Adam Lambert live in Berlin

Dig if you will the picture…

A steamy, packed room of 1500 people pressed close together, singing, dancing, screaming. Stripping down as it gets hotter. On stage, an unbearably handsome singer, framed by two gorgeous dancers, playing music with an insistent, irresistible dance beat. Effortlessly hitting notes that don’t seem humanely possible, moving sensually, singing lyrics of want and desire. Keep me on a leash tonight. Lay me down in darkness. My one and own, I want to get you alone.

Sexiest. Concert. Ever.

BERLIN UNOFFICIAL POSTER augenpoesie

Standing rooms shows… I didn’t even know they were still a thing until this Adam Lambert Original High tour. For some reason he did no Canadian dates, and every venue I considered travelling to was no assigned seating / standing room. I hadn’t been to that type of show in decades.

It’s not my favourite thing, I gotta say. If the entry is well-managed and the fans reasonable, they can be alright, even fun. But if not, they are squishy, scary, unpleasant nightmare.

So when VIP “early entry” tickets when on sale, I was willing to quadruple my concert ticket costs for a chance to be among the first group to get in without having to wait in line.

The slightly nerve-wracking thing is you don’t get details of how exactly that’s going to work until you get an email “24 to 48 hours before your event”. It did nothing for my stress level that said email actually arrived more like 23 hours before my event.

VIPing: What we had to do was rudely walk past the people who’d been lining up all day, and head into the box office area ahead of them. There we were divided into two groups: Those who increased their ticket costs even more, such that they could also meet Adam Lambert before the show (those ladies were giddy), and those of us who just didn’t want to wait in line.

original.hTx7t2pB6HsvGsl_0ZPrIj2O1OclS1lzySAwU9xom3M
One of the Berlin meet and greeters with some dude

As that group went off for their pictures, we were allowed to enter the venue—warned to not run, push, or pass one another. “There’s no need anyway,” the coordinator said. “Because you’re all going to be in the front row.”

Uh? It actually hadn’t dawned on me to that point that we were small enough in number that indeed, we would be in the front row. (There were more “meet and greet” people, actually, and some of them ended up in the second row!)

But for me (and Jean), there was to be no visual obstruction whatsoever all night long. And we had a barrier to lean on. And it was less hot because of the lack of sticky bodies in front of us. It was awesome!

AL_Concert_CM
Crappy phone picture of me in the front row

The opening act, who started promptly at 8:00, were a German band named Eveline, led by an attractive blonde woman singer. They were pretty good—pop, dance style, good singer. She did all her speaking in German, and all her singing in English.

They finished around 8:30, and then we had a wait somewhere in neighbourhood of 45, 50 minutes, which got kind of long, really.

But right from the opening chords, all was forgiven.

For the benefit of those not steeped in all things Lambert:

  • Yes, he has a full band—guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. And two dancers / backup singers. And a pretty awesome light show.
  • Though he does a few covers, the focus is squarely on “his” music, from his three albums.
  • The show is in three parts: The “darker” songs, the ballads, and the dance party. He wears a different outfit for each.

This tour’s been going on for a while now, so the band was tight. They seemed to really be having a good time this night—it was all very high energy, and the pacing seemed perfect. I honestly enjoyed the whole show, but I’ll note some particular highlights.

09-selinaglambert-IG
Berlin band photo by @selinaglambert, https://www.instagram.com/p/BEzW6kyhG2X/?taken-by=selinaglambert

As I’ve already said, I had a great, close view of the stage all night, but I wasn’t right in the centre. Fortunately, Adam was kind of enough to regularly stroll (or dance) over to my end of the stage and stand right in front of me. He first did so at the beginning of Ghost Town. Lordy, he’s attractive in person. Every time he came near I was particularly mesmerized by those gorgeous, greenish eyes.

Chjqn3oWUAAtDaA
Instagram photo by Franke G., https://www.instagram.com/xx_frauke_xx/, taken at the Berlin show

For the purposes of maybe getting surprised, or at least avoiding disappointment, I had somewhat backed off on paying as much attention to Adam’s shows that preceded my own. However, I still caught the fact that in Hamburg, the show two days before Berlin, they had omitted the medley that included the song Runnin’.

There’s no reason to expect him to play Runnin’. It was never a single—heck, it was never even a regular album track, but just a bonus on the deluxe edition of his second album. Nevertheless, it’s such a fantastic song, it’s been discovered, just racking up the YouTube views, despite its not obviously not having a proper video accompaniment.

So I was very relieved that it made its return to the set in Berlin.

Runnin’/Chokehold/Sleepwalker live in Berlin (video)

Lucy, by contrast, is not one of my favourite Adam Lambert song, Brian May (Queen)’s presence on guitar notwithstanding. It’s the lyrics I don’t care for, mainly, as they come across as bit male judgmental about the titular Lucy. (Now, I’m no way suggesting that Adam is sexist. Only that this song is. A bit.)

As done live, though, it was saved for me by the dance moves. No, not Adam’s, but Holly Hyman’s, whose interpretation read, to me, as really powerful and defiant. She actually made me like the song for the first time. Which is cool.

Lucy live in Berlin

And at the end of it, Adam did this, while standing right in front of me.

GIF LUCY B Berlin maggy97 lilybop

Adam is not overly chatty in concert, preferring to letting his singing do the talking. Still, we got a “Hello Berlin” pretty early on, following the tidbit I didn’t know, that he had lived in Berlin for three months. “It wasn’t long, but it gave me a taste.

“And it tasted nasty.”

In the ballad portion of the evening, we got the longest talking sequence. Adam’s message here is that we should try focusing more on our commonalities than differences. “There’s one thing that everyone in this audience all has in common.” Pause. “ME!” Hee!

04-anijsf IG
Photo by Anja Josef Salvat, https://www.instagram.com/anijsf/

Now seems a good time to address what you might be wondering: Given our excellent sight lines, why am I cribbing pictures from other folks instead of featuring wonderful, original Jean photography?

That would be because security took away our camera. Which was very frustrating, as there had been no advance warning that a small camera would be an issue. Even more frustrating? They didn’t seem to take away anybody else’s camera! (Do Germans just like to pick on Canadians?) As my budget cell phone was useless for taking photos, we have none. Which still irritates me every time I think about it.

adam-beauty
Another beautiful Berlin photo by Franke G., who clearly didn’t get her camera confiscated

That said… When you are attending the Sexiest Concert Ever with your sweetie, it’s actually not a terrible thing that his hands and face are free… To fondle something other than a camera…

Ahem. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Adam’s vocals are a thing of wonder: this is not a singer who backs away from the high notes while live. And no auto-tune, either.And the terrific The Original High was quite the showcase for that. He Sings So High in this song.

The big note at the 3:00 minute mark of this video

I also found out later we were very lucky to have David Bowie’s Let’s Dance included in the set, as that’s another number they haven’t been doing so much lately. It was a terrific version. That then led into the super-hot trio of dance songs, “Lay Me Down”, “Shady”, and “Fever”. We especially enjoyed dancer Terrance Spencer’s moves during this sequence.

The audience by now was a sweaty, frenzied mess, but the band wasn’t done with us. They launched into “If I Had You,”—not the weird, reggae version presented earlier on the tour, but the irresistible original. The entire place was hopping to it in unison! So fun!

The encore was Trespassing, which happens to be a favourite of both mine and Jean’s. And got some more talking, including Adam presenting his lucky glitter mushroom (???).

mushrooms

“Want to hear some Queen?” he asked, and on the affirmative, we got some “Another One Bites the Dust”. And a crazy-notes Adam Lambert singalong. (“Some of you are acting too cool to sing. I see you!”) And he concluded with more “Trespassing.”

And what did Jean think? Jean… Actually had a really good time! He’s a people watcher, and he found Adam’s audience mix fascinating. He enjoyed watching me and the other adult woman around regress into teenagers. And he got into it. He danced a bit. He snapped his fingers. He pretended to sing so Adam wouldn’t pick on him.

(But for the record, he still prefers the Queen + Adam Lambert show, because that’s more his music. And also, we had seats for that one.)

Set list:

Anger / Darkness

  1. Evil in the Night
  2. For Your Entertainment
  3. Ghost Town
  4. Welcome to the Show
  5. Runnin’
  6. Chokehold
  7. Sleepwalker
  8. Underground
  9. Rumors
  10. Lucy

Love and longing

  1. After Hours
  2. Mad World
  3. Whataya Want from Me
  4. Another Lonely Night

Party!

  1. The Light
  2. The Original High
  3. Never Close Our Eyes
  4. Let’s Dance
  5. Lay Me Down
  6. Shady
  7. Fever
  8. If I Had You
  9. Trespassing
  10. Another One Bites the Dust
  11. Trespassing (Reprise)

Ratings

Show: A+

I can’t think of a way they could have improved it.

Audience: A

Included a number of uber-fans I actually recognized from their tweets and blogs. And whether uber or not, it was very striking how everyone could and did sing along, with every song, not just “the hits.” They basically screamed instead of clapped to show appreciation. Lively, lively. Only lose + due to some veteran meet and greeters who (I heard) were overly stoic in the front row, which is just a waste. (This did not seem a problem with our VIP half.)

VIP experience: A

Very well-organized check-in and admission procedure, and made this such a great experience for me. Even the included merchandise was better than I expected: Quite a nice poster, and I hadn’t realized it would be signed! (Not that we need two, but…)

They only lose their + for the latish email that basically had the wrong time: It said to be there for 7:00, which made no sense, since that was general admission time. Fortunately, everyone figured that out and was there for the actual required time, between 6:15 and 6:30. Still…

Venue – Huxleys Neue Welt: D.

Apart from my camera problems, I later read on Twitter that this place didn’t have a scanner for electronic tickets! Meaning that anyone with those (like me) had to get out of the line they had likely been standing in for hours to go to an office and switch their eTicket for a “real” ticket. What the…? I also heard they weren’t very good at managing the general admission entry, which can be nightmarish, and I saw the security was really aggressive about removing items like balloons and glow sticks—even though fans had asked in advance and been assured those were fine!

So, I’d definitely see Adam Lambert in concert again, but never at Huxleys.

Links

My compiled Original High Berlin YouTube playlist

Berlin concert roundup

Full show audio:

A footnote about my feet

So before I knew I’d have VIP, I was trying to figure out how to improve my chances of actually seeing something at this show despite being short, and finally concluded that only shoes with wedge heels would work. So I got these:

wedge

Which added, like, 3 inches to my height. Not realizing I’d be ending up in the front row, I wore them.

So I can tell you that for 5.5 hours of straight standing, those suckers were surprisingly comfortable. And though not needed in the front row, they were kind of handy for looking over people’s head at the merchandise table after.

However… During the short walk to the train station, my feet basically had a nervous breakdown. I felt like I would die if I didn’t get off  my feet. Thankfully, the train station wasn’t far, it had a bench, and I was able to find a seat on the train. So I survived the journey back to the hotel room.

So if you try the wedge shoe approach to seeing something at standing room concerts, remember: To survive, you will have to get off your feet every five hours or so. You’re welcome.

 

More Sonos

Sonos, you might recall, is an app-controlled, multi-room, wireless speaker system. I got my first speaker, a Play 5, for Christmas, and installed in the kitchen.

I was happy enough with  it overall to expand the system as my birthday present this year. We got a single Play 1 speaker for the bedroom, and a Sonos Connect for the living room stereo system. So now I could finally try the multi-room feature.

Generally, it’s pretty easy to set up and use. Whenever you want to play the same music in more than one room, you “group” the speakers. This doesn’t work only with the native queues, but with whatever you’re choosing to play through Sonos: a radio station or a line-in application. It took a little while to figure how differing queues behaved with the grouping and ungrouping, but I think I get that now.

So the only big gap in that functionality—for us, anyway—is that you can’t set Sonos alarms as a group. So even though we set both bedroom and kitchen to start CBC Radio at the same time each morning, they’re never completely in sync. So in parts of the house where you can hear both, you get these weird echoes. Can be fixed by manually grouping the speakers, but it’s a bother having to do that daily.

Jean had also discovered, at some point, that with a paid Google Play Music account, you can send music right from that Google Play Music app to Sonos, without having to go through the Sonos app. This is a feature I’ve become quite fond of—it’s just faster to do that (for anything I don’t already have queued), plus the MusixMatch lyrics then works in automated mode!

google-play-music

That definitely gave Google Play another edge Spotify as the music service I’m willing to pay a monthly fee for—that, and its free cloud storage of my own music (even though that doesn’t work perfectly). Now, Spotify does have more and better playlists, nicer social functionality, and sometimes gets new music just a little faster than Google does. But I still wasn’t quite convinced to pay monthly for both, especially as you can do quite a bit with free Spotify (though playing it through Sonos isn’t one of those things).

As for the fact that Sonos doesn’t give access to play counts and dates—that’s bothering me less than I thought it would. The geeky solutions I looked up were a little too geeky for me, so I just do a little manual kludging to get an approximation of my previously automated “smart” playlists. But with the streaming, I also simply have a lot more ways to listen to new music than I used to.

I recently filled in a Sonos survey rating their current features and noting what else I’d like. At the end was the more demographic stuff—age, gender, education, the usual—then a series of questions I wasn’t expecting. How much do the following statements describe me?

  • I like to travel to learn about new cultures
  • I enjoy trying different types of foods and cuisines
  • Healthy and nutritious eating is important
  • Music is a major part of my life

So, OK,, that describes me a lot.

But would you have guessed that being an adventurous / nutritious eater who likes travel makes you more likely to want an app-controlled wireless speaker for your house? Like, how are those things connected?

music-food_wide-4a80c157cf170cad2ec0ec96151473d90c5d9794-s700-c85

Meet the cats

I have a posse of three who haven’t had much blog time to date.

Zoë

Zoë has been with us the longest. Jean saw her at a pet store—not one of those stores that sells kittens and puppies, one of those that displays rescue cats up for adoption—and couldn’t resist. He called me.

“I’m at Pet Value, want to adopt this cat,” he said.

“So she’s black calico?” I answered.

Jean, confused: “So you’ve seen her too?”

No Jean, I hadn’t seen her too. I just knew that Jean had been missing our black calico, Bob, who’d passed away some months before.

Zoë indeed resembled Bob very much; in older pictures, it’s hard to tell which cat is which. And she shares Bob’s graceful elegance of movement.

Zoe
The pretty Zoë in one of her favorite spots

But she’s her own cat. Her big round eyes give her an air of constant inquisitiveness; when awake, she always seems to be fascinated by something. The background she was rescued from was a house overcrowded with cats; she’s never really lost her interest in sneaking around, scrounging around for food, though now it’s just for fun and not survival. And if she does get mouth on something good, she stills goes to hide in the corner to eat it, though the other cats have no interest in trying to steal it from her—they don’t even like “people” food.

She’s the shyest of the bunch and is not exactly a lap cat. But she enjoys being pet in particular places: up on window sills, in the bathroom (as long as she’s the only cat in there), and on us, as long we have a blanket barrier. She also has a daily ritual of joining us for meals at breakfast, on her own stool, content to hang with us whether or not she gets any treats.

McSteamy

McSteamy was picked out of a “catalog” of rescue cats. We were “shopping” because Romey, a stray who’d adopted us years before (and remains our sweetest cat ever) had passed, leaving us with just Zoë. McSteamy was gorgeous, a blue-eyed tabby-Siamese cross.

A handsome fellow

Unfortunately, he was also terrified of us.

It was nothing personal. His foster owner said he’d also been scared of her at first, but had gotten over it, and now she adored him. I was skeptical, but Jean was taken in, so we brought him home and put him in a room for an adaptation period, during which he scrambled under furniture every time we entered. But, once safely “hidden” away he did let us pet him, and would eventually sneak out a bit more.

One day, not long after he’d been allowed out of the one room, some commotion gave him a big fright. He ran up three flights of stairs, jumped on a bed, then crashed through a screened, second-floor window. He through the back yard, beyond the fence, and out to hide with the gophers in the wooded berm.

The cat rescue organization was very helpful in dealing with this crisis. They lent us a trap, told us to put as close to the window he’d escaped from as possible, and to wait. Again I was skeptical, but darned if McSteamy didn’t make his way into that trap around 2:00 in the morning.

Once back in the house and release, McSteamy decided we were the best people ever. And he has never really stopped thinking that. His fear of us was gone for good.

Frankly, I shudder to think what kind of experience he’d had before ending up at the shelter where the cat rescue organization got him, because now this is one of the friendliest, most relaxed cats I’ve ever encountered.

McSteamy’s stressful life

mcsteamy
McSteamy_(3_of_5)_160403

He’s the first to visit “strangers” to the house. If there’s a commotion, he’ll amble over to see what it’s about. He not only accepts attention now; he demands it. With insistent meowing, when necessary (whereas he was a basically silent cat at first).

And yes, he was named after the character in Grey’s Anat0my, a show we watched at the time. Most people find the name a hoot…

Mocha

Mocha was adopted at the same time as McSteamy, but by the same method as Zoë: She was the featured rescue cat at Pet Value. In the store, she seemed the friendliest, most cuddly cat ever. Once we got her home, she proceeded to hide from us behind and underneath furniture, for months. Devious!

Through their time of joint fear in the “adaptation room”, McSteamy and Mocha formed a bond that persists to this day. They often cuddle and sleep together, which always looks adorable and bit funny, because Mocha is an unusually tiny cat, and McSteamy is… not.

Fury Kid's looking cute

At any rate, Mocha did eventually warm to us as well—especially Jean, whom she loves to climb up and all over when he’s at the computer. “Too intense, Mocha!” is a common refrain. And she’s decided I’m OK, too. Especially that I’m not off on canoe or business trips as often as Jean; Mocha has to get her petting somewhere.

Though much calmer than on first adoption, she remains a bit nervous and jumpy, especially when it comes to eating. Her backstory: likely a pet that got out when she went into a heat. She and her kittens were rescued from someone’s backyard. (She and all our cats are now neutered, of course.) But the “rescue” likely involved getting trapped in a box when she snuck out to eat, and she apparently fears that might happen again.

Mocha!
But mostly she seems happy with her lot

Pretty Woman (talk a while)

I’m not one for analyzing my site stats, as that might interfere with my goal of being self-indulgent as to what I write about.

grid-cell-6661-1389547445-13But my husband, he likes to explore the numbers. And he was noticing that a surprising number of people were trying to access an old essay of mine about the movie Pretty Woman. And that this kept happening, week after week. Odd.

He got curious enough about it this weekend to dig into it more. He discovered that there’s a college in Buffalo whose curriculum (on film studies, I guess?) was linking to my old essay as an example of what students in the course would be expected to produce.

Interesting, and somewhat flattering, I guess.

I had a look at the essay again, and reproduced in on my newer site: Pretty Woman: A Fantasy Theme Analysis. (I also left the older page up. Those people are having trouble enough finding it as it is.) I had completely forgotten that it was actually an oral presentation, not a written paper, so it’s much more conversational than most of my academic writing.

I also marvelled at all the pop culture research I’d managed to do for it, in those pre-Internet days.

And noted that I was awfully judgmental about sex work. (And also that I called it prostitution instead of sex work.)

But, I did no latter-day revising. I just fixed a couple typos, and took advantage of the web’s existence to add some photos and a YouTube video.

(Bonus: 19 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Pretty Woman. My essay includes items 3 and 16. I wish I’d included something about item 4. But I was still years from seeing La Traviata…)

Dinner party

As we’ve established, planning a party is hard. No, it’s not hard to say BYOB and order a few pizzas, but when it comes to any parties larger than that–dinner parties, holiday parties, weddings–there are a lot of moving pieces. There are guest lists and menus and seating arrangements and invitations and possibly staff, all weighed against the ultimate stress of any party: money. So every party, generally, is a balance of all those things. It’s an experience that makes the most people possible happy without the hosts going broke.

Uncommon Courtesy Blog

So, I don’t do it all that often, the planning of a dinner party.

Well, that’s not really true. Planning them—at least to the extent of musing about having one—I do pretty regularly. Actually carrying through on those plans is what’s rare.

But last weekend, such a unicorn occurred. I had been thinking of trying to reprise some of the more “gourmet” dishes we try out at new year’s for a larger group people. And about the fact that we had some friends that we’d never had over for dinner before—some had never even seen our house. And we mixed those folks with some people we hadn’t seen in a while.

That added up to six guests, plus the two of us, which is really two more people than fit around our dining room table. So we had to do a table addendum:

Dinner_party_(6_of_16)_160320

In terms of food, I went mostly with tapas-style items. This gave variety, and most items could be largely prepared ahead. Downside was a variety of dishes to prepare, which took up a fair chunk of the weekend:

  • Vegetarian spring rolls
  • Edamame with sea salt
  • Lamb skewers with mint pesto
  • Seared tuna with avocado and orange
  • Wild rice with fruit and nuts

Dinner_party_(2_of_16)_160320

The wild rice was the one item we’d never prepared before, added so we’d have enough food, basically. It was probably least successful. It was a bit mushy, a bit too sweet. (No, none of the guests complained. That’s my assessment.) Everything else was quite good, though. People went back for more.

Dinner_party_(14_of_16)_160320

For wines, we just opened a nice Ontario Riesling, a French Beaujolais (light red), and an Ontario Sangiovese, followed by a French Vacqueyras, so people could take what they would. The music playlist was a Sonos-assembled, timed segue: “high-energy” songs to start the evening, pre-dinner; “thoughtful” (quirky pop) music during the main course, then “romance” for dessert, coffee, and post-dinner relaxation.

As for dessert, that was dark or white chocolate bark with fruit and nuts (dark was much better), chocolate souffle, and grapes—frozen and not. Frozen grapes is something Jean has gotten into that was a novelty for most. Also made for some interesting conversation, adding to the very wide range of topics discussed all evening.

So, I think that was successful. But I’m not quite ready to start musing about the next one.

Magic Mike marathon

When it comes to binge-watching, I’m a real lightweight. (I don’t really get how anyone watches TV for hours on end. Don’t you people have shit to do?) So this “binge” meant that I watched the first Magic Mike movie on Saturday night, and Magic Mike XXL on Sunday night. (In case wondering: Jean was otherwise occupied both nights, and therefore has no opinion on either film.)

Both movies are about male strippers. “Magic” Mike, played by Channing Tatum, stars in both.

magicmikelasvegas

In the usual critical terms, the first Magic Mike is the better film (80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). It’s directed by Stephen Soderbergh (something I didn’t realize til I saw the credits at the end). And it’s fairly gritty, showing there’s a certain hollowness to selling your body for money—even if you’re a man. We see how Mike has trouble forging a real, committed relationship with a woman. How he dreams of running his own custom furniture business, but keeps getting distracted by the easy money of stripping—though his stockpiles of cash do nothing for his credit rating and loan eligibility. And how an 19-year-old who joins the troupe (The Kid, played by Alex Pettyfer) quickly and dangerously gets caught up in the drug trade.

The most fun parts of this movie are the dance performances. In terms of lighting, costumes, and effects—not to mention how very handsome this particular troupe of male strippers are—it’s probably not so realistic. But that’s also likely why the movie became the surprise hit it was.

This “Honest Trailer” for Magic Mike perfectly captures its sad story / hot dancing dichotomy

Magic Mike XXL is not directed by Stephen Soderbergh. And in the “usual critical terms,” it’s not that great a movie (62% on Rotten Tomatoes). The plot is super simple: It’s three years later! The guys are reuniting for one last big strip show! Road trip! Yet it nonetheless often doesn’t make much sense. Why are they stopping at this house? What is that girl from the beach doing there? What is the timeline of this movie?

And yet, and yet. In a world where so many movies are made for teenage boys, it’s hard not to have fondness for a movie so clearly made just for women. (Straight women, anyway.)

magic-mike-a-435

The first movie focused mostly on Mike, The Kid, and MC Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). The Kid and Dallas aren’t in the sequel, so everyone else in the troupe gets more time, especially Matt Bomet as Ken and Joe Manganiello as Big Dick Richie. And what men they are: strong, gorgeous, masculine, but also sweet, sensitive, and funny. None of them have wives / girlfriends at the moment, so they are able to devote themselves to the goal of making women of the world happy.

And they’re very inclusive and non-judgmental about that goal. You kind of plain? That won’t stop Richie from doing a big dance number just to make you smile. Racial diversity comes in after they visit club whose clientele are mostly African-American women (and they pick up a couple African American men to join the group). A bit old to get out to strip clubs? No worries; the men will come to your house to show you “it’s still your time”. Larger-size women get the same worshipful on-stage treatment as their thinner counterparts—and nobody throws their back out. There’s even a scene in a gay club, just so it’s clear these guys don’t have a problem with that, either.

giphy

Richie working the pop machine in a bid to entertain a grumpy shop girl

The stage performances are such a blatant attempt to appeal to women’s fantasies, it’s almost hilarious. Into rock stars? Here’s Ken, singing (nice voice, too), then stripping! Want to be married to a bad boy? He’s Richie in a tux with a big ring: but after the “wedding”, he’ll take off his clothes and throw you in a sling! Want to be painted? Have some guy lick whip cream off your thighs? Or just dance with a guy who looks like Tatum Channing? Done, done, and done!

So, you want a decent movie with a side of hot guys? Then Magic Mike could do the trick. But if you’d rather shut your brain off and enjoy a fantasy, just go for Magic Mike XXL.

Magic Mike XXL official trailer

So you think you can dance

The email from the KW Symphony on February 18:

Thank you for purchasing tickets to the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony‘s Dancin’ Through the Decades. To enhance the overall concert experience, we have added a dance floor for these concerts. The dance floor will be located between the first row and the orchestra musicians. Since this floor is on one of the moveable lifts, it will be 14 inches lower than where the seating starts, in the first row, and should not obstruct the view of any patrons.

That seemed neat, but logistically problematic.

“We’re not going to go there in our dance shoes,” said Jean, pointing out the snowy climes.

But our early spring meant that we could, in fact, go there in our dance shoes without wrecking the soles.

However, it remained that our seats were right in the middle of the row, meaning we couldn’t get out to the dance floor without disrupting half of the people in said row. (And it was a pretty well-attended show.) Plus, we definitely didn’t want to be the first ones on the floor.

We stayed put during the swingin’ “In the Mood,” as did everyone else—much to conductor Matt Catinghub’s chagrin. But then a few brave souls made their way onto the floor.

“What is this one?“ my husband whispered as they launched into the new tune. And by that he meant what dance beat is it, not what song title. (Which is just as well, as now I can’t remember the song title.)

“Slow fox,” I answered.

Well, slow fox is like dance cat nip to my husband—he just can’t resist. We proceeded to disturb everyone in half the row and made it down the dance floor.

But, that’s about all the disturbing we did, because then we just stayed on the floor for the whole show.

For ballroom / Latin dance aficionados, the first half, with music of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, was especially appealing. Along with a number of slow foxes, we got to tango (I think), waltz to “Unforgettable” (I know), jive to “Twist and Shout”, and cha-cha to “La Bamba.”

I have never danced to such beautiful sound. The Symphony are terrific, of course; the Centre has some of the best acoustics on the continent; and the guest singer (Anita Hall), drummer (Steve Moretti), and saxophone players were also fantastic—and very energetic! (Matt Caringhub also did some keyboards.)

If you do a Where’s Waldo on this tweeted photo, you might be able to spot us

At intermission we drank a lot of water—and received compliments on our dancing from passing strangers, which was nice! (Maybe we can dance.)

The second half was 70s, 80s, 90s, and current. Disco like “Night Fever” is basically a samba, and I actually know the steps (yes, there are steps) to YMCA.

Of course, everyone knows the chorus part of this dance

Then we got some “Hotel California,” “Don’t Stop Believin”, “Africa”, “Vogue”, “Rock Lobster” (featuring KWS Assistant Conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser on vocals), and “Happy” by Pharell Williams. So a lot of really fun songs—but also a lesson in why no one does partner dancing anymore, since that just doesn’t work as well to those beats.

But hey, it was a really fun night, and I’m so glad the symphony offered the dance floor setup. It was totally worth the sore muscles the next day!

(As for the television show So You Think You Can Dance, I find their new gimmick of featuring dancers age 8 to 13 completely mystifying and utterly uninteresting. I do not plan to watch.)

The Who Hits 50 (or so)

The Who’s “long good-bye” tour was extended even further when Roger Daltrey came down with viral meningitis last year, forcing all fall 2015 shows to be rescheduled for spring 2016. For my Toronto show, this meant attending a year and four months after I bought the tickets. So I think the Who were really hitting 52 or so…

Who in Concert March 2016
Some of the Who trivia that played before the show started

Continue reading “The Who Hits 50 (or so)” →

Oscar round-up

I expect I’ll tune in for Chris Rock’s opening monologue tonight, but can’t see me sitting there for the following 3+ hours watching it live, with commercials. Even though I do have some opinion about what I’d like to see happen (though mostly, it won’t).

Best picture / Directing

I rented Spotlight from iTunes last night. It is indeed a very good film. I was only vaguely familiar with the story—of the extent of the Catholic Church’s covering up pedophile priests in Boston—so I was along for the ride as the reporting team’s investigation uncovered more and more disturbing facts.

So I’ve now seen five of the eight Best Picture nominees, and three of five Directing. The Revenant I have no interest in ever seeing. Three hours of Leonard di Caprio going through horrible experiences in the bush. Yeah, no thanks. Bridge of Spies—I know nothing about that movie, really. Room—definitely want to see it. I was able to handle the book; should be able to handle the movie. (But Jean wasn’t so sure he could, so this wasn’t a theatre outing for us. Same as Spotlight.)

best-picture

But how to rank what I have seen?

If I went with my heart, it would definitely be Brooklyn. It was just so lovely, and the only one from a woman’s point of view.

With my head, maybe Spotlight with a slight edge over The Big Short?

Though for pure entertainment, hard to beat The Martian. So suspenseful. And overall liked it more than Mad Max: Fury Road, even though that one did manage to keep me interested in a big car chase, which is no mean feat.

And I really think Mad Max: Fury Road was the most impressive directing job of these.

Other film categories

Inside Out had better win Animated Feature Film, and I stick to that despite not having seen any others in this category. That was just one of the best pictures of last year, period. I note it’s up for Best Original Screenplay, too.

95114614770e1f8118804bc009d4ff88767d6ce8c81180cc618ab8f645ab4fe4-370x492I can’t be quite as categorical in the Documentary category, where again I’ve seen only one of the nominees: Amy. Will say that it is very good, though. Wasn’t particularly an Amy Winehouse fan walking in. Certainly was walking out.

Haven’t seen a single one of the Foreign language film nominees!

Acting

Here I’ve really missed a lot of these movies, though I hope to catch some eventually. And there are definite favorites for these, right? DiCaprio best actor; Brie Larson (Room) best actress; Sylvester Stallone (Creed) supporting actor, and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) supporting actress.

At least on that last one, I can wholeheartedly support. She was amazing. See:

The Danish Girl movie clip: I want my husband

And I really liked Soairse Ronan in Brooklyn, though can’t compare her to Brie Larson.

Brooklyn movie clip: You don’t sound Irish

Best song

I only know three of them, and I think Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens to You” might be the best of the bunch. Powerful.

Then all those other categories…

Sound mixing, animated short films, makeup and hairstyling, film production.. Lordie. This is why the Oscars go on 3+ boring hours.

 

Pictures! Food, cities, people

Looking over Jean’s recent photos inspired me to write an activity update…

Toronto

We spent a weekend in Toronto at the end of January. We were blessed with unseasonably (though not unusually, this year) warm weather, which must have pleased these residents:

Things you don't expect in Toronto!
“New to us” elephant street art in Toronto

But people were still able to skate:

Things you do expect in Toronto
Isn’t this photo gorgeous?

And we enjoyed dinner at Ki Restaurant again—with the same great waitress as last time.

Tai with truffle oil and cranberry ponzu
Tai with truflle oil and cranberry ponzu

Party

Last weekend we were away for Jean’s company party. They always do an amazing job of this, not only offering dinner and dancing, but putting everyone up in a hotel. This was a big anniversary year, so we also had an Olympian (Gold medal winner, from Canada’s women’s hockey team) give an inspiring talk, anda  live band playing jazz. That gave us an opportunity to do practice some tango, jive, and quick step—with plenty of room, as we were the only ones on the dance floor! (Bit intimidating, really….)

untitled_(75_of_149)_160220
For once, Jean is in the picture

Berlin

Last night was supposed to be dinner out at the Naked Oyster with a friend, but he had to cancel due to illness. So, we took ourselves to Kitchener’s Berlin restaurant instead. Still a bit louder than we find ideal, but we had an excellent waiter (formerly of Langdon Hall) and the food was exquisite. Though Jean complained that I ordered the “better” option at every turn… Grilled squid over cheese appetizer, and then:

Roasted Duck Breast with Smoked Beets :)
Roast duck breask with smoked beets

over baked blue fish with duck confit gizzards; and then:

Hazelnut Puff Pastry like no other :D
Hazelnut puff pastry (so amazing)

over fruit crepe with cream.

But hey, it’s not a competition. (Even if I totally won.)