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Redesign!

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So I tinkered around with the site a bit. Hope the change is a breath of fresh air, rather than a sour whiff of things forgotten behind the radiator.

Let me know how you like it!

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Un Bel Di

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Been listening to Madama Butterfly instead of studying. Butterfly’s Aria, One Fine Day (midi!), always gets to me. Certain versions will bring me to tears. The performance I’m currently listening to isn’t one of those versions, and I yearn for the production I saw a few years ago in Toronto. The staging was magnificent, and the actors were equally so. Just thinking about it makes me long for COC tickets. I haven’t seen an opera in two years, at least. I had the chance to see Erwartung when they were putting it on, but something came up and I couldn’t. Shame; I heard the stage design was amazing.

I looked up the words to One Fine Day, which can be found here. They’re very sad, as you can imagine. Lots of foreshadowing, lots of remembering the ending and hating Pinkerton, lots of trying to match the Italian to the English and becoming bored. The English translation follows.
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. . .

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In 2002, [John] Cage’s publishers launched a plagiarism suit against British musician Mike Batt, who had included a one-minute silence on an album by his rock group, The Planets. Batt agreed to pay an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust.

Is that gold or is that gold?

The big news is that John Cage’s brilliant silent composition, “4’33,” is being aired on BBC radio and television. That’s awesome. Between this and the business last year about freeing the BBC archives, can you find a more revolutionary broadcaster? I say no. Holla, BBC, HOLLA.

Oh yes, and I’m not being facetious, either. I really think it’s a brilliant piece of work. Let the debate begin.

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Shia LaBoeuf

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My goal is to become the first site Googled for the “Shia LaBoeuf” search string. I will attempt to mention Shia as much as possible, and I encourage all and sundry to make references as well, attaching a guzzling cakes hyperlink to his name like so:

I find Shia LaBoeuf to be a seminal actor of our time.

If it worked for George Bush, it can work for me.

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