Jholiday's guide to classical music

Many of us enjoy classical music, however, many (most) of us are wholly ignorant to the classical musical vocabulary needed to both express enjoyment of the genre and to move in the social circles of other classical fans. This can actually keep us as closeted classical fans until we're confident enough in our terminology to converse with someone about Bach without fear of embarassment. I think Stuffwhitepeoplelike.com put it best when they said:

If a white person starts talking to you about classical music, it’s essential that you tread very lightly. This is because white people are all petrified that they will be exposed as someone who has only a moderate understanding of classical music. When a white person encounters another white person who actually enjoys classical music (exceptionally rare), it is often considered to be one of the most traumatic experiences they can go through.

“Really? Beethoven’s 5th Symphony….that’s your favorite.”
“um, no, I mean…”
“You sure it’s not Pachebel’s Canon?”
“well, ah, I like that, ah, song”
“sigh, of course you do.”

Stuff White People Like #108 Appearing to Like Classical Music

So I present to you: Julia's Very Basic Primer to All Things Classical

What does the title "classical music" really mean?
Classical music is difficult to define, but it is of European tradition, utilizing orchestral instruments(and voice), and must be distinguished from popular music and jazz. This applies to music created in the last 700 years, and it encompasses many styles.

What do you mean by "many styles?"
Alright, so chronologically you've got:

Medieval-mostly religious chants, no one really listens to this stuff.Pre1400

Renaissance-here we see instrumentation as the new focus, as well as multiple melodies. You probably won't recognize any famous composers from this era, and if you do, you shouldn't be reading this because you probably know more about this than I do. 1400-1600

Baroque-alright, now we're getting somewhere. You probably have a lot of these guys(no girlz yet) in your collection. Recognize the names Bach, Vivaldi and Pachabel? They're my boiiiz and they all fall under the stylistic umbrella of baroque music. Music becomes much more complex and we see the creation of "tonality" as a way to categorize music, for example, a concerto in G minor. This is also the birth period of the opera! 1600-1750

Classical-the namesake period, it's the summit of classical music. Piano is now the dominant instrument, and we have the beginning of the SYMPHONY. Big, big, deal. Basically, they tightened up everything from the baroque era and made it BIGGER. Mozart really overshadows all other composers from this epoch.1750-1820

Romantic-If the Classical Period is the parent, then Romantic is the unruly teenager. These guys broke all the rules, then set them on fire. We see flamboyant orchestration and wild experimentation that really departs from the strict rules of the Classical period. Think: Tchaikovsky, Strauss. Beethoven was instrumental(pun intended) in the transition to this period.1820-1900

YES!! Love this

I found a little video that humorously shows a slight flaw in the reasoning of those who oppose gay marriage. If gay Californians aren't allowed to degrade the sanctity of marriage, why should strait couples be allowed to divorce? Isn't that much worse? The 2010 California Marriage Protection Act is currently collecting signatures to be included on the ballot. Ha!



My favorite bit from this clip is "If we allow anyone to get divorced, before you know it people will be divorcing their dogs."




Learn more at RescueMarriage.org

The Poultry Chronicles

Julia's home life has been a bit tumultuous lately. In July my sister broke her arm and subsequently moved out of our shared apartment and home to Chico, leaving me with her two adorable pets (whom I described in an earlier post). The trade off of the lost company of my sister for the constant company of a duck and a chicken took some getting used to. Then I started to like coming home to my new life companions. I even put diapers on them and made them my house pets.

Fernanda:
She had a custom made duck diaper with a coordinating neck bow.


Ms. B:
She was too small for the custom diapers that are sold online, so I made a makeshift diaper out of a plastic grocery bag. How embarrassing, hee hee!

Two weeks ago Laura swooped into town to finish moving out of her room and took my two remaining roommates with her. Left fowl-less, despondent, and alone, I turned to the only venue that I knew would ease my loneliness. Craigslist. I logged on with the sole intention of trolling for poultry. What I found changed my life forever. Behold Chickenbaby.


This is Chickenbaby showing off on the first day that I got her.

Here she is stealing my breakfast this morning. I put my plate on the ground (thoughtlessly) to answer the phone, and when I turned around the plate was empty! So I had to recreate it for a photo shoot. She got to keep the cinnamon roll in the end, in case you were wondering.

Santa Barbara bound

I wouldn't want to classify myself as a Neil Gaiman fan, but I've read more than a smattering of his books. I was a big huge fan of Coraline in 3-D, and Preludes and Nocturnes has forever been on my reading to do list, but his titles take up a lowly shelf in my library so that my collection of Victorian literature can be on better display, if you know what I mean.

This is why I'm telling you (shhh, it's a secret) that I just bought tickets to see him speak at UCSB this February and I am beside myself with glee! Lately, I've been relishing his latest, The Graveyard Book, on audiobook. It's based on The Jungle Book, except in this version the "Mowgli" is raised by ghosts instead of jungle aminals. It just won the Newbery Medal and Neil will be talking about this marvelous work as well as others in a few short months! Check out I, Cthulhu on his website. It's funny.

Two new whimsies

I've spent the last part of my week gardening, a pursuit that I never thought I would take up. This isn't because I don't love plants, or the (tamed) outdoors, but simply because I possess a black thumb. Every unfortunate houseplant that finds itself in my grasp quickly gives up its stake on life due to my overabundant bestowment of water and plant love. Perhaps plants of the outdoor variety will fare better? Time will tell, and I promise to post pictures of an impossibly lush garden (if there is one to be had).

Also, I've become hopelessly addicted to etsy.com. This replaces my previous preoccupation with ebay. This is a picture of my latest acquisition.

A chick and a duck!!!

Laura (my sister) brought home a chick and a duck last week. They're really entertaining! The duck is shockingly intelligent, and the chicken? Shockingly vapid. In a cute way. Hopefully we can get duck/chicken diapers (yes, they exist), so that they can be house pets!

Boxes in the Attic

One of my favorite pastimes is to study interesting subjects online. Some topics have been found merely by hitting the random button on Wikipedia. For instance, the other day I studied blood, and found that blood types are not the only differences between people's blood. Someone could be unable to accept a donor's blood of the same type because of an Rh factor! Fascinating! So O- really isn't the universal donor.
Anyway, the point that I'm getting to is that in my quenchless search for knowledge, I am starting to find that I am...running out of room. For instance, the other week I was looking up malapropisms and related devices, and I can't remember what they are anymore. This forgetfulness has never happened to me (I of the elephantine memory). So I wonder, am I running out of room? Have all of the memories and facts of my 25 years started to crowd the hard drive in my brain? Or are my facilities simply aging and am I unable to retain things like I once could?
My favorite literary figure, Sherlock Holmes, would side with my first theory. In the first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, Watson tells Holmes some commonly held scientific knowledge, along the lines of the Earth revolving around the Sun, to which Holmes responds that he doesn't care! His brain is only filled with things that are useful to him in solving crimes, and everything else is inconsequential. Holmes states that a brain is like an attic, it can only hold so many boxes before it becomes full and you can't find anything anymore, therefore he is a better detective by staying wholly ignorant of everything that is not useful to him.
Is this how our memory works, like Holmes' attic? Or can our minds be infinitely elastic? Most would agree it's not that simple. Memory, in its makings and retrieval, is so interesting. As interesting, I think, as forgetting. Isn't it a mystery how and why we forget things? Or are things never really forgotten, just repressed?

Score!

I just bought my tickets for the 2009 Comic Con in San Diego! I'll be attending Thursday, July 23rd. I can barely contain my joy. For the last few years I've excitedly clicked through pictures of costumed attendees online, muttering promises to myself that I would be one of their number next year. After a few years of apparently empty promises, I've finally taken the plunge. Now all I have to decide on is a costume.

Kombucha!

If you hold credentials as a jholiday blog expert, you've probably heard of Kombucha.

Kombucha is a miracle tonic, created from fermented tea. To picture how it is made, imagine how an alcoholic beverage is made, usually by adding yeast to something with a sugar content (wine grapes, barley, potatoes, etc.) In the same way you can create kombucha, except in the place of yeast you use a kombucha "mushroom", which is made of mostly probiotic bacteria (think yogurt), added to a mixture of green tea and sugar. This creates a delicious, effervescent nonalcoholic beverage that is chock full of antioxidants, probiotics, enzymes and amino acids, and polyphenols.

Kombucha has had success with cancer patients, it promotes weight loss, body alkalinity, the immune system and is the best hangover cure I have ever found.

This post is in celebration of GT's (my favorite kombucha brand) release of new kombucha flavors! So far I've bought:

Botanic No 3- seen above. This has lavender and elderberry. A new favorite.

Botanic No 7- Has a gingery flavor. I like it, it tastes like a mellower version
of their "Gingerade" flavor.

Botanic No 9- I haven't tried this one yet!

Superfruits- includes all those trendy antioxi-berries like Acai and Gogi berries.

Yum

This is the jam!

I've reminded all of you readers about my super awesome how-to-find-music secret, the UK pop charts. At the top of their list is the booty shakin "Number One" by Tinchy Stryder. You heard it here first (in the USA, at least...)



If this video stops working, check out the non-bootlegged version on youtube here

reading list

I've been on a bit of a fantasy bender lately. I wrapped up the Mortal Instruments trilogy, and am now in the middle of Sabriel, the 1995 winner of the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Next, I plan on reading Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern and finishing The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens. Anyone have any other recommendations? I've heard good things about Stewart's The Crystal Cave.

Got my hair did

I got my hair cut today! Nothing drastic, or even a difference most would really notice. But I'm really happy with the cut, it was getting so long that it was bordering on cave woman hair. Melissa from Faces a la Mode does my hair, and she's a-ma-zing!
On a sadder note, Melissa told me my hair is falling out. Thinner overall. and noticably thinner in the front, giving me more of a widow's peak (yuck). So I'm off to New Frontiers for a fancy new multivitamin that will hopefully nip this problem in the root..er..bud.

A day in the life of Julia

Some days you just have to accept that the best choice would have been to drop everything and just go home, because things aren't going to get any better. We all have those days. Mine was yesterday. I woke early, around eleven, natch, and primped myself for a relaxing four block walk downtown to read my book on the patio of Peets with a pot of green tea. I'd bought a pair of sunglasses the day before and was really excited about wearing them. I strolled down the sidewalk feeling not unlike Giselle Bundchen, looking at the nice clear day through my fashionable new aviators.

All I remember is the noise I made, a kind of short, comical "Aaaaaaah!" and then a bump to the shoulder. Then all I saw was the underside of the grill of a BMW. Staring at the front of the now stopped car, I had the sudden flashing vision of the driver imagining they'd hit a mere speed bump and trying to continue on their way. I sprung up, hands defensively splayed, and tried to see inside the darkly tinted windshield. "Why is this person not coming out to apologize?" I thought, just as the door slowly opened to a smiling middle aged woman with lardaceous gums and a bad dye job. In my welling anger toward her glib apologies and creepy demeanor (I have not once gotten the creeps from a woman until yesterday), I wandered off downtown, mumbling something about how I was all right. I think I was in a bit of a shock.

The world seemed slightly unreal as I shakily wandered into a clothing boutique. At this point, I'd forgotten that I'd walked downtown with the intent of drinking tea, so I started thumbing through the clothing racks until I felt an arm around my shoulder, and an enthusiastic "Hi Julia!". It was my friend J*, and by friend, I mean a fellow that I have been acquainted with mostly though drunken, fumbling snogging and pawing at each other in bars. He's quite a handsome fellow, but whenever I see him outside of a nightclub, I never quite know what to say. I escaped the store with his number and a promise to meet up later that night, and made my way toward Peets with a new found remembrance of tea and my book.

Just as I'd stepped (cautiously) across the crosswalk, a dark pick up truck pulled up, and a man in the passenger seat gave me a watchful head nod. My. exboyfriend. whom. I. haven't. seen. since. walking. in. on. him. with. another. woman. a. month. ago. I think I gave him a sort of shocked half wave, but whole day is a little fuzzy for me. Then the light changed, and off he went.

I finally made it to Peets, but before I could refill the water in my jasmine green tea, I timidly headed back home to the safety of my apartment, looking twice before I crossed every street.

Book hunt

I've been reading this new series of books that took forever to get a hold of. I was recommended the "The Mortal Instruments" trilogy, which begins with the volume "City of Bones". The books follow our hero Clary as she navigates a New York populated with demons, vampires, pixies, and really every other fantasy creature you can think of.

So, in my hunt for a new read I hit up the local Borders. I wondered around that dang store countless times but all I could find were volumes two and three! Of course, what do you know, owing to my impeccable taste, I'd selected an unexpectedly popular title that had flown off the shelves in the past weekend. Upon asking a friendly looking Borders employee for help, he re-rummaged through the shelf and with a glimmer in his eye said, "No we're all out, but come with me." I scampered behind his lead, twisting through bookshelves and aisles, till he stopped, arms proudly spread, presenting me with a table piled high with tween-age vampire romance novels. "This one has been particularly popular", he said, laying in my hands "Midnight Fangs", whose cover looked like a Harlequin romance cover, but with, you know, half naked models with fangs. I shuffled, bookless, out of the store, feeling a bit insulted.

Next stop, Barnes and Noble downtown. Same scenario; a teen fiction bookshelf piled, stacked, and double parked with volumes two and three! Forlorn and discouraged, I passed the B&N version of the "Vampire Romance" teaser table. On it were scattered paperbacks decorated with pictures of creepy dark rimmed eyes, seductive fanged grins, and the cover of volume one, City of Bones? Yes readers, I'd found my prize where I least expected to be rewarded. There were only two copies left! And when I returned today for volume two, the first volume was all sold out.

poetry 101

I wrote this a while ago, it's a nod to one of my favorite poets.



Long live the brambles and seafins yet,
under the waves they sleep
I left my home and all the rest
to capture the wet and the wilderness

Of what the wily sea floor left?
It beats a sound retreat--
A windpuff and the frothy wreath
stolen from under my feet

Webs of softly green and light
fold us into its creases-
Let them be left, the green and light
to sweep our thoughts beneath

Long live the brambles and seafins yet
under the waves they sleep
Interred by man they greet no one
but those who swim out to see them

To boldly go?

I've never watched Star Trek before, but I am excited about this



I'm not one for movie star crushes, but dayum! Resistance is futile...I'll follow him where no man has gone before...He can beam me up anytime... You get the idea.

Site that Julia is a fan of (no.1)

I have a few favorite websites that I check every once and a while (daily). College Humor is probably my favorite of the bunch. It's been around so long that it would probably take months of sleepless reading to get through every funny thing on this website. Check it out.

This is one of my favorites from their video section, titled "Overgrown Guy Girlfriend". So silly. You also MUST watch the prank wars in the series' entirety. And "Font Conference", although everyone else I show it to thinks it's weird..

NCAA, whew...

Well my bracket didn't fare so well this year. I only had one pick make it to the final four, and that was UConn. I just can't bring myself to pick North Carolina. Or any North Carolina team for that matter. I really don't like Duke, and for no logical reason! I just have a North Carolina state basketball bias, and it's been debilitating to my bracket odds in the last few years. Go Michigan!

Caveo hominum

So, yeah, my blog posts have been MIA for a long time. But that is all in the past. What we, as readers, need to focus on now is why has Julia neglected this precious blog for so long? Loyal blog followers, Julia has been distracted by dirty rotten MEN. Something that will distract her no longer, be assured. The previous boyfriend of jholiday, who shall not be named but rhymes with Josh DOUCH BAG has held Julia back for too long.

Well, since this a blog about Jholiday's daily life I owe it to you readers to delve into the inappropriately personal tale of the downward spiral of Julia's love life.

So Mr D and I were going along in our girlfriend-boyfriend life just la-dee-da until I stumbled upon some very inappropriate myspace messages! Jules was left for another woman! ! ! It was really traumatizing. All of this happened about a week and a half ago.

But you know what is great about this break up? How quickly I got over it. Honestly, it was all through having my heart broken in the past and knowing what to expect in the healing process and my AMAZING group of friends who never let me be alone. Now I truly feel as though I am myself again. I feel like myself...but better. Myself...with more possibilities, perhaps?

There is something a bit humiliating about being in a bad relationship. When it is over you think that you should have known better. And you wonder what your peers think. Something like, "Oh, that poor girl", which hurts almost as much as the break up.

Rabbit Rabbit

Does anyone make New Years resolutions anymore? Most resolutions are almost cliches, (get in better shape, get out of debt, learn something new) they're unoriginal, and unwittingly bringing scorn upon the resolutioner. The idea of resolving to accomplish something simply because of tradition seems so uninspired. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here (hehe) when I denounce this often vilified tradition.

However, in keeping with the writing goal of actually having a point to my blog posts, I pose this question. Do you readers ever wish to reform yourselves, maybe even minutely, at the start of a new year? Perhaps resolutions come not from foresight, but reflection. Everyone assesses the passing year, usually with a "phew, I'm glad 200- is over". My 2008 reflections were candidly pleasant, and it was the only year in memory that I felt soundly satisfied with. This aside, as 2009 breaks upon us I wonder what my life would be like if I did some things a little differently.

For the Holidays

The boy took me to Disneyland for Christmas after a few heeeaaavy hints and I had a magical time. I love Disneyland as much as the next guy, but every December my memories of the park are like a siren call, and the holidays aren't complete without a visit. Kinda cheesy, I know.


This picture pretty much sums up our moods for the day.

What I've been doing

Loyal readers, cease your mourning for the unfortunate jholiday blog hiatus, and rejoice! For I have returned. I'm sure you're dying for me to tell you what has kept me away for so long, and tell I will. This long month of December has been filled with dead week and finals, family visits, a sister graduation, a jholiday vacation or two, and a very special boy. So please, excuse my absence but be assured that I am back with stories, anecdotes and musings to keep you entertained for a while longer.