Friday, April 28, 2006

post 257. a real, live cubicle.

my very own office. one might make the case that i've got an office at brockport, but in reality i've just got a desk in the legendary mike krickmire's office. at geva theatre center, i've got, like, dividers and my own phone. who cares if there's no window? who cares if the computer is a relic of cold-war russia? it's just like the jeffersons: we're movin' on up.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

post 256. finally, someone realizes i'm a dead ringer for spartacus.

nunemaker found a website that finds your celebrity look-a-likes, so he ried out all his friends...

post 255. bell orchestre at the german house.

i've seen a lot of shows in my 32 years, and i can't remember a drummer who knew exactly where his drums fit into songs. these cats -- including members of the arcade fire -- were fascinating, had a song where the aforementioned drummer -- stef -- played an old typewriter, and even covered aphex twin. check them out.

Monday, April 24, 2006

post 254. a cd-r of pictures i forgot existed.

in the summer of 2001 i went to visit eric in nyc, who was, at the time, working at the bronx zoo. i was also there to see living colour's free concert in central park.

my dad painted this. along with a monument to the vietnam war he designed for a small town in louisiana, it's the only public work of art i know of by the g. joanna took this picture after we went to see atb perform at universe, or galaxy, or gotham city, or whatever the name of that club was. has to be 2002. i think.

maurice, from record archive, did this for the archive's website. sweet.

me and the reverend horton heat outside wber. when was this...2003? i think? the next day i went to the nextel cup (then the winston cup) race at the glen with teri. yeah. 2003. i picked up the rev from water street music hall, drove him to wber, interviewed him, then drove him back; on the way i bought him a frappucino. "anything you have to take care of when you get off the tour?" i asked him. "the gutters," he answered. a really nice guy.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

post 252. has something changed? or have i always been wrong?

now, i loves me some compound sentences. and i mean com-pound. so i'm very friendly with semicolons, commas, dashes, and have had a long and loving relationship with parenthesis. but something, over the past few years, has changed my attitude toward the parenthesis. es. parenthesises. parentheses? anyway. i've always, since a wee lad, written like this:

...and now, i've got this talking dinosaur in my back yard (named "henry," no less).

but lately i've noticed that in real people's writing -- such as books and magazines -- my sentence would be structured like this:

...and now, i've got this talking dinosaur in my back yard. (named "henry," no less.)

have i been wrong all these years? or am i simply experiencing some evolution of the written language?

Sunday, April 16, 2006

post 251. trying to read like an adult.

i've always been a terrible reader. italo calvino's cosmicomics were, for me, great inspiration because they have a sort-of whiz-bang quality to them. at face value, these fable-esque stories of signs hanging off distant galaxies and jealous primitive life forms forming the first shells were like everything i ever did in college...uh...and today. all flash.

but there is a stark difference between those incriminatingly bad stories i wrote and the delicately crafted works of italo calvino (outside of the obvious parameter known as talent): mr. calvino's stories have something smart people call depth. so in re-reading a few of the stories, i've come to realize that i, in my laziness, never really put a book down after reading it and ask myself, "now, what was that about?" and "how does this book effect my life? does it?" and when writing about time travel and superheroes, i never think, "what am i trying to tell people with this?" i just like the thought of talking dinosaurs.

i was talking to graham of iron cobra last week, who mentioned he was reading mr. calvino's
if on a winter's night a traveler; since i wasn't currently reading anything seriously (i had started to reread u2 at the end of the world, one of my favorite books) it got me wanting to return to mr. calvino and see if i couldn't use some smarts and read this like an adult. i'm about a quarter of the way through.

post 250. awesome; i fucking shot that!

i really can't remember why, but i saw beastie boys live several times in the nineties, and i wasn't all too crazy about their live shows. but even with that said, new beastie boys projects always get me excited. one of the few groups out there that has an appreciation, respect, and genuine love for all the music that came before them, these guys really live the life i want to have: the ability to create on their own terms. they're also one of the few bands that gets to operate without pandering to outside forces; like pearl jam, for example, beastie boys seem to be doing their own thing, and having a blast while doing it. lucky bastards.

when
awesome; i fucking shot that! started i was a little concerned about the confuse-o-vision editing of all those cameras together; i kept wondering if i could take this were i an epileptic. but the movie's balance of editing and storytelling, the switch between the hand-held fan cams and the "clearly expensive" cams, plus the stage show itself -- wow!

when the stagehands wheel the wedding band set out onto the stage with everyone dressed in nasty tuxes, it's awesome. intergalactic in the audience? mix master mike wreckin' the decks? doug e fresh? ben stiller seen singing along? this movie was great (much more engaging than the neil young movie i saw a few weeks ago; although the case can be made that the two disparate music styles cannot accomodate comparison, i believe that the mr. young's movie could have been better if it wasn't shot in that boring old stock-footage-y way most concert movies are filmed in) and makes me want to try them live again...


post 249. dinner, scott and kyung and zoe, mamasan's.

thanks for dinner, amigos.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

post 247. a scene with charley saturday night.

i love being in scenes with charley -- i've learned a lot from him, and he's made clear to me the idea of "games within scenes." here we had the suggestion of "hovercraft" to begin with, and it was a lot of fun. the shows went really well this weekend, and i was very glad i got to hang out with becky and graham of iron cobra. they taught us loads. and loads.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

post 246. a one-voice with brian at friday night's theatre sports.

post 245. thank you for smoking.

saw this tonight with mookie and miranda. fab, man. totally fab.

post 244. another piece of a play.

Scene one.

Time. Present.
Place. A spotlight dawns on our hero. The pizza delivery man. He is in his uniform and lifts a pizza aloft with his hand. He looks serious and his outfit is as meticulously put together as it can be.

SPENCER. Not to be too self…self-bigging, or anything, but I’m a pretty darn good delivery driver. I know that might not mean much to you, but there’s not too much else I’m good at. I never could read too well. Hate math. Except pizza math. That’s what I call it: pizza math. Someone calls, and if I take it, I can figure out how much your order is. It’s because I see the same figures all the time. So it’s not like I’m really doing math, I guess. It’s just remembering things. And that’s something I do well. I remember things. Very well. So I’m gonna tell you about something that happened here. Here in Ellensburg. It’s not gonna make sense, maybe, but it happened. [At this point, someone painfully, quietly, and very very slowly, begins to crawl from O.R. It’s a woman, and she’s been bloodied and seems as if she’s making the last moves of her life. She continues to crawl while SPENCER talks, but he makes no mention of her or even acts as if he notices. She crawls towards SPENCER and will arrive to him as the monologue ends.] Little Big Stan’s Pizza and Subs is the best in the county. And I’m not just saying that because I work for him. Every single pizza place that’s come since Little Big Stan’s opened up has gone under. There was the Pizza Shack. They were the first. There was Main Street Pizza. They had a special running once, like, two-for-one pizzas on Saturdays. Didn’t matter. Even Domino’s tried coming in, and that didn’t work one bit. So you might say, “well, the town must be really traditional and hate newcomers and, like, throw rocks at Starbucks.” But it’s not like that. Little Big Stan’s is just the best. New York-style pizza, real thin crust. The sauce has a little bit of a kick to it without being too much. Stan gets the mozzarella from a local guy, which adds to the specialness. No. Unity of it. That’s…not it. What’s that word? The…something of it. It’s… [Shrugs.] There’s a Pizza Hut the next town over, in North Bend. But all the waitresses are old, because none of the kids make any money there. They just sit around and smoke cigarettes and eat the lunch buffet, and the sun comes in through those dusty red curtains and gives the place this, like, seventies look. Really depressing. We deliver to North Bend. I started delivering Little Big Stan’s Pizza five years ago. Don’t go to college. Don’t do much, really, so working here, with it being the best pizza in the county, well, it’s a good job. Pays the rent. Gets me stuff. And, I live above Little Big Stan’s. So. You know, it works out. But. I never thought that I’d see stuff like I saw that night. I mean, it’s a small town. Ellensburg. Who’d’a thought things like that could happen here, right? And the thing about it – with all the killing and the stuff in the woods and the lacrosse team no one knew we had – it all had to do with Little Big Stan and a ball point pen. [At this point the GIRL has reached SPENCER and has reached up to offer him the pen. Blackout.]

post 243. catching up - the odd couple set.

i've been so busy that i haven't had the chance to post too much. here's the sitch two weeks ago, when i was helping build the harlequins drama club's set out at brockport's lab theater. (i'm their faculty advisor.) they were putting on the female version of the odd couple, joanna was directing it, and it came out pretty darn well.
chuck -- harlequins' president -- producing his vision.

lauren, heather, and mookie begin rehearsing.

a long day of painting begins. i'm really interested in how sets evolve; a couple flats, some paint, a few well-hung doors, a couch or two, and sudden;y you've got a nyc apartment.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

post 244. pics from my birthday in brockport.

joanna and adam (to her right) at a cd shop on main street.

joanna, mookie, adam and the cast of the odd couple gave me a nice birthday dinner at barber's on main street.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

post 243. infurtiatingly frustrating.

i don't understand this: how is there a world where the sixth season of sanford and son get put on dvd but the rest of twin peaks languishes in icky vhs-land? i want my windom earle restored!