Dear readers,

The Cereal List apologizes for our temporary hiatus. As you may have heard, we have been accused of libel and threatened with a lawsuit.  Our lawyers advise us to temporarily suspend our operations until the matter has been resolved. We expect to be up and running again sometime next week. Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

Milton Blabber and The Cereal List staff

A picture may be worth a thousand words but often 990 of them aren’t quite the right ones. So each and every Friday we’re giving you a chance to set the story straight with our weekly caption contest. You submit your captions and over the weekend The Cereal List aggregate will convene a panel to narrow the field down to small set of finalists. On Monday, we post the finalists and allow readers to select the winner.

This week’s prize for winning is the following killer T-shirt:

Submit your captions in our comments section!

**Caption comments can be submitted without using real names but must include a working email address (which will not be published).

According to the biography on his website,

Violinist Ray Chen captured the First Prize of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium…

Indeed “captured” may be the most accurate word to describe how Chen has acquired his multitudinous awards.  After failing multiple background checks due to “pre-existing conditions,” Chen recently discovered a loophole through which he can acquire an automatic weapon:

He now plans to “capture” even more first prizes. Someone should alert Young Concert Artists, Inc. Or do they already know?

If Maria Callas, Halle Berry, and M.I.A. had a child together, we’re fairly certain that it would come out looking and sounding pretty much like Danielle de Niese. (We’d also pay a pretty penny to see that sex tape, but that’s neither here nor there.) Though she’s firmly entrenched in the world of diva-dom now and probably too hot for us to Handel (oh, I am so sorry, what the hell is wrong with me?), we hold on to the hope that her Australian heritage would not preclude her from grabbing a cold beer with us one day. Hey, you gotta have dreams.

Hundreds of gay composers–and a few straight composers who write gay music–gathered for a “kiss-in” at the headquarters of New World Records in New York City this past weekend.  Their purpose was to persuade the classical music record label to produce additional installments of Composers Recordings International’s (CRI’s) series of albums celebrating gay and lesbian composers.

In the 1990s, CRI released the compilation albums Gay American Composers and Lesbian American Composers.  CRI went out of business in 2003, and the rights to its recordings were transferred to New World Records.

But some protestors have no faith that New World Records will carry the LGBT torch.  In fact, one group is starting its own grassroots record label, Agenda Recordings, headed by gay composer icon Robert Moran.  According to Moran, Agenda Recordings will “secretly recruit employees of New World and other mainstream labels to pose for semi-nude photographs on the album covers.”

Forget H1N1, a few weeks back, we learned via Soho the Dog about an even more disturbing mutation of the flu virus. Matthew recalls the trauma, “I spent a sleepless hour or two imagining ethereally audience-friendly Eric-Whitacre-esque five-part choral settings.” That’s enough to put anybody on their backs for a good week.

Like the regular flu, the disease is usually self-limiting, and characterized by nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain; and in some cases, loss of taste. General lethargy, weakness, muscle aches, headache, and low-grade fever may occur. Symptoms may persist for several days and may become life-threatening in the young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised if dehydration is ignored or not treated. When a person becomes infected with norovirus, the virus begins to multiply within the small intestine. After approximately 1 to 2 days, norovirus symptoms can appear. It has also been reported that the virus will cause ones hair to grow into a long flowing mane in just a matter of days.

The most disturbing fact about the Eric Whitacre Norovirus as Matthew discovered is that “transmission is predominantly faecal-oral but may be airborne due to aerosolisation of vomitus.” So if you happen to catch the virus, we know how you got it.

Thanks to our readers for their many wonderful captions. We’ve narrowed the captions down to five fantastic finalists and it’s up to you to choose the winner. Remember, there’s a whole lotta PRIDE on the line. Cast your vote now! Polls will close at 11:59 p.m.

A picture may be worth a thousand words but often 990 of them aren’t quite the right ones. So each and every Friday we’re giving you a chance to set the story straight with our weekly caption contest. You submit your captions and over the weekend The Cereal List aggregate will convene a panel to narrow the field down to small set of finalists. On Monday, we post the finalists and allow readers to select the winner.

Well, the Dude took the helm at the LA Phil this week. What do you possibly think might have been said here?

This week’s prize for winning: PRIDE!

Submit your captions in our comments section!

**Caption comments can be submitted without using real names but must include a working email address (which will not be published).

I’ve just listened to “Mohair Time Warp,” and decided that William Brittelle must be the most stunningly versatile lover anyone could wish for. Brittelle is the writer and composer of this epic and erratic piece for singer and chamber ensemble. He also performs it, lip-syncing the vocal part.

Speaking of lips in sync, I shall anticipate a ravishing evening of wild shifts from Punk to Emo. First I’ll succumb to a red-hot thrashing, then I’ll satisfy Brittelle’s insatiable desire for consolation and reassurance. Yes, Mr. Brittelle, you can shower me with your stream of consciousness anytime you want.

There has been a disturbing trend in recent music journalism pertaining to the classification of the unclassifiable music being created by an elite subset of musicians connected to the contemporary music scene. Two terms, in particular, have made an especially egregious entrance into the discourse: “indie-classical” and “bandsemble”.

Painstaking research indicates that the term “bandsemble” as it relates to the “new music” zeitgeist was first used in a September 12, 2008 broadcast of WNYC’s New Sounds in reference to the group Signal Ensemble though we credit the term’s meteoric rise to prominence in the lexicon of music journalism to New York Times and Time Out New York critic Steve Smith, who first used the term on his blog, Night After Night, to describe Missy Mazzoli’s girl-group Victoire. The term “indie-classical,” on the other hand, seems to have emerged from within the “scene” itself possibly as a ploy to attract more women in short skirts with small white tank-tops and black bras to shows.

Regardless of why these terms were invented—practical or perverted—they are illegitimate and need to be banished from contemporary musical discourse immediately. Sign the petition to show your support.