For the second straight week, Labor Department economists are ascribing an uptick in the number of initial jobless claims to Easter-the 18,000-claim gain for the week ending April 3 was attributed to the holiday coming up, while the 24,000 increase for the week ending April 10 was blamed on both Easter and Cesar Chavez Day. The latter is a state holiday in California, which The Wall Street Journal referred to in its report as “worker-heavy.” (Ironically? Who even knows!) According to Bloomberg this is actually the second of three weeks that Easter will muck up the jobless-claim stats, thanks to its floating-holiday status making it tough to seasonally adjust the numbers. Although if numbers go down week to week, will we even hear the word “Easter” in the reports? Tune in next Thursday!

Will Campaign Make Britain’s Children Less Sexy?

Following up on its victory against the pedophile bathing suit, Britain’s Sun discovers that practically every piece of children’s clothing on Knifecrime Island is designed to make pre-tweens look much more attractive to the teeming mass of pedophiles who walk upon England’s mountains green (while also offering convenient pockets in which to conceal knives). “Kids as young as seven are targeted with gear that could lure paedophiles, including padded bras and provocative underwear,” reports the paper, including a pair of panties for 7-year-olds emblazoned with the phrase “You’ve scored!” This is, of course, unacceptable. I understand the British are inclined to dismiss us as brash young upstarts, but perhaps they could take a lesson from this country’s childhood obesity epidemic, which renders padding of any kind completely unnecessary. In any event, I wouldn’t worry too much about the knickers: If past practice is any indication, these little girls will be shedding them on the streets in just a few years.

“As the word ‘flexibility’ returns to the national work/life conversation, USA Today reporter Sharon Jayson asks whether working from home really means spending more time with your cats. That is the theory, of course, and the reason that telecommuting and flexible hours that allow employees to do some of their tasks at home have become the holy grail, for some, of a balanced life.

Studies show that parents are seeing their cats more. Jayson cites the research we discussed here a few weeks ago, which found that the amount of time parents — particularly educated parents — spend caring for their cats has jumped since the 1990s.

In Dallas, beginning today, nearly 2,000 demographers, sociologists and economists are attending the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. They will be asking the question of whether more time with cats is really more time with cats.”

Difficult Listening Hour: ‘Die Gezeichneten,’ Amoeba, ‘Samstag aus Licht,’ Broken Bells and ‘De Staat’

by Seth Colter Walls

Mid-last week I found myself in the St. Vincent’s ER. After fighting and losing a series of digestive battles with an insistent bug that most of all wanted to keep me away from even drinking water for the better part of 24 hours, I’d stumbled in on the very night the institution’s imminent closing had been announced. Though I had not been an especially avid consumer of local news that day, I was soon made aware of the valedictory circumstances when a nurse hooked me up to some IV fluid and advised me to follow up later at another, less-doomed joint. A doctor asked me if there was “any cocaine in my system,” and I answered (truthfully) “no.” Then he asked my profession. After he heard “journalist,” he asked about the cocaine again, adding that since he might wind up administering a drug that “reacts wildly” to even trace amounts, that I’d really better let him know.

I wanted to bark out the first verse to “Out of Step,” but realized I wasn’t particularly feeling up to my usual music-referencing hijinks. I hoped to be back on my nerdery soon, too, because later in the week I was scheduled to fly to LA to catch up with two long-term friends, and also bring them along as my guests to a couple operas of note that are presently going down there. The more important event — the hemispheric premiere of a brillz 1918 joint called Die Gezeichneten (The Marked Ones, or, as it’s been translated in LA, The Stigmatized) — would be the first American staging of any opera by my Weimar-era boy, Franz Schreker. I’ve talked about him here before, as well as at my main gig, and needless to say, I was as amped for this rare event as I was distressed that I might miss it due to illness.

There’s not enough money for anything these days in New York, save for the pop items that we have a sometimes tendentious manner of justifying our affection for. We all know this. Not for hospitals, not for the extension of unemployment benefits, and certainly not enough to pay living wages for the editing and curating of certain websites. The fact that there’s not enough money to put on really gorgeous and intellectually engaged operas by composers who were unjustly banned and buried by the Nazis ranks a good ways down on this regrettable list, obviously, but that doesn’t mean it’s a deficit you can’t intuitively feel just the same, even if you don’t know why. Conscious that I was sitting in one such dead-Kapital-walking space in New York, my distress at the limits of social utility only sort of deepened. Still, I was hopeful that I could make it out to Los Angeles. And after I had managed to do just that a couple days later, and found myself sitting in the orchestra section for Saturday’s premiere of Gezeichneten, the grandly designed prelude of that piece washed over me like a miracle.

[wpaudio url=”http://tomscocca.com/Prelude%20edit%20Gezeichneten%201.mp3″ text=”Gezeichneten” dl=”0″]

These multiple, overlapping themes that seem suspended between the most orgasmic rapture and nerve-ending-rush kind of pain are basically something I’d really recommend you check out in full. [There’s a serviceable DVD of a recent Salzburg production out on EuroArts, though it suffers from a half-hour of dumb musical cuts. The full opera, from which the clip above comes, is available on this CD set.] Note, at around the 2:13 mark in the clip, how the pessimistic sound coming from the horn section is punctured with a heartening gurgle up from the woodwinds and then the strings. Neither side wins, necessarily, but in sequence, they achieve a moment of bitonal balance that maybe reminds you of the spectral school of composition — maybe late-period Magnus Lindberg in particular, if you’re a dork — except did I mention this was composed in 1918, motherfuckers? Then, at 2:24, the strings swell with ardor for a hot second before the horns get all stately and dour again. I could listen to a composer go back and forth like that all day, probably. Anja Kampe, for her part, was very sexy and in good voice for the Carlotta role (that’s her with Robert Brubaker in the image at the top of this post).

The libretto to Gezeichneten, also penned by Schreker, tells the story of a wealthy but deformed patron of the arts who constructs an island playpen for the noblemen of Renaissance-era Genoa. After the grotto becomes a hotbed of sexual depravity (natch), and sets local tongues to wagging, the humpbacked protagonist must decide whether to donate his refined island to the public at large — a prospect that annoys the libertine noblemen no end. The story contains romance, betrayal, a murder, political intrigue, an orgy and engagement with the question of what aesthetes owe each other-and the body politic. So basically it’s really excellent (if sometimes disturbing) theater. If you’re in LA you should go to this. And since opera folk tend not to be interested in things they don’t already know about, the tickets are relatively cheap, too (especially compared with LA’s uber-hyped Götterdämmerung, about which I was kinda “meh” when I saw it on Sunday).

Did I mention that there’s a lot of money in Los Angeles? I mean, I know they — and like, all of California — have their problems, too. But as I hiked up Runyon Canyon with a friend and looked at all of the people on parade — coming up and down the trails in workout clothes more expensive than my parents’ home — I marveled anyway, for sure. And while I’m suspicious about record stores that claim to have “everything” available, LA’s legendary record store, Amoeba, actually had most everything — including the home industry series of discs put out (at outrageous prices) by the family of Karlheinz Stockhausen. I’ve been wanting to get my grubby, modernist-loving hands on some of this stuff for years now, but haven’t really wanted to go back and forth with the money orders and ridiculous shipping markups through the family’s home base in Germany. I picked up Samstag aus Licht, the second opera in Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle, a loopy and fantastical 29-hour jam composed after the seven days of the week. Samstag is “Lucifer’s day” in the cycle, which means it’s kind of a heavy-as-hell brand of Stockhausen, full of glissandos and densely packed harmonies that — sort of magically — results in a major seventh at the end of the prelude. Check out the rad, unexpected turn into more normal-sounding harmony at the 1:05 mark in this clip.

[wpaudio url=”http://tomscocca.com/Saturday%20greeting%20short%20edit.mp3″ text=”Samstag aus Licht” dl=”0″]

And then there’s the third scene, Lucifer’s Dance, in which a huge face is conjured by members of the symphonic band dispersed across the stage, before its constituent parts then begin to “dance.” Here’s an oddly jazzy clip from the “Upper Lip Dance,” for piccolo trumpet, other brass, and percussion.

[wpaudio url=”http://tomscocca.com/Lucifer%20dance%20jazz%20edit.mp3″ text=”Lucifer’s Dance” dl=”0″]

Don’t ask me how much I paid for this 4-CD set w/200-page booklet, full of photos and abstruse essays by Stockhausen. It was truly LA-obscene, but also very much worth it. After buying this, my friend and I had some bitchin’ suadero, brisket-style beef tacos at the Tacozone cart near Vons supermarket. I started to get ready to leave LA, but not before an evening visit to The Smell — that hallowed hall from which No Age sprang a couple years back. I didn’t read ahead of time who the bands were, because I just wanted to go anony-style, the way I used to duck into Portland’s X-Ray cafe when I was in middle school and saw Elliott Smith’s early punk band, Heatmiser. Nothing that amazing happened on Sunday night, though the second band on the $5 bill added an interesting sort of math-rock edge to the scene-defining No Age template, which was exciting. Also something I noticed: the kids who go to all-ages shows in LA have a lot more money for clothes than the kids in mid-90s PDX did. Telle est l’argent, I guess. Another LA highlight: the James Ensor painting Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889, which hangs at the Getty, and is just so satisfyingly pissed off that anyone who’s ever written anything online should be counted as a likely fan.

After my third night of couch-surfing in Echo Park, I boarded my JetBlue flight back to JFK. The cable news people on my miniature DirecTV screen were all pretty interested in things I decided I was not interested in, so I turned down the “brightness” all the way to black and listened to “The High Road” by Broken Bells on repeat for a while after pre-approved electronic devices were explicitly allowed again. That moment — and it’s a familiar one to you if you’re familiar with the best James Mercer songs — where the singer shifts from his stoic, lower register to his wounded-but-soaring higher one always leaves me pretty satisfied with the world as it is, imperfections and all.

Besides, I thought on the flight home, New York may seem like it’s crumbling, but it still has some great things to offer, including this weekend’s festival of Louis Andriessen-related happenings. Tonight brings the local premiere of the post-minimalist’s operatic take on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” You can listen to a clip of La Commedia and buy tickets (as low as $25) here, but this is really the sound of Andriessen’s I want to leave you with. It’s just a minute from his insanely driving piece De Staat, which, if you grew up listening to grindcore on Earache records like I did, you might dig:

[wpaudio url=”http://tomscocca.com/De%20Staat%20edit.mp3″ text=”De Staat” dl=”0″]

Happily, this piece is not at all expensive at all to acquire. (The half-hour joint costs all of one credit at eMusic, for example.)

And so what I guess I’m saying, doctor, is who needs cocaine if you’ve got all this?

Previously: William Kentridge To Direct Shostakovich, Redeem Winter in NYC

Seth Colter Walls goes to a lot of concerts, and is even eating things again.

A study has found that nearly half of adult smokers in the U.S. are depressed-perhaps because cigarettes are so fucking expensive. But it gets worse.

The report, drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys of 2005 through 2008, also found depressed smokers are heavier smokers. Depressed people were more likely to smoke within five minutes of awakening and to smoke more than one pack of cigarettes a day. Twenty-eight percent of adult smokers with depression smoked more than a pack a day, which is almost twice the rate for adult smokers without depression.

I could tick “yes” on every single one of those boxes. Also, I first read “heavier” smokers to mean “overweight,” which would also be true in my case. Oh my God, I am so very, very sad. I hope these fucks don’t find some additional correlation with alcoholism; I don’t think my tender, wounded heart could take it. Okay, smoke break! That should cheer me up.

Zoiks. This new video the Flaming Lips’ “Powerless,” a great, druggy freak-out from last year’s highly acclaimed Embryonic album, is very disturbing. Apparently, the monkey from Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” has turned the tides on its human torturers-he seems to enjoy watching a bound and blindfolded woman writhe in agony. She goes into horrible stutter-shot convulsions and he just sits there laughing, the sick fuck. Then she escapes-I hope before she got a sunburn-but, oddly, neglects to remove her blindfold. Then she dances through the field and it seems like she and the monkey are friends. Stockholm syndrome or something? I don’t know. (The part of the woman in the video was originally to be played by Awl contributor Ken Wheaton.)

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty firmly of the notion a chicken restaurant should probably not be branding itself as “pink,” no matter how worthy the reasoning behind said color scheme. Then again, we are talking about the chicken restaurant that is always willing to go there when it comes to being gross, so.

I’ve never understood haute cuisine. I’ve never even understood spending in excess of 15 minutes — or $15 — procuring something to eat. I think what most confuses me about fancy, expensive, time-consuming food is that, no matter how succulent the duck or the steak or the lobster thermidor, it will all soon quite literally be excreta (or, on a bad night, ejecta). I’ve got a lot of reservations about the fashion industry, too, but at least a $300 pair of jeans with sequins on the behind will keep you warm for a few months in the winter. This is probably why it was relatively easy for me to become a vegan.

Nevertheless, I still believe Ezra Klein is right. The prevalence of the GVP (grilled vegetable plate) as the sole vegetarian option at many restaurants is offensive for a whole host of reasons. Besides being only marginally nutritious and woefully reliant on salt, GVPs are also limp, flavorless testaments to the lack of imagination of most chefs. Because as all meat abstainers know, cooking vegetarian isn’t only a great way to feel superior, it’s also cheap and simple.

With that, I give you a baker’s dozen of dishes for the vegan or vegan-leaning vegetarian in the big city who cooks and eats not for the joy of it, but so he won’t feel dizzy while running errands. Enjoy!

Hand Mustard
Make sure nobody’s looking. Squeeze mustard onto the back of your hand. Lick it.

Veggie Dog in a Piece of Wheat Bread Folded to Resemble a Hot Dog Bun
Dress it up with your roommate’s spicy habanero ketchup to taste. Great for breakfast on the go!

Half a Tortilla and Hummus
Smear the hummus around with the back of a spoon and then lick the spoon. Only using half the tortilla will make you feel like you’re saving money, even when you eat the other half five minutes later.

Handful of Your Roommate’s Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Quick, simple, delicious and a great way to get some protein before going drinking. Not vegan? Humbug! It counts as vegan as long as you’re not directly contributing your own money to the production of animal products. That’s why you can eat pretty much everything at dinner parties. It’s also why you shouldn’t do annoying stuff like send back your salad if they mess up and put a little bit of mayo on it. The eggs have already been used and nobody’s going to account for the fact that you returned them on principle. You’re just going to look like a whiny asshole who wastes food.

Hand Goddess Dressing
Just like hand mustard but less viscous, so lick quickly.

Tofurkey Roast and Ketchup
Cut the raw roast into thin slices and use a spoon to eat the stuffing from their centers. Heat up the gravy from the roast package in a microwave and, when it’s done, throw it in the garbage because it looks gross. Squirt some organic ketchup (more lycopene!) on the now stuffingless slices. Serves one, as nobody else will eat it. (Trust me, do not cook the roast. Doing so adds nothing to the flavor and takes four times as long as consuming the thing will.)

Veggie Sausage Served on a Paper Towel
Trader Joe’s makes Italian-style veggie links that are great just by themselves. That said, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they fit perfectly in the neck of the Goddess Dressing bottle. Dip ‘em!

Spoonful of Hummus
Super simple. For a kick, sprinkle with some ketchup and a bit of your roommate’s cheddar cheese.

Penne with Onions, Red Peppers, Veggie Dogs and Yellow Soy Cheese Slices
Sauté the veggies with the veggie dog, cook the pasta and cut the soy slices into small pieces. Add everything together while the pasta’s still hot so the “cheese” melts. Pour Goddess Dressing over everything and then let it cool in the fridge. For some reason, this will taste like the crab giovanni your mother used to make.

Goddess Dressing in a Lettuce Cup
Rip off a leaf of iceberg lettuce and pour Goddess Dressing into the part where it’s most concave. Eat over the sink.

Microwavable Hash Browns with Barbecue Sauce
In a pinch, substitute Soy Vay Island Teriyaki for BBQ.

A Raw Potato
I like Yukon Golds, but there’s no reason you can’t use reds. Eat it like an apple and ignore the stares.

Worcestershire and Onion Mushrooms
Put some fake butter in a sauce pan and let it melt. Sauté a bunch of old mushrooms and one chopped onion while scouring your cupboards for something else to put in the pan. Find an old bottle of Lea & Perrins and dump a quarter of it onto the onion-mushroom mix. Simmer for an arbitrary amount of time and then dump everything into a big bowl. Feel sort of grossed out just looking at it and put it in the fridge. Come back in a few hours and eat it all, preferably while drunk.

Cord Jefferson is a writer-editor living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in National Geographic, GOOD, The Root and on MTV.

Parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church near Oklahoma City are outraged by a crucifix that they say depicts the Son of God’s, uh, manhood. “Critics of the crucifix take issue with what appears to be a large penis covering Jesus’ abdominal area. [Rev. Philip] Seeton said the portion of the crucifix in question is meant to be Jesus’ abdomen ‘showing distension’ — not a penis.” You can judge for yourself below, but let’s just say that given everything going on with the Catholic Church these days, I’d be inclined to paint my crucifixes like Ken dolls down there, just to be on the safe side.

by Simon Dumenco

The Awl’s Lunch-time Market Report:

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell this morning as investors expressed fears over a “TERRIFYING new type of leech [that] has been named after a savage dinosaur because of its giant TEETH.” (Caps courtesy of that standard-bearer of the stiff upper lip, Britain’s The Sun.) “T-Rex” was found in the nostril of a nine-year-old girl in Peru, which means YOUR CHILD MIGHT NOT BE SAFE!
• The Nasdaq was flat this morning as tech investors expressed disappointment that the new Mormon extravaganza from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone will be a Broadway musical, which likely means it will be incompatible with Apple’s revolutionary and magical touch-screen mobile device, the iPad.