Warf!

Many people think basset hounds are lazy. And that's true. Sebastian sleeps a good 18 hours a day, and since I've been at home more, unemployed and working on my thesis, I've been able to observe him closely.

About three or four times a day, he dreams -- chasing bunnies, I expect, but I'm never quite sure. His paws wiggle, and his nose wrinkles up and you can see his eyes moving under his lids.

But at least once a day when he does this, he growls and yelps and wakes himself up. He looks around, confused -- you can see him trying to work it out. Then he gives me a suspicious glare stretches, and goes back to sleep.

Bristol: The Channel, The Cathedral, The Chart

I don't know why, but I find this endlessly fascinating:

























It's one of those things one finds accidentally on Wikipedia. I guess I simply don't have the kind of rapport with my poop that the creator of this medical chart has.

It does, however, fall well into the category of "distraction from my train-wreck of a life".

.... And then you open a Hotel

So what do you do when your whole world ends?

Travel shows, apparently.
Globe Trekker (on PBS and the Travel Channel), Samantha Brown's Passport series on the Travel Channel, Smart Travels with Rudy Maxa, Rick Steves , Anthony Bourdain, John Ratzenberger, Fred Willard, Burt Wolf or the guy from Have Fork, Will Travel.

I've started watching them all. I've even started watching reruns of Star Trek: Voyager on Spike without retching too much.
Is it a last ditch effort to imbue myself with exoticism before I leave New York? Very probably, I think. Sad, I know.

Life, now, with the ending of all the things I've fought so hard to achieve seems so pointless...
I mean, what's the point of soldiering on when even your dog is going to be taken away from you? My parents aren't young; they deserve a break -- they don't need me sponging off them, but where else have I to go?

I had such dreams for myself.

What Surrounds Us

What I wish...

I wish he would have killed me, instead -- stuck a gun to my head and blew out my brains, stuck a knife through my heart, or poured poison down my throat.

But he didn't.

Okay Cable, ENOUGH ALREADY!

Those of you who don't live in New York probably don't have to sit through 1.800.okaycable's mind-searingly tedious ads. They apparently dig up local bands and pay them enough to shill.

The first one wasn't /so/ bad... It was a group called Early Edison singing about the wonders of one bill for digital cable, internet and long-distance. The lead singer was also passingly cute, so I wasn't grossly offended when it came on 18 times during my People's Court episode each day, and the bassist looked so OTT that I usually giggled.

Here, for your viewing pleasure:


But take a minute and consider the subtext. Apparently, this girl doesn't ever leave the house, and needs to talk to her mother, thousands of miles away, nigh-constantly. She clearly has some psychological issues. The lead singer of the band -- who admits to paying all of these expenses for her -- eyeballs her constantly the way Sebastian the dog eyes a ham, then turns her into a muse of cable advertising. Again, we see some weird obsessive action going on there.

And then there's the guitarist playing like he's trying to save his life.

Were it not for the lively Top 40 Pop/Rock music, it could be a play by Samuel Beckett. But given the music, I'd say it's clearly a verfremsdungeffekt on the part of the singer/actors and this is a modern-day attempt at Brecht.

Now, one would think -- and having been in such bands, written for such bands and played such bands on teh radios, I would consider myself one -- that they may just want to distance themselves from such crass commercialism. But no. Apparently (again, one hopes under the influence of something fun) they do this live:

Here, for your schadenfreude pleasure:


But this ad's run is over. Pseudo-sniff.
Fortunately for those who like local bands, but not enough to go see them or enough to hear their own unadulterated music, 1.800.okay.cable struck again.
This time it was Astoria's own Future86. (And to think, I could have been their neighbour!)

This one, a mid-tempo little ballad that speeds up to a ska-sound didn't exactly have the bizarrely sincere charm of the Early Edison stalkers and their agoraphobic fixation.
In fact, there was no little plot to tell us quite why this chick and her band were in a warehouse (or possibly a very empty cathouse) singing about digital cable.
When the tempo changes, the chick starts caterwauling about wanting it all and doing some third-tier Madonna-esque*posing in a wind tunnel that has suddenly sprung up (insert your own joke about sucking here) and the band doesn't even have the dignity not to look vaguely distasteful. Then, thankfully, the 30-second spot ends.

And so did the ad's campaign.

But wait! There's more! Just this week 1.800.okay.cable's come back with a /60/ second version. The first one caused an apartment-wide leap onto the Tivo remote -- Sebastian the dog not excluded -- to fast forward through the ad. This one causes the same, but... more. It makes me afraid to watch TV at all -- you never know when it's going to be put on the air, or what network. It lurks, like an evil shark, behind the pixels ready to jump whenever you're weak or unready. When you go for a pee during the commercials, there it is. Up for a snack? Its notes reverberate on your turned back. It will consume you. Fear Future86. Fear their love of package internet deals. Fear Spangly cami-tops and Leopard-print guitar straps. Fear Her.**

When the Doctor Could Still Smack People Around

People ask me, "Why is Jon Pertwee your favourite Doctor Who?" and use about as much disdain as possible. It isn't just the fab wardrobe or the gadgets or vehicles, oh no.
It's the karate:



Sorry, but it's been an awful day and I'm too tired to be properly amusing.

Chomp!

So, Sebastian bit me. Again.
Right on the face -- in fact, he managed to bite inside and outside my mouth, ripping a nasty gash inside my cheek.

I called a cab and bled. We went to the emergency room at this hospital.
And waited for the next eight hours. And bled.
When the low-rent version of the ER Indie-Rock Doctor finally showed up, he looked at me and said
we don't give people stitches inside their mouth and wrote a prescription for antibiotics.
It maybe took three minutes.
I hate him.
(He also promised to give me some bandage strips for the outside wounds. He never bothered to come back to give those.)

We got into a cab at 4.30 in the morning and rode home.

You'll notice there's a link above. Go there. Bitch.

--Jaylemurph

Final Gilmore Ruminations

So... last night. Last Gilmore Girls. It was better than I expected. I was even a little sad at the end. I couldn't make up my mind, though, if the episode was shot /knowing/ it was the series finale.

This one guy pointed out that it went to great lengths to feature everyone from Stars Hollow (except it didn't -- Mrs Kim and the Troubadour at least were missing). And of course Luke and Lorelei got back together. And the last shot, the girls eating at a closed Luke's Diner, mirrored the last shot of the first episode.

I think they were hedging their bets, filming something that could work as a finale, but could also work fine as a season ender -- just a little too much was set up that could have been explored in a new season...

My final word? I was right. In the previous weeks' episode, they got Emily to singing. In complete opposition to everything ever established about her character.

Pointless Complexity

Ever have a complex relationship with someone with whom you have virtually /no/ relationship, or is it just me?

One of this one guy's friends is this person who elicits strong reactions from me. Now, I have met this person exactly once -- he and his boyfriend came over one evening. He promptly drank some Scotch and fell asleep on our couch.
For several hours.
His boyfriend was more game; He, some other guy, my friend Emily and I all played Katamari Damacy and drank heavily til late in the night. All told, it was a nice night. And there was some bother about this person switching from all-night to daytime work, and him suffering from insomnia, blah blah blah.
I was not amused.

Which is a shame because, truth be told, he isn't a bad person. He's smart and witty, and nice to look at, to boot. I read his livejournal often even though I probably oughtn't to; it's friends only but I can use this one guy's cookies to bypass that. Generally speaking, I don't hate him. Anything but.

Except on the rare occasion when I do. Something he'll write something or this one guy will mention about him will absolutely convince me he's scum. Really low-down, awful and hideous.
A strange amount of negative passion for someone I've met once.

I've noticed it before and sort of shrugged it off as either some personality quirk or some odd factor in him.

...but then yesterday, it hit me. He also looks like someone, someone I could never quite figure out. I remembered yesterday.
He's a dead ringer for the first boy I ever asked out. It's remarkable.
I had a massive crush on this other boy turned me down -- terribly. It was June and when I asked him out -- for an inoffensive coffee no less, not a seedy trip Legends or a tres cher French dinner -- he told me he had to study for his exams. I was humiliated and angry. And while I can't remember his name any more (it's probably floating around this site somewhere, but I can't be arsed), I remember exactly what he looked like.

Somebody's friend.

Odd bit of passion and anger solved, then.

Addenda

Two other things:

1) It took about two days for this post to germinate.
I must have been thinking about it before I fell asleep last night because I had a GG-tangential dream. In it, Paris Gellar was a friend of mine who owed me a favour. Whilst staying at my Grandmother's, my contact lenses became so dirty they wouldn't adhere to my eyes.
I convinced Paris to drive me home to get new ones... Only to be stopped by the dastardly forces of Civil War Re-Enactors. We fled through a series of leaps several hundred feet high.
What does it mean? The answer frightens even me.

2) The cancellation of GG brings an end to my prophecies concerning the show. Which is a right pain. For the sake of posterity, here they are:

In Season 8:
A) Luke and Lorelei get back together, ultimately marrying. Or at least moving in with
each other. Jovial and intolerable bickering ensues.
B) April joins them to become the new, young, Gilmore Girl. They will, upon occasion,
be joined by Rory who married Logan, got a newspaper job and moved to the West Coast. Her return probably comes during Sweeps.
C) Richard finally kicks the bucket, leaving Emily free to star in a sit-com spin-off, where she
goes into business with Mrs. Kim and travels the country in a trailor selling antiques to
rubes.
D) Related to C: The writers, tempted beyond control by Kelly Bishop's musical theatre
background, will write an all-musical episode.

Gil Me No More

So I heard the other day that the New CW is cancelling Gilmore Girls.

I wasn't surprised.
And I wasn't very upset. That /did/ surprise me. After all, Gilmore Girls has been my favourite American television show for years.
But let's face it: it jumped the shark a while ago. This season has really been driving that home. For the first half of this season, 4 or 5 episodes would pile up on the Tivo before this one guy or I could be bothered to watch them; even then, it was more out of commitment to the Remembrance of Things Past* than actual pleasure.

So what went wrong?
Well, you can't blame the CW, its new network this season, which formed from the unlikely merge of the WB and UPN...
Can you blame the leaving of Amy Sherman-Palladino, the show's creator at the end of last season? Well, probably. Quite frankly a lot of the problems cropping up in the show look a lot like actors getting to much head and writers without much self-control.

The biggest single issue, I think, is (was?) the show's growing lack of respect for its viewers. Early on, the show hummed with energy; the dialogue was lighting fast and its references -- to pop culture and to more, umm, obscure areas of culture -- were just as fast.
And unexplained. The show just assumed you got it. And it assumed you could put the parts of a plot together without being babied.

Now? Hah!
The scenes of the show this season, virtually every one of every episode drag. Drag like a bad SNL skit with Derek Jeter. Too long. Too obvious. Everyone says exactly what they mean, means exactly what they say and go to almost absurd lengths to make sure you at home get it, too.
That'd be the end of oh, say, complexity and subtlety.

Concomitant with that was the lack of discipline on the part of the writers. Luke and Lorelei's romance was built up over the course of years. It was defined by its complexity and depth.
And then it was essentially over in a night and the two acted like children for a year.

...and then Lorelei took up with Christopher. Which had all the cleverness of a divorced six-year old*. And then that ended, too.
It seems a lot like a group of writers sitting around and saying "What'd be fun?" rather than "What will develop our characters?" or "What would be really interesting drama?"
"Fuck it," says they, "A marriage in Paris would be pretty!"

What really told me things were going down was Logan. Flimsiest pre-text of a character he is -- and oh, so perfect for Matt Czuchry as an actor -- they were pretty stalwart about not showing his flesh. Much to my chagrin.
Fortunately and tellingly, a recent episode went to pains to show him in bed, in his boxers, discussing (slowly, natch) his need to be dressed in front of Lorelei.

...and then it hits me. Shark jumped = the time Rory picked Logan over Marty.
Saw him nude his first time on camera. Rory always was a smart girl.

*1) Nice little season 1/2 present for you there.

*2) Another little sly joke there for you.

Hi. Again.


I've decided to start this up (again).
Unfortunately, I've made this decision the same day that I'm leaving for the week-end.

Here's a neat little widget to tide you over.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

I should have known it was coming...

Sitting there in the cinema for the first night's showing of Brokeback Mountian, we /all/ knew it was coming. As sure as Summer follows Spring and day follows night, it would arrive. And we were right. Not long after, you could rent Bareback Mountain. Or Bareback Mountain.
We needn't go into detail. The Wikipedia article is dandy because it treats something so awful with such sincerity. Glitter For Brains did a delightful comparison of the first porno with the actual film here. (You may have to scroll down a bit, but it's worth it).
What none of us expected was that these wouldn't be enough: now, you can watch Bi-Back Mountain! I have no idea what to say to that one.

Having sat through that, here's something almost worth a giggle:

This one guy insisted on seeing Brokeback the night it came out, so we humped down to the Village (where else?) for an evening show. The cinema was packed with not just every homo in the city, but his boyfriend and best girl friend as well. We all crammed in early to get good seats and watched the commercials that flashed on the screen before the previews.
"Beware of Brain Disease!" cried the screen in its best 1950s/Red Scare voice. "It killed Joanthan Larson, and it was COMPLETELY DETECTABLE!" Jonathan Larson* wrote Rent.

At this point, I should mention that my date and I had just been to our favourite little restaurant downtown called Tea and Sympathy. Wine was consumed.

"Well," I said, thinking it to be in a subtle whisper, "if it killed off Larsen, how bad can it be?"
It was not a whisper.

The entire auditorium -- 300 or 400 people -- went deadly silent. I knew I was going to die. My date had mysteriously disappeared. The tension increased and I came to know how riots started.
Then, without warning, the film began, sans previews. The audience, too busy anticipating the imminent cowboy sex, forgot me. And I made it though one more day.

For them such as are interested...


I've done up a rather nice Flikr site. Not only does it have a wider selection of pictures from Henry V, but also has all the pictures worth looking at from my vacation in Vermont, as promised. There are even a few other random pictures culled from the computer hard drive. They're all

here.

In case you're curious, the random photos are: where I work (the Time Warner building in mid-town Manhattan), my place (in the sun), across the street (in a big snow), the Bronx Zoo tigers and Sebastian, the Hound of Rock.

I've had the past two days in a row off, which is virtually unheard of. How have I spent it? Creating he above-mentioned Flikr site, trying unsuccessfully to turn a nice little paper on William Davenant's life into a better Wikipedia article, and a nerdy run downtown to the Strand, Forbidden Planet, the Virgin Megastore and Jim Hanley's Universe. This netted me a New Mermaids copy of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy from the Strand and The Resurrection Casket and this month's copy of Doctor Who Magazine from Jim Hanley's Universe. You see where my priorities lie.

The last two were in lieu of the hardback version of Target's novelization of Inferno that was on sale for $20 and worth about twice as much: Que sera, sera. I had seen it a week ago, but decided I'd only dish out that much cast if it were there today, when it would become clear I was destined for it. As I'm not, I'll revel in the fact I own pristine copies of The Dying Days, Lungbarrow and Cold Fusion. Don't worry: if none of the past paragraph is intelligible to you, it merely means you have a life and can't be arsed with the minutiae of Doctor Who fandom. Good on you.
Nevetheless, the seasan finale of the new Doctor Who is tomorrow night, when Rose Tyler is to die, in and amongst the fan-wanking spree of combined Cybermen/Dalek alliance. I can't lie: it's got me harder than Ayor's Team Training,* if only for knowing that Russell T Davies has had then same idea as me floating around in his head since 1985 or so.

In other news, when some guy and I went to go see the film Superman Returns (or, Can Someone Named B. J. Routh Be Anything Other Than Corn-Fed Iowa Porn-Star Goodness?), there was a trailor (trailer? I'm never sure about such things) for a film called Flyboys.

I was lucky enough last year to take a Theatre and War class with Erika Munk, a writer for the Village Voice, a professor and Yale and editor of Theater whose done (and edited) really top-notch work on war and its representation. It was Awful, and it's worth noting that positive representations of it are rare as hen's teeth -- with reason. I was disturbed to see the preview for the film (to be fair, perhaps not the entire film) to be gung-ho for the War. There is nothing in World War One to be romanticized or celebrated. I can't help feeling this film desecrates the deaths of the millions of soldiers who died.

If you disagree, nose around this site, which contains music, film footage and diary material from the war. It's compelling, and fascinating and horrifying. I love the music and audio selections, but even they can be dismaying -- look at this , or this , this. It certainly counters the charms of K-K-K-Katy or Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty or Keep the Home Fires Burning.

In other news, I finished reading Coriolanus today. More of that later.


*Oh honestly, with that name, if you expected this to be a link to anything other than gay porn, you need more help than I can give. Besides, it's /really/ good porn.

Meanwhile...

Wondering what I've been up to since my last post?

1) I directed a production of Henry V. Here are pictures.

In the interest of fair representation, I need to note the set and lights were designed by Eric Ketchum, costumes by E. A. Burlingame and staging by me. The cast list is here. Questions about cat listing can be posted to me.


Number two? A vacation in Vermont and Montreal. I'll post pictures from that tomorrow.

K-9 and Co...

Dear Blog:

I thought the worst part of tonight's Doctor Who episode ("School Reunion") was when I had /genuinely/ inappropriate thoughts about David Tennant as the Doctor, with his glasses and assumed role as a teacher. So Hot.

Turns out, I managed to wake up some guy with my generally inappropriate giggling when K-9 appeared, and then proceeded to bawl like a baby when... later events in the episode transpired. But still, it makes me generally doubt our relationship when Sarah Jane Smith returns in a series of Doctor Who and he says "Uhh, yep" instead of dancing a happy dance.

I will end this post saying it was my favourite episode of Doctor Who ever, including "The Pyramids of Mars" (mentioned in tonight's story) and "Genesis of the Daleks" (also mentioned).

Stop the Dog's Addiction!

So on Saturdays, I work late. I don't get home till close to (or after) midnight. This guy always makes a tasty meal of sausages and peppers I can look forward to, as well as downloading new episodes of Doctor Who.

Within a few minutes of me getting home tonight, we found the dog munching on some verboten substance. I was afraid of prying open the dog's jaws to discover the culprit, as the dog has maimed me before. That guy -- who's suffering from a pulled muscle in his chest -- couldn't.

Soon after, Sebastian gave up his chewing. He'd gotten ahold of a coffee bean out of my jeans cuff and couldn't handle it.

We await the puke.

Quick! Breathe fast!

It's my Spring Break right now, which means I'm getting a quick breather from classes, rehearsal, teaching and work. Well, all but work, anyway.

Henry V is going reasonably well. It's had about as much superfluous drama as you might expect (college theatre is only one step away from high school theatre, after all) but there are quite a few quite nice moments to be had and some of the actors -- the actual, real world, professional actors we have in to fill the ranks -- are a joy to work with. It's the thought of work with people like them again that makes it worth going through, really, although there is some joy to be had watching young actors discovering their own thing. Even if it is a bit malicious, nine times out of ten they discover things like that when they do what I suggest...

Because of the undergraduate desire to skip out on rehearsal, we're about a week off from my ideal. If there were no Spring Break, we'd be absolutely on target, but as it is we'll be missing about a week of time we need. It's funny: despite the fact I'm a trained and (somewhat) experienced director, my producer won't believe me when I say we're behind. Granted, we may just be ready for opening night, but part of directing is a) working with gut feeling and b) being able to realistically judge what's going on with your production. Both of these tell me we won't be where we should be for opening night. We have a week of rehearsals left, but these are all dress/tech rehearsals where the actors get use to costumes/lights/sets/props -- not so much a chance for them to work their acting skills. My job should be done by now; it isn't.
Still and all, I can't completely blame myself for what hasn't been done, and feel like I've given a decent shake with what I have done. And as all people in the theatre know -- and as Philip Henslowe said in the lovely film Shakespeare in Love -- "the magic of the theatre" will prevail. I hope.

Other than the play -- and it's a bit hard to get past that for me right now -- life is pretty good. I read a lot, or as much as I can. I've been going through a bit of a Sarah Vowell phase. I've read her first two collections, Take the Cannoli and The Partly Cloudy Patriot. I'd be reading her last one, Assasination Vacation, had some guy not loaned it out to some errant associate at his job weeks ago.
If she weren't a girl, I'd probably be madly in love with her. Her take on life is vaguely similar to mine (we have vaguely similar histories) but she has what I think is a very unique and modern voice. I'd be happy for people to say -- and they have -- that she speaks for my generation. Interestingly, the title of her fist books takes the same root as a Gilmore Girls gag.
I plan to spend the next week away from school and reading. Since my last post, I've finished reading all the books mentioned and am now on to:

Good King Henry: another life of Henry V -- emotionally well rendered and very engaging, but lapses into the old mistake of using 'thee's and 'thou's to prove its characters are from a few centuries ago.

The Empire of Glass: a Doctor Who story featuring Shakespeare, Marlowe, Galileo and the Doctor's... vaguely defined relative. Fairly fun, til you realize the plot hinges on a poorly-researched Roanoke colony plot line. Especially galling when you've spent as much time on Roanoke Island as I have... the number of colonists is wrong, it suggests that Marlowe -- Kit Marlowe -- went there with them, and worst of all, that there are cliffs on the Island!
Right, pedantry all and not worth counting, but it does have Marlowe falling for Stephen "Blue Peter" Taylor. As if.

The Messianic Legacy: what with all the excitement about the Da Vinci Code film, why not go back to its (legally determined) source? The sequel to the Holy Blood, Holy Grail book whose first 25 pages provide all the plot of Dan Brown's "book", this work tells you all the secrets the of Super Secret Sectet Society, The Priory of Sion. While parts of it are quite well researched, one of the authors /was/ a writer for Doctor Who. Go fig which bits are fake, but when the blood line of the aliens from Sirius gets metioned, have a care.

Rescripting Shakespeare: Written by a professor at Carolina with no practical theatrical background, this is a book about modern productions of Shakespeare that alter the text from the "standard" texts and the trade-offs directors incur. I'm only on page 12, but there seems to be a lot to be said about this from an actual, practical director.

The Crying of Lot 49: I've felt far too smart of late. I bought this book this week to cure that. I'm only on Chapter Two, but I do want to go 'round saying "I've got a penchant for Pynchon."

In the meantime, I'm playing this ridiculous and frustating game called Kingdom Hearts, the bastard offspring of Walt Disney and Final Fantasy... Any help?

And remember, Series Two of Doctor Who begins tomorrow night with "The New World". Whoot!

Oh yeah. That was me. In a previous life.

Life is busy now, and stressful. I often think I can measure my stress complications with how many books I'm reading. Currently, it's:

Seneca's Oedipus (for class)
George R Stewart's Earth Abides (out of curiousity)
Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot (cause it's class)
George C Wolfe's The Colored Museum (for the class I teach)

and for Henry V:
1 Henry VI
The Merry Wives of Windsor (for the third time)
and Baldasare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier

This is more than enough. In addition to this, I'm managing a small fracas about a loose blade in rehearsal, someone stealing my props, and an eighty-year old quitting my show (just how mad can you get at an octogenarian and not do damage to it?).
And on top of that, my dog appears to have a seizure disorder AND the Sci-Fi network can't even edit Doctor Who for shit:

Rose: Why do they keep tryin' to kill me?

The Doctor: Dunno -- we skipped the bit where the Autons try more than once!

I got sufficiently pissed to quit watching Rose... here's hoping they do better with The End of the World...


However...
In looking up something completely different on teh Internets, I found
this article from The Friends of the Heroes.
It's my interview of Richard, the drummer from Belle and Sebastian. I hadn't looked at it in years, but it's well-informed, smart, and fun to read. Sadly, I think it's the previous release of me, back when I had some cool points.
I don't feel like that now. Nice to know I was there, for a bit.