its making me krazr...

so i got this phone that is like exactly like my old phone which is special because you cant get it anymore it was this limited edition motorola thing which mattered before iphones and blackberries made all other phones redundant. anyways so i buy it,

because its like gold and is the only kind of phone i've used for years and years *the motorola krazr if you care. which i love because it has a memory card for lots of pics and a voice recorder and the front panel is a mirror which makes good for checking make up but rubbish for dropping on hard wood floors which i've done with my last 3 krazr's repeatedly.

its all shiny and new even though i bought it secondhand. and i'm all excited about it when i get it back to the flat and then i put in teh charger and my sim and charge it up but the thing about these phones is they save the messages on the handset and there are all these messages in german and they're all dead girly

then i think about all the phones i've had stolen from me, and had lost. and i'm thinking if this girl sold this phone wouldn't she have deleted the messages? and it does seem so recent and then i start to feel really bad and think its begging to be stolen and think maybe i should
drop it
on the floor so its cracked and then it will look more like my old one and less desirable to steal but either way i can't give it back to the german girl who lost it
and now i feel kinda bad using it.

and then later i meet my friend for a drink and i explain how all the messages are all really really really girly like,
LOL do you think he's flirting with me

and then he's like
so you read all the messages??
and then i feel even worse.


maybe i should just take it back...

falling from the frenzy that was the fringe...

gosh, where do i even begin, so i've just settled back in the wonderland that is berlin and it feels a little like stepping from one world to the next. to those that have never had the pleasure of taking part in edinburgh's fringe festival, for the four days i got to sample the pleasure i can only say its a little like the madness i'm used to in berlin, only with way more performances and people from everywhere. its a theatre/comedy festival on acid, where all your time is spent performing, promoting, trading contacts and taking in some brilliant entertainment and art from all over the world. Thanks to the wonder that is london's spoken word programme UTTER, spearheaded by the ginger haired king richard tyrone jones, i journied to this magical scottish place of hills and temperamental weather and even a castle, a big pretty straight out of a fairybook castle. and though i met no prince or princesses, there were poets and poetesses and comics and performance artists and breakdancers and street performers, all doing all they could to convince the other performers, theater goers and locals that ours was the show they must see.

funnily enough the most fun i had was probably the last day we did promoting/flyering. myself, richard and dzifa benson (my new sister in crime) to0k to the royal mile and jumped up on bollards, bellowing oru prose to the passing public. you'd think it would be humiliating, but it was like taking my performance skills straight down, stripped down to grass roots guerilla level. if you can get a crowd to form around when you're not protected by the safe confines of a stage, well you've got to be doing something right. *video of that coming soon.. oh dear. at one point we were bellowing beside this street performer, a silent ancient asian woman in blue face paint and a million piercings, i ran into her later at this venue and she very quietly and sweetly said she adored my poetry and to keep at it. ah the street performers and other promoters, like the really really hot girl with the whore sign who was out of flyers and just getting people to write the details of her show down.

i'm already thinking about going back next year, and what that will involve, but until then i'm having fond memories of meeting so many marvelous people. and i'm crushing on the city and its local spoken word scene hard. (it helps that all versions of scottish accents i heard sound so damn sexy to my cosmopolitan easyjetset ears :-)

but you probably want some gossip don't you? as i am the girl that likes to kiss and tell... well i'll excercise some ladylike discretion and name no names or particulars. but i can tell you that much to my amusement on one night i saw a fantastic solo show by nyc comedienne desiree burch, that involved audience participation, and at one point left me with a rather large orange dildo in my hand... drinking and chatting after with my edinburgh hosts emma and wallace, i encountered several very hot boys. one of which wrote his name on my arm so i could stay in touch, only i washed it off by accident, anotehr of which didn't write his name on my arm, but gosh i wish he had (although i do remember him taking my glasses off at once point and telling me i how beautiful i was, which made me all shy in a not very varjack way) and then emma and i snuck into this rockabilly club where i was plucked by the promoter/dj and swing danced all around the place. oh and then the following night there was attention from two gentlemen cant mention, but suffice to say the latter of the two resulted in a lot of very sexy flirtation.

and then it was soo late that me and emma had to go back to her place, where i could barely keep my eyes open, and in an hour she was shaking me awake and i was sleep walking into a cab, and now here i am in berlin again. nice one. xxx p

zayna and paula got soul....

5oo days of summer...

Last week I saw a premiere of the film The 500 days of summer. It is a charming little film. It feels very much like a first film, or film school film, in all its breathless desires to pack as many quirky effects and styles as it can into ninety some minutes. This was the kind of film that me and all of my film school friends wanted to make in college. *(those of us that weren’t hell bent on being the next tarantino that is) and what makes it the kind of film we wanted to make? Well…
It has (in no particular order)

• An anonymous narrator unconnected to the plot
• Split screens
• Rotoscoping
• Disney-esque animation mixed with live action
• Black and white silent film sequences
• Choreographed dance sequences
• Flashbacks and flashforwards
• Gorgeous animated titles
• a moody brit pop soundtrack (which for American audiences gives it yet more indie cred. Cue the smiths, belle and sebastien which in the plot are given supreme character relevance)
• very now hipster styling which makes all the characters dress in a kind of modern day version of retro (a neutral classy mash up of forties, fifties, sixties)

For me, and anyone like me, who has this crazy idea that we are totally completely individual in all of our quirky ironic indie interests, after about twenty minutes one is glumly forced to face the fact that yes, i/we belong to a demographic. And that did get in the way of the film for me sometimes. It was like the film was in the corner of a house party, giving me drink after drink, while saying like me like me like me, I’m cool too! we have soooo much in common. But some of those people at parties irritate, and then there are others that you clock and think, yes, you’re a bit young and keen and overexcited, but you are cool. So you let them ramble on and give you more drinks and as soon as they stop trying to prove themselves, the real coolness shines through. So while I can’t say I loved the film, i liked it enough to give it a chance. And this is the coolness I saw shining through.

It does very well to tell a different kind of love story, that isn’t so much about love necessarily but postmodern relationships in general. It plays with gender roles very nicely as well. other than films/tv about polyamoury, this is the first time I have EVER seen a film that deals with the matter of a “non=conventional” relationship. Especially, where it is the female character who is uninterested in commitment or labels. The writers definitely speak with experience, the story and characters involved are presented with sensitivity and bittersweet poignance.

The best part of the film however, is the casting of the two leads. Indie film it girl Zooey Deschanel and the impossibly adorable Joseph Gordon-Levitt are an utter joy to watch. the film is worth seeing for them alone. the way they relate and fail to relate to one another is genuine and real. There are many head noddingly accurate truths that are said and portrayed about relationships. (personal favourite sequence: after the morning they first have sex, and a split screen sequence about date expectation versus how events really play out) annnnd The art direction is fantastic. One of the cleverest ideas of the script, is making the pair work colleagues, in a greeting card company. This allows for some great visual jokes in shots, and a cheeky juxtoposition of the commercial representation of love and sentiment, versus the actual one.

So cast aside all the over the top style stuff, the heavy handedness about them LOVING british pop music (maybe this would bother me less if I was more American) and that matter of all of the characters bar the main two, being fairly two dimensional. (the best being the little sister of the male main character, she only exists to give her older brother advice, but it’s an adorable idea to have this totally together thirteen year old, coaching her moody heartbreak junkie brother). There are a few films that I love to see every time I come out of a relationship, or think about entering one. This could well be a film I add to the list. And though it may not be a date movie, date movies are kind of of over for our times aren’t they? when the concept of dating itself is overrated, maybe its time for more films like this where the equation is far more complicated than boy + girl = love.

3000 ways to commit suicide but… and doppelgangers

i just finished watching one of my favourite films of all time, humoresque. there are films i love that i watch so many times that when i pick up the dvd box and can hear it and see it in my head from beginning to end, and then there are films like this one that hit me so hard, as much as i love them i can only bare to watch once in a while when i’m in a very certain mood. what an astonishing film this is though. its probably one of the best studies i’ve seen of the character of the artist/and/or musician ever, its also a brilliant breakdown of an affair, of the older woman younger man dynamic and for a film shot in the forties is right on point with the issues of fame and artisitic criticism.

i don’t even know what drove me to watch it tonight, other than i knew i had to stay in and i knew it was teh kind of film to keep me grounded and thinking in such a way i couldn’t just float out of the flat after for a drink (she says typing wiht a volumninous glass of rose’ by the mouse…) this theme of involvement with artists is suprisingly a new one for me. see i never really dated many artists before, creatives etc. but now in berlin my life is a dense tapestry of performers of all descriptions. singers, performance artists, musicians, performance poets, actors and actresses, comics. its rarely a day that goes by when i’m out and i’m not with someone who performs in some way

and we’re a funny lot. really. we crave attention to sometimes superhuman proportions, we’re as vulnerable as we’re brash and outgoing. and fueled by our vices of choice, destruction is often just out of reach. i cheated a bit when i went wrote my why you should never date a kunstler piece. i cheated in that i hadn’t dated all those artists. ok an affair and a relationship with two conceptual artists (not at the same time, that woudl have been insanity) and i’ve defo had too many affairs with poets, but the musician section was mostly abstracted from the experiences friends of mine have had. and oddly that felt the most true

humoresque like many brilliant films of the forties, is rife with cracking dialogue, but the line that stuck out and made me laugh out loud in my living room was “a french philosopher once cited three thousand ways to commit suicide, but he left one out, falling in love with an artist” how terribly true. the line is said as the joan crawford character walks out drunkenly from a bar. excited to pass a note to her lover with news that will change their relationship, she goes to his rehearsal. and when he comes ot a pause and reads her urgent note, he crumples it up and asks the conductor to go back to the beginning of the concerto. he doesn’t even look up to see her in the auditorium. its brutal. and she tells him later she doesn’t want to be second to his music. and thats the problem. one falls in love with the artist partly because of the art, and the passion for the art, and not long after one becomes jealous of that very thing. i’ve even been guilty of the same. and yet, now that it comes to me i have this joke i often make with my friends

given the choice of meeting someone tomorrow who i loved and loved me, or a personal assistant who would work for free. i’d take the P.a. no doubt. no question. and its a joke kinda. but the frightening thing is , i also know its true. i used ot be the girl who’s relationship was my life, and it made me very happy, and i’d given up on my career really progressing anyway. i find myself in reverse now.

and why do i think about all these matters? because i’ve been commisioned to write a piece authored by my doppelganger. and as i try to connect with that old self, before the madness of performing, before a kunstlername and alterego utterly eclipsed me and the life before, i’m left thinking, how could anyone really handle me now seriously as a partner, and for that matter, how coudl i seriously entertain the matter of involving anyone else…

july 1st... THE ANTI SLAM...

Ok so, you may know what a poetry slam is.. A group of poets present their self written texts, round after round. And then the few winners of those rounds compete in a final round. The poet with the highest score, or loudest applause, or largest number of hands raised wins. Its fun, its competitive, its entertaining for the audience. But what if the format of the slam was turned on its head? What if the point wasn’t performing the best piece.. but the worst. I don’t just mean bad, I mean terrible, embarrassing, cringe worthy. So bad that its good. And inevitably, this also means… funny.

I bring you… The Anti Slam ??!!!!

Twelve performers “compete” in three rounds performing self written texts of up to three minutes. Six of the performers from the English spoken word and comedy scene, and six from the German poetry slam scene. Each performance is judged by a panel of judges giving scores from 1-10, decimal points used to prevent ties.

The three poets with the lowest scores from each round, have fifteen minutes to write a poem for the final round. The poet with the lowest score, wins. In the first round you can perform in your native tongue, but in the final, you will have to perform a poem in your second language.

When??? Wednesday 1st July.. 21 Uhr
Where?? S.I.N Shönleinstrasse 6 , Kreuzköln Berlin
How do I find out more? Send an email to Paulavarjack@Googlemail.com

--------------------------------German text follows-------------------

O.K., du weißt vielleicht, was ein Poetry Slam ist… Eine Gruppe von Poeten trägt selbst geschriebene Texte vor. Runde für Runde. Und die Gewinner dieser Runden treffen dann in einer Finalrunde aufeinander. Der Poet mit der höchsten Punktzahl oder dem lautesten Applaus gewinnt. Es ist lustig, es ist ein Wettbewerb, es ist unterhaltsam. Aber was ist, wenn das Format des Slams auf den Kopf gestellt wird? Was ist, wenn es nicht darum geht, den besten Text vorzutragen, sondern den schlechtesten? Und nicht einfach nur schlecht, sondern fürchterlich, peinlich, erbärmlich. So schlecht, dass es schon wieder gut ist. Und unvermeidbar lustig.

Bühne frei für… The Anti Slam ??!!!!

Zwölf Performer werden in drei Gruppen aufgeteilt und “wetteifern” mit selbst verfassten Texten von jeweils bis zu drei Minuten Länge. Sechs Performer aus der englischsprachigen Spoken Word und Comedy Szene und weitere sechs aus der deutschsprachigen Poetry Slam Szene. Jede Darbietung wird von einer Jury mit Punkten von 1-10 bewertet.

Die drei Poeten, die den Vorrunden jeweils den niedrigsten Punktestand erreicht haben, bekommen fünfzehn Minuten Zeit, einen Text für die Finalrunde zu schreiben. Und wieder gewinnt derjenige Poet mit den wenigsten Punkten. In der Vorrunde kann jeder in seiner angestammten Sprache performen, doch im Finale muss der Text in der Zweitsprache verfasst sein.

Wann??? Mittwoch, 1. Juli, um 21 Uhr
Wo?? S.I.N Schönleinstrasse 6 , Kreuzkölln Berlin
Für weitere Infos: Paulavarjack@Googlemail.com

coming soon...