Le sigh. I have never been good at keeping journals, and that fact has always depressed me. I've wanted to be a writer for some time now, but being a writer entails daily writing. Or at least one would hope. The easiest manifestation of this is the diary: just jotting down thoughts in a structure that really doesn't even need to be, well, structured. For whatever reason, I can never seem to make it a daily ritual. Maybe its because I really don't think what gets said here does anyone much good. Maybe I am too lazy. Maybe I'm much too busy, which can be confused with lazy sometimes.

My three writing jobs are holding steady right now. It's a little unnerving, because I'm not 100% sure if it will get me through the entire summer and into the school year without needing a retail job, but for the time being it's much more preferable. The child in me is certainly happy. When I was younger, I was told many times by my parents just how bad it was for me to be in front of the computer. Now, I spend as much time as I want on the Internet, and get paid for writing too. As well, I'm performing this summer in a musical written by my best friend and his father. I don't believe I've mentioned it yet. It's called Spirit and is the story of a group of high school seniors at a Catholic school as they approach the sacrament of confirmation. I play Andrew, the theatre geek. You want to know why I'm good for the part? Because I spell it "theatre."

Anywho, Spirit will take place...sometime in late July? I'll get specific dates up here at some point. Again, not that it'll actually get anyone to come see it, but another post on here will just stroke my ego all the more. Performance location is St. Francis High School in Hamburg, NY.



Well, wasn't that something? Turns out Pittsburgh can win in Detroit. And talk about timing. I can't truly claim credit for it, but I did have a hunch that this year's Stanley Cup Final would be going to 7. Especially the way Pittsburgh came back in games 3 and 4. Detroit blew out Pittsburgh in Game 5 and I barely flinched. I maintained that, if Pittsburgh could just pull it together for one game in Detroit, they'd win the series. Losing at Pittsburgh wasn't even a thought that actually registered. And Maxime Talbot putting in the two goals that led to the victory. That's just another dimension of how hockey is just such a different, special sport: This game was won by the team's 6th best forward. That's like Roscoe Parrish grabbing 3 TDs in the Super Bowl. That's like Zydrunas Ilgauskas putting up 60 in the NBA Finals. Or like... someone from baseball... doing... something equivalent.

I don't know baseball players, or what they do.

In a very humorous sidenote, Detroit Red Wings' Marian Hossa was held without a goal in the series. That's like T.O. being like... well, Roscoe Parrish. Two Stanley Cup losing efforts, and the schadenfreude just keeps getting better.



And, wow, just wanted to throw this in here, because this musical is awesome. Next To Normal focuses on Diana Goodman (played here by Alice Ripley) and her family as they all try to cope with her bipolar disorder. Which she's had for years. J. Robert Spencer plays the husband (who's name I'm not really aware of), and Aaron Tveit plays the son who gets hallucinated by the mom. I had a friend of mine recommend the show to me, who ended up burning me a copy of his recording, and it's incredibly lively. The melodies fit together and soar through the roof, guided by the rock orchestrations. Alice Ripley has a bit of a warble to her voice that I can't really ignore. Then again, I'm really picky with my female voices. But, good Christ, does the music kick. Anyone who enjoys this clip would do well to check it out a bit further, as the show won this year's Tony Award for Best Score. And deserved it.

Repo! The Genetic Opera
dir. Darren Lynn Bousman
Lionsgate, 2008

Sometimes, a show just kicks. There are more balls in this 98 minute film than are in a Roman bathhouse. Its taboo decadence rivals that of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and it will probably assume a similar cult status at some point.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is the story of Nathan Wallace. A cheery, level-headed type, Nathan is a widower who is in charge of his 17 year old daughter, Shilo. He needs to keep a close eye on her, as she has had a blood borne disease from birth that renders her unable to contact the outside world. He has raised her since birth without the help of Marni, Shilo's mother who died during childbirth of a mysterious complication. A doctor, Nathan blamed himself for his inability to save Marni, and spends his life devoting himself to his child.

Oh, yea, and he works as a repossessor of organs. And, yes, that means all of his clients now die.

Nathan Wallace works for GeneCo, which saved this futuristic Earth from annihilation by offering genetically enhanced organs when everyone's normal organs started failing for, oh, whatever reason. Everyone's in debt to GeneCo. And the ones who don't pay get their spines ripped out in glorious, bloodthirsty fashion.

It's not just the blood and gore that make this film. It's the blood, gore, and metal. The soundtrack is the most interesting musical composition I've heard for a piece of theatre. Ever. It uses industrial sound effects in concert with hard driving guitar, while implementing many facets of opera as well. It compels, and that's good; the cheese in the plotline might be noticeable if the music wasn't quite so badass.

The casting is perfect as well. No other director or story could incorporate Paris Hilton, Alexa Vega (Spy Kids), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Sarah Brightman and Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy. And it happens here in a way that's totally believable. Well, as believable as it can be in a movie about a guy who repossesses organs.

http://www.repo-opera.com/flash_home.html

This is a link to the movie's main website. I suggest checking out the Media section, which has clips from the film and interviews with Bousman, who also directed the Saw franchise, and the co-creators of the story. To get there, move your cursor to the bottom of the screen, click 'The Film,' then click 'Media' in the left margin.

Still at my sister's place in Hamburg. Her and her husband got back from their honeymoon yesterday. She was a little too tired to drive me home, which was fine. She had to drive back from Burlington, VT, that day, and I didn't care as long as I got to watch the opening game of the Stanley Cup Finals. I did. Go Pittsburgh.

My youngest sister, who's still four years older than I am, told us last night that she was pregnant. Awesomely weird. Awesome, cause now there will be one more young mind to play with. I love frustrating children. Weird, because... well, by the definition of it, technically there's a parasite in her body now. One she'll have to nurse for nine months and then poop out. It really is a beautiful process...

As far as Game 1 is concerned, Pittsburgh showed some fight. This rematch is going to go much differently than last year's matchup. Detroit is still the Empire, not necessarily evil in my book because, aside from the millions heaped on Marian Hossa, the entire Red Wings organization finds a way to compete year after year with a team that has grown up mostly inside their own organization. I admire any team that can turn 5th and 7th round draft picks into Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. Detroit still has home field advantage, as they did last year. Won the first game, like they did last year. But, although I can't remember it precisely, I think Pittsburgh was way more competitive at the outset of this year's final series. It was really Chris Osgood that kept Pittsburgh out of the game, with some courageous saves that held Detroit's advantage.

On Acting
Laurence Olivier
Simon And Schuster, 1986


I never used to enjoy reading books on acting. My own style has been to try and be as organic as possible. Not exactly method, but not a ton of technique either. I figured that there wasn't too much I could glean from another actor's style. Then I actually began to study acting. That word, study, really makes a lot of difference. During high school you're just happy to go on and fuck around on stage. To be totally honest, I still look at it that way. But if you want people to pay you for it eventually, you have to take it a little seriously at times.

Laurence Olivier is widely considered to be a legend of the screen, stage and Shakespeare. In On Acting, a series of conversations on all three, Olivier's own perception of his legacy is persistent but not obnoxious. Early on, he discusses the four men he believes responsible for handing down Shakespearean acting to our time: Richard Burbage, David Garrick, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving. Olivier gushes over the contributions of each to the stage, offering anecdotes and accolades the entire time. He shows proper deference to the past, although one can feel that he considers himself the next in line for that legacy. Olivier was 79 when the book was published, and by then many wouldn't argue whether he belonged in that category. But it's to his credit that his desire to carry the torch doesn't read like peevish insistence.

What I found the most surprising about Olivier's ability to approach a specific role was his attention to makeup. He was a master of the fake nose and other similar facial machinery. Sometimes it's hard to grasp just what subtle yet concrete effect makeup has on defining a role. Olivier talks in detail about his manipulation of his own features, whether finding just the right shade of black for Othello or the molding the makeup of his Richard III after director Jed Harris. Olivier used the makeup to submerge himself into the character. This worked well with Jed Harris as Richard III; Olivier considered Harris "the most loathsome man I'd ever met."

Many are familiar with theatre directors and teachers who are only too happy to tear down. Students who experience too much of this should read this book. Olivier understands, with veritable sympathy, all the problems surrounding the theatre, be they stressful conditions, the search for personal ability, or what have you. The book's final chapter, "Letter to a Young Actress," is one of the best examples of criticism that is easily accessible as constructive. The fact that the letter was written to his at-the-time future wife, Joan Plowright, may have created some bias on Mr. Olivier's part. His decision to share it with the world in On Acting certainly makes it a love letter. Not to his wife; personal romance is discussed to an incredibly minute degree. But to the same people he dedicated the book: "To my children, the next generation of actors."

Fun Parallel: Olivier loves Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote in five acts with multiple scenes. On Acting has five parts with multiple chapters. Coincidence?

The Last Waltz
dir. Martin Scorsese
MGM, 1978


It's important to establish the focus of a film early on, especially for documentaries. Documentaries are the newspaper articles of the film world, and suffer greater from a lack of focus than a traditional hack comedy that can rely on several old gags.

From the very first moment of The Last Waltz, the focus is clearly, and sharply, established. Before going into the movie, a screen reading "THIS MOVIE SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!" pops up. This film is all about the music. Yea, it's a documentary about a band playing their last concert; it may seem redundant. But now the backstory takes a definite back seat, and we don't focus on the personalities so much. Just the everlasting appeal and musical ability of The Band as they hang on stage with some of the greatest names ever in rock 'n' roll.

Oh, and definitely take that advice, the movie needs to be loud. Not just because the music is entertaining, but because the interview scenes, which do add the perfect amount of color, are recorded at such a soft volume.

I've been a fan of The Band for over a year now. I had picked up their Greatest Hits album, which included the greats like "The Weight," "Up On Cripple Creek" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," along with the lesser known wonders "Ophelia," "It Makes No Difference" and "Acadian Driftwood." They had such an intriguing musical style, full of multi-instrumentalists and no set lead singer, and made everlasting melodies seem easy to concoct.

If you want a real concert experience, but can't afford tickets to see an international tour at a stadium, purchase and watch this movie. Scorsese's style of film accentuates the reality of the scene, right down to the sweat dribbling down Robbie Robertson's face. And unlike other musical acts that suffer from, well, musical ineptitude, The Last Waltz is a two hour study in how to invite the greatest rock personalities of all time, including Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, and not just support them but be able to hang with their style. I can't say for certain, but it seems like what The Band had wasn't a group of superstars that created gold record after gold record, but an inventive ability to create music that was absolutely tailored to whoever they were playing with or where they were playing.

It's obvious that this wasn't just The Band's profession; music was their love. How else do you come across people playing such a wide variety of different music? How else do you bring Neil Young, Neil Diamond and The Staples on stage and make the entire concert experience flow as well as they did? If you need more convincing, just look at Robbie Robertson's face near the end of the film, when everyone who has appeared comes back on stage for a "We Are The World"-style rendition of The Band's "I Shall Be Released." It's a face that totally says, "Holy crap, I'm singing into the same microphone as Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, and I'm loving every fucking second of it." I loved every second of that one.

Daily posting may be a noble intention, but putting it into practice is much harder. Now if I can only make a similar revelation about something I don't already know.

I'm currently staying at my sister's home. She just got married Saturday (which is a hell of an excuse for inconsistent posting, I may point out), and things have been a whirlwind of ritual and celebration. Now that she and her husband are away on honeymoon, I get to watch the house and the Hounds from Hell: Jack, the beastly black Lab, and Tucker, a black Lab/pit bull mix that likes to nip at asses. Despite the nomenclature, they've been behaving rather well. I've learned two rules that appear to be vital when caring for a dog with any amount of pit bull in their heritage: 1. Try to remain as stoic and emotionless as possible (I'm German, so this is fine); 2. Always keep yourself between the dog and your ass.

Currently, I'm trying to rally some motivation together to get to work on my first assignment for my latest writing job. It's not coming easy. I'm extremely happy that it looks like I can work from my computer this entire summer, instead of resorting to the old tried and true summer jobs that everyone seems to need. Now I have to figure out how to make a routine of it. And with three writing jobs, plus a musical beginning rehearsals next week and another musical that I need to finish writing, having about 5-10% of it finished now, by the end of the summer. If there's no rest for the wicked, I must inhabit one of the lowest levels of Hell.



I spent some time today watching Utopia, or Atoll K as it's listed on IMDb, the 1950 film that would prove to be the final movie for the comedic duo Laurel & Hardy. I had gotten a 5 disc DVD set of Laurel & Hardy movies a while back on a whim; I had a gift card, and at the moment I wanted something that would seem slightly more enlightening than much of the existing popular cinema around.

For including such an esteemed comedic team, I found Utopia to be fairly depressing. Then again, I'm coming at it from a different perspective than most of their contemporaries. Escapism was the entertainment of choice during the 50s and the surrounding years, and those audiences could more easily access the schadenfreude of the comic mixups and frustrations facing both Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel. Possibly contributing to this depressing aura could be the obvious age of both actors; in 1950, both actors were nearing 60, and were considerably aged compared to their other performances I'd been able to see: Flying Deuces (1939) and March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), both available in the collection. It was interesting to find out that March of the Wooden Soldiers is the original incarnation of Babes in Toyland, the 1986 made-for-TV movie version, which starred a young Drew Barrymore and boyish Keanu Reeves, having been a childhood favorite of mine.

It's interesting to watch older comedy, especially when you have a parent who keeps bemoaning the vulgarity of contemporary popular comedy ("Why do they always have to use the F word to get a laugh?"). It's a more delicate humor, one that I imagine would feel at home more on stage, owing mostly to the fact that both Laurel and Hardy spent their early years working the music halls that were popular near the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th. It takes some time to figure out what should be funny, but once you get used to the primitive physical comedy and scratchy soundtrack, you find yourself enjoying it a lot more. And I don't know whether or not comedy should aim to be wholesome, and although I've enjoyed this stint with Laurel and Hardy, I wouldn't give up Harold & Kumar for it, all I know is I've seen Stan Laurel in every single one of the stoner comedies that have become recently popular. The only difference is he doesn't smoke a pipe on stage. His ability to stay perfectly ignorant in every single situation, however, is priceless.

I'm going to try and change the momentum of this blog. To this point, it's been a showcase of various things, just things, and not even things that I find have a very personal impact. There's very little of myself in this blog, compared to what there could be and what a blog needs to be fueled by. Reading Portnoy's Complaint doesn't separate me from everyone; even reviewing it still lumps me with the few hundred people who have read and left their thoughts, both amateur and professionally, in the myriad of publications and websites begging for personal thoughts and critical analysis. Being Steven Brachmann, however, separates me from many more.

Cliche, yes, but all good campaigns find or co-opt their own. Just look at The Little Obama That Could. He thinks he can, he thinks he can...

I met a man today whose name was Clair. He stood with me outside the post office while we waited in the radiating warmth of early summer for the workers to end their lunch break. Not sure on the spelling, but the pronounciation is the same. It taught me two things. First, that gender confused appellations are not relegated to Generation X. Second, that postal workers need lunch breaks too.

I'm home from school now, and that means boredom. Which means being depressed. I'm the world's worst boss: I run a staff of one, and I still can't get him to wake up on time, work hard enough to be economically productive or even agree to any basic dress code.

Tonight, I have my first local government meeting to cover for The Buffalo News this summer. According to contract, I need to specify that I'm not an employee of the News, but I do contribute freelance work that they purchase; think independent contractor. I have to read the agenda yet, which I believe can be accessed online. An hour and a half of resolutions for more street lamps or refreshment licenses that have been awarded, then another hour and a half of making it sound interesting to a metropolitan audience.

Funny. I just considered Buffalo "metropolitan." Maybe if the state was able to keep from bleeding us dry to feed New York City. Gotta love the Albany Pipeline, the Sales Tax To Nowhere...



Just bought The Hazards of Love, the newest release from The Decemberists. Pretty good, a nice variety of sound that touches folk, alternative rock, metal and the baroque pop that The Decemberists have become known for. NPR's coverage of The Decemberists at 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, TX, is pretty good. The following link contains audio of both an interview of Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, as well as the full SXSW concert by The Decemberists. They play through the entire Hazards of Love release, which listens like a rock opera of sorts. At points, more opera than rock.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101397853

For those with attention spans shorter than an hour and a half, the following review from Open Letters Monthly's Lianne Habinek is incredibly articulate, well put and contains access to two of the better songs off of the release.

http://openlettersmonthly.com/issue/music-review-hazards-love-decemberists/

Sacred
Dennis Lehane
HarperTorch, 1998

Dennis Lehane has slowly become my favorite contemporary author. I never thought I'd find reading paperback popular fiction so edifying.

The combination of Lehane's gritty style of writing, perfectly manifested in his mortifying descriptions of physical death, and the ease with which he incorporates Boston, his lifelong hometown as well as mine for 2 1/2 years, endears me to his work.

Sacred is the third novel in the Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro detective series set in the Boston area. Lehane, the pen behind the books that inspired both Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River movies, peels away at the veneer of casual life, using the pair of private investigators as his device, to see the soft, corrupt, evil underbelly of society. And, if Lehane is to be believed, it is everywhere and affects everyone.

It's difficult to review a mystery novel. You want to encourage the masses to read the literature you love, but you ruin it by opening too much of the plot. I find the introductions written for the classics of English literature by pedantic pedagogues enlightening if not entirely readable, but perusing them has caused much dismay by notifying of the book's climax and what it portends before I've ever seen the first page. But what can you say without talking about the plot? Critique style, use of imagery, and the like? I'm not sure myself. But I am sure that, even by mentioning who's involved in the book's highest moment of intrigue, the first half of the book is inexorably ruined.

This, however, is in and of itself one of Lehane's strongest points as an author. It's been a few years since reading A Drink Before the War, but in both Sacred and its immediate predecessor, Darkness, Take My Hand, the plotlines have been notable for starting in one direction and finishing with not only the truth but characterizations turned on their head. It's a well-known folly that you should never mistake the first bad guy in a mystery book with the ultimate bad guy, but it's a mistake that Lehane keeps allowing me to make.

Knowledge of the area of Boston is another reason why I relate well to Lehane's books. Lehane has made his hometown the setting for every story of his that I've read. I went to Northeastern University for two years, spent another half year in Boston, and tingle at mentions of the Avenue Louis Pasteur or the Wonderland T station. Lehane keeps his characters speeding down St. Botolph, finding a dead body in the Boston Commons, or tailing a suspect down Boylston. Familiarity will make you thrill to a writer, and the ability to know these streets firsthand makes Lehane's writing feel nostalgic and new at the same time.

I generally have an elitist cringe when I look at paperbacks with over-emphasized frontispieces and pompous quotes guaranteeing satisfaction as if it were oozing out of the print. But something in Lehane's work puts this to rest for me. Maybe in passing all this along, Lehane's tragic-yet-humanly-comical characters and stories can find a way to be worth your time.

Western New York Heritage
WNY Heritage Press Inc.
Winter 1997 - present


I've always had something of a forlorn adoration for my hometown of Buffalo, NY. Having seen its heyday in the early 1900s diminish to the government ineptitude and the 2 miles of skeletal remains on Route 5 of the once-thriving Bethlehem Steel of today, Buffalonians have forged an underdog mentality in their psyche, which helps them deal with perennial sports heartaches and the insistence around the country that "Buffalo isn't a real city."

I lived in Boston, MA, for 2 1/2 years, and while I found the Patriots fans to be the most aggravating part (which made the inability of this year's Pats team to go to the playoffs all the more satisfying), the common reaction of Buffalo being such a laughable hometown was equally maddening. Even though they had a point; the economy's not dying in Buffalo, it's hooked up to life support with a faint beeping every minute or so. It certainly wasn't a choice reason would make, but I loved my hometown with all of its imperfections and disappointments and Skyway-like architectural eyesores and, again, our futility in sports. It felt a part of me, something that couldn't be divorced from my soul.



But why the hell did people live in Buffalo in the first place? The big joke around here right now is, with the current credit crisis in America, soon the country is going to come asking Buffalo for advice, because we've lived in a recession for years. And, in fact, I personally can't tell that there's a recession: the Western New York region doesn't thrive on the white-collar industry that has been hit, and though I'm sure foreclosures have gone up, nothing has hit close to home. Actually, if the fact that gas has gone down is a symptom of the poor economy, than this recession has done very well by me, cutting my personal gas bill in half. Shortsighted, to be sure, but I look at it as the poverty endemic to the Buffalo region that has provided a sort of buffer zone for this crisis. But not a healthy buffer.

I'd heard stories about Buffalo's past greatness before. That Millard Fillmore, Grover Cleveland, Mark Twain and a smattering of other celebrities had called Buffalo home for a time in their lives. That millionaire mansions were de rigeur at the turn of the 20th centuries. That, without a man hailing from my personal tiny little hometown of Angola, NY, 30 minutes south of the city, the world may very well not know the comforts of air conditioning in summer (thank you, Willis Haviland Carrier).

These were stories past around by the elderly to whatever young person would listen, an oral tradition that people needed to repeat to themselves to remember in spite of the monotonous drone of nothing but parking lots constructed in Buffalo. But one magazine, undertaking what looks to be a yeoman effort in research and reporting, has been slapping the Western New York (we are NOT upstate, dammit) region in the face, hoping to wake it up to its past in order to negotiate a brighter future.



WNY Heritage, edited by John H. Conlin and supported by the herculean work of area historians, is a treasure trove of those facts about Buffalo's past that keeps its future possibilities bright. A quarterly magazine, each of the years four issues comes with about six articles on differing topics of Buffalo's past, replete with whatever pictoral references each historian, or the magazine itself, can find. For instance, in the issue pictured above, one can read about the Eagle Park 1912 disaster on Grand Island, the early aviation industry's tie to the Buffalo area, the story of the first woman to traverse the Niagara River en route through Buffalo to Detroit in 1702, and even the story of Wells-Fargo founder William G. Fargo, native to Central New York but whose business interests found him in Buffalo. There's even a photo album of Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo from the 1930s and 40s. I spent many afternoons traversing that road, being an alumnus of Canisius High School, and can hardly recognize today's street in these aged photographs.



For myself, it's the pictures that are most enticing. It's one thing to hear another's version of Buffalo's past, filtered as it is through one person's bias, but cold, calculating pictures do not lie (except for the abilities of Photoshop, but I'd like to think that there's nothing someone could gain from altering these pictures). Pictured above is the William G. Fargo estate, a mansion that once took up the entire city square created by Pennsylvania, Fargo, Jersey and West Streets. Such towering mammoths from the past of such a deprived present.

I've read about seven or eight of these magazines, and could honestly go for more. The writing is a little shoddy, but it's easier to accept when you realize that these people are first and foremost historians, writers second. The real prize is in finding another reason to be happy for the hometown that you live in, the ghosts flying around that made this place their home at one point and the promise that ingeniuity can once again make this region a metropolis.

Absolution
Muse
Warner Bros., 2003


I had become disheartened over the past six months or so by music, wondering if I had been bombarding myself with so much of the stuff that the magic of hearing new music for the first time had deadened into an apathetic acceptance of a different sound. I had gone quite a while without finding a new song that could thrill me, and writing music reviews had opened me up to a lot of cynicism, cynicism that can really deflate the fun out of the sport.

In fact, one of the last times I can honestly remember having heard a song that blew my mind the first time I had heard it was "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse, an alternative rock outfit out of Devon, England. I was driving through the streets of Boston, MA, at night, sitting in the passenger side of my roommate TJ's car, and being moved by the defiant-yet-emotive melodic rock sound of this group. I had heard "Knights of Cydonia" courtesy of the Guitar Hero III soundtrack, and was impressed by the technical difficulty of the song but wasn't what you would call piqued. "Stockholm Syndrome" allowed me a chance to hear lead singer Matthew Bellamy (Guitar Hero makes the guitar track louder than the rest of the song), whose soaring but strong timbre lacked the gruffness that typifies the grunge vogue of contemporary rock.

YouTube clips of this band really display their theatrical ability. To my knowledge, they haven't conducted a States-wide tour, which has led to their poor popularity on this side of the Atlantic. A quick search for "muse" and "glastonbury" uncovers a ton of clips from their live show at Glastonbury in 2004, shortly after the release of Absolution. Of particular note is the clip of "Stockholm Syndrome", which includes a five minute post-song jam session including Bellamy taking the off-stage amps, bringing them on-stage, flipping them on their backs, standing on them, pushing his microphone directly towards the speaker and completely distorting the sound of his guitar.

I realized I needed to get Absolution after hearing "Apocalypse Please" on Pandora radio (www.pandora.com), a heavy marching band track containing no guitar, awaiting Armaggedon: "It's time we saw a miracle/ Come on it's time for something biblical..." I was ready to marginalize Muse as a metal band before hearing this track; everything I was familiar to that point contained the same beat-driven, virtuoso intensity that I've associated with that genre. But tracks like "Apocalypse Please" take full advantage of Bellamy's piano ability, and the orchestrations that are "Blackout" and "Ruled By Secrecy" display the group's varieties in displaying their sound.

That sound is a progressive version of traditional emo given a healthy amount of testosterone. "Stockholm Syndrome", also on Absolution, is depressingly emotive, describing a strained and torn relationship: "This is the last time that I'll abandon you/ And this is/ The last time I'll forget you/ I wish I could." But listening to the menacing snarl of Bellamy's lead guitar, and the stoic beat of bassist Christopher Wolstenholme, you couldn't accuse Muse of being wimpy. You can really appreciate a band's ability to take emotively introspective songwriting and hooking people into the music, compared with today's competition.

"Hysteria" was also a standout. The guitar riff sounds like it was meant for a techno rave. An intriguing hard rock guitar riff can get me every time, and "Hysteria" takes full advantage of this. If you're unfamiliar with Muse, but like progressive rock and metal, you're going to want to pick Absolution up and check this band out even more

Last Action Hero
dir. John McTiernan
Columbia Pictures, 1993



I'm not well versed in the action film genre; I haven't seen old standards like Die Hard and Rambo, and my only Arnold experience before this were some scenes from The 6th Day that we watched in a high school science course, the pretense for which I've since forgotten. However, as a loving caricature of action films, Last Action Hero is brilliant in its ability to subtly send up the already ridiculous pretenses of that genre. We have a maverick police officer protagonist spilling cheap puns and dispensing vigilante justice, a villain exemplifying pure evil, ridiculous situations and, most importantly, a driving hard rock soundtrack to set the mood for senseless bloodletting.

But the core plot line, and the places the script takes it, provide a charm that keeps it from the mindless parody of more recent genre parody films, like the Scary Movie franchise and other such work. Young Danny Madigan is a child with a huge affinity for the Jack Slater franchise of action films, with Schwarzenegger playing the rough macho man himself, and spends most of his time at a run-down ancient movie theater that looks like Shea's Buffalo if it had been out of business for 30 some odd years. An aged projection booth operator, played by Art Carney, lets his young friend into an advance screening of the newest Jack Slater film for his eyes only, and to commemorate the occasion, Carney's character, Frank, hands Danny a magic golden ticket. While watching the movie, the ticket's magic is unleashed and Danny finds himself in the action movie world.

The "movie within a movie" structure allows the story to directly comment on the many pretenses of the action genre, from good's eventual triumph over evil to an almost rude unwillingness to die for the main characters. Danny, who seems to have seen every action flick ever made at least four times, adjusts quickly to this new world and uses his action intuition to some comic results. Emboldened by his power in this new world as Jack Slater's sidekick, he decides to play chicken against a bright set of headlights, himself wielding a pink bicycle, rationalizing that, because he is a good guy, the other car will veer and he won't be harmed. Just as he's closing in, he realizes it: "Oh, shit! I'm a comedy sidekick! It's not gonna work!" Of course, he doesn't die, but nonetheless one of the myriad of humorous anecdotes of action analysis.

One of the script's triumphs was to incorporate the use of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing himself, this Last Action Hero Arnold playing the Jack Slater Arnold. It allows for a climactic scene for the premiere of Jack Slater IV, and some witty husband and wife banter between Arnold and his real life wife Maria Shriver, also playing herself. Schwarzenegger's ability to play a serious caricature of action heroes and then play the subtle absurdities of a real life movie star and celebrity not only keep the plot engaging, but deflates a lot of the pretension that a title like Last Action Hero implies.

Another impressing factor about the script was that although this film is technically an action film, not many action films allude to Laurence Olivier and Ingmar Bergman; fewer have the presence of mind to have Olivier's third wife, Joan Plowright, discussing Olivier's Hamlet to a class of schoolchildren, wryly adding that they may have seen his work as Zeus in Clash of the Titans. And it's hard, although not in a bad way, to reconcile Schwarzenegger's presence in any movie that references Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Having Sir Ian McKellen play the role of Death, who has escaped via the magic ticket into the real world, was another nice touch.

Having read a little online about the movie, I have only the vaguest of knowledge that the movie was a box office disaster; the June 1993 release date was a little before the time when I could see PG-13 movies, and I hardly new much about popular culture at six years old (damned sheltered childhood). But I wouldn't have been able to guess it having watched it in 2008, although the fact wouldn't have surprised me considering the jarring blur between reality and fantasy within a movie and that braininess is generally wasted on an action film audience. If this article doesn't pique your interest, I don't suggest going out of your way to check it out. If it does, there are worse ways to lose two hours and ten minutes.

Whoever made this: Thank you. Hockey and Hitler, what could be better?

Talk Radio
Oliver Stone
Universal Studios, 1988



Talk Radio
Eric Bogosian
1987 Off-Broadway
The Public Theater
425 Lafayette Street, Manhattan

One of the theatre's best attributes is the fact that it is an artistic crossroads of sorts. Works of theatre have been processed into movies or can inspire other theatrical adaptations (Taming of the Shrew becomes Pygmalion becomes My Fair Lady). As for the different styles of art that can become theatre, the list is endless. Theatre has taken as its source books (Wicked, Cabaret, South Pacific), music (The Who's Tommy, Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys), movies (Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Producers, Legally Blonde), and even other artistic forms (Sondheim's Sunday's in the Park with George takes its inspiration from a famous painting by Georges Seurat). Theatre's presence is always in the here and now because it is unfolding before you, and it can freshen up an outdated product. And theatre is conducive to far-reaching sources of subject matter because its canvas is malleable; all theatre needs to be theatre is a script, one actor, and one audience member. Art is expensive and movies need DVD players, but theatre can exist almost anywhere, doing anything.

I work in the theatre, and have a great passion for the entire field of theatre, and this idea of cross pollination, if you will, is something that provokes heated debates - No, that movie's trash and we shouldn't have to see it in the theatre. It's all commercial bullshit. It's such an unoriginal concept.

For my part, I don't mind it. I view it as "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." And I find it funny to deride something as "too commercial", because by its definition it's going to be a popular success, earning tons of money. You want something non-commercial? Go patronize community theatre.

I was recently in a production of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio at SUNY Fredonia, where I'm currently attending school. Bogosian is a very gritty playwright - I've gotten the chance to read another of his plays, Suburbia, which can best be characterized by the high school waste cases hanging outside at your local Tops or Walmart - and Talk Radio takes as its main character Barry Champlain, a shock jock who's job consists of riling people up who call into his radio show (an antagonizing protagonist, if you will). I played Dan Woodruff, the yuppie, over-confident, driven station manager of WTLK.

The first thing that struck me, reading Bogosian's script, was the concept. The play was to take place during one of Barry's radio shows. Generally, when you think of a play, you think of scene changes, different settings or at least passages in time. The entire plot of Talk Radio takes place during one two-hour radio show on the eve of Barry Champlain's national syndication. This interested me. Another concept which seemed a little incongrous with live theatre were the callers, backstage voices that weren't seen by the audience. I mean, yea, it's a radio show, it probably would have been harder to show them on stage rather than just have them as voices, but the idea caught me off-guard. I've never been involved with anything that needed this level of voice talent, and the way the cast responded was nothing short of brilliant.

Now, from my understanding, the version we produced on-stage at Fredonia was the original script from Bogosian. A number of changes have been made by the playwright since, culminating in the 2007 Broadway premiere of Talk Radio starring Liev Schreiber. But in 1988, a film adaptation of the play was directed by Oliver Stone, featuring John C. McGinley, Alec Baldwin and Eric Bogosian as the smooth-talking Champlain himself. I had been given a home-made copy of this DVD by one of the professors at Fredonia who knew I was about to be performing in the play.

It's a very interesting feeling, watching someone else play a character that you yourself played. Inevitably, you start measuring yourself against that other person, and although I like to think of myself as a good actor, and Alec Baldwin as a... well, not so good one, the idea of keeping score can make movie watching a less than enjoyable experience. In the movie version, my character as Woodruff got split up between Baldwin, who kept the name and station manager status, and John Pankow, who as Dietz represented the interests of the sponsors.

The basic plotline is such: Barry Champlain, a shock jock radio host, creates an interesting brand of radio by melding a nihilistic sense of the world and other people with an incredible intellect, mocking and jawing at anyone who dares to call into his show. The particular show that the audience sees is just prior to national syndication, which will broadcast Barry on 357 different radio stations across America. At his side are Stu, call handler and long time partner to Barry, and Linda, one of the show's producer. Fending off censorship and regulations from his manager, Dan, Barry delivers another night of raucous radio with growing impatience, anger and frustration at his listeners.

The movie introduced a new character, Ellen, Barry's ex-wife. I like rounder characters, and the play version of Barry seems a little flat, but Barry's misplaced affection for Ellen, an attempt to humanize Barry, came off as a little confusing. And the movie's flashback sequence that introduces Barry's backstory, his rise from suit salesman to radio host, was unrealistic. But I suppose fantastical situations are kind of the MO of movies.

The decision to split up Dan into two characters also poses a problem with flow. In the play, it's Dan in, bitch moan bitch moan, Dan out. The movie keeps Dietz around at all times as a silent presence of the sponsors, while Dan tries to soathingly coax Barry, his disturbed star, to accept what he sees as the subtle negatives of sponsorship for all the money it's going to bring. It turns one character with strong objectives and motives into two weaker characters who better serve the movie by being off-screen.

The most egregious offense I found with the movie was the ending, a montage of different voices with different opinions about Barry Champlain. I get the jist of it: even in death, Barry is still achieving his goal of getting people to talk. But did it have to last three whole minutes? And did the camera simply have to pan the skyline of the Fort Worth-Dallas area? Consider me unimpressed.

I enjoy seeing any adaptation of a writer's idea, and I can't spend time watching something and tell myself that it's absolutely worthless; not only does that deem the time that I've spent watching said movie worthless, it's tantamount to saying that creative professionals wasted a year or two of their lives. But one version can definitely be stronger than the other, and I'd have to opine that Bogosian's original playscript wins out. Of course, I could be biased, but too much tinkering can destroy a good thing, and the simplicity of Bogosian's play triumphs over the misguided vision of Oliver Stone's movie.

I wish I could read The New Yorker every week. The August 4, 2008, issue ran a remarkable profile on Chinese pianist Lang Lang, a musician respected both for his technical prowess and panache. The article cited a YouTube video showing Lang Lang playing a Chopin étude with an orange. Enjoy.

You're Awful, I Love You
Ludo
Island, 2008

There's this strange phenomenon that I've experienced a couple of times in my life wherein I come across, something I've never heard of before, on a commercial or billboard somewhere. Could be a person, a product, anything. And although I take no particular notice of it at the time, I can't swing a dead cat for the next two weeks without hearing some sort of mention of that particular thing. It's beyond the point of coincidence; nothing will reinforce my belief in a divine being faster than the idea that someone's playing a slightly cruel omniscient joke on me and my sanity, and I can see some God-like figure sitting in the heavens, on some throne, laughing his holy ass off at me.

Honestly, it'll drive me up the wall. I doubt my dead cats take kindly to it, either.

Anywho, the latest version of this practical joke, which has permeated my summer thus far, is the discovery of St. Louis emo-pop-punk outfit Ludo. I first heard mention of them on 103.3 The Edge, a Buffalo-area alternative rock radio station. Every Sunday night from 7 to 10, The Edge has a segment called Nextwave, which features a variety of new tracks from underground artists, although the lineup is oft-speckled with bigger names (last week's show included tracks from the latest Foo Fighters, Staind, Disturbed and 3 Doors Down albums).

I was listening to Nextwave while driving home in early May, and I turned it on during the middle of a this song that sounded emo, still had balls, was incredibly melodic, and had a kickass guitar solo. Afterwards, they announced the name of the band was Ludo, the song was "Love Me Dead", which was off their 2008 release You're Awful, I Love You. I was a little disappointed after the song ended, fairly certain that I'd forget the name and, like so many other songs I took a mild interest in on the radio, would evaporate into the back of my brain, only to be recalled months down the line while kicking myself for not remembering that band's name.

Luckily for me, Ludo and 103.3 had other plans. Out of sheer coincidence, I caught the next week's Nextwave segment. This never happens. And, as fate would have it, DJ Josh Potter played track #2 from the same Ludo album; this time, the song was "Drunken Lament". And this one, too, kicked ass. In fact, after these two tracks, I think my cheeks were bruised. I can't remember anything about those two listens except for the fact that this inner voice was screaming at me, "Dude, you have GOT to check these guys out." After the song, God throws me a rope and has Potter say that, "Oh, by the way Buffalo, Ludo will be opening for The Spill Canvas this Wednesday in Williamsville." I summarily called my best friend on the phone, told him that no was not an option, and we made plans to see them at Club Infinity.

Now, here's where the story starts getting a little, well, creepy. The next day, Monday, was my 21st birthday, which I spent at a bar about 40 minutes from my home simply because there was supposedly a Guitar Hero competition there that night (I know, I'm sick). Although the competition didn't materialize, I did spend a good night with some close friends, including one kid I hadn't seen for a couple of years, Pij. Pij, me and my best friend, Paul, were talking about music. I mentioned that I had gone to see The Reverend Horton Heat (see previous entry), and that we were planning on going to see The Spill Canvas that Wednesday in Williamsville:

Me: "But, actually, we're more interested about the opener."
Pij: "Who's opening?"
Me: "Not sure if you've heard of them, called Ludo. Heard a couple tracks on The Edge."
Pij: *does doubletake* "Wait, Ludo Ludo? Broken Bride Ludo?"
Me: "...um, what?"

So Pij regales Paul and I with this story of how, during his days as a DJ for University at Buffalo radio, he came across this CD from 2005 by Ludo called Broken Bride, which he listened to on a whim. Pij then explains the plot of Broken Bride, a rock opera, which, apparently, is the story of a guy living with his girlfriend, his girlfriend dies in a car accident on the way to work, so the guy goes and invents a time machine to save her. He goes way too far back in time, ends up in prehistoric dinosaur times, rides a dino, then goes forward. Bad news again: ends up in a crazy futuristic world where evil zombies rule, and he has to fight off these zombies to get back to his time machine. So he takes it back in time, but reappears just before his girlfriend takes off. Unable to stop her, he simply jumps in the car with her, both of them riding to their deaths. Cue: "Awwwww...."

Me: *turn to Paul* "Holy shit, dude, we have GOT to see this show."

We don't end up seeing that show. Again, as fate would have it, I had an Evans Town Board meeting to cover that night, and we scrapped the plans. But I had heard too much to go back now; I ended up purchasing You're Awful, I Love You from SecondSpin.com, and made a mental note to go back for Broken Bride at some point. It took a few weeks for it to arrive (SecondSpin.com: Awesome prices, shitty delivery time), and in that time span, Paul and I spend a night hanging out with an actor friend of ours from high school, this kid Nathan. Again, we start talking about music; again, "Yea, went to go see The Reverend Horton Heat not too long ago." Again, Ludo pops up again, I'm not sure how.

Nathan: "Oh, yea, Ludo. Broken Bride, right?"
Me: "...um, yea."
Nathan: "Weird. I was in that show over in Chicago. They put on a performance of it, and I was in the cast. We actually got to meet the band."
Me: "...Weird is fucking right."

Needless to say, I was scooping the brick I shat out of my pants for the next few hours. Finally, after all this buildup, I get the CD in the mail, throw it in, and say, "Impress me."

I was impressed.

Ludo is freakin' nuts. The band is emo, despite anyone's best efforts to say otherwise; too many of their songs can be characterized as 'anguished love songs', in particular "Mutiny Below", "The Horror Of Our Love" and "Such As It Ends". But in Andrew Volpe, Ludo has one of the ballsiest emo lyricists I've ever come across; the opening lines to "Love Me Dead" are - "Love me cancerously/ Like a salt-sore soaked in the sea/ 'High-maintenance' means/ You're a gluttonous queen/ Narcissistic and mean." And his voice, a high-pitched tenor, doesn't evoke the same squeal-whine that many more well known artists fall victim too.

If you can take the time, go on YouTube and look up some of the live Ludo performances; I was able to catch both "Love Me Dead" and "Go-Getter Greg" played live on Jimmy Kimmel. Although it could be entirely inadvertant, Volpe has a performance technique that I think is strikingly brilliant: he never stops smiling this stupid, goofy smile. And when you're watching a front man for an emo band smile while singing lyrics like "You're a parasitic psycho, filthy creature/ Finger-bangin' my heart/ You call me up drunk/ Does the fun ever start?" (Again, "Love Me Dead"), you can't help but smile too. Really, Ludo's about good music, but is more about having fun: how else do you explain the videos of the band singing "Love Me Dead" (who says you can't pimp a single song into oblivion?) while brushing their teeth in front of the bathroom mirror. And, again, those videos are on YouTube and are hilarious.

As far as the actual songs on the CD are concerned (I guess I should get to this sooner or later), my favorites are those first two I heard, lo so many months ago on The Edge, "Love Me Dead" and "Drunken Lament", as well as "Lake Pontchartrain", a song about three friends who take a vacation to Louisiana and have a fatal run-in with a murderous lake, and "Go-Getter Greg", a well-delivered send-up of a guy stalking a girl who just moved into his apartment complex. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you wince.

All in all, Ludo's music is infectious, and I still kick myself for being unable to get to that show back in late May. I still have that mental note to revisit Broken Bride (I failed to mention, that rock opera is five tracks and thirty minutes long. Dense). It's music that you'll want to pump in your car, singing at the top of your lungs, but in no way on pitch, with your best friend, going 65 down the interstate. Just make sure you don't land near a sign saying Lake Pontchartrain.

Wiki-Trivia

• Gets its name from the character Ludo in Labyrinth, the 1986 fantasy film with David Bowie and a disturbingly pre-pubescent Jennifer Connelly. You might remember him, he's that weird looking orangutan thing with the horns. In fact, look at the album art for You're Awful, I Love You. See? See????
• Ludo has been putting on themed shows for the past few years at The Pageant in St. Louis. Show titles include HalLUDOween, A Very Ludo Christmas and Cinco de Mustache.
• I can't find any proof of this anywhere, but drummer Matt Palermo can't be more than 16 years old. Look at that baby-face. Listen to the drum work on "Drunken Lament". And stand in awe of the man-child.

Music video of "Good Will Hunting by Myself" by St. Louis-based pop-punk band Ludo. Review of their latest album to follow shortly, but enjoy this in the meantime:

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth
Vintage International, 1994

In my junior year of private Catholic high school, I was suspended for three days out of school for writing a highly inflammatory satire of my everyday school life.

Admittedly, it was incredibly sophomoric, which is fitting as the story was written in my sophomore year. Immature, irreverent and incredibly vulgar, it's an understatement to say that it pissed a lot of people off. After it was written, a friend of mine had published the story, a piece of fiction although real names were used, on a website of like-minded material. Although I don't believe in Murphy's Law, the never-confirmed-but-much-speculated hypothesis that one of the more serious-minded members of the administration found it by Google-ing his or her own last name always struck me as an inordinate stroke of bad luck.

The first few days were harrowing, and although the latter stages included me being heralded as some odd sort of free speech martyr (apparently, three years after graduating, I'm still referred to in some circles as "The Kid Who Wrote That Story"), I had to confront the reality that just about every authority figure in my life right then (which pretty much consisted of my parents and the school's administration) thought, at that particular time, that my work constituted heavy smut worthy of a three-day suspension, as well as personal apologies to every administrator and teacher (eight in total) that appeared in my story. To give you an idea of the contents, certain characterizations included a teacher, who also happened to be a child of an administrator (nepotism be damned!), as another teacher's love slave, and as the main antagonist, a teacher (who I actually liked as a person; hey, Mel Brooks makes his money making fun of Judaism) who paid for college by being a high-priced male stripper. Again, despite the first amendment rights issue of a private high school suspending a student for writing an inflammatory piece of fiction (the "private" part of that being the major sticking point), I can see why people were pissed.

After reading Portnoy's Complaint, I can only assume that, in ten years time, I will actually morph into Philip Roth.

Complaint, a 274-page long Jewish joke first published in 1969, is a monologue delivered by Alexander Portnoy, a 33-year-old Jewish native of Newark, New Jersey, to his psychiatrist, Dr. Spielvogel, about his stereotypically overbearing Jewish upbringing, his incredible obsession with getting off (the passages about his earlier days recount how Portnoy would masturbate numerous times a day, to the point that he was afraid that he would be "spitting blood"), and the unhealthy relationships experienced with a multitude of girls/women (oddly enough, all shiksas).

Although not a literary genius, Roth is a man with an incredibly hilarious idea: we all know the Jewish stereotypes, lets see what happens when we crank them up about ten notches. His father, Jack Portnoy, is an insurance salesman with such anxiety problems that it causes him massive constipation. The recollections of Portnoy's mother, Sophie, include the time she taught Alex as a toddler how to pee by tickling the underside of his peter, and Alex remembers both as parents who would praise their child as a genius to the high heavens one day, and lock him out of the house for eating hamburgers with friends the next. And although the narrator is vague at times between the connection between this upbringing and Portnoy's future shiksa insanities, it's understood just enough so that the entire story arc doesn't derail.

And the smut is overbearing. Just take these few passages:

p. 19: "If only I could cut down to one hand-job a day, or hold the line at two, or even three! But with the prospect of oblivion before me, I actually began to set new records for myself. Before meals. After meals. During meals. Jumping up from the dinner table, I tragically clutch at my belly - diarrhea! I cry, I have been stricken with diarrhea! - and once behind the locked bathroom door, slip over my head a pair of underpants that I have stolen from my sister's dresser and carry rolled in a handkerchief in my pocket. So galvanic is the effect of cotton panties against my mouth - so galvanic is the word "panties" - that the trajectory of my ejaculation reaches startling new heights: leaving my joint like a rocket it makes right for the light bulb overhead, where to my wonderment and horror, it hits and hangs."

p. 155: "What caused her to finally run for her life were the little orgies he began to arrange after jerking off into Garter Belt (or was it Spiked Heels?) became a bore to both of them. A woman, preferably black, would be engaged for a very high sum to squat naked upon a glass coffee table and take a crap while the tycoon lay flat on his back, directly beneath the table, and jerked his dong off. And as the shit splattered on the glass six inches above her beloved's nose, The Monkey, our poor Monkey, was expected to sit on the red damask sofa, fully clothed, sipping cognac and watching."

p. 235: "What I'm saying, Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds - as though through fucking I will discover America. Conquer America - maybe that's more like it. Columbus, Captain Smith, Governor Winthrop, General Washington - now Portnoy. As though my manifest destiny is to seduce a girl from each of the forty-eight states. As for Alaskan and Hawaiian women, I really have no feelings either way, no scores to settle, no coupons to cash in, no dreams to put to rest - who are they to me, a bunch of Eskimos and Orientals? No, I am a child of the forties, of network radio and World War Two, of eight teams to a league and forty-eight states to a country."

The juxtaposition of Alexander Portnoy's eloquence with his state of emotional retardation is what makes this work so funny. The same reason my 13-page novella raised such a stir (hey, if people didn't think it was humorous at all, it probably wouldn't have gone up on that website in the first place).

Portnoy's Complaint Fun Facts (Source: Wikipedia, so trust at your own discretion)

• Almost immediately after publication, Roth's novel was declared a "prohibited import" in Australia. Penguin Books responded by smuggling secret copies into the countries. The publisher and any booksellers carrying the books were prosecuted, but those suits ultimately failed.
• Has been named #52 on the list of The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.
• There have been some confirmed biographical underpinnings to the novel: Like Portnoy, Roth was born in 1933 in Newark, NJ, and according to a book by Roth's ex-wife Claire Bloom, Leaving a Doll's House, the story's other main female, The Monkey, is a caricature of Roth's first wife, Margaret Martinson. Of course, Leaving a Doll's House was a memoir written two years after Bloom and Roth divorced, and is notably unflattering to Roth in terms of their relationship. So, take that as you will.
• Adapted into a 1972 film starring Richard Benjamin (Portnoy) and Karen Black (The Monkey).

Although I have a much larger affinity for musical theater, straight theater has always intrigued me in a number of ways. First and foremost, I've remarked to friends of mine in the past about the fact that, although any all-encompassing canon of musical theater is still pretty finite, and all the best composers are already well-known, you can go searching around online and find 10 quality plays by 10 different playwrights that you've never heard of before.

Now, of course, the name Eugene O'Neill is not obscure. Plays like The Hairy Ape and Long Day's Journey Into The Night are familiar with most students of Broadway, and O'Neill was considered to be revolutionary for his usage of the American vernacular in dialogue, among other things. He dwelt on tragedy in most of his works, writing only one comedy (1933's Ah, Wilderness!) among 21 full-length plays.

I first came across O'Neill's work while reading Seven Plays of the Modern Theater (a bit of a misnomer, considering the book was published in 1950), and I encountered The Hairy Ape. O'Neill has been praised for introducing realist techniques into American drama, but has shown an incredible penchant for poignant expressionism (for those familiar with The Hairy Ape, I refer mostly to the cramped lodgings in Scene 1, representing a cage-like atmosphere, and the interactions between Yank and the New York City crowd on Fifth Avenue in Scene 5).

I had picked up an old, hardcover book a few years back containing three plays by Eugene O'Neill: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, and Mourning Becomes Electra. I read it recently, part of my ongoing project to read all the books that I own that I haven't perused (we're at about 15 books left right now, and at my reading/buying pace, I'll never be done).

I believe that, in theater, musical plays lean too heavily towards comedy, and straight plays lean too heavily towards tragedy. Although there have been plenty of comic playwrights, most well-known plays are tragic, and some playwrights (Arthur Miller, or the aforementionedly pessimistic O'Neill) write almost exclusively in tragedy. I would like to see a reversal of this, more tragic musicals and funny plays. But I wouldn't do away with any former theatre for it, and I truly felt like I was reading a master of the tragic style in reading O'Neill's plays.

All these plays, set in northeastern American locales over varying time periods, are tragedies because their characters, having lost perspective, almost knowingly set off chains of damaging events to serve their own purposes. In Desire Under The Elms, Abbie, who could be considered a trophy wife of sorts, marries the aging Ephraim Cabot, but in her need to completely possess Cabot's farm, seduces, falls in love and procreates with Cabot's son, Eben. Strange Interlude (which really would need a full-length article to have all the intricacies broken down) is an altruistic tragedy; each character drives themselves crazy trying to make somebody else happy, except for the ever-blissfully ignorant Sam Evans. And Mourning Becomes Electra, an updated version of Aeschylus' Oresteia, is imbued with vendetta and pride amongst the character's personal relationships.

I don't have the time right now to do a thorough dusting up of the stories and themes posed by each play. Then again, any attempt to tread a road already so greatly traveled with such scholarly ignorance would be a slap in the face to most people reading this. But, if you haven't before, go pick up some Eugene O'Neill. And make sure you don't read a full play and go right to sleep; your psyche's going to want something calming afterwards, like the Disney channel.

I felt this was still worth bringing up. Clip from June 10, 2008, Colbert Report. The part that intrigued me starts at 3:32, but I've watched most of the episodes of the Report since this was aired, and I haven't heard mention of it again. Too bad, as it would have been a great combination.

Ugh. It's been a while, hasn't it? I hate when it's been a while...

But, thankfully, this current absence hasn't been pure writing apathy. Between the Buffalo News freelancing gig and two pieces I'm trying to put together for an arts and literature review website, this journal just sort of eased its way into disuse. And I've already written about 1,000 words today on CD reviews, so this won't be (as) long, but...

I recently finished listening through Icky Thump, the sixth studio album from Detroit, MI, alternative rock outfit The White Stripes. I had first sampled a few of the tracks through local alternative rock radio, and as good as the songs were ("Icky Thump" and "Conquest" being the ones I was most familiar with), I couldn't believe they weren't in heavier rotation.

I was never, to this point, a big White Stripes fan. Like so many other artists of the past ten years, I let their peak years come and go without purchasing album number one of theirs. But I knew some of their music, liked some of their songs, and decided to purchase Icky Thump. I've been on a recent kick, trying to buck up my alternative music knowledge (you can scroll down to see the entry on Alice in Chains' Dirt, and I just recently bought albums of Ludo and Laura Nyro online, and I'm eagerly anticipating their arrival), and I figured this would be a preemptive strike against the eventual "...you don't own any White Stripes albums???" conversation that I was bound to have with someone in the next three years.

But Icky Thump is certainly an impressive offering from Jack and Meg White. Even in all it's guitar-pitch-distortion glory, the sound is incredibly trimmed down and compact, like Hemingway to a short piece of prose. And almost every single track has a simple catchiness to it that is endearing. And Jack White lets the emotion come out raw on most tracks; in the title number, the third verse starts in, almost as a non-sequitur, with: "White Americans, what?/ Nothing better to do?/ Why don't you kick yourself out/ You're an immigrant too." The following track, "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" just drips with bitter from every line.

Other tracks that impressed me were "Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn", which has a heavy Celtic flair to it, and "Rag And Bone", a track that's half-sung, half-dialogue, and all-scavenger hunt. Listening to a track like this makes it obvious that The White Stripes are something I should try to experience live, as well. Also, I'm pretty partial to "I'm Slowly Turning Into You" and "A Martyr For My Love For You".

So, not much more to say. Good album. Couldn't say that it's better than White Blood Cells or Elephant, but then again, I don't need to. You make that call, America.