Happy, 'cause of all the LJ niceness...

First of all, I have to thank rumdiculous for sending me the nicest gifts.  :-)  She made me a simply lovely bookmark, the watercolors were subtle and as pretty as a painted silk kosode.  Also, she sent an adorable card and two very nice music CDs.  You can learn a lot about a person from the music they like, and I loved so many of those songs.  Of course, "Chou" from Fatal Frame 2 made me all weepy (what is it about Japanese video games and dramatic songs?) and I think my daughter's going to steal that CD 'cause "1,000 words" is on it too.

Also, moko_moko  sent me such a beautiful card...I think I'm going to have to mat and frame it.  I really need to pick her brains about the printing process she's using.  It's just stunning.

And yay, firegazer  got her package.  :-)  Just a little thank-you gift for the amazing "Advent Children" DVD she so kindly sent me.  No good turn goes unrewarded, in my book.

Anyway, more later.  I went to the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert last night, and I really need to compose my thoughts.  It was...   Words fail me. 

edit: I made muffin-bricks this morning. :-( Little, inedible muffin bricks. More like lemon-poppy seed muffin pucks, really.

 

Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "How much blacker could my Christmas spirit be? None more black."

In 'Age of Reason' (1795), Thomas Paine wrote, "One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." Now, I'm not sure how many steps above sublime the Trans-Siberian Orchestra went last night, but I do know they scored waaay off my goofy meter and into the realm of the truly inscrutable. I'm still pondering whether the whole thing was a satirical farce...it was that strange.

I'd like to preface this whole thing by saying that my husband is a dear dear man who was only trying to make my daughter happy when he bought the tickets. None of this is any reflection on his personal taste in music or his judgement as a human being. We walked into this thing totally blind. But now we see.

I suspected I was in for trouble immediately upon viewing the various goodies that were on sale in the lobby of the HSBC Arena. Far too many black concert tee-shirts featuring crystals and wizards...I felt like I'd time-slipped into the '70's when head shop attire was still considered "cool" and everyone had dragon or unicorn shaped incense burners. The stage only served to increase my trepidation. There were more lights than on a landing strip at JFK. The array, I could tell, was calculated for shock and awe and I began to get a serious "Spinal Tap" vibe from the whole thing.

The best part of the entire concert was the first song. I think of it as "the flashing Christmas house song", as it was recently used in some beer commercial featuring a flashing Christmas house. The stage lasered and glittered and strobed like the Mother Ship in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" and the novelty of the whole thing was charming in an invigorating frenetic eye-blinky sort of way. The charm soon wore off.

A narrator with a voice like Darth Vader began to intone some really BAD poetry about a dude in a bar, which morphed into bad poetry about an angel searching for the true meaning of Christmas, which morphed into bad poetry that got all preachy about war and peace on earth and the magic of childhood... You get the point. Interspersed with the crappy poetry stanzas was truly awful, loud music that put the BOMB in "bombastic". It was like the lead singer had channeled the spirit of Meatloaf while doing his best impression of Jon BonJovi, and I don't mean that in a good way. It was like every bad hair band from the 80's rolled into one, doing heavy metal christmas carols and wearing tuxedos with tails AND ruffles. It hurt. Deeply.

Then, after about 2 hours of pain, some little dude with a truly impressive mullet came out on the stage, made some bad jokes, and said something like "we're about halfway through this thing...so enjoy the rest of the show!!"
I turned to Greg with panic in my eyes and asked "Did he just say 'halfway'??" After that, I began to lose it.

The second half of the show was even freakier than the first. The "This Is Spinal Tap" factor was intense (at one point I turned to Greg and said(shrieked) "The Druids! No one knows who they were or...what they were doing."). Seriously, the only thing this show was missing was a styrofoam replica of Stonehenge, some pigeons, and a midget dressed like Frodo. I began to shake uncontrollably with laughter during a rock rendition of Beethoven's fifth symphony (though I can't tell if it was hilarity or horror that I was experiencing). No one was safe. There was abuse for classics all around. Mozart's "Papagoena" was shredded almost beyond recognition and the evening's entertainment climaxed with a frenetic heavy metal version of "Flight Of The Bumblebee" (no, I'm not kidding) complete with all four of the electric guitarists hopping in hairy unison across the stage a-la vintage Van Halen. Lasers flashed, fire pots blew up, flames shot from the stage in a way that made me worry for my safety and look for the nearest fire exit 'just in case...'. I laughed so hard during the screaming rock anthem that was the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's homage to Mozart's unfinished death requiem that I embarassed my daughter. They made Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" seem as tame as "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" by comparison.

And the WORST part, the MOST CONFUSING thing, is that the sold-out audience of over 13,000 was ~eating it up~!! Everyone was loving it. There was a strong over-40 factor in attendance and they seemed to not only be enjoying the show but actually taking it VERY seriously (my husband and I seemed to be the only ones collapsing from hilarity).

Which leads me to wonder; is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for real or what? They seem to be taking themselves seriously, as evidenced by their website. The fervor of their minions seems to point to their apparent legitimacy. Frankly, it's all beyond me. If what they did to me last night was an excercise in satirical spoofery of shameful 1980's hair bands, well, good for them! "Bravo", I say. If, however (as I strongly suspect, and this review of a 2004 'TSO' concert seems to back me up) those clowns were serious, then that's four long, painful hours of my life that I'll never get back.

It's just a damn good thing they didn't mess with Beethoven's 9th symphony, or I would've had to kick someone's mullet-headed pompous tuxedoed ass.