rumor mongering

Well, it looks like the whole "cell phones are killing the bees" thing is a bit of shoddy journalism and mass hysteria.

I've been spreading the bad word myself to anyone who will listen and now have my share of egg on my face.

"Those searching for answers for the recent disappearance of millions of bees in the United States - what researchers are calling colony collapse disorder - jumped on the possible explanation though there was one particular, cellphones and cordless phones emit different types of radiation and what you learn studying one type is not necessarily significant to the other, according to the researchers."

"It's not my fault if people misinterpret our data," said Kimmel. "Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal."

LOL

am I the only person who found the internet meme of LOLCats funny for about five seconds and is now sick of it?

(for those who have not yet encountered this meme, it basically involves pictures of cats with internet haxx0r speech overlayed on it.)

Too Gay for Freedom

Apart from any individual feelings about the legitimacy of our war in Iraq, there are certain behaviors exhibited by our Military that are beyond cruel, beyond stupid and go right into the realms of the inane.

Take this story for example.

Now, let's place this particular bit of news in its context. From the beginning, we have had a serious lack in personnel properly trained (or trained at all) in arabic languages and culture. It's been a huge problem from day one. It's recently come out that the U.S. owned and operated television network in Iraq gave air time to terrorists because the executive staff didn't understand the language. That's right, we've got a 68 million dollar program set up to broacast pro-democracy messages to Iraq and it's broadcasting exhortations to committ acts of violence on Jews. There's also no assignment desk, essentially meaning that the reporting and broadcasting is being done by contractors... who the executives can't understand.

Now, this isn't a military operation, but as a governent based propganda program that works hand in hand with the military, I think it servest to illustrate the point.

So, given that things are not going well over there, and that at every turn we find ourselves sinking deeper and deeper into chaos with a culture that (no matter what Bush wants to believe) is fundamentally opposed to our presence and a population that for most part wants us out and dead (in no particular order), how is it that we're so concerned that our soldiers are emailing their boyfriends? How is the homophobia of our military of greater importance than having people who actually SPEAK THE LANGUAGE of the people that we're dealing with in a desparate situation?

That, of course, continues to make the assumption that we have any concern at all about working WITH the Iraqi people. If, indeed, we are only concerned with occupation and subjegation, then it makes perfect sense that we would fire 58 people who are vital to our operations because they happen to like the meeting of glans to sphincter.

So, what's the priority here? And the Pentagon saying that gay people can serve their countries as contractors doesn't address the issue even remotely.

Wow stuff

Google Map - Street Views. Holy Crap!

Seriously! Holy CRAP

bit of fun

My friend Brian mentioned the Star Wars Photoshopping Project on his blog recently, so I checked it out. It's a series of takes on a single, iconic photo from the original Star Wars film and I felt inspired to do one myself.

The sound of things falling into place

The first draft of "'Sweetie' Tanya" is done and sent off to the musicians and those performers who have already been cast. I am by no means finished with the script, but having something with a beginning, middle and end is vastly satisfying. Now I just need for songs to come back so I can see what needs to happen before and after them and adjust the non-singing parts appropriately.

Aggressively casting 'The Chinese Angle' while keeping an eye out for people for 'Tanya' is rather peculiar. The cast requirements for the two shows are quite different, and the shows are months apart, so it isn't like I'm poaching from one project for the other one. There's no stealing from Peter to pay Paul. Still, it feels like I have this secret agenda all the time.

Of course the real secret agenda involves fleeing the country. I bought tickets today for myself and Mayu to fly to Tahiti in early July. I'm waiting to hear back from the small local airline down there for our secondary flights to Rangiora and Bora Bora. I'm not going to be bringing much with me... just a suitcase of SPF 99 lotion and a speedo. I'll be the viscous pillar walking along the beach.

by one's own mouth

I have never been a Jerry Falwell fan, not even when I was a preacher man.
Mark Morford has assembled a list of Falwell's public statements as his sendoff to the highly influential public figure, and I think it's worth perusing.

And the even more frightening thing is that he, and many others like him, would be proud of that legacy.

ancient history

This is not new information, but I just came across it. I'm in talks with my friend Kurt about "'Sweetie' Tanya" and realized how very little I know about his musical past. I knew he was much happier doing what he's doing now, and I've always been interested in his new musical projects, but I made a rather conscious choice not to go from friend to fan-boy and went the other extreme of not checking *anything* out. Well, I finally decided to check out some of his older work, and found this fascinating account of what went down with him and VH-1 back in the 90's.

I'm no lover of "Reality shows", and have a general distrust of the news media in general and of entertainment news in particular. Kurt's experience is not terribly surprising, but revealing look at Behind "Behind the Music".

in other news

Aside from me being a whiney boy, congratulations to Nina, i.e. the Slackmistress on her wedding this weekend!

Also, kudos to Rick and Megan Prelinger for their article in Harper's this month! (you currently need to be a subscriber to Harper's to read it, but I think it'll be available to the general public soon....)

head under the pillow

At some point I crossed the threshhold into "too much to do" land. I'm not exactly sure when it was, but I think that once I've finished the first draft of Sweetie Tanya and cast The Chinese Angle, I'll be a much less stressed monkey.

This weekend was one in which very little "work" got done. I was able to get the essential edit of Radiostar done before Mayu made it over on Friday, and Saturday was spent with my Mom. She's in town for the week, and for Mother's Day wanted to spend the day with meon Saturday and wanted to meet Mayu. Mother and Girlfriend got along famously, so all is good and right with the world.

We had considered either going to see Paul Jennings and Stephanie DeMott in Macbeth out in Berkeley when we got back home in the evening, but we got back too late to make the curtain time (again). We also considered going to the fireworks/live music spectacle KaBoom, but it was startlingly chilly out and that became a less attractive option. So we went home and Mayu was out like a light, victim to sun and mexican food. Sunday brought us Volleyball in the park, leaving us both with impressive sunburns (mine more impressive than hers... but then she has melanin). Radiostar that night was a good reunion, with Jennifer Jajeh rejoining us after a long absence.

Still, this morning I awoke with a deep awareness of how much is not yet done. There is a Bay Area Professional Small Theatres meeting tonight, I need to get people into the rehearsal space, I have auditions for the Chinese Angle on Thursday and Friday, and I'm getting the last few musicians lined up for Sweetie Tanya and I haven't finished the script yet. I awoke in the midst of a dream of magic, class warfare, crime sprees, and crushing responsibilities and wanted to pull the covers over my head. An apt response to a Monday if ever there was one.

for what it's worth

This is my new favorite online clip. Colbairt with Steinem and Fonda... pure brilliance.

sorting the headshots

I packed my bag full of headshots yesterday morning, thinking that I'd polish off yesterday's Radiostar show and sort through them after work, before my tango class. About halfway through the morning I checked my calendar to realize that I didn't have class tonight, but a BAPST leadership meeting over at the Theatre Bay Area offices. Whoops! I was able to get the show up thanks to lunch and breaks, but I lugged all the headshots to the meeting and was able to do a preliminary sort while we met.

The first pass of headshots is an amazingly superficial part of the casting process. I have hundreds of headshots in my files (or in this case, in my backpack) and I simply sorted them into two stacks. One stack had asian men and women, young white men and white women in their twenties to early forties. Everyone else went into the other stack. That split my headshots into two, fairly equal stacks. It was literally as basic as putting a headshot into a pile every time my eyes rested downwards for a second.

Once I got home, I did a second sort. Asian males in one stack, asian females in another. White men in one, white eomen in another. Sort through the Asian males into stacks of "Wilson Woo" and "Johnny Tanaka". Sort the asian women. Anyone too young looking goes into the reject pile. If they don't sing, they go in the reject pile. What is left is in the "Lily" pile. Tackle the white men. Anyone who looks over 30 at a second glance goes in the reject pile. Anyone with an area code that looks like they are more than an hour drive to rehearsals goes in the reject pile. Anyone without an email address on their resume goes in the reject pile. Yep. I'm not making two dozen phone calls to get people into auditions. Still too many people. I only want to see about 15 people for the role. I think more and more about the character. Wealthy, a bit naive, but a noir character. Not too soft. More go into the reject pile. I finally get it down to 15. Now the white women. I'd like to look at latinas and black women, but the script has as a plot point that these are white women. I make two stacks, older women for "Sydney" and young women for "Ruby" and "Ellen". I go through the Sydney's first. Same process. Distance and ease of contact are the first items. Then a more considered pass. Ex-cop, private investigator assistant, tough... but intimidated by authority figures. I get the stack down to about 12 people. On to the young women. Another stack into two piles. "Ruby" is tough, rude, ambitious and mean. All the femme fatales go in a pile. "Ellen" is by all appearances wholesome, if not completely innocent. They go into the other pile. If a "Ruby" doesn't sing, she goes in the reject pile. Otherwise, it's the same routine, although I have to go through the "Ellen" stack several times. She has to look like she could be in a noir film. Difficult at times with headshots, especially as I've written on more than a few, "looks nothing like headshot" from when I saw them at the Theatre Bay Area General Auditions. If I've written otherwise good things, I keep them in the pile anyway.

By this point I've got the stack down to about 50 headshots, maximum, for six roles. I've already sent out audition notices for people I've worked with before.

It should be enough. I've already gotten back some emails with requests for particular slots in the schedule, and more with people who have moved to LA or NYC since I got the headshots in the first place. I'd like to have this cast in the next two weeks though. This is the least fun part of the process, after all.

Everyone's sweet on Sweeny

I was proufoundly amused today to get the brochure for the 2007-2008 season for American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.), which is the biggest, baddest theatre in downtown San Francisco. It seems that they are bringing the production of Sweeny Todd that I saw in London to San Francisco in August and September. It's been huge on Broadway, as it was impressive in London. So, A.C.T. does Sweeny Todd in August/September, Tim Burton's Sweeny Todd comes out in December, and Sweetie Tanya comes out in January. People will either be primed for this show or they'll be sick of it before it comes out.

As it is, it's already diverged so much from the inspiration that I'm half tempted to change the name. Tempted, but not that much. While the final play's connection to Sweeny Todd will be tenuous, I may well be able to toss enough parody elements into the mix to make it worthwhile. One thing is certain: this is a much darker and more serious work in its own right than I originally intended. This is perhaps not so surprising since the subject matter is not something that is easily treated both lightly and respectfully.

Another composer is tentatively on board and I've approached yet another. I hope to have confirmations available here soon. The script is moving along slowly but nicely. It will probably be the shortest script I've written, although I believe it will still run 90 minutes. This shouldn't surprise me too much, as it's all in how a play is written. "Nothing in the Dark" transcribed to less than six full pages, but ran for 25 minutes and didn't lag for a split second. It didn't even have musical numbers, and Tanya looks like it wil have up to fourteen!

In other news, I swung by the SF Playhouse, Stage 2 to look it over in preparation for "The Chinese Angle", the show I'm directing for Savage Eye Productions in the fall. It's another small house, but it has a decent sized stage, and we should be able to use the space well. I hope that I don't terrify the producer too much with my ideas for how to stage this show. But it's not my fault that they came to me with a script that was set entirely in a Chinatown nightclub in the 40's...