Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Room 101 Reunion!

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

2/3rds Reunion of Room 101, 9.7 years later! Alas not pictured, Justin Howe.

Pigeons. Sex. Literature.

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Last weekend my First Reader and I went into D.C. to see “Arcadia,” Tom Stoppard’s early-90s masterpiece, at the Folger. The play itself is utterly brilliant, seamlessly weaving literature and science and their history over nuanced characters and vivid settings both past and modern.

The Folger’s production of it we thought was pretty good but not equally brilliant. I saw a lady on local PBS saying it was the best “Arcadia” she’d ever seen, but we saw a fantastic one at UVa about ten years ago, which included several very good theater department grad students in the adult roles and undergrad future actress Sarah Drew as Thomasina. It’s hard to remember exactly, and at the time I may partly have been blown away by the play itself, but I still think that production was better.

Either way, it’s a shame that there isn’t a film version of this play, or of more of Stoppard’s work (the Tim Roth/Gary Oldman Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the only one I know of, and I agree with Roger Ebert that the movie falls flat). Especially with the Hollywood screenplays he’s written, you’d think some indie director would be interested in filming one of his plays. Maybe they’re just far too cereberal for a film audience–which might be one reason I love them.

Hope Springs Eternal, 2009

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Opening Day–for some of us, the greatest day of the year. After three months of winter chill and another of spring training, the boys of summer return–a sure sign that the weather will soon warm and leaves will soon be on the trees. There’s also an egalitarian feel about Opening Day that I love–on Opening Day, every team is tied for first place.

With baseball these days just as big-money commercial as everything else, Opening Day now stretches over several days and some seasons over several continents. But my team’s Opening Day actually will be today, thanks to one timeless constant that even television contracts and pushy agents can’t change–the weather. :) To paraphrase a young pitching phenom from the Carolina League twenty years ago, some Opening Days you win, some Opening Days you lose, and some Opening Days, it rains.

Summer is Nigh

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Memorial Day is in the can and my A/C cut on yesterday for the first time this year, so summer is nigh, and my list of tasks is piling up.  I have to write a new story for a critique-group deadline in two and a half weeks, and I’ll have thirty crits to read/write by mid-July.  I need to spray the last guitar I built with lacquer in the next month before the weather gets too humid, but I’ve got to take it apart and sand it first.  And around all that, I’m working on a big new project that’ll be the first step in my super-villain plan to dominate the world (more on that as it unfolds).  Summer is definitely nigh.