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This morning, Baltimore woke to the disconcerting news that the staff of its local Sun was being slashed. Cruel.

However, I recently learned on the internet that news people have a talent for song, and as our local opera company has now filed for bankruptcy and is in the process of selling off its assets, is there an opportunity here? Hey, what nature hasn’t granted, it seems auto-tune will provide!

(T-Pain could not be reached for comment, but Couric is clearly rockin’ this format.)

Okay, I’m no Sherlock, but I have surmised that the whole “case of the amazing shrinking modern attention span” is bunk. Like Steven Johnson, I am comfortable arguing that contemporary pop culture actually expects more and more of our brain power, not less.
And I still basically am, but still: along with this morning’s coffee, I discovered that there are now :50 “official trailers” for 3:19-long songs. That’s what you get, indeed.

Elsewhere, the million and six plot twists of Lost slap us back the other way. Confusion is the new (substitute for) sophistication? Let us mull over these developments while taking in the Golden Girls marathons this week.

Perennial MTG topic of interest, this documentary explores “issues of copyright in the information age.” Walking the walk, you pay what you want to download the film. Inspired to try your hand? Remix it and post your project here.

Stephen takes issue with the Pultizer committee’s selections.

Reportedly shot all in one take with live music and with a $2,000 grant from NYU. Judgment on the net: “this > the original.”

So, like the car crash we just can’t peel our eyes from, The Palin Family Feud was the opera we’d most like to see. I think it works. So many plot lines, so many potential wacky duet pairings. Any takers, composer-readers?

I was thinking more about opera this week, and specifically what keeps me from really embracing it. At root, I think it mostly has to do with how over-the-top the delivery is (awesome, in-and-of itself), yet how slow and plodding the action is often paced. I’m not sure even Brando could clear that hurdle, acting-wise. And, like StoryCorp and This American Life, I guess I’m looking for smaller, weirder, more life-sized stories in the face of the immensity of the world. My artistic interests tend toward the spectacularly intimate over the bombastic stadium-sized variety, and probably they always have.

But I can also perhaps attribute my failure to connect to the fact that I have mostly seen by-the-book, same-as-it-ever-was opera productions. I might be fantasizing that I’m Cher when I go to the opera, but I still appreciate that it’s 2009. Maybe my attitude would get an adjustment if I lived in Europe with their wacky concepts? If you see an opera out there that you think might shift me into gear, do let me know about it.

I don’t know about the weather in your neighborhood, but things are heating up here on my home turf. And that means the tomatoes are going into the ground and summer orchestra seasons are coming! Which brings us to this week’s question:

As I mentioned once before, somehow watching M*A*S*H as a child defined my sense of humor in a rather serious way. As an adult, mass media has continued to shape my cultural perspective–particularly fueled by late nights reading Gawker and watching loads of trash TV. I confess all this to help explain how it is that my contribution to Adaptistration’s Take a Friend To the Orchestra project ended up sounding like I was coming off a Gossip Girl bender. (Ahem.) I’m no Corey Dargel when it comes to the audio engineering, but in the spirit of the amateur, I tried. If you have a few minutes and have ever considered going to a symphony concert, I hope this audio handbook of etiquette for elite occasions helps you navigate the experience with confidence. (If you’re already a regular, I hope it makes you smile.)

If I have failed, your visit is not wasted because Matt got the party started with one of his kick-ass comic strips. Now go laugh! It’s Wednesday.

• Listen to Mind the Gap‘s 2009 Take a Friend to the Orchestra Contribution

And stay tuned for our next installment: Take an Enemy to the Opera

On Thursday, I’ve been invited to sit on a panel to chat about the intersection of opera, pop culture, and mass media, so I thought we’d get the ball rolling here on MTG. This week’s survey question:

If you have wild card answers, please drop those in the “other” category. If you would like to suggest which composers you expect to see attached to these projects, please drop those in the comments below.

And the survey said:

• I have no need for your micro news. I hope the cat gets it. 46%

• Stand in awe: I am master of the 140 character haiku. 35%

• As soon as I start a Facebook page and figure out what Tumblr is, I’ll get around to doing this. 7%

The “Other” category accounted for 12% of the vote. Answers ranged around the field, but this option was mostly used to further express great distaste for the service–pretty much summed up by this one: “More to feed the obsessive-compulsive loop? No. Please, no.”

Meanwhile, the media kept up its Twitter love and expressed its concern for Twitter hate. As for me, I’m loving seeing what friends and colleagues around the globe or doing and thinking on occasion, but am still not feeling prepared to wade into the pool quite yet myself. Count me reluctant.

Two years ago when I still lived in New York, I purchased a ticket to see a production at the Metropolitan Opera. Ever since then, I have received a steady stream of promotional emails, and though I’ve never purchased anything else, I have enjoyed looking at the pictures. Then a couple weeks ago, they sent this to me in Baltimore:

The package struck me for a number of reasons. It was exceptionally heavy, had traveled far (considering what it was selling), and emitted that intoxicating fresh ink smell. Inside was a five-piece subscription solicitation that included personalized mailing labels plus a 50(!)-page four-color brochure jam-packed with more tempting pictures than the JCPenny’s Christmas catalog. The real kicker, however, was the eight-page, double-sided, tri-folded (and perforated!) “Order Forms” section. If I had been perusing the catalog with “Maybe we should go to the opera in New York this year!” fluttering around in the back of my mind, I was now paralyzed by the complexity of buying tickets. Forget Tosca; I suddenly did not feel mentally equipped to handle filling out the seat request form. There were New Year’s Eve tickets and Opening Night tickets and Season Tickets and Single Tickets and something that cost $50,000, but I was too scared to look.

Now, I bet opera fans were drooling all over this same package, so I don’t mean to knock the concept. And it must have cost a small fortune to produce and mail, so I hope they all immediately put in extensive season orders. But it was way more than I, a one-time single ticket buyer, knew what to do with. I’m more a teaser video and “Buy nosebleed seats for this Friday’s show NOW for only $25!” kind of girl, myself.

And at root, that’s probably the real problem. My image of myself does not include season subscriptions to anything, though (peeking cautiously back in on the order forms) I guess I could afford to incorporate one. This package was a great sales piece, I just wasn’t the right customer.