Totally Cereal

Home of The Whopper

To a certain extent, complaining about politicians stretching the truth (a.k.a. lying) is like complaining that water is wet. What else did you expect?

That said, I am personally in awe of the two Democrats currently vying for their party's nomination to run for president. When it comes to telling falsehoods, it is tough to top these two.

"Government is corrupt, so give it total control!"

There are few things quite so ironic in political discourse as listening to Bernie Sanders, the doddering socialist from lily-white Vermont, lecturing the rest of us about poverty and race.

At last night's debate in Flint, Michigan Sanders actually said this: "When you're white ... you don't know what it's like to be poor."

Wow. This will come as a complete shock to the 11.6 percent of white Americans who fall below the poverty line.

Can it be that Sanders has never heard of Appalachia?

"By 'transparent' I mean totally, unlawfully secretive."

Compared to Hillary Clinton,
of course, Sanders is a complete amateur.

In an interview with CNBC's John Harwood yesterday, for instance, Mrs. Clinton informed us that she is "the most transparent public official in modern times."

Yeah, right...

Of course, yesterday's interview wasn't the first time she has made this laughably absurd claim.

"My favorite moment was when Bernie showed her the pimp hand."

Mine, too...

Exhaling

As of yesterday afternoon my beloved Kansas City Royals are officially off the schneid, having beaten the Los Angeles Angels 6-1 for their first 2016 Cactus League win.



RHP Chris Young gave up a run on three hits in two innings of work, a good first outing for a guy the Royals need to be a reliable member of their starting rotation.

"You know spring training games don't count, right?"

That's not the point...

National Cereal Day

So today is officially National Cereal Day, which I must confess was completely news to me. Of course, everything gets to have its own "day" these days, so it is difficult to keep track of them all.

Now that the weather is warming up it's time to start getting back into dry cereals for breakfast. During the winter months
I mostly prefer hot breakfasts, including hot cereals like Cream of Wheat.

I'm not a fan of pre-sweetened cereals. When it is dry cereal season around here it will typically be a nice bowl of Total, Wheaties, Cheerios, Special K, etc.

Being a Language Geek Ain't Easy

From the indispensable webcomic xkcd, by Randall Munroe, which you should read every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, as I do.

Until Next Time...

On March 7, 1875 Joseph Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France, a town very near France's border with Spain. The child of a French father and a Basque mother (who had grown up in Madrid), Ravel found himself as a composer while studying at the famed Conservatoire de Paris. By the 1920s he was widely considered France's greatest living composer.

I had only a passing familiarity with Ravel as a composer until I needed to become acquainted with him for a play I was directing in 2003. I'm glad to have made the acquaintance.

Although Ravel was widely praised for his mastery of the intricacies of orchestration,
he only wrote a handful of concert works for symphony orchestra.

One such work was his Rapsoide espagnole, which he debuted in Paris in 1908. It is significantly influenced by Ravel's Spanish heritage.

The work is one of my favorite shorter pieces, and I'm always interested in listening to a new performance or recording of it.



Today's send-off is a stirring live performance of the piece from The BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 2013. Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Enjoy...