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sinsofthefather-kulemi · 1 month

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Osaka Locations: Cabaret Grand

Majima's Workplace Sotenbori

Cabaret Grand (or The Grand) is a popular cabaret in Sotenbori located on West Sotenbori Street. It's known for its superb staffing: beautiful, usually graceful women, waiters and floor managers that do their best at playing refined men and none other than Sotenbori’s one and only Lord of the Night, manager Goro Majima. Guests come to experience Cabaret Grand’s unique Sotenbori elegance complete with live performances by locally famous musical acts and sometimes even comedians and they stay for the men and women doing what they can to help them forget what’s happening in the outside world.

The Grand prides itself on being an escape when one is in dire need of it.

The Grand’s signature is its gorgeous wine red and lustrous gold color scheme. From the door to the ballroom (as well as the runway leading to the dancefloor), the flooring is carpeted in a fine, (imported) saxony then completed with an intricately designed berber carpeting. The dance floor and stage are made of porcelain that has a strict polishing schedule. It is rare to find filth and debris on the floor of The Grand as there is cleaning staff on standby that roam and monitor the ballroom like hawks. Gold lines the runway, strips of it are neatly pinned to the nose of each step leading to the 2nd floor, the red damask seating is topped with gilded accents even the walls aren’t free of that Cabaret Grand gold!

There’s not only a cover charge and request fee that might threaten to drain the average wallet’s er, customer’s pockets. The menu boasts a pretty hefty price tag too! There’s not much way around it. The Grand’s hostesses are some of the most skilled and persuasive salespeople one might meet. This is why, while Cabaret Grand tries to welcome anyone with an open billfold, the intended demographic isn’t quite the average entry level salaryman.

The Grand prefers their boss’ boss!

There’s a large dressing room and locker room for the talent downstairs not far from the restrooms. It’s not quite as luxurious as the rest of the cabaret but it was designed to allow the ladies to comfortably get themselves together between clients. There are even communal showers in the locker room for the busy bee who may not have time to get home and do so before or after their shifts. No men are allowed in there. The red patterned walls are lined with vanities that are assigned to a roster of women per vanity. This was recently implemented to aid with narrowing down the culprit when theft happens. It’s not foolproof but the manager of The Grand has heard fewer complaints since implementing this system.

Just upstairs is the main office that also doubles as a breakroom for staff. It’s typically empty as most staff prefer to enjoy their breaks outside of the cabaret. It’s far more unassuming than the ballroom and the ladies’ dressing room combined. There are simple, cheap desks, jamming file cabinets and dusty chalkboards on one side for work and with the help of a partition, the room is divided, allowing a rest area on just the other side. The rest area offers a decent television set, two couches and even a towel warmer to help take the load off. There is a telephone in the office as well that has a secure line unlike the recorded line downstairs at the front desk. This allows people like The Owner to call in to The Lord of the Night and offer some… words of encouragement from time to time.

Visit Cabaret Grand whenever you’ve got the chance (and money)!

#sins of the father #yakuza 0 #goro majima #key locations

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gerardpilled · 7 months

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I feel like some of the theatrics of BP got polished by the producers and other people involved. I remember Gerard said mama was inspired from "Cabaret" and in the early demo I can hear Jane Horrocks influences on Gerard's vocal performance but then the studio version is pop-punk crisp clean with all of that just gone. I think they thought they were leaning into it too hard? I wonder just how many changes other songs went through and how many other musical influences were just erased. I think mcr was trying to play it safe by some decisions so they could get more people to listen to them. Making people too uncomfortable makes them drop the album. They were trying to get on billboards and win awards after all. (Btw what albums do you think were more influential and challenging the norms at the time? Aside from big names obvs)

100% agree with this. Like i love the album and I think it almost had to be made the way it was, but i do agree that a lot of it was probably shaved down to make it profitable. Again, I kinda think packaging all those influences into a radio-friendly album is itself a feat worthy of more serious praise than Kerrang best-of lists lmfao.

As for other artists, a list of a few that released albums in 2003-2006:

The mountain goats, Fiona Apple, the decemberists, belle and Sebastian, silver jews, lcd soundsystem, of Montreal, M.I.A, Sufjan Stevens, screaming females, modest mouse, ghostface killah, the go team, arcade fire, Kanye (yes), postal service, Outkast, animal collective, the strokes, the unicorns

Now I don't necessarily personally like the music from some of these people more than anything mcr ever made, but i do think they were all making some cutting edge stuff. some radio friendly and some not so much

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nugothrhythms · 1 year

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“Freezing Point” by Polish gothwave and post-punk band Cabaret Grey off of 2022 release Cold Calculations

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highladyluck · 3 months

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List five of your least-popular fics, as well as when/why you wrote them (tagged by @sixth-light)

Midnight Cabaret (WoT/WoT show, Rand/Ishy/Lanfear and/or LTT/Mierin/Elan) - This was for the 2023 WoT Secret Santa. The premise is kinda 'wouldn't it be fucked up if LTT was already haunting Rand just a little, especially in the World of Dreams?' Also: 'you could totally use the World of Dreams to do a musical episode, and I can prove it.'

Concerning the open Secretarial position in the Andoran Ter'angreal R&D Department (WoT, epistolary, Setalle Anan) - Ah, the first installment of the ATRDD universe! This started out as a joke about how I like writing cover letters, and how working with Elayne and the entire Andoran defense budget to make ter'angreal is my dream job. After I posted it I decided I could totally write at least two multi-chapter stories about Elayne and moral hazard. Spoiler alert: it has been 3 years and I have not done this, but I do have elaborate outlines.

Al'Thor by Asha'mouth (WoT, filk about Rand) - 2022 Wot Secret Santa gift, it's literally just filk of Smash Mouth's All Star but I refined the scansion to within a millimeter of its life. This thing is POLISHED. I had the title in my ideas file for years, and when I got a giftee who I knew liked my filk I had the perfect excuse to actually work on it.

Polar Research (WoT, Aviendha/Elayne) - This was a vignette prompt on tumblr around the end of 2022 from @primeideal: Aviendha at the polar research station. I loved having an excuse to write more in the ATRDD universe and show Aviendha using her Talent of identifying ter'angreal. Also I will never ever miss the opportunity to point out that Shai'tan's workshop is at the North Pole.

A Clothes Encounter (WoT/Les Mis musicalverse, Enjolras and Beslan) - Just checked the original publication date for this crossover on FF.net and it was October 2005! It was in response to an offhand livejournal comment about Enjolras/Beslan. It ended up more E/R but it does provide an origin story for musical!Enjolras's distinctive vest.

Tagging whoever wants to do it! Show us your back catalogue!

#wheel of time #wot fic #tag game #nothing really surprising here except maybe the Avi/Elayne one #songfic of any kind & crossovers are less popular #and very few people want to read fictional cover letters for some reason #sucks for them they're missing out

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variousqueerthings · 2 months

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also did in fact get to watch the west end cabaret, and i did enjoy it (i live in a world where my mum occasionally visits and takes pity on a poor soul and so we go watch a musical) but i think all of what i was concerned about with it was correct. so pros and cons. or cons and pros, hm... pros and cons...

pros:

sally bowles was spot on -- cara delevigne is currently playing her, but not when i was watching, which im kind of relieved about. im sure she does a good job, but a-list hollywood star and model cara delevigne is going to have to work double-time to convince me she's a struggling overwrought undertalented average british woman (while still belting out those higher notes and being the most captivating character on the stage). i liked the actress who played her A Lot, she tapped into all of that perfectly, and i liked that she took the seemingly impossible middle-ground between a liza minelli and a jane horrocks and was both punky and able to convince me that she wasn't that good at performing in the story, while still giving an actually amazing set of performances

the whole kit kat bar Gang so to speak was amazing, i enjoyed every one of them. they were all fantastic and vibrant, while giving a modern-married-with-classic queer feel in their outfits and introductions that updated the visuals in the opening number to a more overt genderfluidity than ive seen before

the pre-show + interval immersive experience was probably my favourite part of the whole thing. entering down a side entrance into a cellar and seeing performers as you wander through various sections, and then during the latter part of the interval the performers bringing some of the more daring audience members onstage and interacting with the various rows. made it feel like not just a musical, but an actual club

frau schneider and herr schultz were great throughout, my other favourite performances of the show. the place where it found its realism most effectively and of course where the politics is most at the forefront, wonderfully depicted by the two actors

cliff bradshaw is the most thankless role in any iteration, so shoutout to making him pretty likeable -- my guy will never be memorable, but that of course is not the point. he's the camera

cons:

the marketing of being "the most exclusive club in town" was giving a whole vibe of elite, difficult-to-gain-access-to, rich, that just... isn't correct. and i mean, the tickets are fuckn expensive so, it really is all of those things, which was my immediate kneejerk reaction to the show long before i ever watched it: is this show for a queer audience, or is it for people to gawk at queers? (but make it musical theatre and polished, no messy realistic queerness). and you can never know if an audience is majority queer or not, but i will hazard a strong... not. and also a strong "very few people under the age of 35 who would have to really save up to watch this show" as well

to add to this point -- i was watching with my mum, her boyfriend, and my godfather (all middle-class and middle-aged straight people in their own right, but youknow. i suggested the show), and during the interval i asked them about how they felt about the tone so far, mentioning that i found it interesting in contrast to the 1993 version, which was quite grimy-looking, and my godfather said that yeah, it was sultry, but it wasn't cabaret clublike -- and i just. if he noticed that. everything was a bit too polished, and too pretty (with, in my opinion, the exception of the portrayal of sally). i just think it's a fundamental misjudgement of who cabaret is about (club performers and sex workers with no money) and also, in my opinion, who it ought to be for

the emcee... ohhhh the emcee. i mean, okay. i took an instant dislike back when it was edd*e r*dmayne, everyone who knows me knows i think that guy has the charisma of a wet sponge and needs to stop poking his fingers in seminal queer narratives, but the fucking... party hat. this show definitely made it clear that it's not just the actor, it's the way it's put together. funny thing was, one of the ensemble performers (played bobby) took charge during the interval (when the actual emcee is presumably off having a big costume change), and i thought, "now that's the emcee," and it wasn't actually any of the performers' fault. i dont think the emcee actor had the look, but that aside, this show had no idea what to do with the character, it's like they didn't give him any kind of grounding at all. a series of nonsensical costume-changes, popping up haphazardly outside the cabaret (but not with any kind of consistency) a sort of... wheedling, un-directedness to the whole thing. he was disconnected from any kind of time (20th century or today), any kind of place (club, stage, in or out of the cabaret), any kind of anything, and it was the costuming, the way he'd been directed, and the lack of consistency for when he appeared. he was almost meaningless to the story

the politics -- speaking of the emcee -- were really weirdly stripped. the big points are there, it's berlin, people want to party and ignore the nazis, and then two big Moments happen (the engagement party, the rock through the window) that indelibly remind people that antisemitism cannot be ignored, and that this is coming, whether you want it to or not (and eventually it's coming for the denizens of the kit kat club too). but other than that, nothing in the way this was put together felt very cognisant of wanting to either get into the idea of nazism of the 1930s or fascism today. there was a kind of vague effigy performance of "tomorrow belongs to me" with figures that looked like they were saying something about conformity, and at the end of the play everyone is dressed in the same, somewhat bland suit, so the message is... idk. conformity makes the world worse, i guess. beyond that single scene with the swastika revealed at the engagement party, we never see one again, which may have been an attempt to point out how people hide behind the idea of "just politics," but with the way the whole thing was staged (this rich, luxurious location) came off to me like it was letting the audience off the hook -- it's still a story, we're telling it to you as gently as possible. it just felt so timid! all the imagery -- like the emcee himself -- is beautiful and un-grounded, only just enough about something to tell the story without being too disquieting

good example is the money makes the world go around song. the emcee comes up in a goth "harem-like" outfit, with a sort of shiny, rib-cage looking harness, clown make-up, black stormtrooper-esque helmet, loooong shining nails -- there's 5 different things going on here, none of which are grounded, they're just... pretty. give a nod to ideas about wealth, and starvation, and nazis, and (hopefully intentionally) appropriation/exotification, and something queer-esque. look, a man with bedazzled nails singing about how money makes the world go around, at a show where the tickets are fuckn expensive, but he's not singing about that, he's not singing about today, or the past, and in fact the number is so overproduced (all the other performers have taken off their homage-costumes to the 1920s/30s and are now in a generic wavy dress outfit, and they're all over the stage, doing the most, distracting from the words) that you can't take in of the words with what's happening onstage

i hated hated hated those conformist suits at the end. what were they on about???? conformity takes the glitter out of things idk?? fascism. talk about modern day fascism. or hell, lean hard into a story about 1930s fascism if you're not comfortable confronting this audience properly, but just... don't be generic

which also, minor gripe time now, but there's this whole plotline in the musical that's deliberately set up at the beginning -- sally has a beautiful coat. the metaphor of trying to polish up her life on the outside, of refusing to acknowledge the deeper issues, not just with the world, but with herself, that she's poor, she's not entirely sure how long she'll last for or what's coming next, so hey, make it a party and look beautiful... that whole setup is important for when she sells the coat to get an abortion! and they have the setup in this version, but then seemingly forget all about it at the end? the coat they reference isn't the beautiful, expensive fur coat she walks in with in the first act, it's this random suit-coat she's been dressed up in for the finale, it misses the whole point. i say minor gripe, but it does feel like a microcosm of so much of this show. it refuses, ironically, to go any deeper. it still fundamentally wants to make sure the audience is comfortable by defanging as much as possible all the little things that add up to one great big picture

gosh it was long. it was -- with interval -- two hours, forty-five minutes. maybe that's why it felt like it lacked purpose, it seemed like it wanted to pack in every version of the story into one, and again, sally at the centre really makes this obvious, because as much as i think the actress was pitch perfect, i definitely saw the ways this particular version repeated sentiments about her over and over so that she became softer, sweeter, like the rest of it palatable. the most uncomfortable she makes you is during her first performance and everything beyond that is just showing how sympathetic she fundamentally is, how hard done by, feel sad for her. like a victorian morality tale, rather than a 20s portrait of complex, flawed people, and it goes on and on and on with that same tangent

think it was a mistake to fire her at the beginning and thereby take her out of the kit kat club -- disconnects the club from the story, so we're just randomly going there sometimes for a song, and then back to the more grounded narrative, then back for another song that loosely comments on the scene we just watched. again, this goes back to the emcee being kind of nothing and sally being taken out of the club, so that there's barely any blend between the plot and the cabaret setting, either through interference of a godlike emcee, or by sally just going to work

this a bit vague, and not quite sure if i mind or not, but cliff was played by a black actor, and the thing is of course that in the story cliff is targeted by a nazi as a guy he can trick into smuggling illegal materials for the nazi party from paris into berlin (until cliff catches wise and tells him to go to hell). and i felt like there's an added ickiness to all of that if cliff is black, that is never really explored in this iteration (nor the fact that he's being hit on by a slew of white men and women). obviously this isn't the original text, so whether or not to bring that forward in this version, to comment (subtly or not) on racial attitudes of the 20s/30s as another form of mirror to today, is very much up to the show. then again, maybe this time isn't original to the text either and they included that as well, so could have been an opportunity if they really wanted to change something up for this specific iteration

In conclusion: really, very beautiful show, with great performers, that ultimately rang pretty hollow and didn't attempt to interact with the material from a modern lens beyond the trappings. save me from generic upscale "queer" imagery made palatable for non-queer audiences. clown emcee can't hurt me, he isn't real

#to taaag to taaaaag #ah fuckit #cabaret #this is for me to find again after all

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