Alone and Unobserved

Five French-Language CDs I Purchased in Montréal:
(and my ratings out of four stars)

• Daniel Lavoie,
  Docteur Tendresse
  ✶✶✶✶
• Les Trois Accords,
  Gros Mammouth Album (turbo)
  ✶✶✶✶
• Isabelle Boulay,
  De Retour à La Source
  ✶✶✶
• Marie-Élaine Thibert,
  Comme Ça
  ✶✶✶✶
• Marc-André Fortin
  (self-titled)
  ✶✶✶

I was talking to one of my coworkers a few months ago, and after I had told her how exhausted I felt having to deal with school, and work, and (most especially) my family, she gave me a long look and said it sounded like I needed a vacation. And really, I clearly did. My first idea was to go to Europe, but I couldn’t decide between France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia, and after I tried to organize a week-long trip that included all of them, I decided that Europe would have to wait until I wasn’t COMPLETELY INSANE.

Montréal was the obvious next choice, because, even though French is my second language, I’ve never technically been to a French-speaking country. (Turns out the French House at BYU doesn’t count.) Also, it would be relatively inexpensive, and concentrating on a single city for a week would be more feasible than trying to take in the whole of Europe in one giant gulp. So I called up my friend Craig, who had already been there twice, but who didn’t at all mind a third trip, and we started making plans for May 8-15, 2007.

Three French-Language Movies I Watched at Serge and Stéphanie’s:
(all four stars out of four)

• Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
  This side-splitting re-envisioning of the Asterix canon has become one of my favorite movies, ever. The one problem: most of the humor is completely untranslatable, and is thus only accessible to French speakers. Sorry, non-francophone readers.
• The Dinner Game
  Serge & Stéphanie had prepared me for how hilarious this movie was, but not for the unexpectedly touching moments scattered throughout.
• The Closet
  Daniel Auteuil plays a complete loser who pretends to be gay in order to keep from being fired. Whether or not this premise interests you, the film is much better than it sounds.

What can I say about Montréal? I loved it. I loved the restaurants, the language, the architecture, the shopping, the métro, the planetarium, and the endless medley of churches and cathedrals . . . and let us not forget all the hot guys walking around, nor how gay-friendly the city is.

Despite all the aforementioned wonderful things, I have to say that the best part about my trip was getting to know Serge and Stéphanie, a Montréal couple Craig introduced me to. If we ever needed to go somewhere (the airport, the mountains, or Québec City), Serge would show up between his classes in electrical engineering and drive us there. Stéphanie fed us a delicious dinner our first night there, and every time we stopped by the two of them made sure to ply us with food—crêpes with ice cream and maple syrup, chocolate milkshakes, popcorn, bagels, hot chocolate, etc. Stéphanie and I had hours of delight discussing our favorite musicians, sharing pasta-cooking secrets, comparing American Idol to France’s Star Academy and complaining about the bad grammar that surrounds us. Both Serge and Stéphanie were very excited to help me investigate as much francophone music and cinema as we could cram into the handful of days I was there. I can’t wait to go back to Montréal, and when I do (within the next couple years, I hope) I’ll definitely be looking them up.

Two French-Canadian TV Shows I Watched in Montréal:

• Ma Maison Rona 2007
  I couldn’t understand anything Benoît Faucher said (due to his incredibly thick Québécois accent), but in the end that didn’t detract from his hotness at all.
• Que le Meilleur Gagne
  This fairly standard quiz show was made more exciting by the fact that I could answer almost all the questions.

Photos of my trip are coming, I promise!

You are, Blake. You are.

Time of the Season

Lovesong

You Keep Me Hanging On

I just watched American Idol again tonight, and I have the sad, sad duty to inform you that tonight’s episode has surpassed last week in unwatchableness in almost every way. The bright spot: J.Lo., who was miles better as a coach/cheerleader than the decrepit and obsolete fossil that Tony Bennett has become. The way she gushed over Blake is almost enough for me to forgive her for liking Sanjaya. A few specifics:

• Melinda Doolittle has stepped off her pedestal to become one of the regular singers. You know, the ones who occasionally get negative feedback from the judges. Or who sometimes FORGET THEIR WORDS. That’s right, she messed up the lyrics to “Sway,” in English, on national television. She still sounded pretty amazing, though, so don’t feel too sorry for her.
• LaKisha needs to invest in a full-length mirror. Yes, she is overweight, but there are ways of flattering almost any figure. And the fuchsia explosion she was wearing tonight would not flatter anyone.
• Chris Richardson should just shut up and look gorgeous, because he sure can’t sing worth a darn. And no dancing for him, ever again! Just hold still and smile. And make my heart melt into sweet, sweet clarified buttah.
• Everyone else was blah, blah, boring, blah until Blake, who was my daddy again with the best performance of the night, and then Sanjaya . . . who didn’t suck nearly as bad as he has in the past, even if his Spanish was completely gringo and his facial hair repulsive.

[Note: I really wonder where they get off calling it "Latin themed" when only one of the singers attempted to sing in Spanish, and two of them sang Santana songs that were originally sung by noted non-Latino Rob Thomas and little-noted non-Latino group "The Product G&B."]

I mentioned before that Jacob’s recaps over on TWoP are amazing, superlative, etc., but I didn’t really provide any examples of why. Well, it’s because he’ll be recapping along and suddenly say something like this:

The dominant gay paradigm of the Baby Boomer generation can be found between the lines of The Wizard Of Oz: a faceless, looming father figure requires you to retrieve the ‘broomstick’ of masculinity from an overbearing, succubus mother figure before he will grant you your heart’s desire: to be whole again, to have a home. This, combined with the general self-involvement of the first generation reared on TV, has convinced the men of today that this paradigm is a constant, when in fact the true gay experience today is more closely reflected in television shows like Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, Six Feet Under, or Doctor Who: a fictional world in which the Father archetype has absented itself from the scene altogether, leaving a malleable world in which the discovery and mastery of personal power, and not a rigid anima-destroying quest, are the keys to the kingdom. The young gay men of the current generation know they’ve already got the ‘broomstick’: they’ve had it all along. More importantly, they know they don’t have to kill anybody to get it. Nothing inside must die for us to be healed. The reason that the seeming breakdown of the illusory and temporary modern nuclear family coincides with women’s rights, minority rights, and the gay cultural insurgence of the last fifty years is precisely because it puts a halt to the received wisdom of previous generations, allowing personal desire to come to the fore and present itself genuinely, rather than as pathology. The absent father contributes to his child’s homosexuality in only one way: through the freedom his absence connotes, in the breakage between generations of male fear and anger, the child is able to discover his gender and sexuality on his own terms, rather than repressing it his entire life and spending that life in a horrible, shadowy, half-authentic haze. Drinking, marrying his mother, trying desperately to become his father, instead of becoming a man. But since the desperate, typical, broken ‘men’ of the last generation are still in control, we’ll keep singing those same old lounge hits the same old way, hating and fearing ourselves and our bodies and each other, letting you twist our innocence into leather daddies raining down spit and degradation on us in dirty rooms, and calling this love, until the dead weight of you is off our backs forever.

Now click here to read the original context. Amazing, huh? An entire semester’s worth of gay male gender theory, packed into a throwaway paragraph in the recap for one of the worst American Idol episodes ever to air. Now do you see why I idolize him?

I’ll get it out right away: Blake is the hottest guy on the show this season. He’s like a singing, beatboxing Travis Wall, except without the prepubescent vibe. He also gets props for not saying that God is the first person he’ll thank when he wins, although “Mom and Dad” isn’t too original, either.

Blake’s followed closely in hotness by Chris Richardson (as opposed to Chris Sligh, who is the most fun). Chris immediately loses points by mentioning God twice in his bio, but he gained them back this week by revealing that he used to be forty pounds heavier. Go him! When Ryan pressed him for his weight-loss secrets, he just said he started eating better. Maybe I ought to give that a try.

As for the girls, my faves are Gina Glockson, who rocked some Evanescence last night (her cute boyfriend doesn’t hurt, either), and Melinda Doolittle, who declared, in a voice of steel and silk, that she is a W-O-M-A-N.

Lastly, don’t worry that this will become a regular blog feature—why would I bore you with weekly Idol updates when you can get them on TWoP?

Today was my day off, also known as Friday, also known as Housework Day, also known as The Day of Housework Avoidance. Naturally I had put all the housework off during the rest of the week, because I had a perfectly good day off coming up when I could do it at my leisure. Of course, when today arrived, and I realized that, instead of indulging in any kind of leisure, I was supposed to spend the hours and hours that stretched before me scrubbing things, and shopping for other things, and washing yet other things, I had a hearty laugh and began ignoring my responsibilities with the stubborn determination for which I am well known.

Accordingly, here is a list of the things I accomplished today, none of which involved housework:

• Two (2) blog entries posted (three (3) if I finish this one in time).
• One (1) two-(2)-hour episode of American Idol watched, but with the fast forward button on my DVR remote, I was able to view the whole things in about one (1) hour total.
• Two (2) sandwiches eaten, one with fresh mozzerella, the other with havarti, both with fresh greens and tomato.
• One (1) movie watched, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. It was both entertaining and thought-provoking, which brought it dangerously close to being work. Fortunately, I am a hardy soul, so I was able to get through it with only one break, during which I ate
• One (1) bag Orville Redenbacher brand Sweet ‘N’ Buttery-flavor popcorn. (It’s like Kettle Corn, except it tastes like [redacted].)
• One (1) coffee-house music night attended, where I listened to a guy named Joey, a woman named Libbie Linton, and a coworker named Andrew Shaw, AKA Chanticleer the Clever Cowboy entertain those present with three different brands of indie/folk deliciousness.
• One (1) shoe rack bought, assembled, and placed by my front door.
  

  The shoe rack

So you see, my day was not as unproductive as it might have seemed at first. I mean, that movie didn’t watch itself!

Is that fact that I am completely unable to sleep right now the fault of

1. My heart, which is currently playing a never-ending drum solo in my chest?
2. The wind that keeps blowing, the floor that keeps creaking and/or the cars that keep passing in the street outside?
3. The delicious, sixteen-ounce coffee-based drink I had for lunch, which did not keep me from sleeping through my afternoon classes, and which cannot POSSIBLY still be affecting me, fourteen hours later?
4. That torture I visit upon myself twice weekly, known as “Pilates,” and spoken of only in a hushed, terrified whisper—if at all—which has reduced my usually manly and robust physique to quivering jelly, and made it impossible for me to sit or lie comfortably in any position?

OR

5. The horrific auditions I’ve watched on American Idol over the past few weeks (thanks to the magic of DVR, which is turning out to be a technology with a very dark side), which I will never be able to erase from my mind, and which I will in fact be forced to relive every time I close my eyes for the rest of my short, tortured life?

You decide.

. . . there’s basically no reason for me to continue watching American Idol this season. I mean, I certainly didn’t watch it for the singing. (Link)

Diva: a now-poetic Italian word meaning goddess (cf. ‘Casta Diva,’ [chaste goddess], an aria from the opera Norma by Vincenzo Bellini); later was applied to the goddesses of the operatic stage (such as Callas herself, famous for singing the above aria). Appropriated by English speakers, by the late twentieth century its meaning had changed to refer to any of hundreds of forgettable popular female singers of fleeting success.

ManDIVA: a now-poetic Italian word meaning man-goddess. No, no, my mistake. ManDiva was the nickname given to Mandisa, a former contestant on American Idol 2006 with a huge, beautiful voice, a huge, beautiful smile, and a huge, ugly tragic flaw. Read more here.

I hate Taylor Hicks, and I love Brenna. She’s so sassy! and he’s so . . . weird and spastic. I don’t think either of them ought to make it, though–Taylor because he’s himself, and Brenna because she’s not a good enough singer.

I wish they’d gotten rid of the 16-year-old crooner. He should be invited to come back once he’s had a rigorous course of elocution lessons, lost his glasses, and grown an inch or two.

I was sad to see Stevie go, mainly because I never got to hear her “real” voice and judge her based on that. She definitely wasn’t Idol material, though–her mouth twists too much, and she seems very self-conscious in general–so I’m not weeping over it too much.

Chris Daughtry is hot. Oh, and I like his voice. I actually think Elliott is cute in a goofy sort of way, and he’s a very good singer. I’d be happy to see either of them win.

I’m not really one of Paris’s big fans. She’s a’ight. I guess my favorite female performer was Lisa–she’s just incredibly pretty, poised, and talented.