Sakura of DOOM

Argh! My computer ate my first post!

I'm still behind on comments and behind on LJ; I suspect I will be for a good few months, as real life has started to get very busy.

( Avenue Q )

( Max Brenner, take two )

After lunch, my sister persuaded me that buying (yet more) peas at the Union Square market and lugging them around while shopping would be a very bad idea. Given that we got home around 7, I think she was right. Though I still miss the peas...

We wandered around Soho because I wanted to visit Purl Soho (a yarn store) and stopped by around 18 different clothing stores along the way. I didn't manage to find any clothes that I liked, but I did find a pair of ten-dollar flats that I got. I think I can wear them dancing. Also, they are pink!

We also managed to trudge over to BookOff at the very end of a long afternoon. Yay Bookoff! Sadly, I couldn't find more cheap $1 manga that I wanted, but I did manage to get some other stuff. I also persuaded my sister to get Emma vols. 3 and 4, so I feel the trip was rather successful.

( Stanton Social )

I saw Stomp last week. It was nifty.

Wah, non-adequate description. I'm not actually quite sure how to describe it if you haven't seen the ads for it -- it's not so much a musical so much as people making rhythms and beats out of really random objects. There's no dialogue or real story. I suspect it's a bit like Blue Man Group, from what I've heard? The basic stage set-up looked like some sort of run-down street with garbage cans everywhere, and the show starts with some guys in messy clothing walking out with brooms and sweeping the streets. More people come out, and soon, you've got about ten people up on stage sweeping. The bristles all make different noises, and all the people have tap shoes on (I think), and everyone is doing different little rhythms by banging the brooms on the floor every so often or making short sweeps or other things. It sounds rather small, but the overall effect was really cool.

My favorite segment was when a group of people were sitting around reading newspapers and started making their own noises by flapping the papers or crumpling them or fanning them out or something, including the one crazy guy eating it. Hee!

Anyhow, I suspect I am making this sound incredibly boring, but it was just really, really cool watching people all start out by making ordinary, boring noises and eventually making them into music by doing them in rhythm and by making them into dance as well.

When I left the theater, I was making all sorts of random outdoor noises into music in my head.

It just made me think, what is music anyway, except a whole bunch of random sounds strung together in a not-so-random fashion? I just liked that they had me looking at everyday objects in an entirely different way -- everything, including the kitchen sink (literally!), was used, and this one nifty bit had people just flicking lighters on and off, and another had these people just sitting around and rummaging in a garbage bag looking for things to make noise with. It actually reminded me a bit of those old Pringles commercials, where everyone would drum around on the Pringles cans, or The Triplets of Belleville, which had the eponymous triplets (haha! I use giant SAT word totally gratuitously!) playing music on their old refrigerator and vacuum cleaner and things.

I liked how they made random noise into music just by paying attention to things, and I liked how it seemed to be a music of people, not necessarily sophisticated music that required years of training. Of course, this is probably one of those handwavy stage magic things, because to move like that and know beats like that probably requires lots of time and training. It just seemed like the show was fueled by the POV that anything can be art and that art can be found anywhere; you just have to know how to listen, how to look, and how to shape your world.

Question (because obviously, my FL knows everything): I managed to get my hands on Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter, Unnatural Death, Clouds of Witness and Gaudy Night, since I am planning on reading them sometime. Is there any sort of handy reference out there that tells me what order I should read them in?

The boy showed me an organizational chart of Time Warner and all the companies it owns and said, "Look, it's the world!" Truly it is the evil empire ;).

I continue to enjoy the Assassins soundtrack, albeit in a slightly strange way. I can't help it. Some of the songs are just so peppy. I love the Sousa-esque "How I Saved Roosevelt" and the banjo-y "Ballad of Booth" and the folk song-y "Ballad of Czolgosz." The Czolgosz song particularly reminds me of "Big Rock Candy Mountain." I just realized while listening to this how much Americana music (is that even a term? Probably not) I listened to while growing up, mostly thanks to the wonderful "Wee Sing America" and "Wee Sing Around the Campfire." Also, the insanely optimistic "Ballad of Guiteau." But while I'm sitting in my car and enjoying listening to them, there will inevitably be a point in which my brain realizes that the songs are still about the assassination of American presidents, and as such, are pretty violent and unhappy. I don't think I'll ever quite get over that disconnect.

I think Sondheim does a particularly good job in reconciling the funny and the horrific in "How I Saved Roosevelt," which could have very easily been a straight comic piece. But every single time I'm giggling like mad because of Sondheim's rhymes (they remind me of "A Weekend in the Country" in A Little Night Music) and the fact that assassinating the president is somehow a solution to one's aching belly, Zangara bursts into the song screaming, "No laugh! No funny!" with a terrifying fury, and suddenly it's not funny anymore. Also, it's a frightfully cheery song for something that ends with the buzzing of the electric chair.

"Something Just Broke" will forever make me think of 9/11. I wasn't even alive for the assassination of JFK, I don't remember the Challenger, or most other national tragedies. I would like to say that 9/11 changed my entire outlook on life, but I'm not sure if it did. It's not as though there was much violence of that nature in Taiwan, though we would sometimes joke about China bombing us. I think it was just that even though most people were pretty sure China wouldn't be so stupid as to blow up our island, the threat was always sort of there. And even if not, it was dangerous territory politically, and just the fact that no one could really say what would happen to Taiwan come ten years makes for some uncertainty.

American never used to feel that way to me, though. American always seemed so safe and so stable, like it was something that would always be there, despite a relatively short national history. That was what 9/11 changed for me. Unlike the rest of my roommates that day, I was awake because (ironically) I was getting a new cell phone. I still find it strange that my old cell phone bill has the start date of 9/11/01. And my friend and her dad and my mom and the guy selling us the cell phones just stood there listening to the radio, because there was no TV in the store, and we heard the news when the second plane crashed, when another one hit the Pentagon, when another one crashed in Pennsylvania. And then the towers fell down. And it felt like the end of the world. Things like this weren't supposed to happen in America. They happened in the Middle East and in Ireland and other places, and it's so horrible to think of tragedies like that, like something that always happens in other places, to other people, but that's how it felt. Prior to 9/11, it felt as though the world was on track... there was the boom of the nineties, we weathered the Asian financial crisis (pretty glum in Taiwan during that time), etc. After, people were screaming for retaliation, which frightened me. My mom was convinced World War III was going to start. The economy, which was already not doing so well, really started going down. And I interned at Merrill Lynch and got seriously depressed, then I graduated from college two years later and had to look for a job and got even more depressed. Because of that, 9/11 always feels to me like the dividing line between adolescence and (fledgling) adulthood, the stepping stone between optimism and cynicism.

But that's what that song reminds me of now.

Despite the sobering associations, I can still listen to Assassins over and over just because the tunes are so peppy. And somehow, it doesn't depress me as much as Sweeney Todd. Also, Sweeney Todd is just incredibly difficult to listen to because of the almost painful whistles in the theme. Sweeney Todd feels like there is no hope at all in man, that everything beautiful only ends up destroyed and broken, but Assassins feels like even though horrible things happen, there is a reason behind it (albeit occasionally insane), and that there are people who still care. It's tragic, but not nihilistic.

Yay!! Read or Die has arrived!!

I also got Avenue Q yesterday, and I listened to it three times at work. My new favorite song is "If You Were Gay."

( Rambling on Avenue Q (and Rent, later) )

Downloaded a few tracks from Avenue Q to see if it was worth getting, and now I want to run out and get the CD right this minute.

Tee hee hee hee hee.

I should be doing productive stuff, like unpacking or moving stuff or job searching (ugh), but instead I am listening to "It Sucks to Be Me."

Found Les Mis at work and borrowed it to listen to (somehow, very long musicals are less annoying to listen to over an eight hour workday than lots and lots of CDs on iPod). I used to absolutely adore it to pieces (still like it, just... not that fanatically), but I haven't heard it in a good few years or so, since my Les Mis CD started skipping.

Ah, so many things are the same -- Cosette still annoys me. I still can't help but roll my eyes at the love at first sight bit and the entire trilling through "A Heart Full of Love." Apparently, I was a cynic about romance pretty early on. Romeo and Juliet annoyed me for the same reason. I think I tried to make everything make sense then, so I completely did not understand how someone could just set eyes on another person and know it's love. For that matter, I still don't think it happens really. Plus, I felt sorry for Eponine (unrequited love, ah, high school. Hee). I think everyone does though, but back then I thought I was being rebellious or something, not liking the heroine ;). It's just, Cosette has no agency at all. She sits there with the Thenardiers and is abused and in general engenders pity in the audience, and then she's rescued by Valjean and raised as a completely sheltered princess. I'm supposed to feel sorry for her because she had a rotten childhood, and I do, but it doesn't make her a very interesting character. Valjean protects her by telling her nothing, as does Marius later, because she's the princess in the ivory tower (mixing metaphors...) who can't be sullied by the real world or something. And I think it makes psychological sense on Valjean's part, but again, it doesn't make her a very interesting character to watch.

Marius also gets points off for doing that love at first sight thing. Plus, I have inherent dislike for the "meant to be" couple in a love triangle. And I remember teenaged me rolling my eyes over his bits in "Red and Black" -- who needs love when there's an exciting, idealistic revolution going on! Now that I think about it, I think I was a great fan of exciting, idealistic revolutions as a kid.

I'm actually not that interested in Valjean either, but I very much like Javert (especially Terrance Mann's voice). I think part of that is the fascination with idealism and justice. I was very adamant (and still am) that things be Fair and Just and with questions of ends justifying means (for a while I was for it) and being annoyed at the emotional heroes who are always willing to let the world go to hell because an innocent is suffering. Not that I am actually all for killing the innocent, obviously, but one sees so many heroic stands like that in fiction, that people who are starkly idealistic to the point in which the end does justify the means are very interesting in contrast. We can now see where my fascination with Wesley stems from. I just thought today that Javert is the opposite of Enjolras -- they've both got this very hard set ideology and aren't very willing to let anything get in the way of it. Ruthlessly idealistic people are interesting. So are ruthlessly grey people like the Thenardiers and Eponine (who now sort of reminds me of Spike).

I think in fiction the heroes are too often singled out so that even when they make the tough decisions, you know they will somehow resolve it, like Buffy in the Gift. ME gets many more kudos though for portraying the psychological damage of having to make those decisions. Sometimes the good people in fiction seem to preternaturally know they are Good and that everything will be ok, and that makes them less interesting. It's like Harrison Ford in Air Force One not taking the escape capsule because he thinks he can single-handedly defeat the terrorists. Admirable love for his family, but extremely impractical, imho. I also used to be (and still am to a lesser degree) absolutely fascinated with the conflicts between being a leader/king/queen of people and being a person (much like Buffy's Slayer/California girl complex) and because all the narratives I watched or read had heroes that would privilege the personal above the ideal (loooots of action movies here, thanks to my dad), I always fell firmly on the side of responsibility to the greater good instead of the personal. I think this is why I got to like Faris so much in A College of Magics.

Also listened to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (stop laughing at me! I went through this huge Andrew Lloyd Weber phase in middle school) for the first time in forever. Like Les Mis, many things haven't changed... still fascinated with fan renderings of the Bible or addendums to the "canonical" stories I know (which is why the Gnostic Gospels and Kabbalism interests me). I still think Joseph was rather spoiled and it wasn't very nice of him to rub his brothers' noses in it. And I still feel sort of sorry for his brothers, who often feel like they are programmed to be mean and jealous.

I also used to be able to sing all the colors from memory in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (It was red and yellow and blah and blah), but sadly, I have lost that ability.

Just finished watching the filmed London production of Oklahoma, starring Hugh Jackman (aka Wolverine), directed by Trevor Nunn.

I like it a lot better than the older film version (fifties? not sure), but I definitely have issues with this musical. It probably doesn't help that I watched it for a class and analyzed it before I really watched it for the first time, so it's a very different perspective than growing up with it. Hugh Jackman is very cool. And funny. And he made me mostly like Curly, which I didn't in the original. I think the person I liked the best in this production was the woman playing Aunt Eller though, because she was great. I liked Laurie in the beginning (much better than the movie!), but then she got in her dress and got much less interesting. After Laurie gets into a dress, the big conflict is will Judd get his dirty paws on her? whereas before it's a kind of pride and prejudice type thing between her and Curly. The two really managed to sell that in the beginning though.

Beautiful singing all around (Hugh Jackman! Wow!), and a really funny British-American-West accent. I bet the British think that whenever Americans are doing a British accent in movies. It's just kind of funny hearing a British inflection coming in in the middle of Oklahoman slang. Minor detail though.

So I absolutely adored the musical until Judd stepped in, at which point everything just kind of went haywire for me. I did like that they didn't have the tension between Judd and Curly that apparent at the first scene in the smokehouse, so that Curly slipping into song about Judd being dead seems more him putting his foot in his mouth than anything else. I remember my prof. thought it was very interesting that Curly is basically singing Judd to death. Kind of creepy. Creepy scene in general. And it was strange, because I got that they were trying to make me feel sorry for Judd, except they also made it hard to feel sorry for Judd without really despising Curly and Laurie. Well, I really hated Curly and Laurie in the movie version, especially Curly, because he was so arrogant and assured. I though Hugh Jackman did a great job portraying him as someone who talked big to hide some insecurities and to just have fun.

Then there are all the thoughts left over from the class last year floating around my head on patriotism/nationalism (esp. evident at the bursting out of a paeon to the state during a very private affair -- Curly and Laurie's wedding). Also many issues on gender roles and the fear of outsiders (read: lower classes or foreigners) getting their hands on white women. I'm always disturbed by Laurie's psychotic ballet dream and the way it ended in this production with her on the ground with Judd lying on top of her. A lot of sexual issues coded in, especially with Laurie all pretty in white being assaulted by this large, dirty, unshaven man. And of course she weakly struggles but has to have Curly save her all the time. Then there's Ado Annie and her sexual favors. And the dirty pictures and the Little Wonder.

I think the thing I had a very big problem with was also Curly's "trial" in the end. Hey, I want the hero to win with the rest of them, but not by having the entire community bully the law in his favor just because he's popular and Judd's not! If it was self-defense, as it seemed to be, it should have held up to a real trial. And then, not two minutes after the mockery of the law goes by, we get a happy ending with Curly and Laurie driving away and everyone singing about the beautiful morning and glorious Oklahoma!

Weird. You know, this is really a very disturbing musical.