I've uploaded a bunch of images to the second "photo album" containing my graphic design work, including some t-shirts I sketched out for Megan Mullally & her band, Supreme Music Program, right here. Link to the first one, exclusively postcards, is here.
Feel free to hire me for all your graphic design needs, especially super-cool ones that pay gobs of cash.
xxx
c
UPDATE 2/26/06: Galleries lost in the move from TypePad. You can find my graphic design for theater on Flickr.
Saw a cool photography exhibit, Snapshot at sixspace, a cool gallery downtown, last night. Apparently, it was inspired by the work that came out of SENT, that phone-cam show that was making the Internet rounds a ways back, which looked pretty damned cool, too.
I liked several of the photographs in the exhibit, but I especially liked Andy Mueller's work, seen here. Not only are the photos themselves beautiful, the juxtapositions between them are startling and wonderful. It's a good thing I don't have much wall space, because I certainly don't have enough money to fill it with what I like.
xxx
c
I went with my friend, Rob Kendt, to see a pretty snazzy show yesterday at the new Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City. It's called A Perfect Wedding, by American playwright of the moment, Charles L. ("Chuck" to his pals) Mee. There are many terrific elements, including the world's best stage kiss and an ultra-fabulous Bollywood musical number, as well as a bunch of terrific performances, including those by my friends Jim Anzide, Melody Butiu, Veralyn Jones, Leo Marks and John Fleck (whose rant on the election has garnered me more hits in one day than I will probably ever receive for the rest of my blogging life).
But you might not even get to see it, it's already sold out for the rest of the run. There are tickets here and there but they're steep; I paid $40 to catch a matinée.
So to hell with it. Come see Peace Squad Goes 99: The Greatest 99¢ Story Ever Told...Ever! (a.k.a., "the 99¢ show") instead! It's Evidence Room's annual holiday treat, and the only show we put up all year that's clean enough for kid consumption (but still cool enough for the hippest of grownups). I'm in it this year, after two years of bugging the genius behind it all, Ken Roht, for a part, but that's not the reason to see it.
I sat in on my first run-through of the show today and it was absolutely dazzling: hilarious, beautiful, brilliant number after number until I was so weak I had to lie down and have some sliced jalepeno cheese and a celery stick.
For them what hasn't had the pleasure, everything in the 99¢ show is from the 99¢-only Stores, which are the show's main sponsor: all the costumes, all the props, all the set pieces. The show's music is composed primarily on a cheap-o Casio keyboard. You have no idea how fabulous this can be in the hands of L.A.'s best theater composers and designers until, well, let's just say that every time I walk into the costume shop and see the latest creation they're building, I want to play a different part.
Opens November 27. Runs through Christmas. Deets here.
Oh, and 15 bucks cheap.
xxx
c
From the IMDb news:
'Alexander' Panned
Critics have panned new Oliver Stone movie Alexander after early previews of the historic epic. The Oscar-winning director allowed a lucky few a sneak peek of the film - which stars Colin Farrell and is due for release later this month - but critics were unimpressed and have voiced their concerns on the world wide web. One review, posted on AintItCoolNews.com, reads, "This movie is a mess. According to Stone he just finished this film on Friday and, in my opinion, it looks like he rushed it out the door. The story is incohesive, the acting is uninspired, and the whole look is incredibly pieced together." Another adds, "I was stunned - and I say that without snarky irony - stunned by how bad this movie was. Overacting, bizarro camera work and frame tinting, lackluster battles. God, it was just a mess."
Well, duh. I mean, did you see that trailer?
xxx
c
Nothing like a little cheery news from Yahoo! about the separation of church and state going to hell in a handbasket to make your morning:
DOVER, Pa. - When talk at the high school here turns to evolution, biology teachers have to make time for Charles Darwin as well as his detractors. With avote last month, the school board in rural south-central Pennsylvania community is believed to have become the first in the nation to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by an unspecified higher power.
Sweet! But it gets better:
The revision was spearheaded by school board member William Buckingham, who heads the board's curriculum committee.
"I think it's a downright fraud to perpetrate on the students of this district, to portray one theory over and over," said Buckingham. "What we wanted was a balanced presentation."
Buckingham wanted the board to adopt an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins," as a supplement to the traditional biology book, but no vote was ever taken. A few weeks before the new science curriculum was approved, 50 copies were anonymously donated to the high school.
Although Buckingham describes himself as a born-again Christian and believes in creationism, "This is not an attempt to impose my views on anyone else," he said.
Nah. It's that Anonymous Donor Guy. Um, gal. Yeah, it's her fault. Those broads are so pushy: give 'em the vote, all of a sudden they think they own the joint.
xxx
c
I like pretty things. And for personal reasons, I'm pretty interested in examining the nature of fear right now.
So as I was catching up with my perpetual six-month backlog of New Yorker magazines last night, this illustration caught my eye. The caption, which I did not scan, reads:
"Five airplanes will fly the artist Jenny Holzer's aphorisms over the Hudson on Oct. 30-31 and Nov. 1, from 1 to 3:30 P.M."
This morning, I looked up Jenny Holzer, whose work is pretty intriguing (although I think a site devoted to art ought to look rather more...um...artful). She's been shown everywhere, but a huge part of her work is about getting art to people who wouldn't ordinary be exposed to it via site-specific installations and unusual media.
There's a good Wired interview with Holzer in which she discusses a piece of virtual reality art she created for the Guggenheim SoHo. In talking about creating art in a new medium, she makes an interesting point about effective communication in general:
WIRED: Do you worry that the technology will become the master in place of the artist?
HOLZER: Not really. I think the problem is more whether you can start from zero and make sure everything you put in is right. I've never been particularly paranoid about a medium being overwhelming. I think the real problem is whether you're talking about the most important thing and whether you're doing it in a way that's accessible to almost everyone. And whether you can do it in a way that's not merely didactic - that what you're conveying is felt as well as understood. Same problem in any medium.
Yeah. What she said.
xxx
c
Bonus extra links: a cool, interactive Holzer-aphorism project on the web. Explanation here. Straight link to the project "Please Change Beliefs" here. Check it out.
Illustration by Marcellus Hall of aphorisms by Jenny Holzer, via The New Yorker
Wherefore, this compulsion to make lists?
I wish I could say it was purely motivated by my lifelong, Virgo-esque pursuit of efficiency, but that thesis was shattered when I found that I derived exactly as much joy in composing a "have done" list as I did a "to do" list.
It's got something to do with order, alright (pun intended); the more chaotic and random life seems, the greater my desire to exert some measure of control. Here are the steps I'm going to take to ensure that: (a) I buy my house before I'm too old to tend the garden I want surrounding it; (b) my cupboards don't have three more jars of duplicate condiments moldering away in them; (c) I have clean underwear next week.
But clearly, the truth goes deeper than that. Because at some point, I can no longer resist the urge to tell the world, or the person next to me, or hell, myself, for that matter, that these are: (1) the best cover songs ever written, (2) my favorite 20 movies, (3) the blogs I think are worth visiting.
And what, or who, is left off: (i.) the best- or worst-dressed lists; (ii) the bazillion incarnations of red or blue lists; (iii) the most-viewed TV shows of last night lists; is as telling as who, or what, makes it on.
For me, lists are a way of getting at the truth, albeit in code. I have an intention to buy a house, therefore I make a list. I have fascination with cover songs, movies and the Internet, so I make a list. I don't have enough time (or courage) to write essays declaring my love, so I make lists.
Of course, I'm not alone in rockin' the list. Lists must be inherently fascinating to most humans or they wouldn't have such a presence on late-night talk shows, Apple's fascistic music delivery system and people's personal websites.
Which reminds me...
To do:
xxx
c
Back in the go-go '80s, my art director and I made silk purses out of some serious sow's-ear assignments and so were let into the inner sanctum: pitching spots for the second pool of a wildly successful TV campaign for the agency's big, fat American car account.
The campaign was the first (yes, really) to use Boomer music to sell to Boomers. It was such a radical notion back then that many of the artists passed on the opportunity to score cash, either for fear of compromising their art or of tarnishing their image among their fanbase (i.e., diluting their own brand). Hell, it was such a new thing, maybe no one knew what to ask for. End result was the client had to pay scads of money for really expensive soundalikes for many, many executions.
Anyway.
Kate (art director) & I were pretty passionate about creating good work back then, and, in my Virgo-perfectionist-good girl way, I was even then concerned with adhering to Campaign Strategy, Brand Personality and Unique Selling Proposition. Not really a problem; to the contrary, I enjoy working within the confines of an assignment way more than blue-sky creativity. Blank pages make me panicky.
And we could be mostly honest! The cars had been restyled to look hipper. They had even re-engineered some stuff to make them...um...drive better and stuff. So we wrote spots to tell (boomer) America how these cars were made just for them, with (boomer) music and (boomer-relevant) stories to match. But for the client, there was always one thing missing: enough "branding."
We puzzled and puzzled over this: the campaign had, we thought, successfully redefined the brand. People were talking about it (buzz), people were buying cars (sales), what exactly was the problem here?
Our older, wiser creative director, a real Car Guy from the three-martini-lunch days, explained: frames on the storyboard that featured close-ups of the car brand doohickey affixed to the vehicle. Lots of them. So we added them, alternating them with driving shots, until there was an acceptable ratio. Which Kate, as an Advertising & Branding Specialist, would point out when she took the clients through the visuals: "Drive, drive, drive; branding, branding, branding."
So the magical, mythical marketing tool of "branding" came down to this: two young women slapping more product shots on a storyboard so we could get this sucker in the hands of directors, producers and stylists who would do the real work of making this product seem meaningful to the consumer. And this was considered successful branding. By everyone. At least, everyone I came in contact with back then.
And in a way, it was. The process (of advertising, movies, film, etc) has become so transparent to consumers that even the hipper advertising of the 1970s, 1980s & 1990s seems quaint, if not outright camp. The emperor is buck naked; branding is dead. Hugh MacLeod speaks of it elegantly (and way more concisely) here. (He'll also lead you to lots more great links on the topic because he's good like that.)
I've no doubt that as the marketplace has shifted, the processes at agencies have gotten more sophisticated to try to adapt to the new reality. I doubt that our impertinent display of cynicism would be tolerated in a meeting, especially a client meeting, today.
But while I've been out of the development game for awhile, I'm still a consumer. And an employee: I act in these masterpieces of marketing that I then see on TV (as often as possible, I hope, if they're airing National Network). And I gotta say, I think there are still a lot of marketing peeps out there more interested in ramming a USP down someone's throat than they are in initiating a dialogue.
xxx
c
I love scary stuff, but I am a big baby. My workaround is to see all scary movies early enough in the day that there is still loads of daylight to wash away the creepy.
My movie-going friend, Lily, feels similarly, so we hit what we knew would be the very scary Saw for the first show at 10:45 a.m.
Not early enough. This movie makes Se7en look like Bambi. There are some fine performances (although the first few scenes are a really badly acted exception), it's super-stylish, and it's a really good story with only minimal barriers to belief (as Lily pointed out, are there two cops anywhere who would [a] visit the dark and creepy lair of a sociopathic serial killer without backup and [b] do so armed only with their service revolvers and a smoke machine?)
But the torture/killing in this is so sick and heartless, it makes you wonder who could come up with it. Well, apparently handsome, young Leigh Whannell, who plays lead opposite a (sadly) puffy Cary Elwes, can. He shares story credit with the director, James Wan, and has sole screenwriting credit.
Yow.
Well, I guess congratulations are in order. Young man wrote a big hit. He can act, yessir. And he scared Lily and me so bad we had to walk it off in the shoe department of Nordstrom's for a good half-hour afterwards. No purchases; just a Holly Golightly kinda thing.
Wait a minute, just got an idea for the perfect psychic palate cleanser...
xxx
c
For my money, "Pee-wee's Playhouse" was one of the greatest TV shows ever, and tied for first place (with "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle") for greatest Saturday morning show ever.
And now, we have reason to believe that this DVD may be one of the greatest packages ever released. As he said in this New York Times article, Paul Reubens waited a long time for this DVD release:
"To produce it, he had to wait several years for the home video rights to "Pee-wee's Playhouse" to revert back to him. (The original company he licensed them to, MGM Home Entertainment, released the show on VHS in 1996 but opted not to publish it on DVD.) He then spent nearly two more years poring over packaging and box art that he felt lived up to the series's eye-popping visual standards."
Could the show that appealed to two starkly different demographics be the show that unites us? The VHS version has passed the Wal*Mart test, so maybe the idea isn't so far-fetched (assuming Mr. Reubens hasn't loaded the DVD extras with swears and naked ladies).
I say, "Americans unite!" Let's rally around something we can all believe in: great TV that teaches kids without being boring or insipid! Get your red & blue butts out on November 16th and buy the Pee-wee DVDs!
Wait, better yet, buy 'em at Wal*Mart on Amazon and make me some book-buying money!
xxx
c
UPDATE 1/17/08: I've got both sets; the shows are absolutely as wonderful as I'd remembered, and collected, they're a dream.
UPDATE 2/9/2011: I'm serious about buying them on Amazon. Look, they come in one BIG set now!
In a way, Epinions was (for me, anyway) the forerunner of the blogging world: we created a tiny, electronic tribe of like-minded souls tapping away about Things Arcane and Mainstream, e-mailing and commenting back & forth. It was lovely. And then the dot-com floor fell and all electronic hell broke loose. The mainstream do-bees took over the joint and the downwardly-mobile art-trash who made the place charming and habitable took off for sunnier climes (culturedose, various movie sites, etc.).
Most of my compatriots have pulled their reviews, to post elsewhere, or not, in disgust. I'm perverse, and refuse. It's especially icky there since the shopping.com buyout, but dammit, every 12 months or so, those crazy reviews get me a whompin' $10 check. Plus it's fun to see how many more people have randomly searched for "cover songs" (a mild obsession of mine) and fallen into my tiny Epinions web.
Oh, and there are also fascinating (if marginally useful) reviews on coffeemakers, baby wipes and nose-hair trimmers. But they're charming and, quite often, amusing. And if you sign up for Epinions before you rank them, you net me a coupla video rentals per annum.
xxx
c
UPDATE 2/9/2011: If Epinions is even still around when you read this, O Person of the Future, do not bother. I sent in for my last check and will close my account as soon as it clears. Excelsior!
It won't nudge Double Indemnity out of the top slot for me, but I am thrilled to have discovered this glorious specimen of the noir genre this late in the game.
The male cast is outstanding, Robert Mitchum is solid and sexy and right in the pocket, as usual, and Kirk Douglas is a perfect foil, but that Jane Greer...yowsa! She was a girl of 22 when she filmed this and she walks away with the damned show. She's tantalizing and maddening and gloriously feline. It's magnificent.
As a side note, I'm now viewing it again as I type this (I looooove my Cinema Display!) and the commentary by James Ursini is excellent as well. It's not super-gnarly, Criterion-detailed commentary, but thorough and pretty engaging.
xxx
c
Lest anyone think that the next four years will be business as usual, I'm posting this op-ed piece my friend, performance artist/actor and NEA Four activist, John Fleck, sent off to The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Advocate:
WHY THIS GAY MAN WON'T BE HOME CHRISTMAS
I grew up in Cleveland. For the last 20 years in Los Angeles, I've survived fairly well as an actor/performance artist. Always, I return home at least once a year, usually for a holiday visit to my 5 brothers & sisters and 12 nieces & nephews living in the Strongsville, Brunswick area. However, I just notified my family I won't be coming this year. It breaks my heart. But, as a gay man, Ohio has clearly disowned me. How can I call it home anymore?
What has truly poisoned Ohio for me is the passage of Issue One stating that Ohio will recognize marriage only between a man and a woman. To compound the injury, it also states that the state does not have to recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships.
The burning issue for Ohio voters was morality, not the economy, recently earning Cleveland the designation of America's poorest city. Not the dubious morality of being lied to by a born-again administration for invading a sovereign country that harbored no immediate enemy killing over a 100,000 of its citizens and 1,200 of our men & women in uniform.
Morals aren't mentioned when discussing the 46 million Americans living without health coverage or the one out of five American children living in poverty. And of course, morals are another issue when turning over national public wild spaces to Oil Companies or giving away the publics airwaves to a few corporate behemoths.
But morals are the issue when it comes to 2 gay people loving one another and wanting some recognition of their long term commitments. Given that the faith-based Republican Party now controls every branch of government, when will a woman's right to choose be next on the chopping block?
Marriage itself is not my issue. You heterosexuals have tainted that sacred concept to the point that I don‚t want it. But to deny my neighbors, a gay couple who have been together for 21 years with 3 children, even the slightest bit of dignity and legal protection of their union; to deny them a civil union contract that might enable them to get health insurance for their children or the right to see one another in the hospital if one of them falls ill is truly morally repugnant.
So I urge every gay man & woman not to return home to Ohio for the holidays. We're not wanted. Perhaps our families will call others and get the word out that some of Ohio's brightest and loveliest won't be returning home this holiday season. But make no mistake about it. We're not leaving for good. Once we get over the betrayal, we will return soon, and in force with marching boots on, because this is a fight for the soul of America. I believe gay rights is the foremost civil rights issue of this decade. Let the battle begin.
I think that a big, fat increase in activism might be the silver lining in the cloud of this painful election.
I sure as hell hope so.
xxx
c
I was having a pretty good night anyway (improvisational, my favorite kind) hitting the Eastside galleries, catching up with friends, nursing a bourbon at a local watering hole whilst scribbling notes for the show's big patter number--when out of the blue, I got blindsided by this breathtaking painting by Gary Taxali:
Could I afford it? Um...no. "Volume is down," as my agent is wont to say these days, and residuals aren't money in the bank until...well, until they're money in the bank.
But this damned thing started screaming at me from across the room. Nay, worse--it was whispering softly, the bastard! That hasn't happened for awhile with a costly piece of art (thank jeezus), but I've learned the hard way to listen to The Voice. So there are less something-or-others (steaks? shoes? heat?) for awhile. So be it.
Connection is everything. I've been a little out of touch with two-dimensional art as a form of connection.
It's nice to be back in the pool.
xxx
c
I'm not an especially fast learner when it comes to life lessons, but the silver lining there is that having had all those extra years of crappy stuff makes me really appreciative now.
This eye-popping revelation on the heels of a great couple of nights of rehearsals: the first, for someone else's play; the second, for the one I'm co-writing with a friend (link to come).
Art may not be everyone's thing, but it's pretty clearly mine. As my writing partner (who works a f/t, six-day-a-week day job) put it: "I've never been more tired or stressed out. And I've never been happier."
Roger that.
xxx
c
Does being overweight indicate a lack of character? Lousy gene pool? Affinity for salty snacks? Dunno. Not my personal row to hoe this go-'round.
But in the near future, it may mean that heavy tags , and their attendant additional charges , are not just for suitcases anymore.
Time to pay the piper, my airborne brethren.
xxx c
I've been thinking about change a lot lately. Mostly for intensely personal reasons, but yeah, this little politial fracas that's been consuming us lately factors in.
So first, the "duh": change is never easy. I think normal human beings--lefties and righties, blues and reds, tall peeps and short (ha!)--resist change with every fiber of their beings.
This guy, Mark Hasty, whose blog I just stumbled upon this morning, makes an interesting point about why Bush won this election: basically, that the Republicans speak to the People and Dems don't. He goes on to suggest that a few of us park our liberal asses in a church and see whaddup with the rest of the world. That there is no substitute for the community provided by faith.
Well, yes. And well...no.
Did Kerry lose because he doesn't speak the language of the majority of the people in this country? Absolutely. It's not like the man is lacking in the moral values area himself.
But why is The Answer to adopt the language and/or lifestyle of that largest voter bloc? I'm an artist (well, I try, anyway). I know lots of other artists. You wanna talk community? You wanna throw down about faith? About true "Christian" (i.e., loving, inclusive, radical) values? Come spend some time in our church. We call it a theater, but whatever. It's a more loving, inclusive community than any of the Catholic parishes that we belonged to in my youth.
At rehearsal last night for the glorious, celebratory, non-partisan, non-religious holiday show we're putting up this holiday season, there were many sad artists. Because even artists don't like to lose. But a lot of us are already fired up about what we see as the possibility for large-scale change, because that's something artists embrace. We like change. We're scared of it too, sometimes, but it excites us. What's working, what's not? What do we keep, what can we toss?
Do we need to find a way to communicate? To reach out? To reassure that no one wants to take anything from anyone else, but rather to add to, to enhance, to include? Yes, yes--a resounding "YES!!!".
You really want to include every one? Heal the rift? Make this beautiful country the great, glorious place it can be?
Get cracking on a lingua franca: that common language that fosters communication between all people, all parties, speakers of all languages.
We're working on it at the 99-cent show. It's a little nutty, but it just might work.
xxx
c
I think the most interesting -- and telling -- thing about this election is what NBC's exit polls point to (Jeff Jarvis sums it up here): that "moral values" and not national security or the (abysmal) economy were what drove Bush votes. To which I must respond, "In what way was John Kerry going to compromise your moral values?" Was he going to shut down churches or prevent heterosexual people from marrying one another? Was he going to deny you the right to carry a pregnancy to term or turn your children into licentious, dope-smoking ne'er-do-well's?
It flat-out sucks that for too many people, the term "moral values" implicitly carries the incomplete phrase "the world ain't right until everyone else adheres to my" in front of it.
I will now get back to my dharma. With renewed vigor, baby.
xxx c
Change comes slowly, except when it comes all at once. Either way, it's not usually something we embrace with open arms (yeah, even "good" change).
We're now on the ink-dot system here in K-town Adjacent. Lots and lots of replacement ballots this year. Seems some of us were trying to punch holes in the ballots with the ink daubers. Actually, given the frequency with which Grand Poobah Poll Worker was barking out the "dot-don't-punch" order, lots of us were.
But see, the dauber doohickey looked like the old punch thingy. And the ballots slide in the same way. And and and...
I made dots. But I did make them extra-firmly, just in case.
Change comes slowly, especially when it comes all at once. For me, anyway.
xxx
c
A few years ago, I was given to doing (unsolicited, oddly enough) an incredibly poor take on Yoda dispensing advice. I think the original exhortation was along the lines of "there is no 'try'; only 'do'" or something similarly zen-by-way-of-Lucas-like. Anyway, "no try...do" became my credo for an embarrassingly long time ("embarrassingly" because really, if it's a Guiding Principle, shouldn't one make sure it's elegant as well as succinct?). And now, equally embarrassingly, I am adopting this rather pathetic, semi-pithy anti-consumerist credo. Dorothy Parker, I'm not.
Worse, I will be buying things still: I must eat; my landlord has this thing about rent. But lately I've found myself resorting to Retail Therapy a bit too often for my tastes. Sure, it's all tax-deductible and/or purchased at the local Goodwill, but still -- it's the principle of the thing. I'm running from something and I done give up runnin', son.
So I'm turning inward. I'm shining that big, fat spotlight on the interior of my soul and scattering the cockroaches. Thank you, my virtual friends. Let the cleansing begin...
xxx c