This is all a long way of saying that I’ve been busy lately, and haven’t managed to get around to blogging. I’m hoping to work that back into my schedule though, perhaps on a once-a-week basis; it’s nice to have a non-academic writing outlet. I’ve had a couple of ideas for series of posts floating around the back of my mind for awhile, and I’m hoping to start on them soon (since my current life of researching, writing, and practicing generally does not lend itself to interesting narrative).

The first of these will be reviews of bizarre albums from my growing record collection. I’ll focus on weird stuff that hasn’t (to my knowledge) been reissued on CD. That way, I can probably get away with providing audio samples. The second series will be about things I use that might be considered old-fashioned or obsolete, yet are to my mind superior to their modern counterparts. I hope to get back to book reviews at some point too, although I’m at this point woefully behind and have to spend time with each book remembering what I thought about it.

Team 701: Musicology Mayhem

Yesterday morning, Veronica, our friend Patrick, and I participated in the Devil’s Challenge Triathlon at Devil’s Lake State Park, about an hour northwest of Madison. We entered as a relay team — I swam (1/4 mile), Patrick biked (15 miles), and Veronica ran (3 miles). We decided earlier this summer that we wanted to attempt a relay triathlon, and had been more or less training since then. We took a trip to Devil’s Lake last weekend to scout out the course and to do a dry run. Still, having never done this sort of thing before, we weren’t quite sure what to expect on the actual day of the race. We left Madison at a quarter to 6 yesterday morning so that we’d have plenty of time to park, pickup our registration packet, and warm up before the 8 a.m. start. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and set about mentally and physically preparing ourselves.

A Later Swim Start

At the race, individual triathletes were organized into starting waves, largely by age and sex divisions. A funny thing about relay teams like ours, though: we were put in the very first wave, which is otherwise reserved for elite competitors. So, you have the fast, hardcore, experienced people grouped with people who aren’t up to doing the whole triathlon themselves. I suppose this makes a certain amount of sense; relayers are free to expend all their energy on each leg of the race, whereas individuals have to pace themselves.

Swimmers Exiting the Water

So, I lined up on the beach with the elite athletes and the other relay swimmers. Since we were the first ones to go, all the other athletes and many spectators were behind us, cheering and making noise. When the starter horn went off, we all ran out into the water towards the first buoy. Not having had the chance to observe any starts, I just followed the people in front of me. The lake was very shallow (I could have walked the whole swim course), so the decision of when to switch from running to swimming was an important one. There was a big crush getting around the first buoy, then the pack started to thin out somewhat. Through most of the swim, I had plenty of room to maneuver. After rounding the second buoy, I swam shorewards until the water became too shallow to get a good stroke. Once on shore, I had to run up a short flight of stairs and sprint a fair distance to where Patrick was waiting with his bike.

Patrick Rounding the Last Curve

I made pretty good time in the water, so much so that Patrick wasn’t quite ready when I arrived. While he threw on his helmet, I transferred the neoprene timing chip anklet from my leg to his and ducked out of the transition area to find Veronica and my towel. After drying off and changing, I grabbed my camera, and started shooting pictures of other competitors. When the first cyclist came roaring down the final hill into the park, I wished Veronica good luck and set off to catch Patrick. From the spot I picked, I couldn’t see very far up the last downhill curve. But, a couple of pro photographers were standing farther up the hill, and I used them as an early warning system; when they reached for their cameras, I knew a cyclist was approaching.

Veronica Running

After Patrick came tearing by, I went to try to catch Veronica at the start of her run. I didn’t get any good pics then, but I managed to catch her later at the finish. Once she’d run across the line, we all hung out for awhile waiting for the results to be posted. We ended up doing pretty well for our first time out: 9th out of 38 relay teams. We were 6th in our division (co-ed relays). I beat my target time (8:00) by more than a minute, Veronica beat her target by nearly three minutes, and Patrick came very close to his target (he would’ve beaten it if his front derailleur hadn’t malfunctioned mid-race, leaving him with only his big chain ring for climbing hills). Our final time was 1:26:43. You can see all the results here (they put us under Veronica’s name, rather than that of our team: Musicology Mayhem). All in all, it was a lot of fun, even if we did have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Click here to see all of my photos from the race. Soon, we should get a link to the pictures taken by the pro photographers. If there are any good ones, I’ll link to them as well.

A while ago someone (I can’t remember who now — tell me if it was you) suggested that I watch Never Cry Wolf because it prominently features a bassoon. This is an insertion of the filmmakers, though — there is no reference to a bassoon in Mowat’s book. In any case, the wonders of Netflix brought the movie to us, and we watched it a couple of weekends ago.

The government agency that funds Tyler’s expedition sends all sorts of unnecessary equipment with him — pallets full of toilet paper, crates of government carbon-copy forms, etc. But Tyler himself brings along a seemingly superfluous item: his bassoon. But, shortly after he and his gear are dropped off by a bush pilot (Brian Dennehy), he finds a use for it. Standing alone in the middle of a frozen lake at dusk, Tyler hears the howls of wolves. He grabs the closest weapon-like thing he can find without any serious unpacking — the boot joint of his bassoon — and hides under his upturned canoe:

Tyler (and his bassoon) escape unscathed, and he manages to set up camp and begin his observations. He befriends two Inuit men, Mike (Samson Jorah) and Ootek (Zachary Ittimangnaq). They help him survive the inhospitable climate, and aid in his study of the wolves and caribou. A couple of times in the movie, we see the three sitting outside together in the evening, Tyler playing his bassoon. He tries to mimic the howls and cries of distant wolves:

At one point, Mike gives the bassoon a try, too:

I won’t say anything more about the plot, but the soundtrack is worth mentioning. As one might expect with so much on-screen time for Tyler’s bassoon, there’s quite a bit of bassoon in the movie’s music, as well. Rufus Olivier, currently the principal bassoonist of the San Francisco Opera, plays throughout.

Every bassoonist should see this movie, and I’d probably also recommend it even if it didn’t have any double-reed connection. The film is beautifully shot, and the arctic scenery is gorgeous. The plot is also quite compelling (although, I wonder how accurate the tagline “A True Story” is). So, add it to your Netflix queue!

P.S. — Thanks to the wonders of Wikipedia, I am also happy to report that Never Cry Wolf “is also noteworthy for being the first Walt Disney film to show naked adult buttocks.”

This year, my mom and I celebrated Christmas Eve with a group of friends in Carson City. We had a massive collaborative dinner (12 people, 6 of whom cooked and/or baked), and settled in to do our white elephant game after dessert. A fair amount of stealing went on, as well as some much complained about — but perfectly legal — family collusion. My mom ended up with a B.B. King 2-CD set, and I got a pocket electronic Yahtzee game. My gift entry, which I’m surprised to say was actually desirable enough to change hands at least once, was this:

It’s not just a figurine of a cowboy using an outhouse — it’s a Christmas figurine of a cowboy using an outhouse. “And where does one purchase such a thing?” one might ask. Why, at one of this country’s finest retailers, of course: Walmart. It’s part of a whole line of “Cowboy Christmas” items, most of which seem to have little or nothing to do with Christmas. I must say, there was a lot of awful crap under $10 to choose from at Walmart, but I knew as soon as I found this that I had a winner.

Click for more photos

I suspect that this was related to Geek.Kon, which was going on all weekend in the UW Humanities Building (which we musicians share with historians, artists, and scholars of the Abrahamic religions), but I’m not sure of that. Apparently this isn’t a unique idea; I found a couple of other examples here and here. I kind of wish I’d been around to see the biker’s arrival or departure, to see what (or who?) rides in the coffin.

It is not uncommon, as I walk from the library or music building to the bus stop late at night, to see people carrying around buckets of brightly-colored sidewalk chalk, stopping every few feet to claim another blank area of pavement. These sorts of ads are usually fairly simple, owing to the necessarily one-at-a-time method of creation as well as to the ephemeral nature of chalk — indeed, of most things that are tramped upon by thousands of feet throughout the course of a day. Occasionally the chalking becomes more ambitious; a number of 20-foot wide peace symbols come to mind.

Near the end of the spring semester, I spotted what is definitely my favorite bit of chalking so far. It was done on the wall of a building, and parodies so well the style and tone of other more serious chalk advertisements:

Click for a larger version

Yesterday afternoon, Veronica and I went to a taping of the Jeopardy College Championship at UW’s Kohl Center. I’d been excited about Jeopardy coming to campus since it was announced sometime last fall. I’d initially hoped to audition for the college shows, but only undergrads are eligible. Bah. Oh well, seeing the show live was lots of fun, anyway. We attended the last of four tapings (conducted over the space of two days), so we got to see the two final games of the tournament. It was very interesting to see how a game show is filmed and how many people are involved in putting it on.

As we entered the arena, we were handed shiny Jeopardy pom-poms and towels to wave for the benefit of the cameras as we cheered. Once basically everyone was seated (there were roughly 3500 people in attendance), we got to watch the contestants play a quick practice round. Then the show’s 83-year-old announcer Johnny Gilbert took the stage and told us a bit about how the taping would proceed, what our cues to applaud were, and when to be quiet. He warned us that if anyone yelled out an answer, they’d have to stop taping, disqualify the clue, and start again with a substitute clue. Amazingly, this never happened.

Our View of the Set

The shows themselves were fun to watch, but the best part of the whole experience was the commercial breaks. During these, Alex Trebek would wander the aisles, answering questions posed by audience members and telling stories. He’s really quite funny, and was obviously playing to the college audience. When asked what he plans to do if he ever retires from the show, he started walking back to the stage and replied “I’ve thought about founding a charitable organization of some sort, to try and do some good in the world.” Only when he’d almost reached his podium did he add “… or maybe I’ll just stay home and drink.”