Why Mlle La Spliffe Should Not Interview Dancers

Finally saw Yours to Break with Gigi - went straight from work, not prettying myself so I wouldn’t go out afterwards. This weekend is about the thesis. The staff at Passe Muraille was very understanding after last week’s incident and had tickets waiting. Praise be, because it was the best thing I’ve seen since I don't know when. Met the mezzo creator (Fidés Krucker) and the male lead (Dan Wild) after the show.

Here's what I recall of the conversation with Dan Wild:

Gigi: Wow, thank you so much. That was one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

Spliffe, picking up her things to get dressed and go, realizes Gigi must be talking to Dan Wild as we've already gushed to Fidés Krucker. Fidés Krucker is from the same northern city we are. Country girl makes good – damn good. Her voice is fucking something. The music is mostly pop standards sung operatically, backed by a great little ensemble and it doesn’t jar - there’s no feeling of condescending to the material. Forza mezzo! We's the best. The heartbreak that makes pop songs dreadfully meaningful when you're in a state is dropped on our laps by Fides Krucker and Dan Wild, who both sing (though one just notices him harmonizing with her since she's so great) and perform physically through dance and boxing. Remember this? the whole show says. This was You, bitch. Spliffe turns. Thar he be.

Voice in Spliffe’s Head: Why the fuck did I work late instead of go to the gym and wash my hair? I’m a fucking disgusting mass of unwash and Dax Wax!

Spliffe: Yes, thank you. That was so touching. (It really was. I could understand how someone who’s never been there could have found the dialogue, though not any other element of the performance, stilted. But most of us have been there, and I reckon even a cynical loveless bastard would have been drawn in by the rest.)

Dan Wild: Thanks so much! (continues to speak. Don’t know what he said. Inner voice too loud)

Voice in Spliffe’s Head: We’re standing on the floor. The floor is flat. Please, pull me down and do me on it now!

Spliffe: How many more performances do you have to go?

Dan Wild: Well, it’s running until the 29th . . . (continues to speak . . . but . . . )

Voice in Spliffe’s Head: You look sweeter than Turkish Delight and tastier than Pepper Jack Doritos.

Spliffe: Oh, do you find the performance dynamic changes over time? (struggles clumsily into sweater, dropping purse, Shuffle and probably change. The performance, by contrast, is excellently stage-managed; simple set well used to give the impression of more than one place. A few nicely spaced silver birches, for example, suggest the region Fides Krucker is from without jarring with the other suggested locales)

Dan Wild: Certainly the interaction changes. . . ( . . .)

Voice in Spliffe’s head: Every simile I can think of to describe your ass is surreal and beautiful.

Spliffe: Well, I’m certainly going to tell everybody I know to do their best to see the show. (And you should. $30 dollars, over the phone or online. You won’t regret it – Gigi and I were both near tears. This fucker is why we use a word as extreme as ‘catharsis’ to talk about catharsis. And it has one of the most apt last lines I’ve ever heard - maybe from Helen Humphreys, I'm not sure. Up there with the fucking Usual Suspects)

One more beer, a few huffs of the pipe, and Spliffe and Voice in Spliffe’s Head might have switched places. But my physical inability to interview male dancers aside, this is a fucking good show. Love is a beautiful brute, devastatingly and simultaneously simple and complicated - no surprise there. Our pop media is based on this. We’re spoiled with images and sounds of people’s ideas of it to the degree that I’ll suffer through a week of retarded left-wing documentaries and savour, if nothing else, not being reminded of it - although if anyone wanted to make a REALLY effective anti-marketing documentary, it should explore how our ideals of love are ruthlessly exploited to sell rubbish. And Yours to Break was just . . . well . . . go see it, shithead. It's been getting good and indifferent reviews, if you need some other opinions.

"Hung Up" = Carrion Cannibalism

What Ayn Rand did to the philosophical novel is what Madonna has done with ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)’ – take something flawed and made it fucking unbearable. I might not listen to ABBA, but I understand people will have relationship shit, a few drinks, and think a line like ‘knowing me, knowing you, there is nothing we can do, knowing me knowing you, aah haaaaaaaaaa’ is really apt. And there's one song I just love - the one where she’s sick and tired of everything, and calls some guy that night from Glasgow. I’ve been there, Swedish lady. We’ve all been there.

Anyways, fuck ABBA, is my point. The vehicle that gets people to put it on after a few drinks is a series of nice little things that make you want to hum or dance or something. The ‘doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooooooo, doo-doo-doo-doo-do-do-do-do-do’ from ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ is one of these things. So is the ‘dee-do-dee-do-dee-do-dee-do-DEE-do-DEE-do-DEE-do-DEE-do’ in ‘Mamma Mia’ or the ‘doooooooo-do-doooooooo-do-do-do-do-do-dooooo’ in ‘Dancing Queen’. Throw these nice little things over a pretty bass line? Great! You can go, “hey! It’s that nice little ABBA thing!” and dance to the pretty bass line. No harm done - in fact, it'll probably be adding to the sum goodness of the world. But if you mix the ‘doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooooooo, doo-doo-doo-doo-do-do-do-do-do’ over a pretty bass line and THEN put Madonna’s execrable vocals over them, the cocktail goes ass-up and it feels like there just aren’t enough coca leaves in the world to take the pain away.

In the midst of the slings and arrows and kudos and bouquets hurled at Madonna, we should all take the time to remember that her voice eats souls.

This is probably bothering me more than it ought at the moment because I have a co-worker who plays 'Confessions from the Dance Floor' at her desk during office hours. This is the same girl, Lady, who had the ‘bug or virus, the doctors don’t know which’ – something contagious, in any case - and spent a solid half-hour puking at her desk despite everybody telling her to go home.

Yeah.

Anyways, let's accentuate the positive. James Blunt, someone who just got nominated for a kabillion Brit awards, has a mouth that's even prettier than an ABBA hook. I wonder if he's any good. Remind me to Limewire him.

The Red Dragon Further Considers Corporate Responsibility

I watched Super Size Me last night. This seems to be Mlle La Spliffe Catches Up on Stupid Documentaries Everyone Has Seen But Her week. I have an easier time excusing them to myself than Vincent Cassel movies or porn when I know I have better (read: thesis) things to do.

The film and I started badly. I went into it thinking it was a retarded gimmick that was successful because America is a fucking pig for retarded gimmicks. And then my Feminist Supersenses tweaked at how lucky Morgan Spurlock thinks he is that he had a nice mother who created lots of happy memories in the kitchen, unlike all those sad poor fat children with the working moms. Nah, actually I doubt that was my razor-sharp feminist senses tweaking. Probably just defensiveness because I’m forgetting how to cook while all these mangiacakes around me learn.

On the happy side I thought it dodged consumer accountability less than the Corporation and that the section on advertising to children was interesting. Advertising to children is the devil and should be banned – like in Québec, but not a fucking joke. I’d love to be glib and say parents should trash television when kids are a certain age. But then there’s a cultural shorthand kids need to communicate with their own generation. And they’re fucking annoying sometimes, must be nice to park them in front of something that makes them quiet. Who am I to judge?

That may be the least sincere rhetorical question ever.

Speaking of, did anyone else find the vegan gf annoying? I imagine not. Vegans make me defensive too, with their stupid made-up name - vegan, what the fuck - moral consumption patterns and beautiful natural body odor, the bastards. I'm faced with my amorality every time they ask ‘how can you do that to another living thing when you have a viable nutritional choice’ and all that backs me up is the instinct that if it isn’t human, it’s my right as a healthy omnivore with billions of years of evolution behind me to eat it if I fucking well please, please and fuck you.

Anyways, not a great movie - I still think it was a retarded gimmick, and I could have done with less Spurlock and more talking heads - and what was said well was said far better in Fast Food Nation. I like Eric Schlosser alot. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market is also a terrific book. I believe he's considered left wing so my socially progressive conscience is no longer growling over me spending a bunch of posts ripping into left-wing media. Now the Red Dragon is growling for some kung fu, but it’s not allowed. Nothing but edumacational movies until I’m a Master. Can anyone think of a documentary that holds a candle to When We Were Kings or Control Room? What about that shit with the penguins? Is that good?

News today - in case you don't look at the comments, you should, and you should look at the link Jiri provided that proves conclusively Microsoft is the devil. And look at this further evidence that Italians fucking rock.

Zoom zoom zoom

StatCounter tells me I have a reader in Pakistan! Yay Pakistan! Did you know, reader in Pakistan, that this site is censored in China? Liberal Islamic Federal Republic 1, Fake-Ass Free Market Communist State 0! Oh, what a wicked world we live in.

That having been said, the woman who is proofing my thesis in the lovely city of Strasbourg is SO FAST! It will be through soon soon I think - so things are looking quite nice in the land of Mlle La Spliffe today.

Birgit Nilson died at the age of a million or so. I hope she had a happy life. Famous sopranos always seem to be pissed off about something. No other news. My new Italian class is pretty awesome, the people in it talk a lot more and I don't feel like the smartest, which isn't what I want to be feeling when I'm trying to learn stuff. I'm afraid I'm going to miss Stéphane Rousseau's show in Paris. Booooooooo, because he's likely to be the only bit of attractive manhood in the entire city and I'll need a fucking laugh and a half after the defense is over. I suppose I could just hold my breath and twirl, and twirl, and twirl!

And then, you know, feel all good I'm done with that shit and see some operas. I'm starting to be a little bewildered by how much I'll have to pack into such a little trip. Here are things I need to do:

1. Defend my thesis
2. See five people in Paris as much as possible
3. See one person in Paris not at all
4. See one person in Padova
5. See family in Calabria - about six people
7. See grandparents in Yorkshire - two of them
8. See one lady in Oxford
9. Buy some psychedelic cats

Can I do this in two weeks? Sure. Will I come home fucked sideways with exhaustion, confusion, and post-traumatic disorder from all the epiphanies and aeroplanes? Yes. I really need to see if I can get an extra week. I think I'll mail myself some reefer. Can't rely on people my age or older to have it any more - we've got all responsible, doncha know. FEB used to think reefer was a government-and-corporate-sponsored tool to keep young people from becoming involved in politics. I think he probably read a much more plausible theory about crack and the Black Panthers and got confused from all the reefer he was smoking.

Mmmmmmm.

Reefahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Soon, my precious, soon. I just have to finish with my stupid piece of crap thesis about you.

EEEEEEEEEE!

My advisor has thrown up his hands in the grip of some indefinable emotion and told me I should defend as soon as I can. So there we are. Any further delays will be my fault, knock on wood. Talked it up at work and can - in fact have to - take my vacation days before March, so EEEEEEEEE! is all I have to say. One way or another this rubbish will be over soon, and I'll get to see some if not all of my Europeans. Planning on spending at least a week in Italy with FEB and family, splitting the rest between England and France. This will not be a sight-seeing trip. This will be a people trip. But then the people all live next to beautiful sights. FEB, for example, is in Padova, beautiful in itself and a stone's throw from Venice, that Disneyland of the grown-up world. And I do believe I'll get there for the tail end of Carnevale. Hope they got some good drugs! If not I'll just twirl, and twirl, and twirl!

Excited. Conscious the clean-up work will be work and ya'll won't be seeing much of me for the next week or so, a little anxious, but excited. I wonder if I can get three weeks instead of two. This short-tripping is not my cup of tea. That can be worked out at my office, I think. One of my colleagues in the department I'm leaving took eight months off to travel in East Asia.

So last night after doing clean-up work until I felt like puking, I watched some of the extra interviews from disc 2 of the Corporation, because - you guessed it - I needed visuals and hash. The spares with the commodities trader should have made the cut. Well, they probably would have made the cut of a better movie, but would have been out of place in this one. He talked about the difficulty of consumer activism in terms of the commodities market, which is super-interesting but would have required more depth to the film. The out-takes about advertising were something. Naomi Klein voiced aloud the pussy-rific conviction that consumers shouldn't 'feel bad' about being influenced by advertising, and then said something circular about how advertising comes from us . . . Thanks, Sherlock . . . but there was an interview at the end of that topic with a branding consultant about the Church as a brandworker that convinced me that he's the devil or at least doing the devil's work. They REALLY should have kept that in the movie; my emotional reaction against what he stands for remains quite extreme. Yes, I was stoned, but so are most of the people who'd rent that movie, I bet.

But then commies don't like the Church either. Ho-hum. The talking heads used the 'c' word a lot more in the cut-out interviews. Noam Chomsky was painstaking about drawing a distinction between Bolshevism and Communism, which was kind of gross. I'm sure 65 million dead Chinese thank him for it. Whatevs. I have to go participate in Capitalism now.

Speaking of commies

I needed cannabis and a movie last night, and somebody had recommended The Corporation. Had my doubts, but the blurb on the back promised lots of talk about advertising in this decadent world; I decided to watch it since even if it was lousy it would be like homework. But then the part about advertising sucked. "There's too much advertising. We're influenced by it." Bravo, Archimedes. Why and how? Jeez. You could have used some of the time you spent on visuals of apple vaccuuming and babies dressed as McDonald's fries to address those two little questions. If that film was preaching to the converted it was too airy-fairy, and if it was on a mission it was too slow. They should have just got that bald trader guy to talk for the whole 145 minutes about the ecstatic way different clients reacted to different cataclysms jacking up commodity prices; that would have been interesting, unlike the hypno-disks and Michael Moore that got way more time.

And the idea of consumer accountability was left right out. The only presented deliverance from the perils of capitalism was a fundamental shift in government powers, so the film came off as commie. And so they shouldn't have put a devil tail AND a halo on the Corporation Man on the DVD cover, because it made me think I was going to get at least a pretence of objectiveness. Fuck, man. See, it’s not just the capitalists who are into the false advertising. It’s really not.

Ah, I'm probably pissy because the commie night at Footwork sucked. Or because the Marx poster broke my phone (it’s all better now, same number). One of those, or else that history of atrocity.

Wintertime, and the weather is shitty

I spent Saturday being a mental GIANT. Sometimes I can't believe the words that come out of my mouth - it's as though I have a capacity for speech that has nothing to do with brain function. The fact that Gilles Duceppe must have a child, which I cleverly deduced aloud from the fact that he has grandchildren (I was confusing him with André Boisclair, which is the opposite of an excuse) was probably the winner. My mental giganticism showed no signs of shrinkage in the wee hours of the new day as I dropped my phone while stealing a cheap-ass poster of Karl Marx. Of course it exploded and of course the SIM card is gone. That means your numbers are too, if I ever had them, so send them to me.

Yeah.

Footwork had a commie night. The theme-ing was restricted to some colour-printer cheap-ass propaganda and the staff wearing the hammer and sickle. Also the music was a little Big Shiny Tunes (which Lady says isn't typical), playing up to my personal prejudice that non-Latin (vulgate?) communists have shit taste in music. But it's a nice space. So yay Footwork. I'll see you when you're feeling better.