So what do you think?
Some people I know think it’s too CGI-heavy, but that doesn’t really bother me since it seems to be well-done. I’m concerned by how Depp-centric it seems and that it may just end up being a darker version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
We’ll see!
Ahm. So. In the past week, I have seen Rent live… 3 times.
Contrary to what it may appear, I am not a “RENT-head.” At least I wasn’t.
It was one of those shows I’d heard about, but never gotten around to, and I was dubious because it was so popular. (I am Opposite Girl, at least I like to think of myself as such.) But hey it was coming to Boston so I bought myself a ticket for last Wednesday.
And I went. And God it was good.
This was even with an understudy as Roger. One of the big draws of this tour is that Roger and Mark are the original Roger and Mark, but hey I was a n00b I didn’t care. The understudy could sing. And he had a mohawk! Love. But I went, and I enjoyed, but it left me with a “whoa one viewing isn’t nearly enough to capture all that just happened in that show.”
But, since I’m lazy, that wouldn’t have led to any further action on my part if I hadn’t had a friend coming to town specifically to see this show.
This friend (Hannah, we will call her, it being her name), is actually a legit RENT-head. I mean, she flew in from DC to see the show, since she couldn’t go when it was in DC. And I met her for breakfast yesterday, and I was like, “wtf, I’ll just rush the matinee she’s going to, not like I have any big plans for my Saturday afternoon.” So I rushed.
And the original Roger was there. And it was a pretty damn good show. I mean, it was pretty damn good. I could feel the RENT-headedness seeping into me, just a little. I wasn’t quite there yet, the matinee was a little shaky in some respects, and I was still feeling my way. But I liked it enough that when Hannah and her bf decided to try to rush the evening show (since they’d flown up specifically to see Rent, they might as well try to see it twice, right?) I thought “heck why not?” and decided to tag along. I mean, I like Hannah, I was liking Rent, what did I have to lose? So the three of us rushed last night’s performance.
And wow. Everything finally clicked.
The actors were spot on. They couldn’t have been better. Roger was like a god onstage, hitting notes I didn’t even think possible. Mimi was once again fantastic, really absolutely perfect, as was Mark.
And Angel. HOmygod Angel.
Angel was played by a Justin Johnston, and he is one of those actors who just—Wednesday night he walked onstage for his first number, “Today for you, tomorrow for me,” and the air just crackled with his presence. It crackled, I could feel it all the way in the balcony. He was spectacular. My God. It practically killed me, his level of awesome.
So I lost my train of thought somewhere, but yeah. Rent. Basically fabulous. I came to late to the party to be a proper RENT-head, but I can be Generation II right? I mean I saw it 3 times in a week, that must count for something.
So um yeah. You may recall that I was pretty excited about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the recent(ish) mash-up of two of my favorite things: Jane Austen and zombies. I bought it but haven’t read it yet (it’s glaring at me from here); I remember finding the first page a bit clunky, which turned it from a “read immediately” book to a “get around to it eventually” book.
Which is a shame, because I really like the new Jane Austen mash-up genre, in theory.
Which is good, because Quirk Books is publishing another one:
The next big thing?
A couple of months ago (May, to be exact) my friend Cindy Pon published her debut YA novel, Silver Phoenix. It took me this long to get around to reading it, because I am a bad friend. But it was totally worth the wait.
At seventeen, Ai Ling should be married, or at least betrothed. But nobody wants her. A free spirit in a land of order and restriction, she almost prefers it that way, except for the shame it brings to her family. Soon, though, she has bigger problems than her social status: her father goes missing and she begins to realize she has a power that she doesn’t understand.
Thus begins Ai Ling’s quest, a quest to find her father and herself.
Aiding her on this journey is Chen Yong, a half-foreigner with major problems of his own, and Chen Yong’s charming, womanizing younger brother Li Rong, as well as a host of other characters. The story is a basic quest/journey tale, but set in a land of such wonder and mystery that you cannot help but be enthralled. Ai Ling meets gods and monsters, some of them in human form, finally arriving at the Emperor’s Palace to battle perhaps the worst of them all: the one that loves her.
The book is just… beautiful. It is breathtakingly beautiful. Cindy also does some fabulous brush paintings, and reading this book was sometimes like looking at one of her paintings. You can see her artist’s eye in the description, even in the language itself. The book also made me incredibly hungry. The food Ai Ling consumes is described in such loving, delectable detail that I could almost smell it wafting from the pages. Cindy is welcome to invite me to her house for dinner anytime. ;)
Anyway, a great book; you can order it here and I highly recommend you do so.
On another note, I have decided that Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, etc.) needs to be in charge of the movie version of this book, and he needs to get on it stat. It has the kinds of mysterious creatures he specializes in, and the type of strong heroine he appreciates, and the sense of wonder that he is a master of. Really. Miyazaki, get to work.
To end, one of Cindy’s paintings:
Okay everyone, hold onto your hats. I am about to show you the most shocking picture you have ever seen.
I KNOW WHAT THE HELL.
For those of you playing at home, here is what Shane MacGowan used to look like:
CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE???
HINT:
THE MAN HAS ALL HIS TEETH.
My world is rocked. Turned upside down. I no longer trust the sun to rise in the east or my compass to point north. Shane MacGowan got his teeth fixed. What is this world coming to?
Shockingly, having someone jab a needle into your spine repeatedly kinda hurts. (I got someone different when I called the tattoo place back, and he magically found an opening today at noon that the other woman had not been able to see somehow. So maybe that phone disaster wasn’t all me.) So now I’m sore and trying not to lean my back against things. Hard, since I’m currently lounging in bed.
Today involved a lot of Star Trek: TNG and The Avengers. Wesley Crusher is so annoying. Why does he have to be in this show? He is the main reason it’s taken me so long to get into Star Trek, all the ST episodes I saw for the longest time were Wesley-centric (like, totally coincidentally all of them—and I’ve seen that Game one like 3 times) and that just turned me off the whole series. And those episodes were after he hit puberty. I’m starting TNG from the beginning and wow he was even more annoying before his voice cracked. How did this show make it big with him in it? Okay Grace stop being mean to the boy prodigy.
Anyway, so yeah, I’m lame. First sunny weekend Boston’s seen in like eons and I spend half of it watching nerdy tv shows and making smoothies (which involved bits of the blender flying around the kitchen). In my defense, yesterday I did properly summery thing, including mini-golfing and a beach. Much fun.
Um so yeah that’s what I’ve been up to recently. Fascinating, as usual.
You will notice how I’m not give you all a writing update. Yeah, about that…
My God I am so bad at phones.
I’ve gotten better. I used to hide from them, basically, until a large portion of my job sort of became answering them. (hi Registrar’s Office!) I am almost totally competent at business phone calls now. I still occasionally fumble (today I had two lines going at once and kept mixing them up and trying to transfer people to the wrong people). But overall my ability to answer an office phone has improved markedly. I just kind of click into automatic mode. I even have a different voice.
However.
If I ever have to make a phone call for myself—to my doctor, to a friend, to a bank, to my tattoo artist—I fail miserably. I giggle, or mumble, or accidentally insult someone, or am just generally incompetent. (I managed to do all 4 in my recent call to the tattoo place.) I think because there’s no script. (Like real life. I tend to do all of those things in real life, too.)
So yeah, I don’t have an appointment to get my tattoo touched up, and I’m pretty sure the receptionist is pissed off at me because I was accidentally rude.
I’ll call back tomorrow and hope I get someone else. And am better at the talking thing.
Blaaahhhhh
So I am currently reading two books: Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and Conquest of the Useless by Werner Herzog. Both are basically fabulous. Today I want to talk about the Herzog book because I’m basically bookgasming on every single page.
First, some background. Werner Herzog is one of my favorite directors; you’ve probably heard of Grizzly Man, that was his. But back in the ’70s and ’80s he was making movies with a man named Klaus Kinski, a brilliant madman of an actor. Aguirre: Wrath of God is one of the famous collaborations. Also: Fitzcarraldo.
Fitzcarraldo, set in the early 20th century, is about a European opera-lover (Kinski) in the Peruvian jungle who decides to become a rubber baron (also he wants to build an opera house). He gets his parcel of land for rubber harvesting, but for some reason—my memory gets a bit sketchy on the details here—he has to get a steamship from one river to another in order to get to the land, and he decides the best way to do this is to drag it over the top of a mountain. Here’s the trailer if you want the flavor:
So Herzog decided the best way to film the steamship being dragged over the top of a mountain in the Peruvian jungle was to actually drag a steamship over the top of a mountain in the Peruvian jungle. From the book, a conversation with the movie bosses:
The unquestioned assumption is that a plastic model ship will be pulled over a ridge in a studio, or possibly in a botanical garden that is apparently not far from here–or why not San Diego, where there are hothouses with good tropical settings. So what are bad tropical settings, I asked, and I told them the unquestioned assumption had to be a real steamship being hauled over a real mountain, though not for the sake of realism but for the stylization characteristic of grand opera. The pleasantries we exchanged from then on wore a thin coating of frost.
That ended up being an adventure. Throw in a totally crazy leading man and the making of Fitzcarraldo becomes the stuff of legend. There was a documentary made of the making of the film (Burden of Dreams) which I like almost as much as the film itself.
Here is what the filming of Fitzcarraldo looked like, from another famous documentary, this one by Herzog, called My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski. Herzog is the dude with the bandana headband near the end; you’ll figure out Kinski on your own. (even if you skipped the last clip you should watch this one…)
Which led to this, one of the most famous stories to come out of Fitzcarraldo:
So that’s what Herzog was working with. The book I’m reading is his diary from the time of filming, recently published for the first time. I haven’t even gotten to Klaus Kinski yet and the book’s already a firecracker. And so beautifully written, it’s like poetry on every page (it was translated from German, but still). Peru is “a sleepy country at which God’s wrath has cooled.” The room he is using at Francis Ford Coppola’s house has “windows that are filled with this demented light.” And I love all his little stories.
In the Rio Santiago the body of a soldierwho had been shot came floating along, on his back, swollen, the legs bent at the knees and the arms bent likewise; he looked as if he were raising his hands. Birds had already hacked out his eyes and eaten away part of the face. The comandante here advised letting him float by—so as to avoid any trouble; they would have to deal with him farther downstream. He gave the swimmer a gentle nudge with his boot, and the corpse spun around once before the current took hold of him.
Basically you should read this book. I mean, I’m barely 20 pages into it, so obviously this isn’t a proper review at all (see all the youtube videos?) but wow. So good. Bookgasm.
In closing, one more video that you should watch even if you don’t care about anything else in this post. See, Kinski wasn’t originally the lead, it was some other guy who got fired or quit or something so they had to totally restart filming. This video shows a scene first done by the original actor and then by Kinski, and wow. Oh yes, and the reason you should watch it? Mick Jagger’s in it. Good thing Herzog changed his mind about that.
or, THE STORY OF GRACE AND THE HUNDREDS OF TEENAGE BOYS WITH BRACES
So last night I went to see Reel Big Fish at the House of Blues. (If it seems like I only go to see shows at the House of Blues, well, that may be true. No comment.) I arrived, and we did the normal checking my ID and going through security thing. And then I entered.
And WTF.
The main floor was full of teenagers. Mostly boys. Not like older teenage boys who are barely not old enough to drink, but like teenage boys with acne and braces and gawkiness. Whoa.
Okay, I say to myself. Just go get yourself a beer and it’ll all be okay.
But—what? The bar does not seem to be open. I mean, they gave me a wristband at the door, so there must be booze somewhere but the bars are totally unpopulated and the liquor area is covered.
I inquire as to the possiblity of acquiring a beer and am told that alcohol is onlyserved on the 2nd and 3rd floors. What. Okay.
So alcohol is only available upstairs. I can deal with this… mishap. Besides, we’re just at the opening acts. So I get me some beer, and I watch the teenage mosh pit that forms during the opener—the Supervillains, they’re actually pretty good—and I am sort of shocked by how silly mosh pits look from above. Like, maybe it’s just because it was a skank mosh pit, but it looked like a bunch of ants running around. Really.
The second opening act was the English Beat, apparently celebrating their 30th anniversary. They were way good. They would have been a fun show to go to all on their own. Seriously. Like, they didn’t reach their full show potential, but I could see the potential.
Um, that didn’t really make sense, but anyway, so I chugged one final beer and went downstairs in time for Reel Big Fish to show up. It took them a while, but they finally did show up. And they put on a really good show. Ska shows are fun. Everyone pretends like they know how to skank, but they don’t really (I don’t exclude myself from this), and they “skank” in a big circle/mosh pit thing going around and around. Lots of fun. Lots of bruises.
So overall a good show. Lots of energy. Tons of fun.
My next show at HoB is Tracy Chapman, which will be a totally different flavor—or Rise Against if I can get a ticket. Anyone? Anyone?
Let’s end with a bit of RBF:
P.S. And if you got this far without realizing I was totally trashed while writing this, well, good on you. ;)
P.P.S. And just to be clear, there were people there aside from teenage boys—40-year-old men in khaki shorts and polo shirts, for instance. I wasn’t the only person older than 15. Also some older couples and some of the hardcore concert boys in their 20s who go to every show available. So yeah. I wasn’t the only weirdo in the crowd.
Chrysanthemum
current wordcount: 45,675
last week: 45,675
satisfied?: big fat zero for the week. damn you, holiday and airplane and trip to DC. look at me make excuses that wouldn’t deter a Real Writer. look at me fail at life.
comments: comments? grace nothing happened this week. what is there to comment on?
