This weekend I was supposed to take my wife and two kids to a mountaintop family resort in Banning, CA for RV camping, fishing, barbecuing, hiking, and playing in the snow — man-made snow that they were having trucked in. But my wife broke her toe, so hiking was out; then they informed us that the fishing was off because they had to drain the lake to clear reeds; then we were informed that the man-made snow was canceled because rain looked likely; and just when my wife and I were trying to envision four days and three nights in an RV with squabbling siblings and no wifi, I was contacted by two board members of the resort and the executive director that maybe we shouldn’t come because it looked like there was going to be a massive snowfall — of snow generated the old-fashioned, natural way — and we would be either snowed in, or stuck on the mountain trying to get in. So instead we stayed home and watched “Fringe” and other things Friday night.
On Saturday, newly unscheduled, I decided to tackle some chores:
putting the year’s worth of unread “Hulk” and “Incredible Hulk” comics into chronological order so that I can read them later
taking all 20 of my unlaundered dress shirts to the dry cleaner’s
getting together all my tax records for my CPA; this took four hours
cleaning my email in-box down to 58 emails I need to respond to — that’s real progress
editing something I’m writing for publication
sending my revised bio to the nice people at the Great Plains Theatre Conference
buying beer and beef sticks
buying a form-molding pillow for my bed, and a form-molding bath pillow for the bath, because yes, my neck is still killing me off-and-on from the car accident four months ago
buying a soldering iron so that I could fix a shoe buckle and a belt buckle
coming home to do that soldering, abetted by my daughter who has learned in school to solder far better than I ever did
reading the new issue of New Avengers
taking a long jacuzzi bath, during which I tested out that new bath pillow and read most of that New Yorker story on Paul Haggis’ resignation from Scientology; I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about Scientology because I can’t quite figure out why it’s any of my business, or how it varies that widely from almost every other religion except that it’s new, but I do have the opinion that this story in no way merits all that space in the New Yorker
coming downstairs to drink one of those beers and work on my play, “I, Teratoma,” which is what I was doing just before…
A week and a half ago, I proposed that the Spider-Man musical might have been better if they’d had an actual Spider-Man writer involved. Sounds like the producers have now gotten one of those involved — and, importantly, it’s one who is also a playwright.
The unanswered question is: What could be changed in the script that could make the show better? In my experience, every production gets its own culture — its own informing ethos — that is distinct from what’s in the script; Apple and IBM may both make computers, but they do them rather differently, and what we see is a reflection not just of the different plans on paper, but of the different company cultures. A theatrical production is mounted by a production company, and that company culture is difficult to change. Once you get too far into the rehearsal process, it’s difficult to change directions, and “Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark” is a show that, more or less, for better or worse, seems to have opened, and long ago. (It has also been widely reviewed, and savagely panned.) Add to that that this is supposedly the most technically demanding show in Broadway history; what significant changes can be made when you’ve already got that much physical hardware in place? And finally: With a show that is already legendary for the injuries incurred in some very dangerous stunts, how much will producers want to risk in changing how the rigging and pyrotechnics and whatnot work in relation to the script?
It’s a lot to overcome. I hope they can work it out.
Many years ago, just out of high school on a camping outing with friends, I drank too much, acted up, ate a raw chicken, and passed out on the outside of the tent when I thought I was inside it. When I woke up, I was lying next to a pile of blood-red chicken bones and covered in dew. In other words, I was not strangely beautiful like these giant hi-res photos of bugs in the morning dew. But some people certainly wanted to squish me.
If you wondered what the meeting between Obama and tech CEOs Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Mark Zuckerberg is about, I think this will sum up much of it.
Congrats to Mike Daisey on this terrific review of his show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” which plays Berkeley Rep through the 27th. As a member of that Apple religion, and someone who has started to consider nailing some questions to the church door, I would very much like to see this show. A quick review of my schedule shows that a trip to the Bay Area isn’t possible between now and then, so I hope this is coming to LA.
To tackle one of the statements that Daisey seems to be making in this show — that we have already become “cyborgs” because of our constant attachment to the internet — I think that’s right. And I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. It gives more people more access to information than ever before, which is theoretically the goal of the enlightened intelligentsia. And given recent history, it seems effective in toppling dictators very quickly.
Here’s a nice profile of the screenwriter behind “The King’s Speech,” who, it turns out, has suffered from stuttering his entire life. Before reading this, I couldn’t relate to the idea of dreading attending awards shows because he might have to stand up and say a few words, but I sure can now. I went to high school with a stutterer, a nice kid named Paul Mosetti. We were friendly, but not the closest of friends, and I graduated more than 30 years ago. So why can I remember his name? Because one time in front of everyone I called him “Paul M-m-m-m-m-m-mosetti.” I still regret that.
When his Tonight Show gig was falling apart, I became one of those millions who started to watch Conan O’Brien. I had never been much of a fan, and I didn’t like his Tonight Show gig at all in the first episode or two that I watched after its debut. But that final week or two had me, and a lot of people, evaluating. As I noted at the time, angry = funny.
As this extremely interesting piece from Fortune points out, O’Brien was the beneficiary of very new tools of his trade: Twitter and Facebook, among others. Purely by luck, he was able to surf the sort of social-media tidal wave that swamped Hosni Mubarak last week. Everywhere we look, whether it’s on shirtless Congressmen on Craigslist or hapless television executives, the impact of new media has just started to be felt. These are the early days, and we haven’t figured out anywhere near what we think we have. Welcome to Gutenberg 2.0.
When you work in theatre in Los Angeles, you sometimes get to meet people you grew up watching on TV. Betty Garrett, who died yesterday at the age of 91, was someone I saw on “All in the Family” and “Laverne & Shirley” when I was a kid. Before that, she was better known as a leading lady starring alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly. I didn’t know Betty well, but she was such a visible part of the Los Angeles theatre community for so long that I think some of us assumed she would always be here; at least, I made that assumption. I remember once going to some bizarre theatre thing outdoors at Griffith Park and sitting on the lawn — near Betty Garrett and near Marion Ross. She was one of the presenters and an awardee for an awards show I did (and now I find I’m sadly fuzzy on the details), and I saw her many times at Theatre West, where she was a founder and a performer, and elsewhere around town. What I remember most about her is her sense of fun and optimism. Ninety-one years is a good long time to live, and it seems she lived it well, but I’m sad that we won’t get to run into her any more in our theatres.
Here’s a montage that the fine people at Theatre West put together last year, in honor of Betty Garrett’s 90th birthday.
To quote my friend Terence Anthony, “Imagine how shitty life under Mubarak must’ve been for people to get this hyped over a military coup.” Precisely. It’s hard to get thrilled when the military assumes power. On the other hand, if Dick Cheney goes out of his way to praise you as an ally, as he did with Mubarak, I need you to go.
