This week's SYD was only an hour long, prefaced by a re-showing of last week's results show. Since I never watch the results shows and also hadn't looked up last week's results, I was glad to have this amusement as I slaved over a hot stove, making marmalade.
Comfort and Courtney were in the bottom two girls -- good choice, America.
Will and Twitch were in the bottom two boys -- you're an idiot, America.
Seriously, this was Mark and Comfort's time, and America got it only half right (which is failing): Comfort went home and, heartbreak of heartbreaks, so did Will.
When asked what had happened to cause Will's premature SYD demise, Nigel said he couldn't know, but that it was possible America had assumed that he was so good that he would obviously be safe.
That's my best guess as well.
(Note on weirdness: Comfort and Will are also noun-names, and the only ones on the show. Weird, right?)
At any rate, Will was the most proficient male dancer in terms of technical skill and training, with the best solo routines, and having him off the show makes the end top-guy result a toss-up for the remaining excellent guys, Joshua and Twitch. If the teenybopper contingent is still hung up on Mark after this week, he may make it into the top four.
But if Mark wins the entire competition, there goes all my respect for SYD. (And I have an absurd amount.) I'm not even sure I'd watch again next year.
(No, no, I would, SYD! Don't worry -- you know how I feel. Now let's never fight again.)
So began the week of top 6, the semifinal round: Chelsie and Twitch, Joshua and Katee, and Mark and Courtney.
Mark and Courtney started out with a Viennese waltz, which guest judge Alan Shankman loved. (He loved everything all night.) Nigel called it "romantic," but I was happy with it, figuring Mark and Courtney's time to go had come.
They pulled a jazz routine second, though, and it was perfectly choreographed by Sonja (sp?) to play to Mark's strengths. Courtney is also a contemporary dancer, and the routine was engaging and strange in a way that made me stop stirring (the marmalade) and stare. If Mark and Courtney don't go home tonight, it will be because of this routine.
Katee and Joshua danced a contemporary routine and made me rethink my entire position on partners. Originally, when Katee had drawn Will, another technically proficient dancer, I'd cheered for them, thinking that now they would both be able to shine free of their old partners.
It's true that Will fared much better post-Jessica, and that Katee did a great job, both with Will and with Twitch last week.
But none of the other pairs are Katee and Joshua.
Perhaps their initial pairing and the up-and-down nature of the other pairs in the earlier weeks of competition made it hard for me to pick up on the extraordinary nature of this duo, but even with the contemporary dance they did in the first week I watched, I didn't recognize the greater-than-the-sum-of-the-partners aspect of these two together.
Alan Shankman, pro-everything, broke out the big-gun commentary for this routine: Along with Tyce Diorio, the choreographer, Alan said, "You guys just became the holy trinity of SYD."
The contemporary routine, which features mid-air-arrested jumps and all sorts of intricate and interesting acrobatics -- but with heart -- was so impressive -- and despite that it was danced to "All By Myself" by Celine Dion, no less -- that I groaned aloud when Katee and Joshua pulled paso doble for their second dance.
The one with the bullfighter, I thought. I can't stand that one.
But this was the best paso doble I've ever seen.
I have to say that Joshua is not my type. He's strong, relatively short and stocky, where I tend to prefer a taller, thinner physique -- even in a paso doble, where power is key, I thought a taller man would be preferable.
But even Dmitri, very tall, very well-built, ripped-his-shirt-off-whenever-he-got-onstage Russian ballroom dancer Dmitri, from a few seasons ago didn't overshadow Joshua. And Katee was superb as his cape.
Twitch and Chelsie danced mambo. The judges raved over Chelsie, as always in Latin dances, and paid respect to Twitch's efforts, though Nigel mentioned a wardrobe malfunction along with Twitch's sub-Chelsie performance: "You lost a bow," he said to Chelsie, "but you lost another beau in the middle as well."
Their second routine was a hip-hop dance choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon, who had them cavorting around the stage as "mad composers" seeking to possess the wand that would control the orchestra -- and each other. It was such an entertaining routine that I didn't notice whether Chelsie was keeping up with Twitch or vice-versa. Definitely a highlight of the night, though Katee and Joshua's reunion stole my heart.
And, if I did that sort of thing, would have stolen my votes.
Get it right this week, America.
**Gah! I've been relying on the blogger at BSYTYCD to give me results, and s/he's quit! I have no idea who was eliminated tonight!!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
You'd be better off asking Veronica Mars...and her show was cancelled...and fictional.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Confessions XV
As a little girl: I never, ever planned my wedding. (My Barbies and My Little Ponies were either married or single -- they also never planned weddings.)
I felt forced to choose between pink and purple for favorite colors. (And so chose, of course, purple.)
I kept a mental list of my best friends in order from first best to fifteenth, always with my childhood friend Megan at the top -- this despite my ranking at fifth or sixth on her list, which she would recite to me on request -- until I met Van in fifth grade. (Midway through middle school, I stopped ranking friends.)
I felt forced to choose between pink and purple for favorite colors. (And so chose, of course, purple.)
I kept a mental list of my best friends in order from first best to fifteenth, always with my childhood friend Megan at the top -- this despite my ranking at fifth or sixth on her list, which she would recite to me on request -- until I met Van in fifth grade. (Midway through middle school, I stopped ranking friends.)
Mix: GRRL PWWR II
Dancing Queen -- ABBA
Free -- Cat Power
You Learn -- Alanis Morissette
Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like -- Nikki Giovanni
Willow Tree -- Plumb
Bette Davis Eyes -- Kim Carnes
World On Fire -- Sarah McLachlan
Bridge Over Troubled Water -- Aretha Franklin
Going Under -- Evanescence
Alone -- Heart
Zombie -- The Cranberries
Wicked Game -- Bassboosa
Puddle Of Grace -- Amy Jo Johnson
Ain't No Sunshine -- Christina Christianson
Maps -- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Video Game Heart -- All Girl Summer Fun Band
Wild Horses -- The Sundays
Let Go -- Frou Frou
Free -- Cat Power
You Learn -- Alanis Morissette
Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like -- Nikki Giovanni
Willow Tree -- Plumb
Bette Davis Eyes -- Kim Carnes
World On Fire -- Sarah McLachlan
Bridge Over Troubled Water -- Aretha Franklin
Going Under -- Evanescence
Alone -- Heart
Zombie -- The Cranberries
Wicked Game -- Bassboosa
Puddle Of Grace -- Amy Jo Johnson
Ain't No Sunshine -- Christina Christianson
Maps -- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Video Game Heart -- All Girl Summer Fun Band
Wild Horses -- The Sundays
Let Go -- Frou Frou
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Movie Review: Gidget, Gidget Goes To Rome
In honor of upcoming Roomie Reunion 2008, a review of a "classic" set of movies.
The Gidget movie franchise stopped, mercifully, at three: Gidget, Gidget Goes To Rome, and Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Despite only having three movies in its pantheon, the actress who plays Gidget is different in each film; the only constant is actor James Darren, singer-heartthrob of the era, aka "Moondoggie," Gidget's main squeeze.
Moondoggie is such a good boyfriend, he even sings a song about "Gidge," the chorus of which is as follows:
"No means yes"? Okay, Moondoggie, but don't let her dad hear you say that.
(In fact, don't let me hear you say that. How much more offensive could this be? The answer is none. None more offensive.)
The Gidget movies are full of Freudian overtones -- none more blatant than when Gidget's friend teaches Gidge to "surf" by putting her surfboard on Gidget's bed and having Gidget stand on it while rhythmically pushing on the edge of the bed to simulate "waves."
Gidget Goes To Rome is a bit more avant-garde, with dinner party attendees dancing mysteriously, to equally "mysterious" music, around Gidget, Moondoggie, and other party patrons. It also features a chase scene through Rome, including a trip down the Spanish steps, which is the highlight of the movie for those who are watching it purely as Romaphiles.
James Darren sings a song in Gidget Goes To Rome about Gidget, too, which is just as well -- since it's a different Gidge, he's got to impress her anew. This song is a bit less objectionable in content, though its insidious earworm-melody more than makes up for the less offensive lyrics:
Gidget Goes Hawaiian features a brunette bombshell Gidget, much taller and more curvy than her Gidget and Gidget Goes To Rome counterparts. That's all I know about the movie, gleaned from the cover picture -- I've never actually seen it.
And that's all you ever need to know or remember about the Gidget movies.
Watch them with friends, a bucket of cheese popcorn, and an MST-3000 attitude, and you'll have a great time despite them.
The Gidget movie franchise stopped, mercifully, at three: Gidget, Gidget Goes To Rome, and Gidget Goes Hawaiian. Despite only having three movies in its pantheon, the actress who plays Gidget is different in each film; the only constant is actor James Darren, singer-heartthrob of the era, aka "Moondoggie," Gidget's main squeeze.
Moondoggie is such a good boyfriend, he even sings a song about "Gidge," the chorus of which is as follows:
If she says she loves you
You can bet your boots she loves you
If she says she hates you
That can also mean she loves you
"No means yes"? Okay, Moondoggie, but don't let her dad hear you say that.
(In fact, don't let me hear you say that. How much more offensive could this be? The answer is none. None more offensive.)
The Gidget movies are full of Freudian overtones -- none more blatant than when Gidget's friend teaches Gidge to "surf" by putting her surfboard on Gidget's bed and having Gidget stand on it while rhythmically pushing on the edge of the bed to simulate "waves."
Gidget Goes To Rome is a bit more avant-garde, with dinner party attendees dancing mysteriously, to equally "mysterious" music, around Gidget, Moondoggie, and other party patrons. It also features a chase scene through Rome, including a trip down the Spanish steps, which is the highlight of the movie for those who are watching it purely as Romaphiles.
James Darren sings a song in Gidget Goes To Rome about Gidget, too, which is just as well -- since it's a different Gidge, he's got to impress her anew. This song is a bit less objectionable in content, though its insidious earworm-melody more than makes up for the less offensive lyrics:
Gidget, when you go to Rome
You'll never be the same
You'll even change your name...to Gegetta...
As unforgettable
As bellisima
And Gegettable as...
Gegetta, make Italy your own
Gidget Goes Hawaiian features a brunette bombshell Gidget, much taller and more curvy than her Gidget and Gidget Goes To Rome counterparts. That's all I know about the movie, gleaned from the cover picture -- I've never actually seen it.
And that's all you ever need to know or remember about the Gidget movies.
Watch them with friends, a bucket of cheese popcorn, and an MST-3000 attitude, and you'll have a great time despite them.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mimi, me
The Internet collapses space, and silence -- and so I know this message will appear as though no time has passed, as though I haven't reflected or mourned.
If I want there to be spaces here, I have to create them.
The worst part about death, from a distance, is the narcissism. I want to mourn; I want to spend myself on grief; I want to give myself to this process.
But in the absence of others who knew her, who understand the loss blindly, viscerally, as an animal understands, I fall on myself. I implode, like a dying star, insensible to the density -- as though I am immune to being crushed.
And I am. I feel immune. I sit still, lie quietly, so the pressure diffuses evenly, so it cannot catch me. I lay like Giles Corey, willing the world to add weight. I sit and listen and laugh when my silence is interrupted. I resemble someone alive.
I am absent, as though I've sent the sorrowing parts of me away. I miss them, and hate them.
My parsimonious grief is frustrating. My frustration is frustrating. I'm in shock, maybe. I'll come out of it -- maybe.
I imagine Patricia and her secret, generous heart. I imagine Marja with her arms extended wide, accepting her own grief and mine, and sadness hits me, as acute as the relief I feel imagining these women.
I cry, but only for a moment. I wonder if the tears have tracked my face, or left no trace; I wonder which I would prefer. I do not look in the mirror.
I remember Mimi laughing, a purple bandana on her head. I remember the shawl she wrapped around herself when she was cold. I remember the sound of her voice speaking Amharic.
I remember saving her seat next to me for meetings, the anxiety of preparing to refuse anyone who tried to take it. I never understood why I did this.
I put Mimi's name on the bulletin boards, with students who had excellent attendance. I never understood why I did this, either.
I copied books on CD for her. She consulted me when she had DVD players to hook up. We went out to lunch when I left. She had sha cha chicken in Chinatown. Her husband Mohammed had noodles.
I spend the first two days after I read the news, reinventing my life, reimagining -- rebooting. Everything I do is a first, because it is the first after: "Mimi will never do this again," I tell myself helplessly as I go into the bathroom, or flip on a lightswitch, or sit on the purple couch in my living room.
Mimi helped get the purple couch, on a Monday (or Wednesday or Thursday) night in February (or March?). We piled into a pick-up truck, into Mimi's small SUV, and barreled down 13th street to retrieve it. Marja said, beaming afterward, that it had been a fun adventure because we'd all pulled together.
Mimi helped get the Christmas presents from GWU for the Adopt-a-family program. I rode down with her and we giggled at office politics, at one-way streets, at students' requests.
When I leave the newspaper office Friday night, hours after hearing that Mimi has died, I understand that the world outside is different.
I will leave something in that building that I can never come back to. And when I return the next day or the next week or next month, the building will also have changed. The room in which I sat, pressed down by understanding, will be another place where Mimi is not alive.
Every place will be.
Every place is.
Maybe here, this non-place, where no atoms divide me from my friends -- where the code of one or nothing takes over for DNA -- she can exist, in some shadow form. Maybe the recitation of my memory will be more than an elegy; maybe she can live, here.
Maybe I'm grasping at straws.
Maybe I'm coming out of shock.
If I want there to be spaces here, I have to create them.
The worst part about death, from a distance, is the narcissism. I want to mourn; I want to spend myself on grief; I want to give myself to this process.
But in the absence of others who knew her, who understand the loss blindly, viscerally, as an animal understands, I fall on myself. I implode, like a dying star, insensible to the density -- as though I am immune to being crushed.
And I am. I feel immune. I sit still, lie quietly, so the pressure diffuses evenly, so it cannot catch me. I lay like Giles Corey, willing the world to add weight. I sit and listen and laugh when my silence is interrupted. I resemble someone alive.
I am absent, as though I've sent the sorrowing parts of me away. I miss them, and hate them.
My parsimonious grief is frustrating. My frustration is frustrating. I'm in shock, maybe. I'll come out of it -- maybe.
I imagine Patricia and her secret, generous heart. I imagine Marja with her arms extended wide, accepting her own grief and mine, and sadness hits me, as acute as the relief I feel imagining these women.
I cry, but only for a moment. I wonder if the tears have tracked my face, or left no trace; I wonder which I would prefer. I do not look in the mirror.
I remember Mimi laughing, a purple bandana on her head. I remember the shawl she wrapped around herself when she was cold. I remember the sound of her voice speaking Amharic.
I remember saving her seat next to me for meetings, the anxiety of preparing to refuse anyone who tried to take it. I never understood why I did this.
I put Mimi's name on the bulletin boards, with students who had excellent attendance. I never understood why I did this, either.
I copied books on CD for her. She consulted me when she had DVD players to hook up. We went out to lunch when I left. She had sha cha chicken in Chinatown. Her husband Mohammed had noodles.
I spend the first two days after I read the news, reinventing my life, reimagining -- rebooting. Everything I do is a first, because it is the first after: "Mimi will never do this again," I tell myself helplessly as I go into the bathroom, or flip on a lightswitch, or sit on the purple couch in my living room.
Mimi helped get the purple couch, on a Monday (or Wednesday or Thursday) night in February (or March?). We piled into a pick-up truck, into Mimi's small SUV, and barreled down 13th street to retrieve it. Marja said, beaming afterward, that it had been a fun adventure because we'd all pulled together.
Mimi helped get the Christmas presents from GWU for the Adopt-a-family program. I rode down with her and we giggled at office politics, at one-way streets, at students' requests.
When I leave the newspaper office Friday night, hours after hearing that Mimi has died, I understand that the world outside is different.
I will leave something in that building that I can never come back to. And when I return the next day or the next week or next month, the building will also have changed. The room in which I sat, pressed down by understanding, will be another place where Mimi is not alive.
Every place will be.
Every place is.
Maybe here, this non-place, where no atoms divide me from my friends -- where the code of one or nothing takes over for DNA -- she can exist, in some shadow form. Maybe the recitation of my memory will be more than an elegy; maybe she can live, here.
Maybe I'm grasping at straws.
Maybe I'm coming out of shock.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
PSA: I can save you.
I got certified in CPR this morning.
At least I think I did. The instructor didn't tell me I'd done anything wrong, and I can't imagine I got enough written-test questions wrong to fail me.
So go ahead, world: Wheeze and cough, get stung by bees, choke on your dinner. Lose consciousness and stop breathing. I'm ready for ya.
At least I think I did. The instructor didn't tell me I'd done anything wrong, and I can't imagine I got enough written-test questions wrong to fail me.
So go ahead, world: Wheeze and cough, get stung by bees, choke on your dinner. Lose consciousness and stop breathing. I'm ready for ya.
So You Thought You Could Dance, V
This week's SYD was both better and less remarkable than past weeks'. The dancers are better -- we're getting down to the wire, here -- which is the source of both the consistently good routines and the relative lack of drama over bad routines. In fact, the judges only shouted down one routine all night, mostly using their comment times to talk about how entertained they were.
The guest judge was Toni Basil, of "Hey Mickey, you're so fine" fame (and no other fame), but she looked like Twiggy from "America's Next Top Model," only in 80s spandex. She talked throughout the night about "street": "street dances," "street" attitude, "street" authenticity.
The effect of hearing a tiny white woman talk about street cred and the gradual acceptance of "street" dances in artsy-dance culture was similar to the effect it would have on you all if I suddenly busted out with "Golddigger" in the middle of a conversation. ("Git down, girl, go 'head, git down.") I can only assume she has some street cred from her "Mickey" days; but I think we all know that whatever credibility she gained from that is now stale, or has been squeezed out of her by the repeated application of spandex to her tiny frame.
Will and Courtney danced a samba and a lyrical hip-hop number. Of the samba, Mary Murphy said "What I want to know right now is 'where's Ashton?' Because I think I'm being punked right now!" (They were so good, they were like samba dancers.) I actually thought Courtney did a good job here, though I've never been in her fan club, and Will always holds his own nicely.
The lyrical hip-hop, which I was again prepared to love, I only like-liked. (A little infatuation, but nothing long-lasting there.) Tabitha and Napoleon choreographed it, and like Mia's routine about herself and her father (who died) from two years ago, it was about the memory of a lost loved one, and being able to see them one last time. There were parts that were excellent, I thought, but probably unintentionally so: Courtney and Will danced as partners in a bendy-flopping-over-each-other way for a few turns that portrayed a desperation I thought was accurate to the experience of losing someone you love, and Will twirled down to the floor near the end of the song in a way that made me think "Now he's going back down to Hell." I don't think Tabitha and Napoleon meant for the routine to be freakish or scary, but for me the freakish/scary bits were the best parts.
Twitch and Katee were partnered for a contemporary dance choreographed by Mia and a Broadway routine by Tyce. The contemporary was, in my opinion, the best of the night. The story behind the routine was that Katee was a codependent lover who wanted Twitch to pay attention to her, wanted to be attached to him, but he wasn't having it. They played around a free-standing door, Katee usually on the "outside" with Twitch not letting her "in." It was funny and pathetic (as in, filled with pathos) at the same time: Twitch would swing open the door, and Katee was hanging on the outside of it, or Katee would use the door frame as leverage to try to kick Twitch in the face, or bang on the door to get in. Both dancers did a great job, enough so that I forgot I was watching Twitch (he seemed to have the technical experience of Will), and I liked Katee all the more by the end. She may actually be my favorite for winner this year.
Nigel joked after this routine that he'd been in that situation with many women before -- he rolled his eyes -- but that "I never opened the door, no matter how much they begged to get out." (What a kidder, that Nigel.)
Mary questioned whether Nigel had ever had women that crazy over him, missing the self-effacing implication that he had been locking them in, and Nigel said "Well, I didn't want to say you by name, Mary." Audience laugh at Mary's expense.
Mary tried to get him back: "Okay, Nigel, play along with me."
"That's what you said last time," Nigel quipped.
In other words, "that's what she said." Haha.
The Broadway routine was startlingly similar in theme to the unrequited love/obsession of Mia's, with Katee as "Sweet Georgia Brown" trying to get her man, and Twitch still having none of it. It was better than most Broadway routines, and again they both performed well. The judges by this point took a friendly interest in critiquing Twitch and Katee, as though they were comrades offering advice to fellow dancers, rather than experts correcting amateurs. Toni pointed out that Twitch brought a "reality" to the dance that Broadway dancers (being "not street") often did not.
Mark and Comfort danced hip-hop and foxtrot. The hip-hop routine was excellent, with the two pretending to be kids in detention when the teacher's left the room. It struck me, as it did last week, that I'd like to see Comfort dancing hip-hop in a non-competitive context, I enjoyed this routine so much. Alas, Mark fared less well, though the judges rewarded him for his out-of-his-genre efforts.
The foxtrot was, more or less, a disaster. If I hadn't already expected Mark and Comfort to go home this week, I would have after that dance. It wasn't the worst dancing ever seen on an SYD stage, but in this season, at this level of competition, it wasn't good enough. The hip-hop routine may save them, but I doubt it.
Joshua and Chelsie danced the Argentine tango, choreographed by past season's Dmitri and set to weird, wordless music, and disco. Chelsie did things with her legs in both routines that should be impossible for humans. (I wonder if she can hear those dog whistles, too.)
Mary and Nigel loved the tango, and Toni couldn't resist her requisite reference to "street" culture: "I think Argentine tango is the most 'street' of the ballroom dances," she said. (Okay, Toni.)
The disco routine's choreographer, Doriana, said both that she wanted people to feel that this was a dance they could do and would want to do themselves, at home, and that she'd packed as many lifts as possible into it. (Okay, Doriana.)
The solos last night left something to be desired, usually choreography. Comfort's solo, again, was one I wanted to see more of, and so was Twitch's (though he mainly worked the crowd rather than dancing a real, choreographed routine).
Will's solo, however, was the only one that really demanded more time (though he didn't get it). He had dressed up as James Brown and was dancing to the song "Get Up Off That Thing." When he went over to the judges' stand to have his phone number advertised so America could vote for him, the judges gave him a standing ovation, and -- in what was possibly the most difficult move of the night, considering the shortness of her dress -- Cat Dealy knelt down and bowed several times in Will's direction.
When they all go on tour, I expect that Will's James Brown routine will be part of the Top Ten act, whether he wins it all or no.
The guest judge was Toni Basil, of "Hey Mickey, you're so fine" fame (and no other fame), but she looked like Twiggy from "America's Next Top Model," only in 80s spandex. She talked throughout the night about "street": "street dances," "street" attitude, "street" authenticity.
The effect of hearing a tiny white woman talk about street cred and the gradual acceptance of "street" dances in artsy-dance culture was similar to the effect it would have on you all if I suddenly busted out with "Golddigger" in the middle of a conversation. ("Git down, girl, go 'head, git down.") I can only assume she has some street cred from her "Mickey" days; but I think we all know that whatever credibility she gained from that is now stale, or has been squeezed out of her by the repeated application of spandex to her tiny frame.
Will and Courtney danced a samba and a lyrical hip-hop number. Of the samba, Mary Murphy said "What I want to know right now is 'where's Ashton?' Because I think I'm being punked right now!" (They were so good, they were like samba dancers.) I actually thought Courtney did a good job here, though I've never been in her fan club, and Will always holds his own nicely.
The lyrical hip-hop, which I was again prepared to love, I only like-liked. (A little infatuation, but nothing long-lasting there.) Tabitha and Napoleon choreographed it, and like Mia's routine about herself and her father (who died) from two years ago, it was about the memory of a lost loved one, and being able to see them one last time. There were parts that were excellent, I thought, but probably unintentionally so: Courtney and Will danced as partners in a bendy-flopping-over-each-other way for a few turns that portrayed a desperation I thought was accurate to the experience of losing someone you love, and Will twirled down to the floor near the end of the song in a way that made me think "Now he's going back down to Hell." I don't think Tabitha and Napoleon meant for the routine to be freakish or scary, but for me the freakish/scary bits were the best parts.
Twitch and Katee were partnered for a contemporary dance choreographed by Mia and a Broadway routine by Tyce. The contemporary was, in my opinion, the best of the night. The story behind the routine was that Katee was a codependent lover who wanted Twitch to pay attention to her, wanted to be attached to him, but he wasn't having it. They played around a free-standing door, Katee usually on the "outside" with Twitch not letting her "in." It was funny and pathetic (as in, filled with pathos) at the same time: Twitch would swing open the door, and Katee was hanging on the outside of it, or Katee would use the door frame as leverage to try to kick Twitch in the face, or bang on the door to get in. Both dancers did a great job, enough so that I forgot I was watching Twitch (he seemed to have the technical experience of Will), and I liked Katee all the more by the end. She may actually be my favorite for winner this year.
Nigel joked after this routine that he'd been in that situation with many women before -- he rolled his eyes -- but that "I never opened the door, no matter how much they begged to get out." (What a kidder, that Nigel.)
Mary questioned whether Nigel had ever had women that crazy over him, missing the self-effacing implication that he had been locking them in, and Nigel said "Well, I didn't want to say you by name, Mary." Audience laugh at Mary's expense.
Mary tried to get him back: "Okay, Nigel, play along with me."
"That's what you said last time," Nigel quipped.
In other words, "that's what she said." Haha.
The Broadway routine was startlingly similar in theme to the unrequited love/obsession of Mia's, with Katee as "Sweet Georgia Brown" trying to get her man, and Twitch still having none of it. It was better than most Broadway routines, and again they both performed well. The judges by this point took a friendly interest in critiquing Twitch and Katee, as though they were comrades offering advice to fellow dancers, rather than experts correcting amateurs. Toni pointed out that Twitch brought a "reality" to the dance that Broadway dancers (being "not street") often did not.
Mark and Comfort danced hip-hop and foxtrot. The hip-hop routine was excellent, with the two pretending to be kids in detention when the teacher's left the room. It struck me, as it did last week, that I'd like to see Comfort dancing hip-hop in a non-competitive context, I enjoyed this routine so much. Alas, Mark fared less well, though the judges rewarded him for his out-of-his-genre efforts.
The foxtrot was, more or less, a disaster. If I hadn't already expected Mark and Comfort to go home this week, I would have after that dance. It wasn't the worst dancing ever seen on an SYD stage, but in this season, at this level of competition, it wasn't good enough. The hip-hop routine may save them, but I doubt it.
Joshua and Chelsie danced the Argentine tango, choreographed by past season's Dmitri and set to weird, wordless music, and disco. Chelsie did things with her legs in both routines that should be impossible for humans. (I wonder if she can hear those dog whistles, too.)
Mary and Nigel loved the tango, and Toni couldn't resist her requisite reference to "street" culture: "I think Argentine tango is the most 'street' of the ballroom dances," she said. (Okay, Toni.)
The disco routine's choreographer, Doriana, said both that she wanted people to feel that this was a dance they could do and would want to do themselves, at home, and that she'd packed as many lifts as possible into it. (Okay, Doriana.)
The solos last night left something to be desired, usually choreography. Comfort's solo, again, was one I wanted to see more of, and so was Twitch's (though he mainly worked the crowd rather than dancing a real, choreographed routine).
Will's solo, however, was the only one that really demanded more time (though he didn't get it). He had dressed up as James Brown and was dancing to the song "Get Up Off That Thing." When he went over to the judges' stand to have his phone number advertised so America could vote for him, the judges gave him a standing ovation, and -- in what was possibly the most difficult move of the night, considering the shortness of her dress -- Cat Dealy knelt down and bowed several times in Will's direction.
When they all go on tour, I expect that Will's James Brown routine will be part of the Top Ten act, whether he wins it all or no.
Local Trivia: Not one of ours.
Yesterday on I-84 East, I glanced in my rearview mirror only to see a semi behind me -- with a giant, electric-lit cross on its front grill.
That truck's not from Connecticut, was my first thought. Then, seriously?
Curious, I slowed to let it pass so I could get a look at the plates: They were Georgia.
All is right with the world.
That truck's not from Connecticut, was my first thought. Then, seriously?
Curious, I slowed to let it pass so I could get a look at the plates: They were Georgia.
All is right with the world.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
PSA: Stalking God
For some reason, evangelical praise choruses lend themselves to out-of-context interpretations that indicate that we (people) are meant to stalk God.
The praise song included on the Stalkermix, for instance:
As a bonus, the version by Sonic Flood (on Stalkermix) includes a half-logical mini-diatribe on how our country was founded on Christian ideals (at least I think that's what it's about). Listening to it in the context of "Every Breath You Take" rather than surrounded by other praise songs, I found the effect chilling: The singer seems like a schizophrenic homeless man you can't quite get away from.
Why would God want that?
But maybe to God we're all schizophrenic homeless men.
The praise song included on the Stalkermix, for instance:
In the secret, in the quiet place
In the stillness you are there
In the secret, in the quiet hour I wait,
Only for you.
'Cause I want to know you more.
As a bonus, the version by Sonic Flood (on Stalkermix) includes a half-logical mini-diatribe on how our country was founded on Christian ideals (at least I think that's what it's about). Listening to it in the context of "Every Breath You Take" rather than surrounded by other praise songs, I found the effect chilling: The singer seems like a schizophrenic homeless man you can't quite get away from.
Why would God want that?
But maybe to God we're all schizophrenic homeless men.
Mix: Stalkermix
"Every Breath You Take" -- Police
"Green Gloves" -- The National
"The Old Apartment" -- BNL
"Consume Me" -- DC Talk
"Stalk U" -- Los Abandoned
"I Want To Know You" -- Sonic Flood
"Stalk You" -- Ananda Project
"Calling You" -- Blue October
"I Will Possess Your Heart" -- Death Cab for Cutie
"Brainy" -- The National
"Eye In The Sky" -- Alan Parsons Project
"That Okay" -- Steamy Bohemians
"Green Gloves" -- The National
"The Old Apartment" -- BNL
"Consume Me" -- DC Talk
"Stalk U" -- Los Abandoned
"I Want To Know You" -- Sonic Flood
"Stalk You" -- Ananda Project
"Calling You" -- Blue October
"I Will Possess Your Heart" -- Death Cab for Cutie
"Brainy" -- The National
"Eye In The Sky" -- Alan Parsons Project
"That Okay" -- Steamy Bohemians
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
PSA: Dermatologist appt.
FYI, for those of you who harangued me for saying stupid things like "I'd almost rather be dead than find out I have skin cancer," I've got an appointment with a dermatologist to check out that suspicious mole I've had for two years.
Apparently I wouldn't rather be dead.
But if I'm dying of skin cancer, it'll still be two months before I find out: The earliest appointment was Sept. 26.
Apparently I wouldn't rather be dead.
But if I'm dying of skin cancer, it'll still be two months before I find out: The earliest appointment was Sept. 26.
Local Trivia: I accuse my neighbor!
Turns out the subject of the trifecta-from-hell that inspired my first "Accusations" post is my neighbor. Somehow I hadn't noticed this before, but there it was this morning -- the Honda Element with the full-window ad for Fire Prevention on its back window.
It figures, I guess.
It figures, I guess.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Anatomy of an Honors Student: Cross and Double Cross
When I was young, elementary-school age, I dreamed of the end. I read Revelation and Job and imagined the leviathon and Godzilla in the same frame. I planned for the worst, for what I knew was coming, and in my dreams, I always hid under a desk at armageddon.
I knew the desk wouldn't save me, but as with children in 1950s post-atomic filmstrips, it was my only cover. I clutched at its legs desperately, with chaos circling around and above me.
I see myself now in my memory, small and all elbows, peering out through bedraggled bangs at the swarm of dragons and black smoke and stars swirling above, and I think that I will never be that safe again.
*****
Some childhood nights I pray a bubble around my bed -- every night for weeks, sometimes, ritually -- so the Freddy Krugers and soul-sucking monsters won't be able to get me. The membrane, hard and slick, that keeps me from their evil scissor-hands and claws, is impermeable. Only God can pass through.
The bubble is as translucent and pearlescent as a soap bubble, though, and I can see them staring, leering, scratching at the outside. They grind their knuckles against each other and plot.
I grip the piles of stuffed animals around me, pulling them in tighter. Sometimes their pyramids are so high that the blankets don't touch me at all, and I have to make adjustments.
I don't touch them to comfort my fears. I pull them to me to protect them, keep them firmly inside the bubble. I touch them to save them.
*****
I shift uncomfortably, putting my weight on one socked foot, then the other.
Brad has been crying for ten minutes now.
His back is hunched over, sobs pass through him in waves, and I can't help but think of Quasimodo. Brad's seven-foot-friend Rob stands sentinel beside him, on Brad's right, and I flank his left. It is my fault he's here.
It started as an online diary, where I met Hamlet. True to his name, Hamlet was a never-acting, always-pontificating "emo" type diarist, spending his words on vague accounts of his personal struggles and philosophies. I commented on the philosophy, and he referred me to Brad, his cyber-space friend.
Brad had a precision I would appreciate, Hamlet said. I do.
We trade emails, Simpsons quotes, thoughts on faith. Brad believes in God, was converted late, but does not believe in hell. Our debates flare up quickly and fade slowly. Brad decides to visit.
Before he comes, I warn him: I am not domestic. I am not the woman he is looking for. I'm involved with someone else.
He hesitates. But he comes anyway.
We watch Trekkies. We see the train and he stands as if crucified, arms out, in front of it. I look away, embarrassed for him. He drove thirteen hours with Rob to get here.
On Sunday, the last day, I take him to church. He sings; he sits; he cries.
I don't know what to do. I should put my hand on his back, make some kind of contact, but I don't want to. Touch implies empathy, responsibility, and I have none and take none.
I stare at the projection, a praise chorus in light-and-black on the white wall, and pretend to sing. I pretend I am caught up by it, too involved to see, peripherally, what is happening. I pretend not to notice.
It doesn't matter. Brad changes without me -- believes in hell, begins attending church in Ohio, meets and marries a "domestic woman."
She wants to thank me, he says in a later letter, for my influence on his life, for pulling him to heel, for making him orthodox.
She wants to thank me.
*****
I stand waiting for hours in the cold, with Christina, with Debbie, with Matt: The train will always come if you wait long enough.
You can hear it from far off enough to get there before it arrives, if it whistles at a distance. If you run, flat-out, you can get there from the field in time to be there at its heartbeat and giant, shuddering run through the edge of campus. But you wouldn't need to -- the echo of the whistle in the field vibrates through the grass and the one dead tree and comes back to you from the sides of houses and the forest-edge of the field loud enough to make you feel like you're there, anyway.
The train is like God. The train is evidence.
Stacked two-high, cargo cars crashing past are the largest thing I've ever seen -- they're large in spirit, large in intent and execution, and their mechanics (so industrial) provoke a visceral reaction. The train could crush me; I feel crushable.
But I understand it. This train only travels on tracks. I can get as close as I dare if I keep my feet and fingers away from the meeting of steel-to-steel. One foot or inch removed is enough, and I can feel the train's pulse and my own in tandem.
I love the train, for three years. I run anytime it calls.
*****
God is like a stranger. I look for God and find walls and walls and walls, unfamiliar ones, ones I can't break. I wonder if I built them in days of lying and busying myself, or through neglect, or whether they came from my stubborn Sundays in bed, my head on my pillow until it was just-too-late for church, my heart pretending to reject guilt.
I wonder who is rejecting who -- me, God, or God, me?
One day, it will stop and I will stop. I suspect I will see again what I always do: that it has always been me, rejecting myself, and that I do not understand God.
I can't.
And I won't.
I knew the desk wouldn't save me, but as with children in 1950s post-atomic filmstrips, it was my only cover. I clutched at its legs desperately, with chaos circling around and above me.
I see myself now in my memory, small and all elbows, peering out through bedraggled bangs at the swarm of dragons and black smoke and stars swirling above, and I think that I will never be that safe again.
*****
Some childhood nights I pray a bubble around my bed -- every night for weeks, sometimes, ritually -- so the Freddy Krugers and soul-sucking monsters won't be able to get me. The membrane, hard and slick, that keeps me from their evil scissor-hands and claws, is impermeable. Only God can pass through.
The bubble is as translucent and pearlescent as a soap bubble, though, and I can see them staring, leering, scratching at the outside. They grind their knuckles against each other and plot.
I grip the piles of stuffed animals around me, pulling them in tighter. Sometimes their pyramids are so high that the blankets don't touch me at all, and I have to make adjustments.
I don't touch them to comfort my fears. I pull them to me to protect them, keep them firmly inside the bubble. I touch them to save them.
*****
I shift uncomfortably, putting my weight on one socked foot, then the other.
Brad has been crying for ten minutes now.
His back is hunched over, sobs pass through him in waves, and I can't help but think of Quasimodo. Brad's seven-foot-friend Rob stands sentinel beside him, on Brad's right, and I flank his left. It is my fault he's here.
It started as an online diary, where I met Hamlet. True to his name, Hamlet was a never-acting, always-pontificating "emo" type diarist, spending his words on vague accounts of his personal struggles and philosophies. I commented on the philosophy, and he referred me to Brad, his cyber-space friend.
Brad had a precision I would appreciate, Hamlet said. I do.
We trade emails, Simpsons quotes, thoughts on faith. Brad believes in God, was converted late, but does not believe in hell. Our debates flare up quickly and fade slowly. Brad decides to visit.
Before he comes, I warn him: I am not domestic. I am not the woman he is looking for. I'm involved with someone else.
He hesitates. But he comes anyway.
We watch Trekkies. We see the train and he stands as if crucified, arms out, in front of it. I look away, embarrassed for him. He drove thirteen hours with Rob to get here.
On Sunday, the last day, I take him to church. He sings; he sits; he cries.
I don't know what to do. I should put my hand on his back, make some kind of contact, but I don't want to. Touch implies empathy, responsibility, and I have none and take none.
I stare at the projection, a praise chorus in light-and-black on the white wall, and pretend to sing. I pretend I am caught up by it, too involved to see, peripherally, what is happening. I pretend not to notice.
It doesn't matter. Brad changes without me -- believes in hell, begins attending church in Ohio, meets and marries a "domestic woman."
She wants to thank me, he says in a later letter, for my influence on his life, for pulling him to heel, for making him orthodox.
She wants to thank me.
*****
I stand waiting for hours in the cold, with Christina, with Debbie, with Matt: The train will always come if you wait long enough.
You can hear it from far off enough to get there before it arrives, if it whistles at a distance. If you run, flat-out, you can get there from the field in time to be there at its heartbeat and giant, shuddering run through the edge of campus. But you wouldn't need to -- the echo of the whistle in the field vibrates through the grass and the one dead tree and comes back to you from the sides of houses and the forest-edge of the field loud enough to make you feel like you're there, anyway.
The train is like God. The train is evidence.
Stacked two-high, cargo cars crashing past are the largest thing I've ever seen -- they're large in spirit, large in intent and execution, and their mechanics (so industrial) provoke a visceral reaction. The train could crush me; I feel crushable.
But I understand it. This train only travels on tracks. I can get as close as I dare if I keep my feet and fingers away from the meeting of steel-to-steel. One foot or inch removed is enough, and I can feel the train's pulse and my own in tandem.
I love the train, for three years. I run anytime it calls.
*****
God is like a stranger. I look for God and find walls and walls and walls, unfamiliar ones, ones I can't break. I wonder if I built them in days of lying and busying myself, or through neglect, or whether they came from my stubborn Sundays in bed, my head on my pillow until it was just-too-late for church, my heart pretending to reject guilt.
I wonder who is rejecting who -- me, God, or God, me?
One day, it will stop and I will stop. I suspect I will see again what I always do: that it has always been me, rejecting myself, and that I do not understand God.
I can't.
And I won't.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Local Trivia: WHAT's playing??
On the Berlin Showcase Cinemas marquee, outside:
Journey to the
Hellboy II
Sex and the
Kung Fu Panda
Journey to the
Hellboy II
Sex and the
Kung Fu Panda
Go ahead, TAKE me (for all I'm worth).
According to an ad appearing at the top of my email inbox, "thieves don't have to steal your mail anymore."
Oh good, I thought. But there was more.
"They get it hand delivered."
The ad went on to say that the company could alert me when thieves began having my mail forwarded to another address -- but that's where they lost me.
If anyone goes to all the trouble of having my embarrassing list of magazine subscriptions -- which includes U.S. News & World Report (because they sent me a free watch with a year's subscription) -- forwarded, more power to them. I mean, I don't read those things anyway.
And if they do it for the sake of breaking into my bank account? Well, they're going to need those magazines to heat their houses come winter, because you can't get blood from a stone...or money from a neo-hippie.
Oh good, I thought. But there was more.
"They get it hand delivered."
The ad went on to say that the company could alert me when thieves began having my mail forwarded to another address -- but that's where they lost me.
If anyone goes to all the trouble of having my embarrassing list of magazine subscriptions -- which includes U.S. News & World Report (because they sent me a free watch with a year's subscription) -- forwarded, more power to them. I mean, I don't read those things anyway.
And if they do it for the sake of breaking into my bank account? Well, they're going to need those magazines to heat their houses come winter, because you can't get blood from a stone...or money from a neo-hippie.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Thirteen thousand, eight hundred cheers for me!
I got a letter in the mail today informing me that my student loans have been paid in full. It congratulates me for diligently fulfilling my obligations to the lender and wishes me success in any future schooling, reminding me X lender will be there for me if I ever have need of more educational loans.
I probably will, X lender, don't you worry.
But for now, I'm basking in the warm, glowing, warming glow of practically debt-free living -- which I expect to last until my next credit card bill arrives.
Huzzah to me.
(And, incidentally, to the team leaders in China and the Americorps program, without which this wouldn't have been possible.)
I probably will, X lender, don't you worry.
But for now, I'm basking in the warm, glowing, warming glow of practically debt-free living -- which I expect to last until my next credit card bill arrives.
Huzzah to me.
(And, incidentally, to the team leaders in China and the Americorps program, without which this wouldn't have been possible.)
I am a pacifist because this is how I pray.
God, I hate you, and I have visions of mercy. I have visions of pulling you apart from the inside out, of clawing my hands into your guts and ripping out handfuls of red, bloody sinew and viscera. I have visions of spreading you open above me like a giant, grotesque slab of still-living meat. I have in my mind terrible slashing, slicing instruments and a vicious, pernicious will to violate – such hatred of you and your deprivations that I swear I never knew you. I swear, as I rip apart what’s inside, your muscles and connections and vessels and thoughts, I never hated you more.
I always hated you exactly this much.
But I can learn.
I always hated you exactly this much.
But I can learn.
One of these things...
On the side of my "Flavor To-Go Soft Drink Mix Peach Tea" individual diet tea-flavor packets' box:
Let me point out that there's no argument here for parallelism in the inclusion of "gym bag" -- rather than, I don't know, "at the gym," "exercising" or "workouts" -- which is a modified noun, since the other words/phrases in the list are a prepositional phrase, a progressive verb, and a plural noun, respectively. (As are my suggestions.)
"Anywhere - Anytime!"
at the office
biking
gym bag
picnics
Let me point out that there's no argument here for parallelism in the inclusion of "gym bag" -- rather than, I don't know, "at the gym," "exercising" or "workouts" -- which is a modified noun, since the other words/phrases in the list are a prepositional phrase, a progressive verb, and a plural noun, respectively. (As are my suggestions.)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Confessions XIV
Like many people, I eat M&M's in a certain color-order every time. Unlike anyone I've ever talked to, my original color order as a child left me with only tan remaining (until tan was retired for blue in the early 90s).
I went through a phase in high school during which I ate Kraft singles cheese by folding each "cheese" slice four times so that it split into sixteen squares of approximately equal size. I then ate each square individually.
During the same phase, I ate bananas by slicing open a "window" in the peel and then cutting away each bite with a fork and knife.
I went through a phase in high school during which I ate Kraft singles cheese by folding each "cheese" slice four times so that it split into sixteen squares of approximately equal size. I then ate each square individually.
During the same phase, I ate bananas by slicing open a "window" in the peel and then cutting away each bite with a fork and knife.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
So You Thought You Could Dance IV
SYD started well in the first week of Top 10 competition.
Jessica, having cut herself from the competition immediately after reaching the top 10 "we're going on tour" mark (and apparently she will be going on tour with the other dancers, though where this leaves Comfort, I've no idea), came out in an ultra-tight dress -- like wow, her skin isn't that tight...I wonder where they folded it up and hid it -- and explained that she had two ribs that were "broken" and one that was "fractured."
Whether this means three total or two total, I have no idea. Cat rushed her offstage for the first hip-hop routine with Joshua and Courtney. The routine was a neat role-play, with Joshua the mad scientist and Courtney the Frankenstein he'd created. Their movements were sharp and it was fun to watch -- but more fun were the comments at the end.
(At this point, Spencer said the reason Mary Murphy pauses before screeching her approval [you can always tell when she really likes a routine because she takes a deep breath and then screams] is so viewers can hit the mute button. Haha.)
Lil' C was the guest judge this week, along with the ever-present Mary and Nigel, and I wasn't expecting much from him.
Man, was I wrong. He stole the show.
"I might need my asthma pump," he said after Joshua and Courtney's second routine, which was a rhumba. "You guys took my breath away."
Note on the rhumba: It was performed to Enrique Iglesias's "Hero," a song that figured prominently in my-and-Debbie's time at Oxford for its complete inanity and overzealous sentimentality. It was also revealed in "Audio Mad-Libs" that the original lyrics of the song were "I can be your Nero, baby / I will kill, impale you, pain," which were both more creative and less disturbing than the current lyrics. ("I can be your hero, baby / I can kiss away the pain")
Lil' C kept it up throughout the night.
When a sad, sad attempt at a country two-step proved that judges won't rally around a "first time on SYD" dance just because it's new, Lil' C consoled Kherington and Mark (who may be on the chopping block for this and their later jazz routine): "Justifiable presentation, though."
When they danced the jazz that Tyce Diorio had said was a "showcase for the dance" rather than a story-dance, Lil' C said "you guys maintained a nice balance on the fulcrum of character."
Comfort and Twitch on the smooth waltz were a bit of a disaster, and Lil' C was not afraid to point it out: "It's a gumball of emotions -- step step here, step over myself here, step over myself there."
But Comfort and Twitch, lest we count them out as weak links, performed a hip-hop routine later that won the night. (With one possible exception, to come.)
I probably would have liked it more if the lights and camera-work weren't so spastic, but as it was, I felt Comfort wasn't doing Twitch many favors. I'd like to see them do a whole show together when they aren't in competition -- I suspect it would be a bit like watching the exhibitionism of the post-Olympic performances of 1992, when Victor Pechrenko did like three triple axles in a row, astounding the commentator into the highest-pitched sportscaster voice I've ever heard -- but I'd like to see them, in person, such that I can focus my eyes on whatever I want, and the only panning being done is by my swiveling head.
When they were done, Lil' C played it for all it was worth. "That was kinda..." he said, extending his so-so tone out, putting his head out and tilting it to one side before finishing his sentence -- "buck."
The crowd went wild, because everyone knows that "buck" means "good" in hip-hop (even us white kids). But for further nuance, Lil' C explained: "Buck is when internal artistry meets physical performance." Awesome, Lil' C. I am with you.
Incidentally, this routine also made me into an actual fan of Chris Brown, whose "With You" was the subject of my first Defense of Poppery post. Comfort and Twitch danced to Brown's "Forever."
Katee and Will were extraordinary, but in such a way that you didn't realize how extraordinary they were. Their first routine was Broadway, which didn't help things much from my perspective, but they did a great job. Their second routine was another SYD first, a pas de deux, and they performed it almost flawlessly. The judges, especially Mary and Nigel, were blown away.
They did make one mistake in a turn. About the mistake, Nigel said only "thank God you made that mistake -- now you have something to still work towards in your careers." The judges began talking about Katee and Will's careers post-show as a foregone conclusion, the way Mia talked about Travis's in the second season.
Will and Katee may be my favorites for merit. Will always seems unfailingly happy for his partner whenever judges say good things to her (and he was stuck with Jessica, who the judges hounded relentlessly for being less-than-Will, for a good long while), and Katee started off slow for me but has really caught my attention and earned my admiration these last few weeks. Good for them.
Chelsie and Gev were the last couple, and frankly, I was sorry to see them paired. In my opinion, Gev is the weakest guy and should probably go home tonight -- on the other hand, Chelsie, despite my admiration for Katee and her own ballroom proclivities, won my heart that first week, and I want her to do really well. Chelsie and Gev danced contemporary first and jive second.
Lil' C said of the first routine that he felt "like you guys really committed to that"; in the second, though, he said what I think all but the hardest-core Gev fans were thinking, to Chelsie: "I think you could actually make a mannequin look good, dancing with it."
Solos were performed tonight, too, and while I won't go into detail on all of them (since many solos are unremarkable), here are some highlights:
Song choices: Will danced to "Dance with my Father," a brilliant choice for engaging the audience; Katee danced to "This Woman's Work" by Maxwell, a song I like (but her routine was just ok -- had that desperation of many contemporary solos); Mark, for whom I despair thanks to his solo effort and pairing this week, danced, bizarrely, to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Solo performances: Comfort's was the first solo that felt like it wasn't over yet when the SYD music came on to signal its end -- I wanted to see more of it (good for her); Twitch's pop-and-lock type routine worked well with the music he chose (as if he were in a car wreck) and got better as it went on; Joshua proved in his pop-and-lock, which was semi-mesmerizing, that he can control each muscle group in his body separately, which is occasionally scary to watch.
I'd also like to point out, on a societal note, and for whatever it's worth, that of the five guys left, three are African-American. (And I expect the Russian-immigrant Gev and white guy Mark to go home the next two weeks.) On the other hand, as of last week, four of the top five girls were white, and the fifth is of Asian descent.
Go fig.
Jessica, having cut herself from the competition immediately after reaching the top 10 "we're going on tour" mark (and apparently she will be going on tour with the other dancers, though where this leaves Comfort, I've no idea), came out in an ultra-tight dress -- like wow, her skin isn't that tight...I wonder where they folded it up and hid it -- and explained that she had two ribs that were "broken" and one that was "fractured."
Whether this means three total or two total, I have no idea. Cat rushed her offstage for the first hip-hop routine with Joshua and Courtney. The routine was a neat role-play, with Joshua the mad scientist and Courtney the Frankenstein he'd created. Their movements were sharp and it was fun to watch -- but more fun were the comments at the end.
(At this point, Spencer said the reason Mary Murphy pauses before screeching her approval [you can always tell when she really likes a routine because she takes a deep breath and then screams] is so viewers can hit the mute button. Haha.)
Lil' C was the guest judge this week, along with the ever-present Mary and Nigel, and I wasn't expecting much from him.
Man, was I wrong. He stole the show.
"I might need my asthma pump," he said after Joshua and Courtney's second routine, which was a rhumba. "You guys took my breath away."
Note on the rhumba: It was performed to Enrique Iglesias's "Hero," a song that figured prominently in my-and-Debbie's time at Oxford for its complete inanity and overzealous sentimentality. It was also revealed in "Audio Mad-Libs" that the original lyrics of the song were "I can be your Nero, baby / I will kill, impale you, pain," which were both more creative and less disturbing than the current lyrics. ("I can be your hero, baby / I can kiss away the pain")
Lil' C kept it up throughout the night.
When a sad, sad attempt at a country two-step proved that judges won't rally around a "first time on SYD" dance just because it's new, Lil' C consoled Kherington and Mark (who may be on the chopping block for this and their later jazz routine): "Justifiable presentation, though."
When they danced the jazz that Tyce Diorio had said was a "showcase for the dance" rather than a story-dance, Lil' C said "you guys maintained a nice balance on the fulcrum of character."
Comfort and Twitch on the smooth waltz were a bit of a disaster, and Lil' C was not afraid to point it out: "It's a gumball of emotions -- step step here, step over myself here, step over myself there."
But Comfort and Twitch, lest we count them out as weak links, performed a hip-hop routine later that won the night. (With one possible exception, to come.)
I probably would have liked it more if the lights and camera-work weren't so spastic, but as it was, I felt Comfort wasn't doing Twitch many favors. I'd like to see them do a whole show together when they aren't in competition -- I suspect it would be a bit like watching the exhibitionism of the post-Olympic performances of 1992, when Victor Pechrenko did like three triple axles in a row, astounding the commentator into the highest-pitched sportscaster voice I've ever heard -- but I'd like to see them, in person, such that I can focus my eyes on whatever I want, and the only panning being done is by my swiveling head.
When they were done, Lil' C played it for all it was worth. "That was kinda..." he said, extending his so-so tone out, putting his head out and tilting it to one side before finishing his sentence -- "buck."
The crowd went wild, because everyone knows that "buck" means "good" in hip-hop (even us white kids). But for further nuance, Lil' C explained: "Buck is when internal artistry meets physical performance." Awesome, Lil' C. I am with you.
Incidentally, this routine also made me into an actual fan of Chris Brown, whose "With You" was the subject of my first Defense of Poppery post. Comfort and Twitch danced to Brown's "Forever."
Katee and Will were extraordinary, but in such a way that you didn't realize how extraordinary they were. Their first routine was Broadway, which didn't help things much from my perspective, but they did a great job. Their second routine was another SYD first, a pas de deux, and they performed it almost flawlessly. The judges, especially Mary and Nigel, were blown away.
They did make one mistake in a turn. About the mistake, Nigel said only "thank God you made that mistake -- now you have something to still work towards in your careers." The judges began talking about Katee and Will's careers post-show as a foregone conclusion, the way Mia talked about Travis's in the second season.
Will and Katee may be my favorites for merit. Will always seems unfailingly happy for his partner whenever judges say good things to her (and he was stuck with Jessica, who the judges hounded relentlessly for being less-than-Will, for a good long while), and Katee started off slow for me but has really caught my attention and earned my admiration these last few weeks. Good for them.
Chelsie and Gev were the last couple, and frankly, I was sorry to see them paired. In my opinion, Gev is the weakest guy and should probably go home tonight -- on the other hand, Chelsie, despite my admiration for Katee and her own ballroom proclivities, won my heart that first week, and I want her to do really well. Chelsie and Gev danced contemporary first and jive second.
Lil' C said of the first routine that he felt "like you guys really committed to that"; in the second, though, he said what I think all but the hardest-core Gev fans were thinking, to Chelsie: "I think you could actually make a mannequin look good, dancing with it."
Solos were performed tonight, too, and while I won't go into detail on all of them (since many solos are unremarkable), here are some highlights:
Song choices: Will danced to "Dance with my Father," a brilliant choice for engaging the audience; Katee danced to "This Woman's Work" by Maxwell, a song I like (but her routine was just ok -- had that desperation of many contemporary solos); Mark, for whom I despair thanks to his solo effort and pairing this week, danced, bizarrely, to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Solo performances: Comfort's was the first solo that felt like it wasn't over yet when the SYD music came on to signal its end -- I wanted to see more of it (good for her); Twitch's pop-and-lock type routine worked well with the music he chose (as if he were in a car wreck) and got better as it went on; Joshua proved in his pop-and-lock, which was semi-mesmerizing, that he can control each muscle group in his body separately, which is occasionally scary to watch.
I'd also like to point out, on a societal note, and for whatever it's worth, that of the five guys left, three are African-American. (And I expect the Russian-immigrant Gev and white guy Mark to go home the next two weeks.) On the other hand, as of last week, four of the top five girls were white, and the fifth is of Asian descent.
Go fig.
Because JESUS spoke ENGLISH, youz guys.
Translators are preparing to translate the Bible into patois, the Creole dialect of Jamaica. They expect the translation to start this month and finish in about 12 years.
Bizarrely, some Christian Jamaicans are not happy with this. In the AP article on the subject, one of them spoke up:
But you do realize that they're not speaking ancient Greek, Vulgate Latin and Aramaic in New Jersey, right Kevin?
Bizarrely, some Christian Jamaicans are not happy with this. In the AP article on the subject, one of them spoke up:
Other Jamaicans, like 30-year-old Kevin Sangster, say patois is an obscure dialect that doesn't deserve to be the focus of such an expensive project. It could dilute the Bible's meaning because it's not an established language, he said.Um. Well, okay.
"Errors could be made, and essentially what is translated is not necessarily reflecting the true meaning of the Scriptures," said Sangster, who left Jamaica in 1994 and lives in New Jersey.
But you do realize that they're not speaking ancient Greek, Vulgate Latin and Aramaic in New Jersey, right Kevin?
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Local Trivia: Wait 'til the town line.
Bumper sticker on a car parked in my driveway yesterday morning:
Please Don't Litter
In Plainville
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Anatomy of an Honors Student: Buckle
I sit in the passenger’s seat, trembling.
“Just tell me what you got,” my mom repeats, and I hold up the geometry quiz with 77 written in red across the top.
“It’s right there,” I say, and my voice cracks – like I’m a fourteen-year-old boy instead of girl.
“I want you to tell me,” mom says again.
Terror rises into my throat, makes me want to throw up.
“I can’t,” I say feebly. I turn toward the window, look out at the Family Dollar store and the Subway, study their signs to try to hold in my panic. I regulate my breathing, quick and shallow. I blink.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you got on your quiz.”
I turn my face away completely, try not to see myself reflected in the glass of the window.
“A seventy-seven,” I say. I hate her.
“Now what was so hard about that?” she says, her voice flat and stern, and she swings open her door and thrusts out a leg. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Alicia. Let’s go.”
We go.
----
This is the first sign that I am the creature in the closet, pushing myself, punishing myself, perfecting myself. It isn’t my mom.
I come closest in school, to impossible perfection, elementary through high school. I come so close I can taste the bitterness of the final percent, the absent plus. Ninety nine is not enough.
Every year I panic that the last year was my best.
I hit the ninety-ninth percentile on all state standardized tests. I pass all the CAPT the first time. I do well enough to qualify for National Merit Scholar semi-finals on the PSAT and improve my score significantly on the SAT. I take the AP English exam, and college-credit Spanish.
I take all honors classes, but I pay no attention to my GPA. I want an A in every class. I want to prove myself. I am not happy.
I am not happy.
---
We look at each other (hesitantly) and pull our desks together (reluctantly), the feet scratching along the floor as we form a group of convenience.
We are the four closest to each other, but we have nothing in common.
“Now talk about your answers with your group members,” the Life Skills teacher says. David, one of my groupmates, wrinkles his nose at her.
I look at my paper. Number one is “nuclear war.”
“So what are you most concerned about in the world?” one of my groupmates asks.
“Nuclear weapons, and world annihilation,” I say eventually. My group looks at me in disbelief.
“You're really concerned about that?” David asks.
“What did you put?”
“Lunch,” he says.
We all laugh.
“What do you mean, lunch?” we ask. “How could you be worried about lunch?”
“I’m worried that I won’t make it to lunch.” He looks at the clock; it’s only second period. He groans.
Ten seconds pass.
“I’m afraid,” Annette says, her voice level and natural, “of failure. I’m most afraid of really trying at something, and failing anyway.”
I lower my eyes to my paper, look at my answers: nuclear war, famine, disease. I felt a creeping chill along the back of my neck.
Her answer is better than mine.
---
It’s easy to “buckle down” – I pull out my history book junior year, flip to the assigned chapter. I read the questions. I read the chapter. I write my answers, as everything, long-hand on a sheet of blank, unlined paper. By the end of the year I can finish this work in under two hours.
I stay in my room the entire time, not stopping – no bathroom breaks, no snack, no interruptions. I do not enjoy the work, but I am not frustrated or bored. I have prepared myself to be empty of emotion, reaction, expectation. (My koan is “succeed, succeed, succeed.”)
I fill myself with knowledge and feel in-a-way satisfied.
---
My friend and lab partner follows me to my locker.
“But why did he give you an A?” she asks me, and it sounds like an accusation. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t do.”
“I don’t know,” I say, but I think because I’m good at English.
“But what did you do that I didn’t do?” Her voice is harder.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.
She stares at me.
I open my locker and wonder if our friendship can survive this.
“You got a B+,” I offer helpfully, knowing it won’t help.
“But you got an A,” she says.
“A-,” I say, despite myself. I taste the minus like a copper penny or a battery on my tongue.
“I don’t know what you did that I didn’t do,” she snaps, and turns and goes.
I glance at her back, her hair flouncing behind her, and think I’m better than you.
I look again, for the first time since she approached me (asking diffidently “What did you get?”), at the computer printout report card.
“A minus,” I say, and sigh. “What didn’t I do?”
I frown. I slam my locker door.
We all buckle.
---
We buckled down, buckled under, because there was nothing in that space. There was no us – just desire, desire, desire: Depend on me. Need me. Tell me I’m good. Tell me you’re proud, envious, awed. Tell me I haven’t failed. Love me -- but don't just love me.
Love me because I’m perfect.
“Just tell me what you got,” my mom repeats, and I hold up the geometry quiz with 77 written in red across the top.
“It’s right there,” I say, and my voice cracks – like I’m a fourteen-year-old boy instead of girl.
“I want you to tell me,” mom says again.
Terror rises into my throat, makes me want to throw up.
“I can’t,” I say feebly. I turn toward the window, look out at the Family Dollar store and the Subway, study their signs to try to hold in my panic. I regulate my breathing, quick and shallow. I blink.
“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you got on your quiz.”
I turn my face away completely, try not to see myself reflected in the glass of the window.
“A seventy-seven,” I say. I hate her.
“Now what was so hard about that?” she says, her voice flat and stern, and she swings open her door and thrusts out a leg. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Alicia. Let’s go.”
We go.
----
This is the first sign that I am the creature in the closet, pushing myself, punishing myself, perfecting myself. It isn’t my mom.
I come closest in school, to impossible perfection, elementary through high school. I come so close I can taste the bitterness of the final percent, the absent plus. Ninety nine is not enough.
Every year I panic that the last year was my best.
I hit the ninety-ninth percentile on all state standardized tests. I pass all the CAPT the first time. I do well enough to qualify for National Merit Scholar semi-finals on the PSAT and improve my score significantly on the SAT. I take the AP English exam, and college-credit Spanish.
I take all honors classes, but I pay no attention to my GPA. I want an A in every class. I want to prove myself. I am not happy.
I am not happy.
---
We look at each other (hesitantly) and pull our desks together (reluctantly), the feet scratching along the floor as we form a group of convenience.
We are the four closest to each other, but we have nothing in common.
“Now talk about your answers with your group members,” the Life Skills teacher says. David, one of my groupmates, wrinkles his nose at her.
I look at my paper. Number one is “nuclear war.”
“So what are you most concerned about in the world?” one of my groupmates asks.
“Nuclear weapons, and world annihilation,” I say eventually. My group looks at me in disbelief.
“You're really concerned about that?” David asks.
“What did you put?”
“Lunch,” he says.
We all laugh.
“What do you mean, lunch?” we ask. “How could you be worried about lunch?”
“I’m worried that I won’t make it to lunch.” He looks at the clock; it’s only second period. He groans.
Ten seconds pass.
“I’m afraid,” Annette says, her voice level and natural, “of failure. I’m most afraid of really trying at something, and failing anyway.”
I lower my eyes to my paper, look at my answers: nuclear war, famine, disease. I felt a creeping chill along the back of my neck.
Her answer is better than mine.
---
It’s easy to “buckle down” – I pull out my history book junior year, flip to the assigned chapter. I read the questions. I read the chapter. I write my answers, as everything, long-hand on a sheet of blank, unlined paper. By the end of the year I can finish this work in under two hours.
I stay in my room the entire time, not stopping – no bathroom breaks, no snack, no interruptions. I do not enjoy the work, but I am not frustrated or bored. I have prepared myself to be empty of emotion, reaction, expectation. (My koan is “succeed, succeed, succeed.”)
I fill myself with knowledge and feel in-a-way satisfied.
---
My friend and lab partner follows me to my locker.
“But why did he give you an A?” she asks me, and it sounds like an accusation. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t do.”
“I don’t know,” I say, but I think because I’m good at English.
“But what did you do that I didn’t do?” Her voice is harder.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.
She stares at me.
I open my locker and wonder if our friendship can survive this.
“You got a B+,” I offer helpfully, knowing it won’t help.
“But you got an A,” she says.
“A-,” I say, despite myself. I taste the minus like a copper penny or a battery on my tongue.
“I don’t know what you did that I didn’t do,” she snaps, and turns and goes.
I glance at her back, her hair flouncing behind her, and think I’m better than you.
I look again, for the first time since she approached me (asking diffidently “What did you get?”), at the computer printout report card.
“A minus,” I say, and sigh. “What didn’t I do?”
I frown. I slam my locker door.
We all buckle.
---
We buckled down, buckled under, because there was nothing in that space. There was no us – just desire, desire, desire: Depend on me. Need me. Tell me I’m good. Tell me you’re proud, envious, awed. Tell me I haven’t failed. Love me -- but don't just love me.
Love me because I’m perfect.
SYD mid-week change-up
Jessica is out due to injury; Comfort is back in.
I'm satisfied with this, as Comfort is a B-girl and thus intrinsically interesting -- and I'll like to see how she does with a different partner.
Sympathies to Jessica, who now won't be taking part in the merchandising frenzy that is the SYD dance tour, post-show. The tour only includes the top 10 dancers.
I'm satisfied with this, as Comfort is a B-girl and thus intrinsically interesting -- and I'll like to see how she does with a different partner.
Sympathies to Jessica, who now won't be taking part in the merchandising frenzy that is the SYD dance tour, post-show. The tour only includes the top 10 dancers.
Local Trivia: Desperation drives us to act really desperate.
Governor M. Jodi Rell's head appears on an ad campaign for Connecticut as a summer destination; the campaign slogan is "Make Connecticut your Staycation Destination!"
According to one source, the word "staycation" was coined on Corner Gas, the CBC's funniest and most popular show, one with enough clout to coin a term and use it in a mostly ironic way. Anyone who's seen the show can imagine Brett Butt saying "staycation" in that self-mocking-but-half-serious Canadian way, and laugh.
No one can look at the headshot of Connecticut's current governor and feel that she's being self-effacing or ironic.
All we can feel is the desperation -- Stay here! Spend money! -- emanating from each poster and flyer.
According to one source, the word "staycation" was coined on Corner Gas, the CBC's funniest and most popular show, one with enough clout to coin a term and use it in a mostly ironic way. Anyone who's seen the show can imagine Brett Butt saying "staycation" in that self-mocking-but-half-serious Canadian way, and laugh.
No one can look at the headshot of Connecticut's current governor and feel that she's being self-effacing or ironic.
All we can feel is the desperation -- Stay here! Spend money! -- emanating from each poster and flyer.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Why I should be depressed about schools
Ken Robinson makes a lot of good points about schools, some of which I've thought of before, and many of which have the potential to be depressing, and he's not alone.
Alfie Kohn writes about homework and the way we work kids into the ground during their tenures in public schools in The Homework Myth and many of his other books on education.
Rosalind Wiseman writes in Queen Bees and Wannabes about the social hierarchy of high school, especially in girls' cliques, and the undercover hostility that guides many if not most of their interactions.
Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner write about the rough transition from college to the "real world" that graduates experience in Quarterlife Crisis. Robbins, at least, is Yale-educated and has published several books: Skull and Bones, on the Yalie secret society; Pledged, on the sorority subculture especially prevalent in the south; and The Overachievers, on the drive of high schoolers (in this case, in Bethesda, Maryland, but it's a pretty universal story) to be high-scoring and "well-rounded" enough to make it into the colleges of their dreams.
I read Pledged and Overachievers last fall, and they impressed me. (Robbins is a good investigative journalist who can tell a story well.) Robbins pointed out that getting into the schools of their choice is harder for high schoolers now than it was even ten years ago (when I was graduating -- and when late-20something Robbins graduated), and that high schoolers had less of a chance to actually be "well-rounded" because they're so busy being neurotic and "productive."
You'd think given all this over-achieving that we'd be the richest generation ever. But we're not -- in some ways we're the poorest. Thanks to the addition of a bachelor's degree to the list of qualifications that make us employable, we're the first generation of Americans to need to pay for the education that will eventually help us earn our money. We've got loans. Tamara Draut points out in Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-somethings just can't get ahead that we have far more debt than our parents, who just can't understand why we don't move out of the house and get a job, already. The answer is that we can't afford to.
And the cost of college isn't going down -- to my knowledge, it never has. Last I heard, the rate of inflation for college tuition prices was 79% above the rate of general inflation. When you're talking $25K, that's a lot of money. Anecdotal evidence: When I graduated high school at the end of the last century, Harvard would run you 34K/year. Now their Web site tells you to count on 53K per year. M.I.T. is even worse (58K).
That's pretty depressing.
And if the education we're getting isn't doing what it needs to do -- if, instead of making us adaptable and creative individuals who can apply ourselves to the unique un-forecastable problems of the future, it's making us more likely to buckle under and become cubicle-dwellers -- then what are we even paying for? Better to keep ourselves in voluntary poverty than socially sanctioned slavery.
But what if education doesn't have to be depressing?
What if there's a better way?
I wanted to write that question all in caps, I mean it so much -- because I think there is a better way, or rather, that there are better ways.
More on that later.
Alfie Kohn writes about homework and the way we work kids into the ground during their tenures in public schools in The Homework Myth and many of his other books on education.
Rosalind Wiseman writes in Queen Bees and Wannabes about the social hierarchy of high school, especially in girls' cliques, and the undercover hostility that guides many if not most of their interactions.
Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner write about the rough transition from college to the "real world" that graduates experience in Quarterlife Crisis. Robbins, at least, is Yale-educated and has published several books: Skull and Bones, on the Yalie secret society; Pledged, on the sorority subculture especially prevalent in the south; and The Overachievers, on the drive of high schoolers (in this case, in Bethesda, Maryland, but it's a pretty universal story) to be high-scoring and "well-rounded" enough to make it into the colleges of their dreams.
I read Pledged and Overachievers last fall, and they impressed me. (Robbins is a good investigative journalist who can tell a story well.) Robbins pointed out that getting into the schools of their choice is harder for high schoolers now than it was even ten years ago (when I was graduating -- and when late-20something Robbins graduated), and that high schoolers had less of a chance to actually be "well-rounded" because they're so busy being neurotic and "productive."
You'd think given all this over-achieving that we'd be the richest generation ever. But we're not -- in some ways we're the poorest. Thanks to the addition of a bachelor's degree to the list of qualifications that make us employable, we're the first generation of Americans to need to pay for the education that will eventually help us earn our money. We've got loans. Tamara Draut points out in Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-somethings just can't get ahead that we have far more debt than our parents, who just can't understand why we don't move out of the house and get a job, already. The answer is that we can't afford to.
And the cost of college isn't going down -- to my knowledge, it never has. Last I heard, the rate of inflation for college tuition prices was 79% above the rate of general inflation. When you're talking $25K, that's a lot of money. Anecdotal evidence: When I graduated high school at the end of the last century, Harvard would run you 34K/year. Now their Web site tells you to count on 53K per year. M.I.T. is even worse (58K).
That's pretty depressing.
And if the education we're getting isn't doing what it needs to do -- if, instead of making us adaptable and creative individuals who can apply ourselves to the unique un-forecastable problems of the future, it's making us more likely to buckle under and become cubicle-dwellers -- then what are we even paying for? Better to keep ourselves in voluntary poverty than socially sanctioned slavery.
But what if education doesn't have to be depressing?
What if there's a better way?
I wanted to write that question all in caps, I mean it so much -- because I think there is a better way, or rather, that there are better ways.
More on that later.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
"This is no joke!"
My email account keeps coming up with a flashing ad informing me that "This is no joke!!! You are the 10,000 visitor!"
I'm glad it let me know.
Now I'm trying to figure out how those other 9,999 people got my email login password.
I'm glad it let me know.
Now I'm trying to figure out how those other 9,999 people got my email login password.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
PSA: TED
For those of you who didn't know, there's an annual conference held (now) in Monterey, Calif., where a thousand people get together by invitation and give lectures to each other on what they do. Most of them are scientists, some are artists, all are visionaries. You can watch these talks online, like I've been doing this weekend.
Here are some summaries of some of the talks I watched, in the order in which I enjoyed them (top is best):
If you have about 20 minutes:
Sir Ken Robinson on schools killing creativity: Robinson has a British accent, making his jokes funnier and his conclusions more cultural and serious. Just kidding about that, but his conclusions about how schools form young minds are right on, in my experience, and made me want to rush out and start that school I've been planning.
James Howard Kunstler on suburbia: Kunstler contends that America’s public realm is nonexistent or worthless (made up mostly of streets), “places not worth caring about,” when it should help us understand who we are and where we’ve come from. Boston City hall plaza is “so dismal even the winos don’t want to go there…there’s not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel okay about going down this block.” (The building was built as a collaboration that included I.M. Pei.)
Amy Tan on creativity: Tan gives a frequently hilarious talk on her own creative process. She’s funny because she appears to be taking herself so seriously. This talk also includes an amazing photo of piles of rocks that are balanced on each other.
J.J. Abrams on the mystery box: Also funny, Abrams talks about his grandfather and why he tends to create movies and TV shows that includes mysteries at their center. (Think Lost and Alias.)
Mark Bittman on what we eat: Bittman doesn’t have much to say that will revolutionize your food worldview if you’ve looked into local, organic, vegetarian diets and the like, but his conviction makes this talk worth watching, anyway – you’ll be inspired to eat your broccoli. His throwaway comments alone make it worth the twenty minutes. (“Minute rice is the stupidest food ever.”)
Mena Trott on blogging: The Trotts started a company with blogging software called Six Apart. She talks mainly about the personal effort and effects of blogs.
Jonathan Harris on human connection: Harris is an artist and computer scientist and talks about his works, “We Feel Fine” and “Universe.” (They’re Internet aggregators.)
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce: Gladwell is famous for Blink and Tipping Point, books about snap judgments that people make and how fads reach critical mass and break into mainstream society. He talks about a bunch of stuff here, mainly how the food industry came to offer a variety of options.
If you only have 5 minutes:
Nellie McKay, singing: McKay’s first song, “Feminists (Don’t Have a Sense of Humor)” is a ukulele-driven satire. Very funny in its understatement.
Alisa Miller on news coverage: Miller shows an interesting graphic that portrays what Americans see from major news outlets (TV) in terms of geographic focus. Not surprisingly, America and Iraq are the two main sources of our news.
If you want to see some sword-swallowing and awesome graphs (not in that order):
Hans Rosling on statistics: Just watch it.
Hans Rosling on poverty statistics (follow-up): Ditto.
Here are some summaries of some of the talks I watched, in the order in which I enjoyed them (top is best):
If you have about 20 minutes:
Sir Ken Robinson on schools killing creativity: Robinson has a British accent, making his jokes funnier and his conclusions more cultural and serious. Just kidding about that, but his conclusions about how schools form young minds are right on, in my experience, and made me want to rush out and start that school I've been planning.
James Howard Kunstler on suburbia: Kunstler contends that America’s public realm is nonexistent or worthless (made up mostly of streets), “places not worth caring about,” when it should help us understand who we are and where we’ve come from. Boston City hall plaza is “so dismal even the winos don’t want to go there…there’s not enough Prozac in the world to make people feel okay about going down this block.” (The building was built as a collaboration that included I.M. Pei.)
Amy Tan on creativity: Tan gives a frequently hilarious talk on her own creative process. She’s funny because she appears to be taking herself so seriously. This talk also includes an amazing photo of piles of rocks that are balanced on each other.
J.J. Abrams on the mystery box: Also funny, Abrams talks about his grandfather and why he tends to create movies and TV shows that includes mysteries at their center. (Think Lost and Alias.)
Mark Bittman on what we eat: Bittman doesn’t have much to say that will revolutionize your food worldview if you’ve looked into local, organic, vegetarian diets and the like, but his conviction makes this talk worth watching, anyway – you’ll be inspired to eat your broccoli. His throwaway comments alone make it worth the twenty minutes. (“Minute rice is the stupidest food ever.”)
Mena Trott on blogging: The Trotts started a company with blogging software called Six Apart. She talks mainly about the personal effort and effects of blogs.
Jonathan Harris on human connection: Harris is an artist and computer scientist and talks about his works, “We Feel Fine” and “Universe.” (They’re Internet aggregators.)
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce: Gladwell is famous for Blink and Tipping Point, books about snap judgments that people make and how fads reach critical mass and break into mainstream society. He talks about a bunch of stuff here, mainly how the food industry came to offer a variety of options.
If you only have 5 minutes:
Nellie McKay, singing: McKay’s first song, “Feminists (Don’t Have a Sense of Humor)” is a ukulele-driven satire. Very funny in its understatement.
Alisa Miller on news coverage: Miller shows an interesting graphic that portrays what Americans see from major news outlets (TV) in terms of geographic focus. Not surprisingly, America and Iraq are the two main sources of our news.
If you want to see some sword-swallowing and awesome graphs (not in that order):
Hans Rosling on statistics: Just watch it.
Hans Rosling on poverty statistics (follow-up): Ditto.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Mix: Music To Die For
"Elle G." -- Newsboys
"The Kill" -- 30 Seconds To Mars
"This Is The End of Your Life" -- The Juliana Theory
"Death And All His Friends" -- Coldplay
"Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" -- C.S.S.
"Death On Sunday" -- Goodbye July
"Death Bed" -- Patton Oswalt
"Satin In A Coffin" -- Modest Mouse
"I Will Possess Your Heart" -- Death Cab for Cutie
"Dead Sound" -- The Raveonettes
"Dying In The Sun" -- The Cranberries
"And When I Die" -- Blood, Sweat & Tears
"Life Is Worth Fighting For" -- Church of Rhythm
"Resurrection Song" -- Birdmonster
"Lou Reed Ain't Dead" -- The Sterling Stitches
"Stayin' Alive" -- The Bee Gees
"The Kill" -- 30 Seconds To Mars
"This Is The End of Your Life" -- The Juliana Theory
"Death And All His Friends" -- Coldplay
"Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" -- C.S.S.
"Death On Sunday" -- Goodbye July
"Death Bed" -- Patton Oswalt
"Satin In A Coffin" -- Modest Mouse
"I Will Possess Your Heart" -- Death Cab for Cutie
"Dead Sound" -- The Raveonettes
"Dying In The Sun" -- The Cranberries
"And When I Die" -- Blood, Sweat & Tears
"Life Is Worth Fighting For" -- Church of Rhythm
"Resurrection Song" -- Birdmonster
"Lou Reed Ain't Dead" -- The Sterling Stitches
"Stayin' Alive" -- The Bee Gees
Freudian Slip(pery Slope)s: Thanatos Theology
If repressing Eros makes everything more erotic, repressing the death drive makes everything more deadly.
Evangelical Christianity is preoccupied with death but doesn’t seem to know it. As with Eros, Thanatos seems to be repressed in Christian circles.
First of all, there's the cross. Catholic crucifixes have Jesus hanging from his three wounds; obviously, there's a concern with Jesus' death and the pain he suffered while dying.
Protestants, on the other hand, have a blank cross -- as though removing Jesus' body removes the meaning of the cross, or as though the cross itself has meaning outside of its use as an instrument of death. When evangelicals do talk about Jesus and the cross, they tend to focus on the resurrection -- his and their own -- and deny the reality of dying, which becomes just a transitional phase in the ultimate journey to heaven.
Other than the obvious “there’s an afterlife” distraction from mortality, there’s the language of death that Christians employ. Your friend has “gone home to Jesus” or “to be with the Lord.” Compare these to “kicked the bucket,” “turned into worm food,” or “bit the dust” and the care with which Christians talk about death is clear.
Evangelicals aren’t known for their sense of humor, so it’s not entirely unexpected that they would treat death with the same serious, matter-of-fact attitude as they use in attending to other life-level questions. They don’t laugh at death, as though it’s an absurd cosmic joke; they might feel or claim to feel joy, but even joy is solemn in its way. It’s straightforward, un-sarcastic, un-cynical, un-ironic.
There’s something uncanny about death, but evangelical responses to death (and the meaning of life) don’t admit absurdity or uncertainty. Because they can’t laugh, they have to deal with anxieties about death and their own internal death-drives in other ways.
The amount of talking about the afterlife that goes on in evangelical circles – of both the “can’t wait for heaven” and “you’re all going to hell” varieties – makes it seem as though Christians are able to deal with death through straight-talk, without resorting or referring to the depersonalizing sense of mortality that lends itself to sarcasm. But only the most strident or self-deluded faith is absolutely certain of the afterlife (and one’s place in heaven); and push down doubt and Thanatos, and they show up in other places – only stronger – just like Eros.
The sense that life may be futile, repressed, becomes suicidal tendencies.
There are plenty of musical proofs of this. Church of Rhythm’s “Life Is Worth Fighting For” and The Newsboys “Elle G.” are songs about suicide – but they’re not in the same vein as metalhead or Marilyn-Manson-esque songs that may arguably revel in the idea of suicide as a panacea or admit to wanting to die. The thrust of the Christian songs is dedicated to showing what a bad idea suicide is.
“Life Is Worth Fighting For” is written as if to a friend who’s in the hospital following a suicide attempt. It’s a heartfelt plea with the suicidal friend to recognize that – well – “life is worth fighting for.”
The fact that the song is written to a friend could mean that it’s autobiographical – someone in the band may have found himself in the position of driving to the hospital to comfort and confront and friend who’d just tried to commit suicide – but whether it’s true-to-life or not, it’s clear that putting the desire to die into the second-person character distances that desire from the narrator. The friend may want to die, but the narrator is in a position of strength (and certainty), insisting that “life is worth fighting for.”
The narrator does admit to feeling death-drive pressure in the last verse:
The song continues with a bridge that emphasizes both the empathetic connection the narrator has with his suicidal friend and the relative strength of the narrator’s current position in comparison to the friend’s:
The empathy makes for a touching, and I would say genuine, song. It’s possible that this song has prevented Christian teens from killing themselves. But it’s also clear that the type of empathy being offered is a theoretically post-Thanatos one, a posthumous one – after the death of death. The narrator may have felt the same tendencies as the friend, but he’s now in a position to aid his friend. Thanatos has been defeated for the narrator, and can be for the friend, too.
There are secular pop songs – Third Eye Blind's "Jumper" comes to mind – that deal with suicide in similar ways, but they don’t seem as prolific, and I don’t think the suicide-themed songs generally popular with secular crowds hit the same chords (so to speak) as some Christian suicide songs.
“Elle G.” by Newsboys doesn’t have the same self-reflection that COR’s suicide-ballad does. More lyrically cryptic in general, “Elle G.” seems to be the ruminations of a less-reliable narrator whose loved one (we’ll call her Elle) has succeeded in an attempt at suicide. Instead of a careful, intimate expression of empathy and hope, “Elle G.” expresses the anger and confusion of the still-living toward the purposely-dead.
There’s no recognition of fellow-feeling on the part of the narrator. Elle’s note gives the narrator no solace, and he seems irritated that she might think it would. The sense of the song is that the narrator has been victimized by the suicide, rather than that Elle has. She "promised" she would replace "evil" with "good" -- presumably, that she would be okay and not kill herself. And then she went and did it anyway.
If Elle is an unwitting victim of wrong thinking (like the friend in “Life Is Worth Fighting For”), there’s no evidence of it. And even if she has committed suicide as a result of misunderstanding, wrong belief receives the same consequences as willful disobedience in conservative evangelical theology. In a note of pity and pique, the final verse says that “grace” is the only hope she has of even making it into heaven where the narrator can see her face again:
Newsboys have made a whole career out of being “not ashamed” of God’s message. They bill themselves as truth-tellers who aren’t afraid to “let you know” what God has to say about everything God has something to say about (which is everything). There’s an argument to be made for their attitude toward suicide being the general theological attitude (uncluttered by political correctness) – though being the self-proclaimed messengers of “and-proud-of-it!” evangelicals doesn’t make them the actual messengers. (It only means they perceive themselves that way.) The idea is that if Christians were unashamed of their message, this is what they would all be saying.
But the effect is that this is what all Christians would be hearing.
In addition to the self-distancing of the songwriters of these two, and many other, Christian suicide-songs, the songs attend to what must be an actual need in the Christian community. Either other Christians need to experience themselves as relating to the narrators – in distanced positions of relative strength – or they need to hear the messages that COR and Newsboys have to offer, themselves.
Christians need to be reminded that “life is worth fighting for,” and that they may not make it to heaven if they destroy themselves. And they seem to need to be reminded more than most other groups.
Mainstream pop music, geared toward teens, has a few examples of suicide-themed songs – but it’s not something you’d expect to find on a Britney Spears album. Goth music and its “dark” cousins deal with death frequently and explicitly; the closest pop music comes to this is dealing with break-ups (the death of a relationship). Christian music, on the other hand, deals with suicide songs as matter-of-factly as evangelicals deal with all other areas of life: It’s simply part of the playlist, part of the message.
If asked, I’m betting evangelicals would point out that there are a lot of hurting people out there in the world, and they just want to reach out to those people.
I doubt they would admit that they were singing to the choir.
Evangelical Christianity is preoccupied with death but doesn’t seem to know it. As with Eros, Thanatos seems to be repressed in Christian circles.
First of all, there's the cross. Catholic crucifixes have Jesus hanging from his three wounds; obviously, there's a concern with Jesus' death and the pain he suffered while dying.
Protestants, on the other hand, have a blank cross -- as though removing Jesus' body removes the meaning of the cross, or as though the cross itself has meaning outside of its use as an instrument of death. When evangelicals do talk about Jesus and the cross, they tend to focus on the resurrection -- his and their own -- and deny the reality of dying, which becomes just a transitional phase in the ultimate journey to heaven.
Other than the obvious “there’s an afterlife” distraction from mortality, there’s the language of death that Christians employ. Your friend has “gone home to Jesus” or “to be with the Lord.” Compare these to “kicked the bucket,” “turned into worm food,” or “bit the dust” and the care with which Christians talk about death is clear.
Evangelicals aren’t known for their sense of humor, so it’s not entirely unexpected that they would treat death with the same serious, matter-of-fact attitude as they use in attending to other life-level questions. They don’t laugh at death, as though it’s an absurd cosmic joke; they might feel or claim to feel joy, but even joy is solemn in its way. It’s straightforward, un-sarcastic, un-cynical, un-ironic.
There’s something uncanny about death, but evangelical responses to death (and the meaning of life) don’t admit absurdity or uncertainty. Because they can’t laugh, they have to deal with anxieties about death and their own internal death-drives in other ways.
The amount of talking about the afterlife that goes on in evangelical circles – of both the “can’t wait for heaven” and “you’re all going to hell” varieties – makes it seem as though Christians are able to deal with death through straight-talk, without resorting or referring to the depersonalizing sense of mortality that lends itself to sarcasm. But only the most strident or self-deluded faith is absolutely certain of the afterlife (and one’s place in heaven); and push down doubt and Thanatos, and they show up in other places – only stronger – just like Eros.
The sense that life may be futile, repressed, becomes suicidal tendencies.
There are plenty of musical proofs of this. Church of Rhythm’s “Life Is Worth Fighting For” and The Newsboys “Elle G.” are songs about suicide – but they’re not in the same vein as metalhead or Marilyn-Manson-esque songs that may arguably revel in the idea of suicide as a panacea or admit to wanting to die. The thrust of the Christian songs is dedicated to showing what a bad idea suicide is.
“Life Is Worth Fighting For” is written as if to a friend who’s in the hospital following a suicide attempt. It’s a heartfelt plea with the suicidal friend to recognize that – well – “life is worth fighting for.”
That morning you called to talk,
You talked about how life was a merry go round,
And you wanted to get off…
I always thought you’d cry for help,
I always thought you’d understand,
That life is worth fighting for
The fact that the song is written to a friend could mean that it’s autobiographical – someone in the band may have found himself in the position of driving to the hospital to comfort and confront and friend who’d just tried to commit suicide – but whether it’s true-to-life or not, it’s clear that putting the desire to die into the second-person character distances that desire from the narrator. The friend may want to die, but the narrator is in a position of strength (and certainty), insisting that “life is worth fighting for.”
The narrator does admit to feeling death-drive pressure in the last verse:
So you’re living on the razor’s edge,
Well, I’ve been there myself, holding a gun to my head
The song continues with a bridge that emphasizes both the empathetic connection the narrator has with his suicidal friend and the relative strength of the narrator’s current position in comparison to the friend’s:
If you hold my hand, can you hold on for a moment longer?
If you know I love you, does it make it better?
(Don’t give up / Don’t give in)
The empathy makes for a touching, and I would say genuine, song. It’s possible that this song has prevented Christian teens from killing themselves. But it’s also clear that the type of empathy being offered is a theoretically post-Thanatos one, a posthumous one – after the death of death. The narrator may have felt the same tendencies as the friend, but he’s now in a position to aid his friend. Thanatos has been defeated for the narrator, and can be for the friend, too.
There are secular pop songs – Third Eye Blind's "Jumper" comes to mind – that deal with suicide in similar ways, but they don’t seem as prolific, and I don’t think the suicide-themed songs generally popular with secular crowds hit the same chords (so to speak) as some Christian suicide songs.
“Elle G.” by Newsboys doesn’t have the same self-reflection that COR’s suicide-ballad does. More lyrically cryptic in general, “Elle G.” seems to be the ruminations of a less-reliable narrator whose loved one (we’ll call her Elle) has succeeded in an attempt at suicide. Instead of a careful, intimate expression of empathy and hope, “Elle G.” expresses the anger and confusion of the still-living toward the purposely-dead.
Week seven: Did you really assume
I'd find some solace from the letter in your room?
Next life, could you kindly refrain
From throwing yourself at the mercy of a train?
Silence all, nobody breathe
How in the world could you just leave?
You promised you would
Silence that evil with good
There’s no recognition of fellow-feeling on the part of the narrator. Elle’s note gives the narrator no solace, and he seems irritated that she might think it would. The sense of the song is that the narrator has been victimized by the suicide, rather than that Elle has. She "promised" she would replace "evil" with "good" -- presumably, that she would be okay and not kill herself. And then she went and did it anyway.
If Elle is an unwitting victim of wrong thinking (like the friend in “Life Is Worth Fighting For”), there’s no evidence of it. And even if she has committed suicide as a result of misunderstanding, wrong belief receives the same consequences as willful disobedience in conservative evangelical theology. In a note of pity and pique, the final verse says that “grace” is the only hope she has of even making it into heaven where the narrator can see her face again:
Forgive her, please Father
She don't know what she did...
God, I long to see her face
We haven't a hope beyond Your grace
Newsboys have made a whole career out of being “not ashamed” of God’s message. They bill themselves as truth-tellers who aren’t afraid to “let you know” what God has to say about everything God has something to say about (which is everything). There’s an argument to be made for their attitude toward suicide being the general theological attitude (uncluttered by political correctness) – though being the self-proclaimed messengers of “and-proud-of-it!” evangelicals doesn’t make them the actual messengers. (It only means they perceive themselves that way.) The idea is that if Christians were unashamed of their message, this is what they would all be saying.
But the effect is that this is what all Christians would be hearing.
In addition to the self-distancing of the songwriters of these two, and many other, Christian suicide-songs, the songs attend to what must be an actual need in the Christian community. Either other Christians need to experience themselves as relating to the narrators – in distanced positions of relative strength – or they need to hear the messages that COR and Newsboys have to offer, themselves.
Christians need to be reminded that “life is worth fighting for,” and that they may not make it to heaven if they destroy themselves. And they seem to need to be reminded more than most other groups.
Mainstream pop music, geared toward teens, has a few examples of suicide-themed songs – but it’s not something you’d expect to find on a Britney Spears album. Goth music and its “dark” cousins deal with death frequently and explicitly; the closest pop music comes to this is dealing with break-ups (the death of a relationship). Christian music, on the other hand, deals with suicide songs as matter-of-factly as evangelicals deal with all other areas of life: It’s simply part of the playlist, part of the message.
If asked, I’m betting evangelicals would point out that there are a lot of hurting people out there in the world, and they just want to reach out to those people.
I doubt they would admit that they were singing to the choir.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
20,000 miles over the road
Seems like only four months ago I was celebrating my 10,000 mile anniversary with my blue Geo hatchback, Betty.
Betty and I have seen a lot of things together these last few months -- Boston and Harrisburg three times, Maryland, D.C. and Johnson City once each -- and she's still a game little car. Today we hit our 20,000 mile anniversary (at 93,842 miles, outside of Oxford, MA), and we show few signs of slowing.
In honor of our impending milestone, I got Betty new front brakes and an oil change a thousand miles ago.
In return, she's given me miles and miles of distance between me and whatever I'm leaving at the time -- bringing me mile-by-mile closer to many of you.
Hurrah for Betty, and hurrah for 34 mi/gal!
Betty and I have seen a lot of things together these last few months -- Boston and Harrisburg three times, Maryland, D.C. and Johnson City once each -- and she's still a game little car. Today we hit our 20,000 mile anniversary (at 93,842 miles, outside of Oxford, MA), and we show few signs of slowing.
In honor of our impending milestone, I got Betty new front brakes and an oil change a thousand miles ago.
In return, she's given me miles and miles of distance between me and whatever I'm leaving at the time -- bringing me mile-by-mile closer to many of you.
Hurrah for Betty, and hurrah for 34 mi/gal!
So You Thought You Could Dance III
I was worried, in the last post-commercial-break section of SYD this week, that I wouldn't have anything to write about here. Watching SYD on the couch of friend Sharon should have made the show that much more enjoyable -- but dance after dance failed to impress.
Ballroom dances were actually the most impressive last night. Honest to goodness: ballroom.
Chelsea and Mark and Courtney and Gev each had good-and-hot ballroom routines. Sadly, Chelsea and Mark's other routine was Broadway style, which was also good-and-hot, but no businessman-and-wife.
The "Adam and Eve" contemporary routine danced by Will and Jessica was raved about by judges Nigel, Mary Murphy and Mia, but Sharon and I didn't "get it." There was a point near the end when I think I identified their expulsion from the garden, but other than that, and their "earthy" movement (Adam was made from dust, you see), I didn't see the connection.
Contemporary dance has this issue: Except for "pop" contemporary, which you can tell was designed for mass consumption, like the prop-contemporary choreography Mia did last year and last week, the movement-for-the-sake-of-movement of jazz and contemporary doesn't make sense to those who aren't technically proficient -- or it doesn't automatically make sense to us all. There are a few people, I'm sure, like Julia Robert's Pretty Woman understanding opera, who "get it" naturally.
I'm not one.
That's no big surprise. If I hadn't played trumpet in a jazz band, I'd probably never have listened to Arturo Sandoval or Maynard Ferguson, and I probably wouldn't have a very strong opinion on which "Mack the Knife" is the authoritative one. (Louis Armstrong's.) I'd think "wow, that note is high" if I found myself listening to an F above the staff, but I wouldn't want to throw up, crawl into a hole or eviscerate myself.
Tyce Diorio was the choreographer. He's a long-time contemporary, jazz and Broadway SYD choreographer, and he's occasionally appeared as a judge. The judges for this week spent as much time complimenting him on his work as they did making statements on Will and Jessica's execution. The most interesting thing about the whole routine was the fact that Mia referred to having Tyce over at her house and listening to the music he used for "Adam and Eve." (She fell asleep in the middle.)
"Oh," I thought. "They're friends, and he went over. That's so nice."
In other dances, Comfort and Thane failed to impress in each of their styles (hip-hop and contemporary, respectively). They'll probably be booted off tonight unless the judges want Jessica off more than Comfort.
So everything was disappointment, disappointment -- until the final scene.
Cat, in a dress soooooooooooo relieving this week that I commented on how much I liked looking at it just about every time she appeared on screen, had announced in the show's opener that we would be seeing the first Bollywood dance ever on SYD.
Confession: I love Bollywood. I love Bollywood in the way I love "It's Raining Men" -- viscerally, and because it's so unrelentingly positive. I've seen Bride and Prejudice and own Dil Ka Rishta and Lagaan (though I haven't watched that one yet -- I'm saving it). I love Monsoon Wedding, even though it's not strictly Bollywood.
But I really thought I'd hate this dance, a la SYD's attempts at krump.
(There was another krump routine this week, too, performed pretty decently by "Twitchington" -- it went as well as choreographed krump can be expected to go.)
Happily, I was wrong: Bollywood was delightful!
I exclaim this because Bollywood is exactly the sort of style where exclamation is useful and necessary. The two characters Katee and Joshua played were typical Bollywood lovers -- Katee played hard-to-get, and Joshua tried hard to get her. Their costumes were appropriate and their dance moves were on-target. It was just fun to watch.
Afterward, the judges were thrilled. Nigel, who said he'd been trying to get Bollywood onto SYD for three years, took the opportunity to make a semi-political statement, possibly the first in SYD history: "I wish the world would come together through dance rather than what we're doing at the moment." (Nigel is, of course, British.)
Mia said of Katee's bindi-ed face and chest, and sparkly Indian costume, "You need to dress like that every day of your life, Katee."
It may seem that the judges were congratulating the dance style and themselves for adding it more than they were congratulating the execution of it, but Mia (who was mean all evening, perhaps in sync with the over-one-eye, Clockwork-Orange black hat she was wearing) didn't pull any punches saying that Joshua had been stiff, and the dance really was well executed. I felt, as I think the judges felt, relieved that Katee and Joshua had gotten Bollywood instead of one of the less-proficient couples. (Comfort and Thane, the lopsided Will and Jessica, and the fun-but-cotton-candy Gev and Courtney come to mind.)
I hope to see a lot more Bollywood on the show -- and while we're at it, let's get contra dancing, clogging and Schemitzun-style dance on there, too. Even America has a few more original dances we haven't tapped into.
We could have the Amish, Michael Flatley and members of the Mashantucket Pequot Nation as guests, respectively.
It'd beat Hillary Duff, that's for sure.
*Update: Comfort and Thane were indeed axed. The final 10 are lookin' good.
Ballroom dances were actually the most impressive last night. Honest to goodness: ballroom.
Chelsea and Mark and Courtney and Gev each had good-and-hot ballroom routines. Sadly, Chelsea and Mark's other routine was Broadway style, which was also good-and-hot, but no businessman-and-wife.
The "Adam and Eve" contemporary routine danced by Will and Jessica was raved about by judges Nigel, Mary Murphy and Mia, but Sharon and I didn't "get it." There was a point near the end when I think I identified their expulsion from the garden, but other than that, and their "earthy" movement (Adam was made from dust, you see), I didn't see the connection.
Contemporary dance has this issue: Except for "pop" contemporary, which you can tell was designed for mass consumption, like the prop-contemporary choreography Mia did last year and last week, the movement-for-the-sake-of-movement of jazz and contemporary doesn't make sense to those who aren't technically proficient -- or it doesn't automatically make sense to us all. There are a few people, I'm sure, like Julia Robert's Pretty Woman understanding opera, who "get it" naturally.
I'm not one.
That's no big surprise. If I hadn't played trumpet in a jazz band, I'd probably never have listened to Arturo Sandoval or Maynard Ferguson, and I probably wouldn't have a very strong opinion on which "Mack the Knife" is the authoritative one. (Louis Armstrong's.) I'd think "wow, that note is high" if I found myself listening to an F above the staff, but I wouldn't want to throw up, crawl into a hole or eviscerate myself.
Tyce Diorio was the choreographer. He's a long-time contemporary, jazz and Broadway SYD choreographer, and he's occasionally appeared as a judge. The judges for this week spent as much time complimenting him on his work as they did making statements on Will and Jessica's execution. The most interesting thing about the whole routine was the fact that Mia referred to having Tyce over at her house and listening to the music he used for "Adam and Eve." (She fell asleep in the middle.)
"Oh," I thought. "They're friends, and he went over. That's so nice."
In other dances, Comfort and Thane failed to impress in each of their styles (hip-hop and contemporary, respectively). They'll probably be booted off tonight unless the judges want Jessica off more than Comfort.
So everything was disappointment, disappointment -- until the final scene.
Cat, in a dress soooooooooooo relieving this week that I commented on how much I liked looking at it just about every time she appeared on screen, had announced in the show's opener that we would be seeing the first Bollywood dance ever on SYD.
Confession: I love Bollywood. I love Bollywood in the way I love "It's Raining Men" -- viscerally, and because it's so unrelentingly positive. I've seen Bride and Prejudice and own Dil Ka Rishta and Lagaan (though I haven't watched that one yet -- I'm saving it). I love Monsoon Wedding, even though it's not strictly Bollywood.
But I really thought I'd hate this dance, a la SYD's attempts at krump.
(There was another krump routine this week, too, performed pretty decently by "Twitchington" -- it went as well as choreographed krump can be expected to go.)
Happily, I was wrong: Bollywood was delightful!
I exclaim this because Bollywood is exactly the sort of style where exclamation is useful and necessary. The two characters Katee and Joshua played were typical Bollywood lovers -- Katee played hard-to-get, and Joshua tried hard to get her. Their costumes were appropriate and their dance moves were on-target. It was just fun to watch.
Afterward, the judges were thrilled. Nigel, who said he'd been trying to get Bollywood onto SYD for three years, took the opportunity to make a semi-political statement, possibly the first in SYD history: "I wish the world would come together through dance rather than what we're doing at the moment." (Nigel is, of course, British.)
Mia said of Katee's bindi-ed face and chest, and sparkly Indian costume, "You need to dress like that every day of your life, Katee."
It may seem that the judges were congratulating the dance style and themselves for adding it more than they were congratulating the execution of it, but Mia (who was mean all evening, perhaps in sync with the over-one-eye, Clockwork-Orange black hat she was wearing) didn't pull any punches saying that Joshua had been stiff, and the dance really was well executed. I felt, as I think the judges felt, relieved that Katee and Joshua had gotten Bollywood instead of one of the less-proficient couples. (Comfort and Thane, the lopsided Will and Jessica, and the fun-but-cotton-candy Gev and Courtney come to mind.)
I hope to see a lot more Bollywood on the show -- and while we're at it, let's get contra dancing, clogging and Schemitzun-style dance on there, too. Even America has a few more original dances we haven't tapped into.
We could have the Amish, Michael Flatley and members of the Mashantucket Pequot Nation as guests, respectively.
It'd beat Hillary Duff, that's for sure.
*Update: Comfort and Thane were indeed axed. The final 10 are lookin' good.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Local Trivia: Prickly Plainville
Greg Kendall was hiking the Metacomet Trail along a ridge in Plainville -- where, strangely, much of the good rock climbing and bouldering in the state is -- and found a prickly pear cactus.
They're native to Connecticut, but rare.
The Hartford Courant printed an article on the finding of the cactus above the fold in the Life section of today's paper. The article describes exactly where to find the small cactus colony -- then it tells people not to pick it.
Yeah, right.
If you want to see the cactus, you'd better get there before any curious Courant reader does...the article jumps to D5 right in the middle of explaining why it's bad to harrass the cactus.
I'm betting potential prickly-pear pickers aren't the types to follow the jump.
They're native to Connecticut, but rare.
The Hartford Courant printed an article on the finding of the cactus above the fold in the Life section of today's paper. The article describes exactly where to find the small cactus colony -- then it tells people not to pick it.
Yeah, right.
If you want to see the cactus, you'd better get there before any curious Courant reader does...the article jumps to D5 right in the middle of explaining why it's bad to harrass the cactus.
I'm betting potential prickly-pear pickers aren't the types to follow the jump.
Phrases That Never Help: Ill-advised Edition
The following are instructions on how to use these phrases effectively as a joke, and why and how to avoid them under other circumstances.
Past editions of "Phrases That Never Help" can be found here, here and here.
"Don't do anything rash/stupid."
As a joke: This phrase functions best in response to someone's announcement that they're about to do something completely reasonable and necessary, such as wash the dishes. Don't overplay the sarcasm; a light touch keeps this phrase hilarious even after many uses.
For real: The person you're advising has probably already decided to do something stupid by the time you utter this phrase. Your advice only indicates your disapproval at that point, making it less likely that you'll get a front-row seat for the monster-truck-rally-type disaster that's about to ensue. (And who wants to miss Gravedigger?)
It's also possible that the advisee is still on the fence; in this case, the phrase only distances you from the person you're trying to convince. Like the obsessed or the worrier, people about to act stupidly usually don't recognize that what they're going to do is stupid. Even if they do, most people don't like to be reminded of their own stupidity-capacity, despite its humanity-wide prevalence.
Instead of telling the advisee not to be stupid, then, bring their focus around to possible actions or ideas that may be smart: "let's mop the kitchen floor," "how about getting some ice cream" or "why don't you adopt that pet tortoise you've always wanted, instead" may get the advisee in a better frame of mind.
"I only say this because I love you/care about you."
As a joke: This phrase is funny when used straight-faced before giving a compliment, since it makes the listener feel you are about to insult them -- the tension of about-to-be-insulted releases into laughter when you actually say something nice.
For real: Placed before a piece of advice, this phrase puts the listener automatically on edge. (See also "No offense, but...")
Placed after some badly received advice, the phrase can be at best ineffective, at worst, offensive. If the listener doesn't recognize the love you hold for them from what you've just said and the tone in which you've said it, this phrase will not convince them. It's more likely to make them think you have to keep reminding yourself of this love/care.
You'd be better off halting in the midst of your bad-advice-giving, and apologizing: "I'm sorry. I've suddenly realized that I'm being an ass."
That would be a real sign of love.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
As a joke: This works best if you are a person of extremes: either extremely straight-laced and not likely to ever do anything remotely questionable, or a daredevil currently high on badly mixed heroin or meth you made in your basement.
For real: This phrase has one advantage over other typical advice phrases, which is that it reveals the true raison d'etre of advice-giving: to get the advisee to act exactly as you feel you would act in a given situation.
Anyone reaching the point of seriously uttering this phrase should stop speaking immediately and seek help.
After you've received your share of advice, you should be able to return to the previous conversation, knowing better.
Past editions of "Phrases That Never Help" can be found here, here and here.
"Don't do anything rash/stupid."
As a joke: This phrase functions best in response to someone's announcement that they're about to do something completely reasonable and necessary, such as wash the dishes. Don't overplay the sarcasm; a light touch keeps this phrase hilarious even after many uses.
For real: The person you're advising has probably already decided to do something stupid by the time you utter this phrase. Your advice only indicates your disapproval at that point, making it less likely that you'll get a front-row seat for the monster-truck-rally-type disaster that's about to ensue. (And who wants to miss Gravedigger?)
It's also possible that the advisee is still on the fence; in this case, the phrase only distances you from the person you're trying to convince. Like the obsessed or the worrier, people about to act stupidly usually don't recognize that what they're going to do is stupid. Even if they do, most people don't like to be reminded of their own stupidity-capacity, despite its humanity-wide prevalence.
Instead of telling the advisee not to be stupid, then, bring their focus around to possible actions or ideas that may be smart: "let's mop the kitchen floor," "how about getting some ice cream" or "why don't you adopt that pet tortoise you've always wanted, instead" may get the advisee in a better frame of mind.
"I only say this because I love you/care about you."
As a joke: This phrase is funny when used straight-faced before giving a compliment, since it makes the listener feel you are about to insult them -- the tension of about-to-be-insulted releases into laughter when you actually say something nice.
For real: Placed before a piece of advice, this phrase puts the listener automatically on edge. (See also "No offense, but...")
Placed after some badly received advice, the phrase can be at best ineffective, at worst, offensive. If the listener doesn't recognize the love you hold for them from what you've just said and the tone in which you've said it, this phrase will not convince them. It's more likely to make them think you have to keep reminding yourself of this love/care.
You'd be better off halting in the midst of your bad-advice-giving, and apologizing: "I'm sorry. I've suddenly realized that I'm being an ass."
That would be a real sign of love.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
As a joke: This works best if you are a person of extremes: either extremely straight-laced and not likely to ever do anything remotely questionable, or a daredevil currently high on badly mixed heroin or meth you made in your basement.
For real: This phrase has one advantage over other typical advice phrases, which is that it reveals the true raison d'etre of advice-giving: to get the advisee to act exactly as you feel you would act in a given situation.
Anyone reaching the point of seriously uttering this phrase should stop speaking immediately and seek help.
After you've received your share of advice, you should be able to return to the previous conversation, knowing better.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Mix: B*tches & Ho's
"Oops I Did It Again" -- Britney Spears
"Bitch" -- Meredith Brooks
"Gold Digger" -- Kanye West
"Maneater" -- Nelly Furtado
"Artbitch" -- C.S.S.
"Bette Davis Eyes" -- Kim Carnes
"Dirty Diana" -- Michael Jackson
"Last Beautiful Girl" -- Matchbox Twenty
"Hunters of the Night" -- Mr. Mister
"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" -- Djay
"Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)" -- Wyclef Jean featuring Akon, Lil' Wayne, and Niia
"Roxanne" -- Moulin Rouge soundtrack
"The Harlot and the Troubadour" -- The Sterling Stitches
"Bitch" -- Meredith Brooks
"Gold Digger" -- Kanye West
"Maneater" -- Nelly Furtado
"Artbitch" -- C.S.S.
"Bette Davis Eyes" -- Kim Carnes
"Dirty Diana" -- Michael Jackson
"Last Beautiful Girl" -- Matchbox Twenty
"Hunters of the Night" -- Mr. Mister
"It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" -- Djay
"Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)" -- Wyclef Jean featuring Akon, Lil' Wayne, and Niia
"Roxanne" -- Moulin Rouge soundtrack
"The Harlot and the Troubadour" -- The Sterling Stitches
In Defense of Poppery, II: "Sweetest Girl"
Pop example: Wyclef Jean, Akon, Lil' Wayne and Niia's "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)"
What redeems it: "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)" is a typical example of its hip-pop genre: semi-rapped lyrics give way to a melodic chorus featuring a female background singer. This song falls into the category of a modern-life-fable, too -- the moral of the story being (as is also typical) that prostitutes live a hard life.
"Sweetest Girl," only the latest in a string of pobrecita-prostitute (aka "po' ho") songs, is remarkable because it's a collaboration. The first verse mentions a few of the artists given credit for singing and writing the song: Wyclef (Jean), Akon, and "Weezy." The Internet credits Lil' Wayne, Niia and Wyclef. Whatever the list and street-name-show-name-real-name combination, it's obvious that a bunch of music celebrities worked on this song.
Think of the other song collaborations you've heard of -- beyond the recent awesome Coldplay-Brian Eno partnership, think of songs where pop singers banded together to sing about some global issue. Usually "Heal the World," "Imagine," "let's end world hunger"-type stuff, right?
"Sweetest Girl" falls into this category. The melody is smooth and driven by (and intended to cultivate) sentimentality. The collaborative artists sing in turn. It's clear both that this goes beyond Jamie Foxx's cameo in "Gold Digger," and that the point of the song is to garner sympathy for a plight.
Here's the extraordinary part: By collaborating on a pobrecita-prostitute song, Wyclef, Akon, Lil' Wayne and co. have proposed that the daily-life woes of prostitutes and their pimps deserve the same sympathy as people starving, or dying in wars.
The first verse pities the prostitute:
The second verse, hinted at in the change from "she" in the first refrain of the first verse to "you" in the second refrain (so "you" may be the pimp), seems to be on the pimp's side, though, making this more a song of "what's this world coming to?" than pro-prostitute:
An awareness that cops can lock them up ("25 to life's no joke") comes up at the end of the section, and along with the word "us" (who nobody's takin' from), the song is form-fits-content at this point. The singers are collaborating to sing; pimps and prostitutes collaborate to make their money-gathering system work effectively.
We're supposed to be paying attention to the system -- the way, in a "feed the world" song, we'd be asked to pay attention to, if not the systemic issues that create or propagate world hunger, at least the large-scale acts of charity that could alleviate it. This song aspires to look at the system as a whole and sympathize with the people within it, more even than with any individual or role. The chorus is explicit in this, and details what appears to be the problem with the world that creates this system:
Money -- the desire and ultimate need for money -- is what created this system.
The final verse goes back to prostitute-specific sympathy, with a dig at the church for being ineffective against the system they find themselves a part of:
The song doesn't mention how the prostitute makes her money in this verse -- instead, it uses a passive-voice euphemism ("time used"). I think this is particularly effective, in that it not only draws our attention away from the mechanics of the prostitute's questionable calling, but it deliberately pays her the respect of modesty -- especially remarkable considering her immodest work and the other terms usually used in place of "prostitute," none of which are particularly respectful.
Unlike many "let's get together" songs, "Sweetest Girl" doesn't offer us a solution...in fact, it almost fails to offer us a problem. Because we feel sympathetic toward both prostitutes and their pimps, we have trouble identifying anyone within the system to blame for their situation, and the song is unclear on how the outside-the-system problem of always needing cash can be handled. We're left with a statement of a problem, but not a proposed solution.
Still, the song effectively portrays, in anecdotal though broad-stroke terms, a set of circumstances that leave only victims behind, and it does this regarding an issue that most Americans wouldn't think twice about, morally speaking.
I'll be interested to see what's next for Lil' Akon Jean.
4 stars out of whatever.
What redeems it: "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill Song)" is a typical example of its hip-pop genre: semi-rapped lyrics give way to a melodic chorus featuring a female background singer. This song falls into the category of a modern-life-fable, too -- the moral of the story being (as is also typical) that prostitutes live a hard life.
"Sweetest Girl," only the latest in a string of pobrecita-prostitute (aka "po' ho") songs, is remarkable because it's a collaboration. The first verse mentions a few of the artists given credit for singing and writing the song: Wyclef (Jean), Akon, and "Weezy." The Internet credits Lil' Wayne, Niia and Wyclef. Whatever the list and street-name-show-name-real-name combination, it's obvious that a bunch of music celebrities worked on this song.
Think of the other song collaborations you've heard of -- beyond the recent awesome Coldplay-Brian Eno partnership, think of songs where pop singers banded together to sing about some global issue. Usually "Heal the World," "Imagine," "let's end world hunger"-type stuff, right?
"Sweetest Girl" falls into this category. The melody is smooth and driven by (and intended to cultivate) sentimentality. The collaborative artists sing in turn. It's clear both that this goes beyond Jamie Foxx's cameo in "Gold Digger," and that the point of the song is to garner sympathy for a plight.
Here's the extraordinary part: By collaborating on a pobrecita-prostitute song, Wyclef, Akon, Lil' Wayne and co. have proposed that the daily-life woes of prostitutes and their pimps deserve the same sympathy as people starving, or dying in wars.
The first verse pities the prostitute:
She had a good day, bad day, sunny day, rainy day
All she wanna know is (where my money at?)
Closed legs don't get fed, go out there and make my bread
All you wanna know is (where my money at?)
The second verse, hinted at in the change from "she" in the first refrain of the first verse to "you" in the second refrain (so "you" may be the pimp), seems to be on the pimp's side, though, making this more a song of "what's this world coming to?" than pro-prostitute:
Pimpin' got harder 'cause hoes got smarterThe end of the second verse clinches the "we're all in this together" sense that comes from seeing both sides of the equation -- the Djay, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" side and the pobrecita-prostitute side:
On the strip is something they don't wanna be a part of
Rather be up in the club shakin' for a thug
For triple times the money and spending it like they wanna
They got they mind on they money, money on they mind
See everyday they feel the struggle, but staying on they grind
And ain’t nobody takin’ from us, and that’s the bottom line
An awareness that cops can lock them up ("25 to life's no joke") comes up at the end of the section, and along with the word "us" (who nobody's takin' from), the song is form-fits-content at this point. The singers are collaborating to sing; pimps and prostitutes collaborate to make their money-gathering system work effectively.
We're supposed to be paying attention to the system -- the way, in a "feed the world" song, we'd be asked to pay attention to, if not the systemic issues that create or propagate world hunger, at least the large-scale acts of charity that could alleviate it. This song aspires to look at the system as a whole and sympathize with the people within it, more even than with any individual or role. The chorus is explicit in this, and details what appears to be the problem with the world that creates this system:
Cash rules everything around me
Singin' dollar dollar bill y'all (dollar, dollar bill y'all)
Money -- the desire and ultimate need for money -- is what created this system.
The final verse goes back to prostitute-specific sympathy, with a dig at the church for being ineffective against the system they find themselves a part of:
She used to run track back in high school
Now she tricks off the track right by school
She takes a loss cos she don't wanna see her child lose
So respect her, and pay up for the time used
And then she runs to the pastor
And he tells her there will be a new chapter
But she feels no different after
The song doesn't mention how the prostitute makes her money in this verse -- instead, it uses a passive-voice euphemism ("time used"). I think this is particularly effective, in that it not only draws our attention away from the mechanics of the prostitute's questionable calling, but it deliberately pays her the respect of modesty -- especially remarkable considering her immodest work and the other terms usually used in place of "prostitute," none of which are particularly respectful.
Unlike many "let's get together" songs, "Sweetest Girl" doesn't offer us a solution...in fact, it almost fails to offer us a problem. Because we feel sympathetic toward both prostitutes and their pimps, we have trouble identifying anyone within the system to blame for their situation, and the song is unclear on how the outside-the-system problem of always needing cash can be handled. We're left with a statement of a problem, but not a proposed solution.
Still, the song effectively portrays, in anecdotal though broad-stroke terms, a set of circumstances that leave only victims behind, and it does this regarding an issue that most Americans wouldn't think twice about, morally speaking.
I'll be interested to see what's next for Lil' Akon Jean.
4 stars out of whatever.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Mix: Plants
"Roses" -- Kanye West
"The Lotus Eaters" -- R.E.M.
"Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn" -- The White Stripes
"Life Like Weeds" -- Modest Mouse
"The Path of Thorns (Terms)" -- Sarah McLachlan
"Lily Was Here" -- Candy Dulfer
"Willow Tree" -- Plumb
"Little Acorns" -- The White Stripes
"Linger" -- The Cranberries
"Seed To A Tree" -- Blind Melon
"This Woman's Work" -- Kate Bush
"Eggs in a Briar Patch" -- David Bryne
"Treefingers" -- Radiohead
"Buddha Rhubarb Butter" -- Soul Coughing
"My Favorite Plum" --Suzanne Vega
"The Lotus Eaters" -- R.E.M.
"Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn" -- The White Stripes
"Life Like Weeds" -- Modest Mouse
"The Path of Thorns (Terms)" -- Sarah McLachlan
"Lily Was Here" -- Candy Dulfer
"Willow Tree" -- Plumb
"Little Acorns" -- The White Stripes
"Linger" -- The Cranberries
"Seed To A Tree" -- Blind Melon
"This Woman's Work" -- Kate Bush
"Eggs in a Briar Patch" -- David Bryne
"Treefingers" -- Radiohead
"Buddha Rhubarb Butter" -- Soul Coughing
"My Favorite Plum" --Suzanne Vega
Sunday, July 6, 2008
The End of "The World"
Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, went on strike Monday, April 14, and did not publish a Tuesday edition of the paper the next day, in response to planned staff cuts.
The New York Times cut its staff by a hundred earlier this year.
The L.A. Times just cut 150 editorial staff.
The Hartford Courant, Connecticut's closest thing to a newspaper of record, just recorded an interview for NPR on photojournalist and reporter cuts. The Courant plans to fill its coverage gaps with user-generated content -- in other words, free writing from citizens.
The Courant's parent company, The Tribune Co., also owns The Baltimore Sun, which is making similar cuts, The Boston Globe is making cuts, and The Boston Herald has said it plans to eliminate 130 to 160 jobs this summer.
Most newspapers can't resist publishing editorials on their own cutbacks. The Hartford Advocate published an editorial by Alan Bisbort when they made cuts from their staff (resulting in the subsequent joblessness, I hope relieved by now, of Jennifer Abel). The New York Times published word of its own de-staffing. The World Association of Newspapers wrote up many of these fact in a weblog entry.
The whole industry is navel-gazing at this point.
Small wonder, considering how little guarantee there is that reporters and editors will be able to keep their bellies full over the next few, likely severe, rounds of cutbacks.
But it's the wrong approach.
Simon, French national and friend, says good riddance to Le Monde if its reporters feel a sense of entitlement so strong that they consider themselves more important than their functions at the newspaper -- stopping the presses, after all, only works if people miss the paper when you do. And people only miss you if they're not already busy resenting you for your interruption of their daily routine.
It's not the same as the NYC transit strike. People needed to get to work. People needed to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. People needed that strike to end.
It's not like the Writer's Guild of America strike that lasted all those months, leaving us Christmas-episode-less and almost finale-less. We're addicted to television. We need our fix of "House" or "The Office" or "Lost."
How many people need newspapers anymore, though? And how many are actually addicted to newspaper-format information anymore?
It's not newspapers' fault that the format may be becoming obsolete (though there's plenty of evidence that it's not -- look at Timothy Egan's "look on the bright side" thoughts on the industry's reach), and it's not out of line for seasoned reporters, editors, publishers and readers to be upset with the still-nebulous changes appearing to be forced on the industry. A thousand jobs lost in one week, in any industry, is nothing to sneeze at.
But it doesn't seem like anything to strike at, either.
Imagine if oil-industry workers on the verge of losing their jobs to a new technology -- solar-power, let's say, for the sake of whimsy -- responded by going on strike. People would pay attention; they would complain; they would speed up the transition to non-fossil-fuel power. A strike would have the opposite of the intended effect.
Newspapers, and more particularly the human elements making up newspapers -- the reporters and editors and people who do newspapers -- need to make themselves indispensible before we dispense with them. Out of the ashes of print-version, corporate-sponsored papers should come something innovative and incisive, cutting to the quick of what people want from their information.
There's so much to be done online -- the lack of organization is staggering -- and who would be better equipped to do that work than people who have been presenting us with information since the pamphlet hit the printing press?
Even if reporting and editing became freelance endeavors, even if what organization came down to was selecting for and copying stories from their sources, we'd still need them. We still need gatekeepers, and we'll need them exponentially more as our dependence on the Internet increases exponentially.
So let's get going. Leave the husk of the old ways behind, Le Monde, and get to work on cracking new stories and presenting them so we take notice.
It's the end of that old world. Start building the new one.
The New York Times cut its staff by a hundred earlier this year.
The L.A. Times just cut 150 editorial staff.
The Hartford Courant, Connecticut's closest thing to a newspaper of record, just recorded an interview for NPR on photojournalist and reporter cuts. The Courant plans to fill its coverage gaps with user-generated content -- in other words, free writing from citizens.
The Courant's parent company, The Tribune Co., also owns The Baltimore Sun, which is making similar cuts, The Boston Globe is making cuts, and The Boston Herald has said it plans to eliminate 130 to 160 jobs this summer.
Most newspapers can't resist publishing editorials on their own cutbacks. The Hartford Advocate published an editorial by Alan Bisbort when they made cuts from their staff (resulting in the subsequent joblessness, I hope relieved by now, of Jennifer Abel). The New York Times published word of its own de-staffing. The World Association of Newspapers wrote up many of these fact in a weblog entry.
The whole industry is navel-gazing at this point.
Small wonder, considering how little guarantee there is that reporters and editors will be able to keep their bellies full over the next few, likely severe, rounds of cutbacks.
But it's the wrong approach.
Simon, French national and friend, says good riddance to Le Monde if its reporters feel a sense of entitlement so strong that they consider themselves more important than their functions at the newspaper -- stopping the presses, after all, only works if people miss the paper when you do. And people only miss you if they're not already busy resenting you for your interruption of their daily routine.
It's not the same as the NYC transit strike. People needed to get to work. People needed to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. People needed that strike to end.
It's not like the Writer's Guild of America strike that lasted all those months, leaving us Christmas-episode-less and almost finale-less. We're addicted to television. We need our fix of "House" or "The Office" or "Lost."
How many people need newspapers anymore, though? And how many are actually addicted to newspaper-format information anymore?
It's not newspapers' fault that the format may be becoming obsolete (though there's plenty of evidence that it's not -- look at Timothy Egan's "look on the bright side" thoughts on the industry's reach), and it's not out of line for seasoned reporters, editors, publishers and readers to be upset with the still-nebulous changes appearing to be forced on the industry. A thousand jobs lost in one week, in any industry, is nothing to sneeze at.
But it doesn't seem like anything to strike at, either.
Imagine if oil-industry workers on the verge of losing their jobs to a new technology -- solar-power, let's say, for the sake of whimsy -- responded by going on strike. People would pay attention; they would complain; they would speed up the transition to non-fossil-fuel power. A strike would have the opposite of the intended effect.
Newspapers, and more particularly the human elements making up newspapers -- the reporters and editors and people who do newspapers -- need to make themselves indispensible before we dispense with them. Out of the ashes of print-version, corporate-sponsored papers should come something innovative and incisive, cutting to the quick of what people want from their information.
There's so much to be done online -- the lack of organization is staggering -- and who would be better equipped to do that work than people who have been presenting us with information since the pamphlet hit the printing press?
Even if reporting and editing became freelance endeavors, even if what organization came down to was selecting for and copying stories from their sources, we'd still need them. We still need gatekeepers, and we'll need them exponentially more as our dependence on the Internet increases exponentially.
So let's get going. Leave the husk of the old ways behind, Le Monde, and get to work on cracking new stories and presenting them so we take notice.
It's the end of that old world. Start building the new one.
Mix: Apocalixx
"The End Of The World (As We Know It)" --R.E.M.
"Red Rain" --Peter Gabriel
"The Future" --Leonard Cohen
"Building A Mystery" --Sarah McLachlan
"My Last Breath" --Evanescence
"Catch Hell Blues" --The White Stripes
"Breakfast" --Newsboys
"Damned If I Do" --Alan Parsons Project
"This Is The End Of Your Life" --The Juliana Theory
"The Devil Is Bad" --The W's
"Skin Is Burning" --Burlap to Cashmere
"Going Under" --Evanescence
"St. Andrews (This Battle Is In The Air)" --The White Stripes
"Resurrection Song," --Birdmonster
"Handlebars" --Flobots
"Rush Of Blood To The Head" --Coldplay
"It Ends Tonight" --The All-American Rejects
"Take a Bow" --Muse
If you would like a CD copy of this mix, send your address to Alicia's email.
"Red Rain" --Peter Gabriel
"The Future" --Leonard Cohen
"Building A Mystery" --Sarah McLachlan
"My Last Breath" --Evanescence
"Catch Hell Blues" --The White Stripes
"Breakfast" --Newsboys
"Damned If I Do" --Alan Parsons Project
"This Is The End Of Your Life" --The Juliana Theory
"The Devil Is Bad" --The W's
"Skin Is Burning" --Burlap to Cashmere
"Going Under" --Evanescence
"St. Andrews (This Battle Is In The Air)" --The White Stripes
"Resurrection Song," --Birdmonster
"Handlebars" --Flobots
"Rush Of Blood To The Head" --Coldplay
"It Ends Tonight" --The All-American Rejects
"Take a Bow" --Muse
If you would like a CD copy of this mix, send your address to Alicia's email.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Local Trivia: Don Edwards, eat your heart out
On the side of Route 72 E, Plainville-New Britain line: a dead coyote.
Love in the time of Pairpuppets
Rob Breszny's "Free Will Astrology," running in the Hartford Advocate as usual (among other publications), hit a nerve this week -- or perhaps a circuit board.
One of the four horoscopes I always read (when I read them), Capricorn's read thus:
This isn't my horoscope, and rightly not -- I don't think I've ever been one for requiring perfection of other so much as of myself, and I've certainly never spent time daydreaming about any potential robot lovers -- but it intersects interestingly with my recent life and times.
Two weeks ago, I picked up The World Treasury of Science Fiction, a rather self-congratulatory collection of sci-fi short stories containing "The Men Who Killed Mohammed" by Alfred Bester. After reading Bester's story, I skipped ahead a few pages and also read "Pairpuppets" by Manuel Van Loggem (translated from the original Dutch, "Paarpoppen").
"Pairpuppets" starts out with our apparently jobless protagonist in yet-another tryst with a real-life woman. The "yet-another" is clear in Joe Shmoe's attitude and in the response from his current date, chosen for him, as they all are, by a computer determining compatibility through mathematical algorithm (eharmony.com, anyone?). The march of one woman after another through his life (not his bedroom -- there are separate facilities for these liaisons) is meant to increase proto-guy's capacity for intimacy so that in the end, he and current-partner-number-X will commit to each other and start a family.
Tangent: I mention the joblessness because it's an interesting problem that the story doesn't deal with at all. In a robotic future, humans' only job seems to be procreation...which leaves us with the BSG $600K question: Why would we deserve to survive? What use would we be at that point?
Van Loggem, after a different point, doesn't attempt to address this question. In the hazy future of Guy Incognito (he has a name, but I've forgotten it and don't have the book with me now), we see only conceiving and raising children as a career -- making the end result more chilling, in my opinion, than it would otherwise be.
Joe doesn't commit to his current partner, or the one after that, but he's intrigued by the frustration the second one we meet shows at his human (performance) foibles. There's nothing seriously wrong with his technique, as far as he or we know, but he's not perfect, and that's what this woman is expecting.
She's expecting it because she's bought and used a Pairpuppet: a robot lover meant to attend to the desires of its owner, and which is physically perfect in every relevant way.
Our protagonist gets curious and does some research, asking a friend about Pairpuppets. Friend advises Joe that Pairpuppets are popular but on the verge of passe -- that most fad-followers are trending off the perfection of Pairpuppets in favor of the idiosyncratic imperfections of actual human beings, the way rich pseudo-bohemians shop at Banana Republic or Abercrombie instead of Brooks Brothers or Armani, today.
Joe eventually goes out into the night and sees a flirtatious, leather-clad, imperfect young woman walking toward him. He is shocked by her forwardness and tells himself that this is it -- real love, beyond robots and beyond calculations done by computers, beyond inhuman perfection, spontaneous and chaotic -- and follows her. They have a quick-and-dirty encounter in a ditch or someplace equally quick-and-dirty, and when he turns to learn her name, she reveals the twist (spoiler alert): she's a new version of Pairpuppet, designed to simulate the need even for idiosyncracy in romance. She's perfectly imperfect, in other words.
That's the end of the story, which reads as a simple twisted-plot vignette, but it didn't end there for me.
The question of career, for instance: If raising kids for who-knows-what-purpose were the actual career of however many humans were alive in this potential future, and then Pairpuppets made humans obsolete as romantic and domestic partners, what job would be left for people? Some people might continue to have children, sure, but only out of a sense of duty, if they were actually falling in love with Pairpuppets.
Of course, the final step away from people having anything at all to do, with the introduction of a Pairpuppet partner that made human partners "so yesterday," is only the final step. Obviously, Van Loggem is portraying a society that has already leased what Star Trek would have called "its humanity" and is treading a fine line at story's start. It's not a shocking conclusion for a society already so far down the path of human obsolescence, that humans become so thoroughly obsolete.
Ray Kurzweil, another link in my recent bizarre chain of "robots are our future" happenstance, was recently featured in a science article for the New York Times. He agrees that robotics are our future -- but he doesn't posit a future of robots making us irrelevant (even to each other); he suggests instead that innovations in sci-tech biology will make our futures brighter than we can possibly imagine.
In the article, Kurzweil claims that we'll soon have a pill that will allow us to eat anything we want without getting fat. He says solar power will save us from greenhouse gases thanks to nanoengineering, within the next five years. Then he says that we'll live, more or less, forever:
But Kurzweil, according to the Times, to the fact that he got invited to the TED conferences, to the publication of such a massive volume by a major publishing house, does not appear to be crazy.
He appears to really believe that we will all eventually be outfitted with robot parts to supplement our current, not-efficient-enough human ones.
We wouldn't be replaced wholesale, necessarily. We'd be added-onto. We would become bionic people, but we'd still be people...we'd just be...well, perfectly imperfect.
This must be the sort of stuff Rob Breszny's been reading, too, to refer to a prediction that robots are our romantic future.
Which makes me wonder whether Rob, clearly well-read and liking to flaunt it, is astoundingly naive -- naive enough to miss his own point -- or genius.
He doesn't endorse or contradict the assertion that many of us will be married to robots in the future. He doesn't comment on the future at all, in fact. (Most horoscopes don't, in the end.) He asserts that Capricorns need to come to terms with imperfections in their partners, side-stepping the issue of A.I. partnerships and their possibly perfect solution. His horoscopic prediction begs -- practically screams -- the question "Well, why don't we just wait awhile, then? Why settle for the imperfect when perfection is just around the corner?"
Maybe he means for us to infer the imperfection of the proposed robotic partners, as Van Loggem and Kurzweil postulate.
Maybe -- maybe, mind you -- Rob Breszny is better at his job than we Village Voice/City Paper/Advocate readers have assumed.
Maybe he knows more about the future than he's saying.
But I sure hope not.
One of the four horoscopes I always read (when I read them), Capricorn's read thus:
By the year 2100, some human beings will be married to sophisticated robots. So concludes David Levy, who got a doctorate from a Dutch university for his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners." Let's use his prophecy as a jumping-off point for your meditation, Capricorn. In your fantasies about togetherness, are you unconsciously harboring any unrealistic desires for robotic perfection? If so, are they interfering with your ability to have deep and satisfying relationships with interesting but flawed people? Take inventory of any tendencies you might have to want artificial partners. Then dissolve those delusions.
This isn't my horoscope, and rightly not -- I don't think I've ever been one for requiring perfection of other so much as of myself, and I've certainly never spent time daydreaming about any potential robot lovers -- but it intersects interestingly with my recent life and times.
Two weeks ago, I picked up The World Treasury of Science Fiction, a rather self-congratulatory collection of sci-fi short stories containing "The Men Who Killed Mohammed" by Alfred Bester. After reading Bester's story, I skipped ahead a few pages and also read "Pairpuppets" by Manuel Van Loggem (translated from the original Dutch, "Paarpoppen").
"Pairpuppets" starts out with our apparently jobless protagonist in yet-another tryst with a real-life woman. The "yet-another" is clear in Joe Shmoe's attitude and in the response from his current date, chosen for him, as they all are, by a computer determining compatibility through mathematical algorithm (eharmony.com, anyone?). The march of one woman after another through his life (not his bedroom -- there are separate facilities for these liaisons) is meant to increase proto-guy's capacity for intimacy so that in the end, he and current-partner-number-X will commit to each other and start a family.
Tangent: I mention the joblessness because it's an interesting problem that the story doesn't deal with at all. In a robotic future, humans' only job seems to be procreation...which leaves us with the BSG $600K question: Why would we deserve to survive? What use would we be at that point?
Van Loggem, after a different point, doesn't attempt to address this question. In the hazy future of Guy Incognito (he has a name, but I've forgotten it and don't have the book with me now), we see only conceiving and raising children as a career -- making the end result more chilling, in my opinion, than it would otherwise be.
Joe doesn't commit to his current partner, or the one after that, but he's intrigued by the frustration the second one we meet shows at his human (performance) foibles. There's nothing seriously wrong with his technique, as far as he or we know, but he's not perfect, and that's what this woman is expecting.
She's expecting it because she's bought and used a Pairpuppet: a robot lover meant to attend to the desires of its owner, and which is physically perfect in every relevant way.
Our protagonist gets curious and does some research, asking a friend about Pairpuppets. Friend advises Joe that Pairpuppets are popular but on the verge of passe -- that most fad-followers are trending off the perfection of Pairpuppets in favor of the idiosyncratic imperfections of actual human beings, the way rich pseudo-bohemians shop at Banana Republic or Abercrombie instead of Brooks Brothers or Armani, today.
Joe eventually goes out into the night and sees a flirtatious, leather-clad, imperfect young woman walking toward him. He is shocked by her forwardness and tells himself that this is it -- real love, beyond robots and beyond calculations done by computers, beyond inhuman perfection, spontaneous and chaotic -- and follows her. They have a quick-and-dirty encounter in a ditch or someplace equally quick-and-dirty, and when he turns to learn her name, she reveals the twist (spoiler alert): she's a new version of Pairpuppet, designed to simulate the need even for idiosyncracy in romance. She's perfectly imperfect, in other words.
That's the end of the story, which reads as a simple twisted-plot vignette, but it didn't end there for me.
The question of career, for instance: If raising kids for who-knows-what-purpose were the actual career of however many humans were alive in this potential future, and then Pairpuppets made humans obsolete as romantic and domestic partners, what job would be left for people? Some people might continue to have children, sure, but only out of a sense of duty, if they were actually falling in love with Pairpuppets.
Of course, the final step away from people having anything at all to do, with the introduction of a Pairpuppet partner that made human partners "so yesterday," is only the final step. Obviously, Van Loggem is portraying a society that has already leased what Star Trek would have called "its humanity" and is treading a fine line at story's start. It's not a shocking conclusion for a society already so far down the path of human obsolescence, that humans become so thoroughly obsolete.
Ray Kurzweil, another link in my recent bizarre chain of "robots are our future" happenstance, was recently featured in a science article for the New York Times. He agrees that robotics are our future -- but he doesn't posit a future of robots making us irrelevant (even to each other); he suggests instead that innovations in sci-tech biology will make our futures brighter than we can possibly imagine.
In the article, Kurzweil claims that we'll soon have a pill that will allow us to eat anything we want without getting fat. He says solar power will save us from greenhouse gases thanks to nanoengineering, within the next five years. Then he says that we'll live, more or less, forever:
I own his book, The Singularity Is Near. It's approximately as long as The World Treasury of Science Fiction, and it's inscribed by Ray himself to an NPR radio hostess in D.C. (How I got this copy of his book, and for free, is another day's post.) I haven't read it, mostly because every time I pick it up with interest, I read the back cover again and think "Oh, yeah. Robot future. Maybe I'll just read more Neal Stephenson instead." (Any excuse to read more Stephenson, though. I love that man...'s writing.)Are you depressed by the prospect of dying? Well, if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy will keep rising every year faster than you’re aging. And then, before the century is even half over, you can be around for the Singularity, that revolutionary transition when humans and/or machines start evolving into immortal beings with ever-improving software.
At least that’s Dr. Kurzweil’s calculation.
But Kurzweil, according to the Times, to the fact that he got invited to the TED conferences, to the publication of such a massive volume by a major publishing house, does not appear to be crazy.
He appears to really believe that we will all eventually be outfitted with robot parts to supplement our current, not-efficient-enough human ones.
We wouldn't be replaced wholesale, necessarily. We'd be added-onto. We would become bionic people, but we'd still be people...we'd just be...well, perfectly imperfect.
This must be the sort of stuff Rob Breszny's been reading, too, to refer to a prediction that robots are our romantic future.
Which makes me wonder whether Rob, clearly well-read and liking to flaunt it, is astoundingly naive -- naive enough to miss his own point -- or genius.
He doesn't endorse or contradict the assertion that many of us will be married to robots in the future. He doesn't comment on the future at all, in fact. (Most horoscopes don't, in the end.) He asserts that Capricorns need to come to terms with imperfections in their partners, side-stepping the issue of A.I. partnerships and their possibly perfect solution. His horoscopic prediction begs -- practically screams -- the question "Well, why don't we just wait awhile, then? Why settle for the imperfect when perfection is just around the corner?"
Maybe he means for us to infer the imperfection of the proposed robotic partners, as Van Loggem and Kurzweil postulate.
Maybe -- maybe, mind you -- Rob Breszny is better at his job than we Village Voice/City Paper/Advocate readers have assumed.
Maybe he knows more about the future than he's saying.
But I sure hope not.
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