was that you or the dog?

did you know that people use lasers to cut cheese?
http://optics.org/articles/news/9/12/1/1

ah, but can they remove the rind from my fleur de maquis?

i can't take credit for that find - i happed upon this man's blog and find it quite funny:
http://baraktutterrow.blogspot.com/

le rock français

In an attempt to stave off my dinner appetite at 4pm, I'm melting frozen blueberries in my mouth. And now I've just eaten half a cowgirl spicy hot chocolate bar.

Do you wonder what french people listen to on their iPods? (ee-puhds?) Since Christie Blatchford didn't trade hers for, say, Le Pen's in her Globe spot a while back, here's my guess:

• Anaïs
  
• Pauline Croze
• M (Mathieu Chedid)
• Arthur H (sings duet with Feist, CB!)

In the golden days you had Trenet, Montand, Aznavour, Salvador...les grands chonsonniers who rattled off stories with vaudevillian flare. "The raving fruitcake Maurice Chevalier" is still a phrase I use from time to time. That and "he donned his lemon carpet slippers" (quite possibly from P.G. Wodehouse, that last one. Or Lolita. Apologies for any copyright infringement). For a lesson in play-by-play emotions made visible, watch a Jacques Brel concert - one where it's just him on a stool in a spotlight. It's theatre!

I'll be in France in 2 weeks, stocking up on tea and baroque sheet music, getting fat (they stay thin by WALKING. I've watched them eat...) and wondering if the new Amélie Nothomb book is a grand jeté from Le petit prince. Not home, indeed.

The Singer and the Song

I've been populating my playlist with tunes of yore:

- Love is a Stranger
- Baracuda
- I Can't Go for That
- Heartbreaker
- Who's Crying Now

They sound like a good story in that order. We could write a REAL rock opera!

Name the artists of these songs and win a delicious new Mill Street (Joyce de?) Wittbier. Sorry out-of-towners...gotta get you here somehow...Hint: none of them involve Bonnie Tyler.

My latest fascination is Yma Sumac
Please give her a listen, if not a mere glimpse. The synergy of photo-voice is astounding! She looks how she sounds, no?

I had a conversation recently about "pop singers with good strong voices", and how attractive they are (aurally) despite the manifold cheesy songs they write. The listed singers above likely qualify, but I happen to like the songs, too. Give me some more names of good singers with bad songs. Foreigner (Lou Gramm)? Chicago (Peter Cetera)?
Loverboy Mike Reno??







All mentionings of Whitesnake and Skid Row disqualify you from further opinion. Sheriff gets an honourable mention for stumping me with that unforgettable ending of "When I'm With You" but should otherwise be left for pie filling.

armadilla chilla

We visited San Antonio in May (friend's wedding)


REMEMBER THE ALAMO.....

This is what the signs and the guides chant. Something about cottonwood, missionaries and Davy Crockett - wasn't he one of the Monkees? It was stinking hot, the wedding was at Vicky Carr's house (bride's step mother). She had a framed personal letter from Frank Sinatra in the bathroom along with Preparation H e-zee wipes. I was told they keep under-eye baggage at bay. I don't know which was the better discovery! Can I just share with you my favourite photograph? Does he need a wipe?: This mug was taken before he won the Oscar.

Drank Dos Equis beer and observed the Rolanding lounge singer entertaining us across the waterfall pool. We barely noticed the sprinkler system of DEET repellent hidden in the flowerbeds. They would spray every hour or so at amazing forti-/amplitude and set us running for the house. Surely there was no such chemical invasion indoors

where the sooth lies

I'm afraid that this has all become a bit of a smash-up. I will try to work my way back into the fold, dear Smurfs. Callings have led me back to my North American homeland of Jane street, and apartment number three is only wired with my neuroses and general hysteria as of yet. Meet me at the corner, Tarzan, and we will swing.

dramatic pause....

....wait for it....




.....WAIT for it.....



comedy? vs comedy - after a performance of "romance" by david mamet.

at what point do insults cease to be offensive and become pointless and hilarious drivel?
another question: when some pithy playwright starts whipping around insults, why is it naturally understood that he is kidding (because we have been told the play is a 'farce')? in short, how do irony and satire work to make us laugh? Of course we can look it up in a book, but someone please explain it to me - how do we compute comedy? i've heard of an Institute of Laughter (in Switzerland, is it?) - maybe they know.

let's say i knew nothing about the play (save the title) before i went in. david Who? sounds like a lactating badger! how did everyone in the audience know instinctively when to laugh? even the little pause before each round of guffaws was all planned out for us by the competent writers and actors - masters of timing. it amazes me how an audience just follows along like a crowd of simultaneously-walked dogs. Mr Mamet! Mr Mamet! tell us how you have us all laughing uproariously simultaneously: THIS is real audience participation. nobody had to embarrass everyone by creeping down off the stage apron to sit in your aunt madge's lap and don the old bag's spectacles. it makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable to have lost that subconscious control, giggling along with everyone like a communal trip to the ha-ha hotel.

can you have insult without injury? let's say yes, for the purpose of demonstrating current trends of Un-politcal correctness. smash humour, like that puppet who hits everyth- Punch, that's his name, yes punch&judy. punch humour.

so when the defendant (jewish) and his lawyer (episcopalian) build themselves up into a frenzy of "listen here, you koy Jesus-freak" and "you f'ing kites can't order a ham sandwich without mentioning the holocaust" (i'm so very PC!!), we are so aghast at hearing it that we laugh in shock but feel that none of it matters in the least. "he's just being funny", i hear people thinking. he's making fun of prejudice, not being prejudiced. the same sort of subtle humour occurs in south park with the whole canadian thing. most people (ahem, americans) don't get that the writers aren't making fun of canada, rather they are making fun of people who make fun of it.

do written words+subtext+action= communication? is life any different from the theatre, then (assuming you don't work from a script in real life)? is that the whole point - to have "make-believe" stage pieces resonate within our lives by illiciting emotions with which we empathize?

what about the opposite - do these dramatics draw you completely OUT of yourself and your experience - entertaining you as an observer? Jeanette Winterson in Art Objects challenges that we (as readers) have lost the ability/willingness to just enjoy art (books, in her case) objectively. we want to extract bits of ourselves out of characters so we can identify with them. when has it all become so egocentric? why can't we understand and appreciate those who are different from us? is that not just as viable as entertainment - a sort of intellectual pursuit?

one last mention of the almeida theatre, london, and of the star of the show, john mahoney - aka martin crane of frasier fame. but he also plays that wet-faced codger prof who is no match for heavy-lidded (not in that bette davis way, but in the "spare me, you putz" one) olympia dukakis in Moonstruck.

after a good foot-chewing

I can't sleep. It's 5 in the bloody morning, and I'm up. Just call me Limps With Foxes. The last time i was up at this ungodly hour was to catch a cab to the airport, and i had a nice convo with a tame urbane fox who was sniffing at my suitcase.

Am I a Drama Queen? Or am I a Dairy Queen? (Fairy Queen, yes, clearly) I went to Neal's Yard Dairy today - creme de la creme, quite literally, all organic - and bought an ewe's milk greek style yog. the wheels of stilton, cheddar, french, dutch and italians are piled neatly in the windows like dead soldiers, yet cultured and alive. it smells like a cellar (I was scrunching up my toes and shuddered with delight -i have this this wierd reaction to the smell of damp earth/cement) and also like vomit, so extremity visited me once again.

Past an ironmonger's square (tucked away near the 7 dials of covent garden) to Monmouth coffee shop, where the Sumatra had a dark cherry wood finish, like a 1916 writing desk I once saw that I cannot purge from my "I must have" memory. A man named Nicholas Saunders ran what sounded like a Ye Olde Purveyors Shoppe on the site "a very long time ago" the shaggy coffeeboy told me. I had inquired about the 4 ancient benched booths that we sit in (altogether now!) to enjoy our cuppas. There was one wee nook suitable for a sole person that was sad and irresistable all at once. Where to stare....I hastily bought a $15 mini-bag and hoarded it away in the freezer behind the cod stix. Nobody will look there, Scooby.

I used my charming Canadian accent (at least i thought i did) to procure many free samples from the face-product shop, had a nice chat with the naturopath at Neal's Yard Remedies, who gave me a tonic that tastes like raspberry juice, and proceeded to Chinatown. I won't describe the duck, which was likely hanging in the neighbouring shop and smoking a healthy fag earlier that morning. remember that Globe article a few months ago? let me see if i can find it...


click on first link in google.

yes, you see? my dinner did bear a remarkable resemblance to that man in the photo.

In other news, i slunk into St. Paul's yesterday ( I am reminded about it because of the bathroom at the Monmouth cafe, which was the size of a confessional). Follow the signs to St. Andrew (Lurking) by the Wardrobe. He's going to come out of his british closet any day now... Anyway, the last service was winding down, prayers of the people and all that, and I was admiring a plaque inscribed Ralph of Sudbury when the organ postlude hit. I staggered visibly. A wash of screetching and booming that filled the dome and the ears. Only my companions (low brass player and RMT) seemed to be affected, and we stood there agape, alone. What stalwartness of the masses, what? I could discern no tonality in the chosen piece because of the way it all mashed itself together like a mince-pie. Worse/better than truly eerie film music - and i don't mean that Theremin/Onde Martineau "Good Vibrations" stuff. We decided that the organist was smearing parts of his body on the keyboard in order to make such wonderful sounds.