PeterRS

Another bit of culture! One art form that has never really interested me much is ballet. I have seen not more than half a dozen in a lifetime of theatre going, but to be fair each has been rather special. At university I had to spend two months studying in Vienna. The legendary pairing of Rudolph Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn were dancing the ballet Giselle at the Opera House. I managed to get a standing ticket. I was never a Nureyev fan, but the way he used the stage as virtually his home and had the audience in the palm of his hand was remarkable. At the start of my career I went to see a short ballet/dance at the Royal Ballet choreographed by one of the great choreographers of the day, Jerome Robbins. His Dances At A Gathering has no story. It is just pure dance with six couples dancing to the piano music of Chopin. I loved it. Robbins, of course, is arguably best known as the choreographer of the original West Side Story. John Cranko was unquestionably one of the finest of all choreographers. Gay and based at London's Royal Opera House before the law was changed, he was arrested and prosecuted. He moved to Stuttgart where he literally became a star in the world of ballet. His Romeo And Juliet was amazing, as was a ballet he created for his four top stars which he named Initials R.B.M.E. each being the first initial of their first names. Perhaps surprisingly, he used not ballet music but the Second Piano Concerto of Brahms. Fabulous evening. It has became one of his most famous ballets. My last ballet experience was a major work by another great choreographer, the American John Neumeier. who headed the company in Hamburg for 51 years till last year. Beforehand, he had worked with Cranko in Stuttgart. Also gay, he created a Swan Lake which he titled Illusions Like Swan Lake in which he changed much of the story and had the principal character loosely based on mad King Ludwig of Bavaria who built all the Bavarian castles like Neuschwanstein. I saw this way back in 1977. The company just had to take it to Munich because everyone in Bavaria in the south was desperate to see it! In my time, I have known a handful of ballet dancers and am always amazed at their dedication and hard work for what for most is a relatively short career. I have been having some email exchanges with a Hong Kong dancer who is now a Principal with the Paris Opera Ballet, the first Asian ever to be awarded such an honour. But I have also seen on youtube a rather fascinating vdo featuring two 16-year old identical twins from Berne, both of whom have been studying ballet for years and will shortly attend the John Cranko Ballet School. The vdo was filmed at a short summer school in the USA. It has some clips from ballet class where the stretching always amazes me - as do the young guys cute asses (oops!) I have a feeling that we will be hearing a lot more about these twins in the world of dance some years into the future.

I once wrote a piece about the gay novelist Christopher Isherwood whose best known work today must be his Berlin Stories which form the basis for the play I Am A Camera which in turn forms the basis for the musical Cabaret! An Englishman, Isherwood had emigrated to California at the outset of war. Enjoying Valentine's Day on the beach in 1953 he struck up a conversation with a particularly handsome young man, Don Bachardy. Isherwood then was 48: Bachardy 18. This was an era when being gay was against the law in California. But the law had never meant much to Isherwood, one of the century's most famous gay icons. Another gay icon and eventual California neighbour quickly became a friend, the English painter David Hockney. Hockney was a frequent visitor to the home of Isherwood and Bachardy. In 1968 he decided to paint them. That painting is now arguably his most famous painting after A Bigger Splash showing a man diving into a swimming pool. Although in the Splash painting we do not see a near naked man after the dive, unlike another Hockney painting more or less on the same subject. At the time, that man was Peter Schlesinger, Hockney's lover. What makes the Isherwood/Bachardy painting so different is its basic middle-class homeliness. Although Christopher died almost 40 years ago, Bachardy at 91 remains alive and active as a painter himself. A vast canvas, for the past 40 years the painting of the two of them has been in private hands. Now it is being put up for sale by Christie's Auction House in New York next month. Expected sale price? Up to US$45 million! That's a huge price for a modern painting. But A Bigger Splash rather set the stage, as it were. Sold for £2.9 million to a private buyer in 2006, it was then a record for a Hockney painting. The buyer then resold it in 2020 for £23.1 million! Photo: Christie's Auction House

There surely comes a time in life when having lied so often to so many about so much that you have to believe you are in fact telling the truth. As we all know, the ghastly Roy Cohn was Trump's mentor. Cohn believed that you could lie your way through life. When called to account, you sued. And you continued to sue until people realised that as with your lies, law suits would be coming if you crossed him. And so countering the lies with facts becomes a rather dangerous business. But with Trump it is not just the lies and law suits. It's revenge! He inhabits a Hadean world where everyone apart from him will always be wrong and like Nemesis he will strike them down.

Vietnam is a rather appropriate analogy, barely noticed until suddenly it was front page news. A start unknown to almost all during the Eisenhower years, continued almost unobtrusively by Kennedy before being brazenly and illegally augmented by Johnson and again by Nixon. Thai censorship may not be illegal - but much of what is censored in Thailand should not be. It's a sort of fantasy. We start small and so what we censor does not exist. But as we increase censorship, the wider Thai community begins to notice and trouble starts. But the powers-that-be continue to pretend they are doing good.

I know precious little about US baseball. Before True Visions quit Star Sports and instead linked up with the cheaper Bein Sports from somewhere in the Gulf Region, we used to get regular mens baseball programmes from Japan. Some of those players were so cute. Same is true of the teams in Taiwan. Not sure about South Korea, but as True Visions is an Asian company you'd think they'd be happy to show Asian baseball. Same is true of many mens sports - like Asian volleyball. Star Sports regularly had mens volleyball from Japan. Bein clearly can not afford the mens licence fees and so we have women's volleyball instead. In my book True Visions programming has gone way downhill ever since it dropped the excellent HBO1 programme years ago.

I would go to see a good play whoever is in the cast. I would definitely not go to see a play only because a Hollywood star is in the cast. Re Good Night And Good Luck, this obviously was a project very close to Clooney's heart. After all, he produced, financed and directed the 2005 movie and the recent theatrical production was just the movie scaled down for the stage. I would not have paid even for the cheapest seat because I thought David Strathairn gave the performance of his career in the same part in the movie. I do like Clooney as an actor, but I cannot believe he would have been as good as Strathairn.

Yes, I did realise. I was just pulling your leg LOL

Can it really be that the stage musical Les Miserables opened in London 40 years ago? And that it has been running in London, New York and many other cities around the world. This is a show that has now been seen by more than 130 million people, has played in 57 countries and been sung in 22 different languages. And that is before we look at the numbers from the successful movie version. The extraordinary thing is that the show almost closed after its first few weeks in London. When the large envelope landed on London producer Cameron Mackintosh's desk, he was somewhat dismayed to see it contained some cassette tapes of another musical - yet another musical. As a successful producer with CATS and a mcuh lauded revival of My Fair Lady under his belt, he was used to being bombarded with eldless cassettes from a line of seemingly endless composers and lyricists. He almost did not listen to this one since he had heard it had opened in Paris (a city that for whatever reason is death to musicals) even though this show had been quite a success. Yet some instinct made him listen to those cassettes and read about this show. Based on Victo Hugo's massive novel, Les Miserables, he heard something which he thought he could re-fashion into a commercial musical. After discussion with its creators Claude Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil, he set to work. Requiring such a huge cast and scenery, Mackintosh realised his regular investors (called "angels" in show biz) could not alone finance a production. So he went into a joint venture with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Its directors were keen and the show opened on October 8 1985. Originally planned for a run of around 12 weeks, all hoped it would run for considerably longer. But when the first night newspaper reviews bordered on the disastrous, everyone prepared for a financial disaster. All except one man, Cameron Mackintosh. Having been in love with musicals since a small child, he believed passionately that what he was seeing and hearing from audiences was not what the critics had written. Audiences seemed to love the show. So he found more cash, blitzed the media with more ads and arranged a short extension to the season. Short? Les Miserables has become the longest-running most successful musical of all time. I have always wondered what it is that has attracted so many millions to see the show. Is it just a love story set against a state of revolution? Triumph over tragedy? Mackintosh himself believes that the power of the show is in its appeal to youth - audiences are inspired by young people fighting for their beliefs and a better world. This is why some of the songs have become anthems of freedom and revolution around the world. We all hope for a brighter tomorrow. Les Mis is now taking bookings in London through till 3 October 2026.

I thought for a moment that you meant I do not have far in terms of age! But you are much too polite for that!

I remember reading some years ago that Thailand is the most censored Asian country after China and Pakistan. In 2011 the government opened a dedicated censorship department covering a variety of issues including a certain family, porn and generally anti-government protests. Yet even a year earlier, in 2010 under the Internal Security Act 74,686 sites had been blocked. Although I can find no figures, I assume the number of blocked porn sites just continues to grow. For those who might not have noticed, international television news like the BBC and CNN is subject to a 5-minute delay. This is to allow censors to pick up and block anything to do wtih - well, we all know what and who. The official reason for so many porn sites being banned, despite increasing protests, is always that they undermine Thailand's traditional cultural and social values. Typical government b/s.

I am sure this is correct, but take away the resident expats (agreed, they are foreigners) and how many visiting tourists ever know about them? A tiny fraction at most is my guess. For example, a quick check using the Search engine comes up with none of those bar/club names. I for one do not recall any being mentioned in these forums (but accept I may just not have noticed - has any visitor?). And if people do not write about them or read about them, how are they to know that tourists are welcome?

The Toronto team has been part of MLB since the mid-1970s. Originally the San Francisco Giants planned to move to Toronto but were stopped from doing so by a court order. Since the League has 15 teams in the east and 15 in the west, when Seatlle was awarded a team, there was a need to balance this with a team in the east. No idea why but the Toronto team got the franchise. Presumably no other team was available! Expediency!

DId anyone mention Trump University, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka (naturally not made in America, MAGA fans please note), the Trump Shuttle (his failed take-over of Eastern Airlines failed venture), GoTrump.com (the attempt to create a travel agency failed after a year), Trump Ice, Trump Fragrances (retailers dropped the line), Trump The Game, Trump Magazine (launched in 1997 and dropped by retailers in 2009 with unpaid bills and staff - just above the headline it says "think big - live large"!), Trump Institute (a four year disaster ending in 2009)? Indeed, the unpaid bills when his businesses have failed must come to a huge amount. Just ask the workers at the failed Atlantic City casino! And this is the successful businessman MAGA adherents believe him to be? The world's greatest con man!

And I expect that is just the least of the maladies affecting him!

A short anecdote about Dame Julie. Although I lived in London after university for only 18 months, in the course of my later work I met a professional colleague who did live there and we took a liking to each other. Unlike most of my London friends, he adored musicals. Visiting the capital around every three months, we'd meet up for a long boozy gossip one evening and a trip to a musical the next. It turned out he was crazy about Julie Andrews, an artiste whom I only knew through the Sound of Music movie and who rather left me cold. On one visit he told me that Julie Andrews would be giving a one-woman show at the celebrated London Pavilion Theatre three months later. We then got into a bit of an argument as I was not particularly interested. However, we compromised. As Dame Julie was taking up the second half of the show, we'd spend the first half in the theatre bar quaffing the bottle of champagne my friend would buy. Suitably oiled, we took our seats in the mid-stalls. Dame Julie's first number was all dance and frankly she was fantastic. At the end, she hoisted herself up on to the grand piano and said, "Who would have believed it? Mary Poppins sweats!" it was a rather stupid line, and yet perhaps because of our rather drunken state, I totally warmed to her. For the rest of the 75 minutes, she had me eating out of her hand. And for the only time in my life, as the curtain came down at the end, I got out of my seat and ran to the orchestra pit to cheer. She was almost better 'live' than on film.

In that site from which you quote, nowhere are any members listed other than indians or indian-Americans. Indeed, as I quoted, from AAHOA's History in its own prospectus, AAHOA was formed by this group. Bloomberg, Avana Capital and other sites agree. The ownership by indians or indian-Americans in this group is 60% - not 40%. You may have your own Russian maths. I go by what i read in reputable and business journals. And yet you who have more than once trashed google use it your argument! Ha!

I will have I hung up my foil a good deal earlier than you - as soon as I entered my last year at university. I decided i really had to study since I had been a lazy sod (academically) up till then. Mind you, fencing was a great sport - but exhausting.

Visiting a Broadway show has been a part of many tourists' experience when visiting the Big Apple. The most expensive ticket used to be for a popular opera at the Metropolitan Opera House. Comparisons now are quite difficult as many opera tickets are booked up to a year ahead. Looking at the website today, there are tickets for productions like Carmen or Don Giovanni at the end of this month where the best available seats are less than $100. Naturally they are about the worst seats in the House as the best would probably have been around $350 if purchased in late 2024. Popular musicals have been another high ticket purchase. I have seen many in my time since I was 17 and can only once recall paying more than $100. It was $150 for Wicked, a popular musical I thought I would like - but I walked out at the interval. The whole pricing of musials had changed when the best producer of the last quarter of 2024, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, decided to up the top price when he brought his London production of Miss Saigon to Broadway in 1991. Even with musicals like CATS, Phantom of the Opera and Mackintosh's own Les Miserables still playing, he charged the highest Broadway price ever with 200 seats for Miss Saigon priced at $99. The theatre world gasped. If Andrew Lloyd Webber had been able to charge that price, he and his investors would not have lost the $20 million in the later run of Sunset Boulevard (the amount estimated by New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich). But Miss Saigon merely opened the pricing doors. Producers finally realised that instead of fixed price seating over all performances, aggressive dynamic pricing to fit demand could make a huge difference between profit and a large loss. When it opened in 2001, Mel Brooks The Producers kept that $99 top price. But his producers were mightily pissed off when it garnered amazing reviews and hotel concierges were charging their hotel guests much more for the privilege of finding tickets. So later in the year, 50 seats were set aside at a price of $480. Other producers cashed in. When Hamilton opened, for a time it had a block of tickets priced at $1,595. All sold out. Not all new shows succeed, though, one being Spiderman: Turn Off The Lights the musical with the renowned theatre director Julie Taymor who had directed the massively successful The Lion King. If anyone plans to write a disaster story of a disastrous musical production, this will be a large part of the book. Its costs were in the $75-95 million range, but it ended up with dreadful reviews and a loss of $60 million. The new 'fad' on Broadway and to a certain extent London is to have famous movie stars undertake limited runs of plays with ticket prices never even considered before. Most recently George Clooney played Ed Murrow in Good Night And Good Luck on a 13-week run in New York's 1,500 seat Winter Garden Theatre. Plays are massively cheaper to put on than musicals. But the top price was $825 and the show completely sold out, with revenues in the last two weeks of $4 million each. Everyone entitled to royalties were paid handsomely. Sadly theatre stage workers do not share in profits. So Broadway is now out of the ballpark for many of New York's regular visitors. And it is not only re theatre, nor the USA. Insane pricing has been part and parcel of the pop world for decades. An analysis by the newspaper the Yorkshire Post has proved that between 1996 and 2025 the average live concert ticket in the UK has risen by 521%. In Singapore last year, a VIP ticket for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour would have set you back US$948. No ticket was less than S$100 and this was before ticket agency charges and other costs were aded. As one who loves theatre, musicals and opera, I think back to my early days in London immediately after finishing university. I got seats at the back of the amphitheatre at the Royal Opera House for around £0.60. A theatre ticket to see a play with two of the country's greatest actors Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson cost around $2. How young people nowadays as well as the mass of tourists can develop an interest in the arts and in live performances beats me.

Yet again @Moses invents his own statistics and posts them here as facts. @Moses, you are plain wrong! Do you not read? I provided a link and in that link it reads - According to industry reports, Indian-origin hoteliers own over 36,000 hotels across the U.S., a majority 60% share of all U.S. hotels. This is a growth from 27,000 to 30,000 hotels in 2020, nearly 50% share of all U.S. hotels then. I now cite a legal source with exactly the figures I posted - https://plgfirm.com/the-rise-of-indian-americans-in-the-u-s-hotel-industry-an-historical-perspective-and-current-market-analysis/ Oh, and by the way? Who formed the AAHOA? Indian hotel owners. As the AAHOA website states in its opening paragraph - The story of AAHOA is the story of Indian Americans pursuing – and achieving – the American Dream. Suggestion: do not contradict posters when you have absolutely zero proof to offer!

Of course, saying "touche" means that I hit you! Are you using a foil, sabre or epee? I can only really take you on if it is foil as I was quite lousy at the other two!

Er - not American Indians but Indians from the subcontinent. The sort that Trump definitely does not like. Think bigger. Mind you, I suspect he'd be perfectly happy to convert this into a Trump Hotel as long as his name is on it. LOL Photo: Wikipedia

Not I think a well known fact. 60% of all the hotels in the United States are owned by Indians or those of Indian ancestry. This includes humble motels right up to a 41% holding in the luxury market including the Four Seasons chain. In just five years that percentage has risen from 50%! The owners represent the largest single force in the American hospitality business. https://avanacapital.com/general-info/indian-hoteliers-and-their-role-in-the-hospitality-landscape-in-the-usa/#:~:text=They have a big say,of all U.S. hotels then

Six tourists died in the town of Vang Vieng in Laos last November - spiked drinks.

Even at my advanced age, with so many eager Chinese running around it must be some sort of paradise! So tempting to try it.

Surely this illustrates the blatant hypocrisy with so much of the MAGA crowd. Basketball would be a third tier sport without all the black Americans and non-Americans playing in the sport. Remember all the hooplah about Linsanity, the Taiwanese Jeremy Lin who set New York alight for a season or two? And the much better Chinese Yao Ming who became a national figure? Baseball likewise where Japan has started to feature. I can remember all the razzmatazz when the ultra cute ichiro Suzuki left Japan and became one of the early Japanese players in the major league. He joined the Seatle Marriners in 2001. Known simply by his first name Ichiro, Suzuki featured on the cover of TIME. He is regarded as one of the sport's greatest ever ball hitters. Before Ichiro, the pitcher Hideo Nomo was also lured to America in 1995. He became the first ever no-hitter to play at Denver's Coors Park, an extremely difficult pitching field because of the city's elevation. And more recently Shohei Ohtani has lit up the Los Angeles Dodgers seasons since 2018 even though his first seasons were plagued by injury. For 2023, he was paid US$30 million, then a new record for a player in his third season. His present contract is for $700 million over 10 years. So much for white American MAGA ideals! And while on the subject of sport, why is it that the end of the baseball season is called the World Series? It has nothing to do with the world! It is exclusively American. What about the Canadians, Central and South American nations, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all of whom have major national baseball leagues of their own? At least MAGA can't be blamed for that as it has been going for 102 years! Definitely time to change the name!