We have a new and absolutely silly treat for you here at T.V.O.D. this month.  Don’t try this with 56K, but, if you have broadband access and click on our television of the month, you will be connected to an mpg of Tony saying ‘hello’ to you.  The file is the size of a floppy disc.  Enjoy!

In my new job, I am the editor of the Episcopal Clerical Directory and now helping shepherd to fruition (is it mixed metaphors when it’s animals and vegetables?) the latest software.  If you click on this link, you will see another mpg, this one fifteen seconds of my office.

This month, T.V.O.D. is all about nothing.  It’s occurred to me that the monthly magazine style just isn’t interesting to me.  Actually, from an analysis of “hits” it seems you’re not interested either!  So next month we will return to the format of a daily diary.  And with the arrival of Bryan’s folks, it should prove interesting.

August also marks the one-year anniversary of my working at Church Publishing.  Yes, if you check out the August 2000 page, you’ll recall that I came to work here as a temp in order to do data entry for the clerical directory.  And now I’m the editor of it!  What a difference a year makes.

Above is a picture from a dinner held on August 24 and 25, the birthdays of my mother and father.  Yes, they are exactly one day and one year apart and Bryan and I took them to Appetito’s restaurant where we’ve gone for drinks before.  Shown (left to right) are Bryan, me, Emily and Mario Vitale, an Italian student who has been staying the week with my folks, my cousin Carol D'Agostino and her friend John, and John and Lorraine Dizzia, daughter of my mother's Aunt Virginia.
 

Above are four pictures of me with my parents, again at the birthday party.

As for the Appetito’s (located at 47 West 39th Street just off Sixth Avenue), every Friday night there are always a bunch of regulars from New York’s opera scene.  Or should I say New York’s “old” opera scene.  Yes, these are fading lights from the past who still enjoy getting dressed up and joining the three opera singers and piano player that the restaurant has on hand.  It’s always a lot of fun, if a bit surreal.

As you will read in next month’s diary, I actually bought the following compact discs on Friday, September 21 but this page needs the content more!

You can click on the artist’s name for their home page or a page devoted to them, any of the album titles for specific information about the disk, or any of the covers to get more information.
 
 

Included in that shopping day (from left to right, top row to bottom) were new albums by:

Laurie Anderson — Life on a String based on her performance art interpretation of Moby Dick that Bryan and I saw at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on October 14, 1999;
Utah Saints — Twois their second album, which arrives almost a decade after their debut; and
Groove Armada — goodbye country (hello nightclub) [sic], also their second commercial release;

as well as re-releases by

999 — their eponymous debut from 1977 (every time they played Boston, lead singer Nick Cash would find me at Spit and drag me out drinking until all hours of the morning!);
Klaus Nomi — Eclipsed is a greatest hits collection of the avant-garde singer who backed up Bowie on Saturday Night Live and died of AIDS complications in 1983; and
Suicide — Ghost Ridersis the re-mastered ROIR cassette of the legendary Alan Vega/Martin Rev anniversary of ten years of performing together.

And what shopping trip would be complete without one great classical disk by Ralph Vaughan Williams?

Richard Hickox leads the London Symphony Orchestra in a special World Premier Recording of the original 1913 version of A London Symphony (Symphony No. 2) on Chandos, containing almost twenty minutes of music he deleted in later revisions.  This unique performance is the only one to be authorized by his widow, Ursula Vaughan Williams.

Finally, for no good reason, here is a picture of me with my parents in Cranford.

And so that’s it for the month of August; it’s time to move on to September where there’s real news.  Thanks for coming by.

Adelante!

Take me home

Remind me of what Tony was talking about last month

Take me to September

I found an on-line multi-lingual dictionary if you'd like one.