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Happy Tuesdays: Record breaker
Apr. 19th, 2011 09:40 pm( Read more... )
Ok, so that *did* sound really effing dwelly. Sorry. The rest of the post should be much less melodramatic (edit: oh, you might want to skip point 5.) As you were.
2. Went down to Sarah's place in the middle of Dumfries and Galloway Thursday - Sunday.
Highlights:
3. Saw Tim Minchin's show. We were pretty excited about it. It was a really interesting show, pushing the boundaries of comedy and I think it was a really brave experiment. We met up with a comedian friend of ours before and met the first violinist, which was pretty cool. The orchestra was really amazing and some of the music was massively grand and awesome. The main problem with it, though, was that the music drowned out the lyrics, which ruined most of the comedy. To my mind, this ruined the whole concept of a comedy show. I think that part of what characterised his comedy was the fact that it was just him and the piano, and the concept that there 'should be an orchestra'. Bringing in the orchestra took that away and everything was subverted in a way that didn't work for me. I spent a lot of time with my fingers in my ears, seeing if that helped me make out the lyrics, and often with my eyes shut, because of the strobe lighting. There were some undeniably beautiful moments, but it wasn't my bag
My other problem with it, personally, was the number of sycophants in the audience. I hate it when people just start laughing and clapping when they recognise a chord. It's not unique to this show, it pissed me off when we saw Eddie Izzard too, even though he is my one true love.
He did a song called 'Context' which I liked (but can't find a link to), which contains the line (I may be paraphrasing) 'I really hate Christians, I just want to punch them in the face'. Now, he is a well-known rationalist and all but this was *not* a serious concept; it was part of a whole structure making a point about prejudice. However, the people sitting behind us *cheered* that line: 'yay, I want to punch Christians in the face for no reason'. They didn't seem to get the point of the song in the tiniest little bit. It's a kind of weird blind following: someone goes because they know he's a skeptic, and so as soon as he says something skeptic-ish they clap and cheer withouth actually listening and processing. Surely this is one of the massive problems of religion? Agh.
Anyway, Ari wrote up her review (Ari reviewed it rather than me because a) she knows more about music and b) she was more available to write it). I posted it up on Twitter with a link to Tim's twitter address. He tweeted back to say that it was a load of inaccurate condesceding bollocks, and why did I post it to him when I know he avoids reviews?'
I replied saying I didn't know that, but I would happily remove the post with him tagged in it, that I just tag people as a matter of process. He apologised for his grumpiness and said that in general, he wouldn't tag artists to negative reviews.
I really wanted to respond but I didn't get into a bitchfight on Twitter. I might write a longer and more detailed piece on this but:
5. Melodrama alert: Started to fall apart a wee bit Sunday, then couldn't sleep Sunday night. Monday I somehow got into work but didn't get too much none. The badness over the review stuff came in with pretty bad timing too. I came in the door in tears last night and had a god-awful evening. I'm just completely exhausted by life. The wierd thing is that things are coming together, but I have run out of steam. I feel like I can see a finish line but have run out of energy before I can get to it. If I drop everything now, I feel like I'll have lost everything I've worked for, but I think that might just happen because I don't have very much of a grip on things.
I was off sick today, and I'm going to see how tomorrow goes. I'm not sure what's going to happen.
Anyway, Happy Tuesday y'all, and enjoy the long weekend.
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Ok, so that *did* sound really effing dwelly. Sorry. The rest of the post should be much less melodramatic (edit: oh, you might want to skip point 5.) As you were.
2. Went down to Sarah's place in the middle of Dumfries and Galloway Thursday - Sunday.
Highlights:
- Seeing Plutot La Vie's By The Seat of your Pants at CatStrand, which is five minutes from Sarah's place. (It's partly what precipitated our visit - we'd been meaning to go for a while and this seemed like a good excuse.) Gorgeous clowning show directed by Magdalena Schamberger who I worked with at Hearts & Minds. We both really enjoyed it, there was some immensely beautiful physicality in it.
- Actually seeing Sarah. We normally get to see her fairly fleetingly, or on the internet, or not at all, so it was really nice just to chill out and hang out (dude).
- Being in the countryside, with deer and rabbit and lambs and peacocks. Ari and Sarah discovered badget setts, near a druid circle - some brush had been cleared away and the big stones has been moved and there were little wooden discs hanging off a load of the trees.
- Eating all the food, cooked in an oven that goes above 150 degrees.
- Having a bath.
- Getting to clean the car (we can't stretch a hoover cord the quarter mile or so away the car needs to be parked)
- Getting lost on the way out there, and accidentally driving about 20 miles our of our way.
- No mobile reception, which meant my plans to interview folk for May's Skinny went tits up.
3. Saw Tim Minchin's show. We were pretty excited about it. It was a really interesting show, pushing the boundaries of comedy and I think it was a really brave experiment. We met up with a comedian friend of ours before and met the first violinist, which was pretty cool. The orchestra was really amazing and some of the music was massively grand and awesome. The main problem with it, though, was that the music drowned out the lyrics, which ruined most of the comedy. To my mind, this ruined the whole concept of a comedy show. I think that part of what characterised his comedy was the fact that it was just him and the piano, and the concept that there 'should be an orchestra'. Bringing in the orchestra took that away and everything was subverted in a way that didn't work for me. I spent a lot of time with my fingers in my ears, seeing if that helped me make out the lyrics, and often with my eyes shut, because of the strobe lighting. There were some undeniably beautiful moments, but it wasn't my bag
My other problem with it, personally, was the number of sycophants in the audience. I hate it when people just start laughing and clapping when they recognise a chord. It's not unique to this show, it pissed me off when we saw Eddie Izzard too, even though he is my one true love.
He did a song called 'Context' which I liked (but can't find a link to), which contains the line (I may be paraphrasing) 'I really hate Christians, I just want to punch them in the face'. Now, he is a well-known rationalist and all but this was *not* a serious concept; it was part of a whole structure making a point about prejudice. However, the people sitting behind us *cheered* that line: 'yay, I want to punch Christians in the face for no reason'. They didn't seem to get the point of the song in the tiniest little bit. It's a kind of weird blind following: someone goes because they know he's a skeptic, and so as soon as he says something skeptic-ish they clap and cheer withouth actually listening and processing. Surely this is one of the massive problems of religion? Agh.
Anyway, Ari wrote up her review (Ari reviewed it rather than me because a) she knows more about music and b) she was more available to write it). I posted it up on Twitter with a link to Tim's twitter address. He tweeted back to say that it was a load of inaccurate condesceding bollocks, and why did I post it to him when I know he avoids reviews?'
I replied saying I didn't know that, but I would happily remove the post with him tagged in it, that I just tag people as a matter of process. He apologised for his grumpiness and said that in general, he wouldn't tag artists to negative reviews.
I really wanted to respond but I didn't get into a bitchfight on Twitter. I might write a longer and more detailed piece on this but:
- I actually wouldn't tag artists to negative reviews as I generally don't post negative reviews up on Twitter at all; certainly not during the Fringe.
- I tag people because it shows up for others, too, who might be searching for reviews or information. Given how clogged his Twitter feed is, I didn't really expect that he would be sitting reading all the posts which mention him. I suspect that me showing Twitter-naivety; I'm relatively new to it. (It was certainly his choice to follow the link, though - if he wanted to avoid reviews, then he didn't have to read it.)
- I don't consider it to be a negative review. It is a three star review containing as many postives as negatives. It has been categorised as 'a bad review' on the basis of it's bad elements. I guess that's human nature, and again naive of me to think that if he did read it, he would think 'Hmm, sounds like I should just check the levels in sound check. What a good point.' I did really want to reply and say 'But it's not a negative review' but I can see that he wouldn't think that and it would be ultimately pointless and frustrating.
5. Melodrama alert: Started to fall apart a wee bit Sunday, then couldn't sleep Sunday night. Monday I somehow got into work but didn't get too much none. The badness over the review stuff came in with pretty bad timing too. I came in the door in tears last night and had a god-awful evening. I'm just completely exhausted by life. The wierd thing is that things are coming together, but I have run out of steam. I feel like I can see a finish line but have run out of energy before I can get to it. If I drop everything now, I feel like I'll have lost everything I've worked for, but I think that might just happen because I don't have very much of a grip on things.
I was off sick today, and I'm going to see how tomorrow goes. I'm not sure what's going to happen.
Anyway, Happy Tuesday y'all, and enjoy the long weekend.
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