CAMA is winding down its long tenancy at the Arlington this season. While most everyone is apparently thrilled, I will miss the un-self-consciously fake Wild West border town facades and the peeling paint. CAMA performances for the 2008-09 season will be in the Granada Theater.
I’ve been in the newly renovated Granada. I had seats in the third row of the balcony (there’s only one) to see a taping of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…. I felt like I was going to be sick the entire time. It’s like looking down a mine shaft, and I can’t imagine what the music is going to sound like (although I don’t know a thing about acoustics). I’ll find out on May 3 when the L.A. Philharmonic comes to town.
Moreover, the Granada is a wedding cake, homage to the Spanish Renaissance. It’s encrusted with every geometric shape you’ve tried not to imagine simultaneously. Now, don’t get me wrong. The Spanish Renaissance was a wonderful and often neglected flowering of culture. Just listen to a master play the vihuela. But, really, Santa Barbara has about as much connection to the Spanish Renaissance as I have to the establishment of common law in England, a phenomenon that was occurring while my ancestors were fighting over who was going to get to eat the offal for dinner.
In short, the Granada is self-consciously grand, and I’m going to try not to look at it.
5 comments:
I think your webmistress is awesome
I, like you, love the kitsch that is the Arlington. Also, judging from the shows I've seen there, the acoustics are pretty good. (Although Tenacious D and Tom Petty are not--in any way--like opera or classical music.)
Anyway, nice work with the blog. You've got a grand, informal style my friend, and I look forward to this being one of the few blogs I would willingly read. (God knows I don't read my own.)
Oh, me, me, me, it's all about you... and music... and architecture... and other things. The pathos is strong in you. I have never even seen the theatre, but now I feel empty and alone at its transformation.
I think the Spanish thing is sweet though. We "buy" a half of a country's prime coastal real estate from a few corrupt, gutless landowners for a wooden nickel; then we indenture its population, who themselves had been indentured to commit mass genocide to get the property in the first place, to build sterile little architectural homages--and I mean that in the original sense of the word--to their very own culture, which we impoverished after we got them to build roads and clear lots for us. I love human history. Such poetry. It just makes you want to run out to the theatre or Taco Bell.
By the way, some writers (and speakers), with an initial unstressed syllable, as in "historian," will use "an" as the article (and barely vocalize the "h"): as in "an historian of science." It's a choice, of course, but it's the only right one.
And don't lay any of that lawyer stuff on me. I think we should go back to common law; it made things so simple: hang the defendant first, regardless of the crime, and try the case later. Maybe we should even reintroduce the ordeal.
A very nice blog Dr. Walling, Esq.; I will visit often and make lots of only obliquely relevant comments.
Wow, I am stoked about my posts, and today, especially Roy's juicy commentary. I also really prefer "an historian," but I don't want people to think I'm no fun at parties.
Looks like I'll get my opportunity to check out the Granada. The SBS is performing the New World on Nov. 22/23 and I won't miss that for anything.
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