(no subject)
Prague has turned into an odd, sometimes surreal time. Mainly due to the fact that last night we decided to czech out some "black light theatre," which is a local flavor of stage performance with neon colors under purple lights. There are dozens of shows all over the city, but we settled on Cats in Prague, because it's a classic show with an entertaining story and wonderful music.
The problem is, Cats in Prague is not a local rendition of the Cats we all know and love, but an entirely different play (hence the legally safe title) featuring a mix of cat puppets singing songs in robotic cat voices with Czech accents, and a live male actor in a white suit and several female actors wearing white catsuits tighter than their own skin attempting to lip-synch selected portions of the English lyrics of songs they probably don't even understand. Other problems include heavy Czech accents on the pre-recorded music; a complete lack of story or exposition, other than the single understandable line in the entire show, "Tomcat is the boss"; and the fact that the show's producers were so confident in their ability to pack the house (it didn't happen) that they crammed in enough rows of seats to make sawing off your kneecaps seem like a comparatively enjoyable option.
Other than that, it's been a nice time. The Jewish cemetary, the oldest in all of Europe, was filled with tombstones almost piled on top of each other because the poor residents of the ghetto were unable to bury the dead anywhere else, leaving behind a dense, unique landscape. The Prague Castle, also the oldest in Europe, had a huge historical museum with some old swords and royal things. The toy museum, in the castle complex, had its top floor reserved for a huge Barbie exhibit, with a couple of the original dolls and thousands of others from then until the present. The prototypes for the never-produced 80s avant-garde series were some of the best. As was the Asian man wearing the South Korean flag as a cape, pointing at one particularly famous-looking doll and yelling, "Michael Jackson!" loud enough to scare his mother.
Tomorrow we may go see the Bone Church or the place where Dvorak is buried. After that we go to the medieval town of Cesky Krumlov, where the old-time music festival is in full swing, then to a house outside of Salzburg for a few days, and then to Bern in Switzerland for a relaxing mountain time. In Salzburg I may become a tourist to the extreme and take the Sound of Music tour. Also, Samara wants to go to a spa for her birthday while we're there, but we're having a hard time finding one where the genitals aren't supposed to be out and about. We're good friends, but it's not that good.
The problem is, Cats in Prague is not a local rendition of the Cats we all know and love, but an entirely different play (hence the legally safe title) featuring a mix of cat puppets singing songs in robotic cat voices with Czech accents, and a live male actor in a white suit and several female actors wearing white catsuits tighter than their own skin attempting to lip-synch selected portions of the English lyrics of songs they probably don't even understand. Other problems include heavy Czech accents on the pre-recorded music; a complete lack of story or exposition, other than the single understandable line in the entire show, "Tomcat is the boss"; and the fact that the show's producers were so confident in their ability to pack the house (it didn't happen) that they crammed in enough rows of seats to make sawing off your kneecaps seem like a comparatively enjoyable option.
Other than that, it's been a nice time. The Jewish cemetary, the oldest in all of Europe, was filled with tombstones almost piled on top of each other because the poor residents of the ghetto were unable to bury the dead anywhere else, leaving behind a dense, unique landscape. The Prague Castle, also the oldest in Europe, had a huge historical museum with some old swords and royal things. The toy museum, in the castle complex, had its top floor reserved for a huge Barbie exhibit, with a couple of the original dolls and thousands of others from then until the present. The prototypes for the never-produced 80s avant-garde series were some of the best. As was the Asian man wearing the South Korean flag as a cape, pointing at one particularly famous-looking doll and yelling, "Michael Jackson!" loud enough to scare his mother.
Tomorrow we may go see the Bone Church or the place where Dvorak is buried. After that we go to the medieval town of Cesky Krumlov, where the old-time music festival is in full swing, then to a house outside of Salzburg for a few days, and then to Bern in Switzerland for a relaxing mountain time. In Salzburg I may become a tourist to the extreme and take the Sound of Music tour. Also, Samara wants to go to a spa for her birthday while we're there, but we're having a hard time finding one where the genitals aren't supposed to be out and about. We're good friends, but it's not that good.