back in the saddle
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| my city is still breathing back in the saddle |
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Wednesday, September 08, 2004 My brother and I went to Douglas Coupland's September 10, 2001: A Social History of the 1990's tonight at OYR. Having been a fan of Coupland since I discovered this thing called literature, I was quite excited about it. And I won't say I was disappointed. Billed as a preview, or work in progress, it was quite good, assuming you enjoy Coupland's books. Performed by Coupland himself, the one man monologue style was akin to having Coupland lecture your Poli class for 2 hours. And it was cute - Coupland would forget his lines and would yell up to Brad, the stagehand or whatever, to cue him. Cute. Sometimes I almost wondered if it was part of the show, it made Coupland (or his character, which would have been himself), seem more human - as in "see I can't even remember what I'm supposed to be saying here". At the same time, I really enjoyed the whole feeling that we were having a conversation with Doug, and the cueing took away from that (am tempted to get into a nice ol' Brechtian Epic Theatre tirade here, but won't). The show ran just under 2 hours, and I must admit getting fidgety by about the 90 min mark - the Coupland lecture - with its wavering train of thought, entertaining for the first 3/4, was simply becoming tedious - but then I was tired and hungry as well. The premise was interesting - that the "decade" the 1990s ended September 11, 2001. Which I would agree with - it's when everything changed. So we basically followed Coupland through a souvenir of Canada style trip down memory lane, remembering everything from the start of the Gulf War (part 1) until the twin towers came down. as well as a bit before and a bit after. no where near as political as it could have been - but offered an interesting side to Coupland as well as into the decade known as the 1990s from a man (a canadian no less) considered a cultural icon of the time. Go see it if you're in Calgary in the next few days. In other excitement I spent the day having lunch and walking around 17th ave and, of course, picked up a few new and exciting cds (ok only one can really be considered new, but all are new to me). First I stopped over at Sloth and used my Friends of CJSW card (possibly for one of the last times before the new ones come out) to purchase Five Dollar Bill from The Corb Lund Band. Then I sauntered down to Megatunes (with a few stops along the way to enjoy the finer points of life), where lovely Justin sold me Joel Plaskett Emergency's lovely second CD Truthfully Truthfully (just threw that one in the ol' cd player - damn is it good so far - and I'm barely into track one), Po' Girl's self-titled and the Garden City Soundtrack (really didn't enjoy the movie, as a side note, but Iron & Wine covering one of my favourites from the Postal Service? how could I say no). I thank Kristin D. and cute boys the world over for helping inspire this latest bout of cd purchase (although I am always amazed by how big Corb Lund is in the Pass). Enough scenster-esque posturing. Must find job in Calgary. or not. posted by kim | 1:11 a.m.|
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