"And now for some of my Nazi haiku..."
Immortal words from the poet we had doing a guest reading the other week in our Creative Writing lecture. He wasn't the most cheery of fellows and after an hour of hearing his poetry about subjects like pain, death, concentration camps, suicide and true crime I had to go to the uni bar and have a screwdriver. And this was after an 11 am lecture!
Attention fans of irony: the last song I listened to on my Beckman (or "CD Walkman" for those of you who don't put Beck stickers on you portable music devices) before the last pair of headphones in my house finally died was Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence'. I would've laughed, except that I was really, really, really pissed off. And let me just say that the last few weeks of having to shop, catch p/t, walk to my uni classes, and ignore my friends WITHOUT the aid of an endless stream of 80s/early 90s pop, have been awful. Now that I can't walk around listening to music everywhere I go, I've noticed how much I depend this soundtrack of my life, (sorry for the Dick Clark reference). I think I've subconsciously started to see life as one big film, and that having New Order (et. al.) constantly whining away in the background helps my mind to create this fantasy of existence as some kind of John Hughesian suburban nightmare, complete with montages and to-camera monologues. So maybe I should view this lack of music as a chance to reclaim my life; indeed, to enjoy the silence. Besides, Depeche sez that "words are very unnecessary", and those guys know their shit. I mean, it's not like they were on crack or anything.
I went and saw Stuff Happens with my parents and just let me say this to you: DON'T SEE IT. Unless you are one of those people who think The Age is leftist, in which case you should see it because it's a pinko's wet dream. My dad, who has never walked out of a play before, exited 15 mins into the first act (each act was one and a half hours long, in case you needed another reason not to see it!) because he was so appalled (he went and befriended the theatre staff and drank wine till the intermission and toddled off home!)
First of all, the play, despite supposedly being controversial and critical, was far too kind to its subjects. What aprticualrly annoyed me was the way that Tony Blair and particularly Colin Powell were portrayed as these almost martyr-like figures. Gimme strength! (They should have provided sick bags for the audience members.) The play also managed to skirt around what the playwright thought was the reason for going to war, this was some mean feat considering it dragged on for 180 minutes and was so goddamn talky. It also had it that some of these pollies actually thought there might be weapons of mass destruction in the beginning, which was a bit of a hoot. At the end of the day, the play didn't say anything that hasn't been said 100 times before.
It didn't work in terms of a political critique and it didn't really work in terms of a play, either. The second act almost sent me to sleep twice. Hey, guess what? Watching three hours of what are almost exclusively boardroom meetings between politicians gets excruciating. It was almost completely reliant on dialogue rather than utilising the potential features of the stage play form.
I will say this for it, though: the acting was superb. For this play to have worked at all, the actors had to really be able to convince the audience that they were these real life people that the audience was already all too familiar with (the characters included Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush). And they did. The voices, mannerisms, inflections, intonations, etc. were all there, and they were physically true to life. But at the end of the day they were like really good caricatures; amusing and witty but lacking any insight to what makes the person tick. Superficially, these stage creations were amazing, but the scriptwriter and director let down the work of the actors. It let them off far too lightly.
OK, so there's another directionless entry for you. I must go now because my cat has jumped on to the mantle piece and is lapping up the water in one of our flower vases. I might stop her, or I might just eat cassata and watch for a while.
Attention fans of irony: the last song I listened to on my Beckman (or "CD Walkman" for those of you who don't put Beck stickers on you portable music devices) before the last pair of headphones in my house finally died was Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy the Silence'. I would've laughed, except that I was really, really, really pissed off. And let me just say that the last few weeks of having to shop, catch p/t, walk to my uni classes, and ignore my friends WITHOUT the aid of an endless stream of 80s/early 90s pop, have been awful. Now that I can't walk around listening to music everywhere I go, I've noticed how much I depend this soundtrack of my life, (sorry for the Dick Clark reference). I think I've subconsciously started to see life as one big film, and that having New Order (et. al.) constantly whining away in the background helps my mind to create this fantasy of existence as some kind of John Hughesian suburban nightmare, complete with montages and to-camera monologues. So maybe I should view this lack of music as a chance to reclaim my life; indeed, to enjoy the silence. Besides, Depeche sez that "words are very unnecessary", and those guys know their shit. I mean, it's not like they were on crack or anything.
I went and saw Stuff Happens with my parents and just let me say this to you: DON'T SEE IT. Unless you are one of those people who think The Age is leftist, in which case you should see it because it's a pinko's wet dream. My dad, who has never walked out of a play before, exited 15 mins into the first act (each act was one and a half hours long, in case you needed another reason not to see it!) because he was so appalled (he went and befriended the theatre staff and drank wine till the intermission and toddled off home!)
First of all, the play, despite supposedly being controversial and critical, was far too kind to its subjects. What aprticualrly annoyed me was the way that Tony Blair and particularly Colin Powell were portrayed as these almost martyr-like figures. Gimme strength! (They should have provided sick bags for the audience members.) The play also managed to skirt around what the playwright thought was the reason for going to war, this was some mean feat considering it dragged on for 180 minutes and was so goddamn talky. It also had it that some of these pollies actually thought there might be weapons of mass destruction in the beginning, which was a bit of a hoot. At the end of the day, the play didn't say anything that hasn't been said 100 times before.
It didn't work in terms of a political critique and it didn't really work in terms of a play, either. The second act almost sent me to sleep twice. Hey, guess what? Watching three hours of what are almost exclusively boardroom meetings between politicians gets excruciating. It was almost completely reliant on dialogue rather than utilising the potential features of the stage play form.
I will say this for it, though: the acting was superb. For this play to have worked at all, the actors had to really be able to convince the audience that they were these real life people that the audience was already all too familiar with (the characters included Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush). And they did. The voices, mannerisms, inflections, intonations, etc. were all there, and they were physically true to life. But at the end of the day they were like really good caricatures; amusing and witty but lacking any insight to what makes the person tick. Superficially, these stage creations were amazing, but the scriptwriter and director let down the work of the actors. It let them off far too lightly.
OK, so there's another directionless entry for you. I must go now because my cat has jumped on to the mantle piece and is lapping up the water in one of our flower vases. I might stop her, or I might just eat cassata and watch for a while.
posted by divinetrash at 10:24 PM
5 Comments:
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By the bye, Benji, of course I'm going to go to GB3. Are you going?
Svet, you should come, too, now that you're officially a member of the Melbourne blogging community. I will impress you with my impressively notorious contacts, some of which are indeed PILLARS of this community; big cheeses in their field.
Even if that cheese is dick cheese.
"Even if that cheese is dick cheese. "
hey thats my line.
Thanks for updating buddy, I was getting so cyber-lonesome. BG3 eh? I dont thing I would do so well there, seeing i've already soiled my rep on this site cos i had a go at Adam. How would it be if i had a go at him in real life? All these pasty freaks would slap me with their USB ports until I cried.
But yeah, maybe we can have our OWN GB3 ie:you come over and we watch tv and eat canned goods. U know u want to!
PS, dick cheese I think could be an STI, sounds gross.
Nick, I was referencing you! It was an in-joke for any GB2 people that dropped in.
Svet, you really ought to come along. None of the people who ran to defend him against your slings and arrows were there last time. I'm sure most of the people who go won't give a crap.
Besides which, I think you meant that they would be slapping you with their USB CABLES, seeing as hitting you with the port itself wouldn't do much damage (unless it was still connected to the computer, of course!)
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