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Out To Ski, Back Soon

In typical Michellian style Michelle has left the country letting only the bare minimum number of people know about it. She asked me to do her a favour of letting you guys know that she's gone skiing for the week; she'll be back this sunday.

Happy Holidays.
--
Russ     russ@btopenworld.com
Personal communications assistant to Michelle. :-)

The Night Before Jurisprudence Essay Deadline

Last night while trying to finish my incredibly late jurisprudence essay, I:

Listened to albums by Unwound, The Cure, Bob Dylan, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miles Davis, My Bloody Valentine, Olivia Tremor Control, and Coldcut's Solid Steel radio show on London Live.

Read two chapters of The Cider House Rules, poems by Adrienne Rich and Andrew Motion, and The Economist.

Snacked on bacon wheat crunchies, mint chocolates, Jaffa Cakes and herbal tea.

Filed the past term's worth of bank statements and phone bills.

Organized my unrefrigerated food storage.

But did not finish my incredibly late jurisprudence essay, alas.

Tori Amos (Hammersmith Apollo) / Rent (Prince Of Wales Theatre)

Tori on Friday. Rent on Saturday. Hence broke, grouchy and essay crisis-ridden on Sunday.

Tori:

Was objectively good, but not what I waited seven years to see. As a performer she gave all the charm and musicianship I'd expected from her, but managed to choose a setlist with very few songs from her repertoire that I love, which is quite an achievement given how much I do like most of it. It could be argued that some songs weren't possible because she wasn't playing with her band - Hello Mr Zebra comes to mind as a song that might suffer from the loss of those jaunty horns, but you could also say that someone like her who adapts things like Smells Like Teen Spirit for solo piano could probably find a way round that.

There were songs that simply left me cold - Juarez, Honey, Suede, Not The Red Baron. There were songs I don't "enjoy" per se, but still had to hear live, and was glad to have experienced - '97 Bonnie And Clyde, Me And A Gun. Then there were songs I do quite like but which still fall short of the ones I truly love - Putting The Damage On, Little Amsterdam, Upside Down, I Don't Like Mondays, Leather, Time, Cruel, Only Women Bleed, I'm On Fire, Landslide. Then there was one song I love - Playboy Mommy. This is why I ultimately left a little disappointed, not with her, I guess, but just by chance.

Songs I'd have liked to hear: Silent All These Years, Precious Things, Pretty Good Year, Past The Mission, Cornflake Girl, God, Professional Widow, Blood Roses, Hello Mr Zebra, Marianne, Jackie's Strength, 1000 Oceans, Real Men.

Oh well. Just my view, others saw it differently, and I still left the concert no less of a fan than I was before it.

Rent:

If you're in London, and you're considering going to the production currently running at the Prince of Wales Theatre, don't. Adam Rickett is a terrible, terrible Mark: camp acting, reedy singing voice; whoever acted Roger seemed to think he was a member of Spinal Tap instead of a struggling indie musician and felt the need to strut everywhere crotch-first and generally just act very cock rock, had an accent that seemed to waver wildly between Geordie, vague American and comically stereotypical New Yorker, and a singing voice that couldn't hack the high notes in One Song Glory.

Light My Candle was either directed by an utter moron, or the actors completely screwed it up. Either way, I don't understand how anyone who'd ever seen a good production of Rent, listened to the soundtrack, or even just read the fucking libretto, for crying out loud, could have butchered it so completely. Musicals don't tend to lend themselves to gradual development of relationships or characters. You're expected to accept that he loves her and she loves him, truly madly deeply, usually to the death; why and how this is so is superficially explained at best, and just imposed at worst. The reason I've always loved Light My Candle is that it seems to convey, better than most, some feel of how people interact before the sweeping heartfelt declarations of undying love. The flickerings of attraction. The banter, sometimes shy, sometimes daring, the wondering, the hoping, finally the confirmation. We got none of this. No Mimi bending to search for her stash on the flood and Roger sneaking a look, Mimi noticing:

M: They say I have the best ass below 14th street - is it true?
R: What?
M: You're staring again.

Just Mimi getting down on the floor and deliberately arching her booty up at him like a slapper right from the start.

No understanding of Mimi's response to Roger's quip about Spike Lee shooting down the street - first "bah humbug" because she's laughing at the joke, second "bah humbug" at him, tenderly, a little awkward, their hands finding each other. We got two careless "bah humbugs" from the couch, then Mimi shooting across the stage and grabbing at him.

I realize I sound like a complete obsessive to anyone who isn't familiar with the musical, and probably even to most people who are. I could go on, but I'm too tired and pissed off. Just be glad I haven't seen a bad production of Les Miserables yet.

MC Krakow / James Iha / YLT's Tom Courtenay

More Onion genius:
Polish Rapper Under Fire For Use Of The Word 'Polack'
DETROIT -- MC Krakow, a popular Detroit-based rapper of Polish descent, came under fire Tuesday for his use of the word 'Polack' on his new album "World Warsaw III...In an official statement, MC Krakow defended his use of the word: "When I say, 'Y'all be my Polacks,' or 'Yo, what up, Polack?,' it's my way of taking the word back. Our people need to re-claim and embrace 'Polack' with pride, just like Eminem did with the word 'faggot.'"

Given that I think Ryan Schreiber's description of James Iha's solo album (borrowed off Yoichi on Tuesday along with some Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, the Rent soundtrack and the new Pulp) as sounding "like the Gin Blossoms and Matthew Sweet soundtracking an early '70s film about young hippies in love, minus the drugs" is incredibly spot-on, and given that I find the album as a whole remarkably uninspiring, Sound Of Love really shouldn't have been in my head all of last night and this morning, but it is.

While we're on the subject of happy happy jangly layered harmony poppy sounds, you might as well also read about Yo La Tengo's gem Tom Courtenay at Rebellious Jukebox, which is a recent addition to my list of dailyish reads.

Earlier I described the riffing in Sonic Youth's Drunken Butterfly as "seductive", which I meant in the predatory, skulking sort of way rather than the "let me slip into something more comfortable" way. Just to clarify.

Sonic Youth: Documentary and Dirty notes

Crept downstairs last night during an extended break from jurisprudence to watch 4Music's Pioneers feature on Sonic Youth, which reassured me that my marked inability to evoke the sheer joy this band's music gives me in any sort of articulate way is shared by lots of other people, including the band themselves (although we didn't even hear from Kim and Steve at all, boo, C4). There was Butch Vig using the tired old (but still frustratingly spot-on IMO) "glorious noise", Brian Molko talking about getting chucked into volcanos and swimming around in magma (also quite apt, really), and Sonic Youth themselves (grovel, worship) sounding very art-rock and cliched and saying how everything is about the music, blah blah blah.

But be not deceived by this flippance. Truth be told, I sat in front of the TV for those precious 20 minutes like a 14 year old girl watching a Westlife porn video.

I was then, unfortunately, forced to stay downstairs trying to wolf the rest of my supper down while David Gray sang what felt like the same song for half an hour, after which I staggered back up to my room and put Dirty on very loud, because I was in the mood for it (yes, I know it's supposed to be the sell-out album and lots of people hate it but I like it anyway), and here are random notes:

Does anyone else find the riffing in Drunken Butterfly incredibly seductive?

I think the best part of this album for me is the three song sequence in the middle. Sugar Kane initially sounds like another one of those exceptionally accessible Thurston-vocal SY songs like Teenage Riot and Sunday , but the minute you hear that intro you just know this song isn't just going to be about catchiness, and that they're not going to be able to resist some sort of descent into chaos later in the song. You can't wait, but you also sense some return to order will follow, this is a song they'll taper to a close. They do...and then they launch into the rollicking riot of dissonance and attitudinal Kim that is Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit. And after this you get Youth Against Fascism, which is one of those songs which SY detractors probably jeer at as aging rockers' attempting to keep in touch with the Ghostworld crowd, but which to me feels exuberant and brash and something I could mosh to without getting killed, and hey, sometimes that's all I'm asking for. No one ever said they were political philosophers, after all, and yeah the president sucks/he's a war pig fuck is fun to yell.

Knight In Silly Hat

In this day and age, when instructed by one's boyfriend to look out of one's third floor window, one does not, admittedly, expect to see him cantering up the street on a white stallion, but one is nonetheless somewhat perturbed by the sight of him in a Santa hat with flashing red stars on it, and waving a pink pig lolly.

All in all, I think I rather like this day and age.

Bugger, Bugger, Bugger

Just found out that I have a jurisprudence essay due this Friday. I must not have known about this because it must have been announced at one of the three seminars I decided to skive. Conveniently, I am also told that the major focus of the essay just happens to be the material covered in the aforesaid seminars. Somehow I always manage to do this to myself. It's a sort of gift.

So, er, if anyone's got (jurisprudentially informed) views on whether:
1. there is a right answer to every legal question, or
2. what function the notion of community has in the making of law,
I will be eternally grateful and consider naming my firstborn child after you (as long as you're not called Prunella or Bubba or something similarly vile) if you send a few ideas my way.

[While we're on the subject of my general crapness, I ought to write here and now that I had a productive power lunch today with Sabrina, where we tried to get our act together about our external moot in January (representing UCL at the Blackstone's mooting competition), and I have to know something about incorporation of terms into contracts by December 28th so we can start assembling our cunning plan for world moot domination. Must not let Sabrina down. Must not let Sabrina down.]

[While we're on the subject of my general malaise, I should also add that the only reason I'm typing this whinge right now instead of studying my arse off in the library is because we've all been evacuated due to what is apparently a fire emergency. This will, no doubt, give the little gremlins that live in the UCL library ample time to take the books I was using and hide them in Medieval Feminine Hygiene Products or some other ridiculously obscure section of the library. They do this frequently. I was hoping I'd foiled them today. Obviously not. Gah.]

Beta Saxophone

It probably says something about the Beta Band when you've been listening to The Three E.P.'s, which you've owned for a while but somehow never listened to very much, and vaguely wonder why they've chosen to end the album with several renditions of the Ave Maria on unaccompanied saxophone, but you shrug your shoulders figuring hey, it's the Beta Band, this is the sort of thing they'd do, and then you realize the album ended long ago, and it's been your neighbour practising all along.

Hall Chronicles: ABBA Priest /Jurisprudence Choices

Tiny glittery stars are strewn along the floors of my hall, incredibly well dispersed from their original places on the tables at our Christmas dinner party by getting caught and carried in clothes and under shoes, or unstuck from noses and cheeks and foreheads. It's rather nice.

The Christmas party had highs and lows, lows being the mediocre cuisine and people who couldn't sing particularly well deciding they'd sing for what felt like particularly long, but of course we all clapped and squealed and hollered "Encore!" because that's what this hall is like, highs being Mark's unfailing ability to choose the exact moment a priest is walking by to be saying PUBES!!!, giggling with Tay about him getting his guitar out and leading everyone in a rousing chorus of "FEEEEEEEED THE WOOOOOORLD", and a brief period in the bar where a small number of people were going absolutely apeshit dancing until everyone promptly decided they were far too drunk to continue and went off to vomit/attempt to pull/sleep.

Neither high nor low but just in a whole other dimension was Father J dressing up as the Queen (complete with handbag) and giving his version of the Queen's speech (tailored for the hall), which included statements like a new pricing system for showers which would involve "50p for a 30 second spurt", and then dancing to, unsurprisingly but terrifyingly, Dancing Queen.

Life was somewhat back to normal yesterday, or at least it seemed normal by the time I'd woken up at 2 pm. Have been grappling with a morass of practical really-must-do's since then - Conflict of Laws reading, choosing my Big Jurisprudence Book option for next term (see below if interested), badgering NatWest about the Switch card they're supposed to send me but haven't.

[I'm going for Plato's The Last Days of Socrates as first choice and Machiavelli's The Prince as second. Discarded Kymlicka's Multicultural Citizenship and Montesquieu's The Spirit Of The Laws early on because they take a more sociological approach to the law than I'm interested in, decided against Finnis's Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dworkin's Life's Dominion and Mill's On Liberty despite their legendary status because they felt like ground a little too well trodden, and finally eliminated Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic rather reluctantly later on because they sounded a little less fun than my final two choices, and also because, as Alec pointed out, it might ultimately feel unfulfilling and difficult to take them on without a wider grounding in philosophy.]

Pleasant distractions abound, though. Amazing dinner at Alec's, cooked by Larry (home-made bread, tortellini, duck, The Mother Of All Chocolate Cakes, wine, some other alcoholic beverage that tasted of lemons). Excitement about Friday's Tori Amos gig, and Saturday's outing to Rent. Slight consternation as to how to avoid nudity and freezing in Andorra in a few weeks, note to self: find out about renting skiing clothes.