The Reluctant Dragon Recites a Poem

Oh sure, you may have exciting plans for this lovely Friday evening. You may have a hot date planned, or many wild parties to go to. But me, I have an evening hanging out at home, a pineapple upsidedown cake, and dragon poetry. You should be jealous.

Playing Pong with Sheep

I have been neglecting my posting of late. I apologize. School's been kicking my butt.

Today's good thing: A good laugh.
If you are at all familiar with the world of the internet you have probably seen plenty of  extreme sport videos. Parkour, wing suits, bungee jumping, and so on and so forth. Yesterday I discovered a new extreme sport. Behold one of the most entertaining 2 minutes and 45 seconds of my life.

That's right. Extreme sheep herding. Have a good laugh on me. 

Halloween Post 3-Ten Tunes to add to your Halloween Playlist

Everyone needs a good Halloween playlist. Might I suggest these? You will find no Monster Mash here, here are some great Halloween tunes that you may not have heard before:

Classical Tunes
1:  Danse Macabre-Camille Saint-Saens
Originally written for voice and piano, with text by poet Henri Cazalis, Saint-Saens later expanded this work into a tone poem for full orchestra and replaced the solo voice with a solo violin. This is one of my all time favorite orchestral pieces. Interesting fact: the chord played at the beginning by the violin soloist, called a tritone or a diminished 5th, is also often called the devil's interval because it's extremely dissonant sound is very uncomfortable to listen to.

This video appeared on PBS in the 80's. The sound quality isn't the greatest, but the illustrations are really pretty. 

2: Funeral Mach of a Marionette-Charles Gounod

Those of you Hitchcock fans may recognize this one, it was used as the theme song for his show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 

3: Requiem Dies Irae-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

THIS one you may recognize from the movie Amadeus. Requiem Mass in D minor was Mozart's last work before his young and tragic death. 

From Movies

4: Gollum's Song-Howard Shore, Fran Walsh, Emiliana Torrini

I'm a massive Lord of the Rings fan. I own all three movies (extended versions, of course) and all three soundtracks. This is one of the most lovely, and creep songs, in the whole trilogy of beautiful music. 

5: Ghostbusters-Ray Parker Jr

This movies seriously freaked me out as a young child. Love the hair in this video, though...

6: Theme from Young Frankenstein

I already mentioned how great this movie is a few posts back. Well, guess what!? It has really pretty music too!

7: Sherlock Holmes Soundtrack

I love all things Sherlock Holmes, I really love the Robert Downey Jr movie versions, and I really REALLY love the soundtrack from those movies. The soundtrack was composed my Hans Zimmer (who also wrote the music for such gems as Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lion King) and includes a host of unconventional instruments including a hammered dulcimer and a "broken pub piano." The whole soundtrack is great and perfect for Halloween. Not so perfect for driving alone at night, though...

From Video Games

8: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

The Metroid games are some of my brother's favorite games. I'm slowly working on playing my way through them and just started Echoes, which is by far the creepiest of the games. The music is equally creepy.

9: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Twilight Theme

This is MY all time favorite video game. The Twilight Realm is sufficiently spooky. 

Just For Fun

10: The Zombie Love Song-Stephanie Mabey

At the end of it all Halloween should be about having fun.

If I were a zombie...

Countdown to Halloween day 2-My Favorite October Reads

Who doesn't love to curl up with a good book? Here's one of my favorite books to read when the leaves start to turn and the world takes a turn towards the weird and mysterious:

Doctor Faustus
Written by Christopher Marlowe (a contemporary of Shakespeare) this play tells the story of Faust. Faust is  a scholar who, upon mastering all other arts and sciences, turns to magic and sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of power. A chilling tale about the error of pride, Faustus is given opportunity after opportunity to repent and save his soul, but his pride and his lust for power always keep him from seeking forgiveness from his God. In the end the devil's servants drag his soul to Hell. If you, like me, grew up watching Wishbone (you know, the little dog that tells stories) you might recognize the story of Faust. Although the Wishbone episode is based on Goethe's version of Faust , published 200 years after Marlowe's, they are both based on a much older German legend, so it's basically the same story. Here's the first part of the Wishbone version:

Eric Whitacre and his Virtual Chior

From ericwhitacre.com:

"Eric Whitacre is one of the most popular and performed composers of our time, a distinguished conductor, broadcaster and public speaker."
 
As a senior in my high school's orchestra I had the opportunity to play Eric Whitacre's beautiful instrumental piece, October (originally written for band). I fell in love with his style of writing and the poetry of his music.
Several years later I saw this video in a series of Ted Talks videos on Netflix:

 

"His ground-breaking Virtual Choir, Lux Aurumque, received over a million views on YouTube in just 2 months (now 4 million), featuring 185 singers from 12 different countries. Virtual Choir 2.0, Sleep, was released in April 2011 and involved over 2,000 voices from 58 countries. Virtual Choir 3, Water Night, received 3,746 submissions from 73 counties and launched at Lincoln Center, New York and revealed online in April 2012. The latest, Virtual Choir 4: Fly to Paradise, released in July 2013, received over 8,400 submissions from 101 countries and launched at the Coronation Festival at Buckingham Palace/BBC 1." -http://ericwhitacre.com/biography

I love this. As both a musician and a technology loving nerd I am moved by the way he uses those things together to connect human beings from all over the world on an emotional level.

So today's good thing, for your enjoyment: Virtual Choir 1, 2, 3 and 4

Amaranth

I went for a walk with my father this evening. We bundled up in coats and headed out into the Utah autumn twilight. We didn't have a destination planned, we just started walking. We ended up passing a little house a few blocks away from ours that I have always thought of as "The Artsy House." It's artsy shaped with artsy glass windows. Some new people moved into it a few years ago and upped the artsyness by painting it blue and adding some windchimes. And gardens. Beautiful flower gardens all over the large front yard. This year the gardens were especially pretty, largely because of the huge, red amaranth plants growing in numbers in the largest of the flower beds.

(This isn't a picture of their amaranths, this is a picture I found online)

Aren't they amazing? They look like something from Alice in Wonderland. I'd been looking at and loving these plants every day as I drove past on my way to and from school. So as my dad and I walked passed we decided on a whim to knock on their door and ask about them. We didn't know these people previously, so we felt a little odd about knocking on their door to ask questions about their shrubs. When a man answered though, he greeted us almost as if he had been expecting us. He seemed to already know we were there to ask about the plants. And when his wife joined us in the yard she seemed to somehow know that's why we where there, too. Steve and Michelle told us about the amaranth, about how it needs full sunlight for the seeds to germinate, about how the seeds are edible and similar to quinoa seeds, about how native Americans cultivated amaranth like grain. And then Michelle cut a seed stalk off one of the plants and gave it to us to start our own plants. 

Today's good thing: Nice people can be found everywhere, and amaranth is beautiful. 

Amaranth on Wikipedia