or how i learnt to start worrying
hippy rv!
I’m in California at the moment.
It hasn’t been -20 for three whole days now and I have to say that is a considerable improvement!
I’ve been brought up as every good European has. To despise the United States and all it stands for! So far I’m disappointed. I like it here. Admittedly it is only a limited demographic, LA and Palm Springs, but I can’t find it in me to criticize anything just yet.
They even call Marlboro Gold, Marlboro Lights. Just like we used to be able to.
Happy New Year!
I’m going to California! I get to spend the first 10 days away from Edmonton and Alberta so for me it will begin happily at least. I hope (even if you are an ardent Edmontonian) that you all have a wonderful NYE and a great 2010.
My resolution? To find my way out of this hell-hole as quickly as possible.
Strangely Edmonton didn’t make the list. I guess it’s not even worthy of hate.
The worst 9 cities (according to Lonely Planet anyway – I didn’t get a vote in) can be found here.
Everyday I wake up and wish I was back in England.
-30 temperatures are only increasing my depression. I do really try to remain upbeat (really!) but the thought of being here for another 6 or 7 months upsets me terribly. To say that I hate it here wouldn’t be doing my feelings justice.
I only hope to God that my wife likes England and Europe because when we do leave nothing on earth will be able to drag me back to this country. I also hope that I can maintain some semblance of sanity so that my wife still wants to be my wife by the time this prison sentence ends.
Moving here was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life. My reasons for moving though were right at the time and unfortunately are still so now. If something doesn’t change soon though I don’t think I will be able to wait until the end of next summer before we (as plans stand) leave.
I am going to have to do my best to follow this story!
A two year old boy was admitted to hospital in Brazil with over 50 sewing needles inside of his body! And they hadn’t been swallowed.
Each one had been deliberately inserted inside of the child. Why? And who by? His mother took him into the hospital so it would seem to rule her out of the equation.
The full story is here.
And an update here.
Review: U: The Comedy of Global Warming.
The play opens with text scrolling across a screen a la the Star Wars titles.
Which makes it strangely appropriate to share an anecdote (or it could just be an urban myth – who knows?) with you. During the filming of Star Wars Episode IV George Lucas supposedly derided Harrison Ford’s delivery of one his lines to which the actor allegedly replied, “You might be able to write this shit George but I can’t say it.”
Which is why I can’t find it in my heart to criticise any of the performances in U: The Comedy Of Global Warming. The three actors tasked with bringing the crudely drawn caricatures presented to them to life were locked into a collision course with the Death Star the moment they signed on the dotted line.
Now Star Wars isn’t a comedy by name or nature. Despite what some of us may think of the most recent cinema outings of the franchise. Unfortunately this play is supposed to be one and the word comedy in it’s title hangs like a millstone around its neck. Or should that be a noose.
That Ian Leung has researched the subject of global warming fully is evident. He shows great skill in succinctly explaining some quite complex ideas and concepts in a manner that is easy for an audience to process and understand. In isolated circumstances, i.e. outside of the play, these descriptions would be both entertaining and informative. Where it all falls down is in his insistence to then hang it all on such a weak skeleton.
The main dramatic premise (and there is a second which I’ll come to shortly) serves as a metaphor for the plays political aspirations and is scribbled in crayon three miles high. Oil rich Alberta (and presumably the Western world as a whole) using its fiscal and political power to screw poorer and weaker nations. Quite literally, in this case, fucking the little guy in the ass. In a clumsy manner at first that is slightly tasteless and I’m certain would stand up in court as attempted rape.
Both actors, Clinton Carew (as Albert A. Oil, just guess what his character represents) and Tim Hamaguchi (Tuvalan refugee, Tivo), show glimmers of their comic skills which unfortunately only serves to highlight the plays comic shortcomings. I am ashamed to say I didn’t so much as crack a smile except when the house-lights came up for dramatic effect at a couple of moments in the play and I felt it would be cruel not to at least pretend to be enjoying myself. Just for the sake of the performers egos.
The second dramatic conceit takes the form of a talk-show, Hotstove Planet, presented by Clinton Carew (enthusiastically portrayed by Garett Spelliscy). It intersperses the main storyline and introduces us to what is no doubt the most interesting aspect of the play. The documentary interviews from activists, scientists and politicians in Alberta who were filmed in order to provide a backdrop and some sorely needed gravitas to proceedings.
Their contributions lift what is on the whole a lifeless theatre going experience and without their inclusion I don’t think it would be unfair of any audience forced to sit through the rest of the show to then demand all or at least a portion of their money back.
If the ‘doom and gloom’ documentary market weren’t already flooded (excuse the pun) I would advise the plays director to bundle the interviews together and construct a narrative from them instead. I was only remotely interested in what was going on onstage when they were playing on the screens above and behind the cast and indeed found myself getting annoyed when the demands of the play meant that an interviewees comment was cut short or talked over in order to return to the ‘action’.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Global warming in itself is not a funny subject so maybe there is a sense of irony in the title. I have a sneaking suspicion though that I’m wrong. This is supposed to be funny. This is supposed to have us rolling in the aisles. My advice to the writer if he wants the play to have a life beyond its short run at the U of A. Stick a couple of jokes in there. One would do to start.
Billy Bragg is someone I grew up with. He was always on the periphery of my musical radar. I was aware of him but never really gave much time to the bard of Barking.
Until I rediscovered him a few years ago and suddenly with the addition of nolstagia and more of a realisation of the political landscape in which I was growing up I got him. I understood why he had seemed so angry and why he had felt the need to spread the word. I was simply too young at the time he was in his ascendancy to fully appreciate what he was actually singing about.
Since my ‘Damascus’ moment I have actively sought out every opportunity to repay my former indifference towards him and have been gifted the opportunity to see him play live on three continents.
It was already a done deal I would see him in my new (but temporary) home in Edmonton. And although he wasn’t stellar, it was the weakest of the four performances I have personally seen, he was a welcome visitor to this incredibly homesick Brit.
It was a strange crowd and atmosphere though in the Winspear. A mixture of young and old as I would have expected as Billy is a well established performer and although they all applauded warmly throughout and gave him a standing ovation at the climax they were on the whole rather subdued. The one time that Billy actively sought audience participation (during the closing number ‘New England’) there was an absence of noise rather than the cacophony of a thousand out of tune voices there should have been. As a result I shouted louder in an attempt to embarrass everyone else into joining in but also to give Billy something back after he had entertained us all for the previous hour and a half.
I got the feeling that mixed in with the younger generation seeking to find out for themselves what the fuss what was about and the hardened fans who lived and breathed the same ideals Billy stood for there was another element present there last night. The elitist Edmontonian arts crowd. Those that pride themselves on the cities reputation as ‘festival city’. For whom the Folk Festival is the pinnacle of their calendar year, where they get the opportunity to parade and preen themselves as the cultural masters of all they survey. It is just such a shame that they have to share it with the rest of us proles. They weren’t there because they believed in Billy’s political stance, they weren’t even there because they truly love music. They were there because they were aware that Billy Bragg is now rightly a folk icon, because CKUA (their guiding musical hand) had told them that was so and because if they hadn’t been there it might have been noticed and how could they have lived that down.
There were a few ‘flat’ moments when it was unfortunately obvious that his politics weren’t perhaps shared by all, at least not when they intruded on Canadian misdemeanors anyway. The Canadian Japanese resettlement during the Second World War being one example when the crowd rather than clap was stunned into polite embarrassment as if Billy had farted at the dinner table. It’s one thing to talk about global issues like capitalism, racism, homophobia etc but to point the finger at us? How dare he?
Perhaps it is partly due to the venue. It is a beautiful space but in my mind far too formal for this kind of event.
Music, from Beethoven to Billy, is visceral, at times violent, at times beautiful, and it should be enjoyed not admired like a fine wine. Not studied coldly from a distance.
I certainly hope Billy received more of an energetic response from audiences elsewhere in Canada.
I made a mistake this week. Against all of the advice of my friends and respected critics worldwide I watched Transformers. That wasn’t the mistake I’m referring to though. It was thinking that surely the second film couldn’t be as terrible as the first.
How wrong I was. Over the course of two evenings I have lost forever nearly five hours of my life.
The warnings were all there. A film that begins with the words ‘A Michael Bay’ film and follows quickly on their heels with in conjunction with ‘Hasbro’ could never be a worthwhile use of time.
In both films every scene begins five seconds after it should and ends five second too early in order to move along (for hours!) at a frantic pace, pummeling the viewer continuously with closely framed images that never dwell for too long for fear you may see how ridiculous those images really are. They jump from scene to scene without bothering to inform the viewer where they might be dragged along to next and not pausing for even a moment to allow them to try and adjust to the shift.
It’s as if whole pages of script and dialogue were tossed aside in the edit suite because they were deemed to slow down the pace.
Which is a shame because it is only when the characters actually open their mouths to speak that the film(s) deliver anything close to entertainment (and I’m being incredibly kind by saying that). Sam’s relationship with his parents for example occasionally points towards an attempt on the writers part to inject humour and pathos into the mix and highlights the writing talent that is sadly not on display elsewhere in the films(s).
If I could be bothered I could quite happily detail all of the plot machinations and exposition but only because it is so simplistic and childish as to be almost totally transparent. NOT because that information shone through as a result of Mr Bay’s heavy-handed intelligent film making.
I imagine that Michael Bay was one of those children who played with his toys making up stories and adventures for them that he acted out in his bedroom or in the garden. Hell we all did. Thankfully not all of us were inspired to craft a career from the experience.
My head was swimming with reasons I loathe North America and living here. From the absence of a real sense of community to the inbuilt desire to consume that is so blatantly on display here to the downright mundane, namely the lack of choice that so a so called free market has given the inhabitants of this bleak and frankly unlivable tract of land north of the United States.
I also wallowed in self pity for a while and so the only thing to do was get up, fix a drink and try to ride the fugue out.
I feel disconnected from the real world. I realise that my definition of ‘real’ is based upon my experiences growing up and that this insular existence is ‘real’ for the Canadians that surround me. They grew up on the fringes of world news and politics. They grew up in a society that built itself on individual rights and damn anyone that tries to pry those rights away.
As a result of my depression, because that’s what it is, I’ve lost all appetite for the few things I used to actually enjoy. Like playing the guitar and even listening to music. I can’t take any pleasure from either at the moment. They just remind me what I’m missing whilst languishing over here. The former is no doubt more of a blessing for everyone else than it is for me.
A whole year has passed and gone. Wasted and lost forever. I’m staring down the barrel of another 12 months and I can’t do it. For me Canada and the northern part of this continent has lost the little sheen it had for me. If it were at all possible for me to just get on a plane and wake up back in Europe I wouldn’t hesitate. And of course I could do that, there is no gun at my temple (discounting the previous metaphor), except that it isn’t that easy. Right now it would be my sanity and happiness or my marriage.
I choose my marriage and so I remain. Getting further depressed by the day but hoping with all my heart that something will rise up from the quagmire and make the time left here at least partly bearable.
check this out.
Mindele Jacobs is a woman believe it or not. What she is trying to do here is dress up a story that shows a gap in what Canada is doing for women overall by resorting to mysogonistic prose herself.
Surely rather than trying to justify Canada’s severe lack of female representation within politics she should be issuing a rallying cry to women across the country.
Instead she rather feebly points out that geographical constraints serve to keep the female population chained to the kitchen as opposed to lobbying for representation.
I’m surprised that Mindele had time to write the article in between doing the ironing and ferrying the kids to hockey practise.
