Friday Random Ten for the Baby Jesus

Well, the Baby Jesus One-Act Jubilee: Second Coming has opened last night and started out OK. One big hitch: due to an emergency on the L Train, two actors and a tech person got stuck, unable to make it to the theatre. Fortunately (in a way) they were all in the company of one of the six shows, so the other five were able to go on as planned, and we just had to drop that one (The Bender Family Christmas, in which Berit and I also appear) from the 7.00 pm "Marys" program. There was some concern that the same thing was going to happen to the last show on the 9.00 pm "Josephs" bill, but the missing actresses for that one showed up just in time.

Pretty smooth for the first "real" run. It'll just get smoother. It's always a pain dealing with the fast changeovers on a program like this, trying to keep the momentum going, trying to keep the show going, and we have some clunky changeovers to do (eg; a couch and two doors have to move backstage at the same time as the movie screen goes up and a stageful of clothes gets thrown into a bag, all of which gets in the way of the others). But, it wasn't too bad and it'll only get better, so good. People are really enjoying my holiday iPod mix that goes on around the pieces, too, so that helps fill the space (I'll post a list of those songs later)

Marshmallow World went over well. I'm still a bit worried about my performance in it. I think it's a good performance, but I'm not sure I'm getting the right tone to start the piece off - since I basically open the play with a monologue. The character is . . . a rather disturbed man trying to hold it all in. Standard character I do well, but with the humor in this piece it's a fine line to walk -- he has to be just disturbed enough to make him funny, but not so much to not be scary-dangerous. And I think I may be just going a hair over that line, but it's hard to tell. If I don't go far enough, I think that's worse, and he won't come off as real at all. Well, I got 8 shows left to try and hit the mark. I'm good enough, just want to be better. Jason and Alyssa and Aaron are all on the mark emotionally - from run to run there are little things that get better or worse, but that's theatre. Always new, always different.

Okay, how much is in the iPod today? 20,865 songs. Let's see what comes up . . .

1. "Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind?" - Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Blood & Chocolate
2. "Cold Bear" - The Gaturs - What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves
3. "Swallow My Pride" - The Ramones - Leave Home
4. "Blinkle Blinkle" - James Kochalka - Superstar
5. "Fat Fat Fellow" - Daniel Janin & J.C. Pierric - Melodie en Soul Sol
6. "Take a Little Sad Song" - The Equals - First Among Equals - The Greatest Hits
7. "To Jean" - Berto Pisano & Jaques Chaumont - Kill Them All!
8. "Summertime" - Big Brother & The Holding Company - Cheap Thrills
9. "Prá Ficar Feliz" - Brazilian Bitles - Antologia
10. "She's Lost Control" - Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

Ah, that was nice. The iPod's pretty close to full without much I want to cut from it, but I discovered that many of the tracks on it are still in MP3 format rather than the iTunes AAC format which is perfectly fine for my purposes (the car, the theatre, the subway) and compresses to much smaller files than MP3 or other formats. So, I've been going through and transferring everything over to AAC that isn't in it already. The iTunes has dropped by almost 30 GB already, and I'm not done yet. Then I fix the iPod up properly and shove even more onto it. Whee!

Friday Video Roundup

Ah, time to catch up on videos and links collected as of recent . . .

First, as I've now seen mentioned on Boing Boing and Gothamist, a surprising animation from the vaults of Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles - no indication of who the animator is, but the music is an original piece by Philip Glass! And from my favorite, classic period, the mid-to-late 70s, with the Ensemble (and vocal group)! It was shown on SS in four parts, but here some nice YouTuber has weaved them all together into the longer piece they must have originally been (are there more?):

A new song by DEVO created for a Dell commercial, and released as an internet single, which I found as part of an excellent overview article on Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO, and his soundtrack company Mutato Muzika in the L.A. Weekly:

Meanwhile, in last night's Special Comment (and thank you MSNBC), Keith Olbermann reminds us - if we needed reminding, and apparently we do - that The President is a liar:

And Jack Cafferty (thanks for this, at least, CNN) reminds us as well - any everyone should be constantly reminded - that the Administration is a pack of actual, literal criminals:

Enjoy. If that's the right word . . .