webcowgirl

Madness, madness. In no things moderation. Yep, that's me. This time it's movies, not theater. BFI's got an Ozu festival going on January and February and I'm going to do my best to see all the movies I've seen by him that I've not seen before (i.e. when they did the Ozu festival at the Northwest film festival, a score of reviews from me here). It's odd to think that I saw twelve and yet there are many, many more I've missed - nine movies in January alone, and I could see another two that I'm postponing until February instead. In addition, there are two Ozu lectures I want to attend - one a general one, the other a scene by scene breakdown of Toyko Story, billed as "his greatest movie," and certainly a goodie.

At any rate, here's the schedule I'm looking at for this January. Let me know if you want to come to one or more of them with me. I'll be buying tickets Tuesday.

1 Friday: 16:00 Le Jour se Leve (1939 - oops, this isn't by Ozu, it's a French Gangster flick but looks really good); 18:00 Days of Youth (1929) (both of these are just maybes, I won't be buying tickets for this until the day due to anticipated New Year's Eve exhaustion)
2 Saturday: 18:20 I Flunked, But & A Straightforward Boy (two short movies)
3 Sunday: 18:00 Les Diaboliques (1955, another French gangster flick, but still, at the BFI)
6 Wednesday: 18:15 Ozu, Emotion and Poetry: An Introduction (this is the lecture)
8 Friday: 18:30 Tokyo Chorus (1931); 20:45 Walk Cheerfully (1930)
9 Saturday: 16:10 Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth (1932); 20:30 Days of Youth (maybe - two movies might be too much given the previous night's schedule, and Days of Youth will also depend on whether or not I make it out on the 1st)
16 Saturday: 13:00 Tokyo Story masterclass (scene by scene breakdown); 16:00 Dragnet Girl (1933 - Ozu's gangster flick)
19 Tuesday: 18:30 A Mother Should Be Loved (1934)
27 Wednesday: 18:30 The Only Son (1936)

I'm sitting here getting terribly excited about this version of Dante's Divine Comedy that I just read about in the Times online. "Five-year-old children pay in a giant glass cube, under the watchful eye of a giant doll. A figure comes on dressed as Andy Warhol and takes Polaroids of the audience. A vast black ball descends and collapses. The steel set crushes a human skull. Crowds of people swarm onto the stage, fall, and roll away as a mechanised skeleton crawls towards them."

Ooh baby. I went right out and booked some tickets for this show - it's all the way in April but some showings are already sold out (though I suppose if you get the three show multi-buy they'll find room for you). Sadly, I can only make it to Paradiso and Inferno (I've booked both for April 2nd) ... I guess Purgatorio can wait (snicker). (There's also a Kabuki 12th Night happening in late March ... yum! I wound up renewing my Barbican membership while I was on the site.)

I swear I just don't get a chance to get a breather even. Work today rushed by as I was trying to leave at 3:30 - but I needed to write a manifesto for my team AND pack my desk and do all of those last minute leaving things. And my Hotel Chocolat order never showed up, AND I got pulled into a meeting at 3:30. And then we still had to go to London Bridge to buy Sekrit Prezzies AND then make it to a second secret present buying location before they closed at six. WHOOSH.

Have spend the night cleaning, buying last minute presents, wrapping less recently bought presents, eating, and paying attention to Boo, who seems to suspect something is up.

Now I need to pack. Aargh!

The schedule in NY looks like this:
Friday: arrive, drop off luggage, eat real New York Pizza, see play Dance Dance Revolution with thedivas
Saturday: goof off daytime, pizza for lunch. see South Pacific in the evening
Sunday: spend day with thedivas, likely have some pizza
Monday: day free, pizza lunch, evening ellen_kushner's The Klezmer Nutcracker with thedivas
Tuesday: day unsure, evening City Ballet's Nutcracker with my brother and sister in law evening at the gay Colombian bar.
Wednesday: head to Peekskill for Christmas eve with my SIL's family
Thursday: lazy day, cookies and eating
Friday: back to NYC, the entertainment options are myriad, possibly Gypsy or maybe Forbidden Broadway after some pizza.
Saturday: spend day with brother in law and sister outlaw, hopefully ending up at the Korean wing dome for wings and Karaoke
Sunday: God knows. I'm guessing I may want to have some pizza.
Monday: also in the air. Pizza for dinner.
Tuesday: back to Fair Albion, likely with a pizza or two hidden in my bag, as well as some melatonin, maple syrup, corn tortillas, and new clothes.

God, can I procrastinate or what? MUST PACK!

I've been watching prices on tickets to New York for two months now, since mid-June when after Air France entered the market and the prices briefly went way down. I wasn't ready to commit then, though, and saw my £323 Christmas flight slide between my fingers as prices shortly thereafter headed to £400 and stayed there.

Until yesterday, when NW suddenly went to £311. Now, that's for a flight with a crummy old plane change, which turns an almost lovey 8 hour transatlantic experience into a far less palatable 12 hour ordeal ...

but then BA dropped their price to £360. And today they dropped it to about £310 (if you buy on Expedia.com or CheapTickets.com). And that was my buy price, especially after shadowdaddy convinced me that I could ethically use the check from my mother in law to pay for two thirds of the cost of the tickets.

So hurray! We're going to New York, and I'll get to see my new nephew (as well as my brother and sister in law, and maybe even my brother in law), and hopefully my (former) dog Shadow (and his new owner the_divas) too! We're leaving on the 19th and will even get in town in time for a show, which I'm sincerly hoping is Xanadu. We'll come back on the 30th, saving ££££ and getting us to London in time for New Year's Eve.

AND just to make it all sweeter, when I went back and looked at the ticket prices, they had gone back up another $13 each. I'm not sure why they changed - but I bought at just the right time.

1. Made enchiladas. Yum!
2. Tried making sangria with white wine. Yum! (It doesn't really taste like sangria but whatever.)
3. Beat wechsler and shadowdaddy decisively at Through the Desert. (I was making it up, however. I will be beaten again the next time we play.)
4. Bought tickets for two more movies in the Guy Maddin series: Archangel (Friday 18 July 2008 at 18:30, seats F5 - F6), and Brand Upon the Brain! (Tuesday 15 July 2008 at 18:20, J4 - J5, and only 5 quid). If anyone else wants to come to these shows with us, please do!
5. Tried and failed to get tickets to see Faeries, which is well on its way to selling out. I am not happy about not being able to get tickets to this show on a schedule convenient to me because the show requires that adults bring a child. What's up, if I went to this show as an adult I must be a pedophile? Is this really legal? To me it's blatant discrimination against the childless and it pisses me off.
6. Bought a second copy of a Proust book, Following Proust: Norman Churches, Cathedrals, and Paris Paintings, that I'd ordered before as a present to me from my dad.
7. Tried to get a copy of Finding Time Again, as I'm getting darned near to the end of my current book and it's become very interesting.
8. Put in some laundry, including all of the clothes the rain soaked through while in York.

Oh, also I found the program from Friday night's Emma Kirkby show, and I'm going to reprint a poem from it (though what I should be doing is writing it up for my other blog). I found it, on Independence Day, a sort of 9/11 reflection on a fallen America, but I'm now much better able to understand what they mean, in a pre-Christian era tribal society, when they are talking about someone being a widow and what that has to say about what would happen to their status in society. It was sung in German and I found it very moving. Anyway, Lamentations 1: 1, (2,) 8, (9,) 12, (20, and 21) for the original.

How desolate lies the city/ Wie liegt die Stadt so wuste
that was so full of people/ die voll Volkes war.
She is like a widow/ Sie ist wie eine Witwe.
She who was a princess among the heathen/ Die eine Furstin unter den Heiden
and a queen in the provinces / und eine Konigen in den Landern war
must now serve/ muss nun dienen.

She weeps in the night so that (Look and see!) / Sie weinet des Nachts (Schauet doch und sehet!)
tears run down her cheeks / dass ihr die Tranen uber die Wangen fliessen,
and no one among all of her lovers / und ist niemand unter allen ihren Freunden
will comfort her/ der sie troste.

All those who were close to her despise her/ Alle ihre Nachsten verachten sie
and have become her enemies / und sind ihre Feinde worden.

Anyway, from this poem to the Trojan Woman to today, the tale of being left desolate by war and death and crying to yourself hopelessly really hit me. It was really lovely listening to the three gambas and two violins of the London Baroque accompanying Emma Kirkby and baritone Peter Harvey (the "beholds" above) as they sang this song, the "Klaglied" by Buxtehude and written upon the death of his father. Sadness, it is truly something that transcends all history. Is joy not the greater surprise?

I spent dinner reading an article I've been holding onto for a while with the cover teaser of "Rachel Cusk on the dangers of telling the truth about motherhood." What were these truths? I had to know. And it was a really engaging read, enough to pull me back to it as soon as dinner had been eaten and the plates cleared away. One of the things she noticed was that she was basically being censored by other women, who weren't okay when what she said about her feelings went against the party line on what was an acceptable thing to say about how being a mother made you feel. While I enjoyed a lot of what she had to say, I found this bit especially resonated with me. Why is it that it's so often other women that try to put the brakes on what comes out of women's mouths? Why are they the forces of conformity? Is the price of sisterhood learning how to "put up or shut up?"

Tell me, oh (female) hive mind: has this been your experience?

I've been moody today. I've even come up with a name for the thing that's been causing my moods lately. I'm going to call it The McGuffin. The McGuffin hasn't gone away, although I thought I saw signs of its demise not too long ago ... it's apparently wormed its way into my brain and will now just kind of twitch now and then when something sets it off. I look forward to it dying permanently, but I now realize this may not happen for another three to six months, or longer. Meanwhile I've got yet another pile of poo added to what I've been toting around inside my head to make me act irrationally and obsess on stupid things. Yay!

So the McGuffin was bothering me as I set out today. I was angry about running so late and making shadowdaddy and wechsler sit and wait for me while I tried to find an outfit to wear (a lack of summer weight pants was making this difficult for me). But after we'd made it to West Dulwich station, of all things, Carter's Steam Fair was set up! It was full of beautiful, restored, gilded giant toys that had calliope accompanyment and silly signs on the sides. The swing even blew out a huge puff of steam every time it went backwards. It was great!

Suddenly I was eight years old and the world was full of wonder. I ran around looking at all of the rides, laughing and pointing and realizing that rather a few of them would make me feel quite ill. The carousel was playing "The Lambeth Walk," a song I wouldn't have recognized a year ago, and I felt so proud of myself for being able to grow a little into the local culture. We stopped in the arcade and played some of the silly, old-fashioned machines. I went for the fortune teller, my obsession since reading American Gods. I got the same one I got last time: "Your hand denotes a firm and determined character, one that can be led but not driven .... Very sincere, but too independent to please most people whom you meet." Yep, it's like a badge of pride and yet a knife in my heart - that ever so accurate fortune of mine - I should just change my LJ user description to say what it says on the card.

I can't really explain how much this cheered me up. We didn't actually ride any rides or play any more games, but trotted off to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see the Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s exhibit (ends tomorrow). This was a very nice exhibit - good representations of the realist, substantially landscape-type work produced in the 1850s right up through Calder and Rauschenberg. I also really enjoyed the artists' description of their art, and the assertion of the need to develop an American identity for art, one which "embraces the world as it exists today" - a philosophy I feel most art forms should pursue, especially the performing arts. We also got to see an exhibit of photographs from China done at the very beginning of the 20th century which I found fairly interesting (reminded me of Song of the Fishermen as well as the Chinese opera I've been watching). We actually were finished in good time - the exhibition hall is rather petite - and had an opportunity to sit down and have tea and scones. It was lovely.

Afterwards it was off to meet natalya and lovingboth up at St. Pancras, with a short stop at London Bridge to wrangle some dinner fixin's (stuffed duck breast at a 30% discount, go heavy bargaining me!) and an opportunity for the McGuffin to take control again (boo). I finally got home at 7:30, popped the food in the oven, and we ate at 8:30 ... and now I'm so tired. So tired! It seems like I really burn the candle at both ends based on how long it takes me to get my engine restoked over the weekend. And I say this, and yet I read that the some Russian ballet company is coming to London in late July and I'm all going, "Oooh! Ooh! How many of the shows can I see?" (the answer is two, but I only really want to see one). I can tell I'm going to put myself in an early grave, but, God, getting there is really fun, except for the sleep deprivation.

I checked in my email and the date I'd made reservations for the Gat Xino was indeed the 24th. She changed the date in the confirmation letter, and I did not notice it at the time - I'm not in the habit of cross-checking those things.

So I was totally humiliated on Thurdsay night when we arrived and found no room at the inn, but now I'm vindicated and will be asking for a refund of all charges made to my card, both the 68.37 deposit and the 215 euros for our "one night stay" that we never got to have.

These Gat Xino idiots got my vacation off to a start that I only was recovering from on the last day, and I look forward to having my Visa card slam them to the ground.

FYI, this week is the most under-scheduled one I've had in weeks - home tonight, home Wednesday, home Thursday (now mind I won't be sitting around there by myself being all ronery or anything), and I just decided after consultation with J to not go to his show's opening on Tuesday, which means I may be at home and in fact by myself, but whatever - maybe I can get my hair done. Then Friday is Dina Martina and Saturday I'm off to Florida for a week for a conference. Frankly, doing very little this week seems like a good plan.

So ... the show I wanted to see today was massively sold out (20 people turned away!), so I'm not sorry I didn't haul myself over to Bermondsey to watch it. But I've made reservations, so I will be seeing Annie Get Your Gun next Thursday. I do hope I continue getting better and that in fact I'm making some real progress on the health front, which my FURTHER reduced weight speaks against (I'm now at 166, which is a bit creepy as I think I'm eating well). But I've stacked my schedule as if I'm a healthy woman, to wit:
Monday: Meeting
Tuesday: Speed the Plow at the Old Vic
Wednesday: mahjong in Greenwich (crap, could have played with interior_lulu while she was over for tacos tonight if I'd only remembered)
Thursday: Annie Get Your Gun (review here)
Friday: The Mikado at the Gielgud
Saturday: Chita Rivera

If I'm not healthy this is not going to be a good week, that's for sure.

Based on having no responses to most of my posts this week, I'm assuming people are bored to listening to me whinge on about my cold. Believe me, I'm sick of having it. I should have some pictures up from the trip later this week and I'm going to post one of the recipes that I made yesterday as it was quite yummy but it's now 10 PM and for the new tired (yet light weight, soon to float away) me it's time to go to bed.

I'm looking forward to a great two weeks. Here's what's happening:

19 Dec Wednesday: a warm-up boozerama with the work folks, then Kiki and Herb (with booklectic!)
20 Dec Thursday: dinner at robot_mel's.
21 Dec Friday: work lunch, then party chez us (Winterbrew! ask for details). End of work for two weeks!
22 Dec Sat: Pinocchio at the ROH with bathtubgingirl
23 Dec Sun: Handel's "Messiah" with Emma Kirkby singing and the company of rosamicula.
24 Dec Mon: butterbee arrives! Dinner at ours.
25 Dec Tues: Christmas with shadowdaddy, butterbee and wechsler. I think we'll be having goose.
26 Dec Weds: Boxing day Cinderella panto matinee!
27 Dec Thurs: Dennis Severs house tour, 6:30; possible trip to the Wellcome collection and the sleep exhibit.
28 Dec Friday or 29 Dec Saturday: Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake (getting details together - other night free).
30 Dec Sunday: Masque of the Red Death!
31 Dec Monday: Ye Olde New Year's Eve Bash!
1 Jan Tuesday: recovery.
2 Jan Wednesday: my one day of work.
3 Jan Thursday: go to Paris with butterbee.
4 Jan Friday: more Paris!
5 Jan Sat: return in time for evening shenanigans.
6 Jan Sun: anticipate return to work *sigh*
7 Jan Mon: butterbee leaves. Wah.
8 Jan Tuesday: see Les Patineurs at the ROH; mourn the end of the festive season over mulled wine.

Okay, there is a Ceili in Hammersmith this Friday at the Hammersmith Town Hall (about halfway between Hammersmith and Ravenscourt Park). Does anyone want to go with me? I'll be having drinks beforehand at the William Morris pub on King Street.

Ceili ceili ceili! (And ceilidh too.)