About-face

Well, I just can't do it. Continue to limit my blog to political commentary, that is.

I was watching CBC Newsworld this morning, and left it on after Antiques Roadshow ended. The news featured a disection of our new PM, Stephen Harper. Who is the man? What do we know of him? Is he the man we thought he was during the campaigning? All of a sudden, everything we thought we knew for sure about Mr. Harper has been turned on it's head, and maybe he's not so conservative as we might have thought.

Good grief, Charlie Brown. As always, the practices of politics and of pandering to politicians leaves me unsure of what to believe. When I start feeling like this, it's time to look around and see if I can take a step sideways to avoid the whole mess, and what do you know, I can. So my blog will now be commentary about "life, love, and everything," as the tag-line says.

I generally enjoy the news coverage on Newsworld, since it's a drastic change to news as it's covered on CityTV or Global. However, sometimes I find that the reporters spend too much time covering something neither newsworthy nor interesting, and when that happens, I find myself changing the channel.

The main reason I ever watch Newsworld is for Antiques Roadshow. I am pretty pleased that there is now a Canadian Roadshow competing against the original British Roadshow for Newsworld's airtime . You can go to the CBC website to view a daily or weekly program shedule, and read summaries of all the programs CBC airs - T.V. and radio. The website is defaulted to Eastern Time, but you can select your own timezone by entering in your postal code.

On both the British and the Canadian Roadshow websites, you can learn more about how the show works, find out where their next tours are taking them, and, my favourite, see pictures of show highlights and read what the experts had to say about them. The Canadian Roadshow website is a little easier to navigate than the British one, and features a link to a weekly story on the home page. The British site, on the other hand, has a link to test out your BritSpeak. Sadly, the the test timed out on me before I could finish it.

I have to give CBC one more plug, because this weekend CBC Radio 2 is hosting a Mozart Weekender and they are currently airing my favourite song composed by my favourite composer: "Fantasia in D Minor." And who ever is playing it cerainly puts my rendition of the song to shame. The Mozart Weekender is a celebration of Mozart's legacy, and coincides with 2006 being the year of Mozart's 250th birthday. The Mozart Weekender website offers Mozart resources, CD's, and the top 27 Mozart compositions as voted for by Canadians.

Always an excellent site to check out for information, Wikipedia has a good biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that lists all of his works and clears up many of the myths surrounding the man.

Interestingly, after playing "Fantasia in D Minor," I always thought the the person who could compose such a song must have some sort of mental imbalance - schizophenia or Tourette's, perhaps. According to Wikipedia, there is a great deal of evidence that supports the notion that Mozart did indeed have Tourette's syndrom. Regardless of this, or maybe even in part because of it, the man was a genious. And I think every genious must have a spark of madness in them somewhere, albeit some more than others.

To get a sense of what I mean about "Fantasia," you can listen to the beginning of the song on Amazon.com. Scroll down the page just a little ways and you'll find that "Fantasia in D Minor" is the second song on Disc 4. You can listen to more excerpts from the song by visiting Digital Piano Voicing. The site isn't much too look at, but you will find the link to listen to parts of the song right in the middle of the page. You can also read what Grant Hiroshima of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association has to say about this song by clicking here.

Happy 250th Birthday,
Mozart!