No. 1

Next to $15 opera tickets, easily the best bargain in town, if it will really just cost 25 cents a "pop".

Chris Matthews is an idiot.

What's that sound you hear?

Just the loudest "Fuck you!" to mainstream media punditry. The Diva lives to fight another day.

new year

I'm still around, but lost to other things. Work mostly, but also to an inscrutable sense of suspension, into a self-feeding "slowsand" of introspection. [To everyone who e-mailed with concern (and one with savory delight), I may not have written back, but (1) thanks for noticing, (2) I hear you, (3) I'm still here, (4) I will come back in some form, (5) but don't know when.]

Yet I manage to still drop by the opera, for instance at last evening's virtuosic dissection of Die Walküre and surgical removal of its heart. Dr. Lorin Maazel supervised the articulation of all the notes of the score. I'd never heard that many notes in Die Walküre before. I wonder what Wagner himself would think of that amount of precision. Save for a handful of riveting moments, it was a rigorous refrigeration.

Meanwhile, I lament Diva Hillary's decline, but find myself cautiously warming up to "change we can believe in." Is it really possible?