A clarinetist to watch out for

Bet you thought I was being ironic with that title.

But no, just as there are lady accordianists whom I respect and admire, there is a clarinetist that you MUST watch out for, if you are interested in gypsies, Joy, or clarinets. His name is Ismail Lumanovski. He is a 22-yr-old Julliard student with devilishly fast fingers, and he fronts the New York Gypsy All-Stars, which gave the best live concert I’ve ever seen last Saturday. I was screaming along to songs in languages I don’t even know.



No recorded albums yet, but I’m waiting. With my breath held. (Hurry up, Ismail...)

Opera for the masses?

In Manhattan last week I was lucky enough to catch a global premiere… the first-ever live simulcast of a Met opera into movie theaters around the world. I think this is a fab idea. An opera ticket for $18…and you can wear a hoodie and jeans… and munch popcorn and slurp a diet coke!

I was especially excited about the opera itself, The First Emperor, by Tan Dun (composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I adore for its exotic epic sentimentality and magic twinkly treetop theatrics). Unfortunately, I think the opera was only a partial success. Costumes were glorious, the set and lighting were grand, and the purely instrumental musical interludes were by turns majestic and spectacularly eerie (including some handheld instrument that looked like a bottomless, haunted birdcage turned an upside-down and played with a bow). Another highlight was the chinese acrobatics and the way the actors imported from the Peking Opera would sometimes contort into ludicrous 'praying mantis’ positions to emphasize a sentence. Oooh, and my other favorite thing was watching the orchestra grapple with ancient Chinese grunting – there was one shot of a middle-aged musician in pearls and a prim black sweater chanting along to the chorus’ “HAAA!!… HOO!!… HAASHY!!” which is what I imagine one would say whilst stomping, glowering, and preparing to decapitate one’s mortal enemy. That was worth the price of admission alone.

On the downside, the production completely failed to engage me on an emotional level. For one thing, the lyrics were in English – a fatal flaw as far as I’m concerned. As a novice opera-goer, I find the art form to be awkward enough with those stiff stage movements and warbly vocal abstractions. It’s even harder to swallow when you know that they've boomed out two dozen syllables to say “you are the princess.” Even worse is the story itself. It’s the story about a man who unites a country by killing everyone who didn’t want to be united. How you can ruin the excitement of that is really beyond me.

Still, kudos to Tan Dun for putting some Chinesiness into opera. And kudos to the Met for being brave enough to challenge the elitism of the medium and giving us cinema-goers a treat. I hope they make it a regular program…

A Neon Kiss

Good Names for Falafel Shops

(in all the names below, you have to pronounce "falafel" like an american: "fuh-lah-fuhl")




The Awful Falafel
(for the ironic, urban hipster crowd, in need a snack after a drizzly 3am exit from a bar)

The Unlawful Falafel
(for Texas where they’re soon to ban the idea of Arabic people)

A Jawful of Falafel
(for hungry boys)

A Troughful of Falafel
(for hungry, messy boys)

A Draw’ful of Falafel
(for Bostonians who keep their falafels in drawers)

Belgian Waffle ‘N’ Falafel
(for the transglobal munchies, working off the same basic principle of LA’s successful establishmen,: Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘N’ Waffles. Yes, this is a real restaurant and, yes, it is deeeeelicious! www.roscoeschickenandwaffles.com)

Thanks to PoorDaniel for his invaluable input to this promising new concept.

A Dream Come True

I've always wanted a shawarma man in my garden... and, thanks to my villamate's 30th birthday bash, I finally got one! Yippee!

Concrete Ninjas!

Who knew Metro could have so much fun with a big shovel??

... actually, we should have guessed. Fun with Objects is his speciality.

Saving the World, One Naive Suggestion at a Time

Wouldn't it be great if all churches and mosques were dual-function?

Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Turkey in a Tub

Well it wasn't really a "tub"... and, strictly speaking, neither was it a bath, even though "Turkish bath" is usually how it's translated...

The hamam is actually a big marble steam room, with a domed roof and crazed, half-naked bath attendants who sing slow, echoey, yodely songs in Turkish. First they lead you into the central room where you lay on a hot marble slab with a fire underneath it until all your muscles slowly melt. Then they take you to a side room where you take your towels off and sit down to have several bowls of water thrown in your face before they tie black brillo pads to their hands and scrape your limbs until all the dead skin (and rather a lot of live skin) is removed. Next, they toss you onto a little marble shelf -- and here's I started giggling uncontrollably -- they have some Incredibly Soft Thing which they dip into a bowl of hot soapy water and, when they rub you with the Incredibly Soft Thing, an enormous volume of soap bubbles suddenly appear. After a few minutes of Incredibly Soft Thing magic, your entire world becomes soap bubbles and you float around in it while the crazed, half-naked bath attendants massage you. After the massage comes the merciless bowls of shriekingly cold water, then they let you collapse onto the hot marble until you can breathe again, then they wrap you up head-to-toe in giant dishtowels!

You can make fun of us for looking like homeless elves, but we are SO CLEAN!

Baby's First Sandstorm

The world outside looks like it's been immersed in a giant tan-colored cloud, or like my life has been gently sepia-stained.

The Emiratization of an Eva

For some reason, the girls in my office have latched on to the idea that I would look great in local dress. Maybe they're tired of looking at my un-ironed button-down shirts... maybe they just thought my face would be improved by an inch of make-up... maybe they were hoping it would make me speak more Arabic so they could laugh at my accent (apparently I sound like giddy little "baby")...

In any case they convinced me be hijab for a little photo shoot the other day. I was hoping it would come with a free Cavalli handbag, but no such luck!