French Culture, Philly Style

UPDATE: It seems like at least part of the delay was due to the fact that one of the main performers was mistaken as a wino and detained by security. Gotta love Philly!


Yesterday was the last day of the month-long Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (goodbye, backyard trapeze artists). For the grand finale, the French acrobat/musical troupe La Compagnie Transe Express put on a free outdoor show right outside our building - I was pretty pumped about it since there was a lot of hype leading up to it, and according to all the posters it would involve lifting a bunch of musicians 100 feet off the ground with a crane for an aerial percussion concert/trapeze act/light show. Ben and I watched them bring in the crane and assemble the giant cage/sideways Ferris wheel thingy on Friday night, and last night made sure to go outside plenty early to get a good spot.

The show was supposed to start at 7:30, and by 7:15 the street was packed. Even though I was standing only about fifty feet from our building's front door, I don't think I could have gone home if I wanted to - it was just wall to wall people. Most people were pretty good-natured about it, but there were a few who tried to shove their way through the crowd and ended up in shouting matches with those who refused to move (or rather, couldn't really move because there was nowhere for them to go). Also, there was a lady not too far ahead of me who seemed to have a claustrophobic freakout, and she sort of went crazy and ran through the crowd (nothing opens up a path like a crazy person) to the fence surrounding the crane, which she promptly jumped so she could sit on the other side and rock back and forth. The crane operator looked like he wanted to tell her she wasn't supposed to be there but couldn't bring himself to approach her, so she spent the rest of the evening in there. Eventually her husband was able to make it over to her, and he stood there really awkwardly and occasionally patting her back.

Anyway, by 7:55 the show still hadn't started and I was afraid the crowd was going to turn ugly, what with everyone being shoved together so tightly and Philly not being renowned for its well-behaved citizens. Some people started climbing onto bus shelters and lamp posts so they could get better views, and others started booing and chanting "start the show! start the show!" I was trying to remember a TV special on how to survive crowd crushes I saw once, because I was afraid I was going to get trampled to death a few yards from my own home. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to stick out your elbows and just try to ride the crowd like a wave, but thankfully it didn't come to that.

Finally, right at 8:00, the show started. Except, since it was a French circus troupe, "starting" meant one guy dressed like a hobo wandered out and started examining the giant cage/Ferris wheel contraption, while making a big show of falling all over himself and talking to the crowd in French. And maybe the crowd would have had the patience for a slow start at 7:30, but they wanted nothing to do with it after half an hour of waiting. When it became clear that it was going to take awhile for anything interesting to happen, the booing and chanting resumed, with the assorted loud person yelling things like "do something interesting!" or "climb up there already!" This continued for about 15-20 minutes, as more performers wandered in and theatrically "discovered" the contraption but didn't actually do much with it. Finally, one of them climbed to the top of it and started ringing a single bell, which temporarily soothed the crowd. Unfortunately, when after several minutes it was still just that one guy ringing his one bell, someone yelled "do something different!", which the crowd promptly began chanting.

Anyway, after about half an hour of build up and increasing crowd unruliness, the performers finally climbed into their contraption, and as soon as the crane lifted it into the air the crowd calmed down and watched the rest of the show peacefully. It ended up being extremely awesome - the thing spun around while expanding and contracting, and in addition to the dangling percussionists there were also several suspended trapeze artists, who did all sorts of impressive swinging and contorting. The Philly Inquirer posted this short video of part of it, which sort of gives you an idea of what it was like but in no way conveys how impressive it really was.

So all in all it was a good day - I got to see an amazing French circus troupe for free, and I did not get trampled to death by impatient Philadelphians. What more could you ask for in life?

Unpleasant Surprise

One of our favorite Philly restaurants is Han Dynasty, which has the best Szechuan food ever. I was trying to remember the name of an awesome noodle dish I got there last time, and thought I'd check the menu on their website. So I typed handynasty.com into the address bar and... let's just say that I didn't realize that Han Dynasty is just two spaces removed from Handy Nasty. So if you are interested in delicious spicy Chinese food, make sure to go to handynasty.net - and only go to handynasty.com if you are interested in a different type of spiciness altogether.

That is all.

New Neighbors

We live next door to the University of the Arts, so there's often weird stuff going on outside our window. Usually it's just bizarre music and the occasional hollering (not to mention all the sad kids in skinny jeans with assorted facial piercings who loiter outside), so Ben and I didn't really pay much attention when we started hearing whooping and clapping at 15 minute intervals awhile ago. But the other day while we were on a walk, we rounded the corner behind our building and ran smack into this:

Apparently as part of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, there is now a temporary trapeze school in our backyard. It's actually really cool, we can sit on our balcony and watch them go at it:

Getting hooked up...

...grabbing the bar...

...woooo!

I will be sad when they leave and we no longer have a free (albeit rather tame) circus every night.

I am becoming crotchety

For the first time in my life, I just wrote a letter to the New York Times editor - this article just got me too aggravated not to. Since I have no hopes of it actually being published, I thought I'd post it here so someone besides the Times' spam filter will see it. It was a lot more ornery, but Ben helped me tone it down in the spirit of reasonable discourse.

To the Editor:

Mr. Winerip admonishes several public education reformers for not having attended public schools themselves, while neglecting to mention that several have taught (Michelle Rhee, David Levin) or led (Marc Sternberg) in them. Did those experiences not provide them with insight into the public school system?

Mr. Winerip’s larger oversight is his conflation of all public schools into one category, as if any one public school district (e.g. Quincy, MA, where Mr. Winerap attended school) is interchangeable with the next (e.g. Roxbury, MA, not ten miles away). According to the latest census data, a mere 6.7% of families live below the poverty level in high-performing Quincy, and 72.5% are white. In Roxbury, where student achievement is more faltering, 25.7% of families live in poverty, and whites are a minority.  To students in struggling urban school districts, affluent and racially homogenous districts like Quincy are just as alien as Phillips Exeter.

Lastly, the assertion that Michelle Rhee is “education’s Sarah Palin” is blatantly partisan to the point of offense. Perhaps she is education’s Gloria Steinem, or MLK – or perhaps she is a complicated political figure to whom people are entitled different opinions. Mr. Winerip’s opinions of her and her colleagues should be presented as such, not as fact.

Caroline Rubin
(Student from an affluent suburban public school, teacher from a not-so-affluent urban one)

Umm...

Background knowledge: Our building's lobby has a revolving door, and a regular door next to it. You can even push a button and the regular door will open automatically, in case your hands are full or you are otherwise indisposed. Also, there is always someone at our building's front desk, and during these events the person was Ted, who is very friendly and awesome.

Situation: Ben and I disembarked from the elevator into the lobby just in time to see a girl, who looked to be around our age, attempt to go through the revolving door while pulling a wheeled suitcase behind her. She made it into one of the revolving door compartments, but there wasn't enough room for her suitcase to make it into the compartment behind her.

Expected outcome #1: Girl backtracks out of the revolving door, and goes through the regular door.

Expected outcome #2: Girl is very committed to using the revolving door, backs up enough to pick up her suitcase and carry it close enough to her body such that it fits in the compartment with her and she is able to successfully exit.

Expected outcome #3: Girl is very committed to using the revolving door, but unable to figure out how to get the suitcase through. She lets go of the suitcase, completes her revolution through the door, then comes back in through the regular door to retrieve her suitcase.

Expected outcome #4: Any other course of action that involved the girl, who looked to be of sound mind and body and is presumably mentally competent enough to be allowed to travel independently, figuring out how to end up outside the building with her suitcase.

Actual outcome: The girl just stood there. For about 30 seconds, just kind of looking at the suitcase stuck behind the door panel. After it became apparent she wasn't going to figure it out, Ted said, "try backing out and going through the other door." She looked at him for a moment, then tried to keep going forward, only to be surprised when she again couldn't continue because of the stuck suitcase. She resumed looking at the suitcase and standing still. Ted once more tried to explain the solution to her, this time she didn't attempt to move in either direction, and commenced staring at Ted. Finally, Ted came out from behind the desk, took the suitcase from her, told her to continue out the revolving door, and took the suitcase through the normal door himself so he could hand it back to her outside.

After she was on her way and Ted came back inside, he made eye contact with me and Ben, who had been standing in the elevator watching the whole bizarre situation, and the three of us simultaneously burst out laughing.

Disclaimer: I am almost certain that I didn't just make fun of a mentally challenged person, but if I did I take everything back. In retrospect, I'm fairly sure the most likely explanation (given her relative youth, the number of college students that rent in our building, and the fact that it was early morning) is that she was on something, or coming down from being on something.

Moral of the story: Don't rave and revolve?

Is that a bear in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Since nothing exciting has happened in my life since my night of Ukrainian acrobatics, and since I already showed you all the funny videos of me as a kid, and since it's almost my sister's birthday, I give you:



My favorite part is the surprise at 0:44. I believe that's still how she starts every morning...

Murder Mystery

Every spring my office has a Murder Mystery party. It was one of the first things people told me about on my first day back in July, and the past nine months have been a slow, steady crescendo of anticipation. It is the Social Event of the Year.

We got our character assignments and backgrounds a month ago - the theme this year was "Cirque du Slay," and I was Tatiana Torovic, Ukrainian Acrobat. The guy who works in the cube next to me was my acrobat boyfriend. Neither one of us wanted to be underdressed, so last week we went out and rented costumes. We also looked at a bunch of pictures of acrobats online and bought facepaint, so we could be adequately made up.

This shows our costumes, but it's hard to see our makeup.

I was a little bit nervous about going to a work party in basically nothing but a swimsuit, but I ended up winning the Best Dressed award so it was totally worth it. I did look like I was naked as I walked there with my coat on over my leotard, though.

Here we are with the Ringmaster! (you can see our makeup better too)

People take the Murder Mystery really seriously, and were in character all night. I did my best to channel my extended Russian family for my accent, and I ended up being just a few votes shy of Best Performer (it went to Crystal Divine, the circus psychic, who held a seance and got possessed my the spirit of the murder victim).

Not the most flattering angle, but it give you an idea of what I mean by "basically a swimsuit."

Cornelius Barnum, the circus owner, had a nefarious plot to flood the Circusdome after opening night so we could leave town with everyone's money and not have to stay and perform. I had to pass messages and bribes between him and the crooked contractor, even though doing so was antithetical to the values of my Ukrainian village, because if I didn't comply he would revoke my work visa and get me deported. When Barnum got murdered I was pretty sure it had to do with this criminal activity, but it turns out the local beauty pageant winner did it - she didn't like the circus being in town and stealing attention away from her. Her past as a florist's assistant gave her all the knowledge she needed to poison the pie a clown threw at Cornelius with Nerium Oleandar. Although I didn't unravel the murder, I was successful in my other objective for the evening - preventing a slew of other circus women from stealing my Acrobat Boyfriend. All in all, a successful evening!