Friday Lame Duck Randomness & Otherways

Slow week.

Paperwork to catch up on or get ahead of -- getting in Equity things from the Summer shows I should have had done two months ago, applying for money and rehearsal space grants for next year, considering where to go with Spacemen from Space, making drawings for the set of A Little Piece of the Sun, paying off the actors from the 2008 shows as money comes in. And so on.

Berit came back Monday night from seeing her grandparents in Wisconsin for their 60th Anniversary (which made the cats happier), we had a board meeting for Edward Einhorn's UTC#61 Tuesday night, and apart from that, just paperwork and sitting back.

And listening to a lot of music. Got in a Beatles mindset on Wednesday after re-reading Geoff Emerick's book on engineering most of their important recordings and wound up listening to just about everything they made from 1963-1970 (plus the two newer Anthology tracks and George & Giles Martin's Love mashup) in chronological order. Almost 13 hours. Nice to do once a year, while working on other things. Last night, it was Negativland.

Not much else new. Lord Oxford is almost over at The Brick - I'll be hanging out there for the last couple of shows as Berit runs board. It's a good production that's gotten several bad reviews that I don't quite understand. I understand why it could get bad reviews, easily, I get that. But with two exceptions - one good review and one "meh" review - the others I saw seemed REALLY outsized in their hate of the show. Again, I can understand not LIKING it but my god the level of vitriol! - I just don't see this show provoking it. Real surprise to me. I talked to some friends who saw and liked it, who are quite critical themselves - one in fact, a critic, but not there to review the show - and they agreed, though they hadn't seen the reviews and didn't, I think, understand from my description how VERY BAD they were.

It's an excellent production of a script that I think is interesting and well-written and still problematic in some ways, but the actorial/directorial work smooths over a lot of that. I think they still need house these last two nights, so if you can and you're interested, please come on by. The show deserves better than it's gotten.

Berit and I are then on to the next show at The Brick, Piper McKenzie's The Granduncle Quadrilogy: Tales from the Land of Ice, written by Jeff Lewonczyk, directed by Hope Cartelli. Berit's making props, I'm lighting it; I get to see a first runthough tomorrow afternoon. And this, along with the next Penny Dreadful takes away most of December from us for getting away from the city, which we've been trying to do since the start of October. Sigh. We'll just get a few days around Thanksgiving to go to Portland, ME and Mattapoisett, MA and then back. Maybe more time in January-February? Yeah, great time to go vacation in Maine. Well, better than nothing . . .

Brief obit link - artist/illustrator Guy Peellaert, loved best by some of us for the David Bowie Diamond Dogs album cover, is dead. He also did the poster for Taxi Driver, the cover of the Stones' It's Only Rock 'n' Roll album, and the Rock Dreams book - a cartoony, stylized metaphoric view of the history of Rock, most of which can be viewed at his site, which I was glad to find.

Today, in the iPod, 26,096 tracks, almost no space, and these 10 songs came up randomly:

1. "Always" - Tom Verlaine - Dreamtime
2. "The Weatherman" - The Residents - Demons Dance Alone

A sweet, sad beautiful track from the Eyeball boys, sung by a female voice, from this not-as-well-known-as-it-should-be recent album -- The Residents' admitted post-9/11 statement: a concept album where the concept is impossible to define, but is obviously there, just out of reach, with the songs divided into three groups, "Loss," "Despair," and "Three Metaphors." One of my favorite songs of the '00s thus far. Maybe my favorite.

I was watching "Ivanhoe"

When they said the tornado

Blew your big old house apart

Robert Taylor was the star

3. "Got To Get You Off My Mind" - Solomon Burke - Atlantic Rhythm & Blues vol 6 1965-1967
4. "About Me" - The Dovers - We're Not Just Anybody
5. "Pee" - James Kochalka - Superstar
6. "Every Time Woman" - The Human Beinz - Evolutions
7. "Please Don't Touch" - Johnny Kidd & The Pirates - 25 Greatest Hits
8. "Tuane" - Hammer - What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves
9. "Schoolboy" - "Lost" John Hunter & The Blindbats - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 1
10. "High On Rebellion" - Patti Smith Group - Easter

So I check the camera to see if Berit took any good shots of the cats that I didn't see, and instead I find she's taking photos of me passed out on the couch . . . not as cute . . .

Though she did do one little close up comparing Moni's and Hooker's paw sizes as they were curled up together:

So I only have some so-so shots this week of the two of them from the other night, as they sat beside me on the couch, alternating which was asleep, first Moni . .

Then Hooker . . .

I have a bunch of videos and other things from here and there to share, but I should be getting on with some other work now, and I might as well spread them all out so I'm not just doing one monster post here every Friday - as sometime winds up happening.

In any case, for those friends who don't know, I want to congratulate all the friends and associates who have suddenly become new parents this past week to month or so -- Frank Cwiklik and Michele Schlossberg (friends and collaborators since NADA in the 90s) on the birth of Donald Shaw Cwiklik; Murphy and Suzanne Gigliotti now have Walker Quentin Gigliotti (Murphy's an even older friend - first person to direct me in NYC back in '86); Milo Barasorda (actor and writer - I've directed him several times) and his wife - who I don't know and haven't met, I think - now have Alexandria Elyse Barasorda; clown and flea circus impresario Adam Gertsacov and his wife Stephanie are joined by little Aaron; and writer George Hunka and Marilyn Nonken have, as George puts it, "welcomed little Goldie Celeste into the building."

Phew! What the hell was up nine months ago?

Oh, wait, right! There IS one video I have to share right now, while I think of it, just 'cause it makes me feel so nice on a cold, blah kinda day:

To be fair, the Google search mentioned at the end is ridiculous unless you enter a few more vectors, but still, oh, SNAP!

Back to work - I have to go to The Brick and sort though some old fabric to see what we should keep and what we should give away . . .