Swedish invasion! Accoustic version of Lykke Li’s “I’m Good, I’m Gone” with guests Robyn, Adam & Bebban (Shout Out Louds), Daniel (The Concretes), Lars (Laakso) and Mikael (Hjalmar).
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Downtown Crossing
I went downtown on Saturday to get tickets for the upcoming Andrew Bird show at the Orpheum. It was a cold and windy day, as in VERY cold and windy, but I was willing to sacrifice my coziness to avoid paying the ridiculous ticketmaster fees. Crappy weather aside, it was nice to talk to a box office person and have the chance to have a CHOICE of seats, like “do you have anything at the mezzanine?” “yes, sure, I can put you at the center row B”. Eat that ticketbastard!!!! After scoring great seats and feeling a little warmer I walked a little further down at Washington and Franklin, where there’s a construction site, and one building has only one facade left standing. You know how it is when it is cold and windy, everybody’s walking with the head down; I was looking up and shooting.
Beams and Chair
Mix and Dont Match
Help Me
The Beauty and the Beast
René Magritte – 110th Birthday
Google informs me that today’s the 110th birthday of René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter. I like his paintings because, well, they are surreal. What I like the most in them are the puffy white clouds. I saw a Magritte exhibition back in 2000 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The exhibition was at the Dean Gallery at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, a very beautiful building located on beautiful grounds. There were about 70 of his paintings on display, the first exhibition of the Belgian’s work ever to be shown in Scotland. The gallery presented a very interesting combination of natural (low, dim, Scottish) light and interior light. I remember looking at the paintings, and they looked like they were illuminated from within. I can still remember how it felt to look at something so beautiful, so grand. I wanted to linger around forever; it was gratifying, it was almost perfect…
The Empire of Light II
The Lovers
Springstep at Night
Springstep is a very interesting building in Medford. The architect has done a great job with the windows and the lighting. It is open and feels transparent. It is a dance studio, and I love it when you can see the people dancing in front of these huge windows. I was waiting for a class to start and take a shot, but it was almost 5:30 and I had to leave. I was playing around with my new small Nikon Coolpix and took this shot. It is not that great, but I like the red on the left…
“Interpreting East Somerville” Photo Exhibition Opening Night
Tonight’s the opening night for the “Interpreting East Somerville” photo exhibition. The opening reception will take place tonight at the Somerville City Hall (93 Highland Avenue) from 5:30 to 7:30pm. The works of 43 local photographers will be on display through mid January at the City Hall.
One of my photographs was chosen for the exhibition and I will be there tonight!!!
My photo made it to the postcard, yay (see top left corner)!
Earth 1966
This is an image of our planet Earth from 1966. In the foreground we can see the surface of the Moon. The image was recently recovered by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project of NASA.
From faraway everything is beautiful and peaceful.
Calexico at the Somerville Theater
Calexico played a very good show at the Somerville Theater on Sunday. Acorn opened for them (and not Bowerbirds as stated on the tickets), a band I had never heard of before, and some of their stuff was good.
We had pretty good seats and it was a cool show. The crowd was typical Boston crowd in the beginning, you know, cold, non-responsive and securely bolted to their seats. After a snarky comment from frontman Joey Burns the crowd warmed up, and later on almost everybody was up dancing. I mean their music is not totally dancable, but the majority of the crowd appreciated their southwest/mexican musical style. I prefer their moody stuff, the stuff that make you feel you’re driving a convertible in an open roadway that cuts through the desert on a hot summer day, under a vast blue sky…
Back to reality and that night’s show, I loved the white screen in the background that looked like lace, and I had the urge to go up and touch it to see what is was made of, but true to style I never delivered.
BK took tons of photos and here are a couple.
All It Takes is 10,000 Hours
“Outliers: The Story of Success” is a new book by Malcolm Gladwell. “Outlier” is a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from others of the sample. In his new book Gladwell investigates the idea of exceptional people, prodigies, genious and precocity. How are masterpieces made? What is talent? What is a prodigy? What does it take to achieve success? Is it hard work and good timing? Is it the right environment and supportive network?
In this New Yorker article he wrote about genious and precocity. Now the Guardian has an extract of his new book “Outliers”, and this is my favorite part:
This idea – that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice – surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.
“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, “this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
So this means that if I start writing my novel now, and devote 3 hours a day to it in 9-10 years I will have put in my 10,000 hours and yes, it is going to be a masterpiece. I’m glad I have worked everything out and I’m glad there’s still hope…
Neil Halstead at the Lizard Lounge
Neil Halstead of Slowdive and Mojave 3 played on Friday November 14, 2008 at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge. I was planning on going to another show that night, and heard of his upcoming show at the last minute. I love his new album “Oh! Mighty Engine”, so after a short debate decided to head to Neil’s show. It was an early (7:30pm) show and I made it to the Lizard on time. The room was not completely full and that was fine with me. I grabbed a good spot by the bar, ordered a pint and Neil’s beautiful music filled the room. Everybody was quiet and attentive. Neil had a coughing fit at some point and declared “I need a smoke”. He got some whiskey and water instead and thankfully did not lose his voice. For some of the songs he was joined by a bassist and another guitarist, who played the electric mandolin when it was time for my favorite “A Gentle Heart”. Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me, but this is a live version of the song they did in San Francisco.
It was a touching, beautiful show!
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
I saw “The Lieutenant of Inishmore”, Martin McDonagh’s play, at the New Repertory Theater recently. It was funnier and less creepy than the “Pillowman” the other McDonagh play I saw also at the New Rep about a couple of years ago. It was a pretty bloody play, involving torture, shootings, dead cats, dead people and dead people being cut in pieces. Lovely, you might think, but actually this black comedy was rather entertaining, if gore could be allowed to be the source of your entertainment.
A dead black cat is found on the island of Inishmore by Davey and Donny; but it is not a random cat, it is Wee Thomas, Padraic’s beloved cat, left in the care of his father Donny, while Padraic is away from home, busy planting bombs and torturing drug dealers. Padraic has formed his own splinter group of the Irish National Liberation Army, because he is apparently too crazy even for the IRA. In the “sweet home” we see Donny and Davey going crazy wondering about their own fate when Padraic finds out what happened to his beloved cat. Neither of them is responsible for the cat’s death, but most likely Padraic won’t care. They come up with absurd and ridiculous scenarios about how to postpone the announcement of the news to Padraic and formulate good excuses. Initially they call Padraic on his cell phone while he’s torturing a drug dealer and tell him that the cat is “poorly” and will not eat. The dealer is only spared because he recommends that the cat is fed some kind of pellets. So Padraic decides to go back home and see the cat.
In the meantime Davey steals another cat that’s not black and looks like the only available cat on the island. He tries painting it black with shoe polish and present it as Wee Thomas. Needless to say it won’t work. They end up sniffing the shoe polish, drink, eat Frosties and go to bed. When Padraic realizes that Wee Thomas is dead he weeps; it’s the only moment he shows some sentiment and then turns the gun to his father’s head, cause he failed taking care of the cat. Dad is spared but not the real killers and neither the half-painted cat.
There are some interesting plot twists and turns, and I was not disappointed as the crowd was open to the comedy of it all. In the end there is some more killing and a blood fest, in a scene which the majority of the crowd did not find funny, but there were two people still laughing, which was annoying.
I liked the play and the production, and the performances were very, very good. What I concluded from the play is that all this empty violence is for nothing. It’s a joke; it’s an excuse to use a gun, to use a knife. Ultimately camaraderie is what these people seek. United fighting towards… what? More killings, more blood, to feed the vicious cycle…
Martin McDonagh is a wunderkind of a playwright, and also the “bad boy” of contemporary theater due to his often use of violence and profanity. He left school at the age of 16 and wrote his entire body of theatrical work during one nine-month period when he was 24. He has not written any new play since (now he’s 38), but went on to win an Oscar for his short film “Six Shooter” back in 2006 and recently wrote and directed the movie “In Bruges”.
A last note that is not directly related to the play: So far whenever I’ve been to a theater play the crowd tends to be middle aged and older. But I was pleasantly surprised to see plenty faces in their 20s and 30s at this play on Saturday. I think one of the main factors contributing to the age, is that ticket prices tend to be high; $49 for a ticket is a lot and generally not the most common form of entertainment for people in their 20s and 30s. I do realize that theater productions are expensive, but theater ticket prices are just not affordable. So what I do is I buy (almost) half-price tickets from BosTix. I paid $26.5 for a $49 ticket. They have two booths, one in Faneuil Hall and one in Copley Square, where you can buy only same day tickets, which is OK most of the time since theater plays tend to not sell out. And usually they carry tickets for every theater play production in Boston. Next plays on my list Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and David Mamet’s “November”.
