rodney's weblog

nitpickings

I don't know what it is, but Vladimir Ashkenazy always seems to nail the tempi of classical music exactly to my tastes. I have this problem with feeling as if most recordings are always too fast, as if a lot of modern performers and conductors feel like they just have to rush through everything at blitz-lightning speed to show their technical wizardry. Sometimes fast is great - even fantastic - but there are just some pieces where blasting through the hundred some bars in < xx:xx minutes simply doesn't do the piece the justice it deserves.

One thing that immediately comes to mind is Kajaran's and Ashkenazy's take on Beethoven's 7th, 2nd movement. Kajaran charges through the piece with some kind of vendetta; when the listener feels like he needs to take a split second to take a breath, Kajaran doesn't wait. Ashkenazy OTOH takes his time and makes sure that every note is given sufficient attention - as a listener, he somehow lets you take it all in. The rich homophony in this movement is key, and Ashkenazy seems to totally get that. Watching the Kajaran video really bugs me, sometimes the music doesn't even match his cues and his arm movements look more like he's trying to swim breast stroke rather than conduct a symphony. Ugh, atrocious. Comparisons below - first Kajaran (total length 8:15), then Ashkenazy (total length 8:47).

ADD anyone?

A scene at a McDonalds on my drive back to Norcal:

Me: "Hi, can I get a Filet-o-Fish, and that's it."
Him: "Ok, would you like anything else with that?"
Me: *repeating* "No, that's it."

* He reaches over to fumble around with something on the next register over, then comes back *

Him: "Ok, so a Filet-o-Fish and a medium drink?"
Me: "..."

china

I finished posting most of the pictures I took in China over November. Take a look.

november

I'll be here and here for the next couple of days visiting my mom. Not looking forward to the plane flight, but I'm excited to try out my new camera in an area outside of the banality of Orange County. It's kind of an off-season period to be traveling to Huangshan, which means less people but higher chances of weather complications. Hopefully everything turns out okay.

Happy Thanksgiving, and happy quarter-century to me.

discovery

There's nothing quite like the feeling of discovering a new song or piece of music, and slowly coming to the realization that you're in love with it as you're listening to it for the first time, and that you know it's going to be on continuous repeat at home, in your car, and at work for the next couple of days. Love at first sight is debatable, but love at first listen is undisputed fact. Why is just one listening never enough? There must be some kind of complex brain process going on that can explain our thirst for repeat listenings of a particular piece of music, and why we don't feel like we can fully "digest" a song until we've heard it 20, 30, 50 times.

Speaking of which, I really want to read this book:

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

hellgate: london

Maybe I'll reinstall when the game stops sucking donkey balls. But probably not. First impressions mean everything to me these days.

Sigh.

think hard

Don't you hate it when you walk somewhere in your house, and then when you arrive you forget why you wanted to go there in the first place? The irritating thing is that when you forget something that was just at the front of your thought process moments ago, it seems soooo much more important. Then you try digging for it in your mind, and it slips further and further away.

I just walked to the kitchen, but I couldn't remember why. If I wanted food, I'd be eating right now. What else could there possibly be??

Saw IV

24 hours after seeing Saw IV, I finally decided to look up on the net as to WTF was going on in the ending. The result was mind-shattering. In the past hour my opinion of the movie has gone from "man, this series is running outta steam" to "I AM NOT F**KING WORTHY". Here's the progression of my chat with my cousin, also a Saw fan:

hardatwrok: did u see saw 4 yet
Rodknee008: yeah
hardatwrok: yesterday?
Rodknee008: yeah
hardatwrok: what did you think
Rodknee008: did you see it yet?
hardatwrok: sucked huh
hardatwrok: ya
Rodknee008: yeah

:: revelation occurs ::

Rodknee008: omg
Rodknee008: omgggggggg

hardatwrok: omfg
hardatwrok: i need to rewatch both
Rodknee008: omggggg
hardatwrok: lmao

hardatwrok: HOW DID THEY THINK OF THIS
hardatwrok: THE IDEA MUST HAVE BEEN PLANTED BY SATAN HIMSELF
Rodknee008: rofl

The real twist in this movie completely flew over my head. I was way too focused (like everyone else in the theater) on the minor twists that were unfolding and utterly missed the bigger picture. Sifting through the 400 user reviews on Yahoo movies, it seems like most people didn't get it, which is both funny (in the sense of the film's cleverness) and sad (in the sense that mostly negative word of mouth will spread). This movie was brilliant, but I don't blame the people that didn't get it, myself included - its level of craftiness is just on a completely different intellectual plane.

change appreciation day

It's really strange how sometimes a seemingly meaningless event can come back and cause an unexpected, yet oddly fitting effect on your life. Earlier yesterday, I was at a 7-11 picking up a few things, and a disheveled, unkempt skateboarder came up to me in my car and asked for 50 cents. My mind instantly flashed to the coins that had been tinkling around in my cup holder for weeks. They were most likely never going to see any use; I don't like carrying change, and I eventually end up sweeping all loose change into the Change Bucket at home. What goes into the Change Bucket usually never comes out.

Thinking that the skateboarder would probably get infinitely better use out of my change than I would, I looked inside my cup holder. 52 cents - two quarters and two pennies. Perfect. I gave him the quarters and felt happy about fulfilling my philanthropic quotient for the day.

Hours later, I found myself on a college campus full of parking lots that my permit-less car couldn't park in. With no other options, I squeezed my car into a metered spot and looked inside my cup holder. I knew full well how much change was left in there (ie. not enough to prevent me from getting a ticket), yet I somehow had to look anyway, hoping that another pair of quarters would magically materialize and that I somehow hallucinated the events from earlier in the day. No, there were only 2 cents.

The thought that I had enough in my car to pay for a parking meter for the last couple of weeks, only to be robbed of it through some freak generous impulse earlier that very day, totally drove me crazy. I think I should start keeping some more change in my car.

schiff

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/05/24/the_schiff_trea.html

"It's written for one hand," Schiff notes. "It's very difficult. It's very easy to miss. So what do pianists do?"

He illustrates: some play the first note in the left hand, and the first chord in the right hand. Some contort themselves to play the first note in the right hand.

"This," he pronounces with unexpected fierceness, " is disgusting".

"With Beethoven you have got to take risks. If you miss it, it's human. Beethoven didn't play music like competition winners today, he couldn't have cared less."

This type of practical, "music for music's sake" mentality makes me really excited to see Schiff this Wednesday. Bonus: finally having a reason to go to the WDCH that doesn't involve everyone-loves-me-because-my-name-is-so-exotic Esa-Pekka Salonen.