Modern Opera: Be Very Afraid (The Fly)

Last Friday was the first opera of the 2008/09 season for us, David Cronenberg's The Fly. Whenever a film director deigns to direct an opera, it's always a bit exciting. Especially here in Whoresville, we love to coo and clap for our movie directors. Mr. Cronenberg's 1986 film The Fly (originally done in 1958 w/Vincent Price) quickly became a cult classic and is a great piece of cinema. However (cough), just because something is a great movie, doesn't necessarily mean one should turn it into an opera. Just give pause to the horror that would be Jurassic Park or Independence Day in opera form. Oh crap, I've probably just given someone that idea now!

As with most operas produced at LA Opera, the sets, costumes, and all the trimmings are over-the-top and impressive. But the music? What exactly does one go to the opera for again? Oh yeah right, the music. If, God forbid, The Fly was being produced by your kid's high school drama club and had cardboard teleporters and a home-made fly suit, it wouldn't have a leg to stand on. As Mark Swed so aptly describes in his less-than-stellar LA Times review, "... I am at a loss to understand why "The Fly" has turned out so dreary, despite the inclusion of sex, nudity, puppetry and athleticism." Indeed!

This is my main bone of contention with almost all modern opera. What is so horrible about beauty? harmony? cohesion? If a melody makes my heart beat faster, or the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, is that a bad thing? and since when? Modern opera seems hell-bent on proving to you HOW modern it is, just by sheer force of ugliness alone. Go ahead, it says, just try and get one of these arias stuck in your head. It's borderline impossible. Are all the rich, jaded, artistic types just completely oblivious to beauty anymore? Or are they surrounded by yes-men who just tell them how everything sounds like rainbows and butterflies and they believe it? At some point, why didn't anyone have the sac to step in and say "um, maybe this needs more work?" instead of green-lighting it? Sadly this is the case with most modern opera. Why do they keep throwing money at sad, unfulfilling, uninspiring music?

Let's just cut right to the meat of the matter: full frontal male nudity. Is it a necessity in opera? I know I've savored many a wonderful evening at the opera house and nary a willy have I seen there under the lights. Here it seemed to be employed as: titillation for titillation's sake, which is always sad. The one truly shocking special effect came when an acrobatic body-double snuck in and did some cool backflips and hand-stands before slinking off and Seth Brundle came back in. That was actually successful. But the robotic puppet baboons, the ceiling crawling, the fake broken arm spurting blood, the perfunctory fucking, all were FAILs.

That being said, I didn't entirely hate The Fly. I particularly liked the way they employed the chorus as an off-stage robotic univoice. Now that was catchy, as you'll see if you watch the video below.

Poor Mr. Cronenberg seemed bound and determined to recast every blessed scene from his movie and there were so many little unnecessary comings and goings. People wheel a cart in, just to wheel it out 4 minutes later. Why?! I could also have done without Veronica going on-and-on-and-on at the end about how she was going to keep the baby. We get it, you're not getting rid of the baby, OKAY. I was expecting a Madonna "Papa Don't Preach" mashup at any moment.

So creators, purveyors, and peddlers of opera, please, please, please stop with the blatant, bracing "rawness" and give me something moving, eloquent, and memorable.

All in all, on a scale of 1 to 10, with Grendel being 1 and Tosca being 10, I'd give The Fly a 3.

The Fly, New Flesh FAIL from mayjah on Vimeo.

The Ghost of David Foster Wallace

Oh David, who is going to rail now against:

Postmodern irony, hip cynicism, a hatred that winks and nudges you and pretends it's just kidding.

Warning: There are footnotes to this post. Those with short attention spans or an aversion to footnotes are not recommended to continue on. Reader discretion is advised.

"David Foster Wallace, Dead at 46" was not a headline I was expecting to see anytime soon and yet there it was. God bless Twitter for giving me up-to-the-minute news, at least. I have kept a short list of topics I want to tweet about at some time in the future and right there on my list from TWO DAYS ago was "why David Foster Wallace should be on Twitter." I've looked and looked for him on there and, as far as I know, he didn't have an account.

I can't remember exactly what David Foster Wallace piece I read first, maybe it was that article about the cruise ship? Or maybe it was actually Infinite Jest? I know I proceeded to consume everything he wrote as quickly as I could find it. Something just clicked for me. It was wordy, yeah. Sometimes it seemed like he intentionally used ginormo words just to be a bother, yeah. And then there were the footnotes. Footnotes pages long, footnotes that were a whole story unto themselves. Footnotes I started to look forward to more than the actual main piece, sometimes. But inside all of that, I just "got it" and I liked it a lot. A lot, a lot. So much so that I'm now sitting here crying, a lot. (*)

I was going to name this post "I Blame David Foster Wallace" wherein I list of all the things that are his fault. Oh right, like you don't have a list of things you blame on DFW? Pfft. It would have been funny if he wasn't dead. If he hadn't intentionally snuffed himself out.

So why does the suicide part bother me so much? Well I just found him enormously appealing and the idea that someone would be thinking so little of themselves, be so profoundly unhappy, to do that, makes me very sad. Very sad, indeed. I've created life, literally, and birthed it. I get knocked on my ass by the profound beautiful gorgeousness of life. I think of his poor mother. She grew his body piece by piece, bone by bone, tendon by tendon. I know what it feels like to love somebody that hard, like you'd die if anything happened to them, like a mother. I wish she didn't have to feel the pain of that loss, a mother's loss. It's hokey but it's true.

Just an FYI for the rest of you: if I like you that much, you aren't allowed to kill yourself. It's in my rulebook. Heads up to everyone I love and admire: I get suicide veto power. (#)

Below is an excerpt from his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. This is my philosophy, yes! Choose what to pay attention to, what to focus on, and construct your experience of reality thusly. But wait, heading into the second paragraph and it takes on a new, eerie context:

“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about, quote, the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

“This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.”

I've been unable to talk about much else other than DFW on Twitter. Someone finally pointed that out to me, to which I concluded "I'm being haunted by the ghost of David Foster Wallace." This isn't entirely outside the realm of possibility and, guess what, it would be perfectly fine by me. Hear that Dave? Drop by and get paranormal with me any old time. (**) I even ran out and got some t-shirts printed. Sort of like my own morbid version of Field of Dreams. If I have t-shirts printed, it must come true.

In brief, I Blame DFW for:

1. Making me read a 1000-page book and wishing at the end that he'd hurry up and write a sequel.
2. My inability to microwave things without thinking of someone putting their head in there. (***)
3. My obsession with what the PGOAT looks like and whether or not looking at her face would actually kill me.
4. Making me believe that it's okay to be smart and funny, sometimes even simultaneously.
5. My fascination and frustration with tennis and my feeling of inadequacy at not understanding the trajectorical intricacies of tennis and other games involving balls.
6. Thinking about that coppery, metallic taste at really inappropriate times.
7. My trepidation about taking a cruise, ever.
8. An understanding that boys can get psycho-infatuated just like girls can, and the fact that I find that strangely comforting.
   
9. My new-found hatred for the procrastination that prevented me from ever sitting in one of his creative writing classes. He was right over in Pomona for crying out loud.
10. My inability to hear the word "assassin" without having a little giggle.
    
11. My inordinate use of the term "searing crush", which is, probably, one of the best descriptives ever.

Scrolling through some lists of his quotes, I'm struck by the number of quotes (okay 5) that are about the poignancy of the human condition:

• "This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside."
• "Fiction-writing is lonely in a way most people misunderstand. It's yourself you have to be estranged from, really, to work."
• "To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now, I'm scared about how sappy this will look in print, saying this."
• "We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy is impossible."
• "The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness."

Finally, no online discussion of DFW could occur without mentioning the Howling Fantonds website. Where else are you going to get DFW-inspired inspirational-posters?

Picture courtesy of: Steve Rhodes

(*) Sorry I'm so sad. I don't quite know why. It is weirding me out and I'm now sad that I'm so sad and dwell-y but I'm working on getting over it. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter, being a pouty, emocore, pain in the ass.

(#) After writing that, I discovered that DFW had gone off antidepressants in 2007 due to side effects but continued to suffer with overwhelming depression. He even had electro-convulsive therapy this summer and had been and out of the hospital. I didn't realize how much he was physically suffering because of his depression. Something very painful was happening to him, apparently, so I shouldn't be so glib.

(**) I mean it Dave, I'm here, waiting for the temperature to get colder. We can talk shop about everything you are learning on the other side. And you can give me tennis pointers. And writing pointers. Any kind of pointers, really, I'm not picky. Did I mention I miss you?

(***) Not only that, that someone would go to great lengths to design and construct one that would accept a head.

The One-Month NME-versary

Well it has been almost one whole month since the New Media Expo, so I should probably get around to writing that post about it, right? I mean, I bought business cards and everything!

Going to Las Vegas for the NME was a crazy weird thing for me to do. I've only been blogging since about April, so it was a tad ... premature. But I rationalized it with "I'll learn so much!" Okay, I did actually learn a lot about social media, but more through relative proximity than anything else. Oh and did I mention I was the only person there who didn't bring their laptop. Doi! Noob alert, noob alert.

Since I didn't spend the $400 for the conference, I just roamed the main hall and eavesdropped on conversations mostly. I definitely felt out of place as I didn't know most of the movers and shakers, nor even recognize them. Chris Brogan who? Lots of people were doing slo-mo run and hugs across the room with each other. I also lacked a T-shirt with my logo on it. Fuck! Apparently business cards are SO old media.



Not to mention the fact that as an internet grrrl I was dressed all wrong in a sweater dress and wedge sandals. I was supposed to be wearing shorts and flip-flops with my logo t-shirt. I never got that phone call. See how out of the loop I am? I better go follow @ijustine so I don't make that mistake again.

Eventually I borrowed someone's pass (thanks @kspidel!) and sat in on a talk. The guy had clip art and Paint up on the projector, showing different ways to make logos for your website. A parrot and a clip art shack were involved. I lasted about 5 minutes. The nice man at the door gave me a handful of sound-effect CDs as I left so it wasn't all bad.

The weirdest part of the expo was how mismatched the talks versus vendors were. I heard that the talks were very basic for most of the people attending, and the vendors were all pitching very advanced/high end stuff, for the most part. Giant mixing board thingies the size of VW Bugs, microphones Mariah Carey would use, etc. Also, where were the scads of nerdy gadgets? Some vendor could have had a field day: all these geeks with money in their pockets. Do you know how much cab fare to Best Buy costs, from the Strip?!

I know I go on and on about Seesmic and video conferencing (and on) but meeting my Seesmic cronies was the highlight of my trip.

Seesmic IRL = The Awesomeness!If you get a chance to do a seesmic meetup, get on it!

I find the ever-increasing transparency of the internet fascinating. I continue to proselytize that video media is an amazing advancement. After seeing someone talk and drink coffee on video, you really do feel more at ease around them. The only downside? When you've watched someone's videos but they haven't ever seen yours and you scare the crap out of them with your creepy over-familiarity (sorry @MissSomething!).



Oh yeah, and I got to meet VinVin. No really, the VinVin. I don't know why I'm smiling like I still have braces. Shock and awe maybe?

Luckily I had my flip with me to record all the expo-y goodness. God I love my flip, best $140 bucks I ever spent.

So I got home and realized I'd only shot about 5 minutes of footage, mostly at Coverville and a tiny bit on the floor of the expo. So if it looks like all we're doing in the ensuing video is drinking, goofing off, and sitting around, that is my excuse. It's "social" media, we had to be social, right? At least I managed to capture all the important stuff. The poster fight that's already been shown from every angle, @documentally and @VinVin being silly, @langley's suit. You know, the biggies!


An Expo-sion! of New Media (the recap) from mayjah on Vimeo.

PS: I also put the video up on Youtube, but I like Vimeo's embeddable player better. Not to mention the fact that you can actually (gasp) upload a thumbnail of your choice! If you'd rather watch it on Youtube, it's here: An Expo-sion! of New Media.

Miu Miu in Beverly Hills

Miu Miu is the nickname of famed Prada founder Miucci Prada and the chosen label for her fresh-faced, younger, more playful line (pssst: that means it is 'more affordable'). Miu Miu just opened it's Bevery Hills store on Rodeo and my husband was kind enough to capture the gorgeousness. Here is a peek inside. I know you've been tossing and turning because the suspense has been killing you.



Bonus D&G in the reflection. Double affluence booyah!





In Los Angeles, sunglasses are as imperative as bottled water and Botox.





Yay, heels!






What? Nobody stopped my husband from snapping pictures of bras and panties? Security!






Flats like this creep me out. Shoes shouldn't shrivel up when you take your foot out, like slugs that just got doused with salt.






Okay these are fucking tight! I'll take a pair of each, please.






I already feel uncomfortable, and I'm not even there in person! Seems a bit standoffish, don't ya think? What? That's the point?! Oh ...






If you actually try anything on, this is where you'll wind up. Cold metal and plush velvety brocade. It's a LOOK, people!

Want to see all that green upholstery in person? Visit Miu Miu at 317 N. Rodeo Drive.

Sarah Palin Incites Social Media Feeding Frenzy

A few days ago, McCain elected or nominated or knighted or deputized (something!) Sarah Palin as his VP nominee. I was just minding my own business, letting Twitter filter my news for me so I could avoid watching the talking heads on TV. News coverage on television, particularly the political variety, makes me want to become a cutter and start doing heavy (ier) drugs so I try to avoid it. Okay, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart can stay but that's IT! So I started to see a little flurry of tweets prefaced with "Little Known Fact: Sarah Palin" blah blah blah. They were nonsensical, they made me giggle, and they made me want to MAKE UP MY OWN.

This, my friend, is how a meme should get started: organically. This one quickly developed into a 4-alarm Twitter fire with people choosing sides much like the election we were joking about. There is no gray area in a meme like this. You either dive in and contribute or you want to poison all those cracking the jokes, people you chose to follow, being of sound mind and body. Now you want them dead.

Fortunately for me I was on the diving team and I just kept running back to the ladder again and again. All day long I'd be doing something mundane and literally break into a RUN to get to the computer to post another one. Is that sad or funny? Tragic? See, I had never gotten a chance to participate in the much-lauded and oft-compared-to Chuck Norris meme. I don't know what I was doing at the time that was so god-awful more important than the Internet. Lesson learned!

Anywayz, soon web sites were popping up in honor of this fad, I was threatening to change my last name to Fact and have a baby I could name Little Known and many, many people were suffering from eye-rolling fatigue.

As luck would have it (or not so lucky, depending on your disposition related to this matter) I was going to the beach the next day and couldn't resist dedicating my entire BeachCast to Sarah Palin.

Even now, a few days later, I can't promise you that I got it all out of my system. I'm like a crackhead now. I've had a taste of the stuff and I'm a goner. The most I can promise is to take it one day at a time and try not to wind up like Ms. Winehouse. First thing this morning, it is still going strong on Twitter. Watching all those Sarah Palin jokes go by is triggering me!


BeachCasting: Bring Your SPF (Sarah Palin factor) from mayjah on Vimeo.

Who Do You Love? Or Is It A What?

A few days ago on 12seconds, the daily challenge was to "tell someone you love them." At first, there were NO replies. This was rather odd. Just days before, on themes like:

1. "What's your favorite Star Wars movie?"
2. "What muppet do you most identify with?"
3. "Sing your favorite song when you were 13."
   

the replies they were aplenty.

This seemed bizarre to me at first until I thought about making my own ... Do I just crack open my most inner self for all of the interwebs? No, of course not, I take a mixup of shots, splice them within an inch of their life, and put that up.

I Can't Say It on 12seconds.tv

The responses, once they started rolling in, were quite interesting. Most involved declarations of love involving inanimate objects. Only towards the end of the day, once a few people had been more authentic did the responses start getting more natural. What someone would declare their love for. I found the responses fascinating. I began to wonder, are you?:

• Emotionally available/unavailable?
• Going for the cheap laugh? (usually me).
• Unbearably shy?
• Suffering from object transference?
• Lonely mouth-breather with no one to love?
• Saying 'i love you' to the person next to you?

In the end, I had so much fun making the 12second version, I put together a longer version. Liza would have done the same for David Gest. Wait ...


Lip Reading from mayjah on Vimeo.

For those of you not on 12seconds, if you had a webcam aimed at you and were posed a question like that, what would you say?