Go see ’The Fall’

If you like the white hot taste of wasabi, chaotic Jackson Pollack splatter paintings or the tweaked out music of Aphex Twin, you should see 'The Fall' by director Tarsem. That's not to say that wasabi, Pollack or Aphex Twin or anything resembling them appears in the movie, but like those other extreme sensual experiences, you will either love the full frontal mad genius on display or hate it for the same reasons.

As a visual experience, 'The Fall' is one of the most startlingly beautiful pictures filmed in the last decade, ranking with the likes of 'Hero', 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'Pan's Labrynth'. You'll see gargantuan desert sand dunes, impossible labyrinthine palaces, graceful whirling dervishes nearly suspended in slow motion and elaborate exotic costumes from all corners of the world. Then there are a host of unforgettable surreal and fantastic images that I would do well to not describe for fear of ruining the experience of seeing them for the first time. Try to imagine a gothic Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton directing the Wizard of Oz.

As with much of the imagery, the less I say about the plot, the better. It is minimalistic and simple to predict anyway. It's the way it is told that matters, with two stories parallel and intertwined, one real and one fantasy. The movie is in part about storytelling and imagination itself. It is occasionally violent and spirals deep into brutal emotional places. To paraphrase one Samwise Gamgee, it's like the great stories, full of darkness and danger. Sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? But it's only a passing thing. Even darkness must pass and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Here's a link to the movie trailer, but watch it at your own risk because it does spoil many of the best images of the movie:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q6j-vg8uNcE

8:39 PM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

HAHAHA!!!

So one hydrogen atom says to another hydrogen atom, "I think I'm missing my electron."
The other hydrogen ask, "Are you sure?"
The first hydrogen responds, "Yes, I'm POSITIVE!"

10:59 AM - 6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Meet the guild

Most of you know something about my gaming habits and that for two years, I've been part of a highly successful guild in World Of Warcraft. The game is set up so that you need other players to tackle the biggest challenges, so people organize into guilds that help each other out and regularly play with each other. Guilds serve as centers of social activity too, and over these two years I've gotten to know many people both in and outside of the game. I guess it's significant to point out that these people are actually worth getting to know. We pride ourselves at being a mature, inclusive guild, so there aren't a bunch of annoying kids running around with us yelling 'Time 2 pwn sum N00bsauce!!lol!!!' Most people have families and successful jobs and are fun to talk to online. We have IT technicians, soldiers, biologists, radio DJs, college professors, hippies, heavy metal bassists and yes, a few nerds.

I actually stopped playing about three months ago, but a friend from the game, Fualruna as I know her, invited me to the guild field trip that our leaders Alcander and Izellah had been planning. So last Thursday, I flew to Chicago to meet my guild, explore the City, party, ride the roller coasters at Six Flags and party some more. About 23 people came out from every corner of the country, as well as Canada.

I had a stellar few days. A full account would take pages and pages, so here's a few highlights:

-Exploring the Art Institute with Alruna and Fualruna on Friday. I got some serious culture while getting to know two of the coolest people in the guild. We spent most of the day, just the three of us, adding in a few folks as the day went on.
-Partying late into the next morning with Brennie and Krelian. When I finally left their hotel room around 3:30 in the morning (well blazed after having watched 'Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny'), I pushed aside the towel that we had used to cover the bottom of the door and opened it up to step into the hall. At that very moment, a cop walked by, looked at me, looked at the towel, looked at me, and kept walking. Boy did that ruin my buzz.
-Got help from Luchilla to survive the first roller coaster. I hadn't been on one in over ten years and I'm terrified of heights. She was a pro. The first one had me petrified and clutching the arm bars, the second had me howling in delight, by the third I couldn't wait to hit them all.
-Spontaneous swing dances with Jandiel throughout the day. She cuts a mean rug, can belly dance and pretty much anything else she sets her mind to.
-Guild free-for-all deathmatch with the bumper cars. "Eat it Wulfin! Oh shit Fualruna, you're going down, bitch!You like that Alvaro! Suck it! Suck it hard!"
-Hitting the vodka HARD before heading out to some of the finest pizza I've ever had.
-Returning to said vodka as soon as we got back.
-Belly dance lessons from Icewing. As an aside: I think I heard more country music in two days than I've heard in two years. And what's sad is that I was drunk enough, that not only did I not mind it, I started dancing to it thanks to an impromptu lesson from a random guy at the bar.
-Realizing that Aphyd is so drunk that not only will he not notice if Fualruna and I steal his last drink that he just ordered, but we'll be doing him a favor.
-Literally freebasing tequila with Alcander. No joke, no exaggeration. He set the bar on fire more than once. I'd be happy to explain how to perform this feat, but you have to promise you won't try it at home. That shit will fuck you up.
-Taking over the jukebox for more dancing with Jandiel, Izellah, Fualruna and anyone else that happened to wander by.

The not so highlight:
-Getting lost with Aphyd on the way to the airport and missing our flight, all while horribly hungover. But it was all worth is because I had such a great time getting to know such cool people.

And finally, go check out my new photo album with a bunch of my pictures from the trip. A lot of them are of Alruna and Fualruna because I spent most of Friday with just them (plus Aphyd later in the day) and a good portion of Saturday sticking close together.

4:57 PM - 6 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Tango on the mind

In the last week, I've had enough tango adventures, I'm starting to feel like I'm trapped in a closet with Astor Piazolla. And that's not actually a bad thing.

Things started when the Forever Tango troupe played a show at the Hult. Normally, I'd just roll my eyes at a show like this. Show tango has almost nothing to do with social tango. It's like the difference between 'American Idol' and seeing a good rock show at the WOW Hall. Sure those 'American Idol' kids have talented voices, but it's still insipid pop schlock. But the Forever Tango show was different. They came to the Tango Center the night before and played with us. These guys are world class professional dancers, and they were coming to check out the local dance scene. I got to dance with a couple of the women, tiny Argentine ladies that could still probably stop a train with their abs if called upon to do so. One of them just seemed like she was being polite, always looking over my shoulder like she was distracted, but another was eager to dance ("Oh! I don't even have my shoes on! But okay, lets dance!" - said in broken English with a thick Argentine accent) and giggled and smiled the entire time. I think my friend Casey had the best time of any of us. The men would dance with her... and keep dancing with her... I think she got propositioned by at least one of them.

Sunday night, the show itself was fun (I got in free with a bunch of other dancers from the local community). Yes, it was still show tango, but I decided to watch it as if it were modern dance, with tango stylings and moves thrown in. I'm still trying to wrap my head around some of the moves these dancers could do. You'd think you need wires to do some of these gravity and momentum defying spins and aerials, but somehow they were pulling it off. The best part of the show was undoubtedly the music. They had an absolutely stunning orchestra with them, with three bandoneon players blasting your skull out, and a violin player could make you cry. These guys weren't just for show, they were old time professionals that had played with Piazolla and Pugliese.

After the show, they came to the Tango Center again for an afterparty. I stayed up dancing against my better judgment. You don't get many chances to dance with people this good, so dancing seemed more important than sleep. But I did learn a lesson in the end: it's fun to dance with professional dancers that can follow the most complicated patterns and syncopations I can imagine, but it's no substitute for dancing with people like Heather or Casey. They might not have the same zen-like control over their bodies and motions, but we've been dancing together so long and understand each other's movements so well that we've developed an irreplaceable intimate connection. I suppose both experiences are necessary. Without new dance partners, you can't expand your vocabulary, you never learn anything truly new. Without familiar dance partners, you never develop lasting relationships or earn the trust needed for those truly shattering tango experiences.

Monday, I actually did not tango. Joanne and I watched Miyazaki's 'My Neighbor Totoro'. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it's left a startling impression. It's lighter fantasy than his other works like 'Spirtied Away', 'Princess Mononoke' or 'Howl's Moving Castle'. Most of the story occurs in our regular non-magical universe, but there is usually some quiet fantastical element to each scene. It's also never clear if the fantasy is real, just in the character's imaginations or possibly something in between (like in 'Pan's Labyrinth'). It makes the more explicit fantasy sequences stand out all the more for it though. The tree growing sequence is startlingly beautiful in its build up and payoff; its visual poetry has the joyful rapturous quality found in the crescendo of a Beethoven symphony. I'm not kidding, it's THAT good.

Tuesday night I was back to the Tango Center to DJ. Now that I'm DJing more than ever, I've gotten better at putting together playlists at shorter and shorter notice, but on busy weeks like this, I've turned to cribbing from past playlists that I've made. Fortunately, since I keep playlists going back a year or more, I doubt anyone could have noticed a repetition of tandas.

Thursday, I DJed my first wedding (not counting my own of course). Ximena and Rob, members of the tango community, asked me a while back if I could DJ for them. In the last month or so, I've been steadily accumulating song requests and samples from their favorite movies to put together a highly personalized set for them. The wedding was the cleverest ceremony I've ever seen. They turned it into a silent movie, complete with 20's steampunk costumes, projected title cards for the dialog, a live piano accompaniment, evil villains, a train robbery and a surprisingly adorable transition in the end to color and sound. I had a fun time participating, even if not as many people danced as we would have liked.

Finally, on Friday, my friend Sallie threw a tango party at her house (the first of what promises to be a bi-weekly ritual over the summer). Strawberries, wine, a hardwood floor, a visiting instructor from Argentina and a bunch of friends who rock my world made for a blissful night of dancing. The all-nighter turned into a slumber party (seriously, when was the last time you had a slumber party?!). Maybe it's that I haven't been getting much sleep all week, but only sleeping for an hour or two that night actually seemed like not that big of a deal. We had a delightfully lazy morning, lying about in the early sunlight streaming through the windows and playing 'Jane's Addiction' loud enough to rattle the floor.

Saturday turned into a freakishly hot and beautiful day. I know it's dreadfully boring to blog about something as pedantic as the weather, but it was snowing not two weeks ago, and we suddenly had a day hit the mid-80's, with a perfect cooling breeze and cloudless skies. Joanne and I wasted no time getting the top down on the TR6 and drove out through the hills. She had on her hottest Grace Kelly white dress, it was all I could do to keep my hands off her while she was driving. We stopped by Sweet Cheeks winery, helped ourselves to their tastings and lounged about their hilltop terrace, thinking it doesn't really get better than this. We finished up the day sitting on the porch at the High Street pub, drinking beer, getting the last of the sun that we could before heading home and watching some more 'Battlestar Gallactica'.

I actually skipped out on dancing last night. After the week long tango blitz and the hypersociability of weddings and slumber parties, I welcomed a quiet evening at home with Joanne. My god, I think I just slept for about twelve hours straight. I'm gonna need it. This next week is gonna kick off a music blitz with Justin and the Long Walk (at Sam Bonds), Vermillion Lies and Jason Webley (WOW Hall) and Swell Season (McDonald Theater) all to crowd in. Maybe I'll see some of you folks there?

3:25 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

For Heather

This evening’s program in four movements:

8:45 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Another hero passes on

Arthur C Clarke
16 Dec 1917 - 18 March 2008

See you on the other side of the Star Gate...

3:53 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Photography

I’ve recently helped my friend Tanya with two different photography projects. For one, she had to tell a ’story’ using six pictures. I suggested two dancers meeting, dancing and parting, which Tanya loved. She met me and my friend Casey at the Tango Center one afternoon and took nearly 100 pictures of us dancing, some of them posed so as to complete her narrative. Of course, lighting conditions being what they are, most of the good shots are the posed ones, even if they don’t reflect the pure spontantous engery of the tango. I’ve posted my favorites, although Casey (Sundancer in my top friends) posted almost all of them on her profile should you want to see more.

The other photo shoot was a bit more ambitious. She had to imitate another photographer. She decided to do Spencer Tunick, the guy who does those outdoor group nudes. She rounded up whoever was willing to participate (4 people took the bait) and took us out to a friend’s farm near fall creek and went nuts. Since myspace is run by The Man, and The Man doesn’t like nudity even if it’s artistic, I’ve had to post these on my flickr account. Again, Tanya used many rolls of film, but I’ve picked out a few of my favorites. So if you don’t mind seeing me full frontal (and you’re not at work!), check out the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tangochristopher/sets/72157604114806321/

edit: due to publishing/copywrite stuff, I had to remove the photos from flickr. If you still want to see them, let me know and I can work something out, but I can’t have them posted where anyone can take em.

Finally, this is late coming, but there are a lot of cool pictures from Valentango (a month ago) that I’ve been meaning to share. I’ll be posting those over the course of the evening.

4:41 PM - 7 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

So It Goes...

Maybe he's rerolling a level 1 bard somewhere...

6:12 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

meltdown at the tango center

It's late and I should just go to bed, but I need to vent/confess/rant. This won't even be that interesting if you're not a regular at the tango center, nor is this meant to be an entertaining blog. And it's way too long. In fact, it's better if you just don't read this as it's an example of myspace blogging at it's worst: pure emo drama-queen crap.

I'm DJing at the Tango Center tonight, which I do about once a month on Tuesday nights. I usually play a mixed traditional/alternative set and we always have live music for 30-60 minutes. One guy that plays solo guitar every few months is Craig (that's Craig Einhorn for those of you keeping score). I've always known that he has a problem with my music. He's one of the few people that has ever complained about my sets, but I always just ignored it because, hey, you can't please everyone. I figured we just have diverging tastes.

Tonight, when he comes in about 15 minutes into my set, the first thing he does is to go over to the soundboard and turn my music down. Keep in mind, I'm DJing, he's just playing a live set later in the evening. I turn it back up a bit and he complains that the music is too loud. To my ear, it was a comfortable medium volume, but I realize I like my music turned up compared to most people, so I roll with it and keep it a little quieter for the time.

I begin nudging the volume back up to its normal level over the course of a few songs as more people come in and start dancing. I didn't think it was getting loud at all, still a comfortable medium, when I see Craig over at the soundboard again. This time, he doesn't just turn it down, he drops the volume almost by half. I can barely hear the beat anymore. I excuse myself from my partner and stop dancing and go up to Craig and clearly and assertively tell him, "Please don't change the volume anymore," and I go to turn it back up.

This is where it gets confusing, ugly and just plain embarrassing. Craig leaps up and runs to the soundboard and physically blocks my way. At this point, we enter a heated argument that I can't even begin to quote in it's entirety, but includes a lot of me saying stuff like 'You can't be serious, you're actually telling me I can't touch the soundboard?' and him saying stuff like (actual quote incoming), "You get to pick the music, but I get to pick the volume." He brings up bullshit stuff like 'I've been coming to the Tango Center for years' as if this gives him the right to control my set, to which I could have responded by pointing out that I've been coming to the Tango Center since it opened and was the longest running alternative DJ in town (I started it with Andrew about five years ago). I take the moral high ground for the moment and try to focus on the real issue: he thinks he can not just control the volume of my set, but that I don't have the right to do so myself.

Keep in mind, if anyone ever asks me to turn the music down (and they do from time to time) I have always complied. I'm here to make people happy and keep them dancing, not antagonize them.

Here's the part that I'm not proud of, but I feel like I need to talk about anyway. Craig has moved from minor-annoyance to douchebag to complete-fucking-asshole barely within the span of 60 seconds. The argument has escalated far past any point of reason. I have no idea how to deal with this and I end up acting on emotion and impulse. After listening to more of Craig dumping all kinds of absurd reasons why I should not be in control of my own music, I finally throw up my hands, mutter 'Fuck this' and I unplug my iPod (shorting out the music in the middle of a song), pack my things, put on my street shoes and move to leave. Of course, with the music suddenly stopped, everyone is looking over at us now, which means I'm basically throwing a quiet tantrum right there in front of everyone. All this is over something as stupid as the volume of the music and I'm taking it way to personally.

Finally, Liz (who runs the Tuesday night milonga) has figured out that something is SERIOUSLY wrong and moves to intervene. I'm so heated up at this point that I can't even recall much of what people said, but the end result was me feeling embarrassed, sitting back down and restarting my set where I left off and Craig and I doing our best to ignore each other for the rest of the night.

Everyone I talked to has backed me up, saying Craig was way out of line, that I should be the only one at the soundboard, that Craig had backed me into a corner, etc. But a couple things will always still bother me. First is that I should have handled it better. I was the one who ended up turning it into a scene and embarrassing myself. To someone who didn't know either of us or what the context was, it would have looked like I was the crazy/irrational/dumbshit one because that's how I was acting when the argument became highly visible. I let him get to me when I should have just kept playing it cool and reasonable, taking that moral high ground that I was trying for earlier. Second is that there was one other couple that pointed out that yes, the music had been too loud earlier (referring to the first time Craig had turned it down). If this were true, it makes me have to admit that Craig was at least partly right, even if he was going about it in entirely the wrong way. And believe me, it's very hard for me to admit that maybe the music had been too loud (especially because to my ears, it honestly wasn't).

I've got more on my mind (it's all I've been able to think about since it happened about four hours ago), but I just need to drop it for now and sleep.

11:36 PM - 17 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Brilliant covers

Floater rocks my world. I don't know many other bands that would throw an accoustic show and cover Elton John AND Green Day in the same night.

1:36 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment