Episode 496: I Hate In Memoriam A. H. H.

Overslept and missed church, but the extra hour or so of sleep helped a lot. I don't know why, but this term's just felt a lot more crowded with incident than the last four, which has made having a lie-in a veritable luxury. Not to say that the entire day was wasted. I watched an episode of The Vampire Diaries. I also did my French homework, although I've elected not to write out answers to comprehensions in future, since we never hand them in and I could probably conjure up the answer on the spot anyway, having read the article twice. Now all that's left to do over the next couple of days is the musical and putting together something that I can send out to solicit sponsorship for AdHoc. I even spent some time reading the remainder of 'In Memoriam A. H. H.', which was just as frustrating as the last time I sat down to read it in the Library. It was so unmemorable, I had trouble remembering where I stopped at first. Having got to the end of it, I found myself feeling like the transition was too abrupt, in the sense that Tennyson spends so many stanzas bemoaning what seems to me to have been at the very least, a very suspicious bromance, but at the end, there's this huge reversal and it's all very tout est bien qui finit bien. There's even a marriage, for crying out loud, even if it is stashed away in the epilogue. Now that reading for work is done, I've moved on to re-reading books I last read years ago. Am beginning with Armistead Maupin's novels, which although they sound a bit dated now, are still pretty funny to me. In other news, Gollancz is now definitely my go-to publisher for science fiction.

Episode 495: Dollhouse Series Finale

So my ears are still ringing just a little after the aural assault of clubbing last night. Nevertheless, I survived rehearsal, and have picked up a simple dance move for the last verse of 'What Lies Before Us'. Maybe with some training, I could be a passable dancer after all? Nothing professional, you must understand, just coordinated enough so that I don't embarrass myself. Am not in the mood for serious work (i.e. trying to comprehend that French article for Tuesday), so I've caught up on most of my TV shows. The Dollhouse series finale was perfect. It was, first of all, very economic. We leapt forward a decade into a future last glimpsed at the end of the first season, and Joss Whedon gave us just enough clues from what characters said and did to infer what their lives had been like during that time, which to me will always represent the unrealised potential of this TV series that was cancelled because Americans are stupid and would rather watch American Idol than something that raises serious ethical questions. (I'm picking on American Idol because it's broadcast by the same network that axed Dollhouse.) Then there was the ending. Without spoiling it, I just want to say that it was a brilliant ending in that it was genuinely open-ended. You know how it's said that Shakespeare's comedies end in weddings and his tragedies end in funerals? Well, none of that conventional tidiness for this show. We get resolution, but only in the sense that we feel like a chapter is closing and a new one about to begin. To put it another way, the two seasons of Dollhouse are a dream for those who're into writing fan fiction because there are so many gaps in the chronology, but yet it's still pretty clear what generally takes place in them. Ultimately though, it's the ethical questions Dollhouse is clearly posing to its viewers that is really fascinating. What does it mean to be human? Are there limits to what we should seek to know and be able to do?

Episode 494: My First Kasbah Experience

Someone said during today's seminar that my introductory paragraphs on Haiti, which I wrote between my lecture and seminar yesterday and then fired off from a computer in Rootes Social, sounded like a column from The Guardian. So tempted to switch to writing about this subject for my non-fiction portfolio instead of the decline of the study of modern languages in the UK. If anything, the Haiti introduction makes for way more interesting reading, now that I compare it with the proposal I sent to Jeremy Treglown. Anyway, still plenty of time to worry about that! Went to Kasbah for the first time ever after tonight's rehearsal. Now when it comes to clubbing, I've got a set of complicated, if not entirely original, views. To begin with, I believe that fundamentally, all clubs and the experiences they provide are fairly similar. Due to that, there is a part of me that instinctively rejects the entire thing as a waste of money and time. (Given that entry to Kasbah costs a fraction of what your average Singaporean club would though, the money factor is less of an issue. Was also pleased that my NUS Extra card was accepted as ID, although I told a white lie and said my passport had been stolen and the card was thus my only proof of identity in the whole wide world.) On the other hand, there is also a part of me that responds to the whole atmosphere of a club: thumping beats, drinks, the crush of bodies on the dancefloor. (How can you not dance to something like Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance'?) It's like for the night, you can forget yourself among your friends, with the assurance that the next morning, everyone else will be too hammered to judge you anyway. (I'd like to mention at this point that I only had one drink all night.) It's a feeling that can get pretty addictive. Anyway, for once, I left a club not feeling like the entire thing wasn't worth what I paid for it and that I never want to do it again. So yeah, I can see why people would return to Kasbah, week after week. Oh, and I also picked up £20 off the floor on my way out. Now if that happened every time I went clubbing, I'd definitely do it more often!

Episode 493: Feeling Industrious Today...

So in a late morning spurt of productivity, I typed out the short piece on Haiti due for tomorrow's seminar between my EN238 seminar and EN227 lecture. It's written in a voice that is possibly mine, although I wouldn't say distinctively so. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that it's written in a voice that I would find engaging, alternating as it does between acerbic, cultivated and flippant. I realise that makes me sound like a better prose writer than I actually am, so here's the link and you can judge for yourselves. Did some preliminary research for the essay due at the end of the term, and already some interesting lines of inquiry are being thrown up. Am going to re-read 'The Eve Of St. Agnes' and 'Goblin Market', then go through the secondary reading I've amassed so far. I mean to get on top of this essay way in advance for a change! It helps that Emma Mason's lectures for the module are pretty damn interesting. I think lecturers need to be confident in their delivery, i.e. no stumbling on words, and after that's accomplished, they need to season it with either light humor or serious intellect. However much we want to pretend that all university students are conscientious, highly motivated individuals, the reality is that our attention is fickle, just like everyone else's.

Episode 492: First Full Dress Rehearsal!

Just back from our first full dress rehearsal, and I'm exhausted. It was good to finally put the whole thing together though, hiccups and all. I've also managed to get 11 people to come to the musical so far, which is pretty amazing, so all of you who're coming, I love you! On a completely different note, Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H. is frankly a really tedious thing to read. Okay, I get it. Your best friend died and you really, really loved him (and the way you describe that love is rather suspect from our contemporary perspective), but I've read poems that dealt with grief so much more economically and had a far greater impact on me as a result. So yeah, it might be a 'great poem' and all, but I don't buy it. (In general, I dislike poems that go on for too long, since a big reason for why I like poetry is its linguistic economy.) Speaking of which, I wrote two light verses during rehearsal for tomorrow's EN238 seminar. One of them's meant to be a rhyme to jump rope to, which I'm actually quite pleased with. Personally though, I've never actually jumped rope while reciting a rhyme. Does this mean I had a deprived childhood?

Episode 491: Emily Of Emerald Hill

So my French presentation went really well today. I'm just assuming this from my tutor's reaction right after because she didn't actually have time at the end to give me feedback. I think the general coherence and fluency of it threw people off, if I may boast a little. (Indulge me here.) Anyway, I thought I had to be at rehearsal today, but Bella disabused me of that notion, so I went to see Ranon's production of Emily Of Emerald Hill instead. Very, very wise decision on my part. I believe Ranon's a first-time director, but his work was quite frankly, bloody good. The idea of taking a monologue and dividing it according to the shifting personalities of the speaker was ingenious. I've read Stella Kon's play when I was much younger, but I always thought of the shifts as a classic case of the unreliable narrator, and what Ranon's done is take that and go a step further in interpreting the text. The acting was really solid as well. For me, the litmus test where emotional scenes are concerned is whether the actors can convey the emotional content without slipping into bathos or caricature, and the cast did it excellently here, particularly in the scene where Emily receives the telegram informing her of Richard's suicide. The production's travelling to London last two days of this month, so if anyone reading this lives there, I highly recommend it.

Episode 490: SomethingALaMode & Mark Ravenhill

I'm into classical crossover stuff like bond and Maksim, so it's not so surprising that my latest earworm is 'RondoParisiano' by SomethingALaMode. To be fair though, labelling them classical crossover is being reductive. (Their MySpace page describes their music as electro/classical.) Although they're playing string instruments like bond, SomethingALaMode exude more sophistication, right down to the drum loops they employ in their tracks. If you want to be a snob about it, they're making classical music cool without it descending into cheesy club-friendly stuff. Plus Karl Lagerfeld lends his voice to 'RondoParisiano', saying something in French about how fashion and music are alike because they both express the spirit of their times. How much classier can you get than French? Had some time between my Kidz Klub administrative work and practice, so I sat in the Library and read some plays. Yeah, I'm aware of how sad that makes me sound to some people, but hey, it was Mark Ravenhill, so I get some street cred, right? I've basically read every play of his that the Library has. So that's Shopping And Fucking, Faust Is Dead, Handbag, Some Explicit Polaroids, Mother Clap's Molly House, Citizenship, Product, The Cut and Pool (No Water). That's too many to talk about in one post, so I'll just say that on the whole, I really like his work. I'm surprised that Beatrice Chia was actually allowed to stage Shopping And Fucking in Singapore! Handbag shows that Stoppard and myself aren't the only ones who've been thieving from The Importance Of Being Earnest, and does it in a clever way, to my mind at least. Pool (No Water) should be required reading for everyone on my course, just because it's such a searing commentary on the jealousy that success can breed among fellow practitioners.

Episode 489: The Threepenny Opera

So, The Threepenny Opera. Let me first say that the only thing I've ever read by Brecht is The Good Person Of Szechwan, and my knowledge of him comes entirely from what Dan was talking about last night. That said, this was one of the more curious productions I've seen. It was, as Dan said, alienating. A strange touch was the series of videos projected onto the three screens above the stage. These were clearly intended to be related to what was happening onstage, but recast in a contemporary setting. I'd say they worked to universalise the themes of Brecht's work, showing them not to be limited to a particular time or place. The singing was good, although at times, I thought Polly's voice was a bit on the soft side. You know what was my favourite bit of the whole production though? Mr Peachum's outfit. Ever since the episode of Gossip Girl with the Vitamin Water White Party, I've been dying to own a white-/cream-based outfit. I know, how unbelievably shallow can I get sometimes, right? Anyway, managed to squeeze in some work at the Learning Grid after lunch at Varsity, although it was very painful having to script a short presentation on 'la Nouvelle-Calédonie' without a dictionary handy. Had to Google every suspect phrase.

Episode 488: The Triptych Papers, Part 4 (Commentary)

Today has been a day, in the words of Lady Bracknell, 'crowded with incident'. Got back past midnight, but did not miss the last 12, so no angry e-mail is forthcoming. Still had to wake up early for rehearsal though, which was not fun at all. Would have been late, but Louisa saw me crossing the road and gave me a lift, pulling up at the bus stop just as the 12 was entering the bus bay as well. Turns out that I didn't need to stay beyond noon, since my new speaking role has now been given to Jeremy, partly because I hadn't had time to learn the few lines anyway and partly so that Jeremy can sit next to Shen Ting in the dinner scene and not forget the guys' melody line. However, my dinner order from Friday had already been shifted to Saturday lunch, so I stuck around. Would have gone to my Archaeology lesson, but I was dressed in completely the wrong clothes. The combined value of my outfit would have been approximately thrice of what I paid to do the entire Open Studies Certificate, so I did a cost-benefit analysis and decided ruining my Ted Baker coat while digging in the mud was not something from which I would derive much utility. Ended up going home to try and finish my commentary for the portfolio, which I've chosen to write as a satire of academic criticism. Managed to get it done before going to see Brecht's The Threepenny Opera in the Arts Centre with Dan, so I'll probably print it off after service tomorrow. Will say more about that tomorrow because I'm beat.

Episode 487: Avenue Q Redux

In case you didn't already know, Daniel Boys is leaving the London production of Avenue Q at the end of this month. So since one of the things I had promised myself after seeing it last year was that I would see it again in my three years in the UK, this seemed as good an excuse as any. Plus I really do like his singing. Enough to have bought his debut album anyway. So yeah, I really enjoyed it again. This time, since I already knew the plot, I could focus my attention on other things, particularly the actors' facial expressions, which I'd kind of overlooked the last time because of the puppets. As I was sitting in the fourth row (you've got to love half-price matinee tickets), I also noticed the microphone rigs. Just a random thing really. Anyway, I'm still on the coach back to Cannon Park because our coach was delayed by about 45 minutes. It's ridiculous! If I miss the last 12 because of that and have to walk home from Cannon Park, I'm going to have words with the Megabus people. On side note, I am still impressed by how much cheaper it was to get to London from Leamington in the middle of the afternoon, compared to going from Coventry. Guess there are going to be some unexpected benefits from living there next year...