Hamm On Wry

On Saturday I was kindly given tickets to the Helena Symphony’s performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, a piece that I 1) love, 2) have performed several times in my life, and 3) laugh every time my mother calls it “Carmen Bulimia” because she’s clever like that.

This piece is one of those works that really makes you love music. It takes some of the raciest concepts and puts them to sweeping music and makes you work while you enjoy it. It’s fantastic.

Or, well, it should be.

I’ve kind of agonized over this because I really do like the people I know in the Symphony, and I know several members of the Symphony Chorale and truly like and admire them. And they did good. Not great, but good.

I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on Allan Scott, the conductor, if he was on fire. I can’t stand the man, and the way he’s treated people in this town has, for years, been a standing insult to the arts. He’s a insufferable dick, and he’s getting worse. So while I did want to see the show, it would have been immeasurably better if Scott had been stricken with a cold, or perhaps a minivan.

But again, the musicians, both in the orchestra and the chorale, did good. Which is only depressing because I know their talent and drive and for them to have done anything less than spectacular is a shame.

Overall, the night wasn’t the best entertainment, but not the worst either.

First off, the concert was billed as Carmina Burana, but when we got to the Civic Center, we find out that the concert will start with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op36. Not a bad piece, but not the same sort of vitality of Carmina, so it’s a bit of an odd choice. Not horrible, just odd. I can imagine this was ostensibly done for the “blue-haired ladies” that fund the bulk of the arts in small towns, but I know most of those ladies and they love Carmina Burana all on it’s own, so it’s still strikes me as a weird choice.

After the orchestra has tuned up, in the traditional manner, Alan Scott, née “Maestro Scott” enters wearing his pajamas. I’m not one to call someone out for wearing whatever the hell he wants, but he looked like he didn’t care about the performance. I wear a tux when I sing with the Helena Chamber Singers, which goes against my “always shorts, always” rule, so I feel I get to call him out on his sartorial cockup. He looked like an idiot, which he isn’t, but maybe he was confused about how to show his true colors. (In case you’re wondering, Allan, megalomaniacs wear epaulettes, eg. Qaddafi.)

Anyway, back to the concert. Scott preened a bit, then turned to the orchestra and waggled his baton to start the performance. Go listen to how No. 2 starts. It has two hits. They aren’t that hard, nor are they uncommon at this point in western musical history, but the Helena Symphony missed it, and given the off-hand, seizure-like flailing of the baton that Scott subjected them to, I don’t see any way they could have gotten it right. He was a mess, and he fucked up the most basic part of a great piece – the first note!

I was not impressed, and at this point, I started to wonder if seeing his interpretation of Carmina Burana was a good idea. As we slogged through the Beethoven, I really become despondent. What happened to our symphony? Why is this being allowed? The piece drags a bit, but, played well, Beethoven is always a treat. It just wasn’t played all that well. And again, knowing the talent seated on that stage, this was a tad crushing.

I actually thought, and asked a friend seated next to me, “Were they sight-reading this for the first time?” because that’s where this performance was. They musicians are that talented, so why was the performance not at their level.

One would think the pajama’d stick-waver would have rehearsed them a bit better. Apparently, one would be wrong.

But whatever, I wasn’t at the performance for the Beethoven, I was there for the Orff. We all were.

I checked the program and was heartened to see the final paragraph, which I will quote in it’s entirety, because it’s awesome.

It must be remembered that Carmina Burana was designed to be seen as well as heard. Either mimed and choreographed as a ballet or performed in concert, Carmina continues to maintain its chilling and hypnotic effect on admirers of all generations (even when they are not familiar with the work itself), proving that besides the ear of the “civilized” man there exists another ear—a greedy, barbaric one that cries for its food, drink, desire, lust, risks, and fate.

I was looking forward to that “seen as well as heard” bit because when I last performed this, with the Helena Chamber Singers, we had the Premier Dance Company do some spectacular performances as we sang. (This qualifies as my disclaimer as I’m hardly an uninterested by-stander, but I did come to this performance with an open mind, hoping for the best.)

I was destined to be disappointed. Instead of having dancers, they had a projector with English supertitles floating 25 feet above the symphony, and the supertitles were useless. The font was small, the color dark blue, and the words were close, but not right and quite frankly, useless. We’d have all been better off without them.

For those of you unfamiliar with Carmina Burana get a copy of it from iTunes. It’s brilliant, and I can guarantee that you’ve heard at least O! Fortuna! as it’s been used over and over again in ad campaigns for decades.

Again, Scott returns to the stage in his silken nightshirt, ready to start the big piece.

He then strikes out with his baton as if fending off a charging grizzly in a vain attempt to save a family of four from being devoured in the wilds of Montana during a particularly harsh winter. The symphony and the chorale are forced to interpret this manic dance, and attempt, only to ultimately fail, to come in together, as the composer intended.

Not a good start.

This went on. There were fantastic moments, truly brilliant times when the instruments were perfect, the chorus was magical and the moment just raised chills for me. There were two of them. In Carmina there are at least 20 places where this should happen, and perhaps 40 more where, under the guidance of true talent, it could happen. Twice was not enough.

The baritone, Evan Thomas Jones, was great. I felt he started off a tad overwrought vocally, but by his second solo he was awesome, and then he added just the right touch of actual acting to make his performance brilliant. Bravo to him.

The tenor, Jeffrey G. Kitto, has only one solo, and it’s a bitch. I know, I’ve sung it. Kitto did great with it, and was hysterical in his acting as well. Bravo to him as well.

Kristine Biller Mattson, the soprano, was the only one of the three soloists that didn’t have her music memorized. I would fault her for this, but given the spastic conducting of Scott’s, combined with the runs and tempo changes in her solos, it’s not that big of a deal. Her voice is rich and warm, and powerful, and while she could have done more acting, she sang beautifully. Brava to her.

The Caspar Children’s Chorale was fine. I don’t know why they were there, nor why the childrens’ choirs from our own city weren’t used, but in the end, the only problems that happened with the choir can’t be laid at the feet of these kids. They sang well, they just looked terrified or bored, depending on where in the piece they were.

The Symphony Chorale was under-utilized, and almost felt under-rehearsed. The dynamic range they showed wasn’t anything near their ability, and the random flapping displayed by Scott was impossible to decypher, so entrances were flubbed and hits were missed.

At the end of O! Fortuna the tempo changes, and with uncoordinated flailing it’s no wonder that instead of the powerful, dramatic, majestic ending that Orff composed, the symphony was left to deliver an end that missed a hit.

I hate criticizing the symphony because it’s such a great institution – or, at least, it was. What Scott has done with is inability to lead, his manic style combined with his overbearing ego and lack of humanity is to destroy this once-great symphony and make it a shell of what it once was. It used to be a regional, if not national, caliber symphony. Now, it’s this:

Which is sad. It was more, and should be again, but at least we can all agree on why it’s a problem, as this tweet shows:

For those of you who don’t know, “ictus” means “hit”, and so, it’s apparently a common problem.

It appears that not only can’t Scott conduct himself as a decent human being, he can’t conduct the symphony orchestra either. He needs to go.

Fixing the TV.

You know, the worst part about watching the TV is that the whole mess that used to be solved by TV Guide has gotten way the hell out of hand. Have you fired up your average Cable TV Guidance System lately? I bet you have. I also bet you’re just as overwhelmed by it as you’d be if you were asked to man the missile control guidance system used by our military drones.

Pardon my language, but what a fucking mess. On my system, Bresnan Cablevision Optimum, you’ll find that the regular channels start at 2, the random “Who the hell watches this? Oh, it’s Lifetime” channels are in the high 100s and into the 200s, there’s a block of NHL channels on the 400s, the 500s used to be HD, but now their movie channels, but not the HD movie channels, unless you’re going into the OnDemand Movie channels and then yes, they are HD, sometimes, and then the 600s have baseball or basketball or hackey-sack or something else that no one really watches anyway, and then the 700s have the regular channels that were back at 2 but they are now in HD and mostly you can find channel 2 in HD on 702, but sometimes that doesn’t work either, and not all the channels have HD yet, but then…

You know what? It’s just dumb. Stop it.

Last year, HBO released an app. (Stick with me, this is related, and I promise this will all circle around and only make one eye twitch.) HBO Go is a brilliant app, you can, if your cable company isn’t a douche, sign in with your cable company login credentials and watch every HBO original series, right on your iPad. Absolutely brilliant!

Of course, Optimum appears to be powered by a super-secret water-and-vinegar concoction so I haven’t been able to use it, but there it is, tantalizingly beckoning me into the future of 2010. Wooohoo.

If you really think about what this is, tho, it’s a chance for the cable companies to get out of the headaches they currently have and instead to offer up just bandwidth and be free of negotiating contracts with content producers, because let’s face it, if you want Disney (and every cable company wants Disney, they practically have to have it) you’re going to have to negotiate with Disney, and while the Mouse is cute, the lawyers he employs are wicked evil. You want Disney, you’re going to have to pay for EPSN2 through EPSN28 as well. Which no one will watch. Ever. Those are the 400s and 600s of the guide, apparently.

Why would you want to bust your balls with that? You don’t. So be smart, Cable Company, and ditch that shit.

Get with Apple or Motorola and make a new kind of cable box that just has a purchasing interface, and then blocks of channels. You want the locals as a given, great, put them in. You want Disney, it’s $4 a month. ESPN is $4 as well. HBO is $6. Showtime is $5.50 and Cinemax comes in a bundle with HBO and just bumps it up to $6.50 for both channels.

And other than the local channels, you know what you get to watch? Whatever you want, if it’s on the channel, you can watch it as you want. That’s the beauty. It’s TV that makes sense, and the cable company just bills for it, and takes their cut of what you’ve chosen to get.

And that would be awesome.

Which means we’ll never see it.

I’m going to share one of my favorite memories from working as a waitron. It still amuses me, and it might be related to a tweet that a friend had today.

Anyway, I was working as a waiter at Planet Hollywood, Phoenix, which has long since closed, and it was a typical lunch rush. Not terribly busy, but not slow either, when I get a table and the host informed me that one of the three kids was celebrating his birthday. His mother had brought him and two friends to lunch, which is always pretty cool.

Things go great, the kids order their special drinks, mom is cheerful and happy, and while I know one of the kids is hers and celebrating, there’s nothing obvious about him, so I have no idea which child is hers, and figure I’ll just ask later, and get on with taking their lunch order.

One of the boys cocked his head sideways at me, and raised one eyebrow as he asked, “Are you a boy or a girl?” with what had to be the most intense, Spock-like look on his face. This kid was confused.

For those of you who haven’t met me in person, I’m a big ol’ queen, sometimes, and apparently this day, it was out for all to see.

Anyway, back to the story.

The kid is looking confused, his friends, tho, are not. They are looking at him like he’s crazy, which causes me to start to laugh. The mother, however, looks appalled, but she’s looking at the kid, not at me, and as I start to laugh, she starts to blush and turns to me with this horrified look on her face like I’ve just been insulted in the worst way. Then she starts to apologize to me with “I’m so sorry…”

I stopped her right quick, “Oh honey, don’t worry, it’s no big thang.” I queened that line like no one has every queened before. Then I turned to the kid and said, “When you get home, ask your daddy.”

The mom started laughing so hard she dropped her drink, which I skipped off to replace. She left a marvelous tip, and I saw her return two or three more times before I stopped being a waiter there, and she always asked to sit in my section. She constantly made my day, too, because we’d see each other and laugh.

What could be better?

I’ve been watching as the news of the Occupy Wall Street group has spawned across the nation to Occupy Much Of The Nation, and I still can’t see what it’s really doing. I’m all for ruining the power base of the oligarchs of our country, and I suspect that’s the long-term goal for this movement, as it seems mostly made up of the disillusioned and angered folks who, back in 2008, voted for Hope & Change.

But has Obama really done that bad?

Yes.

I suspect the real problem is that when he actually got to the White House he staffed up with people who had “done this before” and they set about doing business-as-usual for his administration. Some of the curtains are different, and hell, the website is light-years beyond what’s ever been there before, and he’s got a youtube channel, and a twitter, and it almost looks like they get it, but then you realize that all they’ve done is repackage the old shit and told us it’s new.

Which is what Wall Street did with those securities. And when the securities failed, people were pissed, and our economy screeched to a halt.

Obama missed the one opportunity to shine the light of day into the workings of government by actually forcing everyone else to use the same media tools he’s using, but in a defensive mode. You don’t think for an instant the negotiations for the debt ceiling were pretty, unless you’re an idiot. But think about how less ugly they’d be if every single time the congressional leaders sat down with the president every fucking word out of both faces on their heads would have been recorded and available for We, The People to review.

Just imagine how much bullshit can’t happen when you can’t hide behind closed doors.

Justice Scalia noted that “running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage.” and it’s so fucking true that for this one quote I’m willing to forgive him some of the idiocy that’s fallen forth from his lips. Not all of it, but a healthy chunk.

So it’s time to stop letting the people we’ve elected hide behind closed doors and do things that are harmful to the majority just because it’s necessary to re-enforce the power-base of the oligarchy. I realize it takes a ton of money to run for office, and that money is going to come from industry in a lot of cases. That’s fine, they can support someone who won’t harm them, but buying our Senators and our Representatives is not right, and must end.

What you’ll find, soon enough, is that the room you used to hide in to negotiate those sticky, icky, little things that are bad for the people of this country are no longer open to you. You’ll have to do the right thing, or continue to do the wrong thing, in the light of day where we can see you. Because those hidey-holes are now occupied.