Tuesday, July 24, 2007

punny



rowing lingo is full of bad puns and groan-worthy plays on words -- if i see one more on-line rower with the screen name "goargeous" i think i might cry. i'm not sure what it is about the sport that produces so many punsters; my current theory places lack of sleep and countless hours in spandex at the head of the list of possible causes. regardless of what fueled them, however, the folks across the pond at the twickenham rowing club have done themselves pun proud by rewriting the lyrics to some class pop tunes so that they have a rowing bent. my fav at the moment is the twrc's rewording of gloria gaynor's "i will survive":

I WILL SURVIVE
(With apologies to Gloria Gaynor)

At first I was afraid I was petrified
Kept thinkin' I could never match your timing on the slide
But then I did some heavy weights
Thinkin' how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to scull along

And so you're back from Jurgen's squad
I just walked in to find you here, wanting an outing the quad
I should have changed the boathouse lock
I would have pushed you off the quay
If I'd have known for just one second you'd still want to row with me

Go on ergo, walk out the door
Just put those blades down
'cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to take the rating high
You thought I'd crumble
You thought I'd blow up and die
Oh no, not I. I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to scull I know I'll stay alive;
I've got all my life to live,
I've got lots of length to give and I'll survive,
I will survive. Hey hey.

It took all the strength I had not to drop the rate
Kept trying' hard to mend the pieces of my broken gate
And I spent oh so many nights
Just feeling sorry for myself. I used to sky
But now I hold my hands up high

And you see me somebody new
I'm not that chained up little novice never in your crew,
And so you feel like droppin' in
And just expect a seat is free,
Now I'm savin' all my rowin' for someone who'll follow' me

Go on ergo, walk out the door
Just put those blades down
'cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to take the rating high
You thought I'd crumble
You thought I'd blow up and die
Oh no, not I. I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to scull I know I'll stay alive,
I've got all my life to live,
I've got lots of length to give and I'll survive,
I will survive. Hey hey.

check out the rest of twrc's top of the pots here.

*that's the twrc's "unofficial" club logo, a play on the well-known london underground sign, at the opening of the post.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

i've found the source of the ticking ...

as i type, my university campus is undergoing *massive renovations. one of the main roads that cuts through the heart of campus has been closed to traffic since the early spring, with backhoes, jackhammers, and folks in yellow hard hats running around tearing up concrete, digging giant holes, erecting safety fencing, moving safety fencing around and kicking up a whole lotta dust.

working in the campus library has become a test of patience. during the fall and winter terms, crowded as it is with undergraduate students, it's often difficult to find a desk at which to work if one is looking for a brief respite from one's office. the summer, however, is different. or at least it's supposed to be. this year it's *anything but peaceful. i was down in the basement the other day, where the microfiche lives, doing some research, when all of a sudden the stillness was broken by a massive, rumbling bang and the screen in front of me began to vibrate in a very alarming fashion. i literally white-knuckled the desk and looked around the room. the librarian sitting behind the information desk was cool and collected. she saw the wild look of terror on my face and smiled,

"oh, that's only the blasting they're doing across the road. we can't hear the warning sirens they set off, so when the dynamite blows, it's a little bit of a surprise."

dynamite?

DYNAMITE?

call me old fashioned, or even just plain spoiled (my last three weeks have been spent doing in research in places that academics dream about when they go to sleep at night: the radcliffe camera, the old bodleian ...) but somehow, libraries and explosives just don't seem to go together.

my earth shattering experience the other day did remind me of this video, however. library? not quite. explosively funny, most definitely.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

diva next door


as many folks know, i'm a big time fan of reneƩ fleming and i've talked at great length here about how much her persona appeals to me. in fact, i listed her as one of the models i might look to during my time in the classroom as i try to make plain to my students such mysteries as the vagaries of virginia woolf's claim that the sentence is a "thing made by men". fleming's openness, an almost sort of "girl next door" appeal, has won opera legions of new fans and her voice, with its lush colour and warm texture -- it reminds me at times of a favourite cashmere sweater, light but still able to keep off a chill -- has satisfied critics of classical singing who are quick to note when a diva is in decline.

before reneƩ fleming, however, there was beverly sills. sills was to opera in the 60s & 70s what fleming is to opera now. along with giving the seemingly impenetrable world of coloraturas & counter-tenors a human face, she worked tirelessly as a fund-raiser and artistic director for various organizations following her retirement in the 1980s. i was still a fairly green soprano when i discovered beverly sills, but there was something about both the quality of her voice and the sense of character that she brought to interpretations of such roles as bellini's norma that fascinated me. it would be nice to able to say that my technical progress shot forward rapidly after becoming a sills devotee -- that somehow, her voice unlocked the door to a blinding upper register. not the case (and that's all to do with my own shortcomings and nothing whatsoever to do with beverly). i *did however, pick up a lot about how to *perform a song from listening to her, and i became doubly aware of the way in which textual interpretation was at the heart of this. i can honestly say that listening to beverly sills has made me a better critical reader and literary scholar.

this morning, when the new york times popped up on my browser's homepage, a lump grew in my throat when i read that sills had passed away, at the age of 78, from inoperable lung cancer in her manhattan home. the article on sills in the times describes her as singing with "a vivid sense of text". i wholeheartedly agree.