Cyber Dog

Camden Street Market is quite a place. There are hundreds of stalls and vendors selling clothes and food. It has a distinct feel to it, a mix of classic and vintage style mixed with counter-culture and punk-culture with multiple tattoo shops, leather places, and all kinds of clothing with metal spikes in them.

The most interesting part of the Market is probably Cyber Dog – a special kind of store in the middle of the marketplace. Mix a bit of anime, robot-fetish, cyborg culture, cybergoth/cyberpunk, and you have yourself Cyber Dog. I stumbled upon it almost by accident, and it popped up out of nowhere: a large twenty-foot archway with illuminated letters of the store was centered between two larger-than life cyborgs. Walking through the open storefront, a dark ultra-violet glow greets visitors, as does a dancing highlighter-yellow-blonde man in a plastic outfit twirling some glow sticks on a string. Two professional girls were dancing on little balconies in the back of the store, where you walk through rows of expensive techno-style watches and electronics. Everything was overpriced, so I stopped looking at the tags, and made my way down the escalators where I heard the real music thumping.

The escalator is small, but serves to gradually let in the awe of the lower level. There still wasn’t any sign of florescent or tungsten lighting: all black light reacted with just about every product there. Shirts, pants, hats, glowy things, posters, and strange accessories illuminated in hot pink, lime green, and electric yellow colors. Along one wall was thirty shirts or so with electronic screens – some had scrolling words, others were graphic equalizers that thumped along to the loud bass in the store. While taking a video of a hat with pink spikes on it and panning around the room, a small girl with green hair told me to keep my camera away.

After that, we went on to yet another lower level, one that was 18+ with even stranger outfits and strange...things...in glass bubbles. This one is a little short – cause I really just needed one more thing to write about.

HEY IM HOME!

Well I'm back in the states (currently writing this from the comforts of my own bed). I cannot tell you how much nicer these pillows are than hotel pillows/plane pillows! I'm exhausted though, I've been up since 5:30AM my time so that makes it like 2:30am or so for me right now.

I'm goin to sleep... but there are still more blogs to be published from things that happened that I either forgot to post or forgot to write about.

Good Night!

War Horse: What is It Good For?

I don’t consider myself a theater person at all. I am a student of film, and find the over-acting both annoying and distracting. I understand why it is done of course, but I find that it creates a poor substitute for a movie. I love the subtleties captured on film and prefer cinematic techniques to stagehand techniques.

War Horse is probably the first professional play I have attended. The preview looked hilarious to me – you gotta see how serious the actors are taking this giant horse puppet. There were three possible scenarios for this play.

A. I would love it and appreciate the critically-acclaimed play

B. I would hate the play for being so ridiculous, but enjoy the humor in breaking it down

C. It would be in the middle, and I could not make fun of it or actually like the play

It was C. for me. It is impossible not to be impressed with the puppetry involved. The horses have a slight steam-punk motif that I can certainly get behind. Movements seemed as realizitic as you can get for being a giant puppet impressively controlled by three puppeteers.

The first 20 minutes or so were filled with boring, drawn-out scenes to establish characters and show off puppet-play. The rest of the play teertered on being a child’s tale of a boy loving his animal a little too much (cliché) and then there were adult elements like the relationship between the drunk father and his son (cliché). I also felt there was an inadequate display of why “Joey” was a special horse. The boy in the play, Albert, seemed crazy for him…almost obsessed for no good reason other than his status as a horse. The story was unoriginal and poorly developed. It also suffered from simply being a play – an animated cartoon would have sufficed just fine.

I did find humor in drawing comparisons to Forrest Gump – Albert seemed just as mentally-slow as Forrest, and whined about “Joey” just as much as “Jenny” was mentioned in the movie. In a war scene, Albert’s best friend turned out to be a black guy (Bubba?) and he died as well. (That happens in war…)

But anyway, the theater teacher said it was one of the best plays he had ever seen. If that is the case, then most plays must really suck.