QBlog

Honestly, I really want to gush about him just for a LITTLE BIT.

I was in the seventh grade when I first read Vanity Fair Magazine…I believe Madonna was on the cover and the exclusive story involved pics of her newborn baby and a candid interview. At the time it was very controversial that a star should sell out their child to the mags but nowadays it seems like that’s WHY they’re giving birth. Let’s hop back a decade to when people were hissing at the material mom and her choice of exposure. Of course we all bought into it! I got the magazine and that was when my love affair with the editor in chief began. Everyone has given him props for turning Vanity Fair around. He created the hugely successful “Hollywood Issue” and the “Green Issue” and he effortlessly combined politics with star glamour and hot reads. Throughout high school I read his fierce editorials spitting at the Bush administration, during a time when journalists had yet to find the balls to attack him. Remember that time? It was pre Katrina and almost all of the news media shows were terrified to say anything bad about the Bush administration. In one of his very own editorials he wrote about how after Katrina the journalists were finally starting to ask more questions. “where is our government?” was a common phrase asked by the anchors as they waded through sewage and broken neighborhoods. Now I’m not saying he was the only one, but for as long as I can remember he has had the balls to talk about the unpopular and the ugly, even when the pages after his own words are graced with superficial Armani ads and stupid star soundbites. He’s been able to mix it all up and get a young girl who would normally be dancing out to “Like a Virgin” to stop and think a bit.

I’m a bit in love, but don’t tell.

 -qb

So it’s taking an enormous amount of time to upload my interview with Marsha Qualey. I’m thrilled, it went amazingly well, and I just can’t wait to get it up on the site! She was such a good sport and you can tell by the twinkle in her eye that she was secretly having a great time doing it.

I’m reading a fantastic book that sort of just fell right into my lap. I was at a wonderful used bookstore in Uptown and I stumbled upon this odd cover resembling a bit of a trashy tabloid magazine…only it had pictures of famous authors and the title was “Secret Lives of Great Authors”. It’s all the juicy dirt on every famous writer from Shakespeare to Kurt Vonnegut. Louisa May Alcott had an opium addiction, apparently, and the Fitzgerald’s were just completly bonkers! It tells you who hated who and oh did I mention that Kafka was a nudist perv? It’s all fun and games but really it’s nice to read a brief and colorful history of these literary greats instead of some of the dreary bios thrust upon us in school and just about everywhere else. Of course there’s much more to them than all this, like with most celebrities presented on the front page, but c’mon! “Lord Byron was a Man Slut,” is slapped under the front title. It’s all in the advertising.

 -qb

I’m doing an awful job at updating. I wish I could be one of those bloggers that updates ya with the juice every five minutes but unfortunately when I have a thought it takes awhile to fully process and then to put it in writing requires another year maybe? I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging actually and how fast we want our information nowadays and if it’s really worth it. It’s good to know everything, I guess, and it’s great that everyone has the opportunity to put in their two sense but what information is GOOD information? What is a talented writer these days? The one who can write the fastest and keep it entertaining or the one who is writing the long detailed editorial? I’ve been fascinated with the election going on in Zimbabwe but mostly because the majority of its coverage on all of the news websites is quick with lots of pictures; I learned about the history of the country through a slideshow provided by the BBC. A large majority of the CNN headlines for our own election in the states are completly worthless and we’ll forget about them all in a month. Obama needs a gym card? That’s good publicity for him but what does it do for us? We eat it all up though because we want to be included, everybody wants in, everybody wants the story with an opinion and a picture under a minute so they can get over it and move on to the next big thing or if it’s really good they’ll move on to the next big opinion. Or atleast the next big opinion with a clever point and a second to spare. I don’t even know how to finish this thought but the entry is over 200 words which in the blogworld means it’s time to peace out.

-qb

No I’m not talking about George Carlin.

One of my favorite theater companies, Theatre De La Jeune Lune, is closing after thirty years of being a crucial leader of the Minneapolis theater scene. I grew up going to all of their shows and my first magical experience at the theater was their production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. Their shows were colorful, creative, daring and so different than anything else in the Twin Cities. The set construction and lighting in Tartuffe, the flooding of the stage in Cosi Fan Tutte, the gigantic slide in The Magic Flute, Barbra Berlovitz in Medea, all of it were fairtytales come alive. I don’t understand why this place didn’t work out and I’m angry that people are letting it slip away. Do they want another bar in the warehouse district? Another condo? Another producution of Little House on the Prarie? It does not make sense to me and I suppose will never make sense because when good things slip away how can you find a good answer to ‘why’? I wish I had millions. Here are some things you MUST know before they go…

 The Jeune Lune’s name came from a poem by Bertolt Brecht…

“As the people say, at the moon’s change of phases
 The new moon holds for one night long
 The old moon in its arms. ”

 It’s a disaster thinking about a season without them, not being able to step into the space and be surprised.

Their credo:

We are a theatre of directness, a theatre that speaks to its audience, that listens and needs a response. We believe that theatre is an event. We are a theatre of emotions — an immediate theatre — a theatre that excites and uses a direct language — a theatre of the imagination.

I can’t stop thinking about them. I’ll miss them so much.

www.jeunelune.com please click and see what I’m talking about.

-qb

So I just finished puting up all of the stories and I have to tell you it took me a little too long to do even THAT and don’t even get me started on everything else! Honestly I don’t know a damn thing about computers and syntex and Mozilla so basically the past few months have been a constant battle against whatever the hell god decided to put up on my web browser. I’m still working on everything and everything will always be changing so if love at first site (pun!) didn’t happen to you maybe we can get to know each other and you can learn to love my default headers and faulty web routes. Yes? Well here’s hoping we’ll just grow together….

I hope you can find atleast one story that you like. I like different ones on different days and I hate certain ones every day and others I’m slightly indifferent about but that always changes. They make me very happy though so I guess nothing else matters.

 I certainly am not a scholar of the written word, hardly, I can barely spell. I AM very fascinated by the world of books though, by the people who come and go and stay. I like asking questions. I like seeing why people get obsessed with certain things. Books have been around man, they survived the newspaper and the magazines and the TV. Everyone is saying the Internet is killing everything but book sales actually INCREASED this year while magazine industries are downsizing. There’s lots to say about that and honey knows I don’t have the answers…yet.

 There will be lots more to come. I think you should come back, okay?

Oh and the cartoons will come.

-qb

I am currently reading two books about hormonal over dramatic women lusting after unattainable infatuations while overcompensating for their social awkwardness with manic internal dialogue.  

Book 1: Spells and Sleeping Bags by Sarah Mlynowski

Yes, the “woman” in this book is a teenage girl attending summer camp but it’s all the same bells and whistles. Granted her insights probably have more references from CosmoGirl and her public ineptness has more to do with being comfortable in a sports bra, but it’s all part of the journey yes? Why did I read this? I wanted to see what the kids are up to these days, what the biz is feeding em’. I wanted to know if the O.C translates to the written word. Thankfully this is a book I can actually see girls bringing with them to summer camp and storing under their pillows with a flashlight while they dream about the possibility of a single kiss with the hot guy they saw running around on the beach. I’m happy to also report that “hot guy running around on the beach” translates anywhere.

Book 2: The Vagabond by Colette

I just started reading this yummy and delicious bit of print fit for Garbo. Honestly, the early 20th century grit and glamour described with lucious patience is sultry and slow, the kind of paperback you would see a silent film star throw at the wall of their dressing room in a fit of overwhelming emotion. I myself almost want to read it by candle light holding a bottle of gin. Does it make it a good book when you get lost in a daydream due to the lifestyle it promotes or is it bad because you’re more interested in ordering a vintage kimono than turning to the next page?