What have I been up to?

You might have been thinking from my relative recent silence that I have been chained to my desk working on the 150 filings that happened to come to me in November. Well, frantic work turned out to be for naught because at the last minute our extension request was granted, which means the madness will now continue in February 2010. Ah my job.

Anyway, I've been out and about of late. In fact, it's presently 1:17am and I want to lay my tired head on my pillow, but I feel an obligation to you, my readers, to blog. After all, how annoying must it be to go to the bother of pulling up my blog only to find that there's nothing new to read? (See how magnanimous and kind I am.)

So, let me get to it. On Thursday, I went to see Pink Martini perform at The Town Hall. They were so good. Basically, it's a band from Oregon that incorporates all sorts of fancy orchestral instruments into their repertoire, such as cello, violins, trumpets. They're creative and very musical, and their songs range from incorporating latin samba beats to swing music to poems. The lead singer also sings in French, Spanish, Turkish, Croatian.

What I really like about this group is how much the musicians seemed to be enjoying themselves on stage. They did not take themselves too serious. Which is good because some of their songs draw on complex sources of inspiration, such as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, obscure 1970 French foreign films, motifs from classical composers like Tchaikovsky, etc. All of which might seem a little faux high brow, if you know what I mean, but because they're so intent on just performing and having a good time, you go along for the ride, too. In particular, I loved U Plavu Zoru, apparently sung in Croatian, which has a beautiful, beautiful cello opening. Seriously, the cellist Pansy Cheng was absolutely phenomenal; the sound had the most beautiful - and haunting - timbre.