Max in Dad's Skechers

Max enjoys the comfort of a shoe that is larger than his head.

Dear Star Tribune Web People

Seriously, you guys. When there are related items and subheads under the main story, the paging forward goes too fast to read. Also, if I click an arrow, it should reset the page timer so it won't immediately move off of the story I was trying to look at.

That's my name, too!

The Minnesota Opera is currently running a production of Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti's tale of feuding Scots with Italian names. They have been promoting it on Classical Minnesota Public Radio and elsewhere with the tagline "In all of opera, there's only one Lucia." I've found this to be fairly useless, as it tells nothing of what the story is about, and is also quite generic. You could just as well say that in all of opera there is only one Aida, one Figaro (one character in three operas), or one Nixon.

I was talking about this over the weekend with my opera-buff father, and he explained that besides being silly, the phrase is also false:

• there is a Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana (the one-act opera featured in the climax of Godfather III that tried so hard to be the climax from Godfather I)
• Mimi, the female lead in La Boheme, explains "Mi chiamano Mimi, ma il mio name e Lucia" ("They call me Mimi, but my real name is Lucia")

So not only is there not only one Lucia in all of opera, but we only need to come up with two more to create an "Operatic Lucias" Jeopardy category.


I propose that for the rest of the week, the MN Opera and MPR revise the ad copy to "In all of opera, there are no fewer than three Lucias. This is one of them." No doubt the Ordway will be standing room only next weekend in gratitude for the accuracy.

David Macaulay's "Pyramid"

I grew up on David Macaulay. His books on engineering and architecture, along with Legos, are the primary reasons I started on the path to structural engineering. All his PBS specials were great, but Pyramid is the one I watched over & over. Someone has finally put it up on Youtube.

Some notes:

1. It is my understanding that many then-widely-understood details of Egyptology have been revised since this first aired in 1988. Unfortunately, my working knowledge was sort of crystallized with this special, and I'm probably quite out-of-date.

2. I learned a couple years back that the voice cast for the cartoon story was made up mostly of prominent British actors, including the likes of Brian "Boss Nass" Blessed and John Hurt. The Pharaoh Khufu was not, however, killed by a parasitic alien explosively erupting from his chest cavity.

3. It's far more pronounced in the video, but David Macaulay now reminds me of Will Forte with a moustache.

4. Best lines of the cartoon, which became greetings between me and a high school world history classmate:

• "Yes, I think it will be."
• "My... father's... tomb..? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Anyway, please enjoy.