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Aug. 28th, 2006 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenBoston was fun. Despite being there about a day and a half, I managed to do a lot. Liz M and I walked around the entire city on the nice day (Saturday), and we were up so late Saturday night that I crashed out Sunday leaving only just enough time for me to see ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mephistakitten for like ten minutes and then go to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science.
So, the show? WAY TOO CROWDED, but still very cool. I'm a total freak like that, but I really thought it was neat to see the human body stripped down and, for the most part, they did a great job with respecting the bodies. There were a few I didn't need to see, but those were mostly ones I felt were consciously taking apart a body for no other reason than "art." I'm sorry, I know this is a "show," but that just isn't respectful at all. They had one body where they peeled apart a woman's face and splayed out the bones from her hips just so it made this X-shape. Really not necessary. Likewise, they had a body held in a position like a T-shape--imagine a gymnast hanging from a pair of rings--where it was revealed down to the skeleton except for strips of full flesh and organs in bands around the torso, legs, and arms. And the guy with the "drawers"--sections of the body cut out and pulled directly in front of back of the body like compartments? I think all of these things could have been done with models and been "art"--when you do it to someone's remains? Even if they donated them, that's disrespectful. Maybe they wanted to be art, but still. Didn't like that so much.
You know what was awesome? The bodies plasticized in athletic, taut poses. There was a corpse swinging a bat, and you could see the tension in his form as he did so. A ballerina on point, a couple in a pairs skating move called "The Death Spiral," and a woman doing yoga (although the yoga position she was in was very suggestive, which made me grind my teeth a bit and mutter darkly about how gross it was to go for titillation in a show full of corpses). These were all beautiful, amazing, interesting, and respectful. I could have looked at more of those for hours.
The show also had slices of bodies in plastic in cases (which were impossible to see thanks to the crowding), that someone remarked something about how he had to keep reminding himself that they were real and not just plastic replicas. I know how he felt--it's hard to think of a slice of yellowed and blackened plastic as part of a person, but I guess it's easier when you see the serial sections they had hanging in some displays. The serially sectioned 3D guy you could even sort of see his face.
It's the little touches I found most amazing--the individual organs, healthy and diseased, the amazing meshwork plastic that were preserved blood vessels (the ones in the thoracic cavity looked like a sea fan), stuff like that. The scariest diseased organ was the coal miner's lung--because of the accumulation of coal dust, it looked like it was made of coal, it was so shiny. Another person commented that he didn't understand what gene smokers were missing that made them see stuff like the comparison of the health versus smoking-induced cancerous lung and just not get it. I couldn't but agree.
Yeah, fascinating stuff, waaaaay too crowded. I could have used about a hundred fewer people and been better off.
That was a nice, intelligent diversion after what we did the night before. At the theater at Coolidge Corner, they do sorta fun movie nights each weekend, and Liz M spent the time I was there recounting how funny the "R Kelley Sing-A-Long" was (apparently, R Kelley made a movie, a hideously stupid one, and it was ripe for the mining of humor). They were having another one Saturday night--a Micheal Jackson sing-a-long. So, of course, we went.
They opened with a dance contest, which some guy won hands down because he'd actually taped Michael Jackson videos and studied them at some point in the past--moonwalking, dropping into splits, twirling, popping all his joints in lock-step to the video they put up for inspiration (for the lesser contestants). He got a DVD of the videos used in the show, which I'm sure he already had except for Captain Eo.
Oh, yes, they had a copy of Captain Eo. Man, still one of my most vivid memories of Disney World when I was little. The Land of Imagination, now very much bastardized and reborn in the stupider, "we have to make sure kids like it and that it's extremely irritating to any adults who bring them here" version I saw in February, used to be the coolest place. It had a room that you got to after you went on the tour with the trippy light show with Figment (Figment is back, but he's as annoying as any other talking Disney animal) that was like a giant Spencer's Gifts only with all the cool stuff out of the box (anyone else remember the big pin table where you could like take an impression of your entire body?). After you got bored with that, there was the 3D Captain Eo, and that was before anyone knew anything might be wrong with Michael Jackson's love of children (note: I still don't believe he actually abused any child, but that doesn't mean I think his attitude and behavior are the mark of a healthy-minded individual). Ah, Captain Eo, how you've not aged well at all. But still? Very fun. Almost as fun as the game of "spot the plastic surgery" game you could play just by watching the videos progress through Michael Jackson's life.
You know what? This may be disingenuous (or just plain obvious), but Michael Jackson? Very talented. Not the greatest lyricist, I grant you, but he was quite good at what he could do. His dance repetoire is actually a tad limited, since he repeated many of the same moves over and over, but he was very good at those moves, especially with making his limbs and joints seem entirely fluid. Also, I began to understand why he's so very broke--almost all of his videos in the King of Pop stage of his career are miniature movies, with all the detail and expense associated therewith. "Bad" was directed by Martin Scorcese, for crying out loud! And, for that matter, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola were involved with Captain Eo (Lucas explains the sucking, but I can't figure out what Coppola was doing there).
They played an encore that was a very early Jackson song. He still had a mini-'fro and was darker skinned with a flatter nose. The video is notable for the fact that it's just him singing in front of a bad early green-screen type background animation. Notable, I say, because of how Jackson is dancing and singing in the video. He seems very happy, as in new puppy, young love-type of happy. The kind of happy you are when you're just having an unbelievably good day, your favorite song is on the radio, and you're about to head off to the amusement park. He's smiling without any hint of intent, just smiling to smile. His dance moves are stilted, mostly just rocking around, but fairly elegant twists are scattered throughout.
The next in line chronologically was the "Thriller" video, which, yes, freaked me out, okay? ZOMBIES! And, of course, by that time, Michael had gotten a lot better at dancing and was a lot more free about it. He was still smiling, but it was one of those predatory (how appropriate for the video) smiles, one that's ironic and in-on-something. The dancing is also more passionate. I mean, choreographed, yes, but he dances like he's feeling it (it's the zombies in the background who are more dancer-esque).
This is quite a change from the kid just sorta pulling himself along to the high points of the song. In "Thriller," the music moves him, not the other way around. I think that kind of harmony with it explains a lot of his ability at dance as well as another phenomenom: his near constant crotch-grabbing by "Black or White." If you see singing and dancing as a metaphor for sexual maturity, as I did watching this show, you will understand how Michael Jackson is who he is. It started out as love, then he sorta woke to the passion and power and intimacy of it. He just forgets that other people are looking. At least, that's how it seemed.
It's really kind of sad in a way. Because I truly believe a lot of Michael Jackson's problems stem from his aborted childhood, and to see his experience with love being played out through music, while it produced some great music, is to know that it's a hollow love--music won't love him back, though he feels it does (clearly).
And one last thing (I promise): I'm not sure Michael Jackson ever learned how to express his sexuality in a suitably masculine fashion (suitable for our generally homophobic country, especially in decades past--the height of his popularity coinciding with the discovery of AIDS and "the gay disease" moniker), which might account for the prejudiced view of him that's been around forever. He's got a very lithe, skinny body, and his touching of himself in his videos is along a feminine bent--stroking down his chest, constantly ripping open his shirt and hanging his head away, even the crotch-grabbing isn't showing off his package so much as placing his fingers along an intimate place. He comes across as fey in his obviously sexual dancing/singing, and it doesn't take much exaggeration to see how people could equate that with being one of those sexually confused (guilty) perverts (not guilty?) who take out their frustrations and mommy/daddy issues on innocents (definitely not guilty, according to the law). As I've considered more and more pieces of pop culture from a feminist bent of late, this is what interested me about the videos. There, no more.
So it wasn't an entirely brainless evening--it prompted me to dissect Michael Jackson along sex cultural biases. So that makes up for me shouting stupidly, "Is this the Free Willy song?" at one point during the show. Really, it does.
The bus ride home? Now that was brainless. A stupid fucking accident in Connecticut kept me on the bus for an hour and a half longer than I was meant to be, which, since I was supposed to get in around 11:30 meant I was rushing through Port Authority to get to the indoor entrance to the subway before it closed at 1 am. And worse than that? The bus movie was Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Which I've actually seen. MANY TIMES. It was the only movie (or, rather, the bestmovie, and that's saying something, isn't it?) on my ten-hour plane ride from Fiji to L.A., so I saw it multiple times there. It really doesn't get less abusively stupid with repeat viewings. The music is still pretty good, and I recognize more of it now (they played the opening riff of "Thunderkisses 65," thank you, Guitar Hero, and "Who Are You?" thank you CSI), but that's no compensation. No wonder I felt ill halfway through the ride.
And my light didn't work--again. I always get the night-time bus ride where there's no reading light. There was no way to ignore the blaring audio of stupid bleating from that stupid movie until it was over. If my iPod had given out before we made it home, I might have had to choke the driver (he was trying to joke with us, being clearly a foreigner, but making jokes about how, if we liked the trip, his name was Ben, and if not, Bin Laden? NOT FUNNY TO GROUP TRAVELLING TO NEW YORK CITY, dude).
Home now, kitties to cuddle. Fun trip just the same.
mephistakitten for like ten minutes and then go to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Museum of Science.So, the show? WAY TOO CROWDED, but still very cool. I'm a total freak like that, but I really thought it was neat to see the human body stripped down and, for the most part, they did a great job with respecting the bodies. There were a few I didn't need to see, but those were mostly ones I felt were consciously taking apart a body for no other reason than "art." I'm sorry, I know this is a "show," but that just isn't respectful at all. They had one body where they peeled apart a woman's face and splayed out the bones from her hips just so it made this X-shape. Really not necessary. Likewise, they had a body held in a position like a T-shape--imagine a gymnast hanging from a pair of rings--where it was revealed down to the skeleton except for strips of full flesh and organs in bands around the torso, legs, and arms. And the guy with the "drawers"--sections of the body cut out and pulled directly in front of back of the body like compartments? I think all of these things could have been done with models and been "art"--when you do it to someone's remains? Even if they donated them, that's disrespectful. Maybe they wanted to be art, but still. Didn't like that so much.
You know what was awesome? The bodies plasticized in athletic, taut poses. There was a corpse swinging a bat, and you could see the tension in his form as he did so. A ballerina on point, a couple in a pairs skating move called "The Death Spiral," and a woman doing yoga (although the yoga position she was in was very suggestive, which made me grind my teeth a bit and mutter darkly about how gross it was to go for titillation in a show full of corpses). These were all beautiful, amazing, interesting, and respectful. I could have looked at more of those for hours.
The show also had slices of bodies in plastic in cases (which were impossible to see thanks to the crowding), that someone remarked something about how he had to keep reminding himself that they were real and not just plastic replicas. I know how he felt--it's hard to think of a slice of yellowed and blackened plastic as part of a person, but I guess it's easier when you see the serial sections they had hanging in some displays. The serially sectioned 3D guy you could even sort of see his face.
It's the little touches I found most amazing--the individual organs, healthy and diseased, the amazing meshwork plastic that were preserved blood vessels (the ones in the thoracic cavity looked like a sea fan), stuff like that. The scariest diseased organ was the coal miner's lung--because of the accumulation of coal dust, it looked like it was made of coal, it was so shiny. Another person commented that he didn't understand what gene smokers were missing that made them see stuff like the comparison of the health versus smoking-induced cancerous lung and just not get it. I couldn't but agree.
Yeah, fascinating stuff, waaaaay too crowded. I could have used about a hundred fewer people and been better off.
That was a nice, intelligent diversion after what we did the night before. At the theater at Coolidge Corner, they do sorta fun movie nights each weekend, and Liz M spent the time I was there recounting how funny the "R Kelley Sing-A-Long" was (apparently, R Kelley made a movie, a hideously stupid one, and it was ripe for the mining of humor). They were having another one Saturday night--a Micheal Jackson sing-a-long. So, of course, we went.
They opened with a dance contest, which some guy won hands down because he'd actually taped Michael Jackson videos and studied them at some point in the past--moonwalking, dropping into splits, twirling, popping all his joints in lock-step to the video they put up for inspiration (for the lesser contestants). He got a DVD of the videos used in the show, which I'm sure he already had except for Captain Eo.
Oh, yes, they had a copy of Captain Eo. Man, still one of my most vivid memories of Disney World when I was little. The Land of Imagination, now very much bastardized and reborn in the stupider, "we have to make sure kids like it and that it's extremely irritating to any adults who bring them here" version I saw in February, used to be the coolest place. It had a room that you got to after you went on the tour with the trippy light show with Figment (Figment is back, but he's as annoying as any other talking Disney animal) that was like a giant Spencer's Gifts only with all the cool stuff out of the box (anyone else remember the big pin table where you could like take an impression of your entire body?). After you got bored with that, there was the 3D Captain Eo, and that was before anyone knew anything might be wrong with Michael Jackson's love of children (note: I still don't believe he actually abused any child, but that doesn't mean I think his attitude and behavior are the mark of a healthy-minded individual). Ah, Captain Eo, how you've not aged well at all. But still? Very fun. Almost as fun as the game of "spot the plastic surgery" game you could play just by watching the videos progress through Michael Jackson's life.
You know what? This may be disingenuous (or just plain obvious), but Michael Jackson? Very talented. Not the greatest lyricist, I grant you, but he was quite good at what he could do. His dance repetoire is actually a tad limited, since he repeated many of the same moves over and over, but he was very good at those moves, especially with making his limbs and joints seem entirely fluid. Also, I began to understand why he's so very broke--almost all of his videos in the King of Pop stage of his career are miniature movies, with all the detail and expense associated therewith. "Bad" was directed by Martin Scorcese, for crying out loud! And, for that matter, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola were involved with Captain Eo (Lucas explains the sucking, but I can't figure out what Coppola was doing there).
They played an encore that was a very early Jackson song. He still had a mini-'fro and was darker skinned with a flatter nose. The video is notable for the fact that it's just him singing in front of a bad early green-screen type background animation. Notable, I say, because of how Jackson is dancing and singing in the video. He seems very happy, as in new puppy, young love-type of happy. The kind of happy you are when you're just having an unbelievably good day, your favorite song is on the radio, and you're about to head off to the amusement park. He's smiling without any hint of intent, just smiling to smile. His dance moves are stilted, mostly just rocking around, but fairly elegant twists are scattered throughout.
The next in line chronologically was the "Thriller" video, which, yes, freaked me out, okay? ZOMBIES! And, of course, by that time, Michael had gotten a lot better at dancing and was a lot more free about it. He was still smiling, but it was one of those predatory (how appropriate for the video) smiles, one that's ironic and in-on-something. The dancing is also more passionate. I mean, choreographed, yes, but he dances like he's feeling it (it's the zombies in the background who are more dancer-esque).
This is quite a change from the kid just sorta pulling himself along to the high points of the song. In "Thriller," the music moves him, not the other way around. I think that kind of harmony with it explains a lot of his ability at dance as well as another phenomenom: his near constant crotch-grabbing by "Black or White." If you see singing and dancing as a metaphor for sexual maturity, as I did watching this show, you will understand how Michael Jackson is who he is. It started out as love, then he sorta woke to the passion and power and intimacy of it. He just forgets that other people are looking. At least, that's how it seemed.
It's really kind of sad in a way. Because I truly believe a lot of Michael Jackson's problems stem from his aborted childhood, and to see his experience with love being played out through music, while it produced some great music, is to know that it's a hollow love--music won't love him back, though he feels it does (clearly).
And one last thing (I promise): I'm not sure Michael Jackson ever learned how to express his sexuality in a suitably masculine fashion (suitable for our generally homophobic country, especially in decades past--the height of his popularity coinciding with the discovery of AIDS and "the gay disease" moniker), which might account for the prejudiced view of him that's been around forever. He's got a very lithe, skinny body, and his touching of himself in his videos is along a feminine bent--stroking down his chest, constantly ripping open his shirt and hanging his head away, even the crotch-grabbing isn't showing off his package so much as placing his fingers along an intimate place. He comes across as fey in his obviously sexual dancing/singing, and it doesn't take much exaggeration to see how people could equate that with being one of those sexually confused (guilty) perverts (not guilty?) who take out their frustrations and mommy/daddy issues on innocents (definitely not guilty, according to the law). As I've considered more and more pieces of pop culture from a feminist bent of late, this is what interested me about the videos. There, no more.
So it wasn't an entirely brainless evening--it prompted me to dissect Michael Jackson along sex cultural biases. So that makes up for me shouting stupidly, "Is this the Free Willy song?" at one point during the show. Really, it does.
The bus ride home? Now that was brainless. A stupid fucking accident in Connecticut kept me on the bus for an hour and a half longer than I was meant to be, which, since I was supposed to get in around 11:30 meant I was rushing through Port Authority to get to the indoor entrance to the subway before it closed at 1 am. And worse than that? The bus movie was Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Which I've actually seen. MANY TIMES. It was the only movie (or, rather, the bestmovie, and that's saying something, isn't it?) on my ten-hour plane ride from Fiji to L.A., so I saw it multiple times there. It really doesn't get less abusively stupid with repeat viewings. The music is still pretty good, and I recognize more of it now (they played the opening riff of "Thunderkisses 65," thank you, Guitar Hero, and "Who Are You?" thank you CSI), but that's no compensation. No wonder I felt ill halfway through the ride.
And my light didn't work--again. I always get the night-time bus ride where there's no reading light. There was no way to ignore the blaring audio of stupid bleating from that stupid movie until it was over. If my iPod had given out before we made it home, I might have had to choke the driver (he was trying to joke with us, being clearly a foreigner, but making jokes about how, if we liked the trip, his name was Ben, and if not, Bin Laden? NOT FUNNY TO GROUP TRAVELLING TO NEW YORK CITY, dude).
Home now, kitties to cuddle. Fun trip just the same.
