Hooray for you, Mari Sasano.

The first is written by Trevor Anderson, Leona Brausen, and Briana Buckmaster, with the James T Kirks. The music is great, the story is fizzy and fun yet profound. You will learn the following lessions: don’t medicate your way through life! There’s no running away! If you actually expect to make it in the big world, you actually have to go there!

It’s a more polished version of what they put on at the Fringe a couple of years ago, and they’ve done a great job with it. The music is better integrated, the set is a shade more clever. Good job, ladies! It’s the last weekend to catch it (Friday evening at 8, Saturday matinee at 2, evening at 8 p.m.), so if you have a chance, go see it.

The second just opened. It’s Chris Craddock and Nathan Cuckow’s gay rap opera, which sounds jokey until you actually see it. The characters are classic Albertan queers– gay, yes, but also no-nonsense prairie folk. Again, the music is excellent (Michael Phair was bopping along with his wrists in the air at opening night!) and though briskly paced (clocking in at around an hour), it packs an emotional wallop that you don’t expect. There’s no happy ending (dammit!), but there is a sense that we all have to stand up for true love when it does happen. It’s really quite rare, you know?

Jet Li says this is his last kung fu movie, and it’s a great farewell.

Sure, there’s the fighting. And it’s awesome. But the gist of the story is learning what’s the point of it all. Li’s character, Huo Yuanjia, grows up determined to become an invincible fighter after he witnesses his father lose a fight against the other wushu school in town. He does, and wins the acclaim of the people, who line up to become his disciples. But he loses touch with what’s important: instead of concentrating on training his men, they carouse. Naturally, this makes him even more popular, feeding his ego.

But a miscommunication leads to a needless death, and the consequences are tragic. Yuanjia leaves town in despair and ends up in a small farming village where he learns the value of a job well done, the simple pleasures of exercise, friendship, wholesome meals, and a cool breeze. But he knows he can’t stay– he has to return to face his past and make amends with those he hurt. He returns to a city that is controlled by Europeans, who look down on Chinese people as weak.

This is when he decides to return to the ring, fighting a beefy American, a quick-bladed Frenchman, an unspecified European spearman, and a Japanese master of sword and karate. At last, he sees that his training was about standing up for the oppressed, rather than winning for the sake of his own pride. He recongnizes that his real friends are there when he really needs them, not just when he’s buying the round.

In other words, it’s about becoming a man. Compare that with the School for Scoundrels, the remake of the 1960′s movie about a guy (Jon Heder) who is such a wimp that no one, not even his Little Brother, wants to hang out with him. A friend (David Cross) turns him over to Dr. P, a mysterious man who teaches a secret course in self-confidence.

What Dr.P seems to teach is how to become a bully. Take what’s yours, no apologies. Trust no one. The ends justify the means. Women are treated as proprety to be won or lost, tricked into bed, damn the consequences.

You’d think at some point that there would be any kind of critique of this definition of manliness. But it never really comes. At no point does the movie suggest that we should question Dr.P’s sense of hierarchy, that there is an alternative to clawing your way up the pecking order, that confrontation and standing up for oneself should involve anything other than violence.

Can’t help but think of American foreign policy, eh?

Paul and I have signed up for a beginner Hatha yoga class at Lion’s Breath. We’ve just finished class #2, and I have to say that it is the best thing, ever.

Our instructor is really good at breaking down concepts so that when we do get into those poses, it makes sense and I know which muscles I should be using, or not. I haven’t really done yoga before, but it makes perfect sense in the context of all that dance I used to do, just with more focus and less turning. Never liked turning anyhow.

Most importantly, it’s helping me learn to relax. I’ve been having some trouble with stress this year and I have finally started to do something about it.

Sorry for the delay.

So, I’d never seen the Phantom, so I decided to take advantage of my comps and go. How elaborate! How extravagant! The drapery and sets were truly magnificent. We heard all the hits, I think: Phantom, Music of the Night, That’s All I Ask of You. Kind of tacky (the generous use of synth is still in use after all these years), but it’s sort of clever: it’s a self-critique of these sort of crowd-pleasing blockbuster musicals, lampooing the backstage politics, fragile egos, and groupie over-devotion to what is essentially the hope to get bums into seats with some pretty girls, gee-gaws and frippery.

Unfortunately, this all is predicated on taking the Phantom himself seriously. Which you can’t, because he acts like a 14 year old boy: he buys candy for the pretty girl, then gets mad (NOOOOOOOO!!!!) when she doesn’t get that he wants her to go out with him. Uh, you’re in the friend zone, unless you say OUT LOUD that you like her, you know, in that way.

So it’s goofy when his disembodied voice keeps threatening people, or when he emerges from his swinging perch above the stage. Even the chandelier swung with too much control and moderate speed to really feel dangerous, though it was so cool, everyone taking pictures of it with their cellphones.

I have to admit that once that happened, I felt ready to leave. After all, from that point on, all there’s left are bad things to happen to Christine and the Phantom. I didn’t want to see that, so we left humming those infernal songs.