Head Tale

Saturday Snap – Michael Jackson – The Immortal World Tour

[Edit: this post got linked to by a MJ Fan Community. Visit that page for more news & reviews of the Saskatoon and other shows.]

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Saskatoon having just watched “Cirque Du Soleil Presents: Michael Jackson – THE IMMORTAL World Tour” show.

This is my third Cirque show (I saw a freebie traveling show – maybe Allegria? – in Calgary since the Writers Guild of Alberta where I worked sometimes got free “media” passes to movies and events that had a literary/arts connection) and we also went to The Beatles “Love” show in Vegas a couple years back.

And even though I’m a HUGE Beatles fan and don’t really consider myself a huge Michael Jackson fan (at least compared to my Beatle fandom), I’d have to say this was the best Cirque show I’ve seen.

Why?

– Since I love the Beatles so much, I had huge expectations for Love. They were met for the most part but the gap between expectations and experience was much smaller. I had lower expectations for this show – “yeah, all Cirque shows are good but…meh” so I was more probably more open to being blown away.

– I think another big factor in why I enjoyed this show so much compared to Love is that I’m a Beatles fan but that wasn’t music I grew up with. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson (in fact, I think Thriller might have been the first real LP I ever owned, not counting crap like the Mini-Pops and K-Tel stuff.) Plus Michael Jackson’s was one of the first heroes of the music video era so they could translate routines and moments from his videos to the stage more directly than they could with the Beatles show which was much more impressionistic. Ultimately the Beatles music doesn’t occupy a special place in my heart directly connected to so many memories of my youth like MJ’s does – staying up late to watch the Thriller premiere (on Good Rockin’ Tonight) and being scared shitless so I could only watch about five minutes of it, trying to learn the moon walk with a neighbour down the street, immediately knowing that the MJ performance at the Motown 25th was like watching magic.

– I mean, I pretty much had a smile glued to my face the entire show but when they did a segment featuring “I Want You Back” with part of the cast playing the role of the Jackson Five, I found myself with tears streaming down my face. I was still smiling but also feeling that weird mix of emotions when you feel joy and sadness at the same time – thinking of such an icon of my childhood being gone, of his lost childhood, of my own childhood (much less problematic) but also long gone. A powerful moment. And exactly the kind of thing you have all the time when you’re a kid but which I think we lose as we grow older.

– the technology in this one was amazing, even compared to the Beatles Love show which is only a couple years older than this one. But seeing things like four human beings turn into stars right in front of a crowd of thousands or people dancing in suits made of multi-colored LED lights was unreal.

– at the heart of every Cirque show (and the opposite of the technological achievements) are the amazing performers and this show featured many of the usual acrobats, contortionists and so on. But there was an amazing one-legged break dancer who was integrated into the show so well, you frequently forgot that he was disabled.

– this show was like a mix of a rock concert and a theatrical production (whereas Love was definitely more theatrical) so you got the best of both worlds.

– we didn’t even think of this when we bought the tickets a year ago but going to a Michael Jackson show on the Saturday before Halloween plays in perfectly to some of MJ’s songs – “Thriller” obviously but they also did a segment set to a song called “Ghost Story” (?)

…and my dad had warned me how hard it can bet to get out of the Credit Union Centre parking lot after a big event (he’d been to a pre-season NHL game earlier this year) but we got out in relatively painless fashion after I spotted a line I could join a couple rows of cars over that seemed to be moving faster than the others…and it was – pretty much right out of the parking lot, ahead of cars that were two or three cars ahead of us in our original spot but ended up five cars behind us!

If you grew up in the 80’s, go see this show!

Friday Fun Link – Some people bring their laptops to the library…

…this guy pulled this out of his bag.

(via Reddit)

¶ Posted 28 October 2011 § FridayFunLink § Library § Technology ‡ Comments (0) °

OmniTouch Turns Any Surface Into A Touch Screen

God, I love living in the future… (And I’m sure Microsoft, who own this technology, are saying “Eat your heart out, Apple!”)

(via Reddit)

¶ Posted 27 October 2011 § Technology § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: apple, cool, science

Weyburn Flash Mob

When I worked for Southeast Regional Library, the local Co-op grocery store was a couple blocks away.

I stopped in regularly – for groceries on the way home or to pick up the occasional treats for our afternoon coffee breaks. I was also there fairly regularly because Southeast policy was that you had to return any fleet vehicles you used with a full tank – whether you’d gone 50km or 500km – and the Co-op gas bar was where we had our account.

Yet in all my stops at the Weyburn Co-op, I never saw anything like this…

¶ Posted 26 October 2011 § MemoryLane § Video § Work ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: cool, saskatchewan

The Intersection of Oil & Sex in Williston, ND

We went down to Williston, North Dakota at the end of summer and it was clear that this small American city with a population of about 10 000, like its Candian counterparts, Weyburn and Estevan, was booming due to the oil economy and various related industries.

One industry that’s not available in the Canadian cities (as far as I know) but which is also booming in Williston are strip clubs. CNN does a story focusing on the two local strip clubs and how they are a nexus of economic activity in their communities – not just for the dancers and other staff but also for new arrivals looking to find work in the oil patch.

Of course, the second video on the page is a bit more telling – young men from across the US living out of their cars in a Super Wal-Mart parking lot chasing big-paying jobs and an elusive American Dream.

¶ Posted 25 October 2011 § MemoryLane § Randomness ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: economics, saskatchewan, travel, unitedstates

Music Monday – “And all I can do/Is read a book to stay awake/And it rips my life away/But it’s a great escape…escape…escape.”

I’ve been on a bit of a 90’s kick lately. This is a classic of that era…

¶ Posted 24 October 2011 § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § PopCulture § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: cool, cute, music

Sappy Sunday – Acceptance & Anti-Bullying Message From An Insurance Commercial?!?

A Thai insurance commercial, mashed-up with an atmospheric piece of music, creates a touching message against bullying and about acceptance:

¶ Posted 23 October 2011 § Randomness § Sad § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: language, music

Saturday Snap – Bubble Bath Face

He does it all the time but it’s still always a bit of a shock to walk into the bathroom to see Pace doing this…

¶ Posted 22 October 2011 § Family § SaturdaySnap ‡ Comments (0) °

Friday Fun Link – Go The Fuck to the Library

It’s funny cause it’s true.

(h/t to TR & CF)

¶ Posted 21 October 2011 § FridayFunLink § Library § Randomness § Work ‡ Comments (0) °

The Best Non-Fiction Book I Read This Year…

…was quite possibly a fiction book!

I think I’ve mentioned before that I read mostly non-fiction – probably 80-90% NF to 10-20% Fiction. But a recent Reddit thread on “eye-opening books that have improved the quality of your life” led me to a great fiction find.

In the thread, somebody recommended Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of (Nearly) Everything” which is probably one of my Top 10 books of all-time. Somebody else responded to that comment that if you liked the Bryson book, you should read “Evolution” by Stephen Baxter (review 1 and review 2).

They said the book was a realistic science fiction novel with the conceit that every chapter is a stand-alone but interconnected short story exploring different eras of geographic time – from 100 million years in the past to 500 million years in the future moving in exponential jumps – so 100 million years ago to 10 million to 1 million to 100 000 years to 10 000 years ago and so on, tracing that single strand of DNA that lives and evolves within us all right back to the beginning of life on earth.

The book begins with a prologue, set about twenty years in the future with humanity on the brink of not one but two potential global crises – one environmental (climate change causing massive weather changes) and one man-made (pending war between the first and fourth worlds) but with two potential solutions – advanced robotics on Mars and genetic engineering on earth.

The book then jumps back in time 100 million years.

Each of the non-human chapters (most of the book obviously) are written from the perspective of a series of slowly evolving animals – early dinosaurs, later dinosaurs then the burrowing mammals which are the earliest precursors of humans, their long path towards worldwide dominance created by the dinosaur’s extinction event.

The burrowers evolve into tree-dwelling apes which turn into chimpanzees which leave to the trees to become savannah dwellers, eventually turning into all manner of humanoids with the line known as homo sapiens obviously being the triumphant one.

But then, after a stop in Ancient Rome, we see the results of the 2031 crises before next moving forward in time in similar leaps which shows us the possible ultimate destiny of humanity (or at least our evolutionary descendants – remember, humans as they exist in 2011 are part of the journey, not the final destination.)

Along the way, the book does a masterful job of connecting numerous fields – from the origins and development of language and art, sex and war, agriculture and religion, neurology and astronomy – all linked by the common umbrellas of genetics and history.

Each year, I pick my favourite book of the year and, much like the more artistic films that are released in the fall to increase their chances of scoring Oscar nominations, “Evolution” is easily my current front-runner for my 2011 “Hammy” award for the best book I’ve read all year.

I had to bookmark this specific passage because it was so good at explaining how scientific evolution would even favour its current greatest opponent, unquestioning faith.

From a section about early humanoids:

Mother’s crude treatment had given her patient a real sense of relief from the pain of her bad back. It was no more than what would one day be called the placebo effect: Because she believed in the power of the treatment, the girl felt better. But the fact that the placebo effect worked on the girl’s mind rather than her body did not make it any less real, or less useful. Now she would be better able to care for her children — who would therefore have a better chance of survival than those of a comparable family with an unbelieving mother whose symptoms could not be relieved by a placebo — and so those children were more likely to go on to have children of their own, who would inherit their grandmother’s internal propensity for belief.