So I left the cafe about 9:30 last night. It was pretty dead, especially for a Friday. No surprise there, with the long holiday weekend and everybody going out of town. But then, right after I left, about 40 people walked in the door. Utter madness. I'm pretty sure it was the entourage of the Forman brothers, the twin sons of Milos Forman who are producing Philip Glass's opera Beauty and the Beast at the National Theatre through Wednesday.

Says the FT:

Retaining the spirit of the Jean Cocteau film that served as Glass's inspiration, this truly is a fairy tale for children of all ages: roving eyes will catch some sly, ribald humour designed for adults. But for goodness sake, if you have children, bring them along! The show is so consistently dazzling with its cunning use of video, body doubles, an extraordinarily well-trained horse, breathtaking storybook pop-up sets, flying monsters and a slightly risqué chorus line of cotton-tailed bunnies that your well-worn videotape of the Disney film will soon be in the cupboard with the Pokémon action figures.

What with the Czech nation going football crazy and then abandoning the cities for the four-day weekend like the Bomb was coming, the Forman brothers have been keeping us alive this week. I don't have kids, but I figured I could re-pay the favor and see this show. If you don't have plans and you're reading my blog on a Saturday and you haven't run away to the countryside (anybody?), perhaps you should too.

Tickets are still available as of Saturday afternoon, but you have to go directly to the National Theatre to pick them up (nothing available at Ticketpro, and no reservations at the Theatre). I'll post my own mini-review tomorrow.

Last night I dreamt that I had gone on vacation with my parents to Greece and then to the Czech Republic. I stepped into the dream during the Czech portion of the trip. I had a conversation with my mom regarding the relative merits of the two countries. It went roughly something like this:

Mom: "Greece was much more modern."
Me: "Greece? Modern? Those people live in the Stone Age! They're barbarians!"
Mom: "Yes, but at least they seem to be changing."
Me: "Changing? They joined the European Union twenty years ago, and nothing has changed since then! The Czech Republic, on the other hand, joined this year."

And so on. Note this isn't necessarily what I actually think -- I've only been to Greece once, and it was just for a day -- but that's how the talk went in the dream. Later we visited a new Czech shopping mall, only this one was leaps and bounds fancier than any Czech shopping mall I've ever been to in real life. And still my mom wasn't impressed.

It wasn't until after I woke up that I made the connection with last night's game, which I watched at Tulip last night along with the staff and about five other people.

So the Czechs lost. Sorry, guys. Just remember who went out on a limb defending you against his own mother.

HEY!

Last minute change. I finally broke down and brought my TV from home into Tulip. So the game is on at Tulip tonight! Granted, it's not the biggest screen in town, but unlike Riegrovy Sady, you might actually get served a beer every now and then! No reservations needed.

Slate was forced by Bill Clinton's publisher to take down its piece, "The Condensed Bill Clinton
Slate reads My Life so you don't have to." This of course really makes me want to read it, whereas normally I wouldn't give a hoot. Here's the Google archive.

Turns out I have a lot of CDs in my collection that I own only so that one day I can say, "I have that CD." Obscure stuff, like this. I have that CD.

It rocks!

If there's one thing I wish we'd gotten when Tulip had the money, it's a big video projector. This year is killing us with all the sports events and our lack of a big screen. I considered buying one months ago, but rejected it on the grounds of: a) it's a huge capital outlay, and b) it's not really Tulip's image, as we're not a sports bar. But with the World Ice Hockey Championships followed by Euro 2004, even non-sports-fans go out of their way to watch the big games. The worst part, actually, is that part of my hoping the Czechs will lose so people will come back to the restaurant. Normally I'm rooting for the Czechs. Even when they played the Americans in hockey, I felt conflicted, because let's face it -- on a whole host of levels, the Americans just didn't deserve to win that game.

Every once in a while a customer comes in who says something along the lines of, "I love this place because there's no hockey/soccer." Of course, it's usually one of the only customers in the place at the time.

So if you've had enough of guys in shorts kicking a ball back and forth, this Thursday -- when the Czechs face the Greeks -- I could recommend a nice little refuge. The address is Opatovicka 3.

Speaking of "Lost in Translation," last night I went to the Air concert at Roxy. Good show. Sold out. People standing outside with signs saying "Koupim Listky" (I'm buying tickets). The band was cute and dreamy and stoner-ish and French and one guy wore a black tie with a black shirt, and they played one of the songs they'd written for Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation."

Now here's the funny thing: It's a packed house, and standing next to me is a dowdy older woman dressed like a Czech mother-in-law. Not elderly by any means -- not the age at which you'd be obliged to give up your tram seat, but slowly approaching it. In any case she looked really, really out of place. At first I surmised that she was there to see her son or daughter in the opening band. Except there was no opening band. Later in the show, I saw her talking to a younger girl, about 15 or 16. So I figured that was her daughter, who'd dragged her mom along to the Air concert. I concocted a tale. They live in Liberec, and the kid listens to a lot of Air, and because Air plays the type of music that moms can get into, the mom got into it to. When Air came to Prague, the mom figured she'd take her kid to the concert for her birthday. Either that or the kid really, really wanted to go to the show, but the mom wouldn't let her go alone. I like the first version better.

I hardly even remember how I stumbled across this transcript of a David Bowie online chat, but it sure is funny.

screendoll: David, I am trying to quit smoking. Any tips on what works best?

David Bowie: Filling your mouth with cement helps immeasurably.

Boys and girls and it's time once again to increase your Word Power!

Harmattan: "a dust-laden wind on the Atlantic coast of Africa in some seasons."

Hagioscope: "an opening in the interior walls of a cruciform church so placed as to afford a view of the altar to those in the transept."

Russia's greatest love machine, indeed. Caption?

Via Erosblog.

I'm ripping my entire CD collection onto my hard drive using the free version of WinAmp, so it's taking a mightly long time. I just got to Psychocandy by The Jesus and Mary Chain. (I love AllMusic.com. I didn't know -- though I'm not surprised -- that JAMC officially broke up in 1999. Nobody bothered to tell me.)

Anyway, probably my favorite part of "Lost in Translation" was the ending, when "Just Like Honey" starts playing just as Bill Murray's going to the airport. I was like, "YES!!!"

Tell me, please: The tracks by Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine on the "Lost in Translation" soundtrack, is that new material? As in, written for the movie? Just wondering.