(no subject)
1) Last night I went to the symphony, which was performing Holst's "The Planets" accompanied by video from NASA. There was a bit more CGI than I had expected, but overall it was amaaaaaaazing. I was surprised how many of the still images and video I recognized, actually. For instance, the CGI rendering of one of the Mars rovers' approach and landing, with the double parachute and the pyramid-of-airbags. The transit of Mercury from (last year? two years ago?). There were a lot of images from the Mars rover(s) and of course the Voyager missions, including the initial approach to Jupiter. Jupiter and Saturn were particularly impressive overall. The Great Red Spot! The rings! And I'd forgotten that Uranus also had rings, which was a thing that I had known, but: cool! Also, the music was great. "The Planets" is basically my favorite piece of instrumental music, and I was super impressed by hearing it live for the first time. Neptune, the Mystic! *was blown away*
1b) Apparently this is a thing that a lot of orchestras are doing; the first performance of Holst-with-video was in Houston (natch) and it has since been done by the New York Philharmonic and other places. If your local orchestra is doing it, GO.
1c) The before-intermission part of the program was some other pieces commissioned by the orchestra as part of their "local composers" series. The pieces collectively were labelled as "The Elements," and I was really disappointed when I found that they actually meant the alchemical / classical elements of earth, air, fire, water, and metal. The music was fine, but not so memorable. Generally I don't like anything composed post-WWII, apparently.
1d) During the before-intermission part, a high school or college kid sitting in front of me was fidgety and kept riffling through his program. It was really loud and distracting. During intermission I overcame my Fear of Calling Out a Stranger and asked him kindly to not do that during The Planets. He was nice about it and put his program down. After the performance, a woman two seats over thanked me for saying something to him. Confrontation: Sometimes Not So Awful. I'm just usually pretty bad about it.
2) I've watching, like, everything NBC and NBCSN has aired so far.
2a) Bob Costas is kind of my hero for bringing up Russia being terrible at every possible opportunity to work it into a sentence. Matt Lauer was on very briefly at one point I think during opening ceremonies and said he was going to keep the focus only on the athletes, so he can suck it. The broadcasts as a whole have been very conflict-averse and whitewashed, as one might expect. But certainly the media at large have been talking about all of everything, so, eh.
2b) Watching the men's and women's speed skating: the King and Queen of the Netherlands are so adorable. I mean, for all I know about the Netherlands they could be a completely repressive regime too, but, I mean, they're so happy-looking rooting their skaters on. As an American, I think I'm supposed to look askance at hereditary monarchies, but I kind of want to hug them. Possibly also an inappropriate reaction.
2c) I giggle a little everytime they talk about the biathlon, because, seriously: "biatheletes?"
2d) The winner of the men's biathlon is 40 years old, and he is so fast a cross-country skier that he won the gold despite missing one of the ten shots on the range (meaning he had to take an extra 150m penalty lap, which works out to 15-20 seconds on the time) while the silver and bronze medalists made all ten of their shots and could ski straight through.
2e) All of this is making me feel like an enormous lazy lump. *eyes gym in my management company's other building warily*
2f) I'm really loving this new "team figure skating" competition. Some comparisons have been made to the team gymnastics competition, but it isn't really the same at all. In team gymnastics, each of the men or women could theoretically perform in any of the events, so there's some jockeying for who is better at which event and you can kind of tell sometimes that the teammates are thinking "I could have done that event better than [x]." In this figure skating thing, each event is really separate so they're more genuinely rooting for one another, I think.
2g) I noticed that Jeremy Abbott was not there watching the second day of team figure skating, after his pretty disastrous short program in men's single.
2h) The scoring for team figure skating is kind of weird, though. I think they might need to adjust the points awarded for the free skate next time -- basically after the short programs, there's not going to be hardly any movement in the rankings, because the last place team still gets six points (the first place team gets 10.) There's no way anyone can catch up to Russia now even if they were dead last in all the remaining events, and I think it would be pretty unlikely even for the US to fall out of third to Japan or Italy at this point, although the last three places are currently closer to one another in points than the top two teams, which are way ahead. It's a fight for the bronze, but mostly it's all finished, with (I think?) three events to go.
It's snowing, and while that's seasonally appropriate I am so frakking over it. All winter it's been snow every second or third day, but we haven't had hardly any actual accumulation, so it's immediately turning to ice and the city can't really plow any of it either, they just put down heaps of salt and sand. I'm supposed to go to bowling tonight, but I'm not sure I'll go... which would be bad if I missed it, because I skipped the one two weeks ago and last week they didn't have one because of the superbowl. But I don't like to drive in weather, and particularly here where I'm not sooo familiar with the roads, which are hilly besides. And bridges, which may freeze before roads. Pffffft.
1b) Apparently this is a thing that a lot of orchestras are doing; the first performance of Holst-with-video was in Houston (natch) and it has since been done by the New York Philharmonic and other places. If your local orchestra is doing it, GO.
1c) The before-intermission part of the program was some other pieces commissioned by the orchestra as part of their "local composers" series. The pieces collectively were labelled as "The Elements," and I was really disappointed when I found that they actually meant the alchemical / classical elements of earth, air, fire, water, and metal. The music was fine, but not so memorable. Generally I don't like anything composed post-WWII, apparently.
1d) During the before-intermission part, a high school or college kid sitting in front of me was fidgety and kept riffling through his program. It was really loud and distracting. During intermission I overcame my Fear of Calling Out a Stranger and asked him kindly to not do that during The Planets. He was nice about it and put his program down. After the performance, a woman two seats over thanked me for saying something to him. Confrontation: Sometimes Not So Awful. I'm just usually pretty bad about it.
2) I've watching, like, everything NBC and NBCSN has aired so far.
2a) Bob Costas is kind of my hero for bringing up Russia being terrible at every possible opportunity to work it into a sentence. Matt Lauer was on very briefly at one point I think during opening ceremonies and said he was going to keep the focus only on the athletes, so he can suck it. The broadcasts as a whole have been very conflict-averse and whitewashed, as one might expect. But certainly the media at large have been talking about all of everything, so, eh.
2b) Watching the men's and women's speed skating: the King and Queen of the Netherlands are so adorable. I mean, for all I know about the Netherlands they could be a completely repressive regime too, but, I mean, they're so happy-looking rooting their skaters on. As an American, I think I'm supposed to look askance at hereditary monarchies, but I kind of want to hug them. Possibly also an inappropriate reaction.
2c) I giggle a little everytime they talk about the biathlon, because, seriously: "biatheletes?"
2d) The winner of the men's biathlon is 40 years old, and he is so fast a cross-country skier that he won the gold despite missing one of the ten shots on the range (meaning he had to take an extra 150m penalty lap, which works out to 15-20 seconds on the time) while the silver and bronze medalists made all ten of their shots and could ski straight through.
2e) All of this is making me feel like an enormous lazy lump. *eyes gym in my management company's other building warily*
2f) I'm really loving this new "team figure skating" competition. Some comparisons have been made to the team gymnastics competition, but it isn't really the same at all. In team gymnastics, each of the men or women could theoretically perform in any of the events, so there's some jockeying for who is better at which event and you can kind of tell sometimes that the teammates are thinking "I could have done that event better than [x]." In this figure skating thing, each event is really separate so they're more genuinely rooting for one another, I think.
2g) I noticed that Jeremy Abbott was not there watching the second day of team figure skating, after his pretty disastrous short program in men's single.
2h) The scoring for team figure skating is kind of weird, though. I think they might need to adjust the points awarded for the free skate next time -- basically after the short programs, there's not going to be hardly any movement in the rankings, because the last place team still gets six points (the first place team gets 10.) There's no way anyone can catch up to Russia now even if they were dead last in all the remaining events, and I think it would be pretty unlikely even for the US to fall out of third to Japan or Italy at this point, although the last three places are currently closer to one another in points than the top two teams, which are way ahead. It's a fight for the bronze, but mostly it's all finished, with (I think?) three events to go.
It's snowing, and while that's seasonally appropriate I am so frakking over it. All winter it's been snow every second or third day, but we haven't had hardly any actual accumulation, so it's immediately turning to ice and the city can't really plow any of it either, they just put down heaps of salt and sand. I'm supposed to go to bowling tonight, but I'm not sure I'll go... which would be bad if I missed it, because I skipped the one two weeks ago and last week they didn't have one because of the superbowl. But I don't like to drive in weather, and particularly here where I'm not sooo familiar with the roads, which are hilly besides. And bridges, which may freeze before roads. Pffffft.