CollisionWorks

A week ago I updated from Maine.

Since then, I've driven back to Brooklyn - borrowing my brother's car as Petey Plymouth wound up needing some unexpected work in order to pass inspection here in Maine, where it's registered - and barely made it to the NYIT Awards to lose out on the "Outstanding Lighting Design" award (but had fun celebrating The Brick's Caffe Cino award).

Then Berit and I spent a day lighting the excellent show by Happy Hour now going on at The Brick (through Sunday), and that evening saw the last performance of the hysterical Icetacles/Viva Evel Knievel bill also there in the Amuse Bouche mini-Clown Theater festival we have going on.

Also had a meeting with Trav S.D. regarding the upcoming production of his Kitsch, or: Double Dutch Dumbkopfs that I'm directing for Theatre for the New City (opening in November). Unfortunately, we've lost a couple of actors and are still having some difficulty casting other parts, but that should be settled soon before starting rehearsals around October 5. I'm quite happy with the cast we have (at least those people I know; Trav has cast some people I've not met yet), am looking forward to working on this hysterical script, and hoping to hell that my idea for how to solve the problem of when the four sets of twins, each set played by ONE actor throughout the show -- as this is a loose adaptation of Comedy of Errors set in Berlin the evening the Wall comes down -- all meet at once in the end. At the current moment, the solution involves the concept of "Fake Shemps." We'll see if I can pull it off, blocking-wise.

Also met with Elaine, the set designer for Punk Rock/Love Song, a Horse Trade production NOT playing in one of the Horse Trade spaces, but at our own Brick (!). She had some questions about how best to work some things out in the space, and Berit and I offered solutions that seemed to work for her. I'm pleased that she's using two of the three platforms I built for my August shows (including the 6' cube) so that all that work we put in to them winds up being in the service of even MORE theatre.

Then I had to drive BACK up to Maine so I can get my own vehicle back -- though it was a pleasant 5-hour drive this time, and it means I get to spend a little more time up here, where a New England Autumn has come, and it is lovely and pleasant and cool. There's that special tang in the air that brings back lots of memories of Fall days at NMH from '83-'85 -- some of my fondest memories, still.

So, now, another update from Maine. I just wish Berit could have joined me, but she had to continue running the Happy Hour show through Sunday. Now, I'm here till Monday, probably, and looking for things to do on my own up here -- when Berit and I are here together, we mostly just sit in the same room, reading or playing on computers with the TV on, just vegging out, not actually interacting all that much really, but for some reason it's a lot less fun without B in the room with me.

I'm thinking of going to a local drive-in movie theatre tomorrow or Sunday to see a double bill of Inglourious Basterds and Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 - a PERFECT drive-in double bill - but there's something depressing about the idea of sitting alone in a car at the drive-in (and I don't think one or the other or both of the films will entertain the various family members here - and Berit wouldn't be interested in the Zombie film if she were here either). Still, I may not be able to pass up seeing these films at the drive-in (luckily, it's at the nearby drive-in, which I've never been to, and not the one that's an hour away, where B and I have gone before). I'll probably go on Sunday.

And before then, some hanging out, reading blogs, and doing the regular Friday Random Ten from the 25,551 tracks currently in the iPod (with associated links so you can - mostly - listen along):

1. "The Nearness of You" - Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
2. "I Love You for Sentimental Reasons" - Karl Zero - Songs for Cabriolets and Otros Tipos de Vehiculos
3. "Alone Again Or" - Love - Forever Changes
4. "Look at What I Almost Missed" - The Parliaments - Testify! The Best of the Early Years
5. "Let's Drink to the People" - The Deviants - No. 3
6. "I and I" - Bob Dylan - Infidels
7. "Tiger Roach" - Captain Beefheart & Frank Zappa - The Lost Episodes
8. "Lucy Potato (alternate version)" - Teenage Head - Teenage Head
9. "If You Don't Mind, Mrs. Applebee" - The Human Beinz - Evolutions
10. "The Baker Man" - The Beach Boys - Surfin' USA

No new or interesting videos or photos to post this week -- I seem to be linking to plenty from my Facebook account, which is taking up more of my online interest than this blog these days, but I prefer the form here for writing my weekly updates (and it gets ponged over to Facebook as a note anyway), so I think I'll keep this journal going as long as I'm going. I think I might try to bring it back to something a little more regular, but shorter, with more pictures, something like what Robert Fripp does. We'll see if I can keep that up when I get back home . . .

Well, Portland again, and as nice as usual.

Missed any other updates on Friday. It was a tiring drive up from NYC, and I just felt like relaxing, and then got into working on the George Bataille's Bathrobe script and good things were happening, and next thing I knew it was bedtime.

Much the same on Saturday. And I'm hoping for the same later today. Along with some movie-watching research.

For those who don't know, when doing one of Richard Foreman's plays - generally, there are exceptions - Richard prefers that you start with the text as he writes it, that is, just dialogue and occasional stage directions that he has written in one-page fragments, and then scrambled up and reordered and played with until he's decided that it's "a play," and then you create your own characters, settings, plot or action, etc. So I had a copy of Richard's typescript for George Bataille's Bathrobe (it's never been published in one of his book collections) and I transcribed the pages into the computer, along with some of the fascinating mung in Richard's notes around the typewritten text -- there were lots of handwritten corrections and alternative lines in the margins, and I've included everything I possibly could in my production draft as I could.

Reading over just the dialogue, elements of characters and story emerged, and gradually I had a list of characters (and actors I wanted to play them), a definite setting, a sense of how the feel and movement of the show would work, and the overall structure. However, I still don't know WHO it is saying WHICH line a good deal of the way through the script, so I'm now going through and figuring out all the details, assigning the dialogue to the correct characters, and writing in the stage directions so the actors will know what they're supposed to be doing.

On the other shows, A Little Piece of the Sun has 13 out of 14 actors cast, and I'm waiting for some promised recommendations to be emailed to me on the last actor (I got no one I know right for the part). I'm setting up a first reading for later this month on that one. The Fassbinder play, Blood on the Cat's Neck, has had it's production draft typed up and finished and has been sent to the proposed cast -- 7 of the 10 actors contacted are in; I'm waiting to hear from the other three (though two of them told me in person not long ago it sounded good to them).

So I just need to finish Bathrobe and Spacemen from Space, which I have to write from scratch, a main reason for coming up here to Maine, as I write better away from home.

I was also hoping the great big videostore in town, Videoport, would still have some of the tons of old movie serials they used to, so I could rewatch them as research for Spacemen, which is structured as a cliffhanger serial in six chapters. I had rented them all from the store about 10 years ago. But now? No dice - they were on VHS, and no one ever rented them, so they're long gone. The only serial they have now is the 1949 Batman & Robin, so I got that. I'll have to watch more of the serials I need to see online, which I find annoying and difficult to focus on.

So later, serial. Right now, a Random Ten from the 26,125 tracks on the iPod:

1. "Kidnapping" - Karl Heinz Shäffer - Stereo Ultra
2. "Ain't No Cure For Love" - Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
3. "Heavy Water" - Ray Davies, His Funky Trumpet & Button Down Brass - The Sound Spectrum
4. "To Win Your Love" - Laurie Wade's Cavaliers - Ugly Things #2: Australia's Indiginous Garage Dwellers
5. "So What!!" - The Lyrics - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, Vol. 3
6. "The Curse Of Millhaven" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
7. "Berlin (live 1978)" - Lou Reed - Take No Prisoners
8. "Ultra Twist" - The Cramps - Flamejob
9. "Jailhouse Rock " - The End - Pebbles Volume 6 - Chicago 1
10. "Somebody Somewhere (Solo)" - Andy Prieboy - online single download

Looking for a sharable version of that last song, instead I found Edwin Vacek's excellent homemade/found footage videos for three other recent online song releases by Andy Prieboy, the second frontman for one of my favorite bands, Wall of Voodoo. He hasn't put out an album, unfortunately, since 1995's amazing Sins of Our Fathers (one of my very favorite records), but he's recently released 6 new songs (plus three variant versions) on his website, including the above song, and these three below (one of the songs not here, "Shine," to my pleasant surprise turned out to feature the other WOV frontman, Stan Ridgway, on harmonica!).

If you like 'em, think about picking them up from Prieboy's site.

"Pricks Up Front":

"Bands":

"Hearty Drinking Men":

The one bad thing about coming up here is that, despite having loaner cat Bappers and loaner dog Sasha here to enjoy, we still miss our own little monsters, even if we know they're being well looked after by Tante Christiaan and Unca Bryan:

I do have something like 10 videos saved up that I haven't shared as yet, so in lieu of new stuff the next week of so, I'll dole those out bit-by-bit. Back with those soon enough . . .

4. Disgust


In case you haven't by some chance come across either these original stories, or commentary about them somewhere else, here's a couple of lovely items from The Washington Post on the way our wounded servicemen are being treated by our "SUPPORT THE TROOPS" government when they come home, in PARTS ONE and TWO. Please read them if you don't already know what they're about. I'd say more, but I start to see red and boil over. The articles are disgusting enough and speak for themselves.

My brother David comes home to Maine from the Army this week (day after tomorrow, I believe). He's very lucky that his injury (broken leg) is not something chronic or permanently disabling, given what they're writing about here. Of course he, and all the other soldiers who have been injured in Iraq in "non-combat" ways (he fell through a flight of stairs while on patrol) have not been included in any budget projections in what the VA will need to take care of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, so the Administration can keep the apparent cost of the War down.

Berit and I will be spending next week up in Maine ourselves, so we'll be able to see him then. Good.



And with some additional commentary, here's Mr. Randy Newman with A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.