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One paper down-- well, piece of alternate-historical fiction, really. If Eleanor of Aquitaine's first husband, the king of France, had died on a crusade and she'd married Henry II of England and united his lands with those she kept in France, creating an Anglo-Angevin empire. And Bernard de Ventadour, Toulousian troubadour, had followed her to England and sung her praises across the continent and kept a travel journal about it. So that was fun to write. This next one (a categorization of the uses of way in the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken English) is fun in spurts, but in between I dread doing more, so I'm writing in here instead. I did get a lot done in between performances this afternoon.
Today reminded me somewhat why I do the Christmas Pops even when they suck as badly as they did this year. The percussionists take turns on the tubular bell extravaganza at the end of the carol sing-along, and one of them (the best-looking one) rocks out and headbangs. The American Idol kid (remind me to hold forth on this subject in more detail later) winks at the chorus and gives us a sweet, if not as suave as I'm sure he wishes, point and thumbs-up on his way offstage. The trapset drummer gets sillier every night with the ba-dum-chhhh after the conductor's more unforgivable puns. Most of the audience doesn't know to stand for the Hallelujah chorus, look sheepishly around halfway through and are on their feet by the end, a built-in standing O for the end of the first half. I am one of those impeachably disrespectful, jaded symphony pops musicians who reads onstage during numbers I'm not in, but I can't help smiling at the new ones' enthusiasm and giving them their due attention.
As I guess I'd better do now with my paper, unless I want to be finishing it in LA tomorrow night before the Chanticleer concert. No, that'll be my other paper, the Socioling one. Stephan can help me with that, he recognizes Southern accents in British rock singers.
Today reminded me somewhat why I do the Christmas Pops even when they suck as badly as they did this year. The percussionists take turns on the tubular bell extravaganza at the end of the carol sing-along, and one of them (the best-looking one) rocks out and headbangs. The American Idol kid (remind me to hold forth on this subject in more detail later) winks at the chorus and gives us a sweet, if not as suave as I'm sure he wishes, point and thumbs-up on his way offstage. The trapset drummer gets sillier every night with the ba-dum-chhhh after the conductor's more unforgivable puns. Most of the audience doesn't know to stand for the Hallelujah chorus, look sheepishly around halfway through and are on their feet by the end, a built-in standing O for the end of the first half. I am one of those impeachably disrespectful, jaded symphony pops musicians who reads onstage during numbers I'm not in, but I can't help smiling at the new ones' enthusiasm and giving them their due attention.
As I guess I'd better do now with my paper, unless I want to be finishing it in LA tomorrow night before the Chanticleer concert. No, that'll be my other paper, the Socioling one. Stephan can help me with that, he recognizes Southern accents in British rock singers.
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