Older Than Pharoah, But Still Singing

Porter Wagoner opened for White Stripes at Madison Square Garden? Porter Wagoner? Wow!

He was old in the Sixties, when I used to choose to watch him on Saturday afternoon TV, together with his very young protege, Dolly Parton, rather than those boring old golf shows.

But the White Stripes are probably younger than his grandchildren. Probably a lot younger....

That's what good health care gets you. You just don't pass on. Or maybe it's those miraculous Egyptian unguents....

Madonna's "The Confessions Tour" DVD


San Jose concert photo by "Pera" from fansite, AllAboutMadonna.com.


I asked the pharmacist, "If I take these potash capsules to cure the potassium deficiency diagnosed my the doctor, will I feel more energetic?" He smiled, and shook his head in a silent "No!" Fair enough. So I took a capsule and waited to see what would happen.....

Boy was he wrong! It was 2 a.m., and I was wide-awake! I put Madonna's "The Confessions Tour" on the DVD player, and everyone came running to see what the fuss was all about. Even Cloudy, the paraplegic Bunny, dragged her broken body into the living room, in order to see Madonna (and maybe get some overdue massaging as well from her indulgent master).

I saw "The Confessions Tour" live last year, in San Jose. I thought it was great concert then, but it's hard in a concert setting to see all the details. With the crisp cinematography and camera close-ups of the DVD, it's altogether a different experience. What a great DVD! Is there a better rock concert DVD anywhere? For the photo work, featuring the best dancers in the business, it's in a league all of its own. Yes, it's better than Kylie's DVDs!

Of course, it's not for everyone. After a while, E. (who is also Catholic) began to get a different impression. I don't whether it was the controversial appearance of Madonna on the Cross, the egregious use of the f-word, all the hip-thrusting, or the cumulative impact of all of it, but E. ultimately compared Madonna to Kylie thusly: "Madonna's nasty; Kylie's benign." Perhaps an oversimplification, but a predictable reaction.

I was actually surprised, watching the DVD, to see that Madonna was more at ease, more spontaneous, in front of a live audience than I expected. Maybe it's the difference between the HP Pavilion in San Jose and Wembley Arena in London. Whatever it was, it further dents Camille Paglia's criticisms of a year-and-a-half ago.

In any event, Madonna is a goddess! Madonna and Kylie: twin goddesses in my corner of the universe!

Be Very Afraid

Headline: "Voracious Jumbo Squid Invade California"

Hmmm..... I look out the window, and it looks pretty quiet. Are the squid in the basement? Out by the garbage cans? On the roof?

Dunno......

Best Wishes To Kelly Daniells

I was just listening to Madonna's "I Love New York" from her "Confessions Tour" album, and thinking about how Andrea St. Clair wrote how the Big Apple brought her to tears, it's such a great place, when I remembered that Erik Daniells said sister Kelly is finishing her run in "Mamma Mia" in Las Vegas this Sunday. What a great experience she had in Las Vegas! May there be many, many more great experiences in NYC, for Kelly, and for all Sacramentans who head east!

Bad Choices

Copper thieves lose:

It's a bad idea to burglarize a place marked "K-9 training facility."

Police dog handlers arriving Wednesday at the abandoned nursing home where they hold training sessions discovered two men and a woman dismantling the building's copper pipes and wiring, Hall County Sheriff's Sgt. Kiley Sargent said.

When the officers arrived, the three dropped their tools and ran. That was their second mistake.

"For anyone to try to run from a whole unit of canines, it's just a no-win situation," Sargent said.

Roadkill Raccoon Update

Post-Impact: 66.5 hours.

The animal is gone. Wonder where?

Thanks, Andy!

We need the drumming help!

So, "Tommy" is still on for this weekend!

Screaming Beans

And more screaming beans.

Detached Retina

DMTC Co-Producer Steve Isaacson called just now and said the retina in his right eye had to be reattached today. He had noticed a shadow in his field of vision last week, but it had worsened today. Surgery was done immediately today, on an outpatient basis. As a result, "Tommy" will likely be cancelled this coming weekend, since the show can't be done without a drummer, Steve can't do it (or at least shouldn't do it), and there is little time to find someone who knows the show.

When I was 38 years old, in 1994, the retina in my left eye detached. I had been having a little trouble negotiating around darkened rooms all summer long, and when I went to the optometrist they caught the problem, using that test where you click a trigger every time you see a flash of light (there were big, awkward spans of time when I didn't click the trigger at all).

My blindness was in the left eye's field of vision occupied by the nose, and usually-covered anyway by the right eye - hence my slowness in catching the problem. I talked to the optometrist, and he said that I didn't have a retinal detachment, since he knew what that looked like, and referred me to a glaucoma specialist instead. The glaucoma specialist said my eye looked fine, except for the obvious retinal detachment. So, off to surgery....

Talking to Steve, it sounds like he had a less-radical reattachment procedure than I did. In both cases, reattachment is done by cryogenic freezing, using liquid nitrogen, applied to the outside of the eyeball.

In my case, they put me under using sodium pentothal (truth serum). They then more-or-less removed the eyeball from its socket, put a silicone rubber band around the outside to squeeze it more elongate, then applied the liquid nitrogen to the outside of the eyeball. When I awoke, the whole operating room was laughing. I asked why they were all laughing, and they all said, "oh, nothing!" (damned truth serum must have been all too effective - what was I talking about in my unconcious state?) Indeed, the silicone band remains around my eyeball to this day.

In Steve's case, they didn't remove the eyeball from its socket, or mess around with a silicone band, and instead injected an air bubble into the eyeball to help pin the retina against the shell of the eyeball prior to the cryogenic freezing.

In any event, Steve will need to recover and for the time being probably shouldn't do things like drive, drum, dance around on stage, or undertake any activity where depth perception will be an issue. If his recovery is like mine, for a short span of time of about a week, he'll have a 'dead-eye' look that is disconcerting, but potentially useful in situations like negotiating contracts, wheedling suppliers, or menacing rivals. But maybe he'll be luckier - it was a less-radical procedure after all.

On behalf of all of us at DMTC, and in the Sacramento-area constellation of community theaters, here's wishing Steve and Jan the best regarding this new challenge.

Mountain Unicycling

Looks like fun! Looks like a way to get into serious trouble too! Just depends on how you use the technology:

Mountain unicyclists -- they call their sport "MUni" -- are a rare and dedicated breed. Worldwide there are probably no more than 1,000 riders pedaling trails on one wheel and fewer than 40 in Southern California, according to Josh Schoolcraft, a unicyclist from Pasadena. Riding local mountain bike trails, they get the occasional "Awesome, dude" and a thumbs up from conventional mountain bikers.

...Although unicycles strong enough to be ridden off-road have been expensive and hard to come by in recent years (early ones were custom-built), several manufacturers now offer complete unicycles designed for rough trails.

...Unicycle pedals are connected directly to the wheel -- there are no gears -- so going uphill requires extra effort, and going downhill demands fast pedaling. Because many unicycles don't have brakes, leg pressure alone is usually used to slow them. And because the unicycles don't have shock absorbers like mountain bikes (the only cushioning is in the fat tires and seats), riders absorb bumps by standing on the pedals and using their legs as shock absorbers.

...For some, the appeal of riding a unicycle is meeting a big challenge with an uncomplicated device. "You have to solve problems with this simple machinery," Schoolcraft says. MUni riders have to pick a careful line around obstacles too big to roll over, and when riding off ledges they often have to stick a landing in tight spots to avoid a crash.

Schoolcraft began unicycling five years ago as a college student after his bicycle was stolen. "You can bring a unicycle to class with you -- you just throw it over your shoulder," he says. Several months after learning to ride, he saw a video of MUni pioneer Kris Holm and decided to try riding off-road.

...Practicing an hour a day, the average person can learn to ride 50 feet on flat ground in two weeks to a month, Aharoni says. Learning to ride on rough terrain takes much longer. "It might take a few months to become comfortable on trails -- though, depending on your goals, it can be a lifelong learning process," Aharoni says.

"Hairspray"

I went with the DMTC crew to see the new movie musical at the Regal Cinema in Davis. Since I know little about musicals, in general, I was quite curious about this movie, in particular, since it was clear from events like last year's Flying Monkeys Benefit that it had seized the affections of all the young musical theater aficionados.....

"Hairspray" made me get all teary. Movies rarely do that to me. The last time I remember getting all teary at a movie was seeing "Room With A View", in 1985. Really, "Hairspray" is one of the best - perhaps the best - movie musical, ever! A classic!

Superb casting! No weaknesses, anywhere! Michelle Pfeiffer seemed to me to be the best player, but really, everyone was at their very best here.

America was giddily optimistic in the brief 'New Frontier' period, lasting from 1961 to 1963 - two and a half years, max. The optimism was so strong it almost qualified as a collective delusion. This movie caught the halcyon spirit of that strange, fleeting time remarkably well.

It is very difficult to deal adequately with racial politics in any movie, without getting all didactic, or heavy, or without offending anyone, or patronizing anyone, or getting hopelessly entangled with difficulties. To handle such matters in a musical (could there be a less-suitable art form?) would seem to be almost impossible - easier to grab a wheelchair and roll up Mt. Everest instead. This movie musical does the trick, though, assisted by all kinds of clever writing, energy, spirit, and skill.

Two quotes from imdb (except I adjust the last one according to my memory):

Motormouth Maybelle: If we get any more white people in here this is gonna be a suburb.
------------------

Motormouth Maybelle: [to Seaweed and Penny] You two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly coming from a whole lotta stupid.
Penny Pingleton: Oh, so you've met my mom.
------------------

Go check it out for yourself!

"Tommy" - Sunday Afternoon Pictures

Left: Young Tommy (Maya Rothman) and Uncle Ernie (Steve Ross).


Everyone sure sounded good on Sunday afternoon! This show has really come together!






"Christmas": Chris Petersen, Helen Spangler, Paul Fearn, Ben Wormeli, Sabrina Schloss, Kat DeLapp, Abram Stein Freer, Bob Tootle, Scott Suwabe, Steven Ross, Emily Clark, Sarah Illig, Hal Wright, and Erik Daniells.









Bailiff Bob Tootle looks askance at Young Tommy (Maya Rothman).












Abram Stein Freer, Bob Tootle, Scott Suwabe, Steven Ross, Kat DeLapp, Emily Clark, Sabrina Schloss, and Sarah Illig.











Captain Walker (Paul Fearn) and Mrs. Walker (Kat DeLapp).












Teen Tommy (Sabrina Schloss).













Teen Tommy (Sabrina Schloss) and the Hawkers (Helen Spangler and Chris Petersen).












Tommy (Jon Jackson).













Dannette Vassar, Jan Isaacson, Maya Rothman, Chris Petersen, Kat DeLapp, Emily Clark.












Abram Stein Freer, Bob Tootle, Scott Suwabe, and Steven Ross.












Kat DeLapp, Emily Clark, Sabrina Schloss, and Sarah Illig.












Tommy (Jon Jackson).













Mrs. Walker (Kat DeLapp), together with (left to right), Paul Fearn, Bob Tootle, and Steven Ross.

Roadkill Rapid Response Reaction Team, In Action

Left: Post-Impact +14.5 hours.


E. was agitated:

"M-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-C-C-C-C-C-C! I've been calling you and I've been calling you! Coming back from the VFW, the car in front of me on the Capitol City Freeway hit an animal! I had to swerve! It was struggling and it was struggling! Marc! I almost cried!

I don't know if it was a cat or a dog. It was grey, and hard to tell in the dark. The car that hit the animal took an exit - I don't know if it was E Street or J street. Why was the animal even there? I don't like cats but I don't like to see them suffer. Do you know what I mean? M-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-C-C-C-C-C-C! Do you know what I mean? We must go find it!

I remember once travelling on a rainy night with George, and I saw a cat crossing the road, but he didn't see it. And I said 'George, slow down, slow down, there is a cat trying to cross the road. George! Slow down! There is a cat trying to cross the road! The cat is running! George, he is running! Slow down! But it was raining and George didn't see the cat...."

(Hmmm - even if George had been freight train engineer, he could have stopped, it's taking so long to tell this story....)

Anyway, nothing better at 2:30 on Sunday morning than to closely examine the edge of Sacramento's busiest freeway for wounded animals in the dark - half an hour after the bars closed! So, off we went!

Access to the southbound Capitol City freeway as it approaches downtown is notoriously difficult. I drove several miles north, to the Cal Expo exit, and returned south, in order to get access. Once I reached the J Street exit, I realized I had gone too far. I tried to back in reverse, northwards on the freeway shoulder, but eventually gave up - extraordinarily dangerous on the fairly-narrow elevated freeway segment! So, I took the J Street exit, crossed under the freeway, and headed north again, to the Cal Expo exit, and south again, this time parking off the E Street off-ramp. Then off we went on foot, stumbling along the edge of the elevated freeway with a flashlight, trying to reach the site of the accident.

Freeway roadsides can sometimes look rather pleasant, even idyllic, when gazing at them while safely cocooned inside a fast-moving automobile. In fact, freeway roadsides are howling wildernesses, festooned with garbage and metal shards broken off passing trucks. The semi-truck trailers, in particular, shake your very soul with their roar as they pass by. And things you thought were stable and reliable, like bridges, you discover shake and bounce, when you have to traverse them on foot.

The footing was treacherous, but as we approached the J Street exit in the available half light, we didn't find any animal, just two strange discarded mufflers that looked like swollen hot water bottles. We returned to the car, relieved that someone had likely picked up the wounded animal. We departed......

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

Sunday afternoon, about 1:45 p.m., driving southbound along the same stretch of freeway, I finally saw the animal, lying lifeless roadside on a bridge just north of the J Street exit. Dang! How could we have missed it last night? I guess we didn't quite travel far enough on foot, and somehow we also missed seeing it as we drove slowly past. I wondered if the animal might have a tag that could help me alert its owners to its death. But as J. and I were heading to see DMTC's "Tommy", I couldn't stop at that instant......

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

Finally, at about 5:30 p.m., I returned to the same vicinity. I parked on H Street near 29th Street, jumped a chain-link fence, and scrambled up the vine-covered embankment, headed north along the freeway, crossed the G Street bridge (to the evident discomfort of the passing motorists surprised to see a pedestrian), and finally reached the animal. No pet. The unfortunate animal was a raccoon......

Ye Gods! Harry Potter!

Second Street in Davis was closed last night, between the Avid Reader Bookstore and the Varsity Theatre, with pretty-sturdy traffic barriers, just to accomodate the Harry Potter crowds. Good grief!

"Danielle' was the first person ever to describe Harry Potter to me (cast member, DMTC, Peter Pan, 2001). I thought her attachment to this unknown book was exotic at the time.

Today, I think the attachment of millions worldwide to these books is amazing, nearly-inexplicable, and even more exotic.

Jumping Oak Galls

Friday night, walking Sparky near Sierra II's 24th Street Theater at 2 a.m., I heard a strange **snap, crackle, pop** coming from the gutter. It sounded like sprinkler drops were hitting the leaves in the gutter, but there were no sprinkler drops. Mighty peculiar!

This afternoon, at home, I was sweeping up what looked like a bunch of poppy seeds from a sidewalk, when I heard the sound again. I looked down, and all the poppy seeds were jumping hither and thither. Amazing! Like miniature Mexican jumping beans! But what were they?

These folks suggested they might be Jumping Oak Galls. They even had a video. But what is a Jumping Oak Gall? Here is one explanation:

If you have a Valley oak tree growing in your landscape, or if you visit one of our local parks where Valley oak trees are growing, you may notice a strange phenomenon occurring this year. The ground beneath many Valley oaks this year is covered with pinhead-sized yellow or brown seedlike objects, most of which are hopping around. The tiny things are called “jumping oak galls”, and are formed by a tiny, dark wasp. The wasp belongs to an interesting family of wasps called the “cynipids.”

The galls are actually malformations of plant growth. The tiny gall-forming wasp lays an egg in an oak leaf at a precise moment in the tree’s growth cycle, causing normal plant cells to multiply at an unusually high rate. As a result, the tiny egg becomes encased in the gall composed of oak leaf tissue.

When the egg hatches, the gall provides both food and a living chamber for the larvae. In summer, the oak gall drops to the ground with the tiny wasp larvae inside. The insect moves in jerks, causing the entire gall to jump around on the ground. It’s believed that the larvae hop around in an attempt to find a crack in the soil to hide up in. At maturity it transforms into a pupae, and later into an adult which chews its way out of the gall. The wasps themselves are dark colored, so tiny that you’ll probably never see them, and harmless to people.

A few insect-formed plant galls are found on willow, poplar, rose and other plants, but more than 100 different kinds are found on oaks. The entire oak tree is fair game for the cynipid wasps, which form wasps on leaves, buds, twigs, branches, roots and even the acorns. Each cynipid wasp species forms a gall of particular size, shape and color; no other species forms one quite like it. Also, each one lays its eggs in a specific plant part.

Besides the jumping oak gall, you be familiar with the common oak “apple”, a large gall up to three inches in diameter. These large galls are common on the deciduous Valley oaks, and contain one or more tiny cynipid wasp larva inside. You may also find a pink, star shaped gall on the undersides of Valley and blue oaks. Other galls are cone shaped, or round and fuzzy, or shped like tiny loaves of bread.

In California, most insect caused galls are not harmful to the plant. In some cases the galls may damage leaves or even cause twigs to die. However, the insect galls cause no serious permanent injury. Because of their complex life cycle, it is very difficult to prevent cynipid wasps from forming galls; in most cases, it is unnecessary to do so.

Here is a more-complete Web Page describing the wasps, plus bogus jumping gall wasps, and a host of other strange phenomena concerning these odd insects.

The Salmon Dance

Whassup Colorado?

Oh! Spawning time!

Fighting Over Fungus

Chinese cuisine and Chinese medicine - what won't they use? If only I could get some market action on what lives under my toenails....

A FEUD between two southwestern Chinese towns over access to valuable wild fungus erupted into a gun battle that left eight people dead and 44 wounded.

The violence occurred in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of mountainous Sichuan province yesterday.

"A county government official said around 200 residents from Danba and Sumdo townships clashed in a dispute over access to wild fungus and firewood," the Xinhua news agency said.

Some of those involved drew rifles and the gun battle lasted about ten minutes, the official said.

...The official said that in April, residents from Sumdo were expelled by Danba township when they were caught collecting fungi in Danba.

In May, two people from Danba were assaulted near Sumdo.

"County officials had tried dozens of times to mediate, but their suggestions were rejected by residents of both townships," the official said.

The fungus is what Tibetans call "summer-grass winter-worm". It forms when a parasitic fungus hijacks and devours the bodies of ghost moth larvae that have burrowed into the alpine soil for up to five years. It then steers their bodies to the surface so it can spread its spores.

The mummified moths are a traditional Tibetan cure-all that promoters say helps fight AIDS, cancer and ageing.

As Tibetan medical ingredients have won adherents in China and abroad, the fungus and other alpine fungi and plants have become lucrative commodities, luring almost entire villages on harvests from May to July.

Bev Sykes Reviews "Tommy"

Here's a piece of her review:

DMTC has not been known in the past for outstanding musical accompaniment, so I wondered how they would pull off a show where the orchestra would be the main focus. Quite well, as it turns out. With Director/Musical Director Steve Isaacson center stage, elevated on a platform with his drum set, there is a better than expected assortment of musicians. Jonathan Rothman and Erik Daniells are at the keyboards, Ben Wormeli and Tim Spangler are on guitar, Hal Wright is on the bass guitar and brave Scottt Sabian, on the French Horn does an excellent job of being a one-man horn section.

DMTC Board Changes Anticipated

Efforts are underway to bring new faces onto the DMTC Board. As part of those changes, I will be resigning as DMTC Treasurer, effective late August. I will remain on the Board, however (pending Board approval).

I haven't had the time necessary to bring DMTC's books into the kind of shape that will withstand the closer scrutiny new Board members are likely to apply (after all, I am a trained meteorologist, not an accountant). Arthur Vassar, who has been tapped to replace me as Treasurer (pending Board approval), does have some relevant experience. Since recently gathering his teaching credential, he also now has the time to devote to the upgrade.

I was elected DMTC Treasurer five years ago, in August, 2002. Moneywise, the last five years have been the most tumultuous in the organization's existence, with the mammoth effort to build the New Theater. Considering the many challenges, money matters have been handled rather well, with no scandal, and as a result, DMTC functions more-efficiently than in the past. (Now if we could just knock down our debt, and do something about those lame monthly 'Treasurer's Reports' I churn out....)

Instead, I will devote more time to a DMTC Business Plan I wrote last year, and to Historical Committee tasks, such as readying an on-line data base I nearly-finished two years ago, containing the name, function, and show every DMTC volunteer ever recorded has ever been involved in. In the intervening two years, we've done more shows, and unearthed more (now) rare programs, such that the data base needs updating. Plus, it needs to be posted on-line.

"Hairspray" Reviews Popping Out All Over

This review was somewhat critical, except for Nikki Blonsky:

On the flipside, it would be a real surprise if anyone has more fun in a role this year than young Nikki Blonsky. Two years removed from scooping ice cream, the plus-sized Blonsky sings her heart out, drives other actors to be better and dominates the screen against much more seasoned talent hired to steal scenes from her. To her credit and for our benefit, she never relinquishes a single moment in Hairspray, giving an absolute star-making performance.

The DMTC gang is making plans to see it Sunday evening.