Irrelevance Archives

My Surgery

posted by Melissa on Sat, Jun 14, 2008

Hey, everyone: In case you email me next week and it takes me even longer than usual to get back to you, here's the 411: I'm having cyborg enhancement surgery on Wednesday, 6/18. They plan to cut my leg off and reattach it using titanium and ceramic parts. This is also known as . . .

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Man gets prison time for stealing panties

posted by Cheshire on Wed, Jun 13, 2007

Apropos of something, this news item caught my eye today. Makes me wonder: if he'd stolen briefs instead of panties, might he have, um, gotten off?

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Whack-a-Google #1

posted by Cheshire on Sun, Aug 6, 2006

We're stats whores -- we admit it freely. And we love seeing the weird things people type into Google or Yahoo or whatever and end up on our site. Thought you'd like to see them too, so here are the ten best from the past week.

free information on how to become a ninja
hot ninja girls
initiation for ninja
ninja pirates of the caribbean
Berkeley goth
irrelevance of hamlet
whens smallville on (I don't know -- I've been watching it on DVD)
superman slash richard
lex luthor "baby daddy"
theater people suck

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Hamlet in Space: A Rock Opera

posted by Desdemona on Fri, Jul 7, 2006

I heard about this through a directing pal of mine on a separate e-mail discussion list:

http://www.hamletinspace.com/

Hamlet In Space. Oh, yes. As if the entire Shakespearean canon hasn't been subjected to enough degradation and mockery. Hamlet in Space is not only a "rock opera," but also a "concept album." I imagine it's what might have happened if the members of Pink Floyd and Andy Warhol flunked high school English together and then decided to vent their woes about it while on a severe LSD trip.

With the exception of the "in space" addition, the entire musical preserves Shakespare original text as lyrics--of course, taking the liberty to repeat certain refrains, as rock songs tend to do. With song titles like Suits of Woe, The Rest is Silence, and--of course--To Be Or Not To Be and Get Thee to a Nunnery, it's potentially so bad it could actually be good. Or at least funny. Or just plain bad, actually.

And, OF COURSE these people are German! Is there any culture that's more obsessed with deconstruction and post-post-modernism-slash-surrealism?

Do I hear Measure For Measure: The Musical in our future?

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It's the part of little old New York that runs into Times Square

posted by Jennifer on Wed, Jul 5, 2006

I'm actually staying on 48th Street, but close enough. Regardless, I'm outta here today for summer in New York. Yes, yes, I know, it's going to be hot. Relax people, I can handle it. Besides, I'm too damn excited and will be way too busy to be bothered. Classes at the AADA start Monday and it'll be solid school interrupted by a helluvah lot of kick-ass fun in The Big Apple (Jeff Meanza, if you don't reply to my email, I swear to god I will hunt your ass down when I arrive). My apartment is at 48th and 9th, so if you want to come visit, just say the word. In other news, Chesh has created a monster. I've started my own blog. As soon as I add a decent amount of indecent content, I'll post the url here. OK then, have an ultra-awesome summer, stay in touch and go to Impact's Night of Sin (We need the money, peeps! Plus, you'll have so damn much naughty fun I promise you, you'll never recover.) Oh, and when the Pinup Girl Cocktail book comes out, buy, like 9 copies. It'll bring good luck. I'm f'ing serious.

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If there were an FM to FR

posted by Cheshire on Tue, Jul 4, 2006

Best line I've read lately online: "I would RTFM if there were an FM to FR." As I work on isolating the pinup girls from their backgrounds (especially the hair), I'm repeating this like a mantra.

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Superman Returns

posted by Cheshire on Fri, Jun 30, 2006

(Spoilers follow. Read at your own risk.)

Since Impact is the go-to Bay Area theatre company for superhero plays (The Wake-Up Crew and Meanwhile, Back at the Super Lair..., but let's give props also to Prince Gomolvilas's Fabulous Adventures of Captain Queer), I think a review of Superman Returns is in order.

I really wanted to like this movie. I really did. I was a huge fan of Superman and Superman II when I was a kid. Not so much Superman III, and I don't even think I saw IV. But that supposedly puts me right in line with Bryan Singer, who's said in a number of places that Superman Returns is meant to follow II. If that was indeed his goal, I think Singer succeeds. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

My two main problems with the movie are that 1) it's not big enough and 2) it's not really about anything. Here's the gist: five years ago Superman (Brandon Routh, looking and acting the part just fine) left without saying goodbye, and now he's back. Lois Lane (an annoying Kate Bosworth) has moved on, mostly: she has a young son and a baby-daddy (but she's the commitment-phobic one), and she has a Pulitzer for her poison-pen piece, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." Lex Luthor has been released from prison because Superman missed the parole hearing (what, he's the only one who has an opinion about Luthor's supervillainy?), and now he's swindled a rich old lady's family out of their entire inheritance, including a big boat. He's off in the big boat to the arctic circle, to get the secrets of the Fortress of Solitude.

What's he going to use those secrets for? Eh, let's not give it away too much, but it's cartoonishly big, not dangerously big. This is Superman, for chrissakes -- the biggest superhero of all time. He needs a huge supervillain to go up against and a huge danger, and I never bought into the concept that Luthor was going to radically re-Pangaea the world. Even when he puts his plan into action, I barely believed it.

The personal stakes are pretty low, too: Superman's five-year absence from Earth is explained but not fully justified. Lois may have moved on, but the planet is pretty happy to have Superman back. There's no backlash, no lingering bitterness, just huge gratitude. The person with the most at stake in the movie is Richard, the aforementioned baby-daddy, who's worried (rightly so) that Lois is still in love with Superman and will dump him now that the Caped Crusader is back in town.

Kevin Spacey is great as Lex Luthor, but the character himself is thin. One of the thrills of Smallville, a surprisingly terrific show, is that it's a harrowing portrait of the descent of Lex Luthor from Clark Kent's friend to Superman's arch-enemy. In Smallville, Lex is a tragic figure; in Superman Returns, he's just a bad man with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a bunch of stupid henchmen, and one stupid henchwoman (Parker Posey, who isn't given enough to do).

And in the end, if there isn't a huge threat, at least I wanted the movie to be about something. The Spider-Man, my favorite recent superhero movie, is about accepting the weight of responsibility. Batman Begins, my second-favorite, is about exorcising personal demons and the questionable merits of vigilantism. Even Bryan Singer's own X-Men movies are about being outsiders in society.

The closest this movie gets is a halfhearted meditation on what it means to be alone in the universe. A worthy subject, but one that's never fully explored. Superman's absence and quest should have been a huge part of this movie, not a barely explained prologue.

Oh, well -- hey, Netflix! When's my next Smallville DVD coming?

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Would Carey Perloff do this?

posted by Melissa on Thu, Jun 29, 2006

YES that's my silhouette available for download in the wallpapers section of Impact Crap. Soon you'll be able to see the real thing. I ask you -- would any other AD of any other theatre do this? I think not. And while being the only Bay Area AD with pictures of herself in lingerie on the theatre's website (and in an Impact exclusive cocktail book -- more on that later) probably only shows a basic lack of good judgment, I still put it to you: What other ADs love their company so much that they'll pose in trashy lingerie for it? Tony Taccone? Are you reading this?

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Clever is...

posted by Diana on Tue, Jun 27, 2006

Des: "He's going to feel emasculated"

Melissa: "I don't think you understand the male psyche."

Cheshire: "He's gonna feel emBONERated."

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