SST: Noony Noony Noo

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

I haven't been very active on the blogging front for the past two weeks, partially because not a lot of blogworthy stuff has been going on in my life, but mostly because I feel like if I'm sitting at my computer writing I should be working on my 30 Rock script for my TV Writing Class.

So to help me finish typing up my draft, I will invoke Sesame Street's foremost authority on writing:

Friday the 13th

Ever have one of those days where you go to talk to a professor during their office hour but you get there and there's a note on the door saying that they are out of the office that day? And while you're there you see a flyer for a paid psychological study and you run across campus to participate in it but when you get there they say that they started the session five minutes ago? And then you run over to the administration building to cash the voucher you got for doing a psychological study last week, but the teller window closed ten minutes before you got there? And then you give up and walk over to the bus station to head home but you get there three minutes after your bus left? So you have a half hour to kill before the next bus so you head across the street to the public library and blog about your bad timing that day?

Yeah, me too.

(The one nice part in all of that was that I just succeeded in talking a librarian into waiving a fine for me. Like my dad always says, "You don't get what you don't ask for.")

SST: Big Bird and Oscar Introduced

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

The very first episode of Sesame Street aired on November 10, 1969, exactly 40 years ago today. The show was a lot different back then: it featured a really strange opening, most of the sketches are properly introduced by the characters (à la Laugh-In), and the show featured weird segments featuring blank-faced Muppets called "Anything People" that would have facial features/personalities added or removed during the scene.

To commemorate the anniversary, today's clips from the very first episode. The episode spends most of its time introducing us to the human and Muppet cast and, as you can see, some of the characters were not quite finalized yet:





Happy 40th Anniversary, Sesame Street!

P.S. - Isn't today a cool date - 11-10-09? The Count would love it.

72 Hours

Last Sunday we had a special joint Elders Quorum/Relief Society lesson on emergency preparedness, given by roommate Peter. After the lesson, I dug out my 72-hour kit to show it to Peter. It was a gift from my parents two years ago and upon pulling it out again I read the label:

72 Hour Food Supply (Oct 2007)
Suggested Rotation - 2 years

Guess it's time to rotate. So, at Peter and Seth's suggestion, I am going to live off of my 72 kit for the next three days.* It comes equipped with a handy itemized meal list, so here is what I am eating for lunch today:

A cereal bar, three strips of beef jerky, and a fruit snack pouch. I'm sure that if a huge disaster had occurred I would be thrilled to have all that to eat. However, in this time of peace and prosperity, that doesn't look like a whole lot of food. I hope that I'm not starving all the time over the next three days, but maybe it will help me understand the importance of gradually implementing a more expansive food storage plan.

* One decision I have made is that if I go somewhere and they are offering food (i.e. cookies after FHE tomorrow night) I will accept (and probably accept a whole lot). I mean, if there were a real disaster and the Red Cross swooped down and offered me a cookie, I wouldn't turn it down.

Meeting a Legend

Over the past four years, the University Musical Society has pulled off an amazing coup: they have brought in four of the biggest legends in Brazilian popular music history to perform at Hill Auditorium. The year before I came to Ann Arbor they hosted Gilberto Gil (Que pena!), my first year I saw Caetano Veloso in concert, last year I missed out on Milton Nascimento due to some now-forgotten conflict, and this year they have brought in Gal Costa.

If you are a fan of Brazilian music, your jaw is on the floor right now. Those four are like the Mount Rushmore of MPB (Popular Brazilian Music). History remembers them not just as amazingly provocative musicians, but as leaders of the Tropicália movement, the artistic resistance against the military dictatorship that overtook Brazil in 1964. Tropicália was considered so subversive that Caetano and Gil were thrown in prison in 1969 and eventually exiled to England until 1972.

I mentioned to Peter that I was planning on going to the Gal Costa concert on Saturday night and he forwarded me an email announcing that Gal Costa would be holding a Q & A session on campus this afternoon. I was really disappointed because it was scheduled during a time that I would be in class and then I had a lesson to teach on the other side of campus right afterward. But my class ended uncharacteristically early and my student emailed me with a last-minute cancellation, so I was able to make it to the final fifteen minutes of the Q & A session.

Afterward Gal was mobbed by people, mostly Brazilians, wanting autographs and photos with her. The size of the crowd and the fact that I'm not Brazilian discouraged me and I almost left without trying to approach her. However, I asked a Brazilian lady if she would snap the picture for me and pushed through the crowd all the way to Gal. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked (in Portuguese) if I could get a picture with her and she politely posed with me.

Just when the Brazilian lady pressed the button to take the picture, the battery died. I explained to her in Portuguese how to turn the camera off and back on again. While she was fumbling with it Gal said to me (in Portuguese), "Wait, are you American?" At that point I got a little starstruck and I told her that I spent two years in São Paulo, and then I started gushing uncontrollably saying that I love her music, that she's amazing, that she's the wind beneath my wings, etc.* She told me, "Você merece esta foto mais que as outras pessoas aqui porque você aprendeu a nossa língua e a nossa música" ("You deserve this photo more than the other people here because you learned our language and our music"). She told me at least twice that I speak Portuguese really well. I get really excited when any Brazilian tells me that my Portuguese is good, but having Gal Costa was really touching and made me super-giddy. Then the camerawoman finally got the camera to work long enough to snap a picture.

It's not the greatest picture - the flash washed us both out - but at least the camera stayed alive long enough to take it. The camera failure actually turned out to be a good thing because it lead to Gal talking to me for about a minute solid.

For the uninitiated, here are Gal's two signature songs, both from 1968:

"Baby"



"Divino Maravilhoso"



*This reminded me of the time when my friend Kevin got to meet world-famous baritone Thomas Hampson backstage after a concert. Kevin shook his hand and tried to play it cool, but out of nowhere he blurted out, "YOU'RE AN INSPIRATION TO ALL YOUNG SINGERS!" Hampson smiled awkwardly and backed away. Luckily Gal Costa was not weirded out by me in a similar fashion. Maybe it's good thing that I didn't get to meet Drew Barrymore face to face. I probably would have breathlessly told her about my weird dream about her and she would have gotten a restraining order against me.

Halloween '09

My love of Halloween is well-documented (I did much blogging on the subject of Halloween last year: 1 2 3). This year I had an idea for a Halloween costume months in advance, but I failed to follow through with it (I couldn't find the right stripy shirt).

So since I volunteered to perform a song at the ward Halloween party, I decided that my costume would reflect my song choice. So I pulled out my stage makeup kit, put on my least favorite t-shirt (apologies to Olene Walker), and smeared around some cheapo red nail polish (the only blood-looking item I could find at Rite Aid two hours before the party - everyone was worried but it came off my skin very easily). Add it all up and voilà: your standard zombie costume.

My song choice for the evening was a song by computer-programmer-turned-geek-rockstar Jonathan Coulton. I was introduced to him by my new roommate Peter, who wrote a scholarly paper about him (The Music of Jonathan Coulton: Postmodern and Geeky) that helped him get accepted into the musicology doctoral program here at the University of Michigan (no joke). When I mentioned that I was searching for a Halloweeny-type song to perform at the party, he turned me on to a Jonathan Coulton song called "RE: Your Brains." It's a zombie saga written in the form of a bland interoffice email:

Heya Tom, it’s Bob from the office down the hall. Good to see you, buddy - how’ve you been? Thing have been OK for me, except that I’m a zombie now. I really wish you’d let us in. I think I speak for all of us when I say I understand why you folks might hesitate to submit to our demand. But here’s an FYI: You’re all gonna die screaming.

The song features a part for a zombie chorus, so in the performance, Peter taught the crowd the part and lead them in the performance. I have a little snippet of the show here, starting with the second verse and going until the space on my memory card ran out:



I've become quite fond of Coulton's music - it's all very funny on the surface, but a closer inspection reveals some very sophisticated musical and thematic content underneath the comedy. You can listen to all of Coulton's music for free on this site (click on the little play arrow underneath in the 'Hear' column). In addition to "RE: Your Brains," I would suggest checking out the songs "Shop Vac" (the titular vacuum cleaner is a metaphor for a suburban couple's inability to communicate), "Skullcrusher Mountain" (a folk/country love song from an evil genius to his captive maiden - "I'm so into you, but I'm way too smart for you/Even my henchmen think I'm crazy, I'm not surprised that you agree"), and "I'm Your Moon" (a gorgeous love song written from the point of view of Charon, a moon of Pluto, who is consoling Pluto after being demoted from planet status).

Final thought: Nothing against Katherine Downie and her lovely tree in autumn costume, but the photo at the top of the post was cropped from the photo on the right. I cropped the photo to use as my Facebook profile pic, and as I was doing it I felt bad for chopping off a friend. So friends, I want to know: how do you feel about cropping friends out of your profile pictures? Have you ever been cropped out of someone else's photo? If so, how did it make you feel? Let the comments page serve as a cropped friends support group.