“An article last Thursday about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s preference for New York designers referred incorrectly to the blue Corneliani suit that he bought at Rothmans in the spring of 2013 during his mayoral campaign. Mr. de Blasio wore it at his inauguration, but not on primary and election nights.”

“From futuristic Google Glass headsets to smart watches like Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, wearable gadgets are billed as the next big thing in technology. But China’s tech counterfeiters — notorious for having a nose for what’s hot and what’s not — appear for now at least to be giving wearable technology the cold shoulder in what one expert calls a ‘serious warning signal’ for market players.”

Katherine Anne Moss turns 40 today, which means if you are not yet 40 yourself you can still vaguely make yourself feel better about things by saying, “Well, at least I’m younger than Kate Moss,” and if you have already reached that age it doesn’t really make a difference to you anyway because your life is for all intents and purposes over and no matter how long or short your remaining time on this earth is you are basically spending it enduring agonies of existence that only increase as you trudge toward the tomb while your relevance diminishes with each passing year until you reach the point where if anyone even notices you at all it is to complain about what an inconvenience it is to have you around or to point you out as some kind of cautionary tale about what happens to people who haven’t died yet. Anyway, happy birthday Kate Moss.

“Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has asked people if they think Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York State, wears eyeliner.”

What if Karen O won an Oscar? It could happen! It would be rather magical! Suck it, Williamsburg!

by Nick Danforth

My friend Christopher Trapani is a composer of classical music. Apparently he is quite a good one, having won the Julius F. Ježek and Gaudeamus Prizes, among others. Also, one of his pieces was performed at Carnegie Hall, which I’ve heard of.

Before I met Chris I assumed that new classical music mostly involved people trying to find new discordant ways to extract terrible sounds from instruments that were designed to produce pleasant ones. It turns out that’s exactly what it is, but with program notes like this: “Florence in 1899, or the unexplored ends of the earth. An exotic wash of sonorities, mystical metallic shades — almglocken, steel drum, harp multiphonics — spinning kaleidoscopic patterns, all formless texture and insinuation.”

The last time I went to one of Chris’s concerts there was someone flossing the wiry guts of a piano with a piece of string. At the end of the night Chris was mad that I had fallen asleep and my girlfriend was jealous that I’d been able to fall asleep. To be fair, I can’t even appreciate classic classical music, and Chris’s patient efforts to explain it are largely wasted on me. He uses the word “surprise” to refer to the violinist doing something unexpected, whereas I expect a guy to walk out playing the cymbals in a bear suit.

Sitting around the other day while Chris was busy perfecting a sound on his computer, I started flipping through the score to his newest piece. It’s called “Convergence Lines: For Ten Players and Live Electronics.” It’s premiering at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin on January 23rd, and it celebrates the 50th anniversary of Thomas Pynchon’s V. For my part, I was excited to discover that when a composer wants a clarinetist to slap a clarinet with their tongue, this is how that instruction is conveyed:

And when the composer wants the percussionist to drop a washer on their crotales…

Other highlights from the score abound. Chris thought it was important to mention “the 90 percent of the score where the performers play ‘normally’ is exactly what does NOT require any verbal explanation, but rather the arcane skill of reading music.” Perhaps, though among other instructions is one reminding the pianist to start playing on the keys again. Let’s listen!

Please meet the “tongue ram” and the “tongue slap.”

Here’s some not terribly crazy brass tricks.

The harp player needs some advanced warning at the beginning of the piece to be able to make sounds like this.

Here’s what a “prepared piano” sounds like, and some ways to notate.

Here’s a piece from last year that uses a number of unconventionally notated techniques.

Oh but there’s so much more. Here’s some notation highlights from “Convergence Lines: For Ten Players and Live Electronics.” You’ll just have to imagine what they sound like — or make your way to Berlin.

Nick Danforth usually writes about Turkish history. But he and Chris also have a nonsense tee-shirt blog.

★★ Chilly but sticky. A light, steady-seeming rain got less and less light on the walk to preschool, then abated on the way back. The intensity would continue to rise and fall, fluctuating on an overall trajectory to greater and greater sogginess. Nothing to do about it but put the hood up. A business-improvement-district worker pushed soot-colored water away from a crosswalk on Broadway with a broom. All day the crosswalks would be flooded: gray water, clearish water, opaque beige water. Rainbows of lost motor oil spread in the roadway. Brick dust bled into puddles where workers were redoing a storefront. Brown water dripped from the ceiling onto the N/R platform at Prince Street, not from one identifiable or avoidable spot. Resin-yellow water trickled away from the feces smeared on the wet tile wall in the stairway up to 22nd Street. People slow-walked with their umbrellas under the scaffolding, indifferent to the foot traffic backing up behind them.

I know we’ve all got oral history fatigue, but you should carve out some time for this massive oral history of Hoop Dreams. Like a week. We can meet back here a week from now when we’re all done reading it and discuss. (Hoop Dreams is currently streaming on Netflix, btw.)

“There are no captive audiences on the Internet. Whereas discussing your sex life at the Thanksgiving dinner table may be TMI for Grandma, discussing your sex life online does not necessitate Grandma’s participation. If you follow someone on Twitter and you find that her tweets are too much for you, then you may unfollow her. If you continually recoil at TMI, it’s because you lack the willpower to stop consuming (or foresight to avoid) the information in question. That’s your fault.”

This is undeniably GREAT but do not watch it if you are stuck indoors for a while, because the middle part where Bodega Bamz does his thing is totally going to make you want to smoke. Also I will be saying “wa-da-da-dang” over and over for the rest of the day so if you are someone who has to be around me I apologize in advance. [Via]