Rheingold pregame yesterday included a lecture by the University of Chicago’s Wendy Doniger on the mythological sources of the Ring cycle. Among other things, Doniger discussed a recurring theme in the source Eddas and Sagas that Wagner omits mentioning (explicitly) in his version: Brunnhilde loses her supernatural strength (something that’s necessary if Gunter is to […]

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Jim Henley passes me the talking stick on this question: Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not […]

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In Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, the following not particularly PC scene takes place: The birdcatcher Papageno, sidekick to prince Tamino, shows up to rescue Pamina. Pamina’s being held captive by Sarastros’ lecherous henchman Monostatos, a Moor, who has been trying to force himself on her. When Papageno appears, wearing his feather-covered birdcatching suit, each concludes that […]

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I’ve just stopped by the website for this season’s performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at Chicago’s Lyric Opera, which I’ll be heading out to see in about a week. Many of the performers are the same singers I saw in the Met’s 2004 production: Jane Eaglen as Brunnhilde, Placido Domingo as Siegmund, and, of course, […]

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Mini-debate over in a DCist comment thread about the practice by clubs like the 9:30 Club of doing ticket presales for certain high-demand shows, announced discreetly on their message boards or through the club’s newsletter. Some like the idea of rewarding “rabid fans”; others regard this as elitist bollocks. I see a rationale that doesn’t […]

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Jeet Heer has a nice piece on the intelligensia’s shifting view of comics from the Toronto Star. But it seems there’s something missing here: Since then, we’ve seen an ever-deepening appreciation of the form. Comics are now studied in the academy, archived in research libraries and lavishly reprinted in expensive collector volumes. In one Toronto […]

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Go pick up (or, more likely, download) copies of Beck‘s Guero and The Decemberists‘ Picaresque, both out this week, right away. The first is an all too welcome return to (forgive the oxymoron) eclectic form after the soporific Sea Change, the second a top-notch collection of Brechtian sea shanties, as we’ve come to expect from […]

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There is something deeply surreal about listening to Terry Gross, the prim, breathy-voiced embodiment of all that is NPR, interview the RZA. (“The RZA’s new book is The Wu-Tang Manual; this is Fresh Air.”)

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My old Koch-fellow friend Rhys Southan, also a former Reason intern, has written a short film that’ll be showing next week at the D.C. independent film festival. Doubtless worth checking out.

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Couple days ago, I was walking around with “Sympathy for the Devil” stuck in my head for no particular reason, and paused as I mumbled out these lyrics mid-laundry-fold: I stuck around St. Petersburg When I saw it was a time for a change Killed the czar and his ministers Anastasia screamed in vain And […]

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