14 書香人生 B O O K S & R E V I E W S SUNDAY, AUGUST 16, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES Softcover: US CDs The view from Santigold rip-offs go, Boom, with the city’s rougher voices, like Big the debut single by Anjulie, Tuck, Tum Tum or Fat Pimp. inside Hugh Asis among the cleverest. Apart is an unmemorable rapper, from the drums, all the other instruments though; dismal rhymes abound on his debut — the flatulent junkyard brass, the bone- , . Nevertheless dry Morricone guitars — are obfuscated, he’s got a gift for the sticky concept. Hefner’s harem floating through haze. On top Anjulie coos Walk That Walk is an addictive ode to coyly about giving in when really she should catcalling. With its bouncy, high-pitched Former Bunny Girl Izabella St James paints an know better. And the faintly Caribbean synth stabs, Flashout captures the nervous unflattering picture of life at the chorus — “Boom, sha-la-ka” — echoes a energy of conspicuous consumption. And skipping heartbeat, a theme woven into the occasionally Dorrough’s overreliance on the Playboy Mansion and its lord of the manor song’s lyrics. (On Aug. 4, Boom received a simple results in cleverness. On What’s My 2009 MTV Video Music Award nomination Ringtone, he wonders what song plays when by Carole Cadwalladr for breakthrough video.) he calls his girl: “Is it Love by Keyshia Cole?/ The Observer, London But unlike Santigold, who occasionally Or Playa Cardz by Keyshia Cole?/All I know forgets to ground her excursions in song is it better not be that I Should’ve Cheated Bunny Tales is subtitled “Behind craft, Anjulie isn’t eccentric in the least. Of by Keyshia Cole.” Closed Doors at the Playboy Man- Publication Notes ANJULIE Guyanese descent by way of Toronto, Anjulie Last year Dorrough had a hit in the sion,” but it could have been called Anjulie has an unapologetic pop ear, an intuitive gift southern US (alongside SupaStarr) with “Too Much Information.” Because Hear Music for melody and a voice that, while not rich or Halle Berry, a celebration of women whose while there’s a lot of detail in here deep, eases into long sighs, syllables melting beauty recalls that Oscar-winning actress. which is really not terribly surprising into each other so that entire lines, or verses, But between then and now the rights to — that Hugh Hefner, aged 78 when can seem like one long, fluctuating note. that bawdy song were sold to the Louisiana the book was written (now 83), is All together it makes for an often- rapper Hurricane Chris, whose slightly more not, in fact, one of the world’s hottest sumptuous debut album of lithe, modern genial Halle Berry (She’s Fine) has become lovers — there’s also an awful lot that coffeehouse soul (in senses musical and a huge success in the US, bigger than either the world didn’t really need to know. literal: Hear Music is a joint venture between of Dorrough’s hits. Such as, after popping a Viagra twice Starbucks and Concord Music Group) that To add insult to injury, Hurricane Chris’ a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, Hef smartly avoids the bohemian. The Lisa version comes with its own dance (largely still liked to sleep with up to four girls Stansfieldesque Some Dumb Girl splits the repurposed from My Dougie). Even Berry at a time and “wiped himself off with difference between Muscle Shoals and acid tried it out on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. a wet bath towel after he had sex with jazz. The Heat and Same Damn Thing are each girl and before the next.” Or that lightly drizzled with calypso and reggae. And he video for Psychic City (Voodoo during the ensuing performance, with Love Songs could have been a Neil City), from the new album by the many girls arrayed around the room, number, and it knows it: “I fall so easy for T experimental dance-rock duo Yacht, and porn showing on various screens, Bunny Tales: Behind Closed the cheesy things in life,” Anjulie sings. begins with a disclaimer: “Due to our he encouraged them to give “Oh Doors at the Playboy Mansion Midlife: A Beginner’s Crazy That Way has the most strong personal convictions, we wish to daddy!” shout-outs. conventional beginning of the songs here, stress that this film in no way endorses a By Izabella St James Guide to Blur with just a woman, a piano and a confession: belief in the occult.” It’s not a pretty picture that Izabella Blur St James paints and it’s certainly not 256 pages Virgin “Sometimes I lock myself inside your closet, It’s a funny statement, coming from a an erotic one (“It seemed to me he breathing the scent of your clothes/Take group so invested in ritual and enigma. Running Press just laid there like a dead fish”). The home a T-shirt and pretend I lost it, hide it See Mystery Lights was named after an mansion, though still the stage set for under my pillow.” But then come the strings, unexplained phenomenon in Marfa, , regular Playboy parties, is a decrepit marching a quick step beneath her, and where parts of the album were recorded. Its time warp, unchanged since the 1960s. man performing sex acts with after that the multitracked vocals. Soon the cover, designed by Boyd Elder, involves an “The carpet in the upstairs hallway also teenagers is somewhat out of the mood is acoustic Michael Jackson as filtered arrangement of mystic triangles, encased had not been changed in who knows ordinary, although St James rather through the lens of Ne-Yo, a hint of how in holographic foil. Among the album’s how long. Everything was just old and blows her cover by mentioning in the next generation of singer- is catchier refrains is this one, from Ring the stale. Archie the house dog would the prologue that the catalyst for her coming of age. Bell, a slow-throbbing opening track: “Will regularly relieve himself on the hallway writing the book was meeting “one of we go to heaven, or will we go to hell?/It’s curtains, adding the scent of urine to the few elite actors who are members ong before he was animated and my understanding that neither are real.” the general scent of decay.” of the exclusive US$20-million-a- immortalized as 2D, the lead singer Jona Bechtolt is the chief heretic So what exactly is St James movie club.” The actor, after chatting L of the virtual band , Damon behind Yacht and a remix specialist with doing there? She becomes one of her up, was disturbed to discover Albarn was the leading bloke in the English a canny knack for concept. (The band’s Hef’s “Girlfriends,” with a room in that she once lived in the Playboy band Blur. name originated as an acronym for Young the mansion, a US$1,000 allowance Mansion, so Bunny Tales reads like For many, Blur is a needle in the Americans Challenging High Technology.) (picked up in person from Hef’s an attempt at self-justification. haystack of mid-1990s His previous were solo projects, bedroom every Friday morning, when Just possibly, he was unimpressed DORROUGH MUSIC one-hit wonders. , forever linked but here he teams up with Claire L. Evans, he’d make a point of discussing any by her account of sleeping with a man Dorrough with a teen slasher film and often played at an artist and writer from his hometown, perceived personal failings — usually who eats all of his meals in bed, has a E1 sporting events, is pretty much the only Blur Portland, Ore. Their partnership works “lack of harmony in the group or lack retinue of staff to maintain his 1,500 song you’ll find on anyone’s iPod. Luckily, easily: On a starkly funky track called I’m of sexual participation”), a US$10,000 “scrapbooks” and insists all Girl- we have this double-disc “beginner’s guide” in Love With a Ripper Bechtolt sings the down-payment on a car and all the friends are tucked up inside by a strict to lead us through more than 10 years of verse and Evans sings the chorus, along plastic surgery you could want. Hefner 9pm curfew. And although she says some of the best Brit-pop ever created. with a mock-confessional coda. (“I got told has one tab with a Beverly Hills sexual participation was voluntary, it Disc 1 offers , Girls and Boys to marry a doctor,” it begins.) On Summer hairdresser and another with a surgeon doesn’t sound all that voluntary. and the aforementioned Song 2. Disc 2 Song, which rides a disco beat, their voices and all Girlfriends are encouraged to There’s more than a touch of the presents warm, fuzzed-out guitars, punchy blend into an echoing, androgynous whole. have what they want, although breast Howard Hughes about Hugh Hefner, synths and Albarn’s charming accent on Instrumentally the album hews to the augmentation is the first and most from the compulsive behaviors tracks like Stereotypes and Chemical World. house aesthetic of the DFA label, which urgent of his requirements (and costs — his evening meal is always served signed Yacht on the merit of Summer him around US$70,000 a year). with “apple sauce and a glass of very couple of years in hip-hop the Song. So the drums sound live and present, Unlike many of the girls, St James cold milk” — to the cataloguing of party relocates. From Atlanta it went the bass is full and clear, and myriad says she doesn’t have “a plastic his sexual conquests. And as a sly E to Houston, then the Bay Area, then textural elements fade in and out of the agenda” (not that this stops her), biographical examination of Hef, his Miami, and then back to Atlanta. (New mix. It’s indie-rock party music, and its nor is she some poor and desperate rampant egomania and his fossilized York? Not in ages.) During the last year spare-parts feeling comes honestly: at would-be topless model from the sexual attitudes, this book certainly and a half it’s landed in , which has teamyacht.com Bechtolt dissects the Midwest. She graduated from McGill provides good material for any future become an unexpected hotbed of post-snap- influences behind Psychic City (Voodoo music dance-craze rap, thanks to Lil Wil’s City)”in granular detail. University in Montreal, and then biographer. St James does eventually SEE MYSTERY LIGHTS went to Pepperdine Law School in grow tired of living life as if she were My Dougie, B-Hamp’s Do the Ricky Bobby All of which makes the occult disclaimer Yacht and the GS Boyz’s Stanky Legg. feel like a smirking jape. Does a band like Malibu where, she believes, she was “in a car commercial,” not to mention DFA “like Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, the “sex duties” and the perpetual cat- All those synchronized moves? Dorrough Yacht even have “strong personal convic- with my blonde hair, pink tank tops, fighting with the other Girlfriends. will have none of it. A Dallas rapper with a tions”? Maybe, if you count the message of and low-rider jeans.” Why did she But she also genuinely believes that pair of hits, and Walk The Afterlife, which is that whatever lies then go to Hef? Because “how many it was a small price to pay for entry into That Walk, that require no predetermined beyond, it’s going to have a groove. of us actually get the chance to do an MTV lifestyle. Oh, and the US$20- dance steps, Dorrough has more in common — ny times news service something completely out of the million-a-movie actor? She reveals at ordinary in our lives?” the end of the book that he changed his Well, yes, watching a 78-year-old mind and that they’re now dating. Softcover: US Shakespeare on the Chinese stage

Alexander Huang digs deep to uncover ulterior motives for Chinese culture’s embrace of the Bard, but winds up digging himself into a hole

By Bradley Winterton in China and Taiwan, productions of 1983, were simultaneously co-opt somebody else’s. This is as of almost all of Shakespeare’s one part of the world is deemed Contributing Reporter elsewhere that use Chinese taking place in Beijing. Publication Notes absurd in the Chinese context as plays of 1623 unambiguously to be perfectly serviceable in There are many ways that theatrical traditions, adaptations of Also discussed are Taipei’s it would be in any other, including demonstrates that his reputation any other. It would be absurd if Shakespeare and China might Shakespearean plays that seek to Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters (莎妹 Shakespeare’s original one in was sky-high even seven years planes or cars were found only in interact, even though they are re-imagine them in Asian contexts, 劇團) company (notably its Crazy the English branch of European after his death, with his friend and the countries that first invented two such different entities. One is films based on Shakespeare made Scenes of 2002, based on episodes Renaissance culture. colleague Ben Jonson asserting them, and it’s equally absurd on an individual Renaissance artist, by Asian film directors, and so on. featuring madness extracted The ridiculous argument has that he was probably a greater the cultural front for products to the other a numerically vast All form a rich quarry for thoughts from Hamlet, Macbeth, King been presented to students for dramatist than any produced by remain for long in their places of population and a culture that’s on cultural relativity in the Lear and Othello), the Golden some time that Shakespeare was Greece or Rome. origin. Moreover, it’s not because both ancient and diverse. How modern and earlier ages, and it’s Bough Theater’s (金枝演社) Hoklo only one of several equally talented This absurd relating of this is a globalizing era that such might two such different cultural interesting to see that Taiwan in (commonly known as Taiwanese) English dramatists in his day, and Shakespeare’s status to British things happen — they happen presences, then, opt to relate? particular comes out of the study Yumei and Tianlai (玉梅與天來) of that he was “promoted” to the role imperialism isn’t the only flaw in because they can happen, and it’s Firstly there is the point that with particular prominence. 2004, based on Romeo and Juliet, of National Bard in the early 18th this otherwise competent book. only in retrospect that we dub our Shakespeare, irrespective of his Its contribution to productions and the Godot Theater’s (果陀劇場) century because Great Britain, busy There’s another howler, too, age a global one. Why Shakespeare country of origin and date in related to Shakespeare is shown Kiss Me Nana (吻我吧娜娜) of 1995, acquiring the first of its sequence of when the critic G. Wilson Knight is performed in Asia thus doesn’t history, is widely perceived as the to have been very extensive. based on The Taming of the Shrew. empires, felt the need for a national is associated, alongside the older need explaining. What would need world’s pre-eminent dramatist. Among the many directors But the question nevertheless poet to equal Rome’s Virgil and in critic A.C. Bradley, with the explaining would be if he wasn’t. China has no comparable claimant, discussed are Stan Lai (賴聲川) remains as to what are the motives some way justify the new national interpretation of Shakespeare’s So, from the performance of and it’s Japan’s Chikamatsu who’s (notably in relation to his Lear for the uses of Shakespearean role of imperial expansion. plays via their characters. Knight Hamlet on board a ship off Sierra usually granted the accolade of and the Thirty-seven-fold Practice material so far away from its It’s true, of course, that the in reality led a movement in the Leone a mere five years after it was being the finest dramatist East of a Bodhisattva of 2000 and place of origin. And closely English theaters were closed very opposite direction, playing written to the multiple versions Asia has produced. Nevertheless, 2001), and Wu Hsing-kuo (吳興國) related to this is the issue of down by the Puritans a generation down analysis through character found today almost wherever China’s dramatic traditions, and who founded the Contemporary why Shakespeare achieved his after Shakespeare’s death, that in favor of one using patterns of you care to look, Shakespeare is especially its operatic ones, are a Legend Theater (當代傳奇劇場) with preeminence, both national and Chinese Shakespeares when they were re-opened in poetic imagery that were studied a global phenomenon. Of course major world presence, and in an his wife Lin Hsiu-wei (林秀偉) in global, in the first place. 1660 it was often with musical independently of the characters there are crossover influences age of globalization, interactions 1986; their productions of versions China, so the argument goes, Alexander C.Y. Huang versions of the plays styled on the who gave voice them. in all directions, but apart from between China and Shakespeare of Hamlet, Macbeth and The needed and needs a national poet 350 pages French pattern, and that a revival Alexander Huang is keen to find that, Shakespearean productions on many levels are inevitable. Tempest in the traditional Beijing just as anywhere else does, and of interest in Shakespeare purely ulterior motives for the adoption in Chinese are no different from Chinese Shakespeares seeks opera style were major features if it can’t come up with one of its Columbia as a dramatist did take place in of Shakespeare in Asian contexts, any others. It would, after all, to chart many different forms of of their era. Stylistically similar own — especially in the high- the early 18th century. However, but the real reason for it seems constitute a form of very special such a two-way influence — Shakespearean productions, such profile area of stage performance a quick look at the prefatory to me disconcertingly simple. In a pleading to suggest that they even productions of Shakespeare plays as Zheng Bixian’s (鄭碧賢) Othello — then it will simply have to material to the Folio edition globalizing age, anything from any might be.

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