CollisionWorks

Maine continues to be a fruitful place for me to work. Haven't gotten as much done as I'd hoped, but that's always the case up here -- and often I'm able to keep the creative juices and rhythm and work schedule going even when I get back to NYC. Wish I'd been able to spend another week up here, but there are things we need to handle back home.

I have transcribed the entirety of John Whiting's play version of The Devils, as I do with almost every play I direct, even if I'm not going to be messing with the text as much as I'm planning to on this occasion -- I like to feel the text go through my fingers; I get closer to it and get a basic physical feeling for he movement of the prose, and I can create a "director's draft" that specifically fits the play into the theatre space I'm doing it in. I've also broken the play down scene-by-scene (or beat-by-beat) on index cards, and then done the same with Ken Russell's film of the play, from which I also intend to draw in my production -- Russell, smartly, made his film both from the play and the play's source material, Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon, which I'm also grabbing bits from.

The play is good, but at times a bit dated and heavy-handed, and the film improves it in a number of ways that I can't let go of. At the same time, some of Russell's improvements won't work at all on stage. So a new combination of the two (with Huxley helping out) is what I'm trying to assemble. As the two have some very different ways of advancing the plot -- which often can't be combined -- I have to shuffle and lay out the index cards until I get an order of events that makes sense and is dramatically interesting.

I hope I can make it work in a two-act structure. I don't mind long plays as much as everyone else does these days it seems, and this will be a . . . sizable . . . work. Still, I'd rather keep it to one intermission -- Whiting's play has two, and, unfortunately, at least in his version, that three-act structure makes sense. Well, if it the play winds up wanting it, it wants it, and I can't argue with what the play wants. I'm here to serve it.

Of course, if I don't get the rights, all this work will be wasted. They're easy enough to get, it seems, I just need to do a donation-request email to my list to try and get the money to pay for those rights ASAP. Yeah, there's a reason that out of the 75 shows I've directed only 4 have been from later 20th-Century playwrights where I had to pay the standard amount for the rights (for the Ionesco, Havel, and Fassbinder shows -- and thank you Richard Foreman and Clive Barker for requiring a tiny or non-existent payment for the rights to your plays). Considering that, I probably shouldn't be concentrating on this show as much as I am right now, but it's the one that's burning right now, and I've learned to go as much as possible with the show that's demanding the work. Even if that show's in August and another show, and probably the MOST IMPORTANT SHOW I will ever write/direct, is coming up in June . . .

So I've spent a little time -- not as much as I should, but all I could give right now -- to writing Berit's and my marriage. Still VERY rough. Just ideas and some language here and there. This one seems to need me to walk around for a bit, thinking, and then quickly write down ideas in longhand in my notebook. Somehow, from these fragments of speech and image that come to me, I'll wind up with the production. Work on this might actually be better at home. I keep getting the feeling that I just need to stumble onto that ONE THING, that structural element or music cue or whatever, and the whole thing will crack open wide for me. Some shows are like that.

As for Spacemen from Space, B & I rewatched 6 full 12-episode serials from the '30s and '40s, and even while I worked on The Devils, I kept taking notes on plot and character and dialogue styles and elements to get the feel of those stories down. I have an outline for what needs to happen in each of the six "episodes" that make up this two-act play, I just need to get into the right mindspace to write it, or what I write will wind up just being a good imitation of those serials rather than what I want, which is a satiric, comic pastiche of them (with an underlying "statement" for those who wish to look for one that dovetails nicely with The Devils).

And as for today's normal thing, here's a neat little Random Ten from the 25,435 tracks in the iPod -- I really REALLY thought I was going to find video links for all of the actual tracks this week, but the obscure Sun Records side at #8 blew that, and the really obscure Illinois 1960s garage band at #9 only had a different song available. Ah, well, you get a pretty good mix here, if you follow the videos . . .

1. "Seven Years In Tibet" - David Bowie - Earthling
2. "He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)" - Grizzly Bear - unknown download
3. "I Can Only Give You Everything" - Little Boy Blues - Pebbles Volume 2 - Various Hooligans
4. "Blood Makes Noise" - Suzanne Vega - 99.9 F
5. "Money Changes Everything" - The Brains - The Brains
6. "All The Young Dudes" - Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes
7. "I'm A Greedy Man" - James Brown - Star Time
8. "Hey Now (take 1)" - Billy Love - Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950-1958 vol. 7
9. "Now She's Crying" - The M.H. Royals - Total Raunch - 100% Boss Garage From The Sixties
10. "Done Me Wrong All Right" - Sweet - Funny Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be

And though I've been enjoying taking pictures up here, I did indeed forget to bring the cable to connect it to the computer, so I'll share those when I'm back home.

Here's a little video I found because lord_whimsy posted another video from this same series. He went with the best (and longest), so I advise following the link to that one. Here's another "MANDOM" ad from Japan, 1970, featuring Mr. Charles Bronson (and in this one, his 18-year-old son, Tony):

And I've posted this before, but I had to find it to show someone this morning, and it made me laugh all over again, so here's a replay of what Joe Cocker was REALLY singing at Woodstock:

Birthday Greetings from Joe Cocker

Regina | MySpace Video

(and yes . . . if you're reading this on Facebook you won't see the videos and will have to go to my LiveJournal to do so . . .)

Okay, back to shuffling index cards while C.S.I. plays incessantly in the background . . .

Had a great day yesterday -- good work with David Finkelstein for the ongoing project there. Then Berit and I saw family and friends at an art opening. Then we all went out to a fine fine superfine dinner.

So, for this quiet Sunday afternoon, let us begin with a Sabbath sermon . . .

Quincy Jones bestows cool upon Raymond Burr:

A young David Lynch thanks the patrons of the Nuart theatre in L.A. for their support of Eraserhead:

And I think I vastly prefer this to "Jizz In My Pants" or "Dick In a Box," but maybe it's just because of the nautical theme:

Tonight, supervising a rental at The Brick. Back to work on shows tomorrow.

The video and synopsis for Episode 9 of Bryan Enk & Matt Gray's live serial Penny Dreadful, "The Terrible Tale of the Black Dragon," is up HERE. The synopsis for Episode 10, "The Science and the Seance: Two Tales of Love and Horror," is up HERE, but no video for that as yet. I've been really happy with the whole series and proud of most of my work as lighting designer and tech supervisor, but Episode 9 was my favorite for my design work all around (and, with Episode 4, one of my two favorite segments of the serial overall).

The video, of course, being a recording of a live show, doesn't at all live up to what the show looked and felt like live, but is pretty good for all that. Two more episodes to go. I've been informed of getting a little something extra and special to do on the last episode, too, and I don't know if I can say anything about that yet . . . but it makes me very happy.

I finished my draft of Richard Foreman's George Bataille's Bathrobe (as I had to add all the characters, settings, and stage directions of my own) for the August production a couple of hours ago, and am in the middle of proofing it before sending it to the actors who've agreed to be in it. I'm happy with how it came out and it all now pretty much makes sense to me. Not entirely, or there'd be no point in doing it, but I know enough to proceed properly from this point. I lost a cast member, who got a bigger gig - not the easiest person to replace, but I can handle it, I think. A couple of other people I asked couldn't do it either, and I must ask others, but am debating who to go to next from the list of people I want to work with.

Now, for fun, here's a video of someone's interpretation of "O Fortuna," from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana:

And two found images (from Modern Mechanix and LP Cover Lover), with varied points of view on forms of transportation:

Work progresses on the four shows for August. About half of the cast of A Little Piece of the Sun is set. I'm also finishing up the script for George Bataille's Bathrobe (that is, I have Foreman's dialogue in a file and I'm going through and creating the characters, setting, scenes, and stage directions as they come to me, bit by bit), typing in the script for Fassbinder's Blood on the Cat's Neck and giggling way too much about my idea for the design for the card/poster for that show (based on the original picture of Fassbinder holding a bloodied photo cut-out of a cat for the original production), and watching old serials and Universal monster movies as research for Spacemen from Space (done with the Universal pictures, actually, and I'm currently enjoying a palate-cleanser of movie watching with my favorite Hitchcock and Bergman films).

I also have a couple of grant proposals to get done in the next two weeks that are mostly there. Big thing now for each is to put together a DVD (different for each proposal) of excerpts from my recent work. Not so easy to choose.

We'll be going up to Maine for a little bit soon to relax and write the actual script, or what we can right now, of Spacemen from Space. First, I have to design and act in the next Penny Dreadful episode, and act in a couple of other readings/events I've agreed to.

Nothing else really, so here's today's Random Ten . . .

1. "Pictures of Lily" - David Bowie - Toying
2. "The Big Big Whoredom" - They Might Be Giants - Then: The Earlier Years
3. "Waltzin' With Sin" - Bob Dylan & The Band - A Tree With Roots
4. "Hey There Jim" - Jimmy "Bo" Horne - The First Days of Funk - volume 1
5. "Lagerfeuer (Oswalt Kolle: Dein Kind, Das Unbekannte Wesen)" - Peter Schirmann - Birds Do It
6. "'The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly" ad" - radio spot - Psychedelic Promos & Radio Spots, vol. 8
7. "Just Passing" - Small Faces - Immediate Singles
8. "Gloomy" - Creedence Clearwater Revival - Susie Q
9. "The Trap" - The Music Machine - The Bonniwell Music Machine
10. "I Need It Just As Bad As You" - Laura Lee - Soul Diva Sessions

And for special added value today, some recent favorite videos.

David Letterman reviews George W. Bush's career:

A commercial - YES, IT'S REAL - that made Berit and I giggle like 5 year olds:

And when all else fails, animals doing things they normally don't = amusingosity:

Haven't been to The Brick in weeks! Time to go over and check in tonight on the show that's going to open there next week . . .

Having posted a couple of inspirational texts, here's some more inspiration for a Monday morning . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff found and seen.

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

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

Images and video recently enjoyed . . .

Always good for you to quit smorking:

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

Officer Murphy looks away from Omni Consumer Products:

Stick 'em up:

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

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

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

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

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

( Cornflake Girl )

Enjoy.

Damn, but I'm tired, and there's work to do.

Though writing work is not as difficult as some when tired.

This weekend, rehearsing and writing, writing and rehearsing. Shows look good. We did a runthrough of Harry in Love on Saturday that was damned good. Three of the six of us in the cast are off-book and only rarely needed prompts. Another was off-book for all but one scene, and the other two (which included me) seem to know most of the lines but still need the script as a security blanket. Rhythms good. Show ran 2 hours 17 minutes including 10-minute intermission. I think 5-8 minutes will come off that (some of the company think more will, but we're actually already pretty well bookin', even with some of us still looking at scripts).

Worked two scenes from Harry again yesterday, and got them to a really great manic level. We all felt really good about them when we were finished, kinda looking around for a moment after the run of the last scene like, "Damn, we did that RIGHT." It was interesting, because we actually weren't as precise as we need to be, but we got to a level of energy and character and rhythm that was dead on. So, we now need the precision of lines (in particular) on top of that.

Spell also continues. Still behind in script (on that and Everything Must Go), but there was enough to work in rehearsal yesterday (including working in new cast member Samantha Mason). Next rehearsal for Spell is Friday and I expect to have the full script done before that (two weeks before we open, nice way to cut it close, Hill). Tomorrow, back to Everything Must Go after a bit off (with the way the casts' schedules are working this month, that's how it goes - three or four days mainly on one show and then it goes away for a week or so).

Spell looking good, but some of what I planned didn't work and I had to come up with okay solutions. I like the show, but it's definitely not the show I had in my head while writing, and writing gets harder as I try to figure out if I'm writing the show that was in my head or the show that's appearing in rehearsals now (which is better, I think, but hard to get a grip on). Also, we've lost another cast member, and one even harder to recast due to specialized abilities and qualities needed. We're workin' on it.

So, I have to get back to the writing of the shows now, but first, a bit of fun - I have a backlog of stuff to share. Here's some album covers from LP Cover Lover that I dug:

And inside the cut, NINE recent found videos of amusement for your dining and dancing pleasure:

( Read more... )

Enjoy.

Work continues on the three August shows, at different levels and paces and amounts of stress.

Harry In Love: A Manic Vaudeville is staged and we did a book-in-hand (mostly, some people are nicely off-book for bits and pieces already) stumble-thru and fix-thru that went well enough to show we're in good shape. There is much work to be done, but we have the time to do that work, easily. It's going to be a serious laff-riot, really.

Spell is proceeding well, though I need to write faster on it - the text is coming, but not as I'd like (speedwise, I mean, I've wound up very happy and even surprised with what's come out for this one). The cast is good, though still incomplete - we lost an actress, as I mentioned, and the one I asked to replace her hasn't returned my contact, so I'll move on to asking another. Thank goodness the cast on this show is so cheery to work with - the show itself is pretty bleak and uncomfortable (yeah, I'm great at talking up my own shows - "Bleak and Uncomfortable!" - now that's an ad line for ya . . .).

Everything Must Go (Invisible Republic #2) has had more time off than I'd like, but there were cast conflicts with other shows, and marriages, and so forth. There is a lot to do on this one and not enough time scheduled - I need to find more time to dedicate to this show. Also, I'm behind in the writing on this one too - which is a surprise, as this is the kind of language that normally comes naturally and easily to me (as it did on what is now Invisible Republic #1, That's What We're Here For (an american pageant)). Next rehearsal for this one is tomorrow, and I have to have more text and choreography ready for that, so today is the writing day (mostly for EMG, I hope, and some for Spell), and tomorrow I'll schlep over to The Brick as early as I can and start really getting the choreography down.

I'm still getting over my shyness in choreographing dance on other peoples' bodies; That's What We're Here For was a big step for me, but there I had the one "real" dance for (and by) Maggie Cino and me, and the rest were mainly stylistic pastiches, and worked out a lot with the cast, while this one is mostly me doing actual personal, non-parodic work, with better dancers than I am. Nerve-wracking.

Last night was the end of The Brick's The Film Festival: A Theater Festival (except for some extensions of really good shows that you should all go and see), and we had the closing-night ceremonies and awards ceremonies. This is the second year of this post-fest party, which is on its way to being a tradition, as awards ranging from the semi-serious to outright ridiculous are given, with every piece in the fest winning at least one award (the Special Olympics of Indie Theatre, if you will), with a focus on in-jokes funny (maybe) only to festival participants, or more usually to about 10 regular members of The Brick crowd. Bottomless amounts of alcoholic beverages are served. Lisa Levy, lovely in a gorgeous dress, forces everyone entering the theatre to be interviewed as if on the red carpet as a camera broadcasts the uncomfortable results on the gigantic screen inside. Jeff Lewonczyk, "America's Funnyman," hosts and everyone groans at what he thinks is funny, as Lawrence Krauser tickles the ivories beautifully, giving an inappropriate air of an actual planned show to the whole evening. Private grievances are aired, friends and reputations are insulted, Audrey Crabtree presents awards as a character both disturbing and endearing (supposedly the "special" 13-year-old love child of one of the Brick artistic directors), I stumble around imitating a drunken Orson Welles, technical matters go awry. And it all ends in chaos. Then we drink some more. I blast some Motown over the PA. And some of the theatre-film geeks (me, Lewonczyk, Danny Bowes, James Comtois, and others) play trivia games for way too long. A good evening all around.

Last night, for the second year in a row, I received the award for "Most Misunderstood" show. In a vaguely-drunken, vaguely-Wellesian tone I pointed out that while Ian W. Hill's Hamlet was definitely misunderstood, especially by the critics - and I flinched a bit when I realized that one of the critics I was talking about was sitting right in front of me, oh well - there was no good reason why such a straightforward show as Ambersons should be misunderstood, but that the Backstage critic had managed to do it anyway. I promised to continue to aim to receive that same award EVERY year from now on in the Brick summer festivals (and I shall, oh yes, I SHALL).

Later, to my surprise, the "Ian W. Hill Lifetime Achievement Award for Lifetime Achievement" was given to my old Nada coeval Mr. Art Wallace. 40 years old now and I gots me a lifetime achievement award named for me . . . {sigh}

Oh, and there was another great party the evening before at the McKleinfeld's where grasshoppers were consumed (the drink, that is), many things were grilled and deep-fried (deep-fried Oreos! deep-fried Hershey bars!), and a lot of Rock Band was played. I now need a rest from this intensive relaxation schedule.

So, other things found online for your dining and dancing pleasure . . .

Three images from the always-wonderful Modern Mechanix site, the first announcing a new breakthrough in air travel:

A theme which continues with this important question:

Which leads to a sinister second question . . .

Anyone who knows me probably knows of my David Bowie fanaticism. Well, if you're like me, and I know I am, there's an article that will interest you more than it probably should in The Daily Mail online: He's made up and is releasing a comp of 12 of his own favorite songs of his - not exactly hits that would have shown up on the Changesbowie collections - and he's written liner notes about each song which the Mail has printed HERE. For those interested, the songs are "Life On Mars," "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)," "The Bewlay Brothers," "Lady Grinning Soul," "Win," "Some Are," "Teenage Wildlife," "Repetition," "Fantastic Voyage," "Loving The Alien," "Time Will Crawl," and "Hang On To Yourself (live in Santa Monica)."

Now I have to go make a playlist of those and see what it's like, though I'm both pleased and pissed to discover that Bowie, happy with the songs on the underrated Never Let Ne Down but, correctly, unhappy with the 80s-era production/arrangement, has gone in and rerecorded instruments and rearranged and remixed "Time Will Crawl." The song, a favorite of mine, deserves it. Now, of course, I have to buy the whole damned thing for the one track (unless I can just find the track online).

(huh . . . and of course I discover to my surprise that I don't even HAVE four of those tracks in my iTunes, as I was sure I would . . . damn)

We now have some waterfalls in NYC - to be precise, we have Olafur Eliasson's The New York City Waterfalls - four towers in the area of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges cycling out East River water in a continuous fall all day and some of the night (technically, as has been noted, a fountain, actually). There has been an air of disappointment from some quarters about how they turned out - they looked great in the computer renderings, but most of the time, from most angles, they look . . . pretty pathetic. And I've been a bit pissed off about the fact that traffic on a stretch of the BQE under the Brooklyn Heights (which I generally drive at least twice a day) has become completely slowed, if not even jammed, during waterfall operation due to the slow-down of people taking a gander at the damned one that's right there next to the road, which looks terrible from that angle anyway.

(side note - I nearly went back and fixed this, but what the hell - I have, as a result of reading too many "period" books about earlier centuries in NYC, taken to referring to that area with a now-dropped article, as "THE Brooklyn Heights" - such as "The British are massing on the Brooklyn Heights to attack Washington's troops," or "I have to drive under the Brooklyn Heights twice a damn day," or "Fuck, I wish I could afford a townhouse in the Brooklyn Heights" - I've decided to just go with this and not give a damn anymore; luckily my brief habit, gained the same way, of calling the center of Manhattan "the central park" didn't stick the same way)

Anyway, held up again in traffic last night on my way home from the Brick, and seeing that one lit up after nightfall (and from a bad angle), I began to change my opinion. Jerry Saltz, at New York, HERE sums up pretty well what I think of them now, with a photo of the best of the falls at the best time and angle.

And finally, behind the cut, two of the better humor videos I've seen in a long time - commercials for the ersatz power-drink, POWERTHIRST!

( GRATUITOUS AMOUNTS OF ENERGY! )

Enjoy. I'm back to writing (I hope, rather than sitting at a computer screen unhappily staring and shaking nervously).

First, off, Berit sent me to the Amazon page for the new Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. I had read about this in disbelief already on some tech pages.

You can get a cable to perform the same job for $5.00 - but if you really REALLY want that "top of the line quality" in sending digital ones and zeros back and forth over copper wire that you can only get by buying an overpriced Monster Cable or something, you could get one for $10-20.00 (although it would probably come in a longer, more useful length than the Denon's 59", which HAS to be bad for signal or something). So what does this SERIOUS audiophile cable from Denon cost?

$500.99.

Really.

So, quite a few consumers think this shameless play for the people with too much money and not enough sense as re: their A/V systems (the same people who buy the biggest, most expensive HD monitors and then don't hook them up to actually get HD signal, or just play everything with a 4:3 aspect ratio stretched to 16:9 so that everyone onscreen has the mumps) is just TOO shameless to go unremarked and unmocked.

There is a fine collection of "Customer Reviews" for this product HERE. They're worth reading. Really.

Thanks again to everyone for the birthday wishes! And to the other everyones (with some overlaps) for the nice comments here and in emails about Ambersons!

So, here I am in Maine, with a new driver's license, trying to get some writing done and finding myself somewhat blocked (it used to be that I wrote better outside NYC, now not so much for some reason). I spent the last 7.5 hours of the first day of my 40th year driving up here - a drive that usually takes me 5.5 hours, but I spent an extra hour in traffic and another driving slowly and unnerved through a massive rain & lightning storm. Always fun. Tomorrow I have nothing to do but write, so maybe I can get something done.

Aw, man . . .

Cyd Charisse has died.

I've been crazy abut her since seeing The Band Wagon (still my favorite "classic" movie musical) at a young age, then later seeing her in Singin' in the Rain and Silk Stockings. I've also seen her in the late kinda-noir Party Girl, which is okay, and the unpleasant Gene Kelly musical It's Always Fair Weather - I don't mind "dark" films, of course, and love musicals that go for the dark, but this one is just sour and unpleasant.

But Band Wagon and Singin' . . . ? Oh, I love them. Here's two numbers from each of those films - and you get some great Astaire and Kelly work in there, too:

( GOTTA DANCE! )

Enjoy.