Last night I braved the snow - YES, SNOW. WHAT THE FUCK?!?! - to venture out to the cinema to take in "The Secret Life of Bees".
I'd tell you more about it, but it's a secret.
No. It wasn't so great. I enjoyed it, because I enjoy things that feature black ladies, but me-don't-thinks anybody's gonna be winning any Oscars from it.
It featured quite serviceable performances by Jennifer Hudson (who, yes, as it turns out, can act after all... suck it, Sex & The City: The Movie and the doubts that arose thereafter) and apparent cellist Alicia Keys - who, by the by, played the bitchy sister. Make no mistake about that.
Queen Latifah looked the portrait of a 1960's bee-keeping bull dyke (I know - is there any other kind?). Latifah is fast cornering the market on wise, elder authoritative black ladies... kinda like a female Morgan Freeman.
Dakota Fanning was her usual intense, precocious self. I don't care how normal an adolescence she's seeming to have, that bitch is always going to be the ringleader from Village of the Damned to me.
The real revelation of the evening (if there was one) was Sophie Okonedo as borderline retarded sister, Mae. I actually put her right up there with Sean Penn in "I Am Sam", Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" and Rosie O'Donnell in "Riding The Bus With My Sister" in terms of commendable cinematic portrayals of specially abled folk. Look at me being so PC. Ooh La La!
It must have kind of sucked for Sophie Okonedo, though. She's this fucking RADA-trained tragedian and she's playing opposite people whose acting credits include "Charlotte's Web", American Idol, "The Nanny Diaries" and of course, "Living Single".
I will say this about Jennifer Hudson, though: Just like the saying goes that "nobody gets beaten to death like Hilary Swank", no one can go from desperate to sassy like Jennifer Hudson. I'm very happy to know that she's finding her niche.
In other news:
Have you seen this yet? Y'should.
Wow.
I can only hope that she pulls out that condescending, passive-aggressive, "talking-to-8-year-olds" tone out of her pocket when she tries to finagle the nukes away from Kim Jong Ill.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?! The extent to which this bitch knows not what she says is getting out of control at this point!
I often joke that "I don't mean to play logistic police right now, but..." - I can't tell you how much I believe there truly SHOULD be some sort of private 'logic' brigade or something that can intervene when things just don't fucking make a stitch of sense - LIKE THE POSSIBILITY THAT THIS DUMB BITCH MIGHT BE RUNNING THE FREE WORLD IN A MATTER OF MONTHS!!!
Last Tuesday, of course, marked a particularly Sapphic edition of Bitch Salad - a Gi-normous thank you to all who came out for that ('GI-normous' both as in superlatively huge AND vaGInally...)
It wasn't as lesbo-centric in terms of an audience turnout as I thought - which was just as well, as my lesbo-centric material was scant at best. But yeah - suu-h-uuper-fun. I totally put more germs in my head insofar as doing theme shows WITHIN the already themed show that Bitch Salad is. I.E. an all musical edition... or an all-'urban' edition... or... uhh... an all-puppeteer edition... yeah... probably not... whatevs...
So the excitement continued when last Wednesday saw me attend the opening of Mivish Productions' restaging of the beloved classic "The Sound of Music" - something I was waiting for with baited breath, considering my overly enthusiastic interest in the CBC reality show, "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" this past summer.
In three words: Feel Good Time.
I don't know if you're a fan of the movie at all, or fuck, even SAW the movie - as a shockingly high number of people I've spoken to haven't (read: One person. I can't believe anyone has NOT seen the movie?!?! I thought some sort of accrued knowledge of the Family Von Trapp was more requisite in someone's childhood than the assfucking Bible... meh)... - but this thing definitely lived up to it.
The solution to "How [Exactly] [You Do] Solve a Problem Like Maria?", underdog Elicia MacKenzie, definitely worked it out. She still isn't nor shall she ever be runner up/predicted winner Janna Polzin (who, incidentally, alternates in the part Wednesday evenings and Sunday matinees), but she's definitely believable in the part of flibbertigibbet songbird nanny/mistress, Maria Rainer-Von Trapp.
Other highlights include Noella Huet's "Mother Abbess"... although her acting ranges from barely passable to passable, she can sing like a motherfucker. Like a motherfucker, let me tell ya. Upon hearing her fuck the shit out of the last phrase in the first-act closer "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", you'll be hard pressed to find yourself sitting on a dry seat. It's devastating.
And, of course, the bitch who plays Gretl is mayhaps the fiercest bitch who's e'er lived. She literally needs to blink and the audience full blown ovates. It's nuts. I was ACTUALLY star struck by her at the after party. I kept almost approaching her, only to come to my senses and be like "Dude... she still poops her pants... we can't hang out."
Some differences from the movie:
In the live version, the staple "My Favourite Things" is NOT sung to the children in bed to distract them from the thunder storm, but instead by the Mother Abbess to Maria in an uncharacteristically secular move. Good heavens!
What Maria does, in fact, sing to the children to lift their spirits during the thunderstorm, is instead "The Lonely Goatherd" - a song famously done in a marionette orgy in the film. This was incredibly disappointing, as I was hoping with all my might that there'd be a chorus of people pretending to be marionettes. BUT NO. Instead, it's just Maria yodelling to the kids as they scream their heads off. I thought, "Fuck... could there not be a little bit of reimagining here? Like maybe a mash-up of "The Lonely Goatherd" and Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up"? Like have Gretl come out like "This is the key that makes us wind up..." But no. Anyballs...
Another thing that is noticeably different in the stage production is the part of the Baroness - she's not the skanky, jealous tranny that people have come to know and love from the film... but instead a quite noble and feminine character who simply can't have a meeting of the minds with the Captain... BORING! I WANTED TRANNY BARONESS!!! Instead of being played by a Kathleen Turner-type, as she should have been, she was played by a Gwenyth Paltrow-type, if that gives you any idea.
Anyballs - the party afterwards was fine. Cramped as fuck, as it was held in the actual theatre, because - as I'm told - every banquet hall in the city has been booked due to some mystery conference of sorts. There was a considerable food shortage, and it was all Austrain-themed.
During the show, at one point Elicia/Maria rewards herself for a job well done making clothes out of curtains or something, by sneaking a pastry, but is then busted by the Baroness. I then remarked to my co-horts that if Elicia/Maria needs to do that 8 shows a week, she's going to end up like Jenna Maroney in the episode of "30 Rock" when she comes back from summer hiatus performing in "Mystic Pizza: The Musical" on Broadway, only to have gained 50 pounds from having to eat 3 pieces of pizza on stage per show... I couldn't find a clip of it, but because the more 30 Rock you can mention, the better, DO enjoy Jenna performing her Number 1 smash hit (on the Israeli pop charts), "Muffin Top":
Anyballs - this whole Mystic Pizza: The Musical thing was worth mentioning, because afterwards, upon discovering that the scant food selection was all of Austrian persuasion (Cabbage Rolls, Schnizel, Pickeled motherfucking Herring...), my compatriot Heidi remarked that "now [she] really does wish this was Mystic Pizza: The Musical". Ha. Because then various pizza-things would have been served. Meh - it was funny at the time.
So yes...
Go see "The Sound of Music". And by all means join me in having "The Lonely Goatherd" in my head for the rest of days.
I'm going to see "The Secret Life of Bees" tonight. Jennifer Hudson is in it. I expect sass by the barrell full.
I kind of have been all week. It's been one of those weeks. But I won't get into that right now. I've had a little bit of a situation to deal with that I'm mere steps away from being Katharine-McPhee-quotingly "Over It"... but yeah...
WHAT A WEEK!
Through my boozey haze, it's not gone unnoticed how crazy things have been... firstly, there's been some sort of kerfuffle in the financial world that my boss and other crazy rich people like him are in a downright tizzy about.
CRAZY, TRUE STORY: He actually needed to go to a funeral this week of some financial dude he knows who committed suicide because of it!!! It's like the old tymey days of the depression when stock brokers jumped out of windows and people have to ration bread crumbs!!! Hot diggity, somebody put on some music for me to Charleston to!
Anyballs... I'm in the arts living directly ON the poverty line, so not too much is going to change for me.
We have an election coming up here, as well... this coming Tuesday, October 14th... which just so happens to coincide with:
THAT'S RIGHT!!! THIS COMING TUESDAY!!! Go and vote, then celebrate the democracy you've just demonstrated by taking a Journey to the Isle of Lesbos!!! FUN!
OH - and, because if we at Bitch Salad are anything we're topical, we'll be welcoming SUPER SPECIAL GUEST... ... ... ... SARAH PALIN!!! Yep!
She'll be stopping by to promote lesbianism as a form of abstinence. Because really, that's what it is. I mean, what exactly happens there?! Not sex, that's all I know. = )
Anyballs...
As I was saying, we do have an election coming up, and as such, I was invited to come and do some talking head thing for MTV.
It was perhaps 5 minutes before I shot this that it occurred to me that I don't even remotely follow Canadian politics and have absolutely no fucking clue what I'm going to say.
I think I just kept saying "I love that bitch from the Green Party! She's CRAZY!" over and over again. I also think I said I liked her because she was like Vicki Gabereau-meets-Courtney Love. I found out some time after this that her name is Elizabeth May, of course. I had no clue at the time. So yeah. That didn't go so swimmingly...
I'll be voting Liberal, natch. Always have, always will. But I live in Jack Layton's riding, so it won't make much difference.
One piece of homegrown Election news that I found interesting appeared to me on my daily scanning of Queer Click (the link is extremely, purposefully NSFW... so don't go there lest ye be bombarded by images of cock...) - which is basically a blog that rounds up gay porn site updates (with a pretty blatant penchant for foreskin, but that might just be me) that occasionally includes a round up of news stories relevant to the gay community, and this little item jumped out at me...
In short... the lone gay conservative candidate, like, ever, resigned because of controversial comments he made on a [now-defunct] blog.
Comments to the tune of: "Allow law-abiding citizens who are qualified and trained to carry concealed handguns for personal protection. It's the only proven way to reduce violent crime and murder. If women and gays really wanted to stop being victims of hate crimes, they'd be in support of this, but judging from discussions, they'd rather be helpless and rely on government."
Y'know, good old fashioned crazy-talk like that.
CRAZY TRUE STORY: I went to University with him. I believe he's actually on my facebook. I seem to recall getting an invite from him to an event entitled "I'm voting conservative in the next election!" and was like "SHWHAT?! Helllllllllll to the no." and then thought to myself, "Isn't he a fag? And he's conservative? Now I've seen everything". So yeah. Nuts!
Wasn't all of that completely pointless and incoherent? It's what happens when I attempt to talk politics. I should just stick to what I know...
And what I DO know, it's hot, crazy bitches...
I.E. - my new obsession...
KLYMAXX!!!
I don't know why Klymaxx aren't a bigger deal. Klymaxx was 6-piece, all-girl band made up of a gaggle of dark 'n lovely sistahs each darker and lovelier than the last. Of note: they all played instruments. More of note: their signature touch included a boastful, sassy monologue at the beginning of their songs - not a rap, mind you, but a monologue. Check this shit out: Yep... let's review that...
"Uh, I had to leave my condo to come to this / Well, I’m back, but this time I’m with my man / And these women are puttin’ their hands all over his Yamamoto Kanzai sweater that I bought / And I’m much, much unhappy about that / I’d hate to come down to their level and become a BW - A Basic Woman / But if they don’t stop it’s gonna get scandalous"
"I know I was lookin' good / I had my Kenneth Cole shoes on / My Gianni Versace blue leather suit / My nails were done and my hair was fierce / And I was riding in a Cooper's limousine / Don't you want to ride..."
I'm really starting to get the impression that these ladies are quite tasteful. What with the mentions of driving in Cooper's limousines and the wearing of a blue leather suit. Oh-la-la.
Anyballs... I'm about to peace out for the weekend. Back to Brockville, cuz y'all, it be Thanksgiving.
But before I go, here's something for your weekend... it's the Bitch Salad: Journey To The Isle of Lesbos mix!
Originally, I had intended to make the mix, like the show, entirely Sapphic, and strictly feature remixes of artists who eat pussy.
As you can imagine, that was a little limited.
So I just said "EFF IT!" and went top 40... the tracklisting...
John Legend feat. Andre 3000 - Green Light (Johnny Douglas Mix) Coldplay - Viva La Vida (Telemitry Mix) Katy Perry - Hot 'N Cold (Jason Nevins Mix) Hilary Duff - Reach Out (Touch Me) (Chico & Bermudez Mix) Tami Chynn feat. Akon - Frozen (Ralphi Rosario Mix) Vanessa Hudgens - Sneakernight (Alberto Castillo Mix) Kreesha Turner - Don't Call Me Baby (Digital Dog Mix) Chris Brown - Forever (Bobby Bass & J Remy Mix) Jordin Sparks - One Step At A Time (Jason Nevins Mix) Pink - So What (Bimbo Jones Mix) Natasha Bedingfield - Angel (Moto Blanco Mix) Neyo - Closer (Norty Cotto Mix) Jilly Scott - Golden (Grant Nelson Mix) Lindsay Lohan - Bossy (Soulshaker Mix)
First off - what the balls does that mean, you ask?
Well, it's short form for my current catchphrase and affirmative mantra, "What Would Elayne Boosler Do?"
WHO, you may ask, is Elayne Boosler? And that's a shame.
That you'd have to ask at all. *Sigh-on-behalf-of-the-great-Boosler*.
Elayne Boosler is THE quintessential lady-comic from the 80's, right down to her charmeuse vest and mullette'd Jewess fro.
Check out some of her zingers:
- “We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight, if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, 'You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms.'”
- “My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions”
- “When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country."
And of course... the ULTIMATE Booslerism...
- "I just discovered a new brand - super-extra-sensitive condoms. Wow, do they stick around and talk to you after the guy leaves?"
And just to give you the faintest taste of her on stage persona, I compel you to watch this clip of her at Comic Relief, 198something...
Yeah. She's like the hyper-liberated, tart-tongued best friend of Cathy from the Cathy comics. Like "Elayne! You can't say that!"... at which point BamBoosler would reply to Cathy, "Oh yeah? WATCH ME."
Anyballs - I've been obsessed with Elayne Boosler. Particularly because I've recently been touring exponentially more than I usually do, and finding myself in front of a brick wall background (because yes, a lot of comedy clubs steadfastly retain that stereotypical aestethic), surrounded by unbelievably zany headshots of comics from yore. Why, just this past weekend in London, Ontario, I found myself sharing personal space with none other than a signed 8x10 circa 1988 of none other than Judy Tenuta. Holy fuck. (Apparently, back in the 80's, the BamBoosler was too big for London...)
So yeah... "What Would Elayne Boosler Do?" has gotten me through many a sticky comedy situations over the past couple of weeks. Not answering the question, just saying it. Mainly abbreviated - WWEBD? It's just fun to say. Because in truth, odds are what Elayne Boosler would actually end up doing is making some underhanded jab at men then asking, "ladies, am I right?" Class frickin' act, that Boosler.
I really don't know why I felt compelled to tell you all of that. I'm kind of medicated right now - I've got that cold that everyone's got... and I'm going to catch the premiere open dress rehearsal of "The Sound of Music" tonight. So we'll see how enchanting that is to sit through with a head cold. I'm guessing not very.
Something that will enchant the pants clear off your bums, and, in some cases, frums?
WE'RE BACK!
A very, VERY special edition that, for realsies, I've been trying to do since DECEMBER of last year... yep, this has basically been a year in the making. Your options are kind of limited, though, when there are like, 6 lesbians comics in this country to choose from and you need 5, so yeah. But, at long last, Bitch Salad: Journey To The Isle of Lesbos is happening!!!
Anyballs... I'm off to get The Lonely Goatherd stuck in my head for all eternity.
Queen Latifah looked the portrait of a 1960's bee-keeping bull dyke (I know - is there any other kind?). Latifah is fast cornering the market on wise, elder authoritative black ladies... kinda like a female Morgan Freeman.
I don't know why Klymaxx aren't a bigger deal. Klymaxx was 6-piece, all-girl band made up of a gaggle of dark 'n lovely sistahs each darker and lovelier than the last. Of note: they all played instruments. More of note: their signature touch included a boastful, sassy monologue at the beginning of their songs - not a rap, mind you, but a monologue. Check this shit out:
