Yes, I know this is late, but, well, this is partially in preparation for something else.
I'll start with excerpts from the 2nd presidential debate on 10/08/04 (yes, I said this was late)
[Kerry was asked a question about tax money funding abortions. He didn't answer explicitly but talked about a bunch of stuff not important to me right now since this is not about abortion. Then came Bush's response, which included this:]
BUSH: I signed the partial-birth -- the ban on partial-birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. It's one way to help reduce abortions. My opponent voted against the ban.
[amongst other related comments. Kerry responded to this response thusly:]
KERRY: Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it's just not that simple. No, I'm not.
[KERRY:] I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.
[and then he went on about parental notifications, then Bush responded]
BUSH: Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial birth abortion? Yes or no?
[BUSH:] And he was given a chance to vote, and he voted no. And that's just the way it is. That's a vote. It came right up. It's clear for everybody to see. And as I said: You can run but you can't hide the reality.
[and then the debate continued with a new question.]
I added the italics but I also added the bold italics.
At first it appears that Bush all but explicitly said that Kerry had just lied; that Kerry's vote against one particularly worded ban on partial birth abortions proved that he was against banning them in general.
But then I noticed that Bush said "a ban on partial birth abortion" not "banning partial birth abortion." Literally Kerry was against "a" ban, he voted against it. That part is clear, he was against that ban.
I don't know, maybe Bush was saying Kerry had just lied, maybe Kerry had just lied (I don't buy this, though.)
Dammit, I was going to say something but then I got bogged down in what could possibly be a flaw; it is entirely clear that Bush was trying to call Kerry out - though the other option is that he wanted people to think he was calling Kerry a liar but was speaking carefully, walking a very fine line, in a way that would allow him to deny it.
These details are minor - at least with regards to what I was posting about. What I was trying to convey, part of what I am trying to approach, is in there still - and the fact that it's not clear, besides being inevitable, is helpful as well.
As a reminder to myself, I love Mamet, but his efforts (on one, particular front) are misguided (or, quite distinctly, doomed to fail.)
Last week was Earlimart and Clinic; this week involves Rilo Kiley, the Phoenix Symphony and Interpol.
Rilo Kiley was, well, by now, last night. Jenny Lewis and the band were wonderful, the set-list was as brilliant as it could be without containing Science vs. Romance, Plane Crash in C or Spectacular Views.
One of the opening bands was The Elected, who AMG users can easily find out is Blake's other band.
The other opening band was Tillyand theWall. That first link is to the interview with one of the three lead singers in this week's The Onion A.V. Club (I recognized them from the Rilo Kiley ticket and followed the advice offered); the second link is to the Team Love website mentioned in the interview - the one where you can download their latest album - and the third link is to their own website (which is less interesting.)
They have three lead singers (one male, two female) who are often all singing the same lead (or harmonizing with it.) Oh, and one of the most hilarious parts: the band includes a tap dancer - and that's the live rhythm section. There were some maracas and shakers and such occasionally but no live drummer other than, well, a tap dancer.
I heartily recommend checking them out; Nights of the Living Dead is my early favorite and was fantastic as their live closer. It's always nice when a band's idea of what their good songs are coincide well with yours (or at least good songs to close out with.)
When I said I was catching up I meant on things that I should've posted.
I got half-season tickets for the Phoenix Symphony this year, which means tickets for 7 concerts plus 1 voucher. I'm still not sure what I want to do with the voucher, there are far too many worthy options. For example I want to go to the all-Tchaikovsky special concert Thanksgiving weekend but traditionally I am out of town camping with family. I also am almost certainly going to see Mozart's Requiem (with his 25th symphony) in November and another Chamber Orchestra concert which includes Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht and maybe the Mahler 7th in March - but all that'd be 4 vouchers.
At any rate here was the first concert (in my half season):
Guest Conductor: Giancarlo Guerrero
Jennifer Higdon: Machine
Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto (with Benedetto Lupo, piano)
Wolfgang Mozart: Symphony 36 "Linz"
Franz Liszt: Les Preludes
Hermann Michael (who I'll see week 10 for some Mozart and Brahms) is now Conductor Laureate and they have no Prinicpal Conductor which means I'll see 7 different conductors in the 7 concerts I have tickets to.
I'm a little embarassed to admit that of those pieces I only knew the Mozart. I know Schumann's symphonies but I don't know that I'd even heard the Piano Concerto before the concert, though I enjoyed it more than the Linz. Machine was good and short (3 minutes) but it was the Liszt that surprised me. I don't much care for most of the Liszt that I've heard and was suprised that they were ending with Les Preludes. It turned out to be a good closer, with the conductor jumping up and down on the podium as it reached it's climax.
Intersting side note on Liszt: I went out and bought A Faust Symphony after reading something from Richard Strauss on how wonderful of a symphonist he was (I forget the actual superlative phrase) and didn't like it at all but this taught me something important: I don't realy have to take musical recommendations from composers I don't like in the first place (I was in a very expansive phase, trying to hear new artists; Liszt was one of the few I didn't take to.)
The next concert is in two and a half weeks. (Though this doesn't seem to be a permanent link, which is why there was no link for the 1st concert in my half-season.)
After finally catching Marillion (first trip to the US since 1998 - at the time I was unable to travel to see them) at the Sunset Strip House of Blues I stopped at the Hollywood Amoeba Records. After leaving my CD collection had officially surpassed 1000 hours. I can say that Chroma Key's This is a Recording was the CD that put me over 500 hours but I have to point to a huge cluster of CDs this time because, well, it was Amoeba. [But first I'll note taht that Chroma Key collection was received June 20, 2000, which means it's taken me just over 4 years to double my CD collection, moving at a rate of 19 minutes 28 seconds per day.]
The honorees (with rank; sort method: decreasing time I own by the CD Artist*)
5 - Anton Brucker - Sacred works for Chorus, 4 CD set on DG with Eugene Jochum/Berlin Philharmonic. His 3 masses, Te Deum, Psalm 150 and 10 of the motets.
39 - Bohuslav Martinu - Memorial to Lidice, Field Mass, Symphony 4
42 - Miles Davis - Agharta (now playing!)
59 - Wilco - Being There. They're coming to the Marquee on November 20.
139 - Earimart - Treble and Tremble. The new album. They're coming to Modified on October 20.
197 - Interpol - Antics. Their new album. October 30 at the Marquee. This album had me hooked before it came out (website had a free stream of Slow Hands) and it's growing on me.
251 - Per Norgard - Symphonies 4 and 5. I've been looking for some Norgard for quite some time. With Leif Segerstam conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
281 - Erase Errata - Other Animals. Quite enjoyed them at Coachella. I'd like to see them again having actually heard the CDs.
303 - Long Fin Killie - Valentino. A short lived Scottish band I came across on AMG but I don't recall how and I can't seem to reconstruct the pathway either. At any rate it was $2.99 and it's pretty good.
* - This is how I (currently) file my CDs so each seperate CD package I have has to be alloted to somebody. This is more often an issue with classical music (The Final Concert is filed under Lenny rather than Beethoven or Britten [and also rather than, say, the Boston Symphony Orchestra) but I also, for example, file the Fields and Streams comp with other KRS comps.
One thing I enjoy about HTML is that instructions that aren't understood are ignored without a lot of errors and crashing; thus one can have a lot of nonsense codes and it won't matter.
At any rate I tried to manually edit the template so everything we had a bit of a border or a margin on the left (the right too would be nice but I didn't get that far) so it doesn't look quite so odd. All I managed to do was add a few spaces at the top so the title isn't cut in half and subtly (or not) change a few of the colors (or, possibly, what I thought were colors.)
More to come, eh. And probably at the same rate, too.
