I want to believe!!! Can’t wait!!!

Why oh why did they ever bring this series to an end. One of the reviews’ headlines on the X files read “the X factor is gone, so close the files”. Needless to say, I did not read further.

The thing about the X Files is that there is always a story. Like Start Trek, there are always new and fantastic stories to tell. Even 50 years down the line there will always be some X File waiting to be uncovered.

The thing about these kinds of shows is that they sometimes tap into current affairs and relay a little bit of a sci fi spin to what is going on in the world. Which is always entertaining and a little bit true?

Okay, back to this next episode. I want to believe. Okay Scully was always the rational one and she’s finds some kind of faith through a pedophile priest in this movie. Moulder and Scully are kind of together. I especially enjoyed the scene when they are in bed together. They are meant to be together and why the hell not. I hate those shows where the writers of the shows just keep you dangling and hoping that the lead characters will eventually end up together but never do. Scully and Moulder do not have a kind of a domestic life but they have resigned themselves to the fact they love each other and irk a way to demonstrate and live that the best way they know how. The best way they can.

So can one transplant a head? Who cares, the idea is awesome and fantastic.

Further ideas for future movie length episodes: There was a suggestion in this episode that George Bush had some Files hidden away. Ii am guessing, his relationship to some Middle Eastern companies? Maybe he himself is a botched experiment, maybe even his relationship with the smoking man.

Other ideas that could make for great TV: global warming, the globe is preparing itself or being prepared for another species that can live amongst the storms and high temperatures…etc.

I miss the stories about the Borg and Moulder’s sister and the smoking man, and and and. Bring these back. As often as possible. What else is left?

My romance with the alternative romance genre continues

I’ve thought very hard about writing about this particular TV show. I thought, if I write about this then I will be thought less of because of my attraction to this melodramatic soap opera type. I will be ridiculed for believing and buying into something that is so blatantly made for a specific section of our community. Those who crave cheap romance and get off on the age old love story where friends fall in love can never seem to get it together, ever. Every episode you are tortured, with hope that they might just get it together but alas, it is not meant to be. Ohhh and they came so close this one time….

I kept thinking and thought, hey. Fuck it. This is a brilliant series and one should share what one thinks is brilliant, right? Right! And this is what this blog is about. What I love and want to share. With myself mostly but maybe somebody else out there in cyber ether will identify.

Queer as Folk, American Version, season one and two! Season three, four and five just get too serious and stale and clichéd and just plain boring!

In Queer as Folk I got introduced to Brian Kenny. Brian Kenny is a gay man, who is utterly gorgeous and can (and often does) have anyone he chooses. He is oozing sex and has no inclination towards monogamy. He is who we all would probably like to be and so, so much more. Enter Michael, his best friend since childhood. The only person he’s still not had except; for this one time that they jerked each other off as horny teenagers. Michael and Brian will never be together because that is just the way the writers chose to spin this tale, but I always had hope. Season three, four and five crushed that hope and I hate the writers for it!

There are a few more characters in the series that are really great and one or two that have been very poorly cast. One of whom is the high school kid who falls in love with Brian and turns out to be Brian’s Kryptonite. I think the only reason this guy (Justin was his name) made it into the show was his uncanny resemblance to Matt Damon. I know… Matt is cool and all but he does not make a believable gay man. Even in the Talented Mr Ripley you could feel him trying to cling to something that is just not there in him. The gay man that strives to be sexy and enticing. Just does not work.

The other characters are okay until, enter Zen Ben who would kill my hope that Brian and Michael would end up together.

If you have a weekend to kill or have called in sick at work and need something to keep you going for a good couple of days, get Queer as Folk, American Version Season One and Two. It is funny, it is not for children which is always a bonus as you can always get some nudity, man on man, girl on girl, action, what ever you are into. It is supper sexy without being obscene. Well at least I think so. Do not watch it with the folks though.

It is really what it is. A melodrama with a heck of a lot of nudity and you will fall in love with Michael and want to be Brian!

After watching all the seasons I tried to delve into the L Word. I could only stomach one season of it. It confirmed what I already knew. Girl on Girl is just not meant to be sexy. They tried to replicate Queer as Folk, it just did not work for me. Girls are just different. There is tenderness and loving and no space for being casual about it. We are intrinsically deep and form attachments. There is just nothing casual about us, and if we try, we fall on our asses and remember the embarrassment for eternity. This is a good thing.

The last day

The ballet. Don Quixote. I think this was my first Ballet experience. I appreciate the technical working that goes into crossing a threshold on your toes and being able to hold your leg at a right angle to the other for any length of time. I appreciate the blood sweat and tears that goes into being a ballerina, after all I did see Fame and a few other movies on the subject. I appreciate the music that accompanies the performances and its ability to evoke passion and other kinds of emotion. I do. I do. I do. But, is there suppose to be a story to keep us interested in all of this? If there was on this one I am ashamed to say that I missed it. As much as I enjoyed my first ballet, I think it would be a long time before I return.

I remember as a child seeing the story of Don Quixote on television and I know it has something to do with a deranged man who thinks that he is larger than life and can pick fights with windmills. He fights against what he thinks is evil, windmills included. I saw nothing that took me back to that. It was about the dancing and that was it. Technique can hold me only for so long.

Oh, and can someone please set me straight, the song, ‘To Dream The Impossible Dream’ was in that Don Quixote movie was it not? That is how I remember it. Not as a Luther Van Ross song but as part of the music of a really great musical.

I think I should set my sights high for my next Ballet. I think Swan Lake (and they better have a little bit of what I saw in Billy Elliot in it!)

My last show of the Gtown fes (I just did not have the strength today to sit through a production that was raw or amateurish or just plain bad) was Stuart Taylor’s Techni-coloured. Apparently this show has been running for two years already. I could not find any other stand-up that I really wanted to see. I have seen Politically Incorrect on DVD and was less than amused, there was some other dudes as well, but thought hey why not see the 'Going No Where Slowly' guy. Should be fun. No it was not.

So all in all the Gtown festival was a bit of a disappointment and I blame it all on myself. Maybe I should not have come alone, although, the thought of having watched the shows that I did with someone else makes me tired. I should have planned better, although I thought the thing about Gtown is to pop in here and there and see where the festival takes you.

I think it is largely aimed at those people that have been coming for years and who know exactly what they are looking for. I met a couple who sold me the Ballet ticket (it was fully booked and just my luck, these to needed to get rid of a ticket), and they had been coming down for15 years. They had their whole itinerary right down to the last hour of the festival and I thought, maybe I should have planned a little better. They seemed to be enjoying the fes but I think they were also not impressed by the lack of a story line on the ballet.

It was good to be back in Gtown but it should have been for a much shorter time, like passing through and needing to kill 2 hours.

A Dance, a Tear, and a Laugh, what more could one ask for in a day?

So I have deciphered the Code that is the Grahamstown festival and what a relief! Got up this morning, had residence breakfast (awful, I am too use to staying in hotels where people actually care about what you think of the place), and set out to find the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. And boy did I find it.

I had this whole thing wrong. Stupid me thought if you are in Grahamstown for the festival everyone around town, especially the locals would be ready to serve the out-of-towners and point them in the right direction. Wrong, you are on your own and you need to have the programme to have an inkling of what the hell is going on.

Stupid me also thought that for the duration of my trip here I can leave by Volkswagen and walk around from venue to venue to enjoy the shows that I needed to see. Wrong again. If you do not have a car you are fucked. Okay maybe not because I did see a few signs that indicated that there were shuttles around town that could take you where you needed to be.

So, today was my first real festival experience and I have to say, I have been spoilt by our filtering system where some person, with a whole lot of patience decides what is worth taking to the masses (whether it be to ArtsScape or the Market Theatre or what ever), and what is not so cool. The value is also that you put a piece of art on show and with the audience feedback and some editing your show has more of a mass appeal. I do not have the patience and I am struggling to see that value.

So yes, Grahamstown is open to all, to any, to what ever. I do not know what the process is to get in as a performer but I felt it is a large testing ground for new untested material that can go either way.

My experience today taught me that. Before something gets to be a full blown success, it needs to be tested at the Gtown fes.

Three shows in one day and I did not even begin to scrape the surface of what is on show. For that I will be disappointed.

On the dance side I went for the Dance to the Rain Queen, production by Moses Molelekwa Arts Foundation. He was there in spirit on the percussion. The piece was two thirds jazz (my Jazz appreciation is still evolving), and one third dance. It is listed as ‘dance’. That was my one and only disappointment because I am still schooling myself in the very intellectual area of Jazz enjoyment. Although I do think experiencing live music is better than anything and can get you into any type of music. To see and feel the passion of the various musicians enjoying and doing their thing is a gift from musical mother earth (or Musical God, or mathematics, which ever you prefer). The show was even more amazing because the people that were performing could not have been older that 20. All I could do was imagine them at say thirty-something and doing their thing. The sky is the limit and with passion, talent and a focus, they could be great. I wish the kids there the best in the world and I hope to see some of them in the not so distant future. Maybe at the Cape Town Jazz?

On the Tear side I went to go see the adaptation to stage of the novel the Quite Violence of Dreams. I am too close to this and recognise that an objective view of it (when am I ever objective?) is impossible. Tiring, self indulgent and it makes me less understanding, less empathetic. Why can’t people just get over themselves. I was meant to read the book but did not finish it (this is true of many other great books that have been left unfinished with the book mark still protruding from where I left off, mocking me). Now that I have seen the play I am extremely guiltily glad that I did not finish the book. What a load of crap. I appreciate that others saw something else in this book, something great that needed to be transferred to another medium. All I am saying is…what is the fucking point? I do not get it, it did not get me and that is that. That is both on the book and the play. The performances on the other hand…We had Duke Motlanthe, Lebo Mashile and others who were really great! Really brave. I admire that. There were moments in the theater where there were scenes that made people uncomfortable (this was most palatable on the M2M kisses, which is really stupid. I did not get the same winces on the Black on White Kisses) and I suppose the cast knew how the audience would react but they did not cut short the kisses. The play ended off on a high note with an insignificant word invested in a very meaningful emotional note. I just did not get it, and that is my problem.

Then enter the lowlight of the evening. I was sitting at the drama department cafeteria pondering what to do next, could I finish my food in time to watch this one or that one or something else? 'Short Skirts and High Heels' caught my eye and off I went. This show has no redeeming qualities except for the promise of some nudity of which there is none. Go back to the drawing board.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Gtown festival. I am not sure how I feel about that. I miss Cape Town but I love being on holiday and hopping to see what South Africa is putting on the arts scene.

HahahahahahahahhaHANCOCK!

You know I was standing in the queue for popcorn at the movies when I saw the trailer for Hancock.
I'd bought a ticket to see it after I'd seen a shorter trailer a couple of weeks back. This trailer, then one I was watching while waiting in line for popcorn, this one was much longer.
I laughed out loud when I saw Will Smith flying up and down like he was on steroids. Hahahahahaha.
WILL SMITH FLIES in the movie. Hahahahahahaha.
Its not so much that he flies actually, its more about how he flies. Heroes comes to mind. You remember how the Peter and Nathan Petrelli used to do it? Kinda like a rocket launch. I always thought that was funny because I'd become accustomed to the Superman way of flying which was at a much slower pace.
Superman flying wasn't ridiculous. But the Petrilli way, I just never got used to it.
So even in this movie, I just never got used to Will's flying.

Anyway the movie's awesome. The fact that its absolutely ridiculous makes it such a bloody good movie. Okay, bloody good is pushing it. It was fun. I had fun with it. It is sourt of like those Mr Bean skits. You know, he is so ridiculous, so silly, so obsurd that he's hilarious. Same here.

Hancock is a funny hero movie. Hahaha, imagine an alcoholic hero. Hahahhaha. The Hulk smoking cigarettes? Or Superman as a nympho? They have humanised the concept of a hero in Hancock and its funny.
For something light and well worth it - watch this movie.
's flyling br

The more things stay the same…

Nine hundred kilometers I traveled, I looked forward to see my gracious host of two and half years. I wondered, would it be the same, would it have changed so much that I would not recognize it?

So I am for the first time attending the Grahamstown national arts festival. I got in a few hours ago and thus far, other than seeing it from afar I am mad, I am unhappy and I am bothered!

Where the fuck is the organisation? How the fuck am I suppose to immerse myself into this age ole festival when I can’t find anything? Where is the help, where are the friendly festival marshals to point me in the right direction? Oh lord. I want to go home.

There should be programmes everywhere and maps that show you where you are and where you need to be.

So far all I’ve seen, I could have seen at the Cape Town station flea market. I am not impressed, I am not happy. Maybe I am just tired from the long drive.

Fuck it, there at least should be something happening at the drama department, right? Right? Wrong! Even they do not know what the hell is showing or where I can get a hold of a programme.

So I’ll just have to find out about the various happenings of this little sleepy town from the web. How ridiculous is that? I am here, I am here for goodness sakes!

Anywho back to Gtown my host for 2.5 year of my life. The first thing I go and check out of course is where I spent most of my time not studying. The loner that I was, my time was largely spent at the movies or at the library where I got through trashy novels by Dean Koontz and Stephen King and Robin Cook!

This is what my one cinema looks like today! I shed a tear.



But somethings stay the same:



This has to be the vision that has stayed in my mind all these years.



Surprisingly, well not so much, the Rhodes residences have stayed the same. Same furniture, same mattresses (rock hard), same lamps. As nice as it is to be taken back, it is a little sad, where is that child today that spent so much time in this room wishing for…

So twelve years later, some things have changed in Res. Like, people probably get bugged by cell phones ringing in the middle of the night. Instead of hearing the tap tap tap of someone working hard at their type writer there is silence. I can not even start to image how technology has changed the way we learn and interact with one another.

Ja anyway. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some show to talk about. For now, it is bed time at 21h00 in Gtown. For me anyway.