CollisionWorks

So I've been gone for many months from here, but intending to return. Just haven't felt like I had much to say, or rather, what I had to say fit better on Facebook. But some people might actually venture here from Zack Calhoun's blog Visible Soul, where I was just cyber-interviewed, and if so, here's the deal about this link and where it's going . . .

I'll try and get back to making this blog interesting again by discussing the process for my August season as it's going on. This year, I'll be doing three plays, Removal, a new one that seems to be becoming some kind of farce; Blvd de Paris, a classic play by Richard Foreman I've been wanting to get to; and Invincible City, a text created through improvisation by myself and David Finkelstein of Lake Ivan Performance Group, which David has already transformed into a piece of video art. The last two pieces will play on a double-bill.

So . . . as I work on these shows, I'll keep some of my process journal going here as I used to. I always seemed to work as both a place for dialogue and as a kind of promotion for the shows, so I should get back to it. The last few years, the shows have been big and I've been tired (and/or lazy), but I'd like to get back to an account of what goes into making one of these shows.

I also have some longer pieces I've been working on that might finally get done and wind up here. I've been working on something called "So Big It Can Never Be Catalogued or Appraised: Thoughts on Pieces of Citizen Kane" (which is exactly what it sounds like), and I put in a proposal that was (just today) sadly rejected for a book in the great 33 1/3rd series of monographs from Continuum/Bloomsbury Academic. My proposal was for the Mothers of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money, and I did enough research, thinking, and writing about that work (and related ones) just for the proposal that I should probably just write the book anyway and post in in pieces here.

At the current moment, I'm in the dressing room of The Brick supervising a tech for the Democracy festival that opens tonight. When not writing this I'm going through David's video of Invincible City and transcribing it, so I should be getting back to that. By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to have all these shows cast, but that seems . . . unlikely. I'll let you know when I do. So more on the current projects soon.

Amazingly, when I went to open a new posting window here for this blog, I got a "Restore from saved draft?" window from LiveJournal. Yup, there was an old "Friday Random Ten" that I had typed up but not finished, long enough ago that the playlist of unheard songs I was working through had 9,456 songs in it (it now has 8,655). So from sometime in the past, and as a welcome back to this blog, here's a Friday Random Ten from January 6 of this year . . .

1. "Noisy Summer" - The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love
2. "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" - David Llywelyn - Schwabing Affairs-Delicate Tunes From Swinging Munich Movies Of The 60's & 70's
3. "Kissin' Boogie" - Beverly Wright with Preston Love's Orchestra - Fine Gals, Fast Women & Wailin' Daddies
4. "Dinosaurs" - King Missile - The Way to Salvation
5. "Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie)" - Hugo Montenegro, His Orchestra and Chorus - Seldom-Heard TV Theme Lyrics
6. "Insane Asylum" - Kathi McDonald - Insane Asylum
7. "Rip This Joint" - The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St.
8. "Walkin' the Dog" - Rufus Thomas - Atlantic Rhythm & Blues vol 5 1961-1965
9. "She's Fallen In Love With The Monster Man" - Screamin' Lord Sutch & The Savages - Cameo Parkway 1957-1967
10. "Y.D.M.S." - UK Subs - Occupied

And here's a playlist of all of the above (or as close as I could find):

Most of the brief four or five times I got to speak with him was spent with Pilsner Urquells in our hands, with me leaning in to try and make out his soft-spoken words, and him seeming embarrassed by his perfectly fine English (I'm sure, of course, a man of his precision in thought would have preferred to be as precise in his speech). I still treasure those times. With all the great tributes going around today, the fact of him as "STATESMAN" suddenly struck me again as it hadn't since I first met him. My talks with him had very much been conversations between two theatre professionals talking shop (he SO obviously loved being around actors, directors, and all the people, places, and paraphernalia of theatre!), and I had gotten so used to thinking of him as a playwright first and foremost again that his other great accomplishment had comparatively faded for me until now.

Which was, to no small extent, the purpose of Edward Einhorn and Untitled Theater Co. #61's Havel Festival at The Ohio Theater and The Brick -- to remind everyone of Havel's work as writer. We presented his complete work in that festival, including some previous unproduced works, and a number being presented for the first time in English (and some in new, improved translations). I was lucky enough to direct Temptation in the festival, and do a pretty spiffy job of it with a terrific cast.

I am still, to this day, stunned, confused, and angry at the lack of press attention for the Festival. Every press outlet in the city KNEW about this, and apart from a preview piece in the Voice -- mostly a general summary about Havel, somewhat boring and not a great promo -- and some reviews at nytheatre.com, there was next to nothing in the press about the Fest. There were, to be sure, a couple of dud productions in there, but otherwise it was work of high quality, and, again, the man's COMPLETE goddamned works were all being done.

I know Michael Feingold at the Voice was told personally four times about the Festival, twice before and twice during, and on each of the last three occasions he said he'd never heard of it and why hadn't he been sent something? Strange.

In any case, the Festival was still a marvelous time for us, and provided one of the most special nights of my professional life, when Havel came to see Temptation on the 17th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.

My original post about that special night is HERE.

That's the personal stuff. For more on Havel . . . well, my Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of tributes and links to tributes, quotes, and speeches. You can find plenty out there.

But most of all, READ HIS PLAYS. Please. If you care to, and you can, PRODUCE THEM. I'm not sure any more of them are right for me (unless I restage Temptation sometime), but one of them must be the right one for everyone out there. THAT is the tribute he deserves most, to have his work live on, and alive, onstage.

Thank you very much, President Havel, it was an honor.

Today, more of the same. Plus, as mentioned, preparing a script for online publication. There are events and shows I'd like to get to, but I don't think that's going to happen. So it goes. I think today's westerns to watch (if we can get them all in) will wind up being Support Your Local Gunfighter, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and maybe The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, none of which I've seen.

Still waiting to hear back from the casts of our August shows, ObJects, Antrobus, and Gone, about whether they'd be available and interested in coming back and doing the shows again sometime early next year to make up for the performances we lost with Hurricane Irene. So far, 11 of the 21 actors have responded, and those positively, so that's a good start. Maybe this will actually happen.

There's 24,779 tracks in my trusty iPod. And yet, even after 5 years of using it constantly, there are 8,483 tracks in it that haven't been played. Here's a random playlist of ten from among those unheard tracks (with links to online versions of the songs, where available).

1. "I Got Loaded" - Peppermint Harris - The Aladdin Records Story
2. "All Last Night" - George Smith - My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama
3. "Crazy" - 999 - 999
4. "The Bloody Assizes" - Julian Cope - Fried
5. "Wind-Up Toys" - The Electric Prunes - Lost Dreams
6. "Someday You'll be King" - MX-80 Sound - Out of the Tunnel
7. "Packin' Up" - Delilah - Lost Deep Soul Treasures volume 3
8. "Just Play Music" - Big Audio Dynamite - Super Hits
9. "Absolutal Bastard" - Las Comadrejas - We Are Ugly But... We Have the Music
10. "All Night Operator" - Bryan Ferry - In Your Mind

Hey, cool -- for the first time in doing one of these Random Tens, I was able to find a YouTube for every one of the songs (okay, the Julian Cope is a demo version, but close enough). Here's a spiffy playlist of all the above (with bonus 11th track):

Okay, back to figuring out how to make NECROPOLIS 3: At the Mountains of Slumberland read like a real script.

I haven't touched this blog in 8 months, it appears. I think I'll be changing that soon.

With Facebook, Twitter, and other online media becoming such an immediate and satisfying way of communicating with vast numbers -- and where more often you are responded to, and you can SEE the responses, as opposed to a blog, where you often feel that you are sending messages out in bottles from a lonely island, most of which are going unread -- and given that a lot of the communiques I send are more suited to the shorter, telegraphic styles of those spaces, I've forsaken my LJ for Facebook, and to a lesser extent, Twitter. However, sometimes I've been thinking about something longer I'd like to say that doesn't fit those forms, and it seems to be time to get back to longer essays on theatre, film, art, music, and life in general. I have some longer thoughts about my own work, about my improvisational work with David Finkelstein of Lake Ivan, about Citizen Kane, and about the extensive watching of Western Movies Berit and I have been doing, that I've been working VERY slowly on, but which will show up here eventually, so I better keep the place alive for when they do make it to this location.

Also, Gemini CollisionWorks just received the honor of being named one of nytheatre.com's PEOPLE OF THE YEAR for 2011, which you can read about HERE, and as GCW doesn't have a website as such, I found myself linking here once again, but with nothing recent to welcome someone. So, I'll move back in with my weekly Random Friday music posts, and some updates on the works in progress for August, 2012 -- as well as any progress that's made in bringing back our shows from August, 2011, which has their run cut short by Hurricane Irene, leaving a depressing, unfinished quality to the remainder of the year that has only been alleviated by this nice recent honor.

So I'll be back tomorrow with SOMETHING. Now I have to go run errands after watching all the reaction to the honor on Facebook, and be ready to do a staged reading down at Coney Island tonight. See you soon.

I was going to read a library copy of Richard Brody's big book on Godard, but after skimming the chapter on Contempt (and what passes for a section on Tout Va Bien), and finding the author has neither the interest nor ability to "read" the movies with any accuracy, doesn't bother to check if the shots he is describing actually exist in the films as he is describing them, and apparently thinks the meaning of movies is entirely based on the emotional, psychological, and social events surrounding their shooting . . . I will be perfectly happy to return the book unread, and not give it, the author, nor any of his opinions, any further thought.

(once upon a time, I would have finished any book on film, especially a rare big one that deals with someone I admire, but now I find I frequently seem to know a lot more than the authors, time is a lot more limited, and I have happily left behind the old compulsion to finish everything begun . . . and I recommend this attitude immensely)

Ideas started coming for the August month of shows from Gemini CollisionWorks, and have been notated and discussed. At the current moment, the August show plans consist of one full 2-act play, ObJects, another dance-theater/text piece in the Invisible Republic series (the previous ones were about propaganda and advertising, this one will be about marketing/branding), two short pieces on a double bill -- Gone and Antrobus -- and a solo performance (by me, the only thing I'll be acting in this year) of Mac Wellman's Terminal Hip (if I can get the rights). Apart from the Wellman, I'm writing the rest -- Gone is complete, Antrobus is outlined with a tiny bit written (and, unfortunately, currently trapped on the hard drive of a broken computer), and the other two, like Spell and Everything Must Go from 2008, need to be written primarily around the cast in rehearsal. So I have dream casts written out, and will start contacting people to start work when I get back to NYC.

It's a lot, but ideas are now flowing -- Berit and I had a nice Valentine's Day dinner where I laid out what I had to her, and we batted some things back and forth and they became more clear and possible-sounding. I am sure that one point of dispute will continue, about whether or not to use real paint onstage in one show where I'd like to have someone actually painting a wall over the course of the show -- I want it done for real; Berit is bringing up, correctly, every single possible problem, and there are many, in doing it for real, none of which are, as yet dissuading me -- but we have the start of a plan of attack for the year.

A favorite of the many bloggers I read is The Self-Styled Siren, who primarily writes on classic film. She is currently co-sponsoring a blog-a-thon, For the Love of Film (Noir), and you can find the first collection of links to blogs participating HERE. A first interview between The Siren and the great noir scholar Eddie Muller preceded the blog-a-thon HERE.

Now, if you know me or my work, you know about the huge part noir has played in both for a few years now, so I'll be joining in the blogging fun in the next few days by pulling out and revamping some of the writing on noir I've done here (and elsewhere) in the past few years, with a few rewrites and new material.

I should also note that For the Love of Film Noir is being done to raise funds for The Film Noir Foundation towards the preservation of the classic noir The Sound of Fury. Previously, the FNF has preserved Cry Danger and Too Late for Tears, among other works. When I started studying noir, I was able to rent Cry Danger and The Sound of Fury (under the title Try and Get Me!) on VHS tape from Videoport here in Maine. Later, when researching World Gone Wrong up here, I found the store had gotten rid of both great films in a VHS purge, and neither was available anywhere. Too Late for Tears, an average noir with WAY above-average performances from Dan Duryea and Lizabeth Scott, I found in a terrible print on DVD in a Brooklyn library (under the title Killer Bait). The Film Noir Foundation is dedicated to tracking down, restoring, and distributing these and other films in new, beautiful 35mm prints, as well as creating new DVDs. You can see Cry Danger (restored) and Sound of Fury (not) on Netflix Instant now, but there's no preservation like a new fine-grain negative and film prints for these works. The Film Noir Foundation deserves all the support it can get, especially from those of us who regard noir as a major part of film (and Art) of the last century. You can follow the links on The Siren's page (or here in the days coming up) to donate to them.

And, before leaving, here's a Random Ten from the North from the 2,407 tracks in the "prime unheard" list in the iPod:

1. "I'm Not Living Here" - Sagittarius - Present Tense
2. "Caribou (2005 acoustic live)" - Pixies - 2005.08.06 - Newport, RI
3. "Crazy Little Thing" - Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Clear Spot
4. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" - Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
5. "New Electric Ride" - Captain Beefheart - Unconditionally Guaranteed
6. "Another Country's Young" - The Gun Club - In Exile
7. "Groove A Little" - T.Rex - Dandy In The Underworld
8. "(You're Gonna) Wreck My Life" - Q'65 - Nederbeat The B-Sides 3
9. "Final Solution" - Rocket From The Tombs - Rocket Redux
10. "Dust My Broom" - Ike & Tina Turner - Bold Soul Sister

And here's an embedded playlist of most of the above, or something similar (unless you're seeing this on Facebook), with an extra one to grow on . . .

And while we can't upload the pictures we took here in Maine before we go, we were sent regular photos of our cats from the Fantastic Mr. Enk, who looked after our little beloved monsters while we were up here. Though sometimes the photos made us miss them more, as when Hooker just looks so very sad . . .

Same with Moni . . .

Bryan did once catch them together waking up as he came in . . .

Okay, getting late, and I need to get sleep in before driving over 6.5 hours in the morning . . .

Away from here too long again. As mentioned last time, it's that slow time of the year where we're researching, thinking, and fishing for ideas about our year to come. So Berit plays games and waits for me to ask questions or make statements in between long stretches of me reading books, writing bits of dialogue that come to mind, or staring into space and trying to find the central, real idea that will coalesce these disparate fragmentary notions dancing around my head into an actual show or shows. When I come out with something, Berit can respond with her take on it and send me off into a more focused realm.

Nothing much has happened yet. I have a list of shows to potentially work on for August -- a new Invisible Republic dance-theatre piece; Gone; Antrobus; Terminal Hip; and Objects (or obJECTS or ObJECTS or (ob)/JECTS or whatever silly way I could try to indicate that the stress should be on the second syllable. I was thinking of working on NECROPOLIS 4: Green River, which is actually written, as well, but it's not feeling like the right year -- I'm trying to do smaller, shorter "chamber" pieces with casts of 1 to 8 or 9 actors, tops, and Green River is a large-cast piece.

I could, and maybe should, be focusing on the shows that are further along in creation, but right now I'm still trying to find the central point of Objects, as that's most interesting to me right now, even though I'm not at all certain what "that" is. I have a giant stack of plays by Bernard Shaw from the library to read as research for this, as somehow that seems important, but I have no idea why.

We'll take all the materials away with us to our little "retreat" up in Maine (and, it appears, another, shorter one in Croton-on-Hudson) in February and walk around and study them more in depth. Ideas seem to come better away from home, for some reason.

Some things do show up here -- now that I keep a notebook by the bed, I'm catching more things I would have missed once. I woke up really early after very little sleep today, and was lying there drifting in and out of a vague dream state, when an eight-line lyric came to me that needed to be sung by a chorus in Objects (and I didn't know there'd be a "chorus" in the show until then), so I quickly wrote it down (I won't repeat it here as it would just seem repetitive, vulgar, and silly without music or staging) before forgetting it. Good. For years I didn't bother with a notebook by the bed for such ideas, thinking that anything good that came to me in the half-dream state where I get my best ideas would come back to me when awake, and I've probably lost half of the good ideas in that stubbornness. Not letting that happen again . . .

The next two days, I'm back in work with David Finkelstein, or rather, tomorrow we work -- more improvisation that he videotapes in front of a green screen so he can create his lovely video art pieces around them -- and Sunday evening, David will be screening three of his videos (one featuring me) and one by the legendary Mike Kuchar. There's info HERE.

Images here from David's Marvelous Discourse, which was created from the same text as, and used in, my production Sacrificial Offerings.

And from the 2,529 songs in the "unheard, but should be heard" playlist in the iPod, a Random Ten for the day . . .

1. "Wig-Wam Bam" - Sweet - Sweet Originals: The Best 37 Glam Rock Songs Ever
2. "New York I Love You" - LCD Soundsystem - Mix Disk - Dad
3. "Big Yellow Taxi" - Joni Mitchell - Ladies of the Canyon
4. "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" - B.B. King - King Of The Blues
5. "The Hustler" - The Sonics - Psycho-Sonic
6. "Maybe He'll Know" - Cyndi Lauper - True Colors
7. "There Is A Ghost" - Marianne Faithfull - Before The Poison
8. "Look Good In Blue" - Blondie - Blondie
9. "It's Not Fair" - The Electric Prunes - Lost Dreams
10. "(I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Until The End Of The World

Nice list, and for two weeks in a row I've been able to find a version of the song on YouTube for nine of them, so here they all are in a big embedded playlist (unless you're reading this on Facebook):

And as for new cat photos . . . here's Hooker from last night at the other end of the couch, trying to get my attention:

Here's what happens when Berit picks up Moni, and the little dummy just keeps walking, and winds up on B's back:

And here's what happens when Berit vacates her chair for just a moment to go to the kitchen to get something to drink, seeing this when she gets back:

And here's one from just a short time ago, as Hooker decided he had to sit on my shoulder for a while and help me write this entry . . .

Okay, back to some kind of dreaming . . . and wow, the snow that was covering our back patio when I started writing this has pretty much vanished already!

More days of hurry-up-and-wait; big spaces between things that suddenly have to happen. And then several things that were supposed to happen went away, leaving me with gaps where even more waiting needed to occur. Now I'm waiting for the car to be serviced (nothing specific or bad, just the regular three-month-checkup) so I can then use it on a bunch of needed errands.

Last night, I went out to judge an evening of short plays for the NYIT Awards. I hope to write about this in the next few days, if there's time -- I'm supposed to keep it a secret about what I'm judging, and I'll do my best, though I'm sure anyone with google-fu would be able to figure out what I saw, but I'm not so much interested in writing about the specific plays I saw in this evening, but what aspects of Theatre, good and bad, I saw in them, and what I learned from the whole experience.

While zoning out occasionally from what I was viewing onstage, or trying to turn it in my mind into a more interesting piece than it was, I had images for an August show to be created. All I know was it involved screen projections of still images of the actors onstage, which in my head were Samantha Mason and Olivia Baseman, with simultaneous shadow plays behind the screens, in an office setting (yet again, always ALWAYS offices or jails, no idea why). Have to (literally) meditate on this further, but something in my head was whispering something about "all women" and Caryl Churchill, so who knows . . .

I'm also back into working on improvisation with David Finkelstein (Lake Ivan Theater Company) -- we met on Sunday and will meet again tomorrow. This past week we didn't do any videotaping (David having moved from primarily doing theatre pieces to creating improvisation on video in front of a green screen, then creating a dense world of audio and video around and based on the improv), as David just wanted to work on the improv technique we call the "Landscape" form with me and Cassie Terman. David led Cassie and I through a number of solo exercises that led to us doing an improvised duet, and one that seemed to be one of the most successful we'd all achieved in the form.

After spending 2009 working in the form David now calls "Lake Ivan Classic" -- what he's been doing for over 20 years now -- we spent all but one of our early 2010 work sessions exploring this new form that David has been finding for some years now. Our videotaping sessions in 2009 have led thus far to the creation of two video pieces by David, Marvelous Discourse - which was also featured in, and formed the text of, my play Sacrificial Offerings - and a newer one, Epistolary Fusillades.

He has completed the soundtrack to a third piece, Invincible City, which he played for me on Sunday, and I was blown away by just the audio of that one (when David finds an improv of ours he wants to turn into a video piece, the first thing he does is get the raw audio track of the improv edited - in the case of this new one, he apparently did NO editing to the original improv, it worked so well - and then create the music score, THEN the dense video overlays, so I get to hear the audio for them many months before the video is completed).

The 2010 Landscape sessions, while fruitful in exploration, were not so much so for the creation of new video pieces, and while David and I and Cassie will continue exploring that form in the next few months (and, judging from Sunday, probably quite well), David and I will be going back to Lake Ivan Classic more often, including tomorrow. So I've been reading up the old notes on that form to get myself back into that headspace after almost a year away from it.

Also, I'll send out invites closer to the date, but here's a first mention -- David will be premiering several video works by himself, including Epistolary Fusillades, and one by Mike Kuchar at a screening in January. Information is HERE

I'll probably finally have something to write on the improv work soon as well. I've begun keeping notebooks again of everything going on, as I once did. Frankly, I was completely grabbed by the concept and form of the Field Notes brand of notebooks -- they got me right in the center of my combo utilitarian/design fetishist hipster soul, with reminders of the print shop I worked in at my grade school, and I bought several packs to use. Their slogan, "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now," has wound up making a lot of sense to me, as I'm finding that the action of jotting down all my notes is making them all clearer and constantly more present in my head, as they once more often were. It may be, *sigh*, age, but it's definitely true that I'm not keeping as many things juggled in my head & memory as I once did without losing some, and thinking back on the period where I kept notebooks, I don't think I lost as many ideas then.

And keeping notes in the books has made me desire more (and have the ability) to share those notes here. So there'll be more of that soon -- often as just the raw data. Back to what this blog was created for - the presentation of the nuts-and-bolts work of making Art-stuff.

Meanwhile, back in the iPod, here a Random Ten from the 2,522 tracks in the "Brandnew Bag" playlist of songs not yet played on the device:

1. "Sleep Of The Just" - Elvis Costello - King Of America
2. "Rome And Bored" - Martin Mull - Normal
3. "Real Good Time Together" - Lou Reed - Street Hassle
4. "Boiling" - Minutemen - The Punch Line
5. "Eat to the Beat" - Blondie - Eat to the Beat
6. "Hooty Sapperticker" - Barbara & The Boys - Las Vegas Grind! - Volume 2 'Louie's Limbo Lounge'
7. "David Watts" - The Jam - Direction, Reaction, Creation
8. "Funky But Chic" - David Johansen - David Johansen
9. "Sticks and Stones" - Manfred Mann - The Best of the EMI Years
10. "Here Comes The Nice" - Small Faces - Immediate Singles

And here's the playlist of most of the above (or as near as I could get):

Okay, got the call from the garage -- Petey Plymouth is all ready to go. Now on to the busyness of the day . . . at 4.30 pm, with the sun fading . . .

Which of course is also nice when you're consistently selling out a house of close to 100 seats. That makes for a good laugh from the crowd.

I was planning to take lots of behind the scenes shots at the show, but it wound up not quite being so photogenic backstage as I'd thought -- or when it was, there wasn't enough light or time to get a shot. Here's Moira watching Alex and Yvonne during tech:

And our fearless production crew (Berit in foreground) hacking their way through the difficult tech:

Moira appears to be sticking her tongue out at me as she and Trav S.D. wait and wait and wait (patiently) for the chroma-key to be worked out for their "Buster Friendly Show" segment:

And a blurry shot that still suggests how crazy the tech table/crew situation was out in the house as the show was put together, with lights, sound, live music, and projections all trying to be worked out together (as the set continued to be built, up until - and past - show opening).

The other night was the benefit party, and VJ Fuzzy Bastard did some slick video mixing on one of the screens for us:

And just the screens and set:

Only three more shows, Wednesday-Friday, and they're just about sold out. Nice.

Apart from the show, we've been variously watching a circling playlist of about 15-20 old TV shows on Netflix Instant -- Soap, Archer, old SNLs, NewsRadio, Black Adder, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episodes, etc.; definite TV comfort food -- while also making our way through the BBS Story box set (last night was Five Easy Pieces, which I'd never seen before, and WOW), and also gradually through a Netflix disk/instant chronological playlist of 130 western pictures from 1939 to 1976.

I don't know what the Western-watching is for yet, though I've started making notes of interest and taking down interesting lines of dialogue. A theatre piece might emerge from this. I was just aware that my knowledge of the Modern American Western Movie was less than it should be, and wanted to get to know the genre better. It was INCREDIBLY important for several decades, more than the regard it's held in now would indicate, and I think that understanding certain aspects of America itself, let alone Movies, isn't possible without a knowledge of the genre that most of us born post-its-heyday haven't got.

So we're up to 1947 or so, and about 8 movies in, I think. Actually, the WWII period wasn't all that great for Westerns (as film noir, on the other hand, was being created and thriving) and post-Stagecoach it took a few years for filmmakers to figure out how one actually made a "serious" film in the genre (it seems to have taken Ford's return with My Darling Clementine to get it really started). So we've been sitting through a bunch of "major" films that aren't all that good, but are still valuable to know. Who knows where this will go, if anywhere, but it's an enjoyable study.

And here's a Random Ten for the week from the playlist of 2,519 tracks on the iPod that haven't gotten a spin there yet (actually, there's 10,994 tracks on there that haven't been played yet, but these are the ones I'd actually most like to hear), with links to videos for the songs, or as close as I could get by the artists (same album or period, whatever):

1. "Fish Eyes " - Shonen Knife - Happy Hour
2. "Around The Fire" - Pere Ubu - Worlds In Collision
3. "Red Rain" - Peter Gabriel - So
4. "Big Bands" - Sparks - Halfnelson
5. "Golden Brown" - The Stranglers - La Folie
6. "Moisture" - The Residents - The Commercial Album
7. "Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me" - Shocking Blue - Beat With Us
8. "What Is The Secret of Your Success?" - The Coasters - Fifty Coastin' Classics
9. "Hot Rock Theme" - Quincy Jones - The Hot Rock
10. "Shorty Falls In Love" - Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks - Original Recordings

And here's the video playlist of the above (or as close as I could get - and, as always, if you're reading this on Facebook you'll have to click through to the Livejournal to see the embedded videos), with bonus Linton Kwesi Johnson:

And, finally, I do have one new cat picture to share -- Hooker on a pillow that was new at the time (or at least, had newly appeared out of an old prop box -- I think we got it for Hamlet in 2007), but now already has an immense tear from end to end:

Tonight, I schlep on over to The Battle Ranch to watch a runthru of Bethlehem or Bust so I know what I'm doing when I come in Saturday morning to light it for the FightFest right before it opens. This should be fun.

Can't believe this year is almost over -- it's been a long one. Did B and I actually get married only a few months ago, and then do the two biggest shows we've ever produced? Seems like years now . . .

Today I had a good time over at 3 Legged Dog, where Androids is going up, helping out by setting up the sound system -- the show uses 7 wireless mics, so I had to get the mix board, the receivers, and the mics all in order and arranged. Certainly a pleasure to work with the VERY nice equipment at 3LD.

Androids unfortunately does appear to be keeping me away from seeing, at least this week, work from one of my favorite theatre companies FINALLY happening at my home base, The Brick, as Target Margin brings their lab series -- which I got to help make happen at NADA a couple of years in the late '90s -- to the space. This week, it's a play by Kandinsky, next week Mozart, the week after that, Clyde Fitch. Maybe I'll get to the Fitch . . .

And today, a Random Ten from the as-yet-unplayed playlist in the iPod -- now down to only being 6.1 days long!

1. "69 Année Erotique" - Serge Gainsbourg - De Serge Gainsbourg A Gainsbarre
2. "I Can't Wait Until I See My Baby's Face" - Dusty Springfield - One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found
3. "Bongo City" - Slim Gaillard - Laughing In Rhythm, #4 - Opera in Vout
4. "Our Drab Ways" - Jonathan Richman - Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild
5. "Coca-Cola Commercial 1969 #2" - Ray Charles & Aretha Franklin - Coca-Cola Commercials
6. "Below The Belt" - Minutemen - Post-Mersh, Vol. 3
7. "Shall We Take Ourselves Seriously?" - Frank Zappa - Buffalo
8. "Time Will Show The Wiser" - Fairport Convention - (Guitar, Vocal)
9. "Did You See His Name?" - The Kinks - Club Au-Go-Go 10
10. "Street In The City" - Pete Townshend & Ronnie Lane - Rough Mix

And here's the full video playlist of the songs above, or as close as I could get to them . . . (as always, if on Facebook, check the original post on LiveJournal to see the video):

And now back to catching up on a suddenly full inbox of email (I'm beginning to have to work with companies for the December FightFest at The Brick).