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Nothing to see here – go outside

Watch this video and then you’ll have no reason to look at anything else on the Internet for at least 24 hours. So yYou are free to go outside and enjoy this beautiful Earth Day! I’m going to get back to work.

Update: That video quit being amusing the second the person was revealed as a registered sex offender.

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Blog Fading

A favorite Knoxvillian of mine is fading from the social media spotlight. Russ McBee is ending his participating in the blogosphere, twittersphere, and socialsphere in general with the exception of the photosphere.

I’m ending this blog, effective immediately. It’s been fun (mostly), but I’m signing off, for personal reasons. I’m also deleting my accounts at Twitter and Utterli, but I’ll keep my PBase account active.

This site will remain live until either my hosting account expires or I decide to delete it on a whim, whichever comes first.

Goodbye.

[Source, Russ McBee, The end]

I’ll preserve his final message for prosperity. And one day I want to know why PBase over Flickr.

I have enjoyed reading Russ’ blog and Tweets. His contributions shall be missed!

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Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Blogger Night Success!

Last year the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra tried something bold and invited 50 bloggers to come to the symphony for free in exchange for writing about their experiences good or bad. It was the KSO‘s first Blogger Night. Noah and I went and really enjoyed ourselves so when Frank Murphy announced that the KSO was doing it again, I was quick to respond. I was so stressed yesterday that I almost canceled but I am glad we went! Last year 27 bloggers responded. This year 43 r.s.v.p.’d (I don’t think all 43 showed up). The KSO is already planning next year’s blogger event as one of their performers is now also a blogger.

Last year I learned that despite having an affinity for the theater and enjoying performances throughout my entire life in places like the New Orleans Saenger Theatre, The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, The Bijou, The Tennessee Theatre, and The Clarence Brown, to name a few, I have an overwhelming lack of knowledge about orchestra. Last year I found my hands nearly slapping together at the end of a piece but stopped soundlessly when I noticed no one else in the audience clapping. Stephanie Burdette explains:

At the beginning of the concert, the concertmaster will come onstage. The audience claps as a welcome, and as a sign of appreciation to all the musicians. After the orchestra tunes, the conductor and soloist will come onstage. Everyone claps to welcome them, too. The audience doesn’t usually applaud again until the end of the piece, but this can be a little tricky because many pieces seem to end several times — they have several parts, or "movements." These will be listed in your program. Or you can just … wait until people around you begin applauding and then join in…

I was also under the impression that one dressed to the hilt for the symphony and became a little stressed when we discovered all of Noah’s dress clothes were at the grandparent’s house. Stephanie put my mind at ease:

This is usually everyone’s biggest worry, male or female. Here is the thing – there is no dress code. Anything that makes you feel comfortable is fine. Most people will be wearing business clothes or slightly dressy casual clothes, but you’ll see everything from khakis to cocktail dresses. Some people enjoy dressing up and making a special night of it, and you can, too. Still, evening gowns and tuxedos are pretty rare unless you’re attending a fancy gala.

Before the show we ran into some fellow bloggers and chatted in the hall in front of the sponsors poster. In the long list of names for the Diamond Sponsors, I could only read one – ImagePoint. That seemed both sad and ironic. Last year the entrance was crowded, had tables of cheeses and snacks, and drinks flowed from the bar. This year, the corridor seemed oddly vacant. Perhaps I arrived too early and missed the scene, or perhaps the economy has trimmed away at some tradition. The lights flashed, the chimes sounded, and we found our seats.

The symphony’s program opened with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. I was surprised that it was simply 11 strings and that Lucas Richman did not come out to conduct. The piece was beautiful! At the end of that piece, the grand piano was brought onto the stage and the Maestro made his first appearance and didn’t skip a beat even though his microphone was turned off. As truly great performer, the technical faux pas did not fluster Lucas Richman and he continued to address the audience until the sound tech fixed the problem. He even acknowledged the bloggers! He left and returned with piano soloist Navah Perlman and performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 4. After reading Frank Murphy’s review, I realized that she played for 31 minutes without sheet music! And had a cold so the one missed note was easily forgiven. Again, it was a well-executed piece! I was so caught up in the music that time flew by. After a brief intermission we returned to find the grand piano was gone and no longer blocked our view of the energetic conductor Lucas Richman. The KSO performed Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, "Italian" and the Maestro was so into his work that at times he would pop up on his toes as if about to jump into orchestra itself. His full body worked the direction of the score. Several times in the evening I felt as though I had slipped into Fantasia with the two most compelling moments being the first tuning of the evening and the second watching Lucas Richman conduct this Mendelssohn Symphony.

Noah appeared to enjoy the music. I think he may have been uncomfortable about his clothing. At times his finger conducted along with Richman but Noah has a time of evening when he just shuts off. We exceeded that and I wondered if the finger conducting wasn’t an attempt to stay awake. During Mendelssohn, Noah reclined in the seat and closed his eyes. He claims he stayed awake but at one point his head tilted over to me and I had to elbow him before he snored or fell out of his chair. I feared he might be heading toward a migraine. With his interest in percussion, I think Noah would have enjoyed seeing more percussionists. I was surprised that the KSO was so heavily inclined to strings. I only counted two percussionists and I am not really sure about the second. I thought I heard some brass but I had difficulty finding any winds on the stage. My instrument in middle school was the clarinet. I am a very big Pete Fountain fan and would like to see more wind instruments.

Afterwards we met the Maestro, musicians, KSO blogger Katy Gawne, KSO podcaster, and other KSO staff in a reception with wine and cheese and good laughs. I got to talk to both Lucas Richman and Navah Perlman about how much of his gesture and body movements work into conducting and Navah shared just how important the movements are to the musicians and how dramatically different one conductor can be from another. There were so many bloggers and musicians in the reception that I left feeling like I barely got to talk to anyone despite non-stop gabbing.

Stephanie Burdette shared with me information about Family Concerts. Family Concerts is a creation of Lucas Richman’s intended for children 3-8. I laughed at the thought of Evan the Terror sitting still for one hour of classical music in teh Tennessee Theater. "They are not allowed back and someone contact the contractor and see how quickly we can repair that kid’s damage!" After hearing the details, I actually think it would be perfect! After the one hour show, they have an instrument petting zoo for the children to get a closeup experience with the instruments. They also setup a room specifically for the children to do their own performance. This includes a ticket window, costumes for the appropriate jobs, a variety of toy instruments and a conducting opportunity. The children sell tickets to their show and have a blast. For people with transportation issues, I believe she was saying that busing can even be arranged. I think the family has to do this on March 26 at 9:30am!

As we left, I told Noah not to sweat my shoe. During intermission he stepped on my heel and ripped 3/4 of my sole off (I tweeted heal and soul for deeper meaning). To make sure he’d done a good job, he stepped on the same heel again as we entered the Glenn Miller room for the reception. The reception had wine, cheese and water. Noah doesn’t eat cheese and turned down the water and is not old enough for the wine. Lucas Richman’s son did not attend this year. Last year he and Noah played together and I think Noah was looking forward to that. As we left, I inquired, "Did you have a good time?" He responded, "Yes." then paused and added, "And when I threw up, I got it all in the toilet!" After recovering my chin from the floor, I confirmed Noah was okay and that I didn’t have any damage control to do. Don’t worry KSO; that’s just Noah. He was either overtired or stressed out. Nothing contagious. I asked Noah if he would want to go again and he responded yes.

The biggest thing I learned last night is that my iPod is severely in need of some classical music. My special thanks to the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for putting on this event! We really did have a great time!

I’ll update this post later with a roundup of bloggers who attended. For additional information, listen to the Mozart-Mendelssohn podcast, Maestro Richman’s interview with pianist Navah Perlman, Read the Program Notes, Read Navah Perlman’s Biography, read the KSO blog, see pictures from last night, and subscribe to the KSO podcast. And if you like theaters, you’ll enjoy Cinema Treasures. Be sure to schedule an evening with the KSO!

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LOST Characters Find Twitter

Note: There’s been an onslaught of people copying the SpoilerTV concept resulting in many duplicate names. I’ll update this post later to reflect the originals versus the imitators.

If you are a LOST fan, you’ll love being able to interact with Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, Sayid Jarrah, Sun Kwon, and Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes. They are each on Twitter now!

You may want to follow @abcinnercircle also. You can follow me on Twitter @djuggler.

Update: Apparently this post created some attention for Sayid. His response:

@djuggler Your link boosted my followers. A suspicious number of them, in fact. If I notice anything else… I might have to pay you a visit about 18 hours ago from twhirl in reply to djuggler

Update: In case anyone is curious, the LOST Twitters are part of a role playing game started on Spoiler TV.

Oceanic Six Twitter Project

Postby Gideon on Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:28 pm
All right guys, I know I’m new around here, but I had a pretty cool idea that I think some of you may want to participate in. Essentially, Twitter accounts will be created for the Oceanic Six (minus Aaron, obviously), and we’ll use them to follow the events off-island in this season as if we were those characters. Need for information? Keep reading!

What’s Twitter?
Twitter is a social network/micro-blogging service that is absolutely free to sign up for. You can see the example I’ve set up here. The amount of characters you can input for one "post" is limited to 160. This means sometimes you have to be smart to say all you want to say.

Who can participate?
Anyone can participate! Just post here with the character you’d like to post as, and I’ll help you set up an account if you need any help. I would like for you to make a commitment to this, however, and continue with your character at least until he or she makes it back to the island.

So what/when do I post?
Just post whatever happens to the character on the show! Act as if you are the character, not yourself commenting on the character. Think of it as role-playing. You can post whenever you like, whether on Wednesdays after the show or any time throughout the week, but please do not post more than once a day, simply because people will be "following" you and we don’t want to flood and annoy them. Also, please post at least once a week.

[Source, Spoiler TV, Oceanic Six Twitter Project]

Sayid is being played by Dreyesbo. Kate is being played by Jess. Sun is being played by Mellow. Hurley is being played by PenguinJosh. I’m not sure who claimed Jack but I am guessing Gideon. Charles Widmore is being played by DarkUFO. Vincent the dog is being played by bigsimpsin. Desmond is being played by RobinTWP. Frank_Lapidus is played by Anis Ben Amor. mhawking is being played by ???. Benjamin Linus is being played by ???. Claire Littleton is being played by ???. James Ford is being played by ???. John Locke is being played by ???. Miles Straume is being played by ???. The second Kate Austen is being played by ???. The Island is being played by ???. Jack Shephard (the second) is being played by ???. Juliet Burke is being played by ???. Sayid_Jarrah the second is being played by ???. Walt Lloyd is being played by ???.

See also. Here’s hoping ABC doesn’t make the Mad Men mistake.

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Straight No Chaser – 12 Days

This is awesome! n.b. At the time of post this, the video had 9,299,104 views. That’s like 3% of everyone in the United States. Scroll down. This first video YouTube removed. The 2nd video is the new one (not as good as the first) and the 3rd video is the one you are here to watch.

Thank you LissaKay for Tweeting it!


Update: I’m so sick of Youtube and its pulling of content. The video above was the original video and had over 10 million views. It’s description had a link to the story of Straight No Chaser and how the video above (no removed due to some claim of copyright b.s.) was put up by Straight No Chaser and quickly rushed to over a million views which spurred a record label to have them do a reunion album which is apparently a fantastic piece. You can purchase it through a link in the description on the above video..oh, no you can’t because that video has been pulled due to a copyright claim by a 3rd party. I was going to buy the CD buy now I doubt I will make the effort to find the website..how’s that for smart marketing Mr. 3rd Party Copyright Gonna Cut The Golden Goose Off At the Neck? Below is the 2008 remake of the performance that made these guys famous; that is until Youtube pulls it. It’s okay but the original had more energy to the show.

p.s. Youtube sucks.

Update: AOL Video still has the original:

Watch more MySpace videos on AOL Video

Update: The name of their new album is Holiday Spirits which can be purchased online at this website.

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Sarah Palin Slaughtered

Russ made my eyes water with this homage to the WKRP Thanksgiving Turkey Drop. I don’t think Saturday Night Live could have written this interview with Sarah Palin and her other brother Daryl in the background any better. Her closing line nailed it. Just what was the cameraman thinking?

Sources: Original post from The Huffington Post and the direct link to the Youtube video.