Gone gone going

Last night I didn't go to crowleycrow's reading at Hugo House (nor Hillary Clinton's speech at Benaroya), but instead saw Gone Baby Gone with holyoutlaw. It's basically a private detective story -- a mystery -- focused on a missing child case. Pretty gritty and even unpleasant in places, and pretty damned funny in others. The detectives are a couple, but that aspect of the story seemed underdeveloped to me. Still, it kept twisting in unexpected directions and kept me engaged, and the feckless, fucked-up, druggy, partygirl mother played by Amy Ryan is quite a character. Many reviewers have commented on the powerful sense of Boston the movie evokes, and I could definitely feel it. The ending is downbeat and pensive, which makes it the second downbeat movie in a row that holyoutlaw and I have seen. "Can't we see a chick flick or something?" he asked as we left the theater. Well, I had thought of suggesting that we see Resident Evil: Extinction instead at the last minute, but then I decided I really wasn't up for a slaughter of zombies, even with Milla Jovovich on view.

holyoutlaw and juliebata are soon heading to Ditto/ArtCon in Gualala for the weekend. It didn't work out for me to go, and I've been trying not to think about it. Then I got e-mail from Terry Floyd this morning hoping he'd see me there, he was really looking forward to it. Well, fuck. I'm sure it will be a terrific time. Art is an old Boston boy himself, as you can tell by the way he drives. 90 years old, and still kicking up his heels. May we all follow his lead. Enjoy the party, you lucky dogs who are going! And bravo to alanro for organizing it.

This morning on my walk to work I passed a woman astride her bicycle on the side of the road who took one look at me and said, "If you're this far already, then I'm late." So apparently I'm a timepiece for other regular commuters on the Burke-Gilman trail. She actually wasn't one of the regulars that I recognize day after day.

More modern classics

My undercapitalized co-editor has pointed me to an interview with Alex Ross, the music editor at The New Yorker. It's about classical music in today's world. Interviewer Jason Kottke asks Ross to name some pieces composed between 1980 and 2007 that he thinks will still be known a century from now. I've not heard any of the pieces on Ross' list:

Steve Reich, Different Trains
John Adams, Nixon in China
Kaija Saariaho, L'Amour de loin
Sofia Gubaidulina, Offertorium
Gérard Grisey, Les Espaces acoustiques
Arvo Pärt, Da pacem domine
Louis Andriessen, De Stijl
Thomas Ades, Asyla
Georg Friedrich Haas, in vain
Michael Gordon, Decasia
Magnus Lindberg, Kraft
Osvaldo Golijov, St. Mark Passion

I've heard other music by Reich and Pärt, but all the other composers are unfamiliar to me. I've heard of Nixon in China, which I believe is an opera, but I couldn't have told you who composed it. Anybody else heard any of these?

Since my last post about classical music, I've picked up the Sixth Symphony, "Celestial Gate," by Hovhaness (composed in 1959) and the 7th Symphony, "Angel of Light," by Rautavaara (composed in 1994). So far I'm warming up to the latter more than the former.

One of these days I should try to write about PJ Harvey's new album, White Chalk, but I'm not sure what to make of it. It's so bare, so naked, so discomforting. Not unusual for PJ, I guess, but it seems quite different from anything she's done before.