A Spring Break Sampler

I've got a bunch of things to share that I discovered this Spring Break! Topics include:

• Linotype
• The Princess and the Frog
• Tangled
• Niko Niko's

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Linotype

Linotype machines, invented in 1884, allowed typesetters to prepare type (to be used in a printing press) one line at a time instead of one character at a time. Despite their extreme complexity and awesomeness, these machines were smashed up like junk in the 1970s, as new technology took their place.

A few machines have survived, though, and a feature-length documentary is in production!

Linotype: The Film

Be sure to check out the trailer. I'm really looking forward to it, and when I grow up and have a job, one of the first things I'll do is buy one of their posters or something.

What fascinates me most about this contraption is its ability to create justified spacing (you know, when a paragraph is square on the left and right sides). Think of it -- a mechanical device, automatically spacing out words to make everything line up via flexible spacebands. Brilliant.

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The Princess and the Frog

IMDB 7.3/10, RT 84%

I watched this movie with a friend the other day... and I thought it was fine. I very much liked the main character, and her family, and her dreams. The story was fine, the songs were fine. The bad guy was creepy. The trumpet-playing alligator was... slightly annoying. My favorite parts were the beginning moments, during Tiana's introduction and whenever she was with her family.

Maybe this is just me, but sometimes, the animation felt strange. I remember it was heralded as a big deal -- Disney's return to classic animation!! Most of the time, everything looked fine, hand-drawn and normal. Every few moments, though, it looked like the animators had taken a drawing and used the computer to translate it across the screen in a certain way. Characters moving across the screen, or shrinking and growing, and camera pans were smooth... but too smooth. Almost unnaturally so.

It's hard to describe, but every time something like that happened, it stuck out to me. To use an extreme example, it's like when Family Guy is going along normally, and all of a sudden a plane crash-lands in the middle of the street, and you can tell that the plane is computer-animated because it doesn't match anything else.

Or, perhaps my brain was confused, because the night before, I had watched...

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Tangled

IMDB 8.0/10, RT 90%

OH. MY. GOSH. I don't know what it is about this movie, or the universe happening to line up at a certain perfect point, but I was completely enraptured from start to finish. The trailers are alright, and I thought it might be cool to see, but I was just completely blown away. I have not gotten so into a movie while watching it in quite a while.

I could go on and on about it, but I will stop here with my enthusiastic recommendation. (Personally, I find that my best movie-watching experiences occur when I am the least informed. A trailer or two is more than welcome, but I like to give movies a chance to speak for themselves.)

Here are some must-reads and must-sees that I found during my splurge of fandom. First, this:

• "The Art of Tangled" @ Pushing Pixels

This gem of an article is a Tangled link-fest -- there are tons of links to artists' blogs, which are full of Tangled concept art and storyboards. Super-awesome!! You know what that means -- new desktop backgrounds!!!

I'll leave the link-hopping adventure to you (beware of spoilers at your own risk), but here are a couple of things I wanted to comment on:

• Once you've seen the movie, be sure to check out one, two, and three Tangled articles on a blog called Temple of the Seven Golden Camels, which I would say is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen on the internet. If you've ever been curious about storytelling, or making movies, this blog is for you. Read it now. There are other Tangled articles in there, too, but you've got to do some digging!
• A Flickr account where a guy reviews "The Art of _____" books, including The Art of 'Tangled'. (possible spoiler alert!) His reviews include hi-res pictures of pages from the books, which you can see at the link above.
• You can also dig around for pictures from other "Art of" books. Just search this page for the text "artof".

Okay, great. So you've read all about it, and downloaded all the artwork... but what's next?

• How about some hazelnut soup?
• How about some Pascal / Rapunzel papercraft?!?

... (I'm done.)

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Niko Niko's

2520 Montrose, Houston, TX

After driving past it a billion times, I finally went to Niko Niko's with a good friend last night. The place has received tons of awards and recognition, and I reckon it deserves them!

The place was full (on the inside; outside tables were empty), but we had no wait -- bustling, but cozy. You step in, and feel like the place is fun, welcoming, and serious about food all at the same time. If I was a downtown Houstonite, I'd hit it up for lunch once a week and for coffee and dessert dates as often as possible.

According to my receipt, our cashier's name was Daphne, which is awesome (friendly, check; cute, also check). I had a Greek Chicken Parmesan, which is like Italian chicken Parmesan, but Greekified and served in a pita -- delicious!! Greek salad, also good. Side of French fries, gigantic and good.

Thus, I give it my official recommendation and blessing. Be sure to check it out if you're ever in the neighborhood!

Recognizing Rossini

Once upon a time, I saw this commercial in a movie theater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiMf5cCDy1I

After a couple more chance encounters, it became my favorite commercial of all time. I love Charlie Brown, and the music was fantastic (I always love it how Coke tags on the Coke jingle at the end of a commercial in the style of the music of that commercial. "Coke is the master of advertising," Dad always said. Think about it -- how many Coke insignia do you see in a day?)... but I wasn't sure what piece it was, or whether or not it was even extant before the commercial was made. I had a hunch that it was edited to fit the commercial for a couple of reasons: (1) there are two I - vi - I6/4 - V chord patterns near the end. The first one starts at 0:40 and repeats three times, and the second starts at 0:45 and repeats five times. These numbers are a bit odd -- we expect things to repeat four, two, or maybe three times... but not three times and five times (?). With this in mind, when you watch the commercial and listen for this pattern, it kinda sounds like a deliberate vamp. Also, (2) there are other, shorter versions of the commercial with cuts in the music. Yet, I am left with an unsolved mystery.

Life goes on.

A year and change later, the Baylor Symphony 2009 audition material is announced, and I start listening to recordings. I soon happily discovered that the music in the Coke commercial was a very cleverly edited rendition of Rossini's Overture to the Barber of Seville. 8^D Awesome!!!!

I was also excited to learn recently that we (the Baylor Symphony) will indeed be playing this piece. I'll have to resist adding the Coke jingle at the end every time we play it!! (I also have to resist thinking of Bugs Bunny dancing around with a comb and a pair of scissors.) That is such a fun piece to play; I'm lovin' it.

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For another interesting rendition, check out this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O-hCtPfef8

Yes, I agree, after the first five seconds, you're already thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is terrible. A travesty!" but keep listening. It gets totally cool.

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For closure, watch the Coke commercial again, and look for a quick shot of a girl holding a football. Then, click the "Charlie Brown" link above and note any similarities. 8^)

Charlie succeeds at last; all's right in the world.

Medieval Music Mystery in the Armstrong Browning Library!!

The Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor University campus is such a real treat. It's so cool, and yet so often sparsely populated, I often feel like referring to it as one of the best on-campus "secrets", even though it's not really secret. For those unfamiliar with it, the ABL is a library dedicated to the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is also said to house the world's largest collection of secular stained glass windows. It's a beautiful building... you feel epic just walking around on the inside.

On a seemingly-unrelated note, I was in one of the School of Music's required music history courses last semester. This time, it was The History of Music from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance... or as I called it, "From Way, Way Back to Way Back". I was also in British Literature. When we got to the poetry of the Victorian era, we took a class field trip to the Armstrong Browning Library and got an official tour. The "Treasure Room" (also known as the "E.B.B. Salon") on the second floor contains a room full of Elizabeth Barrett's furniture behind a crowd control rope and hidden don't-cross-this-line sensors. I had seen the room before, so my eyes wandered as I listened to our tour guide... until something caught my eye in the back of the room, behind where we were all standing:

Is that...

...medieval chant notation?!?

I couldn't believe it!! If I hadn't been in Music History 1, I would have never noticed or recognized those strange markings across the top of the bookcase. Our tour group soon moved on, out of the room, but as soon as the tour was over, I scurried back upstairs for an unhurried examination. As I went over the music in my head, I was hit with another surprise -- I had seen and heard this music before!

So, I went home, dug out my Norton Anthology of Western Music, and flipped to the Mass for Christmas Day, and there it was:

(image source)

The full text in Latin:

Puer natus est nobis,

et filius datus est nobis:

cuius imperium

super humerum eius:

et vocabitur nomen eius,

magni consilii Angelus.

And a translation that will be very familiar:

A boy is born to us,

And a son is given to us,

upon whose shoulders authority rests,

and His name will be called

"The Angel of Great Counsel".

(Isaiah 9:6)

Where did this bookcase come from, and what was that medieval melody doing carved across its front? Well, an inscription across the bottom of the case reveals that it was a gift from the English Department. Examination of an old black-and-white photograph in the upstairs hallways shows that it might have been around for several decades -- there are several bookcases like it, though, each with different carvings, and it's hard to tell which exactly are the ones in the photograph.

It was only while working in the Crouch Fine Arts Library and looking for Charles Ives' "Robert Browning Overture" (at an hour well-past the closing time of the Armstrong Browning Library) that I realized that the cabinet might contain sheet music. Sure enough, I looked around on the Armstrong Browning Library's website (which I guess I could have done in the first place), and found a description, complete with date (c. 1930), maker (William A. French Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota), and purpose ("one of two mahogany cabinets specially built to house over 1,500 pieces of sheet music").

Well, that solved most of the mystery, but I still wonder why, if there was a specific reason at all, that that specific chant was chosen (and who chose it) to adorn the bookcase.

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As I mentioned earlier, there are other bookcases similar to this one in the ABL, most of which have interesting (if not cryptic) inscriptions on them as well. I looked around at most of them for clues on one of my visits... interested folks should check them out! Have fun exploring!!!