The Daily Parker

I mentioned that I went to Ribfest Chicago this past weekend. In years past I have reviewed the vendors and posted photos, but I didn't this year. Simply put, the fest hasn't recovered from Covid.

Two things especially disappointed me: first, the festival of ribs had only 5 dedicated rib vendors, not the 15-20 of years past. Wrigley BBQ closed during the pandemic; Fireside, Piggery, Q, and Smoke Daddy didn't bother to come; and Smoque, one of the best rib places in the city, has never bothered because with their Bib Gourmand rating why should they?

Second, all the vendors had serious quality or service issues. For example, from the first time I wrote about Ribfest in 2011, I've put Mrs Murphy's near the top of my list. On Sunday, though, I got a tray of goo from them. They had ladled on so much sauce that I had to scrape most of it away from the three tiny bones they'd given me, but the bones had spent so long under boil that "fall of the bone" became more "disintegrate off the bone." Another vendor had exhausted children of 10 manning the cash registers, and failing in ways you'd expect. (At the best of times 10-year-olds don't multitask well; at a busy food booth they handled each order to completion, including waiting for food, before taking the next order.)

Two vendors had lines a block long on Friday evening. On Sunday afternoon, one of them had no line—because they'd run out of ribs and it would take another 90 minutes for them to cook more. The other one, returning itinerant Austin Texas Lightning, still had a block-long queue, which upon investigation seemed to have more to do with the booth being woefully understaffed than anything else.

I hope next year they do better, or at least have more vendors.

Happy Monday:

• The XPOTUS uses the same pattern of lies every time he gets caught committing a crime. Jennifer Rubin says this was his dumbest crime yet.
• Usability experts at the Nielsen/Norman Group lay out everything you hate about phone trees, and how companies could fix them.
• My generation should be your boss now, but of course, we aren't.
• Within 30 years, Chicago could experience 52°C heat indexes.

I would now like to take a nap, but alas...

This was such an amazing experience! Exhausting, but amazing. Backstage at intermission; Maestro James Conlon is front and center:

And we, the chorus of Roman Citizens, after our curtain call:

I should fully recover by...maybe Thursday?

After Tuesday's half-day of rehearsals (which would have been a full day except for a scheduling conflict I couldn't move), and yesterday's all-day rehearsals, my intellectual capabilities and creativity seem a bit diminished this week. We open tonight with Don Giovanni and close Sunday afternoon with La Clemenza di Tito. I'm meant to work on our product roadmap for the next 5-10 sprints (i.e., through years' end) while also delivering at least one more feature for the current sprint that ends Tuesday. But I really need a nap.

Meanwhile, Ravinia and Maestro Conlon have sent us a couple of blog posts and column about the operas. On Don Giovanni:

[O]f the many implications of this extremely complex narrative, there is an overwhelming presence that, at the beginning and the end, orients the listener. And it is accomplished without a word of text, nor preamble, nor explanation. The terrifying power of the key of D minor, in the hands of the transcendent genius of Mozart, tells us that this is a cautionary tale, illustrating the fate of those who transgress without repentance. The composer, so generous in his own clemency, pardons almost every character in his operas, but here has made a stunning and powerful exception. In an era when portrayal of death on the stage was relatively rare and unfashionable, Mozart presents us the protagonist’s damnation in full view.

On La Clemenza di Tito:

In 1789, the French populace rose up against their king and queen and brought about a revolution, eventually executing their monarchs. Thirteen years before that, the American colonies had rebelled against the British Crown and established their own sovereign nation.

None of this was lost on royals across the entire continent of Europe, who reacted with alarm and concern. The subject of “good governance,” even by monarchs who claimed to rule by Divine Right, acquired a new urgency. The French Revolution struck especially close to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, for Marie Antoinette, the last French queen, was his sister.

So in 1791, when Leopold was to be crowned in Prague, a celebratory opera was to be commissioned. And because one of the contemporary models of Age of Enlightenment authority was that of the “Enlightened Despot,” the new opera could both flatter the new leader and subtly suggest to him an exemplary model of authority. The chosen opera would portray a Roman emperor—and by extension the newly crowned monarch—as not only a man of justice but also of mercy.

Finally, writer John Schauer makes the argument that seeing these operas in Ravinia's Martin Theater, which holds 850, will give you a better experience than seeing one at Dodger Stadium.

I'm spending a lot of time here through Sunday, performing two Mozart operas (as previously reported):

Tickets are still available.

The plan for today I announced Friday has gone without a hitch, though I decided not to take a nap. And, unfortunately, I had to do one productive thing: laundry.

Cassie has enjoyed every moment of couch time while I binge Sandman, so that's a plus.

Regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Today, though, I've got a lot of debugging, and several chorus meetings on various topics, plus a condo association meeting that I really don't want to attend. Since I'm president of both the chorus and the condo association (one voluntary, one voluntold), I can't shirk either.

Meanwhile, some of the grain silos that remind Beirut of the massive government incompetence that led to a massive aluminum nitrate explosion two years ago today collapsed, fortunately before the memorial began.

And one of the four finalists in the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) competition for a quantum-computer-resistant encryption algorithm got cracked by the equivalent of a home laptop in an hour.

Other newsworthy things happened today but I've got to get back to debugging.

We've got a (soft) product release tomorrow afternoon and I've got an opera rehearsal tonight, so a real post will have to wait. I did like Matt Ford's brief note that we've taken the gloves off in the Senate, which is about time. I might have to declare news bankruptcy tonight, though, and return to the world after we launch.

I exhausted myself yesterday with a walk from Otford to Shoreham, in Kent, along the Kentish Downs. I'll have photos after I get home, but until then, here's the Garmin plot:

The bit right around 4km included a steep climb to an amazing view of the Downs. Again, photos next week, which will also demonstrate why I want to retire to Shoreham now.

This is a bit of good news for my weekend getaway:

The strikes have affected the Central, Jubilee, Northern, and Victoria lines, two of which figure prominently in my plans this week as I'm staying in Holborn and spending time in Gospel Oak/Camden Town.