The most moving piece of cinema I have seen in years was the use of The Beatles' Let It Be in the film Across the Universe, directed by Julie Taymor.
It is a must see.

    My parents came to see Room Service tonight as well as my sister and brother-in-law and Unc.  Uncle Alan has been under the weather lately and it was great to see him out and about. Plus, I don't think he has seen a show of mine in quite some time.
    What a wonderful coincidence that my family should be there to witness some shenanigans that can only happen in live theatre.  The show was going along splendidly right up until the second to last scene in Act Three.
    To set this up I should tell you that back during a tech rehearsal we had a problem with the set's bathroom doorknob.  It came off in an actor's hand during an entrance.  The stage manager explained that if grabbed the wrong way or too aggressively that a little button on the side would cause the knob to slip right off.  Everyone took this to heart and was careful when grabbing the knob from inside the bathroom.  Inwardly I wondered why the tech crew didn't just replace it with a foolproof knob.  Another problem was that it had a lock on it that you depress and turn.  Anyway, I am getting way too descriptive.  The point being that designers and set-builders often take no chances where actor's are involved.  Ever hear the term actor proof?
    Back to the present.  The craziness began in a scene where Leo [Andrew Benator] is in the bathroom pretending to be suicidal to stall management from kicking he and the others out of the hotel.  After Leo runs in, Binion [Bill Murphy] and Faker [me] run in after him and slam the door.  After a short time we reenter and continue the scene.
    While still in the bathroom Bill has a bit where he pokes his head out the door several times to give the status of Leo's sickness.  When Bill went to open the door to deliver his third line "He's turning blue!", the doorknob pulled right off.  As the scene continued on stage Bill struggled to replace the knob so we could make our upcoming entrance.
    "Oh, boys!" came our cue from Miller [Hugh Adams].
    The audience must have got a kick from the unintended comedy of a violently rattling doorknob but no entrance.  For what seemed like minutes Bill shook and twisted and cajoled the knob, but to no avail.  We were trapped in the bathroom!  I suddenly realized that none of us were saying anything and Hugh was left out there by himself clueless to our predicament so I called, "Hold on a minute!"
     Finally, the knob turned.  Andrew was on his knees ready to make with our next bit which was the old totem pole gag; one head appearing on top of the other around the side of the door. Andrew's, Bill's then mine on top.  Once Bill got the door open Andrew stuck his head in, still on his hands and knees. Bill, figuring too much time had elapsed already, plowed straight on through the door ignoring the bit altogether and nearly flattening Andrew and pulling me on top of him.  More unintended comedy as we stumbled over each other into the room.  Andrew was so tickled by the incident that his next line came out in a series of rapid-fire chortles as he tried to stifle his laughter.  Somehow we managed to keep it together and get through the end of the scene without a hitch.
    One scene left to go.  At the blackout I helped with the scene change then booked it to the other side of the backstage area to see if I could fix the knob which was on the floor again.  My hands flew across the floor as if reading brail trying to find the knob in total darkness.  Just as my right hand found the knob the lights came up on the last scene.  The actors on stage had only four or five lines before I was to enter through the main door back on the other side of the stage.  I hurriedly put the knob back on the door remembering the instructions given by stage management [Julianna] so many weeks ago.  It snapped into place like a breeze.  I tested it.  Locked!  I tried fiddling with the locking button, pushing and twisting it one way then the other. Nothing!  No matter what I did the knob would not turn and I could hear my cue line coming up.  I yanked on the knob one last time and it turned!  Not trusting the knob to actually stay unlocked, despite the tape that Julianna had applied to keep us from this very predicament, I pulled the door open an inch, just past the point of latching.  One push and it would open, locked or not.  Then I dashed back to the other side, shouting to the ASM [Joane] what I had attempted to do.  I arrived back stage right just in time to walk through the door for my entrance.
    The rhythm of the last scene was slightly jumpy.  All of us were desperately thinking about the knob, knowing that Andrew soon had to rise from the dead and dash to the bathroom.  We all gathered around the bed to eulogize the recently deceased Leo.
    Bill whispered to me, "It's locked."
    I whispered back, "I fixed it."
    He whispered again, more insistent now, "It's definitely locked!"
    I didn't see this, but he had just checked the knob again during the scene, apparently pulling it closed, undoing the quick fix that I had just managed.  Oops.
    During someone else's exchange of lines Bill leaned over behind me and loudly whispered to Andrew, "I think the door is locked!"  No telling if Andrew heard Bill from underneath the sheet that covered him from head to toe as he lay there dead, although I was pretty sure the audience must have.
    Moments later Leo rose from the bed as a ghost, sheet draped over his body, much to the shock of hotel management, Gribble [Robert Wayne] and Wagner [Don Finney].  Pulling the sheet from his head Leo shouted, "Ipecac!" and ran to the stage right door which leads to the connecting room in the world of the play.  The opposing side of the room from the bathroom with the stuck door.  Those of us in the know breathed a sigh of relief that Andrew got the memo.  The looks of bewilderment on the faces of Don and Robert were priceless.  They hadn't a clue why Andrew had exited out the wrong door!
    It was pretty smooth from there on out.  Other than a dropped line and a slight pause in the curtain-call while Bryan and Charles struggled to get through the accursed bathroom door, it was a happy ending.
    To top it all off my Mom, overhearing my conversation with Julianna about the incident, asked, "Oh, so the door was not supposed to get stuck?"  The audience had no idea.
   
    I love this job.

Many times I have been outside at night getting some fresh air when I have heard a rustling in the bushes next to the front door.  A few times it actually scared the crap out of me!  I just supposed it was one of the neighbor cats exploring the yard.  Their activities always drive my indoor menagerie nuts.  One recent night my cats were going crazy by the big windows that look out over the front lawn.  I crept up to the glass to see what all the commotion was about and observed a medium-sized possum lumbering toward the steps that lead to the front door.  Then it simply disappeared!  Investigation with a flashlight revealed where my new friend went.  Under the concrete steps was a small hole dug in the earth.  It must have made a home for itself under my front steps.  How many people to you know with a pet possum?  Of course, now I have to worry whether this particular possum is smart enough to avoid joining it's many brethren and sistren on that great highway in the sky.  Avoid the road, my new found friend! Avoid the road.

note:  spellcheck does not recognize the word "sistren".  I'm taking it back!

another note:  dictionary.com does recognize "sistren" and credits Chaucer, after whom I am named.  Interesting.

We had an exciting night at the theatre tonight.  Broadway Christmas Carol at ART Station in Stone Mountain.  David, Bethany and I had just received the five minute call from Jon our stage manager.  We were all hanging out and talking in Bethany's dressing room.  She gets the decent room with the attached bathroom because she's the girl, I guess.  David and I get the shop.  I am almost completely serious with that statement.  We were discussing issues of the day when we heard a booming sound  from outside and the lights flickered and came back on.  The power has been known to surge at ART Station which reeks havoc on the light and sound board.  They must be re-booted and such.  Usually, the power blips and is fine.  This night was different.  The lights sputtered again and then all was black.  It was very dark in the dressing room and back stage.
We had a full house of patrons and could hear them reacting, mostly positively, talking amongst themselves.  Sounded like they were all in a good mood.  My sister and brother-in-law were out there.  Jon announced that Ga Power had been contacted and things should be back up momentarily.  Well, momentarily stretched into quite a while.  
The actors sat in the dressing room with a flashlight and chatted about the end of the world.  I couldn't help but think of all the apocalyptic tales I was familiar with.  I just finished listening to Cell by Stephen King, and I was reminded of The Stand as well.  I imagined that I would most likely be in a theatre if and when that fateful bomb is dropped and the events leading to the end of the world as we know it are set in motion.  Jeez!  In the dark for fifteen minutes and already I was writing my end-of-the-world tale.
I was content to sit in the dark and save batteries, but Bethany seemed to prefer the light.  As we talked, she would shine the flashlight on whoever was speaking.  After a short while I had to tell her to stop as I was getting rather dizzy by her light show.  At least she could have played some Floyd.
Our stagehand Joanna came back to say "hi."  She told us about the overly helpful patrons who were leading people about the lobby and down to the restrooms with the light from their cell phones.  Only later did I learn that one gentleman had an actual flashlight and he was not only leading ladies to the water closet, but then helpfully assisting them by shining the light up under the stall while they did their business!  Talk about trust.
Patrick, our pianist, agreed to come out and play Christmas songs in the dark.  The patrons sang along, in good spirits.  Thirty minutes and several audience updates later, Jon came out and announced that we were going to do the show by lantern light and started setting them out on the front of the stage.  Reminded me of the Mary Martin biography when she talks about doing a Broadway show by candle light, I think it was The Sound of Music.  Just as we were trying to figure out how to execute the quick changes in low light the power came back on.  Great timing!
Ga Power came through in record time.  Found out later that a car had sped into a pole and knocked out the transformer that sat atop it.  Can anyone say drunk?
So we did the performance.  Went up around 8:46.  Bethany and I had this crazy energy from all the excitement.  David was about to pass out after his exhausting day of teaching children and then all that sitting blew his momentum.
My sister and her husband thoroughly enjoyed the show, but the rest of the audience was weird.  I thought that after all of the singing and waiting in the dark that they would be happy, nay thrilled that we had finally graced the stage with our enormous talents.  Working our way through Dickens' classic tale they sat there like stone statues, barely making a peep.  Very disappointing after our fun evening in the dark.
Oh, well...

I just enjoyed the most entertaining night of theatre in a long time.  I laughed uncontrollably for what could have been minutes!  For those in the Atlanta area, you must go to Dad's Garage Theatre and see A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant and in the Top Shelf brought to you by Collective Works, The Complete Lost Works of Samuel Beckett as Found in a Dustbin in Paris in an Envelope (partially burned) Labeled: "Never to be Performed. Never. Ever. EVER! OR I'LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!!!"

The Scientology Pageant was hilarious!  A friend of mine expressed concern about seeing a show starring only kids.  Don't let that keep you from this show.  The children are very talented and very funny.  There are definately some future improvisors up there.  The direction and choreography were perfect, and the little rug-rats can sing well too!  (Kudos to Bethany Oakie, music director.)  Having little knowledge of Scientology didn't keep me from getting most of the jokes, and in fact, I learned quite a bit. 
Look for a spot-on Travolta impression from one of the kids.  Awesome!

TCLWSBFDPELNPNEEOISFTG on the other hand...  also very funny, but in a different way.  Very Beckett, of course... surreal, absurdist... (I don't want to say much more for fear of showing my lack of knowledge concerning Beckett.)  Let me just say that it is a must see.  George and Steven are fabulous as well as their two costars Jillian and Christie (supercutie...deep sigh) and Raymond's PUPPET piece is not to be missed.

To sum up my thoughts:  DO NOT MISS THESE SHOWS!!!   I MEAN IT!   REALLY.  SERIOUSLY.  (I mean, c'mon!  I used both bold and italics.)

Only 4 shows left for Beckett
And 2 weekends left for Scientology.
Visit links below for details.

collectiveworks@gmail.com

http://www.dadsgarage.com/index.html

Greetings to those who may still be checking in!

I was just cleaning out my e-mail inbox and came across some fascinating info about certain words that I just had to share with someone right now. The little lady is absent, so you are it. I have always been an English buff, my favorite subject in my schooling days, and particularly enjoy the origins of words. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

The Canary Islands are not named after birds. They got their name from dogs (Latin canis); canaries are named after the islands!

Italian scooter company Piaggio named their first product Vespa because they felt it looked and perhaps sounded like a wasp. Vespa is Latin for wasp. A wasp's nest is called a vespiary.

You are probably all familiar with the term "tween", as in the ages between being a kid and being a teenager. "Tween" is also a job title from the animation world. The lead artists create the important, key frames and the tweeners do the fill-in work, ie, they draw the frames between the major frames, creating the illusion of motion. Computerized animation programs have a function called tweening which does essentially the same thing, though without the expertise of a real artist. Animation has been a dream job of mine for a long time.

An alternate definition was provided by JRR Tolkien (a linguaphile himself) in his "Fellowship of the Ring", discussing his created race, the hobbits: "tweens [were what] the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three".
Also, tween as in tweendecks is also used to describe the area below decks on one of the wooden warships.

And finally, we imported the word alligator from the Spanish el lagarto (the lizard).

Well, there you go. Neat-o!

Much of this info was e-mailed to me from:

http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html

Peace,

G

This past Friday night we had just wrapped another crazy performance of Reefer Madness the "hit" Musical at Dad's Garage.  (thru Nov 4!) The house was full to brimming and very responsive.  Lots of love exchanged between them and us.  After hanging out on the porch and enjoying the afterglow of a good show and a bit of libation, I headed for my car.  Doyle needed a ride so I offered to drive him.  He lives downtown.  We enjoyed an interesting and deep conversation on the way to his place.  So engrossed were we in talk, that I missed the turn onto his street.  He told me to turn right at the next street and we circled the block, stopping at a red light at Cone Street.  I glanced to my left and beheld a sight that sent me, and subsequently Doyle, into hysterics.  The car next to us at the light was occupied by two Coneheads.  Stopped at Cone Street.  What are the chances?  The two of them were obviously enjoying the moment as much we were.  Their coneheads bobbed up and down as they laughed.

 

Thought I was dead, did you?  Well, HA!  I'm not!

Since I've been home the fox has not made an appearance.  At least not when I've been out of doors.  I have, however, seen a small hawk flying around over the pool area and just the other day it landed in a tall pine tree in my front yard!  Cool. 

Ok, forgive the boring blog entry.  Just want to let you all know that I'm back and will update you on all the exciting things that have been happening as soon as I stop being distracted by life.

Bad Company.  Oh, yeah!

Well, I'm home.  Boy, things are different here in the south.  Hot, humid, buggy.  I miss Cali something fierce.  (Deep sigh)

Check out some photos from the trip while I get these retro blog entries ready to post.  You can get there from my homepage.

Enjoy,

Googs