POLL - Artistic Grant to Alizée

[Roman]

Originally Posted by rj.bagby

... I would suggest putting more into paying the bills for this website. ...

I'll have to check that I made my donation for this month. Yeah, it might have been nice if we could expand the utility of this site just to find more ways to fund it. People like talking, but they don't care much for shelling out. And people are more used to paying more like $10/year rather than $10/month, but since we have such a small number of people who use this site I assume the costs are pretty much all fixed costs; so, each contribution is a relatively large and necessary contribution.

I guess that conversation is dead. So, anyone with some serious money? I guess you have to go into business with Alizée yourself. There was a time when it would have been a dream to work with Alizée. Still, I wonder what that would be like. Of course, I know nothing about making music.

[wasabi622]

Sounds like an interesting idea. Rather just dishing out some money, give it to her with some sort of style and meaning?

Good stuff.

[VVVACCPLPNLY]

Hmm... I think giving her money is a bad idea, unless it is paying for official merchandise. Handing her cash: baaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by VVVACCPLPNLY

Hmm... I think giving her money is a bad idea, unless it is paying for official merchandise. Handing her cash: baaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea.

Well it's not just plain cash, it's a... Monetary award!

[Roman]

the Nobel Prize is a cash award of about $1.38 million dollars. just saying

[Fèvier]

so whatever happened to that billboard idea? I was willing to pitch in ideas!

[MYGOGT]

Originally Posted by Beaner360

so whatever happened to that billboard idea? I was willing to pitch in ideas!

I was wondering the same thing, also I wonder what the costs are to advertise in the movie theaters.

[sumi1]

Yeah, the billboard idea was interesting. I am not sure about the movie theaters though. That may be way out of our reach.

[wasabi622]

Originally Posted by sumi1

Yeah, the billboard idea was interesting. I am not sure about the movie theaters though. That may be way out of our reach.

Well I've mentioned this before.

As I've worked at a movie theater for the past 2 years, I've heard and seen the adverts at the theater enough. They do cost a bit to advertise, but I don't know if they'll do personal ads. Most of them are from local businesses and the like. They are also theater specific, I work for Kerasotes Showplace Theaters, but say I paid for an Ad, they'd only use them at the Naperville theater.

[FanDeAliFee]

In reflecting on the discussion here to date, this is what I now think:

1. It is a critical juncture in Alizée's career. We <a href="http://answers.ask.com/Science/Other/why_are_french_called_frogs">"rosbeef"/"rosbifs"</a> understand our beloved little <a href="http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=137534">"frog"</a> needs a big enough "bounce" from the "Lili" pad on which she has now landed to reach the next one, rather than drown in the pond.

2. Alizée and her entourage gave AAm three SPECIAL services:<ul><li>> A celebrity appearance (the Open Letter chat et alia)
<li>> Design work by Andy Warhol's "acoltyle" (the 50 CDs)
<li>> Fashion photoshoot of le "fantôme" d'Edie</ul>When given expensive gifts by a stranger, you should reciprocate.

3. New music like <i>UEdS</i> is a luxury and luxuries are highly cyclical. i.e. the industries hurt most by the Great Recession are the luxuries.

4. Technology makes it easy to steal copyrighted music and movies. The very low cost of high-quality sensors and displays, memory and telecommunication make it cheap and easy to copy fixed works of art illicitly. The existence of "copying machines" in every other home in wealthy countries makes it all but unstoppable by force.

5. Technology makes it cheap to serve up perfectly legitimate copies of art past copyright tenure, back to the dawn of time, providing legitimate, free surrogates for new art. (e.g. I created an exhibit using "Edison cylinder" music without having to pay for this music.)

When I was a minor, I never won a huge prize like the AOM trip to the Maldives, for superior performance nationally in the field in which I aspired to practice, as did Alizée. As a high school student, I entered a well-known science contest and won some minor honors, but none which brought cash or its equivalent. However, as the captain of our TV "quiz kid" high school team, I did lead my compatriots to a few victories (including over Ben's alma mater!) and in consequence we earned for our public school library multiple encyclopedias, one of very few kindnesses I have ever showed my old school.

This gave me the idea that instead of helping finance future Alizée art, perhaps we might thank Alizée for the private session by creating the "Alizée Jacotey Fund" at <a href="http://www.ecole-du-spectacle.com/"><i>Ecole de Danse de Monique Mufraggi</i></a>, the private tuition-funded theatrical school which provided her early performing arts education.

It would appear they are very proud of their alumna, because on their Web site home page they write:
<blockquote><i>ALIZEE, ancienne danseuse de l'ecole
L'Ecole de Danse de Monique Mufraggi est très fière de citer son ancienne élève et chanteuse française Alizée Jacotey comme preuve de la réussite de l'école. Alizée a dansé durant près de 10 ans au sein de mon école et ses talents de chanteuse et de danseuse se sont révélés très tôt, pour le plus grand bonheur du public d'Ajaccio.</i></blockquote>which translates roughly as:
<blockquote><i>ALIZEE, former dancer of the school
The Monique Mufraggi School of Dance is very proud to cite its former student and French singer Alizée Jacotey as evidence of the success of the school. Alizée danced for nearly 10 years in my school and her talents as a singer and dancer were revealed very early to the delight of the Ajaccio public.</i></blockquote>I would like to think all of Alizée's experiences there were positive, and she has nothing but fond sentiments toward the school. But I know too many examples of wronged former students of often-authoritarian (and worse) institutions like schools to bet my life on that. Perhaps this dimension is an unhappy possibility we might neglect for simplicity.

The school's currently published fee schedule is this:
<blockquote>PRICES 2009 - 2010

Rates / dance package 1 person:
<table><tr><td>1 class / week</td><td>€ 45 / month</td></tr><tr><td>2 classes / week</td><td>€ 65 / month</td></tr><tr><td>3 classes / week</td><td>€ 88 / month</td></tr><tr><td>4 classes / week</td><td>€ 92 / month</td></tr><tr><td>5 classes / week</td><td>€ 99 / month</td></tr></table>
Rates / dance package for 2 sisters (brothers):
<table><tr><td>1 time / week</td><td>€ 69 / month</td></tr><tr><td>2 times / week</td><td>€ 105 / month</td></tr><tr><td>3 times / week</td><td>€ 125 / month</td></tr></table>
Other rates:
<table><tr><td>Private lessons</td><td>€ 50 per hour</td></tr><tr><td>Single course without the package</td><td>€ 17 Course</td></tr><tr><td>Trial Course</td><td>€ 10</td></tr></table></blockquote>
On this basis, one sees that a € 1000 Fund would provide a single needy but promising NAMED student with the money to attend 10 months of lessons 5 times weekly.

There are many things I like about the gesture I propose.

1. It says thank you to Alizée in a palpable way for the private session.

2. It establishes a suggested price for future similar private sessions which could be used to subsidize Alizée's OWN creative work, rather than a student's education. As I outlined above, there are so many economic threats to the creation of new art, new methods MUST be discovered if creating it is not doomed to be transformed from a rare calling for the talented to merely a hobby of the wealthy.

3. Alizée does not need to say "yes" for us to proceed. And it is beyond my belief that the school would refuse this scholarship fund, as modest an amount as it is. Indeed, they might dream it becomes the snowball which unleashes a small avalanche of similar largesse.

4. Alizée's beloved Corsican island is the "least developed" part of France. That is a euphemism for saying it has less money than other places. Bigdan is good with French numbers and can tell us how much. It is probably harder to find money for many things there, including an art scholarship, than elsewhere in France.

5. The tenth anniversary of the release of <i>Moi.. Lolita</i> is imminent. I believe it is July 4, 2010. This is Alizée's tenth anniversary as a showbiz professional, opening up interesting possibilities. What if in announcing the Fund, the school holds a special celebration then, with Alizée as the Guest of Honor? She could tell of her experiences at the school and in professional life, while Mufraggi and staff could recall her days there as a student. Perhaps one might even exhibit some video clips of Alizée's theatrical work while a student, too.

It would be good publicity for the school and Alizée as well. Is it impossible to believe that French entertainment TV would cover this event? An interesting angle would be that the Fund was created by the unprecedented(?) action of an entertainer's fan club "early" in a career - and a FOREIGN club at that! The 4th of July timing would give a reporter the chance to observe how appropriate it is, given that is also the birthday of the country of the donor fan club.

6. The logistics of doing this in a <b>timely</b> way is still, if barely, within our reach.

7. It is useful to act while the release of <i>UEdS</i> and the two-dozen interviews recently given are still in the public memory. This gesture might give recording sales a useful kick just before the annual August holiday season.

Alizée has told us the favorite song of her early childhood was Simon and Garfunkel's <i>Sound(s) of Silence</i>. I was her devoted fan before leaning this, but it only endeared her a little more to me, because, as I have mentioned, the singers are graduates of my own high school, having become stars a tiny handful of years before my own matriculation.

Since Alizée has said she has now decided to "sing without smiling" for a while, and has also embraced the somber theme of the doomed Edie Sedgwick, I thought that given my present suggestion, I would refer to the song <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Town"><i>My Little Town</i></a> by my homeboys, which Lala will let you audit once <a href="http://popup.lala.com/popup/504684659303551114">here</a>. Simon and Grafunfel have offered conflicting stories for the meaning of the song, but hardly optimistic ones in either case. I invite Alizée to celebrate "her little town" and its dance school as a contrast to the one described in this song!

Sadly, the official Website of the high school Simon, Garfunkel and myself all attended reports that bare-midriff dress is now forbidden. I guess Alizée would be UNWELCOME to visit my school in many of her career's costumes! While a student there, I myself would dress in very tidy, conservative, business-professional attire. My clothing was a striking anomaly amongst the earthy, downmarket garb seen on so many students from homes much more privileged than mine in those days, at the dawn of the 1970s. Notwithstanding this, I remember with fondness the typical bare-midriff attire of a certain fellow student, who today is a highly-regarded oncologist leading an important research project in New York City. Her dress did not interfere with her ability to greatly outstrip the career accomplishments of many of her peers, nor did it drive me to such heights of distraction and frenzy that I failed to do well in high school, better then she did in fact. We didn't need a state institution like a public school to tell dependent young adult minors such as ourselves how to dress. Instead, we had something called <b>parents</b>!

So I can only bemoan the fascist jackasses who rule our high school today. Although I held political opinions <b>very</b> different from those most of my fellow students did, including the young lady I mentioned, it was unthinkable that anyone among us would ever call torturing prisoners anything other than a horrific crime. We lived in different times.