Occasionalities

Anthromorphizing Republicans

2011-10-18T18:29:00.002-05:00

I think the St Louis cardinals squirrel driven success and the GOP primary field are proving we all love nuts in the fall.

Not my first wish of a genie, obviously, but maybe my seventh...

2010-10-20T19:03:00.002-05:00

I wish there was some crime spree you could go on without injuring anybody else. I'd love to be pursed by the Authorities for being a serial delayer of people from things they'd rather be doing because I held them at the point of a series of funny to me but blah to anyone else stories.

Another strike of the obvious...

2010-10-20T19:01:00.000-05:00

On somewhere around my 2,000th viewing of Planet of the Apes I'm wondering why the apes didn't suspect something odd of Heston when he was the only captive human combing his hair...

My Halloween Costume - Taylor from the original Planet of the Apes

2010-10-14T20:29:00.001-05:00

2010-09-29T19:34:00.001-05:00

My cremated remains will be at least .085% cat fur.

The Sending - coming to iBooks, Kindle, and Nook!

2010-09-29T19:06:00.000-05:00

A Look InSide The Book!

2010-09-29T18:53:00.004-05:00

Valerie Rousch was elbowing her way out of the Station Lake Deli on a payday weekend Friday night, loaded down with grocery bags, when she walked right into the guy with the yellow hat. It wasn’t much of a collision as such events could evolve, but she dropped a bag and, on not so much as recovering at least stopped the event when she saw the guy with the yellow hat had a nosebleed.
“Oh, hey,” Val ducked around a few fading and oblivious customers, realizing even as she stood back up that she had absolutely no idea what to do in situations. Not just this one, all situations. Any situation, and what a fine way to go through life? This sort of real thing just drew stark contrast to the fact that she never did anything to change that, to learn anything, to prepare not to panic. Because what kind of way to live was that, always preparing not to panic? Why not live as if? Live as if whatever you were doing was probably going to work out? Kind of like driving through your emotional and real life without any insurance, she thought. You save the premium payment and there’s less stress but if the wheels ever came off the wagon, notify the authorities, Bruce, this babe is bitched.
The guy with the yellow hat already had his head tilted back, his right hand red, pressed up against his nose.
“Are you all right?”
“All right?” His voice was garbled from talking through pinched nostrils. “Of course I’m not all right. My nose is spewing blood; I need a cold, wet rag.”
“I’ll get one.” Val rushed into the deli and explained what was going on. After a moments deliberation the two clerks came up with a clean wipe-up cloth that they held under a faucet before handing across to Val, who ran back outside with it.
Settled on the ground by the pitch-in trash container, the guy was staring at the sky, his hat off and black hair hanging long. “I’m sorry,” said Val, offering the rag. “I’m sorry, I really am.”
“You’re apologies imply some involvement in my life events don’t seem to merit…”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“All you people in Indiana, sorry about this, sorry about that.” He wiped his hand clean first then held the rag against his face. “You guys apologize about the weather.”
“All I mean is I’m sorry.”
“See? There again.”
“I mean about your nose.”
“Why? You didn’t do it.”
Confused, Val said, “But I ran into you.”
Shaking his head, the guy explained. “My nose was bleeding before you even came out of the store, that’s why I was going in and why I wasn’t looking. What’s your excuse?”
Val waited no seconds. “No excuse.”
“Fine answer,” said the guy with a smile.
Feeling a little stupid, Val watched the guy for a moment. He seemed a year or so older than she; Val was fifteen. He had a dark Mediterranean complexion and deepset, dark blue eyes. Beside him sat a large blue bag, more than a backpack but less than a suitcase. “I think I’m anemic,” he said as if it was a question he was looking for assurance on, but Val had no idea which way she needed to go on that one. “That happens sometimes when you don’t eat enough stuff with iron in it,” he said. “Vitamin thing, like why you get scurvy if you never eat oranges.”
“Vitamin C,” Val said.
“Yeah?”
“Not just oranges.”
“Citrus, yeah, fine, I illustrated with oranges and you corrected me in the middle of a sentence- what are you looking for by breaking my train of thought, some half assed trivia trophy?”
“Excuse me?
“I mean to eat spinach at least once a week, but all that means is I’ve reduced down to once a week the time I feel bad about never eating spinach.”
“Wouldn’t that be more often than once a week?” Val spoke without thinking, but finished. “You mean to eat it once a week, so you must consider eating it at least once a day, maybe more.”
“Really?” said the guy, eyes twinking. “So why would I ever worry about anything any more times than it could ever actually happen?”
Speechless would have been an exaggerated way of describing her moment, but Val did pass a moment without speaking while the guy continued to pull himself together, saying, “Many cultures consider it less than polite to fixate on one point with solid affected concentration.”
“I’m not staring, I’m freaked out.”
“Excellent. Since you’re so wracked with the guilt of a lost generation, lemme have a couple of dollars.”
“What?”
“Five bucks, ten, got twenty?”
“What---“
“Money,” said the guy. “What’s the moment I’m missing here? Nobody ever asked you for money before? Nobody ever jammed themselves right up into your personal space to exploit your guilt or maybe get something to eat so their nose wouldn’t bleed so easily?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, nobody ever asked me for money before,” said Val.
“It’s difficult at first,” admitted the guy. “But after the first few hundred times it tastes a little less like crap, and more like supper’s cooking.”
“I don’t have any money,” Val said automatically.
“You got groceries.”
“I got plastic.”
“Touche’.”
“Too what?”
“Disregard last. I’ll carry your groceries home for you.”
“That’s unlikely to happen.”
“Fair enough. But not even a sovereign or so for the lad with the leak?”
Val fumbled through her bag a moment and came out with three, no four dollars.
The guy didn’t hesitate, reaching and taking it but as he did their fingers touched and he pulled back, holding the cash but startled, as if he’d received a shock of static, but he also assumed a defensive shape, protecting himself with attitude if nothing else. “Tanasts.”
Val didn’t understand. “Tan what?”
“You’re a magician, aren’t you” The guy relaxed some, pulling it together as if suddenly proud of some private bit of sleazy cleverness. “Well,” he said, citing chapter and verse: “There are no coincidences in a sympathetic universe.”
“Magician?”
“I smelled the magic oozing off of this goddamn town when the bus broke down.” He smiled at her for a moment which seemed to be an impossible recognition of un-tethered kindred spirits, two spent swimmers suddenly able to save themselves from drowning because of some weird energy inexplicably between them across a ridiculous room, an energy that tastes like pineapple and something sweeter than pancakes on a cold summer morning, with wet on the soles of the feet but nothing but warm coming before the night takes you like a lover but the moment sparked away because Val said to the him, “You’re losing me, guy.”
“I, too, walk within a circle,” he started, but then something wasn’t like it was before, he saw the firefly spark out and a fake unserious mask seemed to drop across his instant ago seriously unserious mask – as if instead of not being caught he’d been momentarily not guilty, and now the issue had been cast again to doubt.
“Listen,” said Val, “I’m sorry about your nose, enjoy the bucks, hope the rest of your life is as interesting as you prefer and I’m going to just go now.”
“Hey, wait a second, I’m sorry,” he said, “I was trying to be funny. Interesting. You know, all showy movie and ooh, don’t transverse those eyes…”
“Don’t what”
“Transverse those eyes, just a thing.” Pulling away the rag he questioned, “Does it look like it’s stopping?”
“How does it feel?”
“It feels as if it’s stopping.”
“I think probably it is.”
Standing up, Val was embarrassed, but for some reason hesitant to gather up and leave. She wondered a little bit about this guy, who he was, fine, he was cute, whatever, but what was he talking about eyes, magic, was he kinda sorta maybe borderline for real cute? As if in maybe interesting? For real interesting?
No arrests to be made, Val thought, but round up the usual suspects.
“I’m Val,” she said.
“Of course you are,” he said, turning off and walking away into the store with his backpack and money. Val waited an embarrassingly long time before she didn’t get to see him again.

Interesting. The entire twenty-fourth day of April played out interestingly to Val, but not in the exciting, well, good and exciting and weird way as the encounter with the guy in the yellow hat. Bad stuff went down as well, namely that after surviving nearly an entire school year Val crossed Andrea T. Langville, the head cheerleader of C.S. Lewis High School, and the eleventh worst person in the world.
Andrea was a clique person.

PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE SENDING WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN! ;)

a forrest tree...

2010-09-29T01:38:00.002-05:00

I'd like to wake up at nine years old, Christmas morning, forever...even if I have to spend all that time waiting for Mom and Dad to arise and never get to open presents. It's that period of sublime, innocent anticipation that makes me think that this all isn't simply an exercise in adaptation.

Animals Behaving Badly

2010-09-29T01:02:00.000-05:00

Four house cats at 1 in the morning when its disrupting their routine is like stumbling across four leopards at a water hole in the Sarengetti, presuming these leopards were coming down off of crack. Decades ago my goals included fame, fortune, women, and wisdom. Right now it strictly involves a cat and a keyboard and the math isn't working my way...

Just drove back from Minneapolis...

2010-09-29T00:47:00.001-05:00

And boy are my arms tired.

2010-09-10T20:05:00.001-05:00

Whenever someone asks you to "think outside the box," they don't mean it - they want you to think inside a slightly larger box. Finding yourself on the actual other side of the cardboard sucks...;)

Run.

2010-07-23T20:35:00.001-05:00

Apocalypse Now Redux Redux - starring President Obama, General McChrystal, and Rahm

2010-06-23T18:19:00.006-05:00

Scene 1 - Inside a humid, secluded room of the White House, President Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm E, and an unidentified Asian in a white shirt, collar open, tie down, sit around a small buffet lunch, consider their options. After serving themselves - "To save time, we might pass both ways," says the President, passing the roast beef - "which is usually not bad," before offering some fried shrimp up, saying "I'm not sure how you feel about this gulf shrimp these days, but if you'll eat it, you'll never have to prove your courage in any other way..."

Rahm opens this discussion, leaning back in his chair before saying, "See, Mister President, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, morality versus practical military necessity. Out there there is a temptation to play God. There is a conflict in every heart, and good does not always triumph. Sometimes we just become assholes. Every man has his breaking point. You do, I do, anyone. General McChrystal has reached his. And he is still in the field, commanding troops. And very obviously he has become a complete asshole."

Hesitant, the President stutters back, "Yes, obviously an asshole."

"Your mission, Mr. President, is to let me bring this seditious asshole back home so you can terminate the General's command."

"Terminate...the General?"

Says the unidentified Asian man: "Terminate...with extreme prejudice."

CUT TO:

A lonely hut in Afghanistan. A brutally overweight General McChrystal sits in a green t-shirt, water bowl before him, using a sponge to drip water over his shaved head, as he mutters "I saw a snail, moving along the edge of a straight razor..."

TO BE PROBABLY NOT CONTINUED...

Is this a legiticate concern?

2010-04-20T12:27:00.003-05:00

I grow wary that by "accidental keyboarding" I'm going to be the fiftieth trillion person to click on porn and win some kind of unavoidably public award...

It occurs to me...

2009-12-22T09:50:00.003-06:00

...that if a person talks about suicide a lot, they usually get mocked or poked at that they're just looking for attention, or help - which is true - but it's always with a bit of unspoken mockery for "talking stupid." But you only have to kill yourself once to turn the tables on all those occasions when you were mocked.

Christmas Is For Children

2009-12-11T19:28:00.001-06:00

Always On A Mountain...

2009-12-11T19:21:00.000-06:00

Blackadder

2009-12-11T19:06:00.002-06:00

McDonalds+Childhood+Christmas...

2009-12-11T19:03:00.001-06:00

The Scottish Play

2009-12-11T19:01:00.000-06:00

IRRATIONAL BELIEFS

2009-11-20T08:19:00.002-06:00

At the root of all irrational thinking is the assumption that things are done to you: "That really got me down...She makes me nervous..Places like that scare me...Being lied to makes me see red."

Nothing is done to you. Events happen in the world. You experience those events at (A), engage in self-talk (B), and then experience an emotion (C) resulting from the self talk. A does not cause C; B causes C. If your self talk is irrational and unrealistic, you create unplesant emotions.

Two common forms of irrational self-talk are statements that "awfulize" and "absolutize." You awfulize by making catastrophic, nightmareish interpretations of your experience. A momentary chest pain is a heart attack, the grumpy boss intends to fire you, your mate takes a night job and the thought of being alone is unthinkably terrible. The emotions that follow awfulizing self-talk tend themselves to be awful, as you are responding to your own description of the world.

Irrational self-statements that "absolutize" often include words such as "should, must, ought, always, never, all, none, everybody, nobody, etc." The idea is that things have to be a certain way, or you have to be a certain way. Any deviation from that particular value or standard is bad. The person who fails to live up to the standard is bad. In reality, it is the standard that is bad, because it is irrational.

Listed below are several basic irrational ideas, beliefs, or expectations that folks often harbor that leave them prone to experiencing exaggerated dysphoric mood states. As you read them, identify the ones that may be most pertinent to you.

1. It is an absolute necessity for an adult to have love and approval from peers, family, and friends.

I must be loved and approved of by everyone before I can feel good about myself.

In fact, it is impossible to please all of the people in your life. Even those who basically like and approve of you will be turned off by some behaviors and qualities. This irrational belief is probably the single greatest cause of unhappiness.

2. I must be unfailingly competent and almost perfect in all I undertake.

To be a worthwhile person, I must be a great success at everything I do.
People will never accept me as a flawed and vulnerable human being.
If someone criticizes me, it means there's something wrong with me.

The results of believing you must behave perfectly are self-blame for inevitable failure, lowered self-esteem, perfectionist standards applied to mate and friends, and paralysis and fear at attempting anything.

3. It is horrible when people and things are not the way I would like them to be, because to be otherwise is awful.

The world should always be the way I want it to be.
Other people should always meet my expectations.

This might be described as the "spoiled child syndrome." As soon as the tire goes flat the self-talk starts: "Why does this happen to me? Damn, I can't handle this." Any inconvenience, problem, or failure to get your way is likely to be met with such awfulizing self statements. The result is intense irritation and stress.

4. External events cause most human misery - people react simply as events trigger their emotions.

I have little control over my feelings.
Other people, places, or things are to blame for my problems.

A logical extension of this belief is that you must control the external events in order to create happiness or avoid sorrow. Since such control has limitations, and we are at a loss to completely manipulate the will of others, there results a sense of helplessness and chronic anxiety. Ascribing unhappiness to events is a way of avoiding reality. Self statements interpreting the event caused by unhappiness. While you may only have limited control over others, you have enormous control over your own emotions.

5. I should feel fear or anxiety about anything that is unknown, uncertain, or potentially dangerous.

Many describe this as "a little bell that goes off and I think I ought to be worrying." They begin to rehearse their scenarios of catastrophe. Increasing the fear or anxiety ion the face of uncertainty makes coping more difficult and adds to stress. Saving the fear response for actual, perceived danger allows you to enjoy uncertainty as a novel and exciting experience.

6. It is easier to avoid than to face life difficulties and responsibilities.

There are many ways of ducking responsibilities: "I should tell him/her that I'm no longer interested, but not tonight...I'd like to get another job, but I'm too tired on my days off to look...A leaky faucet won't hurt anything...We could shop today, but the car is making a sort of funny noise."

7. The past has a lot to do with determining the present.

My early childhood experiences must continue to control me and determine my emotions and behavior.

Just because you were once strongly affected by something, that does not mean that you must continue the habits you formed to cope with the original situation. Those old patterns and ways of reacting are just decisions made so many times that they have become nearly automatic. You can identify those old decisions and start changing them right now. You can learn from past experience, but you don't have to be overly attached to it.

8. I am helpless and have no control over what I experience or feel.

The problems of life are impossible to solve.

This belief is at the heart of much depression and anxiety. The truth is we not only exercise considerable control over interpersonal situations, we control how we interpret and emotionally respond to each life event.

9. People are fragile and should never be hurt.

This irrational belief results in failure to openly communicate important feelings, and in self sacrifice that gives up what is nourishing and pleasurable. Since everything you need or want seems to hurt or deprive someone else, you feel frustration, helplessness and depression. Relationships become full of dead space where conflcits developed and nothing was said.

10. Good relationships are based on self-sacrifice and a focus on giving.

This belief rests on the assumption that it is better to give than to receive. It is expressed in a reluctance to ask for things, and the anticipation that your hidden needs will be divined and provided for. Unfortunately, constant self denial usually results in bitterness and withdrawl. The truth is that no one knows your needs better than you. Your happiness is your responsibility, and being self-focused means you are accepting that responsibility.

11. If I don't please others, they will abandon or reject me.

I must always please people and live up to everyone's expectations.

This belief is a by-product of low self-esteem. You usually run less risk of rejection if you offer others your true, unembellished self. They can take it or leave it. But if they respond to the real you, you don't have to worry about slacking off, letting down your guard, or being rejected later.

12. When people disapprove of me, it means I am wrong or bad.

This is an extreamly crippling belief that sparks chronic anxiety in most interpersonal situations. The irrationality is contained in the generalization of one specific fault or unattractive feature to a total indictment of the self.

13. Being alone is horrible; pleasure and fulfillment can only occur in the presence of others.

Pleasure, self-worth, and fulfillment can be experienced alone as well as with others. Being alone is growth-producing and desirable at times.

14. There is a perfect love, a perfect relationship.

I must find a perfect mate and always feel infatuated with him or her in order to be happy.

Subscribers to this belief often feel resentful of one close relationship after another. Nothing is quite right because they are waiting for the perfect fit. It never comes.

15. I shouldn't have to feel pain; I am entitled to a good life.

The realistic position is that pain is an inevitable part of human life. It frequently accompanies tough, healthy decisions and the process of growth. Life is indeed not fair. Think of the homeless: If life were "fair" then it would imply that all homeless people deserve their circumstances.

16. Anger is automatically bad and destructive.

People who love each other should never fight or feel angry with each other.

Anger is frequently clensing. It can be an honest communication of current feelings, without attacking the personal worth and security of others.

My Review of The Addams Family Musical

2009-11-15T21:31:00.013-06:00

As I make it a point to see and review every genre theatrical musical which includes instruments of torture as props, here goes:

The Addams Family musical is a train wreck in progress - and not the kind of cool train wrecks John Astin's Gomez arranged as a hobby on the 1960's series. This thing is a career killer - a legimate theater version of the disaster that was the movie BATMAN AND ROBIN, and I'm neither exaggerating or looking for cheap shots. Remember that movie, with the Clooney in the suit with nipples, the Governor of California as Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman as some chick with thorns on her and how clear it became by the end that whoever was responsible for this particular movie had never SEEN a Batman movie?

I have serious reservations that Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have seen The Addams Family television program, or the original Charles Addams drawings, or anything other than - possibly - the movies from the 90's, despite Playbill protestations that the source material is the original cartoons. And I can prove this faster than Gomez can draw a sword, but later, just as I can prove that Nathan Lane is - here at least - not only phoning it in, but using somebody else's cell to make the call.

What they've done with this show is unthinkable - and I mean aside from having Bebe Neuwirth not being allowed to do more than sixth great talent night choreography or - yeah, I'll say it - show off her legs for more than one three minute tango. The real crime was committed before this thing entered rehearsals. Remember The Munsters? The fun but always cheezy feeling knockoff of The Addams Family?

My strong suspicion is either Marshall or Rick or both thought they were familiar with The Addams Family when offered the gig, what they were seeing in the art direction and performances confused them - where was the vampire dude? Isn't that Car 54 guy a Frankenstein? - but no matter, they made sure to the give thing a solid, traditional Munsters's plot except they were stuck - where the fuck was Marilyn? Where was the blonde normal chick who was always on the show? No matter, the musical begins with an opening number explaining how it is Wednesday Addams eighteenth birthday - they even ceremonially cut off her famous pigtails during this number - and just in case there's still any confusion the next scene is Wednesday explaining to her family about how she just wants to be normal, because she has invited her fiance and his parents to meet the family tonight.

Are you fucking kidding me? Marilyn - I mean Wednesday - bringing home the "straight" kid and his parents is the plot we're hanging the show on?

The performances are workmanlike - with two exceptions, Nathan Lane for reasons I'll go into later, and Krysta Rodriguez who plays Wednesday. She was in a bad position because the character as written doesn't exist. She is Wednesday Addams trying to go all Abercrombie and Fitch on us. Phelim McDermitt and Julian Crouch (the directors) dress Wednesday like a wannabe Lindsay Lohan when she should be at best Wynonna Ryder from Beetlejuice. But I keep forgetting - that's how they all remember Marilyn dressing.

I'm telling you - not to go all conspiracy theory this early in the process but I think they were working from memories of this other show I've mentioned, one to which somebody else probably owns the rights. As a gambling man I'd guess there at least a 50/50 shot this could be argued actionable, had not every episode of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie already drained that well.

So let's see, adapted the wrong show, four jokes work, think it's funny to do a song about having been raped by a giant squid (okay, I'll give you that one, that could have worked) and instead what they're taking to Broadway in a few months is a show doomed to close faster than a Tim Rice musical based on Anne Rice's vampire novels...which they also did and we might have easily discussed that back in the day, but I digress. Here's the best - we're doing The Addams Family as a musical, so you know, right, that either the opening number, Act I finale or Show finale is going to be The Addams Family theme song, maybe updated with cool new verses and whatever. Uh, no, that never occurred to them because The Munster's theme had no lyrics. Instead we get a throwaway gag moment of the famous Addams Family finger snapping along for thirty seconds and then we're onto a song about how hard it is to fall in love when your family is so weird. Oy.

Know how every amateur - as opposed to the work of an as yet unproduced pro - television spec script always ignores the series regulars like Captain Kirk or Spock and makes the show about the guest star? Because, frankly, the writer in question doesn't understand Kirk or Spock, but Ensign Jones he KNOWS. Same thing here - we have three characters - the boyfriend and his parents - who shouldn't even BE in this show. Every line they're assigned is the book writers saying "We don't know how to write for Uncle Fester!" But we remember the show used to have a big dragon under the stairs so let's make sure the Addams Family have a giant squid in the closet, and a giant lizard under the couch and other giant cool monsters.

Realize the point is now belittled, but with all due respect that's the 'WRONG FUCKING SHOW!"

You want to make an Addams Family musical? Get Sonheim or someone able or interested enough to cross Sweeny Todd with Little Shop of Horrors. Instead we get Munsters Go Home crossed with Beach Blanket Bingo. Wicked had a hundred times the yucks and heart and at last count - screw it, I'm not counting - Wicked had at least six great songs, two that will be standards for a while, and all which were fun or right or at least workable for the moment. Andy Lippa's musical efforts? Eh, not so much - four songs at best are workable, none memorable, save for this - one song "Full Disclosure." And this is memorable for being a failed opportunity of show saving/show killer scope.

"Full Disclosure" is constructed around the conceit that the Addam's Family play a parlor game amongst themselves called "Full Disclosure," where a silver chalice is passed, you drink, and then you speak (sing) the darkest, ugliest secret about yourself - and for real. If it makes Morticia want to kill you, that's terrific. Put a better written version of that song right up front, Act I, Scene I, and there's your plot. All you need is The Addams Family, no bland "guest stars, no gimmicky squids under the floorboards - the point of this goddamn game the Addams Family have invented is the bruhaha your announcement causes to your loved ones - as Nathan Lane fails to get across in his song "Passionate and True," to the Addams Family all emotion is a rush - fear is as much fun as joy, hatred as much fun to feel as love, repulsion as lust - that's the whole point of their bizarre nature. They don't want to murder you, but if you accidentally cut off your hand making sandwiches they'd find that funny and wonder why you weren't laughing as well? If Pugsley Addams drives a nail through his hand or kills his pets the family shares his emotions - but oh, wait. The song falls towards the end of Act I and is mostly centered around the parents of Wednesday's boyfriend and their secrets from each other. Because after all, who's secrets are more likely to be thought interesting when heard from a balcony in $75 seats - those of Morticia Addams or those of Alice Beinke, unhappy suburban wife?

But the Addams Family are the ultimate confidants; they do not judge.

Not that any of that is expressed in the show, that's just what was MISSING from the show, and in response here I type in my own not-so-silent judgment. Is this irony or just a "Go figure," moment.

I really don't want to be the guy pissing on this effort - these people are artists deserving of respect, and no matter how well designed we all know that more airplanes will take off than ever land, that's how the math of the universe works when lives are at stake, and who really cares about art when you start feeling hungry? And most of the people in any Broadway bound show are hungrier than they can ever be artistic - we get that, we forgive. The sets and costumes look great, and Jackie Hoffman's Grandma is a hoot and a half but its heartbreaking - like finding out the girl you had a crush on in high school but never asked out now works at the Bunny Ranch. There are also signs, clues from the dialogue, that a lot of cutting and reworking is being done but they need to shut this thing down and start over, quickly, or the investors can forget about spending much time in New York. In fact, if nothing else is achieved by any review of this show it should be that the cast members don't sign long apartment leases, and the understudies and swings keep doing their auditions.

P.S. Very nearly neglected to prove my point on the source material question. Since Charles Addams had never named his famous family's characters over the course of the 80 or so he drew, names had to be originated for the television series and Charles Addams named these characters himself, but Gomez was never intended to be of any particular ethnicity, and John Aston played him as a manic midwesterner with gothic tastes. And remember Fester Addams is Gomez's brother, clearly from the same region. However the show's script and Nathan Lane's performance are all lifted entirely from the movies, which means we have Nathan doing a Spanish accent - why? Because the late great Raul Julia spoke with such an accent. And when you have no idea what to do with a character like Gomez Addams yourself, you sure can't go wrong by doing a two hour impersonation of someone who did.

My Hollywood Pitch Today

2009-05-26T18:59:00.004-05:00

owing to the efforts of some scientists it becomes possible to send twenty four or so volunteer death row convicts back to SWAP OUR INSTANTANEOUSLY with twenty-four guys at the Alamo, - this change will instantly kill the guys going back, but they themselves go from being recalled as villans as Texas heroes rescuing the real guys except the time travel blah blah leaves the original bodies...now the Texas cops with the scientist realizing they've got Davy Crockett's mind and whatever inside the body of The Rock or some other modern prison guy...so how do they adapt, fish out of water both ways, these are deeply old time southern gentlemen and such and such and then they're released and JUST THEN we discover its all bullshit, this was a SCAM to get these guys all full pardons, and it worked!!!

Sunglasses At Night

2009-02-14T09:20:00.000-06:00

The Poseidon Adventure Woobly

2009-02-13T21:55:00.002-06:00

I saw this movie at the Marquette Theater in Michigan City, Indiana about 24 times when it came out around Christmas of what, '73? Which means I probably paid to see it at least 12 times or so, and sat through it all afternoon on Saturday and sometimes Sunday as well, because it meant I didn't have to be home at a time when I was old enough to know how awful the weekends were, but not old enough to have weekends of my own. Mom would try to drop me off with a $10 bill, and since the ticket was $2.25 I was set - hot dog, corn, Coke (or Sprite, if I was feelin' wild child.) Of course if Dad blew all the money or was too hammered or never came come she might have been counting out nickles for the ticket, with no popocorn or drink, but what am I? An ingrate? This was back when movies didn't change so often, and The Poseidon Adventure played from around Christmas to May at the Marquette, and when it changed - to Pappillon, as I recall, the Steve McQueen Devil's Island picture with the beheadings, leprosy, and cockroach eating - I was depressed, really depressed, for a long while. I was depressed because the movie had changed, because I couldn't go out on Saturday and watch The Poseidon Adventure. I read the novel, checked out from the library's adult section, staring at the cover as if I could make it move. I listened to Maureen McGovern sing The Morning After, the theme from the movie which I bought on .45 AND I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A RECORD PLAYER but it was as if one thing keeping me safe in this world had been jerked away from me.

I couldn't watch The Poseidon Adventure when I needed to, which is why I've since owned the 8mm, VHS, DVD, and Blue Ray. This is the same reason many of you are with the wrong man or woman right now.

I tried to do the same thing with the awful move Damnation Alley a year and a half or so later, but it didn't work because the move wasn't engaging enough for me to not worry about what was going on at home. Or maybe I was too engage with home myself. Anyway, it's either a great movie, or a great security blanket, so The Poseidon Adventure is my woobly (is that the term? Who gives a rats.)