Notwithstanding my experience with Siegfried, I've continued to get further acquainted with Wagner. I've decided that, in general, opera on video is a bad idea (more about that in another post). I still plan to see the video project through but Gotterdamerung is on hold until the Christmas break, when my youngest daughter will be…

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Being thrown out the airlock of a spaceship without a spacesuit would not be nearly so terrible a death as is sometimes imagined. Might not even be fatal although if you got thrown out you probably aren't going to get back in within the 90-second or so survival window. All in all, I think I'd…

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Roy Buchanan: Sweet Dreams: The Anthology (Disc 1) Like many other guitar heroes, Roy Buchanan never really put the whole musical package together. He was too much of a virtuoso to be a sideman, but he doesn’t seem to have had the broad musical vision, not to mention the singing and songwriting skills, needed to…

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Lanterna: Desert Ocean I have fallen perhaps fatally far behind in this feature. I’m not sure I can keep it up as a weekly—perhaps it will become bi-weekly. I’ll make the reviews, or most of them, briefer, for a while and see if I can maintain that. The fact that I know this album at…

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Rather vigorously, apropos the latest movie from Clint Eastwood. I actually agree with her in the two or three paragraphs where she's talking about the stereotypical boomers. The only problem with the piece is that Eastwood was born in 1930, putting him not just a year or two but a decade and a half older…

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I read and think about politics a fair amount–I would guess probably a bit more than the average person–but every now and then something makes me realize that it's really a relatively minor concern for me. For instance, this post by Rod Dreher. Discussing the desirability, or not, of Christians being involved in politics, and…

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You get this picture accompanying this story. What can you say about the condition of England that isn't summed up in the phrase "Sir Elton John"? Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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Funkadelic: Maggot Brain Yeah, I know. I can’t believe I’m writing about an album with such a sickening name, either. Worse, the title song is precisely the one that interested me. The problem was that I had run across several references to its being a killer guitar piece, and, loving that instrument as I do,…

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I just posted the following over at the Crunchy Con blog, in a discussion about who the 2008 presidential nominees would be. Rod Dreher thinks Obama/Edwards for the Democrats; I doubt it. I'm posting this here, just as a way of officially going on record with my prediction about Hillary, so you can laugh at…

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Once again she puts a movie on our Netflix list because it sounds interesting (or something) and comes up with a real gem: Saints and Soldiers. I had a vague idea that it was about World War II and supposed from the title that it probably involved combat-weary soldiers being assisted (or not) by nuns,…

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