Concert night

Our first concert was tonight, and as it happens it's also my last for awhile -- I'll have to miss Sunday's concert, which is a bummer but unavoidable. I think it went pretty well, except that I accidentally put on a dark navy blue shirt instead of a black shirt, so I needed to leave my cardigan on and keep the front closed as best as I could. So I got pretty warm under those bright lights. In over 25 years with this chorus, that's the first time I've made a mistake like that, so I suppose it can be forgiven. But otherwise I feel pretty good about my performance and the rest of the chorus. It's always a little weird to have only one show -- I've gotten used to the opportunity for a second bite at the apple.

I say my last for awhile, because I'm going to have to skip both winter and spring quarters due to conflicts with the concerts. The winter quarter concerts are during FogCon weekend, and in the spring one of the concerts and all the dress rehearsals are at the same time as my trip for WisCon and then my 25th college reunion. I'm particularly bummed about the second one, because the group will be performing a new work by modern composer Giancarlo Acquilani. We learned a couple of movements of his mass last year, which I enjoyed singing a great deal, and he'll be conducting the concerts himself. I'll be back in time for the final concert, so maybe I'll try and go see it. It won't be the same, though.

Family and Spiderverse

My brother is here overnight (we're giving him a ride to a family event tomorrow), and we fed him dinner and showed him Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, which he had not seen. I know I've re-watched bits and pieces of it many times, but it may be only the second or third time that I've re-watched the entire thing beginning to end. I can't think of another film that has more rewarded multiple watchings. There are so many tiny bits and Easter eggs and throw-away lines that there's no hope of catching them all the first time through. My favorite of the things I never noticed before: when Peter Parker is discussing the danger posed by the accelerator, he says that he's not going to let Brooklyn be swallowed by a black hole. "Maybe Staten Island."