Three Hundred Plus, To Three

"Rent" opens at CdM, apparently with fewer problems than anticipated. Thank God! Everyone in the cast (and Hail, in particular) needs a break from all this 'drama'!





Here's the story from Brianna Bailey:


More than 300 students and supporters clogged the sidewalks outside Corona del Mar High School and shouted down three Westboro Baptist Church members who flew from Kansas to protest the school’s spring production of the musical “Rent” on Friday afternoon.

Waving signs that read “love conquers hate” and “God loves you,” students sang bits of the song “Seasons of Love” from “Rent” and cheered as passing motorists honked and pumped their fists in support.

“We had to do something to stand up for ourselves — we couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, because they were coming to our school,” said Emily Morris, 17, a senior at Corona del Mar.

A soloist in the school’s production of “Rent,” Morris organized the counter-demonstration through the social-networking website Facebook, attracting 362 people who said they would attend.

“Rent” opened Thursday to sold-out crowds after sparking national outcry when the school’s drama teacher claimed the principal initially nixed the production over concerns about gay characters in the script.

The school denies that claim, and production moved forward after the incident drew national media attention.

Now the ACLU is suing the Newport-Mesa Unified School district, claiming the school fosters an environment rife with homophobia that is hostile to gay and female students.

Members of the Topeka, Kan.-based church known for picketing the funerals of Iraq war veterans across the country, waved signs with anti-gay slurs and dragged American and Israeli flags on the ground across the street from the school as students left class Friday.

...Daughter of Westboro Baptist Church leader, the Rev. Fred Phelps, Margie Phelps waved a sign that read, “The Jews Killed Jesus” and stood atop a soiled Israeli flag Friday.

“The Jews killed Jesus, and now they’re teaching the young people of America to be filthy sinners before God,” Margie Phelps said.

Church members said they had just returned from picketing the Israeli Consulate General in Los Angeles before stopping by the high school, and many of their signs bore anti-Semitic messages.

Church member Betty Phelps, who is married to the Rev. Fred Phelps’ eldest son, said she had never seen “Rent.”

“It’s a typical play that makes homosexuality look like a wonderful lifestyle, and it’s taking your children straight to hell,” she said. “I would not watch such a piece of junk.”

Many cast members from “Rent” and their parents were in the crowd who came out to voice opposition to the Westboro Baptist Church protest.

“That students would come out to support each other like this makes me feel really hopeful,” said Caryl Ketchum, whose daughter, Hail Ketchum, plays Mimi.

“Our school has really rallied behind the drama department and supported what we were trying to do,” said “Rent” cast member James Ramsey, 17, a senior at Corona del Mar.

“I’m glad people can see how much spirit and pride our school has today,” Ramsey said, who plays Angel.

...“This is an incredible outpouring of support for ‘Rent’ that shows the true spirit of the community,” said Tom Peterson, a member of the Orange County Equality Coalition, who attended the protest.

25th Anniversary Cake Server, And Knife

After the JCS opening, Sally presented Steve and Jan with an engraved cake server and knife, commemorating DMTC's 25th anniversary (and retiring the spatula that had previously been used for the purpose).


"At last, my right arm is complete again!"

"Jesus Christ, Superstar" Opens At DMTC

Technical issues in Act I were virtually flawless. In Act II, there were a few minor problems with Pilate's microphone, but he was speaking loudly enough anyway that there was no loss of understanding.

Great opening!

Drought Deniers

In the same category as Holocaust Deniers and AIDS Deniers. Much like Dick Cheney did with the Eel River salmon a few years ago, California Republicans decide to kill the fish for short-term political gain:

WASHINGTON – As the politics of water grow more intense on Capitol Hill, Republican Rep. Tom McClintock is skeptical that there's really a shortage in California, even though the governor has declared a drought emergency.

"Don't forget we have the most water-rich region in the state," said McClintock, a newcomer on the House Natural Resources Committee, who represents California's 4th Congressional District. "And yet our communities are in … drought alerts, not because of a shortage of water, but because of water that the environmental regulations allow us to use."

It is becoming a common refrain for some Republicans in Washington: California's drought is human-made and could be resolved easily if government focused more on people, less on smelt.

Republican Rep. Wally Herger of California's 2nd District called it a "regulatory drought" that has been intensified by the Endangered Species Act.

And Republican Rep. George Radanovich of California's 19th District assailed "the draconian regulations that turn simple fish into the worshipful gods of the environmental community" while ignoring the rights of people.

"We need the government to protect the safety and happiness of people, not fish," he said.

The Wingnut Produces A Real Chestnut

Judge Janice Rogers Brown:

A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not "persons" according to it's interpretation of a statute involving religious freedom.

The ruling sprang from an appeal of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, which was thrown out in Jan. 2008. "The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court's decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well," the Center for Constitutional Rights said.

..."[The] Court reaffirmed its decision from last year that detainees are not 'persons' for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was enacted in 1993 to protect against government actions that unreasonably interfere with religious practices," the release continued. "Last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the Court of Appeals panel who issued the decision today, referred to the Court’s holding that detainees are not 'persons' as 'a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.'"

Krugman On Torture

The torture lobby is still very strong, has all the air waves open to it, and it will require a lot of work to defeat it:

Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration’s abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true — even if truth and justice came at a high price — that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?

For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let’s be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job — which he’s supposed to do in any case — and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.

I don’t know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.

Still, you might argue — and many do — that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.

But the answer to that is, what political consensus? There are still, alas, a significant number of people in our political life who stand on the side of the torturers. But these are the same people who have been relentless in their efforts to block President Obama’s attempt to deal with our economic crisis and will be equally relentless in their opposition when he endeavors to deal with health care and climate change. The president cannot lose their good will, because they never offered any.

That said, there are a lot of people in Washington who weren’t allied with the torturers but would nonetheless rather not revisit what happened in the Bush years.

Some of them probably just don’t want an ugly scene; my guess is that the president, who clearly prefers visions of uplift to confrontation, is in that group. But the ugliness is already there, and pretending it isn’t won’t make it go away.

Others, I suspect, would rather not revisit those years because they don’t want to be reminded of their own sins of omission.

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.

Low Air Fares To The Antipodes

I was wondering about this. Several weeks ago, Jean pointed out to me that air travel was going to be subsidized between America and New Zealand and Australia, and thus lower fares could be anticipated.

From San Francisco to Auckland round trip, there seem to be a range of prices: $900 - $1,900.

I have never seen airfares as low as they now are between New Zealand (Auckland) and the US, especially LAX (and San Fran is not much higher). For $700 US dollars you can fly roundtrip, including all taxes. So if you wanted to visit NZ and Australia (where the fares as just as good), there has never been a better time. http://www.airnz.com/ is the website for Air New Zealand and they have excellent service (I fly them all the time) - this is a very low fare for top quality service.

To The Folks At CdM....

Have a great opening night!

Crazy 100 Days For The Wingnuts

Just a few votes more, and they might still be running the country.

DMTC - "Jesus Christ, Superstar" - Dress Rehearsal

Left: Tony Osladil as Pontius Pilate.


Tonight is opening night!


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ.


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ.


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ.


Left: Debbie Cole, Wendy Mumolo, Jennifer Berry, Jacqueline Hayek, Will Jones, Nancy Longo, Brennan Ballard, with David Holmes (back to camera).


Left: Amanda Yount (with David Holmes, back to camera).


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ and Tony Osladil as Pontius Pilate (with Debbie Cole as Roman guard).


Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod.


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ. Chorus from left; Juliana Leone, Wendy Mumolo, Nikki Nicola, Nancy Longo, Pamela Kay Lourentzos, Amanda Yount, and Jennifer Berry.


Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod and David Holmes as Jesus Christ. Chorus from left; Juliana Leone, Wendy Mumolo, Nikki Nicola, Nancy Longo, Pamela Kay Lourentzos, Amanda Yount, and Jennifer Berry.


Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod, plus Nikki Nicola and Pamela Kay Lourentzos (Nancy Longo obscured).


Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod. Counterclockwise from top left; Wendy Mumolo, Juliana Leone, Nancy Longo, Nikki Nicola, Pamela Kay Lourentzos, Amanda Yount, and Jennifer Berry (and David Holmes as Jesus Christ).


Left: Emily Cannon-Brown as Mary Magdalene and Brennan Ballard as Peter.


Left: Andy Hyun as Caiaphas


Left: Thirtynine lashes. David Holmes as Jesus Christ, with Tormentors Pamela Kay Lourentzos (left) and Nikki Nicola (right). Above, Tony Osladil as Pontius Pilate and Andy Hyun as Caiaphas, with Adam Sartain as Annas on the steps, background, right.


Left: David Holmes as Jesus Christ.


Left: Nick Thompson as Judas and David Holmes as Jesus Christ, with Pamela Kay Lourentzos and Nikki Nicola as Tormentors. Also, Jennifer Berry, Dannette Vassar (partial), Wendy Mumolo, Jacqueline Hayek, and Juliana Leone.


Left: "Superstar"


Left: Pietà (Juliana Leone and David Holmes).

Tale Of A Frightened Robot

There, there, it'll be all right.

Float

April is typically the driest month in the Sonoran Desert, which may be why Deborah's works have been trending towards marine themes lately.

Blog Post Fail

Blogger, heal thyself!

Jerry writes:

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do with that cause-and-effect post. The links to the first two photos don't seem to match up with your introductory remarks. (I don't know what to make of that guy's comments about Gore's movie -- I think he must have been on something when he wrote them.)

I reply:

I was trying for a more hallucinatory, child's eye effect, but looking at it now, it looks mostly lame. That's what happens when you try to say something profound in 100 words, or less. You end up sounding like Miss Teen South Carolina, or something.

(Plus, I was trying to cram the picture of the ramjet cow into some kind of sensible thought. Harder to do than I thought.)

Cause-And-Effect: Why Is The Globe Warming?

The human race has made many changes to the Earth's surface. There are ever so many more cows today than prior to the start of agriculture and animal husbandry, plus we are also burning prodigious amounts of fossil fuels. Released gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, are effective at trapping the infrared radiation emitted by warm objects on the Earth's surface, further heating the surface of the Earth.

This.... and this:

...lead to this (Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" explains observed temperature trends and CO2 levels)

...and this.

Support Staff Luncheon

Left: The folks from work headed over to Michelangelo's to celebrate "Administrative Professionals (formerly Secretary's) Day".


Left: Chief Administrative Professional (aka, telephone jockey) Jean Henderson is retiring, in order to focus more attention on wardrobe successes and malfunctions for a community-based musical theatre company in Davis, California.


Left: When Jean and her husband Alec recently closed their meat-pie shop in Dixon, California, they were faced with a dilemma: What to do with all the beer?

Gabe is first-off-the-mark with a plan....


Left: The patio behind Michelangelo's.


Left: Enjoying the ambiance.

“A Perfect Storm Of Ignorance And Enthusiasm”

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it":

WASHINGTON — The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on Americans during military training. How could that be torture?

In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.

Today, asked how it happened, Bush administration officials are finger-pointing. Some blame the C.I.A., while some former agency officials blame the Justice Department or the White House.

Philip D. Zelikow, who worked on interrogation issues as counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, said the flawed decision-making badly served Mr. Bush and the country.

“Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the best law enforcement and military interrogators, and lessons from the painful British and Israeli experience,” Mr. Zelikow said. “Especially in a time of great stress, walking into this minefield, the president was entitled to get the most thoughtful and searching analysis our government could muster.”

The Ting Tings Live - That's Not My Name (Coachella 2009)

DMTC - "Jesus Christ, Superstar" Wednesday Night Rehearsal

Working through lots of technical details.

Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod. Counterclockwise from top left; Wendy Mumolo, Juliana Leone, Nancy Longo, Nikki Nicola, Pamela Kay Lourentzos, Amanda Yount, and Jennifer Berry.




Left: Wendy Mumolo, Jacqueline Hayek, Brennan Ballard, Nancy Longo, and Jennifer Berry, with David Holmes (back to camera).


Left: Jennifer Berry, with David Holmes (back to camera).


Left: Paul Fearn as King Herod, with Nancy Longo, Nikki Nicola, Wendy Mumolo, and Juliana Leone.

Below: Wendy Mumolo (left) and Pamela Kay Lourentzos (right), with Paul Fearn as King Herod.




Left: Thirtynine lashes. David Holmes as Jesus Christ, with Tormentors Pamela Kay Lourentzos (left) and Nikki Nicola (right). Above, Tony Osladil as Pontius Pilate and Andy Hyun as Caiaphas, with Adam Sartain as Annas on the steps, background, right.


Left: Tony Osladil as Pontius Pilate and David Holmes as Jesus Christ.


Left: Tormentors Nikki Nicola and Pamela Kay Lourentzos. Behind them; Nancy Longo, Wendy Mumolo, and Amanda Yount.


Left: Juliana Leone, Debbie Cole, Nancy Longo, Wendy Mumolo, Amanda Yount, Jennifer Berry, Trish Ryan, Eimi Stokes, Jacqueline Hayek, Emily Cannon-Brown, and Will Jones. (plus Tormentors Pamela Kay Lourentzos and Nikki Nicola).


Left: Nick Thompson as Judas.

Remember, Dick, 9/11 Happened On Your Watch

Second Life For The Gargoyles

These gargoyles were initially used in DMTC's 1995 production of "The King And I".

In 2006, these gargoyles were slated to be tossed as part of DMTC's efforts to pare down its prop and scenery holdings. I thought the gargoyles deserved a better fate, so I kept them.

Several weeks ago, I handed the gargoyles to Bill Caruthers, who patched, painted and spruced them up. He may yet add tints of red to the gargoyles.


The gargoyles live on.....