Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, still listening to the Howard Hanson symphonies – I began with the last three, and now I’m back at the beginning for the other four. So, now playing is his first symphony, which, like all his symphonies, is pure Hanson – could not be anyone else. But enough about Hanson, why don’t we talk about Spotlight instead. For those who may not know, Spotlight is a handy-dandy Mac thing wherein you click on it, type in a keyword or title or whatever and it finds it on your computer. I find Spotlight completely irritating and frustrating. If I need to find, for example, a previously written commentary for a song, I type in the song title, and it should bring up the show that had that in its commentary. And yet, it doesn’t. It brings up any number of other things that DON’T have that title but not any of the past Kritzerland show commentaries, all of which I have saved in my main folder. So, I search the show title. Nothing. I know it’s there, but nothing. I search the authors of the song. Nothing. So, I go find it manually and, of course, do find it. There it is. Song title? Check. Show title? Check. Authors of song? Check. So, how can that not come up in a Spotlight search? How is that possible? How can it give me irrelevant documents? How can it not find the five OTHER Kritzerland commentaries that had songs from whatever show I searched? It’s maddening. It makes no sense. Dear Apple, get your Spotlight act together because if it continues, I will be forced to consider becoming a serial killer or, at the very least, a cereal killer, and believe me, you don’t want a dead box of Wheaties on your conscious. That irritating Spotlight thing happened six times yesterday and I got so fed up that I stopped writing the commentary. I did get act one finished and the top of act two. Speaking of two, I’m now listening to Howard Hanson’s masterpiece, his Symphony No. 2, one of the most beautiful symphonies ever written, supremely American in sound, completely unique to Mr. Hanson’s musical voice, and simply glorious. There are quite a few recordings of this, but one simply must have Hanson conducting on Mercury Living Presence, especially if you can find the incredible SACD of it, although, that said, the sonics are too dry. There’s a quite lovely performance on CD by Charles Gerhardt. The symphony, much to Jerry Goldsmith’s chagrin, was “borrowed” for the end credits to the motion picture, Alien. And the symphony’s final movement was so obviously used to temp track the final ten minutes of E.T. and John Williams does a bang-up job of emulating its feel and essence. If you’ve never heard this symphony you are depraved on account’a you’re deprived. Oh, a West Side Story reference. I could listen to this symphony on repeat forever. It is a desert island work for the likes of me.
Yesterday was a this and that kind of day. I got seven hours of sleep, was up at eleven, answered e-mails, worked on the commentary until Spotlight irritated me so much that I stopped, had some telephonic conversations, shaved and showered, and then it was time for our long rehearsal day for the Group Rep show. Of our eighteen or so singers, we had all but three, I think. We began at three and ended a little after seven. We went through everyone’s songs, I gave notes, I did some arranging things, mainly beginnings and endings and general layout of the numbers. The songs are really fun and the singers are well suited to them. We had pockets of time where no one was booked, but we ended up not having any down time because everything took a bit longer than expected and our first singer was about twenty-five minutes late due to traffic. But it all went smoothly. I’ll be having a couple of Zoom sessions between now and Sunday to do a little further work.
I hadn’t had time to eat anything, so naturally I was starving. I went to Gelson’s and got a little pasta in meat sauce from the hot food bar, along with a chicken Caesar. I came home and ate it all up and all items were very good. Then I had stuff to catch up on, there was no time for viewing, and so I just watched a few Tube of You things and then went back to the Howard Hanson listening party.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll finish the commentary, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and I still think something is happening that I’m not remembering – hopefully someone will remind me, or maybe I’m just misremembering – I’ll eat something, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I have a lunch meeting at one-thirty, Saturday will be a ME day, and then Sunday evening we have a stumble-through and tech for the Group Rep cabaret. Monday, I’ll get there early along with anyone who wants to run stuff before we do the show at eight. Tuesday we do it all over again, and then I can really buckle down, Winsocki and get cracking with the Kritzerland anniversary show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, finish the commentary, hopefully pick up packages, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What computer thing, whether Mac of PC, irritates you most and how do you wish or think it could work better? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have shone a spotlight on Spotlight.