Author: Jeff Tabaco

Nothing much going on here. Thom is at Sheldon and Gretchyn’s for the weekend. Sheldon has put together an RPG group that will meet periodically, and as I’m not into the whole gaming thing, I’ve opted to stay here in town. (Gretchyn is an amazing cook, though; I might’ve been persuaded to come along just for the food.) So yeah, this is like the proverbial poker night or fishing trip; I feel like I should call some girlfriends over for a game of bridge or a Tupperware party.

Next weekend we have plans to go to Philadelphia to see the Pennsylvania Ballet perform dance pieces set to Rufus Wainwright songs. I know, cool! The other night I was perusing the Rufus message board, which I hadn’t looked at in ages, and there was a thread about it. The full program consists of Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs, Peter Martin’s The Waltz Project, and

the world premiere of 11:11 by Pennsylvania Ballet member Matthew Neenan, choreographed to the music of popular singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright. With earth-tone costumes designed by Principal Dancer Martha Chamberlain, the six-song work will be performed with a cast of 20 to such songs as “Vibrate,” “Poses” and “Oh What a World.”

The other songs are “Natasha,” “Greek Song,” and “Sally Ann.” I’m totally looking forward to this! Thom’s been to Philly before, but I haven’t (just zoomed past it on the train to elsewhere); if anyone has any recommendations of other things to check out, do chime in. (I know that a major Dalí exhibition is coming to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it doesn’t open until Feb. 16.)

[Addendum (Feb. 2): “Rufus Wainwright comes to the ballet,” Philadelphia Inquirer (registration required, or use bugmenot.com). (Via Queer Day.)]

As a regular reader of Express (the free, lite version of the Post), I’ve become fond of the two comic strips it carries: The Duplex and Pearls Before Swine. I’ve been meaning to link to a certain Pearls Before Swine strip from several weeks ago, which makes a reference to The Real World: Philadelphia. But yeah, Sarah and MJ are so last month. It’s all about Shavonda and Landon now (and I’m getting a little tired of them, to be honest). Not that I watch the show or anything, of course.

I upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type (3.15), having held on to version 2.6-something for a while now. There wasn’t any real pressing reason; it’s just that Thom had recently upgraded his installation for his blog, and well, of course I have to keep up with the Joneses, as it were. So the upgrade seems to be running all right, knock on wood.

And I just realized that today is my blog’s third birthday. Its first entry was posted on Jan. 25, 2002. But before you go running to find it in the archives, remember that I don’t have all the old entries online… yet. When I made the switch from Blogger to Movable Type a couple of years ago, I realized that most of my older entries, which were untitled and written like digests, wouldn’t import gracefully, shall we say, into Movable Type’s system, which makes use of entry titles. So I’ve been very slowly going back and cleaning them up a bit. Anyway. Happy birthday, prince rebelle.

Last night’s outing was a good time. The snow stopped mid-afternoon, so getting downtown wasn’t too much of a problem. We had dinner at 701 Restaurant, which is located in the corner of one of the buildings surrounding the Navy Memorial. They have a prix fixe pre-theater menu for $24.95, served nightly from 5-6:45 p.m. (As you exit the Metro, the restaurant is immediately to your right. I took a few photos of part of the memorial and the National Archives across the street.) The show at the Warner Theatre–Stephen Lynch, whom we’ve seen a few times before, and Mitch Hedberg, whom I’d remembered from That ’70s Show–was fun. Lots of laughs.

Today we’re kicking back at home. We made brunch as we usually do on the weekend, and as we were finishing up, I started looking at the latest issue of Condé Nast Traveler, which has results of a reader survey on cruise ships. Thom and I agree that we’d love to go on a cruise someday. Talking about travel reminded me of all the gallivanting in The Talented Mr. Ripley, so I think I’m off to watch the DVD for the umpteenth time.

Last night’s concert of Glass and Mahler was neat, and tomorrow night we’re off to something completely different: comedians Stephen Lynch and Mitch Hedberg, at the Warner Theatre. The only thing is the weather. The forecast calls for heavy snow, so not only could transportation be a problem, but there is also the slight possibility of the show being cancelled. We’ll see. (It’s sort of déjà vu.) Earlier this evening we went to the nearby Giant to stock up on food in case we get snowed in this weekend; there was quite a crowd of shoppers, and I remarked to Thom that this kind of supermarket stocking rush is foreign to the mild climes of my native San Francisco suburbia.

Have a good weekend, kids, and stay warm.

I am wearing black today to symbolize my mourning over a certain event to take place downtown in less than an hour. Maybe I should have been more obvious; I saw people on the Metro this morning with stickers that read, “FUCK BUSH” and “BUSH=BIGOT.” Four years ago, I had actually thought about going to the inauguration out of sheer curiosity. January 20, 2001, was about five months after I first moved to D.C., and at the time it seemed like a novel circumstance, me living in the capital at the time of an inauguration. Well, here we are again, and I am definitely not going. (I might have been moved to go and protest, but I am at work today.)

[Yesterday I came across an interesting piece from The Nation about Thomas Jefferson’s humble inauguration in 1801. How did American presidential inaugurations become such ostentatious, almost regal affairs? See also Mark Fiore’s interactive inaugural map.]

Anyway, in other, lighter news: tonight Thom and I are going to the Kennedy Center to “experience another inauguration,” as an advertisement in the Post Express puts it. The National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin, will premiere a new commissioned work by Philip Glass, Symphony No. 7 (A Toltec Symphony). Also on the program are songs from Gustav Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, featuring baritone Matthias Goerne. Slatkin and Glass will host a discussion after tonight’s concert (which repeats through Saturday). It should all be cool, but I admit that my initial motivation was the special Express offer for $25 orchestra seats. Nice.

[Addendum (Jan. 22): On Saturday, Weekend Edition ran an interview with Glass about A Toltec Symphony. Excerpts of the work are also available.]

Remember how I auditioned for Ragtime last week? I found out last night that I didn’t get cast in the show. Oh, well, it’s okay. A long while ago I told myself I would spend some of my free time getting back into performing arts, and I’m glad I finally took a step in that direction. Now I’m all psyched about searching and trying out for other opportunities, be it shows or classes or what have you.

Speaking of classes, another of my long-term resolutions has been to learn more languages. I’d been meaning to try and learn sign language at some point, and so when I heard about free ASL classes being given at the D.C. Public Library, I had to check it out. It’s a pretty casual gathering. I’ve been to two sessions so far, and I’m enjoying it.

It’s snowing, finally! Just flurries right now, but I swear it’s not winter without snow. Yes, I know, that must sound strange coming from someone who’s lived contentedly in the snow-free Bay Area most of his life, but apparently I’ve since bought into the whole white Christmas, winter wonderland vision of the season. Ah, I wish I’d brought my camera to work with me.

Goodness, before the holidays I had considered but deferred the idea of going on some kind of blog hiatus, but it seems to be taking place de facto. I guess I’ve just been busy at work and tired when I get home, which isn’t a state conducive to writing.

I did want to mention some administrative tidbits, though. A while back I replaced my RSS feed with a new feed from FeedBurner; recently I deleted the old one and set up a redirect so you longtime subscribers aren’t in the lurch. As you probably already know, I’ve enhanced it by splicing in my recent Flickr photos, and I just started a del.icio.us account to handle links, which are also included in the feed. (On my home page the links are displayed via RSS Digest in the sidebar under “quick links”; a subset links to movies and books I’ve recently consumed, listed further down the sidebar.)

This is a work in progress, of course, so as I fiddle and fumble with the feed, I offer apologies if various items show up repeatedly as updated in your reader. And if you haven’t gotten on the RSS bandwagon, try it. You’ll like it. I use Bloglines to read several blogs and news sources, and it’s an easy way to centralize your web reading. (A little too easy, I sometimes think; adding subscriptions to any aggregator is so simple that actually getting around to viewing them all can be overwhelming. Much like TiVo.)