This past weekend, my family attended Aga-Boom, a “theatre of physical comedy and circus arts.” It was incredible, and it was hard to believe that this was performed at the Raritan Valley Community College theater, which is nice and all, but seems small potatoes for a troupe that was part of Cirque de Soleil and which has been in Vegas and on Broadway.
Aga-Boom‘s show is perfect for all ages–my kids loved it, but I may have laughed more than they did. There are three clowns, an older woman, a goofy “large” clown and a kind of morose alien-looking clown. None of these are you typical “clown make-up” type of clowns. In fact, I found the lady clown’s make up to be amazing–astonishingly emotive and expressive. And the morose clown was all white face with a completely fake nose and a simple red frown line for a mouth and yet wow, they could convey everything.
There are several set pieces. The first is a joke about paper getting stuck to the lady clown. It’s a good introduction to the paper conceit that runs through the show (the stage “curtain” is a large sheet of paper! It morphs into this amusing/intimidating section where the morose clown (dressed like an astronaut with (a wonderful detail) a water cooler bottle on his head as a space helmet–is mad because the woman clown accidentally launched his ship into space.
Then comes the goofy clown who does some amazing juggling with a suitcase. I’ve never seen anything like it. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: JONATHAN FRANZEN-Commencement Speech (audio) (2011).
You can hear the entire speech from the Kenyon College site.
[READ: May 28, 2011] Commencement Speech
On May 21, Jonathan Franzen gave a commencement speech to the students of Kenyon College. When I think about my commencement speech (from Judy Woodruff of CNN), all I can remember is that I had never heard of her (and when I typed her name just now I got it almost entirely incorrect–the only thing right was the “wood” part). I don’t recall a single thing that she said. [It’s also fascinating that I can’t find any record of this speech anywhere online–what a different world it was twenty years ago]. I rather expect that most people feel this way about commencement speakers. I have to wonder, if Jonathan Franzen had spoken at my college, would I have cared? Is there even a chance that I would have read any of his novels (had they been published of course) when I was in college? Would I be treating this any differently than my whatever speech in 1991?
But I like Jonathan Franzen and I wanted to read what he had to say.
His speech is about love. Love is kind of an odd topic for a commencement speech, isn’t it? I mean, aren’t they supposed to talk about the Future and Jobs or something? Or maybe even sunscreen? But really, what is more useful for a 21-year-old to think about than Love. Franzen hits the nail right on the head about Love, how it is a dangerous, risky proposition to put yourself out there, to take off your veneer and reveal all of your flaws–and hope someone will love you. Not new or novel, but still true.
The way that Franzen gets into this subject is through technology. It seems weird and artificial at first, but it’s a wonderful way to get into a young audience’s state of mind. They were probably all looking at their iPhones while he was extolling the virtues of his new Blackberry (the old person’s phone, right?). And when he segues into Facebook (who even knows if he has an account–but he seems to be well-versed with it, so maybe he does) you can imagine students raising their head in familiarity (maybe even updating their status) and wondering (as he puts it) if this 51-year-old guy is going to dis Facebook. (more…)
ATTENDED: WEIRD AL YANKOVIC-Live at the State Theater, New Brunswick, NJ May 19, 2011 (2011).
I’ve seen “Weird Al” live three times now and I have never been disappointed by the show. The first year my friend Matt and I waited out by the bus and got the bands’ (minus Al’s) autograph. The second time we waited even longer and Al had an autograph (and picture taking) session in the theater after the show (how cool is that?).
This year, Sarah and I didn’t wait around afterwards (kids at home) but the show was still great. Al made a joke after the first song thanking his opening act, Technical Difficulties. (There were indeed 45 minutes of technical difficulties before the show, but Al’s joke made us quickly forget it–and, kudos to the State Theater: I ordered my tickets online from their site and the day after the concert, the theater owner sent an email apologizing for the delay. Classy!).
Sarah had never seen him perform before, so she was pleasantly surprised by the set selection. I was also surprised by the set selection because he pulled out a few older, more obscure tracks (“Frank’s 2000″ TV” (!), “You Don’t Love Me Any More”–complete with Al smashing a guitar!). But he also dazzled with some new tracks from his forthcoming album.
The set opened with the polka medley (“Polka Face”). This is the first polka medley that I didn’t know any (well almost any) of the sped up songs, but it’s always a treat to watch them play it live. The one complaint with the show was that the sound in the theater wasn’t very good (which is surprising given that it’s an old theater) so it was hard to make out a lot of the words, especially to the new songs–and what’s Al without the lyrics?). But his new song “I Perform This Way” (parody of Lady Gaga’s “I Was Born This Way”) was fantastic (Al was dressed up like a cartoon peacock).
Yes, costume changes. One of the most entertaining things about Al’s shows is the costume changes. For all of his big video hits, he comes out dressed like the video (the band does as well, although it’s a bit more subtle). So, we get the Amish garb in “Amish Paradise,” the Michael Jackson red jacket for “Eat It”–(another surprise) and, my personal favorite, the fat suit from “Fat.” One of the funniest costume changes was for a song that will sadly not be released on the album (but you can hear and download it here), “You’re Pitiful,” in which he wore multiple T-shirts (about 5) which all expressed some kind of funny comment (anyone know who was the face on one of the shirts?) and finally ended in a Spongebob Squarepants shirts and tutu.
So how does he do all of these costume changes? In between songs, when the band runs offstage, they play wonderful video clips. Some of the clips are from his TV shows, some are faux documentaries, and the best are interviews that Al splices together (you can see a whole bunch here) which are hilarious and surprisingly mean-spirited. I wish he would release them (and any other AlTv segments) on DVD, but I imagine that no one would ever give permission for that–check out the Kevin Federline one, for instance. But they’re all pretty great.
The crowd was also totally into it (including the guy behind us with an Al wig (and a Harvey the Wonder Hamster). And the age range was fantastic–from kids to grandparents. My only hope is that my kids are old enough to come to a concert next time he comes around.
Oh and a brief word about his band. He’s had the same four guys with him for years and years and years. Rubén Valtierra is the newest member of the band and he’s been with them since 1991. Jim West (guitar), Steve Jay (Bass) and Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz (drums) have been with Al since 1980. They are tight as a drum, can play incredibly diverse styles at the drop of a hat (check out “CNR” which sounds exactly like The White Stripes) and they all seem to have a lot of fun on stage (see them jump in the air on “Fat” or the crazy vocal-only solo at the end of “Yoda”
–which I think is longer than ever and totally mind-blowing).
[READ: May 21, 2011] This is a Book
I recently read Martin’s “This is Me” in the New Yorker. “This is Me” is, along with about 100 other things in This is a Book. I also heard Demetri Martin on NPR a few Sundays ago and he read a few short things from This is a Book. And they were quite funny.
Indeed, the funny things in this book are really very very funny. It seems to work that the shorter the item, the bigger the laugh. Conversely there are a number of longer, extended jokes which just go on and on, like a Saturday Night Live sketch that just won’t end. Those quickly lose their humorous value. Fortunately there aren’t too many of those in here.
What makes me smile a lot about the book are the jokes he plays with book conventions. So the title page says “This is a book by Demetri Martin called This is a Book by Demetri Martin.” Or the previous page:
Also by Demetri Martin
*
*Nothing yet. This is his first book.
The book opens with “How to Read this Book.”
If you’re reading this sentence then you’ve pretty much got it. Good job. Just keep going the way you are.
I’m not going to spoil the rest of the book (or talk about each piece). But I will mention some real highlights: (more…)
[LISTENED TO: November through December 2010] A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I initially ended this post with: “Even though this audio was unabridged, it felt a bit like hearing an abridged version. I suspect I shall have to actually read the novel again in 2011 to see what I missed.” Well, I assumed that the audio was unabridged. But now I see that there is another recording which is 7 discs as opposed to my copy’s 3 discs. Gadzooks! In tiny print on the back of the box, I see now that this is abridged. NO WONDER I felt like so much was left out of the story. It actually made me think that the story wasn’t all that coherent. As such, you can kind of disregard this post until I listen to the unabridged version (which is available free for download here).
So, back to my initial review:
I was listening to this audio book while exercising. The fact that it took me as long as it did to finish the audio book is more of a testament to my lack of exercising than the book itself. Although I will say that unlike Dubliners, I found that listening to this book (and again, perhaps it was the distance between listenings) to be somewhat unsatisfying. And of course, as with all of these Naxos CDs, the vocals are recorded so quietly (except when he starts screaming–the hellfire sermon is so loud it scared my family upstairs) that you really have to try to listen hard to hear the whispers. The final chapter–Stephen’s diary–is read so quietly it was hard to hear over the exercise machine, even with the sound up all the way.
So this is the story of Stephen Daedalus before Ulysses, when he was, as the title states, a Young Man. My favorite memory of reading this book was when I read the opening aloud to a sick friend who thought that I was messing with her:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo….
Stephen is of course, baby tuckoo, so this novel is more than just the young man days. But from this baby story, we quickly jump to Stephen at school and we see an episode that impacted his whole life: boys who were teasing him pushed him into a stagnant pool of water. (more…)
This collection covers the last five stories from the book. They are all longer stories, especially the fantastic novella “The Dead,” which runs well over an hour. The titles included in Part II are:
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace
The Dead
These last five stories look at (continuing the theme from my previous post) middle age and later life. The protagonists are all older, and as with the first part, they all must deal with harsh realities and even death.
“A Painful Case” is the first story in the book where the title doesn’t directly apply to the protagonist (even though, of course, it does). Mr Duffy is a solitary man. He goes out from time to time but is not really social. At a concert he meets Mrs Sinico and they form a friendship. Her husband approves of the friendship because he believes that Mr Duffy is really after their daughter. The relationship grows stronger and stronger and Mrs Sinico feels closer to him than she does to her husband. Then, Mrs Sinico make a gesture indicating she’d like a more intimate relationship. Mr Duffy is immediately turned off by this and vows to himself to see her no more. This leads to a quote that I assume is not original to Joyce, and yet it is still common today: “Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.” The strange thing about this story is that it then jumps ahead four years. We learn that Mrs Sinico took the dissolution of their friendship very hard indeed. And naturally, Mr Duffy is made to rethink his life choices. It’s yet another story of despair. (more…)
I found listening to Ulysses to be rather satisfying. And, since I have recently commenced an indoor exercise regime, I thought it would be “fun” to listen to some audio books during the workout. I started with Dubliners because and because Jim Norton is the reader (and I enjoyed his style on the abridged Ulysses) and because I own it.
It’s disconcerting to read/listen to Dubliners after Ulysses because Dubliners is such a conventional collection of stories. There’s nothing untoward about them, there’s nothing scandalous (except for drinking and mistreating wives), and there’s nothing to be confused about (except maybe early 20th century Irish political references). But one thing that is abundantly clear is that Joyce was a great writer, right from the get go.
This disc’s stories are mostly between 10 and 21 minutes long, although “A Little Cloud” runs to half an hour. The titles included in Part I are:
The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
I’m not really going to review the quality of the audio. It is uniformly very good, with Norton conveying accents wonderfully. And those accents really bring the stories to life. There is music in between each story, and the songs are all relevant to the time, if not the individual story. As with most of these audio books, it could be mixed louder, but that’s a minor quibble. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: THE DUCKWORTH-LEWIS METHOD-The Duckworth Lewis Method (2009).
This is a CD released by the combined forces of Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh of Pugwash. And if that weren’t enough of a sales pitch, the title of the band is a method of calculating cricket scores! And even more…in concordance with that, this CD is largely about cricket. Huzzah! Buncha sellouts.
I don’t know a thing about cricket, but I know about great orchestral pop, and this disc has it in spades. Some of the more obvious cricket songs are even understandable to non cricketers (the themes of “Jiggery Pokery” are familiar to anyone who has failed in a sport–and musically it sounds like a silent film soundtrack).
“The Age of Revolution” begins with an olde-fashioned soundtrack as well (jazz swing, including tap dancing) but quickly jumps into a dancey discoey verse (the two soundtracks blend surprisingly well in the chorus). And the revolution? Well, it has something to do with cricket. Next, “Gentlemen and Players” is a wonderfully Divine Comedy-esque track complete with harpsichords.
“The Sweet Spot” is another discoey dancey track with some funky bass work (and innuendo whispered vocals). And “Rain Stops Play” is a fun musical interlude.
“Mason on the Boundary” is the first track that seems distinctly Pugwash-y. Hannon and Walsh have similar singing styles, and I find it hard to know who is who sometimes. But this track is clearly Walsh’s and it’s very nice indeed. Similarly, “Flatten the Hay” has that distinct Pugwash XTC/Beach Boys vibe and it’s quite good.
“The Nighwatchman” is also a very DC type song (it even sounds a bit like “The Frog Princess” but pulls away before being a repeat of that great single by introducing some very 70s sounding strings). The rest of the disc follows in this same wonderfully orchestrated pop feel. This a great record that, as far as obscure bands that get no statewide attention go, is top notch.
Oh, an it’s even more fun with headphones!
[READ: October 9, 2010] Skippy Dies
Wow, there’s a lot going on in this book. It’s exhausting just trying to think of all the topics covered: boarding school life, failed romance (two big ones), life as a teacher, the appeal of pop singer Bethani, the Catholic priest sex scandal, drugs of all kinds, sneaking into a girls’ school, World War I, institutional cover ups, M-theory–which is pretty much the entire universe, and donuts.
But let’s start at the beginning. Yes. Skippy dies. In the first couple of pages. And what’s fascinating about this is that we don’t care. I mean, in the scene where he dies, he’s not even the major character. But then Skippy turns out to be more or less the glue of the book once the story proper begins.
Skippy resides at Seabrook school in Dublin (the best, most prestigious Christian academy in the country–sorry Gonzaga). His roommate is Ruprecht (perhaps the strangest major character name I’ve read in a long time). Ruprecht is a large boy who is incredibly smart (he will single-handedly raise the school’s average on the year’s final exams). He is a computer geek who is obsessed with aliens and SETI. And he hopes to be able to communicate with the other world by using techniques suggested in M-Theory. The book does an admirable job explaining M-theory and string theory. I’m not going to take up space here, but there’s a fine description at Wikipedia (or, if you don’t like Wikipedia, here’s an academic explanation that is written for the lay person).
Anyhow, Skippy and Ruprecht are two of a few dozen boys who reside full time at the school. (Most of the other kids are day students). And they have a cadre of half a dozen friends that they hang out with who make jokes at each other’s expense. It’s a very realistically written entourage. Mario is Italian and claims to have had sex with many many women (thanks to his lucky condom which he has had for three years). Dennis is the ballbreaker. He’s the abusive one (but by most standards, he’s not a bad guy). And a few other hangers on.
This story of dorm life is a good one. The boys are funny, their stories believable, even if they are all eccentric in their own way. And then, one day, Skippy sees a girl playing frisbee at the girls’ school across the way (Ruprecht has a telescope which he uses for the stars, while eveyrone else uses it for the girls’ school). And Skippy winds up becoming rather obsessed with the unknown “frisbee girl.”
This girls’ school plays a part in the story in another way too. Carl and Barry are the Seabrook’s thugs. When Barry hits upon the idea of selling ADD meds to the locals (as diet pills), it’s the girls’ school that he mostly preys on. For yes, this story is also about drugs. (more…)
[LISTENED TO: September 27, 2010] Ulysses [abridged]
Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided to listen to the abridged version of Ulysses as well (what’s 4 more hours of my life?). (This edition is by Naxos, which Amazon is selling as a download). I decided that the main reason was that since I have the text so fresh in my mind, it would be interesting to see what they abridged. I mentioned in a recent post that the abridged version is 4 discs (just under 5 hours). That is a serious abridgment, from 40 to 5 hours (actually the Naxos unabridged version is only 22 discs…how come theirs is so much shorter? It seems that Jim Norton reads much faster). And I am curious to see what they consider the “essential” text of the book. Plus, realistically, I would never really want to do it at a later date.
So this version is read by two different people: Jim Norton (who read Dubliners, Portrait, and an abridged Finnegans Wake too) and Marcella Riordan. There are a number of places where the two interact (she is Molly in the early scene in bed and she is some of the whores in the nightwon scene…it adds some real dramatic resonance to the story). (more…)
[LISTENED TO: Week of September 20, 2010] Ulysses 17-18
The final two Episodes of the Ulysses audio book were a mix of nothing new and massive revelations.
Episode 17, the catechism, doesn’t reveal all that much in the reading. It’s a fairly straightforward Episode, so there’s not very much in the actual reading that would impact it. One or two things do become somewhat clearer with the audible emphases but questions like this one are still a beast to unpack:
What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified, declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
Although in Episode 18, Molly says:
he says hes an author and going to be a university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving at now
So I guess the Italian lessons plan is settled? Which gives us some account of Stephen’s future.
But back in 17, this time through I became more aware of the
interment of Mrs Mary Dedalus, born Goulding, 26 June 1903.
So Stephen has been “in mourning” for almost a year. Is that standard for Ireland at the time? And how interesting it is that
Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886.
Their parents died on almost the exact same date (different years, obviously). This is another interesting similarity that is not directly mentioned in the Q&A. (more…)
This week I almost finished Episode 15. I’ve just finished where Bella turns into Bello and things get really weird. And I have to say that this Episode, for all of its craziness, is masterfully handled by Donal Donnelly. I’ve already raved about his vocal stylings in the earlier chapters, dealing with so many different men. But in this chapter he proves to be very dextrous at male and female voices, with a very delicate voice for some and an incredibly masculine woman’s voice for Bello (very well done indeed). He has also proven himself to be a treat with sound effects (of which there are many here). I won’t say for certain that it makes this insane Episode a lot clearer, but it certainly makes it easier to follow.
Back to Episode 13. The Gertie section is written in a style that is supposed to be romantic, very quick and flowy. And Donal really nails it. After the business of Episode 12, the lightness of 13 is wonderful, and it really brings to life the scene, especially when the rockets go off.
One thing I picked up this time is that Bloom assumes that he knows exactly when Blazes and Molly consummated their affair. Even re-reading it now, it wasn’t quite as clear as the way he read it aloud:
Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she?
O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
Ah!
So, yes I suppose it’s obvious, but sometimes reading along you just don’t pick things up. And it took the way he read it for me to realize just what those short sentences meant. (more…)
This past weekend, my family attended Aga-Boom, a “theatre of physical comedy and circus arts.” It was incredible, and it was hard to believe that this was performed at the Raritan Valley Community College theater, which is nice and all, but seems small potatoes for a troupe that was part of Cirque de Soleil and which has been in Vegas and on Broadway.
The first is a joke about paper getting stuck to the lady clown. It’s a good introduction to the paper conceit that runs through the show (the stage “curtain” is a large sheet of paper! It morphs into this amusing/intimidating section where the morose clown (dressed like an astronaut with (a wonderful detail) a water cooler bottle on his head as a space helmet–is mad because the woman clown accidentally launched his ship into space.
I Just Read About That... 