no surprise at my age, most of my friends are either having babies, trying to have babies or struck with a case of baby fever. it's hard not to get all broody when you're surrounded by bundles of adorable-ness. we threw a shower for second time around mommy, shizuka this weekend. she didn't get a shower the first time around, (apparently there's no such thing as baby showers in japan), so we made dang sure she was celebrated this time.
photo courtesy of daniel
although the party was for mom and soon-to-be newborn, we made sure to lavish tons of attention onto shizuka's 3 year old, shino. so much so that she was continually agog by all the people and kidlets, decorations and food. she played with her playmates until she could play no more. without an afternoon nap, little peanut became over-stimulated and zonked out in the middle of the floor. in much the same way as shino's cat.
everybody bought potluck and there was no shortage of food. the picture doesn't look like much, but what you're seeing are the appies. or should i say, the first round of food and then came the cooked food. kudos to peggy's organic tomato bruschetta. heavy on the garlic which i enjoy. good thing i wasn't seeing sean after the party, what with my dragon breath.
course, i turn into one big kid when i'm around children. i get down to their level, crawling and following them around, more so than the other guests. would this change when i do have kids? i'd like to think not. discipline when needed aside, i'd like to think i'd get right in there with them, finger-painting them walls. (with washable paint, of course)
photo courtesy of daniel
intriguing sadie and then amelie to crawl to me on the other side of the tent tunnel
then the baby games began. first the guess the baby pictures:
guess which photo is mine?
then the guess how big shizuka is:
and lastly, guess the flavours of baby food:
these did NOT taste like sweet potato, carrots or corn games pictures courtesy of daniel
and what's a baby shower without presents?
i spy with my little eye my presents to shizuka. it's the pink piccolo bambino cuddly pal blanket on top of my other present of piccolo bambino 6 piece receiving blankets gift set. seriously, not only was the cuddly bunny blanket so cute, but it was super duper soft. i totally want one for myself. cuddle that in the crook of your neck and i guarantee you'll be asleep in no time.
and then all too soon, it was time to wind the party down and head home. time flies when you're around kids. thanks to grace for organizing the baby shower. oh and thanks to sean for helping me pick out the presents.
for more pictures, press play on the slideshow or click here for my flickr.
last night sean and i attended will's 10+10+10+10 birthday at the eatery.
love the eatery. the place has become a tradition with peggy for my yearly birthdays. and i got to go early this year. the place is shout-at-the-top-of-your-lungs loud but the rolls are always inventive and fun.
sean and i got the veggie gyoza, goma-ae, inari, rainbow roll (tuna, salmon, ebi over crab and cucumber) and the volcano (tuna, scallops, salmon and avacado, tempura style, on a lava bed of spicy crab meat. de-lish.
40 friends for a 40th birthday, we commandeered the whole back part of the eatery - 2 sections of booth seating.
photos courtesy of clem
and will's got the bestest wife. for his milestone birthday, chiemi got him a custom made zombie barbie cake. he was surprised and delighted to say the least.
happy birthday will! you don't look a day over 25
now it's got me thinking what i'd want to do for my 40th birthday. you know, 20 some odd years from now.
interpol kicked off their north american tour in vancouver last night. (yay us!)
i met up with kristina, brian and erik at the orpheum theatre. we weren't sitting together though. i was row 12 orchestra and they were seated up in the balcony. i must admit, i initially had reservations about the concert being at the orpheum because of the seats. this is a rock concert. was everyone expected to stay in their seats?
photo courtesy of kristina
shoe-gaze band school of seven bells kicked off the night. a different sound and line-up from when i first heard of their half asleep. i expected to see the 2 dreamy twin sisters but was surprised when it was only alejandra deheza. looks like her twin claudia left the band last october. it was cool to see SVIIB's brandon curtis do double duty as interpol's live show keyboardist.
and then interpol graced us with their presence. and that's when a whack of people at orchestra level charged down the aisles to get as close to the front of the stage as possible. i didn't. thought about it. but i didn't feel like getting piled up on. (must be getting old) it didn't much matter because i ended up having equivalent of 4 seats wiggle room in my row. and with people leaving their spots, i had an unobstructed view of the stage.
when the band walked onstage with only the backlit lights, i could make everyone out. except... where was paul banks? and who was that person coming out with the band that i didn't recognize? erm, it was paul banks. with a faux hawk. i didn't know quite what to make of this new look. it's kinda butch.
but all that didn't matter once the band started playing. the night was a good mix of old and new. and i was my happy self, dancing my kiester off.
so we had the wonderful piercing vocal stylings of paul banks, daniel kessler dancing to and fro whilst playing guitar and sam fogarino pounding tightly on the drums. but oh how i felt the absence of the charismatic carlos d! new bassist dave pajo is no carlos d. even the bass playing is different. when not even jail started, for a few seconds, i couldn't even recognize what song it was suppose to be. the bass line was not dominant at all! of ALL songs, that should've been the one to dominate.
too cool for school
alas, this is the new interpol lineup. and it's going to have to grow on me. without a doubt, carlos d. left some pretty big shoes to fill. all bitchin' aside, i had a great time. even though interpol didn't play heimlich maneouver, i got to groove to the songs that have lifted me up and bought me to eargasm all these years.
on january 27, 1756, wolfgang amadeus mozart was born. he was a celebrated child prodigy and in the course of his lifetime, composed over 600 works. although mozart died in 1791, he remains one of classical music's most popular composers.
authors and playwrights were inspired to write books about him. movies were made based on his life. musical artists paid homage to him. who hasn't been influenced by mozart?
vancouver opera is celebrating mozart's birthday by offering a special QR code promotion for mozart's magnificent last opera, la clemenza di tito.
our street posters with the QR code are now posted around town. or you can just scan the QR code below for the wicked deal:
you may need to download a reader for your smartphone, so click to get your free app from neo or mobio.
this rarely performed opera will be a treat for all mozart and opera lovers. come celebrate his life with vancouver opera. happy birthday mozart!
the opera is really a masterpiece. it's an unsung masterpiece. - chas rader-shieber
it's all about power. it's all about relationships that we have with other people, in regards to authority and how we use that. - jonathan darlington
i think he's written something quite spectacular. for the music alone, it's worth seeing. - krisztina szabo
it's a typical mozart ensemble opera in that everybody has their moment to reveal themselves, their inner selves and in the relationships with others. wendy nielsen
i think most stage directors are attracted to mozart because the source materials, just the work on paper, is so full and it demands to be put on a stage. it calls out to be recreated and recreated and recreated. - chas rader-shieber
you should come and see la clemenza di tito because it is an amazing experience. for those of you who've never experienced it, it's something you'll only get perhaps once or twice in your lifetime. - jonathan darlington
don't miss out! get your tickets now! call our ticketing centre at 604.683.0222 or purchase online here.
you've gone ahead and taken the plunge. you purchased a ticket to your very first opera and now you're wondering, "what should i wear?"
let us help you out with some suggestions. opera needn't be all ballgowns and tux and tails. (although those outfits are certainly welcomed as well!)
a VO staffer put together this video montage using my fashion at the opera photos to show you just how easy it is to put together an opera-worthy look. and oh, there are many looks!
thanks again to all the beautiful people in the photos. you make us look good!
i don't know about you, but the story of hansel and gretel kinda freaked me out when i was a child. first you're taken into the woods and then abandoned by your parents. next you encounter a cannabalistic witch hellbent on making you her supper.
course, as with most children's fairytales, it end up well. the witch meets her fate by getting shoved into the oven and the children are reunited with their father (who was against the whole abandonment plan in the first place)
on that note, here's a 1954 stop motion animated short based on engelbert humperdinck's opera hänsel und gretel. the special effects were created by ray harryhausen and the part of the witch was sung by english-canadian singer and comedienne anna russell.
thanks to jenny breckon, VO's development manager-government & foundations grants, for finding this little vintage gem.
crispin glover has gone and snared me into his web of weird again. but this time, i took sean with me. not that that was difficult, because sean is a big fan of the glover too.
the last time i went to experience (and yes, i consciously chose the word "experience", rather than "see") crispin hellion glover's big slide show I + what is it? in 2008, i ended up walking out during the movie. i left feeling visually assaulted and slightly disappointed that my vision of him was now tarnished. how could such brilliance produce such a hot mess?
well, looks like its effect on me wore off because here i go again.
sean and i went to the sunday night screening of big slideshow II + it is fine. everything is fine!. i had given sean a HUGE caveat about how delightfully and astonishingly bizarre crispin glover is IRL. so he braced himself, but even then....
the night began with big slideshow II. or should i say, it started mistakenly as big slideshow I. realizing the technical gaffe, crispin asked us if we would like him to continue on or load in the correct one. the audience hooted, hollered and clapped for big slideshow II, so crispin glover complied by running up to the projection room and switching over to the correct slideshow. and we got a sneak peek at what crispin glover has on his mac laptop's desktop. what is that folder called betrothed, i wonder??
the dramatic readings slash performance art were, once again, enormously entertaining. lots of laughs, not only from the wackodoo train of thoughts, but also from glover, stomping spastically across the stage, yelling earnestly and gesticulating wildly and dramatically with each frame. if you were to read just his books (without the accompanying presentation), you'd probably couldn't make heads or tails out of it.
i was thoroughly impressed with:
a) how well he's keeping. he's 46 years old but standing up there in his stylish black suit, white shirt and skinny black tie with foppish hair, you'd never guess it. the man is a dandy of a vampire. he doesn't age.
b) that he was able to recite all the content (for the most part) without looking at the text on screen. even though he's been touring with his books for years and knows the material inside and out, it was still a feat.
c) for his entire recitation, he did not have one drink of water. how he could speak for over an hour and not have cottonmouth, i don't know. another feat.
having taken public speaking classes last year, i can further appreciate crispin glover's ability to get up in front of an audience of a couple hundred, talk about a subject for an hour+ and not be afraid to make a fool out of himself. can i get a hell yea?
crispin glover read from 8 of his books. one called round my house, about tom wiswell, his negroid slave, mollusks in the bathtub and going to court over all the bad juju being brought into his house. once vindicated, the reader was "free like a skeleton with no skin". i shall have to find an opportunity where i can toss that phrase into my everyday conversation.
for the land of sunshine, glover went on a verbal tirade, narrating images from the book by forcefully belting out the entire thing in german. it was coming out like machine gun bullets. rat-a-tat-tat-tat! at times, it sounded almost like gibberish. bizarre but hilarious!
then...
i'm
at
egg
farm!
i'm...at...egg...farm!
no idea really what the story was about, but the delivery was side-splitting.
the one that packed a wallop was rat catching. glover narrating slides with sepia-like images of rats in various stages of dissection. he's going along energetically, then comes across an image of a dead baby bird, points sharply to said image and like a madman, screams, "chickeeeeeeeeee!" funnily enough, this was the thing that stood out for me and sean. we practically screamed this out at the same time, shortly after leaving the theatre.
i can't say this enough. if you ever have a chance to see crispin glover doing his dramatic readings, go! it will be the highlight of your day. enjoyable and utterly unforgettable.
a dramatic reading from crispin hellion glover
whereas sean and i sat transfixed by his readings, i'd have to say we felt like we were held hostage watching it is fine. everything is fine! sean hadn't seen glover's directorial debut, what is it?, and found this sophomore work disturbing and not easy to watch. i had to tell him this was a walk in the park compared to the first one. at least this one had a semi-coherent story, although i'd agree with sean that it was not easy to sit through. and as sean said afterwards, the image of a man with a severe case of cerebral palsy in all manners of flagrante delicto will be burned into your mind's eye. and haunt you right before you go to sleep. i guess we were taken aback by his full frontal nudity. and getting blown. and being ridden. by buck naked women. plus throw in serial murder and a dash of necrophilia.
alrighty then.
this is second in a trilogy series. i'm almost afraid to see what the third film will look like when it's done. but knowing me, i'll go. because it's crispin glover. and it's now proven that my admiration for this oddball obviously has no bounds.
crispin glover singing to his buddy ben in willard
...but perhaps just for his dramatic readings. because it's brilliant and so damn funny. it could only be made more stupendous if crispin glover were to sing.
i'm obsessed. and it's over 3 rockabilly lads from germany. the baseballs are a rock and roll band that sound like they've time traveled out of the '50s to amp up today's radio hits. and i use "radio hits" loosely as most of them are songs that i don't give a toss about.
the lads cover plain white tees, rhianna, usher, the scissor sisters, pussycat dolls, beyonce, jennifer lopez, robbie williams, maroon 5 and lady gaga among others. the baseballs also croon a rendition of alicia keys's no one. i'm pretty sure my 4 year old niece won't like it as much as the original. it's HER song, y'know.
it's no secret i love 50s and 60s music. if you drop by my house anytime, the odds are high i'll be streaming either 80s music or jukebox oldies through my TV. sometimes the thought crosses my mind that sean might think i'm an old fuddy-duddy, listening to tunes gone by. i can thank my mom for spoon-feeding me the classics.
clockwise from top left: rockabillies jerry lee lewis, buddy holly, elvis presley, chris isaak, the stray cats, ricky nelson, gene vincent, eddie cochran. and the center is of course, the beatles. before they modded out, they were rockers.
but even if you don't get your rocks off to the oldies, there's no denying that the baseballs' cover versions will take a hold of your body and make it move. and groove. and shake them hips. they got the crooning, the harmonizing, the piano tinkering, the hand clapping, the bass slappingg and the guitar picking down to a science. they also got the look of brylcreemed pompadours, sideburns, dark jeans, white tees, western shirts and chuck taylors down pat.
the song that introduced me to the baseballs was bleeding love. (thanks ami!) i actually like the original but when i heard the cover, i was wowed. i had to know more.
so i did some more digging...and came across the baseballs covering katy perry's hot n cold. i don't dig on katy perry, but i think their rendition is pretty awesome. the opening bars remind me of eddie cochran's c'mon everybody. then you get shouts of "you're hot!", "you're cold!", hand-clappings and a bunch of shoo-waps. how can anybody not be moved to dance?
i love the part when the punk with the mohawk gets into the music. awesome.
and they can croon too. i like onerepublic's stop and stare, but i really like the baseballs' voc n' roll version. makes me think of prom night in the 50's. images of saddle shoes, poodle skirts and crinoline invade my brain.
and i especially love the way they covered snow patrol's chasing cars with piano pounding a la jerry lee lewis' great balls of fire. they even set the piano on fire in the video. i'm a big fan of "the killer", so this rendition went over big time with me. yup, if this was the '50s, i'd be told i was on my way to hell, listening to this devil's music.
sure, there's the fear that the baseballs can be written off as a fad. i mean, can they sustain doing rockabilly cover versions 2, 3 years down the road? who knows? but for now, i'm just enjoying. as you can tell by my most epic of posts.
on the bands website, it says that sam, digger and basti are always on the look-out for songs that can be "rolled". their exact words being, "we take good songs and lead them to their true calling." that is a great mission statement. and with so many crappy songs out there, just screaming for a re-invention, the baseballs' work should hopefully continue for quite some time. amen!
turned out to be a wonderful weekend for vancouver opera. vancouver sun reporter gillian shaw recently interviewed arts organizations who are using social media for brand awareness and to help sell tickets. not only did vancouver opera get coverage in this weekend's arts and life cover story, but also as an accompanying side feature.
Opera might not be the first entertainment that springs to mind when you think of leading-edge technology, but the Vancouver Opera is flipping the traditional image with its social media strategy.
The VO’s social media manager Ling Chan attributes that to general director James Wright, who is willing to try new initiatives, whether it’s blogger nights or a tweeting Opera Ninja.
“We started in May 2008 because our general director wanted us to have a blog,” said Chan. “When we started the blog we also started a Facebook account, YouTube and Flickr and in February 2009 we got onto Twitter.
“Management was very progressive and open about it. We’re at an advantage to have management that even thinks this way, we took the idea and just ran with it.”
The Vancouver Opera never really dabbled in social media, it dived in headlong.
According to VO social media manager Ling Chan, it started with general director James Wright wanting the VO to start blogging in 2008.
That prompted Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts as well. And less than a year later, the VO was on Twitter.
Chan is diligent in keeping up the blog, a potential pitfall for organizations that can launch into social media with great fanfare, only to go silent and leave their blogs, Twitter streams and Facebook abandoned and outdated.
Chan posts three to five times a week and ensures all the VO's events are posted throughout the organization's social media sites, with behind-the-scenes looks, interviews and pre-show production photos and videos shared on Flickr and YouTube.
it looks like there's 2 versions of my interview: the complete write-up for online titled vancouver opera strikes a digital note, and the above mentioned, edited for newpaper.
a triple win for the VO this weekend, with exposure online and in print from friday through to sunday. wowzers. i remain thrilled that people like what i'm doing at the opera. very thankful and very appreciative of all this attention. and youbetcha buttcheeks i ran out and bought the weekend paper. this one's going up my wall.
last night sean and i headed to the orpheum theatre for vancouver symphony orchestra's (VSO) performance of beethoven's symphony no. 9 ode to joy.
when we got to the theatre, there was a lineup around the block to pick up will-call tickets. seems everybody loves beethoven. luckily, we had hard tickets, so we bypassed the line and went inside the bustling theatre. i couldn't help but keep an eye out to see if i spied any familiar opera faces. i didn't, but i did see a girl wear a wicked steampunk outfit. if this was the opera, i would've tracked her down and took her picture.
found our orchestra seats and got comfy for a night of beethoven. the program looked alittle something like this:
the creatures of prometheus: overture
symphony no. 1 in C major, Op. 21 i. adagio molto ii. andante cantabil conmoto iii. menuetto: allegro molto e vivace iv. adiagio - allegro molto e vivace
intermission
symphony no. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, choral i. allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso ii. molto vivace - presto - molto vivace iii. adagio molto e cantabile - andante moderato iv. presto - allegro assai
i've been to the symphony a few times before and although the music is oh so lovely to listen to, there's not much to look at other than the talented musicians on stage and the spanish renaissance architecture. surprisingly, i found myself tapping my foot to beethoven's very distinct sound. and then i thought perhaps in my limited knowledge of classical composers and their works, that beethoven might be my favourite. (for now) i do enjoy symphony no. 7 in A major, Op. 92. his music has so much drama and passion.
sure, the obvious movie that comes to mind where ode to joy was used may be when the villains crack the safe at nakatomi plaza in die hard, but for me, it reminds me of 2 other movies: dead poets society and immortal beloved. (beethoven's concerto no. 5 was also featured in dead poets society)
unfortunately, we were not able to stay until to enjoy the end. silly me, i thought that it was only going to be symphony no. 9 and that we'd be in and out of there in an hour. who knew that that was going to be played AFTER intermission? symphony newbie. but the night was more than made up for with creme brulee at sweet revenge patisserie because everything becomes right as rain with blueberry creme brulee.
beautiful to look at but oh so eery, disturbing, terrifying and intense. natalie portman knocks it out of the park. director darren aranofsky continues to amaze. black swan is a movie that will stay with you, long after you leave the theatre. remember to breathe.
