Canned Dragons
I’m eager to check out the Devo Tiny Desk Concert, which draws me in the same way the Cypress Hill one did. There is some incongruity there, and though it’s difficult to picture, it could turn out to be interesting (like Cypress Hill).
The new anti-toxicity feature on Bluesky that allows a user to detach their original post from a quote post is ingenious. I can’t believe no one has shipped anything like this until now. In hindsight, it seems obvious.
I loved the “Pack Lunch, Drop Kids Off, Skate,Work” short photo essay from the NYT (gift article). The women who were either returning to skateboarding or picking it up afresh in their 40s were inspiring. Having a mini ramp in my my house was always a secret dream of mine (and one that will never come to fruition).
While I think the journaling addition to HEY calendar looks very inviting, the idea of storing something as important as a journal in a proprietary format that will be inaccessible if you cancel your account, the company drops the feature or goes out of business, seems like a very bad idea.
Back To Worship
I missed Divine Liturgy last week because I had to bid goodbye to my wife’s aunt, who just moved up North. Maybe it was the longing for worship I had missed that made this piece by Zac Settle about discovering Orthodoxy so appealing to me, but there was a lot that resonated.
The chanters might be intoning away during Orthros while the priest is hearing confessions while the altar staff are replacing candles or tidying up while the greeters are setting baked goods in the hands and laps of visitors, setting chairs aright in an imperceptibly off-kilter row, or setting candles in front of the iconostasis, the row of icon panels between the altar and the sanctuary. The choir is upstairs rehearsing, an elderly parishioner wheels in or a child in a chair is wheeled in, and a half-dozen candle-bearers trickle down for the half-hour or so before Divine Liturgy begins. There’s whispering in confession, lines read at the altar, chanting to the right, chattering among those in the nave, and greetings among the worshippers who are standing about. Somewhere, someone has lighted that incense. A father brings his young children to kiss the icons and tell them their stories. Nobody seems to be on their phone, but that can’t be true.
The sense of awe that this is something truly different upon discovering an Orthodox service brought back some nostalgic feelings for me. It’s all there, though, still, week after week. It doesn’t change. When the world feels like it’s going a million miles an hour, and everything is hailed as being “unprecedented,” something that feels like rhythm is welcome.
The bumper sticker that Settle imagines, “Honk 40 times if you’re Orthodox,” tickles the funny bone because, as they say, “if you know, you know.”
Noble Oak - Eveningstar
Recently, a friend on Mastodon asked followers about their first cassette purchase. I had no trouble recollecting getting Starship’s Knee Deep In The Hoopla when I was in the fourth grade as my introduction to the world of music on tape. I wore that tape out playing the all-too radio friendly songs like “We Built This City” (some might say the song was pandering — the shoutout to all the cities hasn’t aged well). Following that popular anthem in the track sequencing was “Sara,” a ballad at a time when that was almost a separate genre within a genre. Rock bands used to touring arenas had their slower, more romantic songs interspersed with the more upbeat anthemic fare on their records.
The rocker vs. the ballad dynamic was perhaps never more obvious than on hair metal albums. The rockers were dangerous, lecherous and debauched while the ballads were tender and romantic. The ballads were always fewer in number, but reminded fans — especially those of the female variety — that even the baddest boys (the ones with most Aqua Net and makeup) had a softer side.
Noble Oak’s “Eveningstar” is a balled in the rock tradition. Like Starship’s “Sara,” the song has an sophisticated urban sheen with its immaculate mix of keyboards and guitars. The lyrics flirt with unabashedly straightforward metaphors around love and loss. Lines like “the memory of you becomes a shining light, when you were in my life,” would have sounded perfect in the earnest and overdramatic eighties.
Noble Oak - Eveningstar (YouTube)