Omelet Over a Gas Flame

I have observed many omelets (also spelled omelettes) in the wild. They can be scary and dangerous, and they come in a wide variety of plumage. Before one attempts to domesticate them, one should be aware that there are two basic species of this not-very-rare bird - indeed, this very-well-done-at-an-early-age bird.

First, there is the type I first learned to tame while cooking at the Kountry Kettle Kafe in Krosby (whoops, I mean Crosby), Minnesota, back in the mid-1990s. Actually I had assayed some clumsy attempts to bring this bird to hand even earlier, resulting mainly in a trail of sticky wreckage from one end of the kitchen to the other. At the Kountry Kettle I had the advantage of a large, flat grill and the right tools for the job. Plus, you know, advice from experienced cooks who wanted to see me succeed.

Type I omelets are the type that give eggrolls their name. The idea is to take two or three eggs just shy of their best-by date (so that they lie down flat on the grill), whisk them just enough to mix the yolk in with the white, and pour it over a puddle of butter-flavored oil on a flat grill. Use scrapers (like spatulas, only with the handle on the long edge) to confine the egg to its fair share of the grill's surface area, otherwise it will spread until it covers everything. As the egg cooks, fold in the edges until it assumes a more regular shape. Before executing the last fold or two, top it with other ingredients which, in some cases, may have been browning on a separate area of the grill - such as diced onions, peppers, ham, shredded cheese, etc. - then tuck in the top and bottom edges, fold the sides of the egg over the top of the mound of fillings, top with a little extra cheese (which will melt as the omelet cools), and scrape the lot onto a plate next to a rectangular pile of crispy hash browns and a pile of buttery toast. This is the type of omelet you can buy at Perkins' and IHOP.

Type II omelets astonished me when I discovered them later. Served to order at buffet-style brunch banquets and at certain particular restaurants - such as Waffle House, the Larry Byrd Experience in Terre Haute, and a 24-hour Greek place near my alma mater - this type of omelet is made from room-temperature eggs, blended with a tiny bit of starch in a high-speed drink mixer, then cooked in a smallish, round, oil-soused pan held over a flame. The add-ins may be browned first, and the eggs added over the top of them so that they cook right in to one upright-standing, airy puff of egg. The cook will know a trick of flipping the egg at just the right moment, using a shrewd flick of the panhandle without so much as touching a spatula. For a finishing touch it may be folded in half so that the cheese (sprinkled on top) melts in the center of a fluffy, eggy, breadless sandwich that towers over everything else on your plate.

The nearest I could approach to bringing the Type II omelet home, without investing in a milkshake blender and swapping my electric stove for a gas one, was to buy a novelty omelet pan made of two half-moon-shaped segments, hinged in the center, with a handle at one end. The idea was to cook a little egg in each half, lifting up the edges of the cooked egg so that the raw egg on top would run underneath, then piling the toppings onto the segment nearest the handle before flipping the other side over on top of it. If the egg has been properly loosened from the far side of the pan, it should then drop down onto the near side and the two halves finish cooking in the now steamy environment of the closed cooker.

The results of this process were often fairly satisfactory. But since I moved to an apartment with a gas range I have been, once again, stymied. The gas burners are not large enough to heat the omelet cooker properly. So until today, I had given up on having Type II omelets and settled for eggs over easy instead.

Today, I decided to try a new approach, inspired by those geniuses at Waffle House, but without the drink mixer. First I broke two eggs into a 9-ounce plastic cup. I added a squirt of warm water and a dash each of paprika and turmeric, then began whipping the eggs with a plastic fork. I didn't leave off whipping even while the pat of margarine was melting in a smallish, round frying pan over "medium" heat - What do I know what kind of heat it was? All I know is that I kept turning the flame down until it didn't hiss up the sides of the pan. When the margarine was melted and sizzling nicely, I stopped whipping the eggs and poured them in. They immediately started puffing up in a gratifying way. While most of the egg on top was still fluid but the egg on the bottom had cooked, I lifted up the edges of the egg - first on one side, the on the other - and let the liquid run underneath. Finally, when I judged the bottom was done enough, I made my best effort to flip the egg over so that the top would cook as well. I weakened and used a spatula; don't hold it against me.

For toppings I sprinkled on a bit of feta cheese - perhaps as much as a quarter of a cup's worth - and some crushed dillweed. I folded the fluffy full-moon into an even thicker half-moon and, quite soon after adding the cheese, slid it all onto a plate. The cheese did most of its melting while the egg cooled on the plate. I knew from experience - particularly the spiritually transporting experience of a spinach-and-feta omelet that visited me in the aforementioned Greek place - that the yumminess curve would drop sharply after the cheese began to re-congeal, so I dug in immediately. My tastebuds applauded.

A Warning to Pastors

Thanks to Rev. David O. for passing this along...

Eurgh!

I decided to squeeze a cheapo six-pack of beer into my grocery budget this week, and I picked Widmer Hefeweizen, bottled by Widmer Brothers of Portland, Oregon. (You actually have to be 21 or older to view their website. No underage drinking, virtual or otherwise!)

Now, I have tried many decent brands of Hefeweizen (cloudy wheat beer), including some American brews, though the standard I always go back to - rather, the ideal - is the Franziskaner of Munich, Germany. Even after years of drinking other brands, a single sip of Franziskaner is enough to remind me how vastly superior it is.

On the other hand, if I want to feel better about drinking Boulevard Wheat Beer, or Schlalfy's, or New Belgium Brewing Co.'s Sunshine Wheat, I now know where to turn: the Widmer Bros. Their Hefeweizen is so wretched that the first time I drank it, I suspected a batch of India Pale Ale had been mislabeled. The second bottle was a shade nastier, and the third (which stands on my desk as I write this) was so horrid that I fear I may have been poisoned.

Everything in life is a gift, if you but know how to look at it. I will look upon Widmer Hefeweizen, thankfully, as a reminder of the principle that "you get what you pay for." Next time, chastened, I may buy one less box of mac & cheese and use the balance to upgrade to a six of Sunshine Wheat.

Four Flicks

In the last month or two I have celebrated each new paycheck (and its accompanying brief flush of solvency) with a movie. I haven't blogged about them because I was too busy with umpty-ump other things, but here's my chance!

My last movie was The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Only months have passed since the Pevensie children stumbled back into England through the wardrobe that had magicked them into Narnia. They are still struggling to adjust to being kids again (having grown up in Narnia while no time passed in our world) when a toot on the horn Susan left behind instantly summons them back, right off the train platform where they are preparing to go to school. They are astonished to find that 1,300 years have passed in their absence, and their magical kingdom has fallen to ruin under the rule of a barbarian race of humans called the Telmarines. Their biggest surprise, however, is that the blower of Susan's horn was a Telmarine prince named - whoops, wouldn't want me to spoil it, would you?

On the run from an evil uncle who wants to kill the prince and usurp his throne, Prince Caspian joins the Pevensies and loads of dwarves, centaurs, minotaurs, fauns, and talking animals - particularly a badger named Badger and a mouse named Reepicheep - to fight off King Miraz and his huge army. Even after Miraz is slain following a duel with King Peter, the fight is touch-and-go until the kids finally look up the great lion (and Christ figure) Aslan and ask for his help.

The story is exciting, romantic, with vague undertones of religious allegory and a truly intense "temptation" scene in which the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe returns. The duel scene is gruelling, the battles thrilling, the creature effects convincing, and the film as a whole is a visual and musical treat.

Going backwards in time, my next movie was Speed Racer, a title which really sounds dumb until you realize that it is also the name of the main character. All right, it's dumb. Based on a Japanese TV show, written and directed for the big screen by the Wachowski Brothers of Matrix trilogy fame/infamy, this is an attempt to use their cutting-edge visual style in a family-friendly context. And it is truly a fun movie to watch, with only a couple slips into PG-rated language. I enjoyed the film's texture, with multiple layers moving across the screen at different speeds, a vast number of blue-screen shots, snappy special effects, and a sophisticated but clear way of inducting the viewer into the background of the story. I can, however, imagine how some viewers might be upset or confused by all this, though I think it is justified by the subject matter.

The plot is pretty basic, first-year-at-film-school stuff, but the dialogue is snappy and the cast does a good job. Emile Hirsch plays the young race-car driver of the future whose parents are John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, and whose older brother's death in a racing accident left scars on the whole family. Together with a Japanese driver and a mysterious "Racer X" played by Matthew Fox, Speedy enters the cross-country derby that killed his brother, against his father's wishes. This is all connected with busting the chops of a big-business CEO who makes a career of fixing races and the careers of drivers who refuse to play along. Blah, blah, blah, just enjoy the racing action, the attractive characters, and the hilarious scene where John Goodman beats up a ninja.

Prior to that, I saw Iron Man, the late Marvel Comics movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as a playboy arms manufacturer who gets wounded in such a way that he needs an electromagnet in his chest to keep himself alive. Using a futuristic power source of his own design, Downey plugs himself into a massive armored robot and escapes, then perfects his design back in the states in the hope of selling it as an unmanned weapon (in some idealistic attempt to take human casualties out of warfare). But he is betrayed by the bad guys and ends up having to fight them in his own machine, to prevent the ultimate weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Really, really typical comic book stuff, but with the added entertainment value of Downey's bad-boy charm, Jeff Bridges' bad-guy menace, Gwyneth Paltrow's good-girl sweetness, and Terence Howard's sidekickliness. It's no worse than any of the better Marvel Comics pictures, but it has the added attraction of Downey's wry sense of humor.

And finally (or rather, firstly), I saw - whoa, this was way back before Expelled, which I have already briefly mentioned on this blog - Nim's Island, with Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, and Gerard Butler. It was a nice enough movie, but it did not live up to my expectations. The drama was mostly based on uncertainty about the fate of Butler's character - or rather, the character of Nim's father, since Butler also played the fictional alter ego of author Alex Rover (Foster), whose adventure novels Nim and her father have followed with glee. When Nim's dad is lost at sea, Nim contacts Alex by email and gets her to come all the way to their uncharted, south Pacific island to save her. Which proves entirely unnecessary, but results in lots of laughter as Foster plays her character's agoraphobia to maximum comic effect.

This is perhaps less than sensitive for people who really suffer from agoraphobia (a form of panic disorder that keeps its victims homebound). And it turns out to be less than helpful for Nim, who manages pretty well by herself and finds the reality of Alex Rover rather disappointing. At least she does until the last bit of magic happens - romantic, movie magic. Oh, well. It beats sitting at home watching the neighbors walk up and down in front of your building.

Post-Synodical Reality

Big things have been happening in the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. It has been hard to hold back from commenting. Why hold back? For one thing, the purpose of this blog was not to address ecclesiastical matters. It's only meant to be a personal account of how very dangerous a little liberal arts education can make you. Plus, this blog is a spinoff from my book review column on Mugglenet, where I chose to use a flimsy pseudonym to prevent confusion as to whether or not I consider these writings "part of my ministry."

Now that I'm parishless that isn't much of an issue, but a popular public writer doesn't change identities in mid-stream-of-consciousness. This leads to two implications. On the "art, entertainment, and cat litter" side I sense that many of my readers have followed me over from Mugglenet and I don't want to bore them with sectarian drivel. On the "theology" side, I know and understand the distrust with which concerned members of the LCMS hold anonymous and pseudonymous bloggers.

So before I say anything about Synod, I must first direct your attention to the disclosure at the bottom of this page. I must also ask those who are here to read about books, symphonies, movies, food, and funny stories to bear with me. And finally, I must ask everyone to understand why I write this blog. I am not on a crusade. I have no personal axe to grind. I have no political ambitions. I am not writing for money. I simply one of those poor souls who suffers from the affliction of being a writer, a disease from which I have suffered since I learned to wrap my fingers around a pencil, and I can no more help writing than a kleptomaniac can control his urge to steal. I am also concerned about what is happening in the church body in which I was baptized, confirmed, and ordained.

And, finally, I am liberated by a sensibility of not serving in a parish, nor working for the Synod or its districts or auxiliaries. I think I can reasonably hope my job is safe because I don't blog about it and, as far as the Synod goes, I "can't be touched." Any more than I already have been, that is. And since I am now ready to acknowledge that the likelihood of my ever receiving a pastoral call in the LCMS is similar to my chances of winning the PowerBall (given that I don't buy lotto tickets), I may as well say my piece, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. And if you came here for entertaining gossip about "art, entertainment, and cat litter," bear with me; remember, "theology" has always been on the menu!

So, after lots and lots of ado, here's my piece.

The Eighth Commandment (by Catholic/Lutheran reckoning), the "false witness" one, forbids us among other things to speculate about other people's intentions and motivations. But given the Missouri Synod's public silence - and worse, feeble dissembling - where an explanation of several recent, public decisions was called for, the temptation to speculate has grown well-nigh irresistable. A plague of pundits has sprung up and they are doing more damage to each other than to the Synodical policies they oppose. They are like bickering shrews trying to attack a thick-skinned rhinoceros with toothpicks. One gets so distracted by all their nattering and their tendency to make the "opposition party" look bad that one almost suspects that is part of the regime's strategy. But one doesn't quite do so because that would be, you know, violating the 8th Commandment. Aargh.

I do think the "regime" does a disservice to its members by provoking this temptation. Plus, if one examines the regime's decisions (which are public knowledge) along with its stated theories and practiced methods, one can infer a few things that the pastors and laypeople of the LCMS need to talk about and think about. Here are some of the thinkings triggered by the LCMS regime's recent, publicly-known doings and talkings.

The time is coming, and now is, when the Synod will cease to exist for any practical purpose.

The "practical purpose" of the Synod is to furnish our congregations with pastors, our schools with teachers, and our mission field with missionaries so that they can "make disciples of all nations," etc. At present, the Synod as such is not doing any of these things. Far be it from me to speculate on what the Synod's current "purpose" is, but it doesn't seem to be anything most LCMS pastors and congregations care to support with their money.

If you want to fund a vibrant, evangelistic, distinctly Lutheran radio ministry, you must now support it directly because the Synod no longer has any direct role in it (and nor does the Lutheran Laymen's League and its broadcast program).

If you want to fund a college or seminary so that it can continue furnishing us with teachers and pastors, you must now support it directly because the Synod no longer etc. etc. To be sure, their Regents are elected by Synodical Convention delegates; but the authority of a Board of Regents is mainly theoretical these days. So the Concordias do what they please, and raise their own capital to do it with. Choose the one(s) most nearly doing what you think right and send your donations to them directly. Do not pass LCMS headquarters, do not let them collect your $200.00.

If you want to fund a school so that your church can more effectively "make disciples" of your own children - by rigorous catechesis - as well as reach out to other students who are unchurched... well, that's a matter of your personal stewardship, and that of your congregation. It's our Christian duty and, I dare say, ought to be a high priority for every LCMS church. It isn't. The schools are failing for lack of teachers we can afford to hire and lack of support via Christian stewardship. As soon as people start thinking of the school as so much financial ballast weighing down the sinking ship of the church, it is only a matter of time until the school gets jettisoned. Has the Synod offered any help or advice on this issue apart from hand-wringing and a stench of failure?

If you want to fund an African missionary who has been fulfilling the Great Commission, you must now support him directly since LCMS Mission fired him for baptizing children, teaching the faith, and other marks of "insubordination." Meanwhile LCMS Mission's late track record does not inspire one to open one's pocketbook. Steeped in the "Ablaze!" methodology, LCMS Mission has been recalling missionaries from planting churches and starting seminaries and sending, in their place, mostly short-term religious tourists who "witness the faith" by teaching ESL, doing mercy works, and (if the opportunity arises) sneaking a little Jesus talk in the back door. Plus, they have to travel on their own dime. So even what "mission work" LCMS Mission is doing isn't actually funded by LCMS Mission. Your mission dollars are truly going into a black hole. Why not just pick 3 or 4 missionaries in the field and arrange to fund them directly? Or, although LHF and CLEF aren't on speaking terms with each other, you could support either or both of them because they are currently doing things LCMS Mission promised to do 50 years ago.

If you want to support all the faithful pastors who have been persecuted and driven out of their parishes, forget it. You can't afford it, there are too many of them and the number keeps growing. What are they going to do with their skills and training? They're going to have to fall back on another line of work, because the LCMS has promoted lay ministry to such an extent that, even with a record number of "vacant" congregations, the seminaries can't place all their graduates. Guys like me, rotting away on Candidate Status after resigning or being driven from a parish, may not even find very much pulpit supply or vacancy work in a church climate where "lay deacons" are regarded as quite sufficient.

These conditions are the result of the Synod's recent teachings and policies on the ministry. A movement is in train to make the seminaries entirely redundant by setting up a different path to the pulpit more in keeping with this new "theology" of church and ministry. The result will be pastors who speak with less authority on the basis of God's Word, laypeople who derive less assurance of forgiveness and salvation from their teachings, and a move toward pastors as executives being hired, fired, and compensated in proportion to the growth and success of a commercial entity (formerly "church"). So far from furnishing the church with ministers, the LCMS regime is actively campaigning against the ministry of the Gospel.

In short, Synod for all practical uses has ceased to exist.

What will your congregation do in this post-synodical age? Will it join another Synod? I hope not. There are no greener pastures. There is only the real and present likelihood that, having joined the WELS, ELCA, or whatever, you will find yourself in the middle of an entirely different mess you are totally unequipped to deal with. It's time to face the fact that you don't need to have a Synod and you are better off without one.

How will your church get pastors? Simple. Keep the one you've got as long as you can. When he retires, dies, or takes a call elsewhere, make a list of the men in your church - men mature enough to provide leadership but not so old that they can have only a short ministry - men, say, in their late 20s and early 30s. Strike off the list anyone who obviously lacks the gifts and qualifications to be a pastor (not to put too strict a filter on), or to whom no one has a substantial objection. Write the remaining names on 3x5 cards, fold the cards, put them in a bag, and have someone pull one card out of the bag. Send the person named on the card to the seminary of his choice, with the congregation combining to pay all tuition-related expenses. Don't take no for an answer. And while he's at school, let the elders take turns reading the service out of a book, doing the Scripture readings, reading published sermons or even (by force of necessity) preaching. If you can explain what the Gospel lesson meant and why the doctrines it teaches are good to know, you can probably preach a better sermon than some people who have studied the craft at a high level.

Since the lottery drawing constitutes a commitment by your congregation to support that man and submit to his ministry, he can be regarded as your called and ordained pastor from that moment on. The seminary training is important, however, so that you can know greater assurance that what your pastor proclaims is the Word of God, and not the idle ramblings of a dilettante. Where he goes to the seminary is immaterial. If he goes to Concordia-Fort Wayne, he doesn't have to be placed in the LCMS. If he goes to Yale Divinity School, send him a set of Luther's Works and require him to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every page of it. Ta-Da! A quick recipe for Lutheran Pastor Without Synod! Any other questions?

Nasal Decongestant Chili

When it comes to chile con carne, I am hard to please. Nothing spoils one like living in Yuma, Arizona (a quaint suburb of San Luis, Sonora, on the lower Colorado River).

Mexican food within lunch-rush range of two Mexican states (Sonora and Baja California) is quite different from the caricature of it one gets to know in the Midwest. Or even in Texas. Things you expect to find on the menu (like folded tacos, fajitas, quesadillas, and chimichangas) are emphatically missing. Things you may never have heard of (like albondigas, pollo con mole, menudo, and machaca) cry out to be discovered. And things you thought you knew are served in quite a different way.

Here I am speaking of Mexican restaurants run by Mexican people and catering to mostly Mexican customers. I am speaking of homestyle food, plain, unadorned, and savory; of the best breakfast and lunch burritos in the world; of rolled tacos that you buy in orders of 4 or 6 and dip in salsa as a side dish; of the luxury of knowing someone with a Mexican-American mother-in-law (e.g., any ex-Marine you know) and who thereby has an endless and ready supply of homemade tamales in the freezer; and most especially, of chile served on one-third of a large plate, with the other two-thirds divided between Spanish rice and refried beans.

Because beans are on the side, there are none in the chile. This makes a remarkable difference. In the midwest, except maybe in Ohio, we are accustomed to thinking of chile as a bean stew in a peppery tomato broth. In Sonoran chile, the recipe may include sizable chunks of tomato (along with peppers and onions), but the broth if any is of the beef persuasion. The main thrust of the argument is chili peppers and meat: green chilis, green tomatoes, and pulled pork if it's chile verde; red chilis, red tomatoes, and carne asada (pulled beef) if it's chile colorado. Either one is great with refried beans mixed in; that's why the Gutierrez family's restaurants do such a roaring trade in "green mix" and "red mix" burritos.

Yes, this challenges the orthodoxy of Midwestern chile, just as my theory that pizza is essentially "bread with stuff on it" (and so a pizza is only as good as its crust) challenges the orthodoxy of St. Louis's favorite "pizza," which I prefer to call "deluxe cheese and crackers." The "so spicy it brings tears to your eyes tomato-bean-and-beef soup" type of chile misses the point of the dish. My theory is that "chile," in and of itself, is the red or green sauce - chiefly made of chili peppers, onions, and tomatoes - that authentic Mexican restaurants serve on top of enchiladas. It's basically what comes in cans labeled "Ro-Tel." Add pork, beef, or lamb to that and you have "chile con carne." It doesn't have to be searingly hot. Most restaurants serve side-dishes of house-made salsa picante, and/or have bottles of red-hot sauce on the tables, so you can season your own food to taste and no one has to sweat more than they like.

Tonight I made my own personal, bastardized style of chile, whose successive incarnations I have consistently (and accurately) called "Nasal Decongestant Chile." I could have called it "Turkish Bath Chile" (because it flushes so many unwholesome humors out of one's pores). I could have called it "Sauna Chile" (because my glasses fog up while I'm eating it, so it evidently affects the local humidity). I could have called it lots of Sonoran Desert-related things, like "javelina chile," or "gila monster chile," or "the scorpion," or "the coyote." But I haven't come up with anything more apt than "Sudafed in a Pan."

Here's the recipe I went with tonight. In a medium-sized saucepan brown about a pound of 90% lean ground beef, crumbled up with a middling onion chopped into haphazard chunks. Rather large chunks, because you're lazy. While that's browning, stir in some chili powder (chipotle is more than acceptable), cumin (the essential flavor to the Midwestern palate), and garlic powder (because you forgot to buy fresh garlic when you were shopping - one clove minced would have been better). Once it looks pretty well browned, dump in one or two little cans of diced chilis (I went with "mild" this time). Sprinkle in one or two leafy herbs if you like (like basil or cilantro). If you remembered to drain the grease out of the meat mixture before you started adding stuff (which I didn't), you can add low-fat beef broth toward the end (only I didn't have room in the pan this time; no worries). Bring everything to a simmer until it's heated all the way through. Period.

I omitted the side of beans and rice, but I did garnish with a bit of shredded cheese and some Town House crackers. Recipe yields two fat-stupid-jerk-sized portions, one of which will taste even better after refrigerating overnight in a sealed container.

Isn't that simple? And hot... Excuse me. I have to go blow my nose.

Orff Week

One of the main reasons I was out of touch last week was the final performance week of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus's 2007-08 season. Under guest conductor Peter Oundjian we performed the 1937 Latin/medieval German cantata Carmina Burana four days in a row. Thursday we got one of the biggest Thursday audiences in recent memory; Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's performances were sold out.

I kid you not. After singing our hearts out to the beautiful music of Rossini, Haydn, and Beethoven in front of half-empty or one-third-empty houses, we sang Orff to three (3) full houses in a row. I knew something big was happening when the ushers told members of the chorus that they couldn't stand at the back of the hall to listen to the first (non-chorus) half of the program on Friday night. "We've sold standing room" was their explanation. By one estimate, 10,000 St. Louisans heard us sing Carmina Burana last week!

The piece is as close to rock'n'roll as certifiably "classic" music can get. And as an audience favorite after more than 70 years, it is certifiably "classic." The last time I sang it, 15 years ago, I was in college; at the time I thought it was just right for college kids. Even so, the mature singers of the SLSC did it better, with scrupulous attention to authentic pronunciation of the "German-Latin" lyrics, and with the strength, agility, and polished vocal musicianship that only comes with years of practice. Nearly everyone in the chorus had sung Carmina before; many of them had sung it multiple times; a goodly few had been with the chorus in the 1990s when they recorded it under Leonard Slatkin.

We had spectacular soloists. Tenor Stanford Olsen (above right; I will cast him as "Fitz" the very minute I am ever put in charge of a stage musical based on Cracker) sang only one number - the complaint of a swan being roasted - but he managed to make the audience laugh more than once with his antics. Even hammier was bass-baritone Lucas Meachem (left), who had the audience in stitches during his racier songs about sex, gambling, and possibly flatulence - but who also delivered one of the most moving moments of each evening with the glowing falsetto, effortless improvisational flourishes, and emotional vulnerability of his song "Dies, nox et omnia."

Soprano Anna Christy (right) looked right for the part of the embodiment of young and seductive womanliness; her final solo ("Dulcissime") is the musical epitome of an orgasm. Barbara Berner's St. Louis Children's Choirs contributed to two numbers, including the ever-popular "Tempus est iocundum," often singing lyrics in Latin which they were too young to hear in English; and of course there was the chorus with its lovelorn women ("Ubi est antiquus meus amicus? Eia, quis me amabit?") and the mocking, drunken, and lustful men ("Tam quo papa quam pro rege bibunt omnes sine lege") - to say nothing of the orchestra with its vast percussion section, its timpanist wholly surrounded by drums, its solos for every instrument including piccolo, and its occasional paroxysms of violent noise.

This piece is a rebellion against classical methods of thematic development, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration. It is a revolutionary piece that, at the same time, revives poetry dating back to the year of our Lord 1280. It is music that revels in an excess of food, drink, love, and other amusements; music that celebrates spring, youth, and pleasure; and music in which all these things are held between two shattering statements on changeable and changeless fate. It is seriously pagan music preserved for centuries in a monastery; it is seriously primitive music that survives, like the text before it, as a great work of art; and it is seriously fun music that, quite understandably, draws huge crowds to this day - multigenerational crowds of lifelong and devoted fans who roared with approval at our performance that, even if it wasn't always perfect, had nary a dull moment in it.