This week, one of the projects I worked on was editing a eulogy. When I got the document, it struck me right away that it had been written almost entirely in the present tense.  “Person X is….”
Usually when the same issue consistently recurs in a text, I just use “Find and Replace”.  I Ctrl+H the heck out of it and move on.  But this was someone who had lost their life and in this instance my job was to cement their non-existence on a piece of paper. To change references to things they are and things they do, to things they did and things they used to do.  In the past.  In people’s memories.   Where stuff is bound to eventually fade. It felt very sterile.  And kind of disrespectful, somehow, to use a shortcut.  So I didn’t.  Find and replace. I don’t like the “replace” so much…

Something else I realized that my confrontation Chinese is terrible.  You know confrontation Chinese.  My hey-I’ll-let-a-lot-slide-but-that’s-just-rude Chinese.  I don’t bust it out a lot.  But sometimes I feel an important principle is at stake so I have to say something.  Other times my hormones are all over the place and shutting up is not an option.  This week, I think it was a little of both.

I’m standing at the bus stop and a lady walks past me with her umbrella.  The little tabs at the end of the spiky things get caught in my hair as she walks by.  I have dreadlocks so they kinda catch fast and she then just yanks her brolly hard (ouch!) and keeps on walking.   This would not had been my favorite occurrence of the day even if it hadn’t been raining in Shanghai for like the eleventieth day in a row but that was too much.  Just a cotton-picking minute! I wanted to say.  Dude, what the f***?! I wanted to growl.  Oi! Can I at least get my follicles back? I wanted to harrumph.  But I do not know how to say any of these things in Chinese. So I said to her: Dude, that’s just rude. Those were my exact words.  I didn’t want to swear – out loud – because – between you and me – the number of people who take photos of me when I am just going about my business, I didn’t want to take the chance that someone would catch it on video.  That’s right, my heightened sense of paranoia is what stopped me.  Not any chastening sense of decorum.

Umbrella Woman just looked at me and said: “我听不懂你的话” （I don’t understand what you are saying).  “话” means language and I thought: Save it, sister.  We’ve all played the “I have no idea what you are saying” card before.  Except that you totally understand my body “话”, don’t you?  How’s your French?  “Je suis pissed”.  That’s not what I said; I just thought it.

Perhaps it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Please don’t plunge your brolly into the roots of my hair.  I know I’m a little tall and for you it’s kind of like having to fly a tiny kite over the steeple of a really high cathedral but if you do get it stuck all up in there and have to pull it out, then  a little “My bad” or a raised arm of acknowledgment are in order.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

I hate “lol”.

Honestly. Every time someone I like/love uses it, I make myself quickly list all the things about them which cancel out the cloying insipidness of this stupid abbreviation.

Good morning! Lol.

Really? “Good morning” followed by a laugh out loud? Really?

I mean, seriously…R.E.A.L.L.Y????

Who speaks like that?

No-one. So why write it?

Each time I see “lol” online, I roll my eyes. Or, rather, I let me mind’s eye do the rolling for me.

In general, most people don’t laugh out loud if they find something funny. They might just crack a smile, or give a little “heh” or maybe just think to themselves: That’s funny. Laugh out loud funny is, to me, Chris Rock funny. Rewind-this-clip-which-isn’t-actually-a-clip-at-all-but-a-link-to-some-other-dude’s-website and-watch-him-deliver-the-punchline-five-times funny. Bwahahahaha-I-think-I-may-have-just-ruptured-something-I-laughed-so-hard funny.

So, again:

I’ve just been to the supermarket. Lol!!!!!!!

Grrrr.

And what is with this rampant abuse of exclamation marks? We should declare exclamation marks an endangered species and set PETA on these people. Lol!!! This kind of self-expression, by someone who is neither 12 nor brain dead, makes me *sad face* Can you imagine how a conversation with one of these lollists would go?

Them: Hi! Lol!

Me: Erm…Hello.

Them: My name’s X. Lol!

Me: Ok.

Them: Nice to meet you. Lolest!

Me: Would you excuse me for a bit? I think my mind is about to explode and I want to make sure all the chargers are set properly.

And so it goes.

Having been in China for so long has made me a lot more race conscious.  Living in a monoracial society will do that to you, I guess.  Now, being back home in Zimbabwe, I don’t just see people: I see white people and black people.  I was never this aware of how much people did or didn’t look like me before.

The gym I’ve joined, for example, seems to be about 80% white.  The café I’m in right now has about 30 people – and two of us are black.   Here’s the cruncher – my gym is great and clean and swish.  This cafe is fancy, the smoothie that I had is yum and the service is fantastic.

On the other hand, we were hanging out with my Gran yesterday – in an area with a distinctly different demographic to this one.  They’ve turned off her water.   They who?  “They” who have the power to do it.  Why? Not because she hasn’t paid the bills, but because she refused to pay the bribes.   No burgeoning café culture or intensely manicured women driving around in mammoth SUVs where my Gran lives.  She lives in a place whose name loosely translates to “broken on every side”.

And it is.
So, at the very least, we can celebrate the predictive accuracy of the powers that be.  At least they got that right.  Broken on every side indeed.

Oh my hat.
Sunday, random internet surfing night in the I-J household.  Tonight I’m looking around for free iPhone apps.  You know, to add value to my existence, and I come across this link for the 10 best iPhone apps for women.

1. iPeriod Ultimate – (fertility)
2. Womans Calendar – (baby here)
3. Contraction Master – (baby there)
4. Intuition -  (baby baby everywhere)
5. Pocket First Aid – (eh?)
6. Babybump – (mamma mia!)
7. Total Baby – (even more baby)
8. Baby Tracker – (baby-rama drama)
9. Baby Names – (it’s raining babies)
10. The Pill – (no baby – yet still, somehow, baby)

You cannot be serious.  I mean, who wrote this list?  Baron Misogyny van Chauvinism?  Apart from the first aid one, these are all about what happens pre-, peri- or post-conception.

Is that what app developers think defines women?  How fecund our uteruses are?

God forbid you’re a little bit older and past baby-having age, or that you’re focusing on your career right now and have yet to succumb to babyphilia, or that you just haven’t managed to download the right donor off the internet after giving up on that true love lark, or that (whisper it) you just don’t want a kidlet.

I could be any, or all, of these women, so I’m taking this kinda personally.  Ladies, heaven forefend that there be more to you than maniacally tracking and logging every menstrual cycle. You are screwed.  Hand your woman card in at the door.  Go find a bunch of hairy dudes to hang around and morph into because, according to iPhone Developer X…there’s nothing for you here!

Why not apps for:

1.    Top companies for women to work for
2.    Top shoe designs that will make you feel like a goddess
3.    Top ways to stay connected with your girlfriends when geography or changing priorities pull you apart
4.    Top 10 apps for tracking fitness / weight loss
5.    Top 10 health checks you should perform on yourself
6.    Top 10 impulsive decisions you won’t regret
7.    Top 10 ways to strike a perfect work/life balance
8.    Top 10 pieces of DIY furniture you can assemble yourself
9.    Top 10 retail therapies that work
10.  Top 10 apps for a healthy spiritual existence

To me this seems like a much more representative list than the one above which mights as well read:

• Vagina
• Vagina
• Vagina
• Vagina
• First Aid
• Vagina
• Vagina
• Vagina
• Vagina
• Vagina

And while we’re on the subject, I resent how the baby-havers get all the cool parking spaces and the nice seats on the bus.  There.  I said it.  But fine, let them get the swish parking and the bus comfort but I draw the line at them hogging the cool iPhone apps.  I won’t stand for it.  It really is a bridge too far.  Seriously.  We, the kidfree, are taking technology.  And we are not giving it back.

Who’s with me?

Mad cow disease, E. coli, dysentery, dengue fever, typhoid, projectile vomiting, bilharzia, the Ebola virus, salmonella, pink eye, leprosy, cholera, Legionnaires Disease, athlete’s foot, lupus, acne,nervous dispepsia, glaucoma, snaggletooth, arthritis, …

Now I’m no doctor or anything so: How many of these can I get from ingesting raw cow?

Well done to Bulldog Pub who  saw fit to deliver me an uncooked beef burger tonight.   Not an underdone burger.  A raw burger.  How raw, you say?  Well, the mince was ice cold and blood red.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to Bulldog Pub. Unless it’s the place that used to do Music Matters a couple of summers ago on Wulumuqi Lu , in which case I did go once or twice.  But safe to say I am highly unlikely to ever set foot in there again.

After tonight, you couldn’t pay me enough to dress up in a Hazmat suit and walk past there**.   Because when a restaurant takes well over an hour to make your burger and then delivers it to you raw (after you have insisted that you want it well done*) then you know that you and that establishment are destined for the briefest of relationships.

Did I complain?

No.

Why not?

Because it was free.

When we placed the order, the food delivery service we called told us that the burgers  would take 45 minutes – 1hr to arrive.  We ordered around 8 and the food got there after 10.  In between, we chased up the order and were told that it had taken an hour to make and that because of the delay, we would get the meal comped.  It’s hard to complain when you haven’t spent a single penny.  You get what you pay for, right?  Except that I don’t remember shelling out for gastro-intestinal contamination.

I try never to write a review that is only negative because when I read a review that is a 100% downer I just assume that the writer has some sort of personal axe to grind. And I can honestly say that before tonight, I had no pro- or anti-Bulldog leanings.

What bugs me is not that the order was late, or even that they think up promotions and then don’t take the necessary steps to cope with the extra business (we were told the order was late because the kitchen was super busy*).  It’s the blatant negligence.  The I-don’t-care-how-sick-this-might-make-you-or-how-far-my-shoddy-efforts-are-from-what-you-must-surely-be-expecting aspect of it.  You will never convince me that the dude that put that burger patty onto the bun and into the delivery box and into the courier’s hands was thinking anything other than: I really don’t give a damn.   It’s hard to think of any other explanation that makes sense. And for that reason, I am struggling to find something for the plus column for this eatery.  Except, perhaps, that the burgers were big.  But considering I got a mangled clump of uncooked mince meat between the buns, it’s hard to even think of that as a good thing.

So this isn’t my Don’t ever order from Bulldog blog entry.  One narrow escape from food poisoning (fingers crossed!) does not a summer make, after all.  But in a Shanghai that has Blue Frog and Munchies and Gourmet Café and Kabb and about 1000 other places who do the same thing faster and better, why chance it?

*Worth pointing out that at no point did I actually talk to anyone at Bulldog – we dealt only with the food delivery company.

** Just kidding, you could totally pay me enough.  Go on, name an obscenely high number. Just for fun.

a.k.a Things I love about the office

Office Running

I have thought about it.  I have thought about it a lot.  I really have.  And I cannot, try as I might, come up with a single reason why it is ever necessary to break into a run inside an office.  Where is this girl rushing to?  What devastating catastrophe will befall her if she gets there three measly seconds later? Does she have to pick up a ringing phone?  Even then… she’d be better off just walking faster in this tiny confined space, wouldn’t she? Or maybe she needs to sell that last little bit of killer stock before trading closes?  That’d make total sense – if we worked on a trading floor. Or is she trying to escape the putrid stench of burning ink cartridges as the entire building is engulfed by ravenous flames?  Ok.  Then we’ll all run.  But as a rule, office running is “Grrrr”.  As is office overtaking. You know, when there is that tiny, 3m-long, narrow walkway between you and the door and someone just has to overtake to get there nanoseconds ahead of you.  What’s the point of that? Just stop with all running / skipping / jogging.  Anything that requires a sports bra, basically,  is unneccessary.

Office Belching

Oddly enough, I am one of that tiny minority that doesn’t mind tea eggs (eggs that are boiled for days on end in some grimy brown goo masquerading as “tea”). If you think about the preparation process, it is beyond gross.  But I don’t think about it and I’ve had a tea egg or two in my day.  I usually close my eyes and clench every muscle in my body as my incisors pierce the egg “white” – and you know what?  Four years in and a tea egg hasn’t done for me.  Yet.  Tea eggs are alright.  But you know what is not alright?  The T.E.B. (tea-egg belch).  Performed anywhere, it is pretty nasty, but if you are the person sitting directly opposite me, the tea-egg belch – right into my face – is your way of saying “Screw you, Iris.  Right in the heart.  Bee-yotch.” Seriously, that is what you are saying.  Every time.

Office Toileting

The things I’ve seen, y’all.  The.  Things.  I. Have.  Seen.

Office Ringtoning

Thank you for ruining Empire State of Mind for me.  No, really, thanks.  It’s been on my list of things to do every single day of the week since the song came out.  See?  Right here – here it is – Number 4: Find someone who can achieve the impossible by making me hate Jay-Z. Congratulations.  Mission so very accomplished. You forcing us to endure the first 4 bars of the chorus, played in that high-pitched wheedling whine, on a loop, a bajillion times a day, has done it for me.  I no longer love the Z.  And that, coupled with your office running to answer your phone after Alicia wails New York!!! New York!!! New York!!! for the 120th time is fabulous.  Whatever you do, don’t take your phone with you when you leave your desk, or switch it to silent/vibrate when you come into the office.  No.  Don’t do it.  You are special.  Everybody loves you.  Nobody else on this planet has caught on to this ring tone thing, you trendsetter, you. Don’t ever change.  Ever.

And…breathe.

I’ve always found the presumptuousness of this particular cluster of words puzzling.  As though it is the most natural thing in the world to assume a new identity every time I cross a border.  I’m not Sydney Bristow.

I don’t mind being asked if I have a Chinese name.  But people assuming that my living in this SE Asian behemoth means I’m ready to give up my identity makes me … itchy.

I mean we all faux-drink the China Kool Aid, right?  But do we all swallow?

I don’t want a Chinese name.  And I don’t need one.  Not to process my official documentation or to sign up for stuff or to clumsily introduce myself at the myriad of networking events I am now attending to show off my delicious new shoes to expand my professional network.  And in the same way I don’t have a Uzbek name, or a Portuguese name, or a Venutian name, I do not have a Chinese name.   That’s just not how Mama and Papa Iris rolled.

How hard is “Iris” to pronounce anyway?  You don’t get to obfuscate my identity or try to diminish my sense of self-worth for your own convenience, China.  No Sirree-Bob.  I’ve got shamelessly photoshopped magazine covers and ludicrously improbable cosmetics adverts to do that.

I get the whole checking one’s idealism at immigration when one arrives on these shores.  Totally on board with that.
I understand learning the lingo to show a little respect and achieve a level of independence.  Riding that train.
I even appreciate the importance of not whining about every single aspect of this country that is not identical to my own.  Woot woooooot!

But there’s a line.  There has to be.  And I draw it at adopting an Asian alter ego to go with the laowai flow.  Can’t do it.  Won’t do it.

Word.

So I have decided I am going to go to one of those black women meetings.   I have always rejected being part of such associations because:

Reason #1
If there were a similar club for white men, I would a) resent the hell out of it and b) wonder what they were talking about that they felt dark-skinned people should not be privy to.  And, the conclusion I reached would freak me out.

Reason #2
I am not really a fan of “women” as a genus, or, rather, of the mythical sisterhood that purportedly binds us together.  One on one, Girls, we’re great.  But clump us together and we’re either a bunch of angry feminists or wilting daisies – without much light and shade in between. It’s kinda irksome – the lack of balance when we are en masse. For example, how annoying are those working mothers who bleat on and on about how short maternity leave is and what a wrench it is for them to have to leave little Bitsy after “only” one year of at-home mother-child bonding?  One year, for goodness sake! And I’m pretty sure it was a woman behind those obnoxious “Baby on Board” signs that make you want to rear end the vehicle in front of you just so you can say: “That’s what I think of your idiot sign”.  And what about the constant, passive aggressive competition we are in with each other?  For a prize none of us can really articulate but for which we’d happily set ourselves on fire if it meant winning?  And the workplace overcompensation.  Corporate Boss Woman scares me.  I don’t know if I want to be her, punch her in the face or run for my life.  Probably a little of all three.  And don’t get me started on the Great Make-Up Heist of 1864…That’s not an actual thing, by the way, but make-up is the Devil.  How did we ever get duped into believing we can only look/feel pretty when we are in disguise?  And yes, I wear it.  *Meep*.

Reason #3
I am not much of a joiner.   Cliques, by their very nature, are designed to separate and ostracize.   Which is kind of mean. Not that separation and ostracization are always bad.  But with this group, I realize that none of my friends in this city would be eligible to join.  Either because they aren’t black, or because they aren’t women.  Which seems odd to me.   And a little scary.  I always like to have back-up when going into a situation where I am meeting a bunch of unknowns.  To reduce the likelihood of my being kidnapped.  Or of someone spiking my drink and harvesting my organs in a back room that doubles as a laundry cupboard while I am lying paralyzed yet totally sentient.  These things happen.

Reason #4
On any night out, in any metropolis in any country on planet earth, go into the ladies’ bathroom some time between midnight and 3 am and you will find a woman – weeping and sniveling and vainly trying to stop her mascara from running.  The cause of her distress will always be a boy.  Yet the weeper is not always a girl.  Often she is old enough to know way better.  Occasionally, she is even old enough to know that she is old enough to know better.  TCOB (Toilet Crying Over Boys) is the worst.   It makes me mad at my uterus.

Reason #5
Racism makes me as …aaarrrggghhh!!! … as the next person.  Especially the unflinchingly blatant racism that black people face when living in monoracial Asia.  But here’s the thing: I. Do.  Not.  Want.  To.  Talk about it all day.  And, quite frankly, the fact that you’ve been through it too makes me feel worse, not better.  I really hope that this club doesn’t turn out to be one big fat pity party where we sit around and lick our post-apartheid, post-Obama presidency wounds all night.

Anyway, my friend T – who is very smart – thinks I should go.  She gave some reasons that sort of made sense – though not really.  But 2010 has to be the year I try more things out and I am very hopeful that the group turns out to be as great as I have heard it is.  And, of course, that they don’t hate me after reading this.  Or even hate me before reading this.  Wish me luck!

Here’s the thing about surprises: they are invariably rubbish.

Unless it’s like “Surprise! We’ve found a donor for that kidney you so desperately need” there are very few surprises that really blow your hair back.

What that means is that you have to fake the hair blowbackerry because if you don’t then you, the surprisee, will hurt the surpriser’s feelings.  And the surpriser is a friend or family member trying to do something nice for you.

As I close in on my 31st birthday (roar!), I am thinking that this year, I don’t want to have to fake being impressed or pleased.  There’s a simple way round this…no gifts.

I get to see my parents the day after my birthday and hang out with them for three whole weeks.  I really, really need that.  The rest is just fluff.  Don’t want it.  Don’t need it.  So, to my mates and sisters who don’t read this blog – I know this for a fact because somehow most of my (3) readers are from the US (Hi, America!) – this is what I want for my birthday:

Veer off this course at your peril.  This year I will actually say out loud what I usually think when people go off-script in the gift department: Why do you hate me so much?

Thing number 1: Cheesecake.  My relationship with The Cake is truly mystical.  Definitely spiritual.  Like the time I was walking past that Angel cheesecake shop on Fuzhou Lu on my way to work at the peak (or should that be “the nadir”?) of diet number 5 kerjillion and 8.  Against my better judgment I walked in and was immediately overwhelmed by the warm, buttery, lemony aroma of cheesecake.  Cheesecake of every description.  I may have passed out from the delirium. No one will tell me how they found me but apparently a concerned passerby helped me out the store as I wailed and shredded my clothes in an ecstasy of yearning.

Thing Number 2: Poetry recommendations.  You don’t have to buy me the books.  Just find a poet you think I might like and then casually say, on December 23, have you ever read anything by Blah Blah, Iris?  And I’ll be really excited to have the chance to blow your mind with the poetry that I have read (not that much, to be fair) and keen to hear about this Blah Blah fellow who seems to have slipped under my radar.  And if he turns out to be awesome, I’ll think of you every time I read a Blah Blah poem.  Which will be often.  So we all win.

Thing Number 3: Come round to my place and teach me how to put in contact lenses.  It’s been 9 months since I’ve been wearing them and it still takes me a minimum of 20 minutes, some vicious quasi-eye-gouging, a definite reddening of the whites and streams of tears running down my cheeks as all the poking and prodding wreaks havoc with my tear ducts.  I could just check on my go-to site – I heart you http://www.videojug.com – but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the pleasure of helping me.

And that’s it.  How low maintenance am I?

Ooh, and money.  I’ll never say no to cold hard cash.

I’ve been in Shanghai for four years now and, if you are my friend J, that’s how long you have spent listening to me moan about how there is no good live music around these parts.

To be clear, by “live music”, I mean “live music that I like”.   Which, if you’re me, is the only kind of live music that matters.

Over the past six weeks I have been a bit obsessive in my hunt because I really felt like Shanghai had thrown down the gauntlet of “You think this is bad?  Wait till you go to Place X”  There is an abundance of plankton swimming around like big, talentless fish in a small musical pond here.

Now to the stuff I like

1.    House of Blues and Jazz: Straight in at number one.

I don’t know if I’m rating the venue or the band but who doesn’t like to watch boys soulfully strumming their guitars?  And, as ZZ Top so eloquently put it: “Every girl is crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man.” Never mind the  fact that I have a crush on three-quarters of the Mike Null band – the only one I’ve seen play – it’s the feel that they have for the music that is so easy to get on board with.

You go to some clubs and you feel that most of the acts have memorized all the cool riffs and you can almost make out the performers’ lips moving as  the count down the notes till they can bust out their “improvised” solos.  Mike Null and his band play the blues with feel.  Like it’s what they’re about.  It’s a little bit dirty too.  Enough to make you think you probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room as your parents while you watch them play.

What they wear: Suits.  Crisp.  Sometimes shiny.  Always smart.
What they sing: The promo stuff says blues, jazz and funk.   Who am I to argue?
When they play: Tuesday to Sunday (till the end of November)
Thing I like the best: All of it.  They are that good.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: That they’re off soon.

2.    Carlton J. Smith – Park Hyatt
I’ve just been to see him tonight off a couple of pretty heady recommendations. And they weren’t wrong.  This man can sing. I spent much of the night willing him to do Al Greene’s Let’s Stay Together or Otis Redding’s My Lover’s Prayer.  Two of my favorite male vocals ever.  He’s that good.  And not in the oh-I’ve-been-in-Shanghai-so-long-any-old-guff-blows-my-mind-now way, either.  I mean this dude’s voice is soulful and brash and caressing and smooth in all the right places.  I was really pleased he lived up to the hype because I got there thinking, “There is no way you are going to be as good as I’ve heard”. But he was.  He really was.    There was also a band but I didn’t notice them because Carlton fills up the stage.  He is very, almost alarmingly, high-octane – but it works.

What he wears: Velour.  Black Velour from top to toe.  “Velour” is a word, right?
What he sings: He mixes it up.  Some Marvin Gaye, Beatles, Maroon Five peppered in amongst is own original tunes.
When he plays: Monday to Saturday (till February 2010)
Thing I like the best: Has to be the vocals.  That voice…I think if he sang the instructions to them,  he could get people to do pretty much anything.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: Pudong (ew) and the Park Hyatt (92 floors up and zero view – that doesn’t seem very smart).  And the patrons are beyond posh.  Not so much “get down with the getdowns” as “Another cucumber sandwich, Nigel?”

3.    Cabaret – Gardenia Girl (I just gave her that name)
This one  is a toughie because the first time I went, I loved it.  Apparently the singer that night was just a stand-in.  She was really good.  She had this smoky, achy voice that I really, really dug.  Think Rachel Yamagata (*swoon*
) and you are close to what she sounded like.  She was backed by a band.  J and I went and were so into it we went again two nights later when the regular girl was back.  Back and very underwhelming.  I think that’s all I have to say about that.  So, back to Gardenia Girl…

What she wears: A gardenia in her hair – Billie Holiday style.  How can you not adore that?
What she sings: The usual standards, from “What a Wonderful World” to Alicia Keys’ “Falling”
When she plays: Never, unless the main chick is ill.
Thing I like the best: I had zero expectations from Cabaret.  So everything was a pleasant surprise.   Except the drinks prices.  Those were a nasty surprise.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The regular girl.  Sorry.

Honorable Mention

Redbeat.  Seedy?  You betcha.  Good anyway?  It used to be.  I used to love me a little bit of RedBeat action on Friday or Saturday nights when I couldn’t be asked to struggle with make up or dress like anything other than a hobo to go out.   The band before – with the three girls up front and the four guys jamming in the back – really worked.  It was fun and although they weren’t as vocally proficient as any of my top three, they made up for it in performance and charisma.  Plus Vincent’s guitar solos for Zombie and Sweet Child of Mine were so cool it was easy to regress to  1992 all over again.  The last two times I went, though,  the band seems to have undergone  a dramatic facelift.  Hello new faces.  Goodbye charisma and sparkle.  Boo.

Farewell good Redbeat band.  I loved you well

What they used to wear: The girls: very little.  The boys: hard to describe.  There seemed to be a lot of dangly strings and interlocking buckles involved.
What they used to sing: 80s and 90s pop and rock.  Oasis, Guns and Roses, Roxette, Tina Turner – a marvelous mish-mash
When they play: Who cares?  It’s not the same anymore.
Thing I liked the best: Cathy.  My favorite of the all-singing, high-kicking trio of girls.  She always gave us a shout-out when we arrived, even if she was mid-song.
Thing I ‘m not such a big fan of: The interlopers new people.