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| DawnXianaMoon.com: Randomness |
| Chinese-American Dawn Xiana Moon went from classically trained pianist to singer-songwriter shortly after discovering anarchy in the guitar. Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. Writings on identity, the arts, and more from Chicago. |
| Language: English |
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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 31 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 93114 |
| Visitors Out: 652 |
| Total Visitors Out: 793 |
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| Promoter's Ordinance Tabled! |
| 2008-05-14 01:34:00 |
Promoter's Ordinance Tabled!Great news! The Promoter's Ordinance is being pulled and will not be voted on tomorrow--it's going back to committee, but apparently they're going to ask for more input from the entertainment community this time around. Thanks to anyone to contacted their alderman and the 6000 people who signed the petition at Save Chicago Culture, and the various venue owners who met with City Council members.So for now, the ordinance is something we don't have to worry about, though it'll be worth keeping tabs on.What a relief....
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| Save Chicago Music |
| 2008-05-12 11:25:00 |
Save Chicago MusicIn short, the City of Chicago is planning to rush through an ordinance on Wednesday that will severely damage the live music scene (and theatre and DJs, among other things) if passed.In summary:The “Event Promoters” ordinance requires any event promoter to have a license from the city of Chicago and liability insurance of $300,000, but that’s just the start:The definition of “event promoter” is so loosely defined it could apply to a band that books its own shows or a theater company that’s in town for a one-week run.“Event Promoter” must be licensed and will pay $500 - $2000 depending on expected audience size.To get the license, applicant must be over 21, get fingerprinted, submit to a b...
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| Happy Chinese New Year! |
| 2008-02-07 07:29:00 |
Happy Chinese New Year!Thanks to U! for the fabulous drawing, which he sent me as a greeting card (if you're wondering, it's the Year of the Rat). Have a fantastic year, filled with lots of friends, music, and real Chinese food!...
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| "The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls." |
| 2008-01-26 19:17:00 |
"The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."The last two weeks of The Daily Show provided some interesting commentary on not just American politics, but the media. Take, for example, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's "escalating war of words"--since January 19, 2007, the media has been proclaiming that the "gloves are off" in the race between the two Democratic candidates. We could read this as hype, hype, and more hype. As Jon Stewart put it, "You know, if they're going to keep doing that, why do these candidates keep taking their gloves on and off? It seems inefficient."Or better yet, how about this? CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC constantly proclaim that race is an issue in the Democratic primary, and they've said that Hillary Clinton fi...
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| The Demise of Sigmund |
| 2007-12-20 17:18:00 |
The Demise of SigmundPoor Sigmund, he met an untimely end. He stood near the campus of Northwestern University, and his middle ball was pulled from his body--probably by an undergraduate. And his carrot nose was stolen.The final insult? Someone's dog left a yellow patch on his bottom ball....
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| Another Reason to Hate Windows Vista |
| 2007-12-13 07:20:00 |
Another Reason to Hate Windows Vista In an acronym: WGA. My laptop came directly from Dell with the OS pre-installed, and it's validated itself as "Genuine Windows Vista" before. But one day--probably after updating, or failing to update itself--it decided that it couldn't validate itself anymore. So depending on how annoying the OS decides to be, it gives me pop ups every few minutes to every few hours telling me that I "might be a victim of software counterfeiting" and to please click on the link provided to validate my copy of Vista. Sure enough, I click on the link, download and run their validator, and it tells me that I do have a real, genuine, 100% loved-by-Microsoft copy of their product. But does my machin...
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| A Snowman |
| 2007-12-05 22:28:00 |
A SnowmanLast night I did something I haven't done in years. I built a snowman.It was 9:30pm when Bryan called with the idea. A small gathering formed. Two hours, homemade hot chocolate and cider later, Sigmund was born. The next afternoon, he decided to take a trip....
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| London Highlights |
| 2007-12-03 03:54:00 |
London HighlightsWaking up before anyone else in my family on Monday morning (a rare moment, I know) and sitting in a wonderful café reading Time Out London, sipping a latte, and eating salmon and spinach quiche. The patisserie was so crowded that I first shared a small table with a man reading the morning paper and then, when he’d left, a friendly, older woman.The Tower of London and the accompanying Beefeater tour.An excellent play at the Young Vic: Brothers Size. Three actors. A chalk circle. An intimate theatre. Excellence.Unfortunately their performance season was over, but I still managed to tour the Globe Theatre. It's smaller than I expected--seeing that space puts Shakespeare's plays in a whole new perspect...
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| Mummies |
| 2007-11-27 12:36:00 |
MummiesMy keyboard appears to be British, but as I type it's conforming to an American layout. (Strange--though appreciated--since I haven't changed any settings on the software.) I'm in the basement of an internet cafe right next to the Young Vic, waiting to see their production of Brothers Size, which has garnered rave reviews. I spent most of today exploring the British Museum's extensive Egyptian collection, with minor detours into Assyria and Greece/Rome. Their placards are actually quite informative; I hadn't known that hieroglyphics were a formal form of writing reserved for monuments and art whereas Hieratic script was standard for everyday use (account keeping, letters, records). Eventually Hieratic became a formal script for religious texts, replaced by Demotic script in daily us...
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| Welcome to London |
| 2007-11-24 14:11:00 |
Welcome to LondonStepping out of the Tube station near my home for the next four days, my first sight of London from street level consisted of Starbucks, KFC, and Burger King. It’s always amazing to me how large cities are so similar even in the midst of their differences: the area near the Knightsbridge stop is home to the iconic Harrods department store—and a host of stores that I can find on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Staples like the Gap hang out next to H&M, and I expect the clothes are primarily the same, with the exception that here they cost twice as much. I earned a laugh from the man working the Gatwick Express ticket counter at the airport when he told us that we were getting a great deal—two train tickets for free since there was a 2-for...
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| Reality moves a bit closer to Star Trek. |
| 2007-11-19 03:14:00 |
Reality moves a bit closer to Star Trek.I popped onto Amazon.com just now to update my wish list, and was in for a new discovery: the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is a real-life version of a PADD. Remember watching Picard read Shakespeare in his ready room from a little computer screen? That computer screen now holds 200 books, newspapers, and magazines and connects to the internet via a free wireless service that doesn't require Wi-Fi (Amazon says it's similar to the technology used on cell phones, but with no service fees). Apparently the screen is highly readable, though it's difficult to say how well that works without having tried one. What I do find interesting is the easy portability of hundreds of books--as my roommate...
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| Big Time Entertainment |
| 2007-11-04 18:14:00 |
Big Time EntertainmentWhy pay for something when you can get it for free? Even better, why pay musicians when you can get them to pay you in order to play?In order to book a show through Big Time Entertainment, you have to guarantee that you'll bring 25 people into a show. Your payment as an artist is based on how many tickets you pre-sell. Big Time is counting on every band on the bill to pre-sell tickets, and they won't promote the show themselves.Here's their cost breakdown. Click over there and read how ridiculous this is--while trying to look "reasonable." The site looks fancy, but it's deliberately misleading. According to this, the venue gets over 65% of each ticket purchased through this program. Big Time Entertainment gets over 11%, and you...
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| A Society in Madness |
| 2007-10-23 23:31:00 |
A Society in MadnessIt's not often that I leave a theatre with just one word on my lips: Wow. But Steppenwolf's current production of The Crucible, Arthur Miller's rendering of the Salem Witch Trials, is, in a word, "Wow."The production is intense from the very beginning--the house lights darken and the theatre fills with foreboding music and panicked shrieking, and within the first few minutes of the play we're witness to confessions made under extreme duress. Much has been made of the play's exploration of the McCarthy era, and Chicago newspapers have thrown in their two cents about the production's timely relevance to a society that passes legislation like the Military Commissions Act, but for me, the most interesting...
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| Lincoln Square |
| 2007-10-16 22:05:00 |
Lincoln SquareIn an society that's growing increasingly more fractured, I was excited by a small and wonderful surprise today: my neighbor brought over homemade, salmon-stuffed potato cakes and introduced me to her four daughters (very cute Indian girls all under the age of seven).Lauren, an old friend from the University of Michigan, moved into the apartment half a week before I did--we're now in Lincoln Square, a nice walk from the Square itself with its restaurants, cafes, and the Old Town School of Folk Music. After hours of moving what were primarily boxes of books (the result of or motivation for being a literature major, it's difficult to say) on Wednesday night, I'm now more or less settled. That is, if you don't count the fact that there's a lot ...
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| Tidbits |
| 2007-09-24 01:57:00 |
TidbitsThe best opening line I've ever read in a Washington Post article: "Like worn-out shock absorbers on a car, parts of the human body wear out from age or overuse--often both." Like worn-out shock absorbers on a car. It reads like the lead from an Onion article, not straight news.The best headline I've read in a while: Ahmadinejad urges world to renounce Satan; U.S. walks out.This is bad. The State of Michigan is facing such a budget crisis that state services may shut down if a deal isn't reached by Thursday. Schools and local governments aren't sure what kind of support they're going to get from Lansing--some school districts are preparing to borrow money in order to stay afloat. And it's not just the government that's facing a crisis--at 7.4%, the state unemployment rate is nearly ...
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| Linkage |
| 2007-09-15 23:37:00 |
LinkageEven I think this is cute.I don't know whether these are cute, funny, or disturbing. Especially this one.A way to play a very cool game I discovered last Thanksgiving.A cool VoIP concept.A tree that owns itself. "It is the stated position of the Athens-Clarke County unified government that the tree, in spite of the law, does indeed own itself."One of the best auctions on eBay.If only they made this in my size. Or: further proof of my hopeless geekdom.Or if you like anime.The Flintstones meet Star Trek. More episodes....
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| Free parking does not exist. |
| 2007-09-10 17:51:00 |
Free parking does not exist.A full row of cars lined each side of the street, every one paired with its own parking meter. The meters only required payment until 6pm on weekdays, so we were excited to find free parking downtown. But it was not to be.After about an hour, we returned to the the block and discovered that it was nearly empty. Only two cars were left, and mine was not one of them. My first thought was that it'd been stolen (strange, considering the state of my car compared to the niceties of the neighborhood). Then we saw a sign hidden behind a tree: "Tow Away Zone: 15 minute parking 9pm -9am Saturday-Sunday." What? The SUV next to where my car used to be had three parking tickets decorating its windows, but it was still there. I called the p...
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| Concert Year in Review |
| 2007-09-02 07:07:00 |
Concert Year in ReviewSeptember begins a new concert season, and I've been keeping lists of performances I've not only given, but attended for the last seven years. It started when I was interning for an arts presenter and wanted to keep track of what I saw because I went to so many performances (the free tickets were a great job perk). That first season, 00/01, I went to a total of 37 music, theatre, and dance performances. This past season, I made it to 76. Some highlights:Alvin Ailey American Dance TheaterThe Tempest (the Royal Shakespeare Company with Patrick Stewart as Prospero)Vienna TengComplexions and the Joffrey BalletMonica del CastilloSecond City Chicago and ETCEurydice (Off-Broadway)Kara KulpaSwing GitanPuteri Gunung Ledang (Singapore)Todd Mar...
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| Recipe for a Birthday Trip to New York |
| 2007-08-30 06:29:00 |
Recipe for a Birthday Trip to New York1 Missed flight due to Bryan's last-minute caulking-the-tub project2 Bumps from overbooked flights1 Lost boarding pass1 Additional night in Chicago3 Total visits to O'Hare3 1/2 Days in New York City1 Cute pet rabbit that doesn't utilize his litter box as much as he should1 Off-Broadway theatre production (the excellent Eurydice)1 Free Lincoln Center performance (Kristjan Järvi’s Absolute Ensemble--it was forgettable)1 Breakdancing performance in the subway near Times Square2 Visits to Chinatown3 Trips in search of quality chocolate and/or ice cream1 Viewing of performance art that was less interesting than the view from a skyscraper (Dean Moss a...
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| Wealth is in the eye of the beholder. |
| 2007-08-15 18:52:00 |
Wealth is in the eye of the beholder.Wealth is relative. And writers at the New York Times apparently make (or just spend) a lot of money.Exhibit #1The paper's vote for Best Not-Cheap-Feeling All-Day-Long Cheap Date costs roughly $150. I'll grant that this does include a museum, lunch, a movie, dinner, and a drink for two, but frankly, that's more than half of what I spend on food in an entire month. Not exactly cheap. They could have recommended a free film (available at least in the summer in New York) or concert (again, readily found), or browsing through a cool bookstore (maybe reading Dr. Seuss books out loud, alternating lines--seriously, try it), or watching the sun set over water (the beach is free in Chicago). For food, they could have suggested c...
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| A Cool Feature in Vista |
| 2007-08-10 01:09:00 |
A Cool Feature in VistaNow that I've ranted about what's annoying in Windows Vista, here's a new discovery that's actually pretty cool: the Windows Sidebar and assorted gadgets. It's well-known that I'm a fan of Firefox, primarily because of its customizability. Vista offers its own version of something that I believe Macs have offered for years--the ability to install useful little programs onto their own sidebar, which stays on the desktop (click on the link for a photo--it does look rather Mac-like, doesn't it). Sometimes the gadgets are just an easier way to access other programs, sometimes they're links to websites (I have one-click access to finding synonyms for any word that I type, for example), sometimes they're tools in their own right. Currently my sidebar shows an alarm clock, ...
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| International News of the Weird |
| 2007-08-07 14:05:00 |
International News of the WeirdWith an unintentional focus on Asia.The Thai police will now wear Hello Kitty armbands as punishment. Late for work? Wear a hot pink armband featuring everyone's favorite Sanrio character. Hey, it's more amusing than a dunce cap.A woman in Germany had a pencil removed from her head after 55 years of being bothered by headaches. She fell on the pencil at the age of four and it's been lodged inside her head ever since.In India, police fed a thief chicken and rice hoping he would defecate the gold necklace he'd swallowed. They first fed him 40 bananas, a trick that had worked with a thief who swallowed an ornament a few months before.And finally, we make our way to China--I'll leave the hea...
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| Annoyance and Windows Vista |
| 2007-08-04 01:23:00 |
Annoyance and Windows VistaWarning: I'm going to geek out for a few moments. At long last, I now have a laptop, and while I love finally having one, the last month has also given me a few headaches with Windows Vista. My top irritations:1. Windows Update. Don't you hate it when your computer has a mind of its own? I've customized Windows Update so that, in theory, it will only reboot the computer to "finish installing updates" when I tell it to. Unfortunately, that's not the case in reality--as I discovered after multiple attempts to download a large file, attempts that resulted in a only acquiring a small percentage of the file after Windows decided to reboot my computer (and s...
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| The Things You Find on Facebook |
| 2007-07-27 01:20:00 |
The Things You Find on FacebookLike every other musician, willing or not, you can find me on Myspace. Even though I have issues with the inanity and clutter that passes for web design on people's pages. Even though its "unexpected technical errors" are fully expected, regular occurrences. But I am a far more willing participant in the phenomenon that is Facebook--it doesn't crash often, and they've managed to add widgets for everything from "become a zombie and bite your friends" to "add an aquarium" to "support [insert blank] cause" without devolving into absolute clutter.Normally I like to pretend that Redford, Michigan doesn't exist--I grew up in the tiny strip of land between Detroit and Livonia (the next suburb) that keeps Livonia's property values ...
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| Fireworks |
| 2007-07-04 01:17:00 |
FireworksImagine cramming 1 million people in maybe 15 blocks as close to Chicago's lakefront as possible for a 25-minute minute show and you'll get a good feel for the annual Independence Day fireworks display (which for reasons unknown is held on the 3rd of July rather than the 4th--the display on the 4th lasts half the time). I've never been in such a crowded space in my life.I like fireworks--who doesn't?--but I don't like them enough to navigate crowds of that magnitude. But an hour before I was going to head home from downtown, Jeremy called me to say that he and his friends had staked out a prime piece of real estate a few feet from the lake. "If you want to see the fireworks without being overcrowded, you should come now--we need more people to ...
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| Weddings |
| 2007-06-30 23:23:00 |
WeddingsToo often I go to weddings that feel generic. You know how it goes--in the weeks leading up to the wedding, everyone, especially the bride, stresses about making each and every detail "perfect." Yet a month after the wedding, the guests barely remember the monogrammed napkins or even what they ate. They remember the music only if it was particularly good or particularly horrible (I still remember a wedding where the DJ played songs in blocks instead of mixing song types within a set: a half hour of dollar dance songs, followed by a half hour of "YMCA" and "Hustle"-type songs, followed by an hour of ballads--yikes). And of course the entire thing took place in a church, whether or not the couple was religious in any way.The weddings you remember are the ones with some individuality:...
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| Kid-Friendly Food |
| 2007-06-18 00:48:00 |
Kid-Friendly FoodIt always mystified me that Americans consider certain foods particularly suited to childhood palates--"kid-friendly" is not a concept applied to food in Asian culture. A recent article in the Chicago Reader about school lunches highlights the case in point:The menu the OSP [Organic School Project] has introduced at Alcott [a public elementary school] has been an adjustment for staff and students alike. One morning’s breakfast included broccoli-and-cheese quiche. “We never did anything like that before,” says cafeteria manager Carmen Crespo. “The students didn’t like it—they went straight for the cereal. They’re picky. They like pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, ravioli, macaroni and cheese.”Americans seem to think that food for c...
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| Hello my friend, we meet again. |
| 2007-06-14 23:52:00 |
Hello my friend, we meet again.Yes, it's been the longest absence this blog has ever experienced. I apologize. We're now back in business, and I promise not to lapse so severely again. Here are some highlights from the last few weeks:I finally got caught up on Battlestar Galactica. I'd share my thoughts, but I don't want to give any spoilers for those who haven't yet seen the last couple of episodes. Suffice it to say that the writers love drastically changing the circumstances of the show at the end of the season. Unfortunately, it looks like Season 4 will be the last.I saw Phil Keaggy and Brennan Manning perform/speak at an intimate theatre in Wicker Park. Phil really is one of the best guitar players alive--add to that the fact that he's missing a finger on his strumming hand and I wasn...
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| Moving |
| 2007-04-28 01:46:00 |
MovingIn the last eight years, I've moved 14 times. Tomorrow will be #15.1. Eight months: My parents' house to a dorm at the University of Michigan (East Quad).2. Four months: The reverse.3. Eight months: The reverse.4. Four months: The reverse.5. Eight months: An apartment on S. Forest near the University of Michigan with two girls who were a couple of years older than me. Who both got engaged by October or November that year within a week of each other. (One Monday: Emily's engaged! The next Monday: Jen's engaged! My reaction: Hey, I've got a week--any takers?)6. One (or two) month(s): A room in a house near the Arb (still in Ann Arbor). Emily and Jen were getting married and it was easier to sublease the entire apartment for the summer and have me move somewhere else than try to just su...
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| Cassie's Questions |
| 2007-04-23 18:15:00 |
Cassie's QuestionsI got a message on Myspace today from Cassie in Oshkosh, Wis. and because she's so cool I'll answer her questions here. A little background: "And, so, I'm bored at work (big surprise) and I decided to embark on my new favorite game... drumroll, please... 17 questions (because 20 is so last year). I figured I'd send this to my three favorite roaming rabble-rousing musicians (you, Dan and Thomas (a.k.a. waypastfrown, of course)."1. Do you like tomatoes? There are few vegetables I appreciate (yes, I know it's technically a fruit), and this is one of them. I recently learned how to make an incredible spaghetti sauce from scratch--particularly incredible because I don't usually like marinara to begin with.2. Ever experienced a natural disas...
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| Battlestar Galactica |
| 2007-04-18 15:26:00 |
Battlestar GalacticaIn an article for Relevant Magazine on primetime TV's latest offerings, I had the opportunity to make a case for my favorite show:While it may air on the Sci-Fi Channel, you don’t have to love science fiction as a genre to enjoy BSG. The series is an intelligent re-imagining of the campy 1970s show and wholly its own creation—while robots (Cylons) and spaceships abound, the drama thrives on character-driven stories. This is science fiction at its best, using a futuristic world as a metaphor for understanding the present, and easily one of the best-produced shows on the air. With few mishaps, the writing is tight, the direction is solid, and plotlines continue from episode to episode, making for addictive viewing (curl up with a s...
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| Chocolate and Coffee |
| 2007-04-17 01:42:00 |
Chocolate and CoffeeI have a theory that singer-songwriters have to love coffee. It's almost a job requirement. And I've only ever met one person who was more obsessed with chocolate than I. So before leaving the Quad Cities, Kim, Monica and I made a detour to a local chocolatier that had clearly inhabited its space for years--very few shops were open in that part of town (we walked past a cafe that listed its Saturday hours as 8:00am-11:00am), but the store was full. I ordered a small assortment of truffles, English toffee, and caramel that didn't last through the evening. Admittedly I'm a chocolate snob; the confections were good enough to devour immediately, but nothing special overall.We walked through the streets, ...
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| Theo's Java Club |
| 2007-04-15 15:39:00 |
Theo's Java ClubThus began the tour: insanity in leaving Chicago in the middle of rush hour (my fault), an additional two hours of unrelated gridlock, a sturdy 1990 "truck" (closer to an SUV, really) named Bessie, two guitars (if we'd added mine it would have made three) and a keyboard, stories about raising children not yours, a Californian guitarist named Kim (also known as Monica's best friend), and three musicians left to their own devices for hours on the road with no radio. It was awesome.Sometimes I'm ambivalent about touring before I actually get into the car--there's so much to take care of before leaving town for a few days or weeks that I wonder if it'd be better to just stay home. But once I get to the first venue...
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| Faith, Art and Relevance |
| 2007-04-13 00:20:00 |
Faith, Art and Relevance"We have become irrelevant." I have a few pet topics, among them aesthetics, particularly in the realm of Christianity, theology, and philosophy--and after four months of procrastination I finally wrote a new article on faith and art for Relevant Magazine.Many contemporary Christians tend to make one of three errors when dealing with art: One, we declare anything that doesn’t explicitly proselytize, anything that depicts brokenness without redemption to be depraved or unworthy of Christian notice. Or two, we decide that the secular world really does have better art, so we copy it, boldly and without apology or thought into our own creativity. Or three, we try so hard to be relevant that we adopt the attitude and worldview of the cu...
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| "You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream" (CS Lewis). |
| 2007-04-07 15:50:00 |
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream" (CS Lewis).Seeing trained musicians give up on music makes me a little sad. I was talking to a former graduate conducting student (undergrad in piano) tonight who's now a day trader. He barely plays anymore. Part of the problem is that once you've been working at such a high level of musicianship, working with a bad community orchestra or mediocre church choir is more frustrating than fulfilling. It can become an all-or-nothing scenario. Less extreme are some friends from the University of Michigan, which has one of the top music programs in the country--all of these guys still play, but they're no longer trying to make a career out of it (then again, when you're pursuing music as a career,...
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| One of My Other Obsessions |
| 2007-04-04 01:19:00 |
One of My Other ObsessionsOne of my non-musical obsessions is swing dancing, and I'm excited to finally be teaching lessons again! Since moving to Chicago, I haven't taught much in a formal setting. But for those of you in the Chicagoland area, I'll soon be teaching two classes at Studio Viva in Palatine: Blues and East Coast Swing (we'll do a Lindy Hop class when there's an audience there for it--any takers?).Blues is a sensual dance that grew out of smoky blues clubs and intimate house parties; it emphasizes close physical connection and communication between partners. At its best, it's like a five-minute hug, and I've sometimes described it as slow dancing with style. Dora, who owns the studio, described it as "bumping and grinding without the grinding" tonight, which made us all laugh....
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| Alvin Ailey, or Hearing Your Recorded Voice in a 4000-Seat Auditorium |
| 2007-04-01 06:22:00 |
Alvin Ailey, or Hearing Your Recorded Voice in a 4000-Seat AuditoriumLast Thursday I was privileged to see one of my favorite dance companies at the beginning of their Chicago residency--Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is one of the best modern companies in the US and easily the world. They have a tendency to eschew sets for elegant lighting that puts the focus on their dancers, rather than on any technical aspects of production, and their pieces tend to be both artistic and accessible.The night opened with "Grace" by Ronald K. Brown. I saw Brown's company, Evidence, years ago and thought the company was mediocre--but the choreography here was simply beautiful, and combined with Ailey dancers the result was, in a word, ...
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| So-Called "Godly" Music |
| 2007-03-29 08:03:00 |
So-Called "Godly" MusicSlacktivist links to a slightly disturbing YouTube video: Satan's Tool: The truth about contemporary Christian Music. In this sermon, courtesy of Alan Ives, Music Minister of Wyldewood Baptist Church in Oshkosh, Wis., we learn:God only likes conservative, "safe" (i.e. somewhat boring) melodies.Only straight 4/4 time with a strong downbeat is godly. Syncopation is clearly of the devil.Rock music is bad. As is just about all Latin music and most jazz (the rhythm is way too fun).Dancing is evil.There are so many things wrong with Ives's sermon I'm not even sure where to start. One of the really sad things about his message, as Slacktivist points out, is that Ives seems competent on each of the three instruments he plays (OK, he does play...
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| Random Facts |
| 2007-03-29 06:00:00 |
Random FactsIn 1939, a five-year-old Peruvian girl became the youngest documented mother in history. She hit puberty somewhere between the ages of 18 months and three years.According to the CIA World Fact Book, Singapore has a population of 4.5 million people. And 4.4 million cell phones. But only 2.4 million people use the internet.There's a provision in the document that annexed Texas that would have allowed it to be divided into five states.The average wedding in the US "costs over $23,000 and includes an average of 168 guests, 100 of whom actually give wedding gifts that average $85 each. But the costs of attending a wedding are not limited to the gift—amazingly the typical guest spends on average $500 to attend the event when new attire, travel, gas,...
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