TheAuthority

That's why I stayed away from the business end of things during my sons birth. I can still have sex with my wife!

Jeez Louise!

Our first two weeks of University are going to be online. We've already had 2 snow days (so I'm not even teaching from my studio on campus.) Basically I'm at home with the nipper running around so it's like an endless Christmas! At least one more week and I can see that being extended.

Only 3 mince pies left - what a travesty. This locks tomorrow too - @limpid officially ending Christmas 2021

“Don’t inform people with news, tell them how to feel.” Roger Aisles - Founder Fox News

Often it's thyroid with women too. One pill and a month later kazaam.

Hold on - I didn't think you could enter (KW) after midnight Dec 31st?

Tree came down. Kid was in bits. Decs pretty much all packed away. Always a tinge of nostalgia for me with that. The blow up santa outside is coming down tomorrow. My son will have a kniption.

Kind of reminds of this guys schtick. He does Indie and heavy metal in a "lounge style" Vegas singer.

Sounds like you and him really clicked.

Talking to a friend who's wife works in ICU. 33 old, healthy guy just died on her from Omicron. She didn't believe he'd be very bad as he had no co-morbidities, but he went down hill really, really fast and they couldn't save him. It really shocked her. But he didn't believe in vaccines. He leaves a wife and 2 kids. The youngest is 10 months old.

Look after yourself. Hope it's just mild and you're back up and about soon.

Grauniad today https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it Ironically, the Liberal elites at my lefty University are having a nice talk about it online Jan 7th and anyone can sign up. According to that article we should be buying weapons and training our kids how to plant landmines. https://udenver.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AKZl0CTERnOdxQ7emHM6aA

Trump is running. Anyone who thinks he isn't is kidding themselves or naive. Cholesterol is our best friend at this point.

PARKLIFE!

Well anything I can do to help let me know in regards to the school. Denver is pretty awesome. The mountains are 30 minutes away for hiking and skiing. It was considered a cow town for a long time but we are blown away by it, even after moving from Manhattan. Plenty of food options, vibrant arts scene - plenty to do for the young 'uns.

Interesting info on National Public Radio here today. Although the % of people with the omicron variant being hospitalized is much, much lower than previous variants, so many people are getting it due to its transmissibility that hospitals are filling up and fast. That is a problem especially in smaller communities. A couple of weeks back we purchased some KN95 masks and these are definitely more robust (and bloody uncomfortable) compare to normal medical masks. Tested yesterday along with my unvaccinated son (under 5) and thankfully both negative. But the radio program did talk about the under 5's who are being hospitalized - they are a large unvaccinated population and the unvaccinated are the most vulnerable. My University is going online for the 1st 2 weeks. Then I guess we'll see where we are. Hopefully this is the beginnng of the end.

Just binged "The Loudest Voice" Made in 2019 with Russell Crowe as Roger Aisles. Roger Aisles - the man who made Fox News. Murdoch gets off very lightly in this and I am sure he was far more behind it than portrayed, but Aisles....... You know that question, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler - I think Aisles is a very good 21st Century candidate for the same question.

By God I hope you're right. I will post in the TV thread, but I just watched "The Loudest Voice" starring Russel Crowe as Roger Aisles. That man did so much to destroy this country's Democracy while always claiming to be a "Patriot."

JW is pretty cool - very professional and very warm. I mean, he's pretty well looked after and everyone is always nice to him - hard for him to be a jerk! I didn't know that story about Schindler's list. This is a bit dark, but it reminds that a lot of Jewish composers were killed in the camps. There is a big push amongst Jewish (and non-Jewish) musicians, to have their music played and remembered. Is he a modern day Beethoven? That's a very tough question because writing music for film requires a very different skill set to writing "Western Art Music." They are also composing for different reasons. Beethoven was exploring his philosophy of the human condition (see Schiller's text from the ninth symphony) and well, JW is writing to enhance moving pictures. I'm not belittling anything JW does, because I think it's fantastic - but he is considering timing and hitting action points, whereas Beethoven is thinking about expanding harmonic musical language in order express a comment on life. JW is more like Wagner. Wagner had the idea of "total work of art" which in his day was opera. He wrote the libretto, the music, controlled the look of the sets and the dramatic performances of the singers. Perhaps he would have worked in film had he been around with that technology. Of course he also came up with the idea of "leitmotifs." Essentially everyone has their own theme tune. Well JW absolutely killed that in Star Wars. The Empire has a leitmotif, Luke has a leitmotif, Luke & Leia even have their own leitmotif and one of my favorites is Yoda's. What is very cool about JW though is he also wrote the soundtrack to "Catch me if you Can." It couldn't be any more different to Jaws/Star Wars or even Close Encounters which IMO is one of his best. Hope that makes sense!

Well DU is a great small school for sure. We have two 529's - one from New York and a new once here in Colorado. I hope yours is pretty full because DU is ridiculously expensive (IMO.)

We took my 2 1/2 year old son to a "Polar Express Experience" up at the Colorado Railway Museum on Dec 15th. It was excellent. Actors played out some of the film, they served hot chocolate, then we went outside and they blasted the music from the film as a huge magnificent steam train pulled into the station. Then off on the train - 1st stop - Santa and his Elves do a song and dance, then at the end my son got the meet Santa for the 1st time. It was pretty epic. I've had to watch the movie 85 times since that fateful day.