Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Do you have too much work to do this weekend to get off campus? Yeah, we do too, but there is a compelling reason to leave tonight. Namely, the alternative involves the oddities of a Scottish guy’s digestive system. Not that we have anything against the Regurgitator if that’s your thing, but we’d prefer to pretend it never happened here. And on Saturday night? It’s Screw, and maybe we shouldn’t ask why someone would want to avoid that. It could be a sensitive topic.
We could trundle off to Philadelphia with the remaining scraps of our dignity to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra continue with their revolutionary and innovative programmatic theme- Beethoven symphonies! We’ve never heard any of those before! But, really, it’s No. 6, the Pastoral, this weekend at 8:00 on Friday and Saturday. It’s a piece that will conjure up many happy thoughts of green fields, sheep, and natural beauty in general, including an exciting thunderstorm in the fourth movement. The other piece on the program is “Insomnia” by the Finnish composer-conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, a late replacement for an intended world premiere by Bright Sheng (word has it the piece was not ready for prime time yet). After three weeks under the baton of Simon Rattle, the orchestra is again led by their music director, Christoph Eschenbach.
In the weird movies department, we have “Night Watch,” a Russian sci-fi horror oddity based on a novel by Sergei Lukyanenko. We don’t read quite enough sci-fi to be able to understand the plot summary very well. Something about a powerful Other that will rise up and plunge the world into a new fight between Light and Dark. Sort of like our most recent English lit paper, but with more epic battles and zombies and stuff (which would have made our paper much more fun). The New York Times describes it as “Star Wars Meets the Vampires in Moscow,” which is just awesome. It’s playing at the Ritz 5 in the Old City.
