Driving with the kids for about two hours today, we listened to Lady Gaga and Adele. Putting them on means the kids keep the headphones off. We shifted to ‘West Side Story’ in the last 20 minutes.
“Paparazzi” came on, and I visualized (while still driving safely) the three moments in the video I like the most.
1.) Malady-afflicted celebrity bravely and stylishly taking to the red (okay, lavender) carpet on crutches (2:54 mark):
2.) The Mickey Mouse ensemble with plastic/wax lips she has when poisoning her attempted murderer (5:45 mark):
3.) Dishevelled sass when getting her mugshots at the police station (7:16 mark):
The full video for your convenience (all about saving you the keystrokes in a search engine):
A fast entry because I’m tired of a squirrel carcass being the toppamost post. Here’s a photo of Marilyn Monroe reading ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce. One may snort derisively. Remember Monroe was married to esteemed playwright Arthur Miller. She likely enjoyed the book. Also this photo is adorable and brainy and hot.
If you CHOOSE to eat chicken, do it in private. But stop putting your chicken-eating in my face all the time. And don’t, in any way, try to lure MY CHILDREN into your lifestyle.
Anytime there’s a restaurant scene on t.v. or in the movies, I have to shield my children’s eyes. Didn’t have to worry about that only a few years ago. Now HOLLYWOOD makes it seem like choosing to eat chicken is an entirely natural thing that doesn’t bring the wrath of vengeance upon us all. It totally does! Did Hurricane Katrina happen in a non-chicken-eating country? Case closed.
Nothing angers me more than when a leader I voted for or gave money to for his moral stance on not letting chicken-eaters marry or teach ends up getting caught eating turducken. Happens too often to count.
Our nation’s morals and marriages are in the toilet. Stop eating chicken. Stop trying to get my kids to eat chicken. Back off. Eat more cows. They have got it coming. Book of Angus 4:21 “Consume not the flesh of fowl, for it is effeminancy and an abomination.”
And enough with the chicken pride parades. Do that stuff at home (at the peril of your immortal soul) but get your plumage and clucking off MY streets that MY tax dollars pay for.
Grim information below in the museum at the Donner Memorial Park in California (a lovely place with a nice lake, paths, impressive scenery with high hills above). Yet the location largely comemorates the famous Donner Party travelers who were stranded en route to California and had to eat about half of the people. I mean eat ALL of half of the people, not eat half of each person. Tidbit: the relatively wealthy Donner family was largely spared, most of the people eaten were poorer and/or servants.
The typo (or was it intentional?) that “Feuds and internal disagreements lowered their moral and further slowed the pace.”
Took a series of cannibal-related photos with the family around the site. Am guessing we are not the first to do so. Locals are probably tired of cannibal humor to the point where it no longer has any, well, bite to it. A rich and nutritious source of amusement for us tourists, though.
Cannibals in Polynesia refer to human flesh as “long pig”. Recommend white wine, then.
“The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.” — Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pornography. The new movie Magic Mike, about male strippers according the advertising campaign, made me think about this theory of art expounded by fictional college student Stephen Dedalus. And about desire. Dirty, dirty desire. And art.
QUICK! A photo of a chick, before the attention drops!
Dedalus’ theory is infused with the Catholic shame that evoking desire is something base and bad, exclusive of a more noble high-mindedness. Life isn’t quite that way, neither is art, but it does reflect my experiences in strip clubs.
The photo is one I took of a performer in Mary’s Club in downtown Portland as she says “Thank you!” to marchers on the inaugural day of Occupy Portland on October 6, 2011. A scantily-clad dude stands behind her, amused (easier to see if you zoom in).
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve been in a strip club. I hardly go out. I often go months without going into a bar. When I have gone to strip clubs, some of the time is spent desiring/coveting the performers on the stage. I don’t get aroused significantly, enticed is nearer the mark. Some of the time is also passed people watching, though watching people watch the same person you can has limited charm.
Mostly I wonder what the performer is thinking, and seeing through her eyes.
And I don’t feel pity, at least if the place is decent. The assumption many make that strippers and porno actresses have troubled family lives (doesn’t everyone?) and daddy issues (again, doesn’t everyone?) is condescending. Similar jabs aren’t laid at porno dudes or male dancers. It’s slut-shaming masquerading as gender sensitivity. Feh! FEH!
I have no statistics, but as this is the internet, amn’t gonna care. Stories abound of women who danced to help pay for college, knowing it was a waystation to another, better life. Or people who made a good living for a while. Who cares? Why judge?
It’s expression, it’s a mating display in controlled circumstances. An extension of the same mating/style displays we ponder when we decide what to wear because of how it looks/fits/conveys us for the day.
In strip clubs, if the vibe is good, I wonder what it’s like to be so desired. Thoughts fill of the power wielded, to have a physique that inspires want and awe from people who don’t know you. To know that and to use that to get what you need, to make a living, to hold people in thrall. To externalize that power with a smirk slays me when dancers do it.
Yes, it is possible to dwell in these thoughts while listening to lousy butt-rock music as women swirl around a pole. It is possible to have esthetic arrest and epiphanies to Motley Crüe or REO Speedwagon.
One of my favorite artists, singer/songwriter Sam Phillips, performs “The Fan Dance” in 2008.
Walking yesterday the sight of a balloon art installation tethered to a stairway off the Burnside Bridge caught my eye. Caught about 4-5 peoples’ eyes. Snapped some photos. Within an hour the balloon man was gone. Was the artist/perpetrator among the people snapping photos, taking photos of people taking photos? Didn’t much care. If so, give them their moment. This was interesting.
During a morning walk, a turn of brain had me switch from the audiobook for A Dance with Dragons (why, Roy Dotrice, must you lose track of your character voices from book to book?) to the two songs on my iPod by Neil Sedaka.
I know he’s recorded a lot more songs in his long career. I recall an odd love duet with his daughter. What trips me out about “Calendar Girl” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” is the forced cherubism. “Though sad inside, I shall for the sake of commerce and Tin Pan Alley heave a superhuman effort into PROJECTING MIRTH THOUGH ITS FORCE MAY REND TIME/SPACE ASUNDER!”
Let’s focus on his shout out to “December” in “Calendar Girl”. He uses the word “‘neath”. He could have used “beneath” and it would have still flowed. But no, he formally sat at a table, wrote the word “‘neath” on the music sheet and thought “How winningly informal and crafty. I shall keep it.”
He gives out a “Whoo!” at the start of the bridge (at 1:26 in the clip below) that is hilarious. “Holy Christmas on a cracker, I got so much groove I don’t know what to do but whoop in exultation!”
Drafting this on my phone, its AutoCorrect suggested “Meat” for “Neil”, “Defamation” for “Sedaka”, “Shop” for “Whoo”. Good summary, phone! Somewhere out there my smartphone has a funnier, more concise blog than mine.
Largely house-bound day, about 5:30 p.m. I rustled the family up, insisting on a field trip to the record/CD store while they still exist. Music Millenium (“A place where the music and the people still matter”). I was on the hunt for a next opera CD.
I’d taken the kids there before, but it was several years ago and they had no memory of it. They found the candy section right away and started bargaining. “Can we get candy instead of music?” “NO! Go look around.”
We went separate directions. Where is the opera section? Over in classical, duh. Down the stairs, then some other stairs. Gotta open a door then down OTHER stairs to get into the classical room, then opera is in a closet of THAT room. Like finding a brightly lit opium den.
Got there, browsed a bit, took some tips from the “Opera 101” book I’m reading. Side track: the author is bugging me. He loves using the phrase “the fact that”, once using it in consecutive sentences (*wince*).
I’ve already got Maria Callas in Norma, the first opera CD I bought (bet Fanny Chicken can suss out why) and have listened to Callas’ studio recording of Carmen loads of times, leading to seeing it a few weeks ago. Thanks, T! Madama Butterfly probably the next opera I’ll attend, probably in a few weeks. Found a recording of … Maria Callas performing THAT, nabbed it. Double CD (w00t!) with a bonus CD-ROM of material (wh@t?).
Back in the day (as kids like to say, I’m trying to reach their demographic – how’s that coming across? Cool? Kinda molester-y?) I really like the interactive CD-ROMs put out by Peter Gabriel (still think about those), Sting ‘All this Time’ (Andrew & I joke about that one), and Prince’s ‘Interactive’ (wish there were a smell-o-vision feature). Haven’t tried the opera CD-ROM, but it’s probably documents, not interactive games like “coax the diva to the stage after she received an underwhelming bouquet from her new paramour”.
Also got a Callas opera buffet CD – more than 100 songs over 6 CDs! – that I’ll use as a reference when the various operas get a mention in the Opera 101 book. Small doses. Looking at the track lists made me woozy what with all the languages that weren’t American.
The Madama Butterfly did not have a price tag on it. Asked a clerk in the middle of the store for a price check. Clerk got nervous. “That’s from the opera section.”
“Can you look it up here?”
“Yes. But, it’s from the other section.”
[Non-verbal ??? on my face]
“There may be a special deal or something. They would know.”
“I assumed the whole store would be connected to the same system.” What is up with this opera ghetto treatment?
Clerk scanned it, $23.99. Thanked him, still baffled. But there are old-school rectangular red or white or orange price stickers on the CDs at Music Millenium, and the clerk wanted to make sure I was getting any sale they might be having that would not be reflected in the computer system. So, sorry for my faces, brother. It was $23.99 in the opera/classical register, too, this time.
Daughter got the new Muppet Movie music CD. Son picked nothing. Spouse got a few CDs including a greatest hits of Pink Martini. A new Decemberists CD sits in our home, so far unopened this last month. Tough for parents to find time to listen to new music, but why am I reluctant to seek out music by local artists? I have this threshold for only listening to artists after they hit the mainstream. Never hire me to be an A/R guy, I’d never go anywhere to seek out prospects.
Also picked up the new Patton Oswalt CD. No idea he had one. Why didn’t he tell me?
Got this book for Christmas. Doesn’t cover ‘Carmen’, but I’ll be reading it in 2012.People who know or like opera may want to avert their eyes, I’m about to fling ignorance around like water off a wet dog.
I had only seen three operas. In the late 70s or early 80s I saw a family friend in the female lead of Pirates of Penzance. In the 90s I saw another friend in Candide. Around 1990 PBS aired all of Wagner’s Ring cycle done by the New York Metropolitan Opera. I made it through the first show, and part of the second, then interest waned. A foreign language! Subtitles? German? Even as a fan of Norse myths it was too slow, too much work.
Julia Roberts about to bug the shit out of me.So, in the dark I remained. Yet, I knew enough to get PISSED at Pretty Woman during the scene where the prostitute (Julia Roberts) is told by her aristocrat Wall Street tycoon john (Richard Gere) that people either get, nay FEEL, opera or they don’t. And only the first time. After that, they may LIKE opera, but they have a never-to-be-remedied manqué soul or something like that. Sure as shit, arriviste Julia Roberts weeps at the opera. Her first time. Ah! See? Heart of gold! What if it were a bad production, Richard Gere, and she were turned off by that? Eh? Even though I didn’t know opera, I knew enough to think: “Stop! In the name of Art! Fuuuck YOOOUUU, Pretty Woman!”
I didn’t (and still mostly don’t) like musicals. And operas amplified what I didn’t like about musicals. As a story conveyance device, they were terrible. Rarely showing anything. Flooding the audience with repetitive wordy words, in a foreign language, and not offering much wisdom. Do operas even try have a message? Modern operas, maybe. There’s a new one about Nixon going to China. Watching Pat Nixon sing songs might be funny. Otherwise, whatever.
But during 2011, something clicked, and I got interested (though still intimidated). I finally got that operas were not meant to be didactic, they were pageants for humans to stand in defiance of nature’s amoral flow. That flow will always prevail, but the demiurge to create a moment and marker was important. Melodrama was inherent. We, as humans, would never win, but identity is conflict, and maybe we would find something of ourselves in that temporary stand. And then the catharsis thing and watching people we empathize with suffer as scapegoats for the expiation of our sins (“Die before me Carmen, so that I may mourn the zesty side of me that yet dreams!”) and on and on.
I also got interested in the biography, glamor, and drama of Maria Callas. To be a strong opera performer, compelled to master that moment before a crowd, demands a strong ego. The appeal of the diva will probably be a necessity for holding MY attention. I doubt male vocalists will have that hold for me.
Asking for guidance on Facebook, one friend affirmed Callas was a good start (I already had been listening to her in Norma). Another friend suggested Carmen as the opera to get to know. Snorkeling gear on loan from Parnassus, I leaned off the edge of the boat and flopped in. Read a plot synopsis, then a couple. Read that Bizet wrote “Toreador” in a contemptuous pique of needing to throw a sure-fire hit to the rabble. Problem is, that kind of apocryphal story is told about a LOT of artists, to the modern day. It creates an artificial bond between the artist, the purveyor of the bogus story, and the listener: “Only WE get [insert name of artist]. The swine out there who think [insert name of popular work by artist] is awesome don’t know how low the artist regarded THEIR kind of taste.”
Bought a studio recording of Callas in Carmen. It became a soundtrack for writing. Much of the score was familiar, of course. Visions of The Bad News Bears during the overture. I’m down with that, though. It’s a good movie.
At the end of this year, I caught a production of Carmen on its opening night and truly enjoyed it. The theater was only half full, motivating a shift to better seats during an intermission. Pavlovian conditioning also brought me to scribble writing ideas during the show.
Voices were good, music done well. I don’t have a discerning ear about opera so I can’t get too analytical there. Some of the acting was dull, especially the body language. But the biomechanics of singing opera capably AND being a nimble performer may be impossible. How many divas wear gowns/muumuus so vast you end up marveling they can ambulate their massive torsos around on anything not a downward slope?
I knew the opera was in French, but was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow the lyrics. Yet it was doubtful Eugene was THAT full of people fluent or conversant in French. Don’t get me wrong, a college town and all, but STILL – THOUSANDS of people paying money to hear and comprehend French sung operatically? Translated lyrics were projected above the stage. Ah! Bien merçi!
José was in good voice, mostly. Body language sluggish. Carmen was lusty and unapologetic and lived large. Escamillo was funny and preening and bold. Micaëla was lovely with a great voice and the performer seems destined for ascension.
Four acts in ‘Carmen’. Act one was okay. Got swept up in Act two. Laughed in Act three. Admired the countdown of ‘Carmen’ getting sacrificed for our benefit in Act four. Was impressed that I never caught any illuminated rectangles from cellphones or cameras in the audience the entire time. Also, there were no patronizing announcements asking people to turn off their cellphones. People just KNEW and … no phones rang during the show. A good experience both inward and a mass commisseration. Felt entertained, moved, and optimistic about being a human being.
Yes, I realize if this page is setup right the video played automatically, causing music to come out of your speakers as soon as you got here like a webpage from 1997. Kickin’ it old school. To compensate, check out this charming performance of “Habanera” by Callas below … and YOU get to control the playback. You’re welcome!
