Tonight... we brought down the house!!!
Our best performance yet, playing to the most packed audience so far.
Okay, off to celebrate now :-)
Saturday, June 28, 2008
CHILDREN OF EDEN: Performance #4 and wild cast party!
Last night we had our fourth performance of Children of Eden. Widespread consensus is that this was the one thus far most plagued by mishaps. A keyboard went out, there were problems with the microphones early in Act I, at least one cast member fell ill (but bounced back and rejoined the show), Noah's Ark almost crashed, and I tried hard to hold back a sneeze immediately following "The Flood" and just when I was about to leave the stage, it happened anyway.All suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Names and identities have been withheld to protect reputations and careers.
But all things considered, the audience seemed to have really enjoyed last night's show!
Following the performance, just about all the cast and crew met at Pizza Station in Reidsville for a party that stretched well on into the night and may have gotten a little too wild for anyone's good...
Don't worry: nothing immoral or illegal or otherwise illicit happened last night. Good heavens, there were children present! About the worst thing that happened was me dancing to a Barry Manilow song...
Children of Eden has another performance tonight at 7:30 at the Rockingham Community College Advanced Technologies Building Auditorium, and then its final show tomorrow afternoon at 2:30.
Fifteen years since...
"Dear Lord, am I really doing this?!" A Few Good Men. Red eye over England. Bennie and her mom. Mayhem in the marketplace. The brothers. Lots of wine. The village countryside. The pissing statue. The dark hospital. The odd pizza. "Coke is better than beer!" The American compatriots. A prophecy fulfilled. The peculiar picnic. A strange place to celebrate the Fourth of July. The haunted ruins. The jibber-jabbering Belgian lady. Helping the three Russian students. A kiss on the hand for a real queen. "Le stupid American!" The Piano. Andre's crazy cop cousin. The towering fortress on the river. The blood of Jesus Christ. Real magic. Cows at 150 miles per hour. The Eiffel Tower. The Bosnian refugees. The dead body in the alley. The Maquisard. The hunt for the Hard Rock Cafe. The singing drunk Frenchman. The four Dutch lasses. The unicycling saxaphonist. The Canadian Richard Petty fan. The two Valley Girls. Alive with medical commentary by Bennie. The long walk straight up. Gazing toward Hamburg. "She's out there somewhere." The canal tour. The carnival. Going home. Business class. Discussing Napoleon with a fellow passenger. Home Alone 2. Seeing the World Trade Center towers for the first and last time. The missionary family. Touchdown at Raleigh-Durham. Back.
And there was more, much more, that I am still leaving out from what was my first big adventure in the great wide world, that started fifteen years ago today.
Just the first. There have been others since then. And there will no doubt be many more in the years to come.
Zavel, if by some chance you ever read this: I found Christy. It took me over ten years, but I found her and she was every bit as sweet and beautiful as you described her to be. And I passed along your message to her, too. I don't know if you will get to know that but when I think about how it was that I found her, anything is possible.
Shawn, if you ever read this, I still have the flag that you gave me, dude!
Amazing how something that happened fifteen years ago can still impact one's life.
Anyhoo, it was one of the greatest times of my entire life, and I thought it was worth making a note of here :-)
Friday, June 27, 2008
CHILDREN OF EDEN: Final weekend of performances begin tonight!
Children of Eden
Tonight begins the final three performances of Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Children of Eden. The hit musical takes to the stage tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 and then one last performance on Sunday afternoon at 2:30. All shows are in the auditorium at the Advanced Technologies Building at Rockingham Community College. So far the show has been a huge success, and many patrons are swearing that it's one of the best musicals that the Theatre Guild has ever done! Word is that the shows for the next few nights are selling fast so if you wanna go, get yer tickets now and get ready to enjoy Children of Eden. Or, don't see it, and perish in flame. It's your choice, but not really.
(Hey if nothing else will entice you to come, how about getting a chance to see Yours Truly dressed old-school biblical in tunic and sandals as Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve? :-P)
Wilkins Coffee ads: The dark side of Jim Henson
Yesterday this blog reported the passing of Kermit Love, longtime Muppet designer and operator. His work on commercials led me to look around YouTube for any other examples of Muppets used in advertising.Wilkins Coffee Commercials #1
That's what led me to re-discover the spots that Jim Henson made in the late 1950s for Wilkins Coffee.
Over fifty years ago, Henson was hired by Wilkins Coffee to create some commercials for their product. The result was a series of clips starring Wilkins and Wontkins. These are not only some of the earliest examples of the Muppets on television, they are also the longest-running campaign to feature the Muppets and certainly the most violent! Poor Wontkins dies by cannon, by point-blank shot from a pistol, run over by a bandwagon, not to mention threatened with a guillotine! In one of the commercials he's also shown smoking a cigarette (try doing that nowadays!). Definitely an indication that Henson in his younger days had some 'tude.
Enjoy the mayhem! And remember: People who don't drink Wilkins Coffee have bad things happen to them, muthah! :-P
Wilkins Coffee Commercials #2
Wilkins Coffee commercials #3
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Review of GET SMART
This evening a lot of the cast and crew of Children of Eden got together at the Carousel Grande in Greensboro to catch Get Smart, the new movie starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson and Alan Arkin based on the classic 1960s television comedy.I must say, Get Smart the movie was a very pleasant surprise! From the very beginning, we were laughing like crazy. Carell plays Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams in the television show), an analyst with the U.S. Government agency CONTROL. After an incident at CONTROL Headquarters, Smart is given his first field assignment alongside the beautiful and dangerous Agent 99 (Hathaway). The two are soon thrust into action in the heart of Moscow, where they must stop an agent of KAOS (played by Terrance Stamp) from unleashing nuclear terror on the unsuspecting world.
Plotwise it sounds like your standard Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy story. But Get Smart is also very faithful to the spirit of its television antecedent. Right from the getgo, all the classic Get Smart elements are introduced: the series of sliding doors, the phone booth, the Cone of Silence (look for the original as well as the updated version), the memorable theme music... and of course, the shoe phone (two of my fellow Children of Eden cast members said that I was laughing real hard when we got to see that). I thought that Carell was terrific as Maxwell Smart, and though he doesn't try to ape Don Adams' inimitable style, he certainly does channel Adams here while enhancing it with his own unique persona as an actor. Hathaway too is great as Agent 99. Alan Arkin as The Chief is a hoot, especially in one scene where he does something that he's wanted to do "since Nixon". Also look for cameos by Bill Murray and James Caan (as the President of the United States!).
So if you're in the mood for a good comedy, not to mention one of the better movies that I've seen lately to have been inspired by a television series, you should give Get Smart a try. Definitely one to catch while it's playing in theaters.
Why Johnny Can't Spell
In spite of not having actively posted about it for two weeks, this blog is still getting visits (and the occasional comment) from people who've been following what's been going on between Yours Truly and the local cult calling itself the "Church of Christ", especially its power-mad leader Johnny Robertson of the Martinsville Church of Christ.
Speaking of which, lately I'm hearing it asked quite a lot: Why won't these guys, with all their money, buy airtime on any other television station besides WGSR? Especially when there are other stations in the area with both better studio facilities and broadcast reach? The general consensus is that WGSR's management was the only one desperate enough to sell airtime to the cult, and that every reputable and "real" station in the market wouldn't touch The Three Stasi (that's my latest nickname for Robertson, James Oldfield and Norm Fields) of the so-called "Church of Christ" with a nine-foot cattle prod. I didn't originate that sentiment, folks. That's just what others have been telling me.
Maybe with good reason: I haven't caught most of his more recent broadcasts but the word I'm consistently hearing is that Robertson has appeared "rattled", that the other week he looked like "a deer in the headlights" and that he was practically begging people to call in and pay him attention. I happened to watch a few minutes of his show this past Sunday night and he was ranting about how church bake sales and car washes were tantamount to mortal sin because they weren't mentioned in the Bible. I watched for five minutes then tuned Robertson out and instead began playing BioShock on the Xbox 360. There's more profound wisdom to be found in that video game than there is in the live television broadcasts of three real people during several hours each week: sad, but true.
Meanwhile, y'all wouldn't believe the stuff that's come into this blog over the past few weeks that I can't print yet about 'em. Suffice it say, "Christopher Knight, investigative reporter" is back in the saddle again. More regarding this when I feel like it's time to publish it.
I still stand by what I said on TV a few weeks ago folks: I don't care what Robertson tries to do to me. But as one wise friend told me a few days later: The Lord may yet have some work for me to do so far as these loons are concerned. However, regarding Robertson's boast that he had turned "the community" against me...
We've had three performances of Children of Eden so far. When the cast was greeting the audience following our opening night show one gentleman told me that I was "a hero" for "taking on that nutcase Johnny Robertson". A few days later at our third performance another audience member said that my words during the live appearance had "the love of Christ" and was "what being a real Christian is all about". Not one person has told me that I was wrong for those thirteen minutes, but a lot of people have told me - both in person and via e-mail, and not comments posted to this blog - that Johnny Robertson and Charles Roark are, in so many words, "a disgrace to this area". Again: their sentiment, not mine. I'm just reportin' it, folks. Parse all this as you will.
(Heck, the comments that I'm still having to delete every now and then about WGSR general manager Charles Roark have been more than a little, shall we say, "colorful". And I never knew that Roark had been convicted recently of theft and had served time in jail, or that he was banned from all Wal-Mart stores, or that prior to that he already had FOUR larceny convictions, or that he lost a defamation lawsuit leveled against him... parse all that as you will.)
In the meantime, I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of something that I noticed on Johnny Robertson's website...
You may have to click on the image to read this heading from the What Does The Bible Say? site. It declares in bold red font that...
"The church of Christ is the intellectual center in this region. No one else will take on the issues."Whoa! Big boast there! The "intellectual center" of this region? I had no idea that the Martinsville Church of Christ was a subsidiary of the RAND Corporation!
And "No one else will take on the issues"? What does that supposed to mean?! If you read this blog you know that I take on "the issues" all the time. So do a dozen or so other bloggers in the area, not to mention many other writers and clergy members of various perspectives. So to say that "No one else will take on the issues" is a bold-faced lie. Granted, few of us would claim that we agree 100% with what someone else might believe... but I don't know of anyone so brazen as to proclaim that they are the "intellectual center" of anything.
Heck, I'm a pretty smart guy, and not even I would say something like that.
But wait, it gets better. Also from Robertson's site...
It says "Polgamist May Come to the Tent".
How the heck does Johnny Robertson expect us to buy into the notion that he is the "intellectual center" of the region and that he is the sole inviolate authority of the Word of God... when he can't even SPELL his OWN words right?!?
He has had "polygamist" mis-spelled for over a year now on the front page of his website! Tell me again how this is supposed to be "intellectual"?
This is far from an isolated incident. If you've ever read Robertson's hysterical ravings on the Answering the Church of Christ blog, you know already that he has atrocious grammar and spelling. He also has the tendency of shooting from the mouth before he really thinks about what it is he's saying. Although I tend to believe that when Robertson boasted that "we are here to defeat destroy you" he was being more truthful than he possibly realized.
But I am not here to "defeat destroy" anyone. Instead I choose to take the course of action that the wise sage Mel Brooks has discovered is the best way to destroy Hitler, along with any other evil person in this world...
I choose to make people laugh at Johnny Robertson, James Oldfield, Norm Fields, and their twisted cult that never does anything but hurt others.
More soon. Some will be serious. And some will be different.
Muppet engineer Kermit Love has passed away
Ain't It Cool News is reporting the sad news today that Kermit Love, who designed Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus for Sesame Street in addition to many other Muppets after an already renowned costuming career, has passed away at the age of 91.
Love (who insisted that he was not the namesake inspiration for Kermit the Frog, yeah I checked) also did a lot of commercial work, including the creation of Snuggles Bear and the very strange La Choy Dragon:
I'm telling you, folks back then thought and imagined on a whole 'nother scale than we can do nowadays.
Thanks for all your years of wonder and dedication, Mr. Love. You helped bring joy to millions of children, of all ages. And we won't forget that.
Supreme Court rules that individuals have right to own guns
The decision was 5-4. Which is why I'm not happy about it. That's still too close. In a saner day and age, the decision would have been 9-0 in favor of gun ownership.
Being one vote away from tyranny is still tyranny, in my book.
And then there are those of us among the citizenry who hold to the notion that this ruling has no real meaning at all, because we already know that the individual has the right to defend himself or herself. I sure as hell wasn't waiting with baited breath as to what nine justices in some marble building in D.C. had to say about it.
Here's the text of the ruling (in Adobe Acrobat format) if you're inclined to check it out for yourself.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Meet the heroes of this season's DOCTOR WHO finale
It's gonna be the craziest Doctor Who title sequence ever...(Left to Right): Sarah Jane, Mickey, Jackie, Rose, The Doctor, Martha, Captain Jack, Donna
And the rumor is that this still isn't the full roster of the good guys! Over the past few months I've heard that K-9 might be making an appearance too, and maybe even a previous version of The Doctor himself (hmmmm... Paul McGann?). Heck, with that kind of a lineup it wouldn't surprise me if Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart himself was brought in to order "five rounds, rapid".
It promises to be the most epic clash in the entire 45-year history of Doctor Who, as The Doctor and his friends face the wrath of Davros and his new Dalek Empire. The two-part season finale begins with "The Stolen Earth" this Saturday on BBC One in Great Britain, on Sci-Fi Channel a few weeks after that in America and anywhere you want it to be right after it premieres courtesy of BitTorrent download! :-P
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Rotating Skyscraper: I ain't goin' inside that thing!
This scheme has "Bad Idea" written all over it...
An Italian architect is planning what he calls the first "building in motion": an 80-story tall skyscraper where the floors rotate around a central axis independently of each other.
Got that?
Imagine a twelve-hundred foot tall licorice stick, that's held upright and twisted back and forth. That's the kind of effect that David Fisher is aiming for with his Dynamic Towers, which will be built in Dubai and Moscow. These are going to be apartment buildings. And as each floor spins 360 degrees, the entire building's shape will constantly shift and change.
Its designers claim that wind turbines built between the stories will power the entire building, letting it be completely energy self-sufficient. Powerful elevators will also allow residents to park their cars within their own apartments.
It's also being said that construction of each tower will only take twenty months, with six days time required to install each story. The stories for the building will be pre-fabricated in Italy, then shipped to the construction site. The final assembly will require eighty technicians, according to Fisher and his associates. Utilities like electricity and plumbing will connect to the central core via attachments similar to in-flight refueling used with military aircraft.
I'm not going to begin to write down all the bad scenarios that are possible with living inside such a thing. But if David Fischer can pull this off, it might be worth a trip to Dubai or Moscow to check it out. He's also planning a smaller one for New York City. Hey, at least a building like that would deter King Kong from climbing it, right?
Here's a video illustrating how this thing is supposed to work...
The "lost" tribe that wasn't
Just less than a month ago there was lots of excitement about a tribe of people living deep in the Brazilian jungle that had been photographed from the air. It was claimed at the time that these villagers were just now being discovered for the first time.
In the past few days it's been determined that this was a lie on the part of the photographer.
José Carlos Meirelles has admitted that authorities have known about the tribe since at least 1910! He took the photos and still claimed that these people had been completely undiscovered until his aerial reconnaissance. Why? Because he wanted it to seem like they were a truly lost tribe so that more attention would be given toward the issue of the impact of logging in the Amazon basin.
In other words: it was a lie driven by a political agenda.
I still harbor some admiration for the photos that Meirelles took, but now any appreciation for them will be forever tainted by how he chose to use them. If he had just come forward and said "hey, these are pictures of a tribe that we've known about for a long time but only now are able to get close enough to photograph them" that would have no doubt been a more respectable feat. He didn't play the part of the objective scientist at all. Instead he injected a personal bias into the matter and in the long run he probably did more harm than good to his cause.
That's a lesson that many other scientists would do well to be mindful of.
(And thanks to Nathan for passing along the news about this.)
Monday, June 23, 2008
CHILDREN OF EDEN: More photos!
Here are some more pics from the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Children of Eden. Some of these were taken by my wife Lisa and others were taken by Dean Brown...Father (Neil Shepherd) realizes his dream and creates the universe in "Let There Be", the opening song of Act I in Children of Eden Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) listens as Father tells her and Adam what they must do as they begin "The Naming" Adam (Stephen Hale) and Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) are cast out of the Garden as Father (Neil Shepherd) curses the Tree of Knowledge during "The Expulsion" in Act I Young Abel (Jasper Thomas III, left) and Young Cain (Aaron Boles, right) join their father Adam (Stephen Hale) in asking Father to accept their sacrifice Cain (Jay Smith) brings Abel (Winston Sims) and Eve (Rose Cutuli Wray) to a place that they have no business being in "Ring of Stones" Noah (Jon Young) and his family thank Father for their blessings during "A Piece of Eight" in Act II
More coming soon! And remember: Children of Eden plays for three more performances this coming Friday through Sunday, June 27-29th at Rockingham Community College Auditorium. Visit the Theatre Guild's website for more info!
"Turn Left": Final stand-alone of Davies era among the best of new DOCTOR WHO
Russell T. Davies, if you're reading this, you have made me feel very sorry that I doubted you.
Yeah, there have been some low points during your reign as showrunner on Doctor Who (insert standard derogatory reference to "Love & Monsters" here). But you know what? If the two-part season finale that begins this coming Saturday is anything as good as "Turn Left" was this past weekend, then I will gladly declare that you learned from your mistakes and that you triumphed in every way so far as bringing Doctor Who back is concerned. This past season of Doctor Who might have been the best yet since the series's revival. And it looks to be going out with a bang...
"It's sort of complicated. I ended up in his spaceship on my wedding day.""Turn Left", which Davies also wrote, is the last stand-alone story (more or less) of his tenure at the helm of the classic television series. Last week the Doctor went almost the entire episode without Donna, and now it's Donna's turn in the spotlight in this offbeat episode that also features, after a season of fleeting cameos, the full-blown return of Billie Piper as Rose Tyler."What if you turned right? What then?"
"There's something on your back!"
"We found a body, sir."
"I came so far."
"The Royal Air Force has declared an emergen..."
"Nobody lives in the bathroom."
"America is in crisis, with over sixty million reported dead."
"Why won't you tell me your name?"
"Something's coming, Donna. Something worse."
"'Labor camps'. That's what they called them last time."
"They're going out. Oh my God! Donna look! The stars are going out!"
"Nooooo way!"
"It's a time machine!"
"Tell him this. Two words."
While visiting a planet-wide Chinatown on a far-off world, a fortune teller offers to tell Donna's future. Donna takes her up, but instead of what is to come Donna is made to live out a different past: where instead of turning left at an intersection she chose to have a "safe" life by turning right toward a job that offered security. The most obvious result of this is that Donna never met the Doctor. Without her being there, the Doctor died during the events of "The Runaway Bride". And the result of that was that the world went straight to Hell.
If you've been faithfully watching Doctor Who since its 2005 return, there are rewards galore in "Turn Left": the Judoon's stealing the hospital, the space-borne Titanic, the Sontaran attack... all of these and more we get to see had the Doctor not been there to stop it all. This episode is very much Davies's love letter to his work over the past four years, and it succeeds admirably. My only complaint so far as that goes is that Davies jammed "Turn Left" with references to just about every other Doctor Who-related project he's worked on, including Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures and many viewers might be "lost in the fog" so far as those go. Indeed, I had to go to Wikipedia to find out what this "Trickster's brigade" thing was about.
Catherine Tate does a superb job of carrying the weight of this episode without David Tennant's presence. I've become quite a fan of Bernard Cribbins as Donna's grandfather Wilfred, and it's a delight to see him given so much screen time in "Turn Left".
And then there is Billie Piper's long-hyped return as Rose Tyler. It's not quite a letdown, but it's not what I was expecting either. Under any other circumstance hers might have been a "special guest star" appearance.
But with two words which come crashing down on the Doctor in the episode's final frantic scene (perhaps the best cliffhanger of any Doctor Who episode in recent memory) there is no doubt for anyone that Rose's appearance is no gimmick. That in fact her being here means that something very bad is on its way.
What? What could possibly have made Rose Tyler flee an entire universe to warn the Doctor about?
Here's the teaser that the BBC is now running...
"Turn Left" gets 4 Sonic Screwdrivers out of 5.
Next time: the greatest showdown in the history of Doctor Who begins, as just about every hero in the show's current stable gets thrown into battle against the return of Davros. "The Stolen Earth" transmits on BBC One in five days and across the Internets immediately afterward!
George Carlin has passed away
George Carlin has died at 71, of congestive heart failure.
I didn't care too much for the vulgarity of his act. And I disagreed with him on a lot of things. But that still didn't stop me from appreciating that this was a man who was obviously very thoughtful and had a deep understanding of many matters that too many of us don't bother to contemplate. In that regard, Carlin was something like a conscience for this culture. Here's a clip demonstrating that (warning: harsh language):
In the end, I choose to remember Carlin as a man with a lot of intellect, who was talented at sharing that with others through many very different voices. This was a guy who did the "Seven Words You Can't Say On Television" and was just as comfortable doing voice work for children's cartoons (not to mention his movie work, like playing Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure... and Dogma 'course).
Rest in peace, Mr. Carlin.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
CHILDREN OF EDEN: The Third Performance
Are we really halfway through our performance schedule already? Sure doesn't seem like it.
This afternoon was the third performance of Children of Eden, produced by the Theatre Guild of Rockingham County. It was the biggest audience yet! And the show went great again. Today's performance was especially important for me personally because I was finally able to do something that I've been working on all this past week: have some serious tears flowing when I played Seth at the end of Act I. It worked... but man, that was tough! Will try to do it again for the next three times we do this.
My parents got to come and see the show too. One neat moment happened when I got to introduce my real Mom to Rose Cutuli Wray, my "Mom" (she plays Eve) in Children of Eden. Also got to see a lot more friends who came today, and a few who are seeing it for a second time during this production!
(Yeah I'm talkin' 'bout you especially Nell ;-)
You know, this blog has chronicled a lot of... strange and unusual things from my life in the past few years. Everything from running for office to taking on a major corporation to fighting what many have said is evil incarnate, along with everything in between. Doing Children of Eden with the Theatre Guild has been, far and away, the greatest ongoing experience that I've written about here thus far. I have met so many new and wonderful people, have learned so much, and have rediscovered what may be a real passion that I might follow for the rest of my life in some form or another. God has used this experience to make me think about some things, and in ways that I haven't talked about here, He has used it to show me humility and how there are still some matters in my life that need addressing. Through Children of Eden, I have gained not just new friends, but some new family.
And, it's been a heckuva lot of fun!
I'm going to genuinely miss this time when it's over. But until then, we still have three more shows, so we ain't done just yet.
We have off 'til Friday night, although there may be a "brush-up" rehearsal before then. But for now, we've got the next few days to rest and reflect, and figure out how to make the second half of our schedule even better than the first!
Maybe some more pictures soon also. Stay tuned! :-)
The $400 Star Wars LEGO Death Star
Gizmodo has high-res photos of the upcoming Death Star from LEGO's Star Wars collection. With almost four thousand pieces and setting your wallet back $400, this station is now the ultimate power in the universe (or at least your living room floor, which is the only place big enough to build this technological terror)...
It comes with a staggering 25 minifigs and droids, and re-creates 14 scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy.
It comes with a staggering 25 minifigs and droids, and re-creates 14 scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy.And I must be a very good boy between now and Christmas, because if I tried to bring this thing into the house on my own Lisa would kill me.
EDIT 9:30 p.m. EST: Lisa took one look at that picture, and promptly said "No!"
I suppose she's right. We've got enough Star Wars LEGO models around the place anyway. At least I've got the Millennium Falcon and AT-AT Walker, not to mention Slave I: what more could a guy need? :-P
