A Night @TheOperaTwitter

When I read that The Royal Opera House were planning on creating an opera based around the social networking site Twitter, it’s needless to say my eyebrows were raised. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a ‘Tweetaholic’, well, a lot of one, but even I thought they were taking the biscuit when I read their greatly anticipated plans for the show. Apparently, in an attempt to get more people involved in the creative side of opera, ‘tweeters’ are being asked to submit their ‘tweets’ online of up to 140 characters, which will then be thrown together to form the libretto of the opera. As far as I know I never saw a Facebook film in the box office, or a MySpace musical in the West End, so why should Twitter be the one to take centre stage? The site has had increased popularity within recent months, with the appeal of being able to follow celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Jonathan Ross, along with keeping track of celebrity feuds involving stars Perez Hilton and Will.I.Am, amongst many other famous names. But why then, did the idea to create an opera show come about? Picturing it in my mind, I see lookalikes of Ashton and Demi running off into the sunset, whilst Perez and Will.I.Am beat each other up mid song. But, I’m completely wrong, as the Royal Opera House gave the public a small teaser of the happenings in Act One, Scene One: “William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are anxious for revenge after he has killed one of their number.” I understand the bird theme; Twitter’s iconic logo being none other than a bird, but can that really carry a story along for the length of an opera? I have my doubts. But I suppose I should graze over the positive aspects to come out of this production. It does get younger people involved in a traditional form of storytelling; bringing their highly technologically revolved lives back down to earth for a short while to interact in some real creativity, and who knows it could be fun. Either way it makes me wonder just how much of a downhill slope Britain is on; can we really think of no better entertainment than to take one of the most popular social networking sites and mould it into something it’s really not supposed to be? Alison Duthie, head of the ROH2, warns the public to “expect the unexpected”. Don’t worry Alison; I don’t think we were going to do any less.

Conspire This...

Conspiracy theories; they’re out there. Some completely ludicrous in my mind, others slightly more viable. I’ve spent this evening firstly watching the documentary ‘Did We Land on the Moon?’ which attempts to point out various pieces of evidence arguing against the belief that man ever set foot on that large, white, circular object in the sky. What a bummer it would be if it turned out that one of the greatest events in the history of all time was one big hoax. I can’t seem to get my head around why anything like that would be set up for the public to get sucked into, but I suppose conspiracy theories are what they are because we will never find out the truth. I’d never questioned or even thought about questioning the moon landing being a fake, and I’d have gone on happily believing it really did happen had I not come across this documentary. I have to admit after watching things like this your beliefs are definitely swayed in the opposite direction, what with their biased damning evidence and the friendly voice-over guy who just wants the best for you. So with that in mind I’ll take into account the effect and influence that the media can have upon us. Nevertheless it was an interesting show to watch, and it makes me think about all the other theories out there that could be fakes. Are the government sitting back in their leather recliners laughing at us whilst stroking their white cats? Or are they snorting at how ridiculous these conspiracy theories are? The main arguments I grasped from watching this particular documentary were all very sceptical, such as why did the flag wave about when there is no air or wind in space? And why did the LEM leave no crater blast when landing on the moon? Well, all I can say is that there are tons and tons of stuff that we don’t know about the moon and space yet, so I suppose anything is possible really, and I guess that somewhere out there are plausible explanations for every argument put across in the documentary. One thing I did notice when watching was that they had about ten guys arguing for the conspiracy, and no more than two arguing against. Needless to say one of the guys worked for NASA and really wasn’t doing a great job at putting his argument out there. But then again I’m sure the editors had a part to play in that. Well of course after watching that I wasn’t content enough that my evening of researching conspiracy theories was done with, so I started watching the JFK assassination conspiracy. This one I found a little harder to grasp, as I wasn’t quite sure what the big hoo ha was about the whole thing. Yes I understand it was a terrible tragedy, but twenty minutes in and all they’d pointed out was that there was a possible second assassin involved, not just the one. Err, so? That’s not such a mysterious conspiracy to me. Anyway as it went on it got a little more interesting, with none of the doctors at the hospital ever taking an X-Ray of his brain, or doing any drawings of where the bullets had entered his body. Why didn’t they? One guy claimed that he was just so shocked by the event that it completely slipped his mind. I suppose that’s understandable enough, sort of. But still, whether you’re just a regular guy off the street or the President of the United States, the same rules should still apply. I guess one thing can be certain; we’ll never know what the truth is. Sorry if you were expecting some sort of revelation, or a new theory. But really, that’s all I got. It’s scary to think about how many lies the government might be telling us. Why can’t we know what goes on in places like Area 51? Why should things that concern the whole world be kept a secret? And why is it that just because their careers have taken them there, should that mean that they gain access to information that really concerns everyone? At the end of the day, maybe we should all just take a leaf out of Wallace and Gromit’s book; the moon probably is just a big lump of cheese anyway.

Totally Proud

Well yesterday it really did rain on our parade as we headed to Brighton to do some out and proud things. I’d like to say our spirits weren’t dampened by the mood, but, they were, so we didn’t spend as much time there as we’d have liked to. I didn’t realise how short the journey was from London to Brighton, literally took us about an hour on the train! So it’s safe to say I’ll be heading down there a bit more often in future, if not for the pride then for the beach, sea and clubs, as yesterday I saw and experienced none of that! Which leaves me to wonder what we actually DID do yesterday?? Well, there was a lot of walking, (and running, christ) some major peeing, and a lot of laughs. Then there was the train ride home. Literally that was it. Ha. But we did have fun and saw a lot of bizarre things. I think that’s the first time that chavs have walked onto a train and I haven’t felt intimated or worried; what with the gays definitely outdoing the chavs on the gay to chav ratio. I always get excited if I see a possible gay, with general whispers and points to the person next to me that goes something like ‘definitely a dyke’. But seen as there were going to be a lot of them heading to Brighton at the same time as we were, I couldn’t really muster up enough mouth muscle energy to give a full account each time I saw a girl with short hair or a guy with tight tops and a shoulder bag (major stereotyping there don’t take my word for it). So instead we had a shortened type of recognition in the form of two words: ‘totally proud’. Well it worked for us. But England weather being how it is, completely unpredictable, it rained like there was no tomorrow. For a time I did my best to stay dry; fleeting between various umbrellas in a hope that my hair would stay intact, however after a point I really lost all motivation to keep up this endeavour, and thought fuck it this is gay pride not fashion week, I’ll be gay, proud, and wet. EXCUSE the pun. It was so good to see everyone come together for a day to celebrate their sexuality, and it made me think how un-alone I really am. I knew there were plenty of gays out there, but seeing them altogether like that you don’t quite realise the amount of company you really have. The atmosphere was so chilled and you could sense the aura of happiness about people, which made it all the nicer to be around. I’m not saying us gays are friendlier than the hetero’s, but I got the feeling that it was easier to talk to random people, and that you wouldn’t get evil eyed or told to fuck off as a reply to ‘Where are the toilets?’