sarahism

If God is Willing

sarahism — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:17:09 +0000

Over the weekend I sat down and watched Spike Lee’s four-hour documentary, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. It’s surprising to realize that five years after Hurricane Katrina, the shock has not worn off. There are so many things that one as an outsider wouldn’t even consider. The post traumatic stress, the shutting down of Charity Hospital, the horror stories of corrupt police behavior finally seeing light of day. To add onto all of this, the BP oil spill, the biggest environmental disaster our nation has ever seen, and you can’t help but guffaw at what New Orleans has gone through in order to come out the other side. You know on some level that it’s horrible and unjust, but seeing and hearing from the people directly impacted is a completely different story. It’s amazing to consider the amount of irresponsibility and neglect, but even more amazing to witness the amount of resiliency this city and the people that love it show.

Pumped Up Kicks

sarahism — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:46:25 +0000

Foster the People are relatively new to the music scene and already making big big waves. I’d venture to say that it’s all because of this one song. The perfect summer anthem, both great to dance to and ruminate to. Music like this makes me excited. It’s my new favorite.

Interpol at the Miami Beach Filmore

sarahism — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:58:03 +0000

This past weekend was the last of summer for me. It seemed only fitting to say au revoir to a season filled with spectacular summer shows by going to see one of my favorites, Interpol. I’ve seen them before, three times before actually, but I was thrilled anyway. Not only because I’d hear some of the new music from their upcoming new album, but I was curious to see how they’d fair without original bassist, Carlos D.

Paul Banks was fit, as ever, I will not lie. What really struck me though, was how much more charismatic he seemed this time around. There was a different energy between him and guitarist, Daniel Kessler and I couldn’t help but wonder if that had anything to do with Carlos D’s departure. Their new bassist, Dave Pajo, did a good job, excellent really, but there is no replacing Carlos D.

They played a lot of older material, which I appreciate. Their new songs were also well received; although it’s notable the album isn’t out yet as this is when the crowd was its quietest. Otherwise, though, the crowd was mad. The energy of their life performance is so different to what you hear on the album, a little more frenzied and bursting. In short, an excellent show and I’d say the best performance I’ve witnessed by Interpol to date. The new album, self-titled Interpol, is out September 7^th.

Set List:

“Success” (from the new album)

“Say Hello to the Angels”

“C’mere”

“Summer Well” (from the new album)

“Rest My Chemistry”

“Evil”

“Lights” (from the new album)

“Narc”

“Take You on a Cruise”

“Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down”

“Try It On” (from the new album)

“PDA”

“Not Even Jail”

Encore:

“NYC”

“Slow Hands”

“Obstacle 1″

Cinderella: From Fable Town With Love

sarahism — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 04:51:20 +0000

There is something great about the ability to pre-order items. You anticipate the release of something so much that you order it months and months before it’s been released. Time and life, however, lead you to inadvertently forget all about it. Then one day you pop home from work and are greeted with a wonderful little package making the entire day feel just a little like Christmas morning, really.

This was so Thursday afternoon, when I found a package from Amazon containing Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, a Fables spinoff and the first written without Bill Willingham. The story follows Cindy, who, if you’e familiar with Fables know, is a spy for Fabletown, although very few Fabletown citizens know that. Magical artifacts are being smuggled in from the homelands and she’s sent on the hunt for them. On her mission she meets Aladdin, who becomes a bit of a love interest for her, and we learn some of her back-story.

The artwork is well done here, following suit with the rest of the Fables franchise, but, and I hate to say this, I was a tad disappointed in the story. Cinderella is one of the more mysterious characters in the original Fables storyline, we learn so very little about her. While she’s tough and badass, here, she has moments in which she comes off as just a little vapid. It was enjoyable as a small exhibition of the spy racket, feeling at times very James Bond-ish in its unfolding, but I like to think there’s more to Cindy we’re not seeing here.

A British Bender

sarahism — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 23:19:01 +0000

A few days ago I came down with a pretty bad sinus infection that forced me into quarantine. The isolation and boredom were maddening, all further emphasized by the fact that there is absolutely nothing good on television. After some finagling with the PS3 though (really, I just popped a disk in, but you try this while hopped up on meds and with no decent oxygen airway) I had access to my Netflix Instant Stream, perhaps one of the greatest inventions in the history of ever!! For the next several days I went through what I now refer to as a British Bender, making up for the lack of BBCAmerica on my cable company’s basic package.

I first took a look at Neverwhere, a 1996 miniseries by Neil Gaiman that he later used as the basis for a novel by the same name. I’d read the book before and absolutely loved it. I had no idea there’d been a television show until recently. I enjoyed it, although I must note that sometimes, even when the TV series does come first, the book still manages to be better. Now it’s true that much of this sentiment stems from the fact that the special effects for the show have not aged well. That paired with some overly dramatic dialogue, made for several moments where I just couldn’t help but scoff and giggle at the absurdity of it all, but there were some great moments as well. The Marquis de Carabas (Paterson Joseph) was especially a delight, played with just the right amount of arrogance and wit to make him likeable.

After Neverwhere I moved on to Skins, a British drama that follows the lives of a group of teenagers in Bristol. Now this show I absolutely loved. I have to admit the second series was not quite as good as the first, but still good enough to watch in a little under two days. Not very realistic at all, the show still captures all the desperation and awkwardness of young adulthood. It was a delight to see Nicholas Hoult (and a surprise, boy did he blossom after About a Boy) as manipulating and womanizing hearth throb Tony Stonem and there was a real endearing charm to the nerdy Sid Jenkins (Mike Bailey). Parts of the ending did feel a little tacked on, but I like that the show lets the characters grow up, generating an entire new casts once they’ve taken their A-level testing and are done with school. I’m hoping the third and fourth series, which feature Tony’s younger sister Effy as the central character, will go up on instant stream soon, although I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I was with the first series.

While most of my days were filled with Skins, the husband wasn’t quite feeling it, so we compromised and watched The IT Crowd in the evenings. Hilarious! ‘Nuff said. The show centers around three employees in the IT department of fictional Reynhold Industries. Two are geeky computer technicians (Moss and Rob, played respectively by Richard Ayoade and Chris O’Dowd) and the head of their department, Jen (Katherin Parkinson), who just happens to know absolutely nothing about IT. Each episode sees them working to get out of absurd and ludicrous situations, each more absurd and ludicrous than the one before it. While not the most fluid show (oh the plot holes!!), there’s great chemistry in the cast here and I love the pop culture references and jokes that clearly cater to the nerd set.

They only had the first three series of the IT Crowd on Netflix, so once that was done I turned to a show that’s been begging me to watch it. Doctor Who. There’s no justifiable excuse at all, I just never did, which was dumb of me because I’m totally feeling it. I’m only a few episodes in to the 2005 relaunch so I won’t even try to give a real critique. It’s plenty to say that if you’re interested in science fiction in any way whatsoever you should definitely give the show a shot. The hype is there for a reason.

Of Bastards, Babies and Soon To Be Men

sarahism — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:25:33 +0000

When I was ten, my sister had her first child and I was very quickly no longer the baby. She was to eventually have four boys, and along with the birth of my brother’s son, there would be a whopping five children with less than two years apart in age living with me. My life went from relatively care free, centered around me, the baby, to a complete madhouse. This place became littered with action, making the entire place a much messier and louder place. Admittedly a happier one too, but chaotic nonetheless. I remember moving furniture to act as barricades for wandering and curious little hands. I remember skipping school to help babysit. I abandoned childhood and became an aunt, but the sacrifice was small in order to ensure great childhood’s for the ones after me. Joshua, Juan, Joey, Tony and Alex are so much more to me than nephews. I plan for them, try to mold them, introduce them to the music and books I love, so they too can be just as cool as I am one day.

Someone recently had the audacity to call them bastards. Bastards in the eyes of God because they were had out of wedlock. I cannot emphasize the rage I felt and there I was arguing with women thrice my age in defense of children that aren’t really mine. Except they are. I’ve had a hard time explaining this to people, mostly because I don’t want any children of my own. I have enough with them. I know it’d perhaps be different if I had my own, but that does not make the unconditional love I have for them any lesser. To be truthful, I know how much these kids depend on all of us: their own my mother, my other sister, their grandmother and I. There are five of them and that is a lot. They’re so close in age that they’ll all be entering college right after the other. I do think about the fact that, were I to have a child, it’d be that many more resources spread thin. Maybe one day I’ll want my own, I can’t say. Right now, though, I’m so much more concerned with the boys already here than worried about what one day could be.

One day I will be 30 and Joshua and Juan (the oldest ones) will be 20, and I am sure that I will still feel the same need I do now to protect them. I will never not feel responsible for them. These boys were a group effort, are a group effort. No matter where life takes me, it is one bond that will never be severed. When I moved away the first time, what hurt me the most was the idea that the youngest, Alex, would not remember me. As much as I missed the rest of my family, it was torture knowing they were growing up without me and that I was missing out on so much. The biggest pleasure in coming back has been being a part of their lives. Experiencing this, the biggest indicator of the the passage of time being their growth, has been a pleasure.

Quarter Life Crisis

sarahism — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:13:00 +0000

Time has become an issue of great concern for me lately. I am consumed by a fear that it will soon be too late for me. It’s hard to come face to face with the realization that my life is not at all what I thought it would be, harder still to know that I am almost a quarter century old and none of my plans have turned out. I mean, I know that at 24 there is still a lot of living I have left to do, that I’ll get there. I KNOW these things. Still this feeling of impending failure burdens me.

I found myself thinking fondly of middle school the other day. In my mind I referred to it at as the most creative period in my life and that scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t really. I KNOW this, but suddenly I was wracked by the fear that I’d peaked at 13. More horrifying than this is the knowledge though that the kids I knew are no longer kids and therefore I ain’t either. Children born in the 90s are entering their 20s as I’m exiting them. There are younger brighter people out there and I’m getting old…

Geez, I just depressed myself.

Oysters, Flowers and the Joys of Time

sarahism — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:27:30 +0000

I’ve got two months off of school and I suddenly feel like the world is my oyster. The list of ideas, projects, and activities that have been collecting on sticky notes at my desk will finally come to fruition! It’s as if I all of a sudden have found time to smell the roses, take in the day and devote some time to all those things I’ve neglected for so long. It’s exciting and I can only salivate at the prospect of completely being done with school in December. I can take all the things I love off the back burner, even if just for a little while. Hoorah!

There are some changes coming yonder. For one, I’ve moved all my reviews, critiques and popculture related material to another website that will be devoted to just that. POPhenomena is coming along nicely if I do say so myself, with a new post of its own today. I’ll still be keeping this website around, of course, but as a personal blog space. I’m excited about this and I hope those that visit continue to do so.

Wicked at the Arsht Center

sarahism — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:45:55 +0000

Last night some friends and I caught the last show of Wicked at the Adrienne Arsht Center. I want to preface the rest of this post by saying that I thought it was amazing. This was my first time seeing a musical show at a live theater and it was better than I thought it would be. The venue is amazing, a gem in Miami and I only hope I get to see more quality shows there. (They also hosted Anthony Bourdain a few months ago). Moreover, the set and costume design were beautifully done, a true delight to the eye. The acting was superb; the voice talent of the cast was spectacular. I laughed, I teared up, and it was, in short, a great show. With all that said and done, I was a little bit disappointed.

While we stood in line, waiting for the show to start, I couldn’t help, but notice the large amount of children in the audience. Then I realized that there was a huge possibility that what I was about to see would be kid-friendly, something the book is not. I was right. It’s completely different! Ok, maybe completely different is an exaggeration, but it definitely left me with the feeling that something was lacking. This is, I know, traditional when it comes to book adaptations, but the play was changed to the point where it’s a completely different story. Elphaba becomes more of a girl with self esteem issues, Fiyero is a jock, and the entire story felt too much like She’s All That. Gregory Maguire’s Oz is a darker more interesting place that I wish would have been explored. There’s sex and crime and Animal rights issues! I missed all that.

Magic On Earth

sarahism — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:06:26 +0000

I have lived in Miami pretty much my entire life and thus I have also lived just three and a half hours away from the happiest place on earth. Yet prior to last weekend I’d only been once as a child. For Floridians this is confusing and people are often shocked by my lackluster attitude toward Disney World in general. Even more so when I explain that I haven’t actually been to Disney World as much as to just one corner of the world, Magic Kingdom, and that it was the absolute worse time of my life.

I must have been 8 or 9 when my father loaded twelve of us (my mother and two of my siblings along with assorted cousins and aunts) into a rented van at some eerily early moment of the morning. I know that at most the trip must have lasted four hours, but the drive seemed eternal. On the turnpike the darkness and the wilderness surrounding seemed never ending. Suddenly there were no more man-made structures besides the road we were on. Had it not been for the service stations every hour or so I was sure we were leaving civilization. When hunger set in my father, who for all intents and purposes is the cheapest man on earth, refused to buy anything. He had made my aunt pack sandwiches. Sweet ham sandwiches. Anyone who knows me knows my adversity toward sweet meats. I am not a fan of foods that are sweet that should be savory. Worse than that, though, the sandwiches had gone bad. The lunchmeat was covered in a slimy film and emanated a rancid smell. Still my father refused to buy anything. We did not eat that day, my siblings and I.

My memories of the actual park are vague, overall, but I do recall my jealously as I watched my cousin eat ice cream she’d been bought because she was too much of a wuss to ride Space Mountain. More jealousy came when witnessing more of my cousins ask for autographs in their official Disney autograph books, another thing my dad refused to buy. My sister, taking pity on me, searched a gift shop and bought me one too, but by the time it was in my hands, we didn’t run into another Disney character. Not until it was time to go at least. After two hours my father decided we’d had enough fun and began to herd us all toward the exit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pluto and my sister yelled, “Go Sarah Go!!” I ran to him, skipping in front of a long line of girls who yelled and complained as Pluto signed his name and gave me a hug. I still have that autograph book and Pluto remains close to my heart, but understandably Disney World not so much.

I returned just last weekend and I’ll be truthful, it was not bad. It did occur to me however that maybe it’s because the Magic Kingdom did not capture my heart as a child that there is always something missing, that essential piece of the Disney experience that makes it like magic on earth.