Cool Arrangement

Nobunaga Oda just opened his short program with a bit from Dido and Aeneas by Purcell - When I am Laid (in Earth). Then it went into synth dramatic music - and then it went into something vaguely 80's hard metal - which was totally cool. Thought I should mention.

Comcast/NBC annoys me right now

So, I thought I'd take a look at the COMPLETE figure skating from yesterday - you know, check out some of the non-american or non-top-4 pairs...gee! who'da thunk. So, I go onto NBC.com, where I could watch it. But there, not only do I have to download "microsoft blah-viewer", because obviously one of the other video players ISN'T ENOUGH, but then I also have to verify my cable/tv provider, and register for a "Comcast Video" username and password, because I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PASSWORDS ALREADY. Honestly, people - I thought NBC was a not-for-pay network - you get your revenue through ads, right? And Comcast - I'm already getting my service through your friggin network - can't you tell? We have wireless, it's password protected, and there's a router. Is it somehow impossible for you to detect that I have your service? Or impossible to detect that I have certain things approved/not approved? I mean, you do it on my TV ALL THE TIME. That's why I can't watch Starz or HBO whenever I want. So LET ME WATCH MY COMPLETE FIGURE SKATING, because jeez! Few enough people want to watch the full program, and apparently, you want to make it harder. Good job, screwups.

Plus, I don't care about the polar bears, when you've avoided playing figure skating for a full 25 minutes now. It was the first event you said you'd cover. BTW, NBC, you deserve to lose money on this, if you're going to cover it so badly.

Note on Last Night

Ask and ye shall receive:

Last night the Germans did a short program to "Send in the Clowns" from A Little Night Music... by Sondheim. I was pretty appreciative (it was a nice, if unimaginative arrangment), except what ruined it was the OVERWHELMINGLY AWFUL clown costumes.

And I guess that partly answers my question about why all figure skating music is somehow awful - because skaters don't understand what the song means. *shudder*

In honor of the olypics (hopefully part I)

I'm trying to watch the opening night of figure skating (pairs' short program) which is being interrupted constantly by luge (I don't care) advertisements (many of them totally awful - there was one about a "preparation H"), and talk of the luge competitor who was killed (I feel awful about this - he was younger than me :( ).

So, in honor of figure skating, here's this article from the Washington Post, about the utter crud music that figure skaters perform to. There is a clear bias against modern music in the article, one which I think is worth a bit of thought. Why is pop music so rare? One reason the article states is that vocal music (sung words) is against the rules in singles and pairs, if not ice dance. But why couldn't you do arrangements of other popular music?

Again, back to the purists where classical music is the only good music. Personally, I feel like a Sondheim arrangement might be kind of cool - and unique. "You need something people can relate to, something that can evoke some kind of picture quickly," Weisiger says, wondering how many iterations of "Phantom of the Opera" will be heard at this year's Olympics.

Why is ballet and classical music the only music that both gets "good for figure skating" and "good music" tags?

If you actually have knowledge about this, I'd love to hear what you think.