"Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" - RSP - Saturday Night


Bows: Andrea St. Clair (Milli) acknowledges the applause. Left; Scott Reese (Adam).


Bows: An excellent orchestra (led by Chris Congdon).


After the show, Anne Marie Trout greets Andrea St. Clair.


After the show, Melody Davi (right) talks with Chris Salmon (left), Cooper and Christian Salmon, and cousin Danny. Cooper and Christian played Jake and Billy in the show.

Saturday was one of the hottest days in Sacramento history - it hasn't been this hot since 1996. At 4 p.m., it was 109 degrees Fahrenheit downtown, and 110 degrees at the Sacramento Executive Airport: typical for Phoenix, but quite atypical here. In-between, in Curtis Park, it was 109-and-a-half degrees, and I was feeling vaguely ill. In my first effort to turn on the air conditioner this year, the thermostat simply failed, and so I hoped to cure my incipient heat stroke by attending RSP's "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers", in the cooler confines of the 24th Street Theater (and watch dozens of actors suffer that vaguely-ill feeling instead, as they labored under the lights).

An excellent show! This is the first time I've seen Andrea St. Clair play a character (Milly) with some range, rambunctious as well as feeling, and it was a delight to see how well she did it. I was also pleased at her dancing: the waltz steps, and chaines, came naturally to her. Scott Reese played the forest clan's elder brother Adam, and sang wonderfully. Both Scott and Andrea were well-matched leads for the show.

One choreographic problem was handled well: Reese, for all his skills, isn't a dancer. Ron Cisneros employed several strategems in dances like "Goin' Courtin", such as introducing Reese late into the dancing, and using him principally as support for a very-active Andrea (the way the old ballroom dancers were always told they should do always for their female partners). The accomodations worked well, because they served to enhance Adam's position as the head of the clan, and Milly's help-mate.

Apart from a few friends and acquaintances, most of the cast were new to me, and fresh. It was fortunate that they were so energetic, and their dancing so good. I also worried about the numerous fight scenes: no matter how much you practice them, they are never identical from night-to-night, and it's easy for them to go awry. Nevertheless, they all seemed to go fine, and no one appeared inadvertently injured.

The best dancer on stage was Kacey Kamrin (Sarah). What wonderful energy! Her male partner (one of the brothers, whose name I now fail to remember) was also excellent. Kamrin was sometimes matched with another dancer, whom I believe played Ruth (Jordan Gomez), who was also excellent.

The first challenge of Saturday's show came almost immediately when Scott Reese's beard began peeling away in the heat (and with Ray Fisher taping the show too). Reese gamely kept on, tufts awry, and removed the beard at his first off-stage opportunity (about the time he would have lost it anyway). I thought Reese should have casually peeled it off immediately, as the problem was obvious, as well as its solution, but others noted that the problem served to draw in the audience, to enhance their sympathy and support. In their view, Reese did exactly what he should have done. In any event, it was just a minor problem. Other problems that occasionally bedevil shows, like microphone glitches, were also rare (maybe some 'clipping': that's all).

At intermission, I overheard two audience comments. One was 'that lead actress is great.' The other was 'concentrations in Carmichael's water are 90 times EPA's acceptable limit.' (Never know what the audience voyeur will overhear!)

It is excellent that Andrea will soon leave for New York (October?) with such a recent triumph under her belt. Also in the audience was Melody Davi, and her mother Kathy. After touring nationwide with "42nd Street" for much of the last year, Melody is in town to tie up some loose ends, and work on a fab tan, with which to strike people green with envy on the Great White Way.

Melody told me she recently moved to exciting New York City. It occurred to me Kathy had also told me this recently. I think Melody's father, Tony, also told me this too, but I'm fairly dense, and so it takes a full family press for me to fully absorb news. Nevertheless, even though both Melody and Andrea have been active in Sacramento community theater in recent years, their paths apparently never crossed onstage here. I hope they'll cross in New York, though: make it that much more fun to make that New York trip!

After the show, I tried to plant sloppy kisses on the cheeks of various female cast members, but they all said exactly the same thing: "Eeewww, get away from me, I'm sweating!" (They're so cute!) Could have fooled me, though. Everyone looked fresh, despite the heat.....

Afterwards, I walked home, to commisserate with Cloudy the Rabbit, the only one of my friends and acquaintances who has a legitimate beef with this hot weather....

Mission To My Backyard

Alien vistas, altered landscapes, and in the middle, Adam Taylor.......





On a blazing Sunday afternoon, we went to Tropicana Floral, on Grant Line Road in Elk Grove, and watched hypnotized as the big koi fish swam around in circles...

"Falsettos" - Artistic Differences - Friday Evening

I arrived late, and sat too far away for my slow camera to get really good pictures. Nevertheless....


'March of the Falsettos'


'Jason's Bar Mitzvah' (left to right: Margaret Hollinbeck, Kevin Caravalho, Joey Harris, Craig Howard, Kristen Wagner, Jessica Stein).


The gala afterwards (left to right: Michael R.J. Campbell, Jerry Lee, Kyle Hadley, Kevin Caravalho, Jason McDowell, Jon Daniells, Nora Abaoli).

I think everyone was in agreement here: what a wonderful show! Strong, strong leads. Even young 14-year-old Joey Harris, who apparently has been in the chorus of two Natomas Charter School shows prior to this, and may have never even had lines before this, did fantastic.

Can't go wrong with Gino Platina's choreography! Since I was late, my first impression of the show was "March of the Falsettos." How bizarre!

This show is, in some ways, a kind of hothouse flower: narrowly perched on a small but important demographic at a moment of crisis - homosexual Jews in the 80's, coming to grips with AIDS. Add in the normal crises of adolescence, work/gender roles, and martial dilemmas, and you nearly have too many crises to effectively deal with in a single musical. Which, I guess, is why "Falsettos" is actually an assemblage of three musicals. According to the Artistic Differences Web Site:

Falsettos is a musical by William Finn that ran on Broadway in 1992 and 1993. The play is actually the second and third parts of a trilogy: the first show is called "In Trousers", the second is "March of the Falsettos", and the third is "Falsettoland." Each were produced singularly as one act plays before the second and third were put together as acts one and two of Falsettos.

I think many of us in the audience were intrigued to see a new musical of which we knew little. Of greater interest, however, was seeing so much superior talent on display.

The basic approach of Artistic Differences is to focus first on the talent and the music, and worry later about the tedious logistical details, such as securing a permanent venue for a full season of shows. If not for the potential of scheduling conflicts, that home could easily be DMTC - 'Artistic Differences' certainly are exemplary guests - but a full season might be difficult to accomodate with DMTC's current schedule.

I recall 1979, when I was vice-president of the University of New Mexico Ballroom Dance Club, trying to secure reservations for the on-campus Student Union Ballroom. "These people are supposed to help students, and we are students," I thought. "Is there a reason why they have to be so nasty, peevish, and myopic?"

The answer, of course, is that all facility managers, no matter how well-meaning, are doomed by their role to be difficult. It seems to come coded in the DNA, part of the business of worrying about who is paying for the lights and why is that item out-of-place and did someone lock the doors? Despite seeing first-hand the example of what being a facility manager did to the City of Davis, I worry that transformation will happen to us as well. It's not our fault. It comes with the territory. It's not just like being a parent: it's a bit like Smeagol playing with that damned Ring......

So worry about those logistical details. They are crucial. But not quite yet....

First, glory in artistic triumph! What a wonderful show!

Busting Records

From the National Weather Service in Sacramento:

...THE SACRAMENTO EXEC. AIRPORT CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR JULY 22 2006...

WEATHER ITEM OBSERVED TIME RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST VALUE (LST) VALUE VALUE FROM YEAR
NORMAL
..................................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)
TODAY
MAXIMUM 110R 359 PM 103 2003 93 17 93
1988
MINIMUM 76 535 AM 49 1987 59 17 58
AVERAGE 93 76 17 76

..................................................................

SACRAMENTO CITY CLIMATE DATA FOR SATURDAY JULY 22 2006

HIGH... 109 RECORD HIGH 109 IN 2006* NORMAL HIGH 95
LOW.... 79 RECORD LOW 50 IN 1918 NORMAL LOW 61


* NEW RECORD FOR THIS DATE 109 DEGREES: OLD RECORD 105/2003 AND
OTHER EARLIER YEARS.

..................................................................

...HIGHEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDS SET FRIDAY IN SACRAMENTO AND RED BLUFF...

THE LOW TEMPERATURES FOR FRIDAY...JULY THE 21ST SET RECORDS AT THE SACRAMENTO EXECUTIVE AIRPORT...SACRAMENTO CITY AND AT RED BLUFF.

IN RED BLUFF...THE LOW TEMPERATURE WAS 80 DEGREES WHICH BROKE THE OLD RECORD FOR HIGHEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE OF 75 IN 2003.

AT THE SACRAMENTO EXECUTIVE AIRPORT...THE LOW TEMPERATURE YESTERDAY WAS 73 DEGREES BREAKING THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 71 IN 2003.

THE SACRAMENTO CITY LOW TEMPERATURE WAS A VERY MILD 77 DEGREES WHICH BROKE THE OLD RECORD OF 74 SET IN 2003.

Lots To Do This Weekend

'Pump Boys and Dinettes' at the Studio Theater.

'Seven Brides For Seven Brothers' at RSP

'Falsettos' at DMTC

Auditions for 'West Side Story', also at DMTC.

Transient Global Amnesia

Apparently my brother-in-law suffered this for part of the day. He's been working for weeks on photo albums for his parents, and he just presented them as a gift. Tonight, according to my sister, he's baffled why there's so much photo debris on the work bench.

I pray this TGA doesn't return.

I know I have memory issues. Remembering names, whether of people and things, is a problem. That's one reason I keep a blog: as a memory crutch. If I write down a name, I'll have a better chance of recalling it. But I've never dropped a whole day, or forgotten entire projects.....

Dancing Through The Decades - 50's

Last Saturday, DMTC hosted another one of our fundraisers, modeled after the theme of decades. We were after the fifties this time.

A good time! Since no one was performing, per se, everyone had a chance to relax. I was impressed with new patron Leanne, who carefully crafted a poodle skirt. She recommends Balkan dancing at the UCD I-House on Sunday evenings, as well as Israeli folk dancing on Thursdays, and both of those sound attractive. I'll check them out as soon as feasible. I danced with several others too - Sharon Nielsen, etc.

As the evening wore on, people started doing more karaoke. I did 'Proud Mary' with Dian Hoel (don't ask why I was shaking my nalgas at the audience, or why Dian made to slap them).

A good time for all!

Getting To Yes - "Annabelle", At Thistledew Dessert Theater

On Friday, several of the DMTC folks went to Thistledew Dessert Theater to see "Annabelle," starring recent DMTC standouts, Brennan Cull and Buffee Gillihan. Thistledew is a marvellous little place, in the basement of the Victorian at 19th and P Street. Several other theater folks were there too - Chelsea Beatty and Jerry Lee, for example.

"Annabelle" was the third show of this summer's Local Playwright's Festival, and it was written by James Moran. After this preliminary outing, and after changes in set and lighting, among other things, the show will be presented to the larger theater community, either at Thistledew, or maybe at a place like the Delta King, later in the year.

The show is basically a reminiscence of a romance, and each of the two characters tells their own view of the romance. It's full of wry observations and love songs, but because of it's backward-looking nature, it requires attention: it's not for those with ADD, or Game Boy addictions. It's more for the love-struck!

To keep the play moving forward, the playwright uses the device of an inexperienced, comic theatrical player (Brennan) to Buffee's experienced straight-man, exploring the various meanings of the word 'yes.' It's all quite fun.

Both Brennan and Buffee are wonderful singers, and they sing their songs well. On several songs, Buffee sings in a pop style that reminded me a bit of Mariah Carey. Brennan has a wonderful song just before intermission (if my memory wasn't a sieve, I could remember the title). In comments afterwards, several people mentioned that many of the love ballads were quite similar in nature - 'silly love songs,' of the sort that Paul McCartney rose so quickly in defense of. This is true, but somehow, I couldn't help but think how out-of-place something like a march would be.

Make a point to see "Annabelle" when it is staged again!

More Stupid Light Posting

Work, work, go away, come again another day.... I discovered a big error in some of the stuff I do at work. Just took ten months to discover it. Oh joy!

I was looking for my digital camera. Three weeks passed, and I was still looking for it. Turned out it was where I always put it, for charging. Three weeks passed by, and I didn't look at the west wall of my office, where I keep the camera for charging. And the west wall is covered with pretty art work too. That's just pathetic....

Life On The Ranch

E.: Get outta here!
A.: I'm trying to finish up as quickly as possible.
E.: Stupid!
A.: If you don't stop throwing water bottles, I'm calling the law!
E.: Alien! Ugly!
A.: Stay back!
E.: Stupid! Evil!

New Mexico Literary Travelogue

Here is a fun article regarding new, and fairly new, writing regarding New Mexico:

New Mexico is a world of almost blinding clarity and color. The vistas are vast. The hot peppers are eye-watering when fresh and bright blood-red if left to dry. Summer sunsets nearly make you want to weep.

...Yet it's the spooky human history pulsing just beneath the surface that makes New Mexico such a fascinating place; any real reckoning with the literature of the state has to involve a reckoning with genocide and apocalypse.

... No single book renders that moment better than Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel "Blood Meridian." A tale of an amoral group of bounty hunters roaming the borderlands in the late 1840s, "Blood Meridian" is perhaps the most unsparing treatment of genocide and moral depravity ever written. And the most shocking thing about it is that it was based on real events. In a high, biblical language that owes much to Faulkner and Melville, McCarthy chronicles the exploits of a gang of scalp hunters, modeled on the infamous Glanton Gang, who killed the region's natives without remorse. Eventually, enthralled by blood lust, the bounty hunters turn on the very citizens who'd hired them in the first place. The killing only ends when the group itself is mostly extinguished -- in the end all of them but the judge, a giant, hairless albino and multilingual philosopher, a serial rapist and murderer of children, and a figure of such demonic vitality that he can only be compared, as many have pointed out, to the great Shakespearean villains.

...It should be noted that all of these books deal with a geography much larger than that encompassed by what is now called New Mexico, and when they do deal with New Mexico it's mostly with the part I live in and know best, which is the southern third of the state. There's a wonderful saying we like down here: It ain't new and it ain't Mexico.

I never knew any albinos when I lived in New Mexico (but a friend says he knew a whole family in the southeastern part of the state), and I never knew any hairless folks either. Probably got swallowed up in the vastness....

Erik Kleven, RIP

James informed me today that Erik Kleven had been killed, in a head-on collision on Highway 16, near Rancho Murietta. (It seems quite the year for head on collisions: first John Hancock and Juan Ramos, and now Erik). Erik played in numerous community theater shows over the years, particularly with RSP.

Strangely, I don't believe I knew Erik, even though he lived on Sloat Way, which runs right next to my house: for all I know, we may have been next-door neighbors. In any event, Erik is an important part of the musical theater community, and he will be greatly missed, not only by those who knew him, but by those many more who knew him only by his music.

Satire - Cultural Context Matters

Here is a funny, even a heartwarming story, about how a German-born antiabortion activist picked up a proabortion story from The Onion, didn't realize it was satire, published a blog post attacking the story, was viciously mocked in turn, yet somehow didn't lose his cool, tried to find the humor, and used the whole incident to try and further his mission.

The fellow explains:

The funniest thing about the whole ordeal, said Pete, is that "I come from Germany -- a German economy, a German culture, German friends. And Germans have no humor." When he first came to the States, he said, he worked at Wells Fargo, where he befriended "a bunch of good old boys" who used to prank him. "They'd tease me to the point where I'd say, 'Really?' and they'd say, 'No, you idiot! When are you going to get it?' So I've been struggling with this kind of thing for a long time."

The article explains:

The Onion is a satirical newspaper founded in 1988 by University of Wisconsin students and is these days published weekly from New York. The piece that inspired Pete's July 6 extended smack-down was a 1999 Op-Ed by fictional columnist "Caroline Weber." Pete did not realize that the Onion traffics in satire, and that the piece was a send-up of the notion that pro-choice activists are actually "pro-abortion." Weber's outrageous claims that she "seriously cannot wait for all the hemorrhaging and the uterine contractions" and that "this abortion is going to be so amazing" did not tip off Pete. In an utterly unironic retort, he cited lines like, "It wasn't until now that I was lucky enough to be pregnant with a child I had no means to support," and "I just know it's going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!" to illustrate his disgust with the author.

Sorry About The Light Posting

It's been hella busy at work, and they lack that critical element: a sense of humor about blown deadlines.

Ozone Alert in Las Vegas

Deriving from that big Southern California wildfire. Talk about long-range transport!

Hurricane Bud

In the eastern Pacific, off the southwest coast of Mexico, with a second storm to follow in a few days. No major threat. All is quiet in the Atlantic, but some signs of storminess deriving from Venezuela in a week.

Updrafts, Downdrafts

Cool mammatus cloud photos!

No Need To Exaggerate

This is just silly. People can breathe really atrocious air with no long-lasting ill effect. This isn't lethal air pollution, it's more like an average weekend at my house:

Two women in Marion County, Fla., were arrested after a 5-year-old boy was found living with 14 dogs, four cats, two ferrets and three large turtles in a home that had air pollution at "lethal levels," according to investigators.

Deputies discovered the sick animals in the home because the stench was so bad neighbors had called to complain, said Marion County Sheriff's Deputy Paul Youmans said.

Investigators said when they entered a home located on Southwest Second Court in the Turning Point Estates, it was difficult to distinguish dog feces from the cockroach and rodent droppings on the floor.

Remembering Dark Days, Now Happily Past

Jul 12 1979

It is "Disco Demolition Night" at Chicago's Comiskey Park, where baseball tickets cost only $.98 if the purchaser brings along a disco record for the bonfire. During the second game of the doubleheader, thousands of vinyl LPs fly onto the field, generating enough chaos that the White Sox are forced to forfeit.

The Tropicana Hotel's New Non-Smoking Message

As part of its weird and grotesque and fascinating 'Bodies' exhibition (just opened at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas) is an appeal (strange for a casino) to stop smoking:

Also on the walls were anatomical facts such as: "On average, a pack of cigarettes takes 2 hours and 20 minutes off your life. We'd like you to be around longer. Leave your cigarettes here and stop smoking now!"

Next to the inevitable display of a healthy lung next to a smoker's lung is a large plastic container where people can make the decision to quit smoking right then and there. (This seems like such an odd message to be placed in a casino that employs hundreds of workers who must work in secondhand smoke....)

In 1988, at the University of Arizona, I got a chance to see tissue samples from smokers' and non-smokers' lungs, and I was startled to find out how similar they both were. There is a process called 'pleural drift,' where deposited particles are continually removed by macrophages (cells that swallow and digest foreign objects, including bacteria and dust) and transported to the pleural lining on the outer surface of the lung. So, the outside of smokers' lungs - pretty danged dirty, but the inside - ta da! - pristine! Dr. Sobonya said that if the particle clearance rate diminished below about 99%, lung disease and death would soon follow.

Let's hear it for the macrophages!

There was other weird lung stuff too - the body likes to store hemoglobin there, for some inscrutable lung reason.

Even doctors don't really understand the human body all that well......

Strange Hurricane Season So Far

Except for Alberto (which blew up out of the Caribbean, not the open ocean to the east), the Atlantic Ocean has been a remarkably placid place this summer. A flat, calm, tepid little pond. And it's supposed to be a bad year too.

Meanwhile, so far, the western Pacific is a nightmare. A typhoon is likely to clip Taiwan by the weekend, just one of an assembly-line of storms hitting Oriental shores.

This pattern is unlikely to last, but it's interesting to see!

"Oklahoma!" - Final Weekend

Finally now, Sooner territory can join the Union!

Bethany and Claire apparently saw a midnight preview of "Pirates of the Caribbean II" in the wee hours of Friday morning, and so when they arrived at the theater Friday night, they came decked out in the cutest pirate gear. They waved plastic scabbards at everyone and said 'Aaarrggghhhh!" a lot.

On Friday, I had trouble mounting Ryan Adame's back for the mini-pyramid in 'Kansas City' (I swear, his back seemed lubricated with butter, or Crisco or something). It's fun to be spread-eagled by surprise for the audience's examination and entertainment. Ryan's been complaining about a back ache during the last half of the run - are my 180 lbs. to blame?????

On Friday, the men's ensemble nearly missed its entrance for 'It's a Scandal, It's A Outrage.' I felt superior on Saturday night, and chastised the men's ensemble with my superior punctuality, but, sadly, joined the almost-missers on Sunday afternoon, when we were nearly all late for the entrance.

Georgette Robin came to the show on Friday night and Monica Parisi came on Saturday night.

There was weird music stuff Saturday night - transposed notes at the start of 'Kansas City,' problems with 'Oklahoma,' etc. I blame gremlins for Bushy Head and leprauchans from Missouri.

On Saturday, in the 'Farmer and the Cowman' dance lift, Chelsea Beatty and I miscommunicated. Her leg buckled early and it was nearly a dead-weight lift for me. It could have been worse, but we recovered OK.

On Saturday night, Jaimie Tvrdik crushed the blood capsule as he normally did every night (playing Jud accidentally stabbing himself), but the bloody mess seemed unusually coherent as it exitted the corner of his mouth and went splat! onto the stage. As we lifted him Jaimie, the bloody strand elongated and broke under the tension, like chewing gum, forcing Steve to hastily leave the stage as he burst into barely-concealed laughter. On Sunday, we nearly dropped Jud as we carried him offstage (the lift was nearly beyond my left forearm strength - I was the only one supporting his spine and we began moving him before my arm was in position). Jaimie giggled a lot through the stabbing scene aftermath, all weekend long.

MikeMac chuckled inadvertently in 'Oklahoma,' in the 'pasture for your cattle' line, when he glommed a pine-sap covered palm onto Steve's shoulder. Pine sap and fake blood are both funny substances - not quite liquid, not entirely elastic!

After strike, at Andy Hyun's invitation, some of us went to Woodland for Ludy's Barbeque. Saw Jason Hammond and Deborah Douglass there too ('Godspell' at Garbeau's just closed, and they were apparently returning items to the adjacent Woodland Opera House). Discovered that Tomas Casillas used to do a lot of soccer. Interesting!

Nepotism?

Peas in a Polish pod:

President Lech Kaczynski appointed his identical twin brother Jaroslaw as the new prime minister, the presidential Web site said. Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and his government formally resigned earlier in the day, paving the way for Jaroslaw Kaczynski to form a new government.

...Though the Kaczynski brothers have the same round faces and short, stout builds, many Poles have learned to distinguish them, thanks to the fact that Lech has two moles on his face, and wears a wedding ring. Jaroslaw is unmarried, and has no moles.

Paris Hilton Performs At Tao

What she sings, I can't quite make out - is this lip-synching, karaoke, or is it just a bad recording in a deafening environment? Give me William Shatner's 'Rocketman,' any day.

Georgia O'Chipotle Dip Mix

See, E-Mail spam does have some use! Learn about unsuspected weird 'Arty' food (I wonder what gourmand and art-sensitive computer programmer James Bucanek would say?)

Fever

Fever! In the morning,
And fever all through the night

Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago

James McElroy has written an interesting essay, especially the part about Earth's 'fever!'

My main advising professor at the University of Arizona was George Dawson, a fellow Englishman and friend to independent scientist James Lovelock. I remember when Lynn Margulis, one of Lovelock's colleagues, came to speak to us students at U of A.

Lovelock built very sensitive gas chromatographs. I especially liked the idea that if you had to obtain the very best gas chromatographs in the world, the very, very latest and most sensitive technology available anywhere, even if you were NASA or the CIA or MI5, you had to hunt Lovelock down in his little cottage in the remote English countryside, where he built these gizmos. The Gaia hypothesis is very much a valid scientific concept, which is one reason why the New Agers found it so attractive - it has a ring of truth to it, and is immensely appealing at all levels.

Regarding cockroaches (having done many experiments in southern Arizona, where they are as common as - cockroaches) I've discovered they will drown in a mild soap solution. Nevertheless, cockroaches resist being drawn into mild soap solutions, even when tempted with food, which is why these crafty devils will probably outlive us.

Here is James' essay:
---------------------------------
Marc,

I appreciate your review of "An Inconvenient Truth". I have not yet seen it but have heard much about it. Your analysis of the reasons for the reaction to global warming are well thought out and valid. Some who should know better still talk about evolution of the species, but species evolve as the result of individual decisions about where to live, how to acquire food, who to procreate with, and how to respond to intra-species competition and externally applied stressors. Even if we allow for the evolution of a cooperative strategy for survival, the cooperation of each group member rarely extends beyond the 100 or so other individuals that the typical individual can recognize as "my group". The prognosis for any cooperative effort to halt or slow global warming is not good, given the vast variation in economic status and political distrust of individuals all over the world.

There has never been much justification for the widely held view that homo sapiens is the pinacle of evolution and will inevitably continue to develop forever. I have never bought into the theory that evolution of human intelligence is a "good thing". It basically allows members of the species to sidestep evolved instinct and develop cultural evolution in parallel to biological evolution. This allows some individuals to analyse systems and to develop responses outside of past actions. Thus, better methods of hunting, agriculture, physical science, education, etc. lead to ever larger populations in response to overcrowding. In the bad old days overcrowing resulted in fewer survivors, forcing a return to a stable population level. In the last 100,000 or so years (a mere blink of an eye in the history of the Earth) we have developed an unstable forcing function that is driving the species toward an inevitable collapse. The effect on the species has been the development of autocratic political systems, very unequal economic systems, war, pestilence, and exponential deterioration of the environment. In a post-human world of mulicellular organisms, my money is on the cockroach. That is a species that is probably the epitome of biological evolution. It can take anything you can throw at it (with the possible exception of a well aimed shoe) and evolves fast enough to respond to changing environmental conditions.

As an atmospheric scientist, I assume you are familiar with the Gaia Hypothesis formulated by James Lovelock back in the '60s and published in the late '70s. Unfortunately it was glommed onto by many New Age proponents and has been given a bad reputation. I hold no brief that the Earth is some super-organism. In it's original form it was simply the recognition that in a closed system the sum total of the effects of biological evolution can affect the environment and apply a feedback to the direction of evolution. Eliminate the New Age garbage and think of the Earth as an (almost) closed system, and some interesting thought processes come bubbling up to the surface.

In an aside, Lovelock developed the hypothesis in response to a task assigned by NASA to develop methods to detect life on Mars by various probes and/or visits to the Mars surface. Lovelock was intelligent enough to realize that going all the way there, picking up a single (or very small number of) samples, then bringing them back for analyisis was not a good approach. Instead he suggested carefully analysing the Martian atmosphere by telescopic and low orbital probes to look for the by-products of a biological existance. This was not what NASA wanted to hear and he was quickly marginalized and berated as a pseudo-scientist. A scientist working for the Government ignores politics at his peril.

Think for the moment about the human body. Aside from the huge number of body cells that are the result of development from the original genome, there are an equivalent large number of bacteria, viruses, and single cell organisms inhabiting that universe. Some are essential to the function of the body, some are useful, some are benign fellow-travelers, and some are toxic organsims fully capable of making the body incapable of continuing life. Most of the time the bad ones are not numerous enough to outstrip the body's evolved defenses. Occasionally however, something will upset that equilibrium and the bad guys will start to muliply at a high rate and the body must seek to control the population. Please remember that the body does not think, "the Streptococci are getting uppity, I must nuke them back to the stone age". Instead, the presence of abnormal numbers of the errant biological organism is detected by the immune system, and a programmed (by evolution) response is initiated. Most of the time this is sufficient, but bacteria evolve also and sometimes they evade the defenses and a state of sepsis is achieved.

I find it very interesting that one of the regular defenses of the body in fighting off an infection is to raise body temperature, in some severe cases high enough to affect the bodys own cells adversely. Think now about the Earth as a closed system inhabited by numerous biological organisms, from the very same bacteria we have been considering, up(?) to homo sapiens. One of the organisms has begun to proliferate at an unstainable rate and producing effluent at rates that cannot be handled by the offsetting sinks that have evolved over time. One of many results is the concentration of heat trapping gasses in the atmosphere (obvious evidence of life, for any kibbitzing ET in the neighborhood). The organism is rapidly approaching a state of sepsis, and the Earth, acting as a closed system, is modifying the environment in a way to supress the organism. Thought provoking? Please remember that the Earth is not consciously acting to eliminate the threat, but is simply following the natural laws of Physics, as we all must, eventually.

There is another point here, we considered both the Earth and the human body as closed systems. Actually the human body is much less of a closed system than the Earth, thus the possiblilty of carrying infection from one body to another, and epidemics. If interstellar space travel ever actually occurs the possibility of interstellar epidemics becomes a likelihood. The question then becomes what side do we take? The side of the body hosting the infectious organism, or the side of the organism seeking a new host after destroying the old one? The Earth has huge restorative powers and once the infectious organism is gone it will most likely become even more lovely than before, just that no human will be there to destroy it. The cockroaches will no doubt sigh in relief. Actually, complete destruction of humanity is not neccessary, just a severe reduction in numbers, and perhaps a devolution of the human brain, much as whales lost their redundant legs upon returning to the sea.

The argument that the Earth is simply too massive and inert to be affected by a single species is not terribly convincing. The Earth's climate is a highly nonlinear system that can change abruptly over a geological instant. Human timescales are irrelavent. Non-linear control systems frequently have "trip-points" that can flip the system from one stable state to another very different stable state with little effort. Look at how many times and how quickly the Earth's magnetic field has inverted over geological time. The original inhabitants, bacteria and other archaic creatures, survived quite well in a reducing atmosphere, but still evolved into oxygen producing species, poisoning their own ancestors while preparing the way for more "efficient" oxygen cycle creatures. The point is, the Earth will survive, and perhaps prosper, but the inhabitants are more fragile.

Is this a pessimistic prediction of the future? Consider carefully. Think of a Earth with no Musical Theater, but also no Fox News and Reality TV. Nothing but green grass and blue sky, with flowering plants and fruitful trees, all organisms in balance with each other. Isn't that what we want? In the words of the imimitable Walt Kelly, "We have met the Enemy, and they are us!".

Jim McElroy

Singing Careers

It would be fun to have Lata Mangeshkar's career:

Having music by a famous composer like Rahman or the Kalyanji-Anandji duo, who were roughly his '70s equivalent, is as likely to make a movie a hit as having big stars, because of how much Indians love their movie music. Every movie has five or ten song-and-dance numbers scattered throughout its three hours, during which the stars lip-sync and dance, Busby Berkeley-style, to songs prerecorded by famous playback singers. The most well-known are Asha Bhosle, her sister Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar. Supposedly, Lata has sung in almost 20 languages for over 1,825 films, worked with 165 composers, and made 8,000 recordings overall, more than anyone else.

"You're Not Seeing The Big Picture Here, Miss Lane!"



In 1978, "Superman" with Christopher Reeve was released. At the time, I was attending the University of New Mexico, and immediately, coeds all around me were swooning and fainting. "He is SO handsome!, etc., etc., etc., etc." For months, the hero worship swelled like a wave. For me, the experience was like listening to nails on a chalkboard, without interruption, for months. I hated it. So, I was not looking forward to seeing this movie, with Brandon Routh as the 'Man of Steel,' but I knew my grim duty.

To my surprise, I thought this new movie, "Superman Returns," was great (maybe because I count fewer coeds among my compatriots these days). The visual effects, which cost a whopping $261 million (according to the Wall Street Journal in a recent front page article), were done with a real loving care for landscapes and seascapes. These digital masters really care about what the Earth looks like from space, from the air, and from every other place. They are geeks - real geeks, true geeks - who like geophysics, and how the Earth actually works. Thank God Time-Warner resisted the impulse to go cheap on the visuals! The only fake -looking scenes are the crystal land- and sea-scapes, but there was no choice here - they have no natural analogue. The physics is "Comic-Book Physics" of course, but they could have done SO MUCH WORSE!

The near-futuresque scenes were heightened by rational extrapolation to a second-generation Space Shuttle,whose design was anticipated by futuristic designs as long ago as 1960. Nothing science-fictiony there really: it's all easily-reachable with current technology.

Brandon Routh looks a bit 'plasticky,' in both the promotional stills, and in the movie itself. Is that a good thing? I think so: it serves to maintain the not-quite-human mystique of 'Superman.'

Kevin Spacey makes a superb Lex Luthor: selfish, businesslike, and hardly even THAT evil (until near the end). Kate Bosworth is a fine Lois Lane. I really liked seeing Broadway veteran Frank Langella (indeed, the only Broadway play I've ever seen was 'Dracula' in 1978, with Langella in the lead role) playing 'Daily Planet' Editor ('Great Caesar's Ghost!') Perry White. Parker Posey as Luthor's femme-fatale sidekick was a bit too cardboard for such a good actress (I blame the script here, however, not Posey).

The big question is, of course, whether Routh has what it takes to make coeds of this generation swoon. That's not my department, of course, and I really wish he wouldn't, but fear that he probably will do exactly the same as Reeve did 27 years ago. I just don't want to hear about it....

So, great movie! Go see it! It's much, much better, all around, than the 1978 Superman movie. Take it from someone who remembers, all too well, what that one was all about....

Don't Bite Your Nails, And Get Out Of The Rain

Bizarro article:

Physicians removed 119 nails - many of them rusty - from a woman's stomach months after she apparently swallowed them, a doctor said.

But that isn't the strangest thing about iron....iron rain may be falling in the atmospheres of brown dwarf stars:

The atmospheres contain primarily gases, including gaseous iron and silicate. At hotter temperatures—3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Kelvin)—typical of younger brown dwarfs, the iron remains in its gaseous phase. Over time as the glowing body cools, the iron condenses to form iron-rich clouds and droplets of liquid-iron rain.

...And when it rains it pours: Not only did Burgasser and his team find these metallic clouds, but they also spotted evidence of violent storms. Thermodynamics would predict that as brown dwarfs release heat, they would dim—similar to a cooling ember. But the astronomers found that the older, and cooler, brown dwarfs shined brighter than the warmer, younger ones.

"These brown dwarfs are much brighter than they should be, and the only way for that to happen is for the clouds to disappear very suddenly so you're left with a very hot brown dwarf, which emits a lot of light, but doesn't have the same clouds," Burgasser said.

The most plausible explanation is an off-the-charts hurricane pummeling through the area and clearing the clouds. If the clouds were to clear naturally as the object cooled, that could take roughly 1 billion years, leaving a chilly brown dwarf, Burgasser told SPACE.com. He expects these clearings must be 100 times as quick, a "lightning-fast" 10 million years.

But what causes the cloudy disturbance? With cooling, a brown dwarf's cloud layer sinks closer to its surface.

"As the clouds form deeper in the atmosphere they are more sensitive to the winds and convective motions in the atmosphere," said Mark Marley, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"This dynamics or 'weather' probably leads to the destruction of the clouds," Marley said by email, adding that he and others are working on promising ideas to explain the cloud-clearing mechanism.

Australian Women In IT Aren't Geeks

No, really, they aren't, (but the clunky language makes me wonder):

IT Goddess Calendar - Fundamentally the key reason for producing this calendar is to raise awareness of females in IT via capturing media attention and therefore increased stories, print and digital media reaching target audiences we have failed to reach via traditional means. We plan to do this by smashing through the geek perception by displaying a wide variety (jobs, age, nationality, roles and body shapes) of real women in IT fields, and using the style of calendar as a mechanism to instantly capture interest and attention (and sales).

Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) On The Internet

Would someone please get this guy some staff?:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. […]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.

"Heart and Music Make A Song" - The Company Preview Show for "Artistic Differences"

Left: Jerry Lee as Charles Giteau (assassin of President James A. Garfield, 1881), from Stephen Sondheim's 'Ballad of Guiteau,' from "Assassins."


(Pictures taken with Steve's new digital camera - I've misplaced my own)

Sunday evening, the new musical theater group, "Artistic Differences," presented a preview concert at DMTC's Hoblit Performing Arts Center, in Davis, to an audience of about eighty people, featuring many of the area's best perfomers (both onstage and in the audience). Afterwards, there was much networking in the lobby of the theater,

Later this month, and in early August, "Artistic Differences" will present performances of William Finn and James Lapine's musical, "Falsettos," at DMTC.

Artistic Differences" intends to present contemporary musical theater and, as yet, doesn't have a permanent home. The group is a collaborative effort of some of the best singers in the local musical theater community, and as such, may not necessarily require a permanent home, but rather a host, such as DMTC now serves.

On June 28th, DMTC had a board meeting, where we discussed "Falsettos," after the customary griping about the burdens of operating, with volunteers, a new 'brick-and-mortar' theater that also serves as the host for several smaller theatrical ventures, including "Artistic Differences."

Steve tried to keep the board meeting on-message, but things quickly derailed. Treating us to a fill-in-the-blank, morale-boosting opening, Steve ceremoniously stated, "For us sitting at this table, musical theater is a ????" "A hobby!!!!," I happily babbled. Repeatedly smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand as he sagged forward with exasperation, Steve muttered, "A business! A business!"

For me, a hobby, for Steve, a business, but for the folks in "Artistic Differences," musical theater is more of a calling. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get that good!

The Board wondered about the folks in "Artistic Differences." "Do you think they might be interested in cleaning toilets?," someone wondered. This was a silly question, of course: I know these folks, some of them well, and I'm sure they don't have the slightest interest in cleaning toilets (if only, because they are long-time veterans of the local musical theater community, they've cleaned more than their share of toilets in the past).

Nevertheless, the conversation highlighted the basic conundrum DMTC now finds itself in. We would like a cleaning service, to ease our burdens, but require income from staging or hosting shows, such as those provided by "Artistic Differences," to pay for the services. Most theater companies need artistic differences like a hole in the head, but we need as many as we can get.

Waiting in the lobby, I talked with several people. First I talked with Dianne and Meeka Craig, who were both wondering when, or if, DMTC would extend the runs of certain popular shows, such as "Oklahoma!" That is one of extending runs was becoming increasingly theoretical in nature, not only because facility-use conflicts with other theatrical events were becoming increasingly common as the calendar filled up, but also because of the difficulty of getting every single one of the players to commit to time beyond what they had already anticipated.

I also talked with James Chavez-Glica, and we reminisced together about childhood in northern California, until I remembered I was reminiscing about Aaron Clemens childhood (who grew up with James) and not my own childhood, in New Mexico.

I also talked with Kathy and Tony Davi, who conveyed news of their talented daughters. Melody recently had sinus surgery, to deal with persistent infections, and we wondered how that surgical work might affect/improve her singing. Then Kathy and Tony announced that the San Francisco premiere of the revival of "A Chorus Line," starring Mara Davi as Maggie, would be at the Curran Theater on July 23rd:

Revivals, Hamlisch said, have never held much interest for him. "Once you've seen Zero Mostel in 'Fiddler,' do you really want to see someone else?" But "Chorus Line," in multiple ways, is a special case. Hamlisch will fine- tune the orchestrations, using a synthesizer not available in 1975, for example, but not change a note. One thing he hopes to do this time around is erase the memory of "the very bad movie of this show" directed by Richard Attenborough in 1985.

This is a major, major event we should all watch out for!

The "Artistic Differences" concert was great. Lots of fine performances by many of Sacramento's best! Here are some pictures from the concert itself. Because of the poor lighting, many pictures didn't come out very well: these are some of the best:

Pictures from 'Gun Song,' from "Assassins":


Michael R.J. Campbell, and Kristen Wagner.


Kristen Wagner, Michael R.J. Campbell, Ken Figeroid, and Jerry Lee.


Kevin Caravalho and Jerry Lee.


Kristen Wagner, Michael R.J. Campbell, Kevin Caravalho, Jerry Lee, and Ken Figeroid.


Pictures from 'Miracle of Judaism/Baseball Game,' from "Falsettos":


Joey Harris.


Kristen Wagner, Jessica Stein, Craig Howard, Margaret Hollinbeck, and Kevin Caravalho.


Picture from 'Heart and Music,' from "A New Brain":


Kevin Caravalho, Joey Harris, Kristen Wagner, Jerry Lee, Craig Howard, Michael R.J. Campbell, Margaret Hollinbeck, Melissa Rae Frago, and Ken Figeroid.

Heart and music
Heart and music get along (you gotta have heart and music)

You gotta have heart and music
You gotta have heart and music
Heart and music make a song

"Oklahoma!" Weekend Shows

Friday night, Ryan had trouble with his hat. He tossed it into the audience by accident at the end of 'Kansas City'. When he bobbled it again in the ballet sequence, he overheard a woman in the audience say 'there goes that hat again!' When Bethany jumped into Robert's arms in the saloon part of the ballet, Robert was only able to grab one of Bethany's legs, and he nearly toppled as he struggled to get the other leg.

Dian's veil fell off when we threw her to the floor at the end of the saloon part of the ballet. Jamie reached it and tried to toss it offstage, but the flying veil apparently struck and stuck onto Aunt Eller's house: very symbolic, somehow, and eerily appropriate!

For some reason, that reminds me of that classic Johnny Carson "Tonight Show" footage from 1963, when Ed Ames, co-star of the new show "Daniel Boone", displayed his frontier skills by tossing a spinning hatchet (accompanied by Indian tom-tom music) at a board featuring an outline of a man. Completely unexpectedly, the spinning hatchet landed just right, with the handle pointing outwards, and the audience dissolved into fifteen minutes of hysterical laughter, forcing the show briefly off the air.

On Friday, Lora Kennedy came and got the tour. On Saturday, Ron Cisneros came, with friends.

Saturday just prior to the show featured a weird brouhaha with Davis Indoor Sports Complex (DISC), across the street from DMTC. They were having a roller derby over there, and many patrons jammed the lot we share with Peak Performance. We called the cops, and many DISC patrons were inconvenienced as they were forced to move their cars, but we didn't have much choice if we wanted our patrons to have parking spaces. This incident was unfortunate - DISC and ourselves have much to gain by working together. I'm glad they had a big event, though: DISC needs more traffic (as long as it doesn't inconvenience us too much!)

Saturday seemed like an unusually good show. Jamie coughed up beaucoup (stage) blood in the stabbing scene (what we affectionately call 'Jud blood').

On Sunday, prior to the show, Steve Isaacson presented YPT veteran Emily Jo Seminoff with DMTC's $500 college scholarship. Even though she is graduating from high school, Emily already attends Solano Jr. College, having entered before under the auspices of some program I don't quite fathom. She has an enviable background in theater, but apparently aspires to write as well.

On Sunday, in the ballet portion of the show, some of Dian's hair became entwined on a button on Jamie's vest, so when he threw her down to the floor - rip! Interestingly, she didn't notice for a few minutes, and only later dealt with the bloody patch on her scalp. In the excitement of the moment, on stage, people can suffer surprising injuries, and yet lumber on without noticing much pain. I often find strange, inexplicable bruises, scratches, and small cuts after a show, and I'm sure others do too.

Backstage on Sunday, Andy Hyun shook his head in wonderment as he listened to the music and said "that oboe player really kicks ass!" I hadn't been paying much attention, so I couldn't say, but I did like the image of the ass-kicking oboeist.

What else happened on Sunday?....Steve missed an entrance, in 'Scandal' (he was working box-office, apparently). Folks from Garbeau's showed up - Jerry Lee and Katie Murphy. Ah! How could I forget? Just before the show, Jabriel Shelton said "my do-rag is all messed up." When historians of the future look back on our era, amidst all the shout and tumult, there is a chance they'll overlook the really important things, like a "messed up" do-rag. We must remember, though, even if others forget, lest this dire event repeat itself in the future!

"An Inconvenient Truth" (second draft)

(Left: The last fragment of a glacier on Mt. Kiliminjaro, Kenya.)


I went last night with E2 to the Varsity Theater in Davis to see "An Inconvenient Truth", starring Al Gore. Young musical theater enthusiast Justin Biewer-Elstob (who starred last year as 'Conrad Birdie' in DMTC's YPT summer workshop, "Bye, Bye Birdie") was slinging sodas in the bright orange lobby of the Varsity Theater. The place was eerie: familiar, from having done so many shows there, but also weird, because of the new seats, and the many changes in decor from what we once knew.

My climatologist friend, Jerry, in San Jose, has been promoting this new movie, noting:

The map that indicates that the release of the movie is being restricted to "blue" areas -- what is the point in that? By the way, here is a favorable review from an Austin, TX paper. Here's my favorite reaction so far.

I thought it was a very good movie, but I worried, not so much about what Gore said, but by what he didn't say. People are very prone to confuse standard air pollution problems with the buildup of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, and the movie didn't help on that score. But still, far better than what one usually gets from movies!

Gore does a far better job with his PowerPoint presentations than anyone I've ever seen - a Powerpoint master! His lecturing manner is lively and interesting. Nevertheless, I was worried about the simplifications Gore had to embrace to make his lecture clear.

The best part of the movie is when Gore discusses rotting and decaying ice shelves and glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. Some of this information about breaking ice shelves on Antarctica's Ross Peninsula I had heard before, but never in such a compelling and interesting way. And some of the information, particularly on the decaying Greenland ice sheet, was genuinely new to me. The worst part of the movie was a poorly-edited fragment, discussing Pacific Islanders who've had to relocate to New Zealand because of rising sea levels. These islanders weren't really identified. Global warming victims make interesting news, but not if they remain faceless.

One of my bosses at work is a global warming skeptic. Politically, he's somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun and somewhere to the left of Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force. Once, just before a company dinner, we were vigorously discussing global warming, when the dinner bell rang, and he was forced to summarize the entire global warming skeptic position in ten seconds. His ten second complaint was that the argument on behalf of global warming was too simple: the Earth's climate engine has far too many cogs in it to expect it to respond uniformly to a single forcing agent like an increase in carbon dioxide concentration.

At first, I thought this was a strange argument. Scientists prefer simple explanations. Occam's razor maintains that the simplest argument that explains a phenomenon is often the correct one. Thus, simplicity is a virtue.

But there is a different way to look at global warming - not scientifically, but politically. Simple political explanations are appealing, because they can be easily grasped, and thus it is easier to mobilize people to carry out certain tasks. The ugly details can be left for later. Maybe the danger of simplicity isn't scientific, but political.

If I recall correctly, the first scientist who established that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation was a German named Heinz, in the late 1880's. He immediately intuited from his experiments that the Industrial Revolution would lead to a warming of the Earth. Global warming is a simple enough idea that the very first scientist in the field grasped the key point immediately. The education revolution of the 20th Century has now made scientific thought much more widely available in the past, greatly expanding the pool of people who understand, and thus heightening the political impact of efforts to stop global warming. Everyone can now join in democratic action. But what exactly are we to do?

I never was that interested in climatology - too much statistics for a simple soul like myself. Nevertheless, I remember the late 1980's, when I was a graduate student in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona. There was something of an academic political campaign to bring onto the faculty an experienced scientist, one with connections to NASA, and who had considerable global climate modeling capability, but he did not have much hands-on experience. We had another fellow on the faculty who did have a lot of experimental experience with aerosol particles (also of interest in climatology), but less modeling experience. The outside guy essentially routed the inside guy, and effectively replaced him: hands-on experience no longer seemed quite as important as political glad-handing.

I sensed that, behind it all, the National Science Foundation, among others, had quietly become politicized, and that global warming was now their favored cause, with global modeling the preferred vehicle for educating the nation and the world. The turnover in college faculty, nationwide as well as in AZ, was just a small skirmish in the new campaign, which might take decades to accomplish. Climatological modelers were to be favored, even if the climate models could benefit from the work of people who could actually calibrate the models with experimental evidence. Simplicity was in! Looking forward, though, it seemed like a shrewd bet: after all, carbon dioxide was relentlessly increasing, and there was unusual consensus in the scientific community regarding the implications.

All of this might be OK, but the kinds of things we need to do to get a handle on global warming are daunting. Carbon dioxide is inexorably increasing in the atmosphere - concentrations are already 15% higher than when I was born (380 vs. 315 ppmv). We have to seriously curtail our appetites for carbon fossil fuels, but our precious lifestyles hinge on the consumption of carbon fossil fuels. We are seriously, seriously addicted to petroleum products.

Al Gore spoke of the moral imperative of doing what we must to save our home, our Earth. Gore reminds me of a Preacher, trying to persuade people who've been alcoholics as long as they've been alive, that they should give up the bottle. People have no idea what is involved.

Q.: "Mr. Preacherman, what will happen if I give up alcohol?"
A.: "Well, Timmy, first you'll get the delerium tremens, better known as the DTs. You'll go through a period of what seems like insanity, featuring hallucinations. You'll see spiders on the walls, and your head will feel like it's full of maggots."
Q.: "Can't I have a beer instead, Mr. Preacherman?"
A.: "Well, Timmy, then you'll be part of the problem, rather than part of the solution!"
Q.: "It doesn't look that way from where I sit, Mr. Preacherman!"

So, what is the point? If you are a statesman (aka a politician), maybe you'll be happy enough to settle for second-best. People do not understand that carbon dioxide is not simply a typical air pollutant that can be handled by regulation - carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere, and regulation can only slow, not stop, the process. The danger is that people will become hurt and disillusioned, because they are engaged in a campaign that will likely lose the main battle, even if there are other sucesses elsewhere.

Indeed, after seeing the movie, E2 told me "I have a friend who is buying a natural-gas powered vehicle with near-zero emissions." "Well, that's good," I said, "but natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and the vehicle will contribute to global warming." "I bet you're mistaken," she said. I wish Gore had spoken on this point. The fact that he was silent suggests there are advantages to not making the point clear.

So, if people use more fuel-efficient autos, carbon dioxide will build up more slowly in the atmosphere, although it will still build up. Nevertheless, you might still get air pollution benefits by buying the newer fuel-efficient cars, and consume petroleum products from the Middle East at a slower rate, which might help political stability - all salutary goals - but you will still lose on the global warming front. Two steps forward, one step back - nevertheless, a good day for a statesman.

Our political system does a very poor job addressing long-term problems, and politics is all about the short-term. Global warming may very well be real - I'm a convert - but I suspect we'll burn every precious drop of oil, regardless, until it is all gone. Call me a cynic, but we are a world filled with addicts. The spirit may be willing, but the flesh is very, very weak!

Al Gore stated that if the Greenland ice cap, or the West Antarctic ice sheet melted, sea level would rise 20 feet. All I could think was, "well, the basement of my house is 23 feet, 8 inches above sea level." So, I'll be all right (unless BOTH ice sheets melt, in which case I'll be screwed and have to move back to New Mexico). That's one nice thing about being a mature adult, though. By the time all hell breaks loose, I'll be dead.

Gabe, The Information Warrior

Gabe takes issue with the information my sister sent the other day, and says there is no such thing as a national cell phone registry.

On the other hand, as I noticed previously with the Titanic Poseidon Adventure screening legend, Snopes.com tries to keep its fans on their toes by DELIBERATELY posting false information, so that no one gets too comfortable with their precious facts.

I don't know where the truth lies, only that it is in question.....

Supreme Court Disses Bush's Ad Hoc Military Tribunals

A limited ruling, and very, very late, but one that spells out some of the painfully-obvious points about these military tribunals that were slammed together, in a hurry, in the law-free gulag playland the Bush Administration has put together there at Guantanamo.

Most significant is this:

3. That Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. (See also the AMK concurrence: "The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law. By Act of Congress, moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel. See 18 U. S. C. § 2441.") This ruling has enormous implications for the Administration's detention and interrogation practices, because the Administration's legal conclusion that CA3 does not apply, and that we will not apply it as a matter of practice, was the key linchpin to the entire edifice of legal maneuvers that led to waterboarding, hypothermia, degradation, etc. See my post here. Per today's decision, the Administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes, which are subejct to the death penalty. Although I don't think due process would allow prosecution based on conduct previously undertaken on OLC's advice that CA3 did not apply (after all, the Chief Justice concluded, in the D.C. Circuit, that CA3 did not apply), practices going forward are bound to change, and quick. (I'm sure the memos are being drafted and distributed in the CIA and DOD even as we "speak.")

Here is the news from Reuters:

In a sharp rebuke of President George W. Bush's tactics in the war on terrorism, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as illegal the military tribunal system set up to try Guantanamo prisoners.

By a 5-3 vote, the nation's highest court declared that the tribunals, which Bush created right after the September 11 attacks, violated the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military rules.

"We conclude that the military commission convened to try (Salim Ahmed) Hamdan lacks power to proceed because its structure and procedures violate" the international agreement that covers treatment of prisoners of war, as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court majority.

The decision was a stinging blow for the administration in a case brought by Hamdan, who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan. Hamdan, captured in November 2001, is one of about 450 foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

... Stevens, at 86 the high court's longest-serving justice and a leading liberal, said the tribunals failed to provide one of the most fundamental protections under U.S. military rules, the right for a defendant to be present at all proceedings.

"The rules specified for Hamdan's trial are illegal," he said.

In a 73-page opinion, he also said there was no reason why Hamdan could not be tried by court-martial, which offers greater protections for defendants than the tribunal.

At the White House, Bush said he had not fully reviewed the ruling and would consult with the U.S. Congress to attain appropriate authority for military tribunals.

...A Pentagon spokesman reiterated the need for a U.S. facility to hold dangerous captives and Bush spokesman Tony Snow added, "This will not mean closing down Guantanamo."

...Civil liberties and human rights groups were also jubilant. Amnesty International said it "sends a clear message to President Bush that he cannot act unilaterally to create a system of law from thin air."

... Stevens said the military commissions were not authorized by the U.S. Congress. He did not address whether the government can detain Hamdan indefinitely but said the government must "comply with the rule of law" in seeking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment.

... He was joined by the other liberal justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and moderate conservative Anthony Kennedy.

Breyer wrote in a separate opinion, "The court's conclusion ultimately rests on a single ground: Congress has not issued the executive a 'blank check.'"

The conservatives -- Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who was appointed by Bush -- dissented.

The ninth member of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts, also appointed by Bush, removed himself because he was on the U.S. appeals court panel that ruled for the Bush administration in Hamdan's case.

Republican lawmakers vowed to act quickly in view of the ruling. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia said his committee would consider revising laws governing the detention of enemy combatants.

Another Advantage Of Not Having A Cell Phone!

Via E-Mail from my sister:

JUST A REMINDER....4 days from today, all cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sale calls. YOU WILL BE CHARGED FOR THESE CALLS.... To prevent this, call the following number from your cell phone: 888-382-1222. It is the National DO NOT CALL list. It will only take a minute of your time.It blocks your number for five (5) years. HELP OTHERS BY PASSING THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS OR GO TO: http://www.donotcall.gov/

The Moron Speaks Again

Lee Siegel decides today that Jon Stewart is the problem with lack of participation in our democratic system, particularly by young people:

I don't want to hurt any more feelings out there, but I have to tell you: Jon Stewart's show is destroying democracy as we know it.

...a new study by two researchers at East Carolina University found that Stewart's cynicism has the effect of making viewers so disgusted with politics on both sides of the aisle that they feel too discouraged to vote. Constant ridicule seems to have the effect of turning the political system into one gigantic self-parodying freak show, with no sign of imminent change or relief.

That could be why all the pre-election talk about Jon Stewart sending his young viewers--though the average age of a "Daily Show" viewer is actually 47--to the polls in great numbers to vote for Kerry was just that--talk. It simply never happened.

So maybe ridicule and invective, though entertaining, and a refreshing alternative to the mainstream media's passivity and reserve, isn't the boon to democracy it's cracked up to be? Anyway, don't despair, and don't get enraged because that's just the bad news about Stewart. The good news is that he's not a fascist.

If Mr. Siegel bothered to actually watch the Daily Show, he could see that Jon Stewart does not heap "constant ridicule" on the political system. The Daily Show plays favorites - Thank God!

Atrios also has some feel-good points along the same lines.

Is The Translation Technically Correct?....

Or are the negative connotations so deep that the journalist should be cited for professional malpractice?:

A Spanish news agency has apologized for a report that describes an Arizona gubernatorial candidate's proposed work program for illegal immigrants as "concentration camps."

The story last week caused an international stir.

The news agency EFE quoted Republican Don Goldwater as saying he wanted to hold illegal immigrants in camps to use them "as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting."

Pictures From The Ketchum-Wiggins Farewell Party

There is a room that's full of toys,
There are a hundred BOYS AND GIRLS,
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud.
(From 'Castle on a Cloud,' "Les Miserables")

Hopping around the cool inflatable castle! Just one of a bunch of photos taken on Sunday, June 4th, courtesy of Karyl Ketchum, who says:

...[L]ink to the pics from our going-away party. Thought I would have them up well before this but, to my complete frustration, our moving truck was delayed and I only just this past Sunday had access to my computer. Other than that, all is well here and we are enjoying the beach! Hail will be beginning La Jolla Playhouse’s Summer Conservatory in about a week and I am busy planning my courses for the fall. Hope all is well with you.

Alarm Bells...

...Go off at the Mirage during the new show there ('Love'), to the annoyance of the performers.

Today Might Be The Formal Start of the Arizona Monsoon Season

Despite the current low humidity. But we'll see (from the National Weather Service in Tucson):

HERE IS AN INTERESTING MONSOON START DATE TIDBIT. FOR YEARS THAT END IN `6`...THE START DATE HAS BEEN CENTERED ON JUNE 28TH (1956...JUNE 28TH; 1966...JUNE 28TH; 1976...JUNE 28TH; 1986...JUNE 29TH; 1996...JUNE 30TH). SO WILL THIS TREND CONTINUE FOR 200(6)?

Germany Staggers

Actually, it's the English that are staggering:

ENGLAND's massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry, it emerged yesterday.

Breweries warned beer could run out before the final because of huge demand from our supporters.

In Nuremberg, organisers revealed 70,000 England fans who flooded the city drank 1.2MILLION pints of beer - an average of 17 pints each.

Astonished bar keeper Herrmann Murr said: "Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time."

His bar at a fans' tent in the city ran out after they drained all 32 of his 50-litre (11 gallon) barrels.

Herr Murr calculated Britons were shifting beer at a staggering rate of 200 pints per minute.

... A spokesman said: "It is incredible how much is being drunk but the hardest thing for the breweries is keeping up with the thirst of the English."

In Dortmund, where most fans for England's Gelsenkirchen clash against Portugal on Saturday are staying, the giant DAB brewery is bracing itself by ferrying in extra supplies to boost production.

Scary Weirdness

At Las Vegas' McCarran Airport.

That airport is one strange place. People are basically friendly, despite the sometimes zoolike conditions to get people checked onto airlines.

In 1992, when passing through the airport to my mother's funeral, I had several hours to kill there, and so I attempted to locate a Bible in the terminal. Oddly enough, there are no Bibles to be had anywhere in the airport. How strange is that?

That Enabling Blue Pill

I wasn't going to touch this with more than a 10-foot-pole until the facts were in - after all, I am also a middle-aged man thinking about travelling overseas later this year - but I was overwhelmed by a bout of blogofascism:

I know that a good establishment liberal would refrain from even discussing the fact that Rush Limbaugh likes to go to one of the underage sex capitals of the world with a bottle of Viagra in one hand and God knows what in the other. Lee Siegel would find it wholly imappropriate of me to even bring it up. After all, Rush and his allies may have spent years harrassing Democrats for sexual indiscretions, but it's beneath the blogs to sink to his level and make a big deal out of this.

... Rush should be the poster boy for a new movement. It isn't right that he is the only man in America who can get his Daddy's Little Helpers prescribed in his doctor's name instead of his own. Many men, I'm sure, would be grateful not to have to deal with the embarrassment of a pharmacist knowing about his need for Viagra and now that he's known as a user, the least Rush can do is promote the right for all Americans to carry them without a prescription in their names, as he does.

Rush should be urged to share his story with America. Here's he is, an impotent, thrice divorced, ex-drug addict, conservative, parolee who went on a sex tour in the Caribbean and found himself rudely embarrassed for carrying recreational prescription drugs in his doctor's name. Who can't relate to that? This is a man who has been run through the mud and I think we would benefit from a thorough national conversation to try to understand Rush's urgent need for sex in one of the most poverty stricken countries in the world.

Backwards Bush

Because there are only so many seconds left to go.

Blogofascism

Good thoughts by Josh Marshall:

More generally, I think the blogosphere, in contrast to more staid venues for writing is something like the much more popular and participatory sort of theater culture you had in the 19th and well into the 20th century (you may remember seeing some hint of this funned up in old Bugs Bunny cartoons) where, if the audience didn't like what they were hearing or seeing, they started booing. Or hooting. Or heck, maybe tossing raw vegetables. You get a sense of Siegel's reaction when he grandly opines that the blogosphere, "radiates democracy's dream of full participation but practices democracy's nightmare of populist crudity..."

Siegel is like some would-be Alexander Woollcott who thinks he's taking a seat at the Algonquin Table. But he's shown up on the stage at some freewheeling vaudeville theater. And when the crowd starts booing his pompous malarkey and he gets hit in the head with a ripe tomato, he imagines it's some world-historical event.

...I tried really hard to come up with something intelligent to say about this nonsense. But Siegel's foolishness defied me. And all I can do is keep giggling that this guy actually can write this stuff with a straight face.

Will The Supreme Court Decide CO2 Emissions Should Be Regulated?

Highly unlikely. U.S. laws governing air quality, including the Clean Air Act of 1990, are actually quite specific about not including carbon dioxide. To implement such a program, laws would have to be changed.

In any event, it has always seemed to me that greenhouse gas emissions can't easily be regulated. With other air pollution problems, if you regulate emissions, you regulate air quality, but with a cumulative problem like CO2, your efforts become increasingly ineffective with time, as concentrations inexorably build. There are better ways to address the problem (e.g., conservation and technological solutions) than through regulation.

Small Favors

George Bush decides to go after both Social Security and Medicare next year. In this 2006 election cycle, he's being less subtle than in the 2004 election cycle, which leaves Republican candidates even less wiggle room than in 2005:

If we can't get it done this year, I'm going to try next year. And if we can't get it done next year, I'm going to try the year after that, because it is the right thing to do. It's just so easy to say, let somebody else deal with it. Now is the time to solve the problems of Medicare and Social Security, and I want your help.

Hot Air

There's a special tropical disturbance statement out this afternoon for North Carolina. Several years ago, a storm like this, carrying strong thunderstorms but no circulation, would have passed with barely a comment, except from fishermen, but today, the Drudge Report is trumpeting the special announcement as a headline. Plus, there is a tropical wave 800 miles east of the southern Windward Islands (scary! scary!), but Drudge doesn't mention that the wave is disappearing, not gathering strength.

Whatever it takes to sell advertising, I guess. It's just as important not to overreact as to react too slowly.

For the most part, the Atlantic has been fairly quiet this season, so far....
Talking about underreaction, there is a new book out by Douglas Brinkley about Hurricane Katrina:

Well, it’s because you have widespread poverty in America, and there’s a real underclass to New Orleans, which the city boosters try to sweep under the rug. It’s a city teeming with poverty, and if the poor don’t have automobiles, it’s because they have a ticket or a traffic violation, and they haven’t paid it; or, the seniors are just too old to drive. Some people were caretakers -- a daughter who stayed because her mother was so sick that she couldn’t be moved. You had lonely people who were just stuck or waiting for their Social Security checks. They were supposed to get a check August 31, so on the 29th when the storm was coming, they didn’t want to leave town with no way out, no clear places to get buses, and with empty pockets. We make the assumption that we’re all watching the Weather Channel, we all have cable TV, and read newspapers, but there’s a whole segment of the population that just feel like “we don’t do hurricanes in New Orleans” so if they’ve lived there for 40 years and survived them all, then they’ll survive this one. They just weren’t prepared for the magnitude that occurred.

From Drudge...

Rush's big adventure:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: 'HOW DID BOB DOLE'S LUGGAGE GET ON MY AIRPLANE? I TOLD MY DOCTOR I WAS WORRIED ABOUT THE NEXT ELECTION'... ...CUSTOMS DID NOT BELIEVE ME WHEN I TOLD THEM THAT I GOT THOSE PILLS AT THE BILL CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY'...

Help Wanted...

Hey, I'm available anytime to appear at one of these paying gigs - after all, flights to Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines aren't that hard to come by:

In exchange for letting 'Jet' advertise her birthday party at the club in mass emails and on websites, [Kelly] Monaco and her entourage of eight were given first-class airfare from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, rooms at the Bellagio, free booze and a few thousand in chips to gamble. The deal was worth maybe $10,000.

"Everyone pays celebrities to come to their clubs," says Andrew Sasson, co-owner of Jet, as well as Light at the Bellagio. "It's all part of the marketing in this business. Anyone who tells you they don't is lying. The question is: Do you pay with cash, or provide a jet, a meal, drinks and hotel rooms?"

...To the club owners, it's cheap marketing. On any given Friday night as many as 5,000 people party at the nightclub Pure at Caesars Palace casino. Roughly half pay a $40 cover charge. At that rate the club can sometimes cover the cost of a celebrity before selling a drop of booze.

Nicky Hilton and her boyfriend, Kevin Connolly, were paid $75,000 each to host Pure's New Year's Eve party.

Fergie, a singer in the pop group The Black Eyed Peas, was paid $50,000 to have her birthday party at the club. Britney Spears' husband, Kevin Federline, got $30,000 to show up.

... George Maloof Jr. started the Hollywood trend in Vegas in 2001 with his Palms casino resort just off the Strip. Maloof courted stars like Britney Spears and Shaquille O'Neal, and his clubs Rain and Ghostbar flourished.

Victor Drai, managing partner of Tryst at Wynn Las Vegas, finds the trend ridiculous: "I don't pay celebrities anything. And if they want to drink here, they're going to pay. They're stars. They can afford it."

I wonder what Andrew Sasson would say to Mr. Drai?

Got Wood?

Indian cinema apparently has many capitals:

Bollywood, near Mumbai, is an enormous studio centre that has elevated schmaltz to an art form, churning out hundreds of saccharin films every year to an apparently insatiable audience.

You know the story: plot-free, fanciful scripts loaded with coquettish love scenes on lavish sets punctuated by syrupy song and dance routines involving casts of hundreds ... but there are more.

Kollywood, based in Chennai, produces similar films in Tamil language. Mollywood pumps out Malayalam language films in Kerala. Lollywood does the same in Lahore, Pakistan.

And then there is Tollywood.

Tollywood produces hundreds of movies in the southern Tegulu and Tamil languages and is based in Hyderabad, the capital of Andra Pradesh state and one of India's most unusual cities.

That Blogofascism Meme

The more out-of-control, the funnier (unlike, say, real fascism):

Q: Is Markos Marsupialopolis gay, as Instapundit graciously refrained from implying?

A: No. This is a common misconception, fostered by Hollywood’s deliberate policy of putting out that gay cowboy movie around about the same time they were putting out all those damn Hobbit movies. Let’s clear this up once and for all: cowboys are gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Hobbits, on the other hand, just like going on extended backpacking holidays with their live-in male gardeners, during which they exchange soulful and significant glances and cry and hug and say “oh, Sam!” in a way which, if they were cowboys, would be totally gay, but, seeing as they are hobbits, just totally isn’t. Then the gardener marries the girl from scene 2 who didn’t get any lines, and then Frodo, the confirmed bachelor, goes on a permanent boating holiday with a bunch of “elves”. Dead butch behavior if you ask me.

"One man likes to push a plow, the other likes to chase a cow...."

Cravings

Gotta satisfy them:

WEST PALM BEACH Sources have confirmed to CBS4 News that conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.

Maybe Alzheimer's After All

Ever since I was 38, I've had a terrible name remembering people's names, and indeed, with names of objects in general. And then there's this study, which shows, um, something important.....I forget!:

A study found that in a disturbing number of cases, embarrassing "senior moments" such as forgetting a recent conversation or drawing a blank on someone's name may really be a sign of Alzheimer's after all.

...Occasional forgetfulness is often written off as a normal part of growing old and nothing to get alarmed about. And in most cases, that is probably true.

But the scientists found to their surprise that the brains of more than one-third of the participants were riddled with waxy protein clumps and other signs of degeneration that are hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.

...Participants in the study had amounts of brain deterioration similar to those found in Alzheimer's patients who were severely debilitated by the mind-robbing disease before their deaths. The researchers said that raises the question of why some afflicted people but not others can function normally.

"There's something about these people that allows them to have large amounts of pathology without obvious memory problems," said lead author Dr. David Bennett, an Alzheimer's researcher at Rush University Medical Center. "We need to understand why that is."

His theory, supported by earlier research, is that high levels of education and feelings of social connectedness can help preserve brain function. Bennett said he believes that helps create a "neural reserve" that enables people to tolerate Alzheimer's-induced brain deterioration without showing signs of dementia.

Some researchers believe that mentally stimulating tasks such as doing crossword puzzles, taking classes or reading can help prevent Alzheimer's. But Bennett said his new findings suggest that in some people, these tasks might also enable the brain to compensate for the disease.

...All had performed well on memory exams, although those whose autopsies showed Alzheimer's evidence had slightly lower scores on measures of episodic memory, which tested how well they recalled a story that had been recently read to them.

Episodic memory loss also includes things such as forgetting the name of a new acquaintance, a recent conversation, or an upcoming appointment.

People commonly undergo an age-related slowing of the ability to retrieve information. They might forget where they put their keys, but they usually remember eventually, Bennett said.

But when Alzheimer's is involved, new information is never properly stored, meaning the affected person never learned it well enough to be able to retrieve it, he said.

Lippa said the study bolsters the use-it-or-lose-it theory that says "if you don't keep yourself mentally challenged, your brain cells may die off," or be more subject to disease.

"Phantom" Opens in Vegas

This critic, who doesn't particularly like Andrew Lloyd Webber, likes this version of "Phantom."

Satan Tilts The Playing Field In Utah

Utah politics is a strange breed. Republican primary candidate John Jacob is having trouble with his campaign against sitting five-term Republican Congressman Chris Cannon, but Jacob suspects he knows who's at fault:

Regarding the devil, Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.

Numerous business deals he had lined up have been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race.

"You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there's some other, something else that is happening," Jacob said.

Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people."

Saddam's Hopes

There have been reports in the press lately that Saddam Hussein is hopeful that he will be released from prison, even if sentenced to death in an Iraqi court, because the U.S. needs someone to control Iraq and keep it out of Iranian hands, and he's the only one around with enough relevant experience to do the job.

Tanned, rested, and ready: the new Saddam!

How delusional are Saddam's hopes? It would make a complete and total mockery of all the U.S. efforts over the last three years, of course, but history has enough examples of stranger events (e.g., the pact between Hitler and Stalin prior to the invasion of Russia; the entire career of Napoleon) to make one hesitate.

Somehow, provided Saddam lives long enough (he's 69), I think his dream may come to pass.....

High Spirits

Heading across the Yolo Causeway on I-80 to Davis for "Oklahoma!" this afternoon, a swarm of motorcyclists swooped up from behind, and began passing my car (I was going about 65 mph).

The lead motorcyclist took his feet off the pedals, placed his feet on the seat, and stood up on the seat (I believe he completely removed his hands from the handlebars, but I might be mistaken here). Then he sat back down and extended his feet outwards away from the pedals, in a sort of wishbone position (I've read accounts by physicists explaining that the wishbone position is very unstable on a bicycle, and presumably isn't such a good idea on a motorcycle either, but is probably more manageable because of the greater mass and rotational inertia of the motorized cycle). Then the fellow sat sidesaddle. Then he began repeating his three tricks for the benefit of his six or eight compatriots on motorcycles.

Judging from the red tail lights of the cars ahead of me, this impromptu performance was beginning to creep people out. The motorcyclists didn't care: they slipped through the gaps in between the cars and raced westwards.

I hope they reached their destination safely.

"Oklahoma!" - Weekend Shows

Shows four, five and six down! Second Friday went reasonably well. I didn't really get my dance groove on until after 'Kansas City' - forgot a couple of things - very much a second Friday sort of thing. A few things went awry. In the second act, Brad made his intrusive noise too soon, so he had to repeat it. Nice appreciative audience, though. Jennifer Bonomo (OK! Set Designer) was there. It was really nice to see YPT's Nora Unkel too!

The Saturday audience was large and noisy. There was a plethora of many loud RSP fans, as well as other local musical theater folks. Everybody was there: Ray Fisher and James Brave; Mike and Kim Jones, Andrea St. Clair (soon to be in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", opening July 7th at RSP); Jason Parsons, Meghan and Katherine Vanderford (Patty Simcox and Frenchie, respectively, in Flying Monkey's "Grease" at the Guild Theater), Julia Soto, WOH's Jinn Schneider; the list seemed endless. So many of the magical Sacramento theater folk turned out! Very nice to play to that house.

On Saturday, the dancing went well, but timing overall seemed to be an issue tonight. Bob Bugg tripped up on 'Scandal....', jumping a verse. The music tempo went awry during 'Oklahoma' and we had to feel our way. Even the auction felt strange, with ever so slight changes from usual. Lauren Miller and Brad Bong seemed unusually good on Saturday night, however - lots of energy!

Strangely, a few people in the audience laughed when Jud fell on his knife, both on Saturday as well as Sunday. People react strangely sometimes to well-simulated death scenes, as if they resist being pulled into action that looks just too real. Michael McElroy had a bit of blood him after that scene ('Jud Blood', apparently, although it looked real enough in the backstage half-light). Near the end, Robert tripped up on 'Curley's Surley'.

Saturday night was also the last performance for Ryan Favorite as Ike Skidmore (Steve Isaacson, recovering from knee surgery, returned to the role on Sunday). We will miss Ryan a great deal, although we understand he has better things to do soon, like busting up wedding receptions in "Fiddler..." at Music Circus.

On Sunday, timing issues momentarily sandbagged Mary Young (Aunt Eller) in 'Farmer and the Cowman.' We somehow muffed catching Brad Bong in 'Kansas City'. Steve was back as Ike Skidmore, but got distracted during the moment when he intervenes to prevent a clash between Jud and Curley, during the auction scene. Steve jumped in between the two protagonists, fumbled for the words, and managed to get them out, more or less, but he sounded less like a referee and more like William Shatner channeling Yoda for an improvised lounge singing act.

Helping carry Jud (Jamie Tvrdik) offstage after the knife scene is probably the hardest thing I do during the entire show, because Jud is supposed to appear dead, and can't assist with the lift in any way, such as by stiffening his body while being carried off, as Dream Curley (Ryan Adame) does while mimicking formal death during the ballet scene. On Sunday, leaning over to pick up Jud, my hat either fell, or was brushed off, and landed on Jud's belly and rolled around. "Oh crap," I whispered, in close proximity to the audience, and that slip sent everyone carrying Jud into paroxysms of suppressed giggles, especially Michael McElroy. Even Jud was biting his bloody lip and giggling. It's hard enough as it is to carry Jud offstage, but it's agonizingly harder when you can't breathe because you are suppressing screams of laughter!

Two weekends down; two to go!

In other news, I learned on Saturday that Carly Wielstein ('Cinderella', DMTC, Spring 2004 - Flying Monkeys' Benefit, February 2006), who attends Cal State Fullerton, will be teaching dance this summer at Ron Cisneros' studio in Sacramento, so get on down there soon to pick up the latest in lyrical ballet, plus whatever else they do in Southern California.