music

It is that time of year again when the residence I am in puts on a musical. The production they chose was Fame and this year they did something different... they had this contest:

There are easier ways to see a musical for free if you want to. Show up very early when the cast and band members arrive and bring a book. Usually you can go in because ticket checkers will not have arrived yet. And everyone will just assume that someone in the production gave you a ride. However, I wanted to win this contest, not because it meant free tickets, but because it meant winning a contest.

I have to make a plug for a few people that have exceptional talent. These are the people that I want to get tons of exposure so they can make a career coming out with stuff that entertains the shit out of me. And when I talk to my friends I will sound like a badass because I'll be able to say that I knew them before almost anyone else. They have more talent than most of the people in Broadway or Hollywood. One exception might be Christopher Nolan whose first film is still insanely good. Nolan would be on my list if he were still making low budget films. But he's a best-selling director now, so it's down to these three.

Sorry that the site was down for over a month - my host was being bullied by his ISP. But now that the problem is over, I will make the post that I would've made at the end of March - about a protest that I tried to organize. Right now I am at the University of British Columbia and I live on campus in a residence called Marine Drive. I have quite enjoyed this place: the buildings are new, there aren't any first years around and for this particular building, I don't have to move out at the end of the year - I can keep staying as long as I keep paying. The rent includes all the necessities like a network connection which is very fast and has unlimited bandwidth (thanks to MAC address spoofing). So it would be a good idea for me to keep paying rent.

At the end of March, people in my residence and other residences put on a production of Rent. Close to the date of the performance, I was disappointed to see that the musical would in fact be the school edition. The program included the fine print: "With the permission of the Jonathan Larson Estate, this version of RENT has been adapted for use in schools and other producing organizations. While retaining the dramatic intent of this groundbreaking musical, minimal changes have been made to language and one song ["Contact"] has been deleted." They say that the changes are minimal. My ass. But the biggest lie they tell is that their censored musical retains the dramatic intent of the late Jonathan Larson. He died before the school edition existed and yet MTI presumes to know what his opinion of it would be. Did Larson just decide to put drug references in the script for the hell of it? Because he didn't think they were important to the show? I highly doubt it. You are either being true to an artist's vision or you're not.

It was frustrating to see that a university would be putting on this version of Rent even though it was designed for high schools. I think UBC should be more like Hollywood High School which performed the full version of Rent in 2010. The Wikipedia article says it was the first high school to do so - I am amazed it took this much time for one to act sensibly. However, I suspect that UBC's decision to use the school edition was made for financial reasons. It costs less to license the school edition - something else that bothers me because it has a chilling effect on the feasibility of performing the real show. I take some solace in the fact that the version performed was somewhere in between Rent: School Edition and Rent. The cast restored the swearing and other things, so I think they reverted the changes whenever it was easy to do so. The word "fuck" does not appear in the school edition but it was definitely in the play I saw. I was actually surprised to see that the full script only includes it six times because it seemed like I was hearing it a lot more. Anyway, everyone in the production was wonderful so this is not what I felt I had to do something about.

First of all, happy holidays to anyone reading this! You didn't think I was going to let Christmas / Grav-mass go by without a post did you? Well I absolutely would have if I didn't have this post ready in time. Spreading the spirit of the season can be done in a small number of words - and all of the posts I write have to be long. No exceptions!

Anyway, like many people who have a piano at home, I sometimes hear a great piece of orchestral music in a movie and try to play an approximation to it on the piano. Usually what I try to play is full of mistakes and I lose interest after half an hour. However, my approximations to two Star Wars songs have evolved into fairly well defined pieces that I can play from start to finish. Want to guess which ones?

Both pieces are ending themes so they have to merge into this music that plays during the black and blue credits of every Star Wars movie. That should narrow it down significantly. Anyway, in the rest of this post you can find audio files and sheet music. Learning to play this was satisfying enough. But then I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to learn the music TeX packages so it's a win-win situation.