Dig that crazy music prose!

Hello Cool Cats. Ciao mad monks and trippy teamsters. It's about time for a media update from this end. As you know I spend a lot of time absorbing culture and art like a sponge from books, movies, music and television and as I go along some of the craft is particularly magical and makes me turn my head twice and scream out "Yass! Keep blowing that crazy horn!" So I like to throw out some suggestions for anyone who is in limbo waiting to discover their next favorite book or can't-stop-playing-it-on-repeat iPod song.

First order of business. I took in two plays of late and can't say a bad thing about either. the first, La Cage Aux Folles, is the theatrical version of a movie called 'the birdcage' with Nathan Lane. I wasn't a big fan of the movie but the dancing in the show was pretty off the wall. Second, and much more resonant in my long-term memory and emotional spectrum, was 'The Lion King'. Now I know you can't toss a lion off of a mountain (ouch, too soon?) without hitting someone who saw and loved the movie but the play has a more enriched story line. There's also the little fact that the costumes are awesome, the large dancing numbers are all showstoppers and the music is poignant. So here's my suggestion for people who can't scrape together the 70 bucks (20 pound student price, in my case): Since you already know the bare bones story from the movie just youtube some of the best songs. I added a link to my favorite but you'll have to supply your own box of tissues.

Yassir - moving on - Zoom! If my mad and manic style has thrown anyone off I apologize but i'm trying to emulate one of my new fave books: On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Now, I have a history with this book and it ain't all pretty. On two other occasions I picked the thing up and tried to get into it and both times were a gargantuan fail. I don't know what was missing for me then that isn't now. I would suggest sitting down to this text if you are traveling or just a travel enthusiast and you will be immersed in the 'hit the road' attittude Kerouac pushes. For me, though, I think the most compelling part of this read was the realization that he wrote his entire first draft in two weeks on a 100-ft scroll he taped into his typewriter. For someone interested in the writing craft this is a deeply compelling idea. Most novels struggle with an author who wakes up every day in a slightly different mood him/herself and the text can reflect that but Kerouac saw this one through, albeit on a hazy benzadrine kick. It also entranced me to think of this book as the closest portal into the lives of the mysterious and short-lived beat poets. These were men who cut their teeth in the streets of New York City at a time when the depression and the first great war had left people at a complete loss and they struggled with those emotions through their prose and poetry. Can you dig it?

Time and travel

Wow! Bang! Zoom! Amazing - my last post was exactly two months ago today and that wasn't an intentional occurence. It's strange and mystic the way our bodies and our souls keep time when our minds can't be bothered with it. Not much has happened in the 62 days that passed undocumented. Christmas (not my holiday but still a good way to mark the time) flew by in a whir of chinese food and broken Yiddish lessons with my grandma. New years was spent on a Virgin Atlantic plane in between two girls, both named Molly, one who I will probably never see again and the other who I run into frequently. We landed in London and just a few short days later I began my semester of Study Abroad here.

I've been hesitant to write about London and travel and my experiences. Mainly because everything i've done that has been worth my time hasn't been worth a tale and the same is true in the other direction. I stood at the gates of Buckingham Palace counting the Royal guard and marvelling at their stillness. I stood at the center of every bridge from Westminster to London and traced the winding path of the Thames as it defined this mad laid out city. I craned my neck up to Big Ben's clock until the big hand made a full loop around its little brother and I've ambled through so many museums from the National Gallery (tops in art) to the British museum (great history since the Brits stole from the entire world at one point or another) and the Tate Modern (if modern art is your bag) that I sometimes forget this city has a present to go along with its past. But, through all of that, I found very little meaning in the personal sense that I was looking for. I took pictures and just as quickly deleted them - you can find better on a ten-pence postcard.

What stands out in my mind is the feel of a pint glass, standard pub fare, as i rotate it in my hand. The reticent muttering of "cheers" as I hold the door for someone. The way that the stone-slabbed streets sometimes shift as you glide over them. The discrete camaraderie shared on the crossing of the Waterloo bridge in the morning when we all turn up our collars to the harsh London wind and fog as one. The way that you can identify a Welshman from an Irishman at the pub by the speed and irreverence of the stories he is no doubt telling to the nearest soul. Or maybe all I will remember are the occasional rides on the tube, across from friends, as we sit quietly mimicking the reserved Brits. Comfortable amongst each other our eyes dart greedily around sucking in the scene like a vacuum. Prep school students undoing their ties and tall businessmen hunching over from the slanted tube ceilings. The world comes off most different when it is mostly the same. My memories of the great things will almost certainly fade while my memories of the good, the plain and the mostly mundane, will hopefully be harbored for much longer.