Posts from — March 2005

My friend Charles warned me this would happen. He thinks it’s because I left a post entitled “Sex Flight” as my lead post for too long. Maybe it’s the profanity that sometimes weaves its way into my writing. Maybe some people can’t take a joke. Whatever the reason, rumblestrip.org has been banned by the IT department at the Canadian theatre where my friend works.

Cool. I’m edgy now.

Now, you have to wonder though: what in the hell is a theatre doing censoring stuff? Hmmm?

(By the way, the theatre isn’t in Buttonville, the nearest small airport is.)

So, we’re underway. The Office—a hysterical comedy about the banality of corporate office working life—put on by the BBC for a couple seasons, has been brought across the Atlantic, and American network NBC is trying its hand at putting first class comedy on American air.

So far, so good.

You may recall my gushing about the original BBC series. It deserved all that and more (and got it, from lots of critics). So when I heard they were going to try and get this series to fly on American television, I began to steel myself against the watered-down writing, and the inevitable bad ratings that it would garner. Just last year, another very funny show on BBC, “Coupling”, was absolutely horrible when rendered on American television, and I feared the same fate for Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant’s creation.

The pilot episode aired last Thursday, and I was amazed to see that they basically lifted the entire script from the BBC series’ pilot, nearly verbatim. No laugh tracks, plenty of uncomfortable pauses, and shots of copier machines monotonously running through their paces. Funny stuff that I once thought I had to go to the U.K. to see. But here it is.

Last night, the series moved to its regular program spot, and the new episode featured a beginning departure from the BBC script. The basic themes are the same, the characters and plot lines the same, but there are subtle additions and rewrites that are making it a new, American version. And it’s still really really funny.

One of the interesting things to watch for is the substitution of American slang, iconography and geography for their British counterparts that appeared in the BBC series. For example: redundancies are now downsizing, jelly is now Jell-O™, a puff is a queen, Camilla Parker Bowles is now Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Slough is now Scranton. As someone who loves the British vernacular, I find it interesting to see what the writers choose to “Americanize”, and how they choose to do it.

In many ways, I envy those who have not seen the BBC series because they have no frame of reference for this fine show. I hope it catches on, but then again, when you read reviews like this piece of crap, you realize that most of America wants titties and laughtracks between their beer commercials, and dammit, just can’t be bothered with having to figure out for themselves what’s a joke and what’s idle chatter.

Good luck to Steve Carell and the cast of NBC’s The Office!

March 25 was my Dad’s birthday for as long as I can remember, and long before that. I guess it still is, in the sense that he was born on this day. But he also died on another day — June 3rd — which adds a whole new wrinkle to the whole “birthday” thing. And since this is the first arrival of Dad’s birthday since his passing, I’ve been thinking about the significance of the day.

We celebrate birthdays because they mark the passing of a year in a life. But what about a year in a death? Should June 3rd hold a new significance? Do we stop celebrating the birthday and start marking time since the second biggest event in a life?

June 3rd will forevermore cease to be cause for celebration, but then again March 25th is the day my dad was born… and now he’s gone. So what are we to celebrate? I guess today’s a day for reflection on all the years he was here, and all the memories that were initiated by his being on this planet. And June 3rd’s a day for reflection on the pain of losing him, and memories of the realization that he was no longer on this planet.

So, what to celebrate? Probably it’s a subtle blend of the two from now on.

Since I cannot hand him a book to open this year, let me hand you all a couple chapters from his book: new content at The Kid’s site, available now.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

There’s an old saying that goes: “those who can’t do, teach”. Woody Allen extended and enhanced that into a joke with the corollary: “and those who can’t teach, teach gym.” But what does one say about someone can’t write theatre reviews? Where do they come from? More importantly, why do bad theatre reviewers exist? Gym is one thing — a monkey can throw a ball at a bunch of adolescents and blow a whistle — but analyzing a play and reporting on it to a local readership — who just may have to rely on the ability of said reporter to know whether they might want to see it — takes a little more skill than that. It does a community a disservice when a press outlet’s installed theatre critic is so bad at what he does: so biased, so fickle, so research averse, and… well, just such a poor writer, that his reviews are little more than a childish blow-by-blow by a cliquish wannabe director. Who can’t write.

Peter Filichia, I’m talking to you.

Peter Filichia is the NJ theatre critic for the New Jersey Star Ledger, a central Jersey newspaper with an excellent sports section, balanced editorial staff and a decent arts section. Everything happening in the arts in the NY metropolitan area is dutifully covered by the Star Ledger, and done well. Except for the plays in New Jersey. As you may imagine, New Jersey theatrical openings are generally the domain of Mr. Filichia.

Like a small gnat that occasionally buzzes in my ear at a summer barbecue, Mr. Filichia’s reviews have sporadically annoyed me over the years, especially when he blows one while attempting to cover a production at the theatre where my wife works. But this latest one has me really pissed off.

You may recall my recent gushing about “Address Unknown”, the latest production at GSP. A play about the horrific effects of Hitler’s rhetoric and the ability of people to go along with some bad shit. Deep down, I wondered if Pete would get this one right or blow it again. He blew it.

“Too short!”, says Pete. “It’s annoying for them to constantly repeat the perfunctory information contained within each letter, each time the actors read a new letter”. Wheah. It’s called context, you butt. He mentioned how the post-performance discussion that was added for the entire run (normally only a feature during preview performances) was interesting, but surmised that it was padding the short runtime of the performance. He’s right in that the talkback was interesting — the night I was there WWII veterans and college students alike were discussing Nazis and Bush. Wait, that’s the same thing. I digress. But to accuse the producers of “padding” the show with this talkback is insulting. The talkback was more stimulating than ever for this production, because the production fostered the conversation. Just another missed point in Pete’s happy existence as Grand Poobah of New Jersey theatre.

It would appear that Mr. Filichia is jealous of his fellow staffers who get to go to New York City and review the larger productions there, or perhaps he just has it in for GSP or one of the artistic staff there? I think he just lacks the ability to get his head around new, straight plays. He generally does better with musicals that have been done before — and reviewed before. Of course that didn’t stop him from devoting several sentences of his previous GSP review to “warn” potential audiences on the use of blackface in the last production “Lend me a Tenor”. Good job, Petey, less about the production and more about judging what is socially acceptable. Pete: we’re at the theatre, not nursery school.

If “Waiting for Guffman” had a theatre critic character, Peter Filichia’s sophomoric reviews would provide the same rich comedy that those awful costume sketches of Corky St. Clair’s did. And Bob Balaban would be reassigned to play the role. Who would play the musical director then? Hmmm.

Those who can’t do, write reviews. And those who can’t write are generally bounced down to obituary features or fact checking. So what in the hell is the excuse for Peter Filichia? We’d like to know.

Say hi to Breda. Breda is the youngest daughter (she’s three) of our friends Dierdre and Evan. Last time we saw her, she was being baptized, and that was years ago. Breda and her older twin sisters Claire and Elise live with mom and dad in San Antonio, Texas as mom is finishing out her medical residency. We miss them.

So when mom, dad and the gang were in Boston for a medical conference, and staying through the weekend before heading home, Brenda & I thought it a good chance to see them all. Amtrak’s Acela service whisked us up to Boston Friday night, and Saturday morning I found myself sitting at a table with three sets of young eyes watching me eat eggs.

Those who know me know I have no kid aspirations. The little ones pretty much freak me out. But it always makes me happy to see people devoted to the idea of not only bringing people into this world, but following through on the responsibility of raising those people, every day, for the rest of their lives. Evan & Dierdre are two such people, and Saturday we got to see the current state of the fruits of their efforts.

And when Breda decided to fall in love with me over breakfast, I was only too happy to indulge her every whim for the remainder of the day.

Kids are drawn to me. They smell fear.

Walking out of the hotel to start our day, Breda looked up at me, blinked, smiled, and thrust her hand up at me. I was to hold her hand. I melted. We held hands for much of the day, I carried her around, and by the end of the day “Uncle Rob” was carrying her on his shoulders, because, quite simply, that’s what she had asked him to do.

Dierdre & Evan & Brenda & I caught up on things, which was great, but just watching all three of their kids behave like little growing adults was simply amazing. There are other stories, and other pictures from this weekend, but right now Emma demands she be petted.

I’m pleased to announce that the website containing my father’s writing has some new additions. A co-worker of his contacted me recently and informed me that she had copies of his stories, including some that I did not have in my collection here. She sent them to me last week and they arrived this weekend. I was delighted, because I just knew of at least one story that I didn’t have. Well, that one, along with a couple others I’d never seen, were included in the envelope.

I read them all over a bowl of soup (and a couple of beers) this Saturday. It was easier than the first batch of stories. I know that’s progress, but it’s also not necessarily a good thing.

Anyway, I typed up a couple of them and added them to the site, so I wanted to let y’all know. There are a few more, and I’ll get them up there as soon as I can. I type slowly.

Enjoy them.

“Despair overthrown often turns in mad directions.”

So says Martin Schulse. Martin, one of two characters in “Address Unknown” — the latest play in previews at the theatre where Brenda works — is beginning to slide down the slippery slope into Nazism, in early 1930’s Germany. This statement — along with an amazing monologue that to Martin Schulse is about “liberals” and could easily be heard from the talking head of the week of the neocon plague currently rotting this country — are among the many gems contained in this wonderful 75 minute theatrical immersion. This is what theatre is supposed to be. I loved Jerry Orbach, but “and you give me Allentown?!?” is not the stuff of real theatre.

Real theatre is an hour and a half of sitting on the edge of your seat, watching something that speaks to you. Real theatre is a verbal and physical accusation, a statement. And when the statement is “look what happened”, and that statement so easily translates today to “look what is happening, again, you morons”, you take notice.

The play is an adaptation of a story written by Kressmann Taylor that first appeared in “Story” magazine in 1938, brilliantly adapted and directed by Frank Dunlop. The production is one of the greatest theatrical and literary experiences of my life.

“A short time before the war, some cultivated, intellectual, warmhearted German friends returned to Germany after living in the United States. In a very short time they turned into sworn Nazis. They refused to listen to the slightest criticism of Hitler. During a return visit to California, they met an old, dear friend of theirs on the street who had been very close to them, and was a Jew. They did not speak to him. They turned their backs on him when he held his arms out to embrace him. ‘How can such a thing happen?’ I wondered.” —Kressmann Taylor

In the course of the short play, you watch Martin go through this transformation, as the two characters — a Jewish antiques dealer in San Fransisco and Martin who has moved back to Germany as Hitler is ramping up his hate machine — act out their correspondence.

The dramatic effect of watching these letters come to life, and the lives belonging to the letters morph and interract, is just fantastic theater.

And, I may add, Brenda’s costume work was fantastic. It was amazing how Martin’s pants seemed perfectly straight in the opening scene, and a few scenes later as the tall black boots went on the thighs only looked slightly blousy, yet when the officer’s jacket was finally pulled on, suddenly Martin looked like any SS officer. It was great, just great.

Since this was a preview, the audience was invited to stay after the performance for a “Talk-back”, which proved to be as interesting as any I have witnessed (BTW, for this production, they will be hosting talk-backs on every night of the run, not just for previews). The actors, the director and the artistic director held forth with the audience, and yet the audience proved to be the most interesting element. There were WWII participants, and youngins like me yapping about the Patriot Act. It was great.

I hope the George Street Playhouse has a successful run with this show.

I’ve been saying for some time now that I want to do this or that to my website, find a better host, add more content (some of it old content that never made it back online after the last time I changed software). Well, recently a bunch of things happened all at once. My webhost had a series of outages and poor performance periods, followed by a very frustrating lack of follow-up by the webhost’s tech support. Then, my friend Paul switched from Movable Type to the new version of WordPress. Intrigued, I had a look at WordPress’ website. Turns out, they have added a bunch of functionality that I have wanted, and many of the features that initially appealed to me in Textpattern are easier to use or more intuitive for me in WordPress 1.5. Then, my friend Joe offered me a slice of his server to host my website, with more functionality, for less money. Like the Jeffersons, I moved on up.

Unfortunately, the import script that takes my Textpattern database (which contains all the content of the site — entries, comments, links, web design) and imports it into WordPress coughed on a few items. There are some missing posts, and a lot of missing comments. But, the main concern was that the comments for Bil’s post were intact, and they seemed to be. I’ll rebuild the rest of the missing stuff as time permits (I of course still have all the material in a copy of the old database).

This was a learning experience. I have a little more experience with dns now, and php statements are less foreign to me as well. I plan to get my site’s database in order, then to add more content, and maybe play with the layout some. Then, finally, get some damned photos on here.

Please bear with me as I fix broken links and get everything settled in. I know stuff is busted. I know.

Onward and upward.

Friday

AIM_me: “This is getting complicated.”

AIM_him: “It’s really not. I could have this set up for you in like 30 seconds.”

AIM_me: “OK, here’s my domain registrar login info, here’s what I want…”

Saturday

email received: Subject: Domain Change Request Notice…

situation normal. went flying.

Sunday Morning

Load www.rumblestrip.org: “hi! coming soon! this domain reserved!”

Begin freaking out.

Trade gmail. AIM chat. Resolution.

Enjoy remainder of Sunday.

Sunday Evening

Hi. I’m back. The first stage of my migration to a new webhost hit a pothole, but I’ve learned a lot about dns (domain name service) in the process, and now am the proud owner of not one but two hosted sites. My email is now being received at a new server, and my website still lives at my old host. I have a developmental webspace at my new host, and someday soon I hope to start using that to develop and test a kinder gentler way more kick-ass website that will make you all very proud of me.

Meanwhile, there was about a 14-hour period of time (starting Mar 5 2005 10:33PM EST) where my site was down, and email may or may not have been delivered to me. And this has me concerned, because I’m currently engaged in a sweet deal with this Nigerian fellow, and I’d hate to miss any communications with him.

Seriously, sorry for the downtime (and seriously, if you sent me email last night, you might wanna resend it ((save for the spam))). It was an unfortunate accident but at least the result of me setting the pieces in place to begin a total revamp of my website, which has been a long time coming.

And the next item up for bid, a lovely heart-shaped bathtub. Red. Who’ll give me $100? One hundred? One ten, one ten, lemmehearonetwenty, one ten, lemmehear one twent—onetwenty…

…and so it will go, over and over, until all the heart-shaped tubs are gone.

The Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge was once a prime honeymoon spot for NYC-area newlyweds, nestled in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, but they closed their doors in 2001. They offered an array of tacky rooms (over 900 in fact), in which it seemed everything was heart-shaped and red: heart-shaped beds (that rotate), heart-shaped tubs, heart-shaped windows, heart-shaped bath soap. While a red heart-shaped tub is certainly interesting enough, for me the pinnacle of newlywed chic was the champagne glass-shaped tub. Young couples would ascend a ladder and hop into a giant glass of effervescent liquid—presumably bubble bath—and engage in a little dip into bad taste (among other things, as I would find out later in life).

Back in the late 1970s when Saturday Night Live was actually good, I used to stay up way past my bedtime so I could watch the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and pretend I got all the jokes (I was nine in 1977, so I didn’t). But during the commercial breaks, my sister & I could count on two commercials every week: one for The Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge, and another for the Ideal Manufacturing Corporation. I looked forward to seeing these just as much as the rest of the show.

The Ideal Manufacturing Corporation’s offering featured what appeared to be some out-of-date footage of models steppin’ out with their husbands in some impossibly large Lincoln, while the following lyrics filtered out of the speakers:

If you’ve got a passion for fashion, (bee-bum)
and you’ve got a craving for saving, (bee-bum)

take the wheel, of your automobile,

and swing on down to, IDEAL! (bop, ba-da-da-da-DAH dum…)

While I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, I know those lyrics by heart. They’re so bad, they’re good, and the Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge must have gone to the same ad agency as the Ideal Clothing Corporation, as their ads were equally cheesy and downright delicious. First of all, the place was actually called, simply: Mount Airy Lodge. But you see, the finale of their little promotional ditty featured a chorus of women liltingly singing “Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge”, and so it became the Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge for my sister & I. The commercial also showed lots of grainy snapshots of their blood-red, heart-shaped bedspreads, and so help me god, actual human beings in a giant champagne glass bathtub. Everyone seemed to be having such a good time, amidst all the velour. And of course they were; the place was billed as a honeymoon paradise—everyone was humping like jackrabbits. But I was nine when I was watching these commercials. I assumed they were just enjoying the fact that they had a giant bathtub shaped like a drink glass in the middle of their bedroom. Turns out they were, but not in the way I had been imagining.

Those commercials are such a part of my youth, I was saddened to find that this weekend, the whole honeymoon horror show is going to the auction block. If you’ve always wanted a heart shaped tub, or bed, god help you, but this weekend a place in the Poconos just may have what you’re looking for.

P.S.
So, in another case of You Gotta Love The Internet, my curiosity got the better of me: right after posting this story, I Googled “ideal manufacturing” and “commercial”. Not only did I find a website that has info about this fine institution (as well as an MP3 of the song from the commercial), but they also mention that they have an airport on site. It’s private use, but I think I need to get permission to land there, don’t you? Oddly enough, I was planning a flight to Hammonton anyway, as it’s on my list of NJ public-use airports I’ve yet to land at.

P.P.S.
From the Airnav entry for Ideal Manufacturing Airport:

Airport Operational Statistics
Aircraft based on the field: 1

Single engine airplanes: 1

Additional Remarks – PRIVATE FACILITY LICENSED BY STATE FOR 1 PLANE 1 PILOT

Guess I’m not flying there.

P.P.P.S.
In reading the wealth of info at the above mentioned site, it would appear that my synapses are mis-firing. Looks like the Ideal commercials were viewed after I’d moved to south Jersey, circa 1981 or so, since the guy who put those commercials together only advertised in the local Philadelphia/Southern NJ area. Apparently, the former owner of the Ideal Manufacturing Corp was a bit of a cheapskate, and would air his commercial gem on UHF channels 17 and 29 after midnight in the Philly area. So, I’m already mixing up my memories. This is bad. I’m only 36.