Bohemian men's clubTuesday, December 29, 2009
There needs to be a men's club for guys like me. I'm picturing a large, low, dark-paneled room ... leather wingbacks, books, a sideboard stocked with exotic beverages. Chatting, chuckling, reading. Checkers and backgammon. Pipe tobacco. Light opera on the radio.
I don't smoke or play board games, but the atmosphere appeals. The problem, of course, is that places like this tend to attract elements that I'd prefer to avoid. Achievers, for example. Or rather, achievers who've made it their life's work to achieve. Their handshakes are a little too firm, their smiles consistently broader than necessary. They make eye contact and remember your name and cheerfully punish you with it long after you've forgotten theirs.
So I propose that somebody start a lower middle-class bohemian men's club. No one earning over $60K would be admitted. Nor would anybody who's ever been president or chairman of anything. Horse ownership, au pair employment or purchase of a new car to replace an undamaged car less than five years old would be grounds for immediate cancellation of membership. Members receiving more than one civic award per year would be fined. Special consideration would be given to persons convicted of a white collar crime, as well as persons who derive 50% or more of their income from creative endeavors. Blatant networking on club premises would be strictly prohibited. Business cards would be prohibited, too, but scratch paper and pencils would be provided free of charge.
 Christmas in Pelzer. (Click images for larger version.)
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Friday, December 25, 2009
With only a few days to spare before their final appearance of the season, J. Michael Craig and I traveled to Pelzer this week to see The Light People ... a family of Pelzerites who stand at the edge of their gaily-lit lawn dressed head-to-toe in 120-volt Chrismas tree lights. Orange extension cords trailing behind them, openly indifferent to the possibility of sudden, spectacular death, the Light People issue candy and greetings to passers-by. And they're pleased to accept donations, thank you. Loose change mostly, dropped from car windows into the candy bucket. It takes a lot of electricity to do what they do and electricity costs money.
Nearby, we met a man dressed in a Santa suit who told us that he "and another guy" spend nine solid days each December decorating his front and back yards, as well as the roofs and exterior walls of his modest two-story home and outbuildings. That's down from the four weeks he says it used to take him when he was still working and could attend to the decorations on only a part-time basis. Santa's sleigh, parked behind him at the end of his drive, was a two-tiered utility cart laden with tubs of assorted sweets.
The Pelzer light show stretches several blocks from Santa Land to where the Light People live and cars move in slow procession along the narrow residential road that connects them. Some windows stay up. Others roll down. Candy goes out, coins come in. Strangers in cars shout "Merry Christmas" to strangers on foot.
As they were after my visit last year to the rather creepy Tiny Town display near Easley (Dec. 6, 2008 blog entry), my feelings about Pelzer's contribution to the general welfare are mixed. It grates to equate such rampant garishness with good will toward anybody or anything except Wal-mart, but that does seem to be the sum of the parts. Good will. Yes, I take exception to most of the artistic choices they've made, but Santa Claus and The Light People and all the people inbetween have gone to extraordinary lengths to make us merry ... and at some personal expense. We should be grateful. We should acknowledge. We should not, however, under any circumstances, respond in kind.
 The finest government money can buy. |
Sinclair Lewis published It Can't Happen Here in 1936. Think 9/11. Think Patriot Act. Think Afghanistan, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly and mandatory health insurance. Is corporatocracy fascism? Think Orwell. Think RFID chips embedded in consumer goods and suspension of habeus corpus. Think surveillance cameras bristling from every solid surface in sight. Do you feel safer? Do you believe what you're told? Or do you believe your lying eyes?
Page numbers reference the first edition ...
“This country has gone so flabby that any gang daring enough not to seem illegal can grab hold of the entire government and have all the power and applause and salutes, all the money and palaces and willin’ women they want.” (p. 81)
“The crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin! No inherent reason why anybody’s grandchildren shouldn’t be living in caves and heaving rocks at catamounts.” (p. 134)
“Blessed be they who are not Patriots and Idealists, and who do not feel they must dash right in and Do Something About It, something so immediately important that all doubters must be liquidated.” (p. 138)
“Is it just possible that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators, that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on saving them?” (p. 141)
“It isn’t what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class.” (p. 247)
“A dozen yes-men buzzed about him, their hats in their hands, their smiles on their faces, their souls wriggling with gratitude to him for permitting them to exist.” (p. 399)
Now consider this, dear readers ... The Cybersecurity Act of 2009: Senate bill S.773, introduced by John Rockefeller (D-WV) on April Fool's Day (no kiddin'). The summary of the bill explains that it "would establish a new Cybersecurity Advisory Panel within the White House (and call) on the Department of Commerce to establish and maintain a clearinghouse on information related to cybsecurity threat and vulnerability information to public and private infrastructure deemed 'critical' by the President. The Secretary of Commerce would be given access to this information 'without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.' The bill would also give the President new authority to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.'"
Translation: Sen. Rockefeller's bill seeks to give the Executive branch of government unrestricted authority to excavate, truncate or completely shut down any portion of the Internet wherein it deems a "threat" to be "critical." The digital equivalent of martial law. A similar measure, dubbed the "Digital Economy Bill," is being debated in the UK.
Now please turn to page 304 and read along with me: “Doremus discovered that neither he nor any other small citizen had been hearing one hundredth of what was going on in America, that a modern state can dominate the complex contemporary population better than had ever been done in medieval days.”
Amen to that, Brother Lewis. Step away from the keyboard with your hands in the air.
 Every now and again, a photo shoot renders exceptionally useful results. (Click image for larger version.) |
Friday, December 18, 2009
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Happily, my fears were unfounded. Nothing was stolen or vandalized. No shots were fired.
The images at right link to the refined fruit of our labours ... a series of three posters, 95% complete. With sponsorships and donations drying up and ticket sales providing little consolation, Rock 'n Roll Heaven is something of a make-or- break proposition for us and one we'll market more aggressively than any other show of the season.
Ah, for the days when box office figures were a matter of only academic interest.
 Our Christmas tree ... decorated with mint wrappers, paperclips, teabag strings and other things. (Click image for larger version.) |
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Back in the 60s, before her creative spirit was broken by a non-fatal brain hemorrhage, my mother's dried floral arrangements were the stuff of local legend. Nipponese constructions, as I remember them. Twisty, turny things, spare and dramatic, distinctly apart from the staid bouquets cranked out by her contemporaries at the Sumter Garden Club. Unlike her raku, her macrame, her decoupage, her piano playing and her acrylics, my mother's arrangements won awards. Blue ribbons aplenty. She spent days building, tearing down and rebuilding them, bending wire and clipping stems, working long into the night, sometimes until morning.
Winter is the best time of year to collect the raw materials she used. Milkweed seedpods, thistle heads, something she mistakenly called "Jerusalem oak" and I haven't been able to find in years. It was a freeform exercise for her, as it is for me on the rare occasion that I jab a few sticks into a chunk of florist foam and call it art.
I dedicate my Christmas tree this year to year to my mother. And to Charlie Brown.
 Did the man in the archival Library of Congress photo we're using to promote our production of Coal Creek probably give a rat's ass about normalcy, sanity or anything but living to dig another day? (Click image for larger version.) |
Tuesday, December 9, 2009
There's a passage in the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here that I've flagged. It's about the fragility of social order, but on this particular day it reminds me of my bipolar friend ...
"... The crust of learning and good manners and tolerance is so thin! It would take just a few thousand big shells and gas bombs to wipe out all the libraries and laboratories and art galleries ... No inherent reason why our grandchildren - if anybody's grandchildren survive - shouldn't be living in caves and heaving rocks at catamounts. ..."
I think sometimes about how miraculous it is that we make it from zygote to birth ... all the pieces that have to fit together properly, all the intricate systems that have to align. And then the enormous leap we make from birth to fully-integrated members of society ... dear God.
But the crust of normalcy and sanity and functionality never does get very thick, does it? No matter how well-educated we are, how successful.
Reading one of my friend’s manifestos today, I felt a shock of recognition. I’m every bit as chaotic as he is, I think. We all are. The difference between us and him is our ability to hide our chaos from our neighbors and from ourselves. Look under my hood or your hood or the next guy’s, and you'll find just as much duct tape and faulty wiring as it seems my friend has under his. We kid ourselves when we shake our heads and say, "There but for the grace of God go I." Going there is part of the human condition. The trick, the one we do as much for others as for ourselves, is in pretending that we're somewhere else.
 Many trees on the Davidson College campus have metal identification tags nailed to their trunks. If it's true that plants have feelings, there may be some corrolation between our treatment of non-combattant maples and the frequency with which extraterrestrials shove probes up our butts. (Click image for larger version.) |
Wednesday, November 25
GPS-assisted travel is similar to subway travel in that it narrows the traveler’s focus. It’s very goal-oriented and efficient. While maps broaden perspective and invite side trips, GPS units invite strict attention to the upcoming turn. I try to compensate for this by pressing the “detour” button on my Garmin GPS frequently.
By the morning of Saturday, November 21, everybody I’d invited to ride with me to the MUFON meeting in North Carolina had bailed for one reason or another, so I traveled alone with my Garmin to Cornelius. I located the Acropolis Café where the meeting was to be held and then, since I had an hour to kill, drove what couldn’t have been more than a few city blocks to Davidson where I discovered the Davidson College campus. I’d been looking for a coffee bar in Cornelius, unaware of Davidson or the college, so the sudden appearance of both came as quite a surprise.
About 25 people were in attendance at what some complained was a too-long-overdue statewide meeting of the North Carolina chapter of MUFON. State Director Richard Lang spoke at length about MUFON’s new (and, in my opinion, unfortunately named) rapid response investigative unit, the STAR Team, funded by billionaire Robert Bigelow. His generosity makes it possible for Lang, the national director of STAR, to dispatch investigators to close encounter sites within 24 hours of reports being filed.
Lang was followed by Granville Angell, head of what’s called “experiencer support” for NC MUFON. Angell talked about a place called the Monroe Institute where he’d had a brief, self-induced out-of-body experience and he stated his belief that human beings and extraterrestrials are all members of the same spiritual community … or words to that effect. Angell is, himself, an abductee, so I suppose he has more right to an opinion in these matters than most, but my attention wandered. Like Lang, I prefer corroborated testimony, preferably corroborated by physical evidence.
In any event, you've probably anticipated the "detour button" tie-in and here it is ... I'm imagining some guy sitting in an office somewhere doing whatever it is people do in offices. He's bored. So he opens a drawer and digs down through the debris there to the button at the bottom marked "DETOUR." He presses it. And suddenly he's in Cornelius where grown men and women, "normal" in every other respect, are discussing extraterrestrials and out-of-body experiences as givens. He feels better.
The detour button, my friends. Use it early and use it often.
 One theme we considered for last year's fundraiser was this one. It was rejected, of course. |
The plan is to drive up to Cornelius, NC this Saturday with Peter Saputo to sit in on North Carolina MUFON’s statewide meeting. The reality, however, is that I think I’m coming down with a cold … again … having (I thought) completely recovered from one about 24 hours ago. But yesterday’s marketing meeting was stressful for the second week in a row and it was preceded by a stressful telephone conversation with the guy who manages our building, so that by mid-day, I’d flooded my bloodstream with plenty of whatever it is we produce when we’re stressed. A sucker punch to the immune system, I think. Why can’t everybody just do what I want them to do and be happy about it?
Looking on the bright side, the roof repair guys are supposed to be at the condo tomorrow morning to fix the leak in my roof. (Note to God: Places like this should never, ever have leaky roofs. It’s ridiculous.) And the new sign I ordered for the elevator arrived. It’s now affixed to the elevator wall above the fireman buttons … all-aluminum and a vast improvement over its white plastic predecessor. Little things like that bother me. And since I know they don’t bother other people nearly as much, I sometimes take matters into my own hands. As I did by replacing the elevator sign myself, rather than waiting for the property management company to do it. Ask forgiveness later, that’s my policy.
An acquaintance of mine who also grew up with alcoholism and also has control issues is dealing with her own stressors - and there are many just now - extremely well. I'm always impressed whenever anybody can disengage and compartmentalize. I used to think I had that ability, but I've decided that I was suppressing. It looked like disengagement from the outside, but on the inside, it was nothing of the sort.
Control Freak
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A friend told me recently about an idea for a screenplay that he’s been developing. It pits a middle-aged Batman against a new villain named Control Freak. “Bruce Willis would play Batman,” my friend said, “and you’d be perfect as the villain!” Then he repeated the villain’s name with slow significance … “Control Freak.”
Since I love playing villains – and who doesn’t? – I took his casting as a compliment … until it occurred to me that the whole pitch might have been just a clever way of telling me off. Not 24 hours earlier, I’d reminded the office staff – again (sigh) – that non-Centre Stage publications should be displayed in the lobby only when we’re contractually required to do so. I can easily imagine somebody saying to somebody else as I walked out of the office, “Mr. Control Freak there really needs to get a life,” and then my friend saying, “Control Freak! That would make a great comic book villain! And Tim could play him!!” Laughing agreement all around.
On the other hand, my friend’s comments might have been more about his brain than my abrasiveness. He inherited bipolar disease from his father and some days seems to be channeling Philip K. Dick. Maybe he was jabbing me a little, and maybe with justification, but we now know that he was on the cusp of "going up," as his girlfriend puts it. The next day he was at the doctor's office fine-tuning his meds.
Three possibilities, then: flattery, chastisement, altered state.
The most interesting aspect of my friend’s screenplay is Batman’s eventual discovery – near the end of the story, I would think – that he is Control Freak. He has not two, but three personalities, and at least one of them is locked in a fight to the death with its roommates. Talk about a metaphor ripe with possibilities.
I’ve decided that Batman’s unravelling should begin innocuously. Hurrying along as Bruce Wayne, he should bump into an ill-tempered passerby who whirls on him and shouts, “Watch where you’re going, freak!” An overreaction in the smaller context, but an explosive truth uncovered in the larger. The camera should do that double-zoom-out thing that makes the background look like it’s sliding away. Ambient sounds should fade to a quiet echo. Wayne, isolated center frame, should look lost and alone. Deer in the headlights. Tight shot on Wayne then and, to our horror, we should see that same twitch we’ve seen up to now only on Control Freak’s face. OMG! What’s going on? Is Batman …? Nooooooooo!!!
A chance encounter, a glancing blow, and Dorothy clicks her heels. Neo pops the red pill. Alice shouts, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter why my friend typecast me. It’s important only that I acknowledge what he told me about myself. Whether I'm Batman or Bruce Wayne is anybody's guess, but there's no doubt whatsoever that I am Control Freak. And how embarrassing to think that, until yesterday, I was the only person in Gotham City who'd failed to make my acquaintance.
Your money for your lifeMonday, November 9, 2009
Surveys tell us that the majority of Americans want a public option ... as many as 72% of us by some counts. Yet the congressmen from Pfizer, Humana, Blue Cross and Hoffman-La Roche are deaf to the cries of constituents who don’t parrot the healthcare industry’s propaganda machine. They insist on framing the debate as a referendum on affordable healthcare. Affordable. Not free healthcare. Not universal healthcare. Not what every other industrialized country on the planet provides its citizens. Billions for banks and bombs, but straight-up, unlimited, government-funded healthcare? In these United States? Fuggedaboutit.
If the police or fire departments tried to charge us directly for their services, we’d be outraged, and if they caused injury or death by limiting or withholding those services for failure to pay, the backlash against them would be biblical. But healthcare, it seems, whatever the Constitution might say about our right to life, is a pay to play proposition in the land of the free. The reason, we’re told, is that American doctors, nurses, researchers and technicians are first and foremost in pursuit of a certain standard of living. Remove the prospect of upscale houses and luxury cars and they’ll flee their professions in pursuit of riches elsewhere. That, we're told, is just the way it is. And we accept it. I’m appalled.
When did human life become a commodity? When did it become acceptable to allow wholesale suffering among people who can’t afford medical attention? How is it in the public interest for giant corporations to prey – literally prey – on the most vulnerable among us? And by what supernatural means have those same corporations convinced 28% of people surveyed to defend the status quo?
 The Baillie Players' Christmas '09 tour will travel with a set of four (two shown) traditional backdrops held up by five eight-foot self-supporting stands. (Click image for larger version.) |
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Once upon a time, I was the artistic director of a small touring theater company. For five years, I wrote, scored, acted, directed and built. The building part of the job involved hundreds of hours spent screwing and glueing together set pieces, some of them two stories tall, all of them designed to pass in pieces through a standard residential door frame and store inside a box truck of dubious mechanical pedigree.
In the early days, we toured with heavy platforms, lighting equipment, furniture and so on. Load-ins and load-outs were exhausting. But as it dawned on us that our clients cared far less about most of the technical aspects of our productions than we did, the tours lost weight. Platforms were the first to go ... and good riddance. The scripts lost weight, too. We abandoned our two-act business model and began crafting one-hour musical entertainments that moved the spotlight as much as possible away from us and toward members of the communities where we played. Entertainment, as it so happens, isn't about the entertainer. It's about the entertained.
The man who signed my paychecks back then was Buren Martin and his company, The Baillie Players, exists to this day. Since my fade from his daily view in the mid-90's, Buren and his wife, Dottie, have continued to ply their trade as actor/managers in the great tradition of traveling minstrel shows and Vaudeville and they've continued to refine their product. They no longer hire actors, for example, because the headaches involved in finding and retaining actors outweighed the benefits those actors provided. The company now consists of Buren, Dottie and their two children. Period. They write shows tailored to their clients' sensibilities and they produce those shows with enviable efficiency.
When Buren contacted me recently to ask if I'd be interested in building a support system for a muslin backdrop he'd ordered, I suggested that we take a less polished, less ambitious approach than usual. We decided upon a series of eight-foot stands (pictured here) supporting four eight-by-eight muslin sections suspended from wooden rods. As the vision became reality, we were surprised by how perfectly this aesthetic compliments the company's personality. Why, I wonder, didn't we think of it sooner? All that elaborate eyewash I built and Buren paid for (and both of us, with hired help, lugged thousands of miles) back in the 90's, all our attempts to make ourselves seem kinda sorta like something we weren't ... when we'd have been so much better off emphasizing exactly who and what we were.
 In the incredibly charming claymation movie "Mary and Max," Mary dreams of marrying a man named Earl Grey, living in a castle in Scotland and having nine kids and a dog named Kevin. This is Kevin. Its doleful expression reminds me of the dog that followed me downtown this afternoon. |
Friday, November 6, 2009
I left my car at the theater today and walked to Cherrydale Shopping Center. About five miles into the six-mile circuit, a small dog – a cross, I’d say, between a beagle and a Chihuahua - ran out of the Buncombe Highway Hardee’s parking lot onto the sidewalk, seemingly in pursuit of the Hardee’s employee who was walking ahead of me. But when the Hardee’s employee reversed course, walking back past me with a dazed expression on her face, the dog kept going – first out into traffic, then back to the sidewalk, zigging and zagging all around. I turned to see if the woman was going to call the dog, but she didn’t, so I decided that there was no connection between them. Just a stray dog and a stray person, one of which happened to work at Hardee’s.
The dog continued to track me me, running ahead, then behind, up into yards, out into traffic. Several times it did this and several times some motorist had to slam on the brakes and honk the horn and I fully expected at least one of them to roll down a side window and shout, "Hey, idiot! Why don't you put your damn dog on a leash?!" But that never happened. Just the braking and honking and me rehearsing in my head the line, "It's not my dog!"
Back at the theater, I called BJ out from the stage door to show her what had followed me, thinking she’d get a kick out of the situation – cute dog risks life to follow pet-aversed man for more than a mile through heavy city traffic. We'd chuckle and close the door and the dog would go away. That would be that. But I was wrong. To make a long story short, I ended up buying a leash and a sack of puppy chow and Beau, our box office manager, has taken the dog home … “just for the weekend.” We'll see. Beth, our business manager, placed several rescue-related calls, one of which was to a friend who handles pet adoptions. I offered the dog to my friend Peter, but Peter pointed out that he already owns a dog that’s at least paranoid, if not pathalogical. No arguments there. He’s one dog away from disaster and I don’t want to be the one to push him over the edge.
However this turns out - whether Beau keeps the dog or Beth's friend finds it a home or animal control is called to lock the dog up and eventually kill it - I'm impressed by the dog's good fortune thus far. Had I not been walking past the Hardee's at that particular moment ... had some motorist's reflexes been a bit slower ... had the person who'd fed the dog wieners (which it threw up on the lobby carpet) taken it back with him to (likely as not) the homeless shelter whence they'd come... who knows? What we do know is that the dog has a collar but no tag, is house broken, makes hardly a sound, and knows how to stand up on its hind legs. If only it could talk.
Saturday, October 31, 2009In the movie “Say Anything,” Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) tells his girlfriend’s parents that he doesn’t want to “sell anything bought or processed, buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed - you know - as a career.” I think it’s one of the great film moments of all time and a succinct expression of my own aversion to the vast majority of what’s generally termed “sales.”
Yes, I spend a great deal of time each week selling theater. But I make a distinction between what I do now and what we all did as fundraising conscripts in high school. Maybe it feels so different because quotas aren’t involved. Or maybe it’s different because I seldom have to press customer flesh. There’s no clear connection between pitch and purchase. I don’t “do deals.”
Or maybe I’m kidding myself.
Anyway, I mention all this because I’ve been trying to sell a house for almost five months and hating every minute of it. It’s an extremely desirable house in a great neighborhood and potential buyers queued up the moment it first appeared on the market. But the law allows me to sign with only one buyer at a time and all the buyers I’ve invited to the table thus far have failed the skittish mortgage industry's stepped-up tests of financial reliability. They've all arrived at the process pre-approved and all left the process doubled-back on by their banks. The most recent buyer, for example, found out 24 hours before closing that her bank wanted more documentation of her assets … documentation she didn’t have. So I let the contract die a natural death because I no longer give extensions. I granted the first buyer nearly two months of extensions (beyond the initial one-month discovery period prior to the first closing date), only to have the deal fall through when necessary paperwork couldn’t be obtained from – of all places – Kuwait. (Long, sad story.)
I now wonder if pre-approval signifies anything more than a lender's willingness to take a closer look at a borrower when and if he ever actually tries to borrow money. All the buyers with whom I've signed contracts were pre-approved.
When I bought the house in 1999, I thought I’d closed on the last place I’d ever live. I loved that house with its plaster walls and oak floors, its tile bathroom, glass door knobs, heart-of-pine rafters and chunky granite exterior. Now I want nothing more than to be rid of it and, with the proceeds from the sale, rid of my current mortgage. Debt-free for the first time since I arrived in Greenville three years ago.
Of course, as the economy is recovering, property value is increasing and so things could be worse. I’ve heard the horror stories. In the meantime, though, I’m slogging through the long slow-motion sale of something very much sold, bought, processed and repaired … and it’s starting to feel like a career.
 Amy Stryker Mathena and Chris Evans in A Christmas Memory at Centre Stage.. (Click image for larger version.) |
Back in the 70’s and 80’s, Amy Stryker Mathena was making a name for herself in Hollywood. She starred opposite Mia Farrow and Carol Burnette in Robert Altman’s film The Wedding. In The Long Riders, she married Randy Quaid, and she befriended Meg Tilly in Impulse. Her small screen credits include an appearance on “Charlie’s Angels,” as well as an ABC Afterschool Special (remember them?). Then, in 1983, she returned to her native Greenville, SC where she raised a family and has remained to this day.
Currently, Amy is preparing the role of Sook for an adaptation of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory scheduled to open at Centre Stage December 3. We’re hoping that her film and television credits will draw some attention to the show, as will the prospect of an evening that includes not only the rarely seen (in this neck of the woods, anyway) chamber theater production style, but intermission carolers and complimentary hot apple cider. We’ll bill the package as a “Christmas experience,” or words to that effect, trying to tap into the seasonal appetite for such things.
As for me, I have a huge appetite for traditional Christmas motifs – all the sights, sounds and smells we associate with Yuletide Victoriana, right up to Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” Much past that, though, and I lose interest.
Posted here is one of the promotional photos that I shot yesterday.
 The mist rolled eerily across the wooden benches at Pretty Place Chapel this morning. (Click image for larger version.) |
Friday, October 23, 2009
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I suspect that many in the "family entertainment" business, when they go to sleep at night, dream of being pole dancers. And they're always trying to nudge their products in that direction ... making Santa a little sexier, as it were ... for the sake of art ... or whatever. How desolate! I want to grab these people and shake them. I want to shout at them, "Say what you mean and be what you are and stop going along to get along!!"
Anyway ...
I drove up to Camp Greenville this morning to read for a few hours. There's a little open-air chapel there, built during the WPA era, I think, called Pretty Place. On clear days, it overlooks the foothills. Today, though, it overlooked dense fog ... which is pretty in its own right.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Yesterday, a friend and I drove up to Brevard, NC via the Pickens (SC) flea market. On the way back, we stopped in Hendersonville, NC at a gallery called Revolving Arts. The proprietor, Julie Spalla, says that she and her husband have worked very hard to create a "sacred space" where local and regional artists with "strong voices" can sell their work with minimal markup. Revolving Arts relocated to Hendersonville less than six months ago from Asheville where high end galleries like Blue Spiral engage in the very common practice of "keystoning" - marking up the works they sell by as much as 400%. I was immediately impressed with Spalla's prices and told her so, which is how our conversation began.
I had another interesting conversation this morning about an artform closer to home. A creative ministry director and I talked marketing for over an hour and a half and I was surprised to find that we have much in common. We share the belief (or, in my case, the intuition) that Greenville is ripe and ready for a venue where adults can buy family-friendly professional theatrical entertainment. To recap, that's 1.) family-friendly, 2.) professional, 3.) theatrical, 4.) entertainment. All essential components. One key to the success of such a venture would be making it crystal clear to potential patrons that all four components are always at play. This would not be a religious theater, but a place of unapologetic positivity ... a smile and a hug ... not a wry smile and a suggestive hug, nor an instructive tweak on the nose.
A director friend of mine makes the distinction between country music and rock music, saying that country music comes from the heart, whereas rock music comes from the genitalia. The kind of theater I want to do comes from the heart. It's fascinating to me that so many of my peers find so much validation in anger and titillation, and feel so compromised by heart-focused entertainment. How did that happen? How did the proprietors of our theatrical "sacred spaces" become so self-absorbed?
 The diminutive mother of the Almighty did not die of heartburn as some religious artists would have us believe. |
Waiting for me in my inbox last night was a letter from an old flame. How fun! A middle-aged man likes to be reminded of his reckless youth every so often and letters from old flames serve that purpose very well. But she was writing to tell me how happy she is in her marriage and her career. Hmm. Not exactly a kiss to build a dream on, but what the hell. I sent her a congratulatory reply and she responded, inviting me to keep in touch (ho-ho!), emphatic in her assurance that she was not flirting with me (what the?...) and that she maintains contact with several old flames in full view of her husband and ...
(sigh)
Let me disclose right now that, while I've received postcards from people who've toured The Moral High Ground, I've never been there myself. (I have allergies, you see, and ...) Since losing my virginity at the embarrassingly late age of 23, I've had romantic relationships (okay, affairs) with a number of married women, and though I'm told there exists somewhere a race of uber-secure, uber-mature couples whose social circles include everybody they've ever slept with, my own experience leads me to believe that the best way to avoid the wages of sin is to avoid what the sisters called "near occasions of sin." Ex-lovers fall squarely into that category.
So why would a self-proclaimed happily married mother of two, successful in her career, published, polished and rocking in the upscale bosom of friends, family and community, email a man she says she was once so "crazy about" that she rebuffed the romantic overtures of an NPR personality whose voice we hear on the radio to this very day? Why would she do that? I have two opposing theories:
Door #1: She really is so secure and so happy that she's either indifferent or oblivious to appearances. Reconnoitering from her base deep inside the marital no-fly zone, she puts out her hand and touches the face of anything that sparks her fancy. She's unassailable because she's truly pure of heart.
Door #2: She thinks her husband is having an affair with his secretary.
God knows I'm a cynic and God knows I'm reinforced in my cynicism every waking day, but if my mother had ever sent such letters as these to a highschool sweetheart, the sound of my father's shit hitting the fan would have been deafening. And if that sweetheart had been a.) unattached, and b.) someone who's company was easily avoided ... well ... I shudder to think.
Which is why I'll take door #2, Monty, and I'll throw in an email filter that shields me from future correspondence ... which, in my venal paranoia, I'd only misconstrue.
And on a completely unrelated note ...
Instead of going to the Kiss concert last night, I went to see "Capitalism: A Love Story" and left it feeling both affirmed and despondent. Surprise, surprise. Yet I cling to my worldly goods and my $90/month distaster recovery health insurance plan like an infantryman clings to his St. Christopher medal, even as I'm confident that Blue Cross someday will raise my premium to a level that exceeds my capacity for pretense and I'll join the ranks of the uninsured. And then the homeless. Capitalism rocks!
 Based on a character depicted in "The Garden of Earthly Delights" (Hieronymus Bosch, 1504), this figurine strikes me as a fair representation of our healthcare system at work. (Click image for larger version.) |
I guess the headline here is that I'll be among those in attendance when Kiss plays Greenville tonight at the Bi-Lo Center. My first exposure to Kiss was in 1978 during their "Kiss Alive II" tour. That was at Carolina Coliseum in Columbia where, some 20 years later, I saw them again.
The first concert was a revelation and the second was a nostalgic exercise. But tonight? I'm not sure why I'm going. Curiosity, I guess. Or maybe defiance. A bunch of 60-year-old men in monster makeup, one bleeding from the mouth and spitting fire. They'll sing "Love Gun" and "God of Thunder." Sirens, explosions. Confetti. They'll be a hot mess.
But this morning I forgot all about Kiss as I streamed Bill Moyers' latest condemnation of the healthcare lobby and then his discussion of Wall Street's congressional clout with Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Simon Johnson of M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. Here were three mainstream eggheads echoing, in the polite diction of their kind, the angry rhetoric of so-called "conspiracy nuts" like Alex Jones and Jeff Rense. American government bought and paid for by powerful interests. Healthcare to the highest bidder, and Devil take the hindmost. Corporate predators, shielded from consequence by pet legislators. An orgy of graft. An Orwellian nightmare. Horrible, horrible, horrible.
How high on propaganda must we be that we're willing, even yet, to believe a single thing we're told by the mainstream media? Why do so many of us refuse to even consider the possibility that 911 was a Shock Doctrine event staged by the military-industrial (-healthcare-banking) complex? Why do we engage in "affordable healthcare" discussions when every other industrialized country in the world has figured out that "pay to play" healthcare is an abomination? How much more proof do we need that voting is an act of denial?
So I'm having trouble right now gearing up for the Kiss concert. I'm disinclined to rock and roll all night, and as for partying every day ... not likely. I live in a plutocratic police state where up is down and black is white and those of us who question consensus reality are regarded with nervous suspicion.
 Would it have been so hard for the photographer to tell me that my clip-on tie was crooked? (Click image for larger version.)
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Friday, October 16, 2009
Our production of Mauritius is selling slowly. This, despite two glowing reviews, a television interview, direct mail. billboards, e-blasts, posters, Facebook events, press releases, a feature story and full-color print ads. Our marketing materials are first-rate and the buzz is excellent. Our tastefully-decorated theater is within walking distance of every kind of restaurant imaginable. It offers free parking, excellent acoustics, comfortable seats, and our ticket prices are in lock-step with those of other theaters in the region. There's art on the walls and music in the lobby and the bathrooms are immaculate. We've done everything right (other than choose a show with an utterly meaningless title that nobody knows how to pronounce ... but let's leave that for the moment).
We've even gone to great pains to warn our elusive demographic (50-something, conservative-leaning, college-educated women with disposable income) that the play "contains language some patrons may find offensive." Translation: "contains 10 instances of the word 'fuck,' all of which we feel are contextually justified." This advisory arises from our belief that Centre Stage patrons are ill-disposed toward public displays of blasphemy, profanity and most activities traditionally engaged in behind closed bedroom or bathroom doors.
So where are they? Where are these literate 50-something women with disposable income who refuse to attend plays on Wednesdays because doing so would conflict with adult Bible study? I ask because the entire membership of Centre Stage as it begins its 27th year in a metropolitan area of over one-half million people numbers fewer than 650. I ask because ticket sales for Mauritius are running at roughly 20% of capacity. I ask because comedienne Kathy Griffin's show at the 2,100-seat Peace Center not three blocks from Centre Stage sold out last night over two years after Griffin made national headlines by ending her Emmy acceptance speech with "Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now."
Is it just me, or are we fishing for sea bass in a salmon farm? More people, paying more per person, showed up to see "Suck it Jesus" in one night than we'll seat during the entire run of our carefully-crafted, aggressively-marketed, thoughtfully-expurgated production of Mauritius. Over three times as many people packed the Peace Center to watch the star of "Straight to Hell" as will buy memberships at Centre Stage all year.
Granted, Griffin is a celebrity, but that's not the point. The point is that 2,100 people bought tickets to see a notorious blasphemer in the same town where we bend over backward to avoid offense and are, at the time of this writing, being rewarded for our pains with 20% capacity sales.
So are Greenville's patrons of the arts and entertainment hypocrites? Do they find offense with certain kinds of content only when it's produced locally? Or do they suffer from low self-esteem? Do they assume that no locally-produced entertainment can rise to the standards of an act brought here by bus and truck? Questions for the ages perhaps, but Kathy Griffin's sold-out performance at the Peace Center makes one thing abundantly clear: sometimes, even among the ladies who lunch, "Suck it, Jesus" sells.
 My last meal in Bar Harbor, a $15 lobster omelette, not nearly as impressive as the pancakes I usually have. (Click images for larger versions.)
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Thursday, October 15, 2009
For two years in a row, I've managed to avoid eating the ubiquitous "lobster rolls," a local delicacy that pretty much every eatery in Bar Harbor is pleased to sell you for about $13. And what is a lobster roll? Never having seen one, I can't say for sure, but I've been given to understand that they're chopped up lobster meat and mayonnaise served on a hotdog bun. mmmm. not.
But it seems wrong somehow to spend an entire week in Maine without eating any lobster at all, so I did the deed for breakfast at Two Cats on the morning of my departure. Then I hit the road and got as far as a Comfort Inn somewhere in Pennsylvania. Today I drove the remaining 600 miles through constant rain and am now back at the condo, enrobed, exhausted and about to fall asleep.
 How can one not like a town where there's a shop called The Hemporium? (Click image for larger version.) |
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A rainy day in Bar Harbor. But the Caribbean Princess arrived on schedule and, by 10 a.m., the Opera House was a tower of Babel ... German, French, Cockney, Japanese ... brimming with plastic-wrapped passengers eager to access the Internet, which makes me wonder ... Can one not check one's email on the high seas?
Anyway, I got lots of design work done before returning to The Villager, so my stressometer needle has ceased to wiggle.
Egg roll and hot tea for dinner. Cold and clear tomorrow. Reading a book by Frederik Pohl called Jem. Science fiction, of course. Looking forward to reading "Miss Buncle's Book" upon my return to Greenville since a friend ordered a copy and should have finished it by then.
 I fed the owner of these feet some pastrami today. (Click images for larger versions.)
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Monday, October 12, 2009
The population of Bar Harbor at the time of the 2000 census was 4,820 and the population of the "Village," as locals refer to the town itself, is estimated to be only 2,800. Compare that with the 3,080-passenger capacity of a Caribbean Princess cruise ship, one of which will drop anchor here tomorrow, and it's no wonder that local retailers pray for anchors the way farmers pray for rain. This fact became clear to me this morning in conversation with the owner of the Opera House Internet Cafe. He speaks fluently of liners and their capacities and the habits of their passengers. Roughly 100 cruise ships visit Bar Harbor each year between May and October, disgorging their passengers at 9 a.m. and sucking them back up before sunset. The contrast of these violent influxes with the sleepy shops and taverns that line Bar Harbor's tiny business district (all four city blocks of it), is startling, to say the least. But the natives don't complain. Quite the contrary. It was recently announced that the Cunard Queen Mary 2 (QM2) will arrive November 1 and that fact alone caused the Opera House owner to move his end-of-season closing date from October 26 to November 2. His cashier just wishes the passengers wouldn't bring so many large bills.
I think I have a routine now. Routines are comforting. The one I have here is basically this: breakfast at Two Cats, several hours of design work at the Opera House, groceries at Hannaford, lunch and reading at Otter Cove, blog back at The Villager. That's what I did today, anyway, and it worked quite well.
Read the 2009 cruise ship schedule for Bar Harbor as PDF. Here's my motivation. This outcropping at the edge of the ocean. I sit here and read. Why others haven't thought to bring fold-out chairs for sitting and reading and watching the waves I can't imagine. It seems like such an obvious thing to do. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Sunday, October 11, 2009
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 The sink in my bathroom is consistent in its cuteness with the rest of my room at the Villager. I freaking love this place! (Click images for larger versions.) |
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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My new best friend is the Garmin Nuvi 205. Mapless, I've driven over 1,200 miles so far, which journey has included two detours around road construction (just tap the "Detour" button!) and one trip into a metropolitan area at night for dinner. I even let it guide me to Acadia National Park from my extremely cute room at the Villager Motel.
As per my long-laid plans, I had blueberry pancakes this morning at Two Cats and then read science fiction on a rock overlooking the Atlantic at Otter Cove. All very nice. And the weather is lovely, I might add. Upon my return to the motel, however, I made the BIG mistake of incorporating several production calendars into my marketing schedule, thinking I'd put a few things on the near-term "to do" list and then maybe go for a walk. Instead, I nearly packed up and drove home.
Without going into unnecessary detail, I'll leave it at this: Centre Stage is mounting one production per month for the next four months. (Translation: Write, shoot, design, proof, post and track posters, playbills, rack cards, ads, e-blasts, billboards, banners, press kits, site pages ...) Excuse me, but what the fuck am I doing in Bar Harbor? I'm marketing three or four shows at any given moment and servicing freelance clients, one of which is gearing up for its annual convention. Have I lost my (please excuse me again ... I'm really off the leash here) fucking mind? Rather than make plans for an early morning departure, however, I took a shower and watched a movie on TV. And now I'm blogging. Not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Maybe I'll curl up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor and cry. Or maybe I'll break camp. Or maybe I'll drive back out to Otter Cove and read again.
I intended by today to have written about the two quirky sisters who run the Villager ... and the legions of homeless people wandering the streets of Portland ... and how the air here sometimes smells like Christmas trees. But now ... I'm just numb.
 "Ebony Pearl" Silestone countertops were installed in both bathrooms last week. A company called Oldcastle did the job and I was most impressed with every aspect of their operation. (Click image for larger version.) |
Monday, October 5, 2009
Two recent conversations, one with Tim Baiden, the new board president at Centre Stage, and another with my actor friend Peter Saputo, lured me back up onto one of my favorite soapboxes … the professional status of Centre Stage. Tim Baiden allowed that Centre Stage works “at a professional level,” but hedged on whether it is, in fact, a professional theater. Peter Saputo, who now draws pensions from both Equity and SAG, is a dyed-in-the-wool Union man for whom the theatrical world is divided into two camps: Equity and non-professional. While he admits that the terms “professional” and “amateur” are emotionally charged, he insists that he uses them only in the strictest technical sense … i.e., professional=Equity, amateur=non-Equity. He disowns any implications of quality or commitment or lack thereof. I counter that the technicality claim is specious. It’s a bit like white people deciding that the term “human” is merely a technical term they use to refer to whites. Non-whites should not, therefore, take offense when referred to as non-human. Equity would have us believe that it owns the term “professional," which is loooooodicrous.
But enough about that. I've just returned from an entire weekend spent at Peter's house where the weather was quite cool and the food was tasty. Pot roast is, I believe, among the top ten meals to which cool weather is most conducive.
Loose ends
In 36 hours, I'll be on the road to Maine. I'll spend some of the trip up burnishing my two contrasting monologues, but no worries there. The Silestone counters in the bathrooms look great! And to top it off, Home Depot called after the job was finished to say they owed me $160. The job actually cost less than they'd estimated and I'd prepaid.
Last pre-flight note ... I'll be using a Garmin GPS just purchased today. No more fumbling with maps or astrolabes, no more asking directions. Hello, 21st century navigation.
Summer's last gasp
Friday, September 25, 2009
On Tuesday, September 29, Greenville will enjoy a high of seventy-two degrees, an overnight low of fifty-one and only fifty percent humidity. Contrast that autumnal gloriousness with the seventy-two-degree, seventy-two-percent humid wall of pre-dawn disappointment that greeted me at six-thirty this morning and the tears of joy now streaming from my eyes should require no further explanation.
Eight days after the local forecast regains its sanity, I’ll drive to Bar Harbor for what I now think of as my annual retreat to the rocks of Acadia National Park. En route, I’ll visit Portland to audition for the Portland Stage Company’s upcoming production of A Christmas Carol, proceeding from there to The Villager Motel where I spent a week last year at about the same time in October. The Villager is just a short walk from the harbor and only $79/night … modest but clean accommodations perfect for the frugal traveler who places a higher premium on basic creature comforts and convenience than on wet bars, goose down comforters, exotic soaps and tip-hungry bellhops.
On Saturday, October 17, I’ll return to Greenville to continue the hearing loss I began back in 1978 when Kiss performed at Carolina Coliseum in Columbia. Gene and Paul (minus Ace and Peter) will be at the Bi-Lo Center in Greenville and I’ll be there ensconced in the $125 seat snagged for me by Allen Evans, whose seat-snagging mojo is most excellent.
 The new "Hope!" magazine-format newsletter is part of a complete branding overhaul of Southeastern Children's Home. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Saturday, September 19, 2009
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The Mauritius playbill should be complete next week, too, but it will have to wait for final approval until October 1 (i.e., the last minute) to give stray credits every opportunity to be included.
Oh, yes ... the New Play Festival. It concluded today with record overall attendance figures, a fact I attribute in some small part to our promotional mascot, the New Play Chicken, a life-like robotic Sega "Dream Chick" ordered direct from Hong Kong. We photographed the chicken with various folks around town, including the mayor, and published the photos everywhere. One even made it into our local daily, the Gannett-owned Greenville News.
The most frustrating thing about marketing is the difficulty one has in determining its effectiveness. Would the festival have sold as well sans chicken? Will Mauritius, by closing night, have benefitted from our film noire marketing treatment? Do slogans like "Two women. Two con men. Two stamps worth dying for." really sell tickets? Beats me. But we're having fun and sales are trending up, so we might at least assume that our marketing efforts aren't hurting the theater.
 Here's a look at the entire marketing campaign for the upcoming Centre Stage production of Mauritius. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Monday September 14, 2009
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- Having my life threatened (sort of) by a guy who subsequently disappeared entirely from my world. This adventure involved a 3-week hiatus from the theater while said guy's ultimate disposition remained in question.
- Embarking on a soon-to-be $3K bathroom renovation, which work is still in progress. And to be sure, I'm looking forward to the "ebony pearl" Silestone countertops, but lord ... three thousand dollars?!!
- Selling the old Wheat Street house in Columbia, then having the sale fall through when the buyer was unable to get necessary paperwork from Kuwait. (And now, two months after the contract was signed, my beautiful granite bungalow is back up for sale while I wrangle with the unsuccessful buyer over her ernest money. My attorney is Greek, though, so I will prevail. Whatever that means.)
- Completing the season graphics for our (and yes, I'm once again referring to Centre Stage in the first person plural) 09-10 season, a project that involved not one, not two, but three photo shoots. This is significant because, after well over five years in storage, my studio equipment is busy again, and I'm shooting frames the way the big boys do ... with a sync chord.
- Designing a wedding reception invitation for a friend, Frances Simon, whom I met through BJ Koonce. Frances went to college with BJ back in The Day.
- Completing the upfitting of Buren Martin's scene shop (aka my shop equipment's new home) in Inman. My first two projects were an HVAC intake mask for the condo and a steering wheel unit for the Driving Miss Daisy promo photo shoot. Eventually, I'll build a modular stage for Buren's 1920's-era gymnasium-turned-performance-space.
I'll write more about all these things in the weeks to come, but first I need to get closure on a few of them. It's raining deadlines.
(Oh ... and before I forget ... I discovered a delightful blog a few days ago. It's written by Anna Beth Bonney, who played Luisa opposite my El Gallo a few years ago at Centre Stage. Do yourself a favor and check it out.)
 (Click image for larger version.) |
Monday, July 27, 2009
I’ve never been especially respectful of authority – in or out of uniform. Respect, so far as I’m concerned, isn’t a reward for years lived or elections won or careers chosen or degrees earned. I don’t think that police officers or soldiers or firemen are heroes, either. Unless they’re very unlike everybody I’ve ever met in my life, they entered their career fields for selfish reasons – as do we all – and, to that extent, deserve no more respect or admiration that the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker.
Nevertheless, when Harvard professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. was arrested at his home recently by Cambridge Police Sgt. James M. Crowley, I have little doubt that it was Professor Gates, not Sgt. Crowley, who turned what should have been a routine police matter into a heated referendum on race relations in which both the Governor of Massachusetts and the President of the United States are now participating.
Can we take another look at this?
Read entire blog entry as PDF.Read police report as PDF.
 (Click image for larger version.) |
Sunday, July 5, 2009
For longer than I care to admit, I accepted without examination what I was taught as a child – that we exist to serve a grumpy, grudge-holding God, first under the pall of original sin and thereafter in conflict with temptation. If I imagined any mechanism for this, I suppose it was a vast warehouse of switched-off spirits, all tainted by Adam’s transgression.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 Let's declare our independence from the tyranny of donkey butts. (Click image for larger version.) |
Saturday, July 4, 2009
I’m thinking of all the times I’ve confronted what I consider to be rude behavior and how little good it’s probably done. The over-loud cell phone conversations I’ve interrupted, the smokers I’ve asked not to smoke in non-smoking areas, the parents I’ve asked to calm their crying infants in movie theaters and restaurants. While I do more often than not accomplish short-term local change, I doubt seriously that I’ve made the world a better place for anybody but me, and then only for a few minutes or hours. Still, as automatically as I’d straighten a picture frame hanging crooked on the wall, I’ll rise from my chair to cross a room where I’ll hear myself begin, “Excuse me, but …” and the knot tightens in anticipation of the rebuttal or the blank stare.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 Son of a one-eyed Irish emigre and a divorcee of Spanish heritage, Tom Brosnan is said to have had a way with the ladies. (Click image for larger version.) |
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
I’ve developed a mental image of my father cruising merrily through his McCarthy era adolescence, a cloud of testosterone, beer and cigarettes in his wake, laughing and lean. He was American Graffiti, Rat Pack and West Coast cool all rolled into one. How accurate this image is I’ll never know, but its verifiable backdrop is Carmel, California, the central coast artists’ colony where Alfred Hitchcock filmed movies, Bing Crosby owned a house and John Steinbeck was, by popular acclaim if not original intent, the local folklorist. The fact that my father had been born and raised in Carmel was a major point of pride for him and one of his three most cherished defining characteristics. The other two were his Roman Catholicism and the fact that he was a second-generation Irishman. No matter that I never knew him to go to confession or receive communion. No matter that his understanding of Irish culture ran no deeper than the Irish-American songbook and a fierce loyalty to the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, a school he’d seen only in photographs.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 What does this little bronze venerate and what purpose does that veneration serve? (Click image for larger version.) |
Thursday, May 28, 2009
I’ve been thinking about ancestor worship lately. A friend of mine is a member of the design committee for a monument being erected downtown in honor of one of Greenville’s more notable mayors, Max Heller. I don’t know what form the memorial will take (and it is rather odd that Heller isn’t even dead yet), but its neighbors on Main Street will include baseball legend “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, scientist Charles Townes (who invented the laser), builder Vardry McBee (considered by some to be the “Father of Greenville”) and Antebellum statesman Joel Poinsett. His statue is erected on the site where, on July 4, 1851, just a few months before his death, he delivered a speech in favor of preserving the Union. This nod to non-belligerence I group together with the Sterling High School monument honoring Greenville County’s first black high school. Both seem to me to be forms of apology endemic to the “progressive South.” But more on that later.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
This photo of BJ Koonce (sans rose background) was shot by Greenville photographer David Crosby. Concept, art direction and layout by the author. (Click image for larger version.) |
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Last Friday I retired from politics. My five-day career had consisted for the most part of conversations held with members of the Centre Stage board of directors in an effort to ease resistance to the executive director’s chosen path to retirement. Unfortunately, by the end of the week, that path had been abandoned for a series of rabbit holes where I became quickly disoriented and might have done more harm than good.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.Happy feetnotes
The new toys acquired last week include a Sony Vaio VGN-FW390, a Logitech MX1100, a Canon G10 and an LG VX8350. And BJ, whom I infected over a year ago with the ufology virus, presented a paper on the subject of disclosure to one of Greenville’s oldest women’s clubs. It was the hit of the season. I also met with a plumber, a tile man and a draper to complete several of the larger condo upfitting chores that have been niggling at me since I moved to Greenville 20 months ago.
 Nicolas de Gunzburg (a.k.a. Julian West) as Allan Gray in Vampyr.(Click image for larger version.) |
Sunday, April 26, 2009
A friend loaned me the new Criterion Collection issue of Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1932 cinema fantastique opus, Vampyr. The movie is quirky and fun, but not nearly as interesting as its star, Nicolas de Gunzburg. Son of a wealthy Russian banker (who changed his name from Günzburg to de Gunzburg to make himself seem more aristocratic), he essentially bought his role in Vampyr by bankrolling the movie at a time when director Dreyer was low on funds. Nicolas de Gunzburg then assumed the screen name Julian West for what was to be his first and last movie role. When his family fortune, still smarting from the Bolshevik Revolution, finally ran out in 1934, he moved to America where he parlayed his impeccable fashion sense into senior editorial positions at both Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Mentor to the likes of Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass and Calvin Klein, he died on his private lake island in New Jersey in 1981. His parties, like his wardrobe, were legendary.
 Airline pilot and UFO witness Jim Courant at the National Press Building. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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Peter Saputo and I financed our trip to the conference hotel in Gaithersburg, MD by selling the X-Con T-shirts that I designed last year. Shirt sales covered all but about $80 of our expenses, so I'm up for doing it again if Bassett will agree to make T-shirt orders a part of next year's registration process.
When I arrived at the First Amendment Room on the 13th floor of the Press Building an hour early, I was surprised to find there Jim Courant, a commercial airline pilot who sat on the pilots' panel at the 2006 X-Conference.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.Jim Courant's doppelgangerCNN.com articleUpdate: The Washington Post published a straight-faced article April 21 ... and it features a photo of one of our shirts!
 Buren Martin and his wife, Dottie Martin in the kitchen of the loft apartment they've built inside a former high school gymnasium (soon to be performance venue) in Inman, SC. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Sunday, April 12, 2009
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Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 Actor, late adopter and devotee of The New York Times, J. Michael Craig. (Click image for larger version.) |
Friday, April 3, 2009
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In 1998, as the tech bubble was reaching its zenith, Knight-Ridder-Tribune (may it rest in peace) decided the time was ripe to begin publishing its products online. Four members of The State’s newsroom staff, were chosen to execute that directive in Columbia, SC and I was among them.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.At right: souvenirs of fourth estate Something I'm working on for Centre Stage. (Click images for larger versions.)
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
On Sunday, March 15, we bid a fond farewell to our director, Craig Rhyne. He'd stayed to shepherd us through the first week of Moonlight and given us lovely parting gifts ... a bright new copy of GWTW and a bottle of Director's Cut chardonnay. What a mensch! I sincerely hope to work with this man again.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow, I'm back in Greenville for a busy break prior to the third and final week of our run, a run I'm told has exceeded Temple's expectations in just about every respect. A few of my Greenville peeps have indicated that they might drive to Sanford to see the show, which is a fairly big deal considering the 500-mile round-trip commute. I get a little verklempt thinking about it. Oy.
(Post-fundraiser update: Over $24K was raised, which exceeded expectations.)
Project Reconnect
Received a wonderful reply to an email I sent to my high school headmaster, C.E. Owens, III. He's now an Episcopalian priest and just as wise and gracious as I remember him. Other reconnections include fellow alumni Scott Burns, Jodie Gochnauer and Pam Atkins. Scott briefly considered joining me with his soon-to-be-ex-wife at the X-Conference this April in Maryland, but prior commitments won out. Instead, he and I might travel to Bryson City some day soon to visit with our class valedictorian Rachel Lackey at Sabbath House, the retreat she runs with her husband. Tomorrow night, I'll have dinner with Yvonne Chapman, another old friend with whom I'd lost touch for years before a letter from her showed up in my email box a few days ago.
West End Movies
At long last, Greenville has an art house cinema. West End Movies opened today on Main Street. I attended the opening and ran into BJ (not surprisingly ... it was an arts-related event, after all). I didn't stay for the movie, but did leave my card with the owner inviting him to put me on the mailing list. As I said to BJ, Greenville now has everything that I require of a city ... an excellent coffee house (the Underground), an art house cinema, a choice of live theaters, good bagels and a cool place for me to live. It doesn't hurt that Main Street is so extremely inviting and that the corridor includes Falls Park. Moving to Greenville is one of the better decisions I've made in the last several years.
The bachelor's kitchen
When my realtor friend Brenda Busby first showed me the condo I was destined to buy, she opened the refrigerator and remarked, "A bachelor must live here." Sure enough, a takeout box, some beer and assorted condiments were all the former occupant had on hand. The stove was spotless and the freezer was empty ... signs of non-use, rather than cleanliness. I often think of that moment when I buy groceries or cook. At present, I'm happy to report that the refrigerator's featured contents include a pot of chicken creole and a pan of chocolate-covered strawberries.
 The cast of Moonlight ... me, David McClutchey, Mike Brocki and Peggy Taphorn.. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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A late snow in Sanford and vicinity failed to prevent me from flying from nearby Raleigh to Birmingham last week for a planned vacation of sorts. SETC was held there and the graphical theme for the convention was a promotional photo I art directed for Guided Tour at Centre Stage in 2007. I gather from BJ Koonce that the SETC staff was "absolutely thrilled" with the image, but dear BJ has a gift for hyperbole, so I'll file the review under "very happy."
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 The actors breakfast. (Click image for larger version.) |
Thursday, February 26, 2009
In the cartoon retelling of Carlo Collodi's coming of age story, a fox named Honest John leads a wooden boy named Pinocchio down the road to ruin. He sings "Hi-diddle-dee-dee, an actor's life for me," emphasizing many of the cliches - celebrity, prosperity, debauchery - that non-actors associate with professional theater.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 Greenville performer and graphic designer Tiffany Nave.. (Click image for larger version.) |
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Last Saturday, I visited Centre Stage to catch friend and former colleague Guy Perticone's final appearance as Dion in Clear Lake: The Rock 'n Roll Reunion. His set as leader of the Belmonts concluded the first act, so I planned to arrive late, satisfy my curiosity and leave before intermission without speaking to anyone. But that was not to be.
Read entire blog entry as PDF.
 I shot this in Maine last October. It just spoke to me somehow. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Saturday, February 14, 2009
I'm observing Valentine's Day this afternoon by reflecting on the randomness of love. Love gained, love lost, love desired. As preoccupied as we are by it, as earnestly as we strive for it, one would think that falling in love with a suitable companion and staying that way would be as easy as falling off a log, particularly for those of us who still have full use of our limbs and faculties. But it isn't easy, is it?
Read entire blog entry as PDF. I miss my beard! (Click images for larger versions.) |
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
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But the big news today isn't in the grooming section of the newspaper ... my lines are recovered from the two years they spent in cold storage. I'm "off book," as we say, lines memorized. Allen Evans, who played David Selznick in the 2007 production, will stop by tomorrow and Friday to run my cues with me and with that, I should be fully prepared for first read in Sanford on February 16.
Update (February 12): Michael Brocki's reply to the email I sent him announcing my off-bookedness was "fuck you." Now I'm really looking forward to first read. And my line rehearsal with Allen yesterday went very well. Thank you, Allen!
 Charlie the Italian Greyhound mix, had a bad childhood. He doesn't like to be held. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Thursday, February 5, 2009
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 When Allen Evans brought me the head of Pazuzu, it was inevitable that a restaurant chain be founded in its honor. (Click images for larger versions.) |
Sunday, February 1, 2009
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Actor, friend and fiendishly good development director Allen Evans paid a rare visit to The Lofts last night. I gave him the Hamlet T-shirt he'd ordered and he gave me a replica of the head of Pazuzu we used to laugh about when he and I were colleagues at Centre Stage. The above layout is my humble tribute to his generosity.
 Tempting as it is to write an obit for my ponytail, I'll just let the picture speak for itself. (Click images for larger versions in new window.) |
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The ponytail now resides in a large Altoids tin, where it will remain until I decide upon a more fitting memorial. Within the next week or so, I'll shave and then the facial transformation will be complete.
So I've washed clothes, prepared my tax paperwork for the accountant, bought groceries, visited Peter, filed, paid bills, cleaned the bathrooms and wrapped up the SCSBA convention program. Soon, I'll run out of good excuses for not studying lines.
 The snow has melted for the most part, but the recession continues to strangle struggling arts organizations like Temple. |
Friday, January 23, 2009
Our second and final student matinee, respectably attended, went well today. That's the good news. The bad news is that adult ticket sales, in defiance of several positive notices and what seems to be very good buzz, have dropped precipitously since last week ... 50 and 30 patrons apiece for yesterday's shows. Is this the effect of the snow? The economy? Bardophobia? Remarkably, overall attendance figures are outpacing expectations, a fact that makes one wonder why the show was produced in the first place ...but that's a topic for another day.
Last week's announcement that Temple was on the verge of closing has elicited just over $30K from local donors to date, which means that Temple's life expectancy has been extended to the end of its current season. Beyond that ... hard to say.
We depart Elsinore this Sunday after a 2 p.m. matinee, which should put me back in Greenville by 9 p.m. Then I'll have three weeks before Moonlight rehearsals begin in which to do taxes, wrap up some school board print projects and get off book for first read. I also hope to visit my friend, Peter, whose chow died recently. The darn guy keeps taking in gimped animals that keep expiring on him. Such a big heart the man has.
 The Java Express was open for business this morning, despite a thick blanket of snow covering the city. (Click images for larger versions in new window.) |
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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We'll have a new president in about an hour. It's tempting to call my Obamaniacal friend Peter Saputo just as the swearing in ceremony begins, but I'll send him an email instead.
 I finally managed to set up a few shots of myself this week. The one above is of the Grave Digger, who sings his grave digging song to the tune of May the Circle Be Unbroken. (Click images for larger versions in new window.) |
Sunday, January 18, 2009
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Mike Brocki got a double dose of bad karma this week, first hearing yesterday that a good friend had died of prostate cancer, then receiving a tearful call this morning from his fiancee, distraught over finding one of his five cats dead in the road outside his house.
Peggy Taphorn caused quite a kerfuffle when she announced at a recent city council meeting that Temple will close this month if $120,000 isn't raised to offset the current shortfall. The recession is blamed for disappointing ticket sales this season, which, interestingly enough, follows Temple's best season ever. Hamlet traffic remains respectable, but not the 170/night budgeted. On Friday, we came as close to filling our 350-seat space as we're likely to when roughly 300 high school students were bussed in for a 9:30 matinee.
Due largely to the $23,000 in donations received since her much-publicized city council appearance, Peggy has decided to move ahead with Moonlight and Magnolias.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The first week of our three-week run, like the last day of our 10-day rehearsal/ performance slog, is ended. Audiences averaging around 120 per night have responded well to Rick St. Peter's 2-hour abbreviation of Hamlet, laughing in all the right places and applauding with reasonable energy at the end. So it's good to be me right now, especially since my roles are so easy to perform.
With the James drained of designers, those of us who remain have room to spread out. Hamlet moved into Cyburbia's former room, Ophelia moved to our rehearsal stage manager's former room and I've I moved into our lighting designer's former room which means that we all have direct access to one of two bathrooms. It's a small thing, but tight quarters do wear a person down. When I come back to do Moonlight and Magnolias in February/March, I'll be one of only two people living here. I'll cook more, I think, when the refrigerator isn't so crammed with other people's food.
 Foggy weather, more common than not during our rehearsal period, has returned to Sanford. (Click images for larger versions in new windows.) |
Friday, January 9, 2009
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The poor get poorer ...
I couldn't help overhearing the conversations that took place yesterday morning between the owner of the Java Express here in Sanford and his cook. Right now, they're trying to figure out how many paper coffee cups and plastic lids they need to buy to get them through the end of their work week. The supplier that used to sell them overstock cups and lids has no more overstock, so now they'll have to find another supplier and pay a higher price. I gather from all this that Java Express can't afford to buy more than a one-week supply of such materials at a time. Billions of dollars to wage a war against fictitious "evildoers," billions more to bail out huge financial institutions crippled by self-inflicted wounds, billions more to bail out manufacturers of ugly, unreliable and inefficient automobiles ... and on and on ... while the fish at the bottom of the food chain slowly suffocate. It's true, I suppose, that Americans are too soft and too timid to overthrow their own government. I know I am. Would that it were not so.
 Foggy weather, more common than not during our rehearsal period, has returned to Sanford. (Click images for larger versions in new window.) |
Saturday, January 3, 2009
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Breakfast at the Dairy Bar this morning was followed by a visit to the dry docked train engine across from Java Express. It's the centerpiece of a small park that includes a depot-turn-real estate office and a one-room railroad museum. The Amtrak train zips by periodically on its way from Southern Pines, but it doesn't stop here, a poignant commentary on so much, it seems. The Temple, like most of its counterparts across the country, is struggling financially. Even business at the Java Express, Sanford's only internet cafe, is slow. Elsewhere in Sanford, Mary Ann Gabriel, owner of the local screen print company that's making our show shirts, says she thinks she'll survive the current recession, but hasn't seen numbers this discouraging since she first opened her doors in 1992. Our director, here on sabbatical from his position as artistic director at Actors Guild of Lexington (KY), says he's hoping to land a teaching position to supplement the salary he receives from Actors Guild, which he gives only a 50% chance of surviving the next fiscal year. Signs near and far auger ill for the future of the arts in our country. So we do ten of twelves in the fog. And hope.
 The set as seen from the right wing during tech week. The scrim's weighted bottom flies into a 5" gap in the stage floor. A cyclorama is hung behind the set. (Click images for larger versions in new window.) |
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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I returned in time to enjoy a traditional New Year's dinner (meaning lunch) at Sanford's deservedly popular Fairview Dairy Bar. Adjacent to the Big Lots on Carthage, it offers excellent iced tea, peppery fried pork chops, collard greens (with white vinegar, de rigeur), black-eyed peas and a basket of cornbread cake, all for $7. Great service and $4 breakfasts, too, so they'll be seeing me again.
Smoked a bowl on the front porch of the James this afternoon with Kirby Mallone of Cyburbia. Fascinating guy. His company is one of roughly 20 in the United States evolving what's termed "new media." He and his wife, Gail Scott White, supplement their teaching income with Cyburbia gigs hither and yon. His background is in writing, acting and directing. Hers is in animation and graphic art. They'll be my hall mates for another week, after which they'll return to Virginia.