Random Merry Merry Friday Ten and Cat Blogging

Whew. Kept meaning to post in the past week, but just got busy.

Directing Trav S.D.'s Hawthorne adaptation, Merry Mount, for Hawthornicopia has wound up being harder in some ways than anticipated. It's a short show - maybe 13 minutes - and I have a great cast of principals, and we're all set on the "actorial" stuff, if you get my drift (though we went down a wrong path at first - too serious - and had to go back and fix it - add some camp), but around all the acting are things that are necessary to the script that are a bit of a pain. Like period costumes (Colonial Massachusetts). A maypole that must function as a maypole, and also be breakaway (and set up and collapse in a small space without hitting anyone). A pagan song and dance (with 6-8 actors in small, non-speaking roles). Yeah, nice easy stuff.

All of this is pretty much taken care of now, but it wound up eating a lot more time than anticipated (and causing more stress). All good now, except I can never convince myself that all is good, of course, and I go around worrying about things that are either taken care of or I can't do anything about anyway. I'm a schmuck.

When not directing or worrying about Merry Mount, I'm working on things for the June/August shows, primarily the scripts for Harry in Love and The Magnificent Ambersons:

To the left is the book with the transcript of Welles' cut of Ambersons, to the right, a copy of Richard Foreman's typescript of Harry in Love. Both are long.

Since Ambersons has to be adapted to a playscript, I'm typing that in and trying to turn it into a functional "play" as I go. Harry just needs to be retyped into an electronic format that can be sent around to actors - and also edited down, as the play is just too damned long, so Berit is handling that. We did the full text in the original production of '99, and it was a boulevard comedy (Murray Schisgal/Bruce Jay Friedman-style) that ran 2 hours 50 minutes PLUS two intermissions (totaling another 15 minutes)! And we weren't poky about it, either. The first thing Richard said to me when he saw it, after thanking me for doing it in the first place and complementing my performance, was that it was too long and I should cut it if I did it again.

So I am. The original typescript is 159 pages long, and I would like to get 35 pages out of it, if I can without damaging it. Which may not be possible. The play is short on plot and long on character/funny lines, with a careful, rising-hysteria rhythm, so at a certain point it's the accumulation of insanity that makes everything work, and cutting too many of the beats to get there will eliminate any reason for the play's existence at all. I've already made my cuts in the first four scenes in my work copy - there's just one more scene in the play that B has to finish typing - and when the whole thing is in, I'll make these first cuts and see where we stand. I have some ideas for the second level of cuts that will pain me, but I can live with. Then I'll see if I can live with a third set of cuts, reaching into the "brutal" level. I want no more than 2 hrs. 15 min. plus one intermission. If possible.

Ambersons is, lengthwise, what it is. We're doing the Welles cut as we can. Probably 2 hrs. 10 min. Maybe a little less. With {sigh} no intermission - we're imitating a movie here; it just wouldn't work.

Meanwhile - back in de iPod - there are now 22,046 songs (hooray for better acceptable compression!), and this is what comes up this morning as I type:

1. "Love of My Life" - The Mothers of Invention - Crusin' with Ruben & The Jets
2. "Merry-Go-Round" - Wallace Collection - Laughing Cavalier
3. "Fiction Romance" - Buzzcocks -Operators Manual
4. "Baby Help Me" - Percy Sledge - Essential Collection
5. "Dirty Love" - Frank Zappa - Overnite Sensation
6. "Little Baby" - The Blue Rondos - Jimmy's Back Pages . . . The Early Years
7. "Whirlpool" - Steve Mancha - Northern Soul: The Cream of 60's Soul
8. "More Than a Feeling" - Boston - Greatest Hits of Boston
9. "The Lighter Side of Dating" - The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique
10. "T.N.K. (Tomorrow Never Knows)" - 801 - Live

And as for the kitties, Berit and I continue in our attempt to get a really good photo of Moni by holding her, with mixed success:

Especially as she likes to lick Berit's nose:

But she and Hooker have been particularly sweet this week for some reason . . .

We'll see how long it lasts.

Some other excellent news has come up for Gemini CollisionWorks, but it appears I would have to check the exact language for legal reasons before I make a formal announcement. But maybe a few links would be acceptable . . ?

" . . . Nothing More Than the Lost Roses of Her Cheeks."

In a sad bit of news for horror kids who have grown up to be horror geeks, especially ones like me who are fascinated by horror movie hosts who entertained my parents' generation in the decade before I was born (Ghoulardi, Zacherle, etc.), word has come of the death of Maila Nurmi at the age of 86.

Who was Maila Nurmi? Well, she was better known to the world as . . .

Vampira

Her own personal website has the dates and a lovely headshot of a non-Vampira-ed Nurmi HERE.

I found out about it from Tim Lucas' lovely post at Video WatchBlog, HERE. He pretty much covers everything important about Vampira (and especially her influence on several generations of "vampire girls," as Jonathan Richman would call them), and what he doesn't cover, he links to.

He doesn't mention her fine work in the Bert I. Gordon film The Magic Sword, not such a great movie (except by Bert I. Gordon standards, by which it's exceptional), but she keeps her end up, and it made for one of the best episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Of course, she will always be best known for her appearance as "The Dead Wife" in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.

She, as a result of her Plan 9 appearance, also in no small part inspired my favorite song by The Damned, "Plan 9 Channel 7," which you can see here in a music video that directly pays homage:

R.I.P.

And I'll See You in the Morning, You're All Dressed in Black and Yellow

As a result of various searches and links off searches for my last post, I found, on a blog by and for fans of Jonathan Richman, a video that surprised, delighted, and embarrassed me.

It is a video of Richman, his current drummer Tommy Larkins, and original Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks performing "Roadrunner" at Joey Ramone's birthday party at Coney Island High in May, 1998:

I am surprised that this video exists. I am delighted because it is a record of one of the most joyous concert experiences I've been at.

Now . . . this is by no means the world's greatest version of "Roadrunner" - a song that, to be sure, exists in no "definitive" version - it's rather perfunctory and under-rehearsed.

(for a beautiful essay on "Roadrunner" and Richman, by Laura Barton of The Guardian, who made a pilgrimage last year to all the Massachusetts sites mentioned in all the many versions of the song, see HERE)

However, on this occasion, the joy was simply in the fact that Richman actually DID this song, one of his early ones he has been very insistent on never doing live, as he says he isn't the angsty 19-year-old he was when he wrote it, and it doesn't speak for him anymore. I'd seen JoJo about three or four times before this, and it had always been a great experience, but I was well aware that I wasn't going to ever hear him do my Favorite Song Of All Time.

But, after doing a couple of songs from the not-yet-released There's Something About Mary, he brought up Ernie Brooks and announced that Joey had asked him to do some of the early songs, and he wouldn't normally, but it was Joey's birthday, so . . . First, they did the classic, "Girlfriend" (or "Girlfren" as it is sometimes known). Then, what you see above happened.

Now, I am embarrassed because I am the loudmouth you can hear screaming "YES!" twice at the top of my lungs during Richman's countdown. I think I was leaping about four feet in the air straight up at the same time, just off camera right.

Well . . . what the hell, it meant a lot to me. Didn't think I'd ever see it. I don't think Joey Ramone did either. I looked back at him, perched over the sound board, during the song, and I swear to god, he was crying in joy. I can't be sure, 'cause of the shades, but he looked like he was crying, but with a big silly grin on his face.

A short time later, Uncle Floyd (the host for the evening) brought out Ronnie Spector, who did two songs from the EP Joey was producing for her (Joey's "She Talks to Rainbows" and Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory") and finished up with, of course, "Be My Baby."

Well, at that point, having heard my two favorite songs of all time performed live by the original singers, I left. I didn't see how the evening could get any better for me, and I was walking on air.

I'm glad there's a record.