I was pleased with DMTC's 2016 production of "Man of La Mancha": in particular, in that I managed to avoid getting a lower abdominal injury akin to a groin pull the way I had done in the 2008 production. Blood drained down from the abdomen and formed a huge interior thigh bruise. I didn't understand the 2008 injury because all I had been doing at the time was getting up off the floor.
Doing the show again, I realized that getting up off the floor was just the occasion of the tear - the actual injury occurred a few minutes earlier, in the combat scene, diving into the floor. There is something about hitting the floor palms-first that sends a whip-like, injury-producing shock through the ligaments and muscles of the entire body. By the end of the 2016 production, I felt the ache of the strain from repeated pounding, but I didn't reproduce the injury, and that's what counts.
Friday, March 25, 2016
Mockingjay Part I Directors' Commentary
I was watching the directors' commentary of "The Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part I" and was highly amused by their description of the scene where Peeta attacks Katniss, and Boggs clubs Peeta unconscious. The directors were sorely-tempted to end the movie at that instant, because they had been watching "Breaking Bad", and that's where Vince Gilligan would have ended it, for maximum suspense, leading to Mockingjay Part II. Nevertheless, they worried that that was the wrong place, that they needed some closure for the scene, that fans might riot, etc.... So, they had a different ending, with Katniss helplessly watching Peeta's agony. It was all about the difference between a TV show and a movie. Still, it shows the influence of "Breaking Bad" in Hollywood.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
I've Been Watching "The Hunger Games" Series Again
Really, can't ever get enough. I like this song. In a way, it's a good theme for the Bernie Sanders campaign as it struggles against the Capital.
"Better Call Saul" - Season 2, episode 6, "Bali Ha'i"
Interesting episode!
From the movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific":
A few impressions....
I was impressed with the helados shop (called El Griego Guinador, actually Paletería Michoacana de Paquimé, 6500 Zuni Road SE, with its stunning mural of Paquimé, the largest of the Indian ruins at Casas Grandes, in northern Chihuahua).
There is a mystical unity between Paquimé and the New Mexico Ancestral Puebloan ruins of Chaco Canyon and Aztec. All three ruins span a distance of 400 miles, but are located within half a mile straight north-south of each other (and nearly includes some of the Mimbres ruins in the Gila watershed), an axis which an archaeologist named Stephen Lekson has dubbed the Chaco Meridian. Lekson has forcefully argued since the 1990s that the Meridian can't possibly be an accident, but required great effort and very careful design. The Chaco Meridian reflects religious impulses that live on amongst today's Pueblo Indians. Lekson argues severe drought dislodged the ruling elite from Chaco Canyon in the 12th Century, and forced them to move first to Aztec, then later, for reasons unclear, to Paquimé. The debate among archaeologists continues.
Since 1840, New Mexico has looked east-west for inspiration, to the East and West coasts, symbolized by the great railroads, but the north-south axis not only predates the east-west axis, but was formalized by the Ancestral Puebloans 700 years ago, and due to the lay of the mountains and the Rio Grande River, is actually baked into the landscape. Since the rise of illegal immigration in the early 80’s (driven by Mexico’s high birth rate in the 60’s), the collapse of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1989, and the rise of the drug cartels since then, the north-south axis is reemerging as a primal fact in New Mexican life, a point that was driven home by the appearance of the Cousins in last night's episode.
Bali Ha’i is sung in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” by the fiercely-entrepreneurial Bloody Mary. Quoting from Wikipedia, author James Michener “used the tranquil, hazy image of the smoothly sloping island on the horizon to represent a not-so-distant but always unattainable place of innocence and happiness.” In New Mexico terms, in that respect, not that much different than Corrales.
I also sensed danger with Dale the engineer. He didn’t look or act anything like an engineer, even a civil engineer. Engineers – even engineers on the make - wear cargo pants and Metallica T-Shirts, not casual business wear. If Kim and Jimmy cash that check, there will be trouble.
Photos by Nancy Lucía López:
Owner. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Crew. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Artwork signature. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Nancy Lucía López with the mural. (Photo by the owner, with Nancy Lucía Lopez's camera)
The mural. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
From the movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific":
A few impressions....
I was impressed with the helados shop (called El Griego Guinador, actually Paletería Michoacana de Paquimé, 6500 Zuni Road SE, with its stunning mural of Paquimé, the largest of the Indian ruins at Casas Grandes, in northern Chihuahua).
There is a mystical unity between Paquimé and the New Mexico Ancestral Puebloan ruins of Chaco Canyon and Aztec. All three ruins span a distance of 400 miles, but are located within half a mile straight north-south of each other (and nearly includes some of the Mimbres ruins in the Gila watershed), an axis which an archaeologist named Stephen Lekson has dubbed the Chaco Meridian. Lekson has forcefully argued since the 1990s that the Meridian can't possibly be an accident, but required great effort and very careful design. The Chaco Meridian reflects religious impulses that live on amongst today's Pueblo Indians. Lekson argues severe drought dislodged the ruling elite from Chaco Canyon in the 12th Century, and forced them to move first to Aztec, then later, for reasons unclear, to Paquimé. The debate among archaeologists continues.
Since 1840, New Mexico has looked east-west for inspiration, to the East and West coasts, symbolized by the great railroads, but the north-south axis not only predates the east-west axis, but was formalized by the Ancestral Puebloans 700 years ago, and due to the lay of the mountains and the Rio Grande River, is actually baked into the landscape. Since the rise of illegal immigration in the early 80’s (driven by Mexico’s high birth rate in the 60’s), the collapse of Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1989, and the rise of the drug cartels since then, the north-south axis is reemerging as a primal fact in New Mexican life, a point that was driven home by the appearance of the Cousins in last night's episode.
Bali Ha’i is sung in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” by the fiercely-entrepreneurial Bloody Mary. Quoting from Wikipedia, author James Michener “used the tranquil, hazy image of the smoothly sloping island on the horizon to represent a not-so-distant but always unattainable place of innocence and happiness.” In New Mexico terms, in that respect, not that much different than Corrales.
I also sensed danger with Dale the engineer. He didn’t look or act anything like an engineer, even a civil engineer. Engineers – even engineers on the make - wear cargo pants and Metallica T-Shirts, not casual business wear. If Kim and Jimmy cash that check, there will be trouble.
Photos by Nancy Lucía López:
Owner. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Crew. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Artwork signature. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)
Nancy Lucía López with the mural. (Photo by the owner, with Nancy Lucía Lopez's camera)
The mural. (Photo by Nancy Lucía López)Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Bella At Da Club
Bella and I hit the pavement about 12:30 a.m. Bella seemed almost possessed, and with some detours as her nose commanded, she started heading north. North, north, north. Soon, we were standing on T Street, just outside Step One Dance and Fitness.
"Why are we here?" I asked her. "Too many hard-working people here - not my scene!" She just looked at me. Her nose had already told her I lied. "I know what you want. You want to hoover the entire club up your nose and then pee on it." She just looked at me.
We wandered off into the dark.
"Why are we here?" I asked her. "Too many hard-working people here - not my scene!" She just looked at me. Her nose had already told her I lied. "I know what you want. You want to hoover the entire club up your nose and then pee on it." She just looked at me.
We wandered off into the dark.
Cats In Weightlessness
Cats (kind of) in Space!That time NASA wanted to see what happens to cats in zero G.
Posted by Cats in Space Quoting Scientists on Wednesday, March 2, 2016
The Future, Hazily Seen
I was much surprised tonight to meet Jamar Jefferson, Progressive Democratic candidate for the Sacramento Congressional seat held by Democrat Doris Matsui, at Arden Fair Mall.A chief tool used by activists to make the GOP more conservative was by primarying safe GOP officeholders, even if it meant jeopardizing the seat in the short run. Progressive Democrats need to mimic the conservatives in this respect. Matsui needs to Feel the Bern.
One of Jefferson's immediate goals is to bring Bernie Sanders to Sacramento. Jefferson estimates he'll need to gather 5,000 supporters to do that. I'm there for that.
Donald Trump, Spawn of Wally George
I got nostalgic hearing about the violence at the Tucson Convention Center when Donald Trump spoke there this last weekend. I protested Jerry Falwell there around 1980, and even though Trump uses liberals as foils at his rallies just like Falwell did, Falwell was more interested in containing the liberals than beating them up. Shows you how conservative morality has slid over the years.
Josh Marshall is on to something here, identifying Wally George as having designed the original prototype to Donald Trump's rallies. As the videos Marshall assembles show, Trump follows George's recipe faithfully:
"Over the years, as I wrote more and more about the right, I began to realize that George was like one of those early hominid fossil skeletons which are lineal ancestors of all the diverse permutations of humanity today. Perhaps more apt, he was like that archaic fish who made the first sustained steps out onto land, opening a path for all subsequent terrestrial fauna."
(See more videos at link)
Josh Marshall is on to something here, identifying Wally George as having designed the original prototype to Donald Trump's rallies. As the videos Marshall assembles show, Trump follows George's recipe faithfully:
"Over the years, as I wrote more and more about the right, I began to realize that George was like one of those early hominid fossil skeletons which are lineal ancestors of all the diverse permutations of humanity today. Perhaps more apt, he was like that archaic fish who made the first sustained steps out onto land, opening a path for all subsequent terrestrial fauna."
(See more videos at link)
Nighttime Mysteries
Mysteries were posed during Bella's walk this evening that I couldn't solve. A woman, and a young girl of about age nine, called out from a car as we walked down Broadway. Had I seen her friend walk by, a woman in a red sweater? The little girl had tears in her eyes. I hadn't seen anyone. Hope everything was OK. But just a short distance away, someone was huddling under a blanket in a wheelchair. Who was it? Couldn't tell. Adding to the mystery was a tiny bark from under the blanket, which caught Bella's attention. Mysterious! On the way back, a man flagged us down. He was looking for his pet German Shepherd named Sheba, who had wandered away into the neighborhood. Couldn't answer any of these mysteries.
Trump Dream
Strange dream. I was helping run a local version of the X Files, based in Nevada City, and tasked with determining whether Donald Trump was writing messages in the Sierra snow with an AR-15 machine gun, and if so, what those messages were. We reported our findings on a low wattage public access AM radio station and also communicated our findings with space aliens.
Days of Virtuosic Keyboards
The death of Keith Emerson took my mind back to high school days. Among certain of my friends, Progressive Rock was the rage in the early 70's. I had almost forgotten:
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