Green Day on Broadway

****Spoiler alert for the new Green Day musical on Broadway, "American Idiot"******

The challenge with taking a well-known, critically acclaimed rock album and making it into a musical is how to translate it so it fits the medium. I'll admit, as a fervent Green Day fan, and staunch listener to I was highly skeptical when I first Green Day's music was being adapted to a Broadway show called "American Idiot," after their 2004 album, despite assurances from early reviews that the show had gotten Green Day's blessing and would be performed with minimal tampering.

The show is still currently in preview, so one rainy night (tonight), I went to see it. From the very first chords of "American Idiot" (the title piece), the goosebumps started. With John Gallagher's character, Johnny's narration, it was a bit reminiscent of Rent, especially with the grunge-like style and punk dance choreography that was clearly emulating not only Billie Joe Armstrong's performance persona, but embodies the anxiety and discontent the music portrays.

I was impressed by the fidelity of the musical music to the original album. I mean, I think it was a good move - Green Day with jazz hands probably wouldn't have worked quite so well. Other than a few deviations and remixes (in one instance, "She's a Rebel" was mixed with "Last of the American Girls," a song off the 21st Century Breakdown album), the music didn't change much from what you would hear from the American Idiot album (other than the interweaving music lines and different characters singing different parts). Even the core instrumentation was the same - rhythm guitar, bass, lead, drum set, and other auxiliary instrumentation as needed (piano, cello, violin, timpani). The entire musical was framed by the "American Idiot" album.

But as the characters' situations got murky about halfway through, the music's structure itself deviated from the structure of the album. There were more remixes, and more insertions of their 21st Century Breakdown album songs in there, as well as an awesome misdirect. Johnny, sitting on the bed of Whatsername, starts playing the first few notes of "Wake Me Up When September Ends." Very familiar, well-known notes. Except, it's not "September" - it's another song completely, called "When It's Time" - a song Billie Joe wrote for his wife, but has never been performed before the musical.

One a very obvious level, this was for the fans. Any die-hard fan of the album would recognize that the production keeps very close to the album, and would have known that "September" isn't supposed to happen yet (and indeed, "September" is sung later, at the right time). The framing of the music to make us expect "September," then not satisfying that expectation follows the act of rupturing the familiarity of the album that occurs all throughout the second half of the show (there's no intermission). If we were expecting the "American Idiot" album to be presented on stage in all its unmodified glory, well, some of us may have been disappointed (after all, we like to be flattered - to think we know what's to come, and this musical doesn't give us that satisfaction), but more importantly, it ruptures the familiarity, like Johnny leaving home ruptures the familiarity of suburban America (of course, we will see that familiarity isn't always good either, as Will, the guy who stays home, gets progressively more discontent as he feels he's left behind).

The only slightly awkward thing I thought was the choreography - just the fact that there was choreography (the choreography itself, as I said before, seeks to emulate that punk feel, and I feel like it does it very well), but it is the only time that the musical really feels Broadway. The way Billy Joe moves on stage is completely spontaneous (at least, it feels that way - it helps that he's the only one moving that way), and choreography, by definition, is NOT completely spontaneous - it is planned. It's antithetical to the spontaneity, the unplanned-ness of Green Day.

There was also absolute media saturation in the show - right in your face. There must have been 20+ screens all playing news clips and such, and a projection that turns the entire stage into a projection show, as media saturates us and turns us all into American idiots, right?

Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable show, and certainly nostalgic for those of us who were obsessed with the album when it came out in 2004. A rock opera for our anxiety-ridden society today.

The night also included Soondubu and concluded with a stranger on the train giving me chocolate and, together with a couple of tourists from Chile, telling me I'm very "elegant." It was a good good night.

City of Strangers

A sign in the airport when you step off at La Guardia (and many similar ones are found at JFK) says, "If someone asks you if you need a ride, they probably shouldn't be giving you one."

Isn't it kinda sad? That an act of helpfulness in a city is automatically called into suspicion? That the person asking you for a ride somehow seeks to harm you, and that you must be on guard all the time from others? There's a need to protect, and need to close yourself off.

I feel like this is a symptom of the city. A city where you live among strangers, where your community is limited to the few you allow to get close to you, and that is about how far your compassion extends. No smiles to the stranger on the street, no spending some extra time talking to your waiter at the restaurant. Your waiter doesn't care to talk to you either. Everyone's closed off, in their own world, with their own lives to live.

Even if one wants to be compassionate, it may not be welcome. It's the culture of the city. Never stray too long in conversation with a stranger. Never extend more help than might be wanted. Look after number one.

No wonder Baz Luhrmann says, "Live in New York, but leave before it makes you hard." There's a toughness that is necessary to live in New York, but is that toughness making us forget our day-to-day humanity?

This is how the story went.
I met someone by accident,
Who blew me away.
Blew me away.

It was in the darkest of my days
When you took my sorrow and you took my pain,
And buried them away.
Buried them away.

I wish I could lay down beside you when the day is done.
Wake up to your face against the morning sun.
But like everything I've ever known,
You disappear one day,
So I spend my whole life hiding my heart away.

~Brandi Carlile

Addendum: automated restrooms

What I can get on board with are the automatic self-changing toilet
seat covers. Those things are cool. Of course, they come with the
automatically flushing toilet that doesn't actually flush...

*******************
Cynthia Wang's iPhone
cynthiawang@nyu.edu

Stupidest invention ever

For a city (LA) that is constantly in shortage of water, installing automatically flushing toilets is a brilliant idea. It flushes before you sit, flushes after you stand up, then flushes again as you're
leaving the stall. Who was the genius that thought of that? I mean, because people just don't know how to wash their hands. And of course, there are no germs on the handles of the doors. They are, natually, completely sterile and pristine. You know what you should also install? Invisible, intangible handrails that you can't actually grasp on the subway, cuz that would prevent germs as well. You're so smart.

You know what's also smart? People who aren't competent enough to tell you the right DAY you're flying out of a city. Thank you, American Airlines and Delta Airlines for making my overextended stay in Los Angeles much longer than it needed to be and giving me *gasp* mileage for my troubles and my friends' cuz that completely compensates for your incompetency and bureacratic mumbo jumbo. You are so fucking generous. You even saved me from spending time with my friends who are currently in New York cuz I certainly have better things to do, like sleeping on the floor of your terminal cuz you wouldn't let me into your lounge without paying the $50 day pass. Yea, I know. It's company policy. Pat on the head for you for sticking to the rules, you good little automaton. I mean, who cares about brains and your own judgment when there are these wonderful things called policies. Convenient little buggers, aren't they? Especially when you want to turn a blind eye.

And THANK YOU Delta for assigning me to a middle seat even as you're assigning aisles to other people. I'm looking forward to giving strangers a lap dance every time I need to pee or get to my computer.

And thanks also for putting me in a shitty mood for 48 hours cuz that's just so fucking productive.

*Edited 3/16/10 for formatting, not content. Content all the same.

LA's car culture

Epiphany. Why do we need 4 to 5-seater cars when there's usually only one person driving in it at any given time? Can you imagine how much SPACE there would be in the freeways of LA if each car could only hold on person? There would only be a quarter of the physical space on roads taken up by cars! We should all be driving around in single-seater pods with the family car at home for when we need it.

I know there are logistical and safety issues involved in this, but take, for a moment, my family. At one point, we had 5 cars. FIVE. We had only four people in our family that needed seats. Maybe five, if we counted our dog. How many seats did we have in our cars? Four sedans (at 5 seats each), and one mini-van (which can seat 7 people) - that's 27 seats. For 4 people. I mean, even a family of 4 that has TWO cars still has 10 seats to their disposal)

Something to think about.

Radisson, we meet again.

Just got settled in at the Radisson in Downtown LA. As fate would have it, it's the same Radisson right next door to the Sizzler's we came to all the time (before it closed), and the last time I stayed in here was for a grand total of 3 hours while working on a grant for COPE (which also cost some ridiculous amount).

Allen and I stayed at the office till around 3am or something. Then I was back in the office at 7 or 8 the next morning to get the grant out the door by 5p. It was intense, and sadly, our grant wasn't even reviewed because of a technicality.

Yup. Back on my old stomping grounds-ish for a couple days. Oh, the memories. At least the air is thicker here, but smog-filled.

High-altitude oxygen deprivation

Not something you experience every day unless you live in Boulder or Denver.

I'm in Boulder for a couple days, and if it weren't for the fact that someone had mentioned the high altitude-ness of Boulder, I probably wouldn't have noticed as much as I'm noticing now that
a) I am out of breath after walking a block
b) there is serious lactic acid build up in my muscles
c) my poor broken lung is protesting the low pressure
d) I'm getting lightheaded just sitting here
e) I feel cold - probably has something to do with O2 not getting anywhere, and
f) generally feels like I just ran a mile (when really, all I did was walk up a flight of stairs)

And I think the more I think about it, the worse it gets! Probably should just go to sleep and not think about it. Supposedly the O2 deprivation makes it harder to get up in the mornings too. Fantastic.

This, of course, is in no way impacted by the measly two hours of sleep I got last night, and a full day of activities here on campus, which included a discussion of political economy vs. cultural studies.

Otherwise, Boulder and CU and people are lovely. And the food is amazing too.

Hrm.

We have this problem in our HK home, where fishes that get put into the same tank as our turtle, Soupe, keep going MIA. My mom offers probably what is the best explanation of this situation in an email I got this morning...

>>>>>>>>>>>>

From: Jenny Wang
Subject: One more fish disappeared!!
Date: March 8, 2010 3:59:28 AM EST
To: Cynthia Wang

We suspected it may became the snack of Soupe.

Mama