A “Wicked Good” time

How often can you say the phrase "I spent the weekend in London?" For us Americans, it doesn't seem possible. But if you take the train from Lille, it's only an hour and a half (or so). So as you can tell from the last post, Mark and I spent the weekend in London visiting our friends Niall and Seamus. The food portion of the trip was both good and bad, and the entertainment portion cleverly danced around that idea of good and bad. Let's start with the food.

You know you can't judge a book by its cover. The "National Café" at the National Gallery overlooks Trafalgar Square, Nelson's Column, lots of other columns, sculptures, lots of tourists, and Canada House (hurrah for Niall who, while born in the UK, grew up waving the Maple Leaf flag and making lists of Canadian actors on American television). The service was pleasant but not proficient, shall we say. But for $50 per person, you'd expect the proficient as well. Service errors included reaching across my face to fill up my water and showing me an elbow; grabbing two steaks, not knowing which is medium rare and which is medium, then hoping the customer will sort it out; and carrying that huge oval tray around like a cocktail waitress and exposing diner's foreheads to near collisions with rubber coated plastic. Some of the food was just ok overall, yet other bits were not even digestible. I had a cèpe (mushroom) tartlet for a starter and the chicken for the main course (it's hard to screw up chicken). As a side on my plate was a round heap of "spelt" (yup) with barely any flavor, sitting on top of a slice of grapefruit. Odd combination. Mark and Niall's steaks were not even edible. Mark tried to be a trooper and grind down the gristle, yet Niall gave up all together. You know this is a common occurrence in this restaurant when at the passing request that it would be nice to remove the cost of the steaks from our bill, our waitress acquiesced and the bill showed up steakless… just like Niall's tummy.

Now, change gears completely. This next experience presents itself like an open book. Take a 15 minute taxi to a section of town only known for its empty warehouses. Take that taxi even further down a little alley and, without even a sign on the door, you find the entrance to the Bistrothèque. This was my kind of place. No need for any sort of pretention because it was all real. Interesting cocktails, excellent food, and down to earth yet impeccable service. This is a dining experience from the get-go. The smartest thing the designers did was to make the only passage to the dining room be through the kitchen. You have to carefully make your way around bustling waiters and waitresses while you catch a glimpse of the cooks who seem even more rushed, but happy to be there. The four of us had cocktails, then a starter course that we shared – crab cakes on one plate and a goat cheese salad on another – then our main dishes. I can't quite remember what we all had but I ordered the roasted chicken. I know what you're thinking: "he ordered the chicken again". But this time there was a reason; the place reminded me of Madison's Sardine restaurant where I always order the chicken and it's delicious. I wasn't disappointed. We gave in and ordered dessert as well! Here, the cost was about $85 per person but well worth it, as all memorable experiences are.

Our entertainment agenda for the weekend included two events: Sweeney Todd (the film) and Wicked (the musical). Both deal with the convergence of good and evil on one human being and how someone who is inherently good, innately good, can become evil. Let's do a quick résumé of both stories (and if you know this already, you can skip a few paragraphs).

Sweeney Todd was a barber, a husband, and a father. His only mistake up to this point in his life was being naïve and having a wife too pretty for words. A judge, wanting this wife as his own, had Sweeney Todd arrested on false premises and sent him to jail for 15 years, just enough time to woo his wife. But the wife, apparently too frail and too weak-minded to handle the stress, poisons herself. Fifteen years later, long story short, Sweeney Todd takes up barbering again but uses his chair and his blade to eventually get to the judge. Man after man who unexpectedly came up for a shave ended up with a slit throat and a two story drop into the basement, landing square on his head, where he was cut up and used for meat in pies. The barber gets his man (the judge) but in the excitement of it all, kills the neighborhood crazy old lady who , it turns out, is not just any old crazy old lady. She is Sweeney Todd's wife. You see, the key line is that she poisoned herself, she didn't kill herself. So in this bloodbath of a film, evil conquers good. That is, until you take into account that the cute little adorable singing shop boy, someone who grew up surrounded by evil, remained good through and through and eventually takes a swipe at Sweeney Todd himself. So yes, good conquers evil.

Wicked plays around with ideas of good and evil, but not to show that one conquers the other, but rather to explain that they exist together in us all. G(a)linda, the "Good" Witch, is also self serving, opportunistic, and not too smart. Nessa Rose (whom most of us know as the Witch of the East, the one with red and white striped stockings who gets a house dropped on her) uses her disability as a way to get attention and hold onto her adorable Munchkin husband, Bock. Elfalba, the supposed Wicked Witch of the West, is the one with the purest heart of them all. She dedicates her life to helping those who cannot help themselves, defying the Wizard, denouncing his fallacies, and she eventually accepts her fate of being banished forever. In the novel, where the author, Gregory McGuire, did not have to worry about offending the pleasant expectations of theater goers, good and evil are reversed even more. In fact, good becomes evil, and vice versa. Careful! Spoiler ahead! In the novel, Dorothy is depicted (only for a few short paragraphs) as a bitchy teenager, Elfalba's mother is a real whore, her love interest (Fiero) is beaten to death, and Elfalba herself really does die. In the sequel, if you dare, "Son of a Witch," there's a rape and a gay sex scene. Imagine that in OZ!

Wicked wasn't just good, it was great. I've been wanting to see that musical for a few years now, knowing all too well that it would be white washed of its grit, but still happy to see something like this on the stage, something that puts into question our ideas of good and evil, something that takes the victimizer and makes her the victim. Ever since I began reading books about Buddhism and compassion, I have been learning how to try, at least try, to sympathize with the evil one, to understand what would drive him or her to commit such evil acts, and to ask myself what I have contributed to allowing such evil to make its way through my society. It's not an easy question, and one that is certainly worth more than an Internet blog. But it's still a good question to ponder. Did I help get that judge elected? Did I 'ding dong the witch is dead' with the rest of them? How about you?

Eurotrash

Mark and I just boarded the Eurostar (Lille – London). Do you remember years ago, maybe the late 80s, when we started to hear of this tunnel through the English Channel, a.k.a the Chunnel (clever, huh?)? There were news reports, documentaries, images of Thatcher and Mitterrand shaking hands in the middle (or something like that). I remember this movie with Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible, and how classy it all was. The style of the French mixed with the practicality of the British. What could be better?

In the Lille "Europe" train station, everything is modern, clean, wide open spaces and carefully marked to keep both the English and the French speakers informed. Passport control was a breeze. Security? The nicest security experience I've had since well before 9/11. Shoes stayed on, belt stayed on, the security officers (kind, intelligent people with heads on their shoulders… nothing like the TSA drones in the US), helped us move through and down to the quay where we waited with the other border crossers. I was actually getting excited about getting on board the Eurostar and sitting where Tom sat, or nearby at least.

Time out: Pardon me as I add a quick little observation before we get on board the train. Mark and I were on the quay and realized that our car would be clear at the other end. So we had to roll our little bags for about 500 or so feet. We strolled past the business men in their matching pinstripes suits, their slightly generous girth, and their nonstop talk about business. We walked past the well dressed ladies with their silk scarves and designer eyeglasses. We walked past the families with their miss matched luggage and their plastic bags of food. We walked past French people, Brits, and a few other nationalities. But what was interesting to me – and I apologize as I now complain about the French for a bit (remember that I chose to dedicate my life to them so there's lots about the French that I love, but here's something I don't) – the Brits, almost obsessed with being polite, each stepped slightly back out of the way as Mark and I rolled our bags along the narrow quay. The French, on the other hand, remained either oblivious, or chose to stand their ground ('cause they were there first?). In any event, each time we had to squeeze by a French crowd, we had to carefully navigate a tiny passage between them and the 5 foot drop to the tracks.

I love the French, but I wish sometimes that they could pay just a little bit more attention to others when they're in public. Trying to navigate sidewalks, malls, train stations or airports in French cities is like those first few seconds after class in high school when 100s of kids would empty into the hallway and it would take a good 10 seconds for the crowds to even out. Take those 10 seconds, and that's most every time you are walking in a place where crowds of French man & women & children happen to come together. Of course, we Americans learned how to stay out of the way back in elementary school when we had to file in and out of every classroom, single file, and walk (don't run) to our next classroom, cafeteria, gym class, or recess. So by high school, everyone was used to following more or less the same rhythm, walking always on the right hand side of the hallway. And if you had to stop to tie your shoe or search through your bag, you dove into a doorway or behind a decorative concrete pillar so you didn't cause a five-person pileup on the way to the cafeteria.

I can't tell you how many times I've been walking down the sidewalk in France and there's this one person walking diagonals, side to side, coming towards me. I try to stand my ground, but end up hovering next to the wall to my right; eventually that person heads towards me, surprised to be almost crashing into me, and I have to stop, or move to my left, or prepare for the colliding of the elbows, the clash of the shopping bags, and the 'pardon'. I thought pardons where reserved for those unavoidable intrusions on one another, pardons are not green lights to ignore everyone around you and walk zigzag to and from your destinations.

Anyways…. here we were, ready to board the Eurostar. The train pulled into the station right on time. It was a bright yet dingy yellow. That should have been my first clue but I was still awestruck. We were in car #1. The train stopped. The door finally opened, we climbed aboard, and the first person we see is a passenger lurking in the entryway (someone with a ticket but not a reserved seat). He wore dark sunglasses not so cleverly hiding a beaten black eye and newly sewn stitches. He looked like one of the guys in Mission Impossible after Tom exited the train.

We head into our cabin by opening the sliding door and woosh! What's that odor? It smelled like dirty underwear, polyester, and cheese. Our seats were the very first ones, one to our right and one to our left, both occupied. So what was to be a quick and easy boarding of the Eurostar turned into a bumblefuck (sorry, that's the best word for it). Everyone else had to cram into the entry way as we tried to politely take our seats and boot the squatters out. I have to say, those oncoming passengers stuck in the bottleneck were very understanding… or maybe they too were put off by the smell and not looking forward to venturing forth.

Once finally seated, I began to think… This feeling reminds me of something…. I can't quite describe it yet… but I do remember when I've felt this before. Maybe you have too.

I went to Hollywood, got my share of Hollywood Boulevard, the stars in the sidewalk, the Chinese Theater, and thought… I almost wish I had never come here. The idea I had in my mind of what Hollywood was quickly vanished. Glamour lost in exchange for gum stuck to my heel. A sense of style squandered in favor of the stench of fast food fries and urine. The hope of stardom replaced with the hope of finding a parking spot or a table at a restaurant that wasn't overrun with a bus full of Japanese tourists.

I went to Disneyland (still in California). This is where my Mom and Dad went on their second honeymoon. They brought me back record album from the Magic Kingdom that I listened to hundreds of times. I stared at the album cover and imagined the Small World, the Pirates of the Caribbean, Cinderella's Castle and life-sized characters at every bend in the road, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy… we even had a photo of Mom being kissed by Goofy right on the lips! Wow how cool, how magical, how exciting. Then I went to Disneyland. There was a life-sized duck (a real duck) standing in the Three Pigs village in my Small World. There were Pirates of the Caribbean that were less animated and less life-like than the mechanical band members at Chucky Cheese. Cinderella's Castle was just a passage way, not a destination. And as for Mickey? You now had to stand in line and make your way through a cartoon village to eventually get a photo with the guy, all 4 feet 8 inches of him. When did Mickey get so small?

Umberto Ecco talked about this feeling in his book of essays: Travels in Hyperreality. It's what the French would call 'déception' and what we call disappointment. But Ecco places it in relation to travel and finding out that the real thing is much less interesting than the fake version in our heads. In that one word, déception, is the perfect mix of what I'm feeling now: disappointment and deception.

There's the disappointment of the Eurostar being more Eurotrash than anything; the carpets are dark grey and stained, the seats are ripped, the luggage hovering above our heads, straps hanging down, teasing us with their gravitational pull. Then there's the deception involved in all of this. The gal from the French SNCF who sold us our ticket and raised her eyebrows in awe as she uttered the word Eurostar; the huge Lille Europe train station, sleek, and modern, and kind to travelers. The shaking of hands in the 80s, the coming together of two countries, Tom Cruise and the simple pleasure of making it from one side of the Channel to the other without the risk of sea sickness or the annoyance of boarding a plane.

I guess it's about time I grew up and stopped staring at album covers. I don't really want to, though. I want to walk through the streets of France and not stress over keeping my head up to avoid collisions and keeping my head down to avoid stepping in dog doo. I want to be in a Hollywood where a director had cleaned up all the clutter and chose the perfect angle with which to view it. I want a Disneyland that takes me to the very same place I had imagined wither real fake pirates and finally something to see in Cinderella's Castle.

I'm a new soul

Hi Friends! This is just a quick little blog to share some more video clips with you.

In a country where Britney Spears just received the 'NJG'' Music Award (similar to our MTV award) for "Best International Artist" (I know! Tell me about it!), it is very comforting to know that the French also appreciate the more sane, intellectual, poetic and artistic side of music. Video clips are still very popular here (when's the last time you turned on MTV?) and they can be works of art.



New Soul: Yaël Naim

This one is particularly special for me because it describes someone who is moving into a new place and a new life. Like me, she's already happy, ready to put a bit of herself into what she's doing and where she's living, and what she gets in return is more than she ever imagined. You really have to watch it all the way to the end and finally everything makes sense. I was actually quite moved. I hope you will be to.





Happy Endings: Mika

Mika was also a winner at the NRJ awards (NRJ is pronounced "energy") but this time for Artist of the Year (or something like that). Well deserved.





Tais toi mon coeur: Dionysos

The refrain here is "Tais toi mon coeur" (be quiet my heart), and she replies "Je ne te reconnais pas" (I don't recognize you). This one I enjoy purely for the visual.