captainsblog | Falletta, Buffalo, two-minute minor, high-batoning.

We decided to take a break from movie-watching tonight and have just been reading (in Eleanor's case), computer-puttering (in mine), and, for both of us, listening to the local classical station. A few minutes ago, I decided to put the hockey game on, but only the video, leaving WNED to provide the soundtrack for the game.

The closed-captioning was on the television, and some sort of Shostakovich was coming out of the speakers, when I realized: damn, this is better choreographed than a Latest Disney Shit on Ice production. The wistful sounds of the woodwinds coincided amazingly with the Sabres and Leafs slamming each other into the boards, and the vibrations of the strings accompanied line changes and one late-period march to the penalty box. In time, Eleanor and I started putting Rick Jeannaret's words to the tunes we were hearing.

"I wonder if this is how Gilbert and Sullivan started out," I said after the eighth measure of the coda got called back for icing.

Eventually, Emily came out to see what was so damn funny. Right about then, I'd realized the added surrealness coming from the fact that the words in the captions, which we were synching to the music, were actually showing up about five seconds after the movements on the ice which they were describing.

"Not that we should use them or anything," I sternly warned the child, "but this is why drugs were invented."

ETA. Sabres win; Shostakovich nominated for a Grammy.