2008 Woodie Awards
Over 3,000 people sat next to each other on bleachers in front of the pink-lit stage that hosted a full orchestra. The conductor kept time, his arms in billowing white sleeves, punctuated the full, classical music.
Then, through the night air, a spotlight focused on a young man dressed in an over-sized T-shirt and pants that hung, baggy, on his thin frame. He started rapping.
Stage left, 15 women in tank tops and camouflaged cargo pants danced in sync, their style a mixture of modern dance, Madonna’s “Vogue,” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” At stage right stood three guys on a platform with cans of spray paint, creating a large work of graffiti on a plywood wall. All the while, the orchestra accompanies the musicians, dancers, and artists.
The event, known in Pau, France as Orchestral Urbain: the Improbable Meeting, sought to combine classical music with hip-hop, thus reaching an audience with a broad range of ages and interests. The whole spectacle was representative of tensions in today’s French culture, largely concerning issues of immigration. The traditional sentiments of class and propriety met the younger generation’s world, one that includes an acceptance of new cultures and avenues of expression. It showed that “French music” is more diverse than the sidewalk café tunes of Django Reinhardt or the sappy love songs sung by Charles Trenet.
On that note, I thought I’d recommend some musicians you can check out. Perhaps the songs “à l’air français” can provide a respite from the humid, Iowa summer air.
Let’s start with a classic. Serge Gainsbourg, the super-sexed pop star, was most popular during the 1960s and ’70s.
His song “Je t’aime…moi non plus” reached a large English speaking audience, thanks to the explicit sounds of a woman’s orgasm. His sound is playful and retro. Noted songs include: “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Lemon Incest,” and “Les Sucettes.”
Louise Attaque, founded in 1994, played a folk-rock style that was strongly influenced by the Violent Femmes.
They were immensely popular throughout the 1990s, their albums outselling those of bands like Noir Desir, another celebrated rock band of the time. Their lyrics are strong against a background of fiddles and guitars. Check out these songs: “Je voudrais que tu te rappelles,” “Si c’était hier,” and “Ton invitation.”
For some relaxed tracks, Tryo plays a mix of jazz, funk, and reggae.
My French family is a big fan of their live albums and we often listen to them in the background while making dinner or playing Monopoly. C’est très chouette! Their songs are often politically charged, criticizing right-wing politicians and their policies. I recommend the songs “Paris,” “Monsieur bibendum,” and “Yakamoéyé.”
My favorite French hip-hop comes from two different sources: I AM and MC Solaar.
I AM hit their big break with the album L’école du micro d’argent. Though well known in France throughout the 1990s, MC Solaar met English audiences in 2004 when his song “La belle et le bad boy” was featured in an episode of “Sex and the City.” Favorites include: “Nes sous la même étoile” by I AM, and “Paradisiaque,” “Comme dans un film,” and “La vie est belle” by MC Solaar.
Camille Dalmais prefers to be known by just her first name, Camille.
Her music is rhythmic and complex, reminiscent of Björk, Ani Difranco and Regina Spektor. I just discovered her new album, Le fil, and so far I love “Ta douleur,” “Au port,” and “Pour que l’amour me quitte.”
So, hope you enjoy the sampling of new French tunes. Most of the above are available on iTunes, and I’m sure can be found elsewhere online or at a local record store.
Until next week, ciao!
Caution! A jaguar is on the loose in this blog!
Ah, pardon, that was just me and my untamed digital camera. Back in the cage, you two.
My past week in Los Angeles was bittersweet — Mom (a.k.a. “Gloria,” “The Gloria,” and “Lew Alcinder”) came to visit for five days of Scrabble, rented DVDs, tourist attractions, and awkward interactions with my totally antisocial roommate. That was all fabulous. However, I missed Jeopardy! at least once when she was here, and that’s like forgetting to take my pill. I toughed it out, twitched all that night, and had violent dreams of Alex Trebek announcing terrifying categories like “Reasons Louis Should Get a Nose Job” and “Ways Kylie Minogue Could be Assassinated.”
All for you, Mom.
The two of us traversed the friendly seven-lane roads of L.A. for places that could appease us both. Gloria’s into crosswords and church. I’m into Kathy Griffin and sin. The crossroads weren’t plentiful, but they were enough:
The Getty Museum
Commissioned for some gargantuan sum, the Getty is a giant, free museum located in the sky. You begin somewhere on Earth by Sepulveda Boulevard, but a tram transports you up a mountain and before long you’re walking from building to building, cloud to cloud. Kind of like in Super Mario Bros. 3 when you enter the spiral castle in World 5 and suddenly you’re in Cloud Land, flabbergasted — except without the raccoon suit. Stop me if my literary references are too complex for you.
Here’s the thing about museums: I plan my suicide in them. Not that there wasn’t fascinating material in the Getty — I learned a lot about Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a court painter for Louis XV, on an audio tour. But God, all that walking and reading. At least books sit still. All this s**t was spread out like a scavenger hunt where no one wins (except for the people who sold me that audio tour — I miss that five bucks).
But the place was gorgeous.
Garden after garden. Buildings and staircases that weaved over a beautiful stretch of hills. The most incredible view of California I’ve seen yet. A killer food court.
If you bring your mom to Los Angeles, go to the Getty. You won’t run into homeless people or hookers — and moms like that.
And now for smaller scale fun:
Pinkberry
If you’re a Perez Hilton fanatic, you know all about it. It’s an ultra-trendy and ultra-ubiquitous chain of L.A. ice cream (pardon me, non-ice cream) eateries with some sort of Korean origin. It looks like this:
The original flavor is lemony, pretty sweet, and if you ask me, just OK. Granted, I’m sure there’s a reason my associates call it “Crack-berry.” There was once a point when I thought Jimmy John’s was “just OK.” Yeah, that was long before I chose Turkey Tom as my confirmation name.
Speaking of which, did you know Jimmy John’s is only in the Midwest? What the hell? Moving on:
Sprinkles Cupcakes
Silly you, you wanted to spend that $3.50 on something other than a cupcake. Not today.
Apparently Sprinkles has made a number of appearances on the E! Playboy bunny show “The Girls Next Door,” which is where you usually get your culinary news. The cupcake joint, which had a line out the door when I was there, boasts different flavors everyday. The favorites seemed to be red velvet, vanilla, lemon, and dark chocolate. That’s astonishing to me, because, uh, I thought the ones I ate were disgusting, and I’m still flinging my pearls about it.
I lurrrrve cupcakes, so disappointment with Sprinkles seemed like an impossibility. But I was terribly let down. Like Blair Witch Project let down. Nearly Wedding Crashers terrible (all you Vince Vaughn fans can suck it, that epic piece of sexist s**t was unforgivable, and I judge you and your North Face bull***t for laughing at any of it).
…but let’s be friends.
How did Sprinkles screw up the perfect dessert? The million-dollar ingredient in a Sprinkles cupcake is, of all things, butter. Ugh, it grosses me out to even recall. The cupcakes were spongy, bland, and very heavy. God, as if I needed another reason to be bulimic. I advise you spend that exorbitant amount of money on something reasonable like Jamba Juice… or anything that doesn’t sit in your stomach like a log swathed in frosting.
Unfortunately that tidbit concludes our California foray for today. We will rendezvous again next week, likely with something clubbier. That’s right, get your fishnets on — if you weren’t wearing them anyway. And knowing you Iowan folk, you were wearing them right under the overalls.
Until we’re “goin’ back to Cali” again, xoxo,
LL Cool Louis
I talked to Vikki Cruz a couple weeks ago for a story I wrote on a show at the Bakersfield Museum of Art in California, where she works as an art instructor. Vikki is 28 and from Bakersfield, but she went to school at UC Berkley and then returned to town and has been working at the museum ever since. She had three paintings in the show. I gave her a call today to find out a bit more about being a young artist in Bakersfield and the general condition of the local arts scene.
Maggie: What’s the arts scene like in Bakersfield?
Vikki: I think it’s a little non-existent right now. It’s hard to find people that I really look up to and that are really going to motivate me and challenge me. I think that’s why I got involved with working at the museum — to try to find a more sophisticated art scene. I think that with the way the population is growing, it’s a little bit evident that there’s a need for an art community, and it has grown in the past few years. But with not a lot of places to exhibit work or find work it’s hard to find a lot of young artists working professionally.
M: Has working at the museum helped?
V: It has. You meet people coming through that have similar interests.
M: How was going to school at UC Berkley different than Bakersfield?
V: It was huge. The kind of people that you’re exposed to, the way of thinking that you’re exposed to — it’s almost like a big culture shock. You’re just inspired so much by your environment and people who are constantly doing these outrageous things. The art community was a bit stronger there because you’re so close to San Franciso. But at the same time, it was important to take what I got from Berkley and the city and try to bring it back to a community that is thirsty for it.
M: Where do you go locally to get inspiration?
V: I don’t know. I just feel like through the museum there’s shows that come through that can be inspiring. People have shown at the Empty Space theaters (a local venue). I’ve seen some good shows. Most of them are local. Those can be pretty inspiring.
M: Can you describe your studio?
V: I have a studio partner, and she works with me at the museum…it’s just a big open space, we have huge windows that face the north. It’s just a space to go and be creative and work on paintings and drawings. I like to get people, friends up there to work creatively and collectively to see what kind of ideas people have and to critique my things. My studio partner is a seamstress, and she also paints. Her style is completely different. She’s a huge inspiration, too.
M: Tell me about your work.
V: It’s usually oil on canvas. Lately I’ve been working on a smaller scale. My work is usually one single object, whether it be a figure, an article of clothing, or an air of shoes…the background is kind of an open color-field. The space is pretty shallow, so it doesn’t really give much of a background, foreground and middle-ground. The subject is really up in your face…It’s pretty representational. I have studied a lot from masters from the Renaissance, looking at their work and paintings. In college [my work] was more abstract and a little more conceptual, so the last few years I’ve just been working to get back to the foundation of painting and trying to master it in the more realistic way.
M: Do you plan to stay here in town?
V: I do. I’m working on a graduate school portfolio at the moment. I plan to go to grad school and get my masters in art and eventually teach at a college level. I’d like to be able to do that here in town. I’m born and raised here and I really want to help the art scene here and make it grow and really cater to the young, professional, working artists who are very serious and passionate about becoming successful in the art field.
—————
As for me…I went to Vegas last weekend. I did not get married under a giant neon heart.
I did not sell my car, clothing, hair, limbs, or first-born child for another round of craps.
And, sadly, I did not hit it big, which is why I am still writing this blog. But here are some things I did do:
• Enjoy gambling much more than I thought I would.
• Marvel at all the people who brought their children to Vegas.
• Pay $30 to get into a strip club.
• Eat a full meal at said strip club and then proceed to watch a gaggle of nearly nude women take turns dancing on multiple stages.
• Refuse a lap dance from one of these strippers with a thinly veiled look of terror.
• Get hit on by a man at the strip club who offered to buy me a lap dance. Result? Another thinly veiled look of terror.
My companions, however, both received lap dances. One was a guy, one was a girl. Here is how the conversation went with the girl who gave my female friend a dance — we’ll call her Sally:
Stripper: Your first time?
Sally: Yeah
Stripper: (Cackle, cackle, toss long brown hair in my face.) I have a stalker. Look, that girl over there, keeps following me.
Sally: Oh?
Stripper: F***. Yeah. (Cackle, smile, toss hair again.) So who am I dancing for?
Me: Her.
Sally: Me?
Stripper: (Smiles entirely too broadly and says to me) You’re next.
(Stripper begins dancing after some more cackling and swearing.)
Later I wandered into a normal restaurant that apparently was actually the strippers’ changing and freshening-up room. Whoops. There was lingerie scattered all over and about every kind of perfume and Altoids you could imagine.
Frankly, this place was terrible. The women were all beautiful, sure. But they were terrifying! Most seemed to be on something. And they certainly weren’t enthusiastic while doing their jobs. How can you be turned on by a girl who looks totally bored? Eeeewww. Otherwise, though, Vegas was fun. Next week, expect tales of 16-year-olds misbehaving — I’m covering a local version of Super Sweet 16.
Bye now!
Maggie
This past weekend, I decided to take a little break between classes and escape to London with a few friends.
Stepping off the plane, we threw ourselves with glee on the first sign we saw in English, spoke in poor British accents for three hours straight, and got down to business: Wimbledon.
We not only spent our first night in London on park benches, but we befriended some sassy British kids, we endured 16 consecutive hours of rain, and we spent a grand total of $620 between four people. Oh, and we got front row seats to Wimbledon. Front row seats to Wimbledon. Unless you got married this weekend, that’s pretty hard to beat.
Sam David, a senior engineering and biology student and fellow Hawkeye, was one of my traveling buddies for the weekend. Sam is really easy-going and a huge sports buff. He decided last minute to join us, and we’re all happy he did. We sat down afterwards to recap the weekend.
Ann Colwell: Overall evaluation: incredible. We are never going to forget this experience, barring Alzheimer’s, of course. What was the best part for you?
Sam David: There’s an allure to being at Wimbledon. You see the wall of champions and you know that you’re in a place where so much history has been made. I went thinking I’d get ground seats and walk around the grounds, see a few matches of lesser quality. Never did I think I would be in the front row of a match that actually mattered. A week from now we might be saying that we saw the Wimbledon champion play. To see something that important in sports was pretty cool for me.
AC: Let’s talk about that night we spent outside. When we arrived at the queue at the Park, it was about 1 a.m. the morning of the tournament. I remember a drunk Brit yelling, “Welcome to the queue!” with such enthusiasm, and I knew that it was going to be an interesting day. What was running through your head?
SD: We got our queue cards, which reserved our spot in line to buy tickets. We were #450 in line, and that pretty much guarantees a spot on the Center Court or Court One, the best places to watch tennis. I noted that the weather wasn’t too bad. We were warned by another drunken British man that because we didn’t have a tent, we were going to get “wet bum.”
AC: Now why would we want a tent? Oh yes, because it was freezing.
SD: Everyone else in the queue had tents, thermoses, sleeping bags, pillows, coffee — basically five star accommodations compared to what we had. We had nothing else to do, so we wandered off to find a place to sleep and ended up in what I think was a rose garden.
AC: Fast forward to 4 a.m., when it began to rain.
SD: We found some random house in the park and crashed on the porch under the overhang. We had marginal success sleeping there, minus the frost that accumulated on our clothes while we slept.
AC: Comfortable?
SD: Absolutely not. I think those three hours earned me a few trips to the chiropractor.
AC: That’s why I have my masseuse on speed dial. You never know when you’re going to wake up all sore from sleeping on some random park ranger’s porch in London. We rejoined the queue at 6 a.m., right in front of the British kids.
SD: They were a riot — the kind of guys who could actually make you laugh after spending a sleepless night in a rose garden, and ruthlessly commandeering clothes from your friends in an attempt to stay warm. We were so out of it; everything was funny.
AC: Don’t worry, I won’t ever tell anyone that you stole my pink shawl and didn’t want to give it back. But eight to nine hours of queuing was worth it in the end. Remind me again where our seats were?
SD: The front row: the perfect location for being mesmerized by Maria Sharapova. She’s ranked the second best female tennis player in the world. Sharapova is a past champion of Wimbledon and the US Open — that’s a pretty big deal for anyone, let alone a 20-year-old. She is also very good looking.
AC: Sam, how would you describe the sound Sharapova makes when she hits the ball? It sounded to me like a tribal call that got confused with a mating call.
SD: (laughs, and thinks for a moment) It’s as if someone punched her in the gut while she was having sex. Yeah, that’s exactly how it sounds. It’s the type of sound a girl that hot should never make.
After a lot of sleep and a change of clothes, Sam and I took some time to create a mini-playlist of the songs that would best describe our day in paradise.
Songs for a Wet Bum:
The Kids Aren’t Alright — The Offspring
Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground — The White Stripes
In the Cold Cold Night — The White Stripes
Comfortably Numb — Pink Floyd
Where is my Mind? — The Pixies
Up All Night — Counting Crows
London Bridge — Fergie (Just kidding. Sam says that Fergie has nothing on Sharapova, but seriously, we can’t resist the way she spells her name.)
Here Comes the Sun — The Beatles
London Calling — The Clash
The Clash said it best.
Ann
I just returned to Pau after spending a week in Amsterdam. We had a break between June and July courses, and I thought I might as well head to the Pays Bas, or the “Low Country.” The break signaled not only a pause in homework and three hours of class every morning, but was, in fact, the mid-point marker.
This realization, along with feeling overjoyed to return to Pau at the end of the week, put my whole study abroad experience in perspective. Amsterdam was great, don’t get me wrong. I learned that 1) a society where everyone rides bikes is possible, 2) the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, and 3) more tourists frequent the “coffee shops,” which pedal pre-rolled joints and hash by the ounce, than local Netherlanders. But the strongest thought that kept reappearing during the week was: my days in France are numbered.
That said, I snuggled back into my life here as fast as I could. The first night back I had dinner with my host mom, chatting in French about fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, balsamic vinegar, and eggplant pate. The conversation turned to languages and translation. It started with magazines and moved to film. She pulled out Fenêtre sur cour (Rear Window) an Alfred Hitchcock film, and we settled in to watch the movie. It was in English with French subtitles. We both swooned over Jimmy Stewart and marveled at Grace Kelly’s beauty. We discussed Hitchcock’s style and brilliance.
I reflected, thinking that of the many films I’ve seen while in France, Fenêtre sur cour was one of the few in English. Pau is home to a small, independent theatre called Les Méliès. This cinema brings in international films and rather than the usual practice of dubbing foreign films with French, Les Méliès keeps the film’s original language and adds French subtitles.
In keeping with the “Interview Week” theme at blogs.dailyiowan.com/arts, Lindsay Blotzer, a study abroad student and fellow film dilettante, joined me to discuss the films we’ve seen.
Kate Casper: Hey Linds, glad we could chat. So, we’ve both fallen in love with Les Méliès and many of the films that have been shown there. I don’t think either of us are true movie buffs, but we enjoy film and practicing French.
Lindsay Blotzer: Yeah. I had never sought out [foreign] films without English subtitles before. The first time I was introduced to Les Méliès was during our walking tour of Pau, the first week we were here. Since it was an independent theatre I was immediately drawn to it because films shown in places like that end up becoming some of my favorites.
KC: Being that all the films shown at the theatre are either in French or have French subtitles, were you ever worried about the language barrier, about not understanding the movie?
LB: Seeing the posters of the films coming in all looked interesting. For some reason I wasn’t fazed that they’d be in French or with French subtitles, so there was no guarantee that I would understand them. I just knew I’d be going there a lot.
KC: What were some of your favorites?
LB: I’ve seen a lot, but the ones I’ve really enjoyed have been Irina Palm, which was made in Britain. It was in English but it was still neat because I read the [French] subtitles anyway. I also enjoyed La Vie des autres (The Lives of Others), which is a German film. It was interesting hearing the German and reading the French. It wasn’t too hard to understand because so much of the story was in the characters’ expressions and was played out in front of you. I think film is a great way to get to know language because you don’t have to just rely on the words.
The last film I saw there was Persepolis, which was fun because I was reading the series [by Marjane Satrapi] in its original French. Generally I find it easier to read French subtitles because I’m able to see the words and process them in time. Whereas when I just hear the French, like in this film, I’m also hearing an actual French accent spoken very quickly, which makes it more difficult to understand. But it’s good to see a film in French to get used to the pace of the language.
KC: Have there been any films that you haven’t understood because of language barriers?
LB: Une vieille maîtresse I found difficult to follow. First the language of the film was French. Second, much of the plot relied on storytelling and they didn’t always act out what was being described.
KC: So how did you make sense of the film?
LB: I didn’t make sense of the whole film. I feel like I got the gist, but one of my friends who’d seen it before me had really enjoyed it, and I feel maybe he got a little more out of it than I did.
KC: One film we found particularly interesting. Tu marcheras sure l’eau (Walk on Water) is an Israeli film with dialogue in English, German, and Hebrew and we watched it with French subtitles.
LB: Oh yes, it was fabulous. First, it was great because I enjoyed the film and the English kind of felt like it was thrown in, just for me. I found it pretty easy to understand the subtitles and what was going on. Some time would go by where they would’ve been speaking a little bit of English a little bit of German or Hebrew, and I’d read the subtitles the whole time because I didn’t realize when English was being spoken. It got to the point where I didn’t know if I’d read the French or heard the English, but I understood it so well. It was a nice little victory.
KC: Any other films you saw that were impressive?
LB: Le Scaphandre et le papillon. It had beautiful imagery and a very interesting story. The former editor of Elle magazine had an attack, I forget what the syndrome was called. But he was paralyzed except for one eye and he wrote a book by blinking. It was very moving.
KC: Any last comments?
LB: I recommend all of the films we talked about, except for maybe Une vieille maîtresse. But then again, perhaps it’s better with English subtitles.
That’s it in this edition from France. Hope you all have a great Independence Day in the states, complete with sparklers and fireworks. Until next week, ciao.
Daily Iowan reporters and editors write beyond the print edition.
|
|
RSS 2.0
