Montreal, eh?

Apologies that I haven't posted in a while. Things were a bit hectic for the last month or so, with the Capstone coming to an end and having to move out of Syracuse at the same time. I'm hanging out in Montreal for a couple of weeks before heading back to Atlanta and really jumping into the job search.


(Photo courtesy of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.)

Here's what I've done so far:

-Walked along Ste. Catherine St., taking care to check out all the cool boutique-like shops while doing so.
-Eaten at Le Taj, and discovered probably the best Indian food I've ever had the pleasure of consuming. (Sorry Ma, it's true.)
-Visited the Musee des Beaux Arts. They have a nice little collection, but what's even cooler is the newish gallery building across the street.
-Spent an hour in Chapters, a bookstore resembling Borders, but somehow a little chic-er.
-Had a drink on the terrace at Sky, a bar near Old Montreal. The view is amazing, and the sangria is delightful.
(Logo courtesy of the Montreal Jazz Festival.)

-Peeked in at the Montreal Jazz Festival while walking around the area.
-Stopped in a delightful cafe in St. Lambert for lunch during an afternoon of window shopping.

It's been fun and very relaxing. I've actually been reading books for pleasure again, and that has been so gratifying. The weather has been pleasant too. It's not been too warm, so it's perfect for walking around outside. The Just For Laughs comedy festival starts this week, and it should be interesting to check out some of those shows.
(Logo courtesy of the Just For Laughs festival.)

(Hopefully I'll be able to put up some of my own pictures soon, but I misplaced my camera cord when I was moving last week. I'll figure something out, though.)

Woodstock sighting

My Capstone research took me to a little town called Jeffersonville in mid-state New York. It's a quaint little town with the usual high street assortment of town businesses - the post office, a couple of restaurants, a couple of furniture shops, a bookstore, and even a chocolate shop, where everyone apparently hangs out. There is also a health foods store and two coffee shops which boast "Free Trade" coffee on their signage inviting you to come inside. So it's a pretty hip little town. Anyway, the pastor that I had to interview for my paper told me that Jeffersonville was only nine miles away from the site of the Woodstock concert in 1969. I couldn't be that close to the essence of the rock Gods and not check it out!



The town that holds the Yasgur's farm, where the original event took place, is called Bethel Woods, and there is now a big arts and concert venue nearby. (Woodstock, NY is actually on the other side of the Catskills.) Clearly I had to take a picture, and I tried not to look too ridiculous snapping photos (on a really busy road) of what looks like a totally common farm in a remote part of the state. You can't make it out so well from this picture, but the building actually does say "Yasgur" on it, which is what tipped me off. A professional journalist, I am.

My dream has come true!

Season 1 of CHiPs (the most mocktastic '70s cop show of all time!) comes out on DVD on Tuesday, June 5th. Thought you all would want to know.

An Apple a day...

This morning, I found that my computer wouldn't connect to the internet via the ethernet cable that connects my cable modem to my laptop. The Airport wireless was working just fine, but I didn't have a wireless router in my apartment. So after spending almost 30 useless anytime minutes with Time Warner's crack support team (who simply kept rebooting the modem remotely and then asking me to reboot my computer to no avail) I marched my precious - yes, I have the same affinity for it as Gollum does to that silly little ring - laptop to the Apple store at Carousel Mall. There, a brilliant, nice man named Martin tested it and determined that yes, my ethernet port was indeed faulty. The remedy? To send my computer off to the Apple Gods someplace in California where they will replace the logic board along with the faulty port. They are usually pretty speedy with this type of service, but I am in the middle of writing my thesis and can't afford to be computerless at the moment. What's worse is that I can't pay a whole fortune for that kind of service because I am a non-income-generating student right now. The wonderful "genius" (that's the Apple name for these guys - I didn't make that up) Martin checked my Apple Care warrantly and saw that it had expired on May 7, 2007. Naturally. Well, he and his manager, Donna, worked their collective magic and authorized the repair under the warranty since it had just been a couple of weeks since it expired. AND, they are letting me wait to send it in for repairs until after my thesis draft is due on June 8. I couldn't have been more delighted or more surprised with the easy, intelligent, and purely excellent service that I encountered.

It's almost as if the Apple company realizes that their customers are valuable. What a concept! (It's sad that we don't have more stories like this about customer service. Everyone's just annoyed with everything everywhere, it seems.)

I did walk out of the store with an Airport Express, which took me all of five minutes to unwrap and install. I love how Apple products are so easy to use. Just plug in and go to town. And now I am happily online again.

As if I needed another reason to rave about my Mac. (By the way, I have NEVER owned a Windows machine. It was love at first Mac.)

Are you living (what?)... Are you living (what?)...

When did the '90s become a musical genre in itself? In honor of this month's long weekend, a radio station in Syracuse decided to play only "90s" music, which was surprisingly amusing and reminiscent at the same time. When I was a kid, '70s music was meant for ridicule, and when I was in college, all things '80s were similarly considered silly. But when did it become ok to relegate the '90s to such loving mockery as well? I missed the memo completely on that, especially since that decade barely ended seven years ago. It still feels so fresh...



After I saw a couple of episodes of In Living Color over the weekend, I realized there is actually much to mock from the '90s. Just to name a few: Beverly Hills 90210, Kato Kaelin, grunge, Vanilla Ice, the Spice Girls, etc. (I guess VH1 has already figured that out with their I Love the '90s series.) However, those wacky Wayans were rocking the mock in while still living in the decade!

What do Erica Kane and Brit Pop have in common?

My friends and family who know me well know that my ultimate guilty pleasure is the ABC soap, All My Children. Truthfully, I have been exposed to this show since I was in my mother's womb. (And now, with the advent of my life-altering DVR, every delicious episode is ready and waiting for me when I come home at night.) So today, I almost fell off the couch when the typically mundane reflection scene (in which many of the characters at their individual crossroad situations are shown to be thoughtfully pontificating their next move) at the end of the show featured the new Travis single, "Closer." I mean, talk about two great things that taste great together! It actually provoked me to write a blog post revealing my shameful delight to the world (or rather, to the 15 people that actually read this blog regularly.)



On that note, let me tell you about the new Travis album which came out on May 7.

But first, some background: If you are unfamiliar with this band, they are from Glasgow, Scotland, and they really were the forerunners of the whole Coldplay frenzy, also seen as the "sensitive stadium rock" thing in America and the UK. (This particular phrase was stolen from a Guardian article that talked about a recent Travis show in London, but most rock scholars agree that Travis was doing the Coldplay thang long before Martin and Co. came along. An Independent article says that Travis were able to take Radiohead's moody brooding style and Brit-pop-ify it.) Anyway, Travis have always been huge in the UK, but not so much on this side of the pond. It's a shame, really, because these guys are really poignant, write good melodic pop songs, and are even smartly humorous at the same time. Their biggest US hit was a song called "Why Does it Always Rain on Me?" which, incidentally, John Mayer used to cover when he played at Eddie's Attic in Decatur, GA to crowds of 15 people back in the early '00s. (I don't know why I just threw that tidbit in.)

Travis took a break of about 18 months since they last went on tour. During that time, the band wrote and recorded new songs, and welcomed new members into their families. Their last album, 12 Memories, was more politically charged than their earlier work, and the industry deemed it a mainstream failure. (I thought it was a really good record, myself, but it was definitely deeper and darker than their usual stuff.) So there was a bit of buzz around Travis's latest effort, The Boy With No Name. Would they be able to come back to their early '00s glory?

The album does have a bit of a throwback to earlier musical styles, but the lyrics are more mature and insightful than The Man Who or The Invisible Band and certainly more than 1997's, Good Feeling, which is just a fun album. On the latest record, many of the songs are influenced by singer Fran Healy's newly acquired fatherhood status, and the feeling of despondence which was present on 12 Memories is replaced with the nice feelings of joy and pride.

On a different note, my fabulous friend, Carolee, got tickets to a sold-out industry concert in London back in March. It was one of three shows that Travis were doing before the album came out, and it was at a significantly smaller club than the band usually played. I have followed this band since college (ages ago!), and this was my first time seeing them live. It was a treat like nothing else for me. The band members were in great spirits and played many new songs intertwined with some old favorites. The show was quite well-received, but it was obvious that the audience was full of solid fans. The most interesting thing that I noticed was that everyone seemed to be able to sing along with the single, "Closer" even though the album hadn't come out yet. Ah, the joys of the internet.

I think that The Boy is selling pretty well so far, and I have heard the single on the radio and in the background of a couple of TV shows or commercials. That's a pretty good sign, but nothing says MAINSTREAM more than your song being featured on an American soap opera! (Note to AMC producers: This almost redeems your decision to kill off Dixie.)



(Side note: The Rosebuds' new album Night of the Furies is pretty good also. **Marge, this one's for you. You know how those North Carolina bands just rock.** Check them out if you haven't yet.)

Photos courtesy of ABC, Travis, and The Rosebuds.

Traveler

Coming to ABC next week... I reviewed the pilot episode for this program during my internship at the Museum of Television and Radio. ABC pretty much gives up the whole story in its promo for the show. It's about a group of guys who are college buddies, and they decide to take one last road trip after graduation before they have to be responsible adults. It all starts off generically frat-party-esque, and then things go terribly awry. The pilot was interesting enough that I would watch a few more episodes to see where it goes. The characters are kind of plain, each guy fitting into a particular stereotype. (That aspect didn't excite me much.) It tries to be more suspenseful than the average twenty-something drama, which makes it kind of The OC-meets-Prison Break. It's an interesting choice for ABC, because I would've expected this show on FOX or The CW. But anyway, I don't want to give up the entire plot right here, so if you're curious, go watch the preview at ABC.com. The show premieres Thursday, May 10 at 10 p.m.

Estrada gets his star.

On Tuesday, April 19, Erik Estrada got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. CHiPs is the most mocktastic '70s cop show of all time. I am still waiting for the day that the entire series comes out in a deluxe DVD box set.

(I tried to link the theme song and the first TV promo from the series to this blog, but YouTube wouldn't cooperate. You all can do the searches yourselves. The TV promo is definitely worth seeing, so go find it!)



In other, more pertinent TV news, Estrada is starring in a police reality show called "Armed &Famous." It supposedly began on Jan. 10, but I haven't seen one promo for it, nor have I had the pleasure of seeing the show yet. The regular time slot is Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. on CBS. The show follows this cast of characters as they go through police academy in Muncie, Indiana. Other notable stars of this program include LaToya Jackson and Jack Osbourne. I'm so glad that "celebreality" (thanks, VH1, for coining that term) is giving new careers to these formerly famous people.

Photos courtesy of www.erikestrada.com.

Chicken Noodle Soup?

The cosmos united this week to provide me with not only two lectures on rap and hip-hop music (via my History of Rock class), but also an entire Oprah audience trying to keep up with an Alvin Ailey hip-hop instructor.

It was pretty much the funniest thing I've seen all week (except for Tuesday's episode of the Daily Show and oh yeah, yesterday's Oprah episode on "How to be Happy". WTF was that all about? Seriously, people need a life lesson telling them that they have to find happiness within themselves? Seriously??)

But back to the hip-hop thang. Apparently the hottest moves are steps called "Chicken Noodle Soup" and "The Old Man." Now thanks to Oprah, we can all pretend to be just a little hipper. And people (my friend Nick, specifically) say that I dance like a white boy...

(Photo courtesy of Harpo Productions.)

Gunshots at CNN Center?!

Wow. CNN was never this exciting when I worked there.

(Oh wait, there was the incident where an armed gunman ran through the CNN parking deck after shooting a bunch of people in federal court, but before stealing a car and taking off to grab a hostage in a nearby suburb. The hostage eventually got the killer to "see" God, and the divine power blessed her with a million-dollar book deal to cover her suffering.)

Seriously, I am so relieved that none of my friends or acquaintances were hurt. I'm sure everyone at CNN must be really shaken up. It's a dreadful thing that happened there this morning. My heart goes out to the victim's family and friends, and I am thinking of you guys in the Atlanta newsroom.

Meeting of minds

My old place of employment, CNN covered a seminar at my current place of employment (internship), the Museum of Television and Radio. Check out the Whacked Sopranos getting their say.

Wagamama is love

Photos courtesy of Jacque Brill. This picture pretty much sums up how fabulous the Ireland trip was. I was so happy to be back at Wagamama after a three year hiatus, that I couldn't stop smiling that night. (Look at the ear-to-ear grin!) I finally got my chicken katsu curry fix, and life was good again.

And the most wonderful thing is that just about everyone in our program joined me and Bob Ward (who is demonstrating the menu cover shot) on our quest for noodles in Dublin. It was a really fun night, and it showed "positive eating + positive living" (which is a registered trademark of wagamama ltd.)

I'll write more about the trip sometime soon - I just had to post this for now.

Equus

There are so many amazing shows in the West End right now, that it was honestly quite difficult to choose which one show to see while in London. There is The Tempest, starring Patrick Stewart. There is The Lady From Dubuque, starring Maggie Smith. There is Wicked, The Sound of Music, History Boys, etc, etc, etc.

But when I saw Daniel Radcliffe on the tube yesterday morning, I decided to try to get a ticket for the matinee of his show, Equus. I had read some rave reviews of it over the weekend, and I vaguely remembered seeing a G-rated version of this surreal play when I was in college.

Everything fell into place very easily. I was walking up Rupert Avenue from Leceister Square, when I saw the gigantic black and white sign featuring a half-naked Harry Potter and four horse heads beneath his waist. I went inside to the box office and managed to get a stage seat for 9.50 GBP. (About $20 US.) I would be able to see everything, the saleslady assured me. And see everything I did.

About 10 minutes before the show began, the stage seat patrons were taken backstage and seated about 10 feet above the stage around the back of the round space in the Gielgud Theatre. The theater went dark, and the spooky music quieted the audience. A chubby, white-haired man with glasses lit up a cigarette and the show began.

The surreal-ness of Equus hadn't changed much since the production I'd seen probably 12 or 13 years ago, but the acting and the staging in this production were far superior. Quickly, I was so absorbed into the story that I didn't mind or even notice the 2 hour 30 minutes running time.

From the stage seats, I had to lean over the rail to see the stage, and it was kind of uncomfortable, making my feet stiff by intermission time. But the ticket woman had been serious, I could see and hear everything as well as if I'd been in the stalls.



The acting was excellent, with Richard Griffiths playing the mild-mannered doctor and Daniel Radcliffe playing the angst-ridden teenager Alan Strang. The staging was simplistic, with four rectangular blocks that the actors moved around the space, creating new sets simply with the new arrangement of the boxes. The movement of boxes and opening of doors were fluidly incorporated into the actions of the actors so that it was hardly distracting from the show.

There were even horses in the show, which were exquisite. Six fit men dressed in brown suede riding pants and tight long-sleeved t-shirts of the same color wore large silver wire masks with giant eyes protuding from them and oversized horseshoes that gave them an off-balance stance and clacked as they walked around the stage. Their mannerisms gave the distinct feeling of being surrounded by these magnificent beasts.

During the curtain call, veteran actor Griffiths led the cast in bows, by quietly telling Radcliffe and the others which way to bow and when to turn. As the cast made their way off-stage, Radcliffe took the elder actor's hand and gently led him down the step of the elevated stage. It was in these small gestures that you could see that Radcliffe and Griffiths have a pupil-teacher relationship, and it was nice to see the younger actor during a moment of humility.

Now, about the infamous "naked" scene...

A woman from Chicago sat next to me, and she had seen the show on the previous night. The first thing she said to me was that you forget that you're seeing Harry Potter as soon as the show starts and when "the scene" happens, you are so engrossed in the story that you are not paying attention to the leacherous idea of seeing adolescent Harry Potter in the nude.

She was right. The character of Alan Strang is so angry and vulnerable and pitiful, and the acting so impeccable and captivating, that you actually do forget that you're in a theater, seeing a play. You're really watching 17-year-old Strang freak out while the old doctor coaxes him to relive a disturbing memory.
Of course, when the show ended, because I was sitting above the stage, I had a remarkable view of activities backstage, where Radcliffe was getting dressed for the curtain call. At that moment, I suddenly felt extremely leacherous, and I started looking elsewhere around the theater, because I felt very uncomfortable being a 31-year-old woman having a clear view of Harry Potter's bare bottom.

The Emerald Isle

I'm heading off to Ireland for the next 10 days or so. My Arts Journalism program is taking the cohort to Galway and Dublin to learn about the Irish theatre. There's nothing like an immersion program, I have to say. (Our main free day is on St. Patrick's Day in Dublin.)

Then I'll fly to London for four days where I am going to tour the BBC and see some old friends before heading back to Sunny Syracuse to finish up this semester already.

Current TV

Has anyone out there watched this network? It was launched by Al Gore and his partners back in August 2005. If you have seen it, would you please contact me? I am doing research on this topic.

http://www.current.tv/

Current's description of their venture:

Current TV, which launched August 1, 2005, is the first national network created by, for and with an 18-34 year-old audience. The network shows young adults what’s going on in their world, in their voice. Current is also the first TV network in history whose programming is supplied and selected, in part, by the very audience who watches it. It has developed the television industry’s leading model of “viewer created content” (VC2), which comprises roughly one-third of the network’s schedule, and allows the audience to submit short-form, nonfiction video “pods,” “viewer created ads” (V-CAMs), and mobile video. Its award-winning programming ranges from the hottest trends in technology, fashion, music and videogames, to pressing issues such as the environment, relationships, parenting, finance, politics and spirituality. Current is available in 38 million U.S. homes via Comcast (channel 107 nationwide), Time Warner Cable, DISH Network (channel 196 nationwide), and DirecTV (channel 366 nationwide).

Thanks!

The Namesake

With the movie version of Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning book coming out in just a few weeks, I decided to pick up the copy of The Namesake. The book has been sitting on my bookshelf since my friend Shaona gave it to me in London almost three years ago. She had written in the liner, "Here's a girl that thinks like we do" and presented it to me for my 29th birthday. I wasn't a big fan of Interpreter of Maladies, or really, of any other Indian authors I'd read previously, so I thanked her and added it to my collection of books that I planned to read someday. But later.

(Shaona, I am so sorry I doubted your feeling that I would love this book. And thank you (three years late) for giving it to me.)

This book was moving for many reasons, the first of which is that it immediately felt very familiar. It is a story about a boy, born to Indian parents in America, who is constantly challenged by the demands of one culture at home versus a different culture outside. It is a topic to which many of my friends, family, and I can definitely relate. Lahiri perfectly manages to convey the alienation we sometimes feel/felt having to be "Indian" at home and "American" everywhere else. The story chroncicles the title character's life from its beginning till he is cemented in adulthood.

The story was interesting and engaging, and it made for a very quick and easy read. Something I really appreciated was that Lahiri sprinkled Bengali words and Indian phrases throughout the story without pausing to explain each term. There was no jarring stop and start each time she used a term like pujo or mishti. She just kept right on with the prose, assuming that her audience is smart enough to pick up on it. (FYI, Pujo is a religious ceremony and mishti is a sweet or dessert.)

This novel actually moved me to tears during several of its moments, especially when I read about the parents and how alienated they felt trying to carve out a new and unfamiliar life in a country that was completely foreign to them. For the past day or so, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the characters and what they might be doing now. I can't remember the last book whose characters engaged me so completely and distracted me from my own life.



The film, directed by Mira Nair and starring Kal Penn (a.k.a. my favorite terrorist - see "Jack's Back" post earlier this year), opens in limited release on March 9.

Happiest countries, eh?

Moving to Canada after the last election would've been a good idea after all. They are number 10 on the list of happiest countries in the world, whereas the U.S. is number 23, according to a new UNESCO study. Denmark is number one. Click here for more detailed info. I'm definitely looking into Brunei and the Bahamas for my next move.

Snow-No's

Remember the fire lane sign from a couple of days ago? Pictured below was its state on day two.







So I learned a very important lesson from all this snow: when it's very cold, you must start and clean off your car every other day or else you'll regret it.






Anyway, here are some more pics from the post-storm aftermath.









Below is my front door - I had to kick my way out on day two, because the snow had piled up so high that the door wouldn't open at first.








Below is my car on day two. After AAA gave me a jump start, my very kind neighbor helped me dig the car out so I could drive it around to recharge the battery.





The picture below is the view from my bedroom on day two.

CNN Pipeline

I am doing a beeper for CNN Pipeline at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. Guess what the topic will be?

Bonus points: Can anyone find the bus stop hidden in the snowbank behind me?

Winter in Syracuse

(On the right) The fire lane in front of my apartment complex. Notice the "No Parking" sign. Usually, there is about 4 feet of sign post.


(Below) Looking outside from my bedroom.

My car (below) is buried in snow. (Sadly, it won't start, so I couldn't go anywhere even if I wanted to. On the other hand, classes were cancelled this afternoon. Oh wait, I don't have any classes on Wednesdays. Where is the justice in that?)



My Internship



On a completely different note, some people have asked about my internship. I am working once a week at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. It's been a nice thing, to get out of the cold of Syracuse once a week. So far, I am enjoying working there - the people are really intelligent and friendly, and they have been giving me a lot of interesting work related to various documentaries and news topics. Last week, I wrote a promotional blurb for the William Paley Television Festival about one of this year's honored shows, Ugly Betty. I am hoping to do more entertainment-related work in the future, but I do love having access to MTR's amazing collection of documentaries.

MTR logo courtesy of the Museum of Television and Radio. Ugly Betty photo courtesy of ABC.com. Other photos were taken by me.