Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Let's see, Martha had just posted a review of Stagewalker's play, which
will repost in the first few responses...
  

    

inkwell.vue.115: The Mob from 104: well.fans.neilgaiman!
 <frozen>

inkwell.vue.115.2006: Martha Soukup (soukup)  Sun 14 Oct 01 17:42

 For no reason now I'm concerned Mike might try to stage that show.
 
 Later on a couple of different crew people told me the lady was from the
 soup kitchen program held elsewhere in the church, and also that she has a
 boyfriend from Venus, or that's what she said, anyway.  She didn't look at
 the prop book stagewalker used for my piece, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are
 From Venus", or she would have realized her boyfriend was lying to her.  (It
 came to me later, by the way, that that prop book should have been a
 baseball book, probably one of the Bill James compendiums.  But I digress
 from a digression.)
 
 So, the Hearts in Shadow show.  It's four short plays, running two and a
 half hours (with intermission), with an ensemble cast of four women and
 three men.  All use multimedia effects, all take a rather literary approach
 with a fair amount of narration--in three of the plays, narration by the
 characters themselves.  (So I was surprised to find one of them, Don Nigro's
 "Scarecrow", was actually written as a stage play, because it contained a
 similar degree of literary narration to stage action.)
 
 The first thing I noticed was that none of the three directors took writing
 credits in the program, though, as a writer, I thought they should.  I
 suppose that wasn't the first thing anyone but me noticed.  (Even
 "Scarecrow" was abridged, I was told, by the director.  And the Chekov piece
 was mostly based on one Chekov story but wove in a folk tale and other
 elements--definitely a writing job, I'd say!)
 
 I'm thinking this could be a long post if I discuss all four short plays in
 it, so on to the next rock.

inkwell.vue.115.2007: Martha Soukup (soukup)  Sun 14 Oct 01 17:43

 Actually, can I even go to the next rock?  Isn't this topic full?
  

    

Please, do continue!
  

    
E-mail from Douglas Spadotto:

    Dan - No word from AoTW here too. I think they didn't need help, just a
little "push". And I think that our e-mails gave them just that.

    Neil - Good luck with the site. And the proposal for the Pirate site is
still on. One of my comic book lists is hot in the subject of the "Good
Omens" movie. One of the participants found it in the IMDB and is making a
lot of comments. Any news on that?

    Thanks for posting,

    Douglas
  

    
OH! HORRAY FOR THE NEW TITLE!  I like it very much.

For those who have been kept up wondering how my mouth is doing, I am
feeling much better, though I still can't feel my tongue.

Martha--So glad to hear that you enjoyed the show.  I wish I could
have gone, but I'm in Cincinnati...and that's a bit of a trip.

Angelina (who is noticing just how tired she really is.)
  

    
Martha - good point about the baseball book, although we tend to get a
chuckle when Laura picks up that John Grey book and snorts at it. I'll
take every chuckle I can get, as the audience really needs a release
from Laura's tension. It's been interesting the little modifications I
had to make to the story for purely pragmatic reasons. The book instead
of a glass, baseball instead of basketball (it was just easier to get
baseball sounds) and so forth.
  

    
Oh! Angelina!! 
Glad to hear that you're doing better. Hope you're able to feel your
tongue some time soon... that's a horrid .. um ... lack of feeling.
  

    
Gotta love the new title. It fits well. 

Dan/Martha- I'm glad the show went well. I really wish I could have
been there.
 There's always at least one crazy person at every show. (every good
show, anyway) It's like an unspoken rule amongst the Crazy Person Mafia
or something.

Angelina- I'm not liking the news on your teeth. My wisdom teeth are
almost all the way in and I probably need them removed. But after
reading your posts about pain and numbness for long periods of time, I
think that perhaps I could live with some extra teeth after all. Is it
really that bad?

Neil- Arr. 

Am I pretty much caught up? I hope so. I have to get up early... there
is a certain Boopstie that needs to be neutered. Early. Argh.
  

    

Erynn- it's not a given that wisdom teeth have to come out if they don't
impact your other teeth.  If they get impacted or grow in sideways they
gotta go!
  

    
Oh, the topic's back.  Well, tomorrow!
  

    
... I love the thought of looking like night, especially this night
with it's poufy rain clouds slightly obscurring brightly twinkling
stars that seem to be made of the ice the air hints at,...

>>For no reason now I'm concerned Mike might try to stage that show.<<

Please?   :-)

-Kelly
  

    
Oops,... forgot to mention that I love the new topic name, and does
anyone have a good idea for how to get cookiedough out of a keyboard?
hehe...

-Kelly, licking fingers and baking at 11:30pm...
  

    

Kelly, for a second there, i thought you said you were licking your
fingers and barking.
  

    
Well, that'd make sense in this topic, mightn't it?
  

    
>>poufy rain clouds [...]

     Are they just expressing their individual right of
self-determination, or is there an epicene front moving through? 
(Obviously the rainbow will follow.)
  

    
Argh...
And I was just gearing up for a good panic attack!
  

    
I had an interesting weekend.  No exciting stage shows with mad women,
alas, but fun none-the-less.  We headed into D.C. early Saturday
morning and, until around noon, seemed to have the entire Mall to
ourselves.  We hit the Freer/Sackler, the National Gallery, and the
Postal Museum (which I had never been to and did not particularly
expect to enjoy but found interesting and a little fun). When it came
time to return, around 4pm, the metro was packed.
     I knew it doesn't really mean anything, but I couldn't help but
be a little concerned that Xander used to start bawling as soon as I
tried to read one of his books to him.  Now he's done a complete 180. 
The only way to keep him quiet is to give him something with words on
it; a book to stare at and beat his little fists against, a flyer to
example and then wave about and crumple, &c.  He was doing fine on the
metro until a leaned over and put my arm around Lori, whereupon he
began to wail pitifully.  I quickly realized that the problem was that
my arm was now obscuring the "Please Reserve Seats for Seniors and the
Handicapped" sign above the seatback.  I put my arm down and he resumed
staring at is quietly.  And despite myself, I'm taking this as a very
good sign.
      On our return trip, we sat at the very end of the car so as to
not block the aisle with the stroller.  Sitting there, looking down the
car, I saw a young man who could well have been my twin -- he was my
spitting image, only slightly heavier and without my crazy ears (my
ears don't curl at the top, they just go up and then kind of peter
out).  It was quite eerie.  So I nudged Lori and said, "Do you think
that guy down there in the dark blue shirt looks like me?"  To which
she replied, "Wow." and then, "Get my glasses from the diaper bag." 
Then, getting a better look, she said, "He might be related to you; you
should go ask him."  I spent most of the ride trying to be discrete
about glancing at him; when we reached our station, we got off and so
too did he, his wife, and their baby.  The six of us ended up sharing
the elevator.  Up-close, he looked slightly less like me.  But it was
still eerie.
  

    
Wow.  That happened fast.

New home.  I love the title--yay, Linda!  I think we should ask DanW
and Kelly to do something with the decor: a cross between hippie beads
n' black leather, and decadent pillow nook.  Maybe DanGuy's wife could
paint us some pirates on the walls.

 * 

Congrats again to DanW, Martha and Neil, for the good show.  I really
wanted to schlep up there to see it, but everything went mad down here,
so we couldn’t.

Kelly:  Your nook looks like a fabulous place to recuperate!  Too bad
you couldn’t go to Costa Rica too.  

JennyB: I hope you’ve recovered from the indignity of roses on your
butt.  When I had my wedding dress made, my first words were: "No
poofies, no flowers."

Angelina: hope you’re feeling better with rest.

Jinx: How’re things with your mom?
 
*

Well, I didn’t see any great shows this weekend, or meet my
doppelganger (DanGuy—weird!), but I did, as promised, go talk to people
seriously about Little Red Riding Hood, and had a fabulous time.  Went
to a meeting of the Los Angeles Mythological Roundtable of the Joseph
Campbell Foundation (whew! I feel like asking if you want fries with
that).  Jonathan Young, PhD, of the Center for Story and Symbol spoke. 
And it was incredible.  I had an absolute blast, and it was so
inspiring.  I felt like my head was on fire.

Who knew that the wolf was supposed to win?  (At least initially.)

My personal favorite was this: 
It’s wise to be stupid when you’re in terra incognito.  
(This was hugely comforting to me at this moment of my life.)

-Pam
whose poor husband just worked for 26 hours straight.
  

    
Erynn -- Given your worries, figured I'd chime in. I'll echo Linda's
claim that unless they're causing problems, you can keep your wisdom
teeth. All four of mine came in without crowding the rest, but because
my jaw is misaligned, one of them had no contact with its lower
partner. Thus it decayed, and eventually began disintegrating. Now, I
should mention that I hadn't had my teeth examined in about 2+ years,
so it had stayed in for much longer than it should have. The extraction
only took about 25 minutes, and without all of the horrible "dentist
putting his knee on your chest and torquing" experience that I'd heard
of. I was on Motrin 800mg's for about 5 days, and was more mentally
than physically uncomfortable chewing things after about 36 hours.
(Sorry, Angelina!) Which all is a very long-winded way to say: Your
mileage may vary.
  

    
P.S. Neil sends his love to all, but I guess he's already showed up
here since he sent that (Friday pm).  Just wanted to be responsible and
pass it on.
  

    
>>Are they just expressing their individual right of
self-determination, or is there an epicene front moving through? 
(Obviously the rainbow will follow.)<<

It was a definite display, probably in reaction to the rather strict
republican views of Alaska, where this particular front had the
misfortune of blowing in from.

Alas, I think the rainbows were saved for California.

-Kelly, who did a nice and proper spittake the moment she figured out
what Mike said

Oh - and thank you Pamela-who-slipped. I have a new photo up, closeup
of me showing off my green eyes... I'll post it later tho, when I'm
feeling more "look at me!"   :-)
  

    
Kelly - perhaps heteroclite formations from the anticyclonic gloom?

<grin>

Jo

who thinks epicene is a better word though
  

    
>>in terra incognito.  

    "You, fellow!  What is the name of this place?"
    "Wirrabangongi."
    "Then I claim Wirrabangongi in the name of -- what is it, Ophelia?
 You're wrinkling my tattersall."
    "Not to interrupt the march of empire, Sir Wesley, but
'wirrabangongi' means 'damned if I know.'  Perhaps we should spare
Thomas Cook some embarrassment."

    -- with apologies to both pamela-b and Evelyn Waugh
  

    
Mike: Henceforth, all apologies must contain meaningful uses of the
word tattersall.

A quickie Google search for Evelyn Waugh brought forth this, an' I
just had to share it.

"He's supposed to have a particularly high-class style:
'Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole' ...
would that be it?"

"Yes," said the Managing Editor. "That must be good style."

--Evelyn Waugh, from SCOOP
(blatantly stolen from http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~vfores/waugh.html)

See.  This is just the sort of thing it's so hard for Americans to
pull off: good style with plashy fens.

-P
  

    
This is *so* a terrific pseud.  With thanks to Evelyn by way of
Pamela.

So, I went to Fright Fest at Great Adventure this past weekend, and
wasn't really all that frightened.  I've been more frightened by
current news than by the pseudo-cardboard mausoleums that apparently
have smoke machines built in.  I was also more scared by a coaster
called 'Nitro', which brings you to a ludicrously height before it
drops at an angle that is so completely vertical it's damned close to
negative.  And it went ninety miles an hour.  And it was a bar stool. 
With a lap bar.
Fun!

Rick- I'm preparing to move, so I haven't had access to my Eddie
Izzard tapes, but I wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten about
you.  Once I can find a second VCR, I'll send them right along.

Neil- Glad you enjoyed your time; that cabin sounds not only splendid
but also very much like the ones in which I spent some childhood
evenings, in the middle of the Pine Barrens.
I love the Pine Barrens.  Three-quarters of New Jersey, just green
(and gold and orange and flaming in the fall), full of water that's
been stained brown by the cedars and little towns that have sprung up
like industrial fungal colonies and Mother Leeds and her boy (for those
not in the know, the Pine Barrens in New Jersey [yeah, all millions of
acres of it] is home to the Jersey Devil [yes, from which the hockey
team gets its name].  Way back when, on the morning after a severe snow
storm, people spotted hoofprints on the [roofs?  Rooves?  I just
realized, I don't really know the plural] around a town.  They had no
earthly reason for being there.  So, the unearthly reason is the Jersey
Devil, which, depending upon the person telling you the story, is
either three feet tall with the head of a hippopotamus, the body of an
emu, and the legs of a goat, or eight feet tall, with the head of a
horse, the torso of a man, the hind legs of a goat, the fore legs of a
Tyrannosaurus Rex, and wings like an overgrown bat.  I guess you just
have to hope that, should you ever encounter it, in the middle of the
boonies, and far from any civilization, it's the three foot tall one,
and not the eight foot tall one).
  

    
I like the way "wirrabangongi" seems to roll off the tongue.

Okay, I'll admit it. I've gone and done the Xanga blog thing. Joined
the ABM ring and everything. Go there if you want, don't if not. :) For
now it's going to be more or less an exercise in writing, just to see
if I can still do it.