Various

The fête boys and I will gather next week at Velo Fellow to talk about the June issue. Some kind of video opportunity will bubble up from that, I’m sure, enough at any rate to feed my addiction, which is in magnificently full flower. (Yay?) Jack DelGado says he wants to do a short film based on a short story by a local writer, which sounds good. Or maybe we’ll decide to do something based on the chromakey experiment embedded here, which sounds good, too. Keep the crack pipe full, Mr. Jones, and I’ll ask you no questions.

In all the 25 years that I lived in Columbia, I don’t think I attended a single performance given by the SC Philharmonic. Not one. Should we be surprised, then, that it took me four years to get around to spending an evening with the GSO? Prolly not. If anything, we might congratulate me on my haste.

Anyway, Maestro Tchivzhel led his orchestra, the Greenville Chorale and four guest soloists in a very nicely articulated performance of Beethoven’s 9th on Saturday. Try as I did, I couldn’t quite get Karl Bohm’s 1995 (Norman/Domingo) recording out of my head, especially during the solo passages, but I’m glad I went. And not just because I lucked into a free donor’s circle ticket. It’s good to live in a town where there’s a symphony orchestra at all (just as it was in Columbia, of course). No excuses this time. Buying a season ticket would do me several kinds of good.

Are you as dog tired as I am of our healthcare industry salivating over the fact that one in four men and one in five women will, according to the American Cancer Society, die of cancer? All the campaigns urging us to buy their products and services lest we slip these surly bonds without handing over to them most or all of our worldly possessions … could they be a little more bald-faced about it? It’s like they’ve decided to pleasure themselves in public and charge people to watch on pain of death.