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May 19th, 2005
07:47 pm - Upcoming live performance!
For the benefit of California Theatre Center, I am performing LIVE over Memorial Day Weekend in Sunnyvale, CA! Here's the info:
You are cordially invited to attend California Theatre Center’s BEHIND THE SCENES: SUMMER REP 2005
on Saturday, May 28 from 7:30-10 pm at the Sunnyvale Theatre at the Sunnyvale Community Center!
Your support of this event will help keep California Theatre Center’s Summer Rep alive as a thriving and vital part of CTC’s programs!
At this preview of our Summer Rep 2005 season you will see sneak peaks of scenes from The Fantasticks, Chapter Two and Stones in His Pockets before these shows open; meet CTC actors, directors and designers; travel backstage for special demonstrations on such intriguing topics as makeup, costuming, scene painting, acting and stage managing, listen to live music; and have the opportunity to buy some great items in live and silent auctions, and nosh on wine, cheese and fruit!
DATE: May 28, 2005
TIME: 7:30-10:00 pm
LOCATION: Sunnyvale Theatre at the Sunnyvale Community Center
PRICE: $25 per person advance purchase, $40 per couple advance purchase, $35 per person at the door (Please, no children under 16 years of age)
To RSVP and buy tickets, please call our Summer Rep Box Office as soon as possible at (408) 720-0873!
Don’t miss this exciting inside look at CTC’s Summer Rep!
I know it's pricey, but it's for a great organization. If you come, I will write a song about you and perform it that evening!
Hope everyone is doing well. Congrats to those who have graduated and hang in there to those who are almost there like me!
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April 19th, 2005
11:47 am - A step backwards?
Says the new Pope Benedict XVI according to an MSN article:
“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” he said Monday. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ’swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.”
“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires,” he warned.
This is out of control. I had no idea we were heading in this direction as a civilization.
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April 10th, 2005
08:08 pm
I got a job working for UCLA Arts Camp. Not the most exciting job, but get this--I have my own cubicle with my own computer and printer, and my name on the door. Fun! When summer starts, I'll be working there 40 hours a week and rehearsing at night. But thankfully I will have graduated and I won't be taking anymore classes...a scary thought! But one that I happily embrace.
Current Music: Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
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April 3rd, 2005
01:08 pm
Back in LA. Went to Disneyland with the fam last night, saw the Mainstreet Electrical Parade at California Adventure. The theme for that parade is some of my favorite Disney music ever. 70's electronic music, so cool.
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April 1st, 2005
04:40 pm
With the exception of one grade that's pending, I GOT ALL A'S THIS QUARTER. And that last grade should be a pass cuz I took it p/np. I have no idea how I did this, but I'm not arguing!
Aahh, getting ready for the drive back to LA. This was a very interesting spring break. I definitely got to spend some quality time with my friends, though I wish I could have spent more. I really appreciate my friends and feel very special to have them in my life. You know who you are.
So looking forward to being back in LA. I have grown to love that city so much. I hated it my first two years, now I can picture myself living there for a while. Maybe I've been infected with the Hollywood dream, maybe I think it can be a reality on some level. Maybe I'm superficial like lots of people who live in LA or maybe they were right all along. The Bay Area is so different. It was like driving into another state when I came up this time. I still feel at home here, though a little displaced because I'm no longer based in Palo Alto. But I often forget that I spent a good twelve years in San Jose/Los Gatos too.
Why am I obsessed with Will & Grace? I feel like it makes me a shallow gay man, but IT IS SO DAMN GOOD.
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March 29th, 2005
01:41 am
We need a new breakthrough in popular music.
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March 21st, 2005
11:58 pm - Bob Dylan Still Rocks!
Tonight was such a great show! I saw Bob Dylan at the Pantages in Hollywood. He rocked the house. It was a better show than the last one I saw two years ago in San Diego (Laura--you would have appreciated tonight too). He did classics and a few from his last album Love & Theft, including Summer Nights, a hot swing number that had the ushers telling people to sit down. My favorites were Highway 61 Revisited, Down Along the Cove (which had about five verses I've never heard before), and The Times They Are a Changin'. Dylan played an upright piano while standing up the whole time and never once touched a guitar. He was resplendent in his signature cowboy outfit, hiding under the shadow of a giant Stetson hat. His band was polished--the drummer rivaled Jim Keltner and he had a gifted young woman on fiddle.
Merle Haggard opened the show. This guy knows how to rouse a crowd. His band, The Strangers, is 40 years old this year and is, in the words of Haggard, "the first beer bar band." Whatever that means. Some memorable words from the country Bard were "Don't think about George Bush, just keep your mind on Bob Dylan," (which taken in context was more meaningful than it sounds). I was a little disappointed that in his drunken playfulness he stopped the band halfway into the first verse of "Okie from Miskogee," which I had really wanted to hear, and admitted that he couldn't remember the words...a "senior moment" he called it. My ass, Merle! Lay off the sauce! This after he pointed to a young blonde on back up vocals and introduced her as his wife. He took off his hat and with a pelvic thrust said, "Maybe I'll GET some tonight!" She couldn't have been more than 14 years old and looked utterly mortified!
Amos Lee did the first opening act. He's another new blues/folk/rock guy. I liked two of his songs but found the rest mediocre. Still I love the sound of acoustic instruments. His style was definitely closest to mine and listening to him made me think about my own songwriting. I strive to be like Dylan knowing that to be like him I have to be utterly different than him. Lee, on the other hand, is too similar to me so that while watching him I had to pit myself against him, lyrically at least. I loved his musicianship; I want my lyrics to be clearer and more meaningful than his, i.e. more like Dylan's. A vicious cycle.
What a fantastic night. And the topper (besides getting to hang out with my dad) was that ELVIS COSTELLO was in attendance AND I got to shake his hand after the show. There was a flowing line of people...he was really nice about it. I don't think you can be Elvis Costello and walk into a Bob Dylan concert and not expect people to run up to you with their digital cameras. Anyway, I didn't talk to him or ask for his autograph, just said, "Do you mind shaking another hand?" and he, chuckling, in his crackly British accent replied, "Sure."
Finals ended on a good note. I managed to not get ridiculously stressed this time around. Two weeks off for spring break!
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March 18th, 2005
11:09 pm - Bodyworlds2
Man, this exhibit was incredible. I never really got the sense I was looking at actual dead humans, though. They were handled with such artistry that I thought I was looking at sculpture. At the same time, I must admit that my knees got a little knocky. Some of the most amazing things were not the bodies themselves but the random body parts and organs they isolated in glass cases. Like the smoker's lungs and coal miner's lungs; a gallblatter with gallstones; and an alcohol-poisoned liver. Oh, and the CAMEL. They had a fucking CAMEL. Camels have FOUR STOMACHS. I always think of how amazing the HUMAN body is and then to see this camel, and near it a young colt, made me realize how mindblowing biology is altogether. Gunther rocked my world today. Laura, don't let him get near you with that plastination stuff (Also I must thank Laura for enduring a little unexpected journey through East L.A. after I took a wrong turn. I hope you eventually made it home okay!)
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11:12 am - Guinness
God, I had forgotten how good Guinness is. I'm going to be a snot for a second though and say that Guinness in the U.S. is completely different than in Dublin, Ireland. In Dublin it is tops, which is to be expected, but still. I know I say this in every conversation I have about Guinness, but it is so true and it bears repeating.
I pulled yet another photo-finish on my last essay of the quarter. It was due at 5pm yesterday and I time-stamped it at 4:57pm. Back to my old tricks...for a while I was being good about finishing things a little ahead of time. I must have started thinking again that "on time" meant finishing directly on the time it was due.
The feathers keep falling out of one of my finches. I can't tell if it's because he's "mulching" (something I'm told finches do) or if the other one is pecking at him in some strange mating ritual. I'm worried because his muscles are exposed on the back of his neck. But he's as perky as ever, though he's lost weight. I care about this finch. I've had him for six or seven years. His name is Finny. We got a new finch in January, LaFawnda, who we think is a boy because of his coloring. And since Finny is a boy and they were screwing each other, I was really proud to have gay finches. But now LaFawnda is porking up a bit and we think he/she might have eggs. Does anyone know anything about finches?
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March 15th, 2005
10:11 pm - So yeah
Attempting to write about the representation of nature in Tolstoy's "Family Happiness" and connecting it to late 19th century Russian painters Shishkin and/or Levitan;
Rocked my Chicano Theater final today (tap wood);
Looking forward to writing about the relationship between Wayang Kulit (shadow puppetry) and the Sukarno era in Indonesia tomorrow night;
Hoping to pass the final for my AIDS class on Monday;
Totally seeing Bob Dylan on Monday night after it's all over.
Will I miss finals a few years from now? In all honesty, I think I might.
Will you write me a comment, lunattica? Please?!
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