Last night SHG took me to the symphony for a really good concert. Not only was it the symphony, but it was the Bugs Bunny on Broadway visit to Houston. Essentially, the voice and "kaboom" tracks are lifted from the cartoons, and the orchestra plays the music instead while the cartoons are shown. It was really, really, good. Remember "kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit" to Ride of the Valkyries? Or The Rabbit of Seville? It was great. I love a live orchestra, and ours in Houston is quite good. +5, SHG.
The conductor was from San Francisco, and make some remarks here and there. The best though, was "Don't you think of Elmer Fudd every time you see Dick Cheney?" Oh jeez, half the audience laughed hard and the other half sat kind of grumbling. The audience was non-standard - many kids, as to be expected at something like this. All parents whose child started whining whisked them right out - except one. And I would have said something if I was in that section. But, I think it was a great event for families. I really love classical music, and aside from the fact that my parents only listened to it and big band when I was growing up, these cartoons from Looney Toons and Merry Melodies really hard-wired it into my head. That said, what the fuck do today's cartoons, laden with violence and general dreck hard-wire into kids' heads?
Back to the concert itself: a big glicth occurred. The conductor's headphones went out mid-stream of What's opera, Doc? He stopped everything to get a new set, and started over. Now, I would have thought a truly talented conductor would have just kept on going, seeing as how only 1/2 the pit had theirs on. There were no headphones for click-tracks when the music was written and then re-arranged for the cartoons, and you never saw the greats - Bernstein, Stokowski, Fiedler - wearing them. So, 3 demerits for George Daugherty.
Finally, an observation: People are tripped out over Sponge Bob Squarepants and Teletubbies? WTF? Do you remember how many times somebody in those Bugs Bunny cartoons was in drag? And Bug Bunny himself - how gay was he? I mean really, if people are tripping out over that kind of stuff, they should really think about Bugs Bunny and all the serious, irreversible social damage he has wrought.
