This month’s culprit is Suzanne Young, with her new novel A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL. Here’s the blurb:
We all want to be remembered. Charlotte’s destiny is to be Forgotten…
Charlotte’s best friend thinks Charlotte might be psychic. Her boyfriend thinks she’s cheating on him. But Charlotte knows what’s really wrong: She is one of the Forgotten, a kind of angel on earth, who feels the Need—a powerful, uncontrollable draw to help someone, usually a stranger.
But Charlotte never wanted this responsibility. What she wants is to help her best friend, whose life is spiraling out of control. She wants to lie in her boyfriend’s arms forever. But as the Need grows stronger, it begins to take a dangerous toll on Charlotte. And who she was, is, and will become–her mark on this earth, her very existence–is in jeopardy of disappearing completely.
Charlotte will be forced to choose: Should she embrace her fate as a Forgotten, a fate that promises to rip her from the lives of those she loves forever? Or is she willing to fight against her destiny–no matter how dark the consequences?
I can say without any spoilers that it is an extremely touching story that left me blubbery. Suzanne makes you truly feel and understand the characters, and Charlotte’s relationships with her BFF, her boyfriend, and her family are beautifully and believably portrayed. I felt like I was reading about real people.
So check it out! A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL is simply a wonderful, wonderful book, and I cannot wait for the sequel.
I’ve never read Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, and I’m not particularly interested in the upcoming series on HBO. Which, apparently, isn’t surprising because… I’m a girl. And girls don’t like fantasy.
No really, I read it on the internet. In the New York Times, to be precise, in a review by Ginia Bellafante. The review is kind of full of itself and overly flowery, even for the New York Times, but let’s cut right to the chase. Here’s the paragraph that’s causing all the trouble:
The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.
The first thing I think of is the famous alleged Pauline Kael quote about not understanding why Nixon had won as she didn’t know anyone who had voted for him. Just because you don’t know any women who would rather read The Hobbit than… whoever Lorrie Moore is, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. In large numbers. It also makes me suspect that you aren’t necessarily the best person to be reviewing this show. Surely there’s someone at the New York Times who is even slightly interested in fantasy?
I do think I understand part of what Bellafante is trying to say. There are a lot of movies that are straight up actiony and explodey and then wtf here is a love story that seems to be thrown in just so guys can convince their girlfriends to go see it with them. This strikes me as more of a problem with the perception filmmakers have of their audience than with the audience itself. (I personally go to see actiony explodey movies in spite of the awkwardly patched-in love story, not because of it.) But to follow that observation up with the assumption that women aren’t interested in fantasy except for the beefcakes in loinclothes or the tragic romance verges on ignorant. I hesitate to use that word for someone writing for the New York Times, but it really shows a lack of knowledge about the genre or the people who consume it.
Mostly I just think the review is a poor one. Whether or not the show is any good, I simply don’t trust a review by someone who is obviously the completely wrong audience for the story. I’m also slightly offended by the ending:
If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.
So Bellafante is equating the show with ALL of the fantasy genre. No. A show or story is good or bad irrelevant of its genre. Not everyone who is into a particular genre likes every aspect of that genre. Not everyone who reads fantasy plays D&D. (Hi!) This black-and-white assumption just drives home that Bellafante might know television, but she doesn’t know fantasy. It’s possible to review a genre you don’t normally enjoy, but you shouldn’t make grand sweeping statements about the genre. And since Bellafante never showed any indication that I should trust what she says about “Game of Thrones,” I still don’t know if I want to watch it.
So basically, I think we should all just feel free to ignore this. The review and the offending paragraph are making the rounds of the internet, and I obviously cared enough to write about it, but really—what’s the use in arguing with someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about?
The A.R.T.’s The Blue Floweris pretentious. Let’s just get that out of the way at the start. The lyrics are pretentious, the music is pretentious, the style is pretentious, even the concept is kinda pretentious. That said, it’s a pretty good show, and it contains one of the finest monologues I’ve seen in years (more on that later).
The experience starts even before you enter the theater. The lobby has been set up with lots of tables and a bratwurst cart and feels very much like an early-20th-century train station. You then enter the theater directly onto the stage, which again is set basically to feel like a train station. You’re brought into the show before the show even starts.
The story centers around Max, an artist who eventually retreats into his own manufactured language to escape his past. At first, Max and his friends lead a very Bohemian lifestyle in Berlin; at times I was strongly reminded of Rent and therefore its predecessor La Boheme. (Hannah reminded me slightly too much of Maureen from Rent, actually.) The first act is a rich depiction of this Bohemian life, filled with vigor and joy which is soon torn horribly apart by World War I.
The story is a little disjointed at the beginning, but after the straight-up narration of Max’s life begins it settles down a little bit. There is a strong dose of surrealism and at times the production veers a little too close to Dadaism for my liking, but my date thought it was brilliant. To each his own, I guess. My only complaint about the narrative itself was that it needed probably one more pass with a scalpel, especially near the end. Just a bit too long for the material.
I adored the show’s use of mixed media. Sometimes this sort of thing can be awkward, but here it was seamless and totally fit the show. There are videos playing behind the actors for what seemed like half the show, usually with subtitles. Light and shadow are used beautifully and are almost characters in the show. Blue petals sprinkle over the audience at one point, and if you’re in the wrong place you’ll also get covered in newspaper. All these complexities ran like clockwork. The show has a very high production value.
Also a very high talent level. Hannah and Max especially (Meghan McGeary and Daniel Jenkins) could tell entire stories just by moving a few muscles in their faces, it was quite breathtaking to watch. Even the two-man chorus gave their various parts a lot of character while barely saying a word. The only actor I really had a problem believing in was Tom Nelis as the “Fairytale Man,” but that is probably more due to the character itself (who annoyed me). Mostly, though, every single person on stage was obviously giving their all. You can tell sometimes when a cast is pouring 100% into a show they love, and The Blue Flower is one of those shows.
Unfortunately, what I consider one of the most important parts of any musical—the music—was… perfectly adequate, but not particularly exciting. The songs were all slightly too similar for anything to stand out. The “Sturm n’ Twang” style of the music was an interesting idea but didn’t seem to gel particularly well with the story. One character loved cowboy movies, but that wasn’t enough a part of the story to influence the entire show’s musical identity. And the lyrics, as I mentioned before, were pretentious. Don’t get me wrong, I generally liked them. There were some lines that I wanted to write down because they were so clever, and pretentious lyrics aren’t out of place in a pretentious show. But again, they seemed simply adequate. The songs just weren’t remarkable. There was nothing that you left the theater humming, nothing that was particularly memorable. It was all performed by very talented people, but it just didn’t grab me.
Even with that one glaring problem, though, I do recommend The Blue Flower. It’s an experience as much as a play, and it really is an important piece of art. It’s not my usual cup of tea but I am extremely glad I went.
And finally, that monologue.
At some point, Max addresses the Daughters of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (or some such group). He speaks in a language that is just straight-up “Romance”—sometimes it sounds Italian, sometimes French, sometimes nothing at all. Subtitles and images run behind him while he tells the story of Prince Rudolf’s death. It is absolutely brilliant. Yes, my favorite monologue of the past year isn’t actually in any language. But it is a beautiful piece of acting and production and when it ended I sat back and thought, “well, that was worth the price of admission, doesn’t really matter what they do now.“
Which of course isn’t true, so it’s a good thing the rest of the show held up. :)
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Disclaimer: I received press tickets from the A.R.T. to attend this show.
Last night I went and saw the A.R.T.‘s production of Cabaret, starring everyone’s favorite punk-cabaret goddess Amanda Palmer as the Emcee.
It was a gorgeous show. Fucking gorgeous. So well styled and put together and beautiful and nghh. And you felt like you were actually in the Kit Kat club. The Kit Kat boys and girls were all over and in and around the audience, making asides, dancing, flirting, laughing. I got to wear one of their hats for a while. It was pretty much fantastic. They were pretty much fantastic.
Aside: I desire every pair of shoes in that picture.
I have some quibbles about some of the directorial choices and some of the performances, but eh. I’m not in the mood, and the show’s almost over/sold out so it doesn’t really matter what I say. Overall it was excellent and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a ticket. Palmer usually pipes up on twitter if something comes available.
The one thing I’ll say is the thing that was said to me by multiple people before I went to the show and turned out to be totally true. Basically, a lot of people are going to this show because of Amanda Palmer.* And the consensus is that Amanda Palmer is fantastic, but the rest of the show is even better. Which, yeah. So true. I wish she’d sung more in her own range and not gone deeper for most of the songs, but so true. AFP was fantastic but wasn’t actually the best part of the show. So. If that tells you anything. I’ll let that be my review.
One final picture. Here is AFP looking amazing.
*Frankly, much as I love Palmer, I’m mostly glad she was in this show because I don’t know that I would have heard of it otherwise and Cabaret is one of my favorite ever musicals. And, you know, she chose the show and stuff. So. Thanks AFP!
So. You may remember that Amanda Fucking Palmer gave me a ticket (I’m still pretending that it was a personal gift) to the world premiere show of her new project, Evelyn Eveyln. So it only seems fair to repay her kindness by telling you all how AWESOME the show was.
And it was pretty awesome.
(Quick aside: if you don’t know what Evelyn Evelyn is, they are conjoined twins from Kansas who play music. Any resemblance they have to Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley in a big dress is purely coincidental.)
the elusive twins
The show was at Club Oberon in Cambridge, Mass, where I had never been. I really like the venue, though, it’s small and seems casual, though that may have just been the crowd. Since I get most of my musical experiences at the House of Blues, I really liked the coziness of Oberon. And a brief word on the crowd: I have never seen such a diverse band of misfits as I have at that show. It was spectacular. There were young people, old people, fathers and daughters, people in corsets and people in jeans. Two girls came dressed as Evelyn and Evelyn. I’ve never felt so completely at home in a crowd.
Jason Webley opened the show, and he is a fanfuckingtastic performer. He got the crowd going immediately (“I need you to pretend I just did something awesome so I can get you to help me with the next song… good! good!”) and by the end of his short set had the entire crowd spinning in circles with their fingers in the air. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether I liked his music (I think I did) because he is such a good show. Loved it.
And with the crowd ramped up from spinning and singing, Amanda Palmer made her entrance.
Let’s be honest, Evelyn Evelyn wouldn’t be able to go on tour if Amanda Fucking Palmer weren’t Amanda Fucking Palmer. Someone proposed marriage to her as she sat at her piano. I thought about it (hey, we’re in Massachusetts). She’s an amazing human being and an amazing performer and an amazing performance. I always forget that there are people who don’t know who she is, because she is such an important artist in my sphere.
But sometimes I get caught up in the excitement of Amanda Fucking Palmer being Amanda Fucking Palmer, and I forget how truly stunning her voice is. Watching her sing, especially from like 5 feet away, is entrancing. Perhaps she sold her soul to the devil to get that voice—I really don’t know. But I’d be okay with that explanation. And the woman knows how to work a crowd.
AFP was then joined by Jason and the third performer of the evening, a man named Sxip Shirey. (It will be easier if you pretend it’s spelled “skip.”) They played “Electric Blanket” (accompanied by Sxip on some random bell contraption) and then AFP and Jason disappeared and it was time for Sxip to perform.
Sxip Shirey was the surprise of my evening. I’d never heard of him and had no idea what to expect, but now I’m in love. He’s part circus, part musician, part storyteller, part hair, and all awesome. He’s one of those “makes music with random stuff” guys, and his tools included bells, a train whistle, a police siren, a harmonica (on which he appeared to be beatboxing) and some foot-pedal-thing that did strange and amazing things to his microphone.
This is not the greatest video, but it’s my favorite song that he played:
His new CD went on sale yesterday. BUY IT!
So then after a brief break the twins came on.
The twins are pretty amazing.
It’s really kind of difficult to describe the show. It was part story/play (Sxip was the ringmaster-type, blatantly exploiting the twins), part cabaret, part puppet show. Each twin played one half of an instrument—they each played one hand of a piano, or one hand of the guitar, or ukulele, or accordion. (The accordion may have actually been all Jason the Left Twin, I wasn’t at a great angle.) It’s been years since I’ve played music, but that seems really difficult. The music is the sort of oddball thing you would expect from people who are pretending to be conjoined twins a band discovered by Amanda F. Palmer and Jason Webley. Each song is really a different genre, but it all seems to tie together pretty well. And the show is great. It feels very circus-freaky: “come into my tent and see this great freak of nature!”
There were a lot of little things that made the show even more genius. For instance, the “waiting for the show to start” music consisted of lots of songs about sisters (that Eurythmics song) and being close and being apart—and at least one song that was by Evelyn Evelyn. (I only remember Happy Birthday, but I think there might have been more.) It was brilliant.
Some things didn’t go quite so well, of course, since it was the first time this show had ever been performed. Jason seemed to have some trouble remembering some of the Evelyn Evelyn lyrics, and AFP kept almost cracking up, but as she said during her set, “anything that goes wrong tonight we can just call ‘charming.’” (That is a very rough paraphrase.) The show seemed to end slightly too mellow (this was pointed out by a couple of people in the Q&A session at the end) especially because they’d teased us by playing the opening to “Poker Face.” And there were a few tech issues. But everything was just opening-night kinks, which will probably be fixed over the course of the next few performances.
But still.
The entire thing was amazing.
I’m pretty sure the show is sold out, like, everywhere, but I hereby give you permission to find someone with a ticket and murder and/or maim him/her. Sometimes art is worth it.
AND
SHE ANNOUNCED AT THE END
They’re ending their tour HERE in BOSTON in JUNE at my favorite venue the House of Blues! Tickets aren’t on sale yet, but stay tuned. They’ve promised that it will be total extravaganza and that they’ll have perfected the show (possibly making it entirely different) and I am super super excited.
SO
There is my very very long review of the first ever show by Evelyn Evelyn. Thanks again, AFP.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to the House of Blues, but I think Flogging Molly was a good way to break that sad streak. Absolutely fab show.
I do have one little gripe about the venue (the first time this has ever happened at gracetopia!). Like I said, it’s been a while, but in the interim the HOB has installed about 6-8 LCD screens around the floor and at the bars. I disapprove wholeheartedly. I don’t like being advertised at while I’m waiting for the show to start, and I don’t like the insinuation that if you can’t see the show, these screens are an acceptable alternative. They aren’t. You may as well just stay home and watch the DVD. Now, granted, I spent most of the show close enough to the front that the screens weren’t actually in my view, but STILL. Dislike.
ANYWAY. On to the awesomeness.
The first opener, the Architects, were decent. Not great, but decent. Then the second opener was this guy named Frank Turner, who was fantastic. I totally loved his music, and he is an amazing stage show. Like, he’s one of those people who is doing exactly what he should be doing with his life. Also, I think I’ve seen him before. Really. Strangest sense of dejá vù.
Then Flogging Molly came on stage.
Spectacular. The end.
(N.B. Not only do I write KILLER music reviews (see above!) I let them sit in my “drafts” list for like WEEKS after the show! good job Grace!)
As part of a brand-new series I’m calling “I watch shitty movies at 2am so you don’t have to,” Gracetopia is proud to bring you our review of Dragons: Fire & Ice.
I don’t know how this movie ended up in my Netflix queue. I don’t know what mood I was in when I thought this would be a good idea. Seriously:
[Animated] A bitter feud between the Norvagen and the Daigon has been blazing for centuries, though no one remembers why. The peaceful times of the enlightened dragons and their Crystals of Power are no more, as the dragons have vanished and taken all serenity with them. In an effort to restore harmony to the land, prince Dev of the Norvagan and princess Dyra of the Draigon team up as an improbable pair to fight the forces that only they can conquer.
But now it’s here and I’m going to watch it. So you don’t have to.
I’m going to do something of a play-by-play on twitter (which will be in the past by the time you read this bwahaha) and I’m going to jot down thoughts here as well. I apologize in advance for any rambling, incoherence, etc. It is 2am.
AND HERE WE GO.
You know those videos people post on youtube where they make videogame characters dance around to songs like “Boba the Fett” or “Thriller?” That is what the scenes from this menu screen looks like. This does not bode well.
Hmmm okay so we started with a voiceover about dragons, and the Dragonworld, and crystals (+ one special crystal with a name that sounds like “decepticon”) and A GREAT BETRAYAL and a dragon queen is dead. I am not entirely clear on the details. The voiceover was quite growly and dramatic.
Seriously I was playing computer games when I was ten with better animation than this. And Dragons: Fire & Ice is from 2004.
Ah-ha, now we have a little blond prince and a little dark-haired princess. I PREDICT THAT THEY WILL JOIN FORCES AND SAVE THE WORLD. Partly because I just read it in the description. OH NO THEY’RE BOTH ON DRAGONS NOW what if they run into each other? THERE ARE NO TRAFFIC LIGHTS IN THE SKY.
Aw, the little prince and princess are all grown up. The prince is whiny and blond. The princess is whiny and brunette. Goodness so much whining. They’re perfect for each other. I wish them lots of chubby whiny children.
Okay, the prince really needs to stop saying “I will come in/Go in fast and hard.” My adolescent mind can’t handle it.
Hokay, really, I feel like I am watching someone play a 10-year-old video game. I appreciate Pixar so much more now.
GUYS THE TWO ENEMY KINGS HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY EVIL DRAGONS. Now the prince and princess must BAND TOGETHER and SAVE THEM. As an aside, has anyone noticed that I use more CAPS when I am tired?
Prince quote of the moment, “Uh, yeah, he’s a wizard, duh.” Such elegant language for a princeling.
Okay, I got distracted. They met a wizard and fought a dragon, but it turned out the dragon is “good” and the wise old wizard is actually a bad guy. Shocking twist, I know. Oh, and now the dragon is explaining plot things that… are maybe important?
WAIT! The Orethon (?) is IN the prince and princess! I do not know what this means but it seems important. It sounds like a disease.
I zoned out again. Now it appears that the sky is falling in. Also a herd of gray dragons that look almost exactly like the monkey warriors from The Wizard of Oz. From afar.
And there are 20 minutes left. What. Help.
Reading reviews on Netflix indicates that there are toys that go along with this movie, and that possibly the toys were first. This would explain quite a bit, really.
Ooh the bad guy just made a dragon skeleton thing out of ice, and it’s actually almost pretty. First thing about this movie that seems even a bit impressive.
OH THANK GOD IT’S OVER. It ended with the bad guy shaking his fist (weren’t they supposed to kill him?) and saying “It’s not OVER!” but actually I think it is. Don’t anyone feel a need to point me towards the sequel.
So basically I think this movie was made for pre-adolescent boys whose mothers told them they had to cap their video game time. Because this seems to my untrained eye to be exactly like playing a video game, except with less plot.
Ta-da! I have watched Dragons: Fire & Ice so you don’t have to—not that you were planning to anyway, probably.
Yes, this review is waaaay out of date (from the blog cleanup I’m doing), but I want to keep it around so here we go. Originally from blogger gracetopia.
~
Introducing… a movie about the Joker with appearances by that bat guy.
So, um, yes. The Dark Knight is pretty much worth exactly as much hype as it has received.
It is mislabeled, however. It is less a Batman movie than a movie of Gotham City and of madness. Batman gets no more screen time than Gary Oldman’s Detective Gordon and much less than the star of the show, Heath Ledger’s Joker. This makes the movie stronger, though, as it interweaves the story of Batman with the story of the city he protects, and explores the effect that protection has on both the city and the man behind the mask.
But let’s get to everyone’s main question.
It seems a shame that discussion of this movie is going to always end and begin with Heath Ledger, because there is so much more to the film—on the other hand, this is one of those roles that is going to go down in history. Heath Ledger’s Joker. Like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates, this is going to be a villain people talk about for a long time. Ledger played him so beautifully mad, I was transfixed every moment he was onscreen. He made the pure madness of the character plausible and enjoyable.
The main plotline is—well, chaotic. The Joker is mad. He does mad things. There seems to be reason behind it, but then there doesn’t, and then there does again. Batman tries to stop him and gets a new suit. A lot of bodies fly—I lost track of how many cops are killed. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) shows up and may be the answer Batman is looking for—a White Knight to take over his duties, to give Batman a chance to be Bruce and live happily ever after with Rachel (a role taken over by Maggie Gyllenhaal). (which I almost spelled properly without IMDb.)
Let me give you a hint: it doesn’t work.
The Dark Knight is dark. You thought Batman Begins was dark, you ain’t seen nothing yet. TDK is a study of insanity and desire and fear, Batman’s and the Joker’s and the city’s. The writers tear apart everything these characters hold dear (and Gotham is very much a character) and lets them loose to pick up the pieces as best they can. Batman and Gotham and the Joker–and all the other characters–are pushed to their limits and back again. It is almost painful to watch sometimes, but so riveting.
It is hard to call out actors for commendation because everyone was so good across the board. Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t quite as young and perky a Rachel as Katie Holmes was, which is probably a good thing; her world-weary edge fit this new movie. Gary Oldman, as usual, just showed up and increased the fabulous factor of the movie by about 100%. Aaron Eckhart didn’t have as much to work with character-wise but did a good job with it. And even Christian Bale didn’t bother me as much as he usually does, though his “raspy voice” thing did get old after a while.
TDK wasn’t all made of perfection, though. The body count was ridiculously high, even for me, and some of the technological whizzies were over-the-top in a “really? are you sure about that?” kind of way. Really a lot of the movie was just unreasonable. Way too many times a car flipped over and someone important just strolled out of the wreckage. And–don’t want to give anything away—but the shiny gidget at the end—wtf? And I began to get antsy towards the end—there were a lot of storylines, and they were all tied up more-or-less cleanly, but there was a while there when I was a bit bouncy.
Also, I don’t know if it’s just me, but about half a dozen of their “wow, plot twist!” things totally weren’t twisting me. Didn’t really detract from the movie, though, and it was funny to watch the rest of the audience’s shock when—well, you’ll see.
Also, Cillian Murphy was only in the movie for a grand total of 5 seconds, which was unfortunate.
So I’m always a little leery of concerts that are not going to involve mosh pits. Even if I have no desire to be in said mosh pit, that’s the kind of music I usually see in concert, so I know how to behave. So I was a bit wary of Tracy Chapman. She didn’t seem like a mosh pit kind of gal. I didn’t really know what to expect.
My arrival did nothing to ease my worries. All of the concert-goers were so fucking annoying. I wanted to kill the 40-something couple in line behind me. There’s a point where you just have to stop being a cutesy couple, and 40-something is well past it. And inside—well, at first glance it was the most diverse crowd I’ve ever seen at the House of Blues. There were old couples, young couples, groups of girls, groups of boys, a large selection of lone men and women, families, and of all colors and nationalities. But they did have something in common: how obnoxious they all were. Maybe it was just because there were so many people there, but everyone was rude and pushy, and people were having loud obnoxious conversations even after Chapman had started playing, and everyone was just generally not someone I would want to go to a concert with at all. I mean, this isn’t totally a uniform statement. There was a trio of boys who were dressed like douchebags and who I would never expect at a Tracy Chapman concert and who I would never talk to in real life, but they were remarkably amusing when I spoke to them at the bar.
That was a long long paragraph of me complaining about my fellow concert-goers. Apologies. On to the show.
Tracy Chapman is basically the shit. She was friendly and chatty between songs—she was kicking off her US tour after being in Europe, and she was so thrilled to be somewhere she could speak with the crowd instead of stretching the bits of every foreign lnaguage she knew. Also she apparently went to Tufts and spent the past two days wandering around my area of Boston, going to the Coop and taking the T at Harvard Square and how did I not see her??? Bah.
And boy can that woman sing. Like, seriously. My God. She has the voice of an angel. She sang all of her big hits (“Fast Car,” that Revolution one, that other one that’s really famous) as well as some new things and it was just overall wonderful. And oh my god she ended with “Proud Mary,” Tina Turner style. There aren’t even words for how amazing that was.
So yeah, overall a good experience, even though I am still confused about the crowd. How can so many Tracy Chapman fans be annoying? She’s so much awesome. It just doesn’t make sense. Oh well. She was cool enough for everyone.
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.
This month’s culprit is Suzanne Young, with her new novel A NEED SO BEAUTIFUL. Here’s the blurb:
