A Bill Wood play review

“Angst ‘R Us”

A Bill Wood review.


Last evening I joined the estimable Fitzgerald family at their daughter’s high school play, Blitz, produced by the Lincoln High School Theatre Department.

The joy here was watching a superbly crafted, strongly performed piece by these intelligent, capable students. Scene, lighting and sound (nice work Liz!) were all superb. I think the costume design could have gone beyond colored T-shirts.

Now, content. First, imagine if Ayn Rand had raised Woody Allen. Same neuroses, less hope. Allen would have written Annie Hall without the middle act where two people find love and for a period of time are willing to make the necessary sacrifices and compromises to maintain that love. Instead, the movie would have gone directly from a desperate search for love to a stupid wasting of love for more venal goals.

I don’t know if this making sense. Try this.

Two aliens from Planet Kafka see Blitz as their first taste of humanity:

Urm: These creatures are fairly primitive. They have not yet discovered love. They have the desire but because of universal failure to establish identities and constant carnal lust they all end up suicidal.

Krzc: It appears that their crude chemical compounds cannot halt the inexorable descent into a state of despair.

Urm: We can do nothing here. This species will obviously self-destruct. Let’s go to planet Oxymor. I hear they have five different sexual subtypes.


Well hey. Don’t let me play the bitter elder too long. I knew teen angst. It is the time in life when one gets a free pass to indulge the fantasy that the universe is a cold, lonely misunderstanding place and to enjoy that sweet ache between brandishments of hot self-righteous anger. We’ve all been there. Wouldn’t wanna go back, but been there.

The play was three acts with eighteen mini-plays. The Shockwave Chronicles was woven throughout in five parts and mainly dealt with the quest for emotion, any emotion (and also sex, of course).

Namaste was a three-person play starring Tommie Traylor, Samantha Parsons and the ever-engaging Natalie McDonald. Traylor has become enchanted with Buhddism and is conflicted about playing high school football. Maybe he could do both. Just convince the team not to try for the extra point after a touchdown as a way of making merit and honoring one’s ancestors.

Arrhythmia, consuming all of ACT TWO, was an incisive study of human personality as animal types. As in most of the other vignettes, Sex and Death were buying drinks for each other at the zinc bar, while stumble bum Love was shoved in the alley in her own vomit.

High School Musikill was an outstanding, Broadway-worthy performance of an original score by Victor Henriques.

In summary, it was a SHOCKING performance. I was SHOCKED. But I’m OK now. After digesting the message of Blitz, I have decided to leave my family and wander the barren landscape, confident that I will never, ever find love.

The Glass Is Half Full

When you've got lemons, make lemonade.

The beauty of catching a cold is that for a couple of days you can walk around thinking you have a voice like Barry White.

Huh?

I think it's rich that the McCain campaign is calling Obama a Marxist.

After all, it's Comrade Bush who nationalized the banks (or at least their debt).

Last Week For Cheap Gas

While visiting Dan in Wichita, I saw something not seen in a long time:

Gasoline for $1.99 a gallon.

Most of the gas stations here are selling regular in the low $2's.

My prediction is that those prices will evaporate soon after Election Day.

Required Stuff

I think it's time to make a list of things which have to be done by a time certain.

There is a mandatory OSHA training for Northwest Permanente that has to be done by October 31. That one is alleged to take several hours.

There is the Privileges Reappointment packet. Those are always fun. They require detailed information about every time a lawyer has rattled a sabre at you. Memory Lane. Also by October 31.

Sometime this year I have to complete Oregon Board of Medical Examiners mandatory Continuing Medical Education regarding pain control.

Hmmm, I'm running out of time to put things off.

Portland Japanese Gardens

It is now kind of a guess about the best days for photographing autumn leaf colors. When placing your bet, you have to balance the maturation of the colors against the storms which strip the leaves from the trees.

I think the best color in the Portland area is still a day or two away. I went to the Japanese Gardens today, on my afternoon off. The lighting was disappointing. The Japanese Garden is set in large stands of Douglas firs, which places most of it in shadow after about 2:45 pm or so. This photo was the last bit of visually interesting light I saw. All photos after this one were subjects which had to make do with flat, even shady lighting.

The Scumbag Stare

I had the curious experience the other night of being on the receiving end of the scumbag stare, the one that law enforcement officers give to let you know that they have active dislike for you and would welcome an opportunity to exercise their authority on the side of your head.

The Portland Photographic Society had organized a field trip Sunday night to photograph fire dancers. The fire dancers meet once a month under the east end of the Morrison bridge, next to the esplanade.

However, that area had become a gathering spot for unsavory characters and activities. A recent attempt by the Portland Police to clean things up had very recently led to Taser use, which the surrounding crowd did not take well. That led to Sunday night's presence of 15 to 20 officers on foot, in addition to the mounted police.

So, instead of walking into a photographic society field trip to photograph fire dancers, I find myself walking into a scene which includes lots of law enforcement. I walked up to one of the officers, told him what I was there for, and asked if I was about to walk into something very different than what I came for. He explained the situation to me, and that the area in question was a public park and that they were here to make sure that lawful activities by citizens could proceed without the illegal stuff. He told me that the illegal stuff included the fire dancer's fire, so that they would have to make do with glow sticks that night. We wished each other well, and I proceeded to enter the park.

As I walked on, one of his colleagues swiveled her head and took me in. She had a shaved head, and clear Wiley X type wraparound shooter/safety glasses on. She didn't like what she saw. She fixed her gaze on me and tracked me as I moved, giving me the scumbag stare referenced above. I smiled and said hello. She clenched her jaw and just continued The Stare. It occurred to me that she would welcome an opportunity to exercise her authority, and that giving her such an opportunity would not be a terribly wise choice.

My guess is that it was the camera gear that set her off. Perhaps after the unpopular Tasing that led to this police presence, she assumed that I was there with hopes of taking photographs that would show police activities unfavorably.

I continued on my law-abiding way, and joined my photographic society colleagues on the esplanade for night photos of the city skyline on the other side of the river, with the reflections of city lights on the relatively still river. Later on, the friendly officer I spoke with came by with his partner, and they chatted amiably with our group.

It was pretty chilling to realize that a police officer had drawn a bead on me, and that if her fellow officers had not been there, that she would have had a freer hand to act on her dislike.

Photo du jour - Meerkat

Trojan Horse

John McCain's "health care" proposal is not designed to provide the American people with health care.

It is designed to allow employers to stop providing health care benefits.

McCain - Keynote Speaker for ACORN in 2006

One of the recent RNC memes has been to vilify ACORN, in hopes of delegitimizing what may well happen in November.

They are generating and circulating their fictions too quickly to be able to fact check possible consequences.

Turns out that John McCain was keynote speaker at an ACORN event in 2006.

A musical tribute is here.

Round Count

If the newspaper ran a story, that a person had been arrested who possessed multiple firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition, the implication is that those possessions are evidence that the owner was dangerous and deranged.

However, it is highly likely that someone involved in competitive shooting could be described just so. I don't think competitive shooters are any more dangerous and deranged than citizens at large.

Look at Cowboy Action Shooting (CAS), which has been reputed to be the fastest growing shooting sport in the world. That is an impressive claim, which it may actually live up to. In CAS, you need at least 4 guns to participate: a lever action rifle, a period correct shotgun, and two single action sixguns. The average match will burn up 120 rounds of rifle and pistol cartridges, and about 25 shotshells.

So, if you were to shoot with the Molalla River Rangers on the 1st Saturday, the Orygun Cowboys on the 2nd Sunday and again on the 3rd Saturday, and the Oregon Old West Shooting Society on either the 3rd Sunday or the 4th Saturday, you have now sent about 500 rifle/pistol cartridges downrange, as well as about 100 shotshells. Which means that over a 2 month period, you need in excess of a thousand rounds just to play. You haven't accounted for any practice ammo.

This ammunition can get expensive when there is a war sucking up ammo components, as the Chinese buy all the metal in the world, presumably to poison us with in toys and milk, but I digress. Most people who play these shooting games have to load their own ammo to afford to play. Store-bought rifle and pistol cartridges can cost you $1 a round, $500 a month. 4 boxes of shotshells at $8-9 a box today at Sportsman's Warehouse. So, I own a device like this for loading rifle and pistol cartridges, and a device like this for loading shotshells.

So, when a competitive shooter sees an ad like this, it is really tempting:



You kind of pause for a moment as you place the order, because you are in danger of becoming an unpopular fellow at the Post Office. One of the services of the US Postal Service is the idea of the Flat Rate Box. Whatever fits in the box goes, at a relatively low flat rate. A thousand lead bullets fits easily in the box, costs only about $8 and change to ship, but arrives in a very dense little package that gives half the postal employees a hernia. When you go to the window and ask for your package, the smile that the postal employee has on the way to the package shelf is no longer in evidence as they return working hard to carry your modest package. Comments have been made.

You Know Where This Is Heading

If the McPalin rallies get any angrier, they are going to start wearing sheets and bearing torches, you know.

Evictions

From Chicago:

The sheriff of the third-most populous U.S. county halted evictions on foreclosed properties on Thursday, saying innocent tenants were being put on the street. But bankers said he was breaking the law.

So what did we get for our $700 billion?

A Run BY The Banks

Once upon a time, economic crises could spur a run on the banks, when the investors pulled out their money and the banks had none.

Today, we are having a run by the banks, where the banks have pulled all (?their?) money out of the economy and are sitting on it while they wait to see what will happen. Meanwhile, the rest of us will have none.

So what did our $700 billion buy us?

Quick, name one!

Pop quiz: Name one crisis the Bush Administration has landed this country in that has not enriched the Friends of George.

I can't think of one that hasn't involved the rapid deployment of a trough with a pipeline into the US Treasury.

We've Heard This Before

Palin in 2008 sounds just like Bush in 2000.

Brined Pork Chops with Spicy Chutney Barbecue Sauce

Brining the pork chops gives taste and tenderness that you can't get otherwise. The brine solution, minus the chili powder, would be great for grilling pork chops even without making the barbecue sauce.

The recipe for the pork chops is here.

The link on that page to the Spicy Chutney Barbecue Sauce doesn't work for me, but this link does. The sauce is killer.

Kinda Doesn't Matter??

When Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin whether global warming is manmade, Palin's response included “Kinda doesn’t matter at this point…what caused it,”

Generally, in crafting solutions to problems, the cause of the problem kinda does matter, doesn't it?

Count me in with the boys who don't mind the idea of a girl president. We want one of the smart girls, though, not one of the mean ones.