Who says " I thought poverty was a suburb of Vienna so many composers died there..."

Dear Blog:

Yes, those days of dashing through the sewers of Chicago, manuscript
of my OPERA under my arm, may be GONE.
I have received word, through my RESPECTABLE brother, that I am
being considered for a most interesting commission: Composing music
for a replication of Da Vinci's water organ, to be built in the lobby of
a business combine of some sort.

Ha-ha! And, of course, the Autism Variations proceed apace...........

interesting background piece on TV music

http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=musicontele

sloganeering

HSBC, the Bank, has my favorite slogan these days: "HSBC, As Global As You Are."

I also enjoyed the Andean Craft store @ Old Orchard playing a pan flute version of Colors of the Wind as background shopping music.

Latest MASTERPIECE

I just wrote a song with no verse, no chorus, no rhymes, about nothing: Here it is--


She woke up today, the roofers still at it.
No coffee in the house, line too long at Starbucks.
She took an aimless walk downtown, to see if that DVD was at the library:
It wasn't.
You might expect a chorus here,
But I'm just not in the mood.
She stopped into a very badly named happy hour,
Where aggressive salesmen tried to please--
They didn't.
And appetizers, weren't.
She got home to find a note so boring I won't bore you with it.
La, la, la, la, la.

Fantasticks at the Porchlight

What a good show this is!
The performers are present, unlike many musicals where they seem to have gone on to the next project, or are musing on the last one, and let the very acts of singing and dancing be enuf.
And everybody cries.
(Runs thru Nov. 15th at the Theatre Building).

Very nice!

I saw the cutest couple on the train yesterday:

Russians, between 65 and 70.
He was very skinny w/ crazy hair and shoes that
looked like Brezhnev gave them to him. Poor looking. Bright eyes.

She was round and very calm. They spoke softly
in Russian to each other the whole ride, and looked
as if they had never seen the north side of Chicago before;
kind of delighted, in a modest way.

He kept getting up to check the map, and she watched him
to make sure he didn't fall.

Humble, happy, quite pleased with their train ride and each other.

Bill's B-day tribute

The self checkout line at the Jewel;
Is not the place for you, you fool,
To purchase one strand of saffron,
One grape and one teaspoon of yeast.
And you, madam, have at least
The decency to suckle your child outside:
Teach her there how woe betide
The non-organic farmer and how the scanner works--
Let me get my wine and go, ye jerks.