stories

It’s good enough for whales, dude.

December 12, 2009 by krisis

We just got through sitting in our parked car eating dumplings, a queer little Saturday night date in the midst of this insanity of rock shows and serious theatre and made up awards.

Based on two visits, I love nearly everything from Vanessa’s Dumpling House on Eldridge Street, but my shrimp dumplings were not what I expected. I’m not sure what that expectation was, but it wasn’t a dumpling with dozens of teeny shrimp all nestled inside with no seasoning to speak of.

Ever since I saw District 9 I’ve been a little leery of shrimp eating, and the dumpling of a thousand shrimps was not making the shrimp-eating experience any less ooky.

I turned to E for some comfort.

P: These dumplings have, like, thousands of tiny shrimp inside of them. It’s a little creepy.
E: Like sea monkeys!
P: You’re not helping.
E: Or krill!
P: Okay, now I’m done.
E: Hey, it’s good enough for whales, dude.

E and the band were pretty good, although I can already tell she’s not going to like the video because she wasn’t happy with her vocals (she’s been pretty sick since Thursday). Every time I mention a good spot she has a bad spot to match.

I’m always inconsolable after a performance, for better or for worse. Either I know in my heart it was awful, and no coaxing can convince me otherwise, or I’m sure I was excellent and need no further discussion on the topic (Monday being a prime example).

I won’t rattle her cage any further about it being good or not. We’re off to peek into bro’s cast party to catch up with various sibling units before bed.

Doppelgangers

December 11, 2009 by krisis

Tonight we saw Elise’s brother depict Orsino in his high school’s performance of Twelfth Night.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to recap high school theatre at length for you. At least, not just yet. First, I have to tell you about my doppelganger.

Basically, there is a kid that is friends with E’s brother, and he looks and talks and moves just like me. He’s even inappropriately loud at all the wrong moments, just like I was (but am not as much anymore).

Every possible person has commented about it. E’s mom thinks we look alike. Someone else in the show saw me in the audience and thought he/I had snuck out from backstage.

It’s uncanny. I didn’t have the curly hair back then, he has a better nose, and I don’t think he is under the impression that he is David Bowie, but otherwise he is a relative spitting image of me.

It’s a little unsettling, if only because E’s brother reminds me of me enough to begin with (mostly intellectually, and in wishful thinking, because I wished I was him when I was in high school), but then to have another person remind me of me, and to have the two of them be buds and gallivanting around on-stage, is kind of mind-collapsing.

Also, Twelfth Night itself is a play of doppelgangers and doubles. It’s possibly my favorite Shakespeare comedy because it moves briskly and doesn’t require much suspension of belief. The troupe did it in the style of commedia dell’arte, which meant they all played as archetypal models, and nearly all wore elaborate masks. They also played a collection of found and real instruments, and did some offstage singing to score the scenes.

We did a commedia-style show my freshman year – the brilliant A Company of Wayward Saints – and it was also great. There’s something about the reductiveness of the archetypes that makes it easy to bring amazing scenes to life – like it’s easier to just sink into the character without thinking too much about it.

We also did the found-music thing in Bretch’s Good Woman of Setzuan, a process well-documented in the annals of the blog.

Basically, bro just did my two most technically challenging collegiate shows wrapped up along with Shakespeare AS A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, and knocked it out of the park. As did my doppelganger, and all of their castmates.

They’re pretty cool.

I #blamedrewscancer for being a Philebrity

December 11, 2009 by krisis

I have a story to tell you.

I met half of the #blamedrewscancer crew at Fuzion at around seven for the Philadelphia Area New Media Association (PANMA) holiday party.

That is not the story.

We were at PANMA for some brief networking and catching up with friends, but our end destination was The Trocadero, where Philly blog fixture Philebrity was holding their non-denominational X-Mas party slash year end awards.

Blame Drew’s Cancer was up for the “Outstanding Do-Gooders of the Year” award. Polling had been open and transparent, so it was easy to see that we were getting creamed by Phillies’ Shane Victorino from day one. As such, we didn’t marshal much of a vote – eventually coming in fourth, behind even Mayor Nutter for his ballsy budget bluff.

The four of us – Britt, Mikey, Libby, and I (plus Libby’s awesome husband, another Peter) rolled in to the Troc fashionably late, and occupied the “Reserved” table closest to the stage. Our innate rowdiness took over shortly, and we were hooting at the house band (shout out to BC Camplight) and yelling “Hut!”at any reference to Lady Gaga.

Okay, maybe that was just me.

Suddenly, it was time for our award category. Philebrity Captain and one of my personal Journalist heroes Joe Sweeney read down the list of nominees. When he hit #bdc we cheered, the crowd cheered for us, and he continued down the list.

End of story? Not quite.

Joey Sweeney: So, Shane isn’t here tonight, so we’re going to give this award to Blame Drew’s Cancer.

Team Blame Drew’s Cancer: ???

No, he was not joking. Suddenly we’re being gestured at and motioned towards to the stage and then we’re on the stage and then I’m hugging Joey Sweeney and then, inevitably, I am standing in front of a microphone gaping at a rather large crowd seated at round tables all Golden Globes style and I am like, omg I think now they want me to talk.

Luckily, there is video to document my surprising coherent trip through award show aphasia:

Philebrity Awards from Mark Magliocco on Vimeo.

(Take note of my neck-bobbing walk down the stairs, as it figures in to the next bit pretty heavily.) [Read more…] about I #blamedrewscancer for being a Philebrity

Daily Demo: Crashing

November 2, 2009 by krisis

Song #77: Crashing (live demo) [“Save As” to download from that link]
Last recorded for Blogathon 2002.

10 years ago this weekend I went to my first college party, still very much a purposefully-naive, dewy-eyed teen.

I came home having had my first vodka cranberry and my first inklings of adult romance, drifting to sleep wrapped in the blissful denouement of each.

The following Monday morning was a decidedly dreary day, and I found myself locked out my dorm room in my pajamas. Instead of heading to French 103 I sat down in our common room – five stories from the ground with a two-story windowed wall staring out into Center City Philadelphia.

I pulled out a pad and wrote “Crashing.”

Later that day, having been let back into my room, I recorded its first rough demo and transferred the lyrics to the first page of the crisp new book I bought for my collegiate songs. Up until then I wasn’t sure how I would know it was time to start using it, but I suddenly did.

“Crashing” made frequent appearances at parties and late night hangouts throughout my Freshmen year, resulting in the first complements on my voice I had ever heard. They came as a great shock to me, as they still do. Later that autumn I recorded it for my first full length demo, Other Plans – shakily, in the middle of the night, trying not to wake up my mother in the process.

As a dreary fall turned to winter I moved on to add other songs to my slim gray book – many of which I still play to this day. Yet, it was “Crashing” I would play between classes as I sat at the dinged, old upright piano in the theatre green room. I would hypnotize myself with the rolling two chord verse, learning how to play piano in increments (and maybe a little bit about what the song really meant, as well).

It took the entire intervening decade to learn how to play piano well enough to demo it that way, and it seems apropos that it wound up recorded just as shakily and late as its original demos were, respectively.

Our Battlestar Galactica Halloween as Baltar & Head Six

November 1, 2009 by krisis

Last night E and I dressed up as Head Six and Dr. Gaius Baltar, respectively, from the cult Sci-Fi hit Battlestar Galactica.

E is not in Six’s standard spaghetti-strap dress, but Six can be spotted in this style at least once in the series.

Also, note the spot-on bracelet and ring, which E made herself.

My costume was much more subtle, as I was effectively E’s accessory for the night. I simply grew some scruff and slicked back my hair. For fun, I carried two corner-cut Vice-Presidential memos (as we were ostensibly circa seasons one and two – post appointment to VP, but pre swearing-in as president).

One memo was the results of tests with the Cylon Detector. The other was a draft of Gaius’s inaugural speech, complete with parenthetical asides to Head Six (presumably floating over his shoulder in devilish fashion as he wrote it). Writing in the Dr. Baltar voice was very fun.

Out of two parties four people knew who we were. The best comment we received was by far: