CollisionWorks

Madeleine L'Engle has passed away.

I haven't read any of her books in about 20 years, but for the 10 years before that, I read whatever I could get my hands on, including the classic A Wrinkle in Time which I read many many times (I identified with Charles Wallace a bit much, I think). Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever actually owned any of her books - I recall always having them from school or public libraries. Looking over her work now, it appears I read only a tiny fraction of her published work.

I was pleased and honored to have met and spoken to Ms. L'Engle briefly in 1987 (CORRECTION: 1984) and had dinner with her at her home in 1991 as result of being a classmate and later a friend of her granddaughter, Charlotte.

Recently, Berit and I had a mildly heated discussion with some friends regarding the Harry Potter books - which B & I both enjoy somewhat, but feel are just a bit overrated - I do feel they've gotten much better as they went along, and Rowling's writing skills caught up more to her imagination. However, B & I were making the point that yes, these books are enjoyable for adults to read, but they are still children's books, no matter how dark they may be. This is not a pejorative statement, I think, but just the way it is, but it was taken as a putdown by the people we were talking to, and we were challenged to name other children's books as deep and rich as the Potters.

Well, just thinking of the ones I still keep on my bookshelf and occasionally pick up and read for pleasure, I was able to name Roald Dahl's wonderful books, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (aka Julie Andrews), Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and (especially for my money) the Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper (I enjoyed the Philip Pullman books the one time I read them, but I need to spend more time with them to see if I'd put them up there, too).

Once upon a time I would have included the Narnia books as well, but I reread them a couple of years ago in writing about them for the UGO.com Narnia hub, and discovered (having not touched them in almost 30 years) that they are definitely written for children (and written down to them, annoyingly) and not all that well. Very annoying books now. The other ones I've mentioned all hold up for me as an adult, not Mr. Lewis' annoying allegory. Ugh.

I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have included The Time Quartet. I think I'll check them out again - I may never have owned them, but Berit does, and they're on our shelves now. I have a tiny fear that they'll wind up closer to Lewis rather than Dahl or Cooper or Rowling, but only tiny.

And if you think that children's books that could be read with pleasure by adults (and which show that "children's books" should not be thought of a a negative term) began with Rowling, take a look at L'Engle.

Well, the first part of our "rest in Maine" time is just about up. We have things to do in NYC from tomorrow to Tuesday, so we schlep back for a while. Don't know how long yet. Depends on what I have to do over at the theatre -- The Brick has a few things coming up that we may be needed for: our week in the 365 Days/365 Plays event, the WPA Free Fest (that's the Williamsburg Performance . . . Alliance? Association? I dunno . . .), and the Clown Theatre Festival.

Meanwhile, I've been slicing away at the dross on the iPod, and it's now at 20,474 songs, 71.57 gigs. I'm making some space on the thing. Of course, I've added around 500 songs to it while dropping 1,200, but that ratio is okay. I just heard they're coming out with a 160 GB iPod, too . . . no, that would be madness. Here's what comes up random this morning:


1. "California" - The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys
2. "Your Quimby Dollars at Work" - Mike Keneally - Hat
3. "Rockin' Shoppin' Center" - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
4. "Third World Man" - Steely Dan - Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story
5. "Waiting for Mary" - Pere Ubu - Cloudland
6. "The Will of God" - Keith Bradford - MSR Madness 4: I'm Just The Other Woman
7. "You Me" - Procession - Oceanic Odyssey Volume 12
8. "It's Gotta Be a False Alarm" - The Volcanos - Northern Soul: The Cream of 60's Soul

Okay, this is from a comp I've never listened to in its entirety, and it's beautiful and weird -- it's an uptempo R&B/Soul song, with some orchestration, but prominently featured are a trombone (maybe a tuba?) that sounds like it should be in a oom-pah band and a clarinet that sounds like it should be in a klezmer band. Very odd in an R&B song . . .


9. "Mr. Tenor Man" - Lou Christie - Spazzy Answer Songs
10. "Please Hurt Me" - The Crystals - The Best of The Crystals

This may be the single most cheery, lighthearted and smile-inducing random ten I've ever had (with a slight drop on #10). How nice.

Ah, well, one more day of vegetating and watching TV - we don't have TV at home in Brooklyn so our time up here always involves vast amounts of "surfing the zeitgeist" as Berit calls it (though that winds up being primarily the watching of shows on Animal Planet and Discovery and reruns of C.S.I.). Yes, our idea of a vacation is hunkering down in a dim, cave-like room and not dealing with anything. {sigh} Sounds great to me a lot of the time . . .

We did photo calls for three of the four plays we put up last month, the three NECROPOLIS plays, on the days they closed. I'm in the process of collating all of them from all sources, fixing them up in Photoshop, and posting them at my Flickr page -- I'll start posting them here once I've fixed the whole damned lot.

Berit and I don't currently have a functioning camera, so we relied on the kindness of our actors, asking any of them who had a handy digital camera to bring it to the calls, as I've had good luck in the past with a whole bunch of cameras each taking a whole lot of photos producing some really damned nice ones.

So at the WGW/WGW call, there was a lot of this:



Here, Yvonne Roen, Mateo Moreno, and Stacia French take pictures of a scene they're not in as Sammy Tunis adjusts herself and Jessica Savage and Alyssa Simon lurk in the shadows.

Above photo by, I think, Iracel Rivero -- the problem is that as people were being photographed, camera were being handed back and forth, so I have no idea at times who took which shot.

Here's one of Iracel, taken with her own camera by, I think, Aaron Baker:



So, sorry friends if I don't credit these all properly -- here's another two from Iracel's camera, possibly taken by her, maybe by Aaron - first, the shadows of a flunky (Bryan Enk) and a goon (Roger Nasser):



As their boss, Louis the torpedo (Jai Catalano), sits in the shadows:



And the dressing room of The Brick, during the whirlwind visited on it by the regular presence of 29 actors in four shows for four weeks in very VERY little space:

I'll have actual show pictures in the coming days, and some more of these behind-the-scenes ones, too.

Whoa. For once, I've actually been able to sit back and relax once up here and away from NYC. Not even worrying so much about what COULD possibly be happening that MIGHT be disastrous for me back home.

Good.

So, a morning Random Ten from the iPod now at 20,766 songs, 72.32 gigs:

1. "I'm Allergic to Flowers" - The Jefferson Handkerchief - Pebbles Volume 3 - The Acid Gallery
2. "My Way of Loving You" - Wallace Collection - Laughing Cavalier
3. "I Am" - Molesters - Plastic 7"
4. "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" - Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright
5. "Eloise (Hang On In There)" - William Bell - Soul of a Bell
6. "Get Back" - Laibach - Let It Be
7. "On the Road Again" - Andy Prieboy - ...Upon My Wicked Son
8. "Town Talk" - Ken Woodman & His Picadilly Brass - That's Nice
9. "You Were Born for Me" - The Tunespinners - Oceanic Odyssey Volume 09
10. "Baby, Baby Don't Cry" - The Miracles - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971

Meanwhile, a couple of links from our Rotten Sons of Bitches Department . . .

toddalcott, as always, writes something smart, in this case about Katrina, two years on, and what he's learned about the government as a result.

And shortly after Alcott's opinion piece, I was led by Jason Grote to a lovely piece of investigative journalism by Matt Taibbi that just seems to confirm all of Alcott's (and my) worst suspicions about the Administration's view of its job not to be the steward of this country, but to enable its cronies to loot as much from the Treasury and taxpayers as possible during their stint, and then get the hell out of Dodge and leave the mess to be cleared up by others. Depressing and enraging.

Some pertinent lines from a film noir (I forget which one) that I quoted in WGW/WGW:

THOMAS ARNOLD, the gangster-businessman: When I spill a drink on the carpet, the maid cleans it up for me.
NED DALEY, the honest private eye: When you spill blood, your lawyer is expected to do the same.
THOMAS ARNOLD: Exactly.

And from the Department of Cheering You Up After That Department, imomus has let me know that you can find the entire (hysterical) series The Japanese Tradition on YouTube. I have one of them on videotape, "Sushi," with an English-dubbed soundtrack -- which, frankly, I think increases the deadpan humor of the "trying to educate foreigners about our ways" -- but it only seems to be up on YouTube in Japanese with subtitles, and here it is:

There are more in the series, which I haven't watched yet, but I'm glad to know they're all there. Judging from the comments on them I see at YouTube, a LOT of people don't get the joke, and are confused or angered by them. Berit has often commented on how well the British and Japanese do this kind of deadpan humor that so many in the USA don't get (though judging from some of the comments, it's Japanese who are angered by the series - "Don't tell lies about us!"), and Momus, in his piece on these, makes the excellent comparison to the British Look Around You series. Well, I like them. A lot.

Also, from toddalcott again, a cheering-up link that made my morning, and will serve for this week's Friday Cat Blogging In Absentia, HERE.

Enjoy.

Jason Grote, over at The Inauguration of the Jason Grote Dome, posted links to two comics he found online. He doesn't have much info on them, so I don't really know who did this one, but I wanted to share it:

Jim Emerson, over at his wonderful Scanners blog, felt the need to defend Stanley Kubrick from the charge that he "hated humans," leveled by a writer for the Seattle weekly The Stranger in response to an SK film series playing there. Though no one seems to have taken the original piece, or its writer, very seriously, Jim seems tired of yet one more portrayal of Kubrick as filmic misanthrope, viewing his characters with disdain and/or disgust, godlike, detached.

I am personally tired of this easy cliche myself, which seems to attach itself at one time or another to most of my favorite filmmakers (Godard, the Coen Brothers, Cronenberg, even Lynch sometimes, and - oh, god - Greenaway, quite a bit), but mainly Kubrick. If you present the horrors of the world and of humanity in a distanced way, believing that they speak for themselves and that the best way to look at the worst things is to really LOOK at them, without flinching, and do this without editorializing ("THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD! THIS IS BAD!"), you are cold and unfeeling, apparently.

JE, in looking to refute the original charge, has found a document of great interest to Kubrick fans, that (as one of those fans VERY well-read about the man and his work) I've NEVER seen quoted or mentioned anywhere, and which is as good a statement of intent from SK about his work as he ever made.

It's a letter he wrote to the New York Times in 1972 in response to an editorial referring to A Clockwork Orange as being "the essence of fascism." Kubrick, an EXTREME anti-fascist, felt the need to respond. The full letter is behind the Times Select wall, but Emerson quotes it liberally.

Interested in Kubrick at all? The full post is HERE, and is REALLY worth it.

One quote from SK's letter that bounces around my head in particular:


The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's "Emile": "Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault." It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society.


NOTE -- possible title for one of next year's shows: Extremity (the age of the alibi).

Berit and I are in Portland, ME for a spell, relaxing, recouping, regrouping. I am starting to think about next year's shows for Gemini CollisionWorks. I would like to create one new original one for the June Summer festival at The Brick, and if I have August for my own shows again (or whatever month), have another three or four shows ready for that.

I am planning on making one of the shows a restaging of my 1999 production of Richard Foreman's 1966 farce Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville. I would also like to restage That's What We're Here For as one of the others, if I can get the majority of the cast back. I'll see if the play I'm working on, Spell, will be ready to go by the end of the year. Then, I'm planning on starting work on two other projects in January and seeing where they go. I want to have two groups of actors to work on two different shows, and just start rehearsals with no plans, no script. Maybe some visual ideas, thematic links, a handful of sound cues, and perhaps a title (see above). Meet two or three times a month at first, then more and more as the year goes on. Try to have the full shows completely ready to go, with all props, lights, costumes, etc. by mid-May. One show for June, one for August.

But for a couple of days, I'm going to enjoy watching things on my brother's GIGANTIC HDTV and home theatre system. Yesterday, he had me calibrate it for him to get the audio and video just right (he trusts and prefers me to do this for him), and I tested it with DVDs of INLAND EMPIRE, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West, and then an HD broadcast of Full Metal Jacket. Nice. I'm going to veg for a bit, I think . . .

Attorney General and Constitutional danger Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Effective September 17. Which can't fucking come soon enough for me.

The account from the New York Times is HERE.

A more cheery summary is HERE at Wonkette, in their aptly named "A Farewell to Assholes Dept."

So who was the Al Neri?



"You broke my heart, Fredo."


(OK, fun is fun, but can anyone explain to me how he became "Fredo?" His name's "Alberto," not "Alfredo." Apparently, it was given to him by Our Fearless Leader. Are all "Als" of all ethnicities the same to the man? Or was he aware some time ago that one day Fredo would be sent on a little fishing trip?)


And yes, some things can lighten the heart for a while, but even LOLCats know that the bastards never really go away. No, not really . . .





(Oh, and a Google search doesn't answer the why of the "Fredo" nickname, only that it started with OFL calling him "Alfredo" for some time. Nickname or numbskull? Youth wants to know!)

Good performance of Necropolis 0 and 3 last night. Only one more left of that, Sunday at 8.00 pm. Rebecca Collins understudied for Amy Liszka as Little Nemo and did a great job. Beautiful show.

Three more shows of The Hobo Got Too High, tonight and tomorrow at 8.00 pm, and also tomorrow at 4.00 pm. I'd like this to have a longer run, as I may have said, and there's no AEA restrictions on it, so maybe we'll have it back. Depends on what the other folks at The Brick want.

And out of 20,937 songs on the ipod now, this morning's selections . . .


1. "The Big Bamboozle" - Barry Adamson - Tico To Tico 2: Crimetastic
2. "Come On" - Julie London - Ultra Lounge: Tiki Sampler
3. "Jag Vill Ingenting: - Massmedia - Das Jazz 7"
4. "Woodland Rock" - T.Rex - History of T.Rex—The Singles Collection
5. "Not Alone" - Bernard Butler - People Move On
6. "The Letter" - The Box Tops - Those Classic Golden Years 10
7. "You Beat Me To the Punch" - Mary Wells - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971
8. "Who Are the Mystery Girls?" - New York Dolls - in Too Much Too Soon
9. "The Summer Skies" - The Higher Elevation - Fading Yellow volume 2
10. "Monks" - King Missile - Failure

I am darkly amused by this article in the Times about the "company" hired to demolish the Deutsche Bank building near Ground Zero, which continues to injure people and claim lives. Nice little scam. I like the name. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Also, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show had another amusing-but-not-really-so-much piece - this one on the USA's history of bringing peace to the Middle East. {sigh}

Okay, gotta cheer myself up now on this dark little day here to do a funny show tonight.

Five days and six performances left in this crazy Summer. Here's the promo sent out to my list and posted on my MySpace page:


TWO SHOWS FROM
GEMINI COLLISIONWORKS

FINAL THREE SHOWS FOR EACH!

**********

all shows at The Brick
575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
right by the L Train (Lorimer) and G Train (Metropolitan/Grand) stops

all tickets $10.00

**********

Gemini CollisionWorks and The Brick Theater, Inc. present

NECROPOLIS 0:


and

NECROPOLIS 3:


written, directed, and designed by Ian W. Hill

Wednesday, August 22
Thursday, August 23
Sunday, August 26
at 8.00 pm

"Gemini CollisionWorks's hypnotic new revival of Ian W. Hill's NECROPOLIS 0&3: Kiss Me, Succubus and At the Mountains of Slumberland shows one of indie theater's most singular and unique talents working at full power. These two one-acts show Hill in top boundary-breaking form as he pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft, classic comic strips, and 1960s exploitation movies in the typically fearless fashion theatergoers have come to expect from him . . . terrific cast . . . one of the most visually stunning productions I've seen in a while . . . For theatre-goers who have never experienced the inventive and uncompromising work of this veteran indie auteur, I can't think of a better time to do so than right now."
-- Michael Criscuolo, nytheatre.com - full review at
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/necr5527.htm

more information here: http://www.bricktheater.com/gemini/necropolis03.html or http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/94113.html

tickets: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/135639

NECROPOLIS 0 and 3 is an Equity-approved showcase

** and also **



directed by Ian W. Hill

Friday, August 24
Saturday, August 25
at 8.00 pm, and
Saturday, August 25
at 4.00 pm

Bug Blowmonkey loves music. Bug Blowmonkey loves a woman. Bug Blowmonkey loves cocaine. Two of these things are good for him, but the other one is messing him up. Bad. Wanna take a guess which one? Bug knows the blow is taking him down a dark path, but can't quit it on his own. Luckily, he has a spirit guide to help him out of his hole, and towards the "light" he seeks: Marvin Gaye.

Marc Spitz's The Hobo Got Too High is an hour of sex, drugs, rock and roll, romance, nonsequiturs, vast numbers of curse words, retractable penises, and an appraisal of Diane Lane's breasts. All for a sawbuck. You may not see better value for your theatrical dollar anytime soon.

more information here: http://www.bricktheater.com/gemini/hobo.html or http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/94290.html

tickets: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/135640

Ian W. Hill/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

Rest Day #1 of 3. Kind of. I have one thing to do for the next few days - let in a rehearsal to The Brick tonight, have a screening of Daniel McKleinfeld's video "The Water Cooler" tomorrow, and rehearse an understudy on Tuesday for Thursday night's Slumberland (my Little Nemo got a sweet commercial gig that day - I can't be an ass about it). No shows, though. Yesterday was all three shows. Kinda killer. Good houses though, either size-wise or reaction wise or both (different for all three).

But this morning, sitting back, enjoying listening to music and watching videos with my new headphones (INLAND EMPIRE on a good computer screen, with good headphones, loud? Excellent.).

And by following a weird YouTube train of thought (thanks for the Orson Welles video, dad!), I got into looking up some of those early music videos of the kind I miss - cheap, scratchy, probably shot on 16mm reversal stock. Watched more than a handful, thought I'd share just a handful.

So, here's Lene Lovich doing "Lucky Number;"

Camper Van Beethoven doing "Take the Skinheads Bowling:"

and (since I couldn't find "Oliver's Army") Elvis Costello's "(What's So Funny ' Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding:"

The Residents with "Hello Skinny:"

Devo's early (and better, I think) version of "Secret Agent Man:"

and Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band's "Ice Cream for Crow:"

And a special bonus, found while searching for Elvis Costello videos, Costello and Lou Reed together on French TV performing Reed's "Set the Twilight Reeling," from the album of the same name. Kicks the album version's ass:

Enjoy.