Please Give!
(A monologue heard recently on a New York City A train) Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to interrupt your evening. I don’t mean to be a burden, but I’m in the […]
2010
Extremophiles: Noxious & Loving It
There was a highly compelling rumor orbiting the biosphere at the beginning of December that NASA had finally discovered verifiable alien life. It was not clear in aggregators like The […]
Things Fall Apart – The Inevitability of Social Entropy
One of this year’s Field Metal winners– a Nobel Prize equivalent bestowed upon scientists under 40– worked within the second law of thermodynamics to create a novel equation for calculating […]
More Real Than Real: Philip K. Dick’s Visionary Post Humanism
(Originally published in Strange Horizons Science Fiction Magazine June 27, 2011) “Being Human is aspiring to be human. Since it is not aspiring to be the only human, it is […]
One Trick Picasso
When exactly did Pablo Picasso paint so much? I saw an old documentary recently called “The Mystery of Picasso”, and there was a clip where he was strolling around his work […]
We’ll Just See About That Won’t We?
America’s taken the lion’s share of ass kicking from the world at large as of late, and like all things American, it was extremely well earned, and most likely paid […]
The Great Indoors
According to a recent Pew Research Poll, the average American spends only 72 minutes outdoors a day. It is a stunning factoid when you consider two things: there are 1440 […]
The Magic Bowl Part 1
Private Ritual, Public Display There’s no better immersion into the vast canon of classical music than an al fresco, starlit night at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s a testament to Los […]
The Magic Bowl, Part 2 – Madness and Musical Creativity
Grand Tours, as they were known in the 17th Century, were responsible for educating and ultimately inspiring our most famous composers. The idea is believed to have originated in England. After an […]
Scoring Ain’t Easy
Occasionally on this whirling carousel called life, things just seem to click: the deal closes, the plants flower, the opposite sex finds us irresistible and throws themselves at us without […]
One-Man Shows and the Woman Who Perfected Them
Even though I’ve been the only person on stage for five original theater pieces, I never tell people I’m doing a “one-man” show. There’s no faster way to turn […]
How To Get Filthy Rich In The Theater
Exactly how does one compete with a film like Avatar? Box office grosses have surpassed a billion dollars at this point, and eager spectators are still flocking. When your average […]
The One Man Odyssey
The history of the one-person show is likely as old as language itself. Maybe older. It’s not unreasonable to imagine an overly animated, pre-linguistic Australopithecus grunting out story points in […]
The Air In Ojai
I did not recognize the 805 area code, but after answering my reliably spotty iPhone, I was surprised to learn it was an equity theater in Ojai, California who wanted […]
Note For Note
Honoring America’s Cultural Foundation It can be argued with some confidence that there are no American art forms more authentic and influential than Jazz and Blues. Not even baseball, which […]
Unfriendly Skies
The pleasure of doing anything on stage is who might be in the audience that night, and I don’t mean celebrities. Exiting the theater last night, I was greeted by […]
The Forgetful Doper
Every so often, Stetson Makakowitz would lose everything he owned and have to start his life over again from scratch. It was a terrible affliction that he could do nothing […]
My Friend Herb
The lemon basil sagged on the granite counter in his absence. It was proud strain of the herb. It had been acquired at the affordable price of nothing at the […]
The Iceman Bummeth
Of all the positions in all the wide world of sports, one stands alone with the dubious distinction of being the loneliest: that of the ice hockey goalie. All goalies […]
The Unfortunately Fortunate
One of the most serious dangers in economic downturns such as these is turning a blind-eye to the neediest of cases. As usual, the hardest hit group of all has […]
The Topography of an Audience pt 1
From the stage, it’s never boring figuring out what type of audience you‘re performing for. Audiences are limitlessly fascinating. They’re living organisms. They may act as a whole, but like […]
The Topography of an Audience pt 2
Once they settle into their seats, the topography of an audience is a fascinating thing to measure. Bleecker 45 is a 300 seat house with a thrust stage, meaning the […]