Nothing For Now

My Totally Awesome Day

Okay, so the day didn't start off very promisingly.

Class was so soporific even doodling couldn't keep me awake. I was so bored and tired I couldn't think of things to doodle. Then, after catching a quick lunch, I went off with J, a fellow American abroad, to try and see Julie Andrews do a book signing at the Waterstone's in Harrod's. Turned out that you needed to have either a copy of her children's book or the Sound of Music DVD in order to get in for a 3-hour wait. So the choice is a book I won't read or a DVD I can't play at home? Thanks, but no thanks. We agreed to separate for a while- J went to see if she could sneak a peak at Dame Andrews, and I read Volume II or Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Admittedly, I rushed through it, but it was still a riveting read. Kind of nasty, as Moore often can be, but still wildly creative and dotted with hilarious faux-Victorian bits and pieces.

Harrod's, by the way, was pretty darn cool. Except for the chain record store and bookstore in the middle, it just made everything look classy. I've definitely never seen a butcher's shop with such a pretty ceiling.

Yes, that's a real figure skater in the window.

And the exterior got even prettier in the dark.

Finally, we left the Harrod's wonderland and made our way to see Matthew Bourne's adaptation of Edward Scissorhands at Sadler's Wells, which looked a bit...different than what we were used to. Snaking in front of the entrance and into the lobby was an ameobic green carpet, with potted topiaries- an homage to the original movie- on either side.

Then, we walked inside and looked at the screens displaying which box office line was which. They read, from right to left: "Future tickets", "Guests", and "Press tickets".

Uh...press tickets?

Yes, we'd somehow managed to arrive on press night, so as the box office guy told us, there weren't going to be a lot of tickets available at 6:30. So we ate greasy chicken burgers (yummy) and came back to the theatre about a half hour early, then hovered around waiting for the right time to roll around. And sure enough, we were first in line and got a couple of first mezzanine tickets with a slightly restricted view (which turned out to be not restricted at all to us short people).

So after waiting for the house to open, in we went, and we found complementary issues of Elle magazine lying on the arm rests. Turned out there was an article on Matthew Bourne buried on page 219. *shrug* Hey, it was free stuff. I took it.

Then the show started. I'll post a review later, because this is all about the extraneous stuff. :) When the show ended, what I'm assuming was the creative team behind the show came onstage to take a bow, and I'm pretty sure I recognized Bourne among them. How cool is that? But wait- it gets better. We walked out to find a post-show reception going on, and smiling people offering us free drinks in colorful glasses. Now, far be it from any college student to pass up free alcohol, but in our jeans and sweaters we felt a little out of place amongst the dressed-up guests and insiders. So we made our way to the lobby to find a couple of other surprises- first, there was an ice sculpture (another homage) that hadn't been there before. Then, as we were walking out, one more smiling person offered us something free- a gleaming program, filled with huge, beautiful photos of the production and interviews with Bourne, author and co-adaptor Caroline Thompson, and none other than Tim Burton, who was at the performance, though we didn't see him.

Hot damn. Now, I need to note, in my own defense, that the reason all the photos in this entry are so- well, bad, is because I wasn't really ready to take photos at any point, but kept whipping out my camera at the last second when it finally occurred to me I should. I didn't go to a book signing expecting to take pictures of the store, and I absolutely never expect to take photos of a store's interior. Same goes for the after-party at Sadler's Wells. What if someone took offense at some kid in jeans taking photos? So I was hasty. But at least I got something, and no one seemed to notice.

Our good luck stayed with us the rest of the way home. Even traffic lights turned green as we approached. What a way to salvage a deathly boring morning.

Never Thought I'd See The Day

Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres are in the same political party. I really hope this will lead to an actual change in the rules of the political game in Israel. Kadima.

C'mon, Joe

Joe Torre's evidently thought about moving either Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez to center field to fill in the nasty defensive hole the Yankees have there now that Bernie Williams has aged past the point of no return.

To which I say, "Thought about it? Thought about it? DOOO EEET!"

Seriously- move Jeter to center, get A-Rod back in the shortstop hole, and find some random third-baseman. It'll be brilliant.

Everybody and their mother knows that Gold Glove or no Gold Glove, Jeter's shortstop defense is average at best, and it only managed to scale to those lofty heights in the past couple of years. But you know what two aspects of Jeter's defense have been great for as long as I've been paying attention? One is a factor that manages to seep into every aspect of his game- his general baseball smarts, alertness, and (I'm gagging as I say this), hustle. That's transferable to any position. The second is more important here- he's always been uncannily good at pedalling backwards to track fly balls into short left-center field. On top of that, he's still a good runner with a solid arm. Tell me how that doesn't scream, "potential center fielder" to you. Sure, it might be a sting to the team captain's ego to have to make the move while A-Rod takes his place, but center isn't exactly a bad position. And the team really needs it. Just try it out in spring training, Joe. Please?

CUUUTE!

Panda Cam!

Learn It Again

For everyone who's ever taken a CPR course, the guidelines have changed. You're now supposed to perform 30 chest compressions in between sets of 2 breaths, instead of only 15 compressions. It raises the blood circulation. So learn it again, kiddies. :)

Sunday in the Park With George

There is no French horn.

That marks probably the greatest objection I can muster to the Menier Chocolate Factory's revival of Sunday in the Park With George. And it's not as insignificant as it may seem- the French horn playing the "Sunday" theme is one of the most distinctive and lovely parts parts of the original orchestration. In just two notes it becomes clear exactly which show it is you're watching. But nevermind. Outside of a few blips, the backstage "pit" of a piano, keyboard, violin, cello, and clarinet handled the difficult score acceptably. And really, I have no idea if people who haven't listened to the score more times than is strictly healthy would even know what they're missing.

I have listened to the score that many times, and more, and this is the first time I've walked into a show knowing it end-to-end quite this well. So I think it speaks pretty well of Daniel Evans and Anna Jane Casey that they managed to carve out their own George and Dot in my mind, separate from the original performances of Mandy Patinkin and especially Bernadette Peters. (Though surely their incogruous- for me- English accents helped.) Evans bore the greater visual and vocal resemblence to his predecessor, but he handled the various voices of "The Day Off" in his own way, and with aplomb. The only time I wished he was more like Patinkin was in "Putting it Together", which wasn't quite quick and staccatto enough to live up to its showstopper potential. But for most of the second act, I was perfectly happy that he was just himself, because he made the second George into more of a real person than I've experienced before.

Ms. Casey had the more difficult job in my eyes, because getting past the performance of Bernadette Peters in my mind is a virtual impossibility. Peters owns the role of Dot, coming through in all her warmth and humanity even on the CD alone. So whoever cast this production got past the problem by going around it- brown-haired and angular, Ms. Casey looked and sounded so different from the original Dot that comparisons between the two eventually fell by the wayside. (There's a reason she sang, "If my bust were larger" instead of "smaller" during "Color and Light.") She wasn't as vocally powerful as Ms. Peters, which I regretted in "We Do Not Belong Together", and she didn't plumb quite so many laughs out of her lines, but I think given more time she can do it; her dramatic chops were out in full force the whole night. And-dare I say it? I like her Marie as much as I liked the original, maybe even more. Out of the wheelchair and showing glimmers of mischief and strength despite her physical frailty (she walks slowly with a cane here), we can see just why George adores her even as she annoys the crap out of him.

The rest of the ensemble was solid, though once again I could hear a few jokes being overlooked. I especially liked Alasdair Harvey's foul-mouthed, limping Boatman and sensible, beleaguered Dennis. He delivered his excuse for quitting his job in the second act hilariously. Also, I can't believe I'm saying this about a child actor, but the girl playing Louise really could have been more obnoxious.

The infighting, gossip, ugliness, and threads of discontent running between the characters were all there. And when they all came together through the force of George's artistic inspiration for "Sunday" and its reprise, everything in the show was beautiful and made sense. I've never seen such a perfect depiction of the effects of art on its subjects.

Finally, I'd like to note that I can understand now, more clearly than before, the age-old claim that this show would have been better off with just its first act. Once we've finally gotten to know and understand all the people in "Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte", they disappear for Act II in favor of the denizens of the modern art world. It's hard to start over and try to figure out a new set of characters and motivations halfway through a show, and the relatively downbeat content of this act makes it hard to get through until "Move On." But the fact remains that George is an essential mirror-image of his ancestor Georges, and you need them both in order to form the show's glorious ending, a final synthesis of art and life, combined without compromise. It's a moment of perfect theater, and that's why I was willing to trudge my way to that theater four times over a period of six days just to get my tickets.

Okay, that was stupid...

...But really, that's nothing compared to the stupidity on display by Michael Brown. Anybody remember this guy? The completely incompetent former head of FEMA has decided to make his living by...starting an emergency management consulting business.

Uh, what?

That's like...Rudy Giuliani writing a book on how to win friends and influence people. Like Strom Thurmond teaching racial tolerance. Like Tom Cruise giving out psychotherapy. Are you getting the idea? The sheer stupid here is overwhelming, butat least it's solid proof that the world will never cease to surprise me.

Bizarre Link of the Day

I knew Brazil was beauty pageant-crazy, but this is really over-the-top.

The Constant Gardener

It's hard to begin to say what stood out about this movie, because every single element was about as good as it could be. This is the best film I've seen all year, easily. The acting was fantastic, from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz as Justin Quayle and his wife Tessa, down to Danny Huston and Bill Nighy as sleazy diplomats and Hubert Koundé as a doctor and Tessa's fellow-activist.

Fernando Meirelles' direction was wonderful: taut, suspenseful, and beautiful, weaving together an ever-narrowing web of conspiracy while looking wide-eyed at Africa's beautiful landscapes. England, by contrast, is mostly shot in dank blue-green grays, to great effect. The shaky-cam was used well instead of over-used, as it so often tends to be. It was used in moments of confusion and jolting movement that contrasted well with steadier shots of conversation and landscapes. The film moved quickly when it needed to, with conversations beginning before the camera gets to them and rapid monatages of passing landmarks, but it also settled a bit when it was called for. And the writing almost completely managed to prevent itself from hitting the audience with Anvils of the Obvious, which I appreciated a great deal.

To go back to the acting, Ralph Fiennes really did a fine job as a middling diplomatic employee suddenly given a sense of mission by the death of his wife. And Weisz completely justified the transformation; she was beautiful, rude, set in her convictions, and hugely driven, a ball of fire even pregnancy couldn't slow down.

Plot, you say? Well, it's all about Justin Quayles' investigation after his wife Tessa's suspicious death. It turns out that her investigations into Big Pharma's ethical lapses when conducting medical trials in Africa were more productive than some higher-ups would have liked. As Quayle slowly untangles who she told about what she was doing and who betrayed her, you're repeatedly hit with the theme of responsibility: Who takes responsibility for their actions, who tries to wiggle out of it, and who feels a sense of responsibility for others? The answers are often surprising, and saddening.

The New Center

Ariel Sharon has followed through with his threats and withdrawn from the Likud Party, founding a new organization called the National Responsibility Party. He leaves the party so closely associated with his name as the hawkish option of choice, with Benjamin Netanyahu as probably its most prominent member.

All I can say is- my mind is blown. Like I said previously, I'm pretty out of touch with Israeli politics, but in my mind, Sharon was always Likud and Likud was Sharon. But now he's determined to follow the American road map to a two-state solution, and that's left him at odds with his old party. This comes only after a week afterAmir Peretz replaced Shimon Peres as head of Labor, so I really don't know what to make of the situation.

There's going to be new parliamentary elections, and we'll see how things go. But if Sharon can somehow drag Israel through the peace plan while keeping the Palestinians from blowing it all to hell, well...I just might have to reassess my long-held opinions of him. Maybe.

No Exit

This is our President, attempting to escape a news conference by opening a locked door.

Oh, George.

I'm Out of Touch

I realize my parents are the ones who read Ha'Aretz, since I'm subliterate in Hebrew, but this statement from the BBC really struck me:

"If Mr Sharon does leave his party, he may do so from a position of strength, our correspondent adds.

He currently commands the centre ground in Israeli politics, and may take with him those Israelis who neither want to negotiate with Palestinians nor rule over them. "

Ariel Sharon occupies the center ground? And here I thought the American political spectrum was tilted to the right. I mean, there was a time when we called Sharon an unrepetent hawk, right? What passes for a dove nowadays?

A Night Out

Not long ago one of my flatmates had his birthday, so we all decided to have a big night out.

Going with the "big" theme, we started with the London Eye, a perfectly enormous Ferris wheel on the south bank of the Thames.

I'm afraid that it was only once I was inside the Eye's enclosed pod that I realized the conundrum of taking pictures in there- it was nighttime, so I needed flash, but it was also surrounded by glass, which makes flash a no-no. Plus there were drops of condensation and stuff on the outside to complicate matters. Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying different combinations of settings to no avail. Here's one of the few clear(ish) pictures I managed to take:

After the Eye, we took the Tube back to the middle of town and went to a Lebanese restaurant, which was an absolute dream come true for me. Lebanese food = my food, and just deciding what not to order was pretty agonizing. I ended up having hummus with bits of lamb, a salad, and falafel. Mmm. I also shared and helped initiate my South Asian and African compatriots into the wonders of Middle Eastern food. As it turned out, I wasn't the only Israeli in the room, but I'll get to that in a moment.

No birthday trip to a restaurant is complete without a highly embarrassing rendition of the birthday song, and we were glad to oblige. We also ordered a birthday cake, which, my friends, was about as beautiful a little cake as I've ever seen in my life, white and covered in fresh fruit, lovingly arranged. It was delicious, too, white cake with cream, and it was accompanied by a platter of fruit and another platter of baklava, the wonderfully, disgustingly sweet honey pastry. I wish I'd taken a picture of the cake, but I was too busy waiting to eat it to think of that at the time.

Anyway, our celebration evidently caught someone's attention, because when we were done eating, we were approached by a man who introduced himself as Uri Geller. For those of you haven't got a clue who he is, Geller is an Israeli-born magician and "psychic" who was famously debunked on the Johnny Carson Show years ago. He bent and autographed a spoon for the birthday boy, much to everyone's delight, and if it was a prepared spoon, it didn't change how fun the encounter was.

So that was our big night out, which managed to last long enough that we had to take a night bus home. I'll miss this kind of stuff when I get back to school on the corner of nothing and nowhere.

Sometimes I Hate This Place

England? Great country, really, but I have a couple of gripes at the moment. First of all, who the hell closes their library at 4 in the afternoon on the last Saturday of Reading Week, then 7pm on Sunday? It's Reading Week, people. The reading is done for a reason, namely the exams and papers due right afterwards. Like the paper for which I can't take out a stupid book because I'm never on campus when you deign to open the library.

And second, in what universe is heating from 8am-noon good enough when it's been around 40 degrees outside all day? Argh. As soon as I figure out a way to type anything longer than this entry when I can't feel my fingertips, I'll be sure to let everyone know.

Finally, this has nothing whatsoever to do with England or this fine place of education, but who the hell keeps burning things and making us have fire alarms? If indoor barbeque ended badly the first time, it won't work the 7th time either, buddy. When the weather was warm this could be considered annoying, but now it's grounds for assault.

Oh, and the paper? It's going great, really. *breaks things*

ETA- I HATE YOU AND YOUR SUBWOOFER, GUY NEXT DOOR. USE HEADPHONES!

Bang! Crash! The Lightning Flashed!

I think my neighbors forgot that Guy Fawkes day is on the 5th. *cringes at fireworks*

Aaaah! Aaaah!

I walked on this bridge! I walked on it right after being freaked out by St. Pauls, as a matter of fact, so my memories of it aren't all that sweet. And now they're saying it was collective synchonization, not structural problems, that caused that nasty swaying when it was built back in 2000. Oh, god. That's so reassuring. *cries*