It’s bad enough Joe didn’t get a reservation, the inns are all sold out, and we gotta sleep in the barn, but have you ever tried to get a baby to sleep in a manger?
I finally get him down — he’s gotta sleep in the manger, fer heaven’s sake! — and a bunch of shepherds drive their flock into the barn. Wake the baby, he’s crying! I shout “whattaya doin! can’t ‘cha see we got a baby sleepin’ here?”
They claim it’s a barn and what did I expect — camels? And the kid is sleepin’ on the sheep’s hay. I tell Joe to give them the Bum’s Rush but he just waves them away and says “have a heart!”
So I get the baby asleep again and whattaya think? It IS camels now! Three idiots from who-knows-where come trotting into the barn babbling in some kinda crazy tongue about following stars and traveling forever. Wakes the kid again, and now I gotta rock him and the camels smell like they ain’t been washed for ages — horrible stink fills the barn.
And what do you think else could happen?
Dis little runny-nose brat comes into the barn banging on a drum! He’s shouting, “I play my drum for him!” and he thinks he’s Gene Krupa or something! Baby starts crying all over again.
In the movie “The Matrix,” the hero is offered the choice of a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill gives you knowledge, freedom, uncertainty and the brutal truths of reality. The blue pill offers security, happiness, beauty, and the blissful ignorance of illusion.
In film “Total Recall,” the hero is offered a red pill which is described as ” a symbol, of your desire to return to reality.” There is no blue pill — but Schwartzenegger probably didn’t need the “little blue pill” (Viagra) anyway.
In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (which is a fantasy life) , Ben Stiller travels to Greenland and rents a car at the airport. He asks the rental agent “Do you have any cars available?” and is told “Yeah, we have a blue one and a red one,” and the hero (Stiller) takes the red one.
In 1969, the US initiated the lottery system to draft young men for the Vietnam War. The 366 days of the year (including February 29) were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque blue plastic capsules and drawn from a jar. The first 195 birthdates drawn were basically given the blue pill.
For the more esoteric people (like, those who actually read as well as watch movies,) the fascinating non-fiction book “Gödel, Escher, Bach, and Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstadter (1979) — described by the author as “in the spirit of Lewis Carroll” — has a section where the characters in Escher prints “pop out” of the two-dimensional world (and into our 3D world) by drinking from a blue phial (like a medicine bottle) and “push into” the 2D world by drinking from a red phial.
So which is the real world and which is the looking glass world? Red or Blue?
I grew up in the Beatles generation, and I thought the world was coming to an end in 1969 — not because of the Viet Nam War, but because the Beatles announced they were breaking up!
Fortunately, the music didn’t stop. Especially John Lennon (and — yes, you have to include Yoko) who tirelessly campaigned for Peace and Love. “Give Peace A Chance” and “Imagine” and “War is Over If You Want It (And So This Is Christmas”), the “Bed-In” in Toronto.
But reality is not kind — there has never been a cessation of war.
I learned a Christmas song when very young — “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” and the last verse is so melancholy.
And in despair I bowed my head, There is no peace on Earth, I said For Hate is strong and Mocks the song Of Peace on Earth, Good Will To Men.
Our Theater date took us back to Stages in Fullerton. We enjoy small theaters, as they show wonderful creativity in overcoming their limitations. Our first foray to Stages was to see Urinetown which had a large cast in a small space. One result of this is that the cast acts very close to the audience. Another is that the sets must be modular (if scenery changes are required) and can be very 3-D (Urinetown was two-layered and used the upper level creatively.)
Last night we saw a “New Shakespeare Play” called “All The World’s A Grave.” In the modern era, one might expect such a title to mean a vampire or zombie play (Those are SOOOOO overdone!). But it was a classical Shakespearean tragedy — a mashup of half a dozen plays.
Hamlet, Prince of Bohemia, returns from a foreign war against Lear with a war bride — Lear’s daughter Juliet. He finds his father is dead and his mother has married the King, Macbeth (making her Lady Macbeth). Hamlet’s aide, Iago, is jealous because Romeo has been promoted to general, and Iago isn’t happy at all.
What could go wrong?
Juliet and Hamlet have a tense encounter over a hankie!
The play is gender-fluid. Lear is actually a Queen — Juliet’s mother — and Iago is also female. The troops are also co-ed and dressed in modern military garb.
MacBeth is African-American but race does not seem to be an aggravating factor. Hamlet wants to kill him after encountering his father’s ghost and learning that murder was the vehicle to the throne. Likewise, Rosencrantz is African-American and Guildenstern is female. In this world, the women are as deadly as the males and the ending has a body-count worthy of a Quentin Tarantino flick.
The story is basically a re-shuffling of all these tales, using the original lines with a few twists (Bohemia for Denmark, for example). Does it add anything to the Shakespeare canon? No, and it has pretty creaky contrivances, but then it only lasts about half as long as a full-text Hamlet.
Several of the players are standouts. Lear has a small part, but Rose London displays her mighty chops in the final scene. This is basically Iago’s story, and Christine Cummings carries a lot of weight with unexpected humor and nary a slip of the lip.
But Abel Garcia is a very American Hamlet — not like the British interpretations of a lad going quietly mad. Garcia transmogrifies the character from the initial scenes of a rather easy-going, humorous, and happily married war hero to a raging, ranting, screaming, haunted, and tormented demon. He slaps his poor and puzzled wife around, pulls a knife on his mother, terrorizes his troops — and this all of three feet away from our seats at front-row center. I was hoping that the daggers they all carried were really props.
At community theater prices, this was an evening chock-full of entertainment. The interpretations of well-known characters and tropes are interesting. But as someone once said — “The play’s the thing …” and this really adds nothing to the canon. It can be distracting at times as audience members try to remember which lines and situations came from which plays. For example, near the end, when Hamlet is stalking Romeo with murderous intent, he does a great Jack Nicholson impression (where Jack bursts through the door in “The Shining” and shouts “He-e-e-re’s JOHNNY!”) as he chases his prey across the stage and taunts him with “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”
I am not a Hamlet fan-boy but I’ve seen most of the major portrayals on film (and some of the minor ones). This is an original take on Hamlet — and on the whole five-act Elizabethan drama oeuvre .
I would certainly recommend it to anyone who can sit through a traditional Shakespearean tragedy.
STAGEStheatre
400 E Commonwealth Ave #4
Fullerton, CA 92832
The ex-standup comic I married and I are enjoying a new series on Showtime called I’m Dying Up Here. It is apparently the brain-child of Jim Carrey (listed as executive producer) and he claims some of the sequences are based on his experiences.
Surprisingly it isn’t a comedy. I was afraid of something like “News Radio” was to, well — news radio (It weren’t no WKRP in Cincinnati!). But it is a drama populated by the types of people you would find in comedy clubs in the 1970s.
But it is dark! Jeez — is it dark! Of course the LA comedy club scene (fictionalized here) was full of
desperate climbers who would knife each other in the back and worse (think of bribing a homeless man to poop in your rival’s car). They are all jockeying for position and angling for a shot at the big time — mainly the Johnny Carson Tonight Show.
It is getting mixed reviews but I think that is because it isn’t for anybody. But those who have been or are currently in a comparable situation will find a lot to resonate with — and realize that times haven’t changed that much in 40 years.
I was just saying recently that you can’t count Jim Carrey out. The man is a pure genius and this project benefits from his involvement.
“Let’s Get Lost” is an intriguing title for a movie, taken from a popular song by trumpet legend Chet Baker. Baker crossed that big divide between pop music stardom and jazz obscurity with his song selection, trumpet-playing and his distinctive vocals. It didn’t hurt that he was matinee-idol handsome either.
Film director Bruce Weber made the documentary a year before Baker died and released it right about the time of his death in 1988. I’m not sure if it came out before or after the event. I’m
Manufacturers have millions of dollars to spend promoting their message, which researchers don’t have and government won’t use.
What we end up with is marketing and PR claiming the majority of headlines and sound bites with biased or just plain fictional results.
Also, the general public really doesn’t know the difference between opinion and legitimate test results. Thus we see messages such as “4 out of 5 dentists recommend” such and such a toothpaste — and the claim is not challenged. How much documentation can you put on the tube of a toothpaste?
Once the claims are in the public record, they can be used to fight policies that would limit their damage (as in the history of the tobacco companies) or to promote unwise and unhealthy products or practices as beneficial in some way.
Then we have the “apples and oranges” arguments, such as studies on exercise being used as proof of dietary recommendations. Coca Cola had a massive campaign about consumers increasing their exercise instead of reducing the intake of Coke to fight obesity. Of course, they are fighting the various state and federal attempts to tax soda drinks. It is a typical “follow the money” logic to see what their real agenda is.
Big budgets are usually more successful at promoting a message than science is at promoting the truth.
The CAGED system is a handy way of helping you to get to know the guitar and guitar music. Many guitarists have found this way of seeing the notes and chords an easy way to begin to understand guitar music and improvisation. The CAGED system is not for raw beginners. You need to know the location on the fretboard of the root notes of the chords C A G E and D.
Here is a video explaining the simplicity of using the CAGED system:
