Decisions, decisions…for a night “at the Opera”

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Realizing, of course, that I’m typically posting or commenting about how much I love alternative music, a-la RadioBDC, I suppose now’s as good a time as any to ‘splain that I also grew up with classical music…and loving it. As a matter of fact, the secular manner in which my family routinely completed the last few hours of the Yom Kippur fast was with a countdown using the movie “Amadeus” as our timekeeper. By the time {spoiler alert!} Wolfie was dead and Salieri was hyena-laughing in his wheelchair down the hallway, we knew it was sundown and time to start getting our chow back on.

My father also LURVES the opera in ways that really rival my love of alt music, except that he managed to tuck away the cash for season tickets to the Kennedy Center for several years. Growing up in the DC area, this was definitely one of the best places to catch the opera; there’s also something really impressive about going to a cultural mecca like that and having that as the place where your school field trips go. Really, growing up in DC just isn’t like growing up anywhere else, and I have such an appreciation for that. I think my awareness of this privilege grew exponentially once I moved to New England and I saw that you had to (gasp!) pay to get into museums! THE HORROR…

Anyhoo, here I am staring down a wonderful proposition and I’m looking for some suggestions on what I should do. I have been offered the tremendous opportunity to see operas performed by The Metropolitan Opera (OMG THE MET…!!!). Now, I wouldn’t be heading to NYC, since there’s just no time in my schedule, but I would still get to see Met performances live.

Through the miracle of modern filmmaking, rather than watching their performances on my local PBS station (who I do love and support and highly recommend everyone else support, since they make NOVA, Curious George, Arthur, and all kinds of wonderful things), The Met is bringing their operas to moviehouses around the country as The Met: Live in HD. Of course, I wouldn’t necessarily have my reviews up in time for others to go and see these (the way I can with most movie screenings), since I can’t go to the opening night performances of them all. But, what I’d like is to hear from you – dear readers – is which operas you’d want to see yourself and/or you’d like reviewed on my blog.

   

Here’s the rundown:

10/26 Live, 10/30 Encore        Shostakovich’s The Nose

11/9 Live, 11/13 Encore          Puccini’s Tosca

12/14 Live, 12/18 Encore        Verdi’s Falstaff

2/8 Live, 2/12 Encore               Dvořák’s Rusalka

3/1 Live, 3/5 Encore                 Borodin’s Prince Igor

3/15 Live, 3/19 Encore            Massenet’s Werther

4/5 Live, 4/9 Encore                Puccini’s La Bohème

4/26 Live, 4/30 Encore           Mozart’s Così fan tutte

5/10 Live, 5/14 Encore           Rossini’s La Cenerentola

   

I’ve bolded the ones that I’m really seriously considering because WOW opera and OMG The Met and holy cow what a great opportunity.

Any other operas fans out there…? Any suggestions? What would YOU like to see reviewed, or which of these would you most love to see?

Also, having had Boston Symphony Orchestra season tickets for many years (pre-kiddos), I know that not everything is always universally loved. So, if anybody has any suggestions of what they DON’T like, please do let me know. DH still laughs at the idea of my cringing whenever atonal classical pieces come on…to this day, I think I get mild PTSD if I hear a concertina.

So – there you have it…what should I go see?? I’d love to hear from fellow opera/classical music fans. And, if you’re interested in catching one of these shows yourself, check your local movie theaters for the dates above. Best as I can tell, they appear to be playing at Showcase Theaters in my area, but for best ticket info, go to Fathom Events and they’ll help you find a theater near you.

   

   

Non-disclaimery disclaimer: This post is not sponsored, although I was really offered free tickets to any opera I want to see, in exchange for a review (which is the same deal that I get for movie reviews). As usual, all opinions, snark, musings and whimsical thoughts are ALL MINE; the only thing I included from the outreach I received was the calendar of events and the link to Fathom. So, that’s as much disclaimer as I need to give. I DO, in fact, like opera and The Metropolitan Opera is, in fact, one of the best opera companies/houses in the world. Ask anybody who knows anything about opera. Really. I can wait. {tap. tap. tap.}

20 books & 20 lbs (week 40): Disappointment in the homestretch?

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My weight loss has stalled out a bit, so that’s a bit annoying. I’m trying not to get too upset, but my appetite has been completely up and down lately. It also doesn’t help that some salty foods have made me feel like I’m retaining Lake Erie; sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly which foods contain the salt that causes the problem…so it’s still something I’m working on.

At this point, without further extra effort, I’m on track to have met about half of my weight goal and about 80% of my reading goal. In other words, I need to step it up. BIG TIME. And I really need to stop reading books that are slogs. What on earth is wrong with me picking these chewy novels?! Then again, if all I did was pick up Dr. Seuss books, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

I’m still mentally motivated to continue towards my goals, but I have a general unwillingness to make radical changes to my life that would provide the drastic impacts. Part of that is my stubbornness about needing to have whatever changes I make be things that I can (and want) to continue. I just have to figure out how to get past this without feeling like changes are somehow reducing my quality of life to a point that I find disagreeable. In other words: there’s still plenty of work to do. And speaking of work…

 

Book 14: “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair

I’ve been meaning to read “The Jungle” for YEARS. As a Political Science student (undergrad), I’d heard of this legendary book that described horrifying working conditions at the turn of the 20th century. Sinclair was a journalist at the time, and apparently he’d done some time working undercover in the meat-packing factories of Chicago for an expose he penned for a Socialist newspaper.

The story focuses on the life and great trials of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant to came to the USA with his intended bride and her family, in search of opportunity. What they found instead was nigh unto institutionalized slavery, where horrifying working conditions for living and working were a hamster wheel that was completely impossible to escape. Poor immigrants, especially those with limited English skills, were brought into the factories – if they were lucky – and given jobs that worked them relentlessly, from sunrise until well past sunset, with the constant threat of injury and “losing one’s place”.

Rudkus and his family crowd into a house they are barely able to afford and destined to lose, even with all members of the family above the age of infancy trying to find some way to make nickels or more – often at the mercy of the brutal and inhumane packers. Tragedy heaps upon tragedy, leading Rudkus to run away from Packingtown, but even life as a hobo gives only a brief respite. As he bounces between Chicago proper and the meat-packing district, it seems that Rudkus experiences such impossible-to-survive conditions that you want to reach back into the early 1900’s and give the man a warm coat and a hot meal.

Extremely late in his story, Sinclair finds some redemption for his Job – through the auspices of Socialism. Unfortunately, this is where the book finally and utterly falls off the rails. It took me a while to get into “The Jungle”, as it was a bit of a slog for the first 100-150 pages, trying to figure out who Rudkus was and whether I could make it through his experiences in Packingtown without throwing up. (Seriously, this book gets you to wonder if it’s worth it eating ANYTHING you didn’t grow/raise yourself – ugh.) When Rudkus discovers Socialism and finds his soul freed from the oppression heaped upon it by the exploitative capitalist system, you get the sense that life will finally turn his way. Unfortunately, this is where Sinclair decides to put in a pages-long screed against capitalism that sets up Socialism as the only form of civilized humanity.

Now, as someone who’s studied Socialism and Communism (not to mention free-market Capitalism), I’m not going to say that Socialism is a complete train wreck. It certainly has its advantages, as well as its disadvantages. What bothers me is that the book doesn’t give any satisfactory sense of how Rudkus’ story continues or concludes; once it devolves into the political tract, Rudkus becomes merely the ears through which you hear the Socialist sermon. You never know whether he finds any kind of stability in his new life, and that suggests that the entire book is nothing more than a very large wrapper for a political testimony. I found that incredibly disappointing, not just because I was rooting for Rudkus to catch a break but also because Sinclair effectively discards ALL of his characters at the very end, perhaps proving that his view of Socialism is more about the idea itself than the people who support it.

To the extent that it’s a reminder of how far we have come in terms of working conditions (for many, but clearly not all), “The Jungle” is an incredible view into a truly horrifying world. It’s even worse when you think about how the conditions Sinclair described were based on his real observations of the meat-packing plants and how people lived in Chicago at that time. It’s depressing to think that version of the United States ever existed. It also makes you curious, knowing about migrant labor and poverty (not necessarily tied to such labor) still being issues today…how do we solve these problems without coming together? Frankly, these issues are less about the political umbrellas of Socialism or Capitalism and far more about the moral inclination of human beings to treat all other people as though the right to food and shelter are rights and not privileges.

Movie Review: “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2 3D”

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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2

It’s been four years since we last saw Swallow Falls, the little town hidden just below the “A” in “Atlantic” on the world map. At that time, the island was recovering from the aftermath of local crackpot inventor Flint Lockwood’s overtaxed “Flint Lockwood’s Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator” (FLDSMDFR for short). The wacky food machine had created rains of food for the town so sick of nothing but sardines, but a malfunction caused on by the local gourmands brought food hurricanes and spaghetti tornadoes to the island, among other oversized food-based calamities. Flint (Bill Hader of “Turbo” and “Monsters University”) shut down his machine just in time to save the island, and “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2” opens in the moments just following the climax of the first film, when Flint and his band of friends are celebrating their amazing survival.

This delightful sequel is one of the rare times where a second film keeps pace with the high quality of the original; as someone who hadn’t seen the original before I caught the sequel, I was pleased that the opening brings viewers up to speed without any loss of quality in storytelling. (I managed to watch the original the day following the screening, so I am now fully up to speed!)

At the start of the film, Flint and the gang –  best friend and girlfriend Sam Sparks (Anna Faris of “Movie 43” and “Yogi Bear”), father Tim (James Caan – who needs NO introduction), clueless Brent (Andy Samberg of “SNL”), jack-of-all-trades Manny (Benjamin Bratt of “Private Practice” and “Law & Order”), earnest policeman Earl (voiced this time by Terry Crews of “Arrested Development” and “The Newsroom”), and talking monkey Steve (Neil Patrick Harris of “The Smurfs” and “How I Met Your Mother”) – are sketching their design for their own company: SPARKSWOOD. Each of the group claims a place in their new venture, giving the sense that they will stay together forever. Their happy plans are immediately interrupted by the arrival of a helicopter from LIVE Corp, the primary venture of Flint’s childhood hero: inventor Chester V (Will Forte of “SNL” and “The Cleveland Show”). A holographic Chester V emerges from the copter and explains to the townspeople that LIVE Corp has been contracted to clean up the entire island, and all they have to do is evacuate to San Franjose, where housing and jobs await them for the short period of their displacement.

Steve and Flint tour LIVE Corp headquarters with Barb

Steve and Flint tour LIVE Corp headquarters with Barb

The residents decamp for the mainland – some more grudging than others – and Flint is immediately taken under the wing of Chester V, who brings him on staff at LIVE Corp and challenges him to earn one of the coveted “Thinkquanaut” orange vests by having the best invention of all company employees. Flint throws himself into the challenge with gusto, continuing to invent silly idea after silly idea, including a day-glow, confetti laden party in a box that seems to be an IED from Party City. When Flint isn’t chosen at the “vesting” ceremony and instead accidentally detonates one of his parties in a box, Chester V realizes the time is ripe for the picking.

On the pleasant island of Swallow Falls, Chester V’s Thinkquanauts have been working hard to pick apart and find the coveted FLDSMDFR, and they’ve been having poor luck. Chester V seizes the opportunity to recruit the down-and-out Flint to find the machine himself, selling Flint on the idea that the FLDSMDFR has reactivated and has created monster cheeseburgers with french fry legs that are sure to leave the island any minute now and destroy the Statue of Liberty. Although Flint is charged with handling the task alone, Sam and his other friends – even his father – all bundle together on a boat and head out for Swallow Falls to save the world.

Steve, Flint and Sam

Steve, Flint and Sam

When they arrive, they find “foodimals”, animals derived from food in rather hilarious ways. Some are merely cute, such as the massively adorable strawberry Sam immediately names “Barry”, and others are built for easy laughs, such as the pickles that are reminiscent of South Park’s Terence and Philip. Plays on words, such as “shrimpanzees”, “susheep” and “watermelephants” provide clever visuals and excellent puns. These jokes may mostly go over kids’ heads, but playing to the entire audience is a really good thing.

Steve vs a shrimpanzee

Steve vs a shrimpanzee

Flint and co. explore the island and use varied means to locate the FLDSMDFR; Swallow Falls has turned into a foodimal Lost World with more cute than danger – but the number of pitfalls, detours and distractions is by no means small. When Chester V and his second-in-command, the unflappable chimpanzee-turned-scientist Barb (Kristen Schaal of “The Daily Show” and “30 Rock”), head out to the island to intercept and motivate Flint, cracks form in Flint’s fellowship. In the end, it’s up to more than just Flint to find a way to save Swallow Falls and his search party, and this sweet, cute film finds a way to wrap things up without putting little kids on the receiving end of too many scares.

Chester V and Flint lead the search for the FLDSMDFR

Chester V and Flint lead the search for the FLDSMDFR

I brought both of my kids to this screening, so I can say that little kiddos don’t appear to have too much to worry about from this film; there’s little frightening in it and the jokes are aimed more at adults than at kids (sailing well over the heads of my 4yo ds and 6yo dd). As to the question of whether this is a movie that should be seen in 3D, I can say that the 3D is nice but not required. The bright visuals would look just as good in 2D, and the added depth of the 3D is attractive but not necessarily worth the additional cost, if you’re not typically inclined to paying for 3D movies.

3-1/2 out of 4 stars

“Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 3D” opens nationwide on September 27, 2013. This movie is rated PG (Parental Guidance suggested) for mild rude humor.