Ace has the Top Ten Signs That Zell Miller Is On Fricken' Fire. Number One is well deserved. Heh, indeed.
No, this is not a Gratuitous Domestic Post (TM) about my kids. Rather, I am currently listening to "Papa" Haydn's Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello No. 34 in B flat major, Hob. XV:20. I have a performance on the Harmonia mundi label by Patrick Cohen, Erich Hobarth and Christophe Coin.
I am continually amazed by Haydn's relatively low popular standing these days. (I've been stewing about this business ever since I read Lileks' dismissal of Haydn in this morning's Bleat .) On the radio, for instance, not much of his work gets played other than the London symphonies and occassionally one of his quartets. I believe this is generally true of concerts as well. And it's truly a shame. Haydn didn't have Mozart's genius or Beethoven's driving energy, but he was immensely admired by both younger men. And neither of them would have achieved what they did without Haydn leading the way. Furthermore, on pure musical merit, I'd take Haydn in an instant over most of the 19th Century posing blowhards who dominate the fashion these days.
The reason I'm amazed by Haydn's relative invisibility is that I can't think of any other composer off the top of my head who combined such fine craftsmanship with such accessibility. Haydn is an excellent composer for helping someone new to classical music to understand the forms. Anyone with a reasonable amount of musical ability can pick up the broader outlines of his ideas at once. At the same time, his work cannot be dismissed as mere kiddie-music. (Well, okay, maybe some of it can be.) Rather, it is a source of pure listening pleasure for even the most sophisticated ear (if that ear can be crow-barred away from its biases, that is).
The CD I have on now is a prime example. The great thing about the trios is that they can be as elegant and sophisticated as anything else Haydn wrote, but at the same time they have a cosy intimacy and lack of formality about them that gives Haydn free rein to indulge himself in fancy. These pieces are peppered with jokes, asides and occassional stormy outbreaks while at the same time never losing their outward structural integrity. This isn't Haydn trying to pack a subscription concert in London. Rather, it's Papa and some of his intimates amusing themselves, playing for the pure pleasure of the music itself.
And what good music it is.
The live-blogging should take place tomorrow starting at 4:15, CDT.
And remember, we have the digital camera to bring all the bloggy goodness as it's happenning! So be sure to send in your questions!
I'm off to to a reception later, where I'm going to see how many times I can work in the words "Jawa" and "sandcrawler" in polite conversation with Rusty's PhD advisor....
People often ask me, "Dave, what is that political scientists actually do all day at political science conventions?"
The answer is obvious: in the old days, it was a fair amount of sitting around the bar lobby, drinking at lunch and watching espn on the wide screen tee-vee. Now, of course it's that AND blogging.
So there.
Here are some panels I'll be avoiding this afternoon (and no, I'm not making any of these up):
Political Philosophy Come to Rick's: Casablanca and American Civic CulturePostmodern Body Politics, which includes the paper "Carnal Hermeneutics and Political Theory" (which, oddly enough, is also playing on Spectravision, I believe)
Heteronormativity and the Politics of Heterosexuality
Shades of Black: Despair, Disappointment, Pessimism
Here's one I actually went to:
Taking Infotainment Seriously: The Emerging Role of Nontraditional Media in Politics
This one looked cool but was at the same time as my bloviating was occuring:
Comparative Empirical Analyses of Television News Coverage of the Iraq War
This one looks pretty cool, but that's just because I'm a Thucydides nerd:
Political Theory and International Security
Things I would rather be stuck in an elevator with Howard Dean and Denny Kucinich during a barium enema than go to:
Public Intellectuals and the Left in America: Toward a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing
Later, I'll link these to the pages where you can actually look at the papers themselves!
Well, that's enough for now. Time to head back to the bar.
Here's some good news: The House of Payne is again open for business. Welcome back, guys!
Okay, Robbo's Rule of Memes: When I see it more than once in the space of a day, I have to get in on it.
So here's a twofer.
First, the John Kerry Loyalty Quiz.
My result? 0 out of 10:
Your score is 0 on a scale of 1 to 10. You hate John Kerry with every fiber of your being. He is the embodiment of everything you despise in a politician: a weak, liberal, flip-flopping, elitist, condescending appeaser who threatens all that is good and decent in America. Worst of all, you think he looks French.
Well that's pretty definitive.
And now, the George W. Bush Loyalty Quiz.
My score? 9 out of 10.
You are a True Believer in President Bush. Your loyalty and devotion to him is matched only by your desire to see his liberal detractors locked away and declared enemy combatants. If all Americans thought as you did, and were it constitutionally viable, George W. Bush would be president for life.
I'll give you all time to recover from your shock.
Yips! to The Inpenetrable One and Jen(nifer) .
Tired of Llama political bloviating? Frankly, so am I.
And now for something completly different, Sheila has got a serious Billy Wilder jones going on. Go on over and just start scrolling.
As is inevitable when talking about BW, Sheila also has some things to say about Marilyn Monroe. I've got to confess that I never understood the appeal. But then, that's just me.
Someone googled in on "Santeria, breaking with one's godparents".
Um......
I gather Santeria is some kind of mystic Caribbean religious exercise akin to Voodoo. Lots of magic, talismen n' stuff. Hope whoever is contemplating this "break" is only thinking spiritual and doesn't have any physical manifestations in mind.
Sorry we can't help.
Well, I made it to Chicago fine, and did my paper this morning. So, now this opens up some free time until Sunday, so what better to do than to give our regular readers (i.e. Robbo's Mom) a sense of what type of ecstatic wackiness transpires when you get 3000 political science professors together in one spot.
Let's just say it puts Mardi Gras in New Orleans to shame!
Well, that's a bit of an exageration. Okay, more than a bit, but I need to tell myself these things to prevent a complete nervous breakdown.
I'm going to take the liberty to point out some of the panels I won't be attending:
for instance "Black Presidential Bids in 2004: Their Significance and Impact in the American Political Process" A pretty short panel.
Anyhoo, the big news is tomorrow's panel is
The Power and Politics of Blogs
featuring Andrew Sullivan, Dan Drezner, and.......Ana Marie Cox, aka "Wonkette."
I've got the wireless laptop and the digital camera (and tenure, so I can pull stunts like this), so I'm going to see if there is wireless access in the room. If so, I'm going to live-blog it, and as a measure of interactivity, I'll ask the three best questions you our loyal readers suggest: given the chance, what would YOU ask Wonkette?
Consider this your double-Llama dare of the day!
(Rusty, I'm calling you out on this one!)
More later this afternoon as my time limit on the public computers is up.
Yips! from Robbo - The obvious question for Ms. Cox: "How much?"
I have found that the printer outside my door makes a sound almost exactly like Homer Simpson chugging Duff Beer. Now that I have this image in my mind, I can't shake it. People coming to pick up their print jobs are beginning to wonder why I giggle so much.
For those of you keeping score at home, last night I had a variation on the nightmare that has been haunting me this week. This time around, however, the overriding feeling was more one of annoyance than fear. I simply wanted everyone and everything to go away so I could get some sleep.
I think that this represents progress. Still tired, tho.
Want to know how you'd vote Down Under? Go take this quiz. Apparently in Australia, my free-market economic stance and social Toryism make me something close to a Liberal. But then again, everything is upside-down there.
Yips! to John at TexasBestGrok.
Dan at Obscurorant seems to have been called out of God's bullpen.
I'm beginning to get that twinge in the stomach that comes to all Red Sox fans, even casual ones like myself, round about the beginning of September. Maybe this year, God really is on our side and this is a sign. After all, didn't Tuco also say that "God hates the Yankees, too"?
So my six year old went swimming with some friends yesterday. When she got home, she was practically bursting with the news that she had jumped off the ten foot diving board. (She's quite the fish. The other day she was doing rudimentary flips off a low board at a friend's house.) But being the kind of girl she is, she felt she couldn't just leave it at that:
Yes! I jumped off into the air and started flapping my arms like a bird and just floated there until the lifeguard blew his whistle at me. Then I stopped floating and went down into the water. It was fun!
The vision of my daughter hogging the airspace between the board and the water while an exasperated lifeguard ordered her to get down, was about the funniest thing I've come across in a long time.
I just can't help myself. Again, these are just personal impressions. Everyone else on the planet can get you the transcripts and probably argue individual points better than I can.
First, Zell. Day-um! Gimme some o' that ol' time religion! I've never actually heard him speak before, although I've seen his op-ed pieces from time to time. I strongly suspect many people didn't even really know who he was before last night. They do now. Impact? Well, FNC's tame liberal Mara Liasson made a rather lame comparison between Zell's old-fashioned stem-winder and Howard Dean's "EEEEEAAAAGGGGHH!" but I don't think that is going to fly.
Then there was Cheney. Stolid, unflappable Cheney. In a way, I think he may benefit from the hysterical villification of the Left. Cheney doesn't appear in the spotlight very often and, after listening to the shrieks of his detractors, I think people are mildly surprised and pleased when they actually see him to find that he doesn't have horns and a pitchfork or a voice like James Earl Jones. And every time I hear him speak, my immediate sense is one of security, one of knowing that the grown-ups are in charge. One other thing - I'll bet John Edwards is already having nightmares about having to debate Cheney.
So What Does It All Mean? Well, I think I agree with Bill Kristal on this - the Dems have gone into the campaign reckoning that better than half the country loathe Dubya and that all they (the Dems) had to do was present someone with half-way decent credentials in order to get the nod. The Republicans refused to roll over on this. They have not stepped back an inch from Dubya's record, but instead have stood solidly behind it, at the same time hammering Kerry's weak spots (and he has many) mercilessly. In this way they have been able to cast the election as a stark either/or proposition, one made all the more important by the fact that we're at war. That was the task of Miller and Cheney last night and I think they did a pretty good job.
Oh, one other thing. There was some debate earlier in the year about whether the Republicans would be smarter to paint Kerry as an unrepentant liberal dove or as a weak, cynical flip-flopper. From what I saw last night, they seem to have managed to do both.
UPDATE: Alas, I seem to have missed Zell putting the hurt on Chris Matthews later in the evening. Kevin at Wizbang has the juicy bits.
FURTHER UPDATE: Holy hell. Allah is in the House.
FURTHER, FURTHER UPDATE: The Commissar exposes the Woody Allen nightmare in which we are now living. Heh, Comrade.