Okay, you can't fool me. Call it "anecdotal evidence" all you want, but I know the truth through the scientific method. First, you see, you observe something that seems to be a pattern, and from it you devise a theory. Then you test that theory over time, to see if it holds up. Through this, I have cleverly deduced one of the great unknown conspiracies:
The batteries in smoke detectors have little timers built in so that they will always start to die between 1:00 and 4:00 in the morning, thus waking people up when they start to chirp very loudly and making the general populace tired, cranky and iiritable. (And, apparently, unable to spell.)
As I'm sure you know, most good smoke detectors these days are wired into building power, and this is a good thing--but you always want them to have battery backups, because if the fire takes out building power, you don't want to lose your smoke detector at that very critical moment. Batteries are, therefore, a good thing. But you know how it always works out: the battery starts to go, and the smoke detector is programmed to start chirping so that you know to replace the battery and keep yourself from, you know, burning to death in a fire. But I'll bet you've observed it, too: the chirping only ever starts at some godawful hour of the morning. And "chirp" is the gentle way of describing a most ungentle sound.
Now one might be inclined to think this is all just coincidence, until you climb out of bed and try to remove the battery. The one I wrestled with last night was plugged into the wall through a plug that held tight like a squid with a bottle of fish in its tentacles. Plus it had this little tab that extended right over the battery compartment--you simply could not change the battery without first unplugging the unit, which was kinda sorta impossible. Plus there's the fact that the smoke detector is high up on a wall, and if I were something less than 6'3" it would've been pretty well impossible.
By this point, I was really incredibly awake.
Eventually a pair of pliers did the trick, though I'm amazed I didn't destroy the unit in the process. And now the unit sits on a counter, unplugged and unbatteried, and I'd better hope a fire doesn't start near the front door in the next few hours or I'm toast.
Insult to injury: even after you've removed the battery, the damn thing still retains a charge for a while. It still chirps. Larry David had enormous fun with this in the first episode of the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and of course I watched and laughed and then, not two weeks later, lived through the same scene in real time.
But I just wanted to, you know, warn people. About this great conspiracy. Now let us all turn our attentions to the pernicious question of why.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Is It Progress?
I have now owned a guitar for two weeks, and I have been practicing at least a little bit every day. And so far...
...well, so far I still suck.
See, the frustrating part is that it's such a huge thing to learn because the guitar is more flexible than I'd realized. Chord fingerings for the left hand to learn, and not just a few of them--I've seen chord books for sale that advertise "1,000 chords diagrammed!" The techniques of strumming and picking for the right hand. The infinitely tricky separation of the right hand from the left hand. Learning to read tablature. Learning to read chord charts. Learning to read musical notation. A metronome to keep me on track rhythmically. Not to mention the necessity of actual physical changes that are required: the growth of callouses on the fingertips of the left hand so that there isn't so much, you know, pain when I play. ("I got blisters on my fingers!" shouted John, and now I get why.)
But it's been two weeks, and I've been practicing regularly, and I've learned to play five of the principal chords (A, C, D, E and G) pretty well. There are a couple very simple melodies (played on just two strings, involving only three frets) that I can now make my way through decently. I can sit down with tablature or a chord chart and work it through, slowly, but I can do it. But that's about it.
I still can't put any of those five chords together--I've been trying for days now to shift from A to D and back again, and although I'm slightly better than when I started, it's still pretty horrible. (The fingers just keep ending up in bad places for the D chord, and when I try to play it at speed I always get at least one dead string and another one buzzing badly.) Considering that this shift from A to D is part of only Lesson 2 of a course I'm taking, it feels pretty discouraging.
But perhaps part of the problem is that I'm trying too many things at once. When I purchased the guitar I bought a DVD and book for the Hal Leonard
method. And while I like the book, the DVD jumped almost immediately into reading notation on staves, at which I am really terrible. So I poked around on the internet and found a course almost universally recommended called Jamorama, put together by a New Zealander named Ben Edwards, and it only cost $40 so I bought it. And I definitely like it, but that's the one where I'm already stuck on Lesson 2, with dozens of lessons still to go. Then I bought a book containing lots of guitar chords, along with scales and arpeggios, all nicely diagrammed, so part of my practice now involves slowly working my way through, say, the C scale.
It's definitely possible, though, that all that is part of my problem. I'm doing a little out of the Hal Leonard book, a little out of Jamorama, a little scales work, and so forth. I'm not following any one course systematically, I'm trying to design a scattershot program on the fly without any idea what the hell I'm doing. Which is probably exactly why all I can see at the moment is the vastness of the task, instead of just focusing on, say, nailing the transition from the A to the D chord.
I ain't quittin' yet. No sir. I mean hey, I've got these fresh callouses on my fingertips, so that's one thing I've succeeded at. Time and repetition, and there they are, just like they're supposed to be. It would just be silly to quit now.
...well, so far I still suck.
See, the frustrating part is that it's such a huge thing to learn because the guitar is more flexible than I'd realized. Chord fingerings for the left hand to learn, and not just a few of them--I've seen chord books for sale that advertise "1,000 chords diagrammed!" The techniques of strumming and picking for the right hand. The infinitely tricky separation of the right hand from the left hand. Learning to read tablature. Learning to read chord charts. Learning to read musical notation. A metronome to keep me on track rhythmically. Not to mention the necessity of actual physical changes that are required: the growth of callouses on the fingertips of the left hand so that there isn't so much, you know, pain when I play. ("I got blisters on my fingers!" shouted John, and now I get why.)
But it's been two weeks, and I've been practicing regularly, and I've learned to play five of the principal chords (A, C, D, E and G) pretty well. There are a couple very simple melodies (played on just two strings, involving only three frets) that I can now make my way through decently. I can sit down with tablature or a chord chart and work it through, slowly, but I can do it. But that's about it.
I still can't put any of those five chords together--I've been trying for days now to shift from A to D and back again, and although I'm slightly better than when I started, it's still pretty horrible. (The fingers just keep ending up in bad places for the D chord, and when I try to play it at speed I always get at least one dead string and another one buzzing badly.) Considering that this shift from A to D is part of only Lesson 2 of a course I'm taking, it feels pretty discouraging.
But perhaps part of the problem is that I'm trying too many things at once. When I purchased the guitar I bought a DVD and book for the Hal Leonard
method. And while I like the book, the DVD jumped almost immediately into reading notation on staves, at which I am really terrible. So I poked around on the internet and found a course almost universally recommended called Jamorama, put together by a New Zealander named Ben Edwards, and it only cost $40 so I bought it. And I definitely like it, but that's the one where I'm already stuck on Lesson 2, with dozens of lessons still to go. Then I bought a book containing lots of guitar chords, along with scales and arpeggios, all nicely diagrammed, so part of my practice now involves slowly working my way through, say, the C scale.It's definitely possible, though, that all that is part of my problem. I'm doing a little out of the Hal Leonard book, a little out of Jamorama, a little scales work, and so forth. I'm not following any one course systematically, I'm trying to design a scattershot program on the fly without any idea what the hell I'm doing. Which is probably exactly why all I can see at the moment is the vastness of the task, instead of just focusing on, say, nailing the transition from the A to the D chord.
I ain't quittin' yet. No sir. I mean hey, I've got these fresh callouses on my fingertips, so that's one thing I've succeeded at. Time and repetition, and there they are, just like they're supposed to be. It would just be silly to quit now.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
In Which I Acquire a Guitar
The other day, a friend of mine decided to take advantage of a pretty amazing 2-for-1 offer at West L.A. Music. He went shopping for an electric and a new acoustic, to replace the entry-level guitar he'd had for years. I went along, always happy to watch someone else spend money, but once there, I had practically nothing to do.
I play no instruments, it's just not something that comes naturally to me. I took a music theory class and found it even harder than math--this with a very good teacher, Tony Tommasini, who is now one of the classical music critics for the New York Times. I also took exactly one piano lesson from Tony (won it in an auction), who declared that I had good large hands with a long reach, but never said anything about my having any observable aptitude for the instrument. I pretty much decided it was all too hard, and let the whole thing drop. Sure, I taught myself to sing reasonably well, even did a little recording with a madrigal group, but believe me, I've heard Pavarotti sing and the man has nothing to worry about.
And yet. When you watch Inside the Actors Studio and James Liption asks his list of questions, one of them is always "If you couldn't do your current profession, what other profession would you choose?" And every time, for me, the answer is one of two: either astronomer or musician. And astronomy involves math, really ridiculously high-level math, so you know how likely that is.
So I went along on this guitar-buying excursion because I figured it was the only way I'd ever actually participate in the process of buying a guitar. And like I said, once there I had little to do because I had almost no idea what anyone was talking about. I would be asked "How's this one sound?" and I would say "Sounds pretty good" every time.
Then the next day I went out and bought a guitar of my own. Because damn it, that little trip put a bug in my head and I knew I wasn't going to be able to shake it. But hey, I've always intended, for years, maybe decades, to try to learn an instrument some day. And since I don't have a time-consuming dayjob anymore, now seemed like an ideal time.
My friend went along because honestly, I could pick up a guitar and strum it, but I was utterly unequipped to tell a good one from a bad one. (Plus he needed an amp for his new Strat.) I'd seen on the internet that Fender makes a beginner's kit with a guitar, a strap, some picks, a tuner, some extra strings, a gig bag and a DVD with some lessons on it, all for $200. Fender's a good name, it seemed like a good deal, and it was in stock at the Guitar Center in Hollywood. Off we went.
In the end I picked a guitar that wasn't part of a kit, it was simply a solid $200 Yamaha (the FG700S, in case you're curious), then I bought the other stuff separately. Took it home, and since then I've been going through the exciting, agonizing process of learning the guitar, completely from scratch.
And what can I say? I completely suck. My fingers hurt (and when I took a shower this morning, oh how they throbbed in the hot water), there are chords I can barely manage even when I spend five minutes trying to get them right, my sense of rhythm is beyond shaky, and even though it's hot I always close all the windows because if there's anything a neighbor doesn't want to hear, it's the fractured sounds of a novice guitar player wafting through the air.
No, not wafting. These sounds definitely do not waft.
But at the same time, I can now (laboriously) form four of the principal chords, and a couple days ago I couldn't have picked those chords out of a lineup. It's a start. And I know from my experience that my learning curve has always gone like this: when I first start something I am beyond terrible, and I stay that way for a frustratingly long time. Then, at some point, suddenly it all clicks, it's all just kinda there. So I'm going to keep on with this: I've spent the money, I have the time, and for years now I've had the desire.
If only there was some way to skip the whole protracted-suckiness stage and just get to a basic level of competence, that would be soooo cool.
I play no instruments, it's just not something that comes naturally to me. I took a music theory class and found it even harder than math--this with a very good teacher, Tony Tommasini, who is now one of the classical music critics for the New York Times. I also took exactly one piano lesson from Tony (won it in an auction), who declared that I had good large hands with a long reach, but never said anything about my having any observable aptitude for the instrument. I pretty much decided it was all too hard, and let the whole thing drop. Sure, I taught myself to sing reasonably well, even did a little recording with a madrigal group, but believe me, I've heard Pavarotti sing and the man has nothing to worry about.
And yet. When you watch Inside the Actors Studio and James Liption asks his list of questions, one of them is always "If you couldn't do your current profession, what other profession would you choose?" And every time, for me, the answer is one of two: either astronomer or musician. And astronomy involves math, really ridiculously high-level math, so you know how likely that is.
So I went along on this guitar-buying excursion because I figured it was the only way I'd ever actually participate in the process of buying a guitar. And like I said, once there I had little to do because I had almost no idea what anyone was talking about. I would be asked "How's this one sound?" and I would say "Sounds pretty good" every time.
Then the next day I went out and bought a guitar of my own. Because damn it, that little trip put a bug in my head and I knew I wasn't going to be able to shake it. But hey, I've always intended, for years, maybe decades, to try to learn an instrument some day. And since I don't have a time-consuming dayjob anymore, now seemed like an ideal time.
My friend went along because honestly, I could pick up a guitar and strum it, but I was utterly unequipped to tell a good one from a bad one. (Plus he needed an amp for his new Strat.) I'd seen on the internet that Fender makes a beginner's kit with a guitar, a strap, some picks, a tuner, some extra strings, a gig bag and a DVD with some lessons on it, all for $200. Fender's a good name, it seemed like a good deal, and it was in stock at the Guitar Center in Hollywood. Off we went.
In the end I picked a guitar that wasn't part of a kit, it was simply a solid $200 Yamaha (the FG700S, in case you're curious), then I bought the other stuff separately. Took it home, and since then I've been going through the exciting, agonizing process of learning the guitar, completely from scratch.
And what can I say? I completely suck. My fingers hurt (and when I took a shower this morning, oh how they throbbed in the hot water), there are chords I can barely manage even when I spend five minutes trying to get them right, my sense of rhythm is beyond shaky, and even though it's hot I always close all the windows because if there's anything a neighbor doesn't want to hear, it's the fractured sounds of a novice guitar player wafting through the air.
No, not wafting. These sounds definitely do not waft.
But at the same time, I can now (laboriously) form four of the principal chords, and a couple days ago I couldn't have picked those chords out of a lineup. It's a start. And I know from my experience that my learning curve has always gone like this: when I first start something I am beyond terrible, and I stay that way for a frustratingly long time. Then, at some point, suddenly it all clicks, it's all just kinda there. So I'm going to keep on with this: I've spent the money, I have the time, and for years now I've had the desire.
If only there was some way to skip the whole protracted-suckiness stage and just get to a basic level of competence, that would be soooo cool.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
The Big One
Very early in the morning, two weeks ago. I woke up fast, hearing a sound: my window was rattling, and it sounded like someone was trying to get in. The sort of thing that will in fact wake up anybody mighty damn fast. But there was just enough vibration working its way through the mattress that I realized: Oh, okay. Nobody's trying to get in. It's just an earthquake. Contented, I went back to bed.
The occasion was a 4.6 seismic event, 3 miles north-northwest of Chatsworth, which is to say, pretty close to where I live. (The U.S. Geological Survey's report on the event is here.) A 4.6 earthquake is a solid earthquake, but even so, not much happened. No deaths, no injuries to speak of, no real property damage. All that happened in my apartment is that an unlit candle, stuffed in a closet, tipped over. But a few days later, a friend of mine (hi, Sarah!) happened to ask me what I thought about our chances of The Big One hitting.
The Big One is a favorite topic amongst Californians, for obvious reasons. As John McPhee details in his wonderful book Assembling California (collected with two other books in the wonderful
Annals of the Former World--and by the way, I think McPhee is an incredible writer, and I would happily read his writing on any subject under the sun), the state of California was put together in pieces over millions of years. (The great central valley, for instance, is a huge hinge--two gigantic slabs of earth at angles, forming a huge V, into which sediment has slowly filled and filled the V and thus created that massive flat plain between two mountain ridges.) You've got the Pacific Plate over here, pushing against the continental plate over here, plus a smaller plate (the Juan de Fuca) to the north, and it's all inherently unstable. Big earthquakes are, in a word, inevitable.
But precisely because of my reading of Mr. McPhee, I have a remarkably casual outlook toward The Big One. Yes, it's gonna happen. Will it happen in my lifetime? No, probably not. So I just don't worry about it. This is because of an idea called "deep time."
We could call it geologic time as well. For a geologist, a million years is the smallest unit of time s/he cares about. That's how long it takes for any geologic change to happen. And once you start thinking in terms of deep time, your perspective starts to shift like crazy. Here's an example of why: look at a ruler. At the far left you have the first black marking, the Zero line. If you consider the ruler as a timeline of earth's entire geologic history, the entire span of human history wouldn't get past the Zero line. It's that small.
So if you then consider my individual lifetime against the entire span of human history, well, that's so small it simply doesn't show up on that ruler at all. That's deep time. Which means that yeah, a gigantic earthquake in my neighborhood is inevitable; these faults will one day rupture and California will one day break apart just as it formed, in pieces, separating and then drifting away toward future collisions and reconfigurations. But the chance of the first part of that chain, a major event on the San Andreas fault, happening in my lifetime is so small that I just don't see any point in worrying about it.
Think about it this way: there are no guarantees in life. None. There's no guarantee that the sun will rise in the morning tomorrow--there's only the probability that it will. Based on what we have observed in the past, there is an extremely high probability that in the morning, there it will be, the sun, shining forth as usual. We all go to sleep at night perfectly content that the odds are in our favor on this one. Well, I have the same attitude toward The Big One.
Then again--there was a small earthquake maybe two years ago, when I was at work, in Santa Monica. At the time I happened to be on my lunch break, sitting in the lobby of the building with a book in my hand. I felt the ground jump a little and then looked up--to realize that I was sitting in a glass-roofed extension of the lobby, and that these gigantic panes of glass were shivering above me.
And yeah, I'm not crazy--that made me a little nervous.
The occasion was a 4.6 seismic event, 3 miles north-northwest of Chatsworth, which is to say, pretty close to where I live. (The U.S. Geological Survey's report on the event is here.) A 4.6 earthquake is a solid earthquake, but even so, not much happened. No deaths, no injuries to speak of, no real property damage. All that happened in my apartment is that an unlit candle, stuffed in a closet, tipped over. But a few days later, a friend of mine (hi, Sarah!) happened to ask me what I thought about our chances of The Big One hitting.
The Big One is a favorite topic amongst Californians, for obvious reasons. As John McPhee details in his wonderful book Assembling California (collected with two other books in the wonderful
Annals of the Former World--and by the way, I think McPhee is an incredible writer, and I would happily read his writing on any subject under the sun), the state of California was put together in pieces over millions of years. (The great central valley, for instance, is a huge hinge--two gigantic slabs of earth at angles, forming a huge V, into which sediment has slowly filled and filled the V and thus created that massive flat plain between two mountain ridges.) You've got the Pacific Plate over here, pushing against the continental plate over here, plus a smaller plate (the Juan de Fuca) to the north, and it's all inherently unstable. Big earthquakes are, in a word, inevitable.But precisely because of my reading of Mr. McPhee, I have a remarkably casual outlook toward The Big One. Yes, it's gonna happen. Will it happen in my lifetime? No, probably not. So I just don't worry about it. This is because of an idea called "deep time."
We could call it geologic time as well. For a geologist, a million years is the smallest unit of time s/he cares about. That's how long it takes for any geologic change to happen. And once you start thinking in terms of deep time, your perspective starts to shift like crazy. Here's an example of why: look at a ruler. At the far left you have the first black marking, the Zero line. If you consider the ruler as a timeline of earth's entire geologic history, the entire span of human history wouldn't get past the Zero line. It's that small.
So if you then consider my individual lifetime against the entire span of human history, well, that's so small it simply doesn't show up on that ruler at all. That's deep time. Which means that yeah, a gigantic earthquake in my neighborhood is inevitable; these faults will one day rupture and California will one day break apart just as it formed, in pieces, separating and then drifting away toward future collisions and reconfigurations. But the chance of the first part of that chain, a major event on the San Andreas fault, happening in my lifetime is so small that I just don't see any point in worrying about it.
Think about it this way: there are no guarantees in life. None. There's no guarantee that the sun will rise in the morning tomorrow--there's only the probability that it will. Based on what we have observed in the past, there is an extremely high probability that in the morning, there it will be, the sun, shining forth as usual. We all go to sleep at night perfectly content that the odds are in our favor on this one. Well, I have the same attitude toward The Big One.
Then again--there was a small earthquake maybe two years ago, when I was at work, in Santa Monica. At the time I happened to be on my lunch break, sitting in the lobby of the building with a book in my hand. I felt the ground jump a little and then looked up--to realize that I was sitting in a glass-roofed extension of the lobby, and that these gigantic panes of glass were shivering above me.
And yeah, I'm not crazy--that made me a little nervous.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Free the Old Head!
Y'know, without context, that title looks more than a little odd...
Yesterday I was channel-surfing and ended up watching most of a Discovery HD program on the sinking of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed just a few miles off the Irish coast in 1915--nearest a diamond-shaped strip of land that juts out into the Atlantic, known as the Old Head of Kinsale. As I've mentioned before, my grandparents lived in Kinsale for several years, my grandmother died there, and I've always loved the place--particularly the Old Head, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here's proof:
(Mom took that picture, by the way; it's better than any of the ones I took.) The Old Head is one of those geological oddities, a strip of sandstone that will probably be an island someday when the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland erodes away, but that someday is very far off indeed. Back when my grandparents lived there, the Old Head simply was. You could go there whenever you liked and explore as much as you wished. And believe me, every time I went to Ireland I made sure to visit the Old Head. To wander for a couple hours, breathe the sea air, revel in the views, find that particular peace that comes with such a beautiful place. And honest, the goats never bothered me even once.
Ah yes, the goats. The stalwart defenders of the Old Head. If they decided they didn't like you, they were perfectly happy chasing you back to your car and then ramming it a few times to let you know that you were not welcome. They were just part of the charm, you see. As you can see from the photo, they were perfectly placid whenever I visited, which can certainly be chalked up to sheer chance, or maybe they just recognized that I too was someone who loved the place as much as they did. If only they had been able to defend the Old Head against the wretched forces of consumerism, then maybe...
The last time I visited, I was given the bad news: some real estate developers had purchased the Old Head, and were planning to put a golf course on it. As an Old Head-loving member of the non-rich general public, I would never be able to go there again. And, indeed, I never have. The course opened ten years ago, and people have been shut out ever since. So when I saw this program on the Lusitania, I was again reminded of the Old Head. And of the enormous crime that has been perpetrated on the people of the world by the owners of that damn golf course.
I went to the course's website (no, I will not link to it, nor honor the place by mentioning its name). Green fees are 295 Euros, which is about $406 in U.S. currency. (For comparison, the legendary old course at St. Andrews, birthplace of golf and one of the homes of the British Open, only costs 125 Euros in the high season, or about $172.) That's not counting rental of a golf cart and a caddy. There's fine dining, for members only. And high fences with razor wire to keep people out.
On their site there is a video where they actually say that the course "helps nature fulfill its potential." As if nature wasn't already doing a spectacular job all on its own, which is why the wretched O'Connor brothers bought the place to begin with. They also advertise helicopter charters "for the discerning golfer," which "cuts out significant time lost on road travel, [and] alleviates time pressures...." Because, don't ya know, their visitors are so in-demand that they simply must be able to chopper in, play a few holes, then get the hell out without having to be bothered by, you know, the rabble on those twisty roads. Why, there's barely a straight road anywhere on the whole island, and you're constantly being stopped because there are sheep being herded across the road!
Of course, some of us see that as one of the great joys of Ireland: the pace is different, and being in a hurry is just plain wrong. Don't these people realize that if the point is to relax by playing a few holes, then stressing out by taking a helicopter in and out completely wrecks the whole thing? Those roads do not efficiently get you from Point A to Point B, no they don't; ain't it great?
But you've gotta love the web. I found this site, Free the Old Head of Kinsale, which is exactly what it sounds like: a site agitating for the Old Head to be opened again to the public. They're not trying to oust the golf course at all, they're not unrealistic about their goals: they simply want a trail, something, to be opened to the public so that the common folk can enjoy this most beautiful of places as they have for centuries. There is apparently a court case pending on this very issue of public right-of-way, and I dearly hope they prevail. In the meantime, there's a web petition you can sign, and I am extremely dismayed to find that my signature was only number 56. Maybe you might find yourself so moved as to visit the site and sign on as well. Here's another reason why you should:
Yesterday I was channel-surfing and ended up watching most of a Discovery HD program on the sinking of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed just a few miles off the Irish coast in 1915--nearest a diamond-shaped strip of land that juts out into the Atlantic, known as the Old Head of Kinsale. As I've mentioned before, my grandparents lived in Kinsale for several years, my grandmother died there, and I've always loved the place--particularly the Old Head, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here's proof:
(Mom took that picture, by the way; it's better than any of the ones I took.) The Old Head is one of those geological oddities, a strip of sandstone that will probably be an island someday when the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland erodes away, but that someday is very far off indeed. Back when my grandparents lived there, the Old Head simply was. You could go there whenever you liked and explore as much as you wished. And believe me, every time I went to Ireland I made sure to visit the Old Head. To wander for a couple hours, breathe the sea air, revel in the views, find that particular peace that comes with such a beautiful place. And honest, the goats never bothered me even once.
Ah yes, the goats. The stalwart defenders of the Old Head. If they decided they didn't like you, they were perfectly happy chasing you back to your car and then ramming it a few times to let you know that you were not welcome. They were just part of the charm, you see. As you can see from the photo, they were perfectly placid whenever I visited, which can certainly be chalked up to sheer chance, or maybe they just recognized that I too was someone who loved the place as much as they did. If only they had been able to defend the Old Head against the wretched forces of consumerism, then maybe...The last time I visited, I was given the bad news: some real estate developers had purchased the Old Head, and were planning to put a golf course on it. As an Old Head-loving member of the non-rich general public, I would never be able to go there again. And, indeed, I never have. The course opened ten years ago, and people have been shut out ever since. So when I saw this program on the Lusitania, I was again reminded of the Old Head. And of the enormous crime that has been perpetrated on the people of the world by the owners of that damn golf course.
I went to the course's website (no, I will not link to it, nor honor the place by mentioning its name). Green fees are 295 Euros, which is about $406 in U.S. currency. (For comparison, the legendary old course at St. Andrews, birthplace of golf and one of the homes of the British Open, only costs 125 Euros in the high season, or about $172.) That's not counting rental of a golf cart and a caddy. There's fine dining, for members only. And high fences with razor wire to keep people out.
On their site there is a video where they actually say that the course "helps nature fulfill its potential." As if nature wasn't already doing a spectacular job all on its own, which is why the wretched O'Connor brothers bought the place to begin with. They also advertise helicopter charters "for the discerning golfer," which "cuts out significant time lost on road travel, [and] alleviates time pressures...." Because, don't ya know, their visitors are so in-demand that they simply must be able to chopper in, play a few holes, then get the hell out without having to be bothered by, you know, the rabble on those twisty roads. Why, there's barely a straight road anywhere on the whole island, and you're constantly being stopped because there are sheep being herded across the road!
Of course, some of us see that as one of the great joys of Ireland: the pace is different, and being in a hurry is just plain wrong. Don't these people realize that if the point is to relax by playing a few holes, then stressing out by taking a helicopter in and out completely wrecks the whole thing? Those roads do not efficiently get you from Point A to Point B, no they don't; ain't it great?
But you've gotta love the web. I found this site, Free the Old Head of Kinsale, which is exactly what it sounds like: a site agitating for the Old Head to be opened again to the public. They're not trying to oust the golf course at all, they're not unrealistic about their goals: they simply want a trail, something, to be opened to the public so that the common folk can enjoy this most beautiful of places as they have for centuries. There is apparently a court case pending on this very issue of public right-of-way, and I dearly hope they prevail. In the meantime, there's a web petition you can sign, and I am extremely dismayed to find that my signature was only number 56. Maybe you might find yourself so moved as to visit the site and sign on as well. Here's another reason why you should:
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Coming Soon...
I looked around a couple months ago and realized that over the past few years I've started three companies. (Really, I looked around and there they were, strung in a line behind me, staring back and blinking.) There was the not-for-profit NOWtheatre back in Chicago, which alas does not exist anymore (this one seemed the most forlorn, and blinked only in memory), and then there are the quite-alive-and-still-blinking Zenmovie (an LLC) and Lightwheel Entertainment (a C corp.)
And I realized that every time I started one of those companies, I kept wishing that I could find, somewhere somehow, a list that would tell me the stuff I needed to know in one place: what documents are due to the various government agencies, federally and locally; how much money to pay; and on what dates said documents and payments are due. I scoured the internet blah blah blah, and never found such a document. So finally it occurred to me: I should make one.
So that's one of the things I've been doing. Finished the first draft about a month ago, whereupon my friend Buffie did an extraordinary annotation that led me through the second draft, which I finished last night. Now friend Marc will help me set up a website and, probably early next month, we'll launch the book on the web and see if others find it as useful as I believe it to be.
The book bears the beautiful and mellifluous title Incorporation for Artists, Writers, Musicians and Filmmakers. It ain't literature, it's information, which was an interesting challenge in itself, turning off all my let's call them Thereby-esque writing instincts, my automatic tendency toward the prolix, in order to just convey information. But that's one of the things Buffie is extraordinarily good at, so all praise to her, and I can't wait till we can get this little devil out into the world.
And I realized that every time I started one of those companies, I kept wishing that I could find, somewhere somehow, a list that would tell me the stuff I needed to know in one place: what documents are due to the various government agencies, federally and locally; how much money to pay; and on what dates said documents and payments are due. I scoured the internet blah blah blah, and never found such a document. So finally it occurred to me: I should make one.
So that's one of the things I've been doing. Finished the first draft about a month ago, whereupon my friend Buffie did an extraordinary annotation that led me through the second draft, which I finished last night. Now friend Marc will help me set up a website and, probably early next month, we'll launch the book on the web and see if others find it as useful as I believe it to be.
The book bears the beautiful and mellifluous title Incorporation for Artists, Writers, Musicians and Filmmakers. It ain't literature, it's information, which was an interesting challenge in itself, turning off all my let's call them Thereby-esque writing instincts, my automatic tendency toward the prolix, in order to just convey information. But that's one of the things Buffie is extraordinarily good at, so all praise to her, and I can't wait till we can get this little devil out into the world.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Gotta Love Magic Hour
In case anyone was wondering "Why travel all the way to Vermont just to shoot a trailer?" I proffer the following:
I had never been to Vermont before, but quickly decided that it's a lot like Ireland: overwhelmingly green, with contours to die for, one of those places where you could pretty much close your eyes, point a camera at random, and get a good picture. The above was taken when I had no time to do anything but point and click, yet it looks like a postcard. Too damn easy. And if the point is to make something with visual oomph, well, this particular property in gorgeous Vermont does half our work for us.
(And besides--the people in town were unfailingly pleasant, and the food was beyond-belief-good. I was working like crazy and still gained four pounds in four days.)
After flying a red-eye, and driving up from Boston (loads of fun to be in Boston again, no matter how briefly), and checking into the hotel, we got off our first shot right at magic hour. A jib-arm shot that floated above a fence to reveal the teahouse, framed in Maxfield Parrish lighting (in fact, Parrish worked in New Hampshire, just next door, so no wonder). Here we've got actors Jennifer Ann Evans and David Goryl doing their thing, while director Marc Rosenbush and DP Chris Gosch do theirs. Me, I had just made the strange Blair Witch-thing, just visible beyond the camera, that was meant to disguise an electrical outlet that would have marred the beauty of the shot. We were supposed to have cloudy weather, with a too-high chance of rain; instead we walked into a painting and shot some film of it. Not bad.
The weather held all through the next day, during which we got the tricky shots: the ones that will require special effects, and compositing and green screens and so forth. There were the beautiful scenes at the teahouse, and at the mini-Stonehenge only a few yards away, and as were working on the last of the tricky effects shots, something blew the power main and we lost power, just as the sun was setting. The next day, it rained. Then rained some more. Then rained harder.
Which is, of course, why everything is so green up there in green green Vermont. We got some interior shots, then started improvising, then kinda had to give up for a while. Went back to the hotel and everyone got a nap for a few hours, till sunset, when the rain finally stopped--and we grabbed a shot at the swimming pond behind the hotel instead of dashing back to the property to get what would have been a nearly identical shot. (Like I said: point a camera practically anywhere in Vermont and you're gonna get something good.)
In the end, we didn't get everything we wanted--but the question remains, did we get everything we needed? Yeah, I think maybe we did. The trailer will be less of a linear storyline and more a progression of interesting images, but that's fine, that's what most trailers are anyway. Now if only we had gotten footage of the time David got attacked by a giant badger...
I had never been to Vermont before, but quickly decided that it's a lot like Ireland: overwhelmingly green, with contours to die for, one of those places where you could pretty much close your eyes, point a camera at random, and get a good picture. The above was taken when I had no time to do anything but point and click, yet it looks like a postcard. Too damn easy. And if the point is to make something with visual oomph, well, this particular property in gorgeous Vermont does half our work for us.(And besides--the people in town were unfailingly pleasant, and the food was beyond-belief-good. I was working like crazy and still gained four pounds in four days.)
After flying a red-eye, and driving up from Boston (loads of fun to be in Boston again, no matter how briefly), and checking into the hotel, we got off our first shot right at magic hour. A jib-arm shot that floated above a fence to reveal the teahouse, framed in Maxfield Parrish lighting (in fact, Parrish worked in New Hampshire, just next door, so no wonder). Here we've got actors Jennifer Ann Evans and David Goryl doing their thing, while director Marc Rosenbush and DP Chris Gosch do theirs. Me, I had just made the strange Blair Witch-thing, just visible beyond the camera, that was meant to disguise an electrical outlet that would have marred the beauty of the shot. We were supposed to have cloudy weather, with a too-high chance of rain; instead we walked into a painting and shot some film of it. Not bad.The weather held all through the next day, during which we got the tricky shots: the ones that will require special effects, and compositing and green screens and so forth. There were the beautiful scenes at the teahouse, and at the mini-Stonehenge only a few yards away, and as were working on the last of the tricky effects shots, something blew the power main and we lost power, just as the sun was setting. The next day, it rained. Then rained some more. Then rained harder.Which is, of course, why everything is so green up there in green green Vermont. We got some interior shots, then started improvising, then kinda had to give up for a while. Went back to the hotel and everyone got a nap for a few hours, till sunset, when the rain finally stopped--and we grabbed a shot at the swimming pond behind the hotel instead of dashing back to the property to get what would have been a nearly identical shot. (Like I said: point a camera practically anywhere in Vermont and you're gonna get something good.)
In the end, we didn't get everything we wanted--but the question remains, did we get everything we needed? Yeah, I think maybe we did. The trailer will be less of a linear storyline and more a progression of interesting images, but that's fine, that's what most trailers are anyway. Now if only we had gotten footage of the time David got attacked by a giant badger...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Travelating
The idea is, make a trailer that looks like the next movie we want to make, and it becomes easier to make investors say "Hey, I want to see that movie!" so that we can, in fact, shoot the real thing. Film being, after all, a visual medium. Would you rather see a business plan or three minutes of footage?
That's why we're flying to Vermont tonight. A bunch of actors, some minimal crew, and an astonishing amount of checked baggage. We'll shoot for just a few days, be back by Friday, and then I get some real mileage out of Final Cut Pro.
And what have I been up to in the meantime? Well, getting ready for this, obviously, but also: finishing a treatment for a new screenplay, revising the City of Truth screenplay with Marc (incorporating a wealth of great feedback from several sources), defining the mission statement and purpose of Lightwheel Entertainment, and, happiest of all, rediscovering Thereby.
I posted an excerpt from Thereby Hangs a Tale a long while back, but hadn't actually read it in a time much longer than that. (The book itself has been basically finished for years--long enough that there is stuff in there about two towers being destroyed, collapsing with people in them, that most definitely predates Sept. 11th, and consequently becomes a bit of a problem--do you change the novel because it is, accidentally, too close to something real in a way that would be distracting? Unfortunately, the fall of my towers is so deeply integrated into the story itself that that would be pretty much impossible, so all I can do is have one of my characters, from the "real" world rather than the unnamed someplace where most of the novel happens, comment on the freakish coincidence.)
But since my friend Buffie was visiting, I happened to mention the novel to her one day, and realized I'd never actually shown it to her. So I pulled up the file, started reading, and had that happiest of discoveries: after a great deal of time, not only do I still like the book, I absolutely love it. So I zoomed through a touch-ups rewrite, happy to find that it was already in very good shape, and after getting some comments from people I will start working on finding exactly the right agent--someone who'll love it as much as I do.
Being in L.A. had kinda convinced me that Thereby was just too weird to ever sell, that's exactly why it sat for so long, unseen and unloved. But as soon as I started reading it again I realized, Hell no, it's not that weird at all, all it needs is the right agent and the right editor and the right marketing campaign, and I think people will go a little crazy over it.
But enough for now. Now, I have to pick up a fish-eye lens and then finish packing before a red-eye to Vermont. If there's an internet connection (we already know our cellphones will be just about useless) I'll try to check in from the road.
That's why we're flying to Vermont tonight. A bunch of actors, some minimal crew, and an astonishing amount of checked baggage. We'll shoot for just a few days, be back by Friday, and then I get some real mileage out of Final Cut Pro.
And what have I been up to in the meantime? Well, getting ready for this, obviously, but also: finishing a treatment for a new screenplay, revising the City of Truth screenplay with Marc (incorporating a wealth of great feedback from several sources), defining the mission statement and purpose of Lightwheel Entertainment, and, happiest of all, rediscovering Thereby.
I posted an excerpt from Thereby Hangs a Tale a long while back, but hadn't actually read it in a time much longer than that. (The book itself has been basically finished for years--long enough that there is stuff in there about two towers being destroyed, collapsing with people in them, that most definitely predates Sept. 11th, and consequently becomes a bit of a problem--do you change the novel because it is, accidentally, too close to something real in a way that would be distracting? Unfortunately, the fall of my towers is so deeply integrated into the story itself that that would be pretty much impossible, so all I can do is have one of my characters, from the "real" world rather than the unnamed someplace where most of the novel happens, comment on the freakish coincidence.)
But since my friend Buffie was visiting, I happened to mention the novel to her one day, and realized I'd never actually shown it to her. So I pulled up the file, started reading, and had that happiest of discoveries: after a great deal of time, not only do I still like the book, I absolutely love it. So I zoomed through a touch-ups rewrite, happy to find that it was already in very good shape, and after getting some comments from people I will start working on finding exactly the right agent--someone who'll love it as much as I do.
Being in L.A. had kinda convinced me that Thereby was just too weird to ever sell, that's exactly why it sat for so long, unseen and unloved. But as soon as I started reading it again I realized, Hell no, it's not that weird at all, all it needs is the right agent and the right editor and the right marketing campaign, and I think people will go a little crazy over it.
But enough for now. Now, I have to pick up a fish-eye lens and then finish packing before a red-eye to Vermont. If there's an internet connection (we already know our cellphones will be just about useless) I'll try to check in from the road.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Better Bees?
Huh. Apparently time passes.
Can't say why exactly I'm so fascinated about the story of the bees, but I am. And perhaps even more interesting than the initial reports that caught my attention is the possibility that said reports are, shall we say, overstated. Neil Gaiman, often mentioned here, has recently become a beekeeper, and in his blog he quoted his "Bird Lady," Sharon Stiteler, who wrote to him, saying:
Also, the story about cell phone towers interfering with bees' navigation systems (which so captivated Bill Maher recently) may have been more than overstated, it may have been, according to an April 22 story in the International Herald Tribune, flat-out made up.
Imagine that: all that buzzing over nothing new. Aren't there enough really serious things wrong with the world without making up new ones? Next time: George Bush goes environmental. (That snickering you hear ain't just me...)
Can't say why exactly I'm so fascinated about the story of the bees, but I am. And perhaps even more interesting than the initial reports that caught my attention is the possibility that said reports are, shall we say, overstated. Neil Gaiman, often mentioned here, has recently become a beekeeper, and in his blog he quoted his "Bird Lady," Sharon Stiteler, who wrote to him, saying:
Our bees are Minnesota Hygienic Italian Bees developed by Marla
Spivak at the U of M[innesota]. She is one of the researchers studying Colony Collapse Disorder--she said that this has been a problem for the last 15 years and this year the media has grabbed on to the story. has studied the Varroa mite, which over the past 20 years has become a major threat to commercial honeybees. First discovered in the United States in 1987, the mite weakens the bee's immune system. It kills off most bee colonies within a year or two after invading. Beekeepers use pesticides to control the mites, but Spivak has studied ways to breed honeybees that are resistant to it. The bees have been bred to have a "hygienic" behaviors. They sense when brood is diseased and cleans them out. They also clean out any dead bees as well. This behavior cuts down on foul brood and other colony problems.
Also, the story about cell phone towers interfering with bees' navigation systems (which so captivated Bill Maher recently) may have been more than overstated, it may have been, according to an April 22 story in the International Herald Tribune, flat-out made up.
Imagine that: all that buzzing over nothing new. Aren't there enough really serious things wrong with the world without making up new ones? Next time: George Bush goes environmental. (That snickering you hear ain't just me...)
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Day and Date
I have to assume that Mark Cuban is a solid businessman who know what he's doing, but for the life of me I just can't figure out why he's promoting this whole day-and-date movie release scheme of his.
Cuban runs HDNet, one of the few cable channels that broadcasts exclusively in high definition. I've had a hi-def set for a few months now, attached to my hi-def Series 3 TiVo (one of the great inventions), and I love it. I'm a movie guy, so of course I love it, but what's not to love? Widescreen, great image detail, and it's attached to a good stereo with good speakers. I've even started pulling DVDs off my Netflix list if I saw they were going to be broadcast on an HD channel because they look better there. (And yes, I too am one of those waiting on the sidelines for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray thing to work itself out before I commit to one machine or another.) So HDNet is one of my mainstays, and I particularly love it when they show some NASA footage--simply spectacular. (Though nothing so far has beat the recent Planet Earth specials on Discovery HD Theatre.)
But HDNet also has a movies-only hi-def channel, and the other night they ran a movie called Diggers. As it happens, I had heard about this movie a couple days before and thought it looked interesting: an offbeat indie about clam diggers, with a good cast including Paul Rudd, Sarah Paulson, Lauren Ambrose and Maura Tierney, all of whom I like. I noticed it was going to be playing at a theater only a few blocks away--a theater for which I have a free admission pass. So it was within easy walking distance and wouldn't cost me anything to go and see the movie. "Well maybe I'll do that," I said--but then I checked the TV listings and discovered that Diggers was also playing on HDNet, that same night.
I ask you, why would I want to go to the theater, then? It's more comfortable at home, my equipment is all first-rate, and I can watch when I want. About the only thing that might have made me go to a theater in such a circumstance would have been if I'd had a date, but that didn't happen to be the case. So I stayed home and recorded it on the TiVo and was completely happy. But, as I say, baffled.
Because bear in mind: I'm a movie guy. And I certainly have a keen appreciation for the power of a shared theatrical experience by an audience of strangers experiencing something together (by the way, for the record, Zen Noir works best on a movie screen; I'm just saying, I've seen it happen over and over, that really is the ideal way to see it). I was already motivated to see this particular film, the theater was in easy walking distance, I like to walk, and I had a pass to see the movie for free. It was, in short, about as easy as going to a movie theater can possibly be--but I didn't go, and the only reason I didn't is because that same movie was showing that same night on my TV.
That's what day-and-date means, and it mystifies me. It refers to a newfangled way to release movies in which the movie is broadcast and shown in theaters on the same night, then gets released on DVD the next Tuesday: all formats show up at once, and people can have their choice of watching it in any way they prefer. Nice for we the viewers, but where is the business model? How is Cuban making any money off this?
Sure, Wagner gets my money as a subscriber to the channel, but he gets that anyway; and now he's lost my theater-going money (well, except for that free admission pass, but that's not really germane). The one thing you most don't want to happen is what happens: one format cannibalizes the possibility for success of another format. I paid nothing to watch it on TV, and did not pay anything to watch it in a theater. They tried this with Steven Soderbergh's Bubble several months ago, and lo and behold, that movie did lousy at the box office. (According to Box Office Mojo, it made $145,000, with a production budget of $1.6 million.)
I don't think I'm being a stuffy old traditionalist about this, and I admit the possibility that Cuban is smarter than I am, but I just don't see how he's making any money here. But in the meantime, what the heck: I've got this lovely movie sitting on my TiVo, I think I'll go watch it now.
Cuban runs HDNet, one of the few cable channels that broadcasts exclusively in high definition. I've had a hi-def set for a few months now, attached to my hi-def Series 3 TiVo (one of the great inventions), and I love it. I'm a movie guy, so of course I love it, but what's not to love? Widescreen, great image detail, and it's attached to a good stereo with good speakers. I've even started pulling DVDs off my Netflix list if I saw they were going to be broadcast on an HD channel because they look better there. (And yes, I too am one of those waiting on the sidelines for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray thing to work itself out before I commit to one machine or another.) So HDNet is one of my mainstays, and I particularly love it when they show some NASA footage--simply spectacular. (Though nothing so far has beat the recent Planet Earth specials on Discovery HD Theatre.)
But HDNet also has a movies-only hi-def channel, and the other night they ran a movie called Diggers. As it happens, I had heard about this movie a couple days before and thought it looked interesting: an offbeat indie about clam diggers, with a good cast including Paul Rudd, Sarah Paulson, Lauren Ambrose and Maura Tierney, all of whom I like. I noticed it was going to be playing at a theater only a few blocks away--a theater for which I have a free admission pass. So it was within easy walking distance and wouldn't cost me anything to go and see the movie. "Well maybe I'll do that," I said--but then I checked the TV listings and discovered that Diggers was also playing on HDNet, that same night.
I ask you, why would I want to go to the theater, then? It's more comfortable at home, my equipment is all first-rate, and I can watch when I want. About the only thing that might have made me go to a theater in such a circumstance would have been if I'd had a date, but that didn't happen to be the case. So I stayed home and recorded it on the TiVo and was completely happy. But, as I say, baffled.
Because bear in mind: I'm a movie guy. And I certainly have a keen appreciation for the power of a shared theatrical experience by an audience of strangers experiencing something together (by the way, for the record, Zen Noir works best on a movie screen; I'm just saying, I've seen it happen over and over, that really is the ideal way to see it). I was already motivated to see this particular film, the theater was in easy walking distance, I like to walk, and I had a pass to see the movie for free. It was, in short, about as easy as going to a movie theater can possibly be--but I didn't go, and the only reason I didn't is because that same movie was showing that same night on my TV.
That's what day-and-date means, and it mystifies me. It refers to a newfangled way to release movies in which the movie is broadcast and shown in theaters on the same night, then gets released on DVD the next Tuesday: all formats show up at once, and people can have their choice of watching it in any way they prefer. Nice for we the viewers, but where is the business model? How is Cuban making any money off this?
Sure, Wagner gets my money as a subscriber to the channel, but he gets that anyway; and now he's lost my theater-going money (well, except for that free admission pass, but that's not really germane). The one thing you most don't want to happen is what happens: one format cannibalizes the possibility for success of another format. I paid nothing to watch it on TV, and did not pay anything to watch it in a theater. They tried this with Steven Soderbergh's Bubble several months ago, and lo and behold, that movie did lousy at the box office. (According to Box Office Mojo, it made $145,000, with a production budget of $1.6 million.)
I don't think I'm being a stuffy old traditionalist about this, and I admit the possibility that Cuban is smarter than I am, but I just don't see how he's making any money here. But in the meantime, what the heck: I've got this lovely movie sitting on my TiVo, I think I'll go watch it now.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Where Could They Bee?
Since I was just writing recently about bees, I would be remiss if I did not mention that the bees seem to be going on vacation. Or, to be a little more scientific about it, they're disappearing. By the billions.
As the various articles point out, food crops that rely on honeybees for pollination are worth about $15 billion and include a lot of the fruits and nuts that we all love the most: apples, cherries, almonds, and so forth. There is no adequate mechanical substitute for the pollinating prowess of the honeybee, so if this unknown process should continue, it is reasonable to expect that these staples of our diet will not disappear but will become very expensive from simple scarcity. (Imagine a ten dollar slice of pie.) (Okay, in Los Angeles that's not so far from the truth, but imagine it in Dubuque.)
Bee colonies started to collapse last October: huge numbers of worker bees would simply never return to the hive, up to 50% of the colony in many cases. As CNN reports, most of these bees just plain vanished, and their little bee bodies were never found. Since their failure to return was possibly a failure in their navigation systems, speculation ran rampant on all sorts of causes, including cellphone towers (leading Bill Maher last week to ask, "will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death?"). This New York Times article goes into more detail on the science involved, including this disturbing photo of cross-sections of diseased (left) and healthy (right) bee thoraxes:
A chemical trigger for all this seems most likely, particularly since some hives treated with gamma radiation have begun to recover, suggesting that the gamma is killing some yet-unknown pathogen. But research has barely begun on the problem, and all the while, the bees keep disappearing; and despite some lucky breaks, like the fact that Baylor College of Medicine recently happened to finish sequencing bee DNA (thus speeding up immeasurably a search for genetic triggers), we have no idea how long it will take to find answers to this problem.
Diseased bees are being found to be contaminated with fungi common in humans whose immune systems have been depressed by AIDS or cancer. Thus we learn yet again, we're all connected. The question then becomes, if the bees go, what happens to us?
As the various articles point out, food crops that rely on honeybees for pollination are worth about $15 billion and include a lot of the fruits and nuts that we all love the most: apples, cherries, almonds, and so forth. There is no adequate mechanical substitute for the pollinating prowess of the honeybee, so if this unknown process should continue, it is reasonable to expect that these staples of our diet will not disappear but will become very expensive from simple scarcity. (Imagine a ten dollar slice of pie.) (Okay, in Los Angeles that's not so far from the truth, but imagine it in Dubuque.)
Bee colonies started to collapse last October: huge numbers of worker bees would simply never return to the hive, up to 50% of the colony in many cases. As CNN reports, most of these bees just plain vanished, and their little bee bodies were never found. Since their failure to return was possibly a failure in their navigation systems, speculation ran rampant on all sorts of causes, including cellphone towers (leading Bill Maher last week to ask, "will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death?"). This New York Times article goes into more detail on the science involved, including this disturbing photo of cross-sections of diseased (left) and healthy (right) bee thoraxes:
A chemical trigger for all this seems most likely, particularly since some hives treated with gamma radiation have begun to recover, suggesting that the gamma is killing some yet-unknown pathogen. But research has barely begun on the problem, and all the while, the bees keep disappearing; and despite some lucky breaks, like the fact that Baylor College of Medicine recently happened to finish sequencing bee DNA (thus speeding up immeasurably a search for genetic triggers), we have no idea how long it will take to find answers to this problem.
Diseased bees are being found to be contaminated with fungi common in humans whose immune systems have been depressed by AIDS or cancer. Thus we learn yet again, we're all connected. The question then becomes, if the bees go, what happens to us?
Friday, April 20, 2007
I Have No Mouth and I Must Kvetch
Meanwhile, on a lighter note...
Went last night to a screening of an unfinished documentary called "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," about the inimitable Harlan Ellison. (Does anyone ever just write his name, or is there always some sort of adverb in front of it?) (Just found the trailer, here.) I've been a fan of Harlan's for way over twenty years now, since my mom read Shatterday
then handed it over to me. It was one of those thunderbolts from the blue you get sometimes: words on a page with such vigor and imagination that you immediately respond by going out and buying every other book by this guy you can possibly find.
It's hard to describe Harlan, because there are so many colors to his gigantic personality. Well into his 70s now, he is on the one hand a short, cranky Jew from Painesville, Ohio with the emotional life of an 11 year old; he is also an extremely serious artist in a complex, lifelong pas de deux with his muse; he is a raconteur of the first order, a fearsome debater who will absolutely get right up in your face, one of the most honored writers of his time, a moralist who is utterly unafraid to be offensive, a fanboy collector with a house full of stuff called, no kidding, "Ellison Wonderland," and a sweet guy who loves his friends like crazy. Which is exactly why a documentary about him is such a great idea.
The screening was at the Writers Guild Theatre on the wrong part of Doheny Drive. (Woe to you if you plug in the address on your Mapquest search with "Los Angeles" rather than "Beverly Hills." O woe!) The director, who I believe is Erik Nelson (there isn't yet an imdb listing for the film), has been following Harlan around with a camera since 1981 ("I always just thought he was a fanboy!" cracked Ellison), so clearly this was a labor of love--because believe me, if there wasn't love, Harlan would've driven anyone else away within about ten minutes. Because I was so late (damn you, Doheny!) I missed the first fifteen minutes or so, arriving just in time for the section where Harlan joined the army. By this point the audience--full of Harlan's friends--was already laughing hysterically. They barely needed the film's pithy sidebars (re: Ellison and the army, "It was not a relationship destined for success"), but it was a night for laughter, the loving kind: a guy who's lived a full life, surrounded by people he loved (and name-dropping like crazy), getting what amounted to a valedictory celebration of his life.
It may be a fault of the film that it is in fact too valedictory, that none of Harlan's many enemies weren't interviewed--but then, Harlan is so firm in his convictions that you get the impression he regrets nothing and will defiantly stand behind everything he has ever done in his entire life. And when you start to talk about his enemies, the man just cackles with glee, already rolling up his sleeves and preparing for a new battle. He is that rarest of things in this passive-aggressive world of surface politeness but hidden meanness of spirit: a man who plants his feet and stands behind everything he says, who sugarcoats nothing, and who is so much smarter than pretty much anyone that if said anyone gets caught on the wrong side of an argument with Harlan, well, good luck. But if you are a friend, he is just as passionate: he will come up, embrace you in a bear hug and kiss you on the cheek while saying the most wildly flattering things (there's a section of the film about Harlan the ladies' man that, again, got a good rolling laugh out of the crowd).
Josh Olson, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of A History of Violence, moderated the discussion with Harlan after the film and could barely hold it together because Harlan was (literally) all over the place, with Erik Nelson's cameraman and boom guy following desperately, trying to keep up. Werner Herzog was in the audience, so was the great musician Richard Thompson, along with Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore and of course Harlan's marvelous wife Susan. Harlan was profane and raucous, and if there's any justice some of this material will get folded into the documentary before it gets released because jeez what a night.
But really, when you talk about Harlan you must talk about the work. Shatterday is a good place to begin: it contains some very good short stories like the famous "Jeffty is Five," the title story, and the delicious "All the Birds Come Home to Roost" in which a man encounters all his ex-girlfriends in reverse chronological order, leading inevitably to the first and worst. There are probably better collections (Strange Wine and Deathbird Stories immediately come to mind) (and man, it's a crime how many of his books are out of print), but I might particularly recommend Stalking the Nightmare, the second book of his I read, the one that really cemented my love for the man and his work. Because this time, in addition to some very good short stories, there are also three tales directly from his life, including the hilarious one in which he worked at Disney for exactly one morning then got himself fired.
In some ways, I like Ellison the essay writer even more than Ellison the short story writer. An Edge in My Voice
stands as the absolute best of his essay collections, although the two Glass Teat books (about television) are better known. But really, you should probably start with The Essential Ellison, a fifty-year overview of his work containing much of the best of everything. Then go watch the documentary when it comes out, and start agitating various publishers to get these books back in the marketplace, damn it!
Went last night to a screening of an unfinished documentary called "Dreams With Sharp Teeth," about the inimitable Harlan Ellison. (Does anyone ever just write his name, or is there always some sort of adverb in front of it?) (Just found the trailer, here.) I've been a fan of Harlan's for way over twenty years now, since my mom read Shatterday
then handed it over to me. It was one of those thunderbolts from the blue you get sometimes: words on a page with such vigor and imagination that you immediately respond by going out and buying every other book by this guy you can possibly find.It's hard to describe Harlan, because there are so many colors to his gigantic personality. Well into his 70s now, he is on the one hand a short, cranky Jew from Painesville, Ohio with the emotional life of an 11 year old; he is also an extremely serious artist in a complex, lifelong pas de deux with his muse; he is a raconteur of the first order, a fearsome debater who will absolutely get right up in your face, one of the most honored writers of his time, a moralist who is utterly unafraid to be offensive, a fanboy collector with a house full of stuff called, no kidding, "Ellison Wonderland," and a sweet guy who loves his friends like crazy. Which is exactly why a documentary about him is such a great idea.
The screening was at the Writers Guild Theatre on the wrong part of Doheny Drive. (Woe to you if you plug in the address on your Mapquest search with "Los Angeles" rather than "Beverly Hills." O woe!) The director, who I believe is Erik Nelson (there isn't yet an imdb listing for the film), has been following Harlan around with a camera since 1981 ("I always just thought he was a fanboy!" cracked Ellison), so clearly this was a labor of love--because believe me, if there wasn't love, Harlan would've driven anyone else away within about ten minutes. Because I was so late (damn you, Doheny!) I missed the first fifteen minutes or so, arriving just in time for the section where Harlan joined the army. By this point the audience--full of Harlan's friends--was already laughing hysterically. They barely needed the film's pithy sidebars (re: Ellison and the army, "It was not a relationship destined for success"), but it was a night for laughter, the loving kind: a guy who's lived a full life, surrounded by people he loved (and name-dropping like crazy), getting what amounted to a valedictory celebration of his life.
It may be a fault of the film that it is in fact too valedictory, that none of Harlan's many enemies weren't interviewed--but then, Harlan is so firm in his convictions that you get the impression he regrets nothing and will defiantly stand behind everything he has ever done in his entire life. And when you start to talk about his enemies, the man just cackles with glee, already rolling up his sleeves and preparing for a new battle. He is that rarest of things in this passive-aggressive world of surface politeness but hidden meanness of spirit: a man who plants his feet and stands behind everything he says, who sugarcoats nothing, and who is so much smarter than pretty much anyone that if said anyone gets caught on the wrong side of an argument with Harlan, well, good luck. But if you are a friend, he is just as passionate: he will come up, embrace you in a bear hug and kiss you on the cheek while saying the most wildly flattering things (there's a section of the film about Harlan the ladies' man that, again, got a good rolling laugh out of the crowd).
Josh Olson, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of A History of Violence, moderated the discussion with Harlan after the film and could barely hold it together because Harlan was (literally) all over the place, with Erik Nelson's cameraman and boom guy following desperately, trying to keep up. Werner Herzog was in the audience, so was the great musician Richard Thompson, along with Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore and of course Harlan's marvelous wife Susan. Harlan was profane and raucous, and if there's any justice some of this material will get folded into the documentary before it gets released because jeez what a night.
But really, when you talk about Harlan you must talk about the work. Shatterday is a good place to begin: it contains some very good short stories like the famous "Jeffty is Five," the title story, and the delicious "All the Birds Come Home to Roost" in which a man encounters all his ex-girlfriends in reverse chronological order, leading inevitably to the first and worst. There are probably better collections (Strange Wine
and Deathbird Stories immediately come to mind) (and man, it's a crime how many of his books are out of print), but I might particularly recommend Stalking the Nightmare, the second book of his I read, the one that really cemented my love for the man and his work. Because this time, in addition to some very good short stories, there are also three tales directly from his life, including the hilarious one in which he worked at Disney for exactly one morning then got himself fired.In some ways, I like Ellison the essay writer even more than Ellison the short story writer. An Edge in My Voice
stands as the absolute best of his essay collections, although the two Glass Teat books (about television) are better known. But really, you should probably start with The Essential Ellison, a fifty-year overview of his work containing much of the best of everything. Then go watch the documentary when it comes out, and start agitating various publishers to get these books back in the marketplace, damn it!
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Stain Upon the Silence
There came from Virginia Tech the awful silence that follows; and then it was broken when that wretched child whose tantrum took all those lives got the final word. I had just finished reading his so-called plays and felt pretty lousy for having done so, and I was about to come on here and talk a little about what I'd just read; but then I checked the news pages and saw the video package that got sent to NBC. And I realized that this is all exactly what that petulant monster wants: he wants his image everywhere, he wants to become some sort of iconic figure in the awful tradition of "Charlie" Manson and Jim Jones. To hell with him, I refuse to even name his name. He's no writer, he's no artist, and he sure isn't Jesus redeeming his "children." To Hell with him.
Let's talk about this man instead: Liviu Librescu. He of course was the engineering professor at Virginia Tech who held the door while his students leaped from high windows and escaped; then bullets came through the door and Prof. Librescu died. He lived in Romania under the Nazis, and was ghettoized and/or sent to a labor camp (I've seen it reported both ways); then he lived under the Communists, who tried to marginalize him for his support of Israel by refusing to allow him to publish outside of Romania, but he defied the Ceaucescu regime and published anyway. At last a personal intervention by Menachem Begin in 1978 allowed Prof. Librescu to emigrate to Israel, and then while on sabbatical in the U.S. he decided to stay here. There was no mandatory retirement age for U.S. professors, so he could go on teaching for as long as he liked.
It's clear from the above that he always felt there wasn't enough time. A colleague at Tel Aviv University said "He wanted to write many books and have a lot of students," and his wife claims that Librescu published more papers in his field than any of his contemporaries. So much time was stolen from him in Romania that he must have felt positively impelled to transmit as much as he could to as many people as he could; but he always did so, according to his students, in a gentlemanly fashion, always wearing a suit, always feeling the privilege of his position.
Prof. Librescu was buried today in Israel. There is a lovely Times of London tribute to him here, and a Chabad on Campus family condolence page here.
Let's talk about this man instead: Liviu Librescu. He of course was the engineering professor at Virginia Tech who held the door while his students leaped from high windows and escaped; then bullets came through the door and Prof. Librescu died. He lived in Romania under the Nazis, and was ghettoized and/or sent to a labor camp (I've seen it reported both ways); then he lived under the Communists, who tried to marginalize him for his support of Israel by refusing to allow him to publish outside of Romania, but he defied the Ceaucescu regime and published anyway. At last a personal intervention by Menachem Begin in 1978 allowed Prof. Librescu to emigrate to Israel, and then while on sabbatical in the U.S. he decided to stay here. There was no mandatory retirement age for U.S. professors, so he could go on teaching for as long as he liked.
It's clear from the above that he always felt there wasn't enough time. A colleague at Tel Aviv University said "He wanted to write many books and have a lot of students," and his wife claims that Librescu published more papers in his field than any of his contemporaries. So much time was stolen from him in Romania that he must have felt positively impelled to transmit as much as he could to as many people as he could; but he always did so, according to his students, in a gentlemanly fashion, always wearing a suit, always feeling the privilege of his position.
Prof. Librescu was buried today in Israel. There is a lovely Times of London tribute to him here, and a Chabad on Campus family condolence page here.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
In Which Nothing Happens
I live close enough to the VA hospital complex in West L.A. that when the California National Guard decided to stage a bio-terrorism exercise there, a notice got slipped under my door warning me about it. Lest I freak out when a Blackhawk helicopter flew over the apartment at 5:00 in the morning, although really, in Los Angeles having a helicopter fly over is as common as common can be. Still, the notice made it all sound awfully intriguing: "Operation Vector, a large-scale interstate and interagency exercise" that would include a simulated earthquake, then a simulated chemical attack over the Hollywood Hills. I mean hey, why watch Apocalypse Now when you can have all that military bang-bang going on in your back yard?
Alas, nothing happened. Or rather, what did happen seems to have been far enough away that I never noticed any of it. (The place is huge, so it wouldn't surprise me.) With the exercise scheduled to start at 5:00 this morning, I wandered out there around 7:00 and could find no trace of anything at all; later I took a long walk all through the complex and it was as if nothing had ever happened there at all, the place was just as it always is: busy in clusters, sleepy and quiet in others. Disappointing, really; now I'll have to go watch Robert Duvall and the helicopters after all.
Something else is worth noting, though: the VA center was created in the late 19th century as a bequest to the city from someone whose name I can't remember, under the stipulation that the land be used for the benefit of America's soldiers of any war. But now, there is a fierce local fight going on between evil developers salivating over all that open land in the middle of Los Angeles (beyond-prime real estate) and those like me who think that a promise is a promise. I'm not one to automatically inveigh against real estate developers--none of us would live in anything other than tents and caves if developers didn't develop--but this place is a bright spot in the city and it ought to stay that way. As I walked today there were open fields with lush green grass, trees and birds, bikers and joggers, the UCLA baseball team was warming up for a game against Pepperdine on the athletic field, fathers had taken their sons out to play ball on a different field, and people were golfing on a compact public course. There is a little Japanese garden out there, and of course the hospital, numerous in-patient and out-patient facilities, and residential dormitories to provide long-term care for the men and women who risked everything for us.
The VA Center is good for the soldiers, it's good for the locals, it's good for the soul of the city to continue to do what it promised to do over a century ago. Those developers should just bug off and go someplace else.
when you can have all that military bang-bang going on in your back yard?Alas, nothing happened. Or rather, what did happen seems to have been far enough away that I never noticed any of it. (The place is huge, so it wouldn't surprise me.) With the exercise scheduled to start at 5:00 this morning, I wandered out there around 7:00 and could find no trace of anything at all; later I took a long walk all through the complex and it was as if nothing had ever happened there at all, the place was just as it always is: busy in clusters, sleepy and quiet in others. Disappointing, really; now I'll have to go watch Robert Duvall and the helicopters after all.
Something else is worth noting, though: the VA center was created in the late 19th century as a bequest to the city from someone whose name I can't remember, under the stipulation that the land be used for the benefit of America's soldiers of any war. But now, there is a fierce local fight going on between evil developers salivating over all that open land in the middle of Los Angeles (beyond-prime real estate) and those like me who think that a promise is a promise. I'm not one to automatically inveigh against real estate developers--none of us would live in anything other than tents and caves if developers didn't develop--but this place is a bright spot in the city and it ought to stay that way. As I walked today there were open fields with lush green grass, trees and birds, bikers and joggers, the UCLA baseball team was warming up for a game against Pepperdine on the athletic field, fathers had taken their sons out to play ball on a different field, and people were golfing on a compact public course. There is a little Japanese garden out there, and of course the hospital, numerous in-patient and out-patient facilities, and residential dormitories to provide long-term care for the men and women who risked everything for us.
The VA Center is good for the soldiers, it's good for the locals, it's good for the soul of the city to continue to do what it promised to do over a century ago. Those developers should just bug off and go someplace else.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Bees
In honor of Easter, something a little springy, something with fresh air and sunlight.
On Thursday, I was in Topanga State Park with a camera crew. We were doing camera tests for the next Lightwheel project, a feature that Marc wrote and is directing called Making Love. We had to figure out whether to shoot the movie in 35 mm or hi-def, and the big question with hi-def is how well it performs out of doors. Since a huge portion of the movie must be shot outside, this question had to be settled; so Marc got together with his Zen Noir cinematographer, Chris Gosch, and I went through an amazing amount of rigamarole to get a permit for us to shoot in the park, and on Thursday we went out and did it.
At the ranger station, bees were swarming under the eaves of the building. I wondered why the rangers hadn't gotten rid of the hive, but figured that this being a park, a place devoted to nature, they had simply decided that as long as the bees weren't bothering, they would just leave them be. So the bees buzzed and danced from flower to hive, and everyone went about their busy business as well.
As a producer, once the shoot began there really wasn't anything for me to do except guard the equipment by the side of the road. I sat there for a long while, under a shady tree, with a lush green field just to the left of me, watching seven deer as they slowly grazed their way closer, closer. Above my head, a bee moved from branch to branch, collecting and pollinating.
I was ridiculously happy.
Now bees, I've always been a little wary of. Childhood experiences have their effect, and here are just two of them: once, walking to school, a bee somehow flew inside my shoe and then stung me on the instep, a particularly painful place to get stung; and once when my dad lived in Atlanta, I was up there visiting for a month and was sledding down those red clay hills with some friends when we went right over a yellowjackets' nest. The wasps swarmed, we all got stung multiple times and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Batman TV show with baking soda caked all over us.
Thus bees (and their even-scarier cousins of the wasp family) became equated with Pain. And since I have spent a remarkable portion of my life trying to avoid Pain in every way possible, I've generally reacted negatively to the mere appearance of a bee. Swatting it away, jumping myself away, whatever it took. (And of course, bees just love me. Maybe it's my very blond hair gleaming in the sun like some gigantic daffodil? Who knows.)
But I recently read a review, by whom and of what and where it was I cannot remember, that talked about bees and their long-standing place in culture. Of the bees that supposedly swarmed the mouth of the infant Plato, indicating the greatness of the man-to-be; of the bee's essential role in pollinating most flowering plants (there would be no almond industry, to pick just one example, without the honeybee); of the symbolic nature of the bee as a crucial part of the cycle of life. With me, if you want to turn my head around on something, just give me material like this, I'm a complete sucker for it.
And so I sat there on Thursday, a bee buzzing just above my head, and for once I was happy to just sit there. And the bee, I discovered, wasn't at all interested in me or my daffodil head, and that we were both perfectly content to do what we were doing, now near and now far apart.
The very next day, I went outside my apartment, around the back and up the stairs to finally clean out my car of all the stuff that had gathered for the shoot. (Two wooden planks, an air mattress, leftover craft-service food, and a power inverter, to name just a few of the oddments.) As I marched up the stairs, I saw several honeybees on the ground, writhing; then heard a fearsome buzzing just above my head. Stepping into the clear of the parking lot, I saw that a hive had taken up residence under the eaves of my building, just as they had at the distant ranger station. And apparently an exterminator had just been there, had just sprayed, so the bees were agitated and dying.
My old thinking was that maybe I should clean out the car later. An angry swarm is an entirely different thing from a lone bee dancing around a fragrant tree. But I felt a new sympathy for them, as they lie there dying by the dozen, literally dropping out of the air. I knew that I no longer bore any animosity toward them, and that they would not wreak their vengeance on me. So I did what I had to do, made several trips slowly carrying things right under the dying hive, and by the time I was done, so too, alas, were the bees.
It felt very like a loss. But at the same time, I have to admit--I'm glad they hadn't built a hive in my walls....
On Thursday, I was in Topanga State Park with a camera crew. We were doing camera tests for the next Lightwheel project, a feature that Marc wrote and is directing called Making Love. We had to figure out whether to shoot the movie in 35 mm or hi-def, and the big question with hi-def is how well it performs out of doors. Since a huge portion of the movie must be shot outside, this question had to be settled; so Marc got together with his Zen Noir cinematographer, Chris Gosch, and I went through an amazing amount of rigamarole to get a permit for us to shoot in the park, and on Thursday we went out and did it.
At the ranger station, bees were swarming under the eaves of the building. I wondered why the rangers hadn't gotten rid of the hive, but figured that this being a park, a place devoted to nature, they had simply decided that as long as the bees weren't bothering, they would just leave them be. So the bees buzzed and danced from flower to hive, and everyone went about their busy business as well.
As a producer, once the shoot began there really wasn't anything for me to do except guard the equipment by the side of the road. I sat there for a long while, under a shady tree, with a lush green field just to the left of me, watching seven deer as they slowly grazed their way closer, closer. Above my head, a bee moved from branch to branch, collecting and pollinating.
I was ridiculously happy.
Now bees, I've always been a little wary of. Childhood experiences have their effect, and here are just two of them: once, walking to school, a bee somehow flew inside my shoe and then stung me on the instep, a particularly painful place to get stung; and once when my dad lived in Atlanta, I was up there visiting for a month and was sledding down those red clay hills with some friends when we went right over a yellowjackets' nest. The wasps swarmed, we all got stung multiple times and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the Batman TV show with baking soda caked all over us.
Thus bees (and their even-scarier cousins of the wasp family) became equated with Pain. And since I have spent a remarkable portion of my life trying to avoid Pain in every way possible, I've generally reacted negatively to the mere appearance of a bee. Swatting it away, jumping myself away, whatever it took. (And of course, bees just love me. Maybe it's my very blond hair gleaming in the sun like some gigantic daffodil? Who knows.)
But I recently read a review, by whom and of what and where it was I cannot remember, that talked about bees and their long-standing place in culture. Of the bees that supposedly swarmed the mouth of the infant Plato, indicating the greatness of the man-to-be; of the bee's essential role in pollinating most flowering plants (there would be no almond industry, to pick just one example, without the honeybee); of the symbolic nature of the bee as a crucial part of the cycle of life. With me, if you want to turn my head around on something, just give me material like this, I'm a complete sucker for it.
And so I sat there on Thursday, a bee buzzing just above my head, and for once I was happy to just sit there. And the bee, I discovered, wasn't at all interested in me or my daffodil head, and that we were both perfectly content to do what we were doing, now near and now far apart.
The very next day, I went outside my apartment, around the back and up the stairs to finally clean out my car of all the stuff that had gathered for the shoot. (Two wooden planks, an air mattress, leftover craft-service food, and a power inverter, to name just a few of the oddments.) As I marched up the stairs, I saw several honeybees on the ground, writhing; then heard a fearsome buzzing just above my head. Stepping into the clear of the parking lot, I saw that a hive had taken up residence under the eaves of my building, just as they had at the distant ranger station. And apparently an exterminator had just been there, had just sprayed, so the bees were agitated and dying.
My old thinking was that maybe I should clean out the car later. An angry swarm is an entirely different thing from a lone bee dancing around a fragrant tree. But I felt a new sympathy for them, as they lie there dying by the dozen, literally dropping out of the air. I knew that I no longer bore any animosity toward them, and that they would not wreak their vengeance on me. So I did what I had to do, made several trips slowly carrying things right under the dying hive, and by the time I was done, so too, alas, were the bees.
It felt very like a loss. But at the same time, I have to admit--I'm glad they hadn't built a hive in my walls....
Monday, March 26, 2007
We Are Preparing to Take Your Call
Idle thoughts while on hold with the Screen Actors Guild:
Minute 10
...okay, one last time through the thing I'm calling about--find exactly the right language to describe it so the call will go fast--okay, yeah, that should do, yeah, good...
Minute 25
...damn but I'm good at computer solitaire...
Minute 33
...they keep repeating "We are preparing to take your call." What the hell are they doing to prepare? Repainting the office? Stretching a tin can and a string to my apartment?
Minute 47
...if I ever play one more game of solitaire in my life, I swear I'll scream my damn fool head off. Okay, there are a couple federal and state forms that I need to prepare today, I'll just go online and get those done.
Minute 71
...okay, the forms are done, and hey, look how much time passed! Why the hell am I still on hold? And what to do about the growing bathroom problem?...
Minute 77
...my shoulder hurts. Why haven't I put this call on the speakerphone before now? Now, is there any way to put the handset back in the base that doesn't create a hellish feedbaYOOOOWWW! No, apparently not...
Minute 80
...what am I calling them for again? Jeez, I have absolutely no idea...
Minute 91
...what's my name? Why is there disembodied piano music playing the same tune over and over? Why do these voices keep telling me comforting things that only make me ag-ag-ag-agitated?
Minute 97
mind blister sell aromatic potions lost lost lost (no no no more voices!) can't linger can't delay can't wait can't cant or keen (piano no piano, no please no piano!) phosphorescent pastaaaaahhh...
Minute 103
blink
blink
blink
Minute ...
Minute 10
...okay, one last time through the thing I'm calling about--find exactly the right language to describe it so the call will go fast--okay, yeah, that should do, yeah, good...
Minute 25
...damn but I'm good at computer solitaire...
Minute 33
...they keep repeating "We are preparing to take your call." What the hell are they doing to prepare? Repainting the office? Stretching a tin can and a string to my apartment?
Minute 47
...if I ever play one more game of solitaire in my life, I swear I'll scream my damn fool head off. Okay, there are a couple federal and state forms that I need to prepare today, I'll just go online and get those done.
Minute 71
...okay, the forms are done, and hey, look how much time passed! Why the hell am I still on hold? And what to do about the growing bathroom problem?...
Minute 77
...my shoulder hurts. Why haven't I put this call on the speakerphone before now? Now, is there any way to put the handset back in the base that doesn't create a hellish feedbaYOOOOWWW! No, apparently not...
Minute 80
...what am I calling them for again? Jeez, I have absolutely no idea...
Minute 91
...what's my name? Why is there disembodied piano music playing the same tune over and over? Why do these voices keep telling me comforting things that only make me ag-ag-ag-agitated?
Minute 97
mind blister sell aromatic potions lost lost lost (no no no more voices!) can't linger can't delay can't wait can't cant or keen (piano no piano, no please no piano!) phosphorescent pastaaaaahhh...
Minute 103
blink
blink
blink
Minute ...
Friday, March 23, 2007
Babies!
So last Saturday, we three who comprise Lightwheel had a meeting, did some stuff, etc. Monica, quite pregnant, had reached the stage of perpetual discomfort. Once she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, instructing the kid "Get out!" We all had lunch, and arranged for her last visit with us on Tuesday before her due date swooped upon her.Never happened. Monday morning, around 12:30, the smoke detector in her bedroom went off. Wasn't the sort of thing where the battery is going low so it beeps periodically: it all-out went off. No fire anywhere, no smoke anywhere. She and her husband Kent got up, got the device to stop screeching, and went back to bed. Half an hour later it went off again. No one knows why--the device had no history of false alarms. But a couple hours later, she awoke Kent again: the contractions, they weren't stopping. And so off they went.
We've started calling the device a "birth detector."
Little Madeleine Anne was born later Monday morning, and on Thursday Marc and I went over to meet the newest member of our little Lightwheel family. An adorable child, as you can see, and remarkably mellow: not a crier at all, I barely heard a peep from her during the hour or so we were there. Monica is tired but resting and recovering; her first child, Alexander, has already declared he's "tired of being a big brother," and Kent was a mixture of pride and weariness. Madeleine, meanwhile, just laid there, being passed from person to person with complete equanimity, her huge baby eyes taking in absolutely everything without any sign of fear or anxiety. A perfect child in a perfect world, while we filled in her mom on all the things that had gone on in the perfect world during the days when she wasn't paying attention.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Dove Lieth
I was hard at work, setting up some wholesale sales of Zen Noir, when the phone rang. Caller ID showed it was some telemarketer so I ignored it and kept working; about ten minutes later it rang again, same thing, I ignored it again; then ten minutes later it rang yet again. Just to shut the wretched thing up, this time I answered. A too-cheerful woman on the other end first asked for "the lady of the house" (a particularly archaic construction, I thought), then assured me that the call wasn't a solicitation (thus getting her around the Do Not Call Registry), and that the call would take only ninety seconds. "Do you agree," she then asked, "that movie ratings have gotten too lenient?"
Ah, jeez. One of those.
She was definitely not prepared to get an earful, but come on, she'd called to solicit my complaints about the entertainment industry, and I'm in the entertainment industry. With very strong feelings about a particular subject.
The woman was with something called the Dove Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of "family-friendly" entertainment. Their website says:
But of course that's exactly what they're doing. There's language all over their site condemning filmmakers, in that sweetly passive-aggressive tone that these people should get patented. "Moms and dads are concerned about the gratuitous sex, violence and anti-family values that their children are exposed to," they say, and "For years we have watched the morals and attitudes of the entertainment industry slowly creep into our society." They refer to the "increasingly salacious" content of most contemporary entertainment; and there are prominent links to the FamilySafeDVD site, which offers edited versions of mainstream movies--edited versions that were not created by the creators but chopped up by oh-so concerned busybodies with no right to do so. The Dove Foundation's website offers links to an edited version of Finding Neverland, and this one in particular boggles the mind: what on earth can there be to edit out of Finding Neverland?
The woman was completely surprised when, in answer to her question, I flatly said "Nope." She should be thankful that I didn't continue with the thought, because in truth I feel the MPAA's restrictions are too stringent. Quite aside from their sheer arbitrariness (see the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated for the whole absurd story), I'm just not a big fan of self-censorship, which is exactly what the MPAA is. It was created by the entertainment industry for the purpose of convincing the public that the entertainment industry is responsible enough to monitor its own content.
I say that the best way to convince the public of your responsibility is to actually be responsible. And with that said, it might surprise the people at the Dove Foundation that I really don't have much use for movies that revel in gratuitous violence, like any of the Rambo films, or anything with Dolph Lundgren in it. I don't have much use for gratuitous sex, either, although come on, I'm a guy, I don't mind exactly, but... well, you know.
(Actually, good sex in a movie can be a glorious thing. The Spanish film Sex and Lucia, which my friends the Halperins distributed, is a wonderful movie with interesting characters who love each other and engage in loving, playful sex that has kinda ruined sex scenes in most other movies for me.
Nor am I one of those who routinely denies that movies (or any kind of art, videogames included) can have a harmful effect on the young. Hell, a movie can have a harmful effect on anyone--it's a necessary corollary of what I do that if I choose to believe a story can have a positive effect, it must also be possible that it have a harmful effect. Artists do have a responsibility to their audience, it's that simple.
The thing I don't believe in--and here I am adamant--is that we should shelter our children from such things. Case in point: when I went with the family to Europe about nine years ago, my brother and sister were I think 12 and 14, something like that. We reached Amsterdam and, when the parents went off somewhere, I took Adam and Amanda down to de Wallen, the infamous Red Light District. Then we hit a torture museum just off the Dam. I did this because I firmly believe that children should be exposed to everything--so long as there's an adult present. If they had wandered into de Wallen on their own, that would have been bad; but with me there, both keeping an eye on things and answering any questions they might have, then I think it is exactly the sort of education kids ought to have. (I made sure we all went to the Anne Frank House, too, which the Dove people would probably approve.)
The same with movies and books and whatnot. Experience them under supervision and I think pretty much anything goes--and if it's uncomfortable for the parent, well, that's the parent's problem. The artist has a responsibility to be a good artist, to tell his stories responsibly; and parents have a responsibility to be good parents, to make sure their kids are actually prepared for life--which they cannot be if they've been sheltered from everything dark their whole lives.
This is why I think organizations like the Dove Foundation are just plain wrong. In truth, I would like to see more family-oriented films--and the Foundation's assertion that family films tend to make better profits has some real merit. But it's also true that if that balance were to change--if there were a lot more family films and a lot fewer violent films, then the family films would be seen as a dime a dozen, and the more, shall we say, exotic material would seem rare and exciting and would make terrific profits. That's just how things are.
The woman cut off the call before I was done saying my piece, and I rather suspected that she hadn't included my response in the opinion poll she was taking, because she seemed like the sort who only wanted to hear opinions that matched with her own. So I went online and took their web-based poll, just to make sure they had some dissenting opinions. You can do that, too: just go here. Wouldn't it be fun if we could completely throw their numbers off, and restore a little sanity to this particular conversation?
Ah, jeez. One of those.
She was definitely not prepared to get an earful, but come on, she'd called to solicit my complaints about the entertainment industry, and I'm in the entertainment industry. With very strong feelings about a particular subject.
The woman was with something called the Dove Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of "family-friendly" entertainment. Their website says:
Our standards and criteria are based on Judeo/Christian values, free from the pressure of commercial interests. We believe in a positive approach of commending high-quality, wholesome movies rather than condemning filmmakers for not meeting those standards.
But of course that's exactly what they're doing. There's language all over their site condemning filmmakers, in that sweetly passive-aggressive tone that these people should get patented. "Moms and dads are concerned about the gratuitous sex, violence and anti-family values that their children are exposed to," they say, and "For years we have watched the morals and attitudes of the entertainment industry slowly creep into our society." They refer to the "increasingly salacious" content of most contemporary entertainment; and there are prominent links to the FamilySafeDVD site, which offers edited versions of mainstream movies--edited versions that were not created by the creators but chopped up by oh-so concerned busybodies with no right to do so. The Dove Foundation's website offers links to an edited version of Finding Neverland
, and this one in particular boggles the mind: what on earth can there be to edit out of Finding Neverland? The woman was completely surprised when, in answer to her question, I flatly said "Nope." She should be thankful that I didn't continue with the thought, because in truth I feel the MPAA's restrictions are too stringent. Quite aside from their sheer arbitrariness (see the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated
for the whole absurd story), I'm just not a big fan of self-censorship, which is exactly what the MPAA is. It was created by the entertainment industry for the purpose of convincing the public that the entertainment industry is responsible enough to monitor its own content.I say that the best way to convince the public of your responsibility is to actually be responsible. And with that said, it might surprise the people at the Dove Foundation that I really don't have much use for movies that revel in gratuitous violence, like any of the Rambo films, or anything with Dolph Lundgren in it. I don't have much use for gratuitous sex, either, although come on, I'm a guy, I don't mind exactly, but... well, you know.
(Actually, good sex in a movie can be a glorious thing. The Spanish film Sex and Lucia
, which my friends the Halperins distributed, is a wonderful movie with interesting characters who love each other and engage in loving, playful sex that has kinda ruined sex scenes in most other movies for me.Nor am I one of those who routinely denies that movies (or any kind of art, videogames included) can have a harmful effect on the young. Hell, a movie can have a harmful effect on anyone--it's a necessary corollary of what I do that if I choose to believe a story can have a positive effect, it must also be possible that it have a harmful effect. Artists do have a responsibility to their audience, it's that simple.
The thing I don't believe in--and here I am adamant--is that we should shelter our children from such things. Case in point: when I went with the family to Europe about nine years ago, my brother and sister were I think 12 and 14, something like that. We reached Amsterdam and, when the parents went off somewhere, I took Adam and Amanda down to de Wallen, the infamous Red Light District. Then we hit a torture museum just off the Dam. I did this because I firmly believe that children should be exposed to everything--so long as there's an adult present. If they had wandered into de Wallen on their own, that would have been bad; but with me there, both keeping an eye on things and answering any questions they might have, then I think it is exactly the sort of education kids ought to have. (I made sure we all went to the Anne Frank House, too, which the Dove people would probably approve.)
The same with movies and books and whatnot. Experience them under supervision and I think pretty much anything goes--and if it's uncomfortable for the parent, well, that's the parent's problem. The artist has a responsibility to be a good artist, to tell his stories responsibly; and parents have a responsibility to be good parents, to make sure their kids are actually prepared for life--which they cannot be if they've been sheltered from everything dark their whole lives.
This is why I think organizations like the Dove Foundation are just plain wrong. In truth, I would like to see more family-oriented films--and the Foundation's assertion that family films tend to make better profits has some real merit. But it's also true that if that balance were to change--if there were a lot more family films and a lot fewer violent films, then the family films would be seen as a dime a dozen, and the more, shall we say, exotic material would seem rare and exciting and would make terrific profits. That's just how things are.
The woman cut off the call before I was done saying my piece, and I rather suspected that she hadn't included my response in the opinion poll she was taking, because she seemed like the sort who only wanted to hear opinions that matched with her own. So I went online and took their web-based poll, just to make sure they had some dissenting opinions. You can do that, too: just go here. Wouldn't it be fun if we could completely throw their numbers off, and restore a little sanity to this particular conversation?
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Experimental Theatre
Last night I went to see two plays, one after the other, something I haven't done in ages, since those days when theatre was my whole life. One play was relatively straightforward but flawed; the second, a late-night at the Met Theatre in Hollywood, was not at all straightforward, and deeply flawed--but interesting.
The play is called "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (here's their MySpace page), and it begins with two different things: director Dara Weinberg's desire to explore improvisational theatre, and then her decision to use William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" section from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The paradoxical nature of Blake's diabolical inversion of biblical proverbs seems to have inspired her to cast away one of the defining elements of theatre, namely narrative, in favor of a celebration of moment and instinct. (It's entirely Buddhist in its devotion to Now--and yet, paradoxically, Marc Rosenbush, both a Buddhist and a longtime practitioner of avant-garde theatre, found it all infuriating. But then, so did I, for reasons I'll get to in a second.)
In her Director's Note, Ms. Weinberg describes her approach as "a chemical reaction between the past and the present," further writes that
All of which immediately caught my attention, because I have long-standing complaints with the shape of most contemporary theatrical productions. When film does Realism so well, what on earth is the point of doing Realism on a stage as well? When I walk into a theatre and see a set consisting of some walls, a sofa and a dining table upstage, I'm immediately tempted to just give up there and then, and get out fast.
Now, people are comfortable with Realism because it looks like their lives, so it won't ever go away from theatre, from novels, from any of the plastic arts, and certainly not from film. But there are other possibilities in a theatre, in that living, breathing, communal space, possibilities that I happen to think are best exemplified by the work of Samuel Beckett, which is exactly why I spent so much time in Chicago as an actor working with Splinter Group, the Beckett specialists (now they are Irish Rep of Chicago). Once I'd found people who saw theatre pretty much the same way I did, I happily abandoned thoughts of developing a career in order to do work that consistently excited me. (Then I abandoned acting, but that wasn't Beckett's fault at all, that was just me realizing that there was something else I needed to be doing.)
Theatre should be stark, and surprising, and unsettling; it should resemble but not imitate real life; it should be poetic, not prosaic; it should be an island unto itself, each theatre space a rotating wheel of worlds. So as I looked at the program for "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," standing there in the lobby with friends and minor celebrities (the wonderful Kirsten Vangsness from Criminal Minds), I read mini-articles with titles like "What's Wrong With Theatre?" and thought Great! My people!
And what I expected was perhaps something a little like Mary Zimmerman's Proust celebration in Chicago a few years ago, an installation piece titled "Eleven Rooms of Proust," or maybe Peter Handke's play "Offending the Audience" (which Marc once directed at Emerson). I imagined a theatre space without chairs, in which we audience members became a part of the production.
My friend Ezra Buzzington, one of the producers of the show, would tell us nothing about the production, wanting it all to be a complete surprise. So I was mildly disappointed to walk in and find a standard seating section where, since I was in the back row, it would be impossible for me to interact with the show at all. (Not that I was entirely up for that--it was a late-night, after all, and I'm a morning person.) Still, there were interesting things going on: several video monitors and TV sets were placed around the remaining three walls of the theatre, and a crew member with a camera was pointing it at the audience, at the set, wherever her fancy suggested. Another crew member was in a kind of dangling crow's nest, with wires that would enable her to cause parts of the set to move whenever she felt like it. Two musicians were perched above the action, improvising music that was alternately heavenly and hellish. The result was a fluid space that was designed to be as improvisational as the performance scheduled to happen within it.
Then the performance began. The actors came out, dressed in some rather silly costumes that suggested a cheap Berlin nightclub's costume party (although I liked the guy with the gas mask on sideways), and the house manager flipped a coin to determine which actors would be "in heaven" and which "in hell." They went to their respective corners, the music came up, and the show began. Almost immediately I had one of those "Oh no" reactions.
First off, the music was too loud, so many of the actors were completely inaudible. Not that it mattered--they had all memorized all seventy of Blake's proverbs, and repeated them randomly throughout the performance--and clearly a few of them were particular favorites of the group, because they got repeated a lot. (Only occasionally did these recitations seem meaningful in any way.) Thus you were left to watch the movement work onstage, and that was just as improvisational, in that "I've seen Bob Fosse's work but never actually studied it" way. Windmilling arms, ungracefully undulating bodies, kinda sorta in time with the music.
From moment to moment, one actor was supposed to take the lead while the others imitated or responded to that lead (mostly imitated); then, organically, a moment would lead some different actor to take the lead. But if such an organic moment didn't happen, then the particular undulation would go on for a while as the group collectively tried to figure out "Okay, now what?" Even worse, only a few of the actors seemed to have any real dance and/or movement experience; one actor in particular was so ungainly, so completely disengaged, that he badly dragged down the entire production. I think he only spoke a line once, never took the lead movement-wise, he simply lingered in the background and awkwardly imitated what others were doing. It felt like watching a jazz ensemble perform when one member of the group only picked up his instrument a week before, has no particular feel for it, and has never improvised before, either.
Jazz is the best analogue for what was attempted last night; and bad jazz nicely describes the result. Jazz is, of course, defined by its improvisational nature, and the good stuff is sublime--but that's because it takes place within a structure. When musicians "trade fours," they improvise solos for four bars while the rest of the band supports them, usually by vamping in such a way that the overall structure of the song remains essentially static, leaving room for the soloist's exploration within that shape; then after those four bars are done, the next soloist will jump in and the first soloist becomes a supporting player. The mathematical precision of the four-bar structure is essential to the freedom and artistry of the solo. But when jazz got too sophisticated, when it moved into the Free Jazz era, then the music became so esoteric that only other musicians could appreciate it. And at that moment, jazz began to die.
Talking to Ezra after the show, he could just as easily have been to a free jazz concert as this theatre performance. When we complained about the utter lack of narrative, he said that he doesn't give a fig about narrative, he wants to watch the actors' exploration of the moment. He's an artist watching artists explore their art. Which is fine for we artists, but if we want the form to survive, if we want theatre to still be here in a hundred years, it can't just be some masturbatory exercise only intended for ourselves and our friends. (I used to joke that in Chicago, the only money anyone ever made was the same ten dollar bill--our friends paid ten bucks to see our shows, then we paid ten bucks to see theirs, and it was always the same bill.)
There is room for improvisation in theatre, of course there is--but it needs to be more bebop than free jazz, it needs some kind of shape within which it can flourish. These guys, they keep throwing out the baby with the bathwater every time, reinventing the whole thing almost from scratch, meaning that by the time they begin to get any sense of what they're about on that particular night, the show is already over.
There was one nice moment. An actor had picked up a flat metal washer from somewhere, was at the head of a line of other actors undulating together, and seemed to be about to pass the washer to the actor behind him; but instead he dropped the washer in her pocket, which produced some amusing responses as people tried to get to it. It meant nothing but it was, in an evening of entirely improvised theatre, the only moment that was actually surprising. And a sense of surprise, of joyous discovery, is exactly what was missing from a show that should have been filled with it.
It's an interesting premise, and I celebrate Ms. Weinberg's attempt to explore it. But this show needs six months of rehearsal before it ever goes in front of an audience again. For now, it's just an indulgent mess that, to an outsider who has the misfortune to wander into it, makes the entire theatre community look bad; that seems to confirm that whole "selfishly self-absorbed" rap that keeps hanging over artists.
The play is called "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (here's their MySpace page), and it begins with two different things: director Dara Weinberg's desire to explore improvisational theatre, and then her decision to use William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" section from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The paradoxical nature of Blake's diabolical inversion of biblical proverbs seems to have inspired her to cast away one of the defining elements of theatre, namely narrative, in favor of a celebration of moment and instinct. (It's entirely Buddhist in its devotion to Now--and yet, paradoxically, Marc Rosenbush, both a Buddhist and a longtime practitioner of avant-garde theatre, found it all infuriating. But then, so did I, for reasons I'll get to in a second.)
In her Director's Note, Ms. Weinberg describes her approach as "a chemical reaction between the past and the present," further writes that
We believe that part of what makes live performance special is spontaneity.
The other part is madness. The irrational, the Dionysian. We ask you to join us there, to be both spontaneous and irrational, and to surrender to a dream.
All of which immediately caught my attention, because I have long-standing complaints with the shape of most contemporary theatrical productions. When film does Realism so well, what on earth is the point of doing Realism on a stage as well? When I walk into a theatre and see a set consisting of some walls, a sofa and a dining table upstage, I'm immediately tempted to just give up there and then, and get out fast.
Now, people are comfortable with Realism because it looks like their lives, so it won't ever go away from theatre, from novels, from any of the plastic arts, and certainly not from film. But there are other possibilities in a theatre, in that living, breathing, communal space, possibilities that I happen to think are best exemplified by the work of Samuel Beckett, which is exactly why I spent so much time in Chicago as an actor working with Splinter Group, the Beckett specialists (now they are Irish Rep of Chicago). Once I'd found people who saw theatre pretty much the same way I did, I happily abandoned thoughts of developing a career in order to do work that consistently excited me. (Then I abandoned acting, but that wasn't Beckett's fault at all, that was just me realizing that there was something else I needed to be doing.)
Theatre should be stark, and surprising, and unsettling; it should resemble but not imitate real life; it should be poetic, not prosaic; it should be an island unto itself, each theatre space a rotating wheel of worlds. So as I looked at the program for "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," standing there in the lobby with friends and minor celebrities (the wonderful Kirsten Vangsness from Criminal Minds), I read mini-articles with titles like "What's Wrong With Theatre?" and thought Great! My people!
And what I expected was perhaps something a little like Mary Zimmerman's Proust celebration in Chicago a few years ago, an installation piece titled "Eleven Rooms of Proust," or maybe Peter Handke's play "Offending the Audience" (which Marc once directed at Emerson). I imagined a theatre space without chairs, in which we audience members became a part of the production.
My friend Ezra Buzzington, one of the producers of the show, would tell us nothing about the production, wanting it all to be a complete surprise. So I was mildly disappointed to walk in and find a standard seating section where, since I was in the back row, it would be impossible for me to interact with the show at all. (Not that I was entirely up for that--it was a late-night, after all, and I'm a morning person.) Still, there were interesting things going on: several video monitors and TV sets were placed around the remaining three walls of the theatre, and a crew member with a camera was pointing it at the audience, at the set, wherever her fancy suggested. Another crew member was in a kind of dangling crow's nest, with wires that would enable her to cause parts of the set to move whenever she felt like it. Two musicians were perched above the action, improvising music that was alternately heavenly and hellish. The result was a fluid space that was designed to be as improvisational as the performance scheduled to happen within it.
Then the performance began. The actors came out, dressed in some rather silly costumes that suggested a cheap Berlin nightclub's costume party (although I liked the guy with the gas mask on sideways), and the house manager flipped a coin to determine which actors would be "in heaven" and which "in hell." They went to their respective corners, the music came up, and the show began. Almost immediately I had one of those "Oh no" reactions.
First off, the music was too loud, so many of the actors were completely inaudible. Not that it mattered--they had all memorized all seventy of Blake's proverbs, and repeated them randomly throughout the performance--and clearly a few of them were particular favorites of the group, because they got repeated a lot. (Only occasionally did these recitations seem meaningful in any way.) Thus you were left to watch the movement work onstage, and that was just as improvisational, in that "I've seen Bob Fosse's work but never actually studied it" way. Windmilling arms, ungracefully undulating bodies, kinda sorta in time with the music.
From moment to moment, one actor was supposed to take the lead while the others imitated or responded to that lead (mostly imitated); then, organically, a moment would lead some different actor to take the lead. But if such an organic moment didn't happen, then the particular undulation would go on for a while as the group collectively tried to figure out "Okay, now what?" Even worse, only a few of the actors seemed to have any real dance and/or movement experience; one actor in particular was so ungainly, so completely disengaged, that he badly dragged down the entire production. I think he only spoke a line once, never took the lead movement-wise, he simply lingered in the background and awkwardly imitated what others were doing. It felt like watching a jazz ensemble perform when one member of the group only picked up his instrument a week before, has no particular feel for it, and has never improvised before, either.
Jazz is the best analogue for what was attempted last night; and bad jazz nicely describes the result. Jazz is, of course, defined by its improvisational nature, and the good stuff is sublime--but that's because it takes place within a structure. When musicians "trade fours," they improvise solos for four bars while the rest of the band supports them, usually by vamping in such a way that the overall structure of the song remains essentially static, leaving room for the soloist's exploration within that shape; then after those four bars are done, the next soloist will jump in and the first soloist becomes a supporting player. The mathematical precision of the four-bar structure is essential to the freedom and artistry of the solo. But when jazz got too sophisticated, when it moved into the Free Jazz era, then the music became so esoteric that only other musicians could appreciate it. And at that moment, jazz began to die.
Talking to Ezra after the show, he could just as easily have been to a free jazz concert as this theatre performance. When we complained about the utter lack of narrative, he said that he doesn't give a fig about narrative, he wants to watch the actors' exploration of the moment. He's an artist watching artists explore their art. Which is fine for we artists, but if we want the form to survive, if we want theatre to still be here in a hundred years, it can't just be some masturbatory exercise only intended for ourselves and our friends. (I used to joke that in Chicago, the only money anyone ever made was the same ten dollar bill--our friends paid ten bucks to see our shows, then we paid ten bucks to see theirs, and it was always the same bill.)
There is room for improvisation in theatre, of course there is--but it needs to be more bebop than free jazz, it needs some kind of shape within which it can flourish. These guys, they keep throwing out the baby with the bathwater every time, reinventing the whole thing almost from scratch, meaning that by the time they begin to get any sense of what they're about on that particular night, the show is already over.
There was one nice moment. An actor had picked up a flat metal washer from somewhere, was at the head of a line of other actors undulating together, and seemed to be about to pass the washer to the actor behind him; but instead he dropped the washer in her pocket, which produced some amusing responses as people tried to get to it. It meant nothing but it was, in an evening of entirely improvised theatre, the only moment that was actually surprising. And a sense of surprise, of joyous discovery, is exactly what was missing from a show that should have been filled with it.
It's an interesting premise, and I celebrate Ms. Weinberg's attempt to explore it. But this show needs six months of rehearsal before it ever goes in front of an audience again. For now, it's just an indulgent mess that, to an outsider who has the misfortune to wander into it, makes the entire theatre community look bad; that seems to confirm that whole "selfishly self-absorbed" rap that keeps hanging over artists.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Great Leap
There comes a moment when you just have to let it all fly. Sometimes you choose the moment, sometimes the moment chooses you. And here I am, at the moment.
No longer a wage slave, I now toil solely for myself and my partners at Zenmovie and Lightwheel. It is, of course, utterly terrifying. And there are so many things to do that I'm still a bit flustered, trying to sort out how to get it all done efficiently. The result, at least for now, seems to involve flitting from one project to another, getting a little bit accomplished in several tasks but not quite finishing anything. I'll surely get a better feel for it, but right now I think I'm still a little flummoxed at the idea that there isn't much difference anymore between Friday and Saturday. All that easy built-in structure, gone, leaving just Me and Time. Little Me; Big, Big Vasty Time.
I've got money laid aside for a couple months, and something has to happen during that time. I've always hated deadlines but I just gave myself the mother of all deadlines. And it won't be catastrophic if it doesn't work (after an unpaid summer internship with the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival I got home with $35 in my bank account and a huge stack of bills, but came out from under that just fine); but oh man, I really need it to work. It's time to get down to it, to take that risk, to do what I've always said I was going to do.
Started working on a short story over the weekend, the first time I've worked in straight prose for a remarkably long while. I had a tiny little idea that has already blossomed into something mysterious and strange, and it has definitely been a challenge to write. Which is good: the best way to deal with my new life-challenge is with an art-challenge. And if I pull it off, there's a little money coming in--from writing. From that which I must do.
We've had some interesting meetings with some interesting people concerning City of Truth, and we're going to be workshopping it tomorrow night with some more interesting people. Already we have a host of ideas to make the script better and deeper, and they're all good character ideas, not just showy set pieces. So I'm hopeful there will be good news to report, pretty soon.
Because man. Now there's no choice--there has to be good news, and sooner than soon. I so don't want to have to go back to someone else's office, ever ever again.
No longer a wage slave, I now toil solely for myself and my partners at Zenmovie and Lightwheel. It is, of course, utterly terrifying. And there are so many things to do that I'm still a bit flustered, trying to sort out how to get it all done efficiently. The result, at least for now, seems to involve flitting from one project to another, getting a little bit accomplished in several tasks but not quite finishing anything. I'll surely get a better feel for it, but right now I think I'm still a little flummoxed at the idea that there isn't much difference anymore between Friday and Saturday. All that easy built-in structure, gone, leaving just Me and Time. Little Me; Big, Big Vasty Time.
I've got money laid aside for a couple months, and something has to happen during that time. I've always hated deadlines but I just gave myself the mother of all deadlines. And it won't be catastrophic if it doesn't work (after an unpaid summer internship with the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival I got home with $35 in my bank account and a huge stack of bills, but came out from under that just fine); but oh man, I really need it to work. It's time to get down to it, to take that risk, to do what I've always said I was going to do.
Started working on a short story over the weekend, the first time I've worked in straight prose for a remarkably long while. I had a tiny little idea that has already blossomed into something mysterious and strange, and it has definitely been a challenge to write. Which is good: the best way to deal with my new life-challenge is with an art-challenge. And if I pull it off, there's a little money coming in--from writing. From that which I must do.
We've had some interesting meetings with some interesting people concerning City of Truth, and we're going to be workshopping it tomorrow night with some more interesting people. Already we have a host of ideas to make the script better and deeper, and they're all good character ideas, not just showy set pieces. So I'm hopeful there will be good news to report, pretty soon.
Because man. Now there's no choice--there has to be good news, and sooner than soon. I so don't want to have to go back to someone else's office, ever ever again.
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