BREAKING NEWS

IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOTBALL

There, I wrote it. "Breaking News". I'm just going to write that every day. I mean, come on...the news stations use it for every single story whether it happened last week an hour ago or now. So here is my breaking sports news for the day. I'm sort of in a bad place on these next statements. I'm caught in the middle. First off, I think it's awful that a boat capsized off the Florida Coast and three professional football players (or 2 plus a college player) are still missing after 3-4 days. I'm happy that they found the fourth person alive. The coastguard is pretty sure the others could not have survived in those waters this long. I just wonder how often things like this happen with every day citizens (i.e. - no athletes). I also wonder why some national news stations including CNN have been covering the story all day long. It has always been a media problem. The lives of these athletes are significantly more important than the lives of everyone else who has died in a tragedy in the past week. Here is the pecking order for news coverage of these kinds of tragedies: 1 - Famous People including world leaders, actors, rock musicians (not classical or jazz), 2 - Athletes who are not quite famous but are athletes nonetheless, 3 - Illegal aliens trying to get into our county but drowned at sea, 4 - Regular people. That's the pecking order for news coverage. Cool, huh?

CAST AWAY

Again - a smooth transition even if I do say so myself. I don't remember many moments in the history of cinema where a single person was required to be on the screen....all by themselves for over an hour. That takes some serious balls. I'm not sure it's Tom Hanks greatest performance, I think he was fantastic in "Philadelphia" and some others but it is certainly a testament to his skills as an actor. He may not be an actor that easily transforms himself - you can always tell it's Tom Hanks. But, he does have a special skill at shifting emotion and having an audience feel what he feels. Through his acting you being to feel his frustration at every turn. So as much as I hate to recommend during the tragedy covered in paragraph one, I do think it is worth watching.

FOUR SEA INTERLUDES FROM PETER GRIMES

Wow - this really does work when I just rattle things off the top of my head. I will make this one brief for those of you non-musicians and musicians alike. There is an opera called "Peter Grimes". The opera is by Benjamin Britten. There are CD's available that include 4 Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes plus Britten's fabulous "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestras". The Young Person's Guide is great for adults and children to learn instruments of the orchestras and their sounds and characteristics. The Sea Interludes are simply some of the greatest moments in orchestra writing. These are some of my personal favorites of all time. Oh and yes...in the very dark opera there seems to be a problem with Mr. Grimes boy apprentices disappearing at sea but that's a whole other blog.