Since that post, I’ve found this videoclip, which details Shamu’s ignoble end.

Writing plays is easy. But acting in them requires real imagination.

…to dear old Captain Noah.

My friends in South Jersey and environs will appreciate this clip of Philadelphia children’s show icon Captain Noah, which I just found on YouTube.

When I was a kid I was in daycare for the year before kindergarten when my mother went back to work. The lady who ran the daycare from her home always kept the television tuned to Captain Kangaroo, a show I hated. Compared to the animated adventures of Popeye and assorted pals over on Captain Noah’s ark, I didn’t give a hoot about whatever Mr. Greenjeans and the talking clock were up to. One day I stood up and made a plea to please, please, please change the channel to Captain Noah, giving every good reason on Earth, most of them I’m sure having to do with Popeye. The woman put it to a vote — and I was the only child who raised a hand for Captain Noah. That was my first lesson in democracy: that sometimes the just cause loses.

On Thursday I took the kids (and fortysomething guest kid Trey) to Sea World in San Diego, also known as the Land of Shamu. Almost nine months earlier we had bought five tickets through a Chamber of Commerce promotion and had only a few days left to use them. I was willing to just let them go, but when my wife told me they had cost almost $200, we agreed I should use them with the kids even if she couldn’t go — and that meant going two days after Christmas.

Given that it was a few days after Christmas, my wife had asked, “Is Sea World even going to be open?”

Trey wondered the same thing.

A check of the website showed it was going to be open. I figured that since it was the holidays, we would have free run of the place.

Not quite.

I’ve been navigating the two-hour-plus course to San Diego for years, to attend the San Diego Comic Con (naturally!), to drop in on friends, conduct business, and put in at Tijuana for cigars and reminders of how fortunate I am. Comparatively speaking, it’s a drive I enjoy. On Thursday, though, it was a crawl all the way down, and once we arrived at our destination we learned why:

Evidently, everyone that day was going to Sea World.

After the three-hour trip down, we spent probably half an hour looking for a place to moor in the parking lot before I thought my head would explode and finally decided to dock in the middle of the pelagic puddle everyone else had been avoiding. I figured I’d grab out each kid, throw him or her clear of the water, jump clear myself, and leave Trey to swim for it. Even though we parked in Lake Erie and left the van about as far from the entrance as Lake Erie, this turned out to be a good decision, because during the 20-minute hike to the gate we never saw another parking space.

Once inside, the kids needed to eat. Immediately. We surfed past the Anheuser Busch pavilion, home to all the major park eateries, because I was sure we could find a hot dog stand or food cart inside and be done with it and then get on to rides and exhibits and shows and such. Here’s what I found out about Sea World: There are no hot dog stands or food carts, unless you classify snacks or candy as food. The restaurant we found with the shortest wait was an Italian fast-food chain. Forty minutes of waiting in line later, we had lunch for four, which meant pretty much a slice of pizza and a Coke for each, for $54. And then we spent 20 minutes eating it and watching the wealth of humanity shuffle by in short steps so as not to knock into each other. It was much like the classic Star Trek episode where the overpopulated planet is signified by 50 people jammed into a small viewing room.

It wasn’t too long before late afternoon arrived and the crowd thinned dramatically. Then we discovered that Sea World actually has many wonderful rides, shows, and attractions. The Shark Encounter is eerily beautiful — you walk down a tunnel encapsulated by a glass shark environment, and the sharks head right for you, mouths open, teeth bared. The Wild Arctic Base Station features polar bears, beluga whales and walruses in a mock frozen shipwreck environment both above and below ground. The penguin exhibit is entirely open air, with the penguins only inches away from us; that was very cool. And whoever put together the dolphin show knows how to do theatre: it was cleverly staged, highlighted the tricks and talents of the dolphins, and was performed with great panache and comic timing by both the humans and the animals. Really a great show.

Then there was Shamu.

Shamu is Sea World’s star. Trey and I wondered about Shamu on the way down. For one thing, given that there are three Sea Worlds and all claim to have Shamu, at least two of these three parks have to be Shamu-less. Either that, or this is one very travel-weary whale. Shamu’s show, when it is not Christmas, is called “Believe.” Shamu’s stadium features stadium seating, of course, around a watery playing pit backdropped by enormous rotating video screens. Hundreds of stage lights throw light from all sides. For the Christmas show, a large center screen showed either a solo guitarist playing Christmas ballads or, later, a female singer accompanying him not very skilfully. Between these two and then two different choral groups, gauzy lighting, and weepy music with a very 80’s lounge keyboard sound on the bottom, I thought, “This show is very over-produced.” Here’s the contrast:

Dolphin show: Minimal effects. Great show, displaying spot-on sense of timing and real talent.

Shamu show: Innumerable lights, giant rotating video screens, warbling overly sentimental music, candlelit chorales, and an almost utter lack of animal ability.

That’s right: The three whales did almost nothing. Each beached himself briefly to be rewarded with a fish, and they swam around a few times before going back into their holding tank. The rest of the time Shamu’s Christmas show was an old Lawrence Welk Show on an especially bad night.

Worse, none of the whales was introduced as “Shamu.” My kids wanted to know which one was Shamu. After all, he’s the star, isn’t he? (And a quick check on wikipedia upon return home confirmed that Shamu is indeed dead — died in 1971 — and no, Virginia, there is no Shamu in Shamu’s Christmas show.)

While we were watching this spectacle I started cracking wise to eldest son Lex. You could just feel everyone in the stadium falling for the beautiful gentle-seeming pony-tailed guitar player, everyone but us. I said to Lex, “Girls just love a guy who plays guitar like that. They get confused and think he’s sensitive, when really he’s just a jerk who plays guitar.” Lex laughed and said he’d have to learn guitar.

But Lex had the best line of the entire show, if not the entire day. Surveying the Shamu show and having noted Shamu’s evident absence, I said, “What do you think is on Shamu’s Christmas list?” Lex said, “Revenge.”

Fecal cube or pizza-delivery dessert add-on?

With the help of readers, Slate’s Seth Stevenson decodes some commercials so popular I’ve even seen them. (They must run Friday nights on Sci-Fi.) The ad agencies think they’re telling us one story, but under a different microscope dessert looks like free walking hashish.

When you speak in metaphor, there is no universal translator.

While I’m on the subject of the Edwards announcement, I couldn’t help noticing two more things:

1. The campaign put up then took down then put up its site, stepping on its own announcement. If you can’t even announce right, can you really run the country?
2. The story says, “He did yard work at the home of New Orleans resident Orelia Tyler, 54, whose home was completely gutted by Hurricane Katrina and is close to being rebuilt.” What would be the difference between “completely gutted” and just plain old “gutted?” Because the latter means “guts removed,” it’s an inherently complete operation. You can’t incompletely gut something.

It’s somehow fitting that Gerald Ford died just a couple of days before John Edwards’ announcement that he’s running (again) for president. Ford was the accidental president — someone who was never elected president or vice-president, and whose lasting accomplishment was proving with a pardon that there are indeed two levels of the law: one for the president, and one for the rest of us. I used to wonder if the Republicans so outraged by Clinton’s lying under oath (as I was) ever stopped to realize that this was where the two-tiered view of presidential justice began.

Where Ford was accidental, Edwards made a fortune in litigating large settlements out of accidents. In the abstract, I’m glad that we have a system that allows for injury claims, and I view this as part of our system of checks and balances. In practice, neither this nor one term as a senator qualifies one to be president. (Especially when just two years ago one was a vice-presidential nominee and provided zero assistance to the ticket — including in one’s home state.)

While I’m on the subject, I am as enchanted as everyone else with Barack Obama’s speeches. But my view of leadership involves making hard choices in the face of adversity and often against the headwind of public opinion. If fellowship and togetherness are your panacea, what remedy do you have when not everyone in the world wants to hold hands and sing Kumbaya?

I recently saw a terrific one-person show that I almost missed because I’ve grown to hate the form so much.

For writer and performer Debra Ehrhardt it was almost as difficult getting out of Jamaica 25 years ago as it was getting me to see her show, “Jamaica Farewell.” I don’t begrudge anyone their opportunity to spin self-indulgent tales of their comically tortured childhood; I just don’t want to see them anymore. (Even if — especially if — your name is John Leguizamo. Note to John: less mawkishness next time. And please don’t ever again mime a baby suckling at a breast. We get it, even if you don’t — you’re a demanding infant. Jeez. And note to Mr. “Frank Sinatra Fucked Up My Life”: No, that was you.)

So, having been annoyed so many times, my preference to seeing most one-person shows that don’t feature Dame Edna or Elaine Stritch would be to stay home. Or even to shoot heroin into my eyeball. Anything. Ehrhardt, though, was charming and persistent and I decided to accept her invitation to see the show one night in December just before leaving town. I’m glad — no, lucky — that I did.

Every once in a while you see a show that rewards your devotion to the theatre. Some months ago I asked a group of fellow playwrights how often they were glad they’d seen a show. How often had it been worth the effort involved? Responses ranged from 25% (the always upbeat and bright-eyed comedy writer Stephanie) to 10% (me) down to 5% (the would-be curmudgeon in the group who is a closet romantic — and isn’t that what every cynic is: a romantic who got burned?). The theatre is notoriously difficult to pull off. The writing has to be good, as well as the performing, it has to be pulled together and presented well by a director and designers, the theatre had better not be too hot or too cold, the right audience has to have found it because they are very definitely part of the experience, there had better not have been a bad parking or driving or box-office experience, and on and on and on.

So why do so many of us go so often? Just to get angry at ourselves for our blockheaded refusal to give up? No — because when it is superb, nothing surpasses the visceral thrill of performers and material connecting with an audience in a defined space. I love great performers of all stripes and honestly feel blessed to have worked with so many wonderful actors, and I love great provocative writing. Put the two together and you’ve got the theatre — when it works.

I haven’t seen a lot of that in one-person shows, and that’s probably because the form has become confessional, with the goal of arousing our sympathies. Mostly, I have no sympathies. Life is hard, and if you’re doing a one-person show I can unequivocally guarantee you that by comparison your life is not at all hard — in fact, it’s ridiculously easy. How easy? Unlike these people in Lagos, you aren’t grateful for the opportunity to live deep in a pit at the bottom of the world’s largest dump. Despite what you think, juggling your waiting job with acting lessons is not a great tribulation.

Everything about Ehrhardt’s show is in delightful contrast to the new proclivities of the one-person show. In relating her tale of trying desperately as a young woman to get to the U.S. and start a new life, she never asks us to feel sorry for her. Rather than drowning us in bathos, she shows us pluck and determination. Nothing will stand in her way. She’s also generous in her characterizations: Although she stars in her own life’s story, all the peripheral characters are given fair treatment and deft handling. She sketches in her mother, her father, her boss, and sundry townspeople with wit and charm. Her portrayal of her father, a drunk who has squandered every family opportunity, is remarkable in its final kindness. In an age of visualized revenge, we don’t see that sort of kindness and understanding often. (Except at the end of Paula Vogel’s “How I Learned to Drive” — in which our protagonist shows great empathy for her molesting uncle, in a closing that elevates the play into art.)

Somehow or other, she also manages to meld comedy with high-wire tension in this 90-minute show — as when she is threading her way through the strange terrain of darkened backwaters with a million dollars in cash in a briefcase and men with machetes or would-be rapists stalking her. The writing, and her performance of it, is riveting. I promise you that I’ll never forget some of it.

There are two upcoming performances of “Jamaica, Farewell” at the Whitefire Theatre in L.A., on January 7th and February 4th. I strongly, strongly recommend the show. It hasn’t had an extended run yet, but it deserves one, and it deserves to tour.

…about 30 years too late. (Putting them in the John Kerry School of Snappy Response class of 2006.)

Here’s the story from Publishers Weekly:

Archie & Gang Get A Makeover

The residents of Riverdale will be get a makeover in an upcoming issue of the Betty and Veronica Digest. Artist Steven Butler, who has worked on Marvel’s Spiderman, will give Archie Andrews and the rest of the Riverdale crew a new, more naturalistic contemporary comic book art style in a new story coming in May 2007. The story, “Bad Boy Trouble,” will be written by Melanie Morgan and debut in Betty and Veronica Double Digest # 151. The story will experiment with a longer format. It will be a four-part story and each part will be 25 pages. If the story meets fan approval, look for the mini-series to be collected into a single volume graphic novel. Archie Comics public relations manager Rick Offenberger said the makeover is strictly an experiment to try an attract older readers and the art style will not be used on any other Archie series. He noted that the manga redesign of Archie Comics’s Sabrina series has been “extremely sucessful.” Offenberger said, “This is a real change for us. If it works we’ll collect it into a book. If the fans hate it; we’ll never do it again.”

By the way, here’s the new Reggie:

And this is the new Jughead:

Two-and-a-half years too late, John Kerry has a comeback: Maybe flip-flopping isn’t a bad thing.

(Regarding Mr. Kerry himself, I don’t foresee a comeback. More of a stayaway.)