This post brought to you by New Balance, the official footware of the Swarthmore College Jazz Band

Seriously, with the exception of Mac's ancient-looking white Reeboks, it seems like about half the jazz band wears New Balance sneakers. The most notable exception is Sam, who was wearing bowling shoes tonight.

The River Line opened yesterday, and eclectic_boy, ccommack, and Chris rode from Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden to Trenton (among other trains). It's nice, the cars are pretty sweet, the views great for a railfan, not so hot when you're looking at industrial decay. But I'll try not to be too critical of the thing while it's still young and impressionable.

Saw most of City of Lost Children tonight. I didn't like it nearly as much as Delicatessen, another film by Jeunet. It's gorgeous in that same dark way, and some of the odd snippets are very amusing, but overall it's not as funny as Delicatessen.

Septa didn't strike. This is a good thing, at least until next year when the contract expires again...

Might TO be heading to Philly after all...wait and see...

Names Meme

( Enter if you dare (actually, it's pretty boring) )

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So I spent an hour or two in Lang this afternoon trying to work on my composition stuff. I spent the first hour in Underhill, listening to the beginning of Rite of Spring and Hindemith's Bassoon and Piano Sonata. As you may have guessed, one of the pieces I'm working on is for bassoon. Of course, when I went upstairs and started actually writing, I got 2 1/2 lines of music written and hit a wall. I have ideas - motives, if you will, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting them anywhere. Either I'll leave them behind (as in the bassoon piece) or just keep hammering them again and again, not varying them enough, as in my other piece (clarinet).

Ultimately, the problem may be that I'm not a huge fan of atonal music, which is what I'm trying to write. I ended up writing a measure or so of chorale, just to write something that makes sense. At some point, it's going to come to a head and I'm going to end up writing very tonal music for Jerry, and we'll see what happens. I mean, there's only so much atonal music I can tolerate, and it's within the realm of possibility that heaven is a very large organ and JSB playing chorales 24-7.

On a lighter note, it looks like Sarah Harmer has a new album out. And I think I now know what Xmas feels like for little kids, lounging around my room this morning, knowing TO was on the verge of coming to town, just waiting for the announcement. I guess it's like that feeling that it's just too early to do anything, but everything you want is sitting downstairs under the tree. Oh well, I didn't need much as a child, and I'm still pretty low maintenance, so don't pity me.