Rufus Wainwright

I've been listening to a lot of Rufus Wainwright lately. I first heard him as an opener for Ben Folds some years back. This past August I caught a show he headlined at Ravinia. Leading up to that show and ever since, I've probably taken in a couple hours of his music a day. I like his sound enough that I can throw it on as background music at work, but much of his lyrics are so well written they beg for a closer listening. He uses a variety of instruments to create a really refined sound. His smooth voice also has the strength to really belt it out.

To listen to a wide array of songs, check out these selections from hypem which aggregrates mp3s from all over the internet. In the live versions where he's chatting up the crowd, you'll get a good idea of just how quirky and flamboyant he is.

Some of my favorites:
Beautiful Child
Going To A Town
Grey Gardens
Natasha
Release the Stars

August: Osage County

Wednesday night I had the privilege of catching a performance of August: Osage County at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Tim has a subscription and called me the day of with an extra ticket. I admit I was a little scared by the 3 hour 20 minute run time but I loved every minute of it.

The show is hilariously funny and brutally honest. The well-developed characters ride a roller coast plot line. The acting is superb.

The day after I saw the show, it was announced that it's deservedly headed for Broadway with most of the members from the original cast. If you have a chance to see this masterpiece, by all means go.

<beer>Happiness</beer>

Someone at work had a shirt on today that read <beer>Happiness</beer>

Wearing a t-shirt to work is somewhat questionable but people do it on a regular basis. Wearing one that says "Beer makes me happy" in HTML - yeah, he's a software developer and proud of it.

From the department of this post is geeky enough already, Blogger was reading the text <beer>Happiness</beer> and processed beer as an html tag - just displaying the word Happiness. To combat this, I included the encoded equivalent of < and > which are < and > to display everything as I wanted.

Dialect Surveys

A professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee conducted a dialect survey and mapped his results by geography here. This type of thing is fascinating to me.

Some of the highlights:
Pronunciation of "Insurance" - inSURance like most people, or INsurance like some people south of I-80 in Illinois say.
Sneakers vs. Tennis Shoes vs. Gym Shoes - sneakers out East, tennis shoes elsewhere, gym shoes in Illinois/Indiana/Ohio - which is what I call them.
Some odd knife-throwing game - that the majority of people call "mumbly peg"? WTF?


via 37 signals Fly on the Wall

Four Winds

In high school, Fr. Ralph played us an organ composition he wrote for one of his music finals in college. In was a cleverly disguised variation of the Mickey Mouse Club. I was reminded of this today when I heard the violin line in Four Winds by Bright Eyes. Does it sound like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to anyone else but me?

It’s Frickn' Freezing In Here Mr. Bigglesworth!

I nearly froze while out walking Forest last night and knew it was cold today as well. After what was overall a pretty mild winter, as of 4:55 pm on February 3rd , it's 2 degrees. With the wind chill factor, weather.com says it feels like -16.