Go for the history, if nothing else

I ended up going to see the stage version of Chicago at QPAC last night.  I had declined the original invitation of my wife when she bought tickets, as the plan was she would go with my daughter, who pulled out due to, well, generic teenage malaise and/or a recent period of mother/teen daughter tension, so I ended up there instead.

It was...interesting.   Somehow, I had managed to avoid knowing anything about this show apart from the vague understanding that it was something to do with a woman in jail for murder in the jazz era.  (Obviously, this means I didn't see the movie version.)   I didn't realise that it was entirely about women in jail for murder.

Which struck me as an odd thing to write a musical around.  So I was interested to read after the show how this came to be, and Wikipedia, as usual, has a handy summary:

The musical Chicago is based on a play of the same name by reporter and playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago Tribune. In the early 1920s, Chicago's press and public became riveted by the subject of homicides committed by women. Several high-profile cases arose, which generally involved women killing their lovers or husbands. These cases were tried against a backdrop of changing views of women in the Jazz age, and a long string of acquittals by Cook County juries of female murderers (jurors at the time were all male, and convicted murderers generally faced death by hanging). A lore arose that, in Chicago, feminine or attractive women could not be convicted. The Chicago Tribune generally favoured the prosecution's case, while still presenting the details of these women's lives. Its rivals at the Hearst papers were more pro-defendant, and employed what were derisively called "sob-sisters" – women reporters who focused on the plight, attractiveness, redemption, or grace of the female defendants. Regardless of stance, the press covered several of these women as celebrities.^[3]
 
Annan, the model for the character of Roxie Hart, was 23 when she was accused of the April 3, 1924,^[4] murder of Harry Kalstedt, who served as the basis for the Fred Casely character. The Tribune reported that Annan played the foxtrot record "Hula Lou" over and over for two hours before calling her husband to say she killed a man who "tried to make love to her". Her husband Albert Annan inspired the character, Amos Hart. Albert was an auto mechanic who bankrupted himself to defend his wife, only for her to publicly dump him the day after she was acquitted. Velma Kelly is based on Gaertner, who was a cabaret singer, and society divorcée. The body of Walter Law was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of Gaertner's abandoned car on March 12, 1924. Two police officers testified that they had seen a woman getting into the car and shortly thereafter heard gunshots. A bottle of gin and an automatic pistol were found on the floor of the car. Lawyers William Scott Stewart and W. W. O'Brien were models for a composite character in Chicago, Billy Flynn. Just days apart, separate juries acquitted both women.^[5]
 
Watkins' sensational columns documenting these trials proved so popular that she wrote a play based on them. The show received both good box-office sales and newspaper notices and was mounted on Broadway in 1926, running 172 performances. Cecil B. DeMille produced a silent film version, Chicago (1927), starring former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Phyllis Haver as Roxie Hart. It was later remade as Roxie Hart (1942) starring Ginger Rogers, but in this version, Roxie was accused of murder without having really committed it.

In the 1960s, Gwen Verdon read the play and asked her husband, Bob Fosse, about the possibility of creating a musical adaptation. Fosse approached playwright Watkins numerous times to buy the rights, but she repeatedly declined; by this point she may have regretted that Annan and Gaertner had been allowed to walk free, and that her treatment of them should not be glamorized.^[4] Nonetheless, upon her death in 1969, her estate sold the rights to producer Richard Fryer, Verdon, and Fosse.^[4] John Kander and Fred Ebb began work on the musical score, modeling each number on a traditional vaudeville number or a vaudeville performer. This format made explicit the show's comparison between "justice", "show-business", and contemporary society. Ebb and Fosse penned the book of the musical, and Fosse also directed and choreographed.

So there you go - as with Anything Goes, and its strange storyline of a female evangelist who was big in 1920's America but of whom I had never heard before, I learnt some interesting social history by having seen a stage musical.

What did I think of the show, apart from its educational value?   It's not bad, and I think the three female leads in particular were very good.   (It's quite a demanding show, physically, for the two main leads.)

But it does suffer worse than your average musical from the second act problem - wherein most shows struggle to match the high at which the first act usually ends.  In particular, the dance and musical ending of this show, after the trial, feels quite underwhelming.   My wife said that the movie ended differently, and that sounds like a good idea.

My other main reservation about the show is that I'm not sure if every production has to (contractly?) look as if it was still choreographed and costumed to be a 70's Bob Fosse production clone, but this version certainly does.  And, well, I have always thought this style looked cheesy:

That photo is from a review of a 2018 production in American, but the styles in last night's show were very, very similar.  Not sure it makes sense in any respect other than wanting to make 70's era homo and hetero sleeze styles look nostalgic.

Anyway, I also got to scope out a possible second balcony seat for next year's Ring Cycle - which I still haven't booked for myself.   Soon, soon. 

Quick casting call

If ever they are going to make a movie about the Trump impeachment, surely they would have to go with Laurie Metcalf to play Fiona Hill:

The regretable rise of conspiracy belief in the GOP noted by current prime conspiracy monger in the GOP

The problem with pretending something, as I have noted before, is that if you do it long enough, you start to believe it.   Hence it seems to me quite possible at least some portion of the American Right have gaslight themselves into genuinely believing conspiracies that they initially only pretended to believe to suck up to Trump.

It is such a disturbing thing to watch.
 

Thinking out loud

Various things going through my mind:

*   conservatives and their pro-nuclear for Australia attitudes:   I've always had the feeling that countries with snowy, freezing winters were ones where going completely renewable was going to be the biggest challenge, because they have weak and not many hours of sunshine in winter, and it's not always windy when it snows.  I therefore completely understand a strong "nuclear must be in the mix" approach there (in, say, Britain and parts of North America.)   

But Australia?   We've got enormous amounts of marginally useful (or useless) land in the centre of the county, and a climate whereby huge parts of it are sunny during winter, and with still fairly lengthy daylight hours as well.   Who freaking cares if there were a solar farm a 100km by 100 km near Birdsville?   If transmission issues are solved, my  hunch is that we're about the most suited nation in the world for gigantic scale solar - with a friendlier geography for building it than places like the Sahara, I would guess too.  (Too much hilly, moving sand there.)  

Yes, there are energy storage issues, but with nuclear there are huge costs and slow construction, decommissioning costs, and few people who want to live next door to one.   Why?:  because events like Fukushima show us that when they go wrong, they go really wrong and completely upend the lives of tens of thousands of people.   53,000 people are still displaced by Fukushima.   And this:

Along with cleaning the nuclear residues and enabling those displaced to return to their homes, the Japanese government aims to dismantle the Fukushima plant, a process that is expected to take at least 30 years and the cost for which could reach 20 trillion yen ($180.2 billion).

Extraordinary.

Renewables just do not carry anything like that financial and humanitarian risk - especially when you have a country where virtually no one is going to freeze to death if power fails in the depths of winter.  And let's face it - the technology for useful amounts of household energy creation and storage already exists.  I would prefer to see every new house built mandated to have either solar power and/or a fuel cell and a Tesla battery before I would want a nuclear power station within 50km of me.


*  This November in Brisbane is far, far from normal.  So many bushes and plants in my yard are dropping leaves massively to try to cope with the dry and heat:   it's really unclear how many are going to survive.   The rainwater tank is nearly dry, and given the cost of tap water now, most residents prefer to hope for the best instead of spending hundreds of dollars on keeping a green lawn or a bush alive.

We should have had heavy rain with storms throughout SE Queensland by now: instead it has been extremely patchy, and everyone is fearing a really dry summer that is going to kill off gardens in much the same way the last drought started to.

I must admit, though, that native plants are showing the hardiest resolve in getting through this.

We need rain, badly.

Climate change, drought, and bushfires

Interesting article at The Guardian, talking about the question of the Indian Ocean "dipole", which is linked to Australia's current drought, is increasing under global warming:

Recent research suggests ocean heat has risen dramatically over the past decade, leading to the potential for warming water in the Indian Ocean to affect the Indian monsoon, one of the most important climate patterns in the world.

“There has been research suggesting that Indian Ocean dipole events have become more common with the warming in the last 50 years, with climate models suggesting a tendency for such events to become more frequent and becoming stronger,” Ummenhofer said.

She said warming appeared to be “supercharging” mechanisms already existing in the background. “The Indian Ocean is particularly sensitive to a warming world. It is the canary in the coalmine seeing big changes before others come to other tropical ocean areas.”

Australian climatologists have pointed to this year’s dipole as at least one of the contributing factors in the bushfires. Jonathan Pollock, of Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said this dipole was “up there as one of the strongest” on record.

The article goes onto note that the dipole has been causing flood problems in East Africa - something getting scant attention in the rest of the world, it seems:

Gemma Connell, of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, raised concern over the impact of stronger and more regular Indian Ocean dipole events on Africa.

“What we are seeing from the current record events is large-scale flooding across the region. Entire swathes are under water, affecting 2.5 million people,” she said.

“And putting it in the broader picture of the climate crisis, this flooding is coming on the back of two droughts. What we are seeing, and what we are going to see more of, is more frequent climatic shocks coming. And all that is on top of the violence and conflict that has already displaced many of the people involved.

What's that?  Increased global warming leading to both big droughts and big floods?    Stoopid people like Andrew Bolt have not been able to get their tribal brains around that prediction for decades.

Mind you, as always, prediction of the exact effects on average local rainfall under climate change is much harder than predicting average global temperature rises:

Another concern for Connell and other humanitarian officials is that although climate scientists are racing to try to develop predictive modelling, there is disagreement over whether stronger Indian Ocean dipole events will lead to a wetter climate for Africa or a drier one.

 And if some reader comes here and says "so that means anything will "confirm" global warming?" - don't be an idiot:  global warming/climate change is settled science on one level, but they've always been open that changes to rainfall patterns on a regional level are hard to predict.

When rich nuts meet and plan the future...

By the way - does anyone in the world really think that any of those three made their billions/millions by really praiseworthy contributions to the betterment of humanity?  

Oh, please...

Just as sincere as his "this is the most humble day of my life" claim to the Parliamentary enquiry into his paper's phone hacking.

In pictures

Australia, November 2019:

 

 

 Australian conservative commentary, November 2019:

 

Former thoroughbred racehorse gets into the Christmas spirit

Too soon?  I mean, don't get me wrong - I'd either ban or at least halve the horse race industry, if it was up to me as benevolent dictator.

Projecting Idiot watch

Yes, Steve Kates plays his favourite song again:

It is almost impossible to have imagined more destructive despicable people than those who now inhabit the left. They want power only for themselves because they see only themselves as having virtue and good will. Everyone else is an enemy, and not just an enemy, but immoral as well. I must confess that I find everything about the modern left disgusting and immoral if it comes to that.

This from a man who thinks climate change is a grand conspiracy of socialist scientists, and who has no concern about a President who laughs at the calls for his political opponents to be locked up, who bragged about grabbing women's privates, who lies and/or bullshits just continuously, who has blown out the deficit, etc, etc.

And get this - CL in comments is playing his old projection game of "I've lost interest, so everyone's lost interest":

The US networks have scaled back their impeachment coverage because nothing has happened and nobody is interested. 

I have said this many times before - my impression is that Sinclair Davidson personally does not believe such vicious political Manichaeism - he just runs a blog that is devoted to promoting it.  Same with anti-gay, misogynistic and racist sentiment - not for him, he just runs a blog that people full of it like to participate in.

Why do it? 

Things I'd like to do too if I was a mad authoritarian President...

I said "things", but the post is inspired by this one example:

Philippines' Duterte Says He Will Ban E-Cigarettes, Threatens To Arrest Vapers

Oh look, here's another mad thing it would amuse me to do:

All tattoos exposed within North Korea must show praise towards the Kim (leaders) family or otherwise have some kind of approved political purpose attributed to them.

Fantastic - I wouldn't ban tattoos, just legislate their content (and parts of the body they can be applied, of course.)   Let's see:  characters from Steven Spielberg movies permitted, but only on upper arms and chest, under the shirt line.   Neck and back tattooing completely banned.  Tattoo on the face means jail time.  

Update:  people who commute to work on bicycles wearing lycra - confiscate the bike.  If they were in the centre of a main road lane - a $10,000 fine too.   Groups riding on a road, in lycra, and not in single file - jail time.

Commuting cyclists should only wear ordinary clothes.  And stick to bicycle lanes.  

Noah argues

I've started following Noah Smith on Twitter, and boy, he tweets a lot and has a lot of opinions.

I am not entirely sure how much to trust him, but he at least argues his positions pretty well.  I liked a recent thread dismissing the "coming automation unemployment crisis" claim (of Andrew Yang, for example), and perhaps I will find it again soon amongst the ridiculously high tweet output he delivers.

He also did not much like that recent article by David Graeber "Against Economics" that I extracted at length.   His criticisms in this article at Bloomberg, however, seems a bit light on to me, though.  It's a bit "well, yeah sure, one absolutely key part of the field of economics is in an absolute shambles, and people have gone back to scratch to see if starting start all over again can help, but do we really need to say economics as a whole is in a bad state?"

Going well, then

Noticed on Twitter:

And from Axios:

• Volker testified that allegations by Ukraine's former prosecutor general against Joe Biden and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch are baseless, and that he knows both to be honorable people.
• Volker also said in his opening statement that he was not aware of a linkage between military aid and Zelensky's announcement of investigations, and that he opposed the hold on security assistance.
• In a major change from his closed-door testimony, Volker said that Sondland raised "investigations" in a meeting with Ukrainian officials in the White House, and that he thought it was inappropriate.
• Morrison testified that he recommended that access to the Trump-Zelensky call transcript be restricted, but that its placement onto a highly classified computer system was an "administrative error."

Cats smarter then we knew??

This really is a remarkable clip, the one shown in this tweet:

As a couple of people in comments say:

Some stuff

*  At the Conversation - an article about the limited effectiveness of controlled burns for preventing bushfires in extreme conditions contains this statement which conservative "it's all the Green's fault" ignore (my bold):

Evidence is mounting of increased bushfire frequency and extent in both Australia and the US - a situation predicted to worsen under climate change. Changing weather patterns mean opportunities for controlled burning will likely diminish further. Coupled with expanding populations in high fire-risk areas, Australia’s fire agencies - among the best in the world - have a challenging time ahead.

* JC, who occasionally comes here to make stupid comments, thinks US Attorney General Barr's intensely partisan speech on how wrong it is to restrain executive power is really important.   Yeah, it is important, if you want an AG endorsing the most clearly wannabe authoritarian President we have ever seen.   Here are a couple of articles ripping into Barr's pair of recent, disturbing, speeches.   As usual, he is an example of how conservative Catholics have made Catholicism deeply unattractive.

JC, I keep telling you - you're gullible and just swayed by the last thing you read, and you self filter to read mainly Right wing alternative reality .  You said you watch a lot of Fox News when you are in the US, I think.  Yeah, I can tell, because you make stupider comments while you are there.  Or am I being too generous - you do make stupid comments all the time.

* Rand Paul:    never liked him.  Now he's the libertarian most in the tank for Trump.  What a disgrace.

* On a Netflix note:   have been watching two French horror/supernatural series - Marianne, and the French/Belgium production Black Spot.

My son and I are pretty much enjoying both.   Both, curiously, feature eccentric and somewhat comic male police investigators, which keeps making me think how the Pink Panther series was ahead of its time.

Both also feature some really fast dialogue, with some really rapid subtitle reading required.   You do have to concentrate.  Lots of people smoking, too.

Marianne is often very creepy and somewhat disturbing, and also features the most aggro modern Catholic priest you are ever likely to see portrayed on TV.  The town where it is filmed is very odd looking - very exposed to the uninviting looking ocean, and it's one of the least pretty French towns I have ever seen portrayed.  This site begs to differ:

“Elden” is actually Doëlan, a quintessential French harbour town located in the commune of Clohars-Carnoët. And yes, Doëlan is as idyllic as it seems in Marianne. At the port of Doëlan, little multi-colored fishing boats float in green water, surrounded by charming thatched cottages. Each afternoon, fishermen sell their catch directly from their boats. A lighthouse – the lighthouse in Marianne — stands at the edge of the port. 

Unlike Elden, which is a nest of gloom, Doëlan seems like a good place to get an Airbnb. Just compare Elden’s foreboding motto, “You’ll be back,” with Doëlan’s simple “A port of two halves.” The former translates to, “Stay away!” and the latter to, uh, “A port of two halves.” 

Also, Doëlan is appears to be relatively untouched by tourists. According to Brittany Tourism, “There are also just one or two boutiques, but this place hasn’t been invaded by tourist shops to date.” Brace yourselves, fishermen of Doëlan. The Marianne fans are coming for selfies.

Maybe it's just the way it is filmed that makes it look unattractive to me.

Anyway, the show is pretty good, if you like this genre. 

Black Spot, especially the first episode, seems to have really lifted too much from Twin Peaks.  Again, it really doesn't look much like the Europe we are used to seeing, but it's good looking and I liked the second episode more, so we will keep watching.