Dave's Continental Fans

Continental Europe might be unusually fertile soil for Dave Nachmanoff's folk/rock music. Dave has a Ph.D. in philosophy, and can easily use the heaviest intellectual artillery in what might superficially appear to be vapid, light-hearted folk music.

And every performer needs fans. True fans are hard to come by.

Dave Nachmanoff has a German fan named Stefan, who is doing his utmost to pave the way for Dave's music in continental Europe. Stefan writes:

Hi Mark,

Just got and read your guestbook entry - thanks a lot that you've thought of that and have done it!

It's unbelievable that as per my impression Dave's capacity hasn't reached this in this respect dreamy/bemused old Europe so far (the UK fans have always orientated more to the US of course, and he has been there several times), therefore we have had more US than European visitors on the temporary eu site until now. But I'm convinced that should change rapidly as soon as the Al Stewart tour will have reached this continental part and folks will have experienced what they have missed in their lives until now, by the cause of Dave's opening sets!

And I'm sure you definitely appreciate that wonder of a person living round your corner! I saw him only once in my life, that was last year in England, when I went there for my first Al concert ever. Dave's performance and personality was gripping, and since that night I cannot get loose of his music and intellectual excitation - it's magic!

At least everybody in my personal surrounding who has had to listen to it is smitten with amazement on the spot. So that assures me that there are miracles coming up to old Europe very soon.

Best regards, and thanks again!

Stefan Hesse

I reply:

Glad to make your acquaintance, Stefan!

Even though I live near Dave's home, this concert was the first time I had ever heard him, or heard of him. I'm Treasurer of a community musical theater group called Davis Musical Theater Company (DMTC) and last year we built a new theater. We had to secure so many bank loans that now we are struggling to maintain our finances. We have to find ways to use the new facility to generate money when we don't have shows of our own to present, and so we decided to host travelling musicians for their concerts.

But who would be the first musician? Ben Wormeli, who plays electric guitar for our shows said, "let's get Dave Nachmanoff!" We all said "Dave who?" (We don't follow the local folk music scene much.) But we trust Ben, and his judgment of local musicians, so we said "let's proceed with Dave Nachmanoff!"

I was very impressed with Dave, and his fantastic musical skills. I bought four of his CDs after the concert.

This week, Dave is in a recording studio in Los Angeles, no doubt preparing something for his fans.

You are going to have a special musical treat, come December!

Marc Valdez

So, What Were You Doing September 11, 2001?

Shocking events will often leave vivid memories. Where were you, and what were you doing, when you about heard "X?"

Several events have left their mark in my lifetime, including:

• Assassination of JFK (I had just returned from lunch recess to Mrs. James' 2nd grade class);
• Newark riots (watched on NBC);
• Assassination of RFK (at the kitchen table, reading about it in the paper, the following morning);
• Resignation of Richard Nixon (hiking on the southern leg of the trail encircling Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada);
• Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan (in the basement of the Student Union building at the University of Arizona, at lunchtime);
• Destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger (entering my lab at the Ft. Valley Experimental Forest Station, 5 mi. NW of Flagstaff, AZ);
• Death of Princess Diana (heard about the accident on the evening news, just prior to going to bed);
• Destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia (just pulled out of my driveway in Sacramento).

On September 11th, 2001, I awoke (~ 9:30 a.m.) to the sound of a car radio blaring in the DMV parking lot outside my bedroom window. Clearly, the listener felt something important was going on, and the radio was loud enough that I could make out some phrases, but it was quite baffling. The radio announcer said that the President's plane would soon land in Washington, D.C. This was strange - didn't the President's plane land nearly every day in Washington, D.C.? So, I decided something must be wrong with the President's plane, like maybe the landing gear was stuck, or something, so I ambled over to the TV and turned it on, with the thought running in my head, 'well, this ought to be good for a laugh.'

Despite people's repeated assertions on TV that the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed, I refused to believe it for at least an hour, attributing pictures of falling debris to a falling facade rather than to the structures themselves (When I tuned in, they weren't showing pictures of the second plane's impact, or pictures of the collapse taken from the distance, but rather of close-up pictures that couldn't readily show the scale of the disaster.)

Later that day, walking the streets, I noticed the absence of aircraft in the sky, and it was eerie knowing the few planes left in the sky were solely military aircraft. I wondered where those aircraft were going, and what was going to happen next. I also worried about Al Qaeda-piloted kamikaze Central Valley cropdusters dropping nerve toxins unannounced in Sacramento for at least a week or so.

Blog O' The Day - Badtux

John recommends Badtux, the Snarky Penguin.

Today, Badtux, The Cynical Penguin, disparages the Baby Boom Generation.

I'm all for it (since I'm not a Baby Boomer, no matter what the calendar, or all my friends say), but the acid test is 'what does Gen-X Gabe think?'

Gabe says:

I don’t know if I like the analogy of the Reichstag fire either. George Bush isn’t Hitler. I find it a tired analogy (can we be any more lazy than to always refer to Hitler and the Nazis?). If there is a more apt analogy, I would prefer to see one of the 19th Century (or early 20th) monarchs, like George IV, or the Kaiser, or someone else.

Does that make any sense?

P.S. He does seem like a thoughtful fellow, though, but not one to my liking.

That's a Gen-X guy for you! Picky, picky! Thank goodness I'm from my own independent generation (born in October, 1956), where our daring freethinkingness is matched only by our laziness at picking out Nazi analogies, whether appropriate or not, any day of the week, on any subject imaginable.

WTC Spam

I won't link to the advertisment, but I was impressed by the chutzpah. Pretty soon, they'll have WTC booths at the State Fair, and you can toss balsa-wood gliders at Twin Tower milk bottles, with stuffed animals for those who knock them over:

This historic 2-piece memorial transforms into a magnificent standing sculpture of the Twin Towers, and is clad in 24 KT gold and .999 Pure Silver recovered from Ground Zero!

$5 of every commemorative order is donated to official 9/11 family charities and memorials.

This groundbreaking non-monetary issue will never be released for circulation. It is available through this special private minting for collectors only!

The World Trade Center skyline is lavishly clad in gleaming silver that was miraculously recovered from a bank vault found under tons of debris at Ground Zero. Now, to mark the fifth anniversary, the same silver that was reclaimed from the destruction has been used to cover the magnificent Twin Towers depicted in the 2001-2006 World Trade Center Commemorative.

"West Side Story" Tech Week Begins at DMTC

Left, foreground: Katherine Vanderford sings 'Somewhere,' on Sunday afternoon.

David Nachmanoff Concert - DMTC - Saturday night

Left: Donna Lemongello (left), an audience member Saturday night (but a fellow band member with Dave Nachmanoff in the nineties) sings a song with Dave (right) Saturday night.


Experiments are a good thing, especially the kind where you throw something against the wall, to see what sticks. For the inaugural concert of DMTC's "Keep the Music in Your Community" series, we carefully placed Dave Nachmanoff in a medieval-style catapult, outfitted him with a bicycle helmet (for safety's sake), and flung him against one of the new walls of the Hoblit Performing Arts Center. Lo, and behold! Dave stuck!

What an excellent concert! About 45 folks showed up, mostly die-hard Dave Nachmanoff fans - some from the Bay Area, some from the Sierra foothills, and one couple from Arizona! He sang some of his favorite sings: 'Gulliver, The Cowboy Cat," "The Pope Valley Hubcap King," "The Loyalist," and he sang "Sophia," as his daughter, who was sitting behind me, told her mom, "Daddy's singing about me!" He also sang as tribute song to my neighbor, well-known Sacramento bassist Erik Kleven, who recently perished in a head-on collision on Highway 16 near Rancho Murietta. The song was called "Without a Compass or a Map." He also sang a song about a local place, "George's Corner," about the intersection of Second and L Streets, in Davis.

Dave is going into a recording studio this coming week, and this December, he will be touring in Europe with fellow singer, Al Stewart.

"Glorious" (and one of Ben Wormeli's favorite songs)

Have you ever seen a newborn baby?
The wonder in her eyes
Every sight and sound astounding
Every moment's a surprise
Mother's smiling at her laughter
Father's babbling like a child
Now they're cast into a new world
By the glory of her smile

We were glorious once, and we're glorious still
If we take the time to look, we can see the glory well

"A Certain Distance"

And the satellite is beaming down its signal, to your tiny town
But nothing's getting through
He's much too far from you and you know it
There's a certain distance

"El Niño"

They're catching stingray in Washington State
Down south, there's nothing but drought
There's brush fires all over Australia
And in the north, it's flooding them out

The tradewinds are stuck in the doldrums
The Pacific's receded and warm
The forecast is gloomy for winter
What's causing this tropical storm?

El Niño
blame it all on El Niño
It's because of El Niño
Says the man on the news

El Niño
blame it all on El Niño
That anomalous weather phenomenon from Peru

My last 15 gigs have been empty
It seems like I'm under a curse
The computer is invaded by gremlins
And the stock market couldn't be worse

I broke a nail last Thursday
And the dog somehow injured his paw
I gained 20 pounds, and lost my wife

I tell you, there must be a cause!


I asked Dave what kind of music he calls what he sings: folk, rock, emo, reggae, jambalaya, what? He said, "I don't know - historical folk-rock?" Whatever it's called, it's very intelligent!

Regarding DMTC's plans for its concert series, locally-base singer/songwriter Dave Nachmanoff offered some advice. He suggested keeping a local component to the artists that DMTC brings in. Local artists have local fans, who can be counted on to show up. Local artists will ask less in the form of a money guarantee. And since the only viable local alternative, short of the "Palms," is passing the tip jar at the "Delta of Venus" coffeehouse, local artists may even forgo a guarantee altogether, perhaps in exchange for a portion of the gate. Artists brought in from outside will have no alternative but to have a money guarantee, and since they may not have a local fan base, DMTC might end up losing money on them. The risk is greater.

As DMTC Treasurer, I was pleased with the inaugural concert. The concert brought in slightly more than the most-recent "Dancing Through The Decades" dance, but with fewer food and decorating expenses. As we develop a reputation in the community for these events, and as attendance rises, we will benefit all the more.

Thank you, Dave, for the wonderful music, and for being such a sport!

Explanations

Cop 1: "Ma'am, we really don't care whether he's taking a long time. What matters is what the homeowner thinks."
E: "He called me a bitch, and threatened!"
M: "You threw a pair of shears and hit him in the back!"
E: "He's stupid!"
Cop 2: "That isn't against the law, ma'am!"

"Harvey" - Chautauqua Playhouse(first draft)

Left: Harvey (playing himself) takes a bow on the (stage right half of the) set.


I was late in arriving for the show, so much of the exposition I missed. I haven't seen "Harvey" since 1999, when Solano Community College did it. The caharacters seemed to be quite strong, though.

Daryl Petrig played a wistful, whimsical Elwood P. Dowd, one very pleasant fellow, except for an apparent mental glitch: he has an imaginary friend! Richard Spierto was excellent, as always, as Dr. William Chumley, and Monique McKisson was so funny as Dr. Chumley's wife, Betty. The rest of the cast was strong as well: Cathy Rasmussen as Veta Simmons, Melissa Rae Frago as Myrtle Mae Simmons, Olivia and Brad Carpenter as Nirse Kelly and Dr. Sanderson.

I was very surprised to see John Montagna as Taxi Driver E.F. Lofgren: John is a theater fan and a long-time DMTC Season Ticket subscriber, but I didn't realize he sometimes jumps the fence and gets on-stage as well! Wonders never cease!

Left: Cloudy, Harvey's biggest groupie and autograph hound, edges cautiously in (as rabbits always do) trying to get a closer look.

Russell Postell, General Manager of KXTV-10, Responds

Here is Mr. Postell's reply to my E-Mail message:

The movie is a docu-drama based on findings from the 9/11 commission and is not meant to lay blame, but rather to outline events leading up to the tragedy.

Individuals at News10 from both sides of the political fence have watched the movie and did not feel that it was accusatory nor did they feel that it was defamatory to one particular political party. If indeed this ABC drama contains scenes that are simply not true, or gross distortions of actual events, it will be widely reported. Critics can then specifically point out which events were wrongly portrayed in the ABC docu-drama. We may all end up learning more about the actual events that lead up to September 11th.

Since the movie has not aired, opinions at this point are entirely based on premature assumptions. Below is ABC's statement concerning the film:

Statement from an ABC Spokesperson:

The Path to 9/11 is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews. The events that lead to 9/11 originally sparked great debate, so it's not surprising that a movie surrounding those events has revived the debate. The attacks were a pivotal moment in our history that should never be forgotten and it's fitting that the discussion continues.

The following disclaimer will air throughout the movie:

"The following movie is a dramatization that is drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report and other published materials, and from personal interviews. The movie is not a documentary. For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression."

Please be assured that we are logging all viewer comments and they will be shared with ABC.

If you wish to send your comments to ABC, you can do so through the following outlets

*E-mail: go to ABC.com, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Contact ABC"
*Phone: 818-460-7477

Russell Postell
President & General Manager
News10 Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto

Here is my reply:

Mr. Postell:

Based on previews, critics are already pointing out which scenes are wrongly portrayed. There is no point in learning history by learning falsehoods first, thus feeding the flames of superstition.

Knowingly broadcasting false and defamatory information leads to a great debate all right, namely, which tree limb ABC/Disney (and KXTV) executives look best swinging from. I, for one, will not watch this travesty of recent history. I have more self-respect than that.

Monday morning, provided the show is not cancelled, I will gladly support efforts to boycott advertisers on KXTV and strip KXTV of its broadcast license.

Marc Valdez

Still A Chance To Stop It

Interesting analysis:

Given what I know about how big corporations think, I bet the political slant to the movie wasn't strictly intentional on Disney's part. I bet that Disney's ABC division used a set of PR firms and flacks that decided that 9/11 belonged to conservatives, and so hired conservative movement players to produce, market, and distribute this film. They got Tom Kean, so there was adult supervision. What a perfect event setup, to make ABC the place for the country to turn on 9/11. In this fragmented universe, wouldn't it be great to have a time when the country came together, on one place, to really understand this event through the medium of television. And how wonderful if this were on ABC. It would be AN EVENT.

Ha ha ha.

Of course, Mr. Iger was pitched a total fraud by his subordinates, who probably had it pitched to them in turn, with pitches upon pitches until you get to a nest of right-wing marketing people who think of themselves as internet savants, but are actually just kind of stupid and tied in to the dregs of the right-wing blogs. And now Iger probably feels tricked by his subordinates, who have allowed Disney to aid and abet a right-wing propaganda campaign. The higher-ups just didn't notice what was happening because their corporate controls are awful - ABC Entertainment made this piece of shit instead of ABC News.

The fallout from this is bad, but it's going to get worse. Disney has a full-on PR and political disaster on their hands, and they've handled it horribly. With real but oblique threats to their very broadcast licensing schema, ABC has clammed up and gone into full 'counterproductive big company clusterfuck mode', obviously lying to the public about the film still not being completed, and insulting its critics to boot.

That's not smart. Remember, the people doing the lying to the public on Disney/ABC's behalf are the same people who thought that this film would be AN EVENT, or at least ok'd it.

There is a window of time now for Mr. Iger to step up, an 'apologize for Tylenol tampering' moment. He needs to cancel this miniseries, and take personal responsibility for inadequate oversight. He should privately fire the people responsible for this total disaster of a project, and apologize. That's the only way to restore Disney's brand among a large group of very angry people. Be brave, be public, and be honorable. It'll work.

Call KXTV-10

Let General Manager Russell Postell know how you think:

Dear Mr. Postell:

On behalf of Sacramentans who do not want politically-inspired hit jobs to be given valuable air-time, please intercede to stop KXTV-10 from airing "Path to 9/11" on Sunday. The spectacle was designed specifically to distort history, by blaming everything on the Clinton Administration, facts be damned. The director is directly tied to evangelists with a mission to change Hollywood from the inside (presumably stooping to use whatever tactics necessary, including outright lies). All's fair in love and politics, as they might say!

We'll remember KXTV-10's decision, and whether or not it participated in such a disgusting smear job.

Maybe More Than They Bargained For?

A man with a plan:

The director of ABC's controversial "Path to 9/11" docudrama has ties to an evangelical Christian group whose goals include "transform[ing] Hollywood from the inside out," according to research by readers of prominent blogs.

Did Disney get hoodwinked by a director with a plan to blame everything on Clinton? Or was the director chosen specifically by Disney because he had such a plan already prepared? Chicken or egg, the Mouse is now in danger.

Horse's Head In The Bed

The Senate Democratic leadership sent a letter to Disney today threatening legal and legislative penalties if it goes ahead with its 9/11 show. The letter is so filled with menace that even the stupidest executive can't fail to see the danger.

Come on, Disney, proceed!

He Ran; He Lost

A battered-looking man, with his arm in a sling, sitting down at Subway Restaurant. His T-Shirt read: 'Run Against Pain.'

Rocket Man

William Shatner:

The Star Trek legend was offered a ticket by Richard Branson onboard Virgin Galactic's first passenger flight in 2008.

...The 75-year-old actor said: "I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me."

...He added: "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back."

Introverts And Casinos

First impressions:

"I remember when [my husband and I] went to Las Vegas after we were first married," Laney says in her book. "I staggered through the casino, my brain numbed. Colors danced everywhere, and lights exploded in my eyes. The clanking of winners' coins tumbling into metal catchers pounded in my head ... I was pea green and felt like a trout I once saw lying on a bed of crushed ice in a fish market. At least the trout got to lie down."

Film Noir Style

Just a fun article about the style of film noir.

Dave Nachmanoff Concert At DMTC On Saturday!



Looking forward to this concert! Dave has a stellar reputation for excellent singing and guitar-playing.

A Time For Stripping; A Time For Not Stripping

Contrary to my standard view of the world, whereby stripping is always appropriate, there are apparently times when it isn't:

Some of Australia's leading scientists were still reeling from shock and disgust yesterday after a Federal Government-sponsored conference featured a sexy show by a group of burlesque dancers, ending in a mass walk-out.

Experts and academics attending Wednesday night's dinner at Old Parliament House in Canberra were flabbergasted when the evening's entertainment - a group of eight scantily clad women - wandered out.

Lead dancer and founder of Miss Kitka's House of Burlesque, Rebecca Gale, emerged clothed in red balloons, which she then encouraged male members of the audience to pop.

The dinner was supposed to be the highlight of the three-day Australia New Zealand Climate Forum, held at the Australian National University.

Instead event organisers were left red-faced when the few female scientists in the audience walked out. A disappointed, but not entirely surprised, group of dancers stopped their 45-minute routine after about 10 minutes.

Burlesque is a cabaret style of striptease, which combines crude humour and theatrical costumes with sexually suggestive poses and routines.

..."The intent was lighthearted entertainment," forum organisers Professor Michael Hutchinson and Dr Jenny Kesteven said in a statement.

"In retrospect the choice of entertainment was inappropriate for the occasion. We understand if the sponsors wish to withdraw. We trust that this will not reflect on the very productive contributions made by the Australia New Zealand Climate Forum."

Gale, who teaches women across Canberra the art of burlesque dancing, said she was disappointed her group was being referred to as "cheap strippers". "We're not that," she said.

Lisa Pavlinovic, one of Gale's students, said she was "not surprised" people had walked out on the show. "I was sceptical when we were asked to do the performance," she said. "But (the organisers) were armed with all the information on us. We definitely tailored the act to make sure we weren't too over the top. We chose carefully, but at the end of the day we were asked to do a job and we did what we do best."

Pavlinovic said the burlesque group was focused on raising women's self-esteem and confidence. "We never intended to go along and offend anybody," she said.

Time For Action

Time to boycott Disneyland and Disney World, and as many Disney products as we can think of.

Actually, Hollywood has long used various artifices to tell history, including made-up characters, time compression, and altogether-false retelling of stories, in order to to make the action more dramatic and compelling. Using these same artifices for 9/11 won't work, however, since the principals are all very much alive, and the stories fairly well-understood already.

Plus, it's all done with the intention of blaming the Clinton Administration for everything, and doing so with blatant falsehoods. This 9/11 TV show is being distributed free in schools as history too!

If historical inaccuracies and conservative outrage were enough to get CBS to offload its history of the Reagan's to Cable TV, liberal outrage should be enough to provoke a response here (unless, of course, the media's conservative bias hasn't already locked this smear into place).

What the corporate world won't do for the Bush Administration! Send an E-Mail with your complaints!

ABC's Revisionist History

This upcoming ABC/Disney mockumentary about 9/11 purports to be unbiased, but there are Bush Administration fingerprints all over the bald-faced lies it will present. Time to mobilize....

Here's Hoping!

Trouble in Labour land:

An all-out power struggle between the chancellor and the prime minister, culminating with allegations of blackmail by Tony Blair and a ferocious shouting match between the two men, appeared last night to have forced Mr Blair to publicly declare as early as today that he will not be prime minister this time next year.

That may not be enough for Gordon Brown, who is understood to have demanded that Mr Blair quit by Christmas, with an effective joint premiership until a new leader is anointed by the party.

...In probably the most astonishing day in the annals of New Labour, the use of the word blackmail to describe Mr Brown's actions over the past few days by Downing Street staff was authorised by Mr Blair, and reflected his view that Mr Brown is orchestrating a coup against him. Downing Street claimed the resignation yesterday of the junior defence minister Tom Watson and six parliamentary aides came with Mr Brown's agreement. The seven men quit the government demanding that Mr Blair stand down immediately. Later in the evening, another of the letter's signatories, Iain Wright, resigned as a parliamentary private secretary in the Department of Health.

Downing Street's allegations led to counter accusations from the Brown camp of intimidation of backbench MPs by No 10 aides desperate to cling to office. As a result, the chances of the much prized stable and orderly transition between the two men looked to have collapsed.

The recriminations came after meetings between the two men at Downing Street ended yesterday afternoon with Mr Blair rejecting Mr Brown's terms for allowing him to remain in office, including an accelerated timetable for Mr Blair's resignation by Christmas, and an effective joint premiership in the interim.

Crikey! Tasteless Humor!

Funny, however.

"I'm Ready For My Profile, Mr. DeMille"

Research confirming what we've all suspected anyway. I get a kick over the 'seven' components too:

Celebrities have more narcissistic personality traits than the general population, and people with narcissistic tendencies seem to be attracted to the entertainment industry rather than the industry creating narcissists, according to a groundbreaking study conducted by researchers Drew Pinsky of the Keck School of Medicine of USC and S. Mark Young of the USC Marshall School of Business and the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

..."Narcissists generally crave attention, are overconfident of their abilities, lack empathy, and can evince erratic behavior," said Pinsky, who is an assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at USC. "However, they are also well-liked, especially on first meeting, are extroverted and perform well in public."

To conduct their research Pinsky and Young employed a well-validated personality research instrument, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), which has been used by researchers for more than two decades. The NPI test divides narcissism into seven components: superiority, exhibitionism, entitlement, vanity, authority, exploitiveness, and entitlement.

The authors found that the celebrities participating in the study had statistically significantly higher narcissism scores compared to aspiring business leaders (MBA students) and the general population. Reality TV personalities had the highest overall narcissism scores when compared with actors, musicians and comedians.

What's more, while men are more likely than women to evince narcissistic traits in the general population, the authors found that, among celebrities, females were more narcissistic than their male counterparts.

...The research data were collected anonymously and confidentially from celebrities selected at random during guest appearances on the nationally syndicated Westwood One radio show "Loveline," based at the KROQ-FM radio station in Los Angeles. The celebrities were administered the NPI test during breaks on the show, which Pinsky has hosted for the past 20 years.

Twigs And Berries - "The Full Monty" - Runaway Stage Productions

Left: Over the entrance of the 24th Street Theater. Does the illustration show a bit too much leg for general public consumption?


A very pleasant, libertine kind of Sunday afternoon, checking out Runaway Stage's "The Full Monty."

This is a fun comedy. According to the RSP folks, it sold very well on Friday and Saturday evenings, but because it was a holiday weekend, because events like the State Fair and the Rainbow Festival were sucking out the oxygen in the Sacramento air, and because the Sunday matinee audiences tend to be older (and presumably less interested in risque material), attendance was off. Well, there's just no excuse for that! Round up the girls (and the guys) - even if everyone is just out of church - and head on over!

Left: Final Bows - Actors acknowledge the orchestra, conducted by Christopher Cook (right).

Left to right: At edge of photo, Mary Young. Floyd Harden, Lauren Miller, Tristan Rumery, Craig Howard, Michael R.J. Campbell, Scott Fera, Stephen Russell, Kyle Young, Netty Carey, Sammy Duncan, Anahita Savarnejad, Andrew Skogkebo.


I was quite impressed with Scott Fera, who played an excellent Jerry Lukowski. It was pleasure listening to him sing 'Man,' as well as 'Breeze Off The River.' We'll have to see Scott in more shows! Michael R.J. Campbell was at his inimitable best as Dave Bukatinsky, Jerry's friend. Craig Howard was amusing as former human relations department supervisor, and dancing instructor, Harold Nichols. Stephen Russell was much too young to play 50-year-old Noah Simmons, but imaginative use of hair-white helped.

Every show featuring nekkid people still needs a clotheshorse. That role was played by Mary Young, who sported these amazing, colorful brocaded creations by Lillian Baxter.

The six Main Men of the show had one important advantage, compared to many competing community theater shows - they were all quite good looking. I mean, with or without clothes, they look JUST fabulous - nice pecs, smooth skin, muscular (why do I even choose words like these - perhaps I have ISSUES I'd care not to dwell on?)

One weakness of the show may be its script. Some of the language seemed sort of stilted to me. One example was the bathroom discussion between Georgie (Heather Sheridan) and Pam (Lauren Miller). There were two sentences, or so, that sounded as if an academic had written them. It wasn't an acting problem, it was that these two characters would not have made these particular word choices. Perhaps since the show had a working class English origin, and had to be reworked for an American setting, some difficulties crept into the rewrite.

The popularity of the show hinges on the universality of its message - finding dignity, and happiness, in a world that often denies it. Issues regarding body image are often involved, and the show is among the most direct you'll ever see regarding these issues. Employment, and happiness at work, are very important too. In fact, the principal message of the show is so inherently powerful that I wonder why other people didn't think of it before. Why didn't Rodgers and Hammerstein do "The Full Monty"?

There was a brief technical glitch at the top of the show - the taped music didn't start for a few seconds. Stripping without music can be made to work, if necessary, as long as the fantasy is maintained (need beach balls - big beach balls, and feathers). I remember a friend describing once having seen a bored stripper go through her routine while conversing with a friend about her day - shopping for groceries, cleaning the bathtub, mopping floors. My friend said the dissonant experience of the popped fantasy was quite painful.

In many societies, nakedness is used as a form of protest. For example, formal wear in Sunday church was carefully graduated amongst 17th-Century New England Puritans, with the richest, most gloriously-clothed people in the front, and simple, poorly-clad farmers way in the back. The Quakers, upon finding themselves in this (objectionable) society, would sometimes show up to church stark naked. Even as late as 1967, a village of Ukranian Baptists living in Canada protested their displacement by the construction of a dam by angrily going naked in the streets.

Hippies, yippies, and other countercultural folks sometimes used nakedness as a form of protest - indeed, latter-day flower children, like my friend Kashi, protested ordinances about public nudity in Humboldt as recently as - what? - eight years ago? - by going bare-breasted in the streets of that northern California coastal town. Got her picture in the local paper too (with a strategically-placed banner headline across the photo).

Nakedness is easier in California than in most places (like Buffalo, NY, the setting for "The Full Monty").

The protest urge of nakedness is greatly-sublimated in modern society, but when coupled to commerce (stripping), fame (streaking), or daring celebrity (Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions) sometimes squeaks out anyway. "The Full Monty" is a perfect expression of the impulse to go naked, in order to make a point, about the dignity of work, and the human body.

This is the only show I've heard of that has a gallows-humor musical number, 'Big-Ass Rock,' all about suicide. I found the humor quite disturbing, even upsetting - certainly more upsetting than 'Little Priest' from Sweeney Todd, since we are all more likely to be afflicted by suicide than by gamey 19th-Century meat pies. I thought about yanking down my pants and going naked in protest, standing motionless in grim stolidity in the aisle, but I was afraid that one of RSP's trademark dance routines would erupt, as they often do, in the aisles, and I wasn't going to endanger my Johnson amongst all the flying elbows and kicking feet, just to make Bob Baxter laugh and make all my friends cry.

You know, if you live long enough, you see many things. In a lifetime, you might see a dozen or more lunar eclipses. If you travel, or live in the right place, you might even see a total solar eclipse. But it wasn't until today that I saw Michael R.J. Campbell in a G-String. Big guy (plus little G-String) equals Big Visual Impact! Like I say, if you live long enough, you see many things (now I can die).

"Born To Boogie" - Marc Bolan and T Rex

Rummaging for a fun DVD to watch, I ended up spending a lot of time this weekend repeatedly watching Ringo Starr's remastered movie, "Born To Boogie," featuring Marc Bolan, and his trend-setting band, Tyrannosaurus Rex (later, T Rex). Ringo Starr himself, and Elton John, were also featured. In particular, the movie contains footage of two concerts that were filmed at Wembley Arena, in London, on March 18, 1972.

Although Marc Bolan had a talent for writing catchy rock-and-roll tunes, T Rex ended up pioneering a lot of what might properly be called glam rock, or even some varieties of heavy metal. Marc Bolan was an infectiously-fun and charismatic lead singer - many of the teenage girls shown in the movie were clearly in the thrall of latter-day Beatlemania. He was sort of a Goth - an atypical, happy Goth.

I remember when I first heard of T Rex. In January 1971, for a very, very brief period (less than a week), all-purpose rock-and-roll AM-radio station KQEO in Albuquerque played what had become the top single in Britain, Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ride A White Swan." Although that song wasn't played in the movie, several others were, including T Rex's most famous song, "Bang A Gong."

I still haven't gotten enough of "Ride A White Swan":

Ride it on out like a bird in the sky ways
Ride it on out like if you were a bird
Fly it all out like an eagle in a sunbeam
Ride it on out like if you were a bird

Wear a tall hat like a druid in the old days
Wear a tall hat and a tatooed gown

Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane
Wear your hair long, babe you can't go wrong

Catch a bright star and a place it on your fore-head
Say a few spells and baby, there you go
Take a black cat and sit it on your shoulder
And in the morning you'll know all you know, oh

Wear a tall hat like a druid in the old days
Wear a tall hat and a tatooed gown
Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane
Wear your hair long, babe you can't go wrong

Da-da-di-di-da, da-da-di-di-da ....

DMTC-U in September

This was the first time we ever attempted anything like this: a dinner catered by Cracchiolo's of Woodland (pasta, chicken, & salad), plus a fundraising auction! Roughly 150 people showed up, including many DMTC Season Ticket holders. The evening brought in roughly $15,000, more than expected, in part, because the two Mercedes Benz automobiles donated to the theater (specifically for the auction), met their respective reserve amounts during bidding. The cars thus sold, yielding a cool $5,100 to the theater.

Since June, DMTC had been falling progressively into deeper trouble regarding money; in part, because of large gaps between income-raising shows during the summer, in part because of exorbitant July air-conditioning expenses - the worst heat wave in ten years - but mostly from the sheer, dead weight of so much debt incurred during the building of the theater. We needed an infusion of income beyond what the regular season could be expected to provide.

This fundraiser, then, was ultimately about helping pay for the building we now occupy, and the money we raised Saturday was sufficient to extricate ourselves from our current hole. That's not to say we won't slip into holes again: we'll have to continue to be creative regarding use of the facility to stay ahead of creditors. There are plans afoot (not yet fixed) to stabilize DMTC's debt in the future, so emergencies are fewer. Nevertheless, if Saturday's experience was any clue, we should be able to prevail, no matter what happens. We really do have lots of community support, and that, after all, is more precious than gold.

The committee in charge of the evening was primarily directed by YPT parents: Bonnie, Mary, Jeni, Michael, and Poppy, among others. I missed the organizational meeting on Wednesday, so when I showed up at the theater, I knew little of the plans underway, and focused instead on cleaning bathrooms, and some sweeping.

People started showing up early, though (apparently it is de rigeur for people to show up early at auctions in order to scan the merchandise - who knew?). I was hurriedly sent out to collect tickets. I didn't know where the tickets were, or how to do the job, and for a few minutes, I was very, very confused, but Arthur came over to help, and with more help by Wyatt Floerke and Rachel Fader, we were able to overcome the difficulties. Nevertheless, I never did get changed into my evening clothes, and so I felt a bit raggedy among all the nicely-dressed people.

I suspect I wasn't alone in feeling stressed, though. Since no one had ever done this sort of thing before, many people, YPT teenagers included, often had to improvise solutions to novel problems that arose during the evening (bussing tables, for example: who knew that we had to have a plan for that?)

I think this may have been the first time we ever served wine and beer at DMTC!

The buffet dinner was served (and everyone sat at tables) in front of the theater. Objects for auction were placed on tables in the DMTC lobby. The weather was breezy as the evening cooled off and people meandered among the merchandise. Michael Elfant did an excellent job of MC'ing during the early part of the show, when YPT performers sang snippets of songs. David Nachmanoff (who will be in concert at DMTC on September 9th) set aside his recent bronchitis to sing two rousing folk songs (it will be a great concert next Saturday!) DMTC Main Stage performers like Ryan Adame, Brad Bong, Marguerite Morris, Andy Hyun, and Lenore Sebastian all sung. Later, Steve Isaacson MC'ed during the live bidding.

The bidding posed a few amusing problems. For example, during live bidding, Sarah Rudy bid $400 for one of the Mercedes automobiles, then $2,200, and then Steve pretended to acknowledge a $2,600 bid from her (and she's not even close to being old enough to drive). Her dad felt obliged to warn her about participating!

I noticed that everyone was quite shrewd about their bids - there were no wild excesses, or runaway bidding (dang!) As a result, a lot of people got real steals at the auction.

A very pleasant time was had by all! We'll have to do this more often!

Hurricane John Update

Earlier today, there was a wide gap between forecasts for the fate of Hurricane John.

GFS was saying, "OK, Tropical Storm John is heading TOWARDS Arizona, but alas, the rain won't cross the border."

NOGAPS was saying "be sure to close your windows, and pick up some sand bags at Home Depot."

Now, NOGAPS is beginning to adopt the GFS viewpoint that John won't quite cross the border. Instead, John is forecast to indirectly affect AZ weather through the moisture it releases, but the system itself will stay out of the state. This view has some evidence to support it: John is nearly stalled over the Sea of Cortez.

I continue to hold a stubborn, minority opinion that John may yet have a large influence on AZ weather. I think the mid-latitude system currently over Nebraska will attempt, and fail, to capture John. The attempt will lower pressures over AZ, thereby permitting northward movement of the storm.

We'll see!

California State Fair 2006

Went to the State Fair Friday night with some of the DMTC folks. The place was reassuringly familiar - the same arteriosclerotic disasters on the fair food menu; the same pop star posters on the midway as last year (I thought about throwing a ball to knock milk bottles over, in order to get a Jessica Simpson poster, but decided against it), and the same merchants at work.

This year's emblematic moment was watching a little kid try repeatedly, and failing, to clamber atop a golden metallic statue of the California Bear. It might have been the same kid who tried the same thing last year, and failed then too.

Calamity John

Now it's beginning to look quite alarming. Instead of John staying west of Baja, the current forecasts show John moving into the Gulf of California, the Sea of Cortez, and moving directly into Arizona via the route Nora took several years ago. There are heavy precipitation hits forecast all over Arizona, with a particularly colorful bullseye in the Prescott area.

And soon too! The calamity is forecast to start Monday morning and extend at least through Wednesday.

But before freaking out too soon, the GFS model disagrees with NOGAPS model, and instead keeps John west of Baja, with only a mild breakup forecast.

In general, I trust the NOGAPS model better, because it is a baroclinic model (takes into account temperature gradients), whereas the GFS model is a barotropic model.

I'm going with the alarmist forecast.

John's Not Heavy, He's My Brother

Left: Deborah prepares to keep a wary eye on Hurricane John.





Doug asks for clarification regarding Hurricane John:

Wow, that's "heavy"! Heavy as in "something more than the usual"? Or, heavy as in "this could be life-threatening if you are outdoors"?

So far, it looks like several days of more thunderstorms than usual - like the normal Arizona monsoon, just more of it, and more widespread.

But never trust a disintegrating hurricane, I say. The way in which a hurricane disintegrates can sometimes be very important (remembering the classic disintegration of Hurricane Octave in 1983, and the flooding that followed). We'll just have to keep an eye on it.

Also, that warm-water corridor along the coast is quite narrow, and it will be hard for Mother Nature to maneuver that lumbering hurricane along it. Like a sumo wrestler on a balance beam. So, the forecast is subject to change, and things need not be as dramatic as they look now.

But right now, late next week looks wet.

Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center polls its models:

THE NORTH-NORTHWEST MOTION SEEN EARLIER HAS CONTINUED... NOW ESTIMATED TO BE 335/7. GUIDANCE HAS SHIFTED CONSIDERABLY TO THE NORTHEAST SINCE SIX HOURS AGO. THE GFS/GFDL/UKMET ARE INDICATING THAT JOHN WILL FIND A BREAK IN THE RIDGE AND RECURVE TOWARD THE SOUTHWEST UNITED STATES AS A WEAKENING DEPRESSION. THE MINORITY SOLUTION SUGGESTS A LEFTWARD TURN AFTER INTERACTION WITH BAJA CALIFORNIA. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST IS SHIFTED WELL TO THE NORTHEAST OF THE PREVIOUS FORECAST BUT STILL TO THE SOUTH OF THE MODEL CONSENSUS. IF CURRENT TRENDS CONTINUE... THE FORECAST MAY HAVE TO BE MOVED EVEN FARTHER TO THE RIGHT. THIS WOULD INCREASE THE FLOODING THREAT IN THE SOUTHWEST UNITED STATES CONSIDERABLY IF THE GFS/GFDL/UKMET CLUSTER IS CORRECT.

John Prepares Stealth Attack

The latest forecasts suggests Hurricane John won't quite devour Hurricane Kristy, as I mentioned yesterday. Rather (like WWF wrestlers), Kristy will go into orbit around John's south side, and John will grab her arm and slam her towards the Mexican west coast, as John moves north along the west Baja coast.

But John will try to do something unseen since Hurricane Claudette tried it in 2003. There is a narrow corridor of life-sustaining warm water extending part way up the Baja California coast, to Punta Eugenia, and John is forecast to follow that narrow corridor. So, when John finally completely disintegrates, it will be rather close to San Diego, and large amounts of moisture will disperse into Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Heavy rains will fall in the desert mountains, probably starting as early as Tuesday, and continuing through the week!

Washington Post Whitewash

The Washington Post, that bastion of neoconservatism, is trying to spin the recent revelation that Richard Armitage was apparently the source of the Plame identity leak, into excusing away all the rest of the bad behavior of the Bush Administration. Once Plame's name was exposed, there is no question that Karl Rove and others ignored good sense, grabbed Plame's name, and conducted a ferocious media campaign to defame Joe Wilson. Even more importantly, Wilson's main point, that Iraq was not attempting to secure Niger yellowcake uranium, was never discredited. But the Washington Post lies away anyway:

Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials.

That statement is not true. His report did debunk uranium-shopping reports. Whether Wilson's report circulated to every echelon above him, who can say, but who else, then, was Wilson writing for, if not senior administration officials? That's what CIA reports are all about, after all.

Coupling those two phrases together constitutes deliberate deception on the part of the Washington Post. The Editors need to be body-slammed, and hard, for their lie.

Injustice

New Mexico's District 1 Congressional Representative, Republican Heather Wilson, cannot endure a transparent injustice: THIS year, she was NOT placed at the FRONT of the New Mexico State Fair parade.

Sometimes life is just not fair.

"The Full Monty" Opens Tonight

This morning, about 1:30 a.m., I was wandering past the Sierra II Community Center while walking my dog Sparky, when I heard the familiar, keening buzz of a rotary saw. I peeked inside the side stage door of the 24th Street Theater, and, sure enough, everybody was hard at work! Could it be? Yes it is! Tonight is opening night for "The Full Monty"!

Bagheera

I didn't have any success with this week's B3ta's Question of the Week:

As a teenager I went to the Venice Carnival. I made a mask out of a paper plate, got a metal coathanger and bent it into horns around my head and draped a black tshirt over that. At the time I thought I looked really cool, but thinking it over...

Tell us about your own oh-so-cool fashion innovations.

but I liked my entry nevertheless:

I wanted to go to the school Halloween party with my fellow ten-year-olds as Bagheera, the black panther, from the Jungle Book stories, but I couldn't get my parents to help with the costume. So, I cut up lots of brown-paper grocery bags, colored them an oily-black with some crayons, stapled them together over my body, and went.

At the party, some big ox of a dad could not stop pointing and laughing. The wound still hurts.

Mended Rift

I was looking for this week's Weekly World News lead story about a sister ship of HMS Titanic having been discovered frozen in an iceberg, crew and all, but instead found this:

As any high-school science student knows, nature abhors a vacuum. But according to cosmologists, after eons of enmity, "vacuum" and "nature" have made up. In fact, "They're tighter than Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes," renowned astronomer Ivan Habalish told Weekly World News.

Habalish said the bad blood dates back to the creation of the universe.

"For billions of years, vacuum was the only kid on the block. Then Boom! Along comes the Big Bang and suddenly nature is populating the universe with galaxies, stars, and planets.

"Nature didn't help matters by saying, 'Vacuum just sucks all the air out of a room. I abhor it.'"

Fearing For The Future Of Pop Music

Paris Hilton:

Though her movies are "fun", it's music that Hilton says truly fulfils.

"Singing words you've written and touching people with music is the best thing I've ever done out of all my business ventures. It's what I'm most passionate about.

When Hurricanes Collide

Interesting situation developing off the Mexican coast, south of Baja California. Big, bad Hurricane John is preparing to swallow weaker cousin Hurricane Kristy in the next few days.

Collisions of hurricanes are not terribly common, but they do occur. Usually, a big storm catches up to, and incorporates, a smaller, weaker storm.

In February, 2005, after first wrecking American Samoa, strong Cyclone Olaf caught up to Cook-Islands-wrecking, but weaker, Cyclone Nancy, in the South Pacific northeast of Australia.

In 1993, Hurricane Hilary caught up to and devoured Tropical Storm Irwin, also off the Mexican coast.

Mind Your Filipina

E. Let me at him!
M. Put away the garden shears! Violence never does any good!
(shears thrown from the back porch into the yard, contact made, followed by shouts and an angry feint from below towards retaliation).
E. Let me at him!
M. Put down the mop! This doesn't help anything at all!
(mop thrown from the porch, followed by a clatter of metallic impacts as the mop bounces off the air conditioner).
E. Get out of the way! Let me at him!
M. Put down the steak knife! You are not as strong as you think! The last thing we need is to get you hurt and then we have to call the cops!
(carefully step behind E. and relentlessly squeeze, so as to peaceably disarm, and thus have everyone avoid the cutting edge).

Auditions At Step One

Step One Dance and Fitness is hosting auditions at 3 p.m. Sunday (Equity and Non-equity) for a new Broadway musical called "Lost and Found." There are quite few roles, in particular, for African-American singers and dancers. They didn't have extra fliers, so I have no further details. Give Step One a call at 448-7837 for more information.

Bubble, Bubble....

Sturm und drang. Last night, I fired A.: fireworks ensued. Even though the work he did is incomplete, I HAVE to move on from these projects, if only for my own peace of mind (I just want it to end).

Ernesto Makes Florida Landfall

For Tampa, it looks like heavy rainfall tomorrow, with breezy conditions, up to 21 mph at maximum. No chance for wind damage, except from local heavy thunderstorms. And watch for flooding!

South and North Carolina will get Ernesto on Thursday: North Carolina and Virginia on Friday. Looks like lots of rain, particularly in North Carolina.

Ernesto Edges East

The newer forecasts suggest Ernesto will rake central Florida from south-to-north, or eastern Florida, and not bother western Florida so much, which is good for Tampa. Northerly winds will tend to pull drier air from the north past Tampa, hopefully minimizing the rains that can do so much damage.

Nevertheless, there is disagreement regarding how far west the storm will go. Some forecasts suggest Ernesto will barely clip eastern Florida, making landfall in the Ft. Lauderdale area. I tend to discount these forecasts, however. There is a trough in the upper Mississippi Valley that isn't moving rapidly eastwards, and that trough will tend to pull the storm westwards, onto the Florida peninsula itself.

Both the NOGAPS and GFS models are in agreement, oddly enough, and suggest that Ernesto will make its closest approach to Tampa about 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, with the center of the storm passing east of Tampa, squarely halfway between the east and west coasts.

The strength of the storm looks fairly minimal for western Florida - maybe 30 mph winds at most at closest approach to Tampa, making for an experience not much different than Wilma was last year, for Tampa.

There are signs that the Carolinas, particularly North Carolina, will see a major rain event from Ernesto.

West Side Story Rehearsal, DMTC, Sunday Evening

Choreographer Dian Hoel leads Bernardo (David Ott) and Riff (Robert Coverdell) through their knife fight.

Silverado Bric-A-Brac

Left: My room's table, full of corks






Where's Venus when you need her?










Where's Vincent when you need him?











A sunny Sunday morning, looking through a bar and past a wedding reception's buffet lunch, towards the golf course beyond.

Sierra Research's 25th Anniversary Dinner

Left: Silverado Country Club, just northeast of Napa.







There they are!

(Janice's slide show link - no sign in required)

Napa Valley Tour

Left: A pleasant Saturday afternoon, looking across the Napa Valley from the tour bus. They place lots of shiny mylar strips throughout the vineyards to ward off birds. It seems to work: at the Laird Winery, I watched a flock of birds circle around the vineyard, but after a while settle for a grove of palm trees instead.

Given the heft of the wine industry in California, the agricultural land in the Napa Valley is probably some of the most valuable agricultural land in the world. Beauty aside, land use looked tightly-controlled, but I wonder who does the controlling? Passing by the various wineries, there were indications that eccentric Iranian and Canadian wine moguls, among others, were at work in the valley, but surely they can't control everything. I wonder what would happen if you tried to open up a Wal-Mart Super Center in these fields? How long could one survive the wrath of vintners unleashed? Who would lash out hardest?

Tour guide at the Mumm Winery, illustrating the differences between grapes. The Pinot Noir grapes are purple, and small: the green Chardonnay grapes are larger. All the ripe grapes taste great, of course.

Apparently the harvest started a few days ago. According to the tour guide, the winery is very, very busy of late. Nevertheless (and mysteriously), I saw no farm workers. Do they start before sunrise, so they're finished by noon when the tourists arrive? Or was Saturday A Day Without A Mexican?

Reserve Brut, served for guests, at the Mumm Winery. The outside of this hall is very rustic, but the inside is highly-technical. No expense is spared in the Napa Valley! They take their food and wine very, very seriously here!

On the tour, one could look through windows and see where the various highly-technical stages of bottling are carried out. The process of disgorgement was particularly interesting: freezing the used yeast in the bottle's neck and using the carbon dioxide generated from fermentation to pop the icy used-yeast cork out.

They also have a nice photo gallery here at the Mumm Winery, featuring Ansel Adams and Robert Turner, among others.

A map of the Napa Valley viticultural areas. The geography of wine is surprisingly complicated, even in such a small place like the Napa Valley. The grapes grown right at the Mumm Winery are primarily used for Cabernets and Merlots: grapes for other varieties are trucked in from elsewhere in the Valley. For examples, Chardonnays are largely grown in the Los Carneros District, where the Sonoma and Napa Valleys meet, and where the weather is more-overcast in the morning, and thus milder, than on the sunny east side of the Valley.

Scenic vista at the Laird Winery.

At the Laird Winery, our tour guide, Linda, sat at our table. While we were drinking a Cabernet, she said "do you taste that?" We said, "do we taste what?" "That dust-like taste," she said. "That's what is called 'Rutherford Dust.' It is specific to the wines produced from grapes grown in the immediate vicinity of the town of Rutherford. Wines from Yountville, or St. Helena, or Oakville don't have this taste."

Indeed, there was a dust-like taste to the Cabernet, but I think you have to taste quite a few wines from a number of Napa Valley locations just to make sure you have 'Rutherford Dust,' and not something else, like Napa Dust, Davis Dust, or, God forbid, Sacramento Dust.

I remember a fellow, years ago when I was working at Kirtland Air Force Base, who had the ability to taste different Pepsis, and tell where in New Mexico the Pepsis were bottled, based on the taste of the water. We needed that fellow's skills on Saturday.

Chilled storeroom at the Merryvale Winery. Each of these barrels is made of French oak (California oak is apparently too crooked and tastes wrong to be suitable), and costs $1,000 to $1,250 each. The good thing is that the barrels can be reused (provided one doesn't try to go from red to white wine and one is willing to wait a decade, or so, for the barrel to become available).

In the Merryvale Tasting Room, we were treated to the second tasting level (Reserve). There is a description of the wines we tasted here. I really liked the Antigua Dessert Wine (but then, I've always had a sweet tooth).

Georgette ponders giant casks (of amontillado?) in the Merryvale Winery's darkened dining hall. The sumptuous setting looked specifically designed for a Gothic novel.....

Bubble, Bubble, Toil And Trouble

Ernesto Gaining Strength

The new forecasts show Tropical Storm Ernesto moving steadily westward, crossing Cuba, and then more or less stalling in place in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico while gaining power, reaching hurricane strength, and then crossing the Florida coast just east of Pensacola. For an uncomfortably long time, the storm will be uncomfortably close to Tampa, particularly towards the end of next week. Be careful!

Alkaline Martian Magmas And The Gusev Plains

Evidence has accumulated during the Martian Spirit Rover mission that the Gusev Plains are composed of pretty-darn alkaline basaltic lava rocks. Not at all like those crazy-assed nearly-pure andesitic lava rocks that were so common at the 1997 Pathfinder landing site.

Nevertheless, I yearn for the andesite. If I'm not mistaken, andesite implies (or at least suggests) subduction and plate tectonic processes, like on Earth (Andesite is named after the Andes Mountains, where these processes are quite vigorous).

Basalt implies rock derived from the mantle, however. The Gusev Plains are in the ancient Southern Highlands, where no plates have ever thought about moving, whereas the Pathfinder site is close to the transition to the Northern Plains, and who knows whatever might have happened there?

Sedimentary rocks, like where the Opportunity Rover is located, are more provocative.

Poltergeist

Lieberman as Zell Miller, in 2008. It's gonna happen!

Happiness Is....

Crossing the I-80 Yolo Causeway precisely at sunset, and watching a thousand-plus bats funneling out en masse from beneath the highway and heading towards Davis for an evening of food foraging. I worry about those bats - the youngsters were hit pretty hard last month by the heat wave - and so it's good to see them being robust.

B3ta Question Of The Week

Yay! I made the 'Best' page for this week's Question Of The Week. After correcting my spelling of 'neighbour,' they even put the story in their newsletter. Yay!

In general, it's hard to make the 'Best' page. Your story has to appeal to the juvenile streak in the typical Brit slacker student, and usually the only sure way to do that is to confess to some humiliating anguish: injuries, embarrassments, drunken stupidities, etc.

Here's the story again, in answer to the question, 'have you ever done anything that made strangers think you were a pervert?':

Manly Protection
One evening, my neighbor started screaming. A Peeping Tom was observing her from the bushes in the alley outside her bedroom window. In a panic, she came over to my apartment for manly protection. I locked her in, she called the police, and I went out into the alley to locate and confront the pervert.

So, who was the only one in the alley when the police helicopter and the canine units arrived?

Lazy California Meteorologist Blows Phoenix Forecast

Deborah in Ahwatukee writes:

Some delicious rain on Monday night--just wanted to mention. About 4 hours worth. Thunderstorm right now!

I reply: Cool!

It looks as if you might not get rain today where you are, unless the rain comes from the SW, from the general direction of Yuma. The winds are pretty zonal today, so all those thunderstorms on the eastern horizon are blowing away from you, towards the Rim. It's going to be wild and wet up there today, though!

The general weather picture is very similar to the picture four weeks ago. Instead of Hurricane Emilia, we have Hurricane Ileana spinning away west of Baja. And lots of rain in eastern AZ, and on the Rim.

It's been striking how wet it's been in the El Paso, TX area - some of the wettest weather ever seen over there!

Deborah is not impressed with the forecast, though:

Too late--it POURED here!! About 9 AM. Doug had to wait 20 mins. to get out of his car in N. Phx--mostly wading lakes--his shoes. It's all good!

Once again, I see you are trying to confuse me between what I see on the Internet with mere facts. Hah! It won't work! I am a meteorologist! (A meteorologist who wasn't paying sufficient attention until the storm blew past). But nevermind! It IS conceivable it might rain again today, though, if storms get started this afternoon towards the SW. And like you say, it's all good!

Deborah replies:

Ha and double ha--I'm looking right at sprinkles on the patio!!!

Another Colorful Local Tradition Bites The Dust

In east China. But it gives me ideas for a new local California tradition:

"Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai's rural areas to allure viewers," it said. "Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honored."

New Mexicans Ache For A Wet Winter

Even all that rain they just received just makes a small dent:

As the wet days of summer wane, the National Weather Service says we can expect an average to wetter-than-average winter. ...But a weak El Nino system appears to be forming in the Pacific, and that's a good harbinger of snowy weather to come.

...The period from November 2005 to July 2006 was the 13th driest on record for the state, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

...The monsoons have helped reservoirs recover a small amount after suffering from a drought that started in 1999, but to really get over it the state needs snowpack and spring runoff - lots and lots of it.

"If you look at Elephant Butte, in early 2000 the water level there was 132 percent of normal," Liles said. "After all the summer rain we've had after the drought, it's up to about 22 percent of normal now. Without that rain, it would probably be below 10 percent. A long-term drought takes a long time to get out of."

What would be needed to repair damage from six years of drought?

"One year of 250 percent of normal snowpack could do it," Liles said.

"That may have never happened before," he added quickly.

Annoying Pan-Scholastic Vagueness

But that's philosophy for you! (Gabe is toying with my reflexive Aristotelian empiricism again).

• Everything eternal is necessary.
• Every creature participates in goodness in the same degree as it participates in being.
• In the universe, only the intellectual nature is sought on its own account, all others on account of it.
• Desire of the knowledge of truth is peculiar to human nature.
• Evil is not caused except by good.
• Everything evil is rooted in some good, and everything false in some truth.
• Evil produces no effect except in virtue of some good.
• However much evil is multiplied, it is never able completely to swallow good.
• Stronger than the evil in wickedness is the good in goodness.
• Good can be realized in purer form than evil. For there is some good in which no evil is mixed, but there is nothing so very evil that no good is mixed in it.
  
  From The Human Wisdom of St. Thomas: A Breviary of Philosophy by Joseph Pieper

Weighing In On Pluto

Jerry takes stock of the Pluto situation:

Now that Pluto has been demoted to the status of "dwarf planet", I think that its name should be changed. How about "Dopey"?

I think this is all very silly. Why not keep Pluto around as a planet, in honor of its status as the biggest of the Plutons, whatever its size might be? It's all just a size distribution anyway, and any planetary definition has to have a more-or-less arbitrary cutoff.

But the debate IS getting Astronomy some unexpected, and welcome, press. Help crowd out that Jon Benet stuff!

Let's call Pluto 'Some upstart snowball whirling in the darkness that thinks it's a planet planet.'

Tax-Farming Is Bad

Here's the first of a million good (once antiquated but now brand-spanking new) reasons to oppose tax-farming:

The IRS warned taxpayers Wednesday not to be duped by scammers posing as private debt collectors the agency has hired to chase unpaid tax debts.

'Happy Birthday!'

Left: From Not Just A Hatstand at B3ta.


Because I won't be around for Steve's birthday get-together this weekend, I wanted to wish him 'Happy Birthday!'.

And 'Happy Birthday!' to Steven Ross.

(overlooked birthday guilt welling up....)

And 'Happy Birthday!' to just darn nearly everyone who has had a birthday since about April, or so!

All Thumbs

George W. Bush:

"There must be consequences if people thumb their nose at the United Nations Security Council, and we will work with people in the Security Council to achieve that objective"

David Nachmanoff Concert At DMTC, September 9th

Left: David Nachmanoff (photo by Robert Corwin)


Since DMTC now has its own rehearsal and performing space, we now have the responsibility for paying for that space's expenses, even for those times when DMTC has no shows ready for the public. Thus, we've been experimenting with different uses of the space during our dark times - children's theater projects like the 'Three Little Pigs,' hosting outside theater projects by 'Artistic Differences' and 'Flying Monkeys,' dances such as DMTC's 'Dancing Through The Decades,' and whatever else might benefit the community.

One of the most promising uses of the theater is to book travelling musicians for their concerts. Since their rehearsal needs are light, impact to the facility is minimal. Nevertheless, large, diverse audiences will be drawn to DMTC's Hoblit Performing Arts Center, heightening our community profile. Ben Wormeli has taken the initiative on booking these concerts and making the arrangements through SonicBids.

The first of these concerts will be on September 9th, featuring well-known Davis musician David Nachmanoff:

Davis Musical Theatre Company (DMTC) is pleased to announce the start of a brand new entertainment program for all to enjoy: Keep the Music Playing in Your Community - Concerts to Benefit DMTC. In addition to six Main Stage productions and four Young Performers Theater productions per year, DMTC will now also present benefit concerts showcasing local, regional, and touring artists.

DMTC couldn’t be happier that “An Evening with Dave Nachmanoff” will kick off this concert series on Saturday, September 9, 2006, 8:00 pm at DMTC’s Hoblit Performing Arts Center, 607 Pena Drive in Davis. Dave is a critically-acclaimed, phenomenal singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and recording artist. He has won multiple awards from national songwriting competitions and music associations including the Just Plain Folks Music Awards for his magnificent songs and albums. He studied music and philosophy at Columbia and Oxford universities, and earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of California. His beautiful melodies, amazing musicianship, thoughtful lyrics, and down-to-earth charm make Dave a truly wonderful performer that appeals to all ages. He tours nationally and internationally on his own and frequently with Al Stewart. In addition to his gift of music, Dave enriches his community and other communities with songwriting workshops in schools and nursing homes. Dave also happens to be a treasured member of the Davis community. For more information about Dave Nachmanoff, go to http://www.davenach.com/.

DMTC’s goals in presenting these concerts are:
· To raise funds to support DMTC Main Stage Productions, Young Performers Theater, and the new Hoblit Performing Arts Center to keep the performing arts and arts education alive and well in Davis and accessible to everyone. DMTC is a non-profit 501(c)3, all volunteer community theater company with a 21-year history of excellence in artistic achievement, community service, and youth education.
· To support talented local, regional, and touring artists, raising public awareness of their great work and keeping their music playing too.
· To enrich the community by providing affordable, outstanding musical entertainment in a family-friendly environment.

All benefit concerts will be presented at DMTC’s brand new 240-seat theater, the Hoblit Performing Arts Center, at 607 Pena Drive in Davis, CA. The artists chosen to perform will vary in terms of musical genre, but all will be fantastic. Check the DMTC website for additional concerts as they are booked (http://www.dmtc.org/). The DMTC website also includes a link to SonicBids.com for artists interested in applying to perform a concert. SonicBids.com allows interested artists to submit electronic press kits for DMTC review.

Standard ticket prices will be $20 general and $15 for students and seniors for most concerts, but ticket prices may vary depending on the artist’s fees required. Special value-priced 3-concert series ticket packages will be offered whenever possible.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please go to http://www.dmtc.org/ and click on Benefit Concerts or call DMTC at (530) 756-3682.

DMTC-U In September Gala

Also known as the September Gala - a fundraiser for DMTC. We're going to have a variety of things to auction away, now including two (2) Mercedes sedans. The fundraiser will be September 2nd. I also have tickets, if anyone wants to purchase them directly from me.

DMTC-U in September Tickets

Purchase Tickets

DMTC-U in September, a Labor Day weekend dinner, auction and entertainment gala is set for 6:30 pm Saturday September 2 at the Davis Musical Theatre Company’s Hoblit Performing Arts Center at 607 Pena Drive. The chicken dinner is catered by Cracchiolo’s of Woodland, and also includes pasta, salad and dessert. Wine from new local winery Rominger West and beer from Davis favorite Sudwerk will be available for purchase. As befits a theatre company, the entertainment will be extensive and varied, drawing from DMTC’s talented actors and musicians. A midnight blue Vintage 1984 Mercedes Benz 360 sedan heads up the auction. The silent auction also features a long weekend in San Diego at a Mission Bay cottage, weekend home in Tahoe, Kings and Monarchs basketball memorabilia, many useful and exotic goods and services from local businesses, tickets to other local theaters, including the Mondavi Center and California Musical Theatre and great gift possibilities ranging from jewelry to restaurant certificates to birthday and holiday party entertainment.

Tickets are $30 until August 26, and $40 thereafter and at the door. Tickets for children from 5-12 are $10, and those under 5 are free. All ticket and auction proceeds go directly to support DMTC in its mission to present and preserve the Classic American Musical art form.

The Davis Musical Theatre Company is celebrating its upcoming first full season in the Hoblit Performing Arts Center. DMTC’s Main Stage produces six full length musicals each season. This year, the shows include West Side Story, Oliver!, Mame, Camelot, Annie Get Your Gun, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In addition, the Young Performer’s Theatre group, with all actors ages 7-17, puts on four musicals each year. Grease (the High School Musical), is about to open, and will be followed by The Velveteen Rabbit, Madeline’s Rescue and Alice in Wonderland.

Tax-Farming And Mercenaries

Paul Krugman makes some telling points:

To whom are such contractors accountable? Last week a judge threw out a jury's $10 million verdict against Custer Battles, a private contractor that was hired, among other things, to provide security at Baghdad's airport. Custer Battles has become a symbol of the mix of cronyism, corruption and sheer amateurishness that doomed the Iraq adventure — and the judge didn't challenge the jury's finding that the company engaged in blatant fraud.

But he ruled that the civil fraud suit against the company lacked a legal basis, because as far as he could tell, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, wasn't "an instrumentality of the U.S. government." It wasn't created by an act of Congress; it wasn't a branch of the State Department or any other established agency.

So what was it? Any premodern monarch would have recognized the arrangement: in effect, the authority was a personal fief run by a viceroy answering only to the ruler. And since the fief operated outside all the usual rules of government, the viceroy was free to hire a staff of political loyalists lacking any relevant qualifications for their jobs, and to hand out duffel bags filled with $100 bills to contractors with the right connections.

Tax farmers, mercenaries and viceroys: why does the Bush administration want to run a modern superpower as if it were a 16th-century monarchy? Maybe people who've spent their political careers denouncing government as the root of all evil can't grasp the idea of governing well. Or maybe it's cynical politics: privatization provides both an opportunity to evade accountability and a vast source of patronage.

But the price is enormous. This administration has thrown away centuries of lessons about how to make government work. No wonder it has failed at everything except fearmongering.

Caring More About The Mathematics Than The Power

THIS is why Russians often make the best scientists and mathematicians!:

A reclusive Russian won the math's world's highest honour today for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century - but he refused the award, effectively rejecting a million dollar prize that went with it.

Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal - often described as the maths equivalent of the Nobel prize - for a breakthrough in topology that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.

By shunning the award, colleagues said he had shown he had no interest in a separate US$1 million (£550,000) prize he is eligible for over his feat: apparently proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space that has been one of math's greatest puzzles for 100 years.

...Ball said later that he had met with Perelman in St. Petersburg in June, told him he had won a Fields medal and urged him to accept it. But Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and refused the medal because "he does not want to be seen as its figurehead," Ball said. He would not go into detail about why Perelman feels isolated.

Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the maths union said in a statement.

...Mathematicians have been struggling with Poincare's conjecture since it was posed in 1904 by Jules Henri Poincare, a French polymath. The conjecture is a central question in topology, the study of the geometrical properties of objects that do not change when the they are stretched, distorted or shrunk.

It tackles the nature of three-dimensional space and it states that an object such as a pear or a banana is deformable into a sphere, whereas a bagel or American style doughnut with a hole in the middle is not. Proving the Poincare conjecture is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.

..."It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be."'

Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg, but recent efforts to contact him proved fruitless.

The Stem-Cell Debate In Australia

I don't follow stem-cell issues at all. Nevertheless, Cloudy would be outraged by the following:

Brisbane neurologist Peter Silburn said yesterday the Lockhart report, which forms the basis of a push to legalise therapeutic cloning, had proposed injecting human cells into rabbit eggs.

Professor Silburn said this vindicated warnings by Health Minister Tony Abbott and other critics of therapeutic cloning that the process could lead to human-animal hybrids.

"It's About Time" - Picnic In The Park

Thanks, Andy, for reminding me! "It's About Time," everyone's favorite Big Band, is going to play "Picnic In The Park", in Davis, tomorrow night:

This is a friendly note to let all of you know that Its About Time is playing Picnic in the Park in Davis on Wednesday evening, August 23rd. We start playing at 6:30 PM and will go until we can't see our music anymore. If you are looking for a good time of family fun, food, and music, please come on out. We would love to see all of you out there.

Take care and I hope to see all of you tomorrow.

Andy Sullivan

Phoenix Pranksters

(Left: From Basehead617 at B3ta.)


Aren't they cute!:

Two live diamondback rattlesnakes were released in an Arizona movie theater during a showing of the new film "Snakes on a Plane," according to Local 6 News.

Authorities said pranksters released the young venomous rattlesnakes in a dark theater at the AMC Desert Ridge near Tatum and Loop 101 in Phoenix.

The two snakes caused a panic in the dark theater, according to the report.

"That to me is very scary," herpetological association representative Tom Whiting said. "I would hate to be watching a movie about snakes and have a rattlesnake bite me."

Mancation

On Saturday, my employer is going on something of a Mancation - the sort of vacation you might have without men - pedicures, manicures, sauna, wine-tasting, fine food, relaxing time on the links, etc. The venue is Silverado Country Club, near Napa, and the occasion is my employer's 25th Anniversary.

Appropriately enough, my employer is about 75% male. I'll report back on my experiences getting away from all those men.....

World Strip Poker Championships

Underway, in London.