 Temple Theatre in Sanford, NC in 2009, right after the snow melted during our run of Hamlet. Sadly, I won't be working there this year.. |
Monday, September 6, 2010
For various reasons, I've resigned from the Temple Theatre (Sanford, NC) production of Flaming Idiots that goes into rehearsal next month. It seems that I've been doing a lot of resigning lately ... Center Stage in July, the opera before that, and now this.
When I was a kid, my parents signed me up for just about everything imaginable ... altar boys, swimming, trumpet, piano, YMCA basketball, boy scouts ... and I quit all of them before achieving any particularly scrapbook-worthy milestones. My mother's second-favorite nickname for me, right after "hot house flower," was "quitter."
True enough, I hated to go outside - especially during summer months - and I loved to stop doing things that I didn't enjoy doing.
Then they enrolled me in summer drama camp and suddenly, I wanted to go outside ... to the theater ... and I never wanted to quit.
How strange it is to consider, then, that I've quit so much theater lately.
On a more positive note, maybe I'll get to go to Bar Harbor this year after all, provided I feel road-worthy by end of October. I do miss the sound of the waves breaking on the big rocks.
My friend Michael's father died September 2. The funeral will be this Friday and I'll go to show my support. Of Michael. I didn't know his father. It will be the second funeral I've ever attended, the first being my mother's 2006 funeral mass, which wasn't a funeral really, rather a mass in her honor followed by a reception.
It's taken me almost a half century to figure out what "show my support" means, and why shows of support matter so much to everybody involved.
What's up with China and the UFOs? Five of the 21 pieces I've posted to Pimp My Realitysince July 12 have been about UFO sightings in China. UFOs causing flight delays, mainstream astronomers saying UFOs are real. And People's Daily reporting all of it without a twitch or a snigger.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Since they were contemporaries, I sometimes wonder if Sinclair Lewis and Norman Rockwell hated each other. Lewis dealt so unmercifully with the American ideals that Rockwell glorified.
Kingsblood Royal is Lewis' satire of race relations in middle America, circa WW II. The hypocrites, the climbers, the bigots and bullies. The same stock company of actors we meet in all his novels. Neil Kingsblood, the protagonist, is an up-and-coming white banker who finds out that he's descended from a Revolutionary War-era explorer, a black man, named Xavier Pic. The news destroys him, or so I predict it will 20 pages from the end of the book, which is where I am now.
Last night, I asked some friends of mine, ages 54-65, whether they know any white people who'd be terribly upset by such a discovery. They do, indeed. Many. Two of my friends have red hair and one is blonde, a very Anglo-Arian sample of humanity, but I was surprised, just the same.
Maybe if I felt more affiliated with some group, any group, or oppressed by another, I'd better understand why people get so inflamed about heritage issues. I'm certainly aware of what people appear to be and I'm certainly most at ease among people who are most "like me," but I'm far less conscious of ethnicity than I am of friendliness or intelligence.
Or am I kidding myself? Hmm. Does the fact that I immediately notice a person's race, gender, apparent age and health make me a superficialist? Is it wrong that, as soon as a person gets close enough for me to engage my other senses, I'm trying to hear his mind and sniff his airspace? Does he meet my eye? How's his handshake? Teeth? Sense of humor? Hygiene?
And don't we all do this?
But hold on ... While skin color may not be a disqualifier that I acknowledge, isn't it true that I'm prejudiced in other ways? What gives me the idea that my prejudices are any nobler than the next guy's?
No answer.
Damn.
 The Baillie Players have decided to advertise in the SC Association of School Administrators quarterly magazine. Here's the ad I designed for them. iStockPhoto photography. |
Saturday, August 21, 2010
My Amtrack passenger friend has decided to run a full-page ad in the next issue of the SCASA quarterly and he asked me to do the design. A stock photo (shown at right) spoke to me, so the ad became "You'll be amazed."
I'm kind of amazed that I'm still making a living, however modest, as a creative. When does the other shoe drop, I wonder? When does somebody step out of the shadows to ask me for my papers and, finding that I haven't had a "real job" in over a decade, send me off to a work camp where I'm forced to add columns of numbers for the rest of my life?
Today I wrote a storyboard for a 20-second YouTube video that Don Koonce will pitch to a client on Monday. If the client buys into the concept, we should have a lot of fun producing it, but odds are that a more conservative approach will be requested. It makes me wonder how many other promising ideas have been smothered in their cradles down through the ages. I shudder to think.
 The egg-mcmuffin-looking entree doesn't look especially good, but the idea of slipping away somewhere on a train for a few days is very appealing. |
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Maybe it's my imagination - in fact, it probably is - but I thought I caught a whiff of Autumn approaching today. It was wedged in between the heat and the humidity and it lasted only a few seconds, but maybe ...
My friend Buren sent me an iPhone photo he took from his Amtrack dining car table en route from Virginia to New York. He's in the middle of a three-week run of whatever show he's doing with his family these days and they're taking a break to catch a few Broadway shows. I replied to the photo saying that he leads one of the all-time great lives. He replied to my observation, "Sometimes."
Here's the text that accompanied the photo ...
In the middle of our 3 week run in Richmond/DC... We always slip away to New York for 3 or 4 nights... See two or three shows to steal material... From Richmond it's a 6 hour Amtrak ride... I love the train ride... I sit in the cafe car with the laptop... WIFI... Work a little ... Gaze out the window ... Eat...
 This video still of what some are calling a UFO over Chonqing, China more likely is a missile en route to the Gobi Desert. The odd thing about the video is that it looks nothing like what eyewitnesses described seeing ... four lantern-like objects hovering over a park. Explanation? |
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Jim Courant interview has been posted to Technorati. I assume that the Peter Davenport interview was published in Link, but I never got around to getting a copy of this week's edition, so I don't know for sure. Topping both articles in popularity online were two far more easily prepared pieces: a news summary about recent "UFO" sightings in China and another news summary about a probable UFO hoax in Malaysia.
My editor tells me that it doesn't matter how popular the articles are, however. He says that, so long as he's editing and I'm still interested, I can continue to write for the section. Job security. If only money were involved.
Somehow or other, I managed to kick the restaurant habit this week, buying groceries and cooking them, not eating out even once. I'd almost forgotten how nice it is to battle hunger by simply walking into the kitchen, rather than driving to a restaurant.
How lovely to look inside the refrigerator and see something other than condiments, batteries, candles and a day-old carryout box.
Against my better judgement, I've accepted a role in a production of Flaming Idiots at Temple Theatre in Sanford, NC. It's an eight-character farce, which I don't hold against it, but it takes place during what's shaping up to be an extraordinarily busy time of year for FernCreek. It also precludes my annual trip to Bar Harbor.
Two big strikes against it.
In its favor are these points: 1.) full salary contract, 2.) Craig Rhyne directing and Michael Brocki playing opposite, 3.) Sanford is a nice place to visit when the weather is cool., 4.) I haven't been out of Greenville for more than a one-week stretch in almost two years.
So, badly timed as it is in some respects, the Temple gig is well timed in others and it is getting me out of town to be paid for doing something I enjoy with people I like. And, so far as the FernCreek work goes, my telecommuting skills are of a pretty high order.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Some friends of mine went to see a play in the park yesterday. The heat index at go time was 103 degrees. One hundred and three degrees, ladies and gentlemen. Recreational outdoor activites should be cancelled when temperatures climb that high, but the show went on as scheduled.
Madness.
Went to a doc-in-the-box a few days ago to get a prescription for the ointment I've used since high school to treat the tiny patches of eczema that long stretches of extreme heat sometimes cause to appear on my fingers. I knew exactly what I needed - a 15 gram tube of fluocinonide cream .05% - enough to last me another several years - but I had to pay the clinic $100 to shuffle papers.
And they told me that I have high blood pressure, to boot. No doubt I did, after waiting for over an hour in a noisy room on a hot day while extremely hungry and pissed off after nearly two months of sitting motionless on my sofa because it's been so goddam hot outside!
Nevertheless, the diagnosis did startle me. So I went out and bought a bunch of salt-free food and hunted down the exercise room we have here. I'm now walking two miles each morning on the treadmill, miles I used to walk outside back in the Before Time when the weather was sane.
 The Toast King, shown here with Insanity Prawn Boy, rules over the Moon. It was the Toast King who first told us that heat induces royalty. |
Friday, July 23, 2010
When I contacted Clayton Kale last week about publishing a serious UFO piece in Link Magazine, I did so expecting a polite "we appreciate your interest ..." boilerplate reply ... or no reply at all ... or a spam filter erected in my honor. Link, for all its hipness and youthery, still is published by The Greenville News, which exudes no hipness or youthery whatsoever.
I was wrong.
Kale emailed me yesterday to say that he's going to run the Peter Davenport (NUFORC) interview in next week's issue. His reason for running the piece, he says, is to encourage other local writers to submit their work, but I'm already lining up an interview with Charlotte-based commercial airline pilot Jim Courant in order to have a piece ready to pitch immediately after the Davenport interview is published.
According to the Toast King, who rules over the Moon, heat induces royalty. Thus did Greenville's coronation day parade culminate yesterday with a high of 101. Actual. God knows what the heat index was. Festivities included a widespread power outage (sort of reverse fireworks, I guess) and what sounded like a bat - probably starved and dehydrated - squeaking around the rafters of my 14-foot ceiling. People who've heard me refer the condo as a "bat cave" may begin laughing ... wait for it ... now!
Three ufology news summaries published at Technorati and an opinion piece about the Shirley Sherrod debacle published at Technorati and submitted to The Greenville News. A prolific week, by my standards.
Sherrod's story reminds me of what went down when Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. showed his ass in Massachusetts almost a year ago. Rush to judgement, double back-flip discrimination, apologies, pro forma CYA rhetoric about "teaching moments."
What is the movie about people having some horribly disfiguring condition or disease that's visible only if seen through special lenses? I wish I could remember it. Vampires or aliens or zombies. Something.
Anyway, if we could look at politicians and pundits through a set of those lenses, I think we'd see how much they suffer. Career politicians would be unrecognizable as human beings, especially on the federal level. Local politicians, less corrupted perhaps than their state and federal betters, would look proportionately less frightening.
Maybe my own powerlessness explains why I have such good teeth.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tonight is the night of the big summer fundraiser at Centre Stage, this year themed "Dance Party on Mars!" Of course, I won't be there, because I don't care for big blowouts, but I do look forward to seeing the photos.
Last night, I watched the movie "Greenberg" with Ben Stiller and was reminded of Tim Brosnan. Sadly.
 NUFORC director Peter Davenport inside the decommissioned Atlas missile facility that he may someday call home ... or not. |
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I spent an hour yesterday interviewing NUFORC director Peter Davenport for a profile piece now chilling in the editorial queue at Technorati. It's scheduled for publication on Friday.
I also emailed the editor of Link, pitching the idea of a regular ufology column in his magazine. Edgy and hip and somewhat in-your-face though it is, Link does reside in Greenville, SC, so I'll be surprised if the idea generates any interest. But nothing ventured ...
Talking with Davenport yesterday and investigative journalist Paola Harris a few days earlier, I was struck by how absolutely normal they are, these prominent people in the crazy field of ufology.
I'm not so far removed from skepticism myself as to have forgotten how I used to expect everyone involved with UFOs to have a tick or a quirk or some symptom that I could point to and say, "See? Not playing with a full deck, that one. None of them are."
One definition of insanity, however, is doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting a different result.
So I stopped.
Davenport and Harris are two cogent, articulate professionals, both of whom are understandably amazed by what seems to be transpiring ... all of it ... from the phenomenon itself to the government's refusal to acknowledge the phenomenon to the American media's reluctance to report the government's refusal. I share their amazement.
An X-Conference presentation comes to mind from several years ago, one given by former FAA official John Callaghan. I remember him holding up the bundle of air traffic control documents he'd brought to substantiate an unambiguous in-flight close encounter reported by a JAL pilot as he asked, "Now, who are you going to believe? The government, or your lying eyes?"
The pilot had been reprimanded for talking to the press and U.S. government officials had tried to make the incident disappear, as per usual.
This, I think, is the greater part of what fascinates me about whatever the hell is going on. Hundreds of credible witnesses, radar reports, photos, videos. The kind of evidence that would be admitted in court and more than enough of it to send people to prison if seeing a UFO were a crime.
Clearly, much of the "proof" is hoaxed or questionable, but much of it just as clearly isn't. Stanton Friedman, one of the more popular speakers on the UFO lecture circuit, makes the point that most materials aren't fissionable, but that nuclear physicists don't care about those. They're interested in the subset of materials that are fissionable. He's a nuclear physicist himself, so I figure he knows what he's talking about on that score.
Radio talkshow host Kevin Smith makes the complimentary point that extraordinary claims actually don't require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan famously stated. They should be held to the same evidentiary standards as any other claims.
It would be extraordinary, for example, to claim that Tom Brokaw had stolen women's underwear from a Victoria's Secret store, but how much more difficult should it be to convict him of shoplifting than it would be to convict anyone else?
Friedman and Smith are reasonable men, as are so many others, but their voices get drowned out ... by officials scoffing, "Lil' green men!" and the press echoing, "Lil' green men!" and the boys in the back of the pickup truck singing "Lil' green men!"
Everybody gets a good laugh and then a good night's sleep, embracing the the socially acceptable "Ichabod Crane-like slumber," as Davenport describes it.
Good night, America.
And good luck.
Summer employmentSunday, July 11, 2010
Whenever I go for more than a week without blogging, I feel it's necessary to offer some explanation. My excuse this time is that I've been ramping up FernCreek marketing while ramping down Centre Stage marketing and writing for Technorati.
FernCreek's challenge is to re-establish itself as a company that provides not only video and interactive media, but marketing/branding services as well. In addition to the new Web site, we've cranked out new business cards, letterhead, note cards and a gate-fold brochure that will serve as an all-purpose leave-behind/image piece. These materials are graphically consistent with the Powerpoint presentations that Don Koonce uses to pitch FernCreek to prospective clients and they make a strong case for who we are and what we do. And how we do it.Our impression of the local market is that opportunities are unfolding. Whether that impression is accurate remains to be seen. Fortunately, none of us is hungry or feverishly ambitious. None of us have anything to prove. We're doing what we do because we enjoy it. I think this shows and I'm positive that it's enjoyable for other people to work with.
After deciding several weeks ago not to renew our contract with Centre Stage for next season, BJ and I are preparing to strike our CS marketing tent July 15, the day of the theater's annual fundraiser (Dance Party on Mars). By that time, we'll have generated all of See Rock City's marketing materials, and laid the foundation for next season's basic campaign theme. BJ will stay on for a time in her contractual fundraising capacity, but responsibility for marketing Centre Stage will be ours no more.
To any who might require clarification on this point, let me say for the record ... The time for me to let go of all things Centre Stage is right ... and right now. (Imagine Unknown Hinson saying that.) No harm, no foul. A new team is taking the field.
My Technorati editor, Brad Schmidt, emailed a few days ago inquiring about my failure to publish any new ufology articles for almost ten days, which was rather embarrassing. So I've spent the last two days researching and writing four articles, one of which is an interview with Italian-American investigative journalist Paola Harris.
Two of the articles were posted yesterday, much to my relief. The other two will go up next week and, when they do, my average will be restored to two articles published per week, which is what I sort of agreed to when Technorati gave me the column in May.
A new theatrical employment opportunity has appeared behind, of all places, the Wade Hampton Boulevard K-mart where a sign on Rushmore says that something called Jones Family Dinner Theater is now hiring actors. Since I'm an actor and sometimes eat dinner, I plan to be in attendance at the production of Who Killed the Boss that their web site says is in rehearsal.
Dinner theaterSaturday, July 3, 2010
I like everything about the Texas Roadhouse chain that's edible. The wooden seats may be a bit hard and the acoustics may suck, but the steaks and the the baked beans and the rolls are great. Sweet tea, too.
The cheeky service is a different matter.
How surprised would she be, I wonder, to find out that her tip evaporated the moment my Roadhouse waitress, who looked all of 16 years old, sat down across from me at my table to take my order a few days ago in Taylors?
As if she were my guest or my buddy or the manager. Barriers be damned.
I didn't say anything, which may have been irresponsible of me, now that I think about it. Maybe too much has gone without saying already.
Here, then... to the servers of the world ...
- Don't tell me your name, okay? I don't care what your name is and I won't remember it, anyway.
- Don't imply that you and I are together. "We" aren't feeling any particular way and "we" aren't having an appetizer. I am. If you want an appetizer, buy one.
- Don't tell me that you'll "be taking care of me tonight." That phrase puts images in my head that I'd rather not be there, especially if you're a guy.
- I don't want cracked pepper on my salad. I didn't want it in 1972 and I don't want it now.
- When I thank you for bringing me my meal, please don't say, "No problem." How easy or difficult it is for you to do your job is of no interest to me.
- Don't ask me what I'm reading.
- Unless I invite you to sit at my table, you may not do so.
- Please don't try to up-sell me on the water. That's just weird.
All I want - all I want - is for you to bring me my order as quickly as possible. Do that without embellishment and I'll tip you 20%. Easy peasy. Deal?
The cozy catastrophe
Thursday, July 1, 2010
I've been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction lately. My favorite sub-genre. When Worlds Collide, Level Seven, The Road, that sort of thing. I'm mid-way through Nevil Shute's On the Beach right now and Whitley Strieber's War Day is in queue. Tonight I'll watch "The Book of Eli."
How to explain this fascination with the Denouement? Not sure. Maybe it's the romantic notion of being among the lucky few, even if some of us are wounded or bitter or others gone 'round the bend. Wind blowing through empty city streets. Potted meat washed down with rainwater. Half-baked plans to travel north some day in search of survivors. A dog, of course. Or a trained elephant.
One science fiction writer coined the term "cozy catastrophe" to describe such scenarios ... everybody wiped out except the people you care about most. And no matter how bad things get, you keep up appearances. You insist on tea at tea time and good grooming. You say grace before meals.
It's true enough that the best laid plans - and they did seem awfully well-laid as we were laying them - have gone astray, but I was stocking my fallout shelter with fresh batteries and checking the shelter hatch for leaks weeks ago, even as diplomatic talks were in progress. Once a scout, you know ...
Cozy catastrophes can end in any number of ways. A government helicopter arrives to deliver good news and antibiotics. Or the helicopter arrives too late. Or crashes. Or the survivors turn on each other. Radioactive dust can be a problem, too.
Here's how John Wyndham ended The Day of the Triffids ...
So we must regard the task ahead as ours alone. We think now that we can see the way, but there is still a lot of work and research to be done before the day when we, or our children, or their children, will cross the narrow straits on the great crusade to drive the triffids back and back with ceaseless destruction until we have wiped the last one of them from the face of the land that they have usurped.
Personally, I'd rather drink tea.
Oh ... and speaking of the apocalypse. An ad rep for The Greenville News told me today that their entire production department has been outsourced to a company in Indiana. Of the ten page designers who were displaced, seven were let go and three were kept on to facilitate the outsourcing. Ye gods.
 The hardware that I'm returning eventually will end up in distant lands where insanely poor people toxify themselves extracting precious metals from motherboards and the like. |
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Can't-tenna
The Cantenna experiment has failed. I've tried using it in combination with a USB adapter that plugs directly into the laptop, as well as with two different wireless access points and the signal is almost indistinguishable from what's produced without it. I'll call Charter Cable next week to find out how I can help them increase their bottom line. Meanwhile, it's time to start returning hardware to vendors. (sigh)
Jobs report
Two work orders arrived this week ... a logo design for Lexington One and a brochure for Southeastern Children's Home. Another job slipped through my fingers because the deadline was unworkable and the base files were in Quark, which I haven't used in at least 10 years.
Self-promotion
The FernCreek clan was supposed to gather to discuss improvements to its own marketing materials today, but that gathering has been deferred. One hopes that we don't become a case of the cobbler's children.
TelecomFriday, June 25, 2010
Alas, my latest LG VX 8350 has been laid to rest. It was the sixth one I'd owned, all identical, all but the first bought through ebay after the model was discontinued by Verizon years ago. It was just the right size and shape for me and just the right feature set, so I kept coming back for more, even though every one ever manufactured left the factory with a defective right hinge.
A "flaw in the mold," as it was explained, made the hinge a ticking time bomb. Fine at first, it eventually would form a crack. The crack would cause a tell-tale clicking sound as the phone was opened and closed, and the clicking sound would get progressively louder until the hinge failed. Sometimes it took a month, other times almost a year, but the outcome was inevitable.
The main reason that I stuck with the 8350 for so long, though, was that it was hackable. Using a shareware program called Bitpim, I could access its ringtones, wallpaper and iTAP dictionary, which meant that I could use my own ringtones instead of renting them from Verizon and I could design wallpaper for the phone that didn't rely on its one-megapixel camera for raw material.
(Shut up, okay? Guys like to customize things.)
But after six phones and I don't know how much money, my brand loyalty was exhausted. I now own a Motorola RAZR. Old stock, never-used and around $400 retail when issued. Buy-it-now price on ebay: $40.
It's an excellent phone, but thus far, the RAZR has spurned Bitpim's advances. Sadness. I'll just have to keep plugging away until I get inside it or I break it and have to replace it. That's something I definitely know how to do.
The hairdresser
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Yesterday, I sat facing a table of four women and four children at Panera. The oldest of the children was a youngish teenage girl, primped and painted as we require. The next youngest was an overweight boy, maybe 12 years old, looking pretty standard-issue in his T-shirt, baggy shorts and tennis shoes. The other two children were unremarkable. Both very young. A quiet little girl and a little boy who ran around in circles trying to choke himself on his own tongue or whatever. It's amazing that little boys grow up to be anything at all.
It wasn't until everyone at the table had eaten and the ladies were talking among themselves that the weirdness kicked in (although a friend assures me that it wasn't as weird as I make it out to be) ...
The 12-year-old stood up, positioned himself behind the teenage girl, who was still seated, and started manipulating her hair. Not teasing her, but caressing her, stroking her hair back and up the way a hairdresser might demonstrate possibilities to a client. There was a sexual flavor to his attentions, too, right on the cusp of deniability.
Nobody at the table paid any attention, though, not the women or the teenage girl, who by this time was deep in conversation with her elders. Once or twice, the boy said, "Look, momma! Look what I've done to Jenny's hair!" holding it up or off to one side, not at all trying to be funny. On he went, oblivious to their disregard, and on they went, oblivious to to him.
I kept expecting one of the women to say, "Okay, Bobby, Jenny's hair has had enough now," or for Jenny herself to ask Bobby to stop, but neither thing happened. I imagined stepping over to one of the women, leaning close and whispering, "Excuse me, ma'am, but your party is not invisible and little Mr. Sebastian there is creeping me out."
Obviously, I have no idea what Bobby's story is. Or Jenny's. But their stories aren't so much the point to me as the assumption that people seem to make in places like Panera that they're unobserved.
They seem to define "family atmosphere" as "where people can behave as if they were the only family present."
 This slow loris is the closest thing I can think of to what I dreamed about. Same face, but much, much smaller. And bigger ears. |
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
I dreamed about my father again last night. We were fighting, which is typical for us in my dreams, this time about something he'd done to an animal I'd found on the side of the road. It was the size of a mouse and mostly was a mouse, except that it was partly a monkey and it seemed rather sad. It also seemed too fragile to carry in my hand, so I prodded it into a ginger jar and took it home where I let it crawl out onto the dining room table.
It was very slow moving at first, but perked up once it was outside the jar. Its coordination improved, too, and I sensed that it was taking an interest in its surroundings.
That's when my father started teasing it with a flashlight beam, making it chase a spot of light across the floor. Faster and faster he moved the spot and faster and faster the chase became until the mouse or the monkey or whatever it was slammed headlong into a baseboard at the foot of a wall.
It rolled over onto its side, holding its head between its paws the way a person with a terrible headache would do and I knew that it was dying. I also knew that my father had meant for this to happen and that he thought it was funny.
So I slapped him, anticipating a full-on brawl, but feeling too weak to follow through. I woke up in an impotent rage.
I'm usually pretty good at interpreting my dreams, but this one has me flummoxed. No connection to anything I've thought or done recently, not that I can remember.
Or am I overlooking something?
Leeches like meMonday, June 21, 2010
The person whose wi-fi signal I used to leech moved out last week. I'm not sure who he was - not even sure that he was a he - but the signal is gone, so it's time to make other arrangements.
I could pay Charter Cable's $50 setup fee and then $20/month for internet access, but it rankles to spend money on a service that I've been enjoying free-of-charge for almost three years.
A better option for me is the Super Cantenna. At $40 with shipping, it looks like a Pringles can on a tiny tripod. Connect it to a wireless router, flashed and configured in a particular way, and it rebroadcasts signals pulled from a considerable distance ... up to a mile, by some estimates. Odds are that a few of the signals it finds will be non-password-protected and those are the ones that I'll use to get online when my compatible router (okay, another $40) arrives. Such is the plan, anyway.
The safety-net (not)
You might be wondering whether I'm worried about security. Short anwer: no. Long answer: Security is every bit as illusory online as it is in real life. Maybe moreso. And that goes double for privacy. Consider this ...
The term for cruising an area in search of wi-fi signal is "wardriving."
Google "wardriving" and you'll find plenty of sites openly devoted to the science of breaking and entering password-protected wi-fi networks. Some of them do this in the name of addressing network vulnerability issues, but their how-to videos leave me with little doubt that the sites' owners are more interested in gaining access than in preventing it. There's even retail software available - programs like WEPcrack and coWPAtty - designed specifically to crack (I mean ... um ... verify the strength of) network passwords.
As you might expect, other sites offer tips and tricks for making the leech's life less care-free, but they don't inspire much confidence. One such site suggests guarding your home network with an "upside-down-ternet" that's supposed to confound intruders. I'm not sure how it works, and I won't condemn it for sounding like a Tupperware party refreshment, but I doubt that it's as effective as common sense.
If you're really serious about internet security, keep your virus software up-to-date. Don't disable your Windows firewall. Restrict your online banking sessions to hard-wired networks, especially if you live in a crowded urban area. And if you use your credit card to make an online purchase inside a coffee house, don't display the card beside you as you do so.
Don't be a tard.
Ethics 802.11g
But what, one might ask, are the moral implications of catching and using a thing that's been tossed at one through the air? Is it stealing? At my level of usage, I think not. If I were choking host networks with video traffic, maybe - maybe - we'd have something to talk about, but I'm not, so we don't. Besides, anyone who wants to disinvite me from their party needs only lock the door.
I'm a lightly armed pacifist pursuing paths of no resistance, the least of anyone's worries in an online community that's crawling with cyber-thugs and hucksters. There are rules, but the rules aren't enforced. There are roads, but the roads aren't paved. It isn't safe to be out after dark.
This is unacceptable.
Individual access fees should be rolled into municipal budgets where they belong. Internet usage is too pervasive, too integral to everyday life to be handled otherwise. Leeches like me should be pointing their Cantennas at public access nodes, not coffee shops, and home network users should be no more interested in my online activities than they are in where and how I drive my car.
Universal healthcare would be nice, too.
PermanenceFriday, June 18, 2010
I've been checking mail for a friend while he's out of town for a few months. He has a post office box, as do I, even though he's been living for years in a place where he could receive his mail directly if he wanted to. As have I.
My friend's reasons for having a post office box aren't clear to me, but I began renting mine when I moved to Greenville several years ago. The box was necessary to avoid losing mail through what might have become a series of temporary mail forwarding orders.
I felt transient, too. Even after buying the condominium where I've lived to this day, it seemed to me that I might be here a few months or I might be here a few years. The post office box became one of my escape hatches.
Today, instead of driving across town to check my friend's mail, I drove to my own box, and as I was pulling junk mail out of the wall there, I thought, "I really need to get rid of this thing."
Of course, it would be a bother if I did. I'd spend the better part of a day updating online accounts and downloading forms to fill out and send by snail. But how much more time do I spend each year driving or walking to and from the post office?
My reluctance to migrate might be nothing more than laziness. Or it might be the feeling that, no matter how long I stay here, I'm still about to leave.
Successful launch
I've been doing print work for FernCreek Creative for a while now, mostly their Southeastern Children's Home account. FernCreek is owned by Don & BJ Koonce and, with BJ's (and my) departure from Centre Stage, FernCreek has begun to occupy more of my time. Recently, I redesigned their Web site. Stay tuned.
 Psychic to the stars, Mariana Vezneva |
Thursday, June 10, 2010
At one end of the Technorati feedback spectrum are Stanton Friedman (who stopped by this article to advertise his new book) and NARCAP scientist Ted Roe (who stopped by this article to offer a semantic distinction between UFO’s and UAP’s). At the other end of the spectrum is the effervescent, if linguistically challenged, Canadian who wrote, “if people saw what thay may have saw i donot think their makeing storys or lies up about UFO OR Sauce Squash or thee LOCK NESS MONSTER.”
(If you’ve already figured out that Sauce Squash = Sasquatch, go to the head of thee CLASS.)
Then there's the email that arrived yesterday from a woman identifying herself as “Bulgarian journalist” Anna Kaltseva. She wanted me to know about a “unique experiment” led in 2009 by “the phenomenon Mariana Vezneva."
The phenomenon? There are people in the world who refer to themselves as “the phenomeonon?”
An attachment to Kaltseva’s email chronicles what she calls a “mental-pictogram dialogue experiment” in which a team of 14 Bulgarian scientists posed questions to extraterrestrials and received their answers in the form of crop circles. Vezneva’s role as leader of the experiment was to transmit the scientists’ questions to the extraterrestrials telepathically and then to interpret the crop circle replies that followed.
Google Mariana Vezneva and you’ll find a site where the experiment, as well as her "phenomenon" credentials are laid out in fine fashion. According to Vezneva's site, she is “a phenomenon (and) holder of the phenomenon’s award (which is) “the statuette Golden Phenomenon.”
And who hasn't heard of the Golden Phenomenon award? I mean, really?
Google Anna Kaltseva and you’ll find a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page and a Twitter page. The LinkedIn page says that she’s an editor living in Bulgaria. End of transmission. The Twitter page says this: “I am Bulgarian woman and I am happy join with you!” The most recent tweet there: “I am earning and enjoing with (followed by a link to a read-articles-in-your-spare-time-for-money site called Readbud).” (And yes, the Bulgarian journalist's oft-repeated tweet really is spelled “enjoing.”)
I have no more questions, your honor.
Regarding women’s intestines ...
This just in, ladies … (and it depresses me that I should have to remind you) … Men do not want to know when you’re going to the powder room to take a dump. This means, among other things, that you don’t want to be seen entering the ladies’ room with a newspaper or magazine tucked under your arm. You might just as well wear a sign that says, “Defecation in T-minus 5, 4, 3 …”
Good Lord.
As much time as you spend reenforcing the illusion that your hair and skin are perfect and that you never age, how ever could you overlook the most important illusion of all … that you have no digestive system?
Vintage comestiblesSunday, June 6, 2010
Watching our food chain being destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico this afternoon reminded me that I haven't bought groceries in a very long time. Weeks. I've been trying to eat out less of late, though, and one effect of this has been that my stock of non-perishables is beginning to disappear. Pasta and canned goods. Condiments, too.
On the freezer side of the refrigerator, I arrived a few days ago at a layer of nearly two-year-old meat (see photo). I don't worry about whether eating the meat would make me sick, but the color of it (sort of a dusty rose) does make me wonder how it would taste.
FlabbinessWednesday, June 2, 2010
It's the heat that makes me feel this way. Soft and sleepy and sticky and dirty and slow. I really, really, really dislike hot weather. I really, really, really miss fall and winter. Gotta wait another four or five months for relief, though. No way around it.
The beard that disappeared last month is returning. Who can shave every day when it's hot like this? So I sit in the cool, dry, dark quiet of my condo cave and grow whiskers.
The Pimp My Reality feature at Technorati continues, though not at the furious pace it did the first week. An article or two per week is comfortable. Eventually, I'd like to recruit more writers.
Almost wrote a blog piece about Memorial Day. Somebody forwarded me one of those "in praise of our troops" things and I had my typical allergic reaction. It talked about how people enter the military because they love America and want to defend it with their lives. Stuff like that.
Please.
Duty
Friday, May 28, 2010
I'm calling bullshit on the notion that doing one's "duty" is a higher cause. Whatever form of payment we accept, be it money or gratitude or vicarious pleasure, we do what we do for personal gain. That includes duty.
 Notes from Underground |
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Routines come and routines go. It can be good when they, go, I think.
At the conclusion of my second straight week of "making do" without Centre Stage, I'm pleased to report that I've overcome just about all of the practical disadvantages kicked up by the separation. I now park in the County Square lot behind the Governor's School, for example, and the difference in distance to my favorite downtown haunts is negligible.
I've yet to find another place where it's okay for me to fall asleep on a couch, but in tradeoff I've rediscovered Falls Park and the coffee shop there called Spill the Beans. It opens at 6:30 a.m., which rocks. It also has a ginormous picture window and plenty of upholstered furniture.
Now to find another clique of like-minded souls that I can hover near without obligation, implication, expectation or time constraints. A scarce commodity, that.
Grungy angels
Just finished watching the movie "Legion." God has lost His faith in mankind and sends Michael the Archangel to wipe the slate clean. But Michael chooses to give God "what He needs," rather than "what He wants," drawing the ire of Gabriel and a legion of nasties. A battle ensues. A baby is born. Mary and Joseph drive their station wagon into the sunrise with a trunkload of automatic weapons. I kinda liked it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
What to do? What to do?
Pimp my realitySunday, May 23, 2010
About a week ago, Bradford Schmidt, the Technology editor at Technorati.com asked me if I'd be interested in having my own feature section devoted to ufology. I'd been contributing to Technorati on and off since April, mostly stories pertaining to UFO's, so I told him I would.
He asked me what I'd like to call the section and yesterday I emailed him suggesting that we call it "Pimp my reality."
I've yet to hear back from him on that, but I'm optimistic. As you can see, the graphics I've used for the section's banner are derived from the upcoming Centre Stage fundraiser. Reuse, recycle.
Owing to my desire that the new section have a decent selection of articles when it launches, the last 48 hours have been a whirl of emails, calls, research and writing. About 3,000 words cranked out in toto, which is a shitload for me. (Isn't that a standard unit of measurement? Shitload? I think it is.)
 In a world ... |
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Classic Americana.
Peeling paint, rusty metal and all.
The "coming attraction" boxes that flank the front doors both offer reassuring images of Jesus Christ, but the marquee suggests a duality: "Home of UCW".
I googled UCW and the first link I found was to an organization that appears to be concerned with violations of child labor laws. Could that be it?
No, I decided. Backward though Upstate South Carolina may be in certain respects, its children are rather too spherical to be the victims of anything involving labor.
I passed also on Underground Championship Wrestling. Their photos of speedo-clad male models promising "hot, high-energy wrestling action" and "groans and screams and submissions (that) are genuine" ... too overtly gay to be doing business less than a block away from the Inman Volunteer Fire Department.
Alas.
The most likely link in the list was to Upstate Championship Wrestling. A Myspace page. The status update there, posted 19 hours prior to this writing, reads as follows: the show went pretty good made the dabetes people some money
 X-Conference organizer Stephen Bassett speaks to a film crew at the 2009 X-Conference. |
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Published at TechnoratiThe X-Conference, an annual “disclosure movement” conclave presented by Washington lobbyist Stephen Bassett’s Paradigm Research Group, concluded May 10 as expected: with a call for the Obama administration to make “formal acknowledgement to the American people of the extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”
Read entire article at Technorati.
 Buren Martin feeds Hard Head a snack while what's for dinner looks on. |
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Yesterday, my friend Buren took me to the pasture where his four cows live with a horse named Hard Head, two baby goats and two more cows that belong to his brother, Chris. The pasture looks to me like cow paradise. Acres of green grass, rolling hills, a creek, shade trees, a perfectly weathered barn.
Buren buys his cows as calves from a local dairy farm for $50 a head, then sets them loose in the pasture for a year. They're bottle-fed at first. At the end of the year, he sells them for meat.
Lately, he's been thinking about getting a few of his cows pregnant, but not the old-fashioned way.
You may have had occasion to wonder, as I have, how certain ideas originated. Eating snails, for example. Tattoos. Nasal douches.
But this business of artificially inseminating cows is in a league by itself.
What possessed the first man (and I think it's safe to assume that it was a man) to masturbate a bull to orgasm, then shove a handful of hot bull semen up a cow's ass?
 Half-Bass (1996-2010) |
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Ten years ago, I was one of two "strategists" wrangling creative at a mid-size ad agency in Columbia.
The other strategist and I have kept in touch since then, mostly by email, usually in a nostalgic vein, sometimes to vent. His name is Patrick. He called me yesterday.
"Well, my biggest pro bono client has told me to turn in my key," he said. He was pissed.
"Your key to what?" I asked.
"My key to their building," he said.
Patrick has been helping an animal shelter in North Carolina build its not-for-profit brand since 2007 - all media, from concept to publication. Full-service marketing and public relations. The shelter pays him a tiny fraction of the actual market value of his time, which is why he refers to them as a pro bono client. I get that. His motivation is the staff and the animals and the creative license. The money is a formality. I get that, too. In spades.
"Why do you need a key to their building?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.
"I use their copier," he said, "and they have a big table. I meet media reps there on their behalf. I store equipment there that I use for their projects."
"Don't you have a table at home?" I asked. "And a storage room? You have a copier, too, don't you? Meet the media reps at Starbucks." I was needling him.
"That's not the point!" he said.
I asked him what the point was and he explained unnecessarily that he'd come to think of the shelter as a second home, the shelter staff as his family. He's deeply invested in the work they do.
"They're locking me out of my own damn house," he said. "It's ungrateful. It's weird."
I asked him why the sudden lockout. Had he stolen something? Done drugs on campus? What?
He ignored my questions, explaining that the new president of the shelter's board has been micromanaging the shelter's even newer director of operations.
"It's crazy," he said. "It's worse than last year."
I stopped playing with him then. He'd invoked the adoption debacle. The board had required that people offering to adopt shelter animals fill out an invasive questionnaire and the result had been a spike in the number of unadopted animals put down. The questionnaire was abandoned, but the damage had been done. Lives had been lost.
"They disapproved the trees," he said.
Silence.
"At long last," I said.
"No shit."
That phrase - "at long last" - is a shorthand between us. It footnotes Mr. Bumble and Major Major and all the obstructive bureaucrats we've ever known or ever will know, but it refers specifically to the question that Sen. Joseph Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954: "At long last, have you no sense of decency?" McCarthy had by that time gone round the bend. His end game was ending.
"At long last," Patrick repeated after me.
Silence again.
A sigh.
He called me on my birthday this year, ostensibly to pay his respects, but really to tell me that a local landscaping contractor had offered the shelter a free beauty makeover. Trees, grading, footpaths, irrigation, lighting, the works. You'd have thought he'd won the lottery.
The landscaping company owner's daughter, as it turns out, had adopted a half-basset-half-pug mix from the shelter when she was in high school. Nobody at the shelter had known about the connection until the owner's wife called to say that "Half-Bass" had died of old age. The family wanted to build a memorial. Hence the donation.
Three months have passed since the offer was tendered. The board treasurer recently asked another landscaping firm to bid the project as a means of verifying the stated value of the memorial.
"Now what?" I asked.
"The offer's been withdrawn," he said.
"At long last," I said.
"No shit."
Another silence.
"How many wet dreams do you suppose they've fucked up by now?" I asked.
"I can't count that high," he said.
"So what's up with the key?"
After queering the landscape deal, he told me, the board had turned its attention to security. There'd been no break-ins, no grafitti or trespassing, no problems whatsoever, but the board was on another arbitrary mission. The board president had handed down a decision that, effective immediately, only full-time employees would be issued keys to the building.
"He says it's an insurance thing," Patrick said. He was laughing a peculiar laugh. I was afraid he might cry. "It's bullshit."
"Corrupted absolutely," I said.
I asked him if he was going to divorce the shelter and he said that the sex had never been very good. In other words, yes. Or probably. Then he let the air out of the conversation by changing the subject to something that neither of us was interested in talking about.
"God hates a quitter," I said. One last stab at levity.
"God is dead," he reminded me.
"He's taking a nap," I said.
We left it at that.
 Tara Sweeney and Justin Walker, costumed and by Ben Robinson. A last-minute shoot for G Magazine. |
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
When G Magazine contacted us last Friday asking if we have any promotional photography for our production of See Rock City, the first answer that came to mind was, "Are you f**king kidding me?" The show doesn't open until August 5 and rehearsals don't begin until next month.
Experience has taught me, however, that answering media requests with "Are you f**king kidding me?" is never appreciated, so I said we'd have something for them by today.
Mission accomplished.
It's at times like this that I'm reminded of what an extremely well-oiled operation Centre Stage has become. Special thanks to stage manager Ben Robinson who stepped in as costumer and photo stylist, pulling the perfect combination of colors and textures from thin air at a moment's notice. Thanks also to actors Tara Sweeney and Justin Walker for holding each other so sweetly.
Plays well with othersSunday, May 9, 2010
A couple of guys I know were doing a playwright the favor of producing his unpublished (and thus far unproduced) two-man show. But as it turns out, the playwright wasn't interested in developing his work, only in hearing his words spoken exactly as he’d written them. The production has been cancelled.
A strong finalist in last year's New Play Festival competition copped a similar take-it-or-leave-it attitude with members of the festival’s core committee before a winner was chosen. He’d flown here from the West Coast at his own expense. He flew back empty-handed.
I’ve been surprised and disappointed by the self-defeating arrogance some playwrights bring to the creative process. Granted, playwriting is a solitary art form, while theater is anything but. And there’s an irony in this, as well as a difficult transition the playwright must make from cloister to collaboration. There is not, however, an excuse in it for being a snot.
RepairmenFriday, May 7, 2010
Men like to fix things. Everybody knows this. Women hug, men fix. Problem is, fixes rarely are the brief, pleasant gestures that hugs are.
Fixes are much riskier than hugs, too.
If a woman gives a man an unsuccessful hug, it's no big deal. Thanks for trying. If a man offers to solve a problem that a woman mentions in passing, however, he becomes the problem. And if he goes so far as to implement the solution unbidden ... oy.
Unfortunately, men have no way - no way at all - of knowing if a woman is asking for a hug or a hand. "The sink is broken" always sounds to us like "Please fix the broken sink." It never sounds like, "Please hold me while I tell you how sad the broken sink makes me feel, but don't make me even sadder by actually fixing it."
Tim Branson
Thursday, May 6, 2010
He’s going up again, my bi-polar friend, and we wonder when he’ll come down. He showed me a series of numbers today that he says reveal the age of consent, according to some culture at some time, to be six. It’s something that’s been on his mind for a while.
Two small print design jobs came in this week, rekindling the temptation to buy a new laptop immediately. Tomorrow, I’ll meet with an existing client about a new job, too. Easy come, easy go, easy come back again.
A retired executive I've known for the better part of a year, with whom I've had many conversations and email exchanges, wrote me a check today. It was made out to "Tim Branson." Lest I ever mistake myself for somebody famous.
Shell shockedWednesday, May 5, 2010
Today a woman walked into our lobby on the verge of tears. "Do you recognize me?" she asked. I wasn't sure that I did and was about to tell her so, but she continued, "I work upstairs. I'm the receptionist."
Ah, yes. She'd accepted delivery of a package once while we were away and I'd gone upstairs to get it from her. A nice lady.
"I've seen this coming for a while," she said, "but I wasn't ready for it to happen today."
She wasn't ready to lose her job, she explained. The investment firm that occupies the east half of our building is downsizing and when she got word of her dismissal, she came to us, even though we're effectively strangers. Her filters were failing. "The thing I'll miss most is the insurance," she confided. She told us that she'd been making $10/hour,that her daughter's insurance was tied to hers.
Her visit was my closest encounter to date with whatever's happening to our economy. She put a face on it. Red eyes. Tight lips. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she said. "I'm good with people. I'm a good worker."
She was pleading.
Did we have any openings? We were sorry, but no. Did we know of any? No, but we'd ask around. We took her name & number. She thanked us and left.
There's a photo you've probably seen. Vietnamese children running from their village after a napalm attack.
I'm thinking about that photo now and trying to remember how other-worldly it used to seem.
 Giant duck at Falls Park. It was set up to promote a marathon, I think, but who cares? It's a giant duck. (And no, it has nothing to do with today's blog.) |
Monday, May 3, 2010
The “what if” game goes like this: One person dreams up wild scenarios and the other person imagines how he'd respond to those scenarios. Difficult choices are involved.
“What if,” I might say, “you had to choose between blinding yourself and setting your dog on fire?” You might ask whether I meant legally blind or totally blind and whether the dog would be set entirely on fire, or if just its tail could be ignited. Nailing down details like these is essential to the game.
Total blindness and burned to a crisp, I might say. Several rounds later, you might have to choose between being struck deaf, dumb and blind and eating the dog immediately after roasting it alive. Nobody wins the “what if” game. It’s self-analysis.
A close friend had been slogging through a terrible afternoon at the end of a terrible week when she was ambushed. Two random acts of violence, one right after the other, a letter and a phone call. Asylum stuff. The letter in particular was written by a man who, while literate, seems just a few skipped lithium doses away from urinating in public.
My friend broke down, too weakened to feel pity for the weaknesses of others.
I saw red.
“What if,” I asked myself, “a stroke were to come of this?” What would I do? What if it were only a minor stroke, the kind a person recovers from completely? Or what if it caused permanent paralysis? What if, instead of a stroke, it triggered a heart attack? What if the heart attack were fatal? What would I do?
At some point, I realized, I’d buy a gun. I’d load the gun and pull the trigger. I’d kill.
What if somebody damaged a person you love? Damaged them maliciously and beyond repair? What would you sacrifice? Your life? Your liberty? Would you even deliberate?
 A 14-member panel convened November 12, 2007 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to call for governments to cooperate in studying the UFO phenomenon. Former two-term governor of Arizona Fife Symington moderated the panel..
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 The straight and narrow Liquid Highway |
Friday, April 30, 2010
Published at TechnoratiBritish astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s recent statement that extraterrestrials “might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet” has mainstream media reporters clutching their pearls. The Christian Science Monitor ran a photo of the sitcom alien puppet Alf with its article about Hawking’s comments and, two paragraphs into the article, quoted SETI scientist Seth Shostak’s oft-heard assurance that there’s nothing to get excited about.
Read entire article at Technorati.
One of these things is not like the others ...
There’s a coffee bar franchise based in Greenville called Liquid Highway. It serves good coffee and its bran muffins are huge. It’s tastefully decorated, conveniently located, comfortably furnished and wired. The staff is courteous and efficient. It's everything I like in a coffee bar. The ambient music, however … I dunno. Christian rock. “You are my god,” some guy was singing this morning. Over and over. While I was drinking my coffee. And eating my muffin. And feeling ever-so-slightly unclean.
 Doctor Schnabel von Rom, a 17th-century plague physician in protective clothing. Etching by Paulus Furst of Nuremberg, Germany, 1656.
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
A friend of mine who’s my age but whose health is less perfect than mine pays over three times what I do for health insurance and his out-of-pocket expenses are considerable. The unkindest cut, though, came yesterday when his primary care physician informed him that she’s joined a national network called MD VIP. This means that she’s about to charge him a “fee for access.”
While its marketing materials try to create subjective distance between MD VIP and what’s known generically as “concierge medical care,” I’m neither convinced nor impressed.
Read the MD VIP FAQ page and you’ll discover that network physicians agree to take on only as many patients as they can serve effectively, spend as much office time as necessary to properly hear and be heard by patients, honor appointment times, be accessible by phone after hours and on weekends for emergencies, give thorough physicals and be proactive, rather than reactive, in their overall approach to healthcare.
In other words, MD VIP acknowledges that our healthcare industry currently provides neither excellent healthcare nor good customer service as a matter of course. Like airlines that charge premiums for access to legroom, overhead baggage storage, in-flight meals, pillows and blankets, networks like MD VIP charge premiums for access to a business model that used to be the norm.
I’m old enough to remember that norm. I remember both house calls and coach class meals that were substantial, tasty and included in the price of the ticket.
It irks me that we’re now being conditioned to accept two-tier pricing systems that charge one price for doing a job and another price for doing the same job correctly. I’m offended in the extreme, however, by physicians who would establish such a system for themselves and then insult our intelligence by asking us to believe that healing is still their highest priority.
The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath, written in 1964, ends with this line: “May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.”
Modern translation: “Caveat emptor.”
 Non-boring backstage board. |
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Walking through the green room this afternoon before call, I stopped to read the dry erase board where the running crew has been annotating their set change diagram. It's quite funny. And they're quite a good crew. So good, in fact, that last night, one of the set changes actually got applause! Three smart, respectful high school boys with fantastic work ethics courtesy of Woodmont High School. It's a pleasure to have them among us. (I particularly like the ferns named Wilson and Charlie and the plant named Gordon.)
Week #2 of 3 concluded today. Average attendance roughly 110 per show for the run thus far. Not great, but not bad. Considering.
My bi-polar friend emailed me an 83-page manifesto that I'm reading a little and along. Part autobiography, part theory of everything, it's as deep and strange and articulate and scattered as the author. If you're not bi-polar, get down on your knees right now and thank God.
 The Honda U3-X anti-mobility device |
 Uncanny resemblance. |
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Published at Technorati. A friend of mine who's battling diabetes, obesity and a host of other ailments just found out about Honda's new "personal mobility device," the U3-X. He sent me a link to the promo video for this paramecium-shaped Segway descendent, and seems pretty excited about it. Not I. It reminds me of Bernard Wolfe's Limbo, the Cold War-era novel about a post-apocalyptic dystopia where men perfect themselves through amputation. Society has determined that "disarming" (and dis-legging) men is the only way to curb their violent behavior and ensure the survival of the species. Women are raised to desire limbless husbands, spoon-feeding them, changing their diapers, pushing them in strollers from place to place.
The U3-X, as I see it, isn't about mobility at all. It's about anti-mobility, a limb-withering eat-more-do-less machine. The butt cheek holders, enlarged and reinforced for sale in America, might double as defibrillator pads.
The grays
Last night I dreamed about gray squirrels. I was in the auditorium when dozens of them showed up, mostly in pairs, standing on their hind legs with their arms around each other, walking across the stage and into the aisles as couples might at a slow-motion square dance. Then they morphed into larger creatures, still squirrel-like, still gray, non-threatening, not making a sound. Then I woke up.
Even though the dream was typical of what abduction researchers call "screen memories," I'm pretty sure that it was brought on by three things that happened yesterday:
1.) A co-worker who's never expressed any particular interest in ufology asked me apropos of nothing, "What do you know about the grays?" I suggested he read Whitley Strieber's Communion.
2.) Steve Bassett announced a new conference, Contact 2010, to be held at the National Press Club in October (like this year's X-Conference will be in May) and to focus on "the realities and implications of human-alien experience." Until now, Bassett has concentrated almost exclusively on lobbying governments to release their UFO files. Some have. Others, like ours, haven't.
3.) A baby possum appeared on the threshold of the theater lobby door and would have come in if I hadn't chased him away. Baby possums look sort of like squirrels, I think.
 Tacking into the wind. |
Friday, April 23, 2010
Last week, we broke several non-musical attendance records. Best opening night, best opening week, best first matinee. This week, reservations are trending down.
It would be a mistake to blame our reversal of fortune on bad reviews, though. If the 500 people who saw the show last week had talked it up, we'd be feeling the effect of their enthusiasm now and, since we aren't feeling the effect of their enthusiasm, my theory is as follows:
People are either disliking the show or liking it too little, and if they're talking about it among their friends and co-workers, they're being non-committal. They're saying, "It was okay" or "It was interesting" and then they're changing the subject. The hive is asleep, in other words. No buzz. (end of theory)
We decided to do damage control by embracing the reviews light-heartedly, publishing excerpts from one of them online in combination with production photos in the same way we'd publish excerpts from a positive review. Our landing page headlines cycle through "...bereft!" and "...passionless!" and my favorite, "...far-fetched and wobbly!" ... a calculated gamble that even the reviewer endorsed, thanking us for the "early morning howls."
Underlying all considerations of audience loyalty, marketing angles, the economy, the weather, the demographic we serve, the competition and the impact of any review on ticket sales is the show itself. Is it worthy of us? Does it clear the bar that we've been raising?
Answer: At least 51% "No." If a show we produce doesn't sell, it means we're doing something wrong. We've misjudged our market or we've mishandled our marketing or we've mismanaged the production itself somehow. It's extremely difficult to unpack the causes of success or failure in this business, but bold choices that don't make the phone ring are bad choices. Business 101. At another time, in another place, our production might have caught fire. At this time, in this place, it didn't. Our job now is to learn from our mistakes.
 View across the Centre Stage patio tonight. |
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Yesterday, Centre Stage confirmed the rumor that BJ Koonce will resign from her current position as executive director. She’ll continue to work with me on marketing projects and with the board on fundraising projects and, for a while, with her worthy successor, Glenda ManWaring, on the transition. “I’ll still be around,” she says. No doubt.
Coming out of the auditorium after the announcement event, BJ’s husband said, “I thought I was going to get my wife back, but it looks like I was wrong.” My guess is that regardless of how involved she is with Centre Stage, her other involvements (Leadership Greenville, Greenville Professional Women’s Forum, Metropolitan Arts Council, etc.) will expand to fill whatever void accrues. According to one reliable source, she’s already been offered roles in two productions at Hilton Head, and other offers will come, both creative and professional. BJ’s husband will get his wife back when the world is finished with her.
Not surprisingly, I’ve been feeling less and less adhesive these past few weeks. No debts or social obligations or long-term organizational affiliations. No loose ends. I came to Greenville how many years ago? … four? five? I was a working actor. Then I became a marketing director. Now I’m sitting in a vacant theater lobby watching the sun go down beyond the patio, on the cusp of I know not what. To quote David Byrne ...
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?
Same as it ever was.
In the land of LincolnFriday,April 16, 2010
Our Leading Lady opened yesterday. 178 seats sold, breaking the first night record for a non-musical. Fiddle, guitar and Civil War reenactors at the reception. Baked brie and sausage grits. Artisan beer flowing like ... beer.
The Greenville News review didn't run this morning as it should have, but the Ubertati.com review did. It was mixed, citing the difficulty of wrapping a comedy around the slaughter of a beloved president. Point taken. Difficult to do and difficult to sell.
We talked for a while today about how our philosophies have evolved over the last several years. For my own part, I've come to the firm conclusion that if we can't state clearly how we're going to sell a show and to whom, we shouldn't do it. Doesn't matter how well-written, castable, timely, award-winning, thought-provoking or significant it is. Doesn't matter how long it ran Off-Broadway. If we can't articulate a non-faith-based marketing strategy, we should send it back to the kitchen.
Recent example: Mauritius, by many accounts, was one of the best shows that Centre Stage has mounted, but it was a bear to market, largely because of its arcane, pronunciation-defying title and its oxymoronic premise (a thriller about stamp collecting). So, despite the excellent cast, experienced director, high production values, favorable notices and positive word of mouth, some nights it played to fewer than 100 people. What's in a name, you ask? In the case of Mauritius, confusion.
Similarly, it could be argued that the catalog description of Our Leading Lady raises more eyebrows than interest. Yes, Mr. Public, it is a comedy and, yes, it takes place backstage at Ford's theater on the night that ... well yes, we do hear the gunshot, but ... no, the gunshot isn't funny, but ... Wait! Where are you going?
The season we'll announce April 20 consists of titles that are descriptive of content and either familiar or evocative. And the premises of the shows are straightforward. So rather than spending our time explaining the product we have to sell, we can spend our time selling it. A scene machine stocked with clearly labeled, attractively packaged energy bars. Cha-ching.
 Products dispensed by the Centre Stage scene machine may be habit forming. Use only as directed by a trained theater professional. (Click image for larger version.) |
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tomorrow, Our Leading Lady makes its third television appearance in five days and the exposure seems to be having a positive effect on ticket sales. Our YouTube promo posted late today also, and half-page ads are running in City People through closing week. Alas, the huge building banner that I blogged about six days ago is still on the drawing board, but that's an okay place for it to be while we attend to the several large fish now frying in our pan.
On April 20, we'll announce our 2010-11 "scene machine" season at a special members-only event, invitations to which went out last month. The vending apparatus campaign idea arose from a conversation that J. Michael Craig and I had last week about ubiquity (or was it iniquity?). He mentioned a campaign launched 35 years ago to promote Greenville's first live remote television van. They called it the "ubiquitous scene machine" and there you go ... a marketing metaphor that's simple, yet layered. Note, too, that the words "art" and "theater" appear nowhere in the ad. Put art and theater on a shelf beside movies, television, nightclubs, Facebook and Wii, and guess where the dust will accumulate. No, friends, we have bills to pay. So we're in the entertainment business.
 Destination: top of mind. (Click image for larger version.) |
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, right now. It's about the many little things that accumulate to trigger rapid, large-scale change, sometimes unexpectedly. Another Gladwell book, Blink, affirmed my belief in what Gladwell calls "rapid cognition." Marketing pieces succeed or fail in an instant, grabbing attention and inciting desire. Or not. Bada bing.
Tipping Point is divided into three sections: The law of the few, the stickiness factor and the power of context. The first section discusses how important "connectors" are to the process, connectors being the tiny handful of people who know everybody else. They're the social gatekeepers. "Stickiness" is a common marketing term that refers to how well an ad-driven idea "sticks" in the consumer's mind. I'm hoping that the context section will address the importance of ubiquity. It's a blunt instrument, ubiqity, but what tool box is complete without a hammer?
Yesterday, a friend jokingly called me "Cristo" (installation artist Cristo Vladimirov Javacheff) because I'm proposing that our theater produce billboard-size banners to "wrap" (not literally) downtown buildings with our promotional messages. In one year, we've gone from 12"x18" posters to 48"x72" window banners, so downtown billboards seem a logical next step toward being everywhere all the time.
Self-abuse
Monday, March 29, 2010
When I was in fourth grade, the parish priest asked me if I'd ever abused myself. Abused myself? Why on earth would I do such a thing? And how would I go about it? Hot stove? Hammer? Sewing needle? No, I told him, I had never abused myself.
A funny story, I've thought. The sexless old man asking the sexless little boy about masturbation ... and using that word - "abused."
But wave after wave of scandal lapping the shores of the Holy See has given me pause.
Was the good father's
question a test of readiness? It was asked during confession the same year that a young and very crush-worthy Sister Mary Emily told us how babies are made, so anybody familiar with our curriculum would have known that a seed of a certain kind had been planted. A time to sow and a time to reap, maybe. Just speculation.
Press coverage of Sinead O'Connor's recent calls for the Vatican to admit its complicity in sheltering pedophile priests reminds me that absolute power really does corrupt absolutely. On the other hand, with the possible exception of the confessional incident just described, I've never - not once - sensed anything "off" about any priest, brother or nun. Most were authoritarian, some were friendly. They all smelled good. But none were sexual, not in the slightest. Not even Sister Mary Emily.
Was I lucky? So it would seem.
O'Connor says that her complaint is with the bureaucrats who run the Church, not with the Church itself. They should confess and ask forgiveness, she says. They should do penance. That's the only way she believes the Church can heal.
While I couldn't care less about the death or transfiguration of the Roman Catholic Church and I long ago stopped thinking of myself as connected to it in any way, I agree with O'Connor in principle. Our leaders should lead by example. No institution is too big to fail.
But O'Connor and I part ways in practice. The Church isn't the Vatican. It isn't the priests or the ritual of the mass. It's people like O'Connor. It's people. Listening to her impassioned plea for reform yesterday, I thought, "That woman is holy. Absolutely holy. And she's absolutely wasting her time."
 At the corner of Coffee and Main. The last thing I see each morning before my descent into the Coffee Underground.. (Click image for larger version.) |
Saturday, March 27, 2010
The 45-minute walk from my front door to the Coffee Underground has yet to get old. This time of year especially, with morning temperatures in the 40s and flowers beginning to bloom, I marvel at the care Greenville lavishes on its Main Street corridor. True, the public art leaves something to be desired, but the trees are strung with tiny lights year-round and wind chimes tinkle in the breeze. Liberty Bridge, Falls Park, the West End. Urban blight abolished. No dollar stores. No wig shops. If I were king of the forest, about the only things I'd add would be a Dean & Deluca's, an art house cinema and street musicians. And better public art.
The week gone by was much busier than I wanted it to be. An 8-page magazine format publication to design (and edit), four ads to shoot and lay out, interviews to arrange, a 40-page playbill to rough-in, a cellphone to replace. Those were the highlights. But things have settled down. Next week will be video week. WSPA and WYFF, plus a YouTube video to shoot and edit. And an e-blast to blast. We've upped our game considerably over the last year, which is good, but it's awfully time-consuming, which is bad when so much has to be done in such short bursts. Oh, crap! And we have an April 20 season announcement event to plan and promote.
Reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink right now. In defense of the adaptive unconscious. Instinct, in other words. Very affirming for lazy intellectuals and creatives, I think.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
An old clinical social worker friend came to mind this afternoon. I miss her knack for defusing awkward social situations with tongue-in-cheek psychiatric advice. I miss her irreverence. If she'd been around me today and yesterday, I think she'd have said something along the lines of "Looks like Mr. B could use a few doggy downers and a nice, long timeout."
The several brainstorms I've had over the course of the last 48 hours all were given cautiously positive receptions and all are likely to be implemented. Good ideas, receptive colleagues. Add water and stir, right? Unfortunately, a madness overcomes me when good ideas occur.
No. Let me rephrase that. I become an ass. I charge at people with my ideas. I pound heads with them. And when I see in people's eyes that they're recoiling (as any healthy person would), it infurates me. They should jump for joy. They should dash into the street and hug strangers.
Yesterday, as I was cranking out the last few words of copy connected with brainstorm #2 of 3, I caught myself almost running from desk to desk, hand-editing a draft and shouting in my head like the sports bar crowd does when he fakes! he shoots! he scores!!! Only in my case, it was, "These two words go there! And that word ... oh, shit! ... yes!! ... If this goes here, and that moves there and I add this ... OMFG!! That's it!!"
And then I ran back to my colleagues to demand (implicitly) that they stop whatever the hell it was they were doing ...
and so on.
Two solid days of this. Or maybe three. It's been a blur. An exhausting, embarrassing blur.
Maybe, as another friend suggested this afternoon, I just need to get laid.
Friday, March 19, 2010
My walks into town these last few mornings have been especially pleasant and I give credit for that to the change of seasons. Mornings in the 40s and highs in the 60s. My kinda weather. Oh ... and another change of seasons ... this one theatrical: Centre Stage has chosen its 2010-11 lineup of shows. Three comedies, a mystery and two musicals. Daffodils, quince and camellias. Newness everywhere. And I attended my first owners association meeting last night at Mills Mill. I felt a sense of community, everybody on the same side, all of us members of a winning team and interested in keeping things clean and attractive and in perfect working order. My kinda peeps.
I have a new favorite radio station, thanks to the Tivoli Networks Portal. Fluid Radio calls itself "experimental," but it feels ambient to me and that's how Tivoli classifies it.
Long overdueWednesday, March 17, 2010
This afternoon I'll drive to Tryon to visit with my friend Peter. We'll grill the ribeyes I marinated overnight in terryaki sauce and we'll talk. It feels strange that so much time has passed since our last cookout and stranger still not to be planning to spend the night in his basement bedroom, but flood damage repair takes time. Months, in fact.
8:30 - back from Peter's. Almost everything the flood undid has been redone and Peter is still Peter, which was good to see. Charlie is still Charlie, too. Still not going berzerk at the drop of a hat (as he did in the before time) and still skittish as hell. Charlie leads a secret life that distracts him from most of what you or I might term "reality."
 Daffodils blooming in Falls Park this morning. (Click image for larger version.) |
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Many times during the 17 years we lived together, I said of Janet that she walked with the angels. By which I meant that, no matter how scattered or careless she was, no matter how many times she fell backward into her life, invisible hands seemed to scoop her up and set her gently down. Now, reading her latest blog posts, I get the impression that the angels aren't doing so well by her as they used to.
She's been living in Italy since December, trying to find work and permanent accommodations. She's also been navigating the visa/citizenship labrynth with little success. Not her style at all. Hammering out resumes in a language she barely speaks, living in an upstairs room within 24/7 earshot of a frequently squalling infant, half-heartedly attending job interviews hither and thither, combing rental ads. She's developed high blood pressure, too. And yesterday (thank you, sir, may I have another) she crashed her car ... the one she'd just bought ... and had insured in someone else's name ... in Italy. My heart aches as I imagine her waiting for the polizia to arrive last night, cold rain falling, nearly four hard-fought months into the greatest adventure of her life. She was unharmed - angelic residue, I suppose - but she's losing steam and that's very sad. Her blog post for today begins like this: "I don't think I can do it anymore. It's all just way too hard."
Meanwhile, my own life in Greenville is hugely good. Spring is busting out all over. But not in Italy, I gather. Poor dear Janet. Perhaps she left her angels in America.
 The effect this video has on me is "not reducible to the cognitive." Compassion seldom is. I'm wondering now if God is, more specifically than love, compassion. (Click image to play mp4 file in new window ... takes a minute to load.) |
Saturday, March 13, 2010
In conversation with Bill Moyers recently (March 12 Bill Moyers Journal segment "God, Science and Baseball"), NYU president John Sexton said this: "It's self-evident that there are important things that are not reducible to the cognitive." He mentioned the fact that he and his late wife hadn't proven their love to one another with reason. He also mentioned the "ineffable transportation to another plane" that occurs when we're moved by what's "approached through music and poetry and mythos." I take it that he was referring to the divine.
How refreshing it is to hear a man in Sexton's position, with his pedigree and influence, make such statements.
I bailed on a discussion group a few weeks ago when it became clear to me that the group leader was more interested in parsing religious verses than revealing spiritual truth. I'd asked that the group consider the question, "Are spiritual matters more appropriately deduced than intuited?" and, when I got the group email informing me that this topic had been declined in favor of what was essentially Bible study ... well ... that's what filters are for. (Besides, he'd told me I was going to Hell.)
As I've said before, though not in so many words, reason-based faith sounds to me as oxymoronic as faith-based reason. I might add, as religious scholar and former nun Karen Armstrong said during the March 13, 2009 edition of Bill Moyers Journal, religious intolerance "is pure ego." Founder of an organization called "The Charter for Compassion," she tells this story:
"Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, 'The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it.'"
The path of least correctnessWednesday, March 10, 2010
At the top of the season, the best marketing angle for Charles Busch's Our Leading Lady seemed obvious. The play is about the company of actors who were performing at Ford's Theatre on the night Lincoln was shot and the star of the show - the eponymous leading lady - is Laura Keene, to be played in our production by local luminary BJ Koonce. So I had her photographed from above, costumed in shades of deep red, surrounded by deeper shades of red, reaching up to the camera with a come-hither look in her eyes. That image, combined with the slogan "The last woman Lincoln saw alive," I hoped would convey a sense of mystery and dangerous sexuality. Who is this femme fatale? Did she kill Lincoln? Was she Lincoln's lover?
But two months out from opening night, it dawned on us that we were "playing against type." Our Leady Lady is a comedy. Granted, it's a comedy that takes place in the context of Lincoln's assassination, but it isn't about that assassination. Our previous decision to emphasize the 35% drama/intrigue component of the show had been informed by our belief that it would be too difficult to convince the general public that we'd found something to laugh about in the still-bleeding tissue of the deepest wound ever inflicted on the national conscience ... assassination, slavery, 620,000 dead. Holy cow.
But forget all that.
Some say that Busch wrote the show as a drag act for himself. A drag act. A drag act. And when you get right down to it, a comedy set in Ford's Theater immediately before, during and after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln is marketing gold. It just is.
So we've decided to pursue the path of least political correctness on the assumption that anybody who finds offense with what we're doing is looking for a fight and such people will find what they're looking for regardless of what's there to see.
Sold outFriday, March 5, 2010
And just like that - poof! - all remaining performances of Rock 'n Roll Heaven are sold out. The highest average weekly gross of any show in Centre Stage history and, taken with the success of last year's Country Queens, conclusive proof that concerts conceived, arranged and produced entirely in-house are bankable products.
This October/November, I'll be performing the role of the Judge in Trial by Jury. I do hope that GLOW (Greenville Light Opera Works) impressario Christian Elser's idea of producing light opera in Greenville on a regular basis catches on. Centre Stage is fortunate to be hosting such a project. (Read about it in the Centre Stage newsletter.)
My first week of debt-free living has been marred by a persistent cold. No amount of rest, soup, vitamins or sinus rinse seems capable of staying it from its appointed rounds.
Saturday, March 6 update: Last night's performance sustained a 20-minute interruption when the haze machine tripped the fire alarm. 285 people had to be evacuated to the parking lot where they waited for the fire department to arrive and declare the kerfuffle a non-emergency. The show did go on afterward, and nobody complained, but the haze machine has been retired.
HeredityWednesday, March 3, 2010
Inventorying my parents' estate a few years ago, I was disappointed to discover how far they'd strayed from the eclectic interior decorating aesthetic of my childhood. I'd grown up with shoji screens and hammered brass and Danish modern furniture and virtually all of it was gone. Gone and replaced. With resin gnomes. With Thomas Kinkade cottages and faux antique signage of the kind you'd expect to see nailed to the wall at a Cracker Barrel.
I remember sorting through the boxes wondering how I could be related to people who'd collect such things. Had they been in agreement, or had one abetted the other's insanity?
Then, just yesterday, I caught myself impulse purchasing a four-inch-tall resin pug dog dressed in a banana suit.
Mortification.
Please understand that I know and value the difference between hand-knotted and hand-tufted wool rugs. When Stickley moved its furniture-making operations to Vietnam, I mourned. When I buy a table lamp, I have the sockets replaced with solid brass because brass-painted sockets irk me.
But what does any of that matter now? And how much less will it matter tomorrow when I buy the pug in a peapod suit?
 Rock 'n Roll Heaven drummer Garret McKinney suggested putting the show brand on his drum head. Nice.
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Friday, February 26, 2010
Rude fundraising professionals aside, this has been an uncommonly good week. I sold the Wheat Street house in Columbia, ending an eight-month process that included three failed closings. Rock ‘n Roll Heaven sailed over top-of-season revenue projections and posted its first sold-out performances. It dawned on me that the entire staff is excited about the July fundraiser. (Our business manager is going to create a mixed drink especially for the event – Martian martinis. Glow-in-the-dark glasses may be involved.) Printed materials for the fundraiser have begun to arrive and they look fan-tas-tic. The drummer for Rock’n Roll Heaven suggested, and I implemented, putting the show brand on his bass drum head. Brilliant idea! The Lloyds Luxe floor mats I ordered for my car arrived and they’re all I was hoping they’d be. Yesterday, to celebrate the sale of the house, I took two of my best friends out to lunch and dinner and today I’ll pay off the mortgage on my condo. Debt-free I’ll be for the first time since I arrived in Greenville three years ago.
I traveled to Clinton to audition for the Greenville Light Opera Works (GLOW) production of Trial by Jury and was offered the role of the Judge. I’m now pondering that offer. Greenfield’s abandoned its misguided whole wheat everything bagel experiment. Everything bagels should be white inside and now, happily, they are once again. (They're also an important part of my complete breakfast.)
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
There's a fundraising professional I know whose positive impact on the arts in Greenville is indisputable. This fact buys him considerable deference in my circles and that deference insulates him from the ill will caused by his not infrequent social gaffes. His negativity, bizarrely inappropriate comments and relentless dishing are legendary. He's what casual observers might call "a character," though in his case the term is hardly a compliment.
Yesterday, for example, he walked into my office and, since he was there to talk with my office partner (and it's a very small office, by the way ... maybe 8x12), he completely ignored the fact that I was there. No acknowledgement of my presence, no "Excuse me, may I come in?" ... none of those niceties. He walked in, turned his back to me and proceeded to speak in hushed tones across her desk to the one other person in the room. This went on for at least 20 seconds before he tossed a half-hearted "Oh hi, Tim" over his shoulder, after which my view of his backside resumed, as did his "private" conversation.
I should point out here that he and I are no more than casual business acquaintances. There's no particular informality between us and, at the risk of sounding like a prig, the rules of common courtesy definitely apply.
So I left the room, saying something about giving them privacy. He's a money man, after all, a rather potent one, and Centre Stage is in the midst of a major fundraising effort and ... well, you know how these things work.
But less than an hour later, throwing fiduciary caution to the wind, I was in his office across town calling him out with my colleague in tow as a witness. He took offense, of course, but ultimately spoke the words "I apologize." He didn't speak them like he meant them and it was pretty obvious that he didn't want to speak them at all, but he did speak them. Which is progress, I suppose. For him. Or maybe it's a setback for Centre Stage. Hard to tell this early on.
Now I'm asking myself why I didn't blow the whole thing off, why I didn't simply collect the moment as an amusing anecdote. The answer, I think, is this: Rude people, left unchecked, poison the very air we breathe with their rudeness. They're bad for the common good. And looking the other way in the name of political expediency is a form of social irresponsibility.
That's how I see it, at any rate.
Or am I missing something?
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Warlord: Conan. What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women.
A high school classmate and I have been exchanging emails about goals and maturity. Half-century stuff. It was in this context that he asked me if I'm "continually heading in the direction of something bigger."
Interesting question.
I live in a building overrun with upwardly mobile 20-somethings and every time I step into the elevator with one of them, clean-cut and hard shoe-wearing, my gut clenches. They're deal-doers in-the-making, back-slappers-in-training, good ol' boy aspirants who, one day, will sit in judgement over my loan, my court case, my medical condition. They'll decide energy policy, tax rates, development strategies and diplomatic goals. Some days I fear them. Other days I pity them. Most days I harbor a low-grade dislike for them that's based, as much as anything, in my resentment of the fact that they've already accumulated more influence and material wealth than I ever will. I'm the old bull chewing weeds at the edge of the pasture while the young bulls rut and frolic in the clover.
But am I so unlike them? Superficial differences aside, I mean. Aren't we all in the business of crushing our enemies and seeing them driven before us? Aren't the lamentations of the women music to all our ears?
I'm quite comfortable admitting that I don't want my creative efforts to disappear down the black hole of artistic self-righteousness. I want the work I do to fund my modest lifestyle and, when it's to our mutual advantage, catalyze or be catalyzed by the work of others.
I'm less eager to own my competetiveness. It seems to me that relatively few of the best things in life are cut from the still-warm scalps of fallen foes. Really good bagels and coffee, for example, are way up there on my hit parade. So are moments of inspiration, serendipity, clarity, uninterrupted sleep, online dictionaries and street musicians. Why then, with all this going for me, do I get restless when the tribe on the other side of the hill fells a deer? Why does it follow that I should form a raiding party to steal the deer?
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The box office phones lit up today, a fire ignited by arts writer Ann Hicks' A2 headline, "Rock 'n Roll Heaven out of this world." We'd been stacking fat lighter for over a month prior to opening night - two television appearances, diligent Facebook activity, print and radio ads, YouTube promo, feature articles (one wangled, one routine), outdoor boards, weekly e-blasts, posters and substantial preview audience buzz ... not to mention a first-rate rock 'n roll show. But we needed Ann to strike the match. Which she did.
Still, the victory rings somewhat hollow. Even as our patrons rock out and the money rolls in, a segment of my society regards what we've done as evil necessity at best. At worst, they cite it as our most recent contribution to the decline of Western civilization. Why is this?
Fairway Outdoor, the folks who sell us billboard space for the cost of materials, happened to post two of our shows, one right after the other, to the same frame recently. The one on top is Coal Creek, the winner of our New Play Festival and the one below is Rock 'n Roll Heaven, our cash cow. This purely random pairing (random because boards are placed on a space-available basis) speaks volumes about our motives and methods. Art as entertainment as income ... all three, all the time.
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Rumor has it that Darwinian theory is falling out of favor in some mainstream scientific circles due to lack of hard evidence in support of it. A rival theory, equally unsupported but more to my liking, is devolution. “Forbidden Archeology” author Michael Cremo proposes in his new book “Human Devolution” that we’re beings of pure consciousness, temporarily housed in our bodies, devolved from the spiritual plane.
In her Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) lecture “Stroke of Insight," neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes the sensation of separating from her “self” when she nearly died of a brain hemorrhage in 1996. The stroke occurred in her left hemisphere, the linear-thinking "I am" half that enables us to distinguish ourselves from our surroundings. As her left hemisphere “fell silent,” her right hemisphere woke up, and as it did she says that she could no longer define the boundaries of her body. “The atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall.” She was “immediately captivated with the magnificence of the energy” around her. She felt “at one with that energy” as a sense of peacefulness overcame her and she said goodbye to her life. “My spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria. I found Nirvana. I remember thinking there was no way I’d ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.”
Eventually she did return to her body and, over the eight years that followed, recovered fully. The insight she gained from this experience is that we can choose to be led by the right side or the left side of the brain. We can choose to emphasize boundaries or connections. We can live in Heaven or Hell.
In my own experience as a creative person I’ve found it beneficial to eliminate myself as much as possible from whatever I’m doing. My intuition tells me that creative people are conduits for the energy that Taylor says is all around us … not originators, but intermediaries.
When Cremo says that we’re devolved from a purely spiritual state, it seems to me that he’s referring, at least in part, to the left brain’s imposition of it’s me-focused will on the right brain. That imposition is ego, I think. Selfishness.
So I try to stay focused on the joy of the creative process itself, rather than on what part of that process I " own."
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Saturday, February 6, 2010
My friend Peter Saputo’s Tryon, NC cottage sprung a leak a few months ago. The water came into his basement eight feet below grade and, judging from the stains it left behind, crested at about six inches. That was enough to ruin walls, flooring, furniture and pretty much everything else not made of plastic.
Excavation revealed that the cinderblock foundation had never been sealed, so sealant and a membrane were applied and a proper drainage system installed. The parking and planting areas were reworked as well, so that water running downhill toward the house is diverted away from it.
Of course, Peter’s insurance company did what any insurance company would do when confronted with a $20,000 claim for repairs submitted by a 70-year-old man who’s neither wealthy nor well-connected. They denied it. “Act of God,” they said. No matter that man, not God, had built the house improperly to begin with and that damages resulting from faulty construction might have been the basis for a successful claim.
Peace out
Insurance companies are in the business of selling policies, not making policy-holders whole. File a claim and, if the cost of paying it sufficiently exceeds the cost of denying it, the claim will be denied as a matter of course. So coverage, per se, isn’t what insurance companies sell at all.
The product they sell is the illusion of security, what their ads call “peace of mind.” And isn’t that what we really want, anyway? Isn’t it what we need? We buy policies that we know aren’t worth the paper they’re written on because we do, we do, we do believe in spooks. The good neighbor, the good hands, the umbrella … 21st century charms and potions … incantations … voodoo.
The witch doctor tells us we're safe and healthy and all he asks in return is a pig and a bushel of corn. It's an ancient business model. And if some of us fall ill, as some of us are bound to do despite the witch doctor's assurances, we blame the pig. We have to. The alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
 This photo illustration is how I imagine weary consumers might feel about corporate America's increasingly ubiquitous "messages.". |
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Rock 'n Roll Heaven moved into the theater on Monday and will remain there until March 13. There are 4,275 seats to be sold over the course of the show's 15-performance run, but initial box office activity gives cause for optimism. As of close of business yesterday, 1,022 reservations had been taken.
We're throwing every marketing trick in the book at this production. Everything except Twitter. When a member of the production staff asked yesterday if we were tweeting the show, my response was that there are no hours left in the day for that. We're doing all one reasonably can be expected to do in 70 hours a week and, really, how many more tickets might we sell by broadcasting snippets like, "Set construction underway. OMG!" or "Outdoor boards go up today." or "Rockin' the playbill now."
My gut tells me that people are far less interested in organizational tweets than those of individuals. Let the Supreme Court rule as it will about the First Amendment rights of corporations (ref: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205), the question remains ...Does the average consumer really give a rat's ass about whether the average corporation is enjoying its day? I think not.
 Dr. Lachezar Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, says that he and his team of scientists is communicating with extraterrestrials.  Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia  A crop circle |
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Poor Lachezar Filipov.
On November 26, 2009, London's Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail reported that Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute (NASA equivalent) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, had announced that, "aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time." He claimed that he and a team of BAS scientists had interviewed several aliens (by means not disclosed) and that the answers to their questions were encoded in crop circle formations. According to the Telegraph, BAS issued a report on these communications, but I've yet to find it online.
A Phoenix-based paranormal talk radio host named Kevin Smith says he contacted Filipov by phone shortly after the articles were published and Filipov agreed to be interviewed, saying it was his "duty" to make his team's discoveries public.
Then, Smith says, the good doctor stopped answering his cell phone. Days of radio silence passed before a Croatian news team was allowed to interview Filipov in the lobby of the Academy of Sciences building in Sofia, but the 19-minute interview was not used because, according to the news team, Filipov was "intoxicated."
Smith says he obtained a copy of the interview, which included many close-ups of Filipov's face, and, in Smith's opinion, Filipov was suffering from sleep deprivation. A former international policeman, Smith says that Filipov showed no signs of HGN (Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus), which always accompanies alcohol intoxication. He also points out that sleep deprivation is a favorite tool of the gone-but-still-active Darzhavna Sigurnost, or Bulgarian KGB.
So what happened? Did the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials? Did its deputy director then go rogue, announcing to the media that this communication had occurred? And did the Bulgarian KGB, in an attempt to discredit him, then "prepare" the deputy director for his interview with a Croation news team?
Hallucination is another possibility, of course. As are substance abuse and outright deceit. As to the last possibility, the question arises, who's deceiving whom? And why? The Telegraph refers to recent "heated debate" over "the role, feasibility, and reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences," so maybe Filipov's announcement was only a bizarre and deeply misguided publicity stunt.
Question: What would we be saying right now if the deputy director of NASA had made the same announcement?
Watch Kevin Smith's 4-part discussion of the Filipov case.Read Lachezar Filipov's curriculum vitae.
Snow! (sort of)Friday, January 29, 2010
Even as I write this, snowflakes are falling from the sky at the rate of maybe one flake per 1,000 cubic feet of air. My friend in Tryon (about 30 miles north of here) reports two inches, though, so maybe more is headed our way. Doubtful, but maybe.
Meanwhile, Coal Creek is selling like hotcakes. It's already the most popular New Play Festival winner ever produced by Centre Stage.
Word from Temple Theatre in Sanford, NC is that my October gig prospects there might be on the wane. A scheduling conflict, they say. My prospects of a guest artist contract in November/December at a local university, however, are waxing.
A few weeks ago, I bought an electric shaver to replace the old Braun with the damaged foil that had been scratcing my face. It's an Axis AX-5330 Air. Cool name, but I'd never heard of Axis, so I visited axisshavers.com in search of answers. There, I discovered that Axis is the official grooming tool of something called the UFC. I'd never heard of them, either, so I visited their Web site and the best I've been able to determine is that UFC athletes fight in cages. It's very Roman Empire. I should warn you, therefore, that, should circumstaces warrant, my electric shaver is quite prepared to kick your shaver's ass. No, wait ... your shaver's bitch ass.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The good news is that we might have "ice pellets" (Doest that mean "sleet"?) tomorrow and snow on Saturday. Snoooooooooow!! The bad news is that Coal Creek performs both days. The show already has exceeded box office expectations, but we've gotten our hopes up that the trend will continue for the final three performances of its two-week run. Winter weather is bad mojo for ticket sales south of the Mason-Dixon.
 Caricature of a Smiling Negro, circa 1890, printed by the Courier Company of Buffalo, NY. Ol' time dar am not fo'gotten. Look away. |
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
This morning as I was walking down Main Street toward the theater, a homeless-looking man moved into my peripheral vision and the first words out of his mouth were, “Boss man!” He was black (the relevance of which I'll address momentarily) and I said “No thanks” without so much as looking at him. I kept on walking. He replied somehow, but I try not to hear the parting shots.
I was approached in much the same vein a few days ago by another man, deflected him too, and, as I sometimes do, resolved that if I saw him again near a place where I could buy him a meal, I’d say, “Look, I’m not going to give you money, but I will pay for your breakfast.” Depending on my mood, the fantasy continues either with him taking me up on my offer or him saying, “Naw, man. I need the money for (translates as 'some cheap anaesthetic')."
That's what a friend of mine does and, to hear him tell it, he's bought many a meal.
But “Boss man”? What the hell is a middle-aged white guy supposed to do when a black guy – a stranger – addresses him as “Boss man?” To my ear, it sounds about like “Massa,” and it makes me wonder if he’s pandering to an assumed sense of racial superiority. Or would that be racial guilt? Is he reminding me of the white man's burden? It’s confusing ... and it doesn't make me the slightest bit inclined to give anybody money.
 Always a chance to get somebody to foot the bill, then the drinks are on the house! |
(or, Shut up and drink your gin!)Sunday, January 24, 2010
On January 9, Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout published a column headlined “America’s favorite plays." In it, he correctly observed that readers "willing to mine" Theater Communications Group's public database of production schedules across the country could get a “detailed picture” of “what plays get performed most often" by not-for-profit professional theaters in America.
But after mining the data himself and calculating the statistical favorites, Teachout ignored what the data says about theaters and leapt instead to a conclusion about theatergoers. Surprising? Maybe not.
Read entire blog entry as PDF. The Tivoli Networks, radio of the Gods.
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Friday, January 22, 2010
A talk show host I used to listen to believes that time is accelerating. Not figuratively, but literally. His name is Jeff Rense and, while his anti-Zionist rants are tedious, I do share his sense of a decrease in the distance between tomorrow and today.
It’s been four years, for example, since I arrived at Centre Stage, and when I think of all that’s happened in that time, four years seems too little. My subjective impression, though, is that maybe – maybe – a year has gone by. It’s been 20 years since I met Janet and three years since we broke up and in just a few weeks, I’ll be 50 years old. I can’t account for any of this. Hell, It’s almost noon and I’ll be damned if I can tell you where the last three hours went!
My theory, loosely held, is that this is an optical illusion. The days and months and years seem smaller to us as our distance from them increases. When I was 20, ten years was half my whole life. Now, in conversation people that same age, I’m sometimes struck by the fact that I can reach in my own memory to a time before even their parents were born. Yeesh.
Best radio in the whole wide world!
On a completely different topic, the UPS man delivered my Tivoli Networks radio yesterday. I’d been coveting one for quite a while, but not enough to dull the pain of the $599 MSRP. Then some guy in Maryland put a unit he’d won up for auction on ebay and I snagged it at an unbelievable buy-it-now price. God bless you, guy in Maryland. The radio is stunning … stunning to hear and stunning to behold. I’ve programmed four of my remote presets to ambient, big band, opera and bluegrass. The bluegrass preset probably won’t last long, but I saw a Youtube video recently that piqued my interest in the genre. Perhaps it will yours, as well.
Fat from the fire
Three days ago, our production of Walter Thinnes' Coal Creek was looking rather limpy. But our Executive Director, BJ Koonce, laid hands upon it, called down the Holy Ghost, and caused it to leap out of its wheelchair and do handstands across the stage. A miraculous turnaround literally 48 hours before opening night. Here's the Youtube promo assembled from clips made before the healing service took place. The initial reaction was that the promo made the show look better than it was. Now it's generally agreed that it doesn't make the show look good enough. Click the thumbnail image above to read the playbill ... then make a reservation!
Holy crapping FUCK!
Last entry today ... Satan has been positively identified in Warm Springs, Georgia. Her name is Lynn Middlebrooks Geter.