Jill Murray » (pop) culture

This just in: Figure Skating STILL cheesy

Jill — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:47:30 +0000

I’ve been seeing comments on Twitter and Facebook on Figure Skating costumes at the Olympics, and how insane they are, and whether they might um… detract from the sport.

You don’t have to feel so alone or confused about this issue. My seminal post on Cheese In Figure Skating is here to help you.

“On the international scene, you can see this playing out on the grandest scale among skaters from European countries who don’t have a decades-old history of podium density in figure skating. These skaters are particularly vulnerable to scooping up a bolt of fluorescent-pink spandex and deciding it will look good as two full sleeves of ruffles… more…“

Retroblogging: March trip – LA movie theatres

Jill — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:00:04 +0000

One of the things I loved best about LA (aside from the tendency of Los Angelenos to say charming things like “oh, all the best artists come from Canada!” and the beautiful way they have of valuing creative labour in general) is that despite the bigness of LA, the city still believes in and uses small movie theatres.

I don’t know what theatre this was, but it only had one screen, and we saw Watchmen on it, and the building itself made me very happy.

This is exactly what movie theatres look like in my imagination, and you can be sure I would spend more time in them if they all looked like this in reality.

Now hold on to your hats, because tomorrow we wake up in Niagara Falls. Brrr!

Retroblogging: March trip- Lisa Yee in Pasadena

Jill — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:23 +0000

On my very last day in LA, Cecil & I drove to Pasadena for the launch of Lisa Yee’s Absolutely Maybe. I was excited because I’d been hearing pretty consistently all over the internet how awesome Lisa is, and also because I’d actually read the book, which is a more rare experience than you might expect. I think most writers live in near-constant guilt that they a) haven’t read enough of their peers’ novels and b) haven’t read enough of everything else either.

Pasadena is gorgeous. It stands, old, and proud and delicately ornamented, a spiritual and aesthetic opposite to Los Angeles.

We were in a rush, so this is the only photo I managed to grab as we were driving through, but I think it gives a nice sense of what things are like about town.

Lisa gave a very entertaining presentation about her adventures in publishing, and how she came to write a YA novel after a string of successful middle-grade titles.

And we stuck around and talked to Lisa after the big signing, and she was awesome, and I even got to hold the legendary Peepy! I have arrived!

Finally, Lisa did this fun thing where she had everyone pose for photos, wearing Maybe’s favourite hair colour. (See everyone over here on Lisa’s Livejournal.) I only have one photo of this. Unfortunately, Cecil doesn’t like the one photo that much, whereas I am seriously considering wearing this hair colour at ALL TIMES. So I’ve worked out this compromise so I can still show it to you, AND hint at the next thing we saw after leaving Pasadena…

The Blue Dragon

Jill — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:00:03 +0000

I’ve been a fan of Robert LePage‘s theatrical work since I was fifteen and saw Les Aiguilles et L’Opium with my French class. So I felt like an idiot for not buying tickets soon enough to the Montreal premiere of Le Dragon Bleu, his most recent work with Marie Michaud. I dithered over when to go and who to go with and by the time I got around to it, the show was 100% sold out– a fact that gnawed at me until finally, I decided to get on a bus and go see it Saturday in English, at the NAC in Ottawa.

It’s hard for me to comment on LePage shows because on the one hand, all he has to do is show up and I’m happy, but on the other, there’s nothing he can do to surpass Les Aiguilles et L’Opium, either because it was really that good or because I’ll never be fifteen again, seeing it for the first time, pinning the programme up in my locker, digging through microfiche reviews of his other work at the library on Sundays (oh, my mis-spent youth…). What was on the stage and what did I bring to the experience through my own viewing? I’ll never know for sure.

What has remained consistent all this time, to my mind, is that in LePage’s brand of storytelling, symbolism is explored so thoroughly and knit so tightly into story, it almost becomes the story itself. Symbols are offered up to the audience as anchors on which to tether interpretations and meanings, turning the theatre into a dark box filled with images against which to contemplate one’s own gnawing thoughts as a second story unfolds on stage.

The Blue Dragon starts and ends with calligraphy and thunder, maple syrup and triple outcomes. It presents a love triangle that stands out as much for its lack of romanticism as for the precedence that love– deep, unpretty, forgiving, compassionate, inadequate & healing– takes over conflict. Bleak for most of its two hour run time, it ends on a suddenly comic note that is almost absurd in its abruptness. The play at times feels incomplete or self-negating. A few character changes lack motivation or explanation. And yet, it has power.

I carried my week into the theatre with me, and was struck by some uncanny similarities between this performance and the RubberBanDance piece I saw on Tuesday. The two had in common: their multi-disciplinary natures (both shows incorporate theatre, dance, film and narative in different measures), an unfinished quality, a hopelessness that is either righted or undone in the final, urgent, unanticipated seconds of the work. But was it really all on the stage, or did I think it there because I needed it? I’ll never know.

La Brigitte

Jill — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:28:49 +0000

Just got home from seeing Brigitte Dajczer play at Cafe Sarajevo with my fabulous friend and vocal coach, the unpretentious* Amanda Mabro. Brigitte plays a mean gypsy fiddle, and her band was terrific, blending many subtle world, pop and funk influences into what still shone through as authentic, firey Gitan sound. I’ve seen her play before, but always for other people, so this was a new treat. Fun was had. Tables were danced on (low tables, and not by me, sadly). A successful Friday all around.

RubberBanDance

Jill — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:00:04 +0000

My history considered, it’s more than a little strange that I don’t go to see live dance or theatre very often– a problem I’m trying very consciously to redress, starting rightnow.

This Tuesday, I had a chance to see Montreal-based break-fusion company, RubberBanDance’s Punto Ciego. The comany’s director, Victor Quijada has described their work as “the essence of Hip Hop filtered through the aesthetics of contemporary dance.” (paraphrased)

The show I saw on Tuesday incorporated film and theatrical elements, and revolved around a great many grappling, combative, inescapably unhappy pas de deux, and desperately beautiful intertwining ensemble compositions in which dancers used each other as props, only to ultimately relate more to actual props than each other. This could have been mortally depressing but for the introduction of an audience-participation movement, which encouraged us to modify our breathing, focus and attention while watching, which was totally fascinating and for me, unprecedented. I think it would have been more conclusively uplifting, had there been an illustrative final dance sequence after the urging to go forth and enjoy meaningful human contact, but overall it was a very worthwhile experience. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for their next project.

To find out more about the RubberBanDance, you can check out their web site (tons o’ video, good audio), and read this interesting 2004 Hour Magazine profile of LA-born, Montreal-based, b-boy-turned-ballet-dancer-turned-contemporary choreographer, Victor Quijada .

"Action painting" redefined

Jill — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:44:37 +0000

This video of a guy painting by breaking is kind of mesmerizing to watch. Not only that but he has really nice footwork, and it’s to a track by Bonobo.

Via Celebreak

Great Classical Punks on Beige Is Punk

Jill — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:33:56 +0000

Jill & Cecil at the Museum of Jurrassic Technology.

I’m on vacation this week, galavanting about LA with my bud and fellow YA writer, Cecil Castellucci.

She’s been running a series of punk lists in celebration of the paperback release of her novel, Beige. Mine is a list with a twist and it’s up RIGHT NOW, and I’m really excited because I had so much fun writing it, and I’ve been so eager to show it to you, and now I can!

So go! Go read it! And why not check out Beige while you’re at it?

Zombie Cross Stitch

Jill — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:17:16 +0000

On a lark last night, I typed “Zombie Cross Stitch” into a search engine, in connection with a new project I’m working on. Sure enough:

“Zombies only want you for your brains” on Craftzine
Embroidered zombie heads on Katie Kuthroat’s craft blog
“No zombies allowed on Children Playing with Fire
And for the bonus round: Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More! at Powells

Sweet Dreams are Made of…

Jill — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:00:58 +0000

I’m so sad I didn’t take the posters for this seriously! I saw them around, but the image was so hyperbolic, I dismissed it as marketing fantasy and ignored them altogether. And now I find out its real and its happening tonight, and I can’t even go to Quebec City to see it. Wouldn’t that make a great weekend? Museums, history, people smashing into each other down a 56-foot incline?

Shortly after my 15th birthday, I smashed up my face pretty good (broken tooth, stitches, root canal, plastic surgery) taking a speed bump the wrong way. It took me about a decade to lose the exact stomach-lurching, man-am-I-stupid instant-regret feeling of flying through the air, knowing how I was going to land, and not being fast enough to change my destiny. If I think about it hard enough, I can still bring it back.

Even with that haunting memory creeping through my intestines, when I see this video, my first thought is “want. want it now.” I am sitting on my couch, trying to convince myself that these people have it easy because

They are wearing face-guards and head-to-toe padding
You slide when you hit ice. It doesn’t grip your face like pavement does.

I’m wrong, of course. This is downhill, with people smashing into you. But I wouldn’t ever want to race anyway. I just want to try the course. But I guess there’s no official training facility for this anywhere. They probably just take a bunch of bladers and throw hockey gear on them and give them a shove. So OK, fine, that’s not me. But maybe next year I could at least go watch?

I do get to go to a vegetarian haggis party later, which is not entirely unadventurous, nor is it unfunny, though I do expect far less body checking.

P.S. On a quite-nearly-related note, I just finished reading Justine Larbalestier’s How to Ditch Your Fairy, which is adorable, clever, sparkly, and has an unexpected bobsledding scene!

P.P.S. Thanks to Brigitte for pointing out the reality of Crashed Ice on Facebook, and Fagstein for finding this particular video.

P.P.P.S. Another vastly (to borrow a turn of phrase from How to Ditch Your Fairy) entertaining scenario to think about with regards to this video is what would happen if they had picks on their skates. (You know, like figure skaters.)