world according to cat

Tybalt has been following me around, as he often does when he's not sleeping, or burrowed underneath sheets or a blanket (and probably sleeping), and he's taken to a new habit: when he begs to be picked up (by putting his front paws on my chest), he responds to being cradled in my arms by climbing up onto my shoulders and draping himself around the back of my neck. Always with his head on the right. Up there he can groom my hair to his heart's content. (I think he likes it even better when it's freshly washed. Maybe the remaining scent of shampoo appeals to feline taste.)

And he'll stay up there for quite a while, even as I walk around or go up or down stairs with this extra ten pounds on me, unless I sit down: then he'll jump down right away.

I'm finding that when I don't have a cat on my shoulders I miss the feeling, even though it includes claws digging through my shirt.

success

Two gratifying things:

1. I got my eyes checked yesterday, but the technician said my pupils were too small, even after some time in a dark room, and needed to be dilated. I've long had a phobia about having anything put in my eyes, but I thought, it's over 40 years since I last tried, maybe I've gotten partly over it, the way my fear of heights has diminished over the years. So I had them try it, and not only did it work, but the technician said the dilation solution relaxes the eyes, which also meant I had less trouble with reflexive blinking than I usually do. I had to wear dark glasses outside for the rest of the day, and I found I had trouble reading even under optimal light conditions. But that all wore off.

2. Slate runs a daily trivia contest, which I always take. Today's was on history, and not only did I get all six questions correct, which is not unprecedented, but this time - and still so, three hours after I took the test - I had the highest score, which is unprecedented. (You get extra points for being fast, and I'm rarely fast.)

reading the biography of an author I don't like

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes by Rob Wilkins (Doubleday, 2022)

The most useful thing I learned from this book is that I'm not the only person out there who doesn't like Terry Pratchett's fiction. His own mother refused to read any of the gift copies she was given, and once when the driver of a car she was in put on a Pratchett audiobook, she almost immediately reached over from the passenger seat and turned it off.

Once when Pratchett was in Hollywood, he attended a screening of the not-yet-released movie Shrek. To my mind, Shrek is the perfect animated comedy, but Pratchett didn't care for it. That's appropriate, or at least symmetrical: I don't like what he thought was funny, and he didn't like what I think is funny.

Clearly we had very different senses of humor, because I find his writing desperately failing at a quest to be humorous. However! In this book I found a Pratchett joke that actually made me laugh, first of its kind. As a 17-year-old tyro journalist, Pratchett was assigned to write his paper's children's page, and he filled it with wacky inventions, including the story of a Welsh shepherd named Bedwyr and his sheepdog, Bedwetter.

OK, that was funny.

Richard M. Sherman

Here's what I had to say about the recently-deceased songwriter on the one occasion I found to bring him up:

* * *

Which reminds me that another song everybody hates except me is "It's a Small World." That was one of the Sherman brothers' Disney songs, which in turn reminds me that I watched a documentary on the brothers on Disney+. This weirdly overemphasized their differences and disagreements, so that you wouldn't realize that they kept on collaborating on songs even at the time that the documentary would have you believe they weren't speaking to each other.

I like a lot of the Sherman songs, especially those for Mary Poppins, but there are two I do purely hate the way that others hate "Small World." One of them is the Winnie-the-Pooh theme song, which is nauseatingly cutesy, and the other is "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow," which has the demerit of a catchy tune combined with sententious lyrics. "Man has a dream, and that's a start / He follows his dream with mind and heart / And when it becomes a reality / It's a dream come true for you and me." That's disturbingly unspecific. What if that dream is some industrial process which may produce a useful product but destroys the environment? And, uh, what about Hitler? There was a guy who sure had a dream, and unquestionably followed it with mind and heart, so that recipe is not necessarily a good thing, is it?

no barbecue, man

I've just written and erased three accounts of why I needed to make an emergency scholarly visit to the local university library, so the heck with it. Let's just say that I did and that it had to do with finalizing the proofs for the next issue of Tolkien Studies. I went yesterday, and I picked that rather than Friday or Sunday (yes, the library will be open today) because of the recent article in the paper announcing a barbecue competition going on nearby, sponsored by "Famous Dave" of the eponymous bbq chain, who would be there in person. The where and when was as follows:

The contest, which will take place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. outside Famous Dave’s at The Plant shopping center on Curtner Avenue, is free and open to the public. Sampling will start at 11, and the People’s Choice voting on barbecue chicken wings will begin at 1:30 p.m.

Study that well, because it turned out to be totally misleading.

I was there by 11, and joined a not-too-long line of people in the back parking lot waiting for the opening. Expecting to be asked to pay something, I was puzzled that that didn't come up. As the event opened, we were each given a bag containing a bottle of bbq sauce and some coupons and other bling, went past another table from which we could take small bags of chips, and then to a third table where a man whom I gathered was Famous Dave himself was giving everyone small cardboard baskets with a tiny chopped-pork slider and a cup of mac and cheese. There were some drinks over on one side and tables to sit at, but that was it.

I went back to Famous Dave. "Is that it? Is there anything else?" I asked. "No, that's everything you get," he replied. "But I thought there was going to be a barbecue wing contest or something," I said. "You have to pay for the wings," he said. "They're over there," pointing to a detached area with some smokers and grills. "That's what I meant," I said: "is there anything else?"

I walked over to where he'd pointed, where I was the only customer, and asked someone behind a table. Wings won't be ready for an hour, they said. OK, it opens at 11, but the main event doesn't begin until 12 though the announcement didn't say that.

I ate my free food - eh - and went off to do my library research, which enabled me to return at 1 pm. Surely there'll be wings by then, and the event doesn't close until 4. When I arrived, large numbers of people were gathered in the area where the wings were supposed to be, but nobody seemed to be eating or serving wings. I went back to the free food table and asked the guy there now about it. He said he didn't know anything. "Well, who would know?" I asked, my usual response in that situation. That didn't produce any results. "Is there anybody in charge?" I asked. He pointed to Famous Dave, who was off by the drinks counter. I went up and asked him. "Oh, the wings are all sold out," he said. "Then what are all those people doing?" I asked. "They're waiting for the judges to issue their votes," he said.

This is about the most disorganized event I've ever attended, I muttered, and went off without any bbq.

a quiver of books about Shakespeare

What Was Shakespeare Really Like? by Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Short book, revised transcript of four lectures, intended to convey Shakespeare's personality as deduced through his works, including the Sonnets. Best at discussing the compositional process of the plays, though it doesn't go far into how the roster of the currently available acting company constrained the writing of the plays.

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Collection of essays by various hands, defending Shakespeare against alternative authorship theories. Surprisingly sympathetic to Delia Bacon, depicted as a talented scholar driven mad by the lack of academic opportunities for women in her day. A very clear essay on the Earl of Oxford, exploring the evidence for his connection with playwriting and the theater: he had his own company of players, making it improbable that he would have been writing plays for some other company. Sophisticated discussion of other associated attribution questions in the light of the authorship controversy, and an even more daring one on lies and false attributions in the plays themselves.

Shakespeare in a Divided America by James Shapiro (Penguin Press, 2020)
Eight essays on hot spots in Shakespeare's reception in America. John Quincy Adams, though famously anti-slavery, was utterly repulsed by the inter-racial relationship in Othello, to the point of writing an article denouncing it. The young U.S. Grant was once cast as Desdemona in an army camp performance, which was cancelled due to the homophobia of the officer cast as Othello (but who did he think was going to play Desdemona in an 1845 army camp?) John Wilkes Booth's acting career in Shakespeare: he liked to play villains like Richard III and Macbeth, avoided the romantic comedies. Yeah, that sounds like him. How Kiss Me Kate dealt with changing women's roles in its day. Same thing with extramarital affairs and homosexual desire in Shakespeare in Love. Lastly, the controversy over the production of Julius Caesar which depicted Caesar as looking and acting like Donald Trump. Various indignant persons said, "What if there were one in which it were Obama?" Well, there had been one, and it passed with no controversy whatever, including sponsorship by the same companies that were so shocked, shocked, at the Trump one that they pulled out.

Nine Lives of William Shakespeare by Graham Holderness (Continuum, 2011)
One chapter each on nine ways of looking at Shakespeare - as writer, actor, working class lad, businessman, husband, lover (of both men and women), possible Catholic, and through his portraits - each divided into discussions of the known facts, the recorded traditions, and speculations. The briefest of these is the "Facts" section on Shakespeare's supposed inamorata the Dark Lady: "The documentary facts can be disposed of quickly and simply. There are none. The only certain existence of the Dark Lady is as a fictional character." But that's not all! Each chapter is followed by a fictional document or story elaborating on it, including memoirs as if written by people who knew Shakespeare, plus a pastiche Sherlock Holmes story about the theft of Shakespeare's ring from a museum, and a pastiche Hemingway story transferring the account of the Dark Lady to World War I.

news

1. My favorite Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto closed last weekend. I've been eating at Jing Jing since they opened in 1986, and it's where I took the traveling Tolkien scholars on their last visit here. Fortunately - purely by luck, because I hadn't known they were closing - I stopped in just last week for a final taste of my favorite lunch special, the braised shrimp.

1a. On the other hand, the long-empty restaurant space just opposite the San Jose State University library has finally reopened, and as a Chinese restaurant. That means I can have lunch there when I visit the library, as I often do. I tried that for the first time also last week, and it was pretty good.

2. California is on the verge of banning plastic shopping bags altogether. (The little ones you put around meats or vegetables are still OK.) I don't know how thrilled I'll be with this, because recycled paper bags are often alarmingly flimsy. But when I pick up our weekly grocery order and it comes in up to 15 plastic bags, disposing of the bags is a nuisance. They can't go in regular recycling. I've been stuffing all the rest of the bags inside one, tossing the inflated lump of them in the back seat of my car, and waiting for the next occasion - maybe once a month - when I get to the one grocery which has a recycling bin for plastic bags.

3. I'm not sure I follow all of this. But remember the recount for the local congressional race? The rule in California is that two top finishers in all-party primaries go on to the finals, but there was a tie for second place. A judge ruled that all three go on to the finals, but somebody paid for a recount (which has to be paid for here by a volunteer, usually the losing candidate). And they found a few extra ballots, but the ironies are 1) the tie was broken for the candidate who tried to stop the recount; 2) nobody knows who paid for the recount, but the money appears to be traceable back to the first-place candidate, who evidently thinks he has a better chance of winning against one opponent than against two.

3a. Also: the candidate who was kicked off the ballot, a long-serving local rep whose dreams of Congress are now at an end, quietly accepted the result. He did not send a mob storming the state capitol or anything like that. In short, he behaved like a human being.

4. A correspondent writes that the Ellen Klages episode of Jeopardy, disappeared from YouTube just after I posted a link to it, may be found in chart form on the online Jeopardy Archive. No video, but you can see all the clues and who got them right. Leaving aside brain freezes during the actual game, which I'm sure would slay me were I an actual contestant if I ever did get the buzzer, which I doubt I would, I find that I could solve about half of the 61 clues in the game, including several that none of the contestants got. I knew Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones" finds a poor Gulf coast family riding out this 2005 disaster & its aftermath even though I'd never heard of the book, because "Gulf coast" and "2005 disaster" were enough clue for me. There were two categories where I knew all five clues: "Amadeus" (a Mozart category) and "Treaties" (a historical category), even though each had one clue that flummoxed all three contestants.

5. Sumer is icumen in. Cats shed much.

a train to Santa Cruz

I've written before about Roaring Camp, which runs narrow-gauge trains with a vintage steam locomotive on excursion runs up a mountain in the hill country above Santa Cruz. But they also run a beach train from their station down to the Santa Cruz boardwalk. I'd never taken that, but I decided it was time to try. On summer weekends they make two runs a day - the trip takes about an hour in each direction. If you come back on the same run you went out on, there's a 45-minute layover, which isn't very long; but if you go on the first run and come back on the second, you have five hours from 11 AM to 4 PM, which is long enough to have a leisurely lunch and then hang around.

So that's what I did last Saturday, before taking my car over to Aptos and attending that bassoon concert where I won the audience quiz.

The train runs through some thick redwood forests and halfway up along the side of some vertical cliffs, before descending down into Santa Cruz where it passes through an industrial district and then settles along running down the middle of a street. I'd driven that street and seen the train tracks, but I hadn't seen a train along them before. The feeling was not totally unlike that scene in Inception. The train then makes a left turn and runs - slowly, so that pedestrians can get out of the way - along the boardwalk, puffing to a halt alongside the big century-old roller coaster ride.

Physically getting off the train without the ramp they have back at the station was a little awkward (there's steps, but they're difficult), but once off, I walked back along the boardwalk, past the roller coaster and the bumper car ride and the video game parlors - I didn't even know they still had those - way over to the other end where the wharf is, which is where the good restaurants in the area are.

Adequately lunched, I sat on a bench on the wharf, reading and looking out at the beach and ocean, and about 3 began wandering slowly back towards where the train would be. I spent some time gazing at a flock of beach volleyball courts, most of which were occupied by games of two people (both sexes well represented) per side. It occurred to me, first, that two per side isn't really enough people to play an effective game of volleyball; second, that clearly the reason for playing volleyball on a beach is to facilitate making a saving hit while diving head-first into the ground. I used to play volleyball occasionally - it was the only team ball sport I was ever the slightest bit good at - but never on a beach, only on asphalt. Clearly I was missing something.

Train in the other direction, then hobbled back to my car and was off.

Ellen Klages on Jeopardy

Here it is, folks: my friend, and many of yours too, Ellen Klages as a contestant on Jeopardy today, May 22. First time I've seen anyone I actually know as a contestant on this show.

Two warnings, though:

1. It's a very defective recording. The video freezes, though the audio is OK, throughout the second half of the first round, including the contestant interviews, and Final Jeopardy is mostly cut off. I tried three different postings of the episode and they're all like that. If you find a better one, let me know.

2. Ellen got shellacked and came in third. The other two were faster on the buzzer, that was the main reason.

ETA: 3. And now they've all been taken down anyway. Puh.



As on other recent occasions when I've watched Jeopardy, I'm dismayed by the number of items that none of the contestants knew but I did. There were 6 of them this time, including one which Ellen got wrong, aargh! But would I have been able to do any better under the pressure of the actual show? I doubt it. So a warm round of applause to Ellen for doing her damndest.

Bing preview

I received an invitation to a 'preview party' for the next season from Stanford Live, the organization that puts on concerts at the Stanford campus, and I decided to go. About 60 people were there at Bing, Stanford's keynote concert hall. I think the event was mostly aimed at big donors, but there was room for at least one press person - me - though I didn't recognize anybody else as a classical journalist.

The administrators spent an hour describing the themes of the season and specific concerts therein, accompanied by video clips of the performers and, in two cases, the performers live themselves for sets of about ten minutes each. That was what most enticed me.

Katherine Goforth is a trans woman classical singer, the first I've encountered, though there was an interesting article about trans opera singers in SFCV recently. In speaking voice and in presentation - not just appearance, but how she moved and carried herself - like other trans women I've met Goforth was entirely a typical woman. But her singing voice was that of a baritone. (Her publicity says tenor, but it sounded baritone to me.) It had the rougher texture more characteristic of men's voices.
It was not disconcerting if you were expecting it. But trans vocal singing range is an interesting problem, and the SFCV article discusses how its practitioners deal with it.
Goforth's repertoire was Mahler songs accompanied by piano. One of the season themes is "Mahler and the Second Viennese School," be still my heart.

Edmar Castañeda is a Colombian folk-jazz harpist. (Harp is another of the season themes, and judging from one of the recorded clips of other performers, Philip Glass etudes sound really good on harp.) I can't describe Castañeda's style except to note that he pats the strings a lot.

Afterwards there was a reception in the lobby, with drinks and a small snacks table with berries, melon slices, and crunchy little cookies. You could pick up a copy of the printed season brochure straight from the boxes the printer delivered them in. I noticed two things of particular interest. 1) The entire London Symphony Orchestra is coming to play Mahler's roof-blasting First Symphony in Bing's tiny space. Something is going to blow a gasket. 2) Despite claiming that it's disbanding entirely, the St. Lawrence, Stanford's resident professional string quartet, is carrying on with its traditional once-per-term Sunday afternoon concerts, with the three surviving quartet players joined by others for chamber music collective programs like the others they've done recently. This year, two string sextet concerts and a collaboration with a student cello ensemble.