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Diametric opposites.

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

I haven’t had a chance to post about these things, but I went to two rather different events recently. First, I went to see Mythbusters: Behind the Scenes Tour.

Even though it was clearly geared towards their primary audience (11-year-old boys) I enjoyed myself quite a bit. Cricket came with me and I don’t think he liked it nearly as much due to the fact that he actually took adult-type science classes in high school like chemistry and physics. I did none of that. My senior year of high school I was assigned to Biology for Football Players and Poets where all we did was watch National Geographic videos. The school had given up on us at that point, probably for the best. My classmates and I were not going to be working in a lab anytime soon. But, due to my child-like knowledge of science, I found many of the experiments Jamie and Adam did on stage fascinating. They did this thing where a small boy from the audience lifted a chubby man simply by altering the pivot point of a lever and I was all, “Magic!” Cricket turned to me with a dumbfounded expression and said, “Yeah, it’s basic physics. It’s a lever. You didn’t know that would happen? Have you never lifted anything?” and I responded that I had not and Cricket was disappointed in me, the Rye school system and humanity in general. I learned what a “Bleve” is, and I learned that Adam grew up in Sleepy Hollow and his mom was in the audience (she stood up and we all cheered, it was very nice). During the audience Q&A, someone asked Adam what the scariest myth he worked on and he refused to answer because his mother is not allowed to watch that episode. The finale was taking an audience member, dressing him up in a medieval suit of armor and firing paintballs at him with one of those giant guns that you see in war footage. I found a video online and while you can’t see much, you can hear it.

http://youtu.be/8LaPnDx4t9A?t=37s

Great finale. If it comes to your town and you know a kid around the age of 11, take them because they will love it.

The other thing I went to was NOT geared towards children and while informative, it was not educational in nature. I went to see Nutcracker Rouge.

I saw online that Shelly Watson was performing in it, and I loved her so much at Gotham Burlesque that I decided to go and check it out. It is a rough retelling of the Nutcracker ballet with elements of circus arts, burlesque and cabaret and it was, without a doubt, THE GAYEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN. I don’t mean “gay” in that unacceptable derogatory way meaning “lame” or “less than,” I mean “gay” like “The Logo Channel would explode from this.” Shelly did an operatic version of Madonna’s “Material Girl” in French. That gay. Look, see for yourself.

I had a jolly good time. The audience was comprised of 75% meticulously groomed gay male couples and 25% other. There was a bunch of elderly foreign tourists in line with me at the ticket-taker’s station, I suspect they saw the sign and thought, “Huh, I guess we’ll go see this performance of The Nutcracker,” and I really wish I could have seen their faces when, near the end, the entire cast forms a can-can line where everyone is humping everyone else. Is this what you expected, Nana and Pop-Pop? Is it? I don’t want to tell you too much in case you go to see it next year, but my two favorite people was the woman who played the peppermint candy cane, Courtney Giannone. I found a picture of her online.

She performed in that gigantic hula hoop that spins and I always expect their fingers to get crushed but they don’t. Here, a video of one in action. She did it all topless and smiling, and her back muscles were intense. I wanted to chew on them. Here’s another pic I found of Courtney.

The other person I loved was a woman named Katrina Cunningham. She was a lovely dancer and singer and I found out later she is a graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Dance Conservatory! Hooray alma mater!* Katrina was beautiful and she helped answer a question that has been plaguing me for years: who the hell buys that crazy giant sparkle-encrusted jewelry and the dresses so covered in rhinestones and sequins they weigh eighty pounds? These people do. This cast does. Katrina wore several.

So if you’re looking for a sexy opulent good time held together by a threadbare plot, this is what you need. There are chandeliers as stage lights. People do ballet wearing stag horns. Cannons shoot glitter all over the audience. Cross-dressing flamenco dancing. Drag queens. Whips and leather. Absolutely delightful.

*I didn’t graduate from the Dance Conservatory. I was in the Theater Arts Conservatory, but I still like to look out for my fellow conservatory graduates because hooo boy does being in a conservatory suck.

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SLEEPY.

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014

Ugh, this week. My job wanted me to make a book for a upscale hard liquor and the exact note I got was, “Make it nightclub, lounge, cityscapes, hot girls dancing. Think glamorous sluts.” I was like, “Uhhhhh, have you met me? My idea of a perfect evening involves Japanese takeout, lying in bed wearing a housedress and watching a marathon of Lockup/Lockdown/Jail. I am not your target audience.” But as an arteeste, I must step out of the confines of my life in order to appeal to a brand that appeals to…people who like glamorous sluts. Sigh. Anyway, I stayed up a couple of nights and I think I did a pretty good job. Way to explore my non-demographic. I smudged any information I thought would get me in trouble if I shared publicly.

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Pacific Rim and The Hobbit.

Monday, January 6th, 2014

I am SO COLD. I can’t feel my feet. It was -4 degrees Friday and my poor heater was chugging away, but it couldn’t compete with the chill. I went out to a bar to say goodbye to Nessa (she’s moving to San Francisco to become a cop) and I spent the entire time in the bar like this:

I may never feel warmth again. I shall miss you, toes. You served me well.

Anyway, I saw Pacific Rim the other night! Oh, Pacific Rim. I had such high hopes for you. You were full of ‘splosions! Alien on robot warfare! Idris Elba bein’ all awesome like he do! And then, lameness. It started so well, too. The opening bit was totally engrossing and then from that point on it was a slow smooth descent into Pooptown. I can suspend my disbelief to a point, but some things didn’t, like, you know… make sense. The non-sequiturs were so depressingly meh that I don’t want to even discuss them here, but here are a couple distinctive things:

Do you like nosebleeds? Then you’re gonna love this film! Everyone’s rockin’ a delicate sanguous trickle from one nostril.
The machine fried my brain! Nosebleed.
I was exposed to too much radiation! Nosebleed.
Kleenex should have done some product placement. “Is something leaking out of your face because your brain is overloaded controlling a machine the size of the Empire State Building? Mop up that spinal fluid with Kleenex. It can hold your entire medulla oblongata without ripping. That’s Kleenex, the facial tissue that will help tamp the vital ooze until your eyeball explodes from the inside and you collapse to the ground and die. Kleenex.”
There’s a scene where the only female in the whole film, a super-dope Japanese girl:

She has a disturbing flashback to her childhood where her family is killed by a giant crab godzilla monster she is running down the street crying. The little girl playing her as a child was an AMAZING actor. It was creepy how much she looked like that famous picture from Vietnam where the girl is running down the street naked. I’m sure that was intentional.
The main theme music is HAWSOME. Every time I walk into a room, I want this playing in the background. I’m going to have this put in my work contracts from now on. This is non-negotiable. http://youtu.be/s_R2l4ujlao?t=45s
Speaking of music, Idris Elba makes a rally-the-troops speech at one point, you may remember from the commercials (“Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!!!!”) and it’s a total ripoff of the Independence Day speech (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoLywiaM6PA). I really want someone to make a mashup of the two with an unch-unch-unch dance beat behind it. Could someone get on that, please? Thank you.

If you want to hear all the things good and bad (mostly bad, it’s not a great film) about Pacific Rim, I recommend listening to this podcast. It was pretty spot-on.

http://podbay.fm/show/345412221/e/1376152535?autostart=1

And then today I saw The Hobbit 2: Electric Boogaloo with Benadryl Claritin playing the voice of Smaug. Here’s an unusual occurrence: I saw a website that said this as the review.

“Skip the first half, the only part that matters is the dragon. He’s in the second half and he is amazing. Everything before that is boring.”

Then I spoke to a friend of mine who’s opinion matters to me and what she said.

“I loved everything until the dragon. There was lots of action and excitement and then the dumb dragon basically talks for forty-five minutes about how great and scary he is, it’s boring.”

Now, I thought the first movie (The Hobbit: Let’s Eat Dinner For Fifteen Minutes) was boring and drawn-out and could have been condensed down quite a bit, so I didn’t have big expectations for this film, but I liked it! All of it! The beginning, the middle, the end, it was all good. So that’s… three diametrically opposite feelings about the movie. You need to find someone who hated the whole movie and you would have all the boxes checked. I say go check it out, preferably in IMAX, not necessarily in 3D, and maybe you will like it. Or maybe you will feel like any of these other people who sorta liked parts of it. I can’t guarantee anything.

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., New York | 2 Comments »

Festive medley.

Monday, December 23rd, 2013

1. Ghetto hikes. The explanation is at the top of the page. Enjoy yourself.

http://ghettohikes.tumblr.com/

2. Also, emojis incorporated into works of art. After studying art history for a whole bunch of years, I enjoy this more than I probably should.

http://emojinalart.tumblr.com/

3. Ancient tooth bridge! I think it looks neat.

4. A few things I’ve noticed on my travels around New York:

a. There is a Victoria’s Secret directly downstairs from my job. I was walking past it and they had some fluffy useless-looking garment in the window.

Here’s the problem: for some reason I thought the puffs were teats and this was a garment made to look like multiple bosoms. You follow me? Like a dog. Like this.

And I was appalled. I was like, “Is this where fashion is headed??? That is quite enough of that!” But then I looked closer and realized I was wrong and felt pretty damn stupid. Teats at VS? Really, Jessica? Get it together.

b. In keeping with awkward intimates, I was walking through Chelsea where there is a large male gay population. Therefore, many window displays cater to that. I’m all for it. However, bigger is not always better. This store had a pair of shorts in the window that someone had attempted to stuff so as to convey a great amount of masculinity. But they accomplished that by shoving wads of newspapers in there, so what comes across is elephantiasis of the testicles combined with a potential hernia. That does not entice me to buy your shorts, store. Be more particular with your stuffing.

c. I bought a salad at a McDonald’s recently (have you had their Southwest Salad, because it is delicious) and I noticed a sign on their wall.

Oh, they did not bold-facedly rip off the Island of the Bahamas campaign, did they? Yes they did.

They took the diagonal tear-drop-y shape thing with the turquoise tones and everything! Their graphic designers didn’t even try. I was not planning to go to this waterpark because I don’t feel like coming home with strange itches, but I certainly won’t now. Shame on you.

Posted in Advertising, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious, Teh Intarwebz | No Comments »

Atlanta.

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013

I just went on a business trip! Like an adult! I went to Atlanta for a total of 22 hours. So before you even think to ask me, “Hey, did you go to the-” unless the next words are “the Sheraton near the airport” or “the airport,” then no, that was the extent of my exciting visit to ATL. I had never been there before and I learned a few things during my time there. One, sweet tea. It’s big. So is fried chicken and biscuits. Up here in the New York emphasis is not placed as high on those food items, but down there it’s like the core basics. The most important thing that came to my attention during my almost-an-entire-day stay in Hotlanta was how unerringly friendly and gracious and chatty people are. And, more importantly, how much I hated it. Oh, I hated it so much. I’ll explain. I have lived in the New York area my whole life, and the way things work up here is if someone is having a long, one-sided conversation with you in the middle of the street, there’s a solid chance that person is not right in the head and you should move away, slowly. Down southerly, people share. Really share. It reminded me of this commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffUDDYYIX04

I’ll give you some examples. At the airport (almost all these examples will involve people at the airport since that’s mostly where I was, but I imagine this is a universal trait) there was a woman herding us into two left and right rows. Simple, right? Here’s what her soliloquy should have been:

“People walking in this direction, please move to the left! People walking in this direction please move to the right! Thank you for your cooperation!”

Fin.

Here’s what it was:

“People, c’mon now! I know y’all can hear me! If you’re goin’ this way, move to this side of the hallway! If you’re going that way, move to that side of the hallway! I should be the only person in the middle! Well, hello Captain, I bet you’re glad to be on the ground. Did you see that game, I couldn’t get over *some complicated sports reference that I did not understand.* Have a blessed day now, y’all. I don’t understand people sometimes. I know y’all have educations, it’s simple, just step to the side I’m pointin’ to. *to a co-worker* Sometimes I really rely on the power of prayer to get me through this job. Wow, that’s a cute baby. How old is he? My goodness, mine turned…”

I had walked out of earshot at that point, but I’m positive she had kept talking. I assumed she was a bit wonky and brushed it off. Then I got to the hotel, checked in, and went down to the conference room by myself to set up the laptop, projector and speakers. There I met the AV guy. He came in and asked me if I needed anything. I smiled at him, said I did not and thanked him for looking in on me. He then proceeded to talk about the Metro-North train crash, the fact that both his college-age daughters visited him this Thanksgiving, his last visit to New York and how much his five-bedroom house cost eight years ago compared to the real estate market in New York (it cost $290,000, it’s on a cul-de-sac). DUDE. I’m trying to get ready for a rehearsal meeting in fifteen minutes. The president of my company will be there. This is not happy conversation time. Shush yourself. Later on a hotel attendant came in and commented on these red carpeted walls we travel with to show boards on. “What are those?” he asked enthusiastically. I stepped up to the plate and explained them to him, how they fold down accordion-style, etc. He said he would love those in his home, it’s decorated completely in red and black, those are his favorite colors. I felt like he was waiting for some kind of, “Oh, really? My favorite colors are green and blue, but I mainly use neutral tones in my home decor,” and then we could have talked forever and ever until our mouths dried up or we used up all the oxygen on earth, whatever final outcome he was looking for. I just smiled at him and kept working, refusing to engage.

The meeting happened early in the morning, everything went smashingly, we all got in cars and went to the airport. I was standing in the security line where you strip off your metal stuff and get scanned. We were in three lines, and this time a man was herding us. This is, word for word, a chunk of what he said.

“Alright, y’all, the only thing you should have in your hand is your cell phone. We won’t need boarding passes or identification after this point for a while. Sir, you’re wearing a Saints shirt, I’m really hopin’ for them to lose in the next game. Now, everybody turn your head to the right. See that man holding up that line there with the buckets? He should have taken off his belt in here. We don’t want you to yank your belt out like Zorro, you might hit someone. Take your time, take it off here. Only vital blingy-bling, like tooth fillings. Take off everything that is metal. After you get past the security, you can get a snack. Last trip I took, I brought a whole rack of ribs on the plane. Wooo, the whole plane was mad. I was goin’ to Korea, and when I took out them ribs and all that maple and bourbon smell filled up the plane, people were so mad. But whatever. I had ribs.”

First of all, shut up shut up shut up. Secondly, what jerk-face takes a rack of ribs on a long international flight? It makes me think of Patton Oswalt’s piece on flying (from about 49:00 to 50:00 of this clip below):

http://youtu.be/7DkfbgA8224?t=49m23s

Then (oh, I bet you thought I was done, didn’t you?) I had to get to Terminal A to meet my co-workers for a post-meeting drink at the airport P. F. Chang’s. I asked a nice lady driving one of those beeping golf carts where Terminal A’s P. F. Chang’s was and she said, “Hop on, I’m going there!” So I got to ride on the fancy beeping airport golf carts, which was nice. What wasn’t nice was her non-stop jibber-jabber the way there. “I once ate an entire appetizer plate at P. F. Chang’s, but that was before I knew there were all those foods in the freezer section of my supermarket. Honestly, though, those freezer portions aren’t big enough-” HOLY CRAP WOMAN, CLOSE YOUR CAKEHOLE. WHAT PART OF MY BODY LANGUAGE SAID TELL ME ABOUT YOUR APPETIZER-BUYING EXPERIENCES AND YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT THOSE APPETIZERS BECAUSE I WILL CHANGE MY CORPOREAL STATE TO WHATEVER MAKES YOU STOP TALKING.

I got on the plane and went to sleep. When I woke up, we were approaching LaGuardia airport. We landed and I went out into the terminal and Glory be to God! Everyone was a dick! No one made eye contact or smiled! I could have cried, I was so happy.

Long story short: If I’m not in your will, I do not want to hear your boring-ass stories. And I’d like to actually see the sights of Atlanta sometime.

P.S. I thought I was done complaining. Then I remembered something. I don’t take a lot of non-international flights, but are the seats really really small? I’m a Chubby Chubstein, but I swear when I was in the middle seat going to Atlanta my spare tire o’ fat was trying to eat the armrests on both sides. I couldn’t stop thinking of the video of the ravioli can getting consumed by lava. Here, an animated gif for clarity:

http://s.mlkshk.com/r/VTAB

It was ridiculous. If I had to fly all the time for work like some of the account people I know I would take a far greater interest in maintaining my physique only so I could fit in the tiny seats without feeling like I was wearing a corset of plane.

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The best thing just happened.

Thursday, November 21st, 2013

A woman who used to work adjacent to me left this job to live with her husband on a Christmas tree farm in Virginia. We talk occasionally on Facebook, but we see each other infrequently. So when she sent me this cryptic Facebook message – “Something fun headed your way!” – I really had no idea what it would be. And when I got to work today, sure enough there was an large box sitting next to my desk.

Now this woman’s father recently passed away so I thought maybe she found something cool while she was cleaning his house, like a vase or a painting or a book, but I was wrong. Dead wrong.* Her husband likes to hunt and he killed a enormous male wild turkey for Thanksgiving. So in the box are this big dead turkey’s wings, tail and back.

I was so happy. He had written a lovely note about how he was just going to get rid of the skin and feathers, but my former co-worker told him, “Hey, let’s mail this stuff to Jess, she’ll like it!” And I do. The feathers are really beautiful. It’s hard to see in the picture, but some of them are so iridescent they look like butterfly wings.

The only problem is the wings are completely intact, which means they are full of wing meat, which means they don’t smell great. Not atrocious, but not great. When I get home tonight I think I am going to pluck the wings and throw away anything that isn’t feathers. Before that I wanted to get a portrait of me with one of the wings intact. And here it is. I hope you can appreciate the joy on my face. DEAD THINGS FOR JESSICA ALWAYS.

*This will be funny later, the dead part.

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My week of exciting activities – Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

The rest of my Week of Culture was less spectacular, alas. I’ll explain. On Thursday I went to see Behind the Scenes of The Colbert Report at the Town Hall.

It was most interesting in the beginning. For the first half-hour, Stephen and the twelve writers on stage with him talked about how they constructed the show. Basically, it’s crazy hard work and you cannot have a life while you’re working on it because you’re working on today’s episode and the second you’re done with that you’re working on tomorrow’s episode. Or a field piece. Or getting props. Or an animation. Or learning about who Stephen is interviewing. It’s a never-ending cycle. After they all explained their day, they opened up to the audience for questions. FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF. THE PUBLIC WAS ALLOWED TO SAY WHATEVER INTO MICROPHONES. The level of fremdschämen I felt for these people was overwhelming. One woman stood up and said, “How do I become a writer on your show?”

Stephen said, “You have to submit a script with jokes in it.”

“Can I tell you a joke?” she said.

“Sure,” he said.

“What’s green and has wheels?”

“What?”

“Grass. I was lying about the wheels.”

*The entire audience groans*
*I clutch my face and try to gouge my own eyes out*
*An angel loses its wings and falls screaming*

Here’s the deal: I purposely do not go up to famous people or people I admire and try to talk to them because I get very excited and basically piddle on the floor like an incontinent cocker spaniel. I feel like an epic loser, the famous person is usually not thrilled to be in the presence of someone having an episode of some sort, nobody wins. It’s not unusual, that’s what most people do when they meet someone famous. Now, knowing that that kind of thing is going to happen, why didn’t they have notecards in the entry hall for people to write their questions on and then, when the Q&A started, just read a bunch of those questions? You can curate the crazy while still having people feel like they are participating. Nope. I had to listen to people spazz out for an hour and a half. It wasn’t all bad. One of the intelligent questions I liked was, “Is there any topic that you won’t do?” The writers mentioned that they write jokes all day and it makes them desensitized, so when they write something they think is too much Stephen will say, “Is this fit for humans?” and they will pull a human out of the hallway and read them the joke. And then Stephen said, “Any joke where the victim is the punchline,” which I think is pretty classy. Here’s a Vulture article on the other things that were talked about.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/8-things-we-learned-stephen-colbert-report-nycf-panel.html

Then on Friday I went to see Bill Burr at the Beacon Theater with Cricket. The Beacon has a gorgeous chandelier in the entry hall.

Underneath the chandelier were two bars set up on either sides of the room. Cricket went to the bathroom before the show started and I waited in the corner. It became extremely apparent to me that Bill Burr’s audience is primarily made up of the douchiest, frat-iest, date-rape-iest men I’ve ever seen in my life. It was like the Duke lacrosse team had been put through a copy machine and now there were a hundred of them. One guy standing next to me said to his friend, “Hey, I’m going to the bar, you want something?” and his friend said, “Yeah, I dunno, a mixed drink or something,” and the first guy said, “A mixed drink? What are you, a fag?? FAAAAAAG!!” And then he smiled at me and I tried to tamp down my feelings of disgust. Bill Burr does a bit about that, talking about his youth and how his guy friends do that, but then he talks about how it eventually kills them because they’re not allowed to express their feelings. You know what, buddy? You’re not Bill Burr. You’re not making a statement about society. Shut it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LRcmg9mxRQ

Then Cricket and I went in and we watched Bill Burr perform and he was great and it would have been great if the drunk fratboy behind me would stop yelling. Every time Bill said something really clever the guy would say, “Here we go!” or “Yeah B.B.!” or something of that ilk. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoy going to things, I just don’t enjoy the people around me. They ruin everything. Either they’re unwrapping a cough drop for fifty years, or they’re checking their phone, or whatever. I don’t like my co-audience members. Does no one know the unwritten social contract we all signed? The one where we can do whatever the heck we want in our homes, but when we go outside we say excuse me and don’t shout and close our legs on the train so others can sit? I feel like we as a group should re-address this. If I can follow it anyone can follow it. Seriously. People. Get it together.

Then on Saturday my friend K. had an extra ticket to the Justin Timberlake concert in New Jersey. I always say “never look a free ticket to anything in the mouth” so even though I’m not a huge Justin Timberlake fan, I was down with it. It was a great show, I must say. The set design was phenomenal and we had really good seats.

Hexagons! The set was covered in hexagons! I love hexagons, I really do. There was light painting and video footage and part of the hexagon background was made of scrim so lights showed through, it was just killer design. The only complaint I had was the lights above the stage were organized to form a sad, disappointed face. Occasionally it would appear to be a deity was looking down on Justin and his crew and thinking, “Has it really come to this?”

And then – lasers! All over the arena!

The red lasers went up and down all over the audience made me feel like a can of corn at the self-checkout in Stop-n-Shop. I said quietly to myself, “Please move your items to the bagging area.” And then I chuckled because I amuse myself. I thought that was the extent of the coolness that could be brought, but I was wrong. The entire front edge of the stage was glass that lit up and during one song it came off, rose up on pneumatic lifts and rolled down the aisles so Justin, his trumpeters and his back-up singers could slide past the entire audience on the ground level. Kind of amazing.

Here’s a video someone took of the glass part moving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAd8Xn8Q-lU

He did a bunch of songs there (including the best rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel” I’ve ever heard) and the the stage slid on back and went down and it was like nothing happened. So very rad. And then his did “Poison” by Bel Biv DeVoe! With the cheesy 90s dancing! I was so happy! I found footage from a different show, but it was the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DIvY0k7hD0

Anyway, after I see Richard III tonight, that is the end of my evening galavants for a while. It’ll be good for me to get away from the public and go back into my little hole and craft. I need to build up a tolerance to humanity.

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My week of exciting activities – Tuesday: Twelfth Night.

Friday, November 8th, 2013

My week of culture-consuming continues! On Tuesday night I went to see the Shakespearean play Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance. Stephen Fry was also in it and I imagine most people went because of him, but I love Mark Rylance. I love him. He’s one of the most amazing actors ever. Really. I’m not exaggerating. I don’t much care for Shakespeare most times – too many words, too confusing. But when phenomenal actors perform it, it becomes clear like crystal. It should be the litmus test of whether actors are good or not. They should have to come into a room, do a soliloquy from a Shakespearean play, and if at the end I understood what they were talking about, they’re good. Here’s Mark Rylance doing Richard II in the Globe Theater in London.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M775evBE8A

Rylance was the director of the Globe Theater in London for a decade where you could go and see Shakespearean plays exactly like they did back in the 1590’s (but with probably less body odor). They often don’t use female actresses, making males play female roles (period-accurate). The audience has to stand the whole time (also accurate). The costumes they wear are insane. There are no zippers or velcro or elastic. It’s all linen and silk and cotton and fur and leather sewn together by hand. One costume took sixteen people to make because each person knew a different olde-timey skill and it took all of them to figure the costume out. Amazing. Anyway, Rylance and the rest of the actors got together and came over here and are doing a double-billing of Twelfth Night and Richard III. I have tickets for Richard III (the royal they found in a parking lot last year) which I will see next week. It is not fun. It’s about a crippled man who kills family members to ascend the throne. Twelfth Night, however, is fun. There’s mistaken identity! And silly stockings! And music! There was one song at the end that I could not get out of my head. The lyrics were, “The wind and the rain, it raineth ev’ry day, it raineth ev’ry day.” Four hours later I found myself saying, “England! It raineth every damn day!” to nobody. What an earworm. The music was really cool. They used authentic instruments and parked the musicians above the stage so they could play various tunes to make the scenes more impactful. Ever heard someone play a hurdy-gurdy? I have, now. If you have a chance to see it, I recommend that you do. It’s really a pleasant farce, and it’s so great to see super-talented people do the thing that they do so well. I’m going to buy the DVD version (which is pretty much identical).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Twelfth-Night-Globe-Screen/dp/B00DEROM3M
It raineth ev’ry day.

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., New York, Random Art Bloggery | No Comments »

My week of exciting activities – Monday: StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Wednesday, November 6th, 2013

It just so happens that this week I have things planned for the evenings of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and possibly Saturday. On Monday I went to the Town Hall in midtown Manhattan to see StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

I have never listened to Neil’s podcast, so I was totally ready for whatever when I got there. He has Eugene Mirman the comedian co-host the show regularly. Neil brought on two guests – Brian Greene, the theoretical physicist and string theorist, and Michael Massimino, an astronaut who went into space twice, both times to do repairs on the Hubble Telescope. Eugene brought fellow comedian Michael Ian Black who’s been in a gazillion things. The topic of this episode of StarTalk was gravity, both the movie that just came out and, you know, the stuff that keeps you on the crust of the earth. I had a lot of problems with this because there’s very few things in nature that make my skin get all icy and leave*, and one of those things is outer space. I can’t even watch the trailers for the movie Gravity. You can fall! In any direction! Forever! Complete darkness! No oxygen! So cold! So alone! It just freaks me out down to my core. You want to know my idea of a horror movie? WALL•E. The scene where WALL•E propels himself through space with the fire extinguisher? Nightmare fuel for me. So the two hours of the show was a bit of a struggle for me to get through without curling up a ball, wrapping my coat around my head and moaning, but I made it. Neil talked about several things that bothered him about the movie Gravity. Number one: Sandra Bullock played a medical doctor sent to space to fix a gigantic space machine. Michael Ian Black’s response: “Neil, the Hubble Telescope was sick.” Michael the Astronaut did say that all the tools they used in the film were completely accurate. The space repairmen use really similar tools to what we use here, but they have those big gloves on and therefore they cannot be as dextrous, so the tools are slightly different. And we got the stamp of authenticity on the tools from a real space-tool-knowledge-haver, so that’s good.

This was a cool demonstration. Neil talked about a scene in the movie where Sandra Bullock was running out of oxygen and she had to let go of George Clooney and when she released the tether holding them together he flew backwards away. Or maybe she was the one who flew backwards away. I haven’t seen the film. Whatever, someone released a tether and someone flew backwards away. Neil brought out a dolly, the kind one uses to move furniture, and he made Brian Greene sit on it so his feet were off the floor. Neil handed him one end of a rope and he walked to the end of the length of the rope. And then Neil let go. And Brian didn’t move. Neil turned to us, the audience, and said, “THAT’S WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.” Since Ms. Bullock and Mr. Clooney weren’t on something spinning or moving rapidly and pulling on them, if they let go they would stay put. Nowhere near as dramatic as what happens in the film.

I learned so many things. I learned that Aristotle was the first guy to talk about gravity, but he thought that things will more mass fell faster. To demonstrate the incorrectness of this, Neil took off his boot and picked up a pen. Then he dropped them at the same time. They hit the stage at the same time. Neil then chastised Aristotle for not conducting that experiment, for if he had he would have known the correct answer. I learned that there was a Chinese satellite hanging out in orbit at 550 miles and the Chinese shot it out of existence for scientific reasons. We also had a satellite we wanted to destroy, but it was at 110 miles. We shot it out of existence as well. The difference is that all the debris from our satellite fell into our atmosphere and burned up and was gone. The Chinese satellite debris did not, now making it really difficult to send, like, another satellite into orbit at 550 miles. The new satellite is going to get battered with all the crap from the destroyed satellite. I had never thought of that. If we keep putting things into orbit and they explode or bonk into each other, that layer of orbits will be riddled with pointy things that can jack up our other scientific experiments. Neil mentioned something about nets, but I lost him around there. There was much talk about theoretical mathematical stuff that I simply could not grasp with my non-mathematical-oriented brain. At one point the discussion turned to black holes. I learned that if you are falling into a black hole, if someone is watching you from the outside it will appear that your gestures are slowing down, until you reach the event horizon which is what they call the rim of the black hole. To the person on the outside, it will have appeared that you have frozen. Meanwhile, everything will look normal to you, but the things around you will look sped up, so as you reach the event horizon you will see the future of the universe until the end of time. As Neil said, “You’ll notice you’ve fallen into a black hole right after you get pulled into the thickness of a piece of spaghetti. Then you’ll notice.”

The best thing I learned is that the qualities that makes a flame pointy is the hot air rising and sucking in more oxygen. In space, like in the space station, where there is both oxygen and a lack of gravity, the flame would be a ball. An orb of fire, if you will. And Neil commented that if aliens who were accustomed to a gravity-free environment came to earth, they would not understand why our chandelier candle-lights are shaped like that.

Long story short, I’m going to start listening to StarTalk if it’s a podcast. Is it a podcast? If it is, I will listen to it. And I developed crushes on all the scientists on the stage because goshdarnit I like me a smart man. And these men are SMART. Mmmmmmmm, intelligence.

*The other thing is when an insect lays eggs in another insect and then the camera zooms all up in there as the babies emerge from the host-beast. TOO MUCH. Blargh.

Posted in Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Nature, New York, Stuff | 4 Comments »

Happy happy charts on this grim day.

Monday, October 7th, 2013

The sky was black at 4:00 in the afternoon today and there are tornado warnings all over NYC, so instead of saving your battery in case the power goes out and you need to call for help I recommend looking at these charts instead. 911 be damned, charts take priority!