Monday, March 21, 2005

Take a Bow and Have Some Chocolate. Twilight Falls.

Ragnarok finally came to a close on Saturday. A pair of Asatru (contemporary worshippers of the Norse pantheon) came to the show and loved it. They thanked us afterward for creating a show that honored their religion. Which was possibly the highest compliment our show could receive. Then we partied until dawn at a cast member’s apartment. I spent most of the night smoking on a hookah (which is now my hookah and sitting lovely on the keg we used for the show) and reminiscing and discussing new projects and writing and sex and attraction and etcetera with anyone who came by to smoke. It was a good night, all in all, and very meditative. Except for the wild hours of dancing to good old Louisiana zydeco.

At dawn, those of us who had hung on walked to a diner and got some breakfast, then said goodbye and got as much sleep as we could before we had to be at strike. It hasn’t really hit me yet that it’s really over, but I think, come Thursday, I’m going to find myself very down in the dumps.

To everyone who was involved in this show: Thank you. You helped make this, not just another show and another cast, but a truly spiritual and cathartic experience. I’m going to miss you; I’m going to miss drinking with you and talking to you and the weird and wonderful jokes that we all shared. I’m going to miss the special chemistry of personalities and experience that made us a cast.

One of our customer service reps just came in with a Chunky Bar from a customer, sent as thanks for getting a job done quickly. If only more of our customers showed gratitude with chocolate…

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Tooralooraloo

I’m caring for the little tigers again, while Bonnie and Darcy are off flouncing around Europe for a few weeks (I assume they’re flouncing…they are gay), only now the tigers aren’t quite so little. And they’re still very cute. Last night, one of them grabbed hold of my arm and began gnawing lightly on it, so I rubbed and scratched his belly and generally played along until I realized, with some horror, that he wasn’t just playing. He was really going for the hand. Which was followed by the awful realization that I had no way of getting him off of it without his claws tearing long lines into my arm. For a few minutes, I really had no other recourse than to wait until he grew bored or severed my left hand. Luckily, I’m nominally smarter than a cat and was able to reach for a bag of treats, the sound of which made him quickly disengage my arm and attack the bag, whereupon I slipped out of the room unnoticed.

The best part is that he was purring the entire time. “I love you….chomp!…I love you…” he seemed to say.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. For those of you who don’t know, St. Patrick’s Day celebrates the day when St. Patrick drove all of the snakes out of Ireland. March 17, 423 A.D. (You know…because they had standardized calendars back then.) I’m generally on the side of snakes (because they’re clever, efficient, and practice good hygiene) so I’m not long on celebrating their demise; however, I’m also on the side of whiskey and of buxom redheads with creamy white skin, so I’m all for celebrating St. Patrick’s day. If I didn’t have a show tonight, I would spend much of this afternoon with a glass of Irish whiskey in front of me and a pint of Guinness behind me. I may play catch up after the show tonight.

In honor of our Irish heritage, and I do believe everyone’s got a little Irishman in them (if you don’t, would you like one?), I give you this. Enjoy.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Here, at the End of All Things

We're hurling toward the end of Ragnarok about as fast as we hurled toward the beginning, and I can't wait. Not because I want this to be over; in fact, there's already a sort of "But I'll miss you most of all, scarecrow" effect brewing in my mind, of a sort that I don't usually get when a play ends. I just have this feeling it's going to be glorious, huge, epic. With three more shows anything can happen. Energy will be high and vigorous. I half expect a snow storm, followed by a giant wolf eating the guy who plays Odin. It will be great (not that I want Cory to die, but if he has to, being eaten by a giant wolf is the way to go; I think he'd agree).

Anyway, I can't think of a group of people I'd rather do this show with than this cast, and I'm going to miss them when it's over. I'm rereading American Gods in preparation for beginning work on the elusive fucking novel again, and I hit a line about the gods waiting for the Vikings when they arrived in America--"Tyr, one-handed, and gray Odin gallows-god, and Thor of the thunders"--and for a moment, I knew I was going to miss the gods very much. And the people playing them, more so. I can't think of a group of people I'd rather end the world with every weekend, and even though I'm going to see each of them again, I'll miss having us all together as a group.

So we'll go out with a BANG! POP! BOOM! POWIE! and then we'll party like there's nothing left to fear. And then I'll rest for a while. And then. And then...

Friday, March 11, 2005

A Few Things Neither Here Nor There

Show Stuff
The show is still up and running. Anyone who hasn't seen it and likes the thought of people dressed as neo-Vikings enacting the end of the world really should come out and see us perform. We might even get you drunk afterward.

Apparently the rash of bad/mediocre reviews to good and innovative shows continues on with the reviews for Don't Spit the Water. I have not seen Don't Spit the Water, but a good friend has told me about it and it sounds like great fun. There's more on this over at Hud's blog. He makes the point that reviewers should take into account audience reaction to a show, and I really have to agree. Ragnarok might not be for everyone, but those who have seen it have raved about it to us. So the Reader reviews it poorly, based on some judgement, and the people who are inclined to give a shit about reviews don't come. Which is a shame.

Wine Stuff
My wine is up and making, which is neat to see. I mean, it's not television or anything, but when I consider the fact that I'm basically using the same creature that attacks my feet every summer to make yummy alcohol, I get a little giddy. And I've considered that what I'm doing is a sort of biomechanics, using a living thing to act as a machine for the production of a...um...product (score one for articulation). Which means, if I am to believe the sci-fi movies, that I'm bound to go mad with my new-found power and my yeast is bound to turn against me and plot my demise. I keep one eye open as it bubbles ominously away.

Whine Stuff
I usually like editing. Sometimes, I even love it. This morning was not one of those times. I came in today, tired from a night of karaoke (in which I kicked ass, by the way) but generally in a good mood and was promptly greeted by a sarcastic letter from an asshole doctor essentially saying we're incompetent. He called our designer incompetent. He called me incompetent (in so many words). He called our whole department incompetent, and did so in the most snide tone I have ever seen in writing at this school. We're not incompetent. We're fucking geniuses, in fact, especially the designer who he criticized (and who hauled ass so this shit could bitch about us taking too long to do things).

This sort of thing happens all the time, and it happens from doctors most of all. Because doctors seem to think that because they have advanced degrees in medicine, they somehow know about English. In sort of the same way that my knowledge of English qualifies me to perform liver surgery...right? Right?

Pissed me off thoroughly. Think I'm going to go take my rage out on some Loki meat.

End bitch session.

Tom Cruise Gets It. Why Can't We Get It?

So I’ve been holding off on talking about this for a while. For those of you who don’t read my articles, William Poole, a Kentucky high school student was arrested and detained after writing stories that were deemed to contain “a direct threat to Clark High School”. The kid, in response, claimed that his stories were fiction and that the stories were about zombies. Jeff Vandermeer and Neil Gaiman have both commented about this story on their sites, as have numerous others on the Web. So I figured I’d shut my mouth and let other, more eloquent people say the things I would have been saying anyway.

Today, I read this article in which, shock and awe!, it is revealed that the boy’s writings didn’t actually contain zombies, at all:

What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.
The writings describe a bloody shootout in "Zone 2," the designation given to Clark County.


"All the soldiers of Zone 2 started shooting," Caudill read on the witness stand. "They're dropping every one of them. After five minutes, all the people are lying on the ground dead."

The tone of the remainder of the article is one of vindication; it suggests that the police in this matter are the poor victims of ignorant Web junkies who were quick to bombard them with epithets like "idiots" and "incestuous hillbillies,” when in fact, they had a real and present threat that needed immediate attention. It concludes with this, from detective Steven Caudill:

But after school shootings such as the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 people died, authorities must take threats seriously, he said in an interview.

"Do we as a society want the police to stop there—that he didn't mean it?" he (Caudill) asked. "I'm not going to take that responsibility and have children's and police officers' blood on my hands."

That’s great, but he’s missing one major point: that Poole didn’t actually threaten anyone. What he did was write disturbing fiction about destroying his school. Ignore for a second, if it’s possible, that every high school student has fantasies about destroying their school, ridding the world of a classmate or a clique, tying up and abusing their principle, or what have you and assume that Poole’s writings were genuinely the product of a disturbed and murderous mind; writing down a story about killing classmates is in no way the same as threatening a classmate with death.

Had Poole said to someone, “I am going to kill/main/blow up/torture you/your school,” that would constitute a threat. But he didn’t. He wrote his fantasies out in a short story, which is a patently sane and legal way of dealing with feelings of violence.

See, the police aren’t saying that they’ve found evidence that he was beginning to stockpile weapons, or that they’ve found evidence of a conspiracy in action, or that they’ve found evidence that he was beginning to act on his stories. And until they do, they have no business in the matter. None, at all. Until the kid makes a move to actually enact his fantasies, all the police should be doing is sitting on their incestuous hillbilly asses and suggesting the name of a good psychiatrist (for example on why this is the case, see Minority Report…or read a good book on causality).

It’s an unfortunate thing that crimes happen, that lives take tragic turns, that blood is shed. It’s an unfortunate thing that the world is cold and that death sometimes comes for our children at the hands of our children. But more unfortunate is the society in which a child’s grandparents call the police when they discover a few short stories that he’s written. More unfortunate is the society that thinks that they can stop these awful things by declaring criminal everyone who suggests openly that they might have a dark side. It's in these societies that mental illness festers and grows, that people who truly are sick don't seek help for fear that they will be declared enemies of society.

More than that, if we keep looking to lock up everyone who shows a sign that they might pose a threat at some time, we will never grow into adulthood as a society. Tragic deaths are awful, yes, and they hurt us in the short term, but if we are smart they do not kill us. What they do is make us stronger and more able to face the big bad world sanely and with power. We want to protect ourselves from real harm, yes, but if we turn to the police like mommy and daddy to take away the bad man every time someone suggests something bad might maybe could happen, we’ll raise a society of children, all of us too afraid to face what the big world will throw at us without holding our government’s iron hand. And it is when that happens that we will be in the truest of danger.

Monday, March 07, 2005

The Similarities Just Keep Growing

Ways that I'm Like Jesus:

Beard: check
Long hair: check
Ability to turn water into wine: check
Likelihood that Ian will deny me three times before the cock crows: check
Walking on water: still working on it

Had to post that. My champagne yeast just arrived, which means that my master plan to make gallons and gallons of cheap and flavorful brandy is under way.

Friday, March 04, 2005

The Reviews and Other Randomness

The reviews of Friday's show are in.

InsideOnline thought the show was great:

In Ragnarok, the gods do play games with the universe. Up to and including charades. The interactive theater piece, based on Norse mythology, is beautifully staged in Holy Covenant United Methodist church, a chapel with a vaulted wood ceiling and striking shadows. There are no pews. Instead, you sit, like a toddler, at a massive table, and the action takes place around, in front of, and including you. If you want to be absolutely certain that you aren't just sitting at home watching television, it's perfect. The play takes the form of an unusually demanding party. Odin, the big white beard of the Norse pantheon, is your aloof host, directing a group of loyal and full-throated players in musical versions of the myths. Loki, the desperate and maniacal Norse trickster god, is a gate crasher, trying to disrupt the performances, win over the audience, and bring about the end of the world. Both the players and the trickster play literal games with their guests, giving audience members a chance to change the course of the show. Unfortunately, the same lively church acoustics that give the cast's folk-rock harmonies their splendor make the dialogue muddy, and hard to understand. Combine this with in-the-round seating, Loki's interruptions, and the general party atmosphere, and you get a play that teeters on the edge of sheer chaos. But who wouldn't endure a little chaos for the sake of an experience this sensually lush, this genuinely strange?

The Reader's reviewer, on the other hand, had this to say about it:
Tantalus Theatre Group aims to bring the competitive, vain, lusty, conniving gods and goddesses of Norse mythology to life in this ensemble-written show. But despite 100 minutes of storytelling, song, dance, and improvised games, the effort fails. Directors Glen Cullen and Devin Brain and their cast are occasionally inventive at telling tales most American audiences won't know well, but the narratives are often so unfocused we can't follow them. The trickster Loki (annoyingly played by crude class clown Kevin Antonio Viol) vies with a dull Odin (Cory Conrad) for support in a series of interactive scenes with the audience that might be better suited to children's theater; we never really care who wins. Ragnarok roughly translates as "twilight of the gods," but this play's world ends with a fizzle and we're left wondering, is that it?

Never mind the fact that it's a bad review or that the reviewer seemingly didn't get the play (which admittedly, it was our job to make her get); what's that bit about unfocused narratives and games in which we never care who wins being better suited to children's theatre? What? In children's theatre the stakes must be absolutely as high as in adult theatre--even higher--and narrative must be clear.

I'm probably just nitpicking to make myself feel better about the bad review. Which I really needn't do. Because I just got this review from an audience member who saw the show last night:

as for last night, i'm gradually getting away from my "wow" phase so i can actually analyze it now. if you don't mind, i would like to take one of your words....brilliant. the play was actually brilliant. i had my doubts, and lord knows i could have used more preparation to know it was THAT interactive, but it was brilliant. i'm definitely going to try to coax some of my friends into going now.

So there you go. Without agenda. Still, with reviews this polarized, can you really afford to rest on your laurels and miss this show? No, I didn't think so.

Last weekend I caught a creeping awful disease from someone at a party (I even know who it is...she apologized for it last night), so I'm off today, recuperating my voice and resting my body. Only I can't do that at home, because my landlords have decided today was the day to fix up the apartments next to, above, and below mine. And my power decided to go out. So recuperating and resting at the Grind is what I'm doing. Some hot tea and honey and yeah.

a few links...
I found SerializerDotNet indirectly through a link on Neil Gaiman's site that further linked to The Salon. Not only is The Salon very cool (if for nothing else than for a plotline involving Gertrude Stein as a super sleuth), but a few of the other comics on it have caught my eye, too. Achewood Sunday Edition is very funny in a dry, crass sort of way. There are others, too. It's a great deal to explore, and at $2.95 a month, is well worth it.

Query Letters I Love is a blog from a Hollywood reader that is exactly what the title promises: a series of astonishingly bad query letters for scripts.

And that's about it for today. A cup of lemon tea with honey beckons me closer.