Archive for June, 2010

• Wedding Fever!

  Date: 2010.06.21 | Category: Sweden | Response: 1

  It’s been a pretty tough time to be a Swede, what with their not making it to the Eurovision finals and failure to qualify for the World Cup. However, this past weekend was, finally, a time to celebrate: Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria got married on Saturday in an incredibly lavish (yet tasteful!), televised affair. It marked the first time since Charles & Diana’s wedding in 1981 that I set my alarm to get up early and watch a wedding. (The vows were said at about 3:30 PM Swedish time, which is 6:30 AM here on the West Coast.)

  Of course, there was so much more than just the vows. I spent two hours on Friday afternoon watching the special pre-wedding concert held at Stockholm’s Konserthus. (All of this, incidentally, was streamed live on the web site of Sveriges Television — kudos to them for doing an excellent job of presenting a high-definition live broadcast with barely a glitch, despite the fact that tens of thousands of expat Swedes were no doubt glued to their screens.) The concert reminded me of those annual Kennedy Center Honors telecasts, with a mix of pop (including a Roxette reunion!), classical and jazz. There was even a pair of Chinese acrobats.

  The wedding itself kicked off many hours before the vows with lots of pre-show coverage, and continued ’til after midnight Swedish time, with dinner, dancing, and cake-cutting. Immediately after the wedding, the princess and brand-new prince traveled through the streets of Stockholm in a horse-drawn carriage, waving to the citizens. Amazingly, there was even a little TV camera mounted on their carriage. (The taxpayers picked up half the cost of the extravaganza, so they were certainly entitled to “attend” the ceremony.) I watched maybe 3-4 hours. My mom stayed tuned for about 12 hours (though she did emphasize that she’d done other things, “like hanging out the sheets”). If you weren’t watching in full-screen, there was a little scrolling Facebook app on the page in which people could post comments. I noticed that Swedes were watching from the Phillipines, Scotland, Israel, Mexico, all over the U.S., among many other countries.

  A bunch of the coverage is now archived, in case you want to check it out. If you only watch one video, I’d suggest this one, which is partly in English — Prince Daniel’s after-dinner speech. As a little backstory, Prince Daniel was, until two days ago, a commoner named Daniel Westling. He met the Crown Princess while he was working as her personal trainer at the gym he owned in Stockholm; she was recovering from a much-publicized eating disorder. The two have been dating for about eight years, and word has it that the princess’ dad — that would be the King of Sweden — wasn’t too thrilled about it at first. (His own bride Queen Silvia, Victoria’s mother, was not quite as common a commoner; she was descended from Portuguese royal lineage.) Daniel’s “rural accent” was “the subject of cruel jokes among Victoria’s blue-blood friends.”

  Eventually Daniel was accepted into the royal circle, undergoing a makeover (here’s a slide show including a pic of the scruffy-looking future prince in 2003). He was also “intensively tutored in English, French and German, and given classes in Swedish history and political science,” according to this article. One royal watcher said, “‘He is barely recognisable from the young man we saw in 2002. The courtiers taught him how to eat, what to say, how to stand.”

  The end result of all that training is very much on display in Daniel’s speech, which is delivered with great poise, with no notes. And it’s incredibly sweet and touching (I’ll admit it, I teared up). There’s no doubt these two newlyweds look at each other with love in their eyes.

  The wedding itself, which featured a (literally — so many tiaras!) glittering array of European royals, seems a little out of step with the very modern country that Sweden has become. Some surveys say that an increasing number of Swedes want to dump the monarchy. But Victoria herself is personally popular. She is a hard-working, highly educated young woman who travels all over the world promoting Sweden and doing charitable works. Victoria obviously has a strong sense of duty. Even though I really can’t justify having a monarchy in the 21st century, I still think she is an amazing person and Sweden is lucky to have her. I’m sure Daniel will be a great asset to Sweden, too; now that he’s a prince, he’s had to give up the gym biz, but plans to promote good health & fitness in his new royal role.

  The Swedish royal family does have its black sheep, though — Victoria’s brother, Prince Carl Philip, is dating a bikini model who used to appear on a reality dating show called “Paradise Hotel.”

• It’s all Greek to me

  Date: 2010.06.15 | Category: Movies | Response: 2

  Sugar update: As previously mentioned, for the second year in a row, I’m making an effort to give up sugar during the entire month of June. It’s not a weight-loss plan but an exercise in mindful eating — once you start reading labels, it’s amazing how many processed foods include sugar, corn syrup, and other sweeteners. Even Wheat Thins have sugar! Anyway, for the first week it was difficult: “I could get a Jamba Juice! — no, wait, I can’t. I could get a frozen yogurt! — no, I can’t.” It gets easier. I eat a lot of fruit. I did fall off the wagon once: I had a rhubarb mojito, mainly because I couldn’t resist finding out what a rhubarb mojito tasted like. (Answer: delicious!)

  I’m a fan of the English comedian Russell Brand, so it was inevitable that I would see his new movie “Get Him to the Greek,” despite the fact that it was described in several reviews as a “gross-out comedy.” There are some gross moments, but honestly, it’s not so bad. As for the film, well, if you’re a Brand fan, it’s pretty much wall-to-wall Russell. But if you’ve already seen “The Hangover” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (the film in which Brand’s character, dissolute rock star Aldous Snow, debuted), “Greek” seems a little been-there, done-that. The biggest surprise was co-star Jonah Hill, who plays a lowly record company employee who is tasked with transporting Snow from London to New York (for a “Today Show” appearance, leading to one of the best random cameos I’ve ever seen in a movie: Paul Krugman!) to Los Angeles. I’ve seen Hill in a bunch of films and never really warmed up to him, but he shows unexpected depth in this role. As Hill’s girlfriend, “Mad Men”’s Elisabeth Moss is refreshingly well-rounded compared to the usual harpies you see in bromance pics. In all, not a must-see, but a pleasant matinee if you need to get out of the summer heat for a couple hours.

• I Explain It All For You

  Date: 2010.06.07 | Category: Theater | Response: 3

  My friend Vallery has reminded me that it’s been forever since I posted here. I have the best of reasons: I have been cleaning. I’m talking about polishing the woodwork and vacuuming the dog hair from the staircase carpeting. Things I ordinarily let slide, because dragging the heavy vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs is a pain, and polishing the woodwork makes my arm hurt. The backstory is that a friend of ours asked if his band could take some publicity photos in our house. I said sure, because I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to make myself do a thorough tidying. We also had some out-of-town friends coming over, so the timing worked out well. I really didn’t want to look at the photos later on and see dust bunnies or random piles of magazines in the background. Twenty-four hours later, the house still looks immaculate. We’ll see how long it lasts!

  We did make time on Saturday to go see a preview of “Durang Me!” at Custom Made Theater Co. — an evening of two one-act plays by Christopher Durang. I had always wanted to see “The Actor’s Nightmare,” and it was indeed very funny. A hapless actor (Eric O’Kelly) is welcomed to the theater by a relieved stage manager, who is glad that the understudy has finally arrived. He is then thrust into a role in a Noel Coward play — one he has never rehearsed; indeed, he has no idea where he is, and why people keep calling him George. Or Stanley. The man has to improvise his lines, which proves even more difficult when “Private Lives” suddenly morphs into “Hamlet.”

  Not having been raised Catholic, I wasn’t sure how well I’d relate to “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You,” which is presented in the form of a lecture by the titular nun (wonderfully played by A.J. Davenport, who manages to be both intimidating and comic). She attempts to answer audience questions (allegedly pre-submitted on index cards) about Catholic teaching — for instance, if you ate meat on a Friday before Vatican II, are you going to hell? Occasionally, she is assisted by her 7-year-old prize pupil Thomas, who receives cookies for each correct answer he gives. Thomas is played by a young actor named Cole Cloud, and seriously, this kid is amazing. I am too nice to bash a child actor on my blog, but believe me, I have definitely made comments about overly precious or obnoxious kids to my companions after some shows. Cloud, however, has the poise and presence to blend in perfectly with the other extremely fine actors in this show. Anyone who has ever questioned the inconsistencies in their particular religion will enjoy this play.

  I was also remiss in not mentioning “In the Wake” by Lisa Kron, now playing at Berkeley Rep, which we saw a couple weeks ago. I was such a fan of Kron’s “Well” that I bought tickets to “In the Wake” months in advance, when it was still listed as “A New Play by Lisa Kron.” I’m glad I did, because if I’d heard the subject matter of “Wake,” I may have decided to skip it, and then would have missed a thought-provoking evening of theater. The play takes place during the Bush years, beginning with the contentious election of 2000. The lead character, Ellen (Heidi Schreck), is not a fan of Bush, to say the least, and she talks and talks about the injustice of it all. Remember those people who couldn’t bring themselves to turn off CNN and wouldn’t shut up about hanging chads? That’s Ellen.

  One might think initially that “Wake” is preaching to its liberal Berkeley audience. However, Ellen is far from a totally sympathetic character — Joe found her so irksome that he did not like the play at all — and I found that the show challenged many of my assumptions. Ellen’s friend Judy, who spends most of her time volunteering at refugee camps and (gasp!) refuses to vote, has the best scene in the whole play, when she finally forces Ellen to confront her misplaced idealism. At two hours and 40 minutes, “Wake” is too long, and I’m not sure Ellen’s monologues — in which she breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience — work; they seem to break the rule of “show us, don’t tell us.” Still, I think “Wake” is well worth seeing, and I suspect Kron will tighten it a bit before it moves to New York later this year.