John Prine

I saw John Prine at the Jack Singer last night!!! I was grinning and laughing and singing and aching in my heart so much that I got a headache.

I wrote a review for Beatroute, which they didn't publish. Beatroute is in my bad book.

Anyway, the show:

John Prine has been combining three chords and the truth since the early seventies, when he was hailed as "the next Dylan", but the man on the auditorium stage this rainy Monday night was no graceful elder statesman of country-rock. Looking like a Beatle in his black suit, and hoisting a big-bodied acoustic guitar, he skipped onstage to an explosion of applause, shouts and whistles. Backed up by his band on electric guitar and upright bass, Prine started immediately into "Spanish Pipe Dream"."We're feeling a bit frisky tonight!" he confessed, kicking out his leg and doing the twist whenever the music moved him. I've never experience such a boisterous, excited atmosphere in the Jack Singer.

Prine and his band delivered songs from his rich back catalogue, including favourites like "Please Don't Bury Me". Of note was a slow, introspective version of "Angel From Montgomery", with mandolin and a haunting electric guitar solo. Partway through the evening, Prine performed a set of solo acoustic songs, which put the focus on his direct, often humourous, and sometimes heart-breaking lyrics, as in the songs "Donald and Lydia" and "Sam Stone". Prine's band rejoined him for a fully electric rockabilly rave-up on "Bear Creek Blues". After almost two hours, the evening culminated with "Lake Marie", a nine-minute-long song of love and death, with spoken verses that always returned to the chorus, "Standing by peaceful waters, whoa wah oh wah oh!" You could say Prine took us to church.

Opening act Sarah Watson, formerly of Nickel Creek, joined John Prine for the encore. Her clear, plaintive voice blended well with Prine's rough croon on the songs "In Spite of Ourselves" and "Paradise".


Set list:

Spanish Pipe Dream
The Torch Singer
Picture Show
Six O'Clock News
Mystery Song!!!
Please Don't Bury Me
Whistle & Fish
The Glory of True Love
Crazy as a Loon
Angel From Montgomery
Souvenirs
The Frying Pan
Donald & Lydia
That's the Way the World Goes Round
Sam Stone
Bear Creek Blues
Saddle in the Rain
Hello in There
Lake Marie
ENCORE (with Sarah Watkins):
In Spite of Ourselves
The Late John Garfield Blues
Paradise

Dalai Lama

I went to see the Dalai Lama when he came to the Saddledome in September. When we got there, there were huge line-ups outside for the bag check and security. To pass the time we discussed whether the Lama rode around town in a Lama-mobile, like the Pope. When we finally got to the check, they made me take out my empty Nalgene bottle, just so I'd be compelled to buy overpriced bottled water. I was tricky though, and put down the bottle in a place where I could snatch it back when the security people weren't looking.

I bought my tickets months ago, when they went on sale, for about $70 a piece. Do you think our seats were even remotely good? We were in the nosebleeds. It's a good thing the Dalai Lama is so brimming with positive chi that it reached even us.

The event was hosted by Sandra Oh and Mark Tewksbury. Sandra Oh was pleasant but stumbled over her words a few times. Then there was some aboriginal music, a presentation by elementary school students and singing and dancing by Tibetan youth. My nephew has a Tibetan school friend that lives in our neighbourhood. I like walking by his house because for a long time there was a big line of prayer flags strung across the back yard. I made a joke that he will be the next Lama but my sister thinks he lacks the necessary temperament. Anyway he was supposedly to have taken part in the singing, but we didn't see him there.

So the Dalai finally came out all wrapped in his robe and took a seat on the stage. He had an interpreter to help him out, but he was pretty good with the English. It was just broken enough to give it a charming touch of the esoteric and Eastern.

The Lama didn't impart any new, profound insights. He just reiterated the ancient principles of loving the people around you and pursuing peace.

He was very conversational. He made jokes. Before the Q & A time, he said, "I welcome all serious questions. But if you ask a silly question, I may become...irritated." One question was "How do you see yourself?" He answered, "Some people call me living Buddha or god king. I am just another human being."

The Dalai Lama did seem very human, and I think that is his special power. Despite the robes and the myth and cult of personality, he really seems like reasonable, down-to-earth, normal person. The only difference is he's figured it out, and he gives off that palpable energy of contentment. Few people posses that quality.

Film Fest

The Calgary International Film Festival is over and I saw a total of thirteen films. I would have seen more but I got a cold and confined myself to the couch for the last few days of the Fest. My personal best for films-watched-in-a-day was four. I was powered by the matcha smoothie I had at lunch.

Thirteen films:

Accidents Happen: Gina Davis in an indie film set in seventies American suburbia. Everything that can go wrong to her family does, including a car crash, coma, divorce, and death (multiple). Still scrapes by as a comedy.

Broken Embraces: Pedro Almodovar's latest, a love square (?) involving Penny Cruz. A blind filmmaker thinks back on a love affair doomed by betrayal and jealousy.

The Clone Returns Home: It's the future and the Japanese have invented (but not perfected) human cloning technology. An astronaut dies in space; he is resurrected as a grown man, but with the mind of his childhood self. Haunted by memories of his twin brother, he runs away to the remote countryside. Beautiful and sad.

Daytime Drinking: A group of Korean men make drunken plans for a trip out of town. The next day, only one man shows up at the destination. His attempts to make the best of the situation result in boredom, drinking soju, eating noodles, getting conned, losing his pants, drinking soju, heartbreak, being really cold, fighting, and drinking soju. Reminiscent of some real weekends I spent in SoKo.

Karaoke: A film about a young Malaysian's return from the city to his home on a palm oil plantation. What's interesting is not the narrative but the way the camera is allowed to linger seemingly forever on its subject: a worker on a huge pile of palm leaves, man walking through a forest, the singers in a karaoke bar. Compelling despite the fact that not much happens.

Made in China: A young American has dreams of making it big as an inventor of novelty items (the snake in a can, pet rock, slinky, fake poo, ect.). He leaves his trailer park for Shanghai, where he hopes to have his idea manufactured. His naivete is fortunately matched by his tenacity, as he gets lost, get conned, gets on the wrong train, gets beaten up. And he loses his pants. The big reveal of his novelty idea comes near the end and makes all the trouble worth it.

Miao Miao: A Taiwanese teenage girl befriends a Japanese exchange student. Much mooning over unrequited crushes, as well as baking of cakes.

Nonko

Animated Shorts: Various animation techniques from different countires. The best was "The Little Puppet Boy" from Sweden. Crude claymation tells the epic three-part story of a young man and his visit from a lady friend (they watch a video and eat chips). It's brilliant.

Smash Cut: Intentionality campy horror flick about a movie director who makes unintentionally campy horror flicks (he "makes Ed Wood look like Orson Welles"). Lots of over-the-top deaths and cheesy dialogue.

Tetro: Francis Ford Coppola's first movie in forever. Gorgeous in black and white, it tells the complicated relationship of two brothers. Vincent Gallo as the tortured and moody older brother, just my type. Set in Argentina, including a trip to Patagonia.

White On Rice

Winnebago Man: I'd never seen it, but for years people have been sharing on video tape, and more recently posting on Youtube, outtakes from an eighties TV advertisement featuring a foulmouthed Winnebago salesman. One fan tracked down the man behind the myth and made a documentary about him.