Quebecwhaaa? Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Deux)

Continued from Quebecwhaaa? Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Un)

Museums, Bad and Good:

Pointe-à-Callière, Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire de Montréal:


Nobody warned me you'd be full of children.

Quebecwhaaa?: Miss Stacia Goes To Canada (Part Un)

Oh, Canada.

I booked my Summer '09 trip to Canada at the last minute, not knowing I would be hitting Montreal during the incomparable Jazz Fest until after my plane tickets were purchased, not expecting so many friends to offer up detailed itineraries that would run me frenzied around the city, not realizing the Canada Day Parade would literally march up to the front door of my hotel until I opened up my morning newspaper and walked outside for my daily oeufs.

The trip started of as somewhat of a clusterfuck affair when I realized my passport, which had expired on May 29, 2009, would be required to gain entry into and exit from our North American neighbor as of June 1, 2009. With fifteen days until my departure, Project Update Passport commenced. Against a background of white foam board velcroed over a wall of Mailboxes Etc. PO boxes, and under harsh flourescents used only to light corporate pack-and-ship institutions and the county morgue, a hyper-close mugshot was taken. In it, I resemble the cowardly lion on crack, thanks to a fourteen day stint of the most humid weather in New York history -- the ideal environment in which to prep for glamour shots that will stay with you for the next decade. But I guess it's better than the old photo, originally taken for a fake ID and swiped from my high school desk drawer by a mother with a nose for sniffing out rebellion, to be used on my actual passport. ("You saved me a trip!" she would say when she unearthed it.)

The last ten years, when the customs officers flipped open my little book and scanned their eyes from the passport, to me, to the passport, it was clear I was the kind of girl who wore makeup to the pool in her teenage years.


Would you let hair this big into your country?

CMJ Film Festival 2009 Preview

(Published in Moving Pictures Magazine) 

The 2009 CMJ Film Festival, newly invigorated with a spirit of ambitious scope and scale, is about to descend on a city of eager, discerning moviegoers, from Tuesday, October 20 through Friday, October 23. Held in various locations in New York City in conjunction with the CMJ Music Marathon, this marks the 15th year of the film festival, but the first under the supervision of Artistic Director Alex Steyermark and Festival Manager Frances Wallace. Over the years, the festival has always appealed to the hordes of music industry folk and Music Marathon registrants, but this year Steyermark and Wallace took aim at diversifying and multiplying their selections and expanding their outreach to lasso in the film industry crowd and the general moviegoing public as well.            

“It’s probably a pivotal year in the film festival,” says Steyermark. “We’re sort of reorienting it going forward.”

This refocusing involves expanding the festival’s program to include 31 films, with screenings split between the Norwood Club on 14th Street and Clearview Cinemas on Chelsea’s W. 23rd Street. The selections range from larger-scale productions like the George Clooney and Ewan McGregor vehicle about psychic special forces operatives, “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” and the festival’s closing film, director Oren Moverman’s moving soldier story “The Messenger,” to first-time features like the Terror Twins’ dark comedy “The Invisible Life of Thomas Lynch” and hard-hitting documentaries like the controversial exposé of Dole Food’s farming practices, “Bananas!”

“The selection is very eclectic,” says Steyermark. “We’re not afraid to put big studio movies in the same program as maybe a little lo-fi but no less passionate music docs.”

In fact, this is the first year the festival has attempted to directly bridge the gap between music and film festival attendees through the content of the films, specifically with the Music Doc showcase. All films in the series — including “Searching for Elliott Smith,” a post-mortem biopic exploration, and “Mellodroma,” a history of the mellotron — will screen in five-hour blocks during the daytime at the Norwood (where the festival’s opening and closing parties – RSVP only – will also be held). And Friday night, the Clearview will hold a “Downtown Doc Double-Bill” featuring “Pardon Us for Living But the Graveyard is Full,” about the prolific if under-recognized band The Fleshtones, and “Kid Creole and My Coconuts,” a memoir of collected footage shot by Adriana Kaegi, the lead Coconut in an ’80s world-fusion band that was truly ahead of its time.

The music-to-film connection is also reflected in the film festival’s two panel contributions. The first, on “Breaking into Film Scoring,” features Nathan Larson, music supervisor for Moverman’s closing-night film, “The Messenger,” as well as Sue Devine, senior director of Film and Television Music at ASCAP, and will be moderated by Steyermark, an impressive music supervisor in his own right (“Malcolm X,” “The Ice Storm”). The second panel, entitled “Déjà Vu All Over Again,” explores the reality of the new film distribution model as it relates to changes already observed in the music industry. The panel, moderated by The New Yorker’s John Seabrook, will showcase authorities from both the film and music industries, including Ira Deutchman of Emerging Pictures, Matt Dentler of Cinetic Rights Management and music industry attorney Nick Gordon.

To access the full schedule of festival films or to purchase advance tickets or passes, visit the CMJ Film Festival website at www.CMJ.com/marathon.

Miss Stacia, Geek Bridezilla

If, hypothetically, a man wanted to marry me today, we would have to become water brothers first. For the growing closer. We'd teleport everyone to San Francisco for a reception at the Museum of Comic Art where the main exhibit would be a Neil Gaiman retrospective, with a display of poster artists who have crossed over into comic books in the adjacent room. (Hello, Tara McP!) The first half of the night everyone would dance to Neo's "Closer," played on repeat. The second half of the night, "Closer" would alternate with "Crazy In Love," for old time's sake. The one slow dance of the evening would be to Taylor Swift's "Breathe," (our wedding song in spite of its melancholy theme) and every person, single and coupled, would be forced to play Snowball in honor of my illustrious bar-mitzvah dancing career. Graffiti artists would decorate our tablecloths and our party favors would be blind box Kozik Smokin Labbits with pictures of the in-love couple's faces taped to the bunnies' infamous buttholes.

My husband and I would don Wedding edition Nikes, and I would wear a white playsuit - something like this:

But whiter, and frillier, and with black tights.

Our invitations would be screenprinted by Kayrock and Wolfy and hand-delivered by Phillipe Petit.

I would throw a bouquet of chocolate-covered bacon to my bridesmaids before Edward James Olmos picked me and my man up in the Galactica to take us on our honeymoon on Caprica, which will have been rebuilt for the occasion and staffed by nothing but shirtless Anders' and red-dressed Model 6's. Our fidelity wouldn't last the week, but neither of us would care.

Sums and Summaries: 2008 In Mathematical Review

The Basics: Counting One Through Ten (Albums)
1. Lil' Wayne – Tha Carter III (If you are "the best rapper alive," it probably means you're number one.)
2. Taylor Swift – Fearless (It only took the musical musings of a fifteen-year old to make me want to pick out a white dress and baby just say, yes.)
3. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (Drives home the heartache. Worth every falsetto-inspired tear.)
4. Lykke Li – Youth Novels (Electronically-engineered coyness. I Lykke a lot.)
5. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals ("No Diggity" over "Flashing Lights," over my first race of 6.2 miles. Not to mention a cameo by Rod-the-young-hearthrob-Stewart.)
6. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue (Grand poeticism awash in indie country loveliness.)
7. Kaki King – Dreaming of Revenge (Humble instrumental contemplation.)
8. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight (The Frames minus the movie deal.)
9. Vampire Weekend – Self-Titled (You can be pro "Oxford Comma," while remaining anti-Oxford comma.)
10. Why? Alopecia (Why[?] do I love thee? For your bar mitzvah references and Williamsburg Bridge companionship.)

Remainders
Fleet Foxes – Self-Titled (Breezy harmonies.)
Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer? (Brash horns.)
Kanye West – 808's and Heartbreak (Vocoder soul.)

Now Ten Back to One (Songs)
10. M.I.A - "Paper Planes" (Thumping. Bass.)
9. Kaki King - "Pull Me Out Alive" (Heart. Aches.)
8. Beyonce – "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" (Man. Up.)
7. MGMT – "Electric Feel" (Throw. Back.)
6. Lil' Wayne - "Let The Beat Build" (Lift. Lower.)
5. Kanye West – "Love Lockdown" (Bang. Drum.)
4. Jenny Lewis – "Acid Tongue" (Sparse. Strum.)
3. The Dodos – "Fools" (Chorale. Rush.)
2. Lykke Li – "Little Bit" (Maybe. Love.)
1. Ne-Yo – "Closer" (Billie. Jean.)

Simple Equation for a Swedish Idol Sandwich: Lykke Li's "I'm Good I'm Gone" + Amanda Jennsen's "Do You Love Me" + Lykke Li's "Little Bit" = Syncopated Strutting Down City Streets

Fitness Routine Breakdown in Percentages
20% Ellipticalness: Robyn – Self-Titled (Inspiring Stacey's haircut '09?)
30% Weightensity: Rihanna – Good Girl Gone Bad ('07, so sue me.)
40% Treadmillocity: Beyonce – I Am Sasha Fierce (Run those thighs into '88 leotard shape.)
10% Abdomination: Lil' Wayne - "Let The Beat Build" (Over and over and beyond (8)'08.)


Who Says These Lists Have No Logic?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce (Disc 1) < Solange's Sol-Angel & The Hadley St. Dreams < Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce (Disc 2)

THEREFORE:

Matthew Knowles = RICH
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" > I'm From Barcelona's "Paper Planes" (On the dance floor.)
M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" < I'm From Barcelona's "Paper Planes" (In the headphones.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IF:
Anyone who like Taylor Swift has something in common with eight year old girls.
AND
Miss Stacia likes Taylor Swift.
THEN:
Miss Stacia has something in common with eight-year old girls.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Random Data and Analysis (No Numerical Equivalent):

Electric show no one else (critic or companion) seemed to enjoy: M.I.A. @ McCarren Park, 6/6/08 (Put my neon Nikes to their proper rhythmic use.)

Oops! Forgot I had a ticket to: She & Him @ Terminal 5, 7/26/08 (Was it good? Anyone?)

Discovered I like leaning on the balcony more than standing on the main floor at: Wolf Parade @ Terminal 5, 8/31/08 (I also like a game of shuffleboard, some warm milk, and a nap after the show.)

Partied like it was my birthday at: Girl Talk @ Terminal 5, 11/16/08 (And nearly spent the midnight transition to age 26 on the coat check line.)

Most uncomfortable broadway show to see with your grandparents: Spring Awakening (Incestuous rape and live sex-simulation, followed immediately by intermission. "So how do YOU like it so far?")

How can I justify having watched so much of: The Pickup Artist (I claim research for self-defense against furry hats and goggles and terms like "kino.")

Biggest waste of Maggie Gyllenhal: "The Dark Knight Returns" (Better when Maggie is the dark one.)

Proof that a stellar cast, a decent concept, and a sprinkling of directorial fairy dust does not an awesome movie make: "Be Kind Rewind" (WTF Michel, I thought you HAD this!)

Best reason to stay home (or stay up drunk until 4am with your DVR) on Summer Friday nights: Battlestar Galactica (I heart thee Kara Thrace.)

Why the frak are they making me wait from June until 2009 for: The Battlestar finale. (This is Cylon-prison-on-New-Caprica-level torture.)

Movie That Made Me Want to be French (more than usual): "Man on Wire" (It also made me want to be muse to a man in leggings.)

Totally didn't need to see you twice in theaters: "Sex and The City The Movie" (Seppuku with a Manolo before viewing number 3.)

So glad I double dipped in: Murakami @ The Brooklyn Museum (Semen lassos! Breast-milk jump ropes! Anime-chicks transforming into airplanes!)

Proof that the lord is my personal curator: "Warhol's Jews" exhibit at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco (Where screenprinting meets Golda Meir.)

Proof that Weezy groks the fullness of Robert A. Henlein's, Stranger In A Strange Land: The freaktastic lyrics to "Phone Home" ("We are not the same, I am a Martian.")

Almost lived up to the greatness of Sandman: Y The Last Man and Alias. (Is the fantasy to DATE Yorick and/or Jessica Jones or BE Yorick and/or Jessica Jones. I haven't yet decided.)

Got its ass kicked by the King of Dreams: Girls by the Luna Brothers (A hundred naked chicks per frame, all paling in comparison to Death's gothy hottness.)

Fortune Cookie Fortune Found At The Bottom Of The Wallet '08: You find beauty in ordinary things. (Like fortune cookie fortunes. And year-end lists.) Do not lose this ability.

Summer School Session 1: Old Men, Young Men

Around age 10, after two years of tearful tantrums and rebellion against practicing on the Jones family’s glorious and virtually untouched baby grand, the piano and I parted ways, citing compatibility issues. The piano wanted me to learn how to play music in 3/8, and my decidedly non-mathematical brain said, “No fucking chance. Not gonna happen.” The notes promised me I’d know them by reciting things like “All Cars Eat Gas” and “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge,” but my heart said “All Cars, Who Cares?, and Every Good Boy Sort Of Has Cooties, But Is Also Sort Of Kind Of Cute.” Songbooks tried to win me over with remedial versions of timely pop hits like “Wind Beneath My Wings,” and “Take My Breath Away (Love Theme from Top Gun!),” but my advanced eight-year-old cultural meter proclaimed, “Bah! I am already over you, songs that will function only as nostalgia and punchline material in the future. To the television!” And so my prolific music career ended before it started, leaving me more time to memorize words to Mariah Carey (pop songs with longevity!), and fantasize about Zack Morris while watching him stop Jesse from ruining her life with caffeine pills.

Of course, in my adulthood, nothing has been as disappointing to me as my inability to play and read music. And as someone who has written pretty regularly about the subject, I often wonder if a deeper understanding of the technical components of music would lead to more pointed and poignant expression of my ideas. Is it really the minor key that makes this song to sound so morose? What is a minor key exactly? What makes up a key, period?

Since I’ve never been able to concentrate much on non-fiction or un-aided instructional readings, I decided to pursue my musical enlightenment in the only way the academic, structurally-inclined Jewish girl in me knew how – by signing up for a class at the Y.

My first attempt at the 92nd Street Y’s Beginner Music Theory class was short-lived. I made it to two classes – just long enough to review the bass and treble clefs using a set of meticulously constructed note-bearing flashcards - before I had to call it quits to take a job in the infamous Dub Room (a job that, in it’s earliest incarnation, occupied me from the awkwardly scheduled hours of 11am-8pm).

Nothing much stood out about the makeup of that first class, except that I remember hoping for it to be populated by hot Jewish guys with a fetish for evening hour extra-curriculars, and ended up swimming in a sea of old people. But since I have always enjoyed excelling in an academic environment, I consoled myself with the thought that even though I wouldn’t be making out with my classmates, I’d probably be kicking their wrinkled asses in class participation. (Mind you, there are no grades or tests and not even a modicum of encouraged competitive energy in this classroom setting, aside from the assertion to “challenge yourself.”)

When I walked into the classroom on the first day of my second attempt at Music Theory two weeks ago, the class element struck me as basically the same, if not a bit more fragrant with comedic possibility.

There are about fifteen students total, five of which are women in their late forties to mid sixties. This is the repetitive-question-asking contingent of the class. One woman in particular, who is taking piano lessons concurrently with the theory class, asks questions between every other breath, which explains why her instrument of choice is not the clarinet. At the end of the first class she addressed us all, asking, “Does anyone live near 55th and Lex? We could be study partners!” Much to her dismay, the entire class had decided, just that moment, to move to Brooklyn.

There is also a decent collection of early-to-late 20’s males, many of whom are trapped in the dorkiest of classical music clamshells (I love me some nerds, but I need a popoccultcha man. Or at least a sci-fi dweeb.). As the only class representation of the mid-twenties female, I get these sexy Beethovens AAAAALLL to myself.

But the classmates who are really going to make this class worth the rush hour trip on the green line, revealed themselves quite gloriously.

First was Elliot, who is roughly 200 years old. When our instructor asked Elliot if he had an email address for the class contact sheet, Elliott responded saying, “Yes, after four months I finally learned how to use it. It’s Elliot at yahoo dot com. Yahoo, like the drink.”

Yes, Elliot, like the drink! I am now working on an Elliot version of the Teddy Ruxpin doll in which a motorized, talking old man explains the origins of his email address over and over again.

In the getting to know you segment of the class, Elliot also revealed that he has been playing the harmonica for 70 years (!!!), the guitar for 50 years (!!), and the banjo for 5 (!). He’s a little winded, and his fingers are damned tired, but for the last two hundred years, he has found that an artificial chocolate drink both gives him the pick up he needs, while unlocking the key to new technology.

The other gem of the class was revealed immediately after Elliot in roll call. The name Karen was called, and a muffled, pubescent voice from the back of the room corrected, “That’s my mom. I’m Dylan.”

As we went around the room answering the questions, “What do you do?” and “Why are you here?” - answers that prompted others to say things like, “I’m in risk management and I’d like to read music,” or “I’m an actor and I want to play the piano” - Dylan responded in hilarious deadpan, “I’m in the ninth grade,” and then revealed that he plays guitar and is in a band, the name of which I’m dying to know. His expression throughout class suggested that the real answer to the question “Why are you here?” was “My mom made me come,” which makes me all the more desperate to co-opt young Dylan as my study buddy and facts-of-life advisee. I can only pray he lives in Brooklyn.

Thus, the promise of wisdom pearls from the class bookends of Elliot and Dylan may finally make it worth it for me to break out of my 4/4 shell. We’ll see how it goes.

A Black Dress Away From a Goth Girl

An artists' representation of a hypothetical, 15-year old, comic-book loving Miss Stacia

Around page 9 of “Brief Lives,” otherwise known as Volume 7 of Neil Gaiman’s epic Sandman series, I came upon a panel that first haunted me, and then changed my perception of my adolescence, forever.

In the panel, the character know as Delirium, one of the seven anthropomorphized, intangible forces known as the Endless, enters a nightclub on her search for her departed older brother Destruction. The nightclub is raunchy and replete with fishnet and leather clad club kids; a song pervading the background in wisps overhead with the words:

“All the word just stopped now. So you say you don’t wanna stay together anymore. Let me take a deep breath babe.”

I am waiting for my dinner date in a Japanese restaurant when I read this, and a soft rock soundtrack stunts my ability to place the familiar lyrics.

“Shit. I know this.”

…

“Oh my god, it’s Tori!”

The existence of a friendship/working relationship between Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman had been brought to my attention a few weeks earlier, when, in my desperation at not being able to find Sandman Volumes 3 and 4 in any Manhattan book or comic store (disaster!), I started reading Gaiman short stories to keep myself in the dream zone. In Fragile Things, Gaiman’s most recent story collection, I came upon reprinted program notes for Tori’s Strange Little Girls tour, written by the fantasy master at the request of the fiery songstress.

I happened to attend a show on the Strange Little Girls tour when I lived in Boston and I remember those glossy programs vividly. The concept of the album, which marked the point where my Tori fandom actually began to wither, involved Tori embodying a different female personality on each track, dressing in costumey garb for a series of comic (as in laughable) portraits and repurposing songs like Eminem’s "Bonnie and Clyde" to disastrous effect. Gaiman’s job was to craft short poems to complement each song/lady package, and the results were disjointed, strangely voiced, and lacking resonance, especially compared to his portrayal of females in his comic (as in book) work.

But discovering my latest dark obsession and my teen angst obsession had at one point converged, was at once electric and satisfying.

So I’m still sitting in the Japanese restaurant, eyes glued to the corner of a page in Volume 7, written eleven years before Fragile Things and six before the release of Strange Little Girls, and I'm still processing that by the time Gaiman had come to the tail end of his epic about Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, Tori had already crawled her way into his creative headspace. But I haven't yet answered the question of where the hell those lyrics are from, exactly.

I plug my ears with my fingers and the humming commences, while in my head I access:

All the world just stopped now
So you say you don’t wanna stay to-
gether anymore
Let me take a deep breath babe

...

If you need me and NEIL’LL BE…

(inner “HOLY SHIT!”)

HANGING OUT WITH THE DREAM KING

Now, I am not a lyrics person, generally speaking. I have gone many years only half-knowing the lyrics to my very favorite songs, and occasionally something will come out and clarify a particularly nonsensical Stacia translation and my world of references will be forced to adjust for accuracy. In the case of these particular Tori lines, for example, I have always ignored the fact that I had no idea who Neil was, and had translated the remainder of the lyrics as follows:

If you need me
Me and Neil’ll be
Hanging out with the Dream Team

For over a decade, as far as I knew, Tori could have been singing about the 1986 New York Mets.

Needless to say, when I discovered this Sandman reference, embedded in track 10 of my beloved Little Earthquakes, it triggered a moment of elation. It was like recognizing you and your boyfriend were at the same concert, sitting three seats away from each other, ten years before you ever met. My mouth hung open for the first minute and a half after I made the connection, and then I sat squealing, wanting to scream out to the heavens like a love crazed fool. I felt a desperate need to call someone and explain how I just discovered this beautiful overlap of two cultural loves of my life, but when I tried to think of someone who would appreciate the intersection, I came up blank. Finding people who simultaneously appreciate sci-fi and fantasy graphic novels and feministic piano-driven singer songwriters is a tough assignment, unless you’re smoking cigarettes on the middle school handball courts in 1995.

Suddenly, I thought of a girl named Jane, with whom I shared a relationship slightly above the acquaintance level in middle and high school. Jackie had a propensity for wearing black, brandishing smudgy eyeliner and spitting dark, sarcastic comebacks. She also had a sister who introduced her to The Cure and whose overall grumpiness found solace in the lyrically potent females acts of the early nineties. I was still inhabiting the land of bubblegum pop radio when Jane and I knew each other, but had picked up a Tori cassette tape on a cross country trip one summer, so the two of us occasionally talked about Tori or PJ Harvey or Fiona Apple, who may have been even a little too sensitive for Jane’s sensibilities.

Ten years later, it occurs to me Jane probably would have loved Sandman and may have even experienced it in its comic form. Did Jane experience the concurrent growth of Tori and Gaiman’s careers? Did she read the line from “Tear In Your Hand,” on page 9 in 1995 and let off a sarcastic smirk of knowing? And if Jane and my relationship had blossomed beyond Mrs. Chang’s history class, would I be long past (or deeper into?) the world of Gaiman right now?

When I first started reading Sandman, my awesome friend Comic Guy Mike informed me it was a book that, when released, was particularly embraced by goth kids. As someone with a pretty morbid sense of humor, a realistic-bordering-on-pessimistic view of the world, and hair that, if any darker, would take on a Betty and Veronica blue-black sheen, it's apparent I was probably an influential friend and a black dress away from life as a teenage goth girl. Which perhaps explains my newfound inclination to wear tons of deep blue eyeliner, the color of which can be found otherwise only on salesgirls at Hot Topic, and in the Dreamworld.