TC's Ministry of Propaganda

I'm not sure why this never got posted, but....

Just found that this has been set to 'draft' status since January 30th. ImprovBoston is moved into their new space--which is AWESOME. But the old space was home in many ways to me for many years, and that's why I wrote this post back in January, around the time that the old location was turning off the lights for the last time.

I was 23 years old and living at my Dad's house in Wakefield when I first stepped into the Back Alley Theater in Inman Square. ImprovBoston didn't control it then, though they played there a lot; I think they were still doing a regular gig at Joe Tecce's at the time. I didn't know from ImprovBoston. Truthfully, I didn't know from improv. I'd seen "Whose Line Is It Anyway" (UK version), and felt a kinship with Mike McShane because we were both large men and he was just so damned funny, and got to sing songs and have minor love scenes with Josie Lawrence which seemed like a great way to spend your time. And then I saw an ad in the Boston Phoenix. An improv troupe in Boston was holding auditions. So I figured, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" and called the number. Then on a fateful night in 1992, I went to the audition.

That audition was my first introduction to many touchstones of the last fifteen years of my life. Naturally, it was held at 50 Vassar Street. (This will mean everything to Boston-area improv people and nothing to almost everyone else.)  And much to my astonishment, I was cast. (Thank you, Renegade Duck!) I went to my first improv show a week later. Renegade Duck was performing in what was then a comedy club in the bottom of the Charles Playhouse (current home of Blue Man Group.)

Three months later, if that, I performed with the ImprovBoston mainstage cast at an outgig at a high school auditorium. I had no business being on that stage-- the cast included Adam Felber, Ron Jones, Nancy (Howland) Walker and Larry Pizza... and me. With ninety days of experience, and maybe one show under my belt, I was playing with the big kids. I don't think I'd even performed with Renegade Duck onstage at that point in my improv life.

Within a year ImprovBoston had the lease on the Back Alley Theater. I remember very small houses. I remember when the Abbey was the dive-iest of dive bars, and what's now the hip rock room was the place where the IB cast would go to drink and avoid the regulars. I remember when Christina's opened and having conversations with Ray, the guy from Liverpool who owned the place, wherein I learned for the first time what Khulfi was (rosewater & pistachio ice cream, with a hint of cardamom) and why it was named Christina's (his wife's name). I remember when there was still Jake & Earl's (and I still ate meat, so it was a fantastic combination) and when the Druid opened, and the Soho Bistro, and when it was Sandy & Son instead of Stellabella, and... I am old, people.

I remember Picture This shows (a troupe that was three people, then five people, then three people again, and in the last incarnation I was one of them along with Nancy Walker and a guy named Steve LaBollita) that included short movies, including a showing of something called "Frankenstein and the Planet of the Monsters" that a fellow Renegade Duck was in... it was horrible.

The guy who directed it went on to be the guy who directed "The Darien Gap" and "Next Stop Wonderland".

I left Renegade Duck. I took a break. I joined TheaterSports at ImprovBoston, played there for maybe five years. I bought a house. I got married. I was lucky enough to be present for the birth of what we eventually came to know as Musical Improv Company. I was fantastically lucky enough to have three amazing children. I directed shows. I had major abdominal surgery.  I co-directed TheaterSports. I had a major hospitalization. I woke up one day and found that I was one of the old guard now.

I was 38 years old and living in my own house in Wakefield when I last stepped into ImprovBoston's theater. It's time to move, I know that, but God, that little space holds so much of my life within its walls. And I'm really going to miss it.

I think it was a compliment

Wednesday night: Karaoke night at The Asgard. There's a crowd of regulars from ImprovBoston who are there pretty much every week (because, hey, sometimes performers need an audience even on their off nights.)

Kevin says to me:

"You are the second gayest straight guy I have ever met."

I'm vaguely offended that I'm only the second.

Nothing Sacred

Joe Jackson's song "One More Time" is now a Taco Bell ad.

Sigh.

If Joe Jackson is making a buck off of it, so much the better for him; it's his song. But still.

One more reason not to watch US news

The New York Post reports that ABC executives are embarrassed because Diane Sawyer didn't ask Katie Holmes hardball questions during an interview yesterday-- questions brought up by a new biography of Tom Cruise, including an allegation that baby Suri Cruise was (and I am not making this up) the product of Katie Holmes being artificially inseminated by the sperm of late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

How the hell is this news? I mean, really-- am I supposed to buy the idea that Diane Sawyer's journalistic credibility is impugned because she didn't ask about this? Katie Holmes is an actress. She married an actor. They had a kid. She's out on the talk show/morning show circuit to promote a movie. That's all.

She doesn't have her finger on a button, she can't order troops to war, she isn't going to do something that triggers an economic meltdown, and where the sperm that created her baby came from is none of anybody's goddamn business. (Though a quick Google image search shows that Suri Cruise looks pretty much exactly like you'd expect a kid to look if you crossed Tom Cruise's DNA with Katie Holmes' DNA.)

Argh. I shouldn't get upset over something so asinine but it just infuriates me that this is the kind of thing that passes for news these days.

Can't get there from here...

Update: This article on Boston.com explains the events that caused the train delays: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2007/11/hundreds_of_nor.html

Downeaster
Originally uploaded by chaostheory

The recent move from Malden to the suburbs means that every time I end up stuck at the Malden Center T stop waiting for a way to keep moving north, I become intensely aware that had we not moved, I'd already be home. But then I'd miss out on such interesting happenings like the one I saw tonight.

Coming home from Cambridge after 8pm, my options are this: I can catch the 8:35pm train from North Station, or catch the 9:20pm bus from Malden Center. Both go to more or less the same distance from my house. The 8:35pm train stops at Malden, so I get off the Orange Line there and figure I'll catch the train. I get my ticket, head up the stairs, and... there's already a train there.

And it's dark.

And there's nobody on it.

And there's four people on the platform- three potential passengers and a conductor- looking confused. (Well, the conductor didn't look so much confused as just bored.)

Long story short: The train isn't going anywhere. It's inbound (and I'm outbound) and it can't leave because there's a "signalling problem" at North Station.

Fifteen minutes or so pass before the train can head in to North Station and presumably let the rest of the trains through. The train takes off. A few minutes go by. The next Orange Line train comes in.

And within a minute and a half, the empty platform is suddenly packed with angry people from Maine, including two guys in full National Park Service Ranger uniforms and an Amtrak conductor. Not an MBTA/MBCR conductor, but Amtrak. And she loudly announces that she doesn't know anything yet. "I don't have any information yet! I will let you know when I do!"

Incidentally, the MBTA apparently didn't know either-- the T station attendant at Malden came up when the commuter rail train was there because a passenger had asked her what was going on. Nobody had told her that there was a train stopped at the station, she told me.

Near as I could gather from everyone, there was either a derailment or the potential for a derailment at North Station as the Downeaster, which is Amtrak's only passenger service out of North Station, was about to pull out. And all trains on that line were then screwed, which is why the inbound commuter rail train had been sitting darkened when I arrived at Malden. The Downeaster does not usually stop at Malden Center as near as I can tell from the Amtrak site. And I'm reasonably sure it doesn't use the Boston-Reading part of the line in normal operation but takes the alternate Boston-Woburn-Haverhill route.

Somebody at North Station had all of these people get off the Downeaster and take the subway to Malden Center so that they could get back on the Downeaster. I heard one guy complaining, "We were on a warm train! With a bar!"

Finally the Amtrak conductor got on a bench and announced to everyone that she had finally been given some information-- "Both the Downeaster and the commuter rail train are getting ready to leave North Station. If you are going to Haverhill or are a Downeaster passenger, get on the Downeaster. If you are going anywhere between here and Haverhill, you have to get on the commuter rail. I do not know which one is getting here first."

Naturally, the first question somebody asked her after her announcement was "Which one is getting here first?" She was remarkably restrained. =)

The Downeaster came in first, by which time the bus was about to be leaving Malden Center and I took that instead.

Why the Orange Line isn't just extended to Melrose and Wakefield is beyond me. I've heard that the problem is that Melrose blocked it from happening but I can't find anything definitive on that.

I also wonder if the Downeaster passengers had to pay to get on the subway from North Station to Malden. Or if they'll get refunds for the inconvenience they experienced.

Say what?

Say what?
Originally uploaded by chaostheory

Being a big fan of the 'reimagined' Battlestar Galactica, I'm looking forward to the airing of "Razor" this weekend on SciFi. Naturally, I went to set my DVR accordingly.

It's a big difficult to see here, but according to Verizon FiOS, this brand new TV movie, which relates to the Battlestar Pegasus episodes from last season...

...stars Lorne Greene and Richard Hatch.

Richard Hatch, maybe. He's been in the reimagined series. But Lorne Greene?

If they've perfected a way to Lorne Greene-- who's been dead since 1987-- in the reimagined series, then I can only imagine that somebody is in pre-production on a new Bonanza episode featuring the largely dead original cast.

Incidentally, I'd normally link to the SciFi Network page for BG Razor... but it's full of webisodes and given the writers' strike and the issues involved, and given the information in this article:

http://tv.ign.com/articles/833/833633p1.html

...who knows if anybody who wrote or acted in the Razor webisodes got paid?

edited to add: Ronald D. Moore, Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica, addresses the Razor "featurettes" (his term) on his new blog: http://www.rondmoore.com

From the "Irony Can Be Pretty Ironic" Dept.

Yesterday, we're driving in the car with the kids in the back seat, and we've got the radio tuned to Mike FM. A promo for the station comes on, which I can't remember exactly but which more or less goes like this: "Mike FM. Where we don't play anything offensive. Please listen anyway." That's not it exactly, but you get the gist of it and the point they're trying to get across-- this station is saying that they don't play "offensive" music. They're boring. They're non-controversial. So, you'd think, you can safely sit in your car with your kids in the back seat and let the music play with nary a care.

They go from that promo right into Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side".

Now, let me make this absolutely clear: "Walk on the Wild Side" is a great freakin' song. But did nobody see the irony in going from "nothing offensive" to playing a song with a reference to oral sex in the second verse?

And, you know what kids can be like. Kids listen, kids ask questions, kids retain things without you realizing it and then spout them back at inopportune times. Do I really want my two year old suddenly singing "...even when she was giving head"? Or "...the colored girls sing..."? Because it could happen- he's prone to singing "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" without any prompting at all. Also I'm not really thrilled with the idea of explaining what that line "even when she was giving head" means to my 7 year old and my 5 1/2 year old.

Lou got as far as "...Miami, FLA" before we changed the station.

Hm. Maybe I should rethink putting "Heroin" on that mix CD for the kids...

Tenneseein' is Tennebelievin'!

Crossposted from my running blog, Built For Speed!

I'm going to Tennessee!

I've signed up with Team In Training to run the Country Music Half Marathon in Nashville in April 2008. Only a half marathon this time, but a half marathon laden with meaning, emotion, expectations and hopes for the future.

When I ran the Walt Disney World Marathon in 2004, I had something to prove. As I mentioned to many people at the time, until I began training for it the furthest distance I had run was one mile. In high school. Because I had to for the Presidential Fitness Challenge or some other program that required high school students to run a mile. Within five months, the Team In Training program got me to the point where I could complete a marathon-- and I did. Sure, it took me forever to do it, but I made it 26.2 miles under my own power and raised over $5,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

This time... this time there's a lot more to the decision. I recently found out that 2008 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Team In Training program. Over the past 20 years, people like me have run marathons, completed triathlons, ridden bikes, gone hundreds of thousands of miles and raised over $800 million dollars for blood cancer research. 

One day in August some 20 years ago, I met a guy named Hal Rather at the National Junior Classical League convention at the University of Colorado, Boulder, all thanks to a guy named Scott Clemons. Scott was hosting that year's "That's Entertainment!", the annual convention talent show. I didn't know Hal; he didn't know me. Scott knew us. And he needed material for the show. So he handed us a stack of blank paper and said-- as best as I can recall-- "I need more material for tonight. You guys are funny. Write me something funny."

So a friendship starts. There were other people in the room, other funny people-- Laura, Lucy, Joe, Jenny, other faces and names are flashing but not connecting-- and we threw together a ton of material that afternoon then headed off to eat dinner and go to the show. There'd been a running joke concerning one of the nightly dances at Convention that year-- it had a cowboy theme, and there was a country & western band, and smartasses like us who'd seen The Blues Brothers one too many times kept asking the band if they knew the theme from Rawhide.

They did not.

Hal and I did. We figured that out walking from dinner to the dress rehearsal. By the time we got to the venue, we were ready to go- we had a setup and we had a two-person a cappella rendition of the Rawhide theme. We pitched it to Scott, he bit, and... and because Scott didn't come back to Convention after that, we wrote and hosted that show ourselves for the next three years.

I don't remember exactly when I found out that Hal had leukemia. Sometime in late 1991 or early 1992. Hal had spent most of the previous year abroad at the University of Copenhagen- in fact, Hal is the only person I know who spent each year of college at a different institution. Ironically, he was at Boston University the year before I met him. Then he transferred to Vanderbilt University in Nashville. For his junior year, he was in Copenhagen, and when he came back to the US he was at the school at which we'd first met, University of Colorado at Boulder. He left Boulder early to go into the oncology unit at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. I don't remember the specifics of what he had, and for the purposes of this post specifics aren't necessary.

He died on August 4th, 1992. Hal was a funny, sharp, vibrant guy, as funny and sharp as I've ever known (and I'm around some hilarious people on a regular basis). I'd known him four years, almost to the day. I was at that year's NJCL convention when it happened, flew to Nashville and arrived a couple of hours before the funeral. And then I help carry the casket to the gravesite, and watched them lower his remains into the ground. But Hal wasn't in that box. He'd already gone on to the next adventure.

I have not been back to Nashville since. Not deliberately; it just never happened. Twenty years is five times as long as I ever knew Hal Rather, and yet I think about him all the time.

There's another story, another victim of leukemia, that factors in here. My wife's Aunt Denise died of leukemia at the age of 39.

I'll be 38 this December.

It's time, y'know? It's time to go back to Nashville, to where the journey ultimately began. It's time to raise more money and run more miles. Please help me by donating whatever amount you can. The link is right over there on the left. You can donate online, and donations are tax deductible. But more than that, donations fund research. Research yields treatment. Treatment prolongs and saves lives. And lives, even one life like that of a 22 year old from Nashville, can change all of us just by being lived to the fullest.

 

Schilling re-signs...

...which means that the only way Curt Schilling could possibly avoid being placed in the same revered pantheon as Ted Williams, Carl Yaztremski, et al. is if he personally strangled the Dropkick Murphys.

In Fenway Park.

During the 7th inning stretch.

On St. Patrick's Day.

And even then, there's people that would forgive him... unless it all somehow caused the Yankees to win. Some sins cannot be forgiven.

Channel Surfing

1020070945.jpg
Originally uploaded by chaostheory

I was heading to the Children's Museum this morning to be part of a focus group (fathers who go to the Museum with their kids; great conversation after with another dad there named Terrence who's a teacher in the Boston Public Schools.) Today was also day 1 of Fort Point Open Studios and while I didn't have the time to go see anything, this installation by Lisa Greenfield was right there in the water on the way to the museum. Despite any pretense I have to being creative, all I can say is what went through my mind when I saw it: "That's cool." Because the figures are in plastic bubbles floating on water, they move slightly as the bubbles bob in the water, giving the illusion (especially at a distance) that these are actual people in the bubbles.

Except, of course, for the horizontal one-- a body floating face down in the water is creepier when it's actualy floating face down and hovering four feet above the water.

I don't know anything else about Ms. Greenfield or her work, but if you can't get to Fort Point Channel and see this up close and personal, she's got a website. So check it out.