Author: cultureguru

A ballet at the Moulin Rouge and a symphony in space

The recent calendar has been a little busy, starting with a surprise party for Jean last Friday (at Verses), and a Valentine’s Dance on Saturday (at which we received some nice comments on our dancing, actually), and ending with another Verses dinner this Saturday, with a dance class and practice night fit in there as well.

And we also attended Moulin Rouge: The Ballet, the first ballet we’ve been to since, I think, the Ballet Béjart tribute to Freddie Mercury, quite a few years ago, in Montreal.

This one featured the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and took place in our home town concert hall. It was inspired by the Bahz Luhrmann movie, but didn’t imitate it so closely as to get into copyright trouble. So though it is still a love triangle between a woman who works at the Moulin Rouge, an impoverished artist, and a more powerful man, they aren’t the same characters as in the movie. We still get a tango scene, and green fairy scene, but not at the same points, nor for the same reasons, as in the movie.

No matter. The plot isn’t the point in a ballet; it’s just window dressing for the dancing. And that setting and those themes made for some really lively dancing. It particularly came to life, of course, with the extended can-can scene inside the Moulin Rouge. That part began with an unfortunate flub, in which one dancer was nearly dropped, but otherwise the dancing was nothing but impressive. (Not that I’m any expert.) I wasn’t sure what Jean thought of the whole thing, but he assured me he found it enjoyable—even though he knows this may mean has had to attend another ballet in another 10 years or so.

And Friday, we had tickets to Symphony in Space. This was a KW Symphony Pops concert intended to feature music with a astrological theme. So there was some Star Wars music, some Star Trek music, and some things you wouldn’t expect, like Bach’s Bradenburg Concerto, which apparently is out there on a space capsule somewhere, searching for intelligent life.

I’ve never seen conductor John Morris Russell before, but man, what an enthusiastic, lively personality he is. Along with being interested in science as well as music, he’s quite passionate about education, so the show also featured some young performers. The most adorable thing was seeing all these tiny violin players trot out to join the symphony in Suzuki’s “Variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Brought back memories of my own violin-playing days. But these kids were much better.

The second half was hosted by an astronaut, Bjarni Tryggvason, who guided us through the planets of our solar system as the symphony played excerpts from Holst: The Planets and a bit of Mozart (Jupiter). This part was also accompanied by these gorgeous NASA photos of the various planets. It was really hard to get bored during this concert.

The conclusion featured the Eastwood Collegiate Concert Choir accompanying soloist AJ Bridel on “Defying Gravity” from Wicked. Man, does that girl have chops. Remember that name: She might be someone someday.

All in all it was one of the most enjoyable symphony performances of the season. Well worth making time for!

Movie review: Made in Dagenham

A bit behind, as we saw this a while ago…

**½ Made in Dagenham (November 2010) – Theatre
Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins. Set in Britain in 1968, shows how women workers at a Ford plant achieved pay equity with men though labour action.

She says: Really positive view of history that you realize must have been streamlined somewhat for dramatic purposes, but still makes for a pretty engaging movie.
He says: It was mostly good, but it was slow in parts.

The movie ends with the point that having achieved this milestone, the concept of “equal pay for equal work” for women spread throughout Britain, then through other industrialized countries. Of course, that’s for unionized jobs with clear pay scales. The picture is a bit murkier in other cases, as per this recent chart comparing men’s and women’s wages in US.

Gender gap in wages (US Bureau of Labor Statistics) shows men with higher wages in all sectors - management, services, sales, construction, and transportation

This is your cold on Cold-FX

Colds used to always run their predictable course with me:

  1. Throat scratchy.
  2. Throat sore and scratchy.
  3. Nose starts to run.
  4. Nose becomes faucet; Kleenex stores deleted.
  5. Nose starts to clear; cough sets in.

If lucky, the whole thing would be over in around 7 days. When unlucky, residual stuffiness / coughing would linger for some weeks afterward.

So last Wednesday, when my throat felt scratchy, I felt a certain sense of doom. Not for the first time, I dosed with Cold-FX in response. (Per their recommendations—six pills the first day, then four, then two.) I have found that, for me, Cold-FX tends to lessen the severity and duration of colds. But this time, it was quite extreme. Really, I had a mildly scratchy throat and a bit of coughing at night, for about five days. No fatigue. No stuffed-up nose. No real sense that I ever needed a cough drop or a Tylenol sinus or anything.

Was that even a cold? Jean says no (partly because he didn’t catch anything at all). But I definitely had some sort of throat thing for a few days. It was just super mild.

Oh, well. No sense in worrying about not being sick. And I don’t know whether Cold-FX deserves any credit or not. But I’m certainly keeping it on hand…

Congratulations, Arcade Fire

… On winning Album of the Year at the Grammy’s. Which I actually didn’t realize would be such a shock to everyone who isn’t me. (Cause it was certainly the best 2010 album I heard all year…)

And congratulations, Grammy’s, on giving Neil Young an award for an actual song (not just nice music repackaging), thus eliminating one from your embarrassing top 10 list of people who’ve never won a Grammy.

And to all the people in Twitter-ville so very, very upset that the Grammy’s dared award Album of the Year to a band they’ve never heard of… I gave you my very mature response:

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. My band rules.

What is this a list of?

  1. The Beach Boys
  2. Neil Young
  3. Led Zeppelin
  4. Queen
  5. The Who
  6. Jimi Hendrix
  7. Chuck Berry
  8. The Doors
  9. Bob Marley
  10. Curtis Mayfield

Best live acts? Most influential performers? Best albums of all time? Most-played songs on Cathy’s iPod?

No, no, no, and no. It’s actually “Top Ten Who Never Won a Grammy”, courtesy of 411 Music [link removed as the site no longer exists].

This is my favorite quote in the list:

This is another situation where you can’t really find a good reason as to why the group has yet to receive this award; they were popular commercially and critically for not just a brief time but for a long while, and you would think that at some point, one year, in one random category, people could have thought that The Who of all bands did the best job. But that apparently wasn’t the case. Because, as we all should realize by now, these people are morons.

Nevertheless, I do plan to record and watch this year’s Grammy’s. At least they had enough sense to nominate and invite Arcade Fire… And with three nominations, they even have a serious shot at winning one.

Classic albums live

A concert is not a live rendition of our album. It’s a theatrical event.

—Freddie Mercury

The most recent “Electric Thursdays” concert did not feature the usual Jeans’n’Classics band. Instead, it was the Classic Albums live crew, trademark “Note for note, cut for cut”. We were warned that there would not even be any talking to the audience (I guess, because there wasn’t any on the album).

The subject of the “full album” treatment was The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. And although the Centre in the Square website had the peculiar note that this concert did not feature the KWS (Kitchener Waterloo Symphony), that was not the case. They were there, albeit sitting farther back than usual. And also just sitting around more than usual, because of this idea of faithfully rendering the original album. Not all of which featured orchestra.

Now, though it is not my favorite Beatle album, I do like Sgt. Pepper. The musicians performing it were very good. The Symphony, when they did have occasion to play (“She’s Leaving Home”, “Mr. Kite”, and of course, “A Day in the Life”) sounded wonderful. The songs they played on were the highlight to me. The sound mixing seemed particularly good.

But the whole concept is kind of peculiar. The no interaction with the audience. The covering everything on the album, including the little sounds effects and spoken asides. Seemed more of an exercise than a performance, and left me a little cold, and Jean somewhat bored.

Fortunately, the second act, of “Beatles greatest hits” was somewhat more free-wheeling. They still stuck with the “as originally performed by the Beatles” idea, but by selecting a whole series of songs that were originally orchestrated, at least the Symphony had more to do. And this one did feature some of my favorites: I Am the Walrus, All You Need Is Love, Eleanor Rigby, Hey Jude.

The “encore”, which the only the band (not the symphony) came back for, turned into a rather extended set of various other Beatles classics like “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da”, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (with truly awesome re-creation of the original Clapton guitar solo), “Twist’n’Shout”, “Norwegian Wood” (with sitar, which was cool) and “Helter Skelter”! (And Jean amused me to no end with his shock that this cacophony of feedback was actually a Beatles song.) The band really seemed to be having fun at this part, and interacted a lot more with crowd, speaking occasionally, and getting us to clap and sing along at times.

Still, I have to say that overall, I prefer the Jeans’n’Classics approach. Even though they also sometimes do entire albums, sometimes even with the original artist, it’s never presented exactly as it was originally recorded. It’s always a re-creation, designed to take advantage of the concert hall and the variety of talented musicians available in the orchestra.

And isn’t that the point of live? To hear something different than what you can hear in your living room?

Since you can’t beat winter…

My catsitter thought we were crazy to visit Algonquin Park in February, but I don’t know. Appears the weather there was better than in Southwestern Ontario. Less snow, anyway.

This trip was organized by the Waterloo Wellington Canoe Club. Neither Jean nor I knew quite what to expect, but it turned out well. The whole group was in a housekeeping cottage, with shared kitchen and living room area, but we had our own room. With our own bathroom.

And, contrary to the mild but snowy weather predictions, we got mild and… beautiful sun, at least on Saturday. Made it a fabulous day to go into the park and do some snowshoeing. We did two different trails, one of which led to some really nice views.

Sunday was almost as good, still really mild, though there was a bit of snow this day. We stayed on the Bondi Village grounds and got in just as much, if not more, snowshoeing there. Very nice grounds also, even though we didn’t get to see the fabled deer.

For food, we had to bring our own, but there was a potluck supper Saturday night, with the leftovers served up again for Sunday lunch. Happily, the group seemed to include many with culinary talent, and it was quite a good meal. Or meals.

For entertainment, there was no Internet and no TV, so conversation and card games ruled. Also reading. I got through a whole novel and about five magazines. Whoosh.

I guess the group does this kind of trip twice annually, and we’ll definitely consider going again.

Dining at Bhima’s

The place we were asked to comment on for Where to Eat in Canada was Bhima’s Warung. (Coincidentally, the week we went there, the Record also reviewed them!)

Where to Eat doesn’t publish personal reviews, per se; instead, it compiles and considers all reports received to produce an overall assessment of the establishment. Therefore, when writing about Bhima’s Warung, I didn’t worry too much about massaging the language or whatever. Just said how it was:

As requested, we went to Bhima’s Warung this week, and have a bit of mixed response.

No issues with the starters, which were both oysters, but done different ways. I had the item on the regular menu, which is freshly shucked oyster in a warm lemongrass, ginger, chili, and garlic sauce. The sauce was really nice (spicy!), and really covered up the taste of oyster (such as it is). On the second I deliberately took less sauce to assess the oyster itself better, and they were really nice, seemed very fresh. My husband had a special that day, which was oysters baked with coconut (medium spicy). Haven’t had good baked oyster experiences in the past, but we enjoyed these. The texture does get a little bit can tuna-like, but the coconut flavoring was very good, and it had nice crispiness to it. In both cases, the price was $4 per oyster, and you could choose how many you wanted.

The restaurant had a good number of wines available by the glass, which we appreciated. I had a NZ Sauvigon Blanc with that, which worked well, and my husband had an Ontario Gerwurtz.

For the main course, I chose another regular menu item: tandoori-baked Cornish hen stuffed with sticky rice, with a side of pickled vegetables, naan bread, a yogurt and vegetable sauce, and a chutney ($28). My favorite part was actually the vegetables–beets, bok choy, and carrots, pickled. Surprising and delicious. The naan bread was also excellent. The Cornish hen was perfectly cooked, but quite moderately seasoned. Perhaps the idea was to dip it in the flavorful chutney or white sauce; certainly it took well to doing that. The sticky rice had exactly the texture you’d expect, but was also not too flavorful.

My husband had a special entree that day, which was duck confit and a side of seared foie gras. The duck confit was really quite delicious. The foie gras was also good, but was seared to the point of having a bit of charcoal taste. It did not ruin the texture, but the charcoal flavor was a bit odd. This dish was a bit lacking in accompaniments; it came with some grilled potatoes.

So while my main was more than I could eat, my husband cleaned off his plate and helped me a bit with mine.

With those, my husband had a glass of a nice CA cabernet sauvignon and I had a German off-dry Riesling.

And, we both tried dessert. I had the baked banana with vanilla ice cream. The ice cream was excellent, freshly made (by someone, if not Bhima’s themselves). The bananas tasted fine but weren’t as crispy as other desserts of this type that I’ve had, and which I would have preferred. My husband had the chocolate bread pudding with ice cream, and declared himself satisfied with that. Both desserts came with a really great peanut brittle.

We tried a couple teas with that. Mine was Indian spiced, and it was actually hot spicy! Not quite what I was expecting, and I couldn’t finish. My husband had ginger and honey tea that was more mellow.

The service was adequate. There was quite a wait for food to arrive, and there wasn’t any refilling of water glasses. My tea arrived after my dessert (and after my husband had received his). It was friendly and reasonably attentive, but not superlative.

So it’s a bit tough to assess overall. I appreciate the creativity of the menu, and most things do turn out well. But it is pretty pricey, and I’m not sure the value proposition is quite there. (Total for the meal was $170 with tax but before tip.)

Bob Geldof (‘s people) tweeted about “my” video

I have a Twitter account now, but this is no request for followers, as I have yet to “tweet” a darn thing.

I have, however, been following a few people, like the recently launched @BobGeldofFans. It’s not Bob (who, I learned on Twitter, apparently doesn’t even email, let alone tweet), but it is sanctioned by him.

And 23 hours ago, they posted this:

BobGeldofFans Bob Geldof

MEMORY LANE Take a look at this video — Bob Geldof – Too Late God – Tribute to Freddie Mercury concert youtube.com/watch?v=h6zSlO… via @youtube

Which links to a video on my YouTube account! So that was sort of cool. (Though one has to say this was hardly Bob’s best live performance…)

My first paid restaurant reviewing gig

The email was a bit strange, with a plea for help interspersed with complaints about having to use an “infernal machine” (the computer??) and a request for my phone number.

But the email address looked totally legit, one that I had indeed previously sent unsolicited restaurant reviews to.

It was Jean who had the bright idea of calling the publishing house to see if the email was for real.

“Oh yeah,” we learned. “Anne hates using the computer. But she does need help with restaurant reviews in KW.”

And so I ended up in conversation with the long-time writer of Where to Eat in Canada. I was able to give recent verbal reports on Verses and 20 King (now Bistro 41), but the other two she needed information on, I hadn’t been to in quite a while.

“Would you be willing to go to one of them in the next two weeks? I’ll pay you.”

So just like that, my first paid restaurant review. Not that I’ll be credited, mind you. And as for the payment… Well, I won’t be making enough to cover the meal (for two), let alone make a profit.

Still, I’m excited. And in the way of restaurant reviewers, I’m staying mum about my target establishment until the dining is done and reported on.