Old Dogs

 The other day I came across a YouTube video which appeared to have been made by George Will.  I found the message inspiring and immediately forwarded the link to friends.

No sooner did that link make the rounds when the smell of a rat reached the nose of my friend Bill, who for the nth time pointed out to me that I had been suckered.  I'd like to say that I've learned my lesson, but the sheer number of times I've been taken in by these faux reports indicates that that remains to be seen.  Meanwhile, all I can do is hope my friends have a greater capacity for checking for veracity than I do and a greater inclination to do so.  To my chagrin, I have to conclude that my e-mail messages should carry the warning: DO NOT TAKE THIS POST SERIOUSLY UNTIL YOU HAVE VERIFIED THIS INFORMATION.  With that, of course, I need to accept responsibility to be less quick at the draw when it comes to passing on "information."

In my naiveté, I wondered aloud to Bill why anyone would want to milk the progressive left like that. Why make the effort to provide hope and encouragement for your opponents?  Bill wrote back immediately that it must be that YouTube financially rewards those who get the most viewers, and they know that we on the side of resistance to the trump phenomenon are easy pickins.

Which raises a number of questions. I'm a huge fan of YouTube, I've watched hundreds of hours of entertainment videos, piano concertos and the like, and can't imagine life without this great source of information and enrichment coming into my life. I've sung YouTube's praises any number of times. Now it appears even monkeys fall from trees, even YouTube is part of the great American willingness to sell out for big bucks.

That's all I want to say here. Tread softly.  Never mind the big stick; just tread cautiously.  Tomorrow may be another day, hopefully a better one (here you'll pardon me if I talk to myself for a minute).

But keep the lights on.

And this old dog will work harder at learning new tricks.

Diapers

 I hate wearing diapers.

I know from a caretaker’s perspective, whether we’re talking about taking care of babies or incontinent geezers like me, disposable diapers are a godsend. Arguably, a sign of advanced civilization maybe even.

But I challenge you to try and salvage even an ounce of dignity after pissing yourself and having somebody take off the wet and put on the  dry, Especially if this is all happening in one of America’s elder care institutions where they tell you to go ahead and piss your diaper in the night so they don’t have to  come and change you. 

Not much better (OK a little better) is having to Train Percy to point himself into a plastic bottle instead of at the porcelain. My nights recently have been a duel between my chronic cough and a bad case of dry mouth which require me to drink tons of water. Which require me to then pee into a diaper or a bottle (much preferred, as I said. You have more than gotten the picture I’m sure.

For those of you who have not followed this gripping tale from the start, I slipped getting out of the car at home on Christmas Eve, fell flat on my ass and broke my hip. Two fire engines and an ambulance later, I was in Kaiser Hospital, having a rod placed down the marrow of my left tibia from hip to knee and three days after that I was sent to purgatory to recover from the operation. Purgatory left me with such memories as lying on the floor after falling out of the bed in a soaking wet diaper for three hours in the middle of the night because nobody responded to the calls for help. And a face rash from hell due to the application of the wrong medicine that took me to the ER. Anybody want me to testify in Congress on the wretched state of healthcare in America? My calendar is free. 

OK, enough time on the dark side. I got out of that place and ended up in a much better place with much better people and much better care so it’s not entirely a tale of woe. I’m now focused on getting out of here and getting home, which has been transformed from top to bottom, with every square inch covered by a grab bar or a chairlift or some other accommodation to the new reality by my beloved better half.

Taku has earned triple credits toward his sainthood degree in taking care of me. Between him and my “other beloved,” my chosen niece Amy, I have been bathed in love and affection. I wish everybody could enjoy such care and affection (without having to break a hip, I mean).  And it goes beyond that.  

 Also earning credits towards sainthood are my friends, Takashi and Chiha, my friends Sandy and Norm, my friends Arvind and Ashok and Kei Matsuda, all of whom have stopped by.  And my sister and my dearest of old friends, Sally, and my extended family in Argentina and all the other kind souls who have sent best wishes. I’m feeling super grateful. 

Now to get the hell out of here.

Queen of the Night - Mozart Staccato and Upside Down

 I have a weakness for the razz-matazz.  Much as I'd like to think of myself as a sophisticated listener of classical music, lyrical pieces like Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I'm more often drawn to pieces that require technical virtuosity - fingers that "fly across the keyboard."

My go-to music is instrumental, chiefly piano, and also violin.  But I have no trouble defining the human voice as an instrument, as well, and this especially holds true, it seems to me, for singers with exceptional talent and well harnessed raw powers - singers like Pavarotti or Joan Sutherland, to name just a couple of my favorites.

When it comes to showing off at the piano, Liszt comes first to my mind.  But there are many others: Chopin, Prokofiev, Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.  

But I want to focus here on what I think must be the most difficult piece ever writtten for a coloratura  soprano, credit going for Mr. Mozart himself.  I'm talking about that challenge not only to the voice box but to the lips and tongue and cheeks as well: "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen (The Vengeance of Hell boils in my heart)" from The Magic Flute. It's kind of a rite of passage for coloratura sopranos to attempt it, so there is no shortage of performances to listen to.  For me, the leader of the pack has got to be Diana Damrau.  Here she is all gussied up on a costume that does justice to her magical vocal skills, a gown suggestive of a bonfire and a wig that looks like she's wearing a Victorian sofa nestled in an electric fan.  Pure theatricality to give form to what's going on here on stage: a mother, known as "The Queen of the Night" telling her daughter, Pamina, that she has to put a dagger in the heart of Sarastro. Not because he has been holding Pamina hostage, but because he has robbed her, the queen, of her powers.  "Do it," says the queen, or "you will be my daughter nevermore!"  A heavy trip to lay on an innocent kid.

Opera is by nature histrionic, but nowhere more excessively dramatic than in this aria, which is part of opera lore, and not just in German-speaking countries, where they call German operas like The Magic Flute not by their Italian name, but by a German name, a "Singspiel" - a song play.

An example of how much fun German speakers can get out of this over-the-top piece of music can be seen in the jazz takedown by Bodo Wartke, Germany's cabaret artist and musical satirist par excellence.   To help you follow along (and why wouldn't you?), here are the lyrics in English translation and in the original German:

[I hope I haven't crossed the copyright lines here.  If so, I will take this down immediately, of course.  But just so you can follow Bodo's performance... 

Hell's Vengeance Boils in My Heart,
Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,

death and despair,
Tod und Verzweiflung,

Death and despair flames around me!
Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!

Doesn't Sarastro feel the pain of death because of you,
Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro Todesschmerzen,

Sarastro's death pains,
Sarastro Todesschmerzen,

Don't you, my daughter, ever again.
Sot du meine Tochter nimmermehr.

You never do that to me, my daughter.
Sot du mei, meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Aaaaaah...
Aaaaah...

my daughter never again.
meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Aaaaaah...
Aaaaah...

My daughter will never do that again.
Sot meine Tochter nimmermehr.

Be cast out forever and forsaken forever,
Verstossen sei auf ewig und verlassen sei auf ewig,

May all bonds of nature be shattered forever,
Zertrümmert sei auf ewig alle Bande der Natur,

Abandoned, abandoned, and shattered
Verstossen, verlassen, und zertrümmert

all the bonds of nature, all the Baaaa...
alle Bande der Natur, alle Baaaa...

Aaaaah..., gang, all the bonds of nature,
Aaaaah..., Bande, alle Bande der Natur,

If not for you Sarastro will turn pale!
Wenn nicht durch dich Sarastro wird erblassen!

Hear, hear, hear revenge, - gods!
Hört, hört, hört Rache, - Götter!

And lest you think he's the only one making silly of this Queen of the Night aria, here's a lady doing it upside down.

So much for attending the opera in a black suit and a starched collar.