Four Text Messages

1. Last night, out of the blue, Maury D'Annato:

Did your hits just go way up?

What? Why do you ask? Did—WHOA, I just got my first-ever link from La Cieca, the world's greatest opera blogger! This is, dears, the classical music blogging equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor. I'm still a little dizzy. Did La Cieca just compare me to Alex frickin' Ross? And yes, for a hot minute my hit counter went through the damn roof. 2. Night before last, I got this message from one of my Gregs, who's caught Eighth Blackbird on their tour of the West Coast, reading simply:

OMG bearinettist = dreamboat.

Y'see people?? I do not lie. Now okay, that right there speaks for itself, but later Greg also shared some very interesting thoughts on the Reich and Rzewski pieces we discussed earlier, so remind me to tell you all about it. 3. & 4. Did you hear that Glenn Branca was one of two electric guitarists to win $25,000 grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts? Well the other electric guitarist was this Mick Barr guy, who is from around here! So I txt msg'd my friend Kyle, the lead singer of Mick Barr's old band, for comment:

Haha! Knowing Mick, he'll spend it on Danzig bootlegs.

A minute later:

Or a deluxe ant farm.

He's kidding, people, he's kidding! He loves the Mick Barr! And his music. Although, weirdly, when I listen to Barr's records, they kind of sound like they'd be made by somebody who could manage spend $25,000 on either Danzig bootlegs or a deluxe ant farm. Or maybe somebody who could tell Philip Glass that Two Pages (for Steve Reich) needs a little more focus.

Maury Felice, part II!

Going to the New York Review of Books for information on blogs is a little like asking Grandma for sex advice. The basics are going to be mostly correct, but you won't learn what you really want to know, and everyone comes out of it at least a little bit embarrassed. But I think we can safely say that if even the Review recognizes that My Favorite Intermissions is essential reading, then it has to be true. I was also going to say that this also marks the first occasion that the expression "Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker" has made it into the pages of the NYRB, but then I was reminded of Nabokov's response to Edmund Wilson's Eugene Onegin review. I stand corrected.

Maury Felice!

Maury D'Annato celebrates his one-hundred-thousandth-or-so hit this morning. My favorite My Favorite Intermissions, I have to admit, is the same one La Cieca quoted earlier this year:

The role, as we all know, is unsingable, and so unsing it he did.

But is that my favorite line from my favorite My Favorite Intermissions? Or is it, re: Debbie Voigt,

No, the top is not the same shiny thing it used to be, but neither is the statue of liberty and we still like her.

In any case, I quote both of those one-liners like thrice daily. Informed, discerning, funny, self-effacing, Maury is truckloads of the very best that opera criticism has to offer. Happy D'Anniversary!