Some time ago I wrote about a favorite composition of mine, the Sibelius Fifth Symphony, and I went into a little detail about the last movement. Obviously, I am not the only one on Earth who loves this piece, and it has no doubt been appropriated for other uses. I knew that I knew a popular song that lifted the big theme, but couldn’t remember it at the time. It finally came to me!
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5:
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First Class: “Beach Baby”:
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I went to the optometrist today for my first eye examination in eight years. The last time I went was in the summer of 2000, when my roommate Lee and I walked down to the Reitz Union, which used to have a business that sold eyeglasses and a great doctor. It was the first time anyone ever explained to me how my astigmatism made my eyesight much worse than simple near-sightedness. The doctor used a racquetball cut in half. It was helpful. But he told me at the time that contacts to correct astigmatism were expensive, so I went with glasses, and the cheapest $8 frames I could find at Walgreens.
These days, however, they have contacts for any vision malady, so I had an exam for contacts today. They dilated my pupils, and I could barely keep my eyes open all afternoon. But the doctor was nice–the good doctor from 2000 closed his practice, so I had to find a new one–and her office was really nice. She did an odd test with moving dots of light to test my peripheral vision. And after several varieties of drops were squirted in my eye I could barely see anything. But I’ll go back sometime this coming week to get “fitted” for my contact lenses. I am excited.
It’s a good thing that this great song wasn’t written recently, or you can be sure that one of the lines in the last verse would be “…just a hollow piece of bling…”.
Last night was the season premiere of SNL–which Sara and I watched while Miriam slept on the couch–and though the rest of the show was rock bottom unfunny, the opening was an instant classic that will be talked about for years to come.
UPDATE: Yes, this video will probably not work when you go to play it. That’s copyright for you.
Why do I think politicians who tell outright lies and base their campaigns on said lies can get away with it?
Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”
You can believe the media is biased because Keith Olberman is obviously liberal. But if you have read a paper, or watched a national newscast you have seen exactly what Paul Krugman is talking about above.