Friday, March 20, 2009

Swans look Good

What happens when a guy with artistic sensibilities ranging from mild to suppressed is subjected to three long hours of ballet theater?

A frustrated blog post happens.

I am a fairly artistic person. Most of my friends know that about me. I like music, I like painting, I like dance, and at some point in my short life, I've done all these things. However, my last brush with culture in such large doses was over 3 years ago, unless you count my pathetic attempts at learning how to play a guitar.

Europe is big on culture. They have some amazing dance styles, and the music scene is diverse and booming. Same's true for performing arts. Ballet, pantomime, musicals, stand-up comedy, arthouse, conventional theater, opera, it's all very popular.

I wanted to try it out, see what drives people fond of this stuff. I had been warned. I was the only guy I knew who signed on to watch a ballet performance of 'Swan Lake'.

It was all very 'queer'. Yes, that's the word I want to use. After sitting through the first hour, I felt like I was being castrated slowly. Two guys dancing intimately with one another, was followed by guy dancing with one swan, then a group of swans, then guy dancing by himself, then with a room full of people, then with his manservant and one of his female friends, and so on. Ultimately, the plain and simple conclusion I reached was that the story involved a guy who was a closet homosexual, but fell for a swan. The only thing impressive about the whole affair was that they were all able to dance rather gracefully for nearly three long hours. And tell you what, I clapped hard when the show was over. The show being over was a big reason, but that wasn't all of it. The musical performance of the orchestra was spectacular throughout the show and made it bearable, something I hadn't realized so much while they were still playing.

Observations:
1. Chicks outnumbered guys 10:1 in the audience.
2. Dudes and chicks in the ballet crew were nearly equal in number, even so, the number of guys never seemed to be appropriate as long as there was more than one.
3. The Festival Theater of Edinburgh, where the show was staged, is bloody marvelous both from the interior as well as exterior.
4. The faces of the guys in the audience clearly indicated just how much they were 'enjoying' the show.
5. Lastly, even in the midst of a tasteless disaster of a performance, Swans look good.

P.S. : I was gonna tell you how some of us geniuses in Edinburgh claim Mozzarella is not really cheese, but Wikipedia does not agree, nor does anyone else, and so I'll leave that discussion for another day.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Happy Saint Paddy's!!!

Hi there,

I've finally taken the initiative to write my first ever blog post. I don't really have much to say but I guess I could fill up the page explaining just exactly why that is, so I'll try to keep it short.

First of all, hope you all had an amazing Holi and then an equally rocking St. Paddy's. It's past midnight and I have been out all night at Biddy Mulligan's, 'THE Irish Pub' of Edinburgh, with friends. It'd been a while since I danced so unabashedly so long.

I have been thinking about writing a blog, or at least 'my first blog post', for a while now. It was just a matter of sitting down one day and writing down what I was thinking. Wonder if they would ever invent a mind-reader of sorts, which could blog for you.

I do not have encyclopedic wisdom to share, nor am I a literary wizard, so the matter in my blog will mostly consist of my candid takes on the world around me. Taking into account the fact that I am sort of lazy when it comes to most things, I hope to post maybe 2-3 times a month. We'll see where it goes. Till then, enjoy!

Hasta la vista.