A short selection of photos

Nancy and her new hat from Covent Gardens.

Me and food from Wagamama- our go to place for emergency meals.

A photo of Tower Bridge during the most ridiculously dense fog ever. What an awesome day.

These photos are all from Andy's new favorite toy: his camera. They are from before Christmas because I haven't uploaded his newest pictures yet. (Including some ridiculously high number, like 100, from the American style new years parade) Later on in the trip we figured out that I could take pictures too and then both Nancy and Andy could be in the photo, but by this point we hadn't figured that out yet. But he is a happy clam! I swear! You just can't tell that from these particular pictures.

Stuff We've been doing here in London

Others things we’ve done:

*The American style New Year’s day parade with 1,200 American cheerleaders and a bunch of American High School marching bands. It was pretty cute- most of London’s boroughs entered floats and there were borough beauty queens who looked bored and cold, a giant kinetic sculpture of a tiger, an Indian Scottish pipe band, Harley Davidson clubs, a fire engine from Bethesda, MD (we understand why the WWII trucks and tanks are in the UK, but a not terribly historic fire engine?), historic bicycle clubs, a bunch of clowning groups, and my favorite: a group of miniature steam engines. Basically I want one.

*The Soane Musuem: Okay, so maybe he was a great architect but what a trippy museum. He had a special act from Parliament that means that the house is in the same state that it was when he died in 1837. It is interesting in terms of seeing how museum curating has changed and how different museum aesthetics are now. There is virtually no explanation of any of the artifacts, and there are tons of artifacts. The walls are *covered* and some of the walls swing out on hinges so that more can be displayed on the walls behind the first walls. The sheer volume is overwhelming, and a bunch of the artifacts are just creepy. There is so much stuff in the house and the hallways are so narrow that at times my shoulders would be touching the walls. My shoulders and I’m not that big. Nancy and I decided that we were both happy that we have never had to live with Sir John Soane. Also it was totally cool to see Hogarth’s The Rake’s progress, not the prints, but the paintings.

*The café in The Victoria and Albert Museum. This was my discovery (I only mention this because it means that someday I might get to be as good as Andy at finding out of the way, cool stuff.) I remembered it from a book that I read at Mical and Dan’s house called “Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite” and it had a slogan that the V&A used at one point which was “An ace Café with quite a nice Museum attached.” It turns out to be the first museum restaurant in the world. Quite tasty food too.

*A puppet version of Cinderella at The Little Angel Theatre in Islington. The UK’s leading puppet theatre. The most abstract version of Cinderella ever. There were stick puppets and marionettes and the whole story was told through the music and the puppets movements except for a few bits where the puppeteers spoke in French. A number of extra characters were represented simply by shapes without faces. The kids seemed to be following the story more easily than the three of us were. Andy said later that they could advertise by promoting their ability to speak a language that only children will understand- the parent’s will be flummoxed. This was the first thing we went to that Andy found and then a few days later Time Out magazine wrote a big spread about. The second thing was The Young Ones

*The Young Ones was a musical at a theatre called “Upstairs at the Gatehouse.” The theatre is located on the second floor (first floor, whatever) of a pub in Highgate that has been there more or less since the 1670’s though there are arguments to be made for an Inn being on that site as far back as 1337. (1337!) The musical was a fringe theatre adaptation of a 1950’s movie of the same title that starred the UK’s answer to Elvis- Cliff Richard. It was pretty charming, and in such a small theatre we were practically on the stage. It was cool seeing such classic musical theatre choreography so close up. They played it very straight and without irony, which was sweet but also highlighted how incredibly predictable the plot is.

Some Points I’ve been wanting to share: 2/1/08

*Tomorrow there is supposed to be some snow. Want to know why? Because there is a cold front and wind coming in from Siberia. Siberia. I always forget how far away the US is from everything else. When we first went into Tesco’s on our 1994 trip to England: there were eggplants, which were for some reason called aubergines. They were a beautiful shade of rich dark purple and they were from Zimbabwe. I remember that fact just astounded me, but of course Zimbabwe is much closer to London than it is to the US. And we have California…

*There is a small charcoal grey mouse that lives under the Northern Line platform at King’s Cross Station. It was scampering around the platform and there were a number of us watching its progress. I was quite concerned that someone was going to step on the mouse because the platform was so crowded. Eventually, right before the train arrived; he climbed down to the tracks and raced into a hole on the far side. I was then concerned that the train had squished him, but I think the little mouse has a handle on this whole city life thing because he was there on the platform again the next day.

*I am working my way through “The Complete Electric Bass Player” which I am using to teach myself how to play the electric bass. Anyhow, what I hadn’t expected was how difficult it is to stabilize the instrument- any time I want to shift I find my body moving in the direction of the shift (a higher note and my whole body swings forward and to the right and vice versa). Anyone got any tips?

New Year's Day: Billy Elliot the Musical

I wasn’t all that impressed with the movie when it originally came out. I think I was in the midst of Interlochen and all of that business with “Am I a musician?” and there was some scene at the beginning where Billy was banging out a tune on the piano and I got miffed that they weren’t giving him music lessons and that sort of spoiled the rest of the movie for me.

When I was in London last April Billy Elliot the musical was sort of on my radar. The theatres for Billy Elliot and Wicked are across the street from each other and away from the rest of the West End, so I knew it existed and I remember hearing good things about it, maybe I read a review in Time Out? I don’t remember, but I do know that when Andy and Nancy showed up it was one of the shows I requested to see even though, you know, the movie had miffed me.

Anyhow, whatever the movie- the show was AMAZING. I spent the first half hour of the show with my jaw literally hanging open. It opens with this totally powerful anthem and oh, am I a sucker for anthems. And the choreography! Inspired, awesome, powerful, abstract, and direct. The cast is split about 50/50 gender wise- but the men are all adults and most of the girls are around 12 years old and in Billy’s dance class. The girls are funny. They bumble around a lot until there is a dance with the whole cast and then you understand that they were cast because they can dance.

There is this one scene where the police and the striking miners are clashing and that scene is happening at the same time as Billy’s dance class and the entire cast is weaving in and out and suddenly all the girls are lifted into the air by the miners and there are chairs being passed overhead and then the police and the miners are sitting in a row passing their hats down the row- that is a very poor description of a very cool dance.

The music is phenomenal- so good that I went out and bought the CD during the intermission, which is when I figured out that Elton John had written the score. He’s good, I gotta say. There was one song where Billy had brought a letter to his dance teacher that his mother had written to him before she died. Billy begins singing it and then passes it to the dance teacher who sings it as a duet with his mother and then the mother finishes the song by herself. Every single mother in the audience was crying. Audibly. The woman next to me sniffled through the whole song and then during the reprise as well.

The song that made me start crying is when the Billy’s father is about to cross the picket line and go back down to the coal mines in order to pay for the bus ticket to London for Billy’s audition. He gets stopped by the rest of the miners who won’t let him lose his integrity like that and there is all this pain in the song because he doesn’t understand what his son is doing and he knows he needs to support him and give him a chance to get out of the town that is so clearly dying and the only thing that he can think of to do to help his son is to go against everything that he himself and his community stand for.

I laughed, I cried, I had my breath taken away by the dancing. Oh yeah, and the whole thing is carried by a 12 year old boy. He had to dance in a bunch of different styles (dance very well), sing, act well enough to have an entire show hang on his shoulders, and do all of this before puberty. I was totally impressed, and don’t think I’ve ever seen such a heavily muscled 12 year old before. There are 5 Billys actually because child labor laws mean they can’t do more than two shows a week or something like that. Think about this though- that means that they didn’t just find and train *1* boy who could carry this show- they found *5* (Only one of them per show though, they don’t switch half way through or anything like that.)

Okay, actually I am listening to the sound track again while writing this and I can’t listen to more than one song at a time because I get so worked up over them. Elton John, be my friend please? I really like your work.