TRIBUTE TO "GLAM" ROCK

I would not let this moment pass without bloggin it.

It was two years ago when I borrowed a couple of VCDs from a friend.

It was years ago when I first saw the movie, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch".

I just remember it now when I was browsing through the music that I have, thinking what to upload and what not to upload and I came across the Soundtrack of "Headwig and the Angry Inch" movie.

Suddenly, I felt the rock 'n roll blood in me.

Who knows exactly why, but there's something thrilling about rock 'n' roll that involves cross-dressing. Perhaps it's because rock 'n' roll is all about adopting a persona or a stance anyway -- why not try on the other gender while you're at it, see what it feels like? Smearing lines across the sexes has been a feature of rock since its beginnings.

Suddenly, the multiplied permutations of possible identities were blissfully freeing: A man could look like a woman but sing like a man; a woman could look like a man and sing like one, too. And anyone could look good in a dress -- depending on what form of "good" you were after.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is a story of a tortured rock star who was born a man but who performs as a woman after a botched sex-change operation, "Hedwig" is only partly a meditation on one man/woman's search for identity; assigning too much depth to the movie's themes is a mistake. More important, it's that rarest of creatures: a rock musical that actually works.

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is largely about spectacle; the story unfolds in the background, and while the songs support and enrich it, they're not planted sternly like giant signposts to its meaning. Hedwig, a transplant from the tragically divided city of Berlin, is divided himself: As he travels the States with his band, playing a string of Red Lobster-type restaurants to audiences rendered incredulous by his boyish brand of girl glam, he reveals his story in flashbacks between musical numbers.

His most recent heartbreak involves his affair with a rock superstar named Tommy Gnosis (Michael Pitt), who has catapulted to success on the basis of songs that were actually co-written by Hedwig. Hedwig is in the process of suing Gnosis: With the help of his manager, Phyliss (played wonderfully by Andrea Martin, who's like a tart and tarty den mother), he's in the process of a messy lawsuit to get credit (and royalties) for the songs.

But Hedwig's real troubles start much earlier, when, as Hansel, a teenager in Berlin, he falls in love with a seductive hunk of meat masquerading as an American serviceman (Maurice Dean Wint). The G.I. claims to love him and wants to marry him, but in order to get a marriage license, Hedwig would have to undergo a physical exam. His mother helpfully suggests a sex change, and even knows just the doctor to do it. But the operation goes awry, leaving a sewn-up gash and a stump of flesh ("the angry inch") where Hedwig's penis -- or was it his identity? -- used to be. As he explains in one of his songs, his major feature has been reduced to a sorry mound with "a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face."

Hedwig becomes consumed with finding the other half of his innermost self -- the part of himself that has somehow gone missing or, worse, has been stolen. His existential angst is a suitable excuse on which to hang songs, and it's also a rich playground for both Hedwig as a performer and Mitchell as an actor. Mitchell's Hedwig, with his bitten-fruit lips, assortment of glamorous stripper wigs and wardrobe of trashy-fishnet finery, earns both our sympathy and our frustration as he muddles his way through his identity crisis. We see him hurting the people around him, like the biker-masculine Yitzhak, his bandmate and lover (played with the right mix of poignance and humor by Miriam Shor), who harbors a secret desire to be Hedwig.

Mitchell plays all the stock angles of femininity that every drag queen worth his salt has to: He's pouty, petulant and possessive, always the diva. But he also lets us behind the false eyelashes. There's a massive shot of theatricality in his über-feminine Hedwig -- he's scoldingly funny when he bitches out a bandmate for throwing one of his bras in the dryer -- but his fragility pulses beneath the surface in waves. You feel something for him even when, at his invitation, you're laughing at him.

There's not much gloriousness in the movies these days -- not many moments that deliver true spectacle, that make you realize you've stopped breathing for a few seconds. I had a few of those moments in "Hedwig," all of them during musical numbers. (Especially the Wig in A Box Number)

"Hedwig" is aggressively, winkingly glam. Trask's songs are enjoyable as both sendup and tribute. Sometimes their drama is almost inextricable from their knowing sensibility, as in the ballad "The Origin of Love," where Mitchell's "Velvet Goldmine" crooning explains how men and women became divided from a single being in the first place. It's a little corny, but it still sounds damn good. And the sight of Hedwig and his band transforming a trashy trailer into a glitter-rock stage during "Wig in a Box" was so exhilarating I almost died. The movie is pure theater, as it should.

Oh . . . well you can be hard in a dress, or soft in a pair of leather trousers. The blood flows to every extremity from one source: How fast it beats determines how hard it rocks, whether you're working with 1 inch or 6.

(I have uploaded by the way a couple of Hedwig's songs in my music box . . . you can check it out)

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A BRIEF note:

LOSING MY RELIGION

I have this very funny feeling right now. I was like hopping and browsing through the blogs in my friend's list. And listening to REM's LOSING MY RELIGION. I was unconciously singing along with the song and at the same time, reading SWIMBUD's entry about the POPE's passing.
For the past days I have seen countless of articles, news and so as blog entries dedicated entirely to the "unfortunate" passing of the Pope John Paul II.

I HAVE VOWED NEVER EVER as in NEVER EVER to write anything about that. But I just felt the need.

Remember, coincidentally while reading an entry about the Pope, REM is singing in my ears:

Life is biggerIt's bigger than you
. . . . .
I thought that I heard you laughing

I thought that I heard you sing

I think I thought

I saw you try
. . . . . .

Losing my religion

Actually, in the real world . . . . I have already lost my religion . . . it has been so long . . . or rather, I'm not very sure if religion lost me. Anyway, does it really matter who lost whom?
Now, if you are religious . . . one who follows the dogmas of the church and all. Just skip this entry. Promise! I really do not want you to feel that itch of being burned in hell after life for reading my "immoral" and "diabolical" thoughts.

First and foremost, I'm not very affected by the death of the Pope because, I really do not belong to the Roman Catholic Church.

I'm just a bit weary because this might be the sign for the end of the world! Waaaaaa. And I'm still SINGLE!

So THAT. I feel sorry for the rest of the world for losing their POPE.