Hurrah! It’s Wimbledon fortnight!
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Suddenly, I feel like I want to go to Grad School for film…
Student gets go-ahead for porn film
As Bryan would say, it’s time for an Honesty Moment.
As many of the visitors to this website and most of my friends know, the better part of my summers as a child (teen, whatever the hell I was back then) were spent at Stagedoor Manor, a performing arts training center in the Catskill mountains. I have more great memories of that place than I can fathom – and a few of those great memories quite literally went up in flames yesterday.
On one of the edges of the property along Karmel Road sat an old barn that had been converted into an ersatz theater many years ago. (Actually, many spaces on the grounds had been converted into ersatz theaters, but that was part of the Stagedoor charm.) That barn (the Barn Theater, natch) was home to 6 major productions a summer, as well as acting classes, discussions about the industry, rehearsals for student directing projects, and several bats – many of whom enjoyed swooping down in the middle of performances. There wasn’t much to it; aside from porches on either side of the building functioning as “wing space”, it was indistinguishable from any normal Barn. Well, except that it had singing emanating from it most afternoons.
The Barn Theater burned to the ground yesterday morning, victim of an electrical fire.
Everyone always joked about the Barn at Stagedoor – wondering when it would roll down the hill, collapse under its own weight, or otherwise just evaporate into dust. But for all the joking, the Barn Theater was a constant – unchanging (except maybe for a new paint job every now and then) and comfortable. I have so many memories of that theater – Jack Romano’s Acting Technique classes, during which the Barn became a subway platform, a crystal forest, an audition room, a jungle…rehearsing and performing 5 major productions over an eight year period (and fighting for a little space in the cramped backstage area)…my first real venture into Stage Management, Lauren Gleisher’s student director’s festival production of “Sorry, Wrong Number” came together in the Barn…Jack’s “Theater Talks” sessions, where he held court twice a week, answering questions from impressionable youths trying to get their start in the business…
I’ve been told that they’re going to rebuild on the site. That the new theater will be state-of-the-art, with full-size dressing rooms & brand new everything. But as much as it will fill a need for a new theater, I don’t think it can ever replace the Barn.
Jack Romano died in 1991. The Barn Theater (his theater) died 10 years later. Another piece of my childhood gone – unrecoverable. And another piece of the Stagedoor Manor Experience is lost for future generations.
N.Y. Senate to nix driving-cell phone mix
Two things bug me about this. First, as Darren already covered, and as many have pointed out, the vast majority of accidents on the road are not caused by people with handheld cell phones, but rather by stupidity.
(As a side note, I use my cell phone while driving, but I never actually look at the phone? How? I only dial numbers I have committed to memory when the car is in motion. And, if you look at most modern phone keypads, there’s usually a raised or indented spot on the “5” key – once you find “5”, you can dial any number without looking at the phone.)
Cell phones don’t even begin to account for the vast number of accidents on the American road. But they’re a convenient scapegoat, so let’s all jump on the bandwagon! Sorry, folks, but there’s a whole list of things people do behind the wheel that rack up more accidents than cell phone use – like eating fast food from your lap, drinking a Big Gulp, putting on make-up, shaving, reading the morning paper, talking to your passenger, changing the station on your radio…
The other thing that struck me about this article was that the “E-Mail this Story” feature was brought to us by…NexTel – a mobile phone company.
…the HELL?
Well, maybe not, but I can’t resist…
BBC News | AMERICAS | Cookie Monster ‘assaulted’
Aw, what the hell. We haven’t done one of these in a while…
CAPTION THE PHOTO!
Yet again, image courtesy BBC News Online.
So last night, South Park probably set some kind of basic cable record for using the word “shit” unbleeped 162 times in a half hour.
What’s sad about this is that none of the social commentary (once a word is used “on TV”, it’s legitimized for everyday use, hense teaching the children the proper use of “shit” in a sentence) and none of the biting satire (“the Royal Order of Standards & Practices”??) in this episode will be remembered. But saying “shit” 162 times on basic cable? That, for some reason, will be remembered.
And for the record, BBC America, which is obstensively basic (digital) cable, allows use of “shit”, along with a number of other unsavory words that would never see the light of day on any broadcast network, including UPN.
Where the hell have I been?
A few people have been asking me that question over the last week. Well, I’ve been around – it’s just that I don’t have as much time to blog at work as I used to. (To be specific: the time went from 100% of the day to a couple of minutes a day.) So, let me just get everyone up to date.
Last weekend I worked on the Welcome Back to Brooklyn: On the Waterfront festival – which was (duh) on the Brooklyn waterfront. For an entire day, I had Fulton Ferry pier and the lower Manhattan skyline as my office. We had four acts on our stage, the weather was beautiful, and the day was relatively stress-free. I’d do it again in a second.
The new job is going very well – I think. I’m really busy, and I guess I’ve been doing everything right – I haven’t been getting any complaints – but at the end of the day, I can walk out with a smile on my face, my hands aren’t shaking from stress (like they were while I was with the Giant Corporate Overlord), and I’m generally a little happier than I was a month and a half ago.
Well, I guess that’s about it, really. It’s late, and I should probably be getting to bed. Watch this space for updates…
Site Update:
I’ve made a few minor tweaks to several of the pages on the site – most of the bounceback links to the blog/homepage should work properly. I’ve finally posted the links page – could pictures be far behind? Finally, I’ve updated my resume to reflect some of the gigs I’ve done in the last couple of months.