I Shall Be King of the Wangas!

Well, here we are, back home in Brooklyn, to a messy home that needs cleaning and a pair of cats that missed us A LOT and won't leave us alone now.

Nice to be back, but I may go away a little bit again next month to do the writing of Spacemen from Space, once my research is done.

Today, we watched all 12 episodes of The Lost City, a 1935 serial that makes the insane The Phantom Empire look like a model of narrative coherence and thematic clarity. Wow. Brilliant and crazed (and, yes, racist as all get out). Can't wait to show this one to the company of Spacemen from Space, once I get that show written and cast. I have another 5 or 6 serials in the DVD pile to get through now as research before I can get to the actual writing of the piece.

Otherwise, the August shows progress fine. First reading of Little Piece in two weeks, finishing up casting and setting up readings of Blood on the Cat's Neck and George Battaile's Bathrobe. More tech for Penny Dreadful next week, and a reading for Edward Einhorn. Rehearsal with David Finkelstein and a Brick Staff Meeting tomorrow. The year speeds up.

Today's Random Ten, from a current 26,108 tracks in the iPod:

1. "Incense & Peppermints" - The Strawberry Alarm Clock - Incense & Peppermints
2. "Hello, I Love You" - The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
3. "Record Ban Blues" - Dinah Washington - Mercury Blues & Rhythm Story 1945-1955 - East Coast Blues
4. "Sundown" - Don & The Galaxies - Songs The Cramps Taught Us Vol. 2
5. "Dog Door" - Tom Waits - Orphans: Bastards
6. "Ne Boude Pas" - Richard Anthony - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 28
7. "Another Generation" - Fishbone - Fishbone
8. "Balansa Pema" - Jorge Ben - Samba Esquema Novo
9. "Intro" - James Kochalka - Superstar
10. "All By Myself" - Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers - L.A.M.F. Revisited

No new photos of our own cats to share. I was going to embed a killer video of a Bengal kitten fighting over food here, but it's un-embedable -- you can see it HERE, though (the various videos up on YouTube nearly convince me that someday I'd like to have a Bengal, but on the other hand, they're cute and entertaining in the videos by being boisterous, loud, and mischievous, so maybe not . . .).

Oh, but here's a kitten in Goa, India, that REALLY wants some food . . .

And here's two news anchors (Robert Jordan & Jackie Bange) at WGN Chicago who have, over years, been gradually creating a little routine to get them through commercial breaks, adding on to it bit by bit. They're going to have to start doing it faster if they keep adding to it . . .

And I've been wanting to see the full version of Mike Jittlov's classic 1979 pixilated short The Wizard of Speed and Time for years -- it was cut up a bit when used in a 1979 Disney TV special, Major Effects - a tie-in special to the upcoming release of The Black Hole, and Jittlov redid the whole thing when he expanded the short into a feature about trying to make the original short. What I remembered of it was very influential on me when I did a bunch of stop-motion/pixilation work in the Animation Departent at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts.

Here's the original full short film:

Melanie Martinez - a favorite actress of mine to work with, as director or fellow actor, and who was in the first three or four plays I directed - posted a photo of us on Facebook in her husband Mark Newell's short video comedy Rock Star, where I played an aspiring Rock God with a lot of talent and no sense of coolness or how to project the proper image. As usual, I hate my performance in the video and how I look (of course, the point is that I look fat and unappealing, but still . . .), but I'm pleased that even for the purposes of acting, I got to stand onstage at CBGB once before it vanished and play guitar (my '82 Les Paul Studio).

So here's Mel (with the '75 Fender covered in Japanese Monster stuff, and the killer platform shoes), me, and Matt Pavoni as "Pandemic Aura" . . .

Okay, now I'm off to The Brick to help a company with some tech problems . . .