First off, has anyone else who uses WordPress been experiencing some problems with the spam filters? I keep finding actual comments by people who comment regularly in the spam pile – this has never happened at all for me before the past few weeks or so.
Originally, I thought I might have to batten down the hatches and stay home this weekend on account of a hurricane, but fortunately this has not happened. I do plan to not go near campus tomorrow, though, on account of that it’s Game Day. Football, that is. The American kind, with head-smashing and helmets and 300 pound guys slamming into one another and an entire quad full of drunk undergraduates. It is a big deal here. I have never attended or worked at a university before that had a football team anyone outside the university cared all that much about, so the level of YEAAAAHHH FOOOTBALLLLLL around here takes some getting used to. I have never been one for watching football since I don’t really watch sports in general, and I find football in particular excruciating because all the action seems to grind to a halt like every two seconds. It makes me impatient.
So, because I was thinking about football, I decided to steel myself for an encounter with the closest thing I have in my house to a 300 pound linebacker: the Metropolitan Opera Box Set of Death. It ends here. This weekend. Five operas. Three days. To pervert the ironic football fight song of a certain institution of higher education that has historically been much better at irony than football: “Fight fiercely, Earworm! Fight fight fight!”
The Earworm 
My Spam seems to be the genuine porky product.
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Maybe it’s just me then. I’ll just have to be more assiduous about checking the spam. (And possibly I will make a foray into the settings to see if I didn’t uncheck some important box or something)
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” I decided to steel myself for an encounter with the closest thing I have in my house to a 300 pound linebacker:”
I thought you were going to say Johann Botha.
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Not an unreasonable guess – but there is no Botha in my house this weekend. (Except for the Salzburg 2011 opening concert DVD, but he doesn’t have much to do on that.)
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I use blogspot but I find that many of my comments on wordpress blogs never see the light of day. However, I decided to take it personally. 🙂
Meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know: Which Five Operas?
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If you take the screwy things WP does personally, you are in for a world of hurt 🙂
The operas are Rosenkavalier, Elektra, The rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny, Wozzek and Lulu.
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Heavy! I remember that Lulu broadcast! I was so bummed that Stratas was sick, but pretty thrilled with her “substitute”. You have me seriously considering a purchase of that killer set. I think the only one I own already is the Ariadne auf Naxos. Have fun!
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Is that the Wozzeck they taped in Sept 2001 and then shelved?
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This was taped in October of 2001; Falk Struckmann as Wozzeck, Katarina Dalayman as Marie – is this the one you’re thinking of?
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Yeah, then I saw it a week or two before the taping, on a night there was a bomb scare, over and above all the other godawfulness, and only about half an audience. Prime circumstances for Berg, I thought, as we discussed with an usher the probable contents of a paper bag somebody had left in the fam circ. But I guess PBS chickened out in the end.
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That would indeed be prime circumstances for Berg. I remember how jumpy everyone was those weeks (can’t really blame people for that, of course). I was still in college, and we had a bomb scare in the library – or something like that; I was never sure what had happened. They evacuated the entire building.
Were the contents of the paper bag ever determined?
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iirc, we all looked at each other, weighing the odds, and then, with our tacit agreement, the usher opened the bag, scrutinized the contents a moment, and said “ham on rye”.
I was in junior high in the days of the Weather Underground, and we used to have bomb scares all the time, to the point where our pequeño little dorf had a bomb squad on call. Eventually they quit evacuating the building, I think when they figured out it was mostly bratty little eighth graders trying to get out of exams.
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I worked three summer vacations in central London at the height of the IRA activity. One got a bit blase after a while and anyway after seeing the premier of Henze’s “We Come to the River” an IRA bomb seemed quite a mild assault on the senses and at least mercifully quick.
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