Category Archives: Music

Binge watching “Mozart in the Jungle”

Music, Television

Mozart in the Jungle
If Mozart in The Jungle wins any more awards someone will have to see it. Tweet at? from? The Golden Globes by Albert Brooks.

Over New Years, before THe Golden Globes, Richard Taylor and Tracy Grubbs, jointly,  recommended the Netflix Amazon series,  Mozart in the Jungle, so we put it on our list of TV to try. Then it won A Golden Globe for Best Musical and Gael Garcia Bernal won for best actor in a musical and we moved Mozart in the Jungle to the top of the list. Then we watched it, both seasons over about five days.

That is not as impressive as it sounds because each show is only a half hour (and probably less so it can fit on pay TV, later I guess). Mozart in the Jungle is based on the book Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall and it is chock full of sex, drugs, and classical music. First, the music is great. That may be biased because I love everything about Classical Music except the name, but this is a TV show about a young oboist sort of in an orchestra in New York City and the soundtrack is full of greats. Not just Mozart, but Bizet, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mahler, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, everybody you could possibly want.

Gael Garcia Bernal is delightful as a young, brilliant but impulsive, orchestra conductor and the female lead, the oboist, played by Lola Kirke, is enchanting. The program is charming in a magical realist sort of way. It would be perfect for a snowy or rainy night.

The Taliban’s problem

Current Affairs, Film, Music, War

When we read about the war in Afghanistan, we almost always read about it from the US point of view – duh! – or a Marines point of view, or a NGO peace workers point of view.

A couple of days ago, I read a blog in the NY Times (it is amazing how much good stuff is in the Times, I wonder, and not in a good way, where it will go after the Times folds – if it doesn't just disappear) that talked about why the Taliban are such poor shots. And it sort of talked about it , inadvertently, I think, from the Afghans point of view. Among a long list of problems like having and using equipment in poorly maintained condition, relying on automatic fire rather than aiming, using mismatched and bad ammunition, was

a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from
uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from
poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care.

Sunday afternoon, while the rain feel all afternoon, I watched Afghan Star


The two of them, together, left me with an almost overwhelming feeling of how poor Afghanistan really is. Not We have no doctors, poor. but We have no good sanitation poor. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So poor, most of the adult population can't see very well.

And there is a huge minority of the Afghan population that is afraid to move away from that poverty,. Afraid that they will lose more than they will gain. Maybe they are right – they will lose community, they will lose their convictions and answers – I don't think they are right to be afraid, but, then, I've eaten from the apple a long time ago. I am biased.