Author: Jeff Tabaco

It has come to my attention that my URL appears in the liner notes of The Beautiful South‘s new CD. Indeed they have a cover of Rufus Wainwright’s “Rebel Prince,” but how and why my site was included is puzzling. Jamie, who commented on it today, helpfully e-mailed me a photo of the relevant pages from the booklet, and one page includes just two lines:

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
www.rebelprince.com

Whoa. Perhaps whoever wrote the booklet thought this was an official or fan site? While this site and its name were inspired by Rufus, I am not him, and this is not his blog. I’m just saying.

Believe me, I don’t mind publicity per se, but unfortunately, Beautiful South fans who come here looking for insight on “Rebel Prince” or Rufus are going to be disappointed when they instead find the everyday goings-on of some regular guy.

Today at work I’ve been listening to Mozart’s Requiem on my iPod. Great stuff. (That’s a nice thing about the mostly solitary, library-like nature of my job; I can listen to music while working, provided I use headphones.) I’m reminded of a choral concert earlier this year that Thom and I attended, a sing-along of Mozart’s Requiem at the National Cathedral. Yeah, sing-along Mozart: no easy task. Most of the others in attendance were current members of other choral groups and such. I hadn’t sung in a chorus since college. I was vaguely familiar with a couple of the Mozart Requiem movements, but nothing really beyond that.

It was my first time to the cathedral–an amazing building–so what a neat way to experience it, from the choir section behind the altar. Thom and I situated ourselves between the men’s sections, as I’m a tenor and he’s more of a baritone. Well, this turned out to be less than ideal. Given the angle at which we were facing the choral director, I had all the baritone/bass voices in my ear, while the other tenors were in front, singing away from me. Ah, well. It was pretty fun, making great music in a beautiful setting. (And I remember that the bass soloist was cute. He was kind of short and unassuming, but had a huge, thunderous voice.)

I really should get back into singing, acting, something. Side note, speaking of music choral and classical: in December we’re seeing Chanticleer at George Mason, as we did last year.

In the couple of months since I made my major Apple purchases (my iBook and iPod, both of which I love, by the way), Apple has introduced some new things (like the iMac G5) that I’ve noted with only passing interest. But the more I read about the new iPod Photo, the more I’m intrigued. I’m successfully resisting… for now. Maybe I’ll visit the Apple store in Clarendon sometime. Just to look.

[Link (28 Oct.): The Times‘ David Pogue raves.]

I’m back! We arrived in town last night. I had planned to write and post some blog entries during our trip, but internet access at my parents’ house was slow and intermittent and only came up to full speed on the day of our return. Anyway, there are stories to tell and photos to share, but as usual, sleep is taking over. I don’t even think it’s jetlag, really. Just the usual sleep debt. I’ll write a full trip report soon. For now, here’s a photo from yesterday of me and Thom, awaiting takeoff in San Francisco.

[Correction (26 Oct.): I had previously identified this photo as our connecting flight in Dallas, but Thom pointed out that in fact it’s of our initial return flight from San Francisco. It was the only segment of our trip on a wide-body jet, a 767. I love flying those big birds.]

In less than 12 hours, Thom and I will board a plane bound for San Francisco (via Dallas). Yay! Most of the packing is done–it took me forever to figure out what to wear to tomorrow’s dinner on the quad at Stanford; I may still change my mind–but now it’s time for bed.

See you on the west coast!

I’ve been fiddling around with FeedBurner, and for those of you who read Rebel Prince using the news feed, I present to you a new, enriched, hopefully easier-to-use version. I’ve created one stable feed, which I can easily change behind the scenes. And it lets me splice in photos as I upload them to Flickr, another service I’m really warming up to. For now I’ll keep up the old feed (index.rdf) concurrently and may set up a redirect, but at your leisure do replace it in your reader with the new version:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/rebelprince

(I’ve also been thinking about tweaking my archive structure, but we’ll save that for another day.) My Flickr photos can be found at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffrey

and a random selection of those photos appears in the ever-growing sidebar here on my home page. Lastly, just because I’m turning into one of those people who can’t stop taking pictures of their pets, here’s another one of Alex, lounging under the patio table on the balcony a few weekends ago:

Aww.

I’m reminded that it’s been 15 years (ah, tempus fugit) since the Loma Prieta earthquake on Oct. 17, 1989. I was in the seventh grade, living in Daly City. Most of the earthquake and aftermath is a blur to me now–somewhere I’ve kept a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle from a day or two after the quake–but I do remember a few specific images: when it struck, in the early evening, I was at home. I was doing homework at the dining room table, and everything started to shake. When I realized that this was more than just a little rumble, I dove under the table. I remember seeing the living-room stereo speakers, each about four feet tall, fall forward. When I got up, the chandelier was still swaying slightly. I went into the kitchen, where my grandfather had been. It seemed he stood at the counter the whole time. The power was out, and the empty street outside, which is usually quiet anyway, made it seem all the more surreal.

» The Chronicle is running a series this week called “15 Seconds That Changed San Francisco” (via Beaverhausen).

We had a great weekend with Sheldon and Gretchyn. Thom has written a comprehensive, spot-on account on his blog. Check it out. Ah, the joys of having a blogger-boyfriend: the mutual linking and trackbacking. Hmm, sounds kinky.

“Hans Blix!” We saw Team America: World Police, and I can’t stop quoting it. Yes, apparently I am, like, twelve years old. “You’re breaking my balls here, Hans!”