I haven't posted a blog in like a month and a half. I guess that's because I spent most of August traveling. I think in 31 days of August, I spent 10 or 11 at home - and most of those were spent getting ready to travel.
BUT. I'm in Madrid. I can't say I'm loving every minute of it, but I am loving generally almost every hour of it. I go out late, sleep in, take naps, drink a lot of wine. Do nothing pretty frequently, which is taking more getting used to than almost anything else about being in Spain. I know I should dare complain about having three (possibly soon to be four) day weekends, but I suck suck suck at free time. I've done some exploring of Madrid on my own, but I'd much rather share the experiences with friends, and as we all have to pay for each individual text message we send and phone call we make, things get tricky. I do enjoy time on my own and really don't mind spending hours on end by myself, but I also want to make friends and get to know these people I'll be spending the next three months with, not to mention I would LOVE to meet some Spanish people.
Not being able to text friends all the time is strange. But I have been skyping with people every once in a while, which is really fun. It's nice to see people's faces that I haven't seen in many months. Hopefully some friends are coming to visit - I look forward to showing people around my surrogate city. Sometimes things here feel like New York and sometimes they don't. School actually feels a lot like high school because it's so confined and groups have formed into kind of cliques rather quickly. There's actually probably at least a dozen students here from other schools as well, and it's interesting to see how they are similar to or different from NYU kids.
I've been thinking a lot about love, passion, sensuality, and temporality lately, but that's no surprise as I'm reading Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding this weekend for my Lorca class. Spaniards know how to do passion, man. And you can feel it in their writing if you read it in Spanish. I'm reading Blood Wedding in English but we read a couple poems in Spanish and I'm familiar with some Spanish works, and can just tell. It's something in the sounds of Spanish words too. Lots of long sounds because vowels are really important to the Spanish language.
I suppose I should have a lot more to say, like about all the crazy things that happened in August including my brother starting college, but I just realized how tired I am even though it's only a little after 10 here. I think I'm going to snuggle up with some Lorca for a bit and just see how the night goes. More soon though, as I have loads of free time.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Addiction
I had been thinking for the last month or so that I should maybe be concerned because junkies and I seem to have similar personality traits. Upon further investigation, it seems I only have personality traits similar to Nikki Sixx specifically, and as he's been a rock star for 30 years and is also a photographer, radio host, and owns a clothing line (not to mention has died twice and is now ten years sober), I am no longer so worried. Maybe our addictive personalities are good for us.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Potter Generation
There is not a doubt in my mind that kids will read Harry Potter for ages to come, just like we still read Goodnight Moon and The Wind in the Willows and The Chronicles of Narnia and so many others. Of course Harry's got staying power, or he wouldn't have become this big. Children and teenagers aren't patient. They don't want to wait years for the next installment of a story when they can't even wait a week for the next episode of a TV show. But what I've been thinking about for the last couple weeks is that the waiting, the anticipation, is exactly what shaped so much of this experience and created a phenomenon the world had never seen before. The waiting is what makes me a part of the luckiest generation of kids.
The first three books came fast and furious - Philosopher's Stone finally found a publisher in 1997 in Britain. October 1998 saw the American release of Sorcerer's Stone. By June of 1999, America had received Chamber of Secrets and just a year after the first Potter book crossed the ocean, in October of 1999 we had Prisoner of Azkaban. Beyond that, all future Potter books would be released in America and Britain - and soon in the rest of the world - at the same time.
Anyone who knows me - in fact, practically anyone who has ever met me - knows I was one of the lucky few to lay hands on a first American edition of Sorcerer's Stone in 1998. And once I started reading Potter, I didn't stop. I read and reread them constantly, combing the pages for clues of what was to come. And thanks to the newly-popular internet, I wasn't alone. My family got the internet when I was about ten, and all I did online for several years (pre-myspace, mind you) was spend hours on Harry Potter fan sites, including one of my own creation, which, at its most popular, had at least 500 members. Not bad for an eleven-year-old.
These websites were hotbeds for rumors, theories, every word JK Rowling had ever said copied to be deciphered. I found a post it note in my room once with rumored titles for the fourth book, including Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament. There was the ever-raging debate about Snape's true loyalties. And why were Harry's eyes so important, as we were told they were? Thanks to long lapses beginning with the Goblet of Fire-to-Order of the Phoenix three years, fans' imaginations ran even wilder trying to predict what would happen in the rest of the series, searching everywhere for clues or missed information. This led to a new series of books: published collections of theories, using FBI-intensity research of any resource to be found. 2001 produced a rash of books from the religious populace, either condemning the series for championing delinquents and witchcraft, or heralding the boy wizard's story as a tale of love, courage, and loyalty seldom found in such complex form in childrens' books. I have previously ranted my feelings (in at least two separate posts) about those.
But the thing about these websites and books is they brought together kids all over the world - through books. Because of what they were reading. And we were waiting, desperately, counting down the days to the next part of the story. In 2001 came the first film, helping to ease just slightly the painful wait between books. And the Potter fanbase grew to even more epic proportions. But think back, if you can, to ten years ago. We only had four books - no one knew what the Order of the Phoenix was or who the Half-Blood Prince was, Voldemort had just come back, and Dumbledore was invincible.
Kids will read these books in the future. It blows my mind to think about it, but there are kids reading the books now who weren't born when I started reading them. The huge difference is they will be able to read them for the first time as fast as I read them now. Generally I read the entire series over a period of about four weeks; this time I did it in about three. There is no more waiting. And now, with the release of Deathly Hallows Part II on film, we have no more films to wait for. Our anticipation turns, now, to Pottermore - the elusive, mysterious new website set up by JK Rowling to "enhance" our rereadings of the books. But no one is quite sure what this means. She's doing something that's never been done before because books have never been done this way before. So we wait, with bated breath, without really knowing what we're waiting for.
There won't be another July 15, 2011 or another July 21, 2007. I can't imagine anything else having such a singularly important date as these releases have. (It was only because of my desire to make the last book last more than 24 hours that I didn't spend the entirety of my brother's 14th birthday reading Deathly Hallows.) The trailers and ads for the last film were traumatizing for many of my generation, boldly emblazoned with the tagline "IT ALL ENDS." I refused to watch trailers that included those words, because I refused to face the idea of the end before I was sitting in a movie theatre at midnight on July 15th. But the thing is, it hasn't ended. A lot of people have treated this final movie as the end of an era. In some ways, that's what I've been writing about - it's the end of the the anticipation. But people seem to ignore the fact that these books came into existence for three or four years before the first film existed. The Potter legacy extends beyond the ten years of films. This is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Harry Potter will only truly be gone when none here are loyal to him.
Mischief Managed.
The first three books came fast and furious - Philosopher's Stone finally found a publisher in 1997 in Britain. October 1998 saw the American release of Sorcerer's Stone. By June of 1999, America had received Chamber of Secrets and just a year after the first Potter book crossed the ocean, in October of 1999 we had Prisoner of Azkaban. Beyond that, all future Potter books would be released in America and Britain - and soon in the rest of the world - at the same time.
Anyone who knows me - in fact, practically anyone who has ever met me - knows I was one of the lucky few to lay hands on a first American edition of Sorcerer's Stone in 1998. And once I started reading Potter, I didn't stop. I read and reread them constantly, combing the pages for clues of what was to come. And thanks to the newly-popular internet, I wasn't alone. My family got the internet when I was about ten, and all I did online for several years (pre-myspace, mind you) was spend hours on Harry Potter fan sites, including one of my own creation, which, at its most popular, had at least 500 members. Not bad for an eleven-year-old.
These websites were hotbeds for rumors, theories, every word JK Rowling had ever said copied to be deciphered. I found a post it note in my room once with rumored titles for the fourth book, including Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament. There was the ever-raging debate about Snape's true loyalties. And why were Harry's eyes so important, as we were told they were? Thanks to long lapses beginning with the Goblet of Fire-to-Order of the Phoenix three years, fans' imaginations ran even wilder trying to predict what would happen in the rest of the series, searching everywhere for clues or missed information. This led to a new series of books: published collections of theories, using FBI-intensity research of any resource to be found. 2001 produced a rash of books from the religious populace, either condemning the series for championing delinquents and witchcraft, or heralding the boy wizard's story as a tale of love, courage, and loyalty seldom found in such complex form in childrens' books. I have previously ranted my feelings (in at least two separate posts) about those.
But the thing about these websites and books is they brought together kids all over the world - through books. Because of what they were reading. And we were waiting, desperately, counting down the days to the next part of the story. In 2001 came the first film, helping to ease just slightly the painful wait between books. And the Potter fanbase grew to even more epic proportions. But think back, if you can, to ten years ago. We only had four books - no one knew what the Order of the Phoenix was or who the Half-Blood Prince was, Voldemort had just come back, and Dumbledore was invincible.
Kids will read these books in the future. It blows my mind to think about it, but there are kids reading the books now who weren't born when I started reading them. The huge difference is they will be able to read them for the first time as fast as I read them now. Generally I read the entire series over a period of about four weeks; this time I did it in about three. There is no more waiting. And now, with the release of Deathly Hallows Part II on film, we have no more films to wait for. Our anticipation turns, now, to Pottermore - the elusive, mysterious new website set up by JK Rowling to "enhance" our rereadings of the books. But no one is quite sure what this means. She's doing something that's never been done before because books have never been done this way before. So we wait, with bated breath, without really knowing what we're waiting for.
There won't be another July 15, 2011 or another July 21, 2007. I can't imagine anything else having such a singularly important date as these releases have. (It was only because of my desire to make the last book last more than 24 hours that I didn't spend the entirety of my brother's 14th birthday reading Deathly Hallows.) The trailers and ads for the last film were traumatizing for many of my generation, boldly emblazoned with the tagline "IT ALL ENDS." I refused to watch trailers that included those words, because I refused to face the idea of the end before I was sitting in a movie theatre at midnight on July 15th. But the thing is, it hasn't ended. A lot of people have treated this final movie as the end of an era. In some ways, that's what I've been writing about - it's the end of the the anticipation. But people seem to ignore the fact that these books came into existence for three or four years before the first film existed. The Potter legacy extends beyond the ten years of films. This is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Harry Potter will only truly be gone when none here are loyal to him.
Mischief Managed.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Too Fast For Love
I am starting to believe I only like bands that are older than I am (or would be if they were still kicking).
Tuesday night I went to the Motley Crue/Poison/New York Dolls show in St. Louis and it was undeniably the most epic thing I have ever experienced. NYD rocked while it was still light out. Bret Michaels ran around like he was still 25. As I've mentioned, "Talk Dirty to Me" is one of the most played songs in my iTunes, but the real draw was of course the masters of metal, Motley Crue. And let me just say, the gods were with my friend Brianna and I - we had scored lawn seats for like $16 that magically got upgraded to (only mildly shitty) seats, and then twenty minutes into the NYD set, we moved closer to the stage and closer to center... And stayed there the rest of the night, with no seats in front of us (meaning no tall people to block our view of any epic moment of the next three hours).
And then in the middle of some song playing over the speakers (possibly Guns 'n' Roses, I can't remember), the house lights go out, the stage explodes, the scrim is gone, and Motley Crue is playing "Wild Side," and it's the loudest thing I have ever fucking heard. There's fog. There's fire. There's Vince Niel. In silver pants. Mick Mars is hiding under sunglasses and a top hat and standing in a corner... and there's Nikki Sixx, in a long coat and something with silver sequins.
The "Glam-A-Gaddeon" Tour is celebrating Motley's 30th anniversary... This band was making music for almost ten years before I was born. (Nikki Sixx was born the same year as my mom...) I honestly didn't become a huge Motley fan until recently, but when I like something, I like it right, and therefore was obsessed by the time I got to the show. And how can you not be when this happens:
It's fire. Fire. Everywhere. (And again I'm pretty sure that's Nikki's silhouette.) Poison had some pyro, but it looked like kid stuff compared to the flames and fireworks that the Crue threw at us.
This photo I include purely in honor of the woman standing a few rows behind us who wouldn't stop shouting "Tommy Lee!" and was also drunk enough to not realize that Motley played "Shout at the Devil" pretty early in their set, so she kept shouting "Shout at the Devil!" too.
This picture would have been a lot more epic about ten seconds earlier, but as the night wore on some fucker decided he would occasionally come stand in front of me to take pictures. And he was probably three times my weight, so I just leaned around him.
The Crue show was directed and choreographed and designed like nobody's business. Media, Tommy Lee's drum kit, flashing signs, a shadow box... So I got inspired to get a little artsy myself and the lighting designer came out in me... I LOVE backlight, it's incredibly theatrical and dramatic, and in this case makes the night look about as amazing as it felt. Fuck yeah.
Tuesday night I went to the Motley Crue/Poison/New York Dolls show in St. Louis and it was undeniably the most epic thing I have ever experienced. NYD rocked while it was still light out. Bret Michaels ran around like he was still 25. As I've mentioned, "Talk Dirty to Me" is one of the most played songs in my iTunes, but the real draw was of course the masters of metal, Motley Crue. And let me just say, the gods were with my friend Brianna and I - we had scored lawn seats for like $16 that magically got upgraded to (only mildly shitty) seats, and then twenty minutes into the NYD set, we moved closer to the stage and closer to center... And stayed there the rest of the night, with no seats in front of us (meaning no tall people to block our view of any epic moment of the next three hours).Changeover from Poison's set was so epic that they threw up a scrim to hide the action:
And then in the middle of some song playing over the speakers (possibly Guns 'n' Roses, I can't remember), the house lights go out, the stage explodes, the scrim is gone, and Motley Crue is playing "Wild Side," and it's the loudest thing I have ever fucking heard. There's fog. There's fire. There's Vince Niel. In silver pants. Mick Mars is hiding under sunglasses and a top hat and standing in a corner... and there's Nikki Sixx, in a long coat and something with silver sequins.
This wasn't their first song, but the lighting was too epic to handle. That's Nikki down on the left.
The "Glam-A-Gaddeon" Tour is celebrating Motley's 30th anniversary... This band was making music for almost ten years before I was born. (Nikki Sixx was born the same year as my mom...) I honestly didn't become a huge Motley fan until recently, but when I like something, I like it right, and therefore was obsessed by the time I got to the show. And how can you not be when this happens:
It's fire. Fire. Everywhere. (And again I'm pretty sure that's Nikki's silhouette.) Poison had some pyro, but it looked like kid stuff compared to the flames and fireworks that the Crue threw at us.
They had blackouts between most of their songs, but they can even make darkness look epic:
This photo I include purely in honor of the woman standing a few rows behind us who wouldn't stop shouting "Tommy Lee!" and was also drunk enough to not realize that Motley played "Shout at the Devil" pretty early in their set, so she kept shouting "Shout at the Devil!" too.
This picture would have been a lot more epic about ten seconds earlier, but as the night wore on some fucker decided he would occasionally come stand in front of me to take pictures. And he was probably three times my weight, so I just leaned around him.
Nikki being intense:
"Home Sweet Home" was really epic live. And made me like the recording better, and gain a little more respect for ballads:
If Nikki mother-fucking Sixx tells you to sit the fuck down, you do.
The Crue show was directed and choreographed and designed like nobody's business. Media, Tommy Lee's drum kit, flashing signs, a shadow box... So I got inspired to get a little artsy myself and the lighting designer came out in me... I LOVE backlight, it's incredibly theatrical and dramatic, and in this case makes the night look about as amazing as it felt. Fuck yeah.Things that are EPIC: Everything about Motley Crue:
They played (in no particular order) "Dr. Feelgood." "Shout at the Devil." "Too Fast for Love." "Saints of Los Angeles" "Girls, Girls, Girls,""Wild Side," "Ten Seconds to Love" "Home Sweet Home" "Smokin' in the Boys Room" "Looks that Kill" (one of my faves) and closed with "Kickstart my Heart." They only missed about two songs I wish they had played, and gracefully glossed over their '90s releases that I don't love as much as Dr. Feelgood or Saints of Los Angeles, which, though recorded 20 years apart, are equally kickass.
I rocked so hard I thought my legs were going to fall off on the way to the car and my arms wouldn't be able to get me into it. We got back from the show a little over 24 hours ago (it took over an hour just to get out of the parking lot) and I'm still on a metal high. My hearing is probably going to get back to normal right around next Friday, when I hope to be at the Tour stop in Chicago. Until then...
Rock like there's no tomorrow.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Potter and More
I am unapologetically pretentious when it comes Harry Potter. I am aware of this fact. That is my only disclaimer to the rest of this post.
I went on one of my occasional requesting sprees through the library catalog a few days ago, and as a result today picked up six books and three films. Three of the books have come to resume my study of books about Harry Potter. I haven't read more than the back cover/inside flap/first page of the introduction to any of these books, but I still find them all a little insufferable. As I've said before, most of these books were published in the 2000-2002 era, in the unprecedentedly long lull between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, when JKR was busy getting married and having a baby, in addition to writing her longest installment yet. This obviously means that a lot of Potter analysis is missing (the more significant) half of the story. This is not the biggest issue I have, however; I don't fault people for not knowing information that didn't exist publicly yet. When you're writing about pop culture, your work becomes dated pretty fast.
The problem I face is that before I've read a word of what these people have to say, I feel like I know more than them. They weren't eight years old when Harry got his first letter from Hogwarts, or eleven when we first watched eleven-year-old Harry enter the Hogwarts we had only dreamed about, or seventeen when seventeen-year-old Harry left school and almost everyone he loved to destroy the most evil wizard who ever lived. While anyone born before probably 1993 will be able to remember the development of the series, its explosion into film, midnight releases, and Potter parties, there is only a very small window of my generation that truly grew up with our beloved Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
I feel extremely lucky to be a part of the probably five (maybe seven or eight) year window of kids (now young adults) who got to be young enough to experience magic and wonder but also old enough to realize that this was a big deal, that this was changing our culture and our world and especially (at least in my case) our individual lives. I of course have memories from before I turned eight, but I have a hard time recalling what life in general was like before I started obsessively reading and rereading every word J.K. Rowling put in front of me, desperately waiting for the newest moment in the story. And these experiences, I know, are a rare privilege. But, like I've said, they've also given me a serious superiority complex about anything and everything Potter related. I'm pretty sure I've reached a level of fanaticism that (despite my *I think* articulateness about the whole thing) means I mostly have to hold my tongue in Harry-related conversations. Once I start, talking about Harry Potter becomes an involuntary bodily function.
I was out tonight and someone said J.K. Rowling would probably basically fall off the face of the earth about five minutes after the final film is released in July (less than a month, God help me), and then would resurface again eventually once she started missing being famous. I thought pretty much everything about this statement was wrong, but didn't think it important to start an argument about JKR's dislike of fame or the staying power of Potter and the inevitable notoriety that will probably always glow around JKR, even if she's not always recognized in the street.
Today I found out about Pottermore. As usual, J.K Rowling has something up her sleeve and, because she knows people like me will hang on to anything she gives us, she's dangling an empty website at us. I can practically feel her cheshire cat grin upon creating the site and announcing that something new is coming. We'll find out on Thursday, around 2 am Eastern time, according to the taunting countdown on youtube. Right now we don't even know what we're counting down to, but Potter fans are excited. Very. Excited. Maybe it's the encyclopedia of lore. Perhaps a new RPG. Whatever it is, Pottermore is sure to not disappoint, and I'm counting down the days, hours, and minutes. (Incidentally, I'll be in St. Louis visiting a friend when this news breaks, and we'll just be getting back from a Motley Crue/Poison/New York Dolls concert. It's going to be an extremely intense night all around.)
5 days. 5 hours. 17 minutes. 17 seconds.
I went on one of my occasional requesting sprees through the library catalog a few days ago, and as a result today picked up six books and three films. Three of the books have come to resume my study of books about Harry Potter. I haven't read more than the back cover/inside flap/first page of the introduction to any of these books, but I still find them all a little insufferable. As I've said before, most of these books were published in the 2000-2002 era, in the unprecedentedly long lull between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, when JKR was busy getting married and having a baby, in addition to writing her longest installment yet. This obviously means that a lot of Potter analysis is missing (the more significant) half of the story. This is not the biggest issue I have, however; I don't fault people for not knowing information that didn't exist publicly yet. When you're writing about pop culture, your work becomes dated pretty fast.
The problem I face is that before I've read a word of what these people have to say, I feel like I know more than them. They weren't eight years old when Harry got his first letter from Hogwarts, or eleven when we first watched eleven-year-old Harry enter the Hogwarts we had only dreamed about, or seventeen when seventeen-year-old Harry left school and almost everyone he loved to destroy the most evil wizard who ever lived. While anyone born before probably 1993 will be able to remember the development of the series, its explosion into film, midnight releases, and Potter parties, there is only a very small window of my generation that truly grew up with our beloved Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
I feel extremely lucky to be a part of the probably five (maybe seven or eight) year window of kids (now young adults) who got to be young enough to experience magic and wonder but also old enough to realize that this was a big deal, that this was changing our culture and our world and especially (at least in my case) our individual lives. I of course have memories from before I turned eight, but I have a hard time recalling what life in general was like before I started obsessively reading and rereading every word J.K. Rowling put in front of me, desperately waiting for the newest moment in the story. And these experiences, I know, are a rare privilege. But, like I've said, they've also given me a serious superiority complex about anything and everything Potter related. I'm pretty sure I've reached a level of fanaticism that (despite my *I think* articulateness about the whole thing) means I mostly have to hold my tongue in Harry-related conversations. Once I start, talking about Harry Potter becomes an involuntary bodily function.
I was out tonight and someone said J.K. Rowling would probably basically fall off the face of the earth about five minutes after the final film is released in July (less than a month, God help me), and then would resurface again eventually once she started missing being famous. I thought pretty much everything about this statement was wrong, but didn't think it important to start an argument about JKR's dislike of fame or the staying power of Potter and the inevitable notoriety that will probably always glow around JKR, even if she's not always recognized in the street.
Today I found out about Pottermore. As usual, J.K Rowling has something up her sleeve and, because she knows people like me will hang on to anything she gives us, she's dangling an empty website at us. I can practically feel her cheshire cat grin upon creating the site and announcing that something new is coming. We'll find out on Thursday, around 2 am Eastern time, according to the taunting countdown on youtube. Right now we don't even know what we're counting down to, but Potter fans are excited. Very. Excited. Maybe it's the encyclopedia of lore. Perhaps a new RPG. Whatever it is, Pottermore is sure to not disappoint, and I'm counting down the days, hours, and minutes. (Incidentally, I'll be in St. Louis visiting a friend when this news breaks, and we'll just be getting back from a Motley Crue/Poison/New York Dolls concert. It's going to be an extremely intense night all around.)
5 days. 5 hours. 17 minutes. 17 seconds.
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