Posts made by Newell Post

@Dr-GO Actually, not quite.... A BROKEN watch is right twice per day. But, for example, a watch that is set 30 minutes ahead of the correct time, but runs true, is never correct.

Ha! Try living in San Francisco.

2000: Pacific Bell Park
2003: SBC Park
2006: AT&T Park
2019: Oracle Park

But Candlestick Park was always Candlestick Park, the way God intended.

"Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true."
-- Samuel Johnson: Letter to Fransesco Sastres (August 21, 1784)

Unnhhh... According to the "Manual of Style" on my bookshelf....

• Lay (verb) means "to put in place." It must have an object. (Example: "The contractor promised to lay the sod before the rains began.")
• Lie (verb) means "to rest or recline." It cannot have an object. (Example: "The main plant entrance lies south of the personnel building.")
• Lie (verb) second meaning: "to intentionally utter a falsehood."
• Lie (noun) means: "a knowingly false statement."

Or, as I learned it many years ago in school: "You should lay the baby down for a while. If he can lie still for a few minutes, he might feel better."

.... and Drogon marries Rhaegal and they make dragon eggs, so that dragons do not again perish from The Known World.....

Many of Shakespeare's plays end with weddings, in some cases multiple weddings. It's a convenient way to tie up loose ends and signal the achievement of happiness and the promise of regeneration.

• As You Like It: ends with 4 weddings
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ends with 3 weddings
• Twelfth Night: ends with 3 weddings
• Much Ado About Nothing: ends with one wedding and one expected wedding

Maybe that's how they end GOT. Jon marries Daenerys and they rule jointly happily ever after (after offing Cersei). Tormund marries Brienne of Tarth and they make ginormous babies that conquer the world. Samwell marries Gilly and gets promoted to maester, junior grade. Gray Worm marries Missandei. .... but somewhere in the background, there's a MacGuffin that tells us it won't be "happily ever after" for very long. Maybe some of the white walkers survived, to return some day, etc. etc. THEY'LL BE BACK!

@Robrtx Well, one of the darkest anyway. And I'm not talking about dramatically dark, I'm talking about lighting. I couldn't tell if my TV screen was on or off for most of that episode.....

...in other words, it is easier to defeat a massive army of un-dead ice zombies than for several human tribes to make peace among themselves....

For ever and ever, it was "The King's English." But the old joke during the reign of George VI was that the queen's english was much better than the king's.

@Kehaulani "Braces" or even "galluses". My grandfather used the latter term which I always thought was just really old fashioned. But I now find it is actually a Scottish term.

@trickg There is an active debate about that right now among the architectural and historic communities. There are three possible strategies:

• Replace everything with historically accurate things, right down to the wood pegs holding the rafters together. This maintains the original configuration, but those wouldn't really be 12th century pegs now, would they?
• Restore the exterior as it was, but use modern structural materials in the "attic" and places where they are not visible. This maintains the original appearance, but clearly says to anyone interested that the structural work is 21st century.
• Fix the stone vaults, but do something completely new with the roof that clearly expresses our own age. That may seem heretical to some, but there are cathedrals that were built over many hundreds of years that changed drastically in style as they expanded. Witnesseth St. Albans, north of London. Salisbury might seem "prettier" to some since it was built in a very short period of time and is therefore very consistent in style throughout. But St. Albans is a great expression of the times in which is was built.

As an aside, I once worked next door to a pipe organ factory that went back to the 19th century. They had the most amazing woodworking shop I have ever seen anywhere. (And I have worked in the building design and construction industry my whole life.) Many of their machine tools went back to 1880, but were immense and incredibly powerful and accurate. When they got a new commission, trucks would show up piled high with rough-sawn lumber. They surfaced it and cut it into anything they needed. The only thing they didn't make from scratch was the brass tubing for the little bitty pipes. Unfortunately, they didn't build many new organs. Most of their business was repairing and restoring old ones. But they had a large room where they assembled new organs for testing and final voicing. They sometimes had open houses when one was ready to ship with performers playing them for demonstration purposes. It was quite an experience to take the shop tour and hear the demo. It even got used in a cult horror movie once. (Start at around 6:52)

@Voltrane With the money they now have to spend, I'll bet the organ comes out of a re-build much better than it was....

@BigDub Piccolo trumpet is a harsh mistress. It seems like you should get a whole additional octave out of the deal for free. But unless you are a real master, you mostly just lose the lower octave and get tinny sound. Resist the call of the dark side. Borrow one if you must before investing.

.... more buildup to the grand battle....

@Rapier232 ... and Star Trek has become even more of a cartoon with the new "alternate time line" series of movies. That's what you get when you give the franchise to a guy who doesn't know how to do anything other than turn comic books into movies.

OK, so here is Newell's outline of the possible "Hollywood" ending:

• Jon Snow and Daenerys "bend the knee" to each other and agree to marry and rule jointly and benevolently.
• Cersei dies of complications of her incestuous pregnancy.
• Tyrion maintains his post as "hand" of the king/queen.
• Samwell Tarly becomes grand maester and learns from the ancient books that the army of the dead were created by the children of the forest and can only be defeated by an alliance between the armies of men, the dragons, and the children of the forest.
• The iron throne is melted down to make weapons for the war , since it contains Valyrian Steel. Jon and Daenerys rule from simple chairs, not the iron throne.
• In the grand battle, the army of the dead is defeated by the alliance of the armies of men, the dragons, and the children of the forest, who now realize their mistake in creating the white walkers.
• Many die in the grand battle including Jaime, Sansa, Arya, and many others.
• While the army of the dead is defeated, a few "survivors" escape back to the north. BUT THEY'LL BE BACK.
• Maybe the dragons are all killed in the war, but they left eggs!
• ...and some loose ends get resolved, but many others do not.

So, that's my take on the Hollywood ending. But, since it's GOT, it almost certainly won't have a Hollywood ending.

And for those of you who are not GOT thrones fans, but are musicians (witnesseth your presence on this site) I ask: "Is this GOT stuff really any weirder than what you see in opera?" Don Giovanni, The Ring of the Nibelung, and even The Magic Flute have plenty of supernatural elements. You can bet Mozart and Wagner would have used dragons if the props masters could have built them....

So, trumpeting hivemind, assuming you have watched GOT at all, how would you end it? That's always the challenge with these epics. They have foreshadowed many possibilities. Are there any examples from opera that would provide a precedent?

@administrator I completely agree when it comes to traditional network TV. There isn't one single program on regular TV that I watch. But some of the news, documentary, arts, and nature channels are OK. A while ago I had to spend about a half day in a hospital ER waiting room while my mother had surgery. I was the first one there, so I set the channel to the National Geographic channel or something of that sort. But every time I got up and went out to go to the bathroom or check on mom's status, I would come back and somebody had changed the channel to soap operas. OMG. People who watch that stuff are actually allowed to vote?

@administrator The first two seasons were particularly raunchy. They toned it down (a little bit) after that.