One of my favorite bands of all time is The Mothers of Invention - the 1960s version of Frank Zappa's band, which flourished (creatively if not economically) from 1965-1969. I know Zappa hated his fans who, like me, preferred his "early stuff" to his later work, but what the fuck, it was yer best work Frankie.

The guys from Steely Dan agreed - when they were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, instead of giving a speech, they asked questions of the audience that seemed to be of importance to them, the first being, "Who was the original drummer for The Mothers of Invention?"

They got the correct answer from the crowd - the name and sobriquet of the man who played some tasty and difficult drums for Zappa at the start, keeping Zappa grounded in bar band rock while additional conservatory-trained percussionists (including Arthur Dyer Tripp and Billy Mundi) took on the more experimental parts, and who was the most iconic presence in the group apart from Zappa himself.

And now Jimmy Carl Black, The Indian of the Group, original drummer for The Mothers of Invention, has passed away on November 1.

Jimmy Carl is probably best known and loved for his portrayal of Burt, the Redneck, tormentor of The Mothers, in Zappa's film 200 Motels, from 1971. Here's his big musical number, "Lonesome Cowboy Burt," with a bit of the following scene with Theodore Bikel as Rance Muhammitz, who may or may not be The Devil (and while I thank the person who uploaded this, I can't believe they cut the scene one line short of the best punchline!):

(the next line, from Burt, is "You got many friends that call you Opal the Hot Little Bitch?")

Jimmy Carl, Indian of the Group, we will miss you.

In looking for that clip above, I found a whole bunch of excerpts from 200 Motels on YouTube (the film is long out of print on VHS and there's no DVD), so for those who haven't seen this mangled, difficult, deeply flawed, something-like-a-masterpiece, I've included the clips in the cut below. I'm glad to have them in postable form, but the quality is somewhat variable, sorry.

The film is the story of how touring in a rock and roll band can make you crazy, as The Mothers reach a new town, Centerville, just like all the other towns they've been in as they've stayed in 200 motels across America. The band is beginning to fragment - all of them beginning to hate playing Zappa's weird "comedy" music (which doesn't help them get any groupie action) and wanting to instead play some "heavy blues." They're also tired of Zappa secretly recording their conversations and then using it as material for his songs and for the movie he's writing (which is indeed where much of the dialogue comes from). Now, in Centerville, the band has reached the breaking point.

The film was shot on a large soundstage in England, on video, with a giant cartoony set representing the town and four groups of performers - The Mothers; actors; dancers; a symphony orchestra and choir - performing simultaneously in different areas of the stage.

They had less than a week and very little money to shoot it on, and only wound up filming a third of Zappa's dense script. Then, in the editing (for which two weeks were allowed), the story was made even less intelligible. There were outtakes, but the studio unfortunately decided to erase the master tapes to make a little money selling them back as blank stock(!).

However, what there is left is a collection of beautiful, bizarre parts that don't quite come together. I love it.

( 200 MOTELS - in the TOTALITY of its PAGAN SPLENDOR! )

Still cheery, for the most part, about this week's events. Disillusionment to come, of course, but that's well expected.

Berit's teaching me to run Lord Oxford for a couple shows next week while she has to go away on family stuff - which means I also have to do Penny Dreadful on my own. Busy next week. Currently ambling - cleaning the apartment, thinking about next year's shows, catching up on paperwork to deal with for the company, now that it's a real company.

Still trying to cut things from the iPod today, while adding more at the same time. Now there are 26,020 tracks on there. Here's today's Random Ten:

1. "Lifetime" - The Bliss - Fading Yellow volume 1

Oh, man is this a piece of nauseating wimpy hippie trash. Ick. I told Berit this was an immediate DROP and she said I might want to keep it to use if I needed to build up the will to slap someone sometime. Okay.

2. "Brief Candles" - The Zombies - Odessey & Oracle

Okay, here's how you do wimpy hippie trash properly. This STAYS

3. "Mica" - Mission Of Burma - Vs.

I came to MOB late and want to spend more time with all of their sides before culling the lesser ones (which I have a feeling this one is . . . maybe not). STAYS.

4. "It's a Good Thing" - That Petrol Emotion - Children of Nuggets: Original ARTyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era - 1976-1996

Hmmn. Kinda the same thing as the MOB - I want to know this better before dumping. What the hell AM I gonna dump at this rate?

5. "Nervous" - Victims - S/T 7" EP

Nope, not this. Great cheap punk single.

6. "See My Friends" - The Reegs - Shangri-La: A Tribute To The Kinks

Nice, but unnecessary, especially if I have the Kinks' original. If I do, it's a DROP.

7. "The Little March (live)" - Frank Zappa - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 5

Late-60s Mothers of Invention live? STAYS.

8. "Indian Feeling" - CAM Library - Feeling

Very short charming cheesy library track. STAYS.

9. "Voodoo Plan" - The Headliners - Wavy Gravy - Four Hairy Policemen…

Preceded by a radio spot for The Astro-Zombies, which is enough to keep this.

10. "I Know" - The Illusions - Pebbles Volume 11

Pretty good garage rock, but not a sure thing. DROP.

Hey, cat photos again!

Moni at the window, this morning:

Three stages of falling to sleep from Hooker, as Moni gets jealous of the attention he's getting and sneaks into the shots:

And the two together - a detente:

Out to run some household errands now. Maybe something else new soon . . .

The purpose of this place here where I write is to deal with the day-to-day things that feed me as an Artist-type-person. Which means that besides writing about my shows, other peoples' shows I'm working on, promotions for and processes of these things, I do post things that feed me as a person, hence, as an artist - usually this means music, cats, other arts, and sometimes humor (ie; those things that make life bearable). Some things, like, say, the Halloween party photos from last entry, make me feel a bit uncomfortable, like I've gotten off the track - but since a large percent of the people who read this are close friends anyway, sometimes I do a little something that's pretty much for just them. Whatever. It's my place.

Politics has always been a fuzzy subject for me to deal with here - it's not the purpose of the space, but it's been more and more informing the work that IS the purpose of the writing here. So as I've moved towards making political theatre work - World Gone Wrong, That's What We're Here For, my version of Foreman's Symphony of Rats, my version of Hamlet, Spell, Everything Must Go - a lot of which probably doesn't seem political to anyone but me and Berit, since we were the ones planning, discussing, and debating them during their creation, and who know what we were trying to say with those shows, and good for us for keeping it subtle - politics has come into this space more and more.

For most of my adult life (say ages 18-30), I've been a fairly (and admitted) wishy-washy bleeding-heart liberal who accepted the Democratic party as the closest thing to my beliefs in the public arena, so I might as well come out and vote for them every four years and not think about it the rest of the time. Whatever. Art was more important - I'd focus on that, first and foremost.

That began changing, for reasons, unknown to me, even before the election of our current President. My shows mainly concerned various states of psychic/emotional/spiritual/sociological confusion and splitting - being torn in multiple directions by the things that make us human. Politics, if apparent, was a symptom of a much greater disease evident in the state of merely being a member of our species.

Then I did a production of Foreman's Miss Universal Happiness in 1999 that posed a question that had begun eating at me - if Art cannot, in fact, change Humanity for the better, as it appears it can't, and you begin to think that the only way to accomplish any real, and potentially, ultimately, positive change is through violent revolution, then isn't it incumbent upon you to give up the Art and start making bombs?

That show ended in violent chaos, the question unanswered, the bomb delivered back to destroy the American Patriot Terrorist by a couple of Beauty Pageant Angels (Mr. and Miss Universal Happiness) and a Christian-Marxist Prostitute. I wound up answering the question for myself this year - NO - in Spell.

Where this came from then, I dunno. I had been very political from ages 15-18, and I have no idea why that happened either. I think it came from joining student groups opposed to nuclear war and realizing the daftness of that whole scene - I mean, who supported nuclear war, right? It seemed, the more I looked into it then, that the whole USA/Soviet nuclear race was a fine bit of misdirection to keep people from finding about about the truly scummy, dirty, illegal and unConstitutional things out government was doing in other places - primarily at that point, Central and South America (this is '83-86, a fine time for traitorous scumbaggery in our Nation's capital). So I joined other groups and worked for several years in protest of those actions - helping bring speakers from Nicaragua and El Salvador up to Massachusetts to speak to schools and colleges and so on (somewhere in Washington, there's a little file with my name on it, I'm sure . . .)

Then, I became disillusioned by looking even further into the matters and discovering that the issues were even more complex and dark, and while my government's actions were heinous, I couldn't in good conscience always give my full support to the alternative. And often, the people I was working with turned out to be morally bankrupt themselves, not really caring about the issues as much as being knee-jerk contrarians simply against the status quo - if it hadn't been the Reagan years and actually some kind of vaguely-leftist time, they would have been reactionary conservatives. It was clear that the enemy of my enemy was not at ALL necessarily my friend.

So, with a fine feeling of "to hell with ALL of youse," I went off to film school at NYU and did pretty much nothing but Art-stuff for many years. Yeah, I got beaten by cops in Tompkins Square in '88, as I wrote about, but I was primarily there as a documentarian for a friend and got in the middle of a bad scene I didn't expect.

In my work, I became purely interested in the way human beings work, or don't, internally - the mind/body problem, the struggle between heart and head, the location or existence of "the spirit," how trustworthy in any way are our perceptions, that sort of thing. And I moved from Film to Theatre, but that's another story, and even less clear to me.

Something started changing in me while working at, and living in the basement of, Nada on Ludlow Street from 1996-2000 (for you young 'uns and non NYC theatre folk, this was a theatre, it was cool and beautiful for a time, we did good work there, I can say no more without bringing up VERY bad feelings and old conflicts). No idea why, but it did. I think maybe it was because I had begun to read more on American History, which fascinates me, and the more and broader I read about the past, the more I could see clearly exactly what was happening in the present, and worse.

A week before we were evicted from that space, Berit and I, still a new couple, watched the 2000 election on the old early-'70s Sony Trinitron I had there, with the rabbit ears. Stayed up most of the night in amazement at the drama of the election, but not entirely concerned about how it went, one way or the other. I had voted for Nader - and I admit it happily. New York was definitely going Gore, and I agreed more with Nader than Gore anyway. One thing had become clear to me by that point in my life, and remains true today, that I wouldn't vote for anyone on the actual Democratic or Republican ticket unless I absolutely HAD to - which DOES happen, as I generally won't sit out from a vote in any category, and some people run unopposed, or on several tickets I don't like. I didn't think the 2000 election would change things all too much.

Well, it has and it hasn't. Frankly, a lot of the evil that's been done the last eight years has ALWAYS been going on, and maybe we can be at least grateful to the current Administration for being so shamelessly horrible that more people at least got distracted from the bread & circuses and realized, "hey, these aren't such good things happening here." Again, I've been reading a lot about the Country these last ten years -- most of the evil here has ALWAYS been here, and these times are not unusual.

At the same time, the stakes have gotten higher. And the last eight years have been . . . well, the last eight years. We are now dealing with actions that have consequences that CAN'T just be "fixed" when they blow up on us. The planet itself is in trouble, and Our Fearless Leaders seem to care more about how to plunder it during the brief time they're here and get away with it, and merely LOOK like they're doing something positive, than actually doing anything.

I am continually amazed at the depths to which These Leaders will sink in pursuit of power and money -- Berit never is, and I don't think any politician could possibly sink low enough to surprise her - I think, if it were discovered tomorrow that the President and Vice-President were sacrificing 15-year-old virgins to appease Yog-Suggoth while sodomizing goats and eating live kittens, she'd shrug and ask, "Well, what do you expect from those people?." But then, her earliest memories of politics - and not positive ones - are of the Reagan era, and mine is of watching Nixon resign and thinking that I was learning that the "Bad Guys" always get caught, even if they're the President.

The stakes got high enough that my own work changed and my precepts about keeping politics out of them went by the wayside. I think I've handled the shift well, myself, continuing to put the cart behind the horse by putting the Art before the coarse.

So, I will vote today, and as you might expect. Hell, no point in being coy about it, of course I'm voting for Obama, much the way I did in '04, for Kerry, and again not on the Democratic ticket but in Row E, under the Working Families Party. At the time of the last election, I debated going for Nader again - I mean the state was going Kerry anyway, definitely, but I decided (and still am conflicted about this) that as unified a front had to be made against the man in the White House as possible, as many single voices. Fat lot of good that did, huh?

There's some less nose-holding this time, and more hope. But as I think I've made clear, I don't really trust ANYONE who's part of the political machines of either the Democrats or Republicans, and Obama has pissed me off on more than a few occasions. I can't just suck it back and put on a smiley face and cheer the man unreservedly, but while I can't completely trust him, I can still have enough hope for and in him to join in, and really feel that I am voting not for a "lesser evil," but for your standard politician who may help some things, good or bad, hinder others, also good or bad, against a MONSTROUS FUCKING EVIL THAT WILL DESTROY THIS COUNTRY. REALLY.

Towards the end of his life, that deep cynic Frank Zappa began a push to register voters at his concerts, and encouraged participation in the Democracy of this land. He felt that Americans had lost touch with what their job was in the process - he partially blamed this on the elimination from most school curriculums of that subject once known as "Civics," which was supposed to teach our kids how the country is supposed to work (he was proud of the fact that, while he had been miserable in school and a mostly-bad student, he had gotten A's in that subject). He began putting statements on his album covers such as, "DON'T FORGET TO REGISTER TO VOTE - THE SYSTEM SOMETIMES WORKS WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN IT OR NOT," or simply "VOTE!" In that spirit, I join in that message. If I have any hope that's grown over these last eight years, it's that many in this country have begun to pay attention and learn "Civics" on their own, and are no longer being apathetic and claiming they are simply "withdrawing in disgust" (as often as not, a cop-out). I believe in the basics of this experiment that is this country, and I'm pulling for it not to fail.

Four years ago, B & I watched the returns at home, again putting a makeshift antenna on a TV so we'd get reception (we don't normally bother) - which we do, as B says, in times of disaster, like 9/11 or that '04 election.

Berit's up and in the shower, and when's she's out, we're off to vote. Tonight, we'll be with friends in our home theatre, The Brick, where, hopefully, it's all been worked out so we'll have streaming video on the big screen. If not, I'm bringing that 1973 Sony Trinitron, with the old rabbit ears, with me so I can set it up and switch channels around, just like the old days.

And finally, having gone through all that, here's two funny videos to make light of this serious occasion, from Funny or Die:

( Vote Calrissian for President!/Another Word from Portman & Jones )

Calling out with hope at the other end of a tin can on a string here in this world gone wrong, I remain your friend.

Happy Halloween.

I'm awake, but not cheerfully - insomnia, up and down all night. In the end I got the full hours of "a good night's sleep," but not in a row.

This had nothing to do with any Halloween scariness, though on one of my times up in the middle of the night, puttering away online, I encountered THAT commercial from 1978 that caused me a few sleepless nights back then:

( Fats Wishes You a Happy Halloween! )

Oh, what the heck, let's continue the creepy horror trailers theme for today!
( There's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby . . . )

Meanwhile, back in the iPod, there 26,012 tracks taking up 72.27 GBs, with less than a gig for new music, and months of acquired music to put in. What tracks from today's Random Ten shall be dropped to make way for better things?

1. "L'Estasi Dell'Oro (from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)" - Ennio Morricone - The Dinosaur Gardens Tribute to Il Maestro

Better known as "the music that plays as Eli Wallach runs around in circles for three minutes looking for Arch Stanton's grave." One of my favorite pieces of music. STAYS.

2. "Final Achievement" - In Camera - Return of the Batcave

Whoa. The opening of this is someone doing a low-rent Arnold Dreyblatt impression, apparently striking an electric guitar with a bow. Then it completely changes into a good little post-punk, post-no wave alt-rock song. Not great, but good enough and obscure enough to keep. STAYS

3. "Idiot Wind (original version)" - Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks - New York Sessions

Just got this recently and it was good enough to shove on the iPod ahead of the rest of the backlog. A very different version of a song I already love, maybe not as good as the released version, maybe as good, maybe better. Ask me next time I hear it. STAYS.

4. "Gloomy Sunday" - Sinéad O'Connor - Am I Not Your Girl?

From her album of standards, which I love. However. This song is slow and depressing in the wrong way for the iPod. This one is to be REMOVED.

5. "Louie Louie (medley)" - The Troggs - The Louie Louie Files

This is pretty cheesy. It's probably barely the original Troggs, much later than their 60s prime, doing a medley of various 60s hits. Almost charming enough in cheesiness to stay, but it the end I think this should be REMOVED.

6. "Who's Gene Autry? " - Johnny Cash with John Carter Cash - Legend

Pretty corny track from The Man. GOES.

7. "Glory Box (live)" - Portishead - Roseland NYC (Live)

Great song, made better in this live version, which is not what I would have expected from this band. Actually, EVERY song on this album tops the original version, while sounding almost identical to it; there's just some little bit of extra live energy to them that puts them over the top. STAYS.

8. "Electric In General (from Flower Power & Gunpowder)" - Jerry Finegold - Public Guy Private Dick-Selected Cuts From The Original Soundtracks

Neat hot instrumental that STAYS. Wish I knew where it was REALLY from - Finegold created soundtracks for NYC-area Z-pictures by just needle dropping tracks from other albums, and actually had the nerve to release a "soundtrack album" of tracks he'd just lifted outright from other places. Not even had replayed by new musicians, he just TOOK them! Some chutzpah there . . .

9. "La Vie En Rose" - Sam Butera & The Witnesses - Ultra-Lounge 10: A Bachelor in Paris

Good cheesy lounge version of the song. Not necessary, but STAYS, for now.

10. "Greyhound Blues" - D.A. Hunt - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 5

Don't really know this song yet, and I need to live with it a while longer. STAYS while I get to know it and see if it keeps penetrating, or if it's one more REALLY good blues from the time and place that I have dozens and dozens of now, and can't keep all of them in the iPod.

Some political stupidity to link to . . .

So, have you heard the latest wingnut rumor about Obama? About his parentage? Oh, it's astonishingly mad. urbaniak breaks it down with his normal wit HERE. Yeeesh.

Meanwhile, a group of Christians decided to band together (after one had a dream in which God spoke to her and told her to do this - really) and DO something for our economy. What did they decide to do?

They decided to get together at the giant bronze bull statue down on Bowling Green - not Wall Street, as everyone keeps saying, but it's close enough - and lay hands on this symbol of Capitalism and pray for it to be healed.

It's not quite worship, and not quite a golden calf . . . but close enough to make you wonder how well these people had read their Bible. Oh, right, that's that "Old" Testament, the one that only counts when it's on about killing homosexuals. More words, photos, and video on this glorious non-ironic derangement HERE.

(you know, this same poor bull, right after the beginning of the financial crisis, had its prominent testicles painted bright blue - I'm not sure what event is more insulting to this proud beast . . .)

Oh, and Wil Wheaton, TV's Wesley Crusher, wishes you a very Happy Halloween in his own way . . .

We ALL float down here, Georgie!

Boo!

I haven't been doing much if anything in the way of comment on the election. I provide quotes and links sometimes to various other items of political/social note, but the election . . ? Not my bag for this place. This is a place for sharing words and images related to the Art-Stuff I do, even tangentially in terms of feeding me in some way to make the work. This does include political things, if they have some relation to how I think about the Art-Stuff or can use it in some way. Usually, that means constitutional infringements or other outright criminal/traitorous acts from the Administration.

This quadrennial farce is not artistically interesting in any immediate way to me.

I will be voting, I hope you will, too. I will not vote Democratic or Republican if I can avoid it - I despise the two-party system we've devolved to, and I despise the two parties themselves. If I feel I HAVE to vote for the candidate running as a Democrat (or even, yes, as I have in some areas, usually small county positions, Republican) I will vote for them, where possible, in another column - in the case of Democratic candidates, usually under the "Working Families" party. It's a small thing, but I'd rather not throw my support behind one of the corrupt and corrupting Big Two. If, like . . . well, many people, you feel you have to vote for the Democratic candidate this year, might I suggest the Working Families Party. If you're in New York or Connecticut, that is - the Party is only on the ballot there as yet.

And if you're going to vote this way - for a Main Candidate but on another ticket but the Big One - check your state's rules -- in some states, the votes aren't added together if, say, a candidate is on both the Republican and the Conservative tickets, and even if he gets enough votes under those two parties combined to win a state, it won't matter because only the bigger number will count, and if an opposing candidate gets more votes under one party than that bigger number, they win. In New York State, all votes for a candidate are added together, for all tickets that candidate might be on. Good.

I only have one last comment on the election for now, a photocropping inspired by an identical one created by capthek I saw (along with the full original photo) on urbaniak's blog:

Well, to get the bad taste out of my mouth, two more new favorites that have shown up on the LP Cover Lover site. First, one that . . . well, yet another example of a perfectly good title subverted by time and the change in the most common usage of a word:

And, judging from this cover, the sermon contained inside maybe REALLY stretches a metaphor a bit far:

I dunno . . . Jesus' team looks a little light to me. Maybe he should bring in Joseph to the lineup, with Lot batting cleanup.

The Bible verse noted there that apparently inspired this sermon is "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." I'm not sure quite how this applies to the National Pastime in any useful spiritual way, but maybe I'm just not enlightened enough . . .

Earlier this year, I posted a list of my "50 Favorite Movies." As I noted then, if you were to go through all of my notebooks (as I sometimes do, all the way back to age 15 or so, looking for interesting ideas to develop I'd forgotten about), you find these lists, of varied length (10 films, 15 films, 20 films, 25 films), carefully dated, occurring here and there, months apart, sometimes years, sometimes just weeks.

No good reason to do this really, especially at first (except if you're a film buff, you get asked what your favorites are fairly often, so making lists means you usually don't forget them). Now that it's been years of doing this, I like to go back and see what's stayed or vanished or newly appeared on my lists, and what filmmakers I love but who don't even have one film on the list (most often, as below, Powell & Pressburger, Ken Russell, Kurosawa, Bergman, Tarkovsky, with whom their entire oeuvre means more to me than any individual film; Godard used to always be in this bunch, too).

Looking over a list of my "favorite films" on Facebook today, I felt that a few things were missing. By the time I added the missing ones, today's list was at 35. This time I didn't stop at a "5" because that's how lists normally work (last time I hit 45 and then kinda forced in another 5 to make an even 50), I just stopped when I had a list of the very VERY special films that make me feel a little more something (at least today, right now) when I think of them than any other movies do. This doesn't always mean they're "great," of course (there are movies generally regarded as "bad," and VERY understandably so, below), but they ARE my Favorites - that is, when I think of any one of these movies, I am overwhelmed with a great sense of love for and protection of them, and want to see them again IMMEDIATELY (luckily, I own video copies of some viewable kind of all but 4 of them).

The list is maybe a bit more English-language and American than last time - I think I was self-conscious about that then and forced in some non-English films to try and seem less USA-centric. Well, I am that, I guess.

Here's today's 35 Favorite Movies of mine:

Sherlock, Jr. - directed by Buster Keaton, 1924
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - directed by F.W. Murnau, 1927
Citizen Kane - directed by Orson Welles, 1941
The Seventh Victim - directed by Mark Robson, 1943
Detour - directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945
Magical Maestro - directed by Tex Avery, 1952
Duck Amuck - directed by Charles M. Jones, 1953
Glen or Glenda? - directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr., 1953
Kiss Me Deadly - directed by Robert Aldrich, 1955
The Birds - directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1963
Contempt - directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1963
Two or Three Things I Know About Her - directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1967
Wavelength - directed by Michael Snow, 1967
Point Blank - directed by John Boorman, 1967
How I Won the War - directed by Richard Lester, 1967
2001: A Space Odyssey - directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1968
Performance - directed by Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, 1970
THX-1138 - directed by George Lucas, 1971
The Last Picture Show - directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 1971
Tout Va Bien - directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972
Mean Streets - directed by Martin Scorcese, 1973
Singing on the Treadmill - directed by Gyula Gazdag, 1974
Barry Lyndon - directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1975
Eraserhead - directed by David Lynch, 1977
The Falls - directed by Peter Greenaway, 1980
Bad Timing - directed by Nicolas Roeg, 1980
Stardust Memories - directed by Woody Allen, 1980
Videodrome - directed by David Cronenberg, 1983
Tough Guys Don't Dance - directed by Norman Mailer, 1987
Road House - directed by Rowdy Harrington, 1989
Barton Fink - directed by Joel Coen, 1991
The Age of Innocence - directed by Martin Scorcese, 1993
Heavenly Creatures - directed by Peter Jackson, 1994
Schizopolis - directed by Steven Soderbergh, 1996
Lost Highway - directed by David Lynch, 1997

Any connecting threads here? I'm a little surprised to see that most of them (at least 26, but maybe more if I thought about it) deal with problems of identity in some way, as in "Who Is This Person?" or "Who Are You?" or "Who is ANY person?" or mistaken identities, or shifting identities, or masks and hidden identities. Hmmn.

Well, having blown everything I had saved up or found to share yesterday, I got nothing today for the NEVER-TO-BE-MISSED Friday post that I HAVE to do.

Still have the same things to do, the shows I worked on will be running tonight, and the world is still a fascinating, beautiful, massively-fucked jewel covered with good ants building useful stuff and evil, oily things scurrying around stealing and dealing in the non-useful.

Dunno why all the poison and evil around always becomes "oil" to me. it's not literal, but in my head it's always a gummy, thick black poison that soaks into the earth and poisons it. When I directed my second production, Mac Wellman's Harm's Way at House of Candles in 1998, placing it in the "Old Weird America" I had been reading about in Greil Marcus and scoring it with the Harry Smith Anthology, I tried to get across to the actors the idea that they were in an America where all the evil had seeped into the ground and poisoned it, like an oil spill, and that it had begun to come up into their bodies, like plants leeching bad things from the earth, and they should feel a little sick and nauseous the whole time. I don't think I was able to convey this well to the actors at the time; they just seemed confused by this idea. But something like that came across.

I'm still pleased with that production, though I wouldn't have chosen that play on my own to do - I like Wellman, a lot, but I didn't like that play (it feels like a poet just beginning to become a dramatist - great language and characters but poor structure and momentum - hard to make one thing feel like it's actually supposed to follow the last). I did it because I was asked to replace another director and it was an opportunity, and I made myself fall in love with the play while I was doing it - I found my "in" to it, which was through "The Old Weird America" and I pushed that aspect of the play.

I met Mac while I was rehearsing it, and when I mentioned that I was using Marcus and Smith as touchstones for the play he was very enthusiastic about that approach (he was reading and listening to the same things at the time), and when he asked me the running time of the play, and I told him it was going 80 minutes but I was actually trying to slow the actors down and get it to 90 (which I said warily, for most playwrights I had talked to at that point wanted everything in their plays to be punchier and faster), he thanked me, and said most people did that play WAY too fast and it was over in an hour. And while I was doing the show, I loved it and thought I really GOT it.

But at that time when I was doing the play (and pardon me, those of you who remember me saying this before over two years ago), I thought I was looking at a pointillist work with too few dots, so the picture was illegible, and it was my job as director/designer to add the missing dots to make the picture clear. In retrospect, I wonder if the picture I saw in the dots was actually there at all - maybe it was actually an abstract that I was forcing to fit my personal obsessions - and my job should have been to intensify the colors of the dots that were there to start with, not add my own. I still don't know if I did the right thing by that play (people who dislike the play seem to think I did, and say I made a good production of a bad play - praise that gives me mixed feelings, to say the least).

Well, Mac appreciated the show when he saw it (which was a kind of embarrassing night, as we'd had big crowds for the rest of the run, and he came on closing night and it was nearly empty). At least he said he was "never bored nor horrified" by the production, which someone closer to him told me was actually high praise from the man. Maybe.

In any case, in the present day, I'm still using the Friday Random Ten as a way to find what songs to eliminate from the cramped iPod so I can put more stuff on.

It's even more cramped now that I shoved on the new Bob Dylan Bootleg release and the new album from Electric Six as of last night.

I still need to listen to the latter for real to see if I like it anywhere as much as their other albums, the Dylan - outtakes and rarities from 1992-2006 - on the other hand is amazing even at first listen. I also recommend - as I did - actually taking all the tracks and reordering them so they play in strict chronological order - the order they chose is good, but there's something nicer about hearing him struggle to find the new sound he's looking for in the Oh Mercy outtakes, hearing a bit of it come to him in the live tracks and abortive early-90s sessions, then really taking shape in the Time Out of Mind sessions (the bulk of the set is from this time) then finally hearing it with confidence in the Modern Times leftovers (oddly, nothing really here from the "Love and Theft" sessions - he must have used everything there was from then on that great album).

So here's what the iPod threw up today . . .

1. "Don't Crowd Me" - Keith Kessler - Ear-Splitting Punk

Standard good 60s garage rock that blows open with one of those guitar solos you get sometimes in the genre - inept but brilliant, passion outstripping technique - that makes this worth keeping on the iPod. Also has a great and truly unexpected false ending and final outchorus. Yup. this stays.

2. "The Maid" - The Ron-de-voos - Back from the Grave 7

And, by contrast, okay 60s garage rock that doesn't quite cut it. The guitarist is technically better than the one on "Don't Crowd Me," but doesn't sound like he cares. This one gets eliminated.

3. "My Heart Is a Flower" - King Missile - The Way to Salvation

Silly but good. This stays. Closer to an actual "song" than a lot of their stuff (Berit's the fan of theirs with the albums - I like them, but not as much).

4. "Just Because I'm Irish" - Julia Sweeney & Jonathan Richman - You Must Ask the Heart

Trifling little novelty song, but short and charming. It stays.

5. "Midnight Train" - The Shamrocks - Pebbles Volume 12 - The World

Garage from abroad. Hard to decide if it stays or goes. Pretty standard garage with nothing special except an above-average vocalist. Almost sounds like Canned Heat. Nope, not good enough to stay.

6. "Hey Mister" - Fever Tree - Mindrocker 60's USA Punk Anthology Vol 12

Ooh, Fever Tree is one of my favorite obscure 60s garage discoveries (I used two of their songs in my production of Temptation) but this one . . . beautifully sung but a loping, stupid song. I dunno. The singing nearly saves it, but it kinda ambles to nowhere. I think this one goes . . .

7. "Land Ho!" - The Doors - Morrison Hotel

Hey, one of those Doors songs I actually like! It wouldn't be on the iPod if I didn't like it in the first place, so it stays. For years I had huge animosity towards The Doors - what am I saying, I still do, pretentious silly little fucks. Then I realized that among all the crap - the Lizard King/Mr. Mojo Risin' posturing - were quite a few lovely little pop gems, like this rewrite of "Shortnin' Bread."

8. "Socks, Drugs & Rock n' Roll (live KCRW 1998)" - Buffalo Daughter - Rare On Air Vol 5, KCRW Morning Becomes Electric 1998-99

Wait, isn't that supposed to be "Morning Becomes Eclectic?" Isn't that the name of the radio show this is a sampler from? Oh, well, whatever. Strange "alternative" very-90s song - beepy, jokey, spiky, jangling post-Fear of Music guitars and a bridge that sounds like Cibo Matto. Pleasant, but nothing special. I think I'll leave it on the iPod, though, cause I don't have many songs like this and it makes a nice change-up.

9. "Goin' Too Far" - Boys From Nowhere - Eat A Cherry...Rare Punk, Psych + Glam (but Mostly Punk)

More garage, this one from a WFMU fundraising premium. Good, but not great.

10. "High Wall" - The Fabulous Wailers - Orgy of the Dead

Okay, here's something amazing - a great saxophone-led instrumental, slow and creepy, courtesy of Frank Cwiklik, who used it in the stage adaptation of Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead that I was in. It was the big climactic dance number, and while I wouldn't normally use a track so prominently used in a show by a friend (a rule I broke by accident when I forgot that a cue I used near the end of Everything Must Go was the climactic cue from Frank's Bitch Macbeth), someday I'll have a place in one of my shows to put this moody, beautiful piece.

Oh, and something I need to mention I've been forgetting . . .

Occasionally, I get offered swag for being a blogger. Amazing considering I probably have a regular readership in the low three figures. Maybe. The VERY low three figures, at best. I don't take a lot of the swag usually, admittedly because I'm not interested in a lot of what I'm offered, but sometime because I feel silly about it, even if slightly interested.

However, even though I felt silly about it, I took a free copy of Leonard Jacobs' book Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970 because I'm a nostalgic SOB who loves feeling part of the continuum of American Theatre, and I LOVE old theatre photos.

Didn't mean I'd necessarily like the book, though, and when I saw in the intro that it was comprised of 240 photos, that seemed like a low number to me and I expected to be disappointed.

But if they're the right 240 photos, and these are, you have a good book, which this is (though I could have done without the one illustration in there - I wanted photos and nothing but).

Leonard - who writes The Clyde Fitch Report - does a great job of captioning, explaining, and expounding upon the photos. There is maybe at times at bit much of a suggestion of "oh, these wonderful lost times so unlike what we have now," but whatever, it a book for nostalgia. He gives some additional props to the figure after whom his blog is named, which seem maybe a bit out of proportion compared to some other figures mentioned, but what the hell, Fitch was important and while getting known again now, hasn't had the same rediscovery that Dion Boucicault has (somewhat) had.

In any case, I've gone through the book three times now, a skim, a fast read, and a detailed read, and it's been a fine read and view each time. Sound interesting to you? Check it out.

Here's a video trailer for the book, featuring a handful of pictures from it (not exactly my favorites, except the last two):

( Historic Photos of Broadway: New York Theater 1850-1970 )

More when something happens . . .

Today, a couple of funny ways to look at some very unfunny things and a whole bunch of enjoyable videos to try and get over those unfunny things. I'm pretty much just dropping in two large quotes from other peoples' blogs here, but I wanted to pass these on to people who might miss them otherwise . . .

I read a piece in the Hollywood Reporter recently about Conservatives in Hollywood, and how they feel so outnumbered and put-upon and rejected by the majority of people in their business, so they have to hide their beliefs.

Screenwriter John Rogers, at his blog Kung Fu Monkey, quotes some of the original article in his recent post, and makes a point I had been considering, but with more pith and verve than I'd had in my head . . .

from the Hollywood Reporter:

One "Big Hollywood" blogger is Andrew Klavan, an accomplished novelist-screenwriter who made a splash with a Wall Street Journal article comparing Batman and the The Dark Knight to President Bush and the war on terror.

"It's not easy being different," he said. "The liberals aren't all that liberal. We think they're wrong, but they think we're evil, and they behave like it."

Klavan said a producer, worried that Klavan's political reputation had become common knowledge, asked recently whether he could pitch something Klavan wrote but under an assumed name. Klavan declined.

"I don't want to be the Dalton Trumbo of the right," he said.

John Rogers' comment:

Quick history lesson for you kids fresh off the film school boat -- back in the late 40's the United States Congress hauled screenwriters in front of nationally broadcast hearings where they were essentially accused of treason. There, in front of flashing cameras and some very angry Congressmen, you were given a choice: finger a Commie to prove you weren't a Commie, or ... well, that was pretty much it. Some of the people who refused to rat out friends as members of the non-existent Hollywood Communist Conspiracy, like Dalton Trumbo, served time in federal penitentiaries. Over 300 were blacklisted by studios eager to kiss a little government ass. Their reputations, lives, and careers were publicly and permanently destroyed. Trumbo wound up writing under a pseudonym, and some fifteen odd years later found himself one of the few to be rehabilitated, primarily because he was a helluva writer.

Let me reiterate the bullet points:

-- Nationally broadcast interrogation in front of the House of Representatives.

-- Implied treason.

-- Federal prison time.

-- Career and reputation permanently and utterly destroyed.

You know, folks, maybe your Hollywood friends seem to treat you a bit rudely not because they're illiberal, narrow-minded and judgmental, but perhaps -- just perhaps -- because you are such a

self-pitying self-indulgent narcissist with your head so far up your ass that you equate "occasional discomfort during cocktail party conversations" with "BEING ON THE FUCKING BLACKLIST".

There. Glad to clear that up.

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

And over at Shakesville, William K. Wolfrum seems to have received an email message that he wants to share with us, so I'll take his suggestion and pass it on to all of you:

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing Red every Friday.

The reason? American Republicans who support John McCain's crappy treatment of U.S. Veterans used to be called the "silent majority." No longer silent, American Republicans are voicing their love for God, country and total support of John McCain's crappy treatment of U.S. Veterans in record-breaking numbers.

They are not organized, boisterous or overbearing. Many American Republicans simply want to show they support John McCain voting against $430 million for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans. American Republicans must wear Red to show they support John McCain not even bothering to vote on the 21st Century G.I. Bill and that they agree with McCain that U.S. Veterans don't deserve dignity and respect.

Starting this Friday -- and continuing each and every Friday until the VA Medical System is privatized once and for all -- every red-blooded American Republican that supports John McCain's Crappy Treatment of U.S. Veterans will wear something Red on Fridays and try and privatize all VA Hospitals like they privatized Walter Reed.

By word of mouth, press, TV -- American Republicans must make the United States on every Friday a sea of Red to show their support for how John McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in 2007 by closing corporate tax loopholes.

If every American Republican who supports John McCain's decision to vote against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating abusive tax loopholes will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in RED and it will let Veterans know the once "silent majority" is not on their side more than ever, certainly less than the media lets on. The first thing a Veteran says when they are asked "How Can John McCain do less for you?" is ... "Is that even possible?" So American Republicans can show their support for John McCain's Crappy Treatment of U.S. Veterans by wearing something Red every Friday.

IF YOU SUPPORT JOHN McCAIN'S CRAPPY TREATMENT OF VETERANS -- THEN SEND THIS ON.

IF YOU COULD CARE LESS -- THEN LET YOUR CONSCIENCE BE YOUR GUIDE.

IT IS YOUR CHOICE.

LEST WE NEVER FORGET, WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE.

SO AMERICAN REPUBLICANS, WEAR RED THIS FRIDAY TO SHOW THAT YOU ARE ON JOHN McCAIN'S SIDE AND BELIEVE AMERICAN VETERANS SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE CRAP!

And thank you, Mr. Wolfrum.

For more on John McCain's Crappy Treatment of American Veterans, please visit VoteVets and their blog, VetVoice.

So . . . when all this evil piles up, where to go for relief?

For me, in the joys of beautiful pure pop.

Here's Mina Mazzini (known in Italy as just "Mina"), on the Italian variety show Studio Uno in 1966 (returning to TV after having been banned from it in that country in 1963 for her supposed immorality). The song is by Ennio Morricone, in a form combining 60s California-Wrecking Crew-pop with serialism. Just let it build . . .

( Se telefonando )

And here's a fine fine superfine mashup featuring The Soggy Bottom Boys and Gwen Stefani. God I love American Music. It's all One Big Thing.

( Hollaback Girl of Constant Sorrow )

Well, this is all cheering me up . . . how about some more European pop from 1966? This one's from Finland - Danny performing an American song that may sound familiar . . .

( Kesäkatu )

Waitaminit - I was watching these to cheer up! How did a video with this woman get in here?

( Sarah Palin sings! to Katie Couric )

Okay, THAT'S IT! To recover from Palin, I must play two stupid and charming videos to get over it. Here's some cats flushing toilets . . .

( He's a Cat, Flushing the Toilet )

And here's a Boxer dog on a trampoline . . .

( A Boxer on a Trampoline )

And, finally, here's Screaming Jay Hawkins - he is COOL he is my MAIN MAN - live on NBC's late great & lamented Sunday Night aka Michelob presents Night Music show - doing his Big Hit and his, um, idiosyncratic version of a great American Standard:

( I Put a Spell on You/Old Man River )

Enjoy alla this stuff.

Meanwhile, back in the world of Theatre -- I'm sitting back today until it's time to go see the final dress/tech of Lord Oxford presents The Second American Revolution, LIVE! tonight at The Brick. This looks to be quite a production. Opens Thursday. See it.

Stuff found and seen.

Penny Dreadful episode 7 - the first of Season Two - opened last night and closes today and it was really pretty beautiful. Some rough patches, as there always are with PD - we always have to work with the set, setup, and light plot of whatever main show is in The Brick and work on a really fast, tight schedule, but I was surprised at how pretty this one wound up looking.

It plays again today at 2.00 pm. Then I'm off shows for a month while B works on Lord Oxford.

Images and video recently enjoyed . . .

Always good for you to quit smorking:

Oddly, the thing that interests me most about this magazine cover is the promise of the story "Stella Cravits, Private Eye:"

Officer Murphy looks away from Omni Consumer Products:

Stick 'em up:

And this is from a Canadian WallMart online catalog which featured several examples, like this one, where the wrong picture was put with the product that was to be illustrated. Or, in this case, was it?

I dunno . . . looks like an ultra-douche to me.

My father and stepmom recently gave me a book of postcards of old ads that featured ads for a cigarette called "Spud," which my dad noted that he'd never even heard of. Well, by coincidence, Mark Evanier linked to an animated commercial for them just yesterday. Yeesh:

( If you wanna be mouth happy, the you wanna smoke Spud! )

And from 1985, a young Tori Amos takes whatever work she can get:

( Cornflake Girl )

Enjoy.

Kind of a rest day today. At least as planned. Busy enough for all that though - woke up early with Berit asking me for the vet's number, as Hooker the kitty was having one of his epileptic seizures, and B thought it seemed worse than usual. I looked on and he was fine - recovering from a fit, but fine, no vet needed (he was panting really hard for a long time - look at him above in the icon picture and imagine him holding that face while panting hard for 45 minutes - but that happens sometimes). So I gave him affection for an hour while he pretty much recovered.

Then B wanted to go out for breakfast before errands, so we drove to a nearby diner and figured out our weekend plans and I discussed how things had gone last night on Nosedive's The Master of Horror, which was rough, but pulled-off. Tough show, tech-wise. It'll get better, but I'm pretty well off it now. I'll stop in and check it out a couple more times during the run to see how it's going, and answer whatever questions come up by email (should write and check in with them now, though).

I finished cleaning up my director's draft of Daniel McKleinfeld's A Little Piece of the Sun for August, 2009 - I fixed formatting issues and made some slight alterations, then sent it to Daniel to approve before I send it to possible cast members. Looks good and I'm looking forward to working on it. Many good ideas are coming up for the design.

Berit's got the iPod today as she's out buying prop-building supplies for Lord Oxford . . . at Pearl Paint and elsewhere on Canal Street, so today's Random Ten is from the larger and less-filtered iTunes, with 59,689 tracks to choose from. So what does it go for now . . ?

1. "Little Girl" - Syndicate of Sound - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, Vol. 2
2. "Good Good Lovin'" - The Cinderellas - Girls Will Be Girls Vol.1
3. "One Way Love" - The Drifters - 1959-1965 - All Time Greatest Hits & More
4. "Mechanical Movement" - Eric Peters - Electronic Toys - A Retrospective of 70's Synthesizer Music
5. "Day By Day" - The Action - Wild Things volume 2 - Wyld Kiwi Garage 1966-1969
6. "Real By Reel (Go Home Productions remix dub)" - XTC - GHP Complete - CD11 Unofficial Remixes Vol2
7. "Time Will Never Change" - The Speeders - Prae-Kraut Pandemonium vol. 12
8. "The Man With the Dogs" - Dead Kennedys - Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
9. "Mean Man" - Betty Harris - Saturday Night Fish Fry: New Orleans Funk And Soul
10. "My Last Letter" - Sterling Damon - It Just Ain't Right: USA Garage Greats 1965-1967

And otherwise, just some other things grabbed from around the tubes this week, like this example of why you shouldn't mess with a Ninja:

And when Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan in the recent debate? She was quoting this little example of recorded media from 1961:

Which was a record created by the American Medical Association as part of "Operation Coffeecup," where doctors' wives would invite over their friends for some kinda little coffee klatch and play this record at them so they'd convince their hubbies and others to not be in favor of (the then merely theoretical) Medicare.

Which of course, means he was really just reading something that was completely worked out and written for him, and calling it "a quote from Reagan" is like saying Humphrey Bogart was responsible for anything he said in Casablanca, but what else is new?

(the photo of Reagan on the cover gets odder and creepier the more I look at it - the body pose, the look on his face - is he snarling? brrrrrrrrr . . .)

And some videos -- Yesterday, one of my favorite actors, BRIAN BLESSED!!! (whose name should always be yelled in imitation of the man's distinctive tone) turned 71, and keeps going strong. He is terrific and always seems a bit unhinged, so I love him, of course. Here's some video of the man on a BBC show where he makes a surprise appearance after a guest has declared her distaste of people with loud voices:

( Brian Blessed Does Snooker Commentary )

Here's a version of a-ha's classic song and video "Take On Me" with the song and video brought just a little closer together:

( Take On Me: The Literal Version )

From the film War of the Garagantuas, here's the classic song "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat," (real title, "Feel in My Heart") as performed by Kipp Hamilton (though of her fans say she was redubbed, badly), which was later rewritten and covered by Devo at live shows:

( The Words Get Stuck in My Throat (music video version) )

And speaking of Devo, here's a recent song/video from them. They're still occasionally doing things, and will be playing a concert in their hometown of Akron later this month . . . wish I could see it:

( Watch Us Work It )

Berit has a movie-oriented puzzle in one of her magazines to work on now, so I'm off to relax with that . . .