I forgot Pat Buchanan went to Georgetown

By now, Pat Buchanan vs. Rachel Maddow on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court is old news, but I've just gotten around to watching the clip (at the bottom of this page, or elsewhere on MSNBC's web site). Georgetown has many famous alumni, among them George Mitchell, Paul Tagliabue, and of course Bill Clinton. Why is it that I always forget Pat Buchanan went there too? I'm sure Pat's Georgetown experience in the late 1950s was vastly different from mine in the mid-1990s. For one thing, he would have had far fewer women and minority students to pass on his way to class.

WQXR changes locations, but won't fade away

The New York Times announced yesterday that they had sold WQXR, New York's major classical music radio station, to Univision and WNYC. Univision will take over WQXR's frequency (96.3 FM) later this year, while WQXR will move up the dial to 105.9 and a weaker transmitter. The Times is dumping assets while trying to "weather a newspaper industry downturn" and WQXR was a property they couldn't afford to keep. The station will become a listener-supported public radio station, which keeps it on the air but with pledge drives. For the moment, the station remains on the air at its current frequency and online at wqxr.com.

I've been a fan of WQXR since I moved here ten years ago, listening at work via their web site. So the station's move to a weaker signal doesn't affect me directly, but the potential loss of another classical station does. I understand the Times Co.'s motivation: classical music radio is almost as much of a dinosaur as the newspaper industry. It's a weak genre with a graying audience. It's not popular with young people or advertisers. But I think it's important to preserve stations like WQXR. Even if there's a small audience for classical music, it's a loyal one. And WQXR has relationships with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera that are vital to those institutions. If we lose WQXR, we lose another connection to our musical heritage and history. I hope that the station continues to be the flagship for classical music radio here in New York. It would be a shame for a city as great as this one to lose its only classical station.

What's the deal with fruit?

Matt at Warming Glow posted this delightful "60 Minutes" clip of Andy Rooney checking out the fruit selection at Fairway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I've sat through many of Rooney's commentaries over the years, and he's long past the point of thoughtful insight. Now he's like the old uncle that you visit at the retirement home, the one with the weird view that the 'guvmint' is stealing his Social Security to pay off Fidel Castro. Last year Rooney opined that Barack Obama didn't sound like a presidential name. In another segment, he talked about ways to save money during a recession and admitted that he pockets dinner rolls from restaurants for use in the next day's lunch.

This time, Rooney talks about all the bad melons he's bought over the years, reveals that he's stolen cherries from supermarkets, and doesn't think green is a good color for fruit. Green is the color of vegetables, he claims. But that's just Andy being Andy. The part that scared me the most was Rooney's shriveled hands. Are my hands going to look like that when I get older? I'd better pick up some hand lotion on the way home.

The continued parting of a fool and his money

I've had the iPhone for a few days now and I haven't installed that many apps on it yet. I'm taking my time, sorting out the apps I definitely need (Tweetie, Facebook, Citibank) from the ones that have only marginal utility for me (iHandy Level, two movie theater apps, Paper Toss). I paid $3 for a Wi-Fi finder app for a possible work project, then when I tried the app I found that it didn't report the information I needed for the job. It's still a worthwhile app, just not for this task. And I was conflicted about paying $2 for a iPhone app that shows you which subway car to use to get off right in front of your station exit or staircase, but I bought it anyway. This information is the sort of stuff a New Yorker should learn over years of traveling on the subways, not from a program derived from a lunchtime project. (The NY Times commenters agree with me.) But I bought it anyway because I wanted to see how well it works. But I'm sure I'll forget all about it the next time I'm running late and I get off at an unfamiliar station.

A man and his toys

When I was growing up, I had no shortage of toys: Legos, Star Wars figures and ships, G.I. Joe figures and playsets, and Transformers, just to name a few. My brother and I would play together after school and after watching cartoons featuring some of these toys. As I got older, I knew that eventually I'd have to give up my toys and become a boring adult. I didn't want to be that kid in my neighborhood who was about five years older than me and my friends and clearly too old to hang out with us while we played with plastic Star Wars toys. But I also didn't want to give up my toys. At 12 years old, I actually worried about this upcoming change in my life.

Then I discovered computers and computer games, and I forgot about Transformers and G.I Joe. Just like that, they weren't cool anymore and I didn't care. Also, I'm sure puberty played some role in this change. It's hard to get the attention of girls when you're still bringing your Storm Shadow GI Joe guy to school. So computers and my Walkman became my new toys. I hauled a case full of cassette tapes to England in 1989 so I'd have music to listen to on the flights. I spent hours in front of the computer writing programs, playing games, and tinkering.

My adult life has featured a succession of computers and gadgets, all of which have fulfilled the role that toys used to play. I've run home from work to set up a brand-new computer. I've stayed up late at night playing games on the computer and on my Xbox. And I've carried my laptop to far more places than necessary, under the pretense that I *might* need it but mostly because I just wanted to have it with me.

My four primary "toys" are my laptop, my camera, my HDTV (and the cable box and Xbox that go with it), and my cell phone. The last one is the newest, as I've finally upgraded to an iPhone. I didn't want the iPhone when it first came out. It was expensive, it wasn't as fast as my Samsung flip phone, it looked fragile, and since it couldn't hold more than a few gigabytes of data or music, I decided to wait. Last summer's release of the iPhone 3G tempted me a little more, but I was happy with my old reliable cell phone. And I was still under contract for another six months. This summer, after another year of frustrated texting on my old phone's numeric keypad, I decided it was time to get into the market. Kate got an iPod Touch as a gift, so I got the chance to play around with it and try out the virtual keyboard. I found that I could deal with that feature and that I really liked having a full version of Safari available. I considered buying a smartphone from another manufacturer and I gave serious consideration to Nokia's E71. But the more I thought about it, the more I just wanted to get the iPhone already. Five years ago I bought a MP3 player that wasn't an iPod, in part because I didn't want to be an Apple guy. Two years later I was tired of dealing with my crappy MP3 player and bought an iPod. When I thought about buying a smartphone from another manufacturer, I remembered my previous experience and I didn't want to spend the next two years wishing I'd gotten the iPhone instead.

So now I've got my iPhone. I've only had it for 24 hours, so I haven't played with it that much yet. But from what I've seen and done so far, I think I'm in love.

The end of an era at the NY Philharmonic

I have tickets to tonight's New York Philharmonic performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony. 18 months ago the orchestra announced its schedule for 2008-09, Lorin Maazel's final season as music director. When I saw that Mahler's 8th was the last work he would conduct in that role, I couldn't get my subscription tickets ordered quickly enough. Of course, I want to be there for the spectacle that is Mahler's largest symphony (by the number of musicians involved -- this work is informally known as the "symphony of a thousand"). I also want to be there for Maazel's last weekend in his role as music director.

When the Philharmonic chose Maazel as their music director in 2002, I was surprised and a little disappointed. With all due respect to Maazel, they picked him to replace Kurt Masur, so it was a change of one older conductor for another. I had hoped that the orchestra would choose a younger music director, and I saw Maazel's appointment as one of "caretaker" of the orchestra. And as at least one classical music writer noted, Maazel has been just that in his seven-year tenure. I don't agree with the notion that an American orchestra has to "stand" for something. In Maazel's case, I think the Philharmonic hired him in part because they didn't want to have an agenda. The agenda, if there was one, was 'steady as she goes.' I've always enjoyed Maazel's work at the podium. I am continually impressed at his ability to conduct large works without a score, and for a man of his age he is energetic and enthusiastic. The musicians adore him and their feelings show in the music they produce for him. All of his concerts have been excellent musically, and some of them have been utterly thrilling. I'm really excited he's leading the orchestra tonight, and I'll miss him when he's gone.

But the most captivating Philharmonic performances I've seen this past year have been with younger conductors leading the orchestra. Gustavo Dudamel's Mahler 5 in January was incredible. And Alan Gilbert's two concerts with the orchestra in May showed that the Philharmonic will be in great hands when he takes over as music director this fall. In choosing Gilbert to lead the Philharmonic, I think the orchestra implied that they want to go in a different direction. I can't wait to see where he leads them.

More Philharmonic history than you'll need

As I was leafing through the program at last Thursday's NY Philharmonic concert, I noticed an ad for the Philharmonic's new online performance history database, set to launch on June 22. I checked the orchestra's web site yesterday and found that the database had gone live as scheduled. You can search for any composer, performer, or concert from the orchestra's founding in 1842 up to the present day. I played around with the database for a few minutes, looking up various Philharmonic performances that I've attended in New York. Then I remembered a Philharmonic concert I attended at the Kennedy Center in Washington when I was a freshman at Georgetown. I searched for performances in Washington, DC during the 1992-93 season and found the one I attended. It was the Philharmonic's 11,990th performance and they played Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, along with Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks and Barber's Adagio for Strings. The site even notes the time of the performance: 5 PM. I wonder where I went for dinner after the concert.

It's fun to look up artists to see how many times they've performed with the orchestra, or which works a particular conductor led, or how many times the Philharmonic has performed some of your favorite symphonies (they've played Mahler's Symphony No. 2 34 times in their history, and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony 107 times). I'm still looking for a more academic usage of the database. The search results don't link to program notes or artist bios, so they are without a historical context. The "about this search" page reads like this historical information is there, so maybe I've just missed it. But for a first effort at a task like this, the Philharmonic has done a phenomenal job.