TC's Ministry of Propaganda

Doggerel for the day

My xenophobic self
likes to read the daily news,
with coffee from Columbians
and bagels baked by Jews;
and read about the troubled
European economy.
Some people want to blame the French-
but it's all Greek to me.

Go Bruins!

Confession: I am a bandwagon fan.

Until a couple of months ago, my connection to the Boston Bruins was this: I grew up with a last name that is one letter short of being the same as that of one of the greatest goalies of all time, Bruins legend Gerry Cheevers. I spent most of my childhood being asked if I was related to him. (No. Also, interesting side note: only twice have I ever been asked if I was related to race car driver Eddie Cheever. And only once have I been asked if I'm related to author John Cheever. His literary offspring Benjamin and Susan? Nobody's ever asked if I'm related to them. But I digress.)

Suddenly I'm watching hockey, talking with relative intelligence about the merits of players like Horton, Bergeron, Lucic and Thomas, whose names I barely knew six months ago, and finding my breath rising and falling on each move these guys make on the ice.

I know long-suffering Bruins fans have mixed feelings about bandwagon fans. I get it. They've been riding the rollercoaster for years, and now a tourist like me comes along and tries to act like a local. But this is Boston. That makes it different. In Boston, even if you never watched a hockey game, you know who Bobby Orr was and what number he wore. You know it the same way you'd just simply know names like Williams and Yastrzemski, or Bird and Parish. You know it when you hear kids saying "Beat L.A." and "Yankees Suck" and they're not parroting their parents-- they mean it.  These loyalties are woven into the culture of the city, and woven into each one of us born and raised here.

They don't call it Red Sox Nation for nothin'. Around here, you don't simply become a fan of the Bruins, the Red Sox, the Celtics, or the Patriots. You are born into it the same way you're born into U.S. citizenship. There are days for life as usual and days to fly the colors. This is the time to fly the colors. Go Bruins!

Ignite Boston 8

I've been announced for the lineup of this year's Ignite Boston, taking place this coming Monday night, February 7. The event is part of Global Ignite Week and is taking place at Microsoft's New England Research & Development campus at 1 Memorial Drive in Cambridge. It's free, but you have to register in advance, which you can do by going to the Ignite Boston Eventbrite page:

http://igniteboston8.eventbrite.com/

As with all Ignite talks, I'll be speaking for 5 minutes, with a slide presentation of 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. My topic is "Pure Imagination: How Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory Is Really An Anti-Drug Parable". Fans of me or this blog may recall I tackled this a couple of years ago in a guest post for the great site Overthinking It, which you certainly should be reading if you're not already.

 

Never a bridesmaid...

And yet, I have an article up at Bridesmaiding.com about The Best Man, and specifically my best man. 

http://www.bridesmaiding.com/wp/2010/10/the-best-man/

Testify.

I was taking the subway into work today, waiting on a platform, and looked up at one of the electronic signs to check the time. The new electronic signs on the MBTA show the date and the time when they're not announcing that the next train is arriving. The date hit me hard. It shouldn't have; I knew yesterday was the 3rd because it was a friend's birthday and I knew it had only been a few days since I paid my rent. But I had no reason this morning to think "Oh, today is August 4th." I stood on the platform and thought about where I had been eighteen years ago today.

My friend Hal died on this day in 1992. He had specifically asked to be remembered on Arbor Day- not his birthday, and not the anniversary of his death- but in that, I must disappoint him. After all these years I take my memories when they come to me.

You remember MySpace, right? It was all the rage for what now feels like a period of about sixty to ninety days back at a time that seems so long ago in this internet age that it might as well have involved punch cards and vacuum tubes. But I digress. What follows is a portion of something I wrote on my MySpace blog back in 2007 when I was training to run the 2008 Country Music Half Marathon in Nashville.

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. 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; in fact, the dance had a name: I Wanna Be A Cowboy (Yo, Yo, Yo). There was a country & western band, and smart-asses like us who'd see 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 Theme from Rawhide. We pitched it to Scott, he bit, and... and because Scott didn't come back to Convention after that, we co-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.

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 helped 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.

My strongest memory from Hal's death is this: I was alone, driving through Nashville, time on my hands. I wanted solace. I went to a record store on 21st Avenue looking for some music that I could slip into like a comfortable shoe, something that would soothe me and maybe distract me. They didn't have what I had intended to buy but my eyes fell on Joe Jackson's Body and Soul, which is one of my favorite albums, and I snapped it up. I got in the car, unwrapped it, threw it in the tape deck, and turned on to 21st Avenue. The first track started- The Verdict.

When buying the tape, I'd forgotten about the lyric. What I had intended to be something comfortable threw me a sucker punch in the second verse:

Some people live so fast
They're so scared of getting old
Some people keep on working
All they do is line their graves with gold

We don't know what happens when we die
We only know we die too soon
But we have to try or else our world becomes a waiting room
Would you testify for me?
I think I'd do the same for you.

I didn't return to Nashville for sixteen years, when I went there to run the 2008 Country Music Half Marathon with my friends Sharon and Karen. We accompanied Hal's mother to his gravesite, and I stood looking down at the granite marker with his name on it. At the bottom of the marker, below his name and the dates that mark his time on this earth, is this line: He had a good time along the way. It's inspired by the Jimmy Buffett song He Went to Paris.

I was 39 years old.  Hal will be 22 in perpetuity.

Best of the 2010 Boston 48 Hour Film Project

Last night was the screening of the Best of the 2010 Boston 48 Hour Film Project. ImprovBoston had an official entry, Fat Cops, and there were four other films by members of the ImprovBoston community that made it to the "Best of" level. In the service of shameless self-promotion, the theme from Fat Cops won Honorable Mention for Best Song (the winner of Best Song? A song co-written by my What the Dickens?!? and An Evening With Ladley & Craig collaborator Adam Brooks.) And if you watch Fat Cops, you'll see the stunning debut of a talented young actress, my daughter Annabelle. No, I'm not biased.

All of the films from the IB crowd are great. Here they are:

Fat Cops by ImprovBoston

For A Few Flowers More by Albatross (winner of Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, and a lot of other awards...)

Winston & Wilma by We're Making A Movie:

No Choice by Bastards, Inc.:

Every Buddy Dies by Really.: 

Resurrection

Hi.

I had this blog for a while. Then a lot-- a LOT-- of incredibly painful things happened in my personal life. So I decided to stop blogging for a while. And "a while" turned into a year and change.  

I decided it's time to come back. Among other reasons, I'm inspired by an acquaintance who noted that it made little sense to express myself on Facebook, where the ownership of my creative content is murky at best. Plus, y'know, what's a Ministry of Propaganda without propaganda, right? I have a show I wrote going up this summer at ImprovBoston, and another show I'm directing is going up immediately after that, so...

We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia. 

More News Karaoke - Sir Ted Kennedy


A paean to the senior Senator upon the news that he's been granted an honorary knighthood. From the 3/9/09 edition of Boston News Net. Written by TC Cheever; performed by Jacey Bokuniewicz. Directed/edited by Ian Brownell.

Inauguration...

I meant to post this back when we did it-- This is from Boston News Net, January 24 2009. Really, I meant to post something more recently than... ack, last November. Anyway, all apologies to Elvis, and the backup vocals you hear are courtesy of Miss Jacey Bokuniewicz of ImprovBoston's Family Show.

Point Counterpoint - Boston News Net, Election night

Matt McLaughlin for the Right, and TC Cheever for the Left giving Boston News Net's Presidential endorsement- shot live on Election Night at ImprovBoston during the Boston News Net Election Night 'Political Party', written by yours truly with polish and a spot-on performance by Matt McLaughlin, and based on a concept from myself and the lovely & talented Steve Hoey.