Sunday Night Open Thread

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 08:28:43 PM EST
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Are you watching the Olympics?

Figure skating: original dance; speed skating: women's 1500m Gold Medal final; freestyle skiing: men's ski cross Gold Medal final; skiing: men's super combined Gold Medal final; bobsled: two-man Gold Medal final.

What about NBC and the time delays? It's catching some criticism. Here's NBC's reasoning:

NBC has stuck to the longtime Olympic TV plan: Hold the best action until prime time, when viewership is biggest. Naturally, people can find out the results long before that footage airs. But NBC has exclusive rights to the footage before it airs, so it knows you won't see it until it shows it.

Or are you watching Jeff and Jordan in Chile on the Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters? Something else?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

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Sunday Night Open Thread | 31 comments (31 topical)

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Hockey... (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by michitucky on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 08:57:41 PM EST

USA beats Canada 5-3...Woo Hoo!!!

: USA! USA! (none / 0) (#4)
by waldenpond on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 09:01:28 PM EST

: What a great game...! (none / 0) (#10)
by Anne on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:11:06 PM EST

talk about edge of your seat...easily the best of the evening's Olympic coverage.
Bode Miller was pretty awesome, too; am so happy that he is having a great Olympics after the disaster that was Torino.

: Best parts? (none / 0) (#15)
by jbindc on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 08:29:42 AM EST

1) It was through the efforts of the Michigan peeps (Rafalski, Miller, Kessler) that the US was victorious.
2)Sidney Crosby (aka "whiny boy") actually got called for a penalty - on his home ice!

Just watched hockey on MSNBC. (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by Joan in VA on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 09:00:28 PM EST

We won(surprisingly)!!!

Time for curling on CNBC for me.

Hockey. (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by scribe on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 09:24:24 PM EST

That was one of the best hockey games I've seen in a very long time. Brodeur didn't have his A game tonight, and it was quite ironic that Rafalski, his former teammate on the Devils (When they were winning Cups) was the one scoring on him. Crosby has been getting hung up on physical play and given the international rules do not allow the kind of rough stuff the NHL does - which both allows Crosby to hit back and his enforcers to cover him - he is being handcuffed. (You can look forward to the offenders paying for these wrongs once the NHL returns, but that won't get you a gold medal.)

The Swedes and Finns should be an excellent game, too. Those are two teams Who Don't Like Each Other.

Anyone else think 'Big Love' (5.00 / 1) (#21)
by ruffian on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:27:27 AM EST

has jumped the shark? I'm still watching it, but more often laughing out loud at the unintended humor.

I stopped watching it last (none / 0) (#23)
by Militarytracy on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:33:26 AM EST

season. I guess I only have so much serial room and when Nurse Jackie came out I stopped watching Big Love.


funny you say that... (none / 0) (#24)
by lilburro on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:47:40 AM EST

Time: Big Love: Shark-Jumping in Utah

I don't get HBO so I have to watch it as it comes out on DVD. So I can't really say how the 4th season is going though I read recaps of it.

Buuuut...in general I find Big Love to be really enjoyable and more interesting than a show like "Mad Men" for example. I guess as a former sociology major thinking about the gender dynamics of plural marriage, compound living, and whatever else is going on in that show at any given time is interesting to me. Plus I think all the actresses are great, esp. Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloë Sevigny who is completely hysterical.


: Funny - I will read that (none / 0) (#26)
by ruffian on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 02:48:05 PM EST

My own sign is that last night when I was watching it the characters and dialogue looked and sounded like a Mad Magazine parody.
I used to love it for all of the reasons you cite, but I think they have lost the thread.

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (none / 0) (#1)
by observed on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 08:41:40 PM EST

singing Strauss's Four Last Songs is a cure for a lot of ills.
I listend to Beim Schlafengehen and Im Abendrot on youtube a while ago, with Georg Szell conducting, from 1965.
Lucia Popp also sang them wonderfully. I listened to a performance of hers a couple months ago.
That calmed me down after watching a hair-raising but out of tune Elektra finale with Gwyneth Jones and Birgit Nilsson.
Nilsson was 64 at the time, and retired a few weeks after this performance.
I spent a spring break in the 80's watching a master class of hers at Pepperdine . She was an awesome teacher too---very shrewd psychologically.

Heard Lucia Popp sing (5.00 / 0) (#13)
by oculus on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 11:43:34 PM EST

with LA Phil. Bernheimer sd. It would be transcendent and of course he was correct.


Rosenkavalier (none / 0) (#19)
by gyrfalcon on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:22:14 AM EST

Schwartzkopf was sui generis. Look up her Rosenkavalier sometime. I swear time stops while she's singing. It's almost unbearable.

Nilsson was a force of nature. Someone once asked her what her "secret" was, and she said, "A sturdy pair of shoes." Heh. I so regret never having had a chance to hear her from the house. Must have been absolutely awesome.


She said to have a posture with (none / 0) (#25)
by observed on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 11:03:53 AM EST

a "lot of bottom" or something like that.
Easy for her to say!


Indeed. (none / 0) (#27)
by gyrfalcon on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 04:20:53 PM EST

She meant, I believe, a great deal of muscle just below the abdomen to manipulate the bellows of the diaphragm. It would be interesting someday to have an MRI study of the architecture of both the "bellows" and the nasopharyngeal area of a half dozen great singers of different vocal qualities-- say Kathleen Battle and Nilsson-- and see if there are any discernible differences.


There's a funny story about (none / 0) (#28)
by observed on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 04:36:58 PM EST

Kirsten Flagsted that's related to this, from a biography. Her voice was superior to Nilsson's, IMO, but Nilsson's intensity was otherwordly.
Anyway, a reporter was interviewing Flagsted and she was explaining that if she sang hard, muscles on the inside of her upper thigh would get tired---attachments for some core muscles, I assume.
She took the reporter's hand and put it on her thigh to show him.
Scandalous!


: Great story (none / 0) (#30)
by gyrfalcon on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:30:11 PM EST

I believe it!
Not sure I ever had that particular experience, but at the end of a long song, as the jazz guys say, everything from mid-diaphragm to mid-thigh, front and back, feels the strain. Takes a lotta, lotta work to keep all that effort down below where it belongs and not let the tension creep up into the upper chest, neck and throat.
As for Nilsson vs Flagstad, I think most people who heard both would prefer Flagstad. But Nilsson had without question the most powerful, most penetrating vocal instrument ever in the history of the universe. That would have been good enough to earn her a place in music history, but she was also just a meticulous musician, as well. She didn't really go to your heart, but if you're closely familiar with Wagner's music and text, hearing her sing it is intellectually jaw-dropping.

My voice teacher once said that (none / 0) (#29)
by observed on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 04:38:02 PM EST

he wished he could watch Pavarotti singing, with just a jockstrap on.
Not many people wanted to see that sight:)


: Aaauuggghhh!! (none / 0) (#31)
by gyrfalcon on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:33:55 PM EST

Oh, man, thanks a whole bunch for that mental image. NOT.
I doubt you could see much of anything actually working hidden behind all that blubber, though.
Pavarotti's another one I never heard in the hall, to my great regret. I am definitely not a fan, but I would have liked to have heard the voice in its prime, which I've been told is a whole 'nother thing from even his best recordings-- rounder and much more beautiful where it "blooms" halfway into the hall. There's no way to get that effect in a recording even of a live performance.

No TV in rustic Anderson (none / 0) (#6)
by oculus on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 09:29:35 PM EST

Valley. But I did finally finish Pico Iyer's "The Lady and the Monk."

What son of a dog ... (none / 0) (#7)
by FreakyBeaky on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 09:56:21 PM EST

... at NBC decided to tape delay (on the west coast) the Czech v Russia game so they could show it at the same time as the USA v Canada game on a different channel? Words cannot express the stupidity!

Great game by Team USA - the Canadians are squeezing their sticks to sawdust. Time for them to bench Brodeur.

This will make your stomach churn (none / 0) (#8)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:00:12 PM EST

GM CEO Whitacre receives $9M pay package
General Motors CEO Whitacre to get $9M pay package; ex-CEO Henderson rehired as a consultant

Since we own'em do we get to approve ANYTHING?

: Meh (none / 0) (#11)
by cawaltz on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:52:17 PM EST

I'm sure they're "savvy businessmen" just like their banking counterparts.(tongue firmly in cheek because I highly doubt any men are worth hundreds of times, let alone thousands of times worth the rate of their average worker).

Twist in the Astor case may help appeal (none / 0) (#9)
by shoephone on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:09:31 PM EST

according this NYT article. It provides some details about rancor and threats between jurors, during the deliberations.

It isn't the fact it wasnt live... (none / 0) (#12)
by ek hornbeck on Sun Feb 21, 2010 at 10:53:38 PM EST

I could deal with that.

It was the fact that their Men's Downhill coverage was ONLY half an hour, 4 skiers, and at that it was thin and mostly consumed with Puff Bios and a Crash Reel.

So they could show Polar Bears!

If you want to know what I think and how I'm handling it here you go.

: The puff bios are getting to me (5.00 / 1) (#14)
by Cream City on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 12:37:54 AM EST

as we were subjected to yet more awful stories of tragedies in the athletes' lives today. Ye gods, I said to my spouse, is there even a one of them who have not had horrible things happen to them -- or more often, to family members and close friends?
The moral of the story for me is to avoid being anywhere near Olympic athletes, who must bring bad luck. So the homecoming celebrations for so many of these Winter Olympians from my hometown will just have to go on without me, for my safety!

Skiing (none / 0) (#16)
by CST on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 08:38:45 AM EST

One thing I've noticed, the New England skiiers seem to be doing really well this year compared to the western ones. They keep describing the snow as crappy, icy, fast, slushy, generally poor conditions, etc... Sounds a lot like skiing in New England. I wonder if that's part of the reason the New Englanders have been doing so well.

Paul Krugman misses the point. (none / 0) (#17)
by KeysDan on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 08:49:55 AM EST

In his NYT op-ed, Dr. Krugman reviews the long-term conservative goals of getting the government down to the size that it can be" drowned in the bathtub," but since this was difficult to do (voters find Medicare and Social Security popular) the tact was to "starve the beast"--with popular tax cuts. And, now the conservatives have achieved the goal, the government is starved (add in unfunded wars). Republicans, he says, are at the point now to reveal their plan of what programs they will cut but they will not. Indeed, they no longer support cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and will not even participate in meaningful "bipartisan" deficit reduction--no tax increases and no cuts. So, see, they have no plan other than fiscal catastrophe. In my view, the Republicans do have a plan: an only Nixon can go to China plan, Obama and the Democrats will increase taxes and cut Social Security, Medicare and "give" all Americans health insurance that depresses health care benefits to save money and avoid fiscal ruin. Oh, and the Republicans regain power. Not a bad plan for them after all

The trailers are out for (none / 0) (#18)
by Militarytracy on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:14:15 AM EST

The Last Airbender. It isn't out until July. Do they realize that this is only February and I have to live with Joshua for all the months between now and then and all playing of the trailers? Back off man! This is parent abuse.

E-mail alert from NYT (none / 0) (#20)
by mmc9431 on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:27:12 AM EST

"President Obama on Monday laid out for the first time a detailed legislative proposal for overhauling health care, largely sticking with the approach passed by the Senate with unified Democratic support in December but making concessions to the House version as well."

It doesn't elaborate on what House concessions Obama is willing to consider.

The President's Proposal is out (none / 0) (#22)
by Anne on Mon Feb 22, 2010 at 09:32:13 AM EST

and on the WH website