Sacramento area community musical theater (esp. DMTC in Davis, 2000-2020); Liberal politics; Meteorology; "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul," and Albuquerque movie filming locations; New Mexico and California arcana, and general weirdness.
Nikki Haley's recent gaffe and her evasive course corrections since show that if private individuals decide on their own to start enslaving people again, the Republicans will defend their right to do so without government interference:
Haley said Wednesday that the Civil War was about “capitalism” and “economic freedom” and “freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.” That made her sound like she was talking about the freedom of Southern enslavers. After all, the enslaved didn’t have any capital or economic freedom to defend, and their oppressor wasn’t the federal government but private plantation owners.
Is that a fair interpretation? Haley’s retraction Thursday confirmed that it is.
The tell was Haley’s use of the word, “but.” Haley said we mustn’t “go back to slavery, but what’s the lesson in all that?” If Haley were talking about freedom for the enslaved and their descendants, she wouldn’t have said “but”; she’d have said “and.” Haley was talking about the freedoms of enslavers and their descendants.
If you look at this, this is exactly the point that would be made by abolitionists. They would clearly argue that government should "secure the rights and freedoms of the people”, including the enslaved. They would absolutely argue government should make sure “you have freedom.”
But again, whose “freedom” is she talking about?
Well, that becomes clear when she says “We need to have capitalism, economic freedom.” She argues against government intervention, which means she is not suggesting that the government *stop* the slave trade. So she’s not talking about the freedom of the enslaved people, she talking about government getting in the way of people being allowed to do commerce in the way they see fit.
I was at the mall doing Christmas shopping when someone opened the nearby emergency exit, setting off an alarm. The people closest to the door knew immediately what had happened: a thief had fled through the door carrying a box of Legos with him. I suppose my superhero instincts should have kicked in - the thief was struggling with the box while running only a short distance away - but I just couldn't summon enough outrage to pursue him. Legos are expensive, but so is medical care. Who knows how it would have turned out?
A study of octopus DNA may have solved an enduring mystery about when the rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet last collapsed, unlocking valuable information about how much future sea levels may rise in a warming climate.
The innovative research focused on the genetic history of the Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti), which lives on the seafloor across the Antarctic, and what it could reveal about the geology of the region over time.
Tracing past encounters across the species’ various populations suggested the most recent collapse of the ice sheet occurred more than 100,000 years ago during a period known as the Last Interglacial — something geoscientists suspected but had not been able to confirm definitively, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science.
Two men were arrested after being accused of chaining a 50-year-old unhoused man to a Jeep and dragging him, New Mexico officials said.
Police in Santa Fe responded to a Speedway gas station after getting reports from the fire department that two men had been seen dragging someone through the parking lot with a Jeep, according to a Dec. 20 Facebook post by police.
Adrian Montoya, 31, was the driver of the Jeep and was seen dragging a man later identified as Julian Perez by a chain attached to his legs, according to a probable cause statement obtained by McClatchy News. Jonathan Gomez, 22, was also involved in the incident, police said.
...Gomez said he called Montoya, his manager, and they were still unable to wake Perez up, according to police. Gomez said he kept trying to call the non-emergency phone number as Montoya got a chain from his vehicle, authorities said. The chain was then attached to the man’s feet, and he was dragged, police said. Officers found a video uploaded to Gomez’ Instagram, and he was heard saying they had dragged the man with a Jeep, police said.
...Montoya was charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery, conspiracy, tampering with evidence and driving while intoxicated, police said.
Gomez was charged with kidnapping, aggravated battery and conspiracy, officers said.
The victim was taken to a local hospital with minor injuries, police said.
I wanted to see the two-story Santa in the North Natomas neighborhood that LaToya mentioned, but apparently the owners had taken it down, maybe due to winds associated with the recent storm. Instead, laToya recommended the Rockmont Lights - a project in the Rockmont neighborhood. They go all out there. They apparently go all out at Halloween time too. So, I followed up, and even saw LaToya and Jenn driving around too!
On Tuesday, I went to the beginning-level special Holiday Barbie ballet class at the Ballet Studio.
The instructor, Katie Rogers (seated, lower right), hosted her first Barbie ballet class during the Barbenheimer phenomenon last summer. I later put out a little suggestion, of doing the class again, maybe even on a semi-regular basis (I suggested Safari Barbie). Katie took the idea and ran with it. The Holiday Barbie class hosted 19 students - probably close to a record attendance for such a small space! As one of two Kens, I brought a fourth-grade, papier-mache, California Mission classroom project that I found in the alley behind my house a few years ago as my Mojo Dojo Casa House. Fun was had by all!
A lot of 19th Century books concerned themselves with Education: even “Huckleberry Finn” fits the mold that “Poor Things” occupies, with the only difference being a girl instead of a boy. Jimmy McGill’s BCS rant to shoplifting scholarship student Kristy Esposito comes from “Les Chants du Maldoror,” written in 1869 for a boy rather than a girl. It’s like history repeating itself. I loved that crazy dance in the movie. I loved the fanciful technology. Emma Stone did great. I also thought William DaFoe was great - he loves Bella so unreservedly. Here is an excellent review:
Since Bella needs to have someone monitor her progress as she learns language and motor skills, Godwin asks one of his students, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), to be a companion for her. Godwin has kept Bella shielded from society, but when Bella gets a taste of life outside — Lanthimos has depicted the impact of seclusion from society since his brilliant breakout film, “Dogtooth” — she becomes hungry for adventure. Despite becoming engaged to Max, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a handsome cad, shortly after discovering how to pleasure herself in a rather . . . resourceful way.
“Poor Things” takes off at this point in ways that astound and amuse.
The plot borrows heavily from “Pygmalion,” “Frankenstein” and “Prometheus” among other narratives.
Interesting. “The quarterly data in particular suggests 2023 featured one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the United States in more than 50 years.
”The drop in 2023 comes atop a 6 percent drop in 2022, according to statistics released by the FBI in October. Two consecutive years of declines are doubly encouraging, but one reason the rates are able to drop so much is that they rose so sharply in the two preceding years.
A surrealist with an incisive eye, finding the beauty and absurdity of everyday life. A model who posed for Vogue and sat for Pablo Picasso and Man Ray, but whose fashion career was suddenly cut short. A war photographer who embedded with the US military to chronicle the harrowing events of World War II — and posed defiantly in Hitler’s bathtub on the day of his death.
Lee Miller was an American artist who remade herself many times without straying from the principles that guided her life and career. When she died in 1977, her photographic work had largely been forgotten; her own family was unaware of the scope of her practice, and what she witnessed in the war, until they found her cache of negatives. Now, five decades later, she’s the subject of the Kate Winslet-led biopic “Lee,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, as well as a recent monograph of her work and an ongoing exhibition at mega-gallery Gagosian in New York, where some of her prints are for sale.
NASA's Voyager 1 probe is currently unable to transmit any scientific or systems data back to Earth. The 46-year-old spacecraft is capable of receiving commands, but a problem seems to have arisen with the probe's computers.
...When functioning properly, the FDS compiles the spacecraft's info into a data package, which is then transmitted back to Earth using the TMU. Lately, that data package has been "stuck," the blog post said, "transmitting a repeating pattern of ones and zeros." Voyager's engineering team traced the problem back to the FDS, but it could be weeks before a solution is found.
Given all the true injustices in the world, I have nothing but disdain for gun rights folks. It's just sacrificing the innocent for a hobby. I think the premise of the article is that we are supposed to feel sorry for this guy. Sorry. He deserves the most painful death possible:
Owens had a few hours before he had to drive to Wake Tech Community College to pick up his older daughter, Maya, who was taking a final. So he kept walking. As he made his way down Sequoia Ridge Drive, he caught the attention of a neighbor, a woman who didn’t know him but was struck by the way he was hanging his head. That man, she thought, seems remarkably sad.
Eventually, Owens arrived at the intersection of Sequoia and South Judd Parkway, not far from his house. Cars whipped by rows of well-kept shrubs. Owens pulled out his phone to post a message on Facebook. “In the end, it turns out that I’m not strong,” he wrote. “I’m a coward, and a selfish son of a bitch. I’m sorry.”
I wondered, what are old friends from high school doing? I looked up Mark Reece (on the right in this picture). Here is an article from 2012 describing trauma shears that he was working on. Useful!:
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An Albuquerque physician teamed with a Sandia National Laboratories engineer to improve the doctor’s trauma shears design so emergency personnel can get to the injuries they need to treat more quickly.
“Sometimes seconds count. This product will make a difference for the medical community,” said Mark Reece of Sandia’s Multiscale Metallurgical Science & Technology group. “It’s neat to see something come out of Sandia that will save lives.”
Reece worked with Scott Forman, an emergency room physician and CEO of the Albuquerque startup Héros, formerly known as EMvolution, to improve the performance and durability of trauma shears — the go-to tool for responders in the first seconds of a crisis. The shears must cut through a wide range of materials, from denim to leather to Kevlar, to expose wounds for treatment.
Green Valley VerteFée Cabaret's cast poses for photos after the end of the show at The Gathering Place, St. John's Lutheran Church, at 17th and L Streets in Sacramento.
I went to support Rachel and her castmates at Green Valley Theater Company in their semi-annual VerteFée Cabaret. (Green Valley generally features the best musical theater talent in the Sacramento area.) The Cabaret was filled with fun skits (which I think should be longer). It was nice to see a few old friends too, people like Nick Thompson.
Leah points out her mom, Michele, in today's ballet class. They both took ballet class. The irony is that I overslept, missed them, and missed class altogether.
Rachel was cast in "Yes, Santa, There is a Virginia," an online theater troupe active from coast to coast. It has taken some effort to keep everything running smooth:
To begin our final spotlight series, let's meet the cast of 'Yes, Santa Claus, There is a Virginia': MaKenna Spencer, Adam Triplett, Steve Allison, and Rachel Hoover!
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MaKenna Spencer is ecstatic to be playing Virginia in this production of “Yes, Santa Claus, There Is a Virginia.” MaKenna is a freshman in high school. Her recent stage credits include Lucy in “Dracula” at Lincoln High School and Shprintze in “Fiddler on the Roof” with Lincoln Theatre Company.
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Adam Triplett Adam’s love for theater began as a child watching productions at the Music Circus. After a brief detour into film, he has returned to the stage, acting in plays such as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Ragtime,” and “Something Rotten,” and is incredibly excited to be joining Playzoomers.
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Steve Allison is delighted to add to his long list of musical / theater performances. Steve has played Equity / Non-Equity roles in California and New York and has also performed in TV roles. Steve lives in Citrus Heights and works as a local Hospice Chaplain. This is his PlayZoomers debut.
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Rachel Hoover is thrilled to be making her PlayZoomers debut. Favorite roles include Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Rose in “Gypsy,” and Hannah Pitt in “Angels in America.” Rachel also wrote “Out of the Woods” for “The Vaccine Monologues,” produced via Zoom by Luna Stage in New Jersey.
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Friday, December 8th @7:30 PM ET | 6:30 CT | 5:30 MT | 4:30 PT
Saturday, December 9th @ 9:30 PM ET | 8:30 CT | 7:30 MT | 6:30 PT
Caffeine can be like downmarket fentanyl, a threat to people with certain heart issues - particularly long QT syndrome - and including people like myself. Drink manufacturers put caffeine into drinks where you don't expect it - into citrusy lemonades and orangeades - and then label it poorly or not at all. Customers don't realize they are being threatened. Time to start suing people's asses off:
Panera is being sued again after another customer is said to have died after consuming the chain’s caffeinated lemonade.
Dennis Brown was a 46-year-old man with a chromosomal deficiency disorder, ADHD and high blood pressure who avoided energy drinks, according to a wrongful death complaint filed this week by his mother, brother and sister. A loyal Panera customer, he started regularly ordering “charged lemonade” in late September, according to the suit.
On October 9, Brown, who had a mild intellectual disability and blurry vision along with developmental delay but lived independently, ordered a charged lemonade and is believed to have refilled his cup twice over the course of about an hour and a half, the suit said. He suffered a cardiac event on his walk home and was pronounced dead at the scene when found unresponsive.
The complaint resembles another wrongful death suit filed earlier this year by the parents of Sarah Katz, a 21-year-old woman who died in September 2022 after drinking Panera’s charged lemonade. Katz was diagnosed with a heart condition called long QT syndrome when she was five years old, and managed symptoms by taking medication and limiting caffeine, according to that lawsuit.
On December 3, I drove to San Francisco with Joe the Plumber to watch Depeche Mode. I was apprehensive about the parking situation there, and finding our way, but everything worked out OK. It was helpful that it was a Sunday evening, and there were few competing events to put pressure on the parking situation.
Chase Center is a pretty venue!
Joe is such a classic rock guy. He had never heard of Depeche Mode. even though they've been in full public view since 1980. Ah well.
Joe and I both liked Young Fathers, the opening act. Joe liked Depeche Mode's first four songs, but then they went in a different direction. I thought the first four songs were weird, and then things got better.
The tickets courtesy of Eleanor McAuliffe. Here's the view from the our seats, up in the nosebleed section near the ceiling.
I danced several songs on the (very steep) steps. As I did so, others were dancing around me. I want to show some of the people dancing around me.
The opening band was Young Fathers. I hadn't heard of them before, but they are quite interesting. From Edinburgh, Scotland:
Here is the entire Depeche Mode portion of the San Francisco concert:
Through some oversight, I had never watched Baz Luhrmann's "Strictly Ballroom," (1992) so I fixed that tonight. No one loves Dancesport like the Aussies!
It reminded me of my days in ballroom dance. In 1982, I was a poor graduate student, but through the generosity of my instructor, Margaret O'Hanlon, I was able to hover at the edge of Tucson's Desert Terrace Dance Studio, and enjoy the brilliant, upcoming dance talent.
One instructor in particular stood out - Rick Valenzuela. He was chosen to play the role of Vanessa William's tyrannical dance partner in the 1998 film, "Dance With Me." That film was a dance monument, and featured a number of the top dancers at the time, including Liz Curtis and Natalie Mavor.
I love the recitation here of all the dumb things Elon Musk has done to destroy Twitter:
Musk’s conversation with Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin extended for more than an hour, during which time Musk apologized for supporting the antisemitic post, saying it was the "dumbest" thing he has shared online.
However, that’s highly debatable.
Was it dumber than Musk threatening to sue researchers who documented a rise in hate speech on Twitter? Was it dumber than when he sued Media Matters for America for demonstrating how ads can fall next to racist or antisemitic posts? Was it dumber than when he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after they found his site overrun with accounts pushing “virulent antisemitism”?
Was it dumber than when Musk welcomed back infamous neo-Nazis, including the man who created the Nazi site “The Daily Stormer” and was an organizer of 2017’s torch-wielding Nazi march in Charlottesville? Dumber than when he welcomed a neo-Nazi group that was suspended for repeatedly pushing the same “great replacement” conspiracy that Musk endorsed in his post? Was it dumber than when he falsely accused a Jewish man of being a neo-Nazi involved in a street brawl?
Was it dumber than when he drove away NPR by labeling them as government-controlled media and then threatened to give away their account so someone else could masquerade as NPR? Dumber than the whole blue checkmark scheme?
Was it dumber than when he accused Black people in South Africa of openly plotting “white genocide”? Dumber than when he reposted a “white lives matter” tweet from a notorious white supremacist? Dumber than when he said the Biden administration was destroying democracy? Or when he defended slavery? Or when he spent Pride Month handing out “likes” to transphobic tweets? Or when he said the media was racist against white and Asian people, and defended a man who called for segregation? Dumber than when he went to the southern border in a cowboy hat and video game T-shirt to spend a day endorsing false claims about an immigrant invasion?
Elon Musk apologized for one post. But advertisers didn’t leave the site formerly known as Twitter because of one post. They left because Musk gutted the site’s moderation teams, welcomed those who spread hate and lies, repeatedly demonstrated that he was always ready to believe a racist conspiracy theory, and showed he would make a threat at the drop of a hat.
As the holiday season of 1938 came to Chicago, Bob May wasn’t feeling much comfort or joy. A 34-year-old ad writer for Montgomery Ward, May was exhausted and nearly broke. His wife, Evelyn, was bedridden, on the losing end of a two-year battle with cancer. This left Bob to look after their four-year old-daughter, Barbara.
One night, Barbara asked her father, “Why isn’t my mommy like everybody else’s mommy?” As he struggled to answer his daughter’s question, Bob remembered the pain of his own childhood. A small, sickly boy, he was constantly picked on and called names. But he wanted to give his daughter hope, and show her that being different was nothing to be ashamed of. More than that, he wanted her to know that he loved her and would always take care of her. So he began to spin a tale about a reindeer with a bright red nose who found a special place on Santa’s team. Barbara loved the story so much that she made her father tell it every night before bedtime. As he did, it grew more elaborate. Because he couldn’t afford to buy his daughter a gift for Christmas, Bob decided to turn the story into a homemade picture book.
In early December, Bob’s wife died. Though he was heartbroken, he kept working on the book for his daughter. A few days before Christmas, he reluctantly attended a company party at Montgomery Ward. His co-workers encouraged him to share the story he’d written. After he read it, there was a standing ovation. Everyone wanted copies of their own. Montgomery Ward bought the rights to the book from their debt-ridden employee. Over the next six years, at Christmas, they gave away six million copies of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to shoppers. Every major publishing house in the country was making offers to obtain the book. In an incredible display of good will, the head of the department store returned all rights to Bob May. Four years later, Rudolph had made him into a millionaire.
Now remarried with a growing family, May felt blessed by his good fortune. But there was more to come. His brother-in-law, a successful songwriter named Johnny Marks, set the uplifting story to music. The song was pitched to artists from Bing Crosby on down. They all passed. Finally, Marks approached Gene Autry. The cowboy star had scored a holiday hit with “Here Comes Santa Claus” a few years before. Like the others, Autry wasn’t impressed with the song about the misfit reindeer. Marks begged him to give it a second listen. Autry played it for his wife, Ina. She was so touched by the line “They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph play in any reindeer games” that she insisted her husband record the tune.
Within a few years, it had become the second best-selling Christmas song ever, right behind “White Christmas.” Since then, Rudolph has come to life in TV specials, cartoons, movies, toys, games, coloring books, greeting cards and even a Ringling Bros. circus act. The little red-nosed reindeer dreamed up by Bob May and immortalized in song by Johnny Marks has come to symbolize Christmas as much as Santa Claus, evergreen trees and presents. As the last line of the song says, “He’ll go down in history.”
