Starting a New Blog
I am starting a new blog, which is a collection of Main Stream Media’s coverage of Bloggosphere.
Why bother? I realize I’m becoming a news junkie, spending whole mornings in Starbucks reading three newspapers, plus 4 to 5 magazines each week ( Maybe I should get a job or have a baby). I read in New Yorker sometime last year about a gentleman in NYC reading every page of NYtimes, and he was still 20 years behind even he has given up sports section. Such total consuming without result bothers me. I could never become a political pundict; but I am surely a good librarian, now I have this file box with 20 something hanging folders labeled with ‘IT’, ‘Media’, ‘politics’, ’science’, ‘Art’, ‘book’, ‘China’, and surely ‘blog’, etc. Yes, in this digital age, I am building my paper clippings collation. It is fun so far. I guess it is in my human nature the joy of collecting something visible every day.
Information explosion and the information overload aftermath overwhelmed me, I stopped reading anything on line or on hard copy for a while ( I mean news), and then I decide to return to tradition, letting elite news media guiding my news consumtion. And I am amazed by how many stories about blogs in the MSM, and how unimportant individual blogs is unless you are celebrity, or tied to celebrity. Mena Trott, the cofounder of Sixapart says (MIT technology review, Apr 2005), ‘ only six people in the world may want to know what you did for dinner last night, but if they are six people you know and concern, it (blog) is worth it’. That’s true, and that’s why I still keep blogging, I guess. Then my collection of MSM’s coverage on bloggosphere stems from a curiosity of how millions of personal voices make news, if they can every make news. So far, news stories I collect is mainly about celebrity picks up blogs as news hobbies or business endorse blogs as new PR tool. I feel something is missing here: hey, how about these 10 million anonymous bloggers? The idea about blogs’ impact on politics are their strengths on grassroots, the total of collective voices. There are technorati and blogpulse working on it and should have got more attention on people’s agenda, but certainly it does not matter too much to MSM, who’s still dedicated to voices from Capitol hill. I don’t’ know if the MSM’s angle on blogs will change with the time being, but I sense it is something worth attention. Let’s get real, MSM might sometimes be too slow or too cautious to pick up some explosive news lead, but without going to national news media, what news can be truely big and reach the majority of the population?
A little Italian inside
I usually don’t do this. Taking quiz to know yourself sounds a little too self-indulgent and feminine to me. But I am glad to declare:
| Your Inner European is Italian! |
Passionate and colorful.
You show the world what culture really is. |
I would have chosen to study Italian major if Beijing Foreign language University had opened that major in 1992. Ok, now I know it was not only because of Puccini, I do have a little Italian inside me.
city with opera
Pavarotti �s Farewell concert in Hollywood Bowl is on sale from 10:00 this morning, the box office is not open until May 7 (how on earth people got ticket before Internet?). The concert is 6 months away; we ordered the ticket on line at 1:00pm. I just feel so lucky to live in LA, one of the mere two cities in the US that Pavarotti will sing this year as part of his farewell tour (at least that�s what shows on Ticketmaster.com). So far I�ve seen all three my favorite tenors, my life is so full.
Well, I have not met any celebrity on the street of Los Angeles yet. When I read US weekly at snowy and bleak Buffalo, I imagine I would dine in the same restaurant or shop in the same seven-eleven, in Santa Monica or Malibu, where most of the �star is just like you� pictures are taken, with Johny Depp or Matt Damon. It does not happen. But I paid to see, 100 feet away, Domingo in �Indomeneo� , and the view of Andrea Bocelli�s back in his concert at Las Vegas. I guess with the ticket I paid for the Pavarroti concert, I would only see a tiny dot of this giant (literally and metaphorically) at Hollywood Bowl. Notheless, it�s already thrilling enough for my frail heart.
Ok, I�m getting a little straying again ( It is suppose to be a blog on opera instead of tabloid). Acturally, when talking about opera, I am too awed to be blas�. Moving to Los Angeles and 10 miles from opera house feels like an 8-year-old who�s home next to Disneyland. We saw La Boheme, Madam Butterfly, Indomeneo, and Le nozze di Figaro in Los Angeles Opera. For recital, I went to that of Hei-Kyung Hong and Renee Fleming. We drove east to see Andrea Boceli in Las Vegas, and we drove south to San Diego for Josh Groban, who I considered, has operatic voice anyway. The only popular music concert I went is for Jewel, who I reckoned to have one of the most beautiful voices in pop music world, and she also challenged herself with one of Puccini�s arias at encore.
The second act of La Boheme, the scene at caf� of Latin Quarter, where ex lovers went through a series of jealousy, pretended nonchalance and outburst of passion, has become my favorite opera moment. The Quando men vo is just splendid, splendid. I can�t think of any melody as enthralling as this one; totally Parisian, Paris in spring, with flowers wavering in the breeze of love and desire. Musseta is so different from any other heroine in Puccini�s operas, so overbearing, vivid, and sexy, but with a soft heart. I love her more than anyone else, just because of this aria only. Did I mention how powerful and beautiful when all the other 4 main characters join her in the quintet. Nothing to compare. Listen to it before you die.