Tape Face

Silence is golden. It’s also funny. Very funny. “The funniest show in Las Vegas.” 

 

Huh?

 

Indulge me in some context…

 

When I was living in Auckland, whenever I would eat out, I could always spot American diners. Actually “hear” any American feasters may be more apropos: they were always loud, ready to engage the world, and they always exuded confidence.

     

We had an expression for such overseas visitors: loudmouthed Yanks.

     

Not the most polite term, I do admit, but one applied (at least in my case) from envy, and an unconscious desire to have a voice…a unique creative voice.

     

Ironically, this past Saturday (February 5, 2022), in an American location, I observed silent Kiwi prop comic, busker, clown, and mime Sam Wills speak volumes. 

     

A loudmouthed Kiwi? 

     

Hardly. He has black duct tape over his mouth, and is the star of the Tape Face show currently playing in Harrah’s Las Vegas.

     

For Christmas Past, I let Santa and his familial agents know that at the top of my wish list was a desire to see the Tape Face act. I had followed Tape Face on social media, seen the America’s Got Talent 2016 videos, and wanted to experience the silent treatment en vivo. After making the Nice List and receiving two TF tickets, it was time for a Vegas road trip! 

Post show: The challenge in writing this review is, as the tapeface.tv website states, “simply mentioning any aspect of this diverse show would be a disservice—the less you know, the more you will enjoy this show.”

    

Sure.

     

However, it would be remiss of me not to mention how much of the performance is fuelled by audience participation under the skilled and honed craftsmanship of Tape Face. It’s almost formulaic: a sprinkle of Kiwi ingenuity+household props you’d find in your kitchen, closets, and garage+engaged audience=Perdón! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

     

Okay, okay, no need to pack a sad. I will reveal that at the beginning of the performance I saw, as an air of anticipatory excitement surged through the crowd, an announcer did advise the audience of their esprit de corps responsibility, and encouraged those picked by Tape Face to play along and “not be a dick.” 

Fortunately, there were no mean-spirited patrons at the act I attended. I would say everyone, at some unconscious level, wanted to share the stage with Tape Face (projection, yes; you’re next).

     

This collective, “unspoken” desire was realized in a tension-building, race-against-the-clock final skit in which the entire audience did participate with Tape Face.

     

We all left the theatre engaged, enthralled, and entertained!

     

But wait—there’s more—at least for me.

     

For the past week since leaving Las Vegas, several thoughts have been playing in my mind as I reminisce about the show:

     

What was the creative process in which Sam Wills came up with the Tape Face character?

     

Secondly, as an author, one who frequently frolics in the world of make-believe, I’d like to ask Tape Face: “So, mate, what happened? The unkempt hair, the bulging eyes, the duct tape over the mouth? Two thugs jump you backstage? Your parents were old school and believed ‘children should be seen and not heard’? Or are you a punk-rock performer, silently raging against stereotype and conformity?”

    

“No comment.”

     

Outspoken English television personality Simon Cowell did remark in AGT 2016, “But you’re like Mr. Bean, or Charlie Chaplin, so, so recognizable. I like the fact I’ve got no idea who you are, and I never want to know. I like that.”

     

Agreed. 

     

Some things are better left unsaid.

🥝🥝🥝🥝

Additional links:

http://tapeface.tv

https://www.caesars.com/harrahs-las-vegas/shows/tape-face?utm_campaign=GMB&utm_source=google&utm_medium=local&utm_term=TapeFace&utm_content=Entertainer

Amigurumi Christmas Yve by João Stanganelli Junior

Since it is now the holy-day season, my second review pertains to Christmas—specifically a doll. 

Huh? 

Indulge me in some context…

 

I had to wait fifty-seven years to receive my first doll. Oh, sure, as a father of four daughters, I frequented (with extended pinkie) many a doll’s tea party through the years, but, alas, no doll in attendance at these delightful occasions was ever mine to behold.

 

Mini-me-lad growing up in West Auckland, New Zealand, did have a one-eyed teddy bear named Ted (great thought was put into the naming), but no doll ever shared my childhood escapades.

 

And then for my birthday: hello, dolly!

 

Upon opening my gift from my wife and girls, I was at first shocked. A doll? Wait?…what?…whoa? They have all been blessed with a sense of humour, but their body language, facial expressions, and tone did not telegraph that the crocheted doll I now held in my hands was some sort of bizarre joke, or prank.

 

She was the real deal. She is the real deal. She is amigurumi Christmas Yve.

 

As a writer, I am continuously fascinated by adaptations of an author’s original text. One of the most famous examples is J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter fantasy series. It has been made into a play, video games, films, and a theme park! So this review is more a celebration of how a title character from a book can be reimagined in crochet. 

 

Amigurumi is the Japanese art of crocheting small, stuffed creatures, although artists all over the world now practise it. The word is a compound of two words—“ami” meaning “crocheted” and “kurumi” meaning “wrapping.”

 

One such creator is Brazilian grandfather João Stanganelli Junior. What started out as a retirement activity is now a thriving international business. My wife and daughters contacted him to make an amigurumi version of Christmas Yve.

 

Stanganelli has vitiligo (a disorder in which the skin loses its pigment cells in patches), and many of his dolls also reflect this condition. A personal philosophy of inclusiveness—especially for children—has manifested in other amigurumi creations that display many of the conditions that his customers experience: some dolls are in wheelchairs, or have alopecia, or use hearing aids, et cetera.

 

Since writing Christmas Yve: A Kiwi Elf’s Dream to Join Santa, I did adapt it to a Christmas play that our church teen group presented in 2015, but I never, ever imagined Yve as a crocheted doll.

 

Obrigado, João Stanganelli!

 

🥝🥝🥝🥝

If you are interested in acquiring one of Stanganelli’s amigurumi dolls, check out the Facebook page:

 

https://www.facebook.com/lenaamigurumi18

 

Merry Christmas!

 

SPQR by Richard Blade

First up is SPQR by Richard Blade, an artist I have admired for many years. 

Indulge me in some context…

Three times in my life while living in Southern California, my path has intersected with world-famous DJ and best-selling author (World In My Eyes) Richard Blade’s arena of entertainment. In each encounter, I was always impressed with his British-infused decorum, good-natured wit, and talent.

The first time was in 1989. I was yet another wannabe actor schlepping pizzas around Westwood to UCLA students while I waited for my “fifteen minutes of fame”: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…

Melancholic, and missing all things New Zealand, I found great comfort in listening to Richard Blade on LA’s “The World Famous KROQ” (FM 106.7). Although we were born in different countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, he spoke my language and played my tunes: Billy Idol, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, New Order, The Cure, The Smiths, U2…

The second time I met Mr. Blade was Sunday, December 7, 2014. In honour of my LA-born-and-raised, “Latinalicious” wife’s fortieth birthday, I organized a surprise party for her. I will forever treasure the look on Teresa’s (mi esposa) face when we arrived at la casa de su prima for her to discover not only la familia, but also many of her childhood mates, and of course DJ de la noche: Richard Blade.

The third time was Christmas 2020, when during our annual work Kris Kringle gift exchange, I received a copy of SPQR.

Questions abound at a North Carolina archaeological site when a white ivory Roman staff with a golden eagle and the letters S.P.Q.R. is discovered by some North Carolina State University students in a Native American burial site. Professor Andrew Donaldson, who oversees the dig, recognises that the four letters are an abbreviation of a Latin expression…and the implications of Romans arriving in America hundreds of years before Columbus.

In his first novel, Richard Blade answers this stage-setting historical discovery with a heart-pounding, relentless tale. In SPQR (Latin for Senatus Populusque Romanus—The Senate and People of Rome; impress your friends with that line at your next barbeque), the author goes Roman—hard! XLV (forty-five) page-turning chapters, including the brutal military practice of Decimation that Gaius Julius Caesar employs as punishment against Legio VII for their recent loss in the August 55 B.C. invasion of Britannia. High above the cliffs at Cap Gris-Nez in Gaul, six hundred and eighteen soldiers, the surviving members of the failed campaign, are commanded to strip naked as they await their fate. For those readers who experience acrophobia…beware!

Blade’s love of history permeates every page of the text. In fact, he’s up front about it. In the Acknowledgments section of the book, he credits this noble quality to his father, and we the readers are the recipients of a diligently researched and wildly entertaining story. 

An index of Latin words, curses (Roman sailors swore long before our current naval personnel), and expressions helps us navigate the text and acquaint ourselves with Praetorian Demetrius Marius Varinica, Tiberius, Sallus, Flavius, Aldamma, Claudius, and other larger-than-life characters of the novel. 

The highly decorated and distinguished Varinica is “persuaded” out of retirement by First Consul Pompey. He is tasked with assembling a new legion—Fifteen—and sailing with them and their Roman steel to bring the infamous Pax Romana to the rebellious Britons.

In a well-crafted novel (with some input from the indexed Roman gods), even the might of Rome can be thwarted: General Demetrius Varinica and the fleet never make it to Britannia. He and only a small portion of his legion ultimately end up crossing the dreaded Mare Tenebrosum (Atlantic Ocean) to an unknown world.

Of course, crossing this huge ocean is a transformative experience. Richard Blade made this journey himself when he moved from the United Kingdom to the United States. It is an epic crossing that has inspired countless artists and informed their work (Rod Stewart’s Atlantic Crossing comes to mind). 

Blade infuses his novel with a perspective born out of the encounter of the Old World with the New, of the traditions of the Roman Empire with that of the Native American Croatan tribe. As the main characters from each distinct cultural group engage, themes of honour, fulfilling one’s duty, the politics of conquest, possessions, and what we take with us to the next life are explored.

SPQR also has heart in all its many manifestations—bravery, fidelity, and romance. The blossoming relationship between Demetrius Marius Varinica, a widower, and Kaya, the widowed daughter of the Croatan chief, has overtones of a historical seventeenth-century meeting between a Native American princess and an English explorer (name that Disney movie). 

In the Foreword of the novel, Richard Blade lays the storytelling seeds that will fully blossom in the crescendo of the tale. As a student of history, Blade is inspired by heroic last stands; of unrelenting acts of bravery by a group of warriors who face overwhelming odds, yet never waver, never surrender, and are willing to give all—including for many the ultimate sacrifice. Some examples he lists are King Leonidas at Thermopylae, the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie at the Alamo.  

Richard Blade’s SPQR captures the spirit of such examples of courage when Demetrius Varinica and a small band of Roman soldiers defend the Croatan people from a human plague in an apocalyptic final battle. His story delivers! 

🥝🥝🥝🥝

Additional Links:

https://www.ucla.edu

https://www.audacy.com/kroq

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081Y73XXT/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

https://open.spotify.com/album/7vV3q5jE7DSuKsnHr7OmmN