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So as I concentrated more on Theatre . . . film kinda vanished for me. There were certain directors I would always follow, and films of interest, but I watched fewer and fewer movies as the decade went on -- in the last three years I saw anywhere from 1 to 3 movies in a theater. During my NYU days, I would see up to 10 movies a WEEK in theaters, plus whatever I'd watch on video.

So I'd had a low opinion of Film in the '00s, but as I look over all of these "Best of the Decade" lists, I'm a bit stunned at how many good films there were, and how many I DID see (nothing compared to previous decades in my life, but better than I thought). So, looking the lists over, I decided to make up my own -- which first involved figuring out which films I actually saw during this time. After some research, I came up with a list of 228, and I ranked them all from most favorite to pond scum. I include the full list here for it's own odd purpose.

For years and years starting in 1971, first in Movietone News and then later in Film Comment magazine, which I grew up reading whenever I could get my hands on an issue, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy would do a year-end wrap-up on Film called "Moments Out of Time," which I always looked forward to. They focused on those perfect moments in movies, which can occur in any and every film, even truly awful ones, where everything comes together in one of those especial transcendent moments unique to the medium -- my all-time favorite was when, in the midst of mentioning

The blog Parallax View has been reprinting the older pieces, and their 2009 list is online at MSN Entertainment. I recommend looking at them, they bring back lots of memories of some of the finer moments of those great years of film.

Today I'm going through several of my favorite 20 movies of the past 10 years, watching them either in their entirety, or in just fragments, reminding myself of those very same moments that make me still love movies.

Things to be watched for today:

Fragments of Mulholland Drive . . . the color of Diane Selwyn's kitchen . . . the amazing business Justin Theroux does with his cigarette as he hears the name of the actress he's been ordered to cast . . . the laugh of the suddenly-competent hit man when he is asked what his blue key unlocks . . . "The girl is still missing" leading to the sound of a telephone ring hanging endlessly in the air as poor doomed avatar Betty Elms is brought into Diane Selwyn's dream . . . and then the cruel way Betty is dispatched from the dream, removed from the frame (and existence) by a casual camera move, never to return . . . The Cowboy saying, "There's sometimes a buggy..." . . . the actual script supervisor of Lynch's film, as the keeper of the text, appears in it to close the book on Diane's pitiful life and get the last word . . . "Silencio."

In The New World . . . the opening, pre-credit ritual from Pocahontas that calls the film itself into being . . . the looks of discovery on both sides as they spot each other . . . the amazing final four minutes (almost to the second) as Pocahontas/Rebecca leaves her life by ducking playfully out of the frame as she plays with her child (the positive flip-side of what is done to Betty Elms), only to be reborn in Nature again with the appearance of a Native American spirit in her English home . . . the final moments, where the film joins with the endings of Apocalypse Now, Contempt, and Bad Timing in pulling away from all humanity to show how small and petty we and all our concerns are in the landscape of the natural world. There will always be the ocean, rivers, rain, trees.

INLAND EMPIRE . . . "BRUTAL fucking murder!" . . . Bucky Jay attempts to adjust a stage light . . . a woman (prostitute?) in a Poland hotel cries herself into the static of her TV, falling down the rabbit hole into a fantasy of herself as a beautiful blonde Hollywood actress, but still unable to escape her real life of murder and infidelity, as neither Laura Palmer, Fred Madison, nor Diane Selwyn could in their own dreams before her . . . "AXXoN N." . . . "Look at us and tell us if you've known us before" . . . Nikki Grace shrugging off the attentions of The Woman in White-figure who always represents peace and transcendence in Lynch films, as she still has unfinished business . . . The way the music and sound goes - counterintuitively - strangely and suddenly quiet and mournful during the terrifying finale around the appearance of the horrible face . . . And then Nikki, The Dreamself of the Heartbroken Woman, finally transcending into The Place Where All Stories Come From, a beautiful mansion filled with characters mentioned in this film, from past Lynch films (and maybe future ones?), and a man sawing logs, where there is always music in the air, and the women sing a pretty Nina Simone song.

Dear god . . . Speed Racer . . . an entire MOVIE that looks like molten hard candies and marbles and is the biggest, glossiest art film about movement, editing, and color I've ever seen, continuing the experiments Lucas started with THX-1138 but got sidetracked from by being convinced he needed more "emotion" in his films (I'm sure he wishes his Star Wars prequels were more like this film) . . . an exploration of how to turn the Stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey into a coherent storytelling system for narrative film, with car racing as metaphor for the artistic process.

Men (and a few women) doing their jobs in Zodiac -- writing, cartooning, codebreaking, investigating, fathering, editing, killing; the fascination of watching talented professionals do their jobs (compounded by the joy of watching highly skilled actors do their own perfectly modulated work) . . .

And so on . . . here's my top 20 for the decade, followed by a full ranked list of the remaining 208 films I saw these ten years:

I LOVED AND LOVE THESE MOVIES AND DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT, IF ANYTHING, MIGHT BE WRONG WITH THEM:

1. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch, U.S. 2001
2. Dogville - Lars von Trier, Denmark 2003
3. The New World - Terrence Malick, U.S. 2005
4. INLAND EMPIRE - David Lynch, U.S./France/Poland 2006
5. No Country for Old Men - Joel & Ethan Coen, U.S. 2007
6. Irreversible - Gaspar Noé, France 2002
7. Zodiac - David Fincher, U.S. 2007
8. I'm Not There - Todd Haynes, U.S./Germany 2007
9. Battle Royale - Kinji Fukasaku, Japan 2001
10. The Saddest Music in the World - Guy Maddin, Canada 2003
11. My Winnipeg - Guy Maddin, Canada 2007
12. The Royal Tenenbaums - Wes Anderson, U.S. 2001
13. There Will Be Blood - P. T. Anderson, U.S. 2007
14. Sin City - Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez, U.S. 2005
15. Full Frontal - Steven Soderbergh, U.S. 2002
16. The Fog of War - Errol Morris, U.S. 2003
17. Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman, U.S. 2008
18. The Gleaners and I - Agnès Varda, France 2000
19. In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong 2000
20. Speed Racer - The Wachowski Brothers, U.S. 2008

( The Remaining 207 Movies I saw, 2000-2009 )

We are staying in tonight, and avoiding the craziness and unpleasant travel of New Year's Eve. We've watched Dogville, INLAND EMPIRE and Speed Racer in their entirety, and Zodiac is almost over. What next? I'm Not There? The Saddest Music in the World? Synecdoche, New York is also on the pile but, uh, I'm not so sure that's appropriate for what supposed to be a more happy evening.

And a happy new year to you and yours, friends.

Today, I'm here because a school in Greenpoint has rented the space out from 9 am to 3 pm so that several classes of 9th-grade students who have been creating scenes in class can come in and present them to each other in an actual theatrical setting. So I'm here as space monitor, which is fine (I get paid), except for not getting to sleep until 3 am last night (after opening Ninja Cherry Orchard, which was a lot of fun). Very tired. Nice to see the kids doing this theatre work -- granted, maybe only a third of them are at all interested, but they're doing it.

I am fighting to stay awake right now, so I can be a good monitor, and I could use some loud music in my ears, so here's another week's Random Ten out of 25,239 in the iPod, with links to some of the songs/artists:

1. "Eye Know" -- De La Soul -- 3 Feet High and Rising
2. "So Much (1967 version)" - Night Shadows -- The Psychedelic Years
3. "319" -- Prince -- The Dawn - Act 2
4. "You! Me! Dancing!" -- Los Campesinos! -- Hold On Now Youngster
5. "Will She Meet the Train in the Rain?" -- Greg Perry -- One for the Road
6. "Exile" - Enya -- Watermark
7. "Sun Kissed Chicks" -- Jean-Jacques Debout -- The Music Library by Jonny Trunk
8. "Cool" - TOKIO -- News
9. "Need a Little Lovin'" -- Dean Carter -- Pebbles volume 6 - Chicago 1
10. "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" -- Bob Dylan -- John Wesley Harding

Still no new cat photos due to stolen camera, but here's a few videos of recent interest (if you're seeing this on Facebook, you'll have to go back to the original post to see them.

Here, old friend Art Wallace premieres his new online reality show, Spirit Seekers:

Some clips of Cleveland horror host Ghoulardi:

Woolworth record commercials from 1971 and 1980:

And finally, a little inexplicable adaptation of Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Ah, after rehearsing all morning, the kids are now doing their scenes for their teachers, other classes and parents/guests. They're doing their best -- many of them are shy and reading quietly from scripts, hating being on stage completely, but a few are more natural performers, and watching them get into it when they get audience reaction for the first time, and what it does for them, is very heartening. Maybe one or two of them will want to keep with it, at least part time. I hope so.

The Fight Fest at The Brick has opened, and we're off to a mostly good start thus far. Excellent, speedy preview cabaret on Tuesday night that seemed to get everyone up and ready for the Fest, and a terrific first performance of The Buccaneer last night -- the show is funny as hell.

The Ninja Cherry Orchard, which I'm lighting (and running board on), was also supposed to open last night, but has been delayed as it's a huge damned show that hasn't had the chance to work things enough that need to be worked, so it's opening a week late. We ran it (mostly) last night and got some good things accomplished (and I was able to refine my lights a bit more here and there and get to know the show better, which was a good thing), and we'll do the same thing tonight. I guess they'll work it a bit more in other spaces in the next week, but I won't be needed, or available, for that as I'll be off on other things, including lighting another Fest show, Piper McKenzie's Craven Monkey and the Mountain of Fury, my duties for which include being at The Brick tomorrow morning at 9.00 am, after being there late on Ninja Cherry Orchard. Argh.

Still, despite the hours I'm currently keeping on the Fest (which will ease up shortly), I'm pretty damned happy with it -- everything I've seen from all the shows as yet looks entertaining and exciting, at the very least. Hope to see some of you around The Brick this month (of course, as most of the friends who read this are probably IN Ninja Cherry Orchard or Craven Monkey or Deck the Hallmans, if not more than one of them, that's a pretty good bet).

And here's a Random Ten from the 25,239 tracks in the iPod (with links to the songs or something close):

1. "The Woo Woo Train" - The Valentines - The Doo Wop Box II vol 2: 1955-1957
2. "Weak Become Heroes" - The Streets - Original Pirate Material
3. "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing In The Shadow)" - Lord Sitar - Mindexpanders 1 - In Search Of The Orgastic Flashtastic Psychspastic Groove
4. "One More Time" - Billy Stewart - One More Time
5. "Rooster Blues" - Lightnin' Slim - Excello Story, Volume 3: 1957 - 1961
6. "Fountains" - The Nils - Sell Out Young EP
7. "Rockin' Lafayette" - Dave Alvin Featuring Red Devils - L. A. Rockabilly
8. "Go On, It's OK" - Lonnie Barron - Boppin' Hillbilly 19
9. "Madrigal" - Paul & Barry Ryan - Fading Yellow volume 1
10. "No Easy Way Down" - Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis

Oh, and I'm also appearing on stage tonight, in a way -- on video in Tom X. Chao's Callous Cad which is opening at Dixon Place.

Once again, as I have been before . . .

I am a giant, imposing video face out to torment someone on the stage below . . .

Okay, enough procrastinating . . . off now to deal with unpleasant and vaguely threatening authority figures . . .

Berit and I are annoyed (that our ride is gone), pissed (that we had a few things in there we miss - nothing irreplaceable in the long run, but including several gifts to us that we valued -- a jigsaw, a digital camera, a nice new 3-piece suit -- not things we can just get again easily), and stunned (that of ALL the cars on that block to steal, they chose a beaten-up 1994 minivan -- WHY?!).

Here's the lost boy in happier times -- as usual, in front of The Brick, as once seen on Google Maps (they've changed the street view of Metropolitan Avenue since then), during one of the Clown Festivals:

And unfortunately, as the car was actually my mother's, registered to her in Maine, the police aren't being too helpful in allowing me to even REPORT the theft as (understandably, yes) I have to PROVE that I have some connection to the car. Mom faxed me a whole bunch of documentation, but it wasn't good enough for them (faxes, that is), so I'm waiting for a package of original documents to arrive. As of now, even if it turned up somewhere, the police wouldn't know that it was stolen, or who to contact, as they wouldn't take the report. Great. All I can do (until I can actually make the report) is check online to see if the car's been towed or ticketed for being left in some other location, and be ready to grab it if it is.

The theft was a crappy end to an otherwise wonderful Sunday past, as we had a magnificent matinee of Kitsch at Theater for the New City (followed by a great Indian dinner on 6th Street for Berit and I). There were only 8 people in the audience, and I told the cast to just blow it out and have fun with it, and they did and gave the best performance of the run thus far. Until last night.

We only had 6 people in the house (which seats 85, so BOY does it look bare with less than two handfuls out there) last night -- there WERE 8 for a while, but right as we were about to begin a couple realized they were in the wrong theatre and left to go to the "correct" one next door. Damn. We also had a strangely vocal (with each other) young couple, one of whom left for the bathroom for a while during Part One, and then suddenly decided to leave altogether right as the lights came up on Part Two (after sitting there through most of Intermission). And did so with audible goodbyes and many kisses to the woman he left sitting there. Then, for whatever reason, having left, he came BACK IN midway through the scene, as the actors were, you know, working, and said goodbye and kissed his date AGAIN. Very distracting.

That said, the cast topped Sunday's performance with last night's -- which was fast, funny, confident, and energetic. I hope these qualities don't decrease as we get more audience back in (I know some of the speed will as we have to hold more for laughs again, rather than running on over the handful of chuckles we were getting last night). And I hope we GET more audience back this week . . . it seems like EVERYONE I know is coming to next Friday's performance. Everyone waits for closing week anyway, and now since we're doing a post-Thanksgiving ticket discount, people are waiting to take advantage of that, I think. The show's last two performances have been killer, I'd now like some others to enjoy this, too.

There's now a set of photos from the show, for those who are interested, HERE.

And here's this week's Random Ten from the iPod (with associated links) out of the 25,179 tracks in there right now . . .

1. "In the Mood" - Walter Horton - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 3
2. "Forty Four" - Geoff Muldaur - Mix Disk from my Dad
3. "Heartbreak Hotel" - John Cale - Seducing Down The Door: A Collection 1970-1990
4. "Lookin' for a Place to Park" - Slim Gaillard - Laughing In Rhythm, #2 - Groove Juice Special
5. "Up & Down" - Mom's Boys - Pebbles Volume 9 - Southern California
6. "Ride Your Mule Part 1" - Marvin Holmes & the Uptights - The Git Down!
7. "Theme From 'The Traitors'" - The Packabeats - Highly Strung Vol.1
8. "Night Comes On" - Leonard Cohen - Various Positions
9. "Song to Woody" - Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
10. "Leiyla" - The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Part One

And from the now-gone digital camera, a few last shots . . . first a Friday Cat Blogging shot, with Hooker and Moni doing their occasional yin/yang act on the chair at the computer . . .

And here's a shot from backstage at Theater for the New City a couple of days before we opened, as Berit paints "Vogelbaum's" painting from the show during one of our late nights of working . . .

Now, off to napland before the long subway {sigh} ride into the city for the show . . .

I'm driving my car, and someone else on the road is making a horrible mistake that will result in them hitting me if I don't suddenly do something defensive and correct -- they may have made a wrong-way turn onto the one-way street I'm driving down, and I'm suddenly heading into their headlights, or they're trying to merge into the lane right where I am, or whatever, but always I have a car coming at me and I have to dodge with care and precision. These aren't exactly nightmares, as I always do avoid the other car, and I'm never woken up by some horrible dream-crash, but whenever I eventually wake up, I don't feel so terribly rested. Quite the opposite, I feel quite tense and fearful. It takes a good rehearsal to pull me out of the feeling of dread that hangs over me after one of these.

As Trav S.D. said when I mentioned this to him after Kitsch rehearsal last night, these dreams don't exactly need much in the way of interpretation here, it's all pretty much on the surface (and I should mention that these dream near-misses ALWAYS occur on roads I know well and have to drive to and from rehearsal of whatever play I'm working on -- yesterday's nap-dream-accident occurred on Houston Street just West of the FDR Drive).

That said, Kitsch, which opens in less than a week, is coming together okay. We'll be fine -- I will have some serious stress in the next few days in getting the lights, sound cues and projections together, but I'll get it done (not as fast as I'd like, but in time to run them enough before opening). I'll be seeing David Brune, the set designer, and Karen Flood, the costume designer, at the space today as we all go through the stock at TNC to find what we can pull and use for our show and I learn a bit more about the lighting setup and what I have available to me that way.

Tonight we'll run the thing from top to bottom again, as we did on Wednesday. Monday we ran Part II twice, and Tuesday we did Part I twice (with some skips in each case for actors who weren't there). On those days, the two individual parts looked in good shape, but when we put them together on Wednesday, it didn't quite sing as much, but I think it was just an off-day, and people are still struggling with the lines at times, which doesn't help. Last night, I worked the staging of 7 of the song sequences with the singers of those songs (there are 9 songs in the show), and focused them and made them clear, so we're all happy with those now. Trav also cut several of the longer songs down, which was needed -- the songs were great on their own as songs, but as pieces of a larger piece of theatre (pieces which I had asked for, as Trav had cut them from the play for a bit, but I thought they would really add to the whole work overall), a couple of them stayed with us a beat or two too long.

In any case, I'm now suddenly rushed to get myself together to run errands and get to the theatre (and hoping that the earlier Yankees parade hasn't screwed up traffic TOO much in getting to TNC), so I'd better finish this up as fast as I can . . .

Here's this week's Random Ten from the 25,101 tracks in the iPod, with associated YouTube links so you can hear the song there, or something else by that artist (there are some quite good video links in here this week, I should mention, and songs that, if you don't know them, are worth getting to know):

1. "The World Spins" - Julee Cruise - Floating Into The Night
2. "Dick Tracy" - The Chants - Get Back Up Again 3
3. "Matzoh Balls" - Slim Gaillard - Laughing In Rhythm, #1 - Flat Foot Floogie
4. "Midnight Showers of Rain" - Willie Nix - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 3
5. "You Let A Love Burn Out" - We Five - You Were On My Mind & Make Someone Happy
6. "Strange Weather" - Marianne Faithfull - Strange Weather
7. "Nenen Corta Essa" - Erasmo Carlos - Rato's Nostalgia Collection 1
8. "You're My Best Friend" - Queen - A Night At The Opera
9. "Don't Hurt My Little Sister" - Shonen Knife - The Birds & The B-Sides
10. "The Director Never Yelled 'Cut'" - Sparks - Exotic Creatures Of The Deep

And as for weekly cat-blogging, here's a recent picture of Hooker "helping me" at the computer, while I'm trying to get work done:

I'm looking forward to a brief, slightly "relaxed" day tomorrow, where I'll be working a little more with one or two singers in Kitsch on the last two songs, and then doing the improv theatre performance (and screening) with David Finkelstein that I hope some friends will show up at (check the link for details, folks).

Then, back to Kitsch full-time on Sunday . . .

And now, back to work . . . I'm going to put on some Mike Nesmith now to work to . . . excellent "chill-out" music . . .

Still, we're actually a little bit ahead of where I thought we'd be at this point, mainly because the actors are picking things up fairly quickly, though I'm going to have to constantly be vigilant about everyone's timing in this precise farce (a pain, when it appears at this point that we will NEVER have the full cast of 19 together at any one time until the ONE night before the show opens . . . {sigh}).

Up until recently, we've mostly been rehearsing in the chilly basement of Theater for the New City, amongst old props, costumes, and set pieces. Here's Josh Mertz and Avery Pearson as Violet Vogelbaum and Heinz Bruderlieben, having a lover's spat in the Klub Katzenratzen:

And here's Roger Nasser, Esther Silberstein, Josh, and Avery from the other side, as another spat between Violet and Heinz is watched by Klaus Hanswurst, busboy, and Schwamm, the Klub Katzenratzen singer:

This past week, and hopefully for most of our remaining rehearsals, we've moved upstairs to the actual space the show will be in, the vast (for me) Johnson Theater. Here's Berit (can you spot her? she's actually standing in the same "place" of the set as Esther in the picture above) in the midst of our rehearsal set . . .

That's a lot of space to fill, but it's looking good thus far. Sounding okay, too -- I was worried about echo making the lines muddy, but it's not too bad, and once the back curtain is pulled and our set is in there (and, hopefully, an audience) the reverb should be decreased to a perfectly fine level.

Tonight, Sunday, and Tuesday we're supposed to be in this space, and I've called as much of the full cast as I can for those days (which means 10-14 people, depending on the day) so we can put the pieces of the show together -- but there's always the chance at TNC that we show up and need to be moved to a smaller space (one night, as I noted, we wound up in a hallway), so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we get to keep working in the Johnson, as it makes the show a lot clearer.

So . . . we're okay on this, but not so much that I can relax.

Meanwhile, back in the iPod, here's today's Random Ten (with assorted links) from the 25,580 tracks in there . . .

1. "Hope" - Kristin Hersh - Strange Angels
2. "The Director Never Yelled 'Cut'" - Sparks - Exotic Creatures Of The Deep
3. "Speak To Me" - PP Arnold - The First Cut
4. "That Is Rock & Roll" - The Coasters - Fifty Coastin' Classics
5. "Peekaboo! (muzak version)" - Devo - E-Z Listening Disc
6. "Sinners" - The Cramps - Flamejob
7. "Anybody Seen My Baby?" - The Rolling Stones - Bridges To Babylon
8. "Devil In Disguise" - Elvis Presley - Beat of the Pops 02
9. "If I Didn't Love You" - Squeeze - Singles 45's And Under
10. "You Should Know" - The Sevens - The Sevens

And yes, some recent pictures of the kitties . . . Berit having some cuddle time with a sleepy boy . . .

And Berit tried to get some late night reading in, but has some friends that won't quite let her . . .

Okay, and now I have to get myself ready for our first "full cast" (11 out of 19) stumblethru tonight -- still figuring out where everyone goes much of the time . . .

There are still tonal things that need to be modified and worked out -- how far exactly to go with those accents; how far to go with the "swishiness" or not of the gay characters (in this farce, it seems right to go to almost Mel Brooksian levels, especially to contrast one gay twin from his straight brother, but there IS an offensiveness line that can be easily crossed); there's a lot of Brechtiness in the script, but how much Weimar/Brecht/Weill do we bring in vs. how much actual 1989? -- but we're only two rehearsals in with 24 to go, so we have some time to work things out (not too much, though).

Simple scenes thus far, for the most part. I was a hair stymied by the brief exposition transition from the prologue to the first scene of the play proper last night, when an idea came up that I hadn't considered before that looked to change my whole view of staging the section -- I had a visual gag planned for the scene, but a bit of prop handling I hadn't fully worked out led to the creation of a different gag, which was a less "sure" gag than the first one (that is, it could REALLY work or REALLY fail as a piece of humor, and the first one was a fairly definite laugh, or at least chuckle). So I had to decide between a gag that would work that I had planned, or one that could either work better or fail miserably, but which would also solve a problem of getting some props offstage (a major pain). An offhanded suggestion - more a joke about it - from Josh Mertz led to a solution that combined both gags into a better one, albeit one that's still unsure of a laugh (and brings up the question, when you throw a baby offstage, is it funnier if it's just tossed, or if you hear the sound of the baby going "Waaaaaaa!" as it arcs away?).

Monday will be a sudden jump in difficulty staging-wise, though, as I'll have almost the entire cast there for the climactic scene of the farce in which everything comes together. This involves 16 to 18 actors (not sure yet) with a whole lot of extremely specific blocking which must look chaotic, including the use of four "fake shemps" disguised as half of the four sets of twins the play centers on (it's basically The Comedy of Errors with two extra sets of twins, broken up in infancy and sent to either side of the Berlin Wall, all finally meeting up and causing confusion on the night it comes down - a nice classic farce, with a pedigree that goes back over 2000 years).

In any case, it's underway and won't be stopping now.

Back on the iPod, here's today's Random Ten (and associated YouTube links) out of 25,552 tracks:

1. "Dilated Eyes" - The Gregorians - You Deceived Me: USA Garage Greats 1965-1967
2. "Joey's On The Streets Again" - The Boomtown Rats - The Best Of The Boomtown Rats: The Millennium Collection
3. "King of Comedy" - R.E.M. - Monster
4. "Last Dance" - The Mekons - Fear and Whiskey
5. "The Picnic" - Johnny Mandel - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea soundtrack
6. "Love Me" - Koko Taylor - What It Takes: The Chess Years
7. "30 Seconds Over Tokyo (live 1993)" - Pere Ubu - The Late Show
8. "CBS Marijuana Special" - Radio Promo - Rock'n'Roll - The Untold Story Vol. 6: The Jivin' Novelty Party Record

TV ANNOUNCER: "See a CBS Special on marijuana, 'Get the Habit' -- stay tuned to this channel!"
9. "Rots-O-Ruck" - Richard Marino - Ultra-Lounge 18: Bottoms Up
10. "I Shall Not Be Moved" - Johnny Cash - Unearthed

And a couple of new kitty photos from the last couple of days . . . Hooker, who has become a NEEDY attention hound of a cat since our last time away, here with Berit on the couch . . .

And, just a few minutes ago as I write this, nudging me in the face and pawing at me for attention, jealous of the computer . . .

Maybe I'll get some new photos of Moni for next week; she never seems to stand still long enough for a good photo, though.

Tomorrow we have a day off of rehearsal for Kitsch (one of only two we have between now and opening weekend, the other being Halloween), which B & I will spend going up to Darien, CT - just a bit north of my ol' hometown - where my dad, Nils Hill, is in a group show with some pretty good company, to say the least (he's a painter, in case you didn't know, as is my stepmother, Ivy Dachman). I'm looking forward to the small day trip up into the home state.

Also, in other events, there are 2 shows opening this weekend from friendly creators and spaces you might check out:

1. Titus Andronicus from Danse Macabre Theatrics at my homebase The Brick (looks to be Frank Cwiklik's usual intoxicating and overwhelming blend of staging and media); and,

2. Marc Spitz's new comedy Up for Anything at The Kraine, which I was in a reading of not long ago -- it's hysterically funny, like most of Marc's work (I've directed/acted in two of his plays, The Hobo Got Too High and Marshmallow World, and loved it), and has a really terrific cast (including CollisionWorks favorite Alyssa Simon).

And a first notice: Some of you may have seen my show Sacrificial Offerings this August, the text of which came from improvisational work by myself and David Finkelstein, who has been doing this kind of work for years as Lake Ivan Performance Group.

The play also contained a video by David called Marvelous Discourse, which was based on the videotape of the same improvisation that created the text of the play (David's notes on the video are HERE).

Well, there will be a screening of that video, along with another video of David's, Terrifying Blankness, created with a different improv partner, at CRS on Saturday, November 7 at 8.00 pm.

And most excitingly for me, David and I will also be performing a live 15-minute long improvisation that evening. I have been refreshed and rejuvenated in many ways by the work I've been doing with David this year, and the idea of doing some of this improvisatory theatre work live (the first time, for me) is something I very much look forward to. Details are at the links above; more info as the date gets closer.

Okay, time to leave the computer and prepare for tonight -- just found out I'm short an actor I expected, so revisions to the schedule must be made . . .

Well, for goodness' sake, I forgot the weekly blog post yesterday.

And I won't have time to do it for real until tomorrow -- at least the music/photos/video part of it.

So, anyway, I'm back in NYC, and gearing up for Kitsch at Theatre for the New City. Today, Trav and I met with David, the set designer, at the space and discussed possibilities. I mentioned what I needed and David suggested possibilities that suggested additional avenues of approach, so I think we're all on the same page with this piece.

It's nice to collaborate sometimes -- but I don't think I could let go of too much more of the design of my own shows; I HAVE to do set, light, and sound for those, it goes hand in hand with the directing. Kitsch is purely about direction as craft -- how do I stage THIS script to get every drop of what's on the page out of it with THIS cast. That will be MORE than enough to do with this large script and cast (19 in the cast; 4 or 5 still uncast).

So today, I'm at The Brick for the most part - running box for the 3 pm matinee, supposedly having a 5.30 pm meeting (no one showed up), and training the box person for the evening show whenever she shows up. I'll probably have to stick around until the show starts just to be sure the box person actually understands everything I show her, then I can effoe home.

Current fave raves: The Beatles' music in mono -- no, I don't have the new box set, much as I would like it; I have , uh, acquired the mono mixes in the past, digitized off the vinyl -- I grew up mostly with mono vinyl copies of the albums, and hearing it again this way sounds a lot more "right" to me (and I think makes the music sound a lot less "dated"). Here's a couple of examples (if you're seeing this on Facebook, you'll have to click through to the original post to see the videos):

SCTV Network 90 -- Newbury Comics in Portland was having a sale and I was able to get the complete run of this great show for $10 a box; well worth it, and glad to go through the whole run again. Two favorite sketches:

And a favorite song I've been obsessed with and playing over and over again recently:

Back tomorrow with an actual Random Ten.

I could have used another week, but there's things to do -- the NYIT Awards on Monday, teching a show at The Brick the next two days, and getting really cracking on directing Trav S.D.'s Kitsch for Theater for the New City, going up in November. We'll get back here in January, I'm sure, but that's not exactly as great a time to visit Maine as September. Of course, we spend almost all our time here lounging about one room, reading, playing on the computer, and watching TV (as we have no TV at home in Brooklyn, we use our time away to catch up on what's going on there, or as B puts it, "surfing the zeitgeist"). Actually, though, there hasn't been much bearable on the cathode-ray box apart from cute animal programs, Mythbusters, some news, and reruns of Roseanne and C.S.I., so we're not really zeitgeisting ourselves all that much.

(Berit interrupts to note that we're seeing lots of TV commercials, and that this tells us more about what's really going on in the world than any shows do -- she's right, of course)

So that's our happily boring week.

Hey, some advice . . . if you're on a Mac, and still running Tiger rather than Leopard (let alone Snow Leopard) as an OS, and you haven't been upgrading QuickTime for a while because the upgrades interfere with some of your computer games (notably, maybe even only, ones from Aspyr) and make them not work, but you HAVE been updating iTunes . . . I wouldn't advise updating to the new iTunes 9, as it REQUIRES the newest QuickTime to run at all, and you will be stuck without any iTunes until you upgrade QT as well. And you will NOT be able to downgrade back to the previous iTunes without losing all your library info. And while Aspyr has patches that will fix the problem, assuming that all your copies of their games are {ahem} fully legal and so forth, if you simply want to go back to the older iTunes and QuickTime that you had, it involves a huge amount of workarounds and . . . well, it's a major pain in the ass.

How do I know this?

Guess.

In future, I ain't automatically upgrading nothin' without paying more attention to it and having more of a backup system. And I just have to say I'm SO tired of programs and upgrades that absolutely REQUIRE you to have the latest, most up-to-date software from top-to-bottom installed, as I've far too often had to keep my "out-of-date" but working perfectly equipment going for many years as I couldn't afford to upgrade -- we wouldn't have any of these problems if we had been able to upgrade to a newer OS.

In any case, I still have no iTunes until we decide which one of several ways we want to go about fixing this problem.

But I can still do the Random Ten on the iPod, out of the 25,551 tracks, with associated links, and here is this week's . . .

1. "Turtle Blues" - Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company - Cheap Thrills
2. "Everything Louder Than Everything Else" - Meat Loaf - Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell
3. "Shake 'Em On Down (version 3)" - R.L. Burnside - A Bothered Mind
4. "One Time Too Many" - PJ Harvey - C'mon Billy EP
5. "Little Girl" - Pilferage Humor - So Cold!!! Unearthed 60's Sacramento Garage
6. "Nothing Down (99 Years To Pay)" - Jean Dee - Back to the 50's 04
7. "Kung See, Kung See, Let's Be Happy" - Penny Lim & The Silvertone's - Girls in the Garage volume 9: Oriental Special
8. "Sea Horses" - Blueboy - If Wishes Were Horses
9. "Contact" - Brigitte Bardot - Club Au-Go-Go
10. "City Creatures" - V2 - The Identity Parade

And as we're here in Maine, I should focus the weekly "cat blogging" on our loaner animals up here -- like Bappers The Cat, here in the living room . . .

And closer in. This cat is over 15 years old, an indoor/outdoor cat, in great shape and still going strong, though she weighs less than any cat I've ever lifted . . .

She can be a little standoffish, but will accept a good belly rub at times . . .

Bappers HATES the dog, Sasha, who is adorable, if excitable. Here, Berit tries to give both affection at once, though the kitty isn't having any of it, and is pointedly ignoring them . . .

And here's the dog on my lap as I try to watch TV -- in this case it was Meercat Manor, and when Sasha caught sight of the meercats on the TV she flipped out and wouldn't stop growling and barking at them and had to be removed from the room to get her to shut up . . .

Okay, time to sit back and reread book 7 of the Harry Potter series. I've already reread the first six this week -- I am not exactly a fan of them, but I was both interested in reading them all in order straight through in rapid succession and seeing how the entire story worked in one big lump as well as just examining them to understand what did in fact "work" about them. Rather relaxing.

Why THANK you, Mary Worth's Tobey, for the kind words!

Yesterday we loaded the last of all of our stuff from this year's shows out of The Brick, and the August 2009 shows are now a memory.

And, as always, when we close a show (or 4, as now) I immediately come down with something, so I've been sniffing and coughing for much of today -- it's like my immune system holds out until I get a day to relax, and then the whole furshlugginer thing collapses.

Anyway, we have a couple of days before going off to Robert Honeywell & Moira Stone's wedding upstate, so we can rest and I can get well, somewhat.

And then onward to directing Trav S.D.'s show in November and planning next year's shows, including our Wedding-Show in June (we seem to have gotten the reception restaurant taken care of now, so that's a big part out of the way) and Spacemen from Space and . . . one other show in August -- I'm researching the rights situation on the show I WANT to do currently -- it looks to be a mess, as it's a British play from 1960 that has been out of print in the States for years, with no immediate indication of who actually controls the US rights. We'll see. (Oh, whoops, just checked the Samuel French site and THEY have it - $75 a performance; about standard)

I'm also currently obsessed with the films of Powell & Pressburger, Jean-Luc Godard, and Universal Pictures' monster series from 1931-1946 in ways that suggest there's something I need to be doing with/about them on stage (not together, I would think, but you never know), but it hasn't come clear yet. More watching is needed . . .

And here's today's Random Ten out of 25,537 in the iPod, with associated links, where I could find them (not all of them this week - some pretty obscure songs this week):

1. "I Was Wrong" - Gene "Bowlegs" Miller - Legacy Of Gene "Bowlegs" Miller
2. "Just" - Radiohead - The Bends
3. "Hey, Sweet Baby" - The Loose Ends - Sixties Rebellion Vol 3-The Auditorium
4. "Egg or the Hen" - Koko Taylor - What It Takes (The Chess Years)
5. "I Have Been to Heaven and Back" - The Mekons - The Mekons Rock'N'Roll
6. "I Was Born A Brownskin And You Can't Make Me Blue" - Priscilla Stewart - Complete Recorded Works
7. "Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On" - Ringo Starr - I Wanna Be Santa Claus
8. "Holiday On Ice" - The Nits - New Flat
9. "Hummingbirds (demo version)" - Love - Forever Changes
10. "Father and Son" - Johnny Cash with Fiona Apple - Unearthed

No new cat photos today, but I've been trying to decide on a picture of me and one or both of the little monsters to send to the Men and Cats site, and narrowed it down to 5, all but one consisting of Hooker enjoying his habit of standing or lying on me whenever he can (the other a nice naptime shot that also contains Moni)

These cover, chronologically, the last 4 years, starting with Hooker interrupting my reading of the newspaper in 2005 (back when I still read hard copy papers):

And the following year, he thinks he deserves more attention than my book:

And a few days later, as I have a nice nap with the boy, the jealous girl climbs on my back:

In 2007, another nap has someone joining in:

And last year, Hooker decides that I'm of more use as a standing place than writing the script I'm trying to get through:

And, as I was trying to write this post, he just jumped on me and demanded attention, and I was able to get a shot of us with the computer's camera, so I now have a 2009 shot . . .

And (courtesy of LP Cover Lover) sometimes I think a man of the cloth has the RIGHT IDEA: