m a n d r o p p i n g s

on political suicide...

2012-02-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

...and the dwindling of numbers.

Here are some thoughts that occurred to me today, in light of all the posts and concern over the (white, male, Santorumesque) efforts to impose new restrictions on women's healthcare that have recently unfolded.

Republicans just can’t help themselves. Their desire for exclusivity and to turn back the clock to, say, 1850 has gotten to the point where it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad...

Strike that. It is hilarious.

Let's look at their efforts to reach out.

So they long ago alienated African-Americans, fighting at every turn as they did against any implementation of civil rights laws, and further, seeking to roll back what rights have been won by imposing new poll taxes and onerous voter ID laws designed to keep out the great unwashed on election day.

In Arizona, Alabama and now Georgia we’ve watched as what miniscule gains they made with Latino voters were erased in the slow-motion political and economic train wreck that is those states’ anti-immigration laws.

They’ve stood firmly with the one percenters, fighting tooth and nail against even gelded, toothless financial reforms, shrieking about government takeovers when people made the mild suggestion that the very rich--who have done so well under our system, and who the rest of us have very kindly declined to rob and murder--might like to pay a few percentage points more in taxes rather than see the country they supposedly love descend into a bloody, crumbling hellscape.

Gay rights--well. ‘Nuff said.

And now they’re doing their damnedest to alienate the 50.1 percent of the population who regularly visit a gynecologist--along with the unknown percent of the rest of the population who think women might have more to offer the world than to become the human version of factory-farm sows, lolling on their sides in a cage, spitting out child after child under the watchful eye of male supervision.

Jesus Christ! Keep up the good work, fellas!

Pass the popcorn--what we thought was the slow decline of the Republican Party may well turn out to be the end of the Republican Party in an apocalyptic firestorm--one of their favorite go-to visuals. And it might happen sooner than we think, if they continue to chase people out of their ever-shrinking ‘big tent.’

It occurs to me that if you support people who hate everyone, you're unlikely to have anyone support you.

Whoa. Zen for haters, man.

skeletons

2012-02-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece that erupted spontaneously as I was working on my play this morning. It just kept going and going, and while it was way too long to use in the context of the play, I was having way too much fun with it to just toss it out. :-)

Enjoy.

Skeletons

If you’ve lived any kind of an interesting life, once you reach a certain age you’ll find that there isn’t a closet big enough to contain all your skeletons. You stuff the clattering bones in there as best you can. But before too long they start to spill out, little by little, bone by bone.

At first it’s just a metatarsal here, the end of a finger bone there, occasionally the odd tooth will roll out--embarrassing when you have guests, but it’s nothing that can’t be swept under the rug or kicked under the dresser. But soon, as the closet fills up, the bones that roll out get bigger--here’s a skull, there’s a femur; I knew him, Horatio. Where be your gibes now?

Before you know it, you’ve got complete skeletons piled in the corners of the bedroom.

You might find this amusing for a while. Maybe you stack them neatly at first, hanging clothes off them as if they were a neglected treadmill. Or maybe you pile them up with books and magazines as though they were shelving units from some macabre Ikea. You laugh at your skeleton sculptures along with your friends, with a small note of self-deprecation, just a touch of embarrassment, but no big deal.

But soon enough, the skeletons grow populous enough that you’re forced to start stuffing them under the bed. Eventually you’re jamming them into that space between the bed and the wall. One day, you’re in a hurry to get out the door and so you toss one on the end of the bed--just temporarily, just until you can get home that night and make some room for it...somewhere.

Before you know it, they’ve taken over the bed. You’ve got skeletons stacked like cordwood on your Tempurpedic mattress until they nearly reach the ceiling. Pretty soon there’s no room for you in your own bedroom anymore.

So you say fuck it, and you start sleeping at other people’s houses.

Which, of course, leads to more skeletons...

###

taming of the shrew review

2012-02-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hey guys--here's my latest review in the Post. They just posted it online this morning and there's already a negative comment (about the review) so let the slagging begin. :D I think changing up Shakespeare is something that people either love or hate; no middle ground on it. So I am prepared for the slings and arrows.

(But when they add modern words and phrases??? Come on...)

Anyway. Here's the piece as I turned it in to the editors, and here's a link to the Post's published version. Let me know what you think!

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

In a certain light, “The Taming of the Shrew,” a story about a husband “taming” his unruly, cantankerous wife, reads like a CIA “special rendition” handbook entry: psychological torture, sleep deprivation, withholding food--let the hilarity ensue!

And the blatant misogyny of the play isn’t only troublesome to modern audiences.
There is evidence that there has long been some degree of embarrassment about the subject matter, even some 300 years before women’s suffrage. This includes Shakespeare’s “induction,” a rarely-performed framing device that makes the entire story a play-within-a-play, as well as a sequel of sorts written by Shakespeare’s successor, in which the tamer Petruchio gets tamed himself by a new wife.

Examples like these would seem to argue against the view that the entire play was taken as satire in the late 1500s, that the Bard was mocking the harsh treatment of women by going completely over the top with it.

But misogyny or satire, the play is so often produced not only because it’s hilarious, with endless one-liners and situational humor--it also features a ten-round epic battle of wills between two of Shakespeare’s strongest, most vital characters, Petruchio and Katherine.

As imagined by director Kent Thompson, the couple (John G. Preston and Kathleen McCall) meets in a late-1950s diner owned by Katherine’s father in Padua. As illustrated on a huge map behind David M. Barber’s gorgeous set, Padua in this telling is located on the shores of Lake Michigan, Pisa is large city on the east coast, and Verona, Petruchio’s home, is deep in the heart of Texas.

When suitors Gremio and Hortensio (Randy Moore and John-Michael Marrs respectively) seek the hand of Katherine’s younger sister Bianca (Christy McIntosh) her father refuses to allow her to wed until the shrewish Katherine is married first. Enter Petruchio, friend of Lucentio (Drew Cortese), a suitor from Pisa also seeking Bianca’s hand, who convinces Petruchio to wed Katherine and thus secure a rich dowry.

The leads are all superb--especially McCall as Katherine--all fully fleshed-out, “real” people relishing the thrust and parry of attempting to win love.

What becomes distracting is how far Thompson goes with his Americanization of the characters. Here we are treated to a pistol-packing, “yee-haw”-yelling Petruchio mixing it up with Lucentio’s servants from “Pisa,” whose Italian accents make them sound like extras on hiatus from “The Sopranos.”

The show threatens at every turn to become “The Comedy of the Two Stereotypes”--most of Petruchio’s household servants appear to be brain-dead, slack-jawed rejects from “Deliverance,” thus cementing for us the last two groups one can safely make fun of without being thought of as small-minded: Southerners and Jersey Shore rejects.

I suppose if you’re going to do a play in which the major point on which the plot turns is the subjugation of a woman, you might as well go for the prejudice trifecta.

Granted, some of these additions are genuinely funny. Patrick Halley as Lucretio’s
servant Biondello is a scene-stealer with tremendous comic timing, playing him as a sort of hyperventilating Lou Costello. And Preston’s Verona-on-the-Rio dialect doesn’t interfere with his readily apparent and heartfelt love for Shakespeare’s language, nor with his connection to the character.

And while it is important to bring modern audiences along when performing Shakespeare, there comes a point when all the added phrases--think “fuggedaboutit” and “y’all”--become pandering, and frankly, patronizing. Particularly irksome was Petruchio tacking on a string of “know what I means” after several jokes, as if the audience is too hopelessly thick to understand when it’s time to laugh.

And that’s the real crux of the matter: the play is written well enough that the jokes can and do stand on their own.

This is all to take nothing away from the actors, as they brought heart and genuine humanity to their characters within the constraints they were given.

But it’s safe to assume that Shakespeare kinda knew what he was doing. The audience would be better served by letting the jokes and the story tell themselves without getting in the way.

###

Oh, um, no.

2012-02-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

No, no, no. God no.

sir texts-a-lot

2012-02-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

BRB, mom's calling.

bradying, the new tebowing

2012-02-07T12:38:00.001-07:00

Yep, someone did that.

snow day! snow day! snow day!

2012-02-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Actually this boxer pup reminds me more of Steve Martin in 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.'

delicious

2012-02-02T16:55:00.002-07:00

Your sideways water is quite tasty, thank you.

thoughts on auditioning

2012-02-01T23:39:00.000-07:00

“Such thoughts as ‘I am a fraud, I am no good, I was terrible tonight’ are the opposite of effective self-improvement. They are obeisance to an outside or internalized authority--they are a plea to that authority for pity on your helpless state. But you are not helpless.”
--David Mamet

Well I had an incredible run of auditions over the past month--I got cast in Terry Dodd’s original play ‘Amateur Night at the Big Heart’ at the Aurora Fox this spring. I was cast in Paragon’s ‘The Seafarer’ for next fall, in a much bigger and more juicy role than I was originally called back for. And I got called back for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

And although I didn’t end up getting cast by CSF, in some ways that is the biggest audition of all.

First of all, getting called back for them the first time I went out is huge. Like many less formally-educated actors, I don’t like doing Shakespearean monologue auditions. Don’t get me wrong--I’ve done several Shakespeare plays (as well as ‘The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged’ haha) and I actually love several Shakespearean film adaptations (Ian McKellan’s ‘Richard III’ might be in my top five favorite films of all time). So I do have somewhat of a grip on the language--in fact I love the language. It’s not that I don’t understand it or don’t get scansion or the rhythm of the verse. It’s more a psychological thing, I think, to audition Shakespearean pieces for Shakespearean actors/scholars/directors--in other words, for people who do Shakespeare for a living.

It’s intimidating.

But I was determined to be extra well-prepared this year, and as a result I think I FELT the piece I performed for my monologue more than I ever have when I’ve done Shakes monos in the past. And my readings at the callback were also heartfelt and true and honest and unembellished--which brings me back to Mamet’s ‘True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor.’ Walking out after the CSF callback and during the week-plus afterward while I awaited word, I have never felt so free of anxiety, so unconcerned with how I did at an audition.

Why? Because I was confident I did the work well. I did my homework, went in with confidence, knew what I was saying, and I got where I needed to go emotionally and with honesty. What else could I do? What else can any actor do at any time, on stage or at an audition?

Absolutely nothing. The rest is on the audience if it’s a performance, or on the director and casting director if it’s an audition. Do I have the right look or the right age or the right voice relative to other actors, etc., etc.? All that is none of my concern and there is nothing I can do about it anyway.

As to thoughts like ‘what did they think of me,’ well, these kinds of ideas don’t really even enter into it. Not when I know I’ve done the work the best I can, and know that I’ve done it well. Knowing when I walk out of that room that I had a genuine connection to the words I was saying and feeling is all I can hope for. They’ll pick me or they won’t, but I know with certainty that what I brought was real and genuine and true, and therefore I can’t and don’t really concern myself with what they thought.

It’s incredibly liberating.

One of the best and most useful pieces of advice I ever got about auditioning (and I apologize for not remembering exactly where I picked it up--it may well have been ‘The Practical Handbook for the Actor,’ which was written by Mamet protégés) was that you should find a reason--any reason--going in to every audition, why you DON’T want to be cast. Say to yourself, for instance: it’s a long drive to this theatre, the director is kind of a prick, the script is weak, the show would conflict with another show you might like to do, etc.

It’s a useful kind of psychological jiu-jitsu that releases you from the stark terror of pre-audition jitters, which often revolve around utterly useless and even debilitating thoughts like ‘Will I be Good Enough? Will I Screw Up? Will they LOVE ME?’ These kinds of thoughts are all debasing. They psychologically set you up as a lower life-form, as a thing to be judged Good or Not Good, and they give away any kind of power or psychological edge you might have had.

They make you weak. That is not a good way to feel when you’re about to perform.

Of course, you are being judged when you audition. On the other hand you are not a child. You are not there to show daddy your latest math test in hopes that he pats you on the head and puts it on the fridge. You are not a six-year-old, blinking wide-eyed in hopes that daddy won’t instead be grumpy after a long day and ignore you, thus judging you as A Failure.

Fuck that. You are a grown-up who has a work ethic, a drive, a set of skills and a unique way of looking at the world. You have--no, you ARE a unique set of experiences that could offer any show many things of value.

Did I want to get cast by CSF? Of course I did. But I now have the opportunity to do one or two other shows this summer that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. When I roll in to doing ‘August Osage County’ late this summer it won’t be on a wave of exhaustion, on the tail end of working on CSF shows for the previous three months. I’ll have more time to work with Visionbox on my own plays and other original pieces. Plus I am better-positioned to audition for CSF next year--they’ve seen me now, and they know I can do the work; the first hurdle of apprehension--on THEIR part--has been crossed.

Don’t mistake: this is not the little kid sniffling as he walks home from the baseball game where neither team picked him and muttering, ‘Fine. Screw you guys. I didn’t want to play anyway.’ I promise you my sense of relief is genuine, not some self-amelioration in a sad attempt to mask my pain.

Would CSF this year have been a huge opportunity? Yes, of course. Do I have a shit-ton of other opportunities this summer that I haven’t even begun to examine? Oh Yes.

This all might sound slightly insane, like slightly new-agey psychobabble, a jedi mind trick hiding some deeper pain at being rejected or something. I promise you, for me it is not.

To me what is truly insane is living or dying on the opinions of others. It is a sense of neediness, co-dependence and erasure of the self that we would never tolerate in any other aspect of life. Why should we do it in the context of auditions?

“Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of a myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being. And if you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you’re learning to say it better.”
--David Mamet

some thoughts post-Othello Project

2012-01-29T15:38:00.002-07:00

Nothing like laying around in bed until noon (actually closer to 1:00) the day after an opening. That was my Saturday, followed by a ‘Six Feet Under’ marathon and finally reaching the Acceptance phase with my pet cold--I shall name him Iago. He has been threatening doom this past week, whispering in my ear of betrayal as the stress of tech week loomed.

Acceptance that one is sick is something one cannot abide during tech week--I usually stick with Anger and Denial. Deny, deflect, and apply Emerg-N-Cee powders internally and externally as needed. (Rubbing orange powder all over my face and forehead, paying special attention to the sinuses? Why not. Might work. I shall weep tangerine tears all week.)

Of course the sad thing about this opening weekend for this phase of ‘The Othello Project’ is that it is also closing weekend. One night only, for this incarnation of the show, which is somewhat frustrating and feels like a triumph in the same breath in which it is a bit of a let-down. But of course this is only Phase One, so there is more to come. And it is my first time working with the wonderful people of Visionbox--a nascent theatre ensemble and studio--but hopefully not the last.

The project is the brainchild of Visionbox founder Jennifer McCray Rincon, and the piece we put on was just the bare-bones version of what will eventually be the first act of the completed project. As Jennifer points out, Bill Pullman’s similar (but not similar at all) multi-media project on which she worked took over five years to develop from a thirty-minute staged reading piece into a full-blown three-hour, fully-performed event.

So it’s all good, and it’s really good to be on board at this stage of the project, because I can see it developing into something amazing. In this incarnation of the piece, Jennifer has inter-cut scenes from Othello with pieces from Simone de Beauvoir’s writings on gender, as well as some truly harrowing scenes taken from police interviews and court transcripts documenting a convicted murderer’s account of the stalking, rape and brutal slaughter of his ex-wife.

We had a house of maybe 80-100 people, and I definitely heard some laughter in certain spots, as well as sniffles and uncomfortable shifting around during the recounting of the murder. Also, with an audience--as always--the performances took on an extra heightened urgency; some parts of the Othello text were ‘en fuego,’ as they say.

It has been a great group to work with, and I look forward to working with Visionbox again. Jennifer is trying to set up a true ensemble, a group of people who work together on various projects, readings and shows, as well as in classes and doing studio work together, something I have never been a part of.

And which is sadly lacking in the area. Aside from Buntport and LIDA, as far as I know, there aren’t any true ensembles who put together original work--and I don’t think either of them have studio-type classes and workshops for actors. (I do NOT count any of the various improv groups. Generally speaking, calling improv groups and their performances ‘theatre’ is akin to referring to Applebee’s as ‘fine cuisine.’)

One big problem with the way things are done in most smaller to mid-level houses in the Denver/Fort Collins area is that actors are treated as the lowest life-form in the theatre biosphere. We come in for auditions, wide-eyed and hopeful, grateful for any scrap we are tossed, just happy to be cast. And if we are cast, we are brought in as freelance cowboy gunslingers from show to show, expected to devote and donate weeks and weeks and hundreds of hours of our time to put up a show that benefits only the theatre. You may be helping to ‘build a brand,’ in terms of helping a given theatre and director put on a quality show and build an audience, but once the show closes, you get...what? The opportunity to audition again? To go straight to callbacks? To again work for nothing? You as the actor are not truly part of the theatre, not their success nor their failure.

(SIDEBAR: I grant that there is invaluable learning that one absorbs working on any show; that is where I got the bulk of my theatre education, working on shows. But there comes a breakover point where being expected to essentially pay for an education in the form of time and effort is no longer a bargain for the actor.)

After a show closes, we are tossed aside--once we’ve helped with strike, of course--then left in the cold until the next round of auditions, having been sent on our way with a check that usually pays us something on the order of 25 to 50 cents an hour, including time spent rehearsing and learning lines on our own outside of rehearsals.

And of course, we are referred to as ‘family.’

Which is great, don’t get me wrong, and not unappreciated--the family part, that is. But the 'family' designation is also a bit disingenuous; one is 'family' only as long as the show is up. And the truth is it isn’t a sustainable model, not if the true intent is to create not only quality shows, but also a real family, a solid, core group of talented people who will and do and are capable of coming together and putting up consistent, quality shows. If you only pay directors, and costumers, and set designers and administrators anything even remotely approaching what their time is truly worth, then what are you left with?

You are left with actors who are expected to work for nothing.

And of course there is a place for free, unpaid theatre. People can only learn so much from college theatre productions. And I’m not suggesting I or anyone else should or could get rich doing theatre.

But think about this: at the next level, something above community theatre, somewhere where you charge people two or three times the price of a movie ticket to see your shows, why on god’s green earth would you put in all that time and careful effort, spend all that money on sets, design, direction, publicity, and administration--not to mention rent, lights, and insurance--and then completely neglect one of the main pieces of what it takes to put on a truly great show? You’re going to cheap out on the people who are actually going to PERFORM? Why would you scrimp on the last line of contact between your theatre and your audience?

It is insanity.

Because I can tell you from experience, you get what you pay for. Oh, sure, you can get some wonderful performers and performances out of people who will work for nothing. You can and often do. But not always. And not consistently, and never across the board.

So what’s the result? You end up with a board of directors sitting around bitching about how they never get the respect and coverage the larger theatres get. Well, if every other show you put up is great, top-quality and all that, you should be very proud. But if every other show you put up is amateurish because you are using, well, amateurs, because you are too cheap to pay for quality actors, then you have no one but yourself to blame.

And by the way, the money spent on the people who harangue and harass and beg the public for money through email and phone calls and pre-show announcements? Who organize an endless, ongoing string of fundraisers using donated items and donated talent and yet more donated time? You might not have to work so hard at that part if you put up consistent, quality shows. If that were the case, people might be coming to you and offering to help in whatever way they could.

What invariably happens is theatres of this size become temporary lily pads for quality actors who are not only talented but also devoted to doing the work necessary to get better. These smaller theatres chase these actors away, eventually, through not only a paucity of pay, but also through a lack of investment in actors in the form of making them a part of a company, not just treating them as hired guns.

Instead, the theatre must go back to the tedious annual ritual of weeding through the awfulness of open auditions to find the odd unpolished gem on whose back they can ride for a season or two, before he or she too bails out for greener climes.

Hint. At auditions you are not the one holding the leash.

(SIDEBAR 2: I fear I say all this at risk of sounding like an ingrate. Understand: I love and adore many, many people and theatres I’ve worked with. I am not angry, nor am I resentful. I am in fact enormously grateful for the gifts I have been given by people I’ve worked with, as well as those gifts I have discovered within myself through the efforts of people of the theatre and through working on shows. I merely wish to point out that the accepted way of doing things is askew; it’s very weird and twisted when you think about it. And we never look at it as such, we just accept it. Maybe it’s time to think about another way of looking at things.)

If you want to play with the big boys, pay like the big boys. Or at least start approaching the problem from a different and more equitable direction. Treat your actors like something more than meat props, as something easily replaced by the next warm body that comes along that stands at a similar height, has the requisite genitalia, and can remember more than two lines of dialogue at a time while not breathing through his or her mouth. Because the current model does a disservice to everyone: to your actors, your theatre, and your audience alike.

If we can agree that quality and depth and breadth of support for a given theatre is directly related to the quality of the performances they put on, then it follows that said theatres should do whatever they have to do to ensure they get the best performances possible.

We all know you get what you pay for. If you spend all your money on administration and set design, don’t be surprised if that is what you end up with: administrators standing before lovely sets begging half-empty houses for more money on top of the overpriced ticket they just bought to the half-assed show/debacle they are about to witness.

For you will have no one of quality to perform, and your audience will go home disappointed.

Make an investment in your actors. Make them part of something larger than the next show coming down the pike, and I guarantee they will make an investment in you. As will your grateful audiences.

###

theatre heresy

2012-01-21T11:36:00.003-07:00

One of my favorite comments that I get from actors I’ve just met who come from a theatre school or theatre grad school background is that my acting is ‘...very naturalistic.’ Or ‘organic.’

Now, I am not so stupid as to miss the underlying intent of comments like these; unsults are hilariously pathetic to me, the product of people so weak and insecure and false that they can’t even come right out and honestly dislike something or someone; they must couch their bitterness and distaste in false praise.

And of course there's truth in these comments, and they are not always meant snottily.

But honestly I always take comments like this about my acting as compliments. To me there’s nothing more painful in the world of the stage than watching someone ‘act-act,’ as they were taught to do by some well-meaning but douchetastically inept instructor.

So when I got David Mamet’s ‘True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor,’ I was deeply gratified to see that Mr. Mamet supports my views and my (admittedly accidental and back-assward) education in the theatre.

I just read nearly the whole thing in a night (and mostly re-read it immediately after I finished it) and I recommend it highly to all my actor friends, and even to anyone remotely interested in what acting and theatre entail. It could even be read as a treatise on what it is to be honest in one’s life, true to oneself and emotionally honest with our fellow humans in a larger sense.

Most people familiar with the man’s work either despise Mamet or worship him; there rarely seems to be a middle ground. But it’s hard to argue with his success: 30 years of writing for the stage, for film and for television, directing, acting, a Pulitzer, Oscar nominations--all of this gives him a unique perspective when it comes to performance and what it takes for an actor to deliver.

And what he does here is burn to the ground a number of sacred cows, starting with theatre education:

'Let me be impolite: most teachers of acting are frauds, and their schools offer nothing other than the right to consider oneself a part of the theatre. Students, of course, need a place to develop. That place is upon the stage. Such a model can and probably will be more painful than a life spent in the studios. But it will instruct. And it is probably finally kinder to the audience to subject them to untutored exuberance than to lifeless and baseless confidence.'

Is that not the shit!?!?!? '...lifeless and baseless confidence...' --only Mamet.

Another:

'Here's what I learned from a lifetime of play-writing: it doesn't matter how you say the lines. What matters is what you mean. What comes from the heart goes to the heart.'

Mamet reflecting the old hip-hop adage, 'Real recognize real.'

And it's true. So many actors feel the need to twist and vocally mangle the words in front of them in order to infuse them with some meaning that simply isn't there. I worked with an actor some time ago who absolutely refused to simply say a very funny playwright's very funny lines as the jokes and punchlines they were intended to be. The result was quirky, indeed, which I'm sure was the intent, but it was also not funny, and not at all genuine.

The result was a person trying very very hard to look more interesting--which is of course self-absorption, which is of course the opposite of acting, which, we are all told all the time is Listening. If you're so busy listening to the sound of your own voice and the funny little kooky quirks you put into it, how can you possibly be listening to anyone else on the stage?

And possibly my favorite quote of all:

'Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.'

the othello project

2012-01-21T11:11:00.000-07:00

Here's the press release for 'The Othello Project,' the latest theatre piece I'm working on. It's a wonderfully collaborative piece with a fantastic and fantastically talented cast, but it is no doubt the brainchild of the awesomely talented and wonderful Jennifer McCray Rincon of Visionbox.

We perform one night only in this incarnation, next Friday the 27th, so I hope you can make it! (FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE...you get the idea. :-)

.

The Othello Project, Phase I
A free multimedia performance event
January 27, 2012, 6-9pm
L2 Arts & Culture Center
1477 Columbine St., Denver 80206

As part of the production, there will be an art show by local artists in the L2 lobby from 6-7pm. At 7pm, in the upper auditorium Visionbox will present The Othello Project, Phase I, excerpts from a new low-friction adaptation of Othello combining Shakespeare’s text and characters with contemporary scenes of Domestic Violence. The production is conceived, adapted and directed by Jennifer McCray Rincon, Executive Artistic Director of Visionbox. Following the performance there will be a talk back with members of the Crime Victims Advisory Council, a unit of the Victim Services Network, part of the Denver District Attorneys Office and the cast and the creators of the project.

Tickets to the show are free.

The material you will see on January 27th is the beginning of a full length production we will present to the public in May 2012. Please be advised that the material contains scenes of graphic violence and is for mature audiences only.

We are also writing to remind you of our January 2012 match grant campaign, initiated by Amber and Mike Fries after our December 8th performance event with Bill Pullman. Amber and Mike Fries have agreed to match every dollar we raise by the end of January up to $50,000. We hope you will consider a donation at this time. No donation is too small...or too big. A contribution of $250 or more will come with 2 free tickets to The Othello Project in May 2012, and a contribution of $5000 or more will include free tickets to all of our 2012 events and VIP parking!

To make a contribution, and for more information about classseswebsite, Visionbox.org, or checks can be made out to CNDC FBO Visionbox and mailed to CNDC 4130 Tejon St., Suite A, Denver, CO 80211. Visionbox is a project of the Colorado Nonprofit Development Center, and contributions to CNDC for the benefit of Visionbox are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

We need your help now to ensure we can bring the excellence and diversity of our programming to as wide a community as possible. Please help us as:

“The Great Work Begins” (Angels in America by Tony Kushner)

Sincerely,
Jennifer McCray Rincon
Executive Artistic Director

acting quotations

2012-01-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

Found these at various sites when I was looking for quotes regarding the differences and similarities between stage acting and screen acting. There's a whole crop of younger actors around these days who seem to think that what one does on stage is radically different from what one does on camera, and I just don't think that's true.

Can you act? Can you, as someone besides yourself express emotions, demonstrate desires, go after objectives? This is all acting is. It may be bigger and louder on stage, it may be smaller and more intensive on camera, but it's the same goddamn thing.

To me people who shriek about how much different film acting is are people who don't really know how to act. They have no sense of what acting actually is, and because they sense this paucity or weakness or lack of knowledge or skill in themselves, they react as the insecure always have and always will: they cover it by applying a false superiority to themselves.

In a more generous vein, I would assert that perhaps people who have seen stage actors bomb before the cameras have been subjected to what I would delicately call 'bad acting,' not necessarily 'stage acting.'

Here's some related and unrelated quotes:

"[Human beings] will begin to recover the moment we take art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money." - Ernst Levy

"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." - Oscar Wilde

“Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.”
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

“Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.”
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

“All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you’re cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you’re someone you think you’re not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you’re plagued by it until you’re cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this.” ― David Mamet

"The articulate, trained voice is more distracting than mere noise." - Seneca

"Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part." - William Hazlitt

"In theatre, I have been able to take parts I didn`t think I could do - you have time to rehearse and learn. In movies, they want you to do what they know you can do - there isn`t the time." --Ian McKellan

the wisdom of bunnies

2012-01-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Donnie: Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?
Frank: Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T14:45:00.004-07:00

Welp, that was weird.

2011, I mean. By any measure, that was a strange year. A damn strange year.

On the surface it doesn’t seem so weird: did a bunch of shows, moved to Denver, wrote some reviews, carved a new script (almost done) out of a weird kernel of an idea.

I'm working on 'The Othello Project' with Visionbox, a sort of hybrid Sakespearean show inter-cut with interviews and court documents of domestic violence victims and perpetrators.

I just auditioned for Terry Dodd's original show, 'Amateur Night at the Big Heart,' and the week after next I'm reading for Creede Rep, Paragon's production of Conor McPherson's 'The Seafarer,' and for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival(!!!!) Wish me many broken things, as I'm going to need it. :-)

We'll see...

Other than that?

Blogged. Reddited (strictly a lurker; I don’t handle rejection well, haha.)

Fell in love, fell out of love. Both of which were against my will, haha. Which is the weirdest thing of all, in some ways. Because I really, honestly didn’t think I had that in me anymore. But no, I (foolishly, awesomely, retardedly, joyfully) remembered for a brief moment what it’s like to feel real emotions--not just the stage kind--and as usual I got burned.

I think that’s largely my fault; a pattern emerges for he who has eyes to see. I have a tendency to put too many eggs in the proverbial basket. And that is only if and when I discover in my clunky way that a basket might potentially exist at all, haha. No, I tend toward either complete misanthropy, complete separation from other humans, or, conversely, a naïve hope that on some level, there is, there MUST be some perfect, complete understanding.

As I always say, I believe the biggest cynics are actually the biggest romantics, because we envision something infinitely greater than the shite world that's in front of us.

But in my naiveté, I seek an erasure of self--of selves--that would mean total understanding, total connection with another, but which is, of course, impossible.

We are born alone, and we die alone. Although we like to imagine it to be otherwise in between, we are always alone.

No person can ever truly know another.

But I think this feeling that comes around from time to time for me, the feeling that I want and need to connect with someone on that level--or that it is even possible for me to connect on that level--is so strange and leads to such vulnerability that when these things end it can’t help but lead to trouble for me. When you strive to--or perhaps naturally--feel nothing or less than nothing for others much of the time (off-stage that is, haha. I’m really good, I like to think, at feeling other people’s feelings--just put a script in my hands. :-) those moments when real emotions flood in can be overwhelming. Probably not only for me, haha.

Whatever. I’m okay. I always am; I always end up okay, eventually. Making oneself emotionally available is a bitch, at least for me. But I always come around, afterward, when I come back down to earth. I think, long-term, it’s just wiser to keep my distance, however awful that sounds.

Feel things on stage; leave them there.

Rubbing of parts aside, I think this should be my mantra. :-)

(Or maybe my mantra should be 'Rubbing of parts aside...'

At any rate, I have learned a lot this year, about myself and about how the world works. And really, can anyone ask for anything more than that? I am delighted to--even at my grizzled age--still be learning. I think one of my favorite things about doing shows is meeting other actors and learning from them.

Especially younger actors. I’m speaking not necessarily of the ‘rubbing of parts’ :-) or learning technical things--acting things or theatre school wisdom or anything like that, although all of that happens too, when I’m lucky--but more of learning about life and myself. There’s an energy and enthusiasm that I leech off of younger actors, and often a simple joy, a sheer, blind, dim-witted happiness at simply being alive that younger people often have, whether they know it or not, and it feeds me. It saves me, however briefly, from my natural gloom.

And this is the first year that I finally came to the realization--or acceptance--that I am someone people look up to, as an actor at the very least, and perhaps in the larger world too.

Trust me when I say this isn’t braggadocio. I am insecure to the point where it takes some convincing for me to believe that I have anything at all to offer others. I am at my core a selfish, self-conscious, doubtful person who spends a great deal of time worrying about how fucked up I am and/or appear to other people.

But this year, especially in Pagosa Springs, I finally copped to the notion that people like and perhaps even admire me. And as vain as that sounds, I swear it isn’t meant to indicate a one-way street.

They watch me, I watch them.

And each of us learn from it.

Somehow, seeing yourself through another’s eyes teaches you way more than you might ever hope to learn through quiet reflection or yoga or meditation or booze or classes. To me, anyway. It's like a photograph: you can peer at yourself in the mirror as long as you like, but you will never truly see yourself there like you will when you look at a picture of yourself. this is because the picture is looking at you through someone else's eyes, even if that someone else is just a camera lens.

There’s a joy I vampirically take in hanging out with people younger than I am. I suck their energy and enthusiasm and hopefully return something to them in the way of knowledge and smarts, or perhaps just my own goofiness and immaturity. :)

As an insecure person, I am always floored when I perceive people looking up to me, whether as an actor or as a person (meaning: an actual PERSON, a non-actor...a human, haha). Frankly, it’s even weirder when they think I know something about acting, or even more strangely, life; I may know a little, in strictly my own way, my nonsensical, non-structured, purely organic, instinctual thing...funny how educated theatre people always say something like, ‘you have good instincts!’ haha...)

SIDEBAR: Interestingly, I seem to approach both life and theatre in much the same disjointed, haphazard, seat-of-the-pants way...

But as little as I know about acting, it’s possible I know even less about life. I often feel like I don’t know a damn thing about living and what it takes to be a human in this world.

Surely, whatever dubious knowledge I may have is not anything that should be passed on.

My bad decisions are legion. I must echo Hunter Thompson when I say, ‘I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.’

A good craftsman always blames his tools. Or in my case, his tool. :-)

With regard to acting, my bad decisions have led me down a twisting, kooky path that has reaped great rewards. (Until people catch on and realize how full of shit I am, how much of a faker and charlatan I am, I’m going to ride it out. :-)

I’ve been lucky to work with directors and actors who were patient and had a lot to give. But this path is strictly my own; bashing your head against a wall over and over is something I inevitably do, but it isn’t for everyone.

I’m not going to do the year-end tally of things I’ve done. If you read this blog, or even if it’s your first time here, there are plenty of entries about the shows I was in last year. (Search for ‘theatre.’ Yes, the snobby spelling. Screw you, John M. :-)

In brief, highlights include ‘Equus,’ (where I learned a great deal about horses and repressed emotions) ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ (my first musical since high school; musical theatre actors are freaks, haha :-) ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (in which I got to play a ‘nice guy,’ for once, although he was a broken-priest-turned-atheist, alcoholic, womanizer...hmmm...type-casting?) And my greatest show of the year, and perhaps of my career thus far, ‘The Lion in Winter.’

My dad didn't recognize me in this pic when I showed it to him over Christmas. True Story.

I have gone on ad infinitum about Pat Payne, the director of ‘Lion,’ and Tim and Laura, the proprietors of Thingamajig Theatre and the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts, so I won’t belabor the point. I will just say that, like the best directors, Pat brought things out of me that I wasn’t even aware were there; he took me to new levels of emotion and expression such that I surely owe him an ongoing debt as I continue acting. And considering we did all that in just seven days of rehearsal, it’s even more miraculous.

And Tim and Laura are the best theatre-running couple that could ever exist. They, atop the heap--as the hosts of this mad thing we tried to pull off in a week in a tiny mountain town under a blanket of winter--made the experience a trickle-down of good spirits, joy, and love.

No bullshit, no egos, no negativity, no doom-saying--which is the way theatre ought to be.

We're all on the same team, after all, aren't we? We all want to put up the best show we can and connect with people, don't we? So why does it always seem like there has to be someone in the cast or crew or production team that seems hell-bent on predicting and/or creating failure?

Anyway.

In short, while I don’t believe in God or blessings, I do believe in luck.

And I am lucky. And grateful to all the people I have met in my life: you have made me who I am. I am grateful to life, the universe, and everything to have been one lucky motherfucker this year.

Big thanks to everyone who I brushed against (not RUBBED UP against...although...come to think of it, thanks to you too! :-)

In all seriousness, you all have made an impact on me, even if it’s in a way I can’t express. You know who you are, or even if you didn’t before, know now that you move and motivate me.

I am a better person for having met you, for having you in my life.

Peace, and much love as we approach the end of days,

(thanks SO much for that, Mayans...)

--kjb

I'm not getting all mopey or emo, I swear. This is just what came up when I googled 'We are born alone, and we die alone.' :-)

Little Alex

2011-12-20T00:15:00.002-07:00

Me after every bender.

the mouths of babes

2011-12-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

wednesday has some honesty for you.

the jesus--

2011-12-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

--nobody fucks with him.

evil child

2011-12-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

No, I don't have to share my toys.

I don't know ...

2011-12-17T16:18:00.004-07:00

...where in hell all these daily followers come from, spambots or government snoops or just plain weirdoes (my PEOPLE!) But I am gratified to see so many even when I'm not posting all that regularly--and mortified at the same time, because I'm not posting all that regularly.

However, I have plans to change that--and like the proverbial hangover victim who swears off liquor every morning--this time I mean it!

Jimmy Page's (L) patented hangover cure.

So in that spirit, I present here:

Kurt's Cheeezball Christmas Card in Digital Format

aka: A Christmas Card From a Hooker in Denver

Here's my Christmas card face. Deal with it.

Merry Fuckin' Christmas, Bitches.

So, feel free to stop reading here, if you like.

...

Sticking with it, huh? Well, okay then. Here goes:

I'm obviously back from Pagosa, and our production of 'The Lion in Winter'--a rousing success, I'm told, though I'm still waiting to get PAID. Fucking TIM. And LAURA.

Never trust mountain folk. Not with your money, and certainly not with your daughter. :D

Winter is Coming...fucking TIM. Be PREPARED!

(Of course, I won't be driving over that godforsaken pass till spring, so you're probably safe...for now.)

No, it was a great experience; I learned from it as an actor, watching director Pat Payne (...fucking PAT...) wring such amazing magic from us and the script in such a short time. And especially I learned as an actor in terms of how focus is possible, how you don't need all the time you get (read: time you waste) in preparing for most shows. We put it up in a week, and it was good, it was solid--it was even great in places, if I may so bold. We could have gotten more nuance out of it--and did, later in the run--but isn't that always the way with any show? Even those shows on which you squander seven weeks of your life rehearsing? Everything after opening weekend is an improvement.

Whiskey is Coming...

But not only that, I made a bunch of new friends (and only a few enemies....fucking TIM... :) One such friend is Anna, who played my Alais in the show. She came down and auditioned with me at the Aurora Fox last week, and we had a good time hanging with Pat and Abby Apple--the latter with whom I am scheduled to do a production of 'August Osage County' next summer!!!)

Anna as Alais, me as Da Motherfuckin' King, Yo.

As far as the Aurora Fox goes, I'm going to callbacks for that show--which is 'Amateur Night at the Big Heart,' an original script by my friend and former director Terry Dodd--on Monday, so fingers crossed.

Another friend(ish...I'm still kind of on the fence about this guy...fucking DAVID...) is David Trudeau, who played my rival, King Phillip of France--aka The Periwinkle Prince, so named because of his fruity little boots and baby blue tights. :)

He also designed the freakin' awesome lights for 'Lion' and also works with Visionbox, a theater studio/ensemble here in town. Which leads me to: I saw an ad on the CTG website saying Visionbox needed males for a production of 'Othello' they're putting on in a few weeks, and I went down and did a couple of monologues for director/founder Jennifer McCray Rincon. Lo and behold, looks like I'm in Othello, thanks in no small part to my connection with David. (...Fucking DAVID...)

The really cool part of it is that Jennifer wants to present this more as 'The Othello Project,' turning it inside out from the usual 'poor Othello/tragic love story' thing and instead presenting it as a study on domestic violence. (Othello, after all, kills Desdemona in a fit of jealous rage, however mistaken its origin. Some love story...)

So, taking pieces from the play and interspersing them with film pieces and performed interview transcripts from actual domestic violence cases could prove to be a groundbreaking, very interesting production. (Jennifer spent years in New York, and was at DCTA for something like 800 years, so I trust her as a director already.)

Pinter is Coming.

Let's see...what else? Got my first Paragon Theatre audition, for a McDonagh show, and although that role didn't work out, two of the company's other directors sat in on that audition and one of them wants me to read for him for another Irish play, 'The Seafarer,' written by me wee auld pal Conor MacPherson. He also wrote 'Shining City,' a show I did in the Fort last year and which I really loved.

If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me. But I didn't, so it doesn't.

Let's see...running out of steam here. Christmas is coming, and yes I still hate it. Mostly I hate the shopping and the Elevated Asshole Levels one encounters in the world (I think we've hit Threat Level Plaid). But still. I'll be in State College with family for a week or so--which is the fun part of the holidays, getting to see my nephew John Alex and brand-new niece Chelsea--then back to work on Othello.

Thanks again everyone who reads this even when there's nothing new to read (you know who you are, officers...)

Happy Holidays Everyone, from Grinchville.

--kjb

ADDENDUM: for the easily offended and/or the tremendously thick (although I believe there is a great deal of overlap in those two demographics): All the cursing and nastiness toward individuals I mention here is purely in jest. Love them all. Except for...well, never mind. Not important.

P.S. Chris Hitchens, RIP.

Right or Wrong, You Stomped on the Terra. Your mind and writing skills will be missed.

on writing

2011-12-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

Writing, some days, flows.

Other days, it's like you're a blacksmith, but instead of hammering away at a horseshoe or a sword, you are instead pounding on your own hand, which you have placed willingly on the anvil yourself.

We eat horses, don't we?

2011-11-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well, now we do.

There are so many levels of mistaken assumption to point out in association with this story that I almost don’t know where to begin.

It started for me when I saw a post by a distant FB friend who said ‘[Obama] needs to be out of here!’ based on her anger at horse slaughter becoming legal again.

First there’s the ignorance of basic civics, and how laws are made--that is, Congress writes laws, meaning a shitload of Republicans AND Democrats agreed to pass this shite bill before it ever made it to Obama’s desk. (I think she may have unfriended me after I gently pointed this out to her...she definitely pulled her post.)

It’s pretty funny how predisposed dislikes create a bad guy instantly in people’s minds before they even know what it is they’re mad about.

But anyway. Putting aside Fox News-educated understanding of how the world works for a moment, what is really irksome about this is the dumbness and hypocrisy of saying one animal is verboten for human consumption while any number of other animals are perfectly acceptable. It’s the Dennis Leary ‘otters are cute’ argument, and it makes just as much sense.

As Jonathan Safran Foer pointed out in ‘Eating Animals’ (and in an excellent ‘Modest Proposal’) if the issue is whether dogs--or in this case horses--are intelligent, feeling, playful, sensitive, companion animals, then we should not only not kill and eat horses and dogs and cats. We should stop killing pigs immediately, and probably cows and possibly even chickens as well.

So for the same people who natter on about how great bacon is or who play the chest-thumping ‘I’m a carnivore’ card to get all weepy about Nugget or Fido ending up in someone’s stewpot demonstrates a tremendous disconnect and failure to think through the entirety of the problem.

SIDEBAR: By the way, how tough do you have to be to slaughter an animal that has no idea what you’re up to and no way to fight back? Kill and eat a human and I might respect your bad-assery, tough guy.

So, yes, Obama signed an odious bill into law allowing the slaughter of horses for human consumption, a law passed by (Republican- or at least Money-controlled) Congress, a bill that was pushed by pro-horse slaughter forces in red states like Wyoming. And, no, we shouldn’t eat horses, for the same reasons we don’t eat dogs or cats, because they are smart, loving, intelligent, playful animals with apparently rich emotional lives that we can never truly understand. But by that logic neither should we eat pigs or cows. At the very least, people should be aware of the hypocrisy of eating one type of animal that possesses these qualities while being appalled at the notion of eating another.

Holiday Fever

2011-11-26T14:01:00.004-07:00

Thanksgiving is fun. If you’re hanging out with the right people, it can be a great time to relax, enjoy good food and drink with friends in a convivial all-day/all-night atmosphere. I imagine Roman and medieval ‘feast days’ were something like what we do that Thursday in November, sadly only once a year. We all need more days spent together in this style, I think, time to take a deep breath and commune with one another, in a world where our fun is crammed into bite-sized packets and consumed before we rush headlong back to the gray drudgery of ‘the real world.’

But then there’s Christmas and all that ‘the holiday season’ implies.

I get very tired of hearing that it’s the people who don’t buy into the holiday hype who are wrong, who are ‘dead on the inside,’ or ‘broken,’ etc.

I would argue that if you actually stop and think about it, it’s the freaky-enthusiastic holiday harpies who are truly a bit off. Those madly grinning, ‘joyous’ people who dress up their houses, their dogs and their kids in green and red costumes starting in mid-November. Who fart candy canes and shit cookies. Who revel in shopping on the sickest day of the year. And frankly who seem to be lacking something real and genuine and human within themselves, and who try to make up for their hollowness with holiday niceties.

Nice sweater, Aunt Mabel.

If it’s about your family, and how much you love them, then you’re doing it wrong. Presumably your family exists the rest of the year too. I’d suggest you work on being more loving toward them--and maybe even toward all of humanity--all year round, not just on one magical day in December when Mithras (oops, I mean Jesus) was allegedly born under a mysterious star that appeared out of nowhere.

If it’s about hearkening back to ‘a better time,’ some Norman Rockwell wet dream of wholesome American life, then go fuck yourself. That time never existed. It has always been a lie sold to us to cover the sickness at the heart of this nation and humanity as a whole. If such a time ever was real for some, keep in mind that it existed at the expense of the freedom of black people, and women, and laborers, and was built on the broken and dying backs of the slaves who built this country and the Indians from whom it was stolen.

[SIDEBAR: America is a gas station: out front, the sun shines down on dad as he smiles tensely and wipes a small spot off the fender of his shiny new car. He fills the tank on credit, plucks a stray thread from his crisp, pressed shirt and squints into the sunlight, wondering how far they can get before nightfall.

Mom sits on the passenger seat staring straight ahead at nothing, unseeing, unblinking. She clutches her purse in a white-knuckle grip.

In the musty, dank shop out back, Sis is on her knees sucking off the fat, grimy mechanic who smiles through his tobacco-stained teeth and pats her on the head with his greasy hand, calling her a good girl.

Junior sits on the broken toilet in the flickering fluorescent light of the filthy bathroom, ramming a needle into his arm in a desperate attempt to find some way to tolerate the perfection of his life.]

But back to the holidays:

If it’s about taking joy in the consumerist orgy of Christmas shopping and how much fun it is to get new stuff, then go double-fuck yourself.

Fuck everything about this.

If that’s the case then you are a dead husk, a useless meat sack gobbling up the empty calories of this bereft culture, with nothing of your own to offer the world, no light of any kind living inside you. You are the dead eyes of Kim Kardashian; you are the bland idiocy of Justin Beiber. The happy glow of your new iPhone will decay soon enough, leaving you longing for the next object that will temporarily illuminate your miserable, empty life ever-so briefly until it too becomes passe and needs to be replaced. You are overgrown children coming to your senses at the tail end of the annual Christmas morning present orgy, sitting amid a pile of shredded wrapping paper and staring glassy-eyed at the pile of toys that are already growing old.

I gots me sum light bulbs! For real cheap!

You could argue that the holidays are simply a microcosm of what’s wrong with this country: false joy plastered over sick-at-heart underlying problems, all of it buried under a pile of mindless consumption and shiny things to distract us from the doom toward which we are careening.

So, uh, Happy Holidays!

yummy turkey staph

2011-11-22T14:33:00.002-07:00

And people ask why I'm a vegetarian (from a Wired article):

There are two new studies out that confirm, once again, that drug-resistant staph or MRSA — normally thought of as a problem in hospitals and out in everyday life, in schoolkids, sports teams, jails and gyms — is showing up in animals and in the meat those animals become.

full article

MRSA is the strain of staph that is resistant to multiple antibiotics, but which normally responds to tetracycline. If you don't know what an MRSA staph infection implies, then by all means click this link. Not if you're eating though.

But when the researchers looked at the strain they found in factory farms they found something disturbing in factory turkey samples:

In this paper, all of the staph found in pork and turkey was tetracycline-resistant even when it was not MRSA (which, definitionally, is resistant to methicillin or its close analog oxacillin). Six of the seven staph-containing turkey samples were t034, and one was t337, which is associated with another MRSA strain that has emerged in pigs in China. “This suggests that turkeys, in addition to pigs, are a possible reservoir for both the ST398 and ST9 strains in the United States,” the authors say.

(ST398 and ST9 are the tetracycline-resistant strains of staph.)

Could we, through our mindless addiction to cheap meat, be producing the very diseases which will eventually kill us off? Far-off and far-fetched though this might seem, it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.

Yeah, that's shit all over them. Delicious.

And really, if the conditions in meat-producing facilities aren't enough to gross you out on factory meat (which is statistically all the meat you will ever consume in modern America) then maybe the thought of the uber-diseases these corporations are creating in their petri dish facilities by pumping these animals full of massive doses of hormones and antibiotics might do it.

(warning: very disturbing images of animal abuse)

Do any parents ever consider what they are training their kids to consume for life? Do they ever wonder if they might be making their kids sick or at least priming to become sick later in life by feeding them things like chicken nuggets or even store-bought meat?

Think about that when you line up for another plate of turkey.

via

that's gotta hurt

2011-11-22T12:32:00.001-07:00

via.

Finally, just what you wanted to see while you're digesting all that turkey and stuffing: here's a book called 'Stuck Up!: 100 Objects Inserted & Ingested in Places They Shouldn't Be.'

It's a collection of x-rays of patients who had to go to the emergency room because, 'er...I, uh, slipped in the shower and that Barbie doll got jammed up my ass...'

Barbie's Dream Castle this is not.

Or 'I was working out and fell off the treadmill and somehow my iPod got crammed into my butt.'

Good tunes, man. I wonder what they'd sound like up my ass...

Okey dokey.

Not all of the items were inserted, as you may have gathered from the title. Some were swallowed or otherwise found themselves interfaced with a human body. Funny stuff, if a little gross and a little WTF.

One piece of advice: if you do somehow slip and magically get a Barbie doll stuck in your rectum, don't send Buzz Lightyear in there to get her out. Certainly not feet-first.

Not that he could see much better if he went in head-first...

To infinity and beyond?

I mean, isn't the obvious choice to send Ken? We have to assume he's had experience with being in other people's bums... :D

The Lion in Winter

2011-11-22T10:44:00.006-07:00

What an incredible week-plus. Just back in Denver for a few days following ten days of intensive theatre doing ‘The Lion in Winter’ at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts with Thingamajig Theatre Company. Seven days of that was prep for the three performances we did this past weekend, all of which were incredible--even, eventually, the Sunday matinee to cap off ten straight days of exhaustion and immersion in this monster.

Me and Anna Hershey as King Henry II and Princess Alais. My, what big, furry shoulders you have, your majesty...

It was an incredible weekend especially considering the radically reduced rehearsal time-frame. Pat Payne, the director figures we put in close to 60 hours of rehearsal in just 7 days.

What an incredible group of people to work with too.

Imagine taking nine people you don’t know--or, to be fair, of whom there are several individual connections, but who as a group have never worked together before--and trusting them to put together a show as complex and emotionally raw as ‘The Lion in Winter’ from top to bottom in just seven days' time.

If you’re not familiar with the play, do yourself a favor and watch the multiple-Oscar wining 1966 film version, starring Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole; it is incredible. It joins the uber-dysfunctional family of King Henry II for Christmas, 1183-style. But this is no holly-jolly Christmas, believe me.

The set of 'The Lion in Winter.'

Pagosa Springs has an a amazing facility, with LED lights and a huge, beautiful lobby that doubles as an art gallery/reception hall.

The emotional roller-coaster this man and his family go through in 24 hours is frankly brutal to portray. From the final scene of Act One through the end of the play, I (as Henry) get to disown my three sons in a tearful shriek (‘Goddamn you!!’) get told off by Queen Eleanor (who I have kept imprisoned for a decade) nearly lose my lover Alais, narrowly escape death myself and nearly commit murder.

It’s a crazy ride. We are getting great houses and a tremendous response to what we’re putting out there. Tons of audience tears flowing by the end, which I always take as a good sign (in theatre, not in relationships, haha, although the latter seems to occur more often. :)

Anyway, the Pagosa Springs local talent have been peerless in their welcome of us Denver peeps. I’ve been staying at a house that the theater owners Tim and Laura Moore bought (Tim also plays my son Richard). It’s less than a mile to the theater, and has a roof, heat, and a cold Beer Storage Unit...what’s the name for that thing? Oh yeah, a refrigerator. And that is mostly all I need. I go running at a reservoir connected with Pagosa Lake a mile or so away from the house, and the town and surrounding countryside are gorgeous and have been mostly sunny, even in winter.

Myself, David Trudeau and Robin Hebert (they are playing King Phillip of France and Henry’s son Geoffrey, respectively) have had a great time there, and I’m looking forward to more fun as well as another two weekends of shows after Thanksgiving. The show, even over the course of just one weekend so far, has grown tremendously, and I look forward to seeing what we are able to do once it has sunk into our bones even more.

Anyway. Wanted to decompress some of that, so thanks for indulging me. Please come down if you can; you won’t be disappointed. The set and costumes are rented from the Arvada Center’s production of the show, and reflect the nearly $100,000 budget they had for such things.

Aside from that, there is a great deal of talent on that stage, a great deal of honest, genuine emotion, and the show is well worth the drive.

Bonus: You can crash at 'my place' when you come down--just stay the hell away from my Beer Storage Unit. :)

ADDENDUM: Oh yeah, the damn hot springs are AWESOME! How could I forget our late-night adventure at the springs on Friday after the show? After all, it is called Pagosa SPRINGS for a reason...Nothing like frost on the handrails and ice on the paths as you soak in a steaming, 107-degree, sulfur-infused pool. I believe all theaters should attempt to replicate this. Hot tubs for all actors! It's my new crusade! :)

idiotic, essentially

2011-11-22T10:09:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest idiocy from Fox News on the topic of Casual Pepper Spray Cop. After Bill O'Reilly offered that we shouldn't '...Monday-morning quarterback' the actions of police at '...what is a very liberal school,' (still not sure why that matters, but oh well). Then they discussed what pepper spray is really like, prompting Kelly to opine that pepper spray '...is a food product, essentially.'

Naturally, the meme world took over from there.

the lion in winter, in winter

2011-11-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

Theatre: The Adventure Continues

Well, some of you may have noticed that I dropped off the face of the earth to some degree during and after Grapes of Wrath (we closed on October 30). I’ve had personal issues but also that show took a lot more out of me emotionally than I thought it would. Trying to not only play my part, but also help keep the trains running on time with a cast of, what, 26 (or was it 60? 237? 9337? I lost track...) was a chore in itself.

At any rate, I was totally down for some well-deserved time off afterward when I got a text from director and ubiquitous theatre-gnome-about-town Pat Payne. “I may have a gig for you. Call me.”

Now Pat and I have very nearly worked together several times, but up until now, the gods of the muse saw fit to put us elsewhere when push came to shove. In this case, though, he was offering me the role of King Henry II in “The Lion in Winter.”

For those of you who haven’t seen the film version of this, get the Oscar-winning 1966 Peter O’Toole/Katherine Hepburn version. It is amazing, both the script and the acting (of course.) The emotional journeys of these people as well as the verbal chess game/sparring match among one of the most dysfunctional royal families in history is epic to witness when done properly.

That's me. I've aged horribly. And grown back a bunch of hair.

And me being the theatre whore I am, how could I say no? especially when considering that the company putting on the show is Thingamajig Theatre Company in Pagosa Springs. They have artist housing, and so I’m getting a mini-vacation of sorts (strictly a working vacation, as you’ll see) up in the mountains while getting to perform one of the all-time iconic roles of theatre history.

I’m excited but also a bit apprehensive, however, as we are doing this on a quick turnaround timeframe: I’m driving up today for our first night of rehearsal and we open next Friday.

A week from tomorrow.

I’m supposed to be off-book (real close! Real, real close!) but even with the rest of the Pagosa-based cast having already begun work, I anticipate a hard, long climb to get where we need to be for next (fucking!) Friday.

Still, I’m mostly excited for a new adventure. Look for updates here and on FB.

And don’t wish me luck--say break a leg.

Your boy-correspondent,

kjb

things to do

2011-11-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

via

Staggering, confused, and fetal position all at once is usually the way I cope.

jesus dyed

2011-11-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

Of course, the bible isn't in color, so it's entirely possible this was Jesus' actual hair color.

His fabulous, fabulous hair color.

art

2011-11-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

Early warning.

fuck yeah, thespian peacock

2011-11-05T12:29:00.000-06:00

This is one of my new favorite sites, Fuck Yeah, Thespian Peacock. This theatre girl (Maya, I think is her name, in Maryland??) saw the meme world, with Foul Bachelor Frog, and Socially Awkward Penguin (see below),

And as a typically shy, quiet, wallflower type of a theatre person, she decided to make up her own meme, Thespian Peacock. Also typical of theatre people, she chose a shy, not at all flashy animal as her meme.

It may not have the broad appeal of some memes, but nonetheless, the result is hilarious, especially but not only for theatre nerd and their friends. Here's a few faves but check out her blog for many, many more.

obama mask

2011-11-03T19:49:00.000-06:00

Oh fuck yeah. That's cool.

via

religulous

2011-11-03T19:14:00.002-06:00

Here's several religious posts I've been hoarding.

I love the New Testament/Old Testament beef this brings up. The original East Coast/West Coast battle.

Plus Jesus has awesome bedroom eyes. I'll eat that chick's cracker any day.

She just has to shave the beard first.

Yes. When engineers and their flow charts apply themselves to the illogic of religion.

But this might be the favorite of the batch. I love (loathe) the smug, first-world, top-of-the-food-chain dumbness of religious posts like this.

I think all of these came from my god, reddit.com.

fall colors

2011-11-03T19:06:00.000-06:00

Is that what gay guys mean when they talk about 'bears?'

via

children are so grating

2011-11-03T19:04:00.001-06:00

If you're going to eat delicious children, make sure you slice them very thin. Grated or shaved is best. I find this model of playground slide to be the most efficient method.

Just need a large frying pan waiting at the bottom and we're all set.
via

rule 34

2011-11-03T00:11:00.000-06:00

This is so deeply disturbing, I figure by sharing it here, it will no longer haunt my nightmares. Welcome to the jungle, bitches.

Pass the eye bleach please.

mother....I want to--

2011-11-03T00:09:00.000-06:00

Antigone. Oedipus. Ouch, my eyes.

via better book titles.

nothing to see here

2011-11-01T20:08:00.001-06:00

every damn halloween

2011-11-01T19:33:00.000-06:00

no, the other one

2011-11-01T19:30:00.002-06:00

Yeah, that one right over there.

dali in da house

2011-10-07T12:32:00.000-06:00

via

coraline getting harassed

2011-10-07T12:29:00.000-06:00

via

I love this. It's like Coraline is saying, 'Bitch, get off me! I'm trying to walk here!'

in the eyes of hunter

2011-10-07T12:27:00.000-06:00

via

so...tech week ended

2011-10-02T20:20:00.000-06:00

And then I came across this.

It's like, 'Whew. it's going to be so nice to get away from all these people.'

On the other hand, it's weird not having them all around.

how batman eats a hot dog

2011-09-20T10:31:00.003-06:00

So...this happened. When you're The Goddamned Batman, I guess shit just is naturally dramatic.

via but all over the place too.

the best pick-up line ever

2011-09-20T10:07:00.000-06:00

BOOM!

gingers got it tough

2011-09-20T10:04:00.001-06:00

Poor little ginger seal. This guy was shunned--because he was different, they assume.

This seal was spotted on an island off the coast of Russia. They think it has its strange coloring as a result of heavy iron content in the surrounding area.

The loneliest ginger.

Don't worry--the photographer who spotted him was with staff from a dolphinarium and they rescued the little copper-top.

orbiting earth

2011-09-19T07:48:00.000-06:00

via via

This is amazing. A series of stills taken from the International Space Station as it orbits earth. Perspective, bitches.

jon stewart as michelle bachmann

2011-09-19T07:43:00.001-06:00

Crazy eyes? I got yer crazy eyes right here.

Brock Sampson, grammar nazi

2011-09-16T16:55:00.002-06:00

This is how I feel when people misuse 'your' and 'you're.'

And 'their' and 'there' and 'they're.'

Admittedly, that's like, five whole words you have to keep straight right there. Life can be tough without IRL autocorrect.

Speaking of.

Go Team Venture!

an addendum to duckface post

2011-09-16T16:53:00.001-06:00

I'm afraid there's some truth here, ladies. So sorry.

it needed to be said

2011-09-15T12:55:00.004-06:00

Duckface. NO.

via

hipster x-ray

2011-09-15T12:53:00.000-06:00

via.

Yeah. She's hot.

disturbed llama

2011-09-15T12:50:00.000-06:00

This llama just saw the last gif file I posted below.

NSFC - Not Safe For Clowns

2011-09-15T12:48:00.000-06:00

You're back! I knew you'd come back to us!

patience

2011-09-12T14:39:00.000-06:00

Posted without comment.

via

i love this country, but...

2011-09-12T14:25:00.000-06:00

...I hate my countrymen.

To wit, this 290 pound gentleman who is suing White Castle because he can't cram his fat ass into their booths. (via via)

No, seriously, this is happening:

A 290lb stockbroker is suing White Castle because he says he can't fit it any of their booths. He says the chain promised to make the booths bigger and even showed him schematics of the new designs, but never made the changes.

"They're stationary booths," he told The New York Post. "I'm not humongous, [but] I'm a big guy. I could not wedge myself in."

Not only that, he sustained injury trying to squeeze his humongous corpus into a booth!!

The man said he hit his knee on the metal post underneath the table when he tried to sit down.

Extra for cheese?!?!? What, is this IRAQ? You bastards!

White Castle management pointed out that the gentleman was offered a regular chair.

The lawsuit seeks damages and larger chairs.

White Castle, for their part, made an effort to ameliorate the man's suffering--by arranging to help make him even fatter (although they did add insult to injury as you will see):

Each of the three times in the past he filed complaints, White Castle offered him a free hamburger. However, cheese was extra.

le sigh.

condensed

2011-09-12T14:02:00.001-06:00

This is a new favorite site for me.

Book-a-Minute reduces all kinds of books from classics to sci-fi to modern 'literature' like 'Twilight' to a few lines at most in a hilarious way. Por ejemplo: (click to embiggen)

But wait! There's more:

I like also that they manage to make fun of the authors as well as the authors' fans at the same time. Here's a couple of examples:

And here's one of my favorite books and one of my favorite authors, Phillip K. Dick. I'm afraid they nailed this one, much the way The Onion nails newspaper writing, they are obviously fans of said authors and books, in that they understand them terribly well, like spouses understand one another.

And last but not least, as I am rehearsing The Joad Play, we have us some Grapes of Wrath.

Ouch. :D

this freaks me out--

2011-09-09T16:12:00.001-06:00

--is that wrong of me?

I wonder if all my FB friends know that their phone numbers--and possibly all the numbers stored in their cell phone--are publicly displayed on their profile page, and possibly even alongside their name in their friend's contacts.

This article explained it pretty well:

Facebook has a history of fishy privacy practices, so we're not surprised at its latest grab for user information. If you use a Facebook app on your cell phone, have provided your phone number to it for "increased security," or entered it into your profile under certain sharing settings, your data could be at risk.

Rumors abound that Facebook is now making public contact lists from smartphones that use Facebook Mobile. Although Facebook denies that this is true, a longstanding feature that syncs contacts from your phone to your Facebook account has been discovered by many. This means that Facebook has probably stored every number in your phone on a server somewhere.

The main thing that is for sure happening is that when people enter their phone number '...for increased security' the number is showing up in your profile. When you think of how casually we friend people we've just met, that's a bit disconcerting, IMHO.

As one guy wrote about this, even though I actually know a few of the people I'm friends with, I still don't think I'd hand out my phone number to hundreds of random strangers in a bar. Would you?

To remove you number go to profile > edit profile > contact information and delete it.

While you're at it, you might not want all 500 of your super-close friends knowing your address either.

But that's just me. I'm kinda paranoid like that, I guess.

headshot final finalists

2011-09-09T11:56:00.000-06:00

Opinions welcome!

when you see it...

2011-09-09T07:27:00.001-06:00

ouch.

sin and its cure

2011-09-09T07:26:00.002-06:00

Ha.

insomnia

2011-09-09T07:22:00.000-06:00

Can't sleep more than a couple hours at a time right now. Gonna go run and see if that helps.

strangers wth candy

2011-09-08T23:12:00.001-06:00

Why O Why have I not watched this show before?

Best Stephen Colbert line: 'I know this is hard for you. It would be hard for me too if I broke up with me.'

Best Amy Sedaris line (so far): 'Nah, I'm thinking about pussy. Science fairs are for queers.'

ADDENDUM: HAHAHAHAHA!!!! another Colbert quote: 'I wasn't pushing you away. I was pulling me towards myself.'

Obama is the best Republican President since Lincoln

2011-09-08T12:50:00.000-06:00

O my yes. This is an outstanding screed by Tina Dupuy pointing out just how badly Obama and his corporate whore advisers have screwed the progressives who put them in office. Favorite passage:

President Obama has managed to quell all anti-war protests and even start a new conflict. That is surely to be the envy of any Republican president who’s ever served.

Guantanamo Bay? Still open. Osama bin Laden? Shot in the head.

Talk about getting 98 percent of what they wanted. If the GOP didn’t have to change their goal post so Obama could never score in their view – Republicans could be dumping Gatorade on Rush Limbaugh by now.

Read it--it sums it all up perfectly. As she says, given that the greatest Republican President since Lincoln is in the White House now, chances are a Republican will win in 2012.

via

seriously.

2011-09-08T09:27:00.000-06:00

I think it's possible that this woman may literally be retarded.

via

leakage

2011-09-08T09:20:00.000-06:00

I love it when the 'interpipes leak' (thank you boingboing) over into the real world.

nasty-ass honey badger belle

2011-09-08T09:10:00.000-06:00

Hey girl.

That's a wig, bitch.

via

accidentally like a martyr

2011-09-08T01:40:00.001-06:00

'The phone don't ring

And the sun refuse to shine...'

I miss this guy, morose fucker though he was.

hipster barista

2011-09-07T09:16:00.000-06:00

I knew him before his lattes went mainsteam. :D

via

united nations on the rocks

2011-09-07T08:44:00.001-06:00

Zebra-infused vodka is delicious, by the way.

I think this is via reddit but it appears to be the work of someone here.

expectations

2011-09-07T08:41:00.001-06:00

Poor Bob. Those thorns hurt.

stupid head

2011-09-06T21:27:00.001-06:00

fuck yeah, twenty-something guy

2011-09-06T15:42:00.000-06:00

But you still don't know the word 'millennia.'

Or how to use spell-check.

Fuck yeah.

imagine...

2011-09-06T14:00:00.001-06:00

Wow. We've got a Mac fanboy here, methinks. From the endlessly hilarious Lamebook.

headshots suck

2011-09-06T10:16:00.001-06:00

The Insanity of Staring Deeply Into Your Own Eyes, Over and Over:

Here’s my account of getting new headshots taken by my friend Brian Landis (he prefers Lando Kalrissian) Folkins.

He would probably tell a very different story than the one I relate here. He would likely say something like, ‘Who is this tight-assed, tense bitch I thought I knew as an actor? Where is his swagga, the swag I know so well, because he was an obnoxious, outgoing DICK when I worked on ‘Bug’ with him...’

So that might be Brian’s story. You’ll have to check with him on that.

But, seeing as this is my blog, I will write my own story, thank you very much.

And this is how I remember it, and what I learned about myself upon viewing the results of our afternoon of ‘work.’

I only put quotations around that word because I had so much fun hanging with Brian that it didn’t seem like a chore at all. He has a pro photographer’s uncanny knack for instantly seeing when you’re phoning it in, or are thinking about something else, or are not engaged somehow with the camera. Calling me on my bullshit may have resulted in numerous giggling, grinning, unusable photos, but it also got me back in the game. You can see the light die in my eyes as I go away, and you can see it come back whenever Brian grabs my attention again.

Major props to you, sir.

I’ll take my kickback now, in the form of sixteen beers and shots. :-)

That said, the end result--which requires you looking at yourself and your own fakery and duplicity and bone-deep phoniness, broken only by the occasional odd, off-moment when the photog somehow catches you looking like YOU, and not some fake-ass, dead-eyed catalogue model--believe it or not, going over and over pics of your own face is disconcerting.

It is so disconcerting that I have compiled a list of Important Thoughts to help you understand what a weird thing getting your pic taken professionally can be. (FYI, I have taken artistic license here to post some of the more awkward and goofy-looking shots. Brian did a fantastic job, and I will be posting some of the finalists for my actual headshot on FB and probably on here very soon. There are a lot of excellent shots to choose from; just not in this post. :D Sorry, Brian.)

1) You spend your whole life worried that your teeth might be yellowed and coffee-stained. But WHY didn’t anyone tell me my teeth are crooked as a crack whore’s? Shiny-white though they appear against my farmer’s tan, I am a snaggle-toothed, Jewel-looking motherfucker.

2) Apparently, if anyone spends a couple hours with me, the vast majority of expressions they are going to see are going to be completely insane, buoyed by a smattering of squinty-eyed giggles, and one or two moments of normal-ish looks. Sorry about that, everyone who has ever known me.

3) To reiterate: 99 percent of the time, when I am not as dead behind the eyes as a Kardashian, or obviously and blatantly thinking about food, boobies, and/or beer, or all three at once, I am quite clearly a fucking dangerous psychopath. This is according to most snapshots of my face.

4) Crow’s feet? Really? Why didn’t anyone over the many, many years tell me to stop smiling so much?

5) When you try to open your eyes wider, it just looks freaky. ‘J. Dahlmer? Paging Mr. J Dahlmer, party of one...’

6) DOUBLE FUCKING CHIN??? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS RIGHT NOW, UNIVERSE? FUCK YOU, TOO! MY NECK IS FAT?? WELL YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF!!!

7) And seriously, I have FUCKING DUMBO EARS?? Why wouldn’t my good friends at least let me know, even in a mean-spirited way: ‘Hey, Brighton! Can we catch a lift with you? How? By Elephant Airlines, of course! Haha!’ or maybe, ‘Hey Kurt, put your ears away; here comes a Hindi. Ganesh might get jealous...’

Dumbo ears and crazy eyes all rolled into one bonus horror pic for you.

8) I suddenly have a tremendous amount of empathy for Michelle Bachmann. It’s really really fucking hard to avoid showing crazy eyes when a camera is pointed at you and you’re trying to smile.

9) Pro-tip for wide-shouldered, big-headed guys: chin fucking forward. You look like a sandworm or a particularly weird, ugly muppet with the guy’s hand way forward in your throat when you pull your chin back even slightly.

10) MY GOD I LOOK LIKE A THUG!!!

11) The other thing is I can easily identify the pics are those moments when Brian finally had to say, ‘breathe. Gotta breathe..’

12) And seriously, now, when did my left nostril drop down like half an inch?

13) Never knew until today that I am the Leather Muppet.

And there you have it. Have a good time, kiddies, getting your headshots done!

Me and this dog are separated at birth, I think.

More to come!

That's the idea...

2011-09-06T00:43:00.001-06:00

Welp, my 'young' is lasting a long while anyway...

...at least in my (ancient, doddering, alzheimer's-ravaged) mind, anyway.

The Conundrum

2011-09-05T23:54:00.003-06:00

Yes.

Imagine how hard it is being one of us kids who don't play well with others--except briefly. :)

a valuable life lesson

2011-09-04T08:15:00.000-06:00

Brains...

2011-09-04T07:35:00.002-06:00

Even British zombies dine properly. Obv a Terry Gilliam animation, found here.

party hard

2011-09-04T07:28:00.000-06:00

And thus endeth the lesson.

via

determined tea drinker

2011-09-04T07:26:00.001-06:00

Um, you guys? Do you mind? I'm trying to drink my tea, here...

Tea! I'm drinking my fucking TEA here!

creepy jesus monkey

2011-09-04T07:23:00.000-06:00

via

Random weirdness.

But somehow still very reminiscent of what bible thumpers look like to me.

and then it got weirder

2011-09-03T20:10:00.000-06:00

So a unicorn, a fairy and a cop walk into a bar...

...ha! You have to come down tomorrow to see and/or hear the punchline. 16th and Lincoln.

gimme the gig pix

2011-09-03T20:01:00.001-06:00

Here's pics from day one of the Gimme the Gig event. I'm playing a cop, in case you didn't figure that out. Given the snugness of the uniform, we concluded I was actually a stripper-cop. Though no one could possibly have fit even a single bill into my waistband. :)

I'll be back tomorrow, corner of 16th and Lincoln, pulling people over as they test-drive a 2012 Ford Focus.

ADDENDUM: Jesus Christ. I think I just found the fine line theatre directors face when scheduling a season: asses in seats (i.e. money) or artistic integrity (i.e. not being a man-whore.)

atheism

2011-09-02T13:16:00.000-06:00

"The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want."

--Sam Harris

floor salad, floor wife

2011-09-02T09:59:00.000-06:00

These are fantastic.

That's right, honey, it's just like going out for dinner: you sit at my feet gazing up at me lovingly while you prepare food for me. And where's my goddamn drink--oh. Good girl. Keep the bread and butter coming.

Yeah, thanks for the floor salad, hon, but would it kill you to give me a foot-rub while you're down there? Sheesh.

The main thing I love about this one is not only that the man is the one who reads while the woman, again, gazes lovingly at him, but also the quiet elegance of having one of those weird Swedish indoor fireplace thingees in the background. I'm sure they're considered a fire hazard and probably a suffocation hazard, but man they looked cool, huh? They give any living room that 'Clockwork Orange' feel.

all pics via where there are TONS more vintage ads, catalog pics, magazines, etc.

trained black boxes

2011-09-02T09:47:00.002-06:00

How do you get black boxes to hang around you like that? I want some.

via

and grandma has a pagina

2011-09-02T09:30:00.000-06:00

Hate to break it to you, honey. It's appalling but it's true: Daddy does have a penis.

via everywhere

soon.

2011-09-01T23:05:00.001-06:00

Soon. Very, very soon.

via

noodle?

2011-09-01T23:02:00.000-06:00

The fuck happened to you, Noodle?

via

how to stop your kids from being atheists

2011-09-01T11:56:00.000-06:00

via via

O, my goodness yes.

choice quotes:

'Lie to them constantly about how the world works. Feed them a steady diet of mumbo jumbo dressed up as real knowledge...'

'Make them loathe their own natural bodies and functions.'

'Instruct them...to never question for themselves...'

The Gimme Bar

2011-08-31T20:06:00.001-06:00

A screen-grab of The Gimme Bar library.

This program is absolutely the shit. The Gimme Bar allows you to grab virtually anything on the web--pics, vids, text, even whole web pages--and drag them to a bar that appears at the bottom of your browser screen. Then once you've added them to your library, you have that entire document stored for easy access--not just the link, but the entire document or video or image.

It's still in beta, but I think you can still get invited just by going to the site and signing up. Here's a link to a vid I grabbed, a live acoustic set by Modest Mouse outside a record store in 2001. And here's a collection, titled 'mars sin death' (slightly NSFW-iah, I guess.)

To see the rest of my 'gimmees' just click my user name, wasabi23, and it'll take you to my library ('public firehose' is the default public library).

the music scene

2011-08-31T19:41:00.002-06:00

Amazing animated video. Not entirely sold on the song itself, but...

via soup.io

william s burroughs drumming

2011-08-28T18:14:00.000-06:00

For a drummer he's a helluva beat writer. :)
via dangerousminds

oh ricky

2011-08-28T17:55:00.000-06:00

Atheists don't crucify people, Ricky. Nor do we worship them. So get over yourself.
(on the other hand, this is a pretty clever pic.)

engrish

2011-08-28T17:53:00.001-06:00

This is apparently the box info on a Chinese DVD of 'Batman Begins.' Found via dangerous minds.

lincoln's advice

2011-08-26T16:19:00.000-06:00

Found this on the daily what. This kid is a born theatre critic.

penn state move-in day

2011-08-26T16:15:00.000-06:00

This little ditty is making the rounds, and even inspiring imitators.

This sign was spotted along fraternity row in State College, Pennsylvania, along a street on which incoming parents bringing in their freshman kids drive. Home of the Nittany Lions.

Keeping it classy, as usual.

via buzzfeed