And the Answer Is...

 

I know everyone was waiting with bated breath to find out whether I went to the International Festival or the Bach Around the Clock marathon today. Well, wonder no more - I am about to reveal the answer.

This morning Travalon was watching Crystal Palace with Jerry and Roy Jr., then he drove me to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church to attend... Bach Around the Clock. He thought about going to the men's Badger Basketball game, but the tickets were really expensive, and he figured it would be a boring game because they were playing Penn State, who are not good this year. Instead, he watched part of the game at the Laurel Tavern, and then he went to Leopold's.

I got to Bach Around the Clock just as the recorder ensemble was finishing up, which includes an old choir mate of mine. The next group included the lead singer from Yid Vicious and a guy I know from early music circles, and they did a really fun mashup of Bach's Invention in D Minor and a Macedonian folk song. My choir mate joined me, and the next group we saw was a community choir, so we talked about joining it. She's already in the St. Andrew's choir and the recorder group. I remember when I used to be in two choirs and three bands - where did I find the energy?? This choir practices on Monday nights, which is the same night as the Russian Folk Orchestra, which I keep saying I'm going to join but haven't yet. After that there was a bell choir playing Bach, and a cellist playing Bach, but the pianist that was next on the list apparently couldn't make it, because the MC led us in a rousing rendition of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," verses 1 and 3, with the implicit understanding that we are facing the evil forces in the hymn in Dear Leader, his overlord in the Kremlin, and the oligarchs destroying our democracy. 

And then... my favorite part, a tribute to PDQ Bach. First some singers sang some of his pieces, which sound quite beautiful if you don't listen to the words, like that the hocket causes the singers to sing: "Hot!" "Dog!" "Hot!" "Dog!" Or if you disregard the fact that the bass just wandered off during one piece and started scatting like he was singing jazz, not a madrigal, which I assume is in the directions. After all, these are the "discoveries" of Peter Schickele, who was allegedly the Very Full Professor of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. (A real town of 247 people - I looked it up.) Then the husband of the Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player played two Musical Contraptions, one of them based on the simple melody that as kids we sang to the words, "On the Planet Mars/Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars," and the last part was a concerto for viola four hands. I made a brief video.

The concerto had four movements, and in the last one, the two violists get in a fight, run offstage, and make a lot of noise. Eventually one came back triumphantly holding an instrument in several pieces (which was actually a violin), and then the other one shuffled back onto the stage with an ice pack held to his forehead. Then they both exited the stage again, and the pianist kept playing the same figure over and over, waiting for them to come back, until he got disgusted and left too. I was laughing so hard! My favorite character who commissioned a piece by PDQ Bach is Count Pointercount. That reminds me of the terrible jokes in Bullwinkle, which we were watching last night, like regarding Boris and Natasha, "the two heels with no souls." I laughed so hard at that, I didn't even catch the rest of what they said.

This reminds me that late last night I told Travalon that Niko really matches the cover of this month's Magnificat, and he said, "He should have been on the cover of Time. He could have been Person of the Year instead of Dear Leader," and I said, "Person? Nah. Maybe Keychain of the Year."

Anyway, back to the Bach marathon. My former choir mate went downstairs for snacks, but I stayed to watch an organist before joining her. Another former choir mate was a volunteer downstairs, so the three of us chatted before I had to go outside to meet Travalon. As I waited, the sandwich board announcing the marathon ("Free Bach Event Today! BachClock.com") fell over not once but twice. It may have even fallen over again after that, but I wasn't there to do anything about it, because Travalon arrived and told me the Badgers had actually lost to the subpar team. (As Boris Badinov said, "I didn't go to Penn State - I went to State Pen!") (Another line that made me lose it: "Are you incinerating that I'm stupid?") He had brought me a pandan latte from Leopold's, and I happily drank it as we drove to Tiedemann's Pond, where we took a vigorous walk around the circumference. No birds there yet.

We had to get back so that I could go to a meeting of the condo board members from the three area boards, to ask questions of the developer who is buying Mariner's. He says he would like to have a restaurant on the ground floor that honors the memory of Mariner's, so that makes me happy. He is thinking only two floors of apartments above that, and one of the other board's members was not happy that it would be apartments instead of condos, but it was implied that these would be pricy enough apartments to keep the riffraff out. Also, the marina is going to stay the same. The developer really wanted to talk to us after the fiasco with the developer who purchased the Nau-Ti-Gal and then pissed off the neighborhood so much with his grandiose plans that we got the town to turn down his plans, and he has yet to come back with acceptable ones, so the building is just sitting there empty, surrounded by fencing. 

After the meeting, Travalon and I went down to the dock, where we saw geese and some small ducks hanging out on the ice or swimming in the open water in the channel. We saw a muskrat, and he started to climb onto the ice, but then Travalon moved closer to take a photo, so he dove back into the water. It is definitely getting to be spring! 

Tonight we are going to see Gaelic Storm, so I'll try to blog about that tomorrow. It will probably be a late night, so that's why I'm blogging now. Luckily the Mass we always go to is at a late time, because tomorrow Fake Time starts. I vaguely remember someone telling me months ago that, "You might not like Dear Leader, but he banned Daylight Saving Time." I said, "Really? Then I do have to give him credit for doing something good." But apparently he did not ban it. My fear is that, instead, in November he will say that we are never going back to Real Time again. He is totally evil enough to do that.

Famous Hat