So here's what happened:
Last spring, Janet Hollier and I selected our season for 2007-2008. Janet is a colleague in the theatre department here on campus. We knew we would be moving to a new campus in summer 2007 and wanted to get the program off on the right foot. We also wanted to select shows which would both challenge and elevate our talented students. In the end, we chose to do Arabella's Little Secret in the fall, which she would direct, and Lysistrata in the spring, which would be directed by me.
A note: I did not push for Arabella's Little Secret, which I wrote, to even be on the shortlist. This was a request made by Janet and by our department chair David Cromer. So there.
In summer '07, Janet and I met with Beth Wells, who ran the community theatre located closest to the new campus. We needed a performance space for our shows, and we also needed to establish a positive relationship with our new community. Beth Wells considers herself to be a very spiritual woman and has shepherded her theatre to be in step with her religious beliefs, as is her right. Janet and I knew this when we gave her Arabella's Little Secret to read but were confident in Ms. Wells' capacity to keep an open mind, and after she and I spoke at length, she agreed to allow us to put on the show in her theatre (provided we paid for rental, etc.).
Halfway into rehearsal, we received a note from Beth Wells. We were to disavow in our advertising any relationship between her theatre and our show. The show could still go on in their theatre -- just without their "official support." Around this time, Ms. Wells also confirmed that our scheduled dates for Lysistrata were in conflict with another production in their space and we had to find a new location. I suggested we perform the show on campus.
More on that later.
The cast and crew of Arabella's Little Secret persevered and, in the end, even without the theatre's official support, the show went well. Members of the community came out to support us and we had much larger crowds than we had expected.
Ms. Wells never attended.
Meanwhile, I held auditions for Lysistrata. I was stoked to direct the play, and planned on incorporating music to better reflect the original intentions of Aristophanes. I had a good number of students try out and by the end of December, my cast was assembled and learning their lines.
And then the shit really hit the fan.
Cain Ticker
Galileo Ticker
Nuclear Winter Wonderland Ticker
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
I defenestrate thee!
I love the English language. What an utterly bizarre and schizophrenic lexicon it has. My favorite English word is "defenestration." It means "to throw someone or something out a window."
Ruminate about this for a moment. We have a language which necessitates a word for throwing someone out a window. This means that the action happened at such frequency that a word needed to be invented to describe it.
How awesome is that?
According to the OED, the word has its origin in the Bohemian insurgency of 1618, which helped precipitate the Thirty Years War. The insurgents stormed the castle and, yes, tossed two of the commissioners out the nearest window. This is known - I kid you not - as the Defenestration of Prague.
Love it.
Ruminate about this for a moment. We have a language which necessitates a word for throwing someone out a window. This means that the action happened at such frequency that a word needed to be invented to describe it.
How awesome is that?
According to the OED, the word has its origin in the Bohemian insurgency of 1618, which helped precipitate the Thirty Years War. The insurgents stormed the castle and, yes, tossed two of the commissioners out the nearest window. This is known - I kid you not - as the Defenestration of Prague.
Love it.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
INCREDIBLE HULK PROVOCATIONS (or "Ways to make David Banner angry")
1. Problems with flat tire
2. Nightmare
3. Thinking about either of his wives
4. Cut off from somebody in danger who needs his help
5. Being hit over the head repeatedly with a metal object
6. Having his cure destroyed
7. Quicksand
8. Being mauled by a bear
9. Being bit by a dog
10. Being placed in a car compactor
11. Being punched out and thrown down a flight of stairs
12. Being punched out and thrown over a balcony
13. Being punched out, period
14. Being buried in a sand pit
15. Having a row of computers fall on him
16. Being hit with a blast of steam in the face while trying to turn off the nuclear
reactor that is melting down
17. Receiving a lethal injection, and then having the person say, "Oh. I just gave
you a lethal injection. Sorry, David."
18. Dropping a C02 cannister on his foot after being insulted
19. Being pushed down a mountainside by a bigfoot impersonator
20. Dealing with a pesky operator in a phone booth ("I DON'T HAVE TWENTY-FIVE
CENTS!!!")
21. Getting into a car crash
22. Having a burning 2x4 fall on his head while trying to get the horse out of the
burning barn
23. Being trampled by a crowd AND having the hot coffee spilled on his hand
while trying to get to the sniper
24. Being tied up and fed soup by an elderly Japanese woman who doesn't
understand words like "You've GOT to cut me loose!"
25. Grabbing the pipe that is below freezing temperature
26. Falling through a rickety staircase while trying to get to the drunk girl who is
about to jump off the roof, and then finding that she's locked the rooftop door
27. Trying to get out of the basement cage while handcuffed to a chair only to fall
over a stack of boxed bottles and have them all fall on him
28. Being placed in a dumpster by the two garbagemen who think he's a thief,
and who don't believe him when he says "Hey! There are rats in here!", and then
being bitten by the rats to add injury to insult
29. Having two mean football players snap wet towels at him and shove him into
the steam room which they have turned on to full blast
30. Being trapped inside a football stadium drunk tank while his friend is in
danger, and THEN having one of the drunks hit him over the head with a metal
object
31. Being caught taking photos of toughs committing monkey business in the
restaurant, and then being beaten up and thrown under a table
32. Getting his jacket caught in the printwheels at the newspaper printing room,
and then inexplicably sticking his hand into the rollers
33. Yelled at by a mean cop, and then having mace sprayed in his face by same
mean cop
34. Handcuffed to a woman who is falling over the cliff
35. Having a large wooden beam fall on him, and then having a heavy boulder fall
on the beam
36. Somehow running into a bear trap
37. Beaten up and placed on a car going through a car wash, and then being
dragged under the car
38. Placed in a small room with a ravenous black panther
39. Somehow locking himself in an old, dark basement, and then nearly
electrocuting himself (really has to be seen to be believed)
40. Falling into the churning water of a boathouse, and then inexplicably being
repeatedly carried over the paddlewheel (this one is stranger than 39)
41. Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire
42. Listening to ultrasonics
43. Attempting to turn off the boiling hot water for the waxmaker, only to have
the faucet break off in his hand and scald him, and then inexplicably slipping and
rolling around in same boiling hot water
44. Kicking over a beehive and then being surprised when the bees are mad at
him
45. Being beaten up and thrown down a well
46. Having his friend tell the New York "syndicate" that David has their money,
so that their enforcers chase David back to his apartment, and then having all his
neighbors close their doors on him rather than listen to him saying "Please!
You've GOT to let me in!!!", and then being beaten up and thrown over the
balcony into the smelly trash cans by same enforcers
47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - "You don't understand, I
have to be there by 4:00!" - "Hey, mac, it's rush hour, we ain't gettin' there til five,
so relax." - "BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!"
48. Helping Ray Walston out with a magic trick by allowing himself to be chained
up and put in a tank of water, only to find that drunk Ray has forgotten to leave
the escape key inside the tank
49. Beaten up and locked in a car trunk
50. Receiving a speeding ticket
51. Having Thor the Thunder God push him around
52. Locked in a drunk tank with a crazy person who insists he is Ernest
Hemingway and then beats the stuffing out of David
53. Being tear gassed
54. Buried in a mine cave-in
55. Injecting himself with the wrong cure
56. Somehow getting himself into a bellfry and then realizing that a bell is there,
just as it strikes the hour
57. Being pushed out of a plane at 30,000 feet by a mean guy who yells “You’re
gonna land a lot sooner than the rest of us!”
58. Being forced to land a 747 without any training or instructions or help, at the
risk of his, the Hulk's, and everybody else on the plane's lives
59. Being put in a strait jacket because he's seen the videotape that proves that
the sanatarium doctor is performing unnecessary lobotomies on the patients,
and then thrashing around so much that he bangs his head on the floor
60. Being stuck in the police department's voice mail system when he knows his
friend is about to be the next lobotomy subject, only to have the police finally
pick up the phone after he's turning into the Hulk
61. Being stuck in a cabin that the police are turning into swiss cheese with their
shotguns, even though he and the pregnant woman have no guns and have
waved the white flag, only to have the police bullets start a fire in the cabin, etc.,
etc.
62. Beaten up by a bunch of mean cops who won't listen to him saying "Hey!
Don't touch that woman! She's pregnant! No!"
63. Being grazed in the face by a bullet while running after the bus carrying his
friend's hysterical mother, and then running into the messy, overturned garbage
cans
64. Being rear-ended fifteen times in a row by a mean bully with a bigger car than
his
65. Buried in cement by the mob
66. Being showered with electrical sparks because Jack McGee has spotted him
and is running after him shouting "Hey, John Doe!"
67. Beaten up by the rag trade mob, and having his arm placed in a press iron
68. Being placed in a cage with an angry gorilla
69. Making some Hell's Angels very angry with him
70. Being run over by same angry Hell's Angels
71. Wandering into an Army dump to get the deadly canister of army nerve gas
that has blinded his friend, only to be caught by a mean MP who knocks his gas
mask off and throws him back down the hill, knocking the canister open so that
David can frantically try to put his mask back on before looking up to see that the
MP has somehow brought in a crane and is dumping two tons of garbage on him
(this is an unusually bizarre situation)
72. While blinded for the episode, wandering across an Army training course,
and then veering into the training minefield (see parenthetical at #39)
73. Being chained to a truck while his friend for the episode has been taken
inside the trailer by the natives to be punished under the rites of La Culta de
Cabeza Chocolata
74. Trying to run away from the nasty prison work camp, only to fall through a
rotted bridge, and then being bitten by a rattlesnake
75. Beaten up by all the other prisoners in the work camp, in the middle of the
night while he is trying to sleep, when he emphatically told them not to beat him
up that particular night
76. Falling in a pitfall set by the crazed man who is hunting David on his private
island, and then being stung by the scorpion when trying to climb out
77. Being horsewhipped by same crazed man who is understandably upset that
David will not accomodate his polite requests to "turn back into that thing"
78. Being thrown under a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade float by a mean guy in
a gorilla suit who gives David a few kicks for good measure
79. Making the High Priest of the Baba Yaga voodoo cult so angry with him by
challenging a perfectly normal ritual sacrifice that several of the Priest's minions
are obliged to beat the stuffing out of David and throw a cloak over his head
80. Accidentally getting stuck in the department store that is being robbed, and
then having one of the thieves lock him in the bottom of an elevator shaft,
underneath a creaky old elevator that is showering sparks, and slipping off of its
cables, yelling "Hey! You've got to get me out of here! It's slipping!", only to
have the 5-ton elevator suddenly fall on him (this one gets points for originality)
81. Being beaten up by the thieves and thrown in the store vault, having the
vault door closed on his foot, and then having the air supply cut off by the
giggling thieves
82. Being placed in a cargo crate with his friend for the episode because he’s
found out about the problems at the waterfront, and being hoisted onto an
outbound freighter, but having all the dockworkers ignore his screams of “Hey!
Hey! Help! HELLLLPPPP!!!”
83. Being mistaken for mob boss Mike Cassidy, who looks exactly like him, and
who everybody wants to beat up, so that David is repeatedly beaten up for no
reason
84. Being placed in a room that is filled with carbon monoxide gas
85. Wandering around in the service ducts of a hotel (akin to Bruce Willis) only to
accidentally yank several of the steam pipes loose and get a full blast of hot
steam
86. Beaten up and thrown in a closet, and while thrashing around and trying to
get out, sticking his hand in a box of broken glassware
87. Foolishly running in and trying to help a man who brought a lit cigarette into a
room full of toxic vapors, only to have an explosion throw him across the room
and into the row of heavy C02 containers, which all fall on him
88. Hit in the face with a high powered beebee gun, which causes him to fall
over the balcony and plunge 40 feet into the seats below
89. Being trapped by McGee in a back room, and when he tries to run away,
bashing his knee, crashing into a backboard, and doing generally clutzy things
culminating with falling down the stairs and crashing into a giant flower pot
90. Beaten up while trying to keep the incoherent man from stabbing the woman
who accidentally locked David in the closet, and then having same man attempt
to close the door to same closet on David's head
90. Being hit by a car and knocked twenty feet so that he tumbles down a
conveniently open manhole
91. Being shot at close range with a silenced pistol, after standing up to the
mob's enforcers
92. Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire so that burning branches keep
falling on him and setting him on fire, and a giant, burning tree falls directly on
him as the last straw (Different from last forest fire predicament)
93. Being caught in an explosion on the edge of the fire that throws him into a
tumbling, rolling pile of large, heavy pipes
94. Foolishly trying to open the door to the shed of airplane propellant that is on
fire, and then being caught in the explosion
95. Falling out of a plane without a parachute, then being given a parachute
(which causes the person who pushed him to be told "That guy has nine lives",
to which the mean person responds by pulling out a rifle and saying "Yeah, but I
got ten rounds"), and then having the straps to his parachute shot off when he is
still 30 feet above an empty house so that he falls through the roof and hurts
himself
96. Deliberately going to a disco club and picking a fight with some very large
and angry men because while trying to cure himself, he injected himself with a
solution that has unleashed his "dark side”
97. Trapped on a platform with the worker who is having a heart attack, and
being showered with electrical sparks
98. Crawling through the sensitive, highly dangerous electrical service tunnel
for no apparent reason, only to accidentally kick several of the electrical cables
loose and flailing around near the hot water pipes so that he can be practically
electricuted and fried at the same time
99. Accidentally leaving the laser beam on in the chemical lab so that it cuts
across the room and into the highly toxic chemicals so that David is enveloped in
poisonous fumes
100. Trapped in a burning room in the scientific project with ten other people by
the crazed mercenary who is trying to capture the Hulk, and then trying with
everybody else to ram open the door with a jagged metal shelf set, only to get his
hand caught between the edge of the shelf set and the door during a group ram
101. Punched out and thrown in the cactus bed so that David can thrash around
on the cactus, even though he has plenty of avenues of escape
102. Coming to the aid of the gumshoe in the garage who is being beaten up for
not minding HIS own business, and getting beaten up himself, kicked under a low
riding sportscar that has been jacked up for repairs, and whose jack is removed
so that the car can fall on David. Gumshoe's reaction, in voiceover narration: "It
was a big green thing, and it definitely wasn't happy about something."
103. Being caught at the old studio backlot with same gumshoe, by same nasty
bad guys, and trying to run away so as not to get angry with them, only to have
them pull a heavy old scene facade down on top of him. Gumshoe's reaction: "It
was that green thing again, and it still wasn't happy."
104. Beaten up by a couple of punks under the Santa Monica Pier, who ask him
for his wallet, query him why he only has $5 on him, and then forcibly baptize him
several times
105. Tied up by same punks and left attached to a bench press machine as bait
for the bodybuilder (played by Lou Ferrigno) and his girlfriend to find and
become upset over, except that David becomes upset first
106. Being fed poisoned sushi
107. Tied up by the Japanese mob in San Francisco and thrown in his bathtub
with the shower blasting scalding hot water on him (why he doesn't simply get
out of the tub is a mystery)
108. Having several clay pots broken over his head in the middle of the now-
burning room (why is the room always burning?), and then knocking an entire
case of same clay pots onto same head, and then, while lying very still and
struggling not to get angry, having his pants catch fire
*109. For Dell Frye (whose hulking out predates David by 30 years): Having
David rudely turn off the gamma radiation machine when he's trying to turn
himself back into the green creature he used to turn into in the 1950s
*110. For Dell Frye: Going to a bar and deliberately picking a fight so that he can
get mad, turn into the creature and kill someone
*111. For Dell Frye: Having David rudely inject him with a cure so that he won't
be able to turn into the monster anymore
112. While paralyzed for the episode, somehow getting caught in the middle of a
barroom brawl, and while trying to quietly wheel himself out of the room, being
hit by a flying body and knocked down the stairs (what David is even doing in
such a situation goes unexplained)
113. While still paralyzed, trying to drive a car to the bank to stop his friend for
the episode (who is going to try to obtain an immediate loan by robbing the
bank), only to drive so slowly that the big guy in the truck behind him keeps
yelling "Hurry up! Learn to drive!", and then getting so caught up in watching his
friend wheel into the bank that he forgets to look both ways before entering the
intersection, crashes into a car trying to cross in front of him, and gets rear-
ended by the big guy in the truck, who remarks as David begins turning into the
Hulk: "You IDIOT!!"
114. Trying to escape his apartment before Jack McGee finishes bashing in the
front door with an axe, by smashing the bathroom window, only to grievously cut
himself on the broken glass
115. Trying to help his friend for the episode, the midget wrestler known as "Half
Nelson", by climbing into the ring for him, only to be clobbered by a large, beefy
wrestler who practices numerous combination moves on David, in spite of David
(and Jack McGee)'s numerous cries of "Stop! You don't know what you're doing!
You're making me ANGRY!"
116. Somehow being caught under a rockslide, and then foolishly exposing one
of his hands on the mountainside so that a big, heavy rock smashes it
117. Being attacked by some mean cops who handcuff him even though he has
told them his hand is broken, and who then let him flail around so that he falls on
his bad hand.
This list was created and compiled by an AD named Kevin Koster who worked on the TV show JAG.
Freakin' hilarious.
2. Nightmare
3. Thinking about either of his wives
4. Cut off from somebody in danger who needs his help
5. Being hit over the head repeatedly with a metal object
6. Having his cure destroyed
7. Quicksand
8. Being mauled by a bear
9. Being bit by a dog
10. Being placed in a car compactor
11. Being punched out and thrown down a flight of stairs
12. Being punched out and thrown over a balcony
13. Being punched out, period
14. Being buried in a sand pit
15. Having a row of computers fall on him
16. Being hit with a blast of steam in the face while trying to turn off the nuclear
reactor that is melting down
17. Receiving a lethal injection, and then having the person say, "Oh. I just gave
you a lethal injection. Sorry, David."
18. Dropping a C02 cannister on his foot after being insulted
19. Being pushed down a mountainside by a bigfoot impersonator
20. Dealing with a pesky operator in a phone booth ("I DON'T HAVE TWENTY-FIVE
CENTS!!!")
21. Getting into a car crash
22. Having a burning 2x4 fall on his head while trying to get the horse out of the
burning barn
23. Being trampled by a crowd AND having the hot coffee spilled on his hand
while trying to get to the sniper
24. Being tied up and fed soup by an elderly Japanese woman who doesn't
understand words like "You've GOT to cut me loose!"
25. Grabbing the pipe that is below freezing temperature
26. Falling through a rickety staircase while trying to get to the drunk girl who is
about to jump off the roof, and then finding that she's locked the rooftop door
27. Trying to get out of the basement cage while handcuffed to a chair only to fall
over a stack of boxed bottles and have them all fall on him
28. Being placed in a dumpster by the two garbagemen who think he's a thief,
and who don't believe him when he says "Hey! There are rats in here!", and then
being bitten by the rats to add injury to insult
29. Having two mean football players snap wet towels at him and shove him into
the steam room which they have turned on to full blast
30. Being trapped inside a football stadium drunk tank while his friend is in
danger, and THEN having one of the drunks hit him over the head with a metal
object
31. Being caught taking photos of toughs committing monkey business in the
restaurant, and then being beaten up and thrown under a table
32. Getting his jacket caught in the printwheels at the newspaper printing room,
and then inexplicably sticking his hand into the rollers
33. Yelled at by a mean cop, and then having mace sprayed in his face by same
mean cop
34. Handcuffed to a woman who is falling over the cliff
35. Having a large wooden beam fall on him, and then having a heavy boulder fall
on the beam
36. Somehow running into a bear trap
37. Beaten up and placed on a car going through a car wash, and then being
dragged under the car
38. Placed in a small room with a ravenous black panther
39. Somehow locking himself in an old, dark basement, and then nearly
electrocuting himself (really has to be seen to be believed)
40. Falling into the churning water of a boathouse, and then inexplicably being
repeatedly carried over the paddlewheel (this one is stranger than 39)
41. Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire
42. Listening to ultrasonics
43. Attempting to turn off the boiling hot water for the waxmaker, only to have
the faucet break off in his hand and scald him, and then inexplicably slipping and
rolling around in same boiling hot water
44. Kicking over a beehive and then being surprised when the bees are mad at
him
45. Being beaten up and thrown down a well
46. Having his friend tell the New York "syndicate" that David has their money,
so that their enforcers chase David back to his apartment, and then having all his
neighbors close their doors on him rather than listen to him saying "Please!
You've GOT to let me in!!!", and then being beaten up and thrown over the
balcony into the smelly trash cans by same enforcers
47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - "You don't understand, I
have to be there by 4:00!" - "Hey, mac, it's rush hour, we ain't gettin' there til five,
so relax." - "BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!"
48. Helping Ray Walston out with a magic trick by allowing himself to be chained
up and put in a tank of water, only to find that drunk Ray has forgotten to leave
the escape key inside the tank
49. Beaten up and locked in a car trunk
50. Receiving a speeding ticket
51. Having Thor the Thunder God push him around
52. Locked in a drunk tank with a crazy person who insists he is Ernest
Hemingway and then beats the stuffing out of David
53. Being tear gassed
54. Buried in a mine cave-in
55. Injecting himself with the wrong cure
56. Somehow getting himself into a bellfry and then realizing that a bell is there,
just as it strikes the hour
57. Being pushed out of a plane at 30,000 feet by a mean guy who yells “You’re
gonna land a lot sooner than the rest of us!”
58. Being forced to land a 747 without any training or instructions or help, at the
risk of his, the Hulk's, and everybody else on the plane's lives
59. Being put in a strait jacket because he's seen the videotape that proves that
the sanatarium doctor is performing unnecessary lobotomies on the patients,
and then thrashing around so much that he bangs his head on the floor
60. Being stuck in the police department's voice mail system when he knows his
friend is about to be the next lobotomy subject, only to have the police finally
pick up the phone after he's turning into the Hulk
61. Being stuck in a cabin that the police are turning into swiss cheese with their
shotguns, even though he and the pregnant woman have no guns and have
waved the white flag, only to have the police bullets start a fire in the cabin, etc.,
etc.
62. Beaten up by a bunch of mean cops who won't listen to him saying "Hey!
Don't touch that woman! She's pregnant! No!"
63. Being grazed in the face by a bullet while running after the bus carrying his
friend's hysterical mother, and then running into the messy, overturned garbage
cans
64. Being rear-ended fifteen times in a row by a mean bully with a bigger car than
his
65. Buried in cement by the mob
66. Being showered with electrical sparks because Jack McGee has spotted him
and is running after him shouting "Hey, John Doe!"
67. Beaten up by the rag trade mob, and having his arm placed in a press iron
68. Being placed in a cage with an angry gorilla
69. Making some Hell's Angels very angry with him
70. Being run over by same angry Hell's Angels
71. Wandering into an Army dump to get the deadly canister of army nerve gas
that has blinded his friend, only to be caught by a mean MP who knocks his gas
mask off and throws him back down the hill, knocking the canister open so that
David can frantically try to put his mask back on before looking up to see that the
MP has somehow brought in a crane and is dumping two tons of garbage on him
(this is an unusually bizarre situation)
72. While blinded for the episode, wandering across an Army training course,
and then veering into the training minefield (see parenthetical at #39)
73. Being chained to a truck while his friend for the episode has been taken
inside the trailer by the natives to be punished under the rites of La Culta de
Cabeza Chocolata
74. Trying to run away from the nasty prison work camp, only to fall through a
rotted bridge, and then being bitten by a rattlesnake
75. Beaten up by all the other prisoners in the work camp, in the middle of the
night while he is trying to sleep, when he emphatically told them not to beat him
up that particular night
76. Falling in a pitfall set by the crazed man who is hunting David on his private
island, and then being stung by the scorpion when trying to climb out
77. Being horsewhipped by same crazed man who is understandably upset that
David will not accomodate his polite requests to "turn back into that thing"
78. Being thrown under a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade float by a mean guy in
a gorilla suit who gives David a few kicks for good measure
79. Making the High Priest of the Baba Yaga voodoo cult so angry with him by
challenging a perfectly normal ritual sacrifice that several of the Priest's minions
are obliged to beat the stuffing out of David and throw a cloak over his head
80. Accidentally getting stuck in the department store that is being robbed, and
then having one of the thieves lock him in the bottom of an elevator shaft,
underneath a creaky old elevator that is showering sparks, and slipping off of its
cables, yelling "Hey! You've got to get me out of here! It's slipping!", only to
have the 5-ton elevator suddenly fall on him (this one gets points for originality)
81. Being beaten up by the thieves and thrown in the store vault, having the
vault door closed on his foot, and then having the air supply cut off by the
giggling thieves
82. Being placed in a cargo crate with his friend for the episode because he’s
found out about the problems at the waterfront, and being hoisted onto an
outbound freighter, but having all the dockworkers ignore his screams of “Hey!
Hey! Help! HELLLLPPPP!!!”
83. Being mistaken for mob boss Mike Cassidy, who looks exactly like him, and
who everybody wants to beat up, so that David is repeatedly beaten up for no
reason
84. Being placed in a room that is filled with carbon monoxide gas
85. Wandering around in the service ducts of a hotel (akin to Bruce Willis) only to
accidentally yank several of the steam pipes loose and get a full blast of hot
steam
86. Beaten up and thrown in a closet, and while thrashing around and trying to
get out, sticking his hand in a box of broken glassware
87. Foolishly running in and trying to help a man who brought a lit cigarette into a
room full of toxic vapors, only to have an explosion throw him across the room
and into the row of heavy C02 containers, which all fall on him
88. Hit in the face with a high powered beebee gun, which causes him to fall
over the balcony and plunge 40 feet into the seats below
89. Being trapped by McGee in a back room, and when he tries to run away,
bashing his knee, crashing into a backboard, and doing generally clutzy things
culminating with falling down the stairs and crashing into a giant flower pot
90. Beaten up while trying to keep the incoherent man from stabbing the woman
who accidentally locked David in the closet, and then having same man attempt
to close the door to same closet on David's head
90. Being hit by a car and knocked twenty feet so that he tumbles down a
conveniently open manhole
91. Being shot at close range with a silenced pistol, after standing up to the
mob's enforcers
92. Being trapped in the middle of a forest fire so that burning branches keep
falling on him and setting him on fire, and a giant, burning tree falls directly on
him as the last straw (Different from last forest fire predicament)
93. Being caught in an explosion on the edge of the fire that throws him into a
tumbling, rolling pile of large, heavy pipes
94. Foolishly trying to open the door to the shed of airplane propellant that is on
fire, and then being caught in the explosion
95. Falling out of a plane without a parachute, then being given a parachute
(which causes the person who pushed him to be told "That guy has nine lives",
to which the mean person responds by pulling out a rifle and saying "Yeah, but I
got ten rounds"), and then having the straps to his parachute shot off when he is
still 30 feet above an empty house so that he falls through the roof and hurts
himself
96. Deliberately going to a disco club and picking a fight with some very large
and angry men because while trying to cure himself, he injected himself with a
solution that has unleashed his "dark side”
97. Trapped on a platform with the worker who is having a heart attack, and
being showered with electrical sparks
98. Crawling through the sensitive, highly dangerous electrical service tunnel
for no apparent reason, only to accidentally kick several of the electrical cables
loose and flailing around near the hot water pipes so that he can be practically
electricuted and fried at the same time
99. Accidentally leaving the laser beam on in the chemical lab so that it cuts
across the room and into the highly toxic chemicals so that David is enveloped in
poisonous fumes
100. Trapped in a burning room in the scientific project with ten other people by
the crazed mercenary who is trying to capture the Hulk, and then trying with
everybody else to ram open the door with a jagged metal shelf set, only to get his
hand caught between the edge of the shelf set and the door during a group ram
101. Punched out and thrown in the cactus bed so that David can thrash around
on the cactus, even though he has plenty of avenues of escape
102. Coming to the aid of the gumshoe in the garage who is being beaten up for
not minding HIS own business, and getting beaten up himself, kicked under a low
riding sportscar that has been jacked up for repairs, and whose jack is removed
so that the car can fall on David. Gumshoe's reaction, in voiceover narration: "It
was a big green thing, and it definitely wasn't happy about something."
103. Being caught at the old studio backlot with same gumshoe, by same nasty
bad guys, and trying to run away so as not to get angry with them, only to have
them pull a heavy old scene facade down on top of him. Gumshoe's reaction: "It
was that green thing again, and it still wasn't happy."
104. Beaten up by a couple of punks under the Santa Monica Pier, who ask him
for his wallet, query him why he only has $5 on him, and then forcibly baptize him
several times
105. Tied up by same punks and left attached to a bench press machine as bait
for the bodybuilder (played by Lou Ferrigno) and his girlfriend to find and
become upset over, except that David becomes upset first
106. Being fed poisoned sushi
107. Tied up by the Japanese mob in San Francisco and thrown in his bathtub
with the shower blasting scalding hot water on him (why he doesn't simply get
out of the tub is a mystery)
108. Having several clay pots broken over his head in the middle of the now-
burning room (why is the room always burning?), and then knocking an entire
case of same clay pots onto same head, and then, while lying very still and
struggling not to get angry, having his pants catch fire
*109. For Dell Frye (whose hulking out predates David by 30 years): Having
David rudely turn off the gamma radiation machine when he's trying to turn
himself back into the green creature he used to turn into in the 1950s
*110. For Dell Frye: Going to a bar and deliberately picking a fight so that he can
get mad, turn into the creature and kill someone
*111. For Dell Frye: Having David rudely inject him with a cure so that he won't
be able to turn into the monster anymore
112. While paralyzed for the episode, somehow getting caught in the middle of a
barroom brawl, and while trying to quietly wheel himself out of the room, being
hit by a flying body and knocked down the stairs (what David is even doing in
such a situation goes unexplained)
113. While still paralyzed, trying to drive a car to the bank to stop his friend for
the episode (who is going to try to obtain an immediate loan by robbing the
bank), only to drive so slowly that the big guy in the truck behind him keeps
yelling "Hurry up! Learn to drive!", and then getting so caught up in watching his
friend wheel into the bank that he forgets to look both ways before entering the
intersection, crashes into a car trying to cross in front of him, and gets rear-
ended by the big guy in the truck, who remarks as David begins turning into the
Hulk: "You IDIOT!!"
114. Trying to escape his apartment before Jack McGee finishes bashing in the
front door with an axe, by smashing the bathroom window, only to grievously cut
himself on the broken glass
115. Trying to help his friend for the episode, the midget wrestler known as "Half
Nelson", by climbing into the ring for him, only to be clobbered by a large, beefy
wrestler who practices numerous combination moves on David, in spite of David
(and Jack McGee)'s numerous cries of "Stop! You don't know what you're doing!
You're making me ANGRY!"
116. Somehow being caught under a rockslide, and then foolishly exposing one
of his hands on the mountainside so that a big, heavy rock smashes it
117. Being attacked by some mean cops who handcuff him even though he has
told them his hand is broken, and who then let him flail around so that he falls on
his bad hand.
This list was created and compiled by an AD named Kevin Koster who worked on the TV show JAG.
Freakin' hilarious.
Monday, January 28, 2008
"I'm not singing!" he sang (Notes on the Postmodern Musical)
Last night I saw The Drowsy Chaperone, that frothy champagne flute of a musical written by the co-creators of the whip-smart TV show Slings & Arrows. One of the show's distinguishing features is how outrageously self-referential it is.
Although, come to think of it, that's not distinguishing at all.
Actually, the Broadway musical has been postmodern longer than postmodern's been postmodern. 1949's Kiss Me Kate is a metanarrative (a story about the telling of a story). 1967's featured a mirror which reflected the audience. 1973's Pippin ends with the protagonist redefining his own narrative.
Shows like The Drowsy Chaperone and 2002's Urinetown are not aberrations. The whole idea of the Broadway musical necessitates a postmodern sensibility; rare is the musical which doesn't break the fourth wall.
1986's The Mystery of Edwin Drood has an the ending which changes from night to night.
1987's Into the Woods has its self-conscious characters murder the show's narrator.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
* Note: My father was originally supposed to take my stepmother to The Drowsy Chaperone, but her aunt suddenly became very ill. My thoughts are with her.
Although, come to think of it, that's not distinguishing at all.
Actually, the Broadway musical has been postmodern longer than postmodern's been postmodern. 1949's Kiss Me Kate is a metanarrative (a story about the telling of a story). 1967's featured a mirror which reflected the audience. 1973's Pippin ends with the protagonist redefining his own narrative.
Shows like The Drowsy Chaperone and 2002's Urinetown are not aberrations. The whole idea of the Broadway musical necessitates a postmodern sensibility; rare is the musical which doesn't break the fourth wall.
1986's The Mystery of Edwin Drood has an the ending which changes from night to night.
1987's Into the Woods has its self-conscious characters murder the show's narrator.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
* Note: My father was originally supposed to take my stepmother to The Drowsy Chaperone, but her aunt suddenly became very ill. My thoughts are with her.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Nellie McKay
Our third and final entry this AV weekend is a clip of Nellie McKay singing "Ding-Dong." If you haven't fallen in love with her yet...now you will.
Thanks to Jordan for introducing me to the brilliant brilliance that is Nellie McKay.
Thanks to Jordan for introducing me to the brilliant brilliance that is Nellie McKay.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Avenue Jew
Maintaining yesterday's spirit of audiovisualality, I present you with another clip, this one much shorter and funnier. My industrious theater students introduced me to this one, which is from 2004's Easter Bonnet (an annual competition sponsored by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS). Altogether now: thank you, industrious theater students!
Friday, January 25, 2008
Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
Carnegie Mellon University has a series entitled Last Lecture wherein a noted professor is given the podium to speak on whatever subject he or she wants, the premise being: what if you only had one lecture left to give?
Apparently this video has been viral for a few months now, so naturally it's taken a while to get to me. But it's simply amazing, inspirational, and worth every minute.
Apparently this video has been viral for a few months now, so naturally it's taken a while to get to me. But it's simply amazing, inspirational, and worth every minute.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
So Logical
I love logic puzzles. Many people do. That's why Sudoku is so successful. There's a certain satisfaction one can get from taking disparate elements and uniting them in a common design.
Josh Zamrycki posted this logic puzzle (which he found here) a while back on his blog. He said it took him a little over an hour to solve it. Josh, you're a better man than I.
Good luck!
Josh Zamrycki posted this logic puzzle (which he found here) a while back on his blog. He said it took him a little over an hour to solve it. Josh, you're a better man than I.
Facts:
- There are 5 houses in 5 different colors.
- In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
- These 5 owners drink a certain beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
- No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.
Hints:
- The Brit lives in a red house.
- The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
- The Dane drinks tea.
- The green house is on the left of the white house.
- The green house owner drinks coffee.
- The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
- The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
- The man living in the house right in the center drinks milk.
- The Norwegian lives in the first house.
- The man who smokes Blend lives next to the one who keeps cats.
- The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
- The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
- The German smokes Prince.
- The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
- The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water.
The question is:
Who owns the fish?
Good luck!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Some Imaginary Rules
I received an email this morning from my good friend Amber. She's a dramaturg up in Boston and asked me if I could share with her what I believed to be the ten most important aspects of playwriting.
Here's what I've collected over the years:
Writers have written eloquently about craft for centuries. None of the insights listed above are original. They've been distilled from sources such as John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, David Mamet's Three Uses of the Knife, and E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, and from my own trial and error. The best preparation any person can have to be a writer is to be a reader. Read everything. Ask yourself what works. Ask yourself what doesn't. And then ask yourself what's always the most important question: why?
I hope that helps, Amber.
Here's what I've collected over the years:
- Show, don’t tell. Audiences (and readers) are always much more engaged in action than they ever are in speeches. Show your characters in pursuit of their goals. Show them succeed. Show them fail.
- Keep it simple. Our most memorable plays are our simplest ones. Romeo & Juliet. Faust. Our Town. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Note the difference between simplicity and simpleness.
- Even if you don’t know where you are, always know where you’re going. Would you get in a car and drive aimlessly for three hours a day every day? Sitting down to write without a benchmark in mind is nothing more than a creative exercise. You must always have a goal (even if it's as mundane as Write for Three Hours or Get Protagonist Off-Stage).
- Begin late, end early. By which I mean this: always start your play at the precipice of the exposition, right before the inciting incident. Give us a few minutes to know your characters and then dump them head-first into your plot pit. Or begin in medias res and force the audience to catch up. And by all means, when your protagonist has achieved his superobjective, End Your Play. Anticlimaxes are so...anticlimactic.
- Nobody cares about someone who does nothing. Despite critical misinterpretation, Hamlet is very much not a play about a man who does nothing. The Danish prince in fact does many, many things. He's just tremendously neurotic (which is why he was such a perfect character for our tremendously neurotic 20th century). Always have your main character in pursuit of a goal. Goncharev's Oblomov, the most slothful character ever created, is assertively slothful.
- Change is good. This applies to both plot and character. Keep your plot twisting in an organic and ingenious fashion and your audiences will be enthralled. Similarly, show your characters twist as well. Have them change through the course of the play. Prince Hal is not the same man in Act 5 that he was in Act 1. Neither is Nora Helmer.
- Save your best for last. Just as anticlimaxes are anticlimactic, climaxes must be the absolute peak of audience engagement in your material. Save your best lines, best moment, best twists for your finale. End with a bang. Leave them breathless. Is there a better ending in recent American theatre than in Edward Albee's The Goat?
- If you wouldn’t want to read it, don’t write it. Like most of these rules, this is fairly self-explanatory. "Write what you know" is the mistaken form of this adage. Write what you want to know. Write what you need to know. Just as audiences love an active, engaged character, so will they love the work of an active, engaged playwright.
- Plot = character = theme = style = setting = genre. This is my favorite rule on the list, and the one most easily forgotten. Just as form should balance content, content must in turn balance itself. It's no coincidence that the chaos of A Midsummer Night's Dream takes place in a forest. In a great play, every literary element should directly relate to each other. It's not linear; it's circular.
- All rules are made to be broken. But you must understand why the rules work in order to understand the circumstances in which they can be bent. Beckett didn't write Waiting for Godot on a whim or in a vacuum.
Writers have written eloquently about craft for centuries. None of the insights listed above are original. They've been distilled from sources such as John Gardner's The Art of Fiction, David Mamet's Three Uses of the Knife, and E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel, and from my own trial and error. The best preparation any person can have to be a writer is to be a reader. Read everything. Ask yourself what works. Ask yourself what doesn't. And then ask yourself what's always the most important question: why?
I hope that helps, Amber.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
And the Award Doesn't Go To...
Last week I shared with you my personal paradox regarding awards: they're mostly meaningless and boy, I love to win them.
Today the nominations were announced for the 2007 Academy Awards. As usual, my friend David Krasner (who also happens to be one of the single most funny and charming human beings I've ever met) was mostly right in his predictions.
But let's concentrate on the writing nominations:
Today the nominations were announced for the 2007 Academy Awards. As usual, my friend David Krasner (who also happens to be one of the single most funny and charming human beings I've ever met) was mostly right in his predictions.
But let's concentrate on the writing nominations:
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Juno by Diablo Cody
Lars and the Real Girl by Nancy Oliver
Michael Clayton by Tony Gilroy
Ratatouille by Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, and Jim Capobianco
The Savages by Tamara Jenkins
All unique scripts. Some overpraised. Here's five more worthy gems: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by Kelly Masterson, Eastern Promises by Steven Knight, Margot at the Wedding by Noah Baumbach, Mr. Brooks by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, and Superbad by Seth Rogan and Adam Goldberg.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Atonement by Christopher Hampton
Away from Her by Sarah Polley
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Ronald Harwood
No Country for Old Men by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson
Again, not a coal lump in the bunch. A really great collection of adaptations, actually. Now add to the list: Bug by Tracy Letts, Gone Baby Gone by Aaron Stockard and Ben Affleck, Stardust by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by John Logan, and 3:10 to Yuma by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas.
Overall, a very good year for American films (at least until early November, when the AMPTP decided otherwise). Congratulations to all who were nominated...and to all who weren't.
Juno by Diablo Cody
Lars and the Real Girl by Nancy Oliver
Michael Clayton by Tony Gilroy
Ratatouille by Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, and Jim Capobianco
The Savages by Tamara Jenkins
All unique scripts. Some overpraised. Here's five more worthy gems: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by Kelly Masterson, Eastern Promises by Steven Knight, Margot at the Wedding by Noah Baumbach, Mr. Brooks by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, and Superbad by Seth Rogan and Adam Goldberg.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Atonement by Christopher Hampton
Away from Her by Sarah Polley
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Ronald Harwood
No Country for Old Men by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson
Again, not a coal lump in the bunch. A really great collection of adaptations, actually. Now add to the list: Bug by Tracy Letts, Gone Baby Gone by Aaron Stockard and Ben Affleck, Stardust by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by John Logan, and 3:10 to Yuma by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas.
Overall, a very good year for American films (at least until early November, when the AMPTP decided otherwise). Congratulations to all who were nominated...and to all who weren't.
Monday, January 21, 2008
My Time Travel Bucket List (British Edition)
Here it is (in rough chronological order):
- Witness the Battle of Hastings
- Avoid the Plague
- Attend the York Cycle
- Stand with Elizabeth I at the cliffs of Dover
- Swim the Thames
- Buy William Shakespeare a pint
- Help put out the Great Fire
- Get Charlotte Bronte to sign my copy of Jane Eyre
- Get Charles Dickens to sign my copy of Jane Eyre
- Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd
- Watch Queen Victoria be not amused
- Tug on George Bernard Shaw's beard
- Give James Joyce the pint I bought William Shakespeare
- Play chess with Winston Churchill
- Attend a Beatles concert in Liverpool
- Attend a Queen concert at Wembley
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Learn How to Be Funny (in only 31 years!)
If you want to learn anything about comedy, read Steve Martin's new book, Born Standing Up.
Of course, if you want to learn anything about Steve Martin, the book also functions as a well-detailed and candid memoir, chronicling his early life on the West Coast, his muddy relationship with his father, his inspirations, his successes, and his failures (and, more significantly, how success and failure are often two sides of the very same coin). He offers one of the finest descriptions of anxiety and depression I've ever read.
But back to the comedy.
In this book, Steve Martin illuminates - about as well as anyone can - the amount of perseverance and precision required for comedy to work. It took him 31 years to perfect his act. He manufactured his famed silly antics from the 1970s with an exactness and discipline bordering on OCD.
And that's exactly what it's like. I've never done stand-up (and never will), but I do write comedy (well, it's funny to me....) and if I've learned anything, it's how important preparation and analysis is to making a joke work. As the old saw goes, comedy is a very serious business. Ask any actor, playwright, or stage director: you always know when the tears will come in a tragedy but you never know, day to day, when the laughter will come. Comedy is organic and subjective and near-impossible to tame. It's no wonder so many try to be funny; it's no wonder few succeed. Steve Martin is one of the most successful around . Read Born Standing Up.
And then watch The Jerk. If that film doesn't at least make you smile, my God, check your pulse. You may be dead.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Southern Winter Wonderland
It snows in Atlanta roughly once every four years. This week it has snowed twice. I'd blame it on a resurgence of El Nino, but that would just feed into Lou Dobbs' paranoia about illegal immigration.
I love the snow. I love the purity of it. I love the childlike notion of every snowflake being a unique world unto itself. I love the sight of four year-olds spread-eagled on their lawns making snow angels. I love everything about the snow, really, as long as I don't have to drive in it or dig out my car from under it.
Hartsfield-Jackson, the local airport, hates snow. Hates it. As soon as the first flakes touched the tarmac, they canceled most flights. My brother and his wife are thus stranded in Michigan (where the temperature is currently 17 degrees...but the airport's open). Thousands of commuters across the country are right now stranded because of Hartsfield-Jackson's Chicken Little mentality. We're talking about the busiest airport in the country. You'd think they would stock up on some salt.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite American poets, Billy Collins, and his musings about snow:
I love the snow. I love the purity of it. I love the childlike notion of every snowflake being a unique world unto itself. I love the sight of four year-olds spread-eagled on their lawns making snow angels. I love everything about the snow, really, as long as I don't have to drive in it or dig out my car from under it.
Hartsfield-Jackson, the local airport, hates snow. Hates it. As soon as the first flakes touched the tarmac, they canceled most flights. My brother and his wife are thus stranded in Michigan (where the temperature is currently 17 degrees...but the airport's open). Thousands of commuters across the country are right now stranded because of Hartsfield-Jackson's Chicken Little mentality. We're talking about the busiest airport in the country. You'd think they would stock up on some salt.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite American poets, Billy Collins, and his musings about snow:
"Snow Day"
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.
In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.
In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
Friday, January 18, 2008
In the Court of the Crimson Kangaroo, Part Tres
So I'm in high school, about to enter college. I've received accolades for my amateur legal skills while my teachers consider my fiction writing to be, well, amateur. Other classmates were selected for creative writing scholarships. Other classmates had their work published. I was editor-in-chief of the school literary magazine, yes, but only because no one else wanted the job.
Then, one day, I just began to write again. No monumental event inspired me. No epiphany opened my eyes. Real life is far more anti-climactic. I just sat down at the typewriter and once again wrote fiction. Lots of fiction. I wrote a horror story about a rain of insects (inspired by Canadian "man-bugs"). I wrote a short novel for my clique of friends and gave it to them at the end of senior year. I got to college and wrote a stream-of-consciousness about suicidal roommates (inspired by my odious roommate at the time).
I was so prolific that my social life took a backseat -- or perhaps I was so prolific because my social life took a backseat.
Anyway.
Despite Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - in part because of Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - by my junior/senior year of college I had begun to concentrate my efforts almost exclusively on playwriting. I took a summer class through NYU and Playwrights Horizons and my instructor, Paul Selig, helped me find my voice; by the end of that class, I had written "The Motherpucker," a Very Dark Comedy about a prom date from hell, a horny girl impregnated with a kiss, and her serial killer brother. When I brought it back to SUNY Binghamton to be performed, the audience loved it...well, most of the audience. A few of my classmates and most of my college instructors felt the content to be puerile and pointless. To which I replied, "But did you laugh?" For which I was, for the next few years, raked over the coals. This apparently was the wrong question for me to ask them. Ah well. I never have gotten along well with elitists. Some of my instructors (thank you, Tom Kremer) and most of my classmates (thank you, very long list of people who will be singled out at another time), however, were very supportive of my playwriting and for the rest of my time at Binghamton, I continued to put on a full-length original play a year, including my best play, a three-act whirlpool entitled Pop Apocalypse.
I never did take a law class in college. I never took the LSAT. This, of course, created some friction between me and my father. Fortunately, with the success of my writing career, that friction has mostly abated. He's my biggest fan.
One final note: in reading the past few entries, you may have surmised I'm the type of writer who needs constant encouragement to maintain constant output. Sad but true. I think what it comes down to is attention...which is bizarre because I'm extremely shy and most of the time shrink when confronted with flattery.
If only I had been a mock psychiatrist.
Then, one day, I just began to write again. No monumental event inspired me. No epiphany opened my eyes. Real life is far more anti-climactic. I just sat down at the typewriter and once again wrote fiction. Lots of fiction. I wrote a horror story about a rain of insects (inspired by Canadian "man-bugs"). I wrote a short novel for my clique of friends and gave it to them at the end of senior year. I got to college and wrote a stream-of-consciousness about suicidal roommates (inspired by my odious roommate at the time).
I was so prolific that my social life took a backseat -- or perhaps I was so prolific because my social life took a backseat.
Anyway.
Despite Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - in part because of Ms. Moran's comments about my dialogue - by my junior/senior year of college I had begun to concentrate my efforts almost exclusively on playwriting. I took a summer class through NYU and Playwrights Horizons and my instructor, Paul Selig, helped me find my voice; by the end of that class, I had written "The Motherpucker," a Very Dark Comedy about a prom date from hell, a horny girl impregnated with a kiss, and her serial killer brother. When I brought it back to SUNY Binghamton to be performed, the audience loved it...well, most of the audience. A few of my classmates and most of my college instructors felt the content to be puerile and pointless. To which I replied, "But did you laugh?" For which I was, for the next few years, raked over the coals. This apparently was the wrong question for me to ask them. Ah well. I never have gotten along well with elitists. Some of my instructors (thank you, Tom Kremer) and most of my classmates (thank you, very long list of people who will be singled out at another time), however, were very supportive of my playwriting and for the rest of my time at Binghamton, I continued to put on a full-length original play a year, including my best play, a three-act whirlpool entitled Pop Apocalypse.
I never did take a law class in college. I never took the LSAT. This, of course, created some friction between me and my father. Fortunately, with the success of my writing career, that friction has mostly abated. He's my biggest fan.
One final note: in reading the past few entries, you may have surmised I'm the type of writer who needs constant encouragement to maintain constant output. Sad but true. I think what it comes down to is attention...which is bizarre because I'm extremely shy and most of the time shrink when confronted with flattery.
If only I had been a mock psychiatrist.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
In the Court of the Crimson Kangaroo, Part Deux
When last we met, it seemed I was destined to pass the bar exam, fill my closet with neckties and suits, and litigate your next divorce. Destiny, however, has a wicked sense of humor. Just ask John Kennedy Toole.
See, way before I had ever heard of mock trial, I had been a writer. I wrote my first story when I was six. I knew how to use a typewriter by the time I was eight. Again, this was my father's fault. He sold office machines and so we had ready access to typewriters, copiers, and shredders. Some of my earliest, fondest memories involve me perched over an IBM Quietwriter at my dad's store on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Yep, I was weird even back then.
I wrote my first real short story in 2nd grade. It was around Halloween and my teacher, Mrs. Short, had assigned us a list of 10 Halloween-related words for us to combine into a narrative.
I scribbled down a missive about a young vampire named Vinny who had a loose tooth...but no one would help him out because, well, he was a vampire. Poor Vinny. I remember the story being praised by my parents, Mrs. Short, and even Principal Freeman (who, previous to that, believed I was borderline autistic - no joke, long story, 'nother time). All this positive attention sated my prepubescent neuroses and provided fuel for my creativity for a long, long time, and by 6th grade, I had written a novel. It was 10 pages long, but heck, it was a novel. I submitted it to the statewide Young Authors contest...and won for the entire city of Warwick (trouncing all efforts contributed by the kids in ALAP, the city's program for gifted youth......nope, no spite here....). All the winners of the contest got to attend a seminar on writing and meet Real Live Authors like Jon Land (who had read my book and proceeded to offer some very specific and tremendously helpful constructive criticism). What a blast that was.
It occurs to me that this is beginning to sound like a Watch Josh Kick Ass sermon. I guarantee you - there will be many more stories where you will Watch Josh's Ass Get Kicked. But I'll save those for when the flowers are blooming.
I continued to write all through junior high school, even as the wave of mock trial swept over me. I won a few more awards. I received some more praise. But, more importantly, I received a Stinging Rebuke from one of my instructors. Upon reading my latest batch of fiction, Ms. Moran, who taught the gifted program as Winman Junior High School (a program which my father fought tooth and nail to get me in, I should add), told me that my dialogue was "stilted and trite" and recommended I give poetry a try instead. Was the dialogue in my stories stilted and trite? Probably. I was in 7th grade. Should she have dissuaded me from ever writing fiction again? Probably not, but whatever. The point is she succeeded, and I turned my back on fiction writing forever.
Then destiny, with its wicked sense of humor, stepped in.
More later.
See, way before I had ever heard of mock trial, I had been a writer. I wrote my first story when I was six. I knew how to use a typewriter by the time I was eight. Again, this was my father's fault. He sold office machines and so we had ready access to typewriters, copiers, and shredders. Some of my earliest, fondest memories involve me perched over an IBM Quietwriter at my dad's store on a quiet Saturday afternoon. Yep, I was weird even back then.
I wrote my first real short story in 2nd grade. It was around Halloween and my teacher, Mrs. Short, had assigned us a list of 10 Halloween-related words for us to combine into a narrative.
I scribbled down a missive about a young vampire named Vinny who had a loose tooth...but no one would help him out because, well, he was a vampire. Poor Vinny. I remember the story being praised by my parents, Mrs. Short, and even Principal Freeman (who, previous to that, believed I was borderline autistic - no joke, long story, 'nother time). All this positive attention sated my prepubescent neuroses and provided fuel for my creativity for a long, long time, and by 6th grade, I had written a novel. It was 10 pages long, but heck, it was a novel. I submitted it to the statewide Young Authors contest...and won for the entire city of Warwick (trouncing all efforts contributed by the kids in ALAP, the city's program for gifted youth......nope, no spite here....). All the winners of the contest got to attend a seminar on writing and meet Real Live Authors like Jon Land (who had read my book and proceeded to offer some very specific and tremendously helpful constructive criticism). What a blast that was.
It occurs to me that this is beginning to sound like a Watch Josh Kick Ass sermon. I guarantee you - there will be many more stories where you will Watch Josh's Ass Get Kicked. But I'll save those for when the flowers are blooming.
I continued to write all through junior high school, even as the wave of mock trial swept over me. I won a few more awards. I received some more praise. But, more importantly, I received a Stinging Rebuke from one of my instructors. Upon reading my latest batch of fiction, Ms. Moran, who taught the gifted program as Winman Junior High School (a program which my father fought tooth and nail to get me in, I should add), told me that my dialogue was "stilted and trite" and recommended I give poetry a try instead. Was the dialogue in my stories stilted and trite? Probably. I was in 7th grade. Should she have dissuaded me from ever writing fiction again? Probably not, but whatever. The point is she succeeded, and I turned my back on fiction writing forever.
Then destiny, with its wicked sense of humor, stepped in.
More later.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
In the Court of the Crimson Kangaroo
My father wanted me to be a lawyer.
I think his reasoning was two-fold: one, I seemed to be a passionate arguer (at least with him) and two, I seemed to have a knack of the law. Well, at least mock law. You see, in high school, I was a participant in mock trial.
Mock trial was fun. Every year we were given a new civil case to argue and had to prepare both an effective defense and a powerful prosecution. The witnesses in the case were always given unisex names like Pat and Chris so any gender could portray them in the trial. Mock trial, at its heart, was and is improvisational theater. And for whatever reason, I was very good at it. After our first trial, the presiding judge (who was a real superior court judge) called me over to the bench and commended me on my "performance" and recommended that I pursue the law as my career.
My father, who attended every trial, couldn't have been more proud.
My fondest memory of mock trial, though, came two years later, in the quarterfinals. You know those great cross-examinations you see on TV, where the lawyer blindsides the witness and then proceeds to streamroll them until the witness is basically forced to recant every single statement they previously made? Well...that was me. I crucified the prosecution's star witness and won the case for my school. The state mock trial board later gave me an award for Best Cross-Examination.
I'm really not trying to be boastful or self-aggrandizing. The following week, I helped contribute to our school losing the semi-finals. But for that day? For those ten minutes when it was mano y mano and I absolutely crushed that witness on the stand?
No stimulant can compare.
My father, who had been enthusiastic before about my pursuing a legal career, now became adamant. Not a day would pass when he wouldn't bring it up. Not one day. When it came time to apply for colleges, he made sure I included schools that had excellent pre-law programs. To him, for me not to pursue a career in law would have been an unforgivable squandering of potential. And I kinda/sorta agreed.
So what happened?
Stay tuned.
I think his reasoning was two-fold: one, I seemed to be a passionate arguer (at least with him) and two, I seemed to have a knack of the law. Well, at least mock law. You see, in high school, I was a participant in mock trial.
Mock trial was fun. Every year we were given a new civil case to argue and had to prepare both an effective defense and a powerful prosecution. The witnesses in the case were always given unisex names like Pat and Chris so any gender could portray them in the trial. Mock trial, at its heart, was and is improvisational theater. And for whatever reason, I was very good at it. After our first trial, the presiding judge (who was a real superior court judge) called me over to the bench and commended me on my "performance" and recommended that I pursue the law as my career.
My father, who attended every trial, couldn't have been more proud.
My fondest memory of mock trial, though, came two years later, in the quarterfinals. You know those great cross-examinations you see on TV, where the lawyer blindsides the witness and then proceeds to streamroll them until the witness is basically forced to recant every single statement they previously made? Well...that was me. I crucified the prosecution's star witness and won the case for my school. The state mock trial board later gave me an award for Best Cross-Examination.
I'm really not trying to be boastful or self-aggrandizing. The following week, I helped contribute to our school losing the semi-finals. But for that day? For those ten minutes when it was mano y mano and I absolutely crushed that witness on the stand?
No stimulant can compare.
My father, who had been enthusiastic before about my pursuing a legal career, now became adamant. Not a day would pass when he wouldn't bring it up. Not one day. When it came time to apply for colleges, he made sure I included schools that had excellent pre-law programs. To him, for me not to pursue a career in law would have been an unforgivable squandering of potential. And I kinda/sorta agreed.
So what happened?
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Plato Smash!!!
My favorite comic book right now is Action Philosophers. Its genius concept is this: explicate a famous philosopher's life and thoughts in action-packed comic-book form.
Here is a sample.
Awesome, isn't it? Through entertaining visual interpretation, they manage to convey Descartes's basic tenets without diminishing or slighting them at all. If this book doesn't become mandatory in Philosophy 101 classes (as a supplement, of course, not a substitute), then colleges really are missing out.
My favorite issue involves Plato, who, given his early success as a wrestler (true fact), is depicted in the comic book as...a wrestler. Complete with goofy mask.
Action Philosophers is published by Evil Twin Comics, written by Fred van Lente and drawn by Ryan Dunlavey. Kudos to my friend Jordan for turning me on to it.
Buy the comic book. Read the comic book. Just don't feed it to your dog.
Here is a sample.
Awesome, isn't it? Through entertaining visual interpretation, they manage to convey Descartes's basic tenets without diminishing or slighting them at all. If this book doesn't become mandatory in Philosophy 101 classes (as a supplement, of course, not a substitute), then colleges really are missing out.
My favorite issue involves Plato, who, given his early success as a wrestler (true fact), is depicted in the comic book as...a wrestler. Complete with goofy mask.
Action Philosophers is published by Evil Twin Comics, written by Fred van Lente and drawn by Ryan Dunlavey. Kudos to my friend Jordan for turning me on to it.
Buy the comic book. Read the comic book. Just don't feed it to your dog.
Monday, January 14, 2008
And the award goes to...
Awards are meaningless, and yet I'd love to win some. I've already won a few and every time they have led to open doors and better opportunities. Still - I repeat - they are meaningless and arbitrary. When it was published, Richard Yates' masterpiece Revolutionary Road never won any major awards. The Moviegoer by Walker Piercy beat it for the National Book Award. Does that mean The Moviegoer is the better book? Of course not.
Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar. Neither has Sidney Lumet.
Last night the Golden Globes decided that Javier Barden gave a better performance as a psychopath than Philip Seymour Hoffman gave as a CIA operative. Putting aside the obvious joke about the similarities between a psychopath and a CIA operative, how can the Hollywood Foreign Press Association - how can anyone - determine which of these two vastly different performances was the better? It's not even apples and oranges. It's apples and zebras. After Augusto Pinochet passed away in 2006, the NY Post tried to compile a list of the 20th century's best dictators. What would that award even look like?
Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar. Neither has Sidney Lumet.
Last night the Golden Globes decided that Javier Barden gave a better performance as a psychopath than Philip Seymour Hoffman gave as a CIA operative. Putting aside the obvious joke about the similarities between a psychopath and a CIA operative, how can the Hollywood Foreign Press Association - how can anyone - determine which of these two vastly different performances was the better? It's not even apples and oranges. It's apples and zebras. After Augusto Pinochet passed away in 2006, the NY Post tried to compile a list of the 20th century's best dictators. What would that award even look like?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Try actor...that's compact-er...
Once upon a time I was an actor.
I acted in Julius Caesar. I played Caesar. I was in sixth grade. When the mob swarmed me with their knives and stabbed me to death, I always giggled.
Perhaps that should have been a clue that acting wasn't the profession for me.
And yet I continued to perform all through junior high school and high school. Even though I can't carry a tune, I was Mr. Bumble in Oliver!. I played Mr. Green in Clue (more on that at another time) and gleefully broke character every single night.
Then I got to college and met real actors. Folks who worked hard, practiced, and honed their craft. Folks with talent. I still acted in a few smaller shows, but that was it. The meaty roles belonged to them. Thank God.
Have you ever seen a real actor tackle a play like Cloud Nine or A Midsummer Night's Dream? To behold human skill at work is to behold wizardry.
I still get the acting bug, now and again. Like all bugs, it's potent and fleeting. Again - thank God.
Many of my friends are professional actors. I want to take this moment to wish them all the best in the world, because they deserve it. If our wizards can't triumph, no one should.
I acted in Julius Caesar. I played Caesar. I was in sixth grade. When the mob swarmed me with their knives and stabbed me to death, I always giggled.
Perhaps that should have been a clue that acting wasn't the profession for me.
And yet I continued to perform all through junior high school and high school. Even though I can't carry a tune, I was Mr. Bumble in Oliver!. I played Mr. Green in Clue (more on that at another time) and gleefully broke character every single night.
Then I got to college and met real actors. Folks who worked hard, practiced, and honed their craft. Folks with talent. I still acted in a few smaller shows, but that was it. The meaty roles belonged to them. Thank God.
Have you ever seen a real actor tackle a play like Cloud Nine or A Midsummer Night's Dream? To behold human skill at work is to behold wizardry.
I still get the acting bug, now and again. Like all bugs, it's potent and fleeting. Again - thank God.
Many of my friends are professional actors. I want to take this moment to wish them all the best in the world, because they deserve it. If our wizards can't triumph, no one should.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
It's a kind of magic (realism)
Right now I'm reading a dazzling novel entitled If I Told You Once. It's by Judy Budnitz and falls squarely in the genre of Contemporary American Jewish Folk Literature. What are the qualities of this genre, you ask? Well...
1. The characters tend to be folk of the American Jewish persuasion...not that anyone really needs to be persuaded to be American or Jewish because both heritages offer such fine cuisine.
2. The plots tend to revolve the aforementioned Contemporary American Jewish Folk returning, sometimes literally, to the Old Country. By Old Country, I mean Eastern Europe. By Eastern Europe, I mean Russia. By Russia, I mean the various shtetyls scattered throughout the region referred to ever-so-kindly as the Pale.
3. These plots also tend to include elements of magic realism. Literary scholars are wont to attribute the invention of magic realism to the Spanish-language works of Borges and Marquez, but Borges and Marquez, I'm sure, would poo-poo this attribution and point at the folk stories of all cultures for their inspiration.
And why do folk stories usually contain elements of magic? If you lived in a region referred to ever-so-kindly as the Pale, you would seek refuge in your imagination too. Also, it goes without saying that the more rural the populace, the more prevalent the superstitions. New Yorkers, for example, are not superstitious about anything, while rural Georgians tend to be superstitious about New Yorkers.
I love magic realism in all its folksy variations and I especially enjoy Contemporary American Jewish Folk Literature (which, if you haven't deduced yet, is an unwieldy moniker I've created to mock, well, unwieldy monikers). Genre practitioners such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Aimee Bender, and Judy Budnitz spin such wonderfully creative suspension-of-disbelief tales. If you enjoy literature that's provocative, outside-the-box, and very much in touch with the muddy currents of recent diasporatic history, I highly recommend you check them out.
1. The characters tend to be folk of the American Jewish persuasion...not that anyone really needs to be persuaded to be American or Jewish because both heritages offer such fine cuisine.
2. The plots tend to revolve the aforementioned Contemporary American Jewish Folk returning, sometimes literally, to the Old Country. By Old Country, I mean Eastern Europe. By Eastern Europe, I mean Russia. By Russia, I mean the various shtetyls scattered throughout the region referred to ever-so-kindly as the Pale.
3. These plots also tend to include elements of magic realism. Literary scholars are wont to attribute the invention of magic realism to the Spanish-language works of Borges and Marquez, but Borges and Marquez, I'm sure, would poo-poo this attribution and point at the folk stories of all cultures for their inspiration.
And why do folk stories usually contain elements of magic? If you lived in a region referred to ever-so-kindly as the Pale, you would seek refuge in your imagination too. Also, it goes without saying that the more rural the populace, the more prevalent the superstitions. New Yorkers, for example, are not superstitious about anything, while rural Georgians tend to be superstitious about New Yorkers.
I love magic realism in all its folksy variations and I especially enjoy Contemporary American Jewish Folk Literature (which, if you haven't deduced yet, is an unwieldy moniker I've created to mock, well, unwieldy monikers). Genre practitioners such as Jonathan Safran Foer, Aimee Bender, and Judy Budnitz spin such wonderfully creative suspension-of-disbelief tales. If you enjoy literature that's provocative, outside-the-box, and very much in touch with the muddy currents of recent diasporatic history, I highly recommend you check them out.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
When Friends Get Famous
So I'm in Borders the other day, because that's where I go to refill my brain, and on one of the end-caps is large ad for an up-and-coming singer-songwriter. And I recognize the woman from the ad...because Ingrid and I were friends in college.
So I bought the CD (naturally). And it's pretty damn great. Shades of Regina Spektor with a sprinkling of Kate Bush for wonk. A great anti-folk album I would have liked even if I didn't know the person who made it.
Another friend of mine is an assistant editor at Marvel Comics. Another writes for Nickelodeon. Another is a member of a prestigious New York acting troupe.
This got me thinking.
Fame is never something I sought to pursue -- and that's good because it doesn't seem to have much interest in me right now either. But I'm 32. Not old by anyone's standard (save, perhaps, a toddler) but not quite young anymore either. All my life I've been told that one day, I was going to be famous. Maybe everyone is told this. But the clock is ticking and this fame my friends and family predicted for me has yet to pass. I feel - and this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous, but I am nothing if not absolutely ridiculous - I feel as if in some way I've let my friends and family down. As if I failed to live up to their potential.
Don't get me wrong. I'm mostly satisfied with many aspects of my life (how's that for a qualified assessment). I have a good job. My writing career is in an upswing. I have the aforementioned family and friends who love me and who I hold dear.
And yet...
Lysistrata Errata
OK, so, an important fact to know about me:
I hate talking about myself. This may prove to be an obstacle to blogging, but I've overcome obstacles before. In high school gym class, for example, mats were piled so as to create an obstacle course. I overcame that. Or at least could have...had I not enjoyed falling on the mats.
What can I say? I just love cushioning.
Right now I'm directing a production of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, widely considered to be the first great Western comedy. I chose to direct it for its political relevance, its timeless humor, and its large female cast. Most college theatre programs have more women than men, and Georgia Perimeter College's is no exception. By offering up this fact, I'm not necessarily trying to make a point, although any opinions on the subject would be appreciated.
Some errata and factoids of note (to justify this post's title): Lysistrata is in fact Based On a True Story and was not born full fruit from a satirist's imagination; the play originally was in fact a musical, and by many accounts Aristophanes was as brilliant a composer as he was a librettist; and on May 3, 2003, over 10,000 performers worldwide enacted thousands of productions of Lysistrata in a global protest against war.
I hate talking about myself. This may prove to be an obstacle to blogging, but I've overcome obstacles before. In high school gym class, for example, mats were piled so as to create an obstacle course. I overcame that. Or at least could have...had I not enjoyed falling on the mats.
What can I say? I just love cushioning.
Right now I'm directing a production of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, widely considered to be the first great Western comedy. I chose to direct it for its political relevance, its timeless humor, and its large female cast. Most college theatre programs have more women than men, and Georgia Perimeter College's is no exception. By offering up this fact, I'm not necessarily trying to make a point, although any opinions on the subject would be appreciated.
Some errata and factoids of note (to justify this post's title): Lysistrata is in fact Based On a True Story and was not born full fruit from a satirist's imagination; the play originally was in fact a musical, and by many accounts Aristophanes was as brilliant a composer as he was a librettist; and on May 3, 2003, over 10,000 performers worldwide enacted thousands of productions of Lysistrata in a global protest against war.
Introductories
Hello, reader(s)!
So:
I'm a writer.
I write plays, screenplays, novels, syllabi, tests, quizzes, and the occasional cantankerous retort.
Right now, I'm sitting in my office at the Newton Campus of Georgia Perimeter College, where I teach English and theatre. In five minutes I'm going to badger my play analysis class with the collected works of Sophocles.
I'll be back in a few.
So:
I'm a writer.
I write plays, screenplays, novels, syllabi, tests, quizzes, and the occasional cantankerous retort.
Right now, I'm sitting in my office at the Newton Campus of Georgia Perimeter College, where I teach English and theatre. In five minutes I'm going to badger my play analysis class with the collected works of Sophocles.
I'll be back in a few.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
