Klarinet Archive - Posting 000166.txt from 2008/05

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] This reminds me of Dan's novel
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 08:03:37 -0400

Audrey Travis wrote,

>This reminds me of Dan's novel
>...which I loved. Nothing to do with clarinet or music,
>but I thought some of us might enjoy this review as
>well as the book.

Audrey later sent the link to Janet Maslin's May 26 New York Times review of
Mark Alpert's thriller novel, "Final Theory."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/books/26masl.html?th&emc=th

It's much too hot and humid to wear a hat indoors this morning, but if I
were wearing one, I would tip it to Ms Maslin for doing such a fine job of
skewering this book without ever coming right out and saying that no amount
of clever holographic cover art will cover up the fact that Albert should
stick to writing essays about physics.

Saw my Physics teacher from U. C. Berkeley, Edward Teller, aka "father of
the H Bomb," being interviewed on a Discovery Channel program this
week--narrated by William Shatner. As Teller defended his decision to help
invent the H-Bomb, I swear he gave the camera the same lecture, almost word
for word, that he muttered the first day of my class with him in 1968, or
was it 1969?--after he finished lecturing us on why the university shouldn't
have forced a professor of his august standing to lower himself to teach
undergraduates and before he stomped off the platform and disappeared,
leaving the entire teaching job to his teaching assistants, until the last
day of class, when he reappeared, growled out exactly the same lecture and
bid us goodbye and good luck. He had a point--teaching the class would have
wasted his time, though his absence didn't waste mine, because his teaching
assistants were among the best teachers I've ever had in any subject,
fortunately for me, since I was exceptionally stupid at physics.

So, thanks to that old curmudgeon and to Janet Maslin's smarty-pants review,
I'll read "Final Theory." Doesn't have anything to do with clarinets? Hey,
of course it has!

Take a look at Nitai's May 26 instructions on tweaking a bass clarinet in
>Message-ID: <314939.25828.qm@-----.com>
Now, it can't be a coincidence that Nitai's instruction appeared on the same
day as Maslin's review. Oh, no, it's all connected. The secret seems
completely obvious: This infernal bass clarinet is really a weapon of mass
destruction disguised as a musical instrument. The compensating lever no
doubt conceals a switch that, when perfectly adjusted, causes a certain long
tone to open a portal into a parallel universe. Just turn that screw a
little bit more this way or that way....

But is the plot a malign one by former physics students turned mobsters in
league with aliens to take over our galaxy? Or is it a benign plot to use
all the Earth's apparent bass clarinets (probably the contra-altos and
contrabasses, too) to blast the aliens back into their own space-time
continuum ? Clearly, the truth has something to do with the successful
Phoenix landing on Mars. What's it *really* doing there? (Hmmm...Phoenix.
Dumbledore...!) The truth is out there! Beware of that third screw!

[The fourth screw shuts off the facetiousness detector.]

Lelia Loban
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/Lelia_Loban

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