Electronic Justice

As usual, Ed has the facts right, but is not giving the complete story. The events that led to the destruction of his computer are straightforward enough. Some months ago, my piece for Euphonium Duodecad Perfect Counterpoint had its premier before an audience of forty-four middle-school students at PS117. I assure you, the response was nothing if not rapturous to the extreme. I have seen it written that today's young people are unable to appreciate the subtleties of modern serious music, but these bright students were hanging on every retrograde inversion. In fact, some of them were so transported by the music, that they pulled out those tiny telephones people carry with them these days and spent the entire concert taking down notes about the music.

However, all truly revolutionary music finds resistance among the ranks of small-minded critics, and this piece was no exception. The next day's edition of the The Green Gopher Gazette, included a slanderous hit piece by that thirteen-year old harpy, Jenny Blankstein, who described it as "a chromatically saturated mess of a piece that pretends to great profundities -- while in fact revealing itself as the desperate ramblings of a composer who has long since depleted his limited stable of ideas."

Blog Restored

It has been a few months since we've heard from Roscoe; I'm not entirely sure why, but a few weeks after his last post he had the unusual idea of shoving his computer out of his sixth-story window -- monitor, tower, keyboard, and all. And when I say "his" computer, I really mean "my" computer, since it technically belonged to me, or rather, to be extra-technical, my mother, since it was her name on the warranty (which did not cover defenestration, by the way). Luckily, no one was harmed, although the repairs to the hot dog cart it landed on were distressingly expensive. Then Roscoe refused to collaborate with me on this blog until I could show him in person what I was going to post, and with no computer between the two of us and with him banned from the public library for various historical reasons, there just wasn't much of a way to keep the blog going.

At any rate, I managed to assemble the funds for a new computer -- this time a laptop that I don't have to leave unsupervised -- and we are back in business. Roscoe's working on a new post as we speak and you, the lucky reading public, should be able to enjoy it shortly.