I have never sung the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. I saw the entire oratorio a very long time ago, done by the Arcadia Players, a chamber ensemble in western Massachusetts, but my choir director never wanted to perform it, saying that everyone does it and there's nothing really different you can do with it in terms of interpretation or presentation. I tend to agree, but you know what? It's still a cool piece, and I like it. So there.

I learned some new things about comedians, watching Paul Rodriguez on a Latino comedy special on Showtime, taking place in El Paso. They both generate humor by comparing Latino (where "Latino" means "Mexican" or "Mexican-American") and Anglo experiences of family, work, and friends. But they frame the comparisons differently: the first guy had a repeating format of "Latinos do this thing, Anglos do this other thing", a tedious method of comparison that I remember trying to avoid when writing papers in school. Rodriguez, by comparison, is fresh and flowing, and I realized it's because he just tells stories. Instead of saying "This is how Latinos act", he talks about something he or his father or mother did, and points up something quintessentially Latino about the experience. In reality you don't really need to explicitly state much about the white experience, because everyone knows: it dominates literature and television. If you tell the story well, everyone will get the point.

The past couple of weeks have been very educational, in that way the world has of constantly rearranging the way you see things. Whatever happens, everything will be fine.