CollisionWorks

No idea how good it's going to be (Devo, though one of my favorite bands, very rarely made a fully great start-to-finish album, though their great tracks would fill up several), but we now have a first track (single? are they even called that anymore?).

And here it is, "Don't Shoot, I'm a Man!":

Devo fanatics may remember that the orange-safety "Don't Shoot, I Am a Man" vest (as worn by Devo/Toni Basil/David Bowie backing dancer Spazz Attack) was first featured in a film shown to audiences at Devo live shows in the late '70s, where General Boy would guide the potentially devolved on proper attire for the modern urban mutant and spudboy or spudette. These are indeed REAL vests worn by hunters in hopes of not getting plugged by other drunk hunters in the woods on a weekend shootfest.

I looked for one of these vests to wear around NYC (or at least to punk shows) for years, but they seemed to have stopped making them with the words on them by the mid-'80s (I once went into the hunting gear room at L.L. Bean's in Freeport, Maine looking for one and was nearly blinded by a big room full of glowing orange vests and parkas). I just looked them up online however, and found that a Dick Cheney appearance was once greeted by protesters wearing "Don't Shoot, I'm Human" vests (I guess in the intervening years female hunters pushed for a gender-neutral version).

In any case, good to have the spudboys back, with a song and video that is definitely classic-style Devo, if not an instant classic in either case. I'd have loved to include some of the wonderfully disturbing original Devo videos here, but it looks like Warner Bros. has made sure that none of them are on YouTube, so here's something a little more rare, Toni Basil, backed by Devo (on the track, not in the video), performing their song "Be Stiff," from her album Word of Mouth (Devo backed her on two other songs of theirs on the album as well):

There's been some rethinking going on, it would appear, in some of the other theatre blogs, with the writers doing some self- and soul-searching about "why am I doing this?" or "what am I trying to say?" or "have I run out of things to say?" or some such. That's not going on here. I know what I'm doing and what this blog is about, even if I'm not doing much of it right now. I'm just being . . . I dunno . . . lazy, perhaps? At least about taking on certain subjects to blog about.

I have many ideas each week as to things to write about here, but the more I think about any of these ideas, the more they grow out of control and I realize I'd be looking at having to write an actual united essay rather than a loose confederation of interesting thoughts and concepts, and I don't feel I'll get out of the writing enough useful data versus the energy I'd put into it.

The purpose of this place is to be a running account of someone who is making Art-stuff and thinking about it and how the more airy nothings of abstract thought about the work become practicalities in the real world of actually nailing these delicate pieces of creation into being, often with clumsy, rudimentary tools. Including running accounts of what things feed the process of learning about and making these things - other art, music, words, thoughts that come in and change or expand the mindset (with the additional thought that writing about these things may clarify for me what they mean to me and how I can use them in my own work).

Now, as it's been months since direct work has been happening on most of my own work, these thoughts have been somewhat in hibernation. I've been focusing a lot on input, but haven't had much to let go with about what I've been taking in.

But as my "season" of shows -- that is, the four August shows I'll be producing/designing/directing plus the show for Trav S.D. I'm directing in November -- swings into actual production, I think the energy to write about the process (and related issues) will return somewhat.

First thing of note with the August shows is that I've postponed Spacemen from Space until next year and replaced it with a new, smaller show (currently and very-definitely-working-titled BBQ). Spacemen was just becoming too damned big to do in rep with the three other shows -- it needed a cast of 22, lots of costumes, props, projections, and set pieces, plus I'd only barely begun writing it and wasn't sure if I was on the right track, tonally (it's a hard line to walk, being both pastiche-parody and social satire at the same time). When I do a month of four shows, I think only one of them can be an immense, two-act work, and this year that slot is taken by A Little Piece of the Sun. Also, I was writing the show with a lot of specific actors in mind that I wanted to be in it, and many of them couldn't do it this year, and replacing them would involve a large auditioning process I don't have time for.

BBQ is a smaller piece that comes out of the work I'm doing with (and at the suggestion of) David Finkelstein. David and I have been doing our improv work on an almost weekly basis recently, which he has been videotaping for transformation into video-art pieces -- something he has been doing for years with several different performing partners. I'll be going into more detail about our work soon -- I wasn't sure if David wanted me to write about it publicly until last week, but he has suggested I do so. His own posts about his work can be found HERE at the Improvisation Forum on his Lake Ivan website, which includes, as the last few posts, some of David's notes to me on the work we're doing.

From the work we've done so far -- five videotaping sessions after several weeks of learning the process and rehearsing -- several good "pieces" have emerged (as David has noted, and I agree, all of the work we've done would probably be interesting in a theatrical context, even when we're not at our best, but only certain improvs, when videotaped, become interesting fodder for David to make a video piece from).

David thought one piece we created together thus far was worth working on for his purposes, and suggested that it might be interesting if I transcribed the improvised text we spoke and used it as the text of a theatre piece I would create, which could run on a double bill with the video that he would be creating. I very very much took to this idea, and when it became apparent that SFS couldn't go on this year, I turned to this as a workable alternative, as I have been determined that in my month of shows I present each August, one of them at least had to be an original play (in this case, co-original, but that counts).

So in the piece of video David is working on, he and I keep using a lot of imagery related to barbeques and sacrifices, so we've just been calling it Barbeque and Sacrifice as a placeholder name (I assume), but it's become BBQ on all my scheduling documents, so that's what it is for me right now. Right now I have the show down for 7 performances in August, but I'm hoping to maybe get another 2 in. David notes that it usually takes a few months longer than he would have to make up a final version of one of his videos (they involve many, many layers of complex, computer-created imagery, plus an original score), but it's probably possible to have a "first draft" video ready to be used, which is fine.

Ah, yes, I just mentioned scheduling . . . I sent out a first draft of the proposed rehearsal schedules for the other three shows -- A Little Piece of the Sun by Daniel McKleinfeld, George Bataille's Bathrobe by Richard Foreman, and Blood on the Cat's Neck by Rainer Werner Fassbinder -- to the actors cast right now (Piece is fully cast; Blood is missing one person and I'm waiting for someone I want to decide yea or nay; Bathrobe is missing three people, two of whom I'll have to do an audition call for, still). More conflicts coming in, and a second draft will have to be made and sent out by Monday. Not too bad, though, not like last year, which was a nightmare of scheduling. So we're moving forward on those fronts. I have to remind myself, so I'll do it here, to email Mr. Foreman and mention I'm planning on doing a play of his this year and just check to be sure he's okay with it and can send me the letter I'll need for the Equity Showcase forms (Richard's never seemed to care too much about me just deciding to go ahead and do a play of his, but well, I should check).

So, shows move forward. We have a first reading of Trav S.D.'s Kitsch in another couple of weeks, and it looks like we'll have a good cast for the reading that we might be lucky enough to keep around for the final production.

Also, I'm writing a new play -- David's improvisation technique has actually opened up the creative floodgates for me in a number of ways, and I'm using the process to write something called Fat Guy Fall Down. The basic "feel" of the play came to me while trying to get to sleep last week, and thinking of The Brick's upcoming Fight Festival, and wondering what kind of show I would do if I were to try and make something for that Festival (there's no chance in hell I'll have time to do anything for it this year, so I'll have to save the script for a future FightFest or just some other occasion). Once there's more to it, I'll post some of Fat Guy as it comes together. It's kinda nasty and seems to be an abstract intellectual discussion told through the medium of dirty little fistfights and bloody noses.

Meanwhile, back in the iPod, here's today's Random Ten from the the 25,299 tracks in there:

1. "Snakeface" - Throwing Muses - University
2. "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man" - The Rolling Stones - Singles Collection: The London Years
3. "Dark as a Dungeon" - Johnny Cash - Unearthed
4. "Taboo" - The Cramps - Fiends of Dope Island
5. "Birthday" - Martin Mull - Normal
6. "Hot Plate Heaven At The Green Hotel" - Frank Zappa - Broadway The Hard Way
7. "Dust And Dogs" - Pere Ubu - Why I Remix Women
8. "I'm Not Here" - Syd Barrett - download
9. "No, No Cherry" - Frank Zappa - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 4
10. "LSD Blues" - The Golden Cups - Volume One

And three cat shots -- first, Hooker and Moni, once again, staring out the window . . .

From just a short time ago this morning, Hooker curled up against the sleeping Berit . . .

. . . while Moni sits on the nice warm radiator . . .

The damned cold that has held me for several weeks now seems to be loosening its grip quite a bit, though Berit is still in the midst of it. There are two shows I want to see that close in the next couple of days (Power at The Metropolitan Playhouse and Times:365:24:7 at The Brick), and I'm still deciding if I'm feeling able to sit through an extended piece of theatre without having an extended coughing fit, or causing great distress to myself by suppressing one.

I'm sure it will be fine when, next week, I get to see my first (yes, FIRST!) Wooster Group piece. I can't explain, to anyone's satisfaction, including my own, the silly and bizarre combinations of inner and external reasons that despite living here for 23 years, with plenty of opportunities, I've never seen any of LeCompte's work, but finally this important gap in my education will receive a tiny bit of filling . . .

And on top of it, I had to deal with doctor appointments for myself and both cats, and also getting my car towed and dealing with two days of bureaucracy and a trip out to Far East Brooklyn to get the car back, which was pretty awful, except Berit and I saw some some inspiringly depressing landscapes and architecture while walking the long, desolate distance between the bus stop and the car impound . . .

For recreation, there is at least a ball field nearby . . .

Here's a little more view, down Flatlands Avenue, for context . . .

A friendly-looking place to live, right . . ?

. . . which I'd love to try and find a use for in some Gemini CollisionWorks film/video project at some point, Maybe I can write off the whole towing incident on the company taxes as a location scout. If I was ever able to fulfill my dream project of making a film of Jeff Noon's great dystopian novel Vurt, changing the location from Manchester, England to Brooklyn, I now have some definite shooting locales.

Wednesday, during the day, Bryan Enk (co-creator), Timothy Reynolds (set supervisor) and myself had to have a PRE-pre-tech for this weekend's FINAL episode of the Penny Dreadful serial at The Brick (and by the way, for those of you getting caught up online, the video for Episode 11 is now posted).

It's a complicated, double-sized episode, and we have a HARD changeover from the mainstage show up at The Brick right now (Times:365:24:7, which I hear is great and is getting pretty good reviews), so we have had to plan everything out carefully. That night, we ran the show and worked out kinks, but I had to leave after Act I (which ends with the scene I directed) as my illness was getting the better of me.

Today we had our standard pre-tech, setting the light and sound cues without the actors, so that hopefully at least 85% of the work is done before the brief time we have tomorrow to run the show with full dress/tech and make corrections. As has happened at least once before, we couldn't do the whole show in the time we had today, only about 3/4ths of it, so we're going to have to run the first act as planned tomorrow, send everyone off on a longer lunch break while we finish the tech for Act II, then come back and run the rest of the show (it'd be nice if we could call everyone later and finish before they show up, but we lose actors who are only in the first act at 1.00 pm).

At least the show is looking a lot better than I feared it would. The difficulty with Penny, always, has been that I'm stuck using the light plot that's up for the Brick's mainstage show for each episode. Sometimes, I get lucky (my light plot for The Granduncle Quadrilogy, which I didn't plan in any way to work for Penny, actually may have been better for the latter than the former). Times:365:24:7 uses The Brick (terrifically) in a very different, environmental way than usual, which means I don't have very many lights pointed at out stage area (which is where our seating area normally is, and vice versa). Somehow, though, it all worked out, and with the addition of the footlights I'm sharing with the mainstage company, it's actually looking pretty much up to Penny standard.

It's sad leaving Penny and its cast of characters behind, but it's been a good long run since November, 2007, and the story has run it's predestined course. If you are interested in seeing it and you don't have tickets, better get 'em now -- tomorrow night's 11.00 pm show is sold out, and the two shows on Sunday (2.00 pm and 8.00 pm) have between 10 and 15 seats left, and we CAN'T oversell with the setup for the show. And be prompt, there is and can be NO late seating. The door will be locked, you can't get in once it's started. Even if you bought a ticket.

So, today's Random Ten, from 25,641 in the still-being-cleaned-out iPod (with related YouTube videos, where available) . . .

1. "Cry" - The Malibus - Leave Me Alone! - USA Garage Greats
2. "Debbie Debbie" - Gary Wilson - Mary Had Brown Hair (Stones Throw)
3. "I'm Drowning" - Flaming Groovies - Super Sneakers
4. "Right Now And Not Later" - The Shangri-Las - Myrmidons Of Melodrama
5. "Big Leg Mama" - Little Walter - The Chess Years 1952-1963
6. "Mind Control" - Z - Music for Pets
7. "Willingly" - The Shannon Sisters - A Million Dollars Worth of Girl Groups Volume 3
8. "Slippin' And Slidin'" - Little Richard - 18 Greatest Hits
9. "Back To Front" - Stiff Little Fingers - All The Best
10. "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" - Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen

(and now Berit is making fun of me for dancing along to the arrhythmic John Zorn track that followed the 10 above, and says I'm "weird" because of it . . .)

And as for this week's cat photos . . . here's the babies posing in the window again . . .

Here's Hooker planning to once again chew on my Crocs, as they offend his fashion sense (but dammit they're the only things I can comfortably work in all damned day!) . . .

Here's Hooker confronting his nemesis - the squirty-water-bottle we use to drench him when he's being bad . . .

And yet another sweet windowsill pose . . .

Back to work on Penny tomorrow morning at 8.00 am. Oy.

Well, I can't say anything right now about this last one (no spoilers here), but it's a BIG ONE, and I assure all the fans out there it's a more fitting finale than the BSG one (or, for that matter, most double-length series finales).

Now to make some ziti with extra-hot sauce (courtesy the bottle of sriracha sauce I got) to try and keep burning the sick out of me . . .

Work has slowed up a little bit on the August shows while I've been concerned with some other matters (and been a hair burned out from too much/too fast on those ones). I've been going over the script for the show I'm directing after the August ones, Trav S.D.'s Kitsch, Or: Two for the Price of One.

Trav has sent me a 109-page draft, but I have an older, 146-page version he gave me many years ago to look at (which he was surprised to discover I have, as he doesn't seem to have that version himself). So I'm going through both drafts and seeing if there's any little things in the long version I might want to reinstate, though Trav and I have agreed that shorter is better with this show (but we're going to put back in the songs, which were all cut from the short, and I've already caught one of my favorite jokes gone from the short version I'll ask Trav about putting back).

Trav and I visited the space at Theater for the New City where we'll be doing the show, and it was a revelation to me, as it was a huge space there that I didn't know even existed at TNC (I'd seen shows in another fairly large space at the rear that I had thought was "the big one," but nope). Probably the biggest room I've ever directed something in, which is good, as the script calls for (and should have) several two-level sets. Not sure if they have enough lights there, but we'll see. Now we have to set up a script reading just to hear the thing - probably not with the final cast, but we both need to hear this out loud ASAP.

More work on everything going on this weekend, including a work call at The Brick on Sunday morning to cover everything we can in the space for the insulation people who will be coming in to make our place more efficient all around this Sunday-Tuesday. A pain to deal with - especially right as a new show opens there this weekend - but it was the best time we had to take care of it, and it'll be done, and both the heat and cool will stay in better when we want them to from now on.

And I have to get back to finishing up the casting on George Bataille's Bathrobe and Blood on the Cat's Neck and writing more of Spacemen from Space.

Meanwhile, here's today's Random Ten, with associated links, from 25,806 in the iPod:

1. "Deixe em paz meu coração" - Brazilian Bitles - Antologia
2. "Widow's Walk" - Van Dyke Parks - Song Cycle
3. "Friends" - Robert Ashley - Dust
4. "See Emily Play" - Pink Floyd - The Pop Side of The Floyd 1967-1972
5. "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" - James Brown - Star Time
6. "Police Call - Stan Ridgway & Drywall - Work The Dumb Oracle
7. "Lordy Miss Lupe" - El Vez - How Great Thou Art
8. "The Giant Toad" - The Firesign Theatre - Dear Friends
9. "Lotta Boppin' (alternate version)" - The Rock-A-Teens - Woo-Hoo
10. "Something I've Got To Tell You" - Glenda Collins - It's Hard To Believe It: The Amazing World Of Joe Meek

As for the kitties, Hooker continues to enjoy lying on Berit and I while we're sleeping, as each of us discovers when we see the photos we alternatively take of this . . .

When we're awake, he likes to play-fight, which is more fun for him than for us, as he doesn't get bitten . . .

Last night the two of them curled up with me as I took a break from reading and movie-viewing . . .

And for most of today they've been curled up together on the couch, variously hugging, or napping, or cleaning each other, or a combo, like here . . .

Now back to cleaning out the iPod for a while . . .

A point from an LJ friend led once again to spending too much time with old clips of the Heads. For some reason, there seems to be more interesting live footage of them from their early days available on YouTube than any of my other favorite bands (except maybe Roxy Music at times when their clips aren't being vanished).

Today's focus was the 1978 Heads live -- one album out, another about to come out, three years of playing live behind them, 26 (Byrne) to 29 (Harrison) years old, knowing EXACTLY what they want to do and FOCUSED.

I used to be especially fond of the even earlier, almost acoustic, mainly 3-piece Heads, or the final immense Big Band Heads and tended to ignore the '78-79 era (and the More Songs About Buildings and Food album), but that time may have been the best for the Heads as a unified statement, rich and undiluted.

From that year, in England, on The Old Grey Whistle Test, doing "Psycho Killer":

Two songs in the sunshine - "Warning Sign" and "Pulled Up" - from Sproul Plaza, Berkeley, CA:

Finally, courtesy of that point by imomus, a 12-song set in its entirety (brief pauses between songs as it loads), gloriously recorded on appropriately stark Sony Portapak video, from My Father's Place, Roslyn, NY, May 10, 1978 (and if this is indeed the complete set as advertised, it must be one of the 3 or 4 occasions on which the Heads didn't play "Psycho Killer" at a gig, though Tina flirts with the bass line a few times between songs):

Enjoy.

I was REALLY hoping to get away for about two weeks to Maine to buckle down and write the thing, but it looks like have to do some jobs at The Brick at widely separated times during the window I had for a getaway, so I'm stuck here, where writing just doesn't happen as well. I have to get out of the home, I think. Maybe I'll schlep the laptop to The Brick's depressing office space and punch in some 8-hour days next week, just writing and pacing. That means, though, I wouldn't have Berit around. I'm not sure yet if she's going to get co-writing credit on this one, but she's been more involved in the immediate creation of it than usual on my original plays, where she acts as my best critic and bounceboard during the whole process. I do all of the actual writing, and especially the conceptual and structural work, but more and more dialogue in this one is coming out of the two of us improvising scenes in reaction to the actual serials we're watching, so her involvement in more direct here in the creative process (though both of us, I think, agree, it's not quite at co-writer level yet, it may well get there).

Unfortunately, while the majority of the actors I wanted for the other three shows have jumped right in, the 22 people I asked to be in Spacemen have mostly turned me down, or said it's unlikely they'll be available, or said they won't be able to commit fully to an August show until much, much later in the year. So I may have to do a full casting call with this one and bring in a LOT of new people (apart from the people I asked, most of the people I know just don't fit in the world of Spacemen). So it goes. It was a lot more fun writing it for actors I knew and liked and figured would knock it out of the ballpark easily.

In between writing, planning, and checking in online, I continue to try to cull enough tracks out of the iPod to put in all the tracks I've got in the last year that I'd like to have there (I pretty much filled up the damned thing and stopped my regular dropping in of any and all music I was finding on March 11 of last year). I've dropped about 800 tracks from it, and now added back in about 350 from the last year. This will take a while.

So, from 25,621 tracks now in the iPod, this week's Random Ten (with related video links):

1. "Pricks Up Front (Presto Con Brio)" - Andy Prieboy - From Pauper to a King
2. "Anthology" - The Kay Gees - Keep On Bumpin' & Master Plan
3. "Run Run Run (live 1967)" - The Velvet Underground - The Gymnasium - 1967
4. "'21 Sounds For The Sunset' - LP Promo Spot" - Radio Record Promo - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 1
5. "Macumba" - Piero Umiliani - Angeli Bianchi... Angeli Neri
6. "Pray Them Bars Away" - Lee Hazlewood - Cowboy In Sweden
7. "New Cooter Boogie" - Southern Culture On The Skids - Ditch Diggin'
8. "KRLA, King Of The Wheels (Full Song)" - The Bobby Fuller Four - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 5
9. "Spearmint Pup" - Mike Keneally - Hat
10. "Catch A Wave" - The Beach Boys - Greatest Hits

Oh, it's March 6. What's happening today? Oh, right . . . the Watchmen movie.

Don't know if I'm going to see it . . . I think I'll reread the graphic novel today (the 20-year old trade edition I have signed by Alan Moore). Actually, Tasha Robinson at A.V. Club makes it sound like it was, for her, exactly like what I'd expect it to be for me in her piece here -- a fascinating, immersive experience with enough small (and seemingly-small but not really) changes from the book to not-quite-but-almost spoil the whole experience. She notes at the end of the piece (and repeatedly restates in the comments) that she LIKED the movie, but has still has several pages of not-at-all-unimportant problems with it.

The trailers got me somewhat excited about the movie, but the scene excerpts I saw kinda killed that buzz. The scenes I watched looked (mostly) well-acted, (mostly) acceptably staged, (mostly) deeply faithful to the book, and (heavily) boring as all fuck. Enough film writers I respect have positive things to say, overall, about it (and plenty of ones I don't respect are being assholes about it in general, which can actually also be a plus), and I'd enjoy seeing a big IMAX experience film again, so I'll probably go (especially now discovering there's an IMAX screen where it's playing right nearby in Sheepshead Bay), but I'm also a little pissed that I'll be seeing a cut-down version as opposed to the full version that will be on the DVD. I enjoyed Fellowship of the Rings on the big screen at first, but once I saw the expanded (and improved by it) DVD version, I just got more and more angry watching the later two Lord of the Rings films in the theatre, knowing there would be a better, longer version released later, feeling a bit ripped-off paying full price to see a "tab" version.

Well, however the film works out, it couldn't be any worse than the 80s Saturday-morning cartoon spinoff version . . . (hee, hee) . . .

Hey, we got some new cat pictures! Amazing, considering that their skills (especially Moni) for immediately walking away, turning, blinking or whatever whenever we get a nice shot set up have gotten more and more acute. Now we have to take pictures when they're sleeping, for the most part. Like in a box of old props and costume pieces . . .

Or on a chair . . .

Or at the other end of the couch from where I'm writing . . .

Or, when I'm taking a nap break from writing, on top of me, in photos I don't discover Berit's taken until I download the camera . . .

Maybe next week, I'll get some more active photos of the two. Maybe drinking from their new razzafrazzin' fancy-ass water dish.

While we were in Maine last time, we finally bit the bullet and spent some money on a fancy drinking fountain for them. Moni has always seemed to prefer running water, and follows us into the bathroom on every trip so she can stand on the sink and drink at the faucet, if we'll turn it on for her. So we decided to get a powered water bowl that runs water down a plastic dome into a bowl, thinking she'd love it (and that Hooker, who's pretty easygoing, would accept it).

Nope.

Moni has been terrified of the damn thing - she hates the motor sound, we think, and more and more demands the sink faucet instead, and won't drink from her new (and for us, expensive) toy -- I've been worried about her getting dehydrated, but can you check this with a skin response test, and she seems okay. It took her forever just to drink from a normal bowl we put next to the thing! Hooker didn't like it at first, but soon took to licking the water off the dome as they're supposed to. We thought this might give the always-jealous Moni some ideas when she saw him do it, but no. Berit even got down on the floor and tried to demonstrate it for her. No go.

Last night, B said that she FINALLY saw Moni drinking from the new thing. We'll see if she's got it down now . . . I'll believe it when I see it.

Recent fun (mostly video) items to pass on . . .

Video and commercial director Ron Winter's keyboard triggered collection of drums and "dance music" sounds. Indulge your inner beatmaker by creating new backing tracks from this playable collection of cliched, obsolete sounds that will probably become hip again two years after David Bowie starts playing with them five years from now.

From Smearballs, the inexplicable "Sweatin' Like a Farm Animal, Cool as a Daisy":

The Three Stooges still owed Columbia several shorts on their contract at the time Shemp Howard died, so the films were completed with a "Fake Shemp" (a somewhat largely accepted bit of film terminology now, thanks to Sam Raimi). Here's most of the Stooges footage that features a Fake Shemp (comedian Joe Parma):

Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" as re-imagined through the miracle of Microsoft Songsmith:

What R2-D2 is actually saying throughout Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace:

"The Short and Simple Story of The Credit Crisis," a thesis design project by Jonathan Jarvis, about 10 minutes, in two parts. Part One:

PART TWO HERE

I miss Falco (and I miss cheap chroma-key music videos that looked like this):

(alternate video for this song HERE, which I hadn't seen before)

Recently, thanks to the book Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds, I've been going through an obsession with the post-punk era, and (connected but not always the same thing) the post-Sex Pistols work of Johnny Rotten/John Lydon. Here are two favorites from one of the most hypnotic frontmen in popular musics (the second featuring the fine fine superfine Mr. Africa Bambaataa):

And finally, courtesy Gawker, the "BREATHTAKING DESIGN STRATEGY" created by The Arnell Group for Pepsi.

Pepsi spent good money, many millions and millions of dollars, on the creation of this new version of their logo, and the accompanying campaign, so obviously, it had to be justified with an extensive document that says more than "we think this is an improvement on the logo that will continue the brand recognition while being more attractive and bringing more sales." So what you get is an amazing plan that discusses the new Pepsi logo in terms of Feng Shui, the Golden Mean, Magnetic Dynamics, the Earth's Dynamo, and the Gravitational Pull of Pepsi. Really. No, really.

I wish I'd had this document handy before I created Everything Must Go; I could have REALLY used some of it for that show.

To see the full 27 pages of breathtaking bullshit, check it out HERE (it's a PDF file, so if those don't load well for you in a browser, download it and enjoy - it's easier to read that way in any case . . .).

More recently, Pepsi used The Arnell Group to rebrand their Tropicana line, and wound up with a gigantic failure -- do any of these people actually buy stuff in stores themselves . . ?

Today, after several days of medical procedures and running around for different theatre work in different places all around, it's time for silly fun at home. Hope you enjoy yourself today, too.

It almost makes me want to try and work out Spacemen from Space as an actual monthly serial to do at The Brick, but that piece - though it's a play broken up into 6 serial "episodes" - wouldn't actually work in serial form without major changes (and there'd be no way to keep the cast together as needed, month-to-month; Bryan and Matt have been able to work around actor conflicts in a way my story couldn't).

Work continues on Spacemen and the other August shows; nothing more interesting to report there. Casting work continues on all of them, to various extents -- suggestions come in, meetings are set up. About a third of the people I wanted for the cast of Spacemen are interested, but either can't confirm or don't think they can do it. {sigh}

I'm meeting this weekend with Trav S.D. at Theatre for a New City where I'll be directing his play Kitsch: Or, Two for the Price of One in November - it's a version of The Comedy of Errors set in immediate post-Wall Berlin, with the sets of identical twins (sent to either side of the Iron Curtain) being babies formerly experimented on by Nazi doctors. Very funny. Really. And it'll be a big thing for me to direct/design at TNC -- a new space, a different kind of play.

So I have a bunch of great plays coming up this year. I am really, really looking forward to getting started this Friday with the first reading of A Little Piece of the Sun by the full cast (assuming I cast one last role by then; I'm seeing a couple of people tomorrow).

Unfortunately, I have to undergo a little medical procedure on Friday before that. It's nothing major, but not all that pleasant, and I do have to be knocked out for it. I've already postponed this once, and it's a pain to reschedule, and at the same time it's almost impossible to get the whole Little Piece cast together right now, so I can't really give up either of these Friday appointments. I'm hoping I'll be recovered enough by Friday night to properly supervise and participate in the reading, and that Berit won't wind up having to read my part.

I may be continuing to think and act like I'm ten years younger and can do things like this with near-superhuman stamina. I'll find out two days from now just how much stamina I have, I guess . . .

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera to the Penny tech this weekend before the shows, so I didn't get any good shots of my own. Bryan took pictures though, and has posted them on the Penny Facebook site. I downloaded a bunch and cleaned them up as best as I could, but their still not quite what I could have gotten with my own camera.

But I was quite pleased with the look of this month's episode ("The House Where Bad Things Happen" -- a quote from me about the Cyrus Pierce house, where the episode I directed - and this one - almost entirely took place), so here's some of the better shots I could fix from what Bryan took:

( PENNY DREADFUL #11 in 15 Photos )

The FINAL episode of Penny Dreadful, "The Last Century," plays at The Brick Saturday, March 28 at 11.00 pm, and Sunday, March 29 at 2.00 pm. We're trying to arrange a THIRD show on that weekend as well, as this will be a big finale (probably in two acts with intermission) and we've been selling out all the shows the last couple of months, even without all of our audience "regulars" able to make it to each performance (hell, now that we've had 65 actors appear in the serial since it started, we could more than sell out one house just with all the Penny Dreadful alums coming back!).

And can I say that I'm really REALLY jazzed that Matt & Bryan have asked me to return as a "special guest director" for one sequence in the final episode? Kinda like Tarantino on Sin City.

Can't say much about it yet - hell, I don't really KNOW anything about it yet - but I guess I get to come back and deal with some of the things that I supervised in the full episode I directed, #5: "The Deb of Destruction, or The Poor Little Witch Girl." Bryan knows I'm drawn to the darker, unsettling or scary parts of Penny, so I'm hoping and thinking they're giving me something good and NASTY to design and stage next time.

Bryan and I are the spoil-sports with Penny. We want to unnerve and upset people while entertaining them with this, and we get a little pissed sometimes at the large amount of laughter the show is getting in - to us - inappropriate places. Yes, it's a melodrama, deliberately overplayed to a certain extent, and over-the-top in general, and with plenty of intentional laughs in it, but we have more and more been getting an audience that comes in a bit drunk and rowdy and finds EVERYTHING funny.

So with #11, there was, in the writing and design, some real effort made to dampen this aspect. Three continuing characters were killed off, including the nominal hero (whose wife had been horribly killed in the previous episode). The two most audience-pleasing comic characters have also been offed in the last two episodes (one, as I had hoped, getting the "Scatman Crothers in The Shining" treatment, rushing to save the hero for the two episodes previous, then getting blown away almost instantly on showing up). As Bryan and I kept saying as we dry-teched #11, at times making it as assaultive as we could in lights and sound, "We're not fucking around here, folks." This is a gaslit, moody, pulpy melodrama, with quite a few deliberate laughs, yes, but it is also a work of horror.

So next time at Penny . . . The Paradise of Destruction . . . ANARCHY!

. . . heh-heh-heh . . .

I did this for my blog last January when it was going around then. The result of that one can be seen HERE. Berit did hers a few days later, and can be seen HERE

However, I haven't seen the back cover part of the meme make it to Facebook. Here's how it went when I did it a year ago:

1. Reload Flickr's interesting photos page twice. Use the seventh picture, but desaturate it.

2. Reload the random quotes page. Take the last few words of each quote to make song titles. Use them all.

So here's what I got for the back cover of that exciting new album by THOC2, To Fly in Formation:

Now YOU try it, if you haven't already . . .

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 . . .