Random thought of the day
Daniel Silevitch
Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
(For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
-dms
Kip Williams
They make cd clock radios.
Kip W
Daniel Silevitch
Too easy...
-dms
Dorothy J Heydt
A similarly crescendo rendition of the "Morning" segment from
Grieg's Peer Gynt would also work, for those who don't care for
pounding rhythmical drumbeats at that hour.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Bolero, but not at weird o'clock
in the morning.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Kip Williams
Sorry, I didn't finish. The CD player is balanced on the edge of the
table, with a penny glued to the top of the disk. This causes the player
to fall over, landing on a pair of scales. As that side goes down, the
othe side goes up, striking a match which then lights a candle that
warms the air inside a dry-cleaner's bag. The bag rises, causing a
superstitious fellow outside to become alarmed, and he goes to the phone
to call the TV station. The phone completes an electrical circuit that
diverts a bus carrying the Cleveland Symphony orchestra to drive past
your house, where a replica of a traffic light permanently set on "stop"
awaits them. Meanwhile, the cleaner's bag rises to the ceiling where it
causes a thread to tighten just enough to unveil a picture of some
acorns in front of a squirrel on a treadmill. The squirrel starts
running to the acorns, causing a string to wind on a protruding axle
that unveils a blow-up photo of Bo Derek from "10" in your yard. The
orchestra members, bored from waiting at the light, will then take the
hint and begin playing "Bolero" to amuse themselves.
Then, of course, you spend the rest of the day putting the various parts
of the device back in position to wake you up the following morning,
just in time to go to bed and get some sleep and start it all over. When
the Cleveland Symphony catches on and stops taking that route, you may
substitute the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Kip W
Joe Ellis
If they did, there would probably be a large increase in the number of
folks late for work...
<<Remember "10" with Bo Derek?>>
Daniel Silevitch
That's much better, thanks. I'll start construction tomorrow afternoon.
-dms
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:mNadnUGvsNP...@comcast.com:
You're such a Rube.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Kip Williams
Hey!
Kip W
Paul Dormer
dms...@uchicago.edu (Daniel Silevitch) wrote:
> *From:* Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu>
> *Date:* Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:04:52 GMT
>
> Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>
> Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
> complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>
I had a friend at university who rigged up an alarm clock to play a
cassette of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (in a version with cannons).
This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
mechanical. I recall it involved a piece of string wound round the alarm
key. When the alarm rang, the key rotated, tightening the string which
operated a switch on his cassette player.
> (For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
> long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
> and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
>
Ravel himself said it was his best piece and there wasn't a note of music
in it.
The piece is all in one key apart from a wild modulation right at the end,
at which point in then modulates back to the home key. There's a story of
a French composer (I think it was Koechlin) who turned up late for a
concert at which Bolero was the first work. "I only came for the
modulation," he said.
Kip Williams
[Bolero]
> Ravel himself said it was his best piece and there wasn't a note of music
> in it.
I'd be interested in a quote on that. I've seen where he states that
it's orchestral tissue without music, but I've never seen where he says
it's his best piece.
Kip W
Dorothy J Heydt
Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <slrndmetg5....@bardeen.uchicago.edu>,
>dms...@uchicago.edu (Daniel Silevitch) wrote:
>
>> *From:* Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu>
>> *Date:* Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:04:52 GMT
>>
>> Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>>
>> Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
>> complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>>
>
>I had a friend at university who rigged up an alarm clock to play a
>cassette of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (in a version with cannons).
>
>This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
>mechanical. I recall it involved a piece of string wound round the alarm
>key. When the alarm rang, the key rotated, tightening the string which
>operated a switch on his cassette player.
And way back in the 1960s someone wrote a piece of Star Trek
fanfic informing specifying that Captain Kirk awoke to a
recording of the Ride of the Valkyries.
Joe Ellis
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
It's also notable for being one of the few orchestral works to call for
saxophones. Unfortunately the sax parts are often played by clarinetists
doubling on sax, and (speaking professionally) they don't get a decent
tone - WAY too thin and reedy.
I've been told by percussionists who have played it that it's a
nightmare - it's the same pattern, over and over again, and you're
almost guaranteed to loose your place... and then, right at the end, it
changes.
The usual classification of the piece is as a "tone poem", where the
melody is secondary to the shifting timbres of the instruments and their
combinations. It was it was commissioned and first performed in 1928 as
a dance piece featuring Ida Rubinstein, with choreography by Nijinsky.
See wikipedia for more detail:
Paul Dormer
Williams) wrote:
It's the sort of thing that Radio 3 announcers say before broadcasting it,
but I certainly can't find it written down anywhere.
Paul Dormer
<synthfilker-A0DD...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com>,
synth...@sbcglobal.net (Joe Ellis) wrote:
> *From:* Joe Ellis <synth...@sbcglobal.net>
> *Date:* Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:23:25 GMT
>
> In article <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
>
> > The piece is all in one key apart from a wild modulation right at the
> > end, at which point in then modulates back to the home key. There's
> > a story of a French composer (I think it was Koechlin) who turned up
> > late for a concert at which Bolero was the first work. "I only came
> > for the modulation," he said.
>
> It's also notable for being one of the few orchestral works to call for
> saxophones. Unfortunately the sax parts are often played by
> clarinetists doubling on sax, and (speaking professionally) they don't
> get a decent tone - WAY too thin and reedy.
>
It's not that rare these day. Off the top of my head I can think of
Bizet's L'Arlesienne suite, Berg's violin concerto and Lulu, Britten's
Sinfonia de Requiem, Vaughan Williams 6th Symphony and Job, Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue. There's a story that Strauss wanted saxhorns in his
Sinfonia Domestica, and someone read it as saxophones, but there is no
evidence for this.
Just checked Norman del Mar's Anatomy of the Orchestra, which adds to my
list Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije and Milhaud's La Creation du Monde.
The final paragraph of del Mar's article on the saxophone is interesting
on the subject of doubling:
"The general rule is for an extra player to be engaged whenever a
saxophone is required, but it can be taken as a doubling instrument in the
clarinet department on account of the similarity of its single-reed
mouthpiece. Oddly enough, Ravel organized his orchestral version of
Mussorgsky's Pictures so that the saxophone should be doubled by the 2nd
oboe, but this is never done in practice.
Now, if you want an orchestral rarity, consider the contrabass clarinet.
>
> The usual classification of the piece is as a "tone poem", where the
> melody is secondary to the shifting timbres of the instruments and
> their combinations.
That's not what I take to be the meaning of tone poem. It sounds more
like the definition of Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie.
Daniel Silevitch
[Ravel's Bolero]
> I've been told by percussionists who have played it that it's a
> nightmare - it's the same pattern, over and over again, and you're
> almost guaranteed to loose your place... and then, right at the end, it
> changes.
I've also heard this. The combination of trying to keep the pattern
while maintaining a very slow but continuous crescendo must be very
difficult. I vaguely remember reading that Bolero is fairly frequently
used as an audition piece by orchestras to test drummers' skills.
> The usual classification of the piece is as a "tone poem", where the
> melody is secondary to the shifting timbres of the instruments and their
> combinations. It was it was commissioned and first performed in 1928 as
> a dance piece featuring Ida Rubinstein, with choreography by Nijinsky.
A tone poem? I don't think I've heard it described as such. My usual
image of a tone poem is a piece that incorporates some sort of narrative
into the music; _The Sorcerer's Apprentice_, to take one well-known
example. I'm not sure how _Bolero_ fits into that sort of scheme.
> See wikipedia for more detail:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolero_(Ravel)
Nice article. I've heard the piece in concert and (many times) in
recordings, but have never seen it performed as a ballet.
-dms
Daniel Silevitch
Hmm. I'm not sure I see that fitting into his character. I think Ride of
the Valkyries would be more appropriate for a Klingon alarm clock.
-dms
Dorothy J Heydt
Back then the Klingons hadn't been made very much of: we had seen
them in about two episodes and they were the good-looking Moorish
types with bifurcated eyebrows that Worf later on didn't want to
discuss.
Dorothy J Heydt
Joe Ellis <synth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>I've been told by percussionists who have played it that it's a
>nightmare - it's the same pattern, over and over again, and you're
>changes.
Rather like the Hallelujah Chorus, or the Daphnis and Chloe
Suite, if you're a singer. In the latter, however, you're more
likely to lose the orchestra's place and come in late or, worse,
early. A good conductor will give you a countdown with the hand
that isn't holding the baton, but sometimes he finds himself too
busy....
Kip Williams
> In article
> <synthfilker-A0DD...@newsclstr01.news.prodigy.com>,
> synth...@sbcglobal.net (Joe Ellis) wrote:
>>
>>In article <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
>> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
>>
>>>The piece is all in one key apart from a wild modulation right at the
>>>end, at which point in then modulates back to the home key. There's
>>>a story of a French composer (I think it was Koechlin) who turned up
>>>late for a concert at which Bolero was the first work. "I only came
>>>for the modulation," he said.
>>
>>It's also notable for being one of the few orchestral works to call for
>>saxophones. Unfortunately the sax parts are often played by
>>clarinetists doubling on sax, and (speaking professionally) they don't
>>get a decent tone - WAY too thin and reedy.
>
> It's not that rare these day. Off the top of my head I can think of
> Bizet's L'Arlesienne suite, Berg's violin concerto and Lulu, Britten's
> Sinfonia de Requiem, Vaughan Williams 6th Symphony and Job, Gershwin's
> Rhapsody in Blue. There's a story that Strauss wanted saxhorns in his
> Sinfonia Domestica, and someone read it as saxophones, but there is no
> evidence for this.
> Just checked Norman del Mar's Anatomy of the Orchestra, which adds to my
> list Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije and Milhaud's La Creation du Monde.
Also Glazunov's concerto for Saxophone. I just was online looking for
the reason my piano reduction of that credits it to Glazunov and Petiot,
but didn't find it. One source says Petiot did the piano reduction, but
a PDF I found of Glazunov's letters, written at the time of the writing
of the sax quartet and concerto, has him saying he's finished both the
orchestral and piano versions.
The letters are interesting also in having him express a bit of his
opinion of Ravel's version of "Pictures." He doesn't like the muted
trumpet in the "Two Russian Jews" part, saying it sounds like a chicken
clucking. He does say he liked the saxophone part, though.
http://www.dornpub.com/SaxjPDF/glazounov.pdf
Speaking of Bolero, there was a tale of a conductor -- now I don't
recall if it was Reiner or Toscanini -- who praised the percussionist
for his crescendo in a rehearsal of the piece, which made the poor
fellow self-conscious, so that he ruined it the next time through and
got chewed out for it. One of Levant's?
Kip W
Joe Ellis
That handful certainly doesn't give an orchestra a reason to have a
full-time saxophonist. :(
>
> The final paragraph of del Mar's article on the saxophone is interesting
> on the subject of doubling:
>
> "The general rule is for an extra player to be engaged whenever a
> saxophone is required, but it can be taken as a doubling instrument in the
> clarinet department on account of the similarity of its single-reed
> mouthpiece.
And hence the problem. A clarinet (at least, the 'conventional' Soprano
clarinets in Bb and A, and the Sopranino in Eb ) is played with the
instrument pulled back towards the body and the lower jaw firm, with the
mouthpiece "prying out" the teeth of the upper jaw and very little of
the mouthpiece in the mouth.
The saxophone is (correctly) played with the mouthpiece nearly straight
into the mouth, and usually at least half the front of the mouthpiece in
the mouth. The embrochure is also more relaxed in general. The body of
the instrument should be nearly vertical.
The mouthpieces may LOOK similar, but they are used in very different
ways. (Eb Alto, Bb Bass, and Bb Contrabass clarinets are more similar to
the saxophone in position, but you still are out further on the tip of
the mouthpiece)
> Oddly enough, Ravel organized his orchestral version of
> Mussorgsky's Pictures so that the saxophone should be doubled by the 2nd
> oboe, but this is never done in practice.
Thank goodness... Oboists bite even harder than clarinetists, with
predictably less musical results on the sax.
>
> Now, if you want an orchestral rarity, consider the contrabass clarinet.
Been there, played that. Well, clarinet choir, but still, played it.
How about a contrabass _saxophone_?? ;)
> > The usual classification of the piece is as a "tone poem", where the
> > melody is secondary to the shifting timbres of the instruments and
> > their combinations.
>
> That's not what I take to be the meaning of tone poem. It sounds more
> like the definition of Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie.
Dr. Benedum disagreed... (but then his Doctorate was in J. S. Bach...)
;) Since Bolero was originally conceived and was first performed as a
ballet, though, then it probably fits the more convention understanding
of the term as well.
I scandalized him by doing a setting for one of Bach's "art of the
fugue" pieces for saxophone quartet. After all, he DID say that the
instrumentation was pretty much 'whatever was available'... ;)
Joe Ellis
Sung in the Original Klingon, of course...
Tim McDaniel
Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Daniel Silevitch wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 09:13:48 -0500, Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Daniel Silevitch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>>>>
>>>>Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
>>>>complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>>>>
>>>>(For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15
>>>>minute long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and
>>>>quiet melody, and ending with full orchestra playing at full
>>>>volume.)
>>>
>>>They make cd clock radios.
>>
>> Too easy...
>
>Sorry, I didn't finish. The CD player is balanced on the edge of the
>table, with a penny glued to the top of the disk. This causes the
RASSF award with an inclined ramp with a ball balanced at the top, a
hollow half-coconut, a lamp with the bulb replaced by a Roman candle,
a spring-loaded mirror in front of a hostile parrot, twin red-heads on
a trapeze, and an elephant uncommonly fond of enemas.
--
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
Karl Johanson
> Hmm. I'm not sure I see that fitting into his character. I think Ride
> of
> the Valkyries would be more appropriate for a Klingon alarm clock.
How many Klingons does it take to change the ships transtator? . . .
Six! Waa ha ha Ha ha. *snort* gufaw. No wait, I told it wrong. Why's it
take six Klingons to change the ships transtator? . . . Cuz they's so
dang stupid!!
Karl Johanson
(With apologies to the writers of Raising Arizona)
Daniel Silevitch
Naturally.
"A true Klingon Warrior has no need for a 'Snooze' button!"
-dms
Doug Wickstrom
<memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
>mechanical.
[*]
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net>
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx
Now filtering out all cross-posted messages and everything posted
through Google News.
David G. Bell
<slrndmfarj....@bardeen.uchicago.edu>
dms...@uchicago.edu "Daniel Silevitch" wrote:
Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded version
to fit the time allowed.
Apparently the only non-Russian couple to win Olympic gold for Ice
Dance.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."
Amethyst
Daniel Silevitch wrote:
> Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>
> Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
> complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
OK if you need a gentle sort of wakeup call. I gloat that, as a swing
shifty worker, I don't need an alarm clock. The cats will wake me up
gently when they are hungry enough.
Daniel Silevitch
Good point. Now that you mention it, I _do_ remember watching that. I
was 8 at the time, so I doubt I was able to identify (or appreciate) the
music.
-dms
Douglas Berry
<synth...@sbcglobal.net> posting the following on Tue, 01 Nov 2005
15:15:39 GMT iin rec.arts.sf.fandom?
Huh. I always associate "Bolero" with Torvil and Dean just destroying
the competition at the 1984 Winter Olympics. (and starting a
since-banned spate of "death on ice" endings to pairs and dance
routines.)
--
Douglas E. Berry Do the OBVIOUS thing to send e-mail
Atheist #2147, Atheist Vet #5
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as
when they do it from religious conviction."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #894.
Paul Dormer
Williams) wrote:
> Also Glazunov's concerto for Saxophone.
I was leaving out concertos, of which there are many. John Harle has
commissioned several.
Paul Dormer
> Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
> custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
> specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded
> version to fit the time allowed.
Which sort of ruined the point of the piece.
Paul Dormer
Wickstrom) wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:46 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
> <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
> and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>
> >This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
> >mechanical.
>
> [*]
Well, I don't think I saw anything other than mechanical alarm clocks
before the mid-seventies.
But now that I think about it, you could get something called a teas-made
(or possibly teas-maid) which was an alarm clock that made a pot of tea in
the morning. I guess they must have been at least partly electrical.
(Remember once seeing a low-budget film, must have been about 1970, about
police investigating an arsonist. The method of starting the fires was
filling a teas-made with an inflammable fluid.)
Kip Williams
I considered the possibility that you had, but you said "orchestral
music" and included Rhapsody in Blue, so I thought I'd take a chance on
it. I'm just as glad I did, as it led me to Glazunov's comments on
Ravel's Pictures.
Kip W
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in
news:memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk:
Yeah, but it's only classical music, which by demand of popular culture
gets sliced and diced to a fare-thee-well anyway. Commercials for
spaghetti sauce show vistas of Roma, Napoli, Pisa, etc., while on the
soundtrack Lauretta Schicchi sings of throwing herself into the Arno.
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in
news:memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk:
> Now, if you want an orchestral rarity, consider the contrabass clarinet.
Isn't there one of them guys in Holst's "Planets"?
Dorothy J Heydt
Douglas Berry <pengu...@mindOBVIOUSspring.com> wrote:
>What's so funny about peace, love and Joe Ellis
><synth...@sbcglobal.net> posting the following on Tue, 01 Nov 2005
>15:15:39 GMT iin rec.arts.sf.fandom?
>>In article <slrndmetg5....@bardeen.uchicago.edu>,
>> Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>>>
>>> Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
>>> complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>>>
>>> (For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
>>> long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
>>> and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
>>
>>If they did, there would probably be a large increase in the number of
>>folks late for work...
>>
>><<Remember "10" with Bo Derek?>>
>
>Huh. I always associate "Bolero" with Torvil and Dean just destroying
>the competition at the 1984 Winter Olympics. (and starting a
>since-banned spate of "death on ice" endings to pairs and dance
>routines.)
And I associate it with the setting in "Allegro Non Troppo"
showing the evolution of an entire biosphere out of the contents
of a discarded Coke bottle left behind by a passing spaceship.
I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
subtitled, not dubbed.
Dorothy J Heydt
Matthew B. Tepper <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
>p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) appears to have caused the following
>letters to be typed in
>news:memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk:
>
>> Now, if you want an orchestral rarity, consider the contrabass clarinet.
>
>Isn't there one of them guys in Holst's "Planets"?
Is there? If you find out there is, do let me know in which
movement. I've just run through all of them in my head (don't
have a recording at the present time) and I can't identify one,
but memory does fail.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:IpALv...@kithrup.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00014NE6M
Kip Williams
I forgot that. I liked the movie a good deal when it came out. Years
after that, I found a movie by the guy who portrayed the animator,
Maurizio Nichetti, called THE ICICLE THIEF. It was fairly amusing, and I
think I got it off Bravo back when bravo was commercial free and showed
interesting stuff. (In fact, it was on a preview for another service --
I think it was the Independent Film Channel.)
It concerns an art film within the movie itself, being interrupted by
commercials and eventually engulfing the "real" guy played by Nichetti.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=24265
After ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, I had some respect built up for Bozzetto,
which was damaged severely by a series of short fillers he did called
"Mr.Hiccup" ("Mr. Hiccup always has to have the hiccups!") that used to
be shown on Nickelodeon. But they didn't ruin the movie for me, anyway.
I still like the good parts.
Kip W
Douglas Berry
Bell") posting the following on Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:32:02 +0000 (GMT)
iin rec.arts.sf.fandom?
>Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
>custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
>specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded version
>to fit the time allowed.
>
>Apparently the only non-Russian couple to win Olympic gold for Ice
>Dance.
Mon Dieu, aren't you forgetting the Gold won by Anissina and Peizerat
(France) in 2002?
Yes, I'm a skating geek. Caught it from my wife.
Paul Dormer
Williams) wrote:
> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
> > In article <3dhfm15bvf74cg5ta...@4ax.com>,
> > Douglas Berry <pengu...@mindOBVIOUSspring.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Huh. I always associate "Bolero" with Torvil and Dean just destroying
> >>the competition at the 1984 Winter Olympics. (and starting a
> >>since-banned spate of "death on ice" endings to pairs and dance
> >>routines.)
> >
> > And I associate it with the setting in "Allegro Non Troppo"
> > showing the evolution of an entire biosphere out of the contents
> > of a discarded Coke bottle left behind by a passing spaceship.
> >
> > I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
> > subtitled, not dubbed.
>
> I forgot that. I liked the movie a good deal when it came out. Years
> after that, I found a movie by the guy who portrayed the animator,
> Maurizio Nichetti, called THE ICICLE THIEF. It was fairly amusing, and
> I think I got it off Bravo back when bravo was commercial free and
> showed interesting stuff. (In fact, it was on a preview for another
> service -- I think it was the Independent Film Channel.)
>
> It concerns an art film within the movie itself, being interrupted by
> commercials and eventually engulfing the "real" guy played by Nichetti.
See also Volere Volare, where he plays a man who dubs sound effects on to
cartoon films. Then he starts to turn into a cartoon himself. (He
directed these two films, as well.)
In this film (and I think I mentioned this in here recently) he has a
brother who dubs sex films. For some reason, the women who the dubbing
have be in their underwear for the sessions. They also only speak foreign
languages. It's very surreal.
The hero persuades his brother that he can do a sex film, but he does it
entirely with cartoon sound effects. I literally fell out of my chair
when a woman's breasts fell out of her top with a boing sound.
Paul Dormer
> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) appears to have caused the
> following letters to be typed in
> news:memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk:
>
> > Now, if you want an orchestral rarity, consider the contrabass
> > clarinet.
>
> Isn't there one of them guys in Holst's "Planets"?
Not according to the Boosey and Hawkes score.
The oddities in The Planets are the bass flute and the bass oboe. Except
that what Holst called a bass flute is now usually called the alto flute
(flute in G), to avoid confusion with the modern bass flute, which plays
an octave lower than the conventional flute.
I first saw a contrabass clarinet when a piece called Proenca by John
Buller was premiered at the Proms about thirty years ago. Seen it in
several pieces since. Saw one at a Xenakis concert just last month. It
looks like a piece of the central heating plumbing.
Mike Van Pelt
Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
>alarm clocks before the mid-seventies.
Hmmm... I had a clock-radio when I was in high school. This
was in the mid to late 60s. It was a vacuum tube radio. You
could wake to music or to a buzzer. I opened it up and wired
the switch to a power outlet on the back of the radio, so I
could use it to control lights, bells, sirens... whatever it
took to get me out of bed in the morning.
--
Tagon: "Where's your sense of adventure?" | Mike Van Pelt
Kevyn: "It died under mysterious circumstances. | mvp at calweb.com
My sense of self-preservation found the body, | KE6BVH
but assures me it has an airtight alibi." (schlockmercenary.com)
Steve Coltrin
Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> writes:
> "A true Klingon Warrior has no need for a 'Snooze' button!"
A true Klingon warrior needs a new alarm clock every day.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Fox can't take the sky from me
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press
Dorothy J Heydt
>letters to be typed in news:IpALv...@kithrup.com:
>
>> showing the evolution of an entire biosphere out of the contents
>> of a discarded Coke bottle left behind by a passing spaceship.
>>
>> I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
>> subtitled, not dubbed.
>
>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00014NE6M
Thanks; I can't tell, however, whether the DVD is dubbed or
subtitled, and I *really* don't want the dubbed version. When
(if) I can afford it, I'll do some heavy-duty searching.
Joe Ellis
Steve Coltrin <spco...@omcl.org> wrote:
> begin fnord
> Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> writes:
>
> > "A true Klingon Warrior has no need for a 'Snooze' button!"
>
> A true Klingon warrior needs a new alarm clock every day.
Well, if they'd learn not to turn them off with a bat'leth...
Dorothy J Heydt
Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
Well, I used (long long ago) to sing with a Renaissance music
group that had a large assortment of period instruments. These
included the garklein recorder, about five inches long, and the
great bass shawm, about six feet long with a long curved
bassoon-like tube between the shawm and the reed. Of course, the
biggest guy in our group, with fingers like bananas, played the
garklein, and the little weedy guy who could barely reach all
the keys played the great bass.
Kip Williams
> begin fnord
> Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> writes:
>
>>"A true Klingon Warrior has no need for a 'Snooze' button!"
>
> A true Klingon warrior needs a new alarm clock every day.
Or just drinks a whole bunch of beer at bedtime and lets his bladder be
his alarm clock.
Kip W
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>Daniel Silevitch wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 09:13:48 -0500, Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Daniel Silevitch wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>>>>
>>>>Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
>>>>complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>>>>
>>>>(For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
>>>>long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
>>>>and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
>>>
>>
>> Too easy...
>
>Sorry, I didn't finish. The CD player is balanced on the edge of the
>table, with a penny glued to the top of the disk. This causes the player
>to fall over, landing on a pair of scales. As that side goes down, the
>othe side goes up, striking a match which then lights a candle that
>warms the air inside a dry-cleaner's bag. The bag rises, causing a
>superstitious fellow outside to become alarmed, and he goes to the phone
>to call the TV station. The phone completes an electrical circuit that
>diverts a bus carrying the Cleveland Symphony orchestra to drive past
>your house, where a replica of a traffic light permanently set on "stop"
>awaits them. Meanwhile, the cleaner's bag rises to the ceiling where it
>causes a thread to tighten just enough to unveil a picture of some
>acorns in front of a squirrel on a treadmill. The squirrel starts
>running to the acorns, causing a string to wind on a protruding axle
>that unveils a blow-up photo of Bo Derek from "10" in your yard. The
>orchestra members, bored from waiting at the light, will then take the
>hint and begin playing "Bolero" to amuse themselves.
>
>Then, of course, you spend the rest of the day putting the various parts
>of the device back in position to wake you up the following morning,
>just in time to go to bed and get some sleep and start it all over. When
>the Cleveland Symphony catches on and stops taking that route, you may
>substitute the Buffalo Philharmonic.
>
What, you think we're a bunch of rubes?
-- Alan
Kip Williams
> In article <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
> Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Well, I don't think I saw anything other than mechanical
>>alarm clocks before the mid-seventies.
>
> Hmmm... I had a clock-radio when I was in high school. This
> was in the mid to late 60s. It was a vacuum tube radio. You
> could wake to music or to a buzzer. I opened it up and wired
> the switch to a power outlet on the back of the radio, so I
> could use it to control lights, bells, sirens... whatever it
> took to get me out of bed in the morning.
Like maybe just the electricity.
Kip W
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:09:26 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> In article <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
>> Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
>>>cassette of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (in a version with cannons).
>>>
>>>This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
>>>key. When the alarm rang, the key rotated, tightening the string which
>>>operated a switch on his cassette player.
>>
>> And way back in the 1960s someone wrote a piece of Star Trek
>> fanfic informing specifying that Captain Kirk awoke to a
>> recording of the Ride of the Valkyries.
>
>Hmm. I'm not sure I see that fitting into his character. I think Ride of
>the Valkyries would be more appropriate for a Klingon alarm clock.
I think the author of that fanfic was aware of what they play for wakeup call
during Finals Week at Cal Tech, at least in some houses.
-- Alan
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) appears to have caused the following
>letters to be typed in
>news:memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk:
>
>> In article <20051101.19...@zhochaka.org.uk>,
>> db...@zhochaka.org.uk ("David G. Bell") wrote:
>>
>>> Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
>>> custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
>>> specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded
>>> version to fit the time allowed.
>>
>> Which sort of ruined the point of the piece.
>
>Yeah, but it's only classical music, which by demand of popular culture
>gets sliced and diced to a fare-thee-well anyway. Commercials for
>spaghetti sauce show vistas of Roma, Napoli, Pisa, etc., while on the
>soundtrack Lauretta Schicchi sings of throwing herself into the Arno.
If it's any consolation, the demands of dance (and ice-dance) competition
result in hideous slicing and dicing of popular music as well.
-- Alan
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
With no dialogue in the animated segments, does it make _that_ much of
a difference? (Although "Prisney" probably isn't as funny if it's not in
the original Italian, I nonetheless didn't think the live-action sequences
were that funny anyway. Loved the animated ones, though.)
-- Alan
Joel Polowin
> The hero persuades his brother that he can do a sex film, but he does it
> entirely with cartoon sound effects. I literally fell out of my chair
> when a woman's breasts fell out of her top with a boing sound.
Sort of like the late-Heinlein "Ring des Nipple-spungen"?
--
Joel Polowin jpolow...@sympatico.ca but delete "XYZZy" from address
If the Corps is Mother, and the Corps is Father... you *might* be a redneck.
Kip Williams
It's possible to do it in other ways. (See: Goldberg variations.)
Kip W
Joel Polowin
> (For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
> long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
> and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
I've been trying to track down a book I remember only vaguely from
many years ago. The main character -- a young whiz-kid-type
inventor -- had built himself an alarm clock which worked through
several alarm stages. It started with a quiet alarm, and got to
louder and louder sound effects; the ultimate stage involved
firecrackers or a cherry bomb or some such thing, and destroyed
the clock. (A hotel bed in Robert Heinlein's _Between Planets_
used a similar principle, but stopped short of blowing up.)
Mike Van Pelt
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
Hit the snooze alarm and Roll Over, Beethoven. (Or more relevantly,
Baby's got Bach).
The Brits would probably build this device from a Heath (Robinson) kit.
-- Alan
Bill Higgins
> After ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, I had some respect built up for Bozzetto, which was
> damaged severely by a series of short fillers he did called "Mr.Hiccup" ("Mr.
> Hiccup always has to have the hiccups!") that used to be shown on
> Nickelodeon. But they didn't ruin the movie for me, anyway. I still like the
> good parts.
We *all* like the good parts. Of everything.
(Even Sturgeon likes the good parts.)
--
I only have the vaguest concept of how | Bill Higgins
Net News works. I envision it as sort of a |
perpetually orbiting cluster of data, | Fermilab
somewhat in the nature of the Phoenix |
Asteroids in *Dark Star*. --Jacque Marshall | hig...@fnal.gov
Kip Williams
> The Brits would probably build this device from a Heath (Robinson) kit.
Ah, you've tangentially touched on Heathkit. Their catalogs were always
eagerly awaited by me -- along with the Edmund Scientific catalogs. I
even got to order a thing or two from them. I got the 19-in-1 (or some
similar figure) electronic kit and excitedly followed the
cartoon-illustrated steps to put the basic breadboard together, and
breathlessly started following the steps to make some of the projects.
Alas, they had forgotten the electrolytic capacitor, so I couldn't make
the three-transistor radio until we took a trip down to Denver to the
Heathkit store itself to purchase one.
Sometimes I made the AM transmitter, but most of the time I left the
3-transistor receiver assembled. A nice feature that I discovered myself
was that it worked without the batteries in it: I could hear two local
stations through the crystal earphone, just like with the egg radio I
got one Christmas (a crystal set in a plastic ovoid case).
I hated getting rid of the thing, but when I moved from home, years
later -- actually home moved from me when Mom & Dad went to Texas -- I
had to pare down my possessions at least a little. I'm still bitterly
regretting at least one book I shed at that time, but that's another story.
Kip W
Kip Williams
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Kip Williams wrote:
>
>> After ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, I had some respect built up for Bozzetto,
>> which was damaged severely by a series of short fillers he did called
>> "Mr.Hiccup" ("Mr. Hiccup always has to have the hiccups!") that used
>> to be shown on Nickelodeon. But they didn't ruin the movie for me,
>> anyway. I still like the good parts.
>
> We *all* like the good parts. Of everything.
I just didn't want anybody thinking I liked the not-good parts. I
avoided controversy by not specifying which was which.
> (Even Sturgeon likes the good parts.)
I think this is a red herring.
Kip W
Dorothy J Heydt
I actually *had* a clock-radio-CDplayer once, and the Goldberg
variations were what I put on it. Unfortunately it went out of
setting somehow, I had lost the instruction book, and I could
never figure out how to re-set it. Neither could Hal. I forget
what happened to it after that.
Dorothy J Heydt
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>In article <IpALv...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
[Allegro Non Troppo]
>>I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
>>subtitled, not dubbed.
>
>With no dialogue in the animated segments, does it make _that_ much of
>a difference? (Although "Prisney" probably isn't as funny if it's not in
>the original Italian, I nonetheless didn't think the live-action sequences
>were that funny anyway. Loved the animated ones, though.)
It makes a difference for me. I would settle for a DVD undubbed
and uncaptioned, if I had a regionless player. (I mostly play
DVDs on my computer anyway, so I can watch while lying in bed.)
The dubbed version was lame.
The non-animated segments were, of course, also a sort of Disney
parody: the poor enslaved cartoonist laboring away and getting
bread and water for lunch. Disney didn't pay very much. (On the
other hand neither did anybody else, and jobs of any kind were
scarce in those days.)
Dorothy J Heydt
Really? I *think* (though I'm not sure) the author was Ruth
Berman, who was unlikely to know much about life at Cal Tech.
So did they play TRotV at Cal Tech, or what did they?
Dorothy J Heydt
Kip Williams
I generally compare it with the recorded version and note the differences.
Kip W
Matthew B. Tepper
I wouldn't have brought it to your attention if I hadn't seen these lines
in the description:
# Available Subtitles: English
# Available Audio Tracks: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
Take THAT, Daniel Lin, Mark Sadek, James Lin & Christopher Chung!
Matthew B. Tepper
appears to have caused the following letters to be typed in
> What, you think we're a bunch of rubes?
BZZT! Did that one already.
Matthew B. Tepper
letters to be typed in news:Af2dnahviMr...@comcast.com:
You have a stronger stomach than mine.
Joe Ellis
Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Also Glazunov's concerto for Saxophone. I just was online looking for
> the reason my piano reduction of that credits it to Glazunov and Petiot,
> but didn't find it. One source says Petiot did the piano reduction, but
> a PDF I found of Glazunov's letters, written at the time of the writing
> of the sax quartet and concerto, has him saying he's finished both the
> orchestral and piano versions.
Played that one in college - sophomore year recital, IIRC.
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>In article <00A4C280...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>,
>Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
>>In article <IpALv...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
>
>[Allegro Non Troppo]
>
>>>I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
>>>subtitled, not dubbed.
>>
>>With no dialogue in the animated segments, does it make _that_ much of
>>a difference? (Although "Prisney" probably isn't as funny if it's not in
>>the original Italian, I nonetheless didn't think the live-action sequences
>>were that funny anyway. Loved the animated ones, though.)
>
>It makes a difference for me.
Not much to add here, but I want to acknowledge your perfect right for it
to make a difference for you.
I would settle for a DVD undubbed
>and uncaptioned, if I had a regionless player. (I mostly play
>DVDs on my computer anyway, so I can watch while lying in bed.)
>The dubbed version was lame.
>
>The non-animated segments were, of course, also a sort of Disney
>parody: the poor enslaved cartoonist laboring away and getting
>bread and water for lunch. Disney didn't pay very much. (On the
>other hand neither did anybody else, and jobs of any kind were
>scarce in those days.)
But most of Disney's animators, I believe, were men, not little old ladies.
-- Alan
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
Yes, so I'm told. (In the early 70s they did, anyway, and it smacks of a
tradition.)
-- Alan
Keith F. Lynch
> Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Mike Van Pelt wrote:
>>> ... whatever it took to get me out of bed in the morning.
>> Like maybe just the electricity.
> Some mornings, that's what it would have taken.
You are Frankenstein's Monster (as played by Boris Karloff), AICMFP.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Kip Williams
> win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing)
> appears to have caused the following letters to be typed in
> news:00A4C27E...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU:
>
>>What, you think we're a bunch of rubes?
>
> BZZT! Did that one already.
That's the asynchronous nature of Usenet for ya. Gotta go -- trick or
treaters are outside!
Kip W
Kip Williams
> In article <IpAyu...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) writes:
[Allegro non troppo]
>>The non-animated segments were, of course, also a sort of Disney
>>parody: the poor enslaved cartoonist laboring away and getting
>>bread and water for lunch. Disney didn't pay very much. (On the
>>other hand neither did anybody else, and jobs of any kind were
>>scarce in those days.)
>
> But most of Disney's animators, I believe, were men, not little old ladies.
Were they animators? I thought Nichetti was the animator. If they were
ink and paint people, then Bozzetto had their gender right, for the most
part, if not their age.
Kip W
Kip Williams
> Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in news:Af2dnahviMr...@comcast.com:
>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>>>In article <00A4C280...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>,
>>>Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing <win...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>If it's any consolation, the demands of dance (and ice-dance)
>>>>competition result in hideous slicing and dicing of popular music as
>>>>well.
>>>
>>>How can you tell?
>>
>>I generally compare it with the recorded version and note the
>>differences.
>
> You have a stronger stomach than mine.
I feel like Retief in the story where the torture consisted of bad
music, clashing colors, and unpleasant odors. But it's just that,
although I'm somewhat fuzzy on the last 30 years, there's still a lot of
pop music that I like and remember, and even listen to. Even though I'm
not well versed on what's current, I don't actually find it universally
disgusting.
Since I've been playing Donkey Konga, I've been getting a little more
familiar with a small subset of more recent music, and it doesn't
particularly thrill or revolt me. Some of my younger friends like
current music quite a bit, and I'm not prepared to dismiss them as
insane or lacking in discernment.
Kip W
Matthew B. Tepper
There are some items from the 1960s which I remember fondly, and which I've
been, er, finding by various means and re-hearing with delight, even
putting together various "mixes" for my daily commute. And for the most
part, these are *not* "hits"; few of them indeed are rock'n'roll, which in
the main has never appealed to me, even in childhood or teenaged years. At
some point I mean to pour forth with some thoughts, but those will likely
go into my LiveJournal. You may well notice when that happens.
Dorothy J Heydt
Matthew B. Tepper <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
>djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) appears to have caused the following
>letters to be typed in news:IpAsD...@kithrup.com:
>
>> In article <Xns970181D16BD...@207.217.125.201>,
>> Matthew B. Tepper <oyþ@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) appears to have caused the
>>> following letters to be typed in news:IpALv...@kithrup.com:
>>>
>>>> And I associate it with the setting in "Allegro Non Troppo" showing the
>>>> evolution of an entire biosphere out of the contents of a discarded
>>>> Coke bottle left behind by a passing spaceship.
>>>>
>>>> I must try to get a DVD of that someday, if I can find one that's
>>>> subtitled, not dubbed.
>>>
>>> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00014NE6M
>>
>> Thanks; I can't tell, however, whether the DVD is dubbed or subtitled,
>> and I *really* don't want the dubbed version. When (if) I can afford it,
>> I'll do some heavy-duty searching.
>
>I wouldn't have brought it to your attention if I hadn't seen these lines
>in the description:
>
># Available Subtitles: English
># Available Audio Tracks: Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
Aha! I didn't see that! Thanks.
Dorothy J Heydt
Oh yes. The one ANT animator was a man. The little old ladies
were the orchestra.
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
You may well be right. Long time since I saw the picture; don't recall for
sure.
-- Alan
Daniel R. Reitman
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
>In article <a6qdnegdnNn...@comcast.com>, ki...@comcast.net (Kip
>Williams) wrote:
>See also Volere Volare, where he plays a man who dubs sound effects on to
>cartoon films. Then he starts to turn into a cartoon himself. (He
>directed these two films, as well.)
>In this film (and I think I mentioned this in here recently) he has a
>brother who dubs sex films. For some reason, the women who the dubbing
>have be in their underwear for the sessions. They also only speak foreign
>languages. It's very surreal.
>The hero persuades his brother that he can do a sex film, but he does it
>entirely with cartoon sound effects. I literally fell out of my chair
>when a woman's breasts fell out of her top with a boing sound.
The scene where he is hiding on a poster of Leonardo's Man is also
amusing, but painful.
(At least the architects didn't show up for that.)
Dan, ad nauseam
Aaron Denney
Still done as of 2000. Playing at times other than finals' week is
liable to get the perpetrator thrown in a pond.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Doug Wickstrom
<memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>In article <4367beb3.474695953@localhost>, nims...@comcast.net (Doug
>Wickstrom) wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:46 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
>> <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
>> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
>> and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>>
>> >This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
>> >mechanical.
>>
>> [*]
>
>Well, I don't think I saw anything other than mechanical alarm clocks
>before the mid-seventies.
My folks had a clock-radio that used vacuum tubes. I still have
it. It still works.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@comcast.net>
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." --Mohandas K. Gandhi
Now filtering out all cross-posted messages and everything posted
through Google News.
David G. Bell
<memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk "Paul Dormer" wrote:
> In article <20051101.19...@zhochaka.org.uk>,
> db...@zhochaka.org.uk ("David G. Bell") wrote:
>
> > Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
> > custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
> > specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded
> > version to fit the time allowed.
>
> Which sort of ruined the point of the piece.
That pretty much happened anyway, whether one tune or three was fitted
into the allowed time. It's a pretty constrained form of performance,
and my recollection is that it was remarkable what they did do within
the limits, whatever music they picked.
I think a lot of people would be surprised at the full version.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
"I am Number Two," said Penfold. "You are Number Six."
David G. Bell
<osofm1hs0ksfng96k...@4ax.com>
pengu...@mindOBVIOUSspring.com "Douglas Berry" wrote:
> What's so funny about peace, love and db...@zhochaka.org.uk ("David G.
> Bell") posting the following on Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:32:02 +0000 (GMT)
> iin rec.arts.sf.fandom?
>
> >Torvill and Dean; Ice Dance at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics. It was the
> >custom to use multiple tunes in the Free Dance, but the rules didn't
> >specify that. Torvill and Dean used Bolero, a specially recorded version
> >to fit the time allowed.
> >
> >Apparently the only non-Russian couple to win Olympic gold for Ice
> >Dance.
>
> Mon Dieu, aren't you forgetting the Gold won by Anissina and Peizerat
> (France) in 2002?
>
> Yes, I'm a skating geek. Caught it from my wife.
Thanks for the correction. It sounds like the site I googled was out-of-
date.
Kip Williams
> Oh yes. The one ANT animator was a man. The little old ladies
> were the orchestra.
Ah! It's starting to come back now.
Kip W
Kip Williams
> Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> appears to have caused the following
> letters to be typed in news:Uo-dnRvyVJx...@comcast.com:
>
>>Since I've been playing Donkey Konga, I've been getting a little more
>>familiar with a small subset of more recent music, and it doesn't
>>particularly thrill or revolt me. Some of my younger friends like
>>current music quite a bit, and I'm not prepared to dismiss them as
>>insane or lacking in discernment.
>
> There are some items from the 1960s which I remember fondly, and which I've
> been, er, finding by various means and re-hearing with delight, even
> putting together various "mixes" for my daily commute. And for the most
> part, these are *not* "hits"; few of them indeed are rock'n'roll, which in
> the main has never appealed to me, even in childhood or teenaged years. At
> some point I mean to pour forth with some thoughts, but those will likely
> go into my LiveJournal. You may well notice when that happens.
Most likely. I read just about all your entries.
Kip W
Kip Williams
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 19:49 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
> <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
> and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>
>>In article <4367beb3.474695953@localhost>, nims...@comcast.net (Doug
>>Wickstrom) wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:46 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
>>><memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
>>> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
>>>and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>>>
>>>>This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
>>>>mechanical.
>>>
>>>[*]
>>
>>Well, I don't think I saw anything other than mechanical alarm clocks
>>before the mid-seventies.
>
> My folks had a clock-radio that used vacuum tubes. I still have
> it. It still works.
I've been suspecting some sort of definitional problem with this. I'd
guess that electromechanical clock movements are simply considered
mechanical, else I'd have mentioned an electric alarm clock I used to
have that I got at a garage sale for a dime. It worked faithfully until
I decided to use the alarm to go fishing with Dad. I don't remember if
it went off on the morning of the trip or not (I do remember I didn't go
for some reason), but the next morning at 4:30, there it was, buzzing
louder than anything this side of hell has any excuse for. I switched it
off, and 24 hours later, it did it again. The switch had two 'off'
positions. Fearful of using the wrong one again, I unplugged it at that
point, and when I plugged it in again, it didn't work. My feeling at the
time was that it was miffed at not being able to keep getting me up at 4:30.
Kip W
Nancy Lebovitz
Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing wrote:
>
>I hated getting rid of the thing, but when I moved from home, years
>later -- actually home moved from me when Mom & Dad went to Texas -- I
>had to pare down my possessions at least a little. I'm still bitterly
>regretting at least one book I shed at that time, but that's another story.
You might as well tell us. What was the book?
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Nancy Lebovitz
Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Too easy...
>
>Sorry, I didn't finish. The CD player is balanced on the edge of the
>table, with a penny glued to the top of the disk. This causes the player
>to fall over, landing on a pair of scales. As that side goes down, the
>othe side goes up, striking a match which then lights a candle that
>warms the air inside a dry-cleaner's bag. The bag rises, causing a
>superstitious fellow outside to become alarmed, and he goes to the phone
>to call the TV station. The phone completes an electrical circuit that
>diverts a bus carrying the Cleveland Symphony orchestra to drive past
>your house, where a replica of a traffic light permanently set on "stop"
>awaits them. Meanwhile, the cleaner's bag rises to the ceiling where it
>causes a thread to tighten just enough to unveil a picture of some
>acorns in front of a squirrel on a treadmill. The squirrel starts
>running to the acorns, causing a string to wind on a protruding axle
>that unveils a blow-up photo of Bo Derek from "10" in your yard. The
>orchestra members, bored from waiting at the light, will then take the
>hint and begin playing "Bolero" to amuse themselves.
>
>Then, of course, you spend the rest of the day putting the various parts
>of the device back in position to wake you up the following morning,
>just in time to go to bed and get some sleep and start it all over. When
>the Cleveland Symphony catches on and stops taking that route, you may
>substitute the Buffalo Philharmonic.
Rassef award, but since I haven't though of sufficiently complex
ornamentation, I've linked this to my lj.
As for "too easy", I'm reminded about the bit in a Modesty Blaise story
decribing Willie Garvin making a little tape of music with bathing sounds
substituted for the instruments--without using a computer, since they
weren't in common use then.
Paul Dormer
drei...@spiritone.com (Daniel R. Reitman) wrote:
> *From:* Daniel R. Reitman <drei...@spiritone.com>
> *Date:* Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:23:07 -0800
I remember the architects. Identical twins who liked to watch the heroine
having a bath, as I recall.
The woman who becomes the hero's girl friend works as a sort of
prostitute. She goes around acting out men's fantasies for them. There
were the architects, and the chef who liked coating her in chocolate.
Then there was the waiter. His fantasy involved her visiting his
restaurant and he "accidentally" spilling a bowl of pasta over her so she
had to remove her clothes. But she visits the restaurant with the hero
and the waiter still manages to spill the pasta, though he's trying not
to.
Paul Dormer
> In article <slrndmfb1o....@bardeen.uchicago.edu>, Daniel
> Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.eduwrites:
> >On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:09:26 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com>
> > wrote:
> >> In article <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>,
> >> Paul Dormer <p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk> wrote:
> >>>I had a friend at university who rigged up an alarm clock to play a
> >>>cassette of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (in a version with cannons).
> >>>
> >>>This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
> >>>mechanical. I recall it involved a piece of string wound round the
> alarm >>>key. When the alarm rang, the key rotated, tightening the
> string which >>>operated a switch on his cassette player.
> >>
> >> And way back in the 1960s someone wrote a piece of Star Trek
> >> fanfic informing specifying that Captain Kirk awoke to a
> >> recording of the Ride of the Valkyries.
> >
> >Hmm. I'm not sure I see that fitting into his character. I think Ride
> of
> >the Valkyries would be more appropriate for a Klingon alarm clock.
>
> I think the author of that fanfic was aware of what they play for
> wakeup call
> during Finals Week at Cal Tech, at least in some houses.
And I remember Tim Illingworth hosting a party where people who stayed the
night were woken up the next morning by the Valkyries. Or was it the
whole Ring cycle?
Paul Dormer
wrote:
> Well, I used (long long ago) to sing with a Renaissance music
> group that had a large assortment of period instruments. These
> included the garklein recorder, about five inches long, and the
> great bass shawm, about six feet long with a long curved
> bassoon-like tube between the shawm and the reed. Of course, the
> biggest guy in our group, with fingers like bananas, played the
> garklein, and the little weedy guy who could barely reach all
> the keys played the great bass.
Many years ago, I heard this programme on the BBC:
The Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clacket
Schola Polyphonica Neasdeniensis
Peter Weevil and John Throgmorton (shagbut)
Tatiana Splod (minikin)
and H.G. Hogg (Flemish clacket)
Introduced by Hugo Turvey
Hucbald the Onelegged (of Grobhausen, fl. 1452)
Instrumental Rondo: Haro! Poppzgeyen ist das Wieselungenslied
(First broadcast in 1968)
1968 was about the time David Munrow started making early music popular,
and it's a spoof of that. I recall that one of the instruments was
designed by Heironymous Bosch "while no one was looking".
(For those that don't know, Neasden is a northern suburb of London which
was the butt of many jokes in the humorous journal "Private Eye".)
Paul Dormer
Wickstrom) wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 19:49 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
> <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
> and photons to travel coherently in saying:
>
> >In article <4367beb3.474695953@localhost>, nims...@comcast.net (Doug
> >Wickstrom) wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:46 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), in message
> >> <memo.2005110...@pauldormer.compulink.co.uk>
> >> p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) caused electrons to dance
> >> and photons to travel coherently in saying:
> >>
> >> >This was about 1970, when the only alarm clocks you could get were
> >> >mechanical.
> >>
> >> [*]
> >
> >Well, I don't think I saw anything other than mechanical alarm clocks
> >before the mid-seventies.
>
> My folks had a clock-radio that used vacuum tubes. I still have
> it. It still works.
I wonder if they ever made it over here. I have no recollection of such
things, but that doesn't mean much. (For the record, we call vacuum tubes
"valves" over here.)
Kip Williams
> In article <uLCdne3KasS...@comcast.com>,
> Kip Williams <ki...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing wrote:
>>
>>I hated getting rid of the thing, but when I moved from home, years
>>later -- actually home moved from me when Mom & Dad went to Texas -- I
>>had to pare down my possessions at least a little. I'm still bitterly
>>regretting at least one book I shed at that time, but that's another story.
>
> You might as well tell us. What was the book?
_The Omnibus Boners_, illustrated by Dr. Seuss. I could get another copy
of the book any time, but this one was a present from my uncle (who died
before I was born) to my mother, and the inscription was written in
little men who formed the letters. I hated doing it at the time, but it
was a space concern. I didn't know then just how bad I'd feel about
doing it.
Kip W
Matthew B. Tepper
Gawrshk!
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in
> In article <IpAsK...@kithrup.com>, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> Heydt) wrote:
>
>> Well, I used (long long ago) to sing with a Renaissance music group
>> that had a large assortment of period instruments. These included the
>> garklein recorder, about five inches long, and the great bass shawm,
>> about six feet long with a long curved bassoon-like tube between the
>> shawm and the reed. Of course, the biggest guy in our group, with
>> fingers like bananas, played the garklein, and the little weedy guy who
>> could barely reach all the keys played the great bass.
>
> Many years ago, I heard this programme on the BBC:
>
> The Shagbut, Minikin and Flemish Clacket
> Schola Polyphonica Neasdeniensis
> Peter Weevil and John Throgmorton (shagbut)
> Tatiana Splod (minikin)
> and H.G. Hogg (Flemish clacket)
> Introduced by Hugo Turvey
>
> Hucbald the Onelegged (of Grobhausen, fl. 1452)
> Instrumental Rondo: Haro! Poppzgeyen ist das Wieselungenslied
> (First broadcast in 1968)
>
> 1968 was about the time David Munrow started making early music popular,
> and it's a spoof of that. I recall that one of the instruments was
> designed by Heironymous Bosch "while no one was looking".
I would have put David Munrow's heyday a little later. And sadly, he
hanged himself in 1975, having made dozens and dozens of LPs worth of
recordings in between.
> (For those that don't know, Neasden is a northern suburb of London which
> was the butt of many jokes in the humorous journal "Private Eye".)
--
Daniel Silevitch
> Inspired by music on the radio last night:
>
> Somebody really should make an alarm clock where the wake-up sound is a
> complete recording of Ravel's _Bolero_.
>
> (For anyone not familiar with the piece: It's essentially a 15 minute
> long crescendo, starting with a very soft drum beat and quiet melody,
> and ending with full orchestra playing at full volume.)
<looks at thread> Huh. I'm not sure what sort of response I was really
expecting, but a thread that nearly hit 100 messages in a day (94 on my
server at the moment) was certainly _not_ what I was anticipating.
Mysterious and inexplicable are the ways of the newsgroup.
-dms
Andrew Stephenson
closely as it probably merits but also haven't noticed pointers
to this review of the ANT DVD
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1114non.html
which may help.
--
Andrew Stephenson