Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

• Would you like your aura to glisten with vibrant white musk? 
• Or
  would you prefer a sweet “bat-friendly bouquet”?
• Do you want to smell like ozone and mountain thunder?
• How about chocolate, deeper musks, fig, and rum?

Tempted? Then you won’t turn your nose up at the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.*

Besides, each of these four perfumes also helps some good cause–the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Bat Conservation International, Adopt-a-Native-Elder program,  and the Animal Assistance League of Orange County, respectively.

What kind of smells would fit your own good causes?

• Habitat for Humanity: Sawdust and soldering irons?
• Heifer International: Eau de barnyard?
• For those of us who suffer from C-Nile virus: Roses (for remembrance) and forget-me-nots…

I might just wear the last of these, but then, who nose?

In an unmicrophoned and intimate space behind the Agassiz Theater,
Harvard’s Early Music Society presents L’Orfeo, Monteverdi’s 1697
“fable in music.”

I went to the dress rehearsal tonight–real tickets have sold out for
all but opening night, and no wonder–Harvard has excellent word of
mouth. Music director Thomas Kelly and stage director Zoe Vanderwolk
(yes, that Zoe, the multi-talented blogger at Greenpass) have created a
seamlessly transparent, honest staging of this classic.

From the opening fanfare (sackbuts and cornettos baroque trumpets*) to curtain calls with
the young cast taking their bows, you are under the spell of Claudio
Monteverdi. Costumes and scenery are scaled to enhance the opera’s own
magic–nothing is pretentious, nothing is tricksy–if only the ART**
could stage classics so well!

Among many talented players, some are especially good. Lovely, grave,
clear-voiced Erica Brookhyser personifies “Music,” bare-armed and
bare-footed in heavy silk classical drapery. (It gave me a start to see
her at intermission in blue jeans and clogs, chatting with one of the
lutanists. “I only come onstage during the happy acts,” she explained.)

Paul Guttry as Charon (“Caronte”) maintains fine control of expressiveness and tone way down into some very deep bass territory.

Samantha Franklin sings an irresistibly flirtatious Persephone
(“Proserpina”)–and Nick Vines (“Pluto”) convincingly falls for her
wiles, going from pouty to patriarchal with dignified grace.

All in all, it was a marvelous evening of music and theatre–congratulations to all for a job well done!

Some of my favorite headlines ever are out there today, because everybody is writing about the Red Sox!

• Page one of the Christian Science Monitor!
• A Boston Globe special edition this morning whose front page headline is just the big word “Yes!!!”
• Today’s Boston Herald gives the Sox three times more ink than
  Kerry and Bush and the Dow Jones all together. (Well, the Herald always
  does that, but this time it’s good news.)

Other headlines of note, via Google News:

• Sourball headline of the day, month, and decade: No More Curse, But No Windfall Either
• 
  Best foreign headline trying to sound clueful (Australia): Bigger than the Boston Tea Party
• Headline most likely to leave people scratching their heads: Bill Buckner’s sister glad Red Sox curse has finally lifted

Don’t worry, I will stop writing about the Red Sox.

Tomorrow….

Last night, Fannie Farmer and Isabella Steward Gardner co-hosted the Red Sox game-watching party to die for. Our intrepid correspondent has this report:

Alexander Graham Bell wore his beard in a hairnet as he passed around a tray full of
tiny quiche thingies. “My latest invention,” he said, “I call them
‘Mientkiewicz’.” (Bell is the star chef for Cotton and Increase Mather,
who cater all heaven’s big parties.)

Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott were holding hands–those two have been a hot item since they fell in love watching Fischer/Spassky.
Pressed for a quote for this story, Thoreau said, “It is never too late
to give up your prejudices.” Alcott offered one from her father: “Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.”

Then Julia Ward Howe climbed up onto a sofa to conduct a group sing of “Mine eyes have seen
the glory…”, so we slipped out the back to find some other parties.

Politicos were three deep at George Washington’s old favorite Warren Tavern–Squanto
and James Michael Curley were each holding one arm of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, who had been partying a bit too long. Tears in his eyes, JFK
started shouting “I am a jelly doughnut! I am a jelly doughnut!“

His shouting caused your reporter to wake up. Man, those Mientkiewicz
quiche-thingies were delicious–I can’t wait until somebody invents
them down here!

A total lunar eclipse–spooky and beautiful–can be seen this Wednesday
night from Maine to Alaska.  For a preview of what it will
look  like from your state, check out the beautiful animations online.

East-coasters like me will see the moon high in the sky and late at
night. I sampled some states farther west and watched their moon rise from a
simulated horizon, then go through its changes not far above (or past)
sunset.

Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox! Red Sox!

We now return to our regular scheduled blogging.

What a weekend! We had our annual family pumpkin-carving party, Frank
got about 8 million more invitations to do things of which at least 4
million were extremely tempting–and Judith Meskill effervesced into our family scene, en route to blogging Jeff Pulver’s VON conference for WeblogsInc.

So, you ask, which of these jack o’lantern’s was carved by a Nobel
laureate?

No, not the pumpkin pi (bzzzzt), that’s the work of biologist Dr.
Mrs. Profligate.

Answer, not one of these pumpkins was carved by Frank. He drifted
off into recreational physics after hollowing out the rightmost
pumpkin up top.

Ten giant lilac bushes showed up on my front sidewalk yesterday. (Hey, could you have said no if your neighbor’s sister asked “Do you want some free lilacs?”) This morning it’s pouring rain and I just spilled my coffee.

But I’m smiling now, thanks to Lisa Williams, who just pointed me to the website of Tiki Murph.

What is the matter with ad.doubleclick.net? I’m sitting here staring at
blank online-news pages minute after minute while ad.doubleclick.net
tries to figure out what ads to show me.

Now, when I’m paying for broadband internet access, and the servers at
ad.doubleclick.net are set up to duplicate dial-up page-loading times
and the World-Wide-Wait, it’s doggone annoying. There is no way I’m
going to click on an ad that is wasting my time and money before I even
see it.

So if you, dear reader, do business with ad.doubleclick.net, please
tell them to rev up their servers if they want clickthrough.

The
revenue model you save may be your own.