Plaidophile

(Also that image isn't fair to the quality of HDTV, but I'd already deleted the original HDTV source when I was watching this so I couldn't do a direct crop out of the original high-bitrate 720p feed. Oh well.)

I'm amazed that he can keep that thing from getting caught in the bridge of his violin. How is the reception on your over-the-air HD by the way?

I think the beard is what's playing the violin.

The reception is awesome. Actually the new TV's tuner is way better than the old one... the old one I needed a powered antenna with very careful tuning, but the new one is fine with a bit of wire jammed into the antenna jack. The only thing I don't get reliably is Fox, and that doesn't matter since I already DVR all the Fox shows I like so only getting everything else for live TV is fine.

BTW, Dave Letterman looks really scary in HD. He's like a walking corpse.

(Of course I had HD before, but it was on a CRT and essentially a 22" diagonal picture, which is an order of magnitude smaller than a 40" discrete-pixel 1080p LCD display. Also that picture above was OTA, it was just processed through DVR which makes it less sharp than the live version.)

From the Seattle Symphony Orchestra homepage, it appears that the fellow's name is Clark Story.

Meet the Symphony

Hm, I tried finding stuff on that page but I could only find the principals. Weird. My browse-fu must be in need of a tuneup.

Finding more information about him is difficult because of common phrases like "The Ron Clark story" and "The Lewis and Clark story."

fluffy:

Hm, I tried finding stuff on that page but I could only find the principals. Weird. My browse-fu must be in need of a tuneup.

Finding more information about him is difficult because of common phrases like "The Ron Clark story" and "The Lewis and Clark story."

A search for "Clark Story" and "Seattle Symphony" brought up a few articles[1] [2], but nothing that really mentions him aside from a single quote about his personality.

Clark Story, a Seattle Symphony violinist who describes himself as an outspoken "lightning rod" in the orchestra, points out that all our major sports teams (Mariners, Seahawks, Sonics) have had new coaches during Schwarz's Seattle tenure, and that "it's time for a new coach at the Symphony."

It seems as though there is a lot of childish drama within the symphony. A lot of political maneuvering and infighting.

Yeah, I've heard a lot about that actually. One of the mailing lists I subscribe to at work is classical-music-lovers and every now and then the latest eye-rolling developments in the Seattle Symphony Soap-opera get discussed.

Classical music itself might be mature and refined but the people who perform it are still prone to take themselves way too seriously.

My initial reaction to that picture was "My god, that man is a dwarf! Like a braid the beard, bind it in brass, and tuck it into his belt Tolkein style dwarf!" The girlfriend now thinks I'm a madman.