Missed Opportunities
I have official confirmation. The rumors are true. My beautiful and talented FedEx guy has gotten married. Work-at-home moms all over Southwest Austin are in mourning.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Why? Just Why?
Despite the bizarre portrait on the cover, I thought I wanted this CD:
In fact, I've been thinking I wanted it for a while. Tony Bennett with Sting? Cool! James Taylor? Oh yeah! k.d. lang? Definitely! But when I went to amazon.com to place my order this evening, I was stopped dead in my (mouse)tracks. Tony Bennett and Celine Dion? Shitbucket!! What am I going to do now? I simply can not, will not, must not purchase anything by Celine Dion. I *KNOW* some people really like her. Yes, I'm sure she's very talented, blah, blah, blah. And if I'd never actually seen her move or heard her speak, I might be able to live with it. But I have and I can't.
Sooooo, if I'm serious about this Tony Bennett thing, I'm going to have to pull myself together, make a flying leap into the new millenium (yeah, I know I'm running a couple years late), and learn how to buy individual tunes online. But frankly, I'm still recovering from figuring out how to get the free podcasts of Fresh Air and This American Life. Bleh. Anyone know a teenager who'd do it for me? Without bitching about Tony Bennett?
Or maybe I should just forget about it and go listen to some old Lyle Lovett.
Despite the bizarre portrait on the cover, I thought I wanted this CD:
In fact, I've been thinking I wanted it for a while. Tony Bennett with Sting? Cool! James Taylor? Oh yeah! k.d. lang? Definitely! But when I went to amazon.com to place my order this evening, I was stopped dead in my (mouse)tracks. Tony Bennett and Celine Dion? Shitbucket!! What am I going to do now? I simply can not, will not, must not purchase anything by Celine Dion. I *KNOW* some people really like her. Yes, I'm sure she's very talented, blah, blah, blah. And if I'd never actually seen her move or heard her speak, I might be able to live with it. But I have and I can't.
Sooooo, if I'm serious about this Tony Bennett thing, I'm going to have to pull myself together, make a flying leap into the new millenium (yeah, I know I'm running a couple years late), and learn how to buy individual tunes online. But frankly, I'm still recovering from figuring out how to get the free podcasts of Fresh Air and This American Life. Bleh. Anyone know a teenager who'd do it for me? Without bitching about Tony Bennett?
Or maybe I should just forget about it and go listen to some old Lyle Lovett.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The State of the (local) Media
I present to you the following "story," which was posted on KXAN's website Sunday evening. I'm posting the story in its entirety, completely unedited or excerpted.
*The Austin Symphony Serves Up The Sounds For Mother's Day*
May 13, 2007 10:05 PM
Sunday several Austin families came out to celebrate Mother's Day at the Austin Symphony.
The annual outdoor concert featured some well known tunes and musical numbers.
The concert was held at Zilker's Hillside Theatre.
That's it. I happened across this on Sunday evening, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Why did the "journalists" at KXAN post this on their website? The story is neither accurate, well-written, nor is it of any interest whatsoever.
Let's start with accuracy. The Austin Symphony did not play at Zilker Park on Mother's Day. The Austin Symphonic Band did. Different organizations altogether. I recognize that this distinction is not important to anyone other than the members of the two separate organizations (and probably more important to the actual Austin Symphony Orchestra since they, as professional musicians, probably don't appreciate being compared to a bunch of wannabes), but the fact remains that the subject of the story is inaccurate. The "several families" bit is misleading too--unless they were really, really big families, as there were several hundred people there. I'd estimate there were 350 to 400 on the hillside this year. There are only two other facts presented in the story: music was played (true) and the concert was at the Zilker Hillside Theatre (also true). So, this article, such as it is, is 50% wrong.
But let's move away from the accuracy to another journalistic issue: quality of writing. Whoever wrote this only had to generate three sentence and a headline, and this is the best he or she could give us? "The annual outdoor concert featured some well known tunes and musical numbers." Yep, we played tunes and musical numbers? You didn't know we had it in us, did you? Which did you like best? Myself, I preferred playing the tunes.
Finally, why the hell did they even post this story? There was, in effect, NO story. There was not even a picture that might make it an interesting human interest space filler.
The more I think about this (and clearly, the fact that I'm thinking about it at all is probably good evidence that I'm avoiding something much more important), the more flabbergasted I am. It makes me wonder what the real purpose of local "news" coverage is.
I present to you the following "story," which was posted on KXAN's website Sunday evening. I'm posting the story in its entirety, completely unedited or excerpted.
*The Austin Symphony Serves Up The Sounds For Mother's Day*
May 13, 2007 10:05 PM
Sunday several Austin families came out to celebrate Mother's Day at the Austin Symphony.
The annual outdoor concert featured some well known tunes and musical numbers.
The concert was held at Zilker's Hillside Theatre.
That's it. I happened across this on Sunday evening, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Why did the "journalists" at KXAN post this on their website? The story is neither accurate, well-written, nor is it of any interest whatsoever.
Let's start with accuracy. The Austin Symphony did not play at Zilker Park on Mother's Day. The Austin Symphonic Band did. Different organizations altogether. I recognize that this distinction is not important to anyone other than the members of the two separate organizations (and probably more important to the actual Austin Symphony Orchestra since they, as professional musicians, probably don't appreciate being compared to a bunch of wannabes), but the fact remains that the subject of the story is inaccurate. The "several families" bit is misleading too--unless they were really, really big families, as there were several hundred people there. I'd estimate there were 350 to 400 on the hillside this year. There are only two other facts presented in the story: music was played (true) and the concert was at the Zilker Hillside Theatre (also true). So, this article, such as it is, is 50% wrong.
But let's move away from the accuracy to another journalistic issue: quality of writing. Whoever wrote this only had to generate three sentence and a headline, and this is the best he or she could give us? "The annual outdoor concert featured some well known tunes and musical numbers." Yep, we played tunes and musical numbers? You didn't know we had it in us, did you? Which did you like best? Myself, I preferred playing the tunes.
Finally, why the hell did they even post this story? There was, in effect, NO story. There was not even a picture that might make it an interesting human interest space filler.
The more I think about this (and clearly, the fact that I'm thinking about it at all is probably good evidence that I'm avoiding something much more important), the more flabbergasted I am. It makes me wonder what the real purpose of local "news" coverage is.
Friday, May 04, 2007
I love all the nature in my backyard (owls, hummingbirds, various other birds, butterflies, etc.) and I've worked hard to attract all that nature TO my backyard. But today's nature sighting has left me considering a different approach. Namely, a cement highrise in the middle of a busy cement city. This is what we discovered in a tree in the backyard today:
I don' t know if you can tell from the photo, but it's a four-foot long rat snake. Here's a close-up of his/her head.
I'm moving to Manhattan. Or maybe the Antarctic. ASAP.
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