CollisionWorks

These are three short stories by Stephen King adapted for the stage (note: links include spoilers): "Nona," adapted by James Comtois; "Quitters, Inc.," adapted by Qui Nguyen; and "In the Deathroom" adapted by Mac Rogers; all directed by The Blood Brothers: Patrick Shearer and Pete Boisvert (jesus, it's a showfull o'bloggers!). Plus several other short interstitial bits (a couple of them long enough really to not quite count as vignettes): "The Last Waltz," the poem "Paranoid: A Chant," and the wonderfully nauseating "Survivor Type" (which I read aloud on the 1985 Halloween episode of my high school radio show on WNMH, grossing out many listeners, heh-heh-heh).

It's been a fun gig (I had to come in quick and replace the original designer, who got another gig, which is why you won't see my name anywhere on this right now) and an enjoyable show.

I'm a King fan from way back, as uneven as he is (I sent him a fan letter so many years ago that he was still answering fan mail, and I got a personal postcard response from him answering questions of mine and telling me about his upcoming books Firestarter, Cujo, and Danse Macabre), and have always been especially fond of his short stories, which aren't probably his best work, but are great reads that at their worst are still as fun as (and much in the style of) the EC horror comics of the 50s - Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear - with their twisty plots and gruesome comeuppances. Like those comics, which featured The Crypt-Keeper, The Vault-Keeper, and The Old Witch chuckling (heh-heh-heh) over the misfortunes of the poor dumb slobs in their stories, Nosedive's occasional grand guignol shows - they've done two others - have their own hosts, The Blood Brothers (aided in this new show by a Blood Sister, it seems):

So in my viewings thus far of the show, I've been enjoying it at the level of one of those classic comic books, alternately horrified or amused (or both at once). There will be plenty of blood and ichor, that's for sure.

And I'm just geeky enough to imagine which EC artists, who each had a very distinctive style, would have been assigned to each story: "Nona" would have worked done by Wally Wood; "Quitters, Inc." by Jack Davis; "Survivor Type" by "Ghastly" Graham Ingels; "In the Deathroom" by Jack Kamen; and, if lucky, Bernie Krigstein on "Paranoid: A Chant," with wraparound host segments by Johnny Craig. That'd be a good read of a comic book, there.

I can't exactly imitate the look of the books with what I have to light the stories - no lurid Creepshow effects - but at the same time I wouldn't really want to - it's not at all played those comics, though it may feel like them in some ways (that's just inherent in the original King stories).

In any case, I have to work with a somewhat limited house light plot - all house light plots are limited, but this one really comes down to banks of lights in cans on track lighting, with a manual 2-scene preset board. I've added two floor-mounted birdies and two clip lights for some additional effects, but it's pretty bare bones. I've spent years by now though being "the guy who works well with any simple house plot" so I think I got a good look for the whole show out of this. Very noir, which might be expected from me, but the limitations kinda lead to it. Very little color - I've been told I can regel the lights if I really wanted to, but as regelling in this case means removing the gels that are gaff-taped to the cans and sticking new ones on, I thought it'd be best to keep it simple. I've got three colors in limited areas I can bring in - deep red, deep green, and light blue-white - so I'm saving those for special bits and just using the larger washes as elegantly as I can.

Yeah, keep it simple. It's already a headache for Ben, the company member acting as board op, to do the cues on the manual board, with some fast dimmer repatches in there, and a lot of sound cues at the same time, but he turned out to be able to handle it much better than I expected last night (I once had a stage manager/board op walk off a show I was designing/directing when I gave her the cue list and she said it was impossible to run - it was hard, sure, but Berit or I could have handled it fine - and wound up doing so - and Ben obviously could have done that one as well).

Fine cast doing good work here, too, most of whom I don't know. I know Jessi Gotta and Michael Criscuolo (another blogger!) well enough though that when I heard they were in the show, and what stories were being done, I pegged exactly what characters they'd be playing, respectively, in "Nona" and "Quitters, Inc." Jessi also gets to do the solo performance of "Paranoid: A Chant" which is my favorite part of the show - it's my kind of piece and I get to do my favorite kind of lighting for it, which tries to feel like it's coming out of a person's emotions as they flip around, complementing their emotional state.

Well, I'll be on The Master of Horror another two nights and then back home to The Brick to design the next episode of Bryan Enk & Matt Gray's Penny Dreadful and help out on Robert Honeywell and Moira Stone's new musical, LORD OXFORD BRINGS YOU THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION, LIVE! - being the necessary and appropriate response to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's suppression of the freedoms and dignity of the European-American settlers and their descendants in the Royal Eastern American Colonies and the inordinate conferring of special favours and privileges on the merciless Indian savages and the former Negro slaves, in the year Two Thousand and Eight.

But those are later this month . . . first up, opening tomorrow:

The Blood Brothers present... The Master of Horror
at
Endtimes Underground at The Gene Frankel Theatre
24 Bond Street (between Bowery & Lafayette)
October 9-11, 16-18, 23-25, 30-31, & November 1, 2008
Thursday through Saturday, 7.30 pm
$18.00
Tickets HERE

It'll warm your heart. And then eat it, heh-heh-heh.

(Berit is amused by the cover tagline, noting that, to her, a "jolting tale of tension" would be more on the order of "Urgh! I got to get these FORMS in!" and not exactly something on the order of what's depicted here . . .)

I got distracted, and the day's schedule done gone all wonky, by going in for the first time for jury duty today which was interesting and okay, however I got picked to be on a jury in a civil case (as an alternate yet, so I have to sit through it all and then NOT get any say in the matter). The trial starts next week, so at least I'm not back in tomorrow.

Tomorrow night is the season-opening party at The Brick. That looks to be a good time. Then I'm light-designing the new Nosedive show and doing additional tech help on Robert Honeywell & Moira Stone's new show at The Brick. Penny Dreadful coming up again, too.

I am missing tonight's not-so good time - the Palin/Biden debate - through the pleasant fact that Berit and I don't have television. We have a television of course, a big one, and lots o' videos, but very deliberately no antenna or cable, so I'll just read the reports and transcript later, and maybe subject myself to some online video of bits of it if I feel masochistic. Right now, I'd rather look at videos I'm saving up.

So instead of the horrors of the current rotten political debate, how about a commercial pitch from Johnny Rotten?

( Never Mind the Bollocks, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! )

I was a little put off by that ad at first, but my friend Sean noted that, as always, it was just another example of how any form of true rebellion is stolen, de-edged, incorporated into the Status Quo, and used to sell stuff to us, and there's actually something heartening in seeing Johnny Rotten now transformed from "antichrist" to "symbol of England."

Sean also, years ago, made the statement that Johnny Rotten and Brian Wilson were the two living people he believed were to be forgiven any and all screwups they will, have, or may have committed in their lives, as the greatness of their finest work wiped away all their sins. He added that dead people who got this same forgiveness were Buddy Holly and Frank Zappa. I tend to agree.

Sean and I went to a book-signing for Rotten's autobiography when it came out, and got to have a brief conversation with him. There were some young punks (in two senses of the word) across the street from the bookstore, with signs protesting Rotten's having written (and now SELLING!) this book as a "sellout." Very silly. So when Sean and I approached him together, we brought it up:

SEAN: So, uh, did you see those people across the street, protesting you?
ROTTEN: (honestly taken aback and confused) Aw, YEAH, what's that all about, then? What are they angry at me for?
IAN: Making money.
ROTTEN: (with great realization) OHhhhhhhhh! COMM-u-nists!

I just read an article where someone was complaining that "viral videos" have gone downhill in the last few years, pointing to this one below as an example of the kind of charming, funny, bizarre and inexplicable videos that people used to send around that you don't see so much anymore. I don't know if that's true, but I'd never seen this before and it was indeed funny and inexplicable:

( Valentine for Perfect Strangers )

Strange things are indeed happening everyday, as Sister Rosetta Tharpe once noted, and here are four other examples of the amazing singing and guitar playing of that great performer:

( Sister Rosetta Tharp rocks the gospel, early 1960s )

Also from the 60s - in fact, like me, 40 years old - here's a piece of video newly out on DVD, a performance by Harry Belafonte that was cut by CBS from the Third Season premiere of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour as it includes footage from one of that nasty Summer's nastier moments:

( The Whole World Is Watching )

Ah yes, the world is full of fine fine superfine people, and here's a real sign one of them has on their front yard:

Personally, I regard him more as a 50/50 cotton/poly blend . . .

If you have a problem with the "Muslins," maybe you can make a request of your own Savior . . .

And, in the midst of all this, for cheeriness' sake, here's 13 adorable seconds of catness:

( The Sliding Cat )

Keep your heads up.

But. It's what I've been looking at and concerned with, and my theatre work has been supervising clowns and some slight working on the scripts of (and thinking about) George Bataille's Bathrobe and A Little Piece of the Sun - just blue-skying about casts, sets, effects, music, and so forth. And trying to find that original show that's just out of mind - like the mental equivalent of being on the tip of your tongue - abstract images dancing there, forming for a moment, then vanishing like a dream when you wake. Frustrating. What the hell IS it that's trying to get out?

Every now and then, between thinking of a show I want to do and looking at what's happening outside my head, I think the show I want to do is called Country of Assholes. Nah, too on the nose.

We rewatched the film of Peter Barnes' play The Ruling Class the other night, and I kept thinking we needed something like that for this time and this country, but I'm not sure that's my bag. Something to think about, in any case . . .

Anyway, here's some of my "favorite" quotes, links, and videos from the past couple of days, in case you missed some of these. I found them from all over the place, but a bunch came from toddalcott and flyswatter.

Bill in Portland, ME at Daily Kos points to a Fox News interview from March in which Chris Matthews suggests repeatedly to Henry Paulson that the events that have now played out may well come to pass, and repeatedly gets back the answer that "we're just going to have to wait and see how that plays out." Fine fine planning there. Apparently, as long as we have "confidence" in the markets and firms, everything should be alright. Yeah, this has worked out well.

Perhaps my favorite on-the-record quote in a long time was given to Forbes.com, in what many people, when first seeing, felt just had to be a parody from The Onion:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Wow.

Yeah, that "Wow" is from Forbes, not me. Though I agree.

Nice to see that some of our Nation's reps have some backbone and righteous anger, namely (though I think they're not alone at this point) Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, and Jim McDermott of Washington:

( We should not be rolled by a Wall Street exec who is masquerading as Secretary of the Treasury. )

I'm still a bit stunned by the New York Times' account of the meltdown the other evening at the White House meeting to work out the bailout plan. Henry Paulson getting down on his knee before Nancy Pelosi? Barney Frank refereeing an "internal G.O.P. ideological war?" The hell--?

Doesn't it make you feel good to know that we're going along exactly the way Osama Bin Laden said he wanted and expected us to, way back in 2004?

mcbrennan - Cait - is not a mental health professional, but is a keenly-observant wordsmith who has some experience with the developmentally disabled, and has a "Modest Theory" (which she qualifies as "troubling, but half-baked") regarding Sarah Palin's "word salad" responses to some of the questions she's been asked recently. Troubling, certainly. "Half-baked?" Maybe not. Maybe a little more baked than that.

Didn't anyone around McCain know what happens when you snub Letterman, and then he finds out your excuse is bogus and you're off doing something else? Cher did this to him around 1988, and he did half a show about it that tore her to pieces. Can't make it, fine, but don't lie to the man, or you get something like this:

( 9:11 of a pissed-off Dave )

I really like Don Hall's summary of how conservatives focus on social issues so much as a smokescreen to avoid their incompetence with fiscal policy:

"Dad. It looks like you've really screwed up the check book and the power has been turned off. Maybe Mom should be in charge of the money."

"Wha? You're a gay abortionist!!"

And never mind about paying attention to tonight's debate, John McCain has already won it - haven't you seen the ads that say so? And it is so, if you say it's so.

Oh, and in the midst of all this, we've now escalated to our forces and Pakistan's actually shooting at each other. This is going to go well. (h/t VetVoice)

Oh, don't worry - The Department of Homeland Security is working on a little something called Project Hostile Intent, a "pre-crime" detector to determine who best to pull out of line and ask a few questions. Neat, huh?

As Glenn Greenwald notes, though, there's no reason to be at all paranoid about the fact that a U.S Army Brigade has been newly assigned to "the Homeland," in probable defiance of The Posse Comitatus Act. One brigade couldn't do any major "martial law" action, and if it could, it wouldn't have been made public. It's just probably illegal and a damned bad precedent.

At times like this, music may soothe the savage breast. The iPod is now almost jammed up, after adding a bunch of newly-acquired Bowie live tracks and a good deal of Dylan/The Band's basement tapes. Less than 100 MB free in there now - have to do a cleaning, get rid of some of the 26,181 tracks. Here's what comes up random this morning - the iPod appears to have decided We're All Devo . . .

1. "Time Out for Fun (muzak version)" - Devo - E-Z Listening Disc
2. "Imitation Situation" - The Sixpentz - Mindrocker 60's USA Punk Anthology Vol 13
3. "Climbing the Walls" - They Might Be Giants - The Else
4. "It's Making It" - The Lollipop Shop - Just Colour
5. "Night By Night" - Steely Dan - Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story
6. "I Saw Her Again" - The Mamas and the Papas - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 8
7. "Jet" - Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run
8. "Words Get Stuck in My Throat" - Devo - Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology
9. "Winos on Parade" - Marga Benitez & The Mello-Tones - Winos on Parade
10. "Alias Pink Puzz - LP Radio Promo Spot # 2" - Paul Revere & The Raiders - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 4

Maybe a nice relaxing game would help. Here's a commercial from 1975 that I actually remember (h/t Boing Boing Gadgets), and now wonder how the hell this was ever actually released to market . . .

( BALL BUSTER! Fun for the whole family! )

Or maybe, for relaxation, I'd like to look at some great hairstyles of the past that I miss:

Which takes me mentally - through flashing on the 'fro of Don Cornelius - to a video Adam Swiderski linked to today on Facebook, noting its coolness. It makes me happy, too, and I hope this fine fine superfine track from The Commodores can make you move and smile this dreary Friday:

( Machine Gun )

. . . and you can bet your money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey. Love. Peace. Soul.

As this article from WNBC puts it so clearly in its title: "Body Parts Strewn on BQE After Deadly Hit-and-Run." Ewww.

However, another line used not only in the article, but as the caption to the photo below which accompanied the story, makes me wonder if something ELSE was responsible, and a police coverup is in effect:

A "grizzly" scene? Dear sweet merciful gods in heaven, there are BEARS roaming the streets of Williamsburg, tearing innocent tourists to bits! And THEY don't want us to KNOW!

(this is actually the THIRD time in as many months I've encountered a news organ that apparently doesn't know how to spell "grisly" - come on, GET IT TOGETHER, people!)

Operated board twice yesterday for a show - Big Bang - in the Clown Festival - last two shows for that one. In between, I saw another show - Bury My Heart at Dumbass Cowboy - which is one of the funniest damned things I've seen on a stage in FOREVER. Loved it, loved it, loved it, though I also kinda had the same reaction I had when I first saw The Big Lebowski on opening night in the movie theater - David LM Mcintyre and I were sitting there, laughing so hard at the movie that it was nearly over before we realized that we were the only people in the entire audience laughing, and that everyone else HATED the movie.

I don't think the rest of the audience HATED Dumbass Cowboy, but I did eventually realize that the loud laughter I was hearing came from me and about four other people in a packed house, and everyone else was smiling kinda strained or looking confused and disturbed. Oh, well, whatever, it was great and it plays one last time, tonight at 7.30 pm.

I'd go see it again and drag Berit along - she's working board for the show before it tonight, Kill Me Loudly, a Clown noir, which she tells me is really good and I'll be seeing - but we're off to see, as mentioned, Arnold Dreyblatt at The Knitting Factory.

Arnold's playing on an interesting bill, with several other performers, including a three-man band out of North Carolina called Megafaun, who will be backing Arnold up on this occasion as The Orchestra of Excited Strings (Arnold's name for whatever group is doing his music with him at the moment). They just did a residency and played up at the Salem Art Works together, and I like what I hear in these videos - the first of Arnold and the group, the second of Megafaun:

( Arnold Dreyblatt & Megafaun )

In other music news, I do indeed like the theme song created by Jack White (and co-performed by him and Alicia Keys) for the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace (which, luckily, only mentions "solace" and doesn't try to get the film's title in there) - you can hear the real theme, where White Stripes meet James Bond, HERE - however, Joe Cornish, British comedian, has created his own theme for the film that may top it:

( The Something of Boris )

And finally, continuing the "Ian and Hooker the Cat at the Computer" series that I've been posting, for those who enjoy cats, computers, me, or any combination thereof, I let the video run the other night to capture how Bastard Kitty demands affection from me in more detail. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn on the microphone, so I just grabbed a Pixies song I liked that fit the video exactly, timewise (and seemed to work otherwise as well) and put it behind it.

( La La My Cat Loves Me, Even When I Don't Want Him To )

That's my cat. Some other time I'll post one with the sound so you can hear the yowls . . .

In any case, Qui Nguyen and Abby Marcus of the theatre company Vampire Cowboys were just married over the weekend (I don't remember which day, only that Qui announced on Facebook that he was going to "marry the shit out of Abby" that day), and I probably wouldn't have brought it up here were I not so completely and utterly taken with the sweetness of the photo Qui posted over on his blog, Beyondabsurdity, HERE.

I am filled with awe. AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!.

Congratulations Qui! Congratulations Abby!

I was also reminded that once again, B & I have forgotten our "anniversary" day, September 4. I remembered on the 2nd, then forgot. Then on the 7th, and then forgot. Then on the 12th, and . . . well, you get it. I don't think she's remembered at all. I think I'll let her find out from when she gets to this post. So, eight years now. Huh. Amazing. We'll probably deal with marriage next year or the following - next year would be nice just to finally GET IT DONE, but Berit makes the point that marrying in 2010 will make remembering the year pretty easy - we'd also like to get married on June 20, as that's halfway between our two birthdays (June 16 and 24) to make that easier to remember, too (we think - knowing us . . . well, we'll see how likely it really is).

I still have to write and design the service, which will be performed in a theatre as a multimedia performance piece. We're hoping that The Brick will decide on a Summer Festival theme that our wedding will fit into, so we can do an actual 4-performance "run" of the wedding in the Festival (one performance would be the "actual" wedding, by special invite only).

But that's in the future. Today, we run another show together at The Brick. Tomorrow, we have a day off, so maybe we do something nice together - oh, wait, we have a board meeting in the evening for UTC#61. Well, maybe we'll do something before that. Then, we're back on Clown Festival work through Saturday. Wheee.

And from the past eight years . . .

We're very very fortunate.

New companies are coming in from all around the country (and world) every few days - there's a big turnover, the way it's scheduled - people show up, do a few shows in a few days, and are gone - and all the techs have to be supervised by someone from the Brick staff who is competent to answer tech questions, which means me, Berit, or Michael Gardner. As we've split the duty hours for running the Festival between the 7 Brick staff members and the 3 other Clown Fest directors (as we can, as the latter are now all out of town on jobs), B & I are getting most of our hours out of the way running techs for the companies coming in, which has mostly not been any trouble. I'm in today myself from 2-5 pm on a tech and that's it, so, light day.

We're not doing much in the way of board operating for shows, so it's much lighter than last year - Berit is doing the weekly cabarets and an upcoming show, Kill Me Loudly (a clown noir), and we've each handled board for a show that's already closed, so it's not like last year, where Berit ran board for something like 15 shows total over the Fest (she spent a LONG time up in the booth one Saturday when she ran six out of the seven shows in one day).

The big problem, for the person in charge of the physical plant - that is, me, is the sheer amount of STUFF that needs to be stored in the space. As you might imagine, many clowns have props. Lots o' props. Boxes and boxes and stands and carts and STUFF. And they aren't always good at informing you in advance of how large it actually is - when you're told, it's a really big set, but it folds down flat, it is indeed a really big set that folds down impressively into a much smaller space, but a space that's still something like 4'x5'x7', which ain't flat. Or you're told, I just have a couple of boxes, and they turn out to be very BIG and very HEAVY, and then a number of people have things like that, and then there's NO ROOM for ANYTHING in the space.

For next year, B & I are going to prepare a nice document to send all the companies in advance, telling them what will and will not help their stay and tech in the space - we need to do this for ALL festivals, but the clowns have specific needs and ways of dealing with things that should also be addressed specifically (and often this boils down to - don't be afraid to ask for things and let us know what you want, we can probably do it for you if you're clear enough, we know most of you are used to working with less tech options than we can give you, and the rest with much much more, but just be clear and polite and we'll do everything for you that we can, and don't be put off by Ian & Berit's sometimes sour demeanors - especially Ian's - they're just working hard and concentrating on how to make all the shows, including yours, work as perfectly as possible).

And coming up this Monday, a Penny Dreadful fundraiser, including mini-episode #6.5, which B & I dry-teched yesterday with Bryan Enk. Looks to be a fun evening.

I've pulled out the copy of Richard Foreman's George Bataille's Bathrobe that he gave me and will start retranscribing it into a computer today for probable production next August. It will be an interesting transcribe - it's a xerox of Richard's typescript with lots of cross-outs and rewritings, and it's hard to tell sometimes what the "final" text is. Sometimes there are several alternate lines around each other, or other handwritten lines that I can't tell if they're new lines or suggested stage directions (Richard's dialogue and stage directions can sometimes be identical). It is, of course, as with most of Richard's plays, just lines on paper with no indication of character, setting, or plot.

I see this as taking place in a prison (what, again?) with an elderly imprisoned writer-figure - kind of like a Henry Miller who was much MORE extreme than Miller in all ways - an early 20th-Century American Communist, a poet-philosopher, essayist, novelist, intellectual, womanizer, writer of erotica and/or pornography, in the jug for years now for some kind of political crime (in the USA? where? should it ever be mentioned? or suggested?). A bit of Krapp - surrounded by writing and recording implementa. Trying to get his story down (and straight) before he dies (is he afraid of execution?). The third line of the play is "I am Frank Norris" so I think that's his name - good, strong American macho name. Of course, it's a semi-famous writer's name already, but whatever (actually, that picture of the real Norris on Wikipedia is a damned good image of the kind of man I'm thinking of).

Who to be in this? I always saw Tom Reid as Norris, but he'll probably be in A Little Piece of the Sun for me in the demanding role of Chikatilo, so doubling shows wouldn't be a good idea. I could play it, but I'm also in Little Piece in the also-demanding role of Medvedev, and I won't act in two shows at the same time again anyway, so, no. A few possibilities - maybe Timothy McCown Reynolds? He might seem too immediately smart and sensitive - Norris should seem like a big, burly, bull-headed type you wouldn't think would be an artist and intellectual, and who uses that. Maybe Gavin Starr Kendall? How old to play him? We see him from youth to elderly years - could be played anywhere in there. Bill Weeden maybe? Time to think about this.

Women in his life. Becky Byers and Sarah Engelke come to mind - faces/bodies that would look good in early 20th-Century clothing - overcoats with fur collars/hats/muffs (in The Brick in August - great). Stripping down to satin lingerie and stockings. Louise Bryant figures. Wives and mistresses. A pair of twins is mentioned - maybe dancers (a couple of "women, like fashion models" appear at a door at one point, are they "the famous Brundi twins!" mentioned elsewhere?). They could do an "act."

This play is exciting. Ideas are rushing. I need a new sketchbook. And a pencil. Charcoal, maybe. Color pencils. Get to it.

So, over in the iPod today, now with 26,166 tracks in it (remember how I said I needed to cut stuff out of it? well, instead I added a whole bunch of Dylan & The Band's basement tape recordings . . .), here's what comes up on random:

1. "Ghoul Friend" - The Ravens - Highly Strung vol. 1
2. "She Loves Me" - The Possums - Shutdown '66 - The World's Only 60's Punk Record
3. "Air Force Promo Spot" - The Bob Seger System - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 4
4. "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" - Looking Glass - Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1972
5. "Love Her With a Feeling" - Paul Butterfield - The Electra Sessions
6. "Hi-Tone Mama" - Walter "Tang" Smith - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 3
7. "Lovers of Today" - The Only Ones - D.I.Y.: Anarchy in the UK - UK Punk I (1976-77)
8. "Tico Tico" - Esquivel - Four Corners of the World
9. "Narrow Your Eyes" - They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18
10. "Crimson and Clover" - Tommy James & The Shondells - Anthology

I have to say I'm enjoying the new iTunes v.8 "Genius" feature - though it took FOREVER to set up for us, as it has to go though your entire iTunes collection, and THAT'S got 53,474 songs in there.

What it does is, you select a song and how many songs you want in a playlist, and from your collection it chooses songs that - supposedly - should work together in a playlist. And it actually does a pretty interesting job, I have to say. I'm not sure how the algorithms work, or how it's been programmed or makes its "decisions," but it's fun to see what it puts together, though sometimes it gets odd in the transitions - though it did 25 songs starting with Link Wray's "Rumble" for us yesterday that were just perfect together.

Of course, it doesn't know many obscure artists/songs and can't do anything with them, but I'm surprised at what it DOES know - I just started a run with Jimmie Spheeris' "Seven Virgins" from Isle of View (never heard of him? me neither - I don't know where I got this from, but it's really good and I'm glad to have it), which is an easygoing FM-sounding galloping rock song from, I assume, the early 70s, and Genius has decided to then go through The Byrds, David Bowie, Randy Newman, Dr. John, Brian Eno, The Yardbirds, The Nazz, Richard Thompson, Steely Dan, Michael Nesmith, Jefferson Airplane, Leonard Cohen, Herman's Hermits, Tim Buckley, Cat Stevens, The Youngbloods, and Traffic (and The Besnard Lakes . . . who the hell are they?). And somehow these songs all DO work good together. Odd. How do it know? Berit thinks it somehow knows how to match tempo, too. Well, iTunes does keep beats-per-minute info on files, so I guess that's not unlikely.

So B & I were having fun plugging in odd songs and seeing where it would go from there ("Wait, wait, do 'Black Angel's Death Song!" "No, no, I wanna try 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby'!").

I have noticed that if you give it some kind of pre-1970s "classic rock" number, you'll get a pretty middle-of-the-road playlist of other numbers from 1956-1973 that you would have once heard on "oldies" radio that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, so it don't do too well there. I just gave it an obscure Ventures track, for example, and got back a list of things like "Maggie May," "Johnny B. Goode," "Mrs. Robinson," "Somebody to Love," "California Dreamin'" etc. etc. you get the picture, with Blondie's "Heart of Glass" as the wild card. Also kinda happens if you choose a "punk classic," something like "TV Eye" - you'll get "Personality Crisis," "Sonic Reducer," "Neat Neat Neat," "Blank Generation," etc. and a few interesting wild cards. It does better with non-"classic" songs.

In any case, for those of us who like to use randomization of an immense collection of tracks as our own private radio station, it's another useful tool.

Okay. Off to make Art happen now, more soon . . .

Jeez, yeah.

Sorry - been busy getting The Brick ready for the third annual New York Clown Theater Festival.

B & I have spent the lion's share of every day since Saturday over at the space cleaning it up, rearranging things, and fixing things, since, for once, we had the time to do it. The place looks really good now and the tech is in much better shape. We started teching clown shows on Wednesday and all is going well and the shows look to be really good this year.

Today are the opening ceremonies - a Clown Parade stating at 4.30 pm in Union Square (red noses will be handed out for those who don't have them), which will travel by subway to Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, then march through the streets to The Brick, where we will have our big big pie fight in an immense plastic tent constructed in the theatre to avoid destroying the place (many fights, in fact - we do them in shifts, with some themed groups - ladies only, children, "fast skate" - then we get the pie-covered people outside the theatre to hose them off).

I've also had the fun duty of creating the mix of music to be played during the fights. I've kept many of the great selections Devon Ludlow used in the past - lots of bombastic classical favorites mixed with some driving rock - and added a few of my own that I hope will amuse while being good pie-fight scoring. Won't name them now, as I'm looking to surprise people who will be there, and who I know read this blog.

Anyway, B & I need to get moving fairly soon to get there and check in and help with setup, so I'll just go on to the normal Friday Random Ten now, from out of the 26,103 still there in the iPod (I have more to add now, but I can't until I drop some of the useless tracks there) . . .

1. "Chocolate Pope" - Electric Six - Switzerland
2. "Let The Sun Shine Down" - Hardy Boys - Bubblegum Classics volume 5
3. "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down (live)" - Johnny Cash - Legend
4. "Get It Jerk" - Frankie Coe & The Mighty Soul Messengers - the Git Down!
5. "Satumaa (Finnish Tango)" - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Volume 2
6. "I Move Around" - Nancy Sinatra - Boots
7. "Should Have Known Better" - Richard Lloyd - Alchemy
8. "She Weaves A Tender Trap" - The Chocolate Watchband - 44
9. "Lucifer Airlines" - Electric Six - I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master
10. "Lonesome Cowboy Burt (Swaggart Version - live)" - Frank Zappa - The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life

I'll be back more regularly again once the ClownFest is really under way . . .

I have to go to Queens this afternoon to pick up the brochures for the Clown Festival and then deliver them to The Brick, so that's when I'll probably get started on the cleanup/fixup of the space. Then the same thing tomorrow, all day, until the evening, when it looks like we'll be hangin' with friends, which will be nice.

Yesterday, watched some of the first season of Rocky & Bullwinkle, then Powell & Pressburger's The Small Back Room, The Empire Strikes Back, and the special Star Wars episode of Robot Chicken. Fun.

I wish there was still a movie palace in NYC that showed old films - I read yesterday that the Egyptian in L.A. is showing a whole bunch of wonderful, obscure, mostly-not-on-video, pre-1950 films right now, including Olsen and Johnson's followup to their incredible debut film Hellzapoppin', Crazy House.

So that got me looking at some Olsen & Johnson on YouTube. And here it is:

( OLSEN AND JOHNSON ARE COMING! )

Enjoy.

Here's the email, as a couple of the points will be of interest to blog readers who may not be on the list . . .

**********

Four items of note from GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS:

1.

We are revising and revamping and transferring our email list to a new account - geminicollisionworks@gmail.com - rather then the old gemmemory@aol.com account - which will still be best for personal messages to Ian.

In the process, we may accidentally get you on our email lists TWICE. Please let us know if you are getting double emails from us, and we will correct the problem.

NOTE TO BLOG-READERS

Our just-closed trio of shows - Harry in Love, Spell, and Everything Must Go - are still eligible for voting at The New York Innovative Theatre Awards.

25% of the final vote depends on our audience. If you saw any of the shows and haven't voted (especially if you LIKED them), please go to the link above and do so.

3.

Thanks to all of our donors who made this year of shows - the three mentioned above, plus The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage - our biggest year, in terms of scale and budget, in the 11 year-history of GCW.

However . . . big budget and scale, presented in a small space at a reasonable ticket price, means big debt, and we would like to try and get out of it before next season. So, remember, you can now . . .

DONATE TO GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS! IT'S TAX-DEDUCTIBLE!

a. If you wish to donate by check, they MUST be made out to "Fractured Atlas," with "Gemini CollisionWorks" in the memo line (and nowhere else), and should be given to us personally or sent to us for processing at:

Gemini CollisionWorks
c/o Hill-Johnson
367 Avenue S #1B
Brooklyn, NY 11223

b. You can also donate directly online securely by credit card at

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/1394

(please double-check to be sure you're at the "Gemini CollisionWorks" donation page)

All donors will be listed in all our programs for the 2009 season under the following categories:

$0-25 - BONDO
$26-50 - RAT RODS
$51-75 - CHROME
$76-100 - LOW RIDERS
$101-250 - CANDY FLAKE
$251-500 - FLAME JOBS
$501-1000 - T-BUCKETS
$1001-2500 - SUPERCHARGERS
$2501-5000 - KUSTOMIZERS
over $5000 - BIG DADDIES

4.

Future plans for Gemini CollisionWorks? As in probably next year?

We will be bringing back Daniel McKleinfeld's intense and wonderful documentary play, A Little Piece of the Sun, which premiered under Daniel's direction and our design in the 2001 NY Fringe Festival.

We are looking to do a new production of Richard Foreman's play George Bataille's Bathrobe.

We are creating an original piece about space opera of the mid-20th Century.

And we are planning - would you believe? - a family-friendly puppet show, conceived and supervised by Berit - illustrating songs by some of our favorite popular music artists from Herbie Hancock to Devo to The Sonics to several others.

We'll see what happens . . .

hope to see you at our shows next year, and thanks for your continued support,

Ian W. Hill, arts
Berit Johnson, crafts
Gemini CollisionWorks

Gemini CollisionWorks is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Gemini CollisionWorks may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

**********

Gemini CollisionWorks online:

blog: http://collisionwork.livejournal.com
images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geminicollisionworks/
info: http://www.myspace.com/geminicollisionworks
store: http://www.cafepress.com/collisionworks

Some of them are pretty long, so I'll put them each behind their own cut, and you can look at them as you please and at your leisure.

Here's the first four - an intro to the company, and pieces about Everything Must Go and Spell:

( Part 1: INTRODUCTION )