Confessions in the Nosebleed Seats

Madonna hatches [SAWF News]

I saw Madonna last night at Madison Square Garden, and I have spent most of the day in love with her.

I am definitely a sincere Madonna fan, but I approach much of what she does with skepticism. She's been getting very political with recent albums, which tends to suck the fun out of it sometimes, whether I agree with her politics or not. So, thank god "Confessions" was an incredible show. As fit to match her latest fantastic-from-beginning-to-end dance album, it was uplifting and joyful compared with her recent tours. Though I loved them, I found "Drowned World" to be a bit dour and "Re-Invention" to be a bit message-heavy in comparison. There's a "message" or a "moral" in many of the new songs, too, but she seems merely socially conscious this time rather than angry and politically arrogant.

	A closer look [estadao.com.br]

I avoided reading about the tour over the last few months. I had learned certain things on accident, such as the disco ball entrance and some of the set list, but I wanted as much of it as possible to be a surprise. I wanted to be dazzled. And I was. (And that disco ball entrance was even better than I imagined it would be!)

Nothing about "Confessions" by itself was particularly unusual or groundbreaking or revolutionary. The lights were gorgeous and brilliant, especially the rainbow lights along the edge of the stage during the finale and the video screen dancefloor at the end of the catwalk. Yet, honestly, they were just lights. But they were lights at a Madonna show, so they were awesome. With the exception of some parkour and some fancy, death-defying rollerskating, the dancing looked almost ordinary to me. But it was flawless. And it was at a Madonna show — so it was awesome.

She even does a balloon drop at the end of the show. The last two tours used confetti. How mundane, right? Not so. With these shiny mylar balloons, she transforms the interior of Madison Square Garden into a disco ball turned inside-out. And with the air conditioning turned off, we are all sweating and shouting and moving together in the biggest dance club in New York.

Madonna: a raven-like vixen [hollywoodtuna.com]

I cannot equivocate about her voice, however. She sounded amazing. Thank god for Evita and the requisite voice coaching that changed everything.

Thank god, also, that there were no kilts this tour. Or bagpipes. She's been working that too much lately. The Erotica-style riding crop came back, but thanks to her late obsession with horses, it's actually in the context of riding. I'm also glad that she didn't do "Holiday" as the final number. In fact, contrary to some early-reported set lists I saw, it didn't appear in the show at all. It's a crowd pleaser, but she can fly just fine without that magic feather.

A lot of old-school disco found its way in, which I found clever and fun. Madonna loves to pay hommage to the divas who came before. Her own repertoire is getting larger all the time. And her themes, both visual and lyrical, are repeating more frequently. "Deeper and Deeper" harkened back to "Vogue." "Hung Up" recalls "Love Song." It shows ultimately a consistency through her career and makes possible some clever combinations. During a mash-up of "Music" and "Disco Inferno," I heard some roboticized lyrics from "Where's the Party." I love to hear those oldies coming back into play.

She is still a bit wooden when she plays guitar and sings at the same time. As with everything, she is so careful, so precise. Trying so hard to get it right. And she does get it right. But only when she breaks away from that microphone, do we see the diva within. When she struts across the stage and starts to jam a little bit, it looks like she's actually having some fun. And when she's having fun, we all have more fun.

It's no great playing, either. Simple stuff — as if I know anything about guitar. But it sure sounds good. Some people say she should be embarrassed for being a guitar-playing poser, but rather, I think it just shows what little actual talent goes into being a rock star. (Rock star, not musician.) It's all attitude. Madonna does not have that attitude on the guitar, but she more than makes up for it with the attitude in her look and her moves and the choices she makes for the rest of her show — and in the fact that she's lasted so bloody long. I'd say she's maybe ... 90% rock star. But she's definitely 100% superstar.

A friend recently complained that there is no room for spontaneity in her shows. They are too choreographed and structured and mechanical. And they are. But Madonna has never claimed to be a musician. She is a performer. An artist. To this day, she calls herself a dancer. She puts on a concert like it's a theatrical production. Everything is planned; everything is just so. And how is this a bad thing? Her art is in her precision and her calculation. It's a dancer's art. It's a story. She's saying something specific. And it's a brilliant performance.

	S&M merry-go-round [hollywoodtuna.com]

The set was spare and minimalist, if anything. The show relies very heavily instead on elaborate video productions. I want to know who puts these things together. Ordinarily they would be the backdrop to the live performance, but instead they are integral to the experience. In one part of the show, Madonna rides up and down on a cross between a mechanical bull and a runaway carousel horse, singing "Like a Virgin." At the same time, the video screens show scenes of horses throwing their riders, falling, injuring themselves. It's a weird set of contrasts. Forget the trashy wedding dress and the Boy Toy belt of the '80s. She's moved on, and so have we. The song survives with other things to say.

The images tell one story while the live performance tells another. This happened throughout the show. She's obviously taking more seriously her role as a social commentator. She takes on industrial waste during "Sorry," and a bit later during the "Sorry" costume-change remix, there is a weird, clearly purposeful, contrast between images of her in a satin leotard and tights (and Gaultier corset!) and her feather-back hair and eye shadow, vamping "don't speak" and "don't talk" and "I've heard it all before," and the images of world leaders (both obvious villains and merely morally questionable politicians), war and world strife.

She seems to admit to being an image, an icon, a one-dimensional pop star. There is depth to her, but leave the depth to her friends and family. All we need is the surface. But, she says, while we're all at this party, take a look at what's going on outside. Look at what you're going home to. It's like: Some strange shit is going down out there. Shake it off for a night, and let's dance!

There are the tried-and-true religious references, too. I don't think she uses religious imagery in an inflammatory way. These symbols represent ideas that people have been willing to kill each other over throughout history. They are widely powerful and suggestive and potent. So much is tied up in two perpendicular lines, two crossed equalateral triangles, a crescent and a star. I take some comfort in seeing them used to tell a story or express a more harmonious point of view rather than as weapons at odds with each other.

During the "uproar" over her performing a song on a giant mirrorball cross — Anglicans around the world have condemned her, apparently — I yawned. Who cares? She's been working that crucifix since the beginning. She's singing "Live to Tell," and the context is the worldwide fight against AIDS. I don't know what impact this concert will have on that fight. (Will she make substantial donations with her enormous proceeds?) But I think it's a sensible and legitimate artistic expression to compare that ongoing human suffering to the legendary suffering of Jesus on the cross. Whatever statement Madonna is making, it is not literal. This is surely not the enactment of some kind of a messianic complex.

Religion should never be off-limits in art, whether it's high art or pop music. Art has been used through the ages to glorify religion. But somehow, raising thoughtful questions, drawing meaningful connections and pointing out legitimate paradoxes is evil? Hardly. It merely places the divine in the context of human existence. If we can't do that, we have no hope of understanding our own religion, let alone anyone else's.

And I think there's a real link to the Christian conceits of suffering and redemption in this case. How much suffering in the world — at the hands of this mindless disease and at the feet of powerful but inactive politicians and businesspeople — does it take before those who suffer can see some redemption or easement?

Despite her somewhat silly crown of thorns, Madonna clearly is not suffering. She is only reminding us of a story of great suffering, the Crucifixion. Her crucifix is composed rather glamorously of countless little mirrors, reflecting outward in all directiong, showing us ourselves. What are we doing to answer the call of these victims? How are we suffering?

In the end, it's all sort of ridiculous. A crown of thorns. A lampooned crucifixion. Madonna, in all her yogafied dance-a-thon glory, with arms out, wrists slumped — but fantastic hair. She is willing to act out these roles and to assume that undignified position, almost like a clown. Of course it's ridiculous; not only the act, but the fact that she is doing it. And I think she knows it. It's an old joke. She's almost making fun of herself. In 1983, Madonna wore the crucifix. In 2006, the crucifix is wearing her.

Slightly newer is the stir she caused with the "Isaac" track on her album, and in this concert. At best, it's an entry to educate her fans about the Kabbalah. it introduces themes of the study into her work, gives them some depth, and probably does a great deal to spread some peaceful thoughts around the world.

However, it is apparently a no-no to make money off the name of one of the founders of Kabbalah. I can understand that. Madonna has never really compromised her work for any person or any religion, has she? She has absorbed what she will from Catholicism. She has taken what she will from people and continues to take what she will from people beneficial to her progress. She is absorbing what she needs at this point in her life from Kabbalah. She takes what she needs and she moves on. It's not even intentional or planned. It's just in service of her vision or her ambition or her self discovery or her life's journey. It's all really the same thing. I find this uncompromising parasitic nature at once totally horrifying and utterly respectable. Truly, it's necessary if she is going to do the work she wants to do.

I won't say she exploits religions or modes of thought or social movements. I won't say she uses people. What I will say is that she absorbs and learns and evolves — relentlessly. She takes, she gives, and she moves. And she leaves something beautiful behind. That is all. If she is guilty of anything it is a fascination with the world around her and a desire to be a part of it and to understand it. She has the confidence to take the world that was given to her at birth — the same world we are all given — and fill out her life. Can we all claim to do the same?

She may not be a great artist, but she is fearless in creating her art. Her canvas is herself. It's a work in progress. The same is true for you and for me. In her case, though, through the forces of capitalism and free markets and pop culture, she is taking us on her journey with her, and we are buying it, literally.

A Prairie Homesick Companion

We saw A Prairie Home Companion yesterday. I loved it, but found it truly odd, rather like the radio show on which it is based. The movie seemed to be about nothing. It followed no particular path or plan. This is the mark of an Altman film, of course, but also shows a heavy influence of Garrison Keillor. It was like a two-hour "News from Lake Wobegon" monologue set to a screenplay: an aloof, meandering, and largely ad-libbed story told in Keillor's grave, butterscotch voice. Just a slice of life. Nothing important. Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along now.

And that is precisely is why it was so good.

It was also an intensely personal experience for me — to the point of distraction. It made me strongly nostalgic for my adopted home. My North Star. My Minnesota.

I lived in Minneapolis for six years and worked at Minnesota Public Radio in downtown St. Paul, where the film was shot. (Keillor's folks would want me to take great pains, I am sure, to make clear that Prairie Home Productions is a separate company from MPR, and that A Prairie Home Companion is distributed by American Public Media, also a separate company. Though they are all like in-laws at a family reunion potluck wondering whose ambrosia salad will go home untouched.)

Half the fun was seeing people and places I once saw daily. I knew that the movie would be like a photo album for me, but I did not want to be the annoying guy up front pointing out the bottles of Grain Belt Premium beer stacked up at the Fitzgerald Theater concession cubby (Who but a Minnesotan knows what this stuff is?) and that the interior of the Fitzgerald had been repainted for the movie and that the room with the box seats where Tommy Lee Jones sits is actually a production booth in real life.

The film takes place at the Fitzgerald, where the real show happens every week for most of the year. We used to have all-staff meetings and our holiday cabaret party there. In one of the final scenes, some of the men working backstage are theater staff in real life. I never knew their names, but I recognize them!

I annoyed Jeff right away by squealing quietly when the camera panned to Mickey's Diner in the opening scene. Mickey's looks like an old, stationary railroad dining car at W. 7th Street and St. Peter. A historic St. Paul landmark. Essentially a burger joint. But you don't go there for the food. You go there because it's Mickey's.

A ridiculous movie called Jingle All the Way used exterior shots of the diner, but the interior, where Gov. Schwarzenegger and Sinbad get into a fist fight over a toy robot, is a lamentable fake. Keillor's movie, however, authentic down to the Grain Belt, is the real chrome-plated deal.

"You're not going to do that all through the whole movie, are you?" he said.

And truly, I wasn't going to.

The radio show in real life is actually better than the radio show in the movie. The musical feel is the same, but there's more humor and a number of radio sketches and fake commercials and such.

My connection to Garrison Keillor is minor at best. I met him when I worked on the A Prairie Home Companion Web site for a year at MPR. My first meeting with him was in his cluttered office. He was barefoot. I had just been given responsibility for the Web site representing his show. He wanted us to completely redesign the site, which was the largest, most visited, most visible and most beloved of all the sites that MPR produced.

No pressure.

Oh, and have it done in three weeks in time for the launch of the new season.

And we did. The home page, and the major architecture, anyway. The rest of it came in phases throughout the next year.

I met with him again to show him design sketches from our truly marvelous Web designer Ben. (I mean it. This guy is good.) It was at his house in a fashionable St. Paul neighborhood. We sat at his dining room table. I fell in love with his kitchen. And I couldn't help but think, "I'm discussing Web site navigation with a genius." But he's so... normal and homey. So... Minnesotan.

As we were leaving, he gave me and the designer copies of his latest book at the time and a new CD compilation of Lake Wobegon stories. I didn't dare ask for an autograph. It felt petty and ungrateful at the time. Unprofessional. And I didn't want to seem impressed. I was a colleague first, a fan second.

I can remember back when he was working on a nebulous "screenplay." Who knew what it was about? Didn't matter. The man was always writing something. He is so busy and so prolific. I respect him immensely. A weekly radio show, a book or two, a screenplay, an op-ed, an essay, plus whatever we could squeeze out of him for the Web site. Sure, he has time for it all! I remember a blog I had set up for him, to use as a travel log while the show made stops around the country one summer, in which he noted a visit from Robert Altman, who attended the L.A. show. Hmm... Interesting... That Keillor sure gets around, don't he?

And here we are with a full-blown movie.

Oh my god! Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin are sitting in the seat at Mickey's where I always sat! I had chili fries Right There!

(P.S. It's also the same booth where Jeff spilled a whole Coke on his lap. Maybe that's why he shushed me.)

Cold Pizza

There is nothing better than cold pizza for breakfast on a Monday.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Wiki

Douglas Adams was nothing if not a visionary. Of course, he was much more than that, but the thing about him that impresses me most is his concept of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I can't say he predicted the Internet — any more than Jules Verne predicted space travel — but I think we can certainly say that he saw the potential of the Web technology we are now settling into.

The fictional Guide was written by intergalactic traveling researchers — hitchhikers — who sent their entries back to editors at the publishing houses of Ursa Minor who red-penned them (One of the major jokes in the Hitchhiker's books is that the entry for Earth was boiled down to the diminutive and somewhat insulting "Mostly harmless"), compiled them and sent them back through the sub-ether to all the copies of the electronic book, the Hitchhiker's Guide. Simple collaborative publishing. The convergence of laptops and WiFi made the Web into the embodiment of Adams' vision.

This was not lost on Adams. For a while there was a site called H2G2. I think he started it, in fact. "Researchers" made entries about whatever they liked, or proposed additions to existing entries. A team of editors would review the work and publish the entries. A whole community of nerds came together over the project, including myself. I had readt the Hithhiker's books in elementary school, and have always felt them to be among the major influences of my life — how I talk, how I write, how I think. Adams himself made appearances on the site. I remember in particular his entry on tea, which taught me the invaluable lesson that it is not enough to merely pour hot water on a tea bag. Rather, he opined, the tea must be met with boiling water — not water that had just been boiling, but water that was at that moment boiling. In other words, one must briefly boil the tea leaves.

I wrote an entry on the OED, which to my delight was published. And then the BBC bought and absorbed the site. And after I got into an argument with someone over the shape of Michigan (He adamantly denied that it was the shape of a mitten and a rabbit. Idiot.), I realized I had little to no interest in maintaining a presence in an online community. I wasn't ready to live online yet. A late adopter, me. So I gave it up. Someone else would have to write about Dolly Parton, I reasoned, and Michigan (uhm, check out the shapes) and Madonna.

And, as if by magic, someone else did.

What has been catching my attention lately is the phenomenon of wiki, from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick." The collaborative writing of Wikipedia — no official editors; anyone can log in, create a presence in the wiki community and edit — is a step beyond the Guide. But rather than chaos, what seems to happen is that the people with good reputations are trusted, and their work sticks, and Wikipedia seems to take on some coherence.

Here's Wikipedia's definition of wiki. Meta-wiki. Yay! Fun with prefixes.

Oxford English Dictionary

I don't think any part of me is English. I know I'm 50% of Polish extraction. The other half is mainly German, with a smattering of French (the Alsace-Lorraine region, my grandma says), Swiss and Native American. Not nearly enough of the latter to win me a scholarship, of course. And none of this is a source of pride or an attempt at establishing any sort of credibility; it is merely fact.

Nevertheless, my non-Englishness has not prevented me from feeling a kinship with England. It surfaced first most notably when I was a kid with my very strong reaction to Mary Poppins. I cried like a whipped child every time the wind changed and she left the Banks children. (This also led to an unassailable love for Julie Andrews.) When I got older, I bought the series of books by P.L. Travers, which I now, of course, prefer to the movie. (I think the "P.L." stands for "persnickety lesbian," which is why we love her.)

Now I collect the hard-cover, cloth-bound, first edition, British-published Bloomsbury editions of the Harry Potter series. The British spellings and slang just seem more true than what we see in the American editions. The British cover illustrations are far superior. Even the Bloomsbury typeface of the text is better.

When I was in London in the summer of 1997 for overseas study, I felt very comfortable. It was all a big romance for me — until I was dressed down by my writing professor once for something I wrote about the charming chimney sweeps dancing with Mary Poppins across the rooftops of London. Chim-chim-cheree and tally-ho!

Those men were overworked slaves of the aristocracy, he said — they often died of various kinds of cancer from the soot they inhaled throughout their lives — any child born to a chimney sweep inherited a short, dismal life of extreme hardship and abject poverty — shame on you, Eric, for romanticizing such a detestible way of life. You are overprivileged. You are petty. You are American.

Touché, Professor Penn.

However, those sweeps sure could dance!

So, I think I'm an Anglophile.

I am aware that this is a completely superficial appreciation for England. It is, after all, filtered through the lens of American history, literature, public television and BBC America. I'm comfortable with that.

But maybe I'm just biased.

Part of that love is manifested in an intense love of the English language — which, it is rumored, some people still speak in the U.K. This love knows no bounds but my general laziness for study. However, I did write a senior project in college on the history of punctuation. And I took graduate-level courses as an undergrad on the history of English. It was taught by an Oxford English Dictionary researcher. (I say this, again, not out of pride, and not to establish myself as any sort of expert — Lord knows, I am not — but just to show my love.)

English is huge. More than 400,000 words, and growing. Highly adaptable. Many of those words are absorbed (I will not say stolen) from other languages. As a result, it is monstrously confusing to second-language learners. (Even I, when typing "monstrously," had to ask myself: Is there an E?)

I can't wait until 2010, when the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is scheduled to be released. Far more than a simple, boring compendium of definitions, the OED is a treasure chest of history. Every word is traced back to its earliest appearance, from Old English to modern Standard English.

I love the OED. I covet it. All 20-plus volumes of it. I want to pore over it with a magnifying glass. I want to sleep with each volume in turn, wrapping myself around its sharp, hard-bound edges.

Years ago, I wrote an article for the Hitchhker's Guide to the Galaxy Web site, about the OED. I was inspired by a book I had just read called The Professor and the Mad Man, by Simon Winchester, about a criminally insane OED researcher and his relationship with the dictionary's original editor.

I was amazed and gratified when the entry was edited (hence the British spellings) and published.

Desperate Housewives Call for Desperate Writers

When I first learned that Doug Savant and Marcia Cross would both be among the cast of Desperate Housewives, I assumed the show would be another trashy incarnation of Melrose Place. But I listened to my obsessed friends who insisted that it was special; it was different; it was like nothing else; it was Good. So we rented Season One and got ourselves hooked. We waited with Six Feet Under, too, and we ended up adoring that show, so I figured maybe the same thing would happen with D.H.

OK, so it's a good show. We love Lynette. We hate Susan. Bla bla bla.

Then, oddly, at the end of Season One, the reason for the show's existence was eliminated: The mystery of Mary Alice's death was revealed. Yes, certain other intrigues were introduced — something to keep the show in a second season, like the new neighbors with the creepy guy in the basement, and the aftermath of Mrs. Huber's murder — but the main engine of the show was shut down.

I began to worry again.

Sure enough, to keep things moving, the second season has been filled with nothing but a series of contrivances, each more far-fetched than the one before. And now that we've reached the end of Season Two, we find ourselves with Bree escaping from the loony bin, Susan living in a trailer, and Zack shutting off granddad's life support to force-inherit his fortune and a rather large house, and abandoning his dad in prison. Tom has a long-lost daughter, whose crazy mother is moving into the neighborhood. Gabrielle's maid is having her baby. Mike gets run down by Susan's dentist! And Andrew is wandering the back highways of ... Illinois? (Where are they, anyway?) ... after Bree drops him off at an abandonned gas station in nowheresville.

And, incidentally, who cares if Andrew is gay? His assholeness trumps any interest I might have in his love life — though I was enjoying the scenes of his boyfriend mowing the Solis' lawn. Nor do I have much use for his totally non-credible hatred of his mother. What did she do to him, again? Uhh... hospital corners on his bed? Whiter-than-white underwear? Potpourri? Surely he's not upset that she gave him a hard time about his sexuality. I mean, she didn't kick him out — until he seduced her sex-addicted AA sponsor/boyfriend. After he falsely sued her for child abuse to become an emancipated minor and abscond with his trust fund to buy ... a car? A car? No, Andrew isn't even soap-opera interesting. He's just petulant and boring.

One of the best characters of Season One, Mrs. Huber's weird sister Felicia, is reduced in Season Two to the minor role of Zack's grandfather's nurse, playing some manipulative role in Zack's future — and with a terrible new haircut!

When TiVo screwed up and failed to record the last half hour of the two-hour season finale, we were barely bothered. Most of the details I missed, I got on the ABC Web site. As it settles safely into Melrose Place Land, will anyone care about this show anymore?