It's Autumn, The Leaves are Falling

Hair - Forty Years Later

We saw Theatre Artists United's production of Hair last night at Out North. Fun. The music still stands up after all these years. I couldn't believe that all the songs were familiar. I saw it long ago in LA, but never had the album. But so many of them were hits on their own. The small band under Steven Alvarez' direction filled the theater with music. The twenty or so actors filled the stage with and at times the audience with movement and song.

I couldn't help wondering what it all meant to the actors none of whom was born when Hair first came out. The emotional edge of 1968 didn't translate into 2007. The whole tension of Claude dealing with the draft board, the generational chasm over sex, drugs, and rock and roll that underlie the whole show no longer reverberate like they did then. That's not to say the issues are gone, but back then, guys' hair over their ears and lapping down the neck was a sign of rebellion. Today's shaved heads are more like the old traditional crew cuts and military cuts the long hair was repudiating. What was most shocking in 1968 was the fact that a Broadway show included the whole cast full frontal nude. But without the music it wouldn't have made it. This production doesn't include that scene. It really isn't necessary, and director Christian Heppinstall said that having a 16 year old actor precluded it anyway. I'd also note, that it is nice when the actors are picked based on talent whether they have perfect Hollywood faces and bodies or not. There were real people on the stage - all of them talented.

Anyway, it was fun. If you're in Anchorage during October I'd recommend it. The clips above, like always, are a spectators fuzzy digital camera view of events. Not great video or sound, but a sense of what was happening But I'm getting better with iMovie.

October 1 - Eastern Promises

We went to a late afternoon movie. Eastern Promises was an interesting movie that kept my attention. A little too grisly for my taste, but I learned a little about vory v zakone.

These clips should give you a sense of the movie without spoiling anything.

Crown Maker

The dentist sent me to get the color right for my new crown. I never even knew this job existed, but I was quickly taken in by Ken Clester as he talked about his job. When someone really loves something, it doesn't matter what it is - when they talk about it, it's interesting. Here's a bit I had space for on the chip in my camera.

Campbell Creek Bike Trail Under Seward Highway

The Anchorage Daily News has an editorial today about completing the Campbell-Chester Creek Trail loop around UAA. That part just needs better signage for people who don't know it. The real key is completing the large loop of the Campbell Creek to Coastal Trail to Chester Creek. And a major problem is Seward Highway and Campbell Creek.

Yesterday I had to go to CompUSA on Dimond from the University. Should I drive or bike? It was a beautiful day, but the bike trail doesn't quite go the way I wanted to go. The big gap in the bike trail is under Seward Highway. The trail to the highway is great and after, but there's this gap. Lanie Fleischer - who was one (and she emphasizes that there were many others) of the early bike trail advocates and whose name is on the trail at Goose Lake - told me once long ago that she talked to the engineers building the Seward Highway. She wanted them to make sure it would be easy to one day build a bike trail under the highway along Campbell Creek. She said they sneered and purposely built it low. Lanie has no reason to make up such a story.

In any case, yesterday I decided to bike it. Here's the obstacle.

I rode south on Lake Otis to 47th, (#1 on the map) I think, where I picked up the bike trail headed west through the Waldron area, past the soccer fields and the small lake. It winds through a small park to Campbell Creek and then ends.
There is a dirt path through the woods, but I took the quiet neighborhood street to the Seward Highway. (#2) The pictures below are getting under the Seward Highway - the box on the map by #2.











This is where the little dirt path begins to go down and under the first of the four bridges (one each for north and south of Seward Highway, and a frontage road bridge on each side).















Down under the bridges.









While traffic whizzes by above, down under the bridges it's a totally different world.





And after the last bridge, now on the west side of the Seward Highway, you take another small dirt path and the new bike trail begins again with this wooden bridge.
.






















Note on this post. The reason I went to Dimond was to buy iLife08 which includes iMovie08 - a totally new way of putting together movies from iMovie06. I did this movie in the new software just by going to help when I had a problem. It is incredibly easy and intuitive. And I saw the other day that there is a new upload video button on blogger, so I wanted to try that out too. It would mean not having to post first on Viddler. But it is taking forever to upload. Let's see what it looks like when it's done.
Well, there's the answer. [When I'm making the post, there's a video screen saying "Uploading Video" but I also got a message saying it can't upload it.] It appears that I can't upload it in Viddler, it's too long for YouTube and it didn't upload here. A quick Google shows that a lot of people are having trouble with iMovie. So I'll just post this for now and see what I can do. [And it doesn't come up. I'm guessing it's too big. But the file format doesn't work for Viddler and it's clearly too big for YouTube.]

Sicko

Say what you want, but Michael Moore knows how to frame an issue. And we all have had enough experience with US health care to know that he's not just making this up. Stories of people who didn't qualify for health care. About a lady who had a surgery and then her insurance said she had lied about her health record - a minor yeast infection that had absolutely nothing to do with her condition - and so she really wasn't eligible for the surgery and should return the $7,000 payment.

Then they interviewed someone who had worked for the insurance companies whose job it was to go thru people's medical records - after they'd had an expensive procedure - and find something in their record - like a yeast infection - they could use as an excuse to drop them.

The interviewed doctors who talked about the incentives - bonuses for rejecting the most procedures, promotions because they had saved the company money by rejecting needed procedures. We heard stories of people who died because of refused procedures. Here are a few clips I took in the theater to go with this review.



Moore effectively attacks the stories that Americans have been taught about health care. Here are a couple of the myths he challenges:

1. America has the best health care in the world
2. The free public health systems in Canada and England are second class, you have to wait forever for treatment, and the doctors are poor.
3. Cuba is a wretched country
4. Americans take care of their own

He challenges #s 1 and 2 by looking at people with similar health issues in the US and in other countries and how they got treated. A man in the US without health insurance who cut off the ends of two fingers is told - the middle finger will cost you $70,000 to fix, the ring finger $12,000. Which do you want? Then they showed a guy in Canada who cut off four whole fingers and had them all reattached - and he could move them - for free. You saw the sick baby comparison in the movie. They tour health care in England looking for the terribly things people say about it and find it pretty good.

OK, I'm sure you can find horror stories in Canada and England, just as you can find stories of good care in the US. My wife and I have had good care with caring doctors in nice facilities. But we are also hearing from friends who are turning 65 who are having trouble finding doctors who will take patients on medicare.

The real issue is the outcomes. The statistics he gives are consistent with others I've heard showing the US lower in critical stats such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy than these other countries with free health care - even Cuba. If you're thinking, "that's BS," I'd ask you to stop and think why you think that. Probably because it goes against the stories in your head that we have the best health care. Go look up the statistics - not on Rush Limbaugh's site, but at the US Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. Here's a table I put together from two WHO stats, you can see life expectancy and costs.



According to this table, Moore was wrong. Cuban life expectancy for both males and females for infants is .7 years lower than US life expectancy. On the other hand, Cuba manages to be that close paying 3.7% of what the US pays for health care. Maybe the US should contract out our health care system to Cuba.

And finally Moore shows footage of various politicians, including Bush, talking about our great heroes who worked to rescue people after 9/11. Then he interviews some of them five years later with respiratory diseases and other problems who can't get the health care they need. He takes them and other people he's interviewed for the movie to Cuba where one gets $120 worth of medication at home for 3 cents, and everyone gets looked at with fancy equipment, diagnosed, and some treatment and a health plan for home. Would you get treated like that in Cuba if you walked in off the street and didn't have a camera crew with you? I don't know. I do know years ago an older friend of ours got great treatment for a stroke while visiting Canada at no cost. And in Thailand recently, my wife got rabies shots after she was bitten by a dog, for about $20 per shot. From a list serve discussion of rabies in North Carolina:

>Treatment involves at least 6 injections in the arm, given over 28 days.
>More injections are sometimes given near a wound, if the rabid animal has
>broken its victim's skin. The cost typically ranges from $1500 to $2000 and
>is often covered by insurance

If we take the low figure, that would be $250 per shot. More than 10 times the cost in Thailand.

This movie takes on people's myths about America's greatness, about the efficiency of the market, about how bad other countries are. This confrontation with a view of things different from the propaganda we're used to seeing will cause many people to go into denial. They will sit and squirm in this movie, because they'll have to deal with their own deception. But they'll know from their own experiences or from that of friends and relatives, that these stories ring true.

Truer than the images we get in commercials from the health care systems or from politicians who have received large campaign contributions from these industries. Politicians who have been wined and dined and flown to nice resorts by their lobbyists.

I read somewhere that the difference between Russian newspaper readers and Americans was that the Russians KNEW their papers were all lies and thus they learned how to read between the lines.

Backyard Bird Fest

There were so many birds in the backyard this afternoon. After seeing flashes of yellow and a couple of red breasted nuthatches were flitting right outside the window, I took the Canon Powershot 550 out to see what I could get. It took me about 15 minutes of waiting and shooting to fill my 2 gb sd-card. Downloaded and checked that video and decided to go find the old tripod. Wow, what a difference. Duh. Then as soon as I sat down, the Steller Jay came.

Political CSI Part 2 - Veracifier Does Don

I posted about Political CSI Thursday and suggested the folks at the Next Hurrah did that sort of thing. But probably what they do is more like real crime investigators do and Veracifier does more like the tv show - simplifies Political CSI for average folk. Thanks to Kodiak Konfidential for this link on Don Young.

And Here's the Rain

Video shot about 24 hours after the picture in the previous post of the Ring. So at least this time it was true: "Ring Around the Sun Means Rain Coming Soon."

Broadway Under the Stars Sun

The MacBook I got about three weeks ago has iMovie 6, which I spent most of today learning to put together this video of last night's outdoor concert. Christian Heppinstall and Theatre Artists United put on the show with help from various other folks. And now that I've got down the basics of iMovie 6, iMovie 7 came out this past week, and Ben from the Apple Store at CompUSA says it is completely different. Oh well, another obsolete skill.





I continue to be pleased with Viddler. The problems with the video can all be put on me. But considering this is all recorded with my digital camera, it's not too bad. Stabilizing would be helpful in a few places. A second camera would be really helpful. But it was a fun evening, with a big crowd out in the beautiful weather.

Viddler vs. YouTube

Here's my July salmon spawning video as saved on Viddler.




And here's the best quality I could get onto YouTube.




So, which one is better?

Alaska Railroad Video Using Viddler

Yesterday when we got back to the car parked at Indian, we went down to the beach. Just after we got there, a train went by, but I had just enough time to find a good rock tripod for the camera. And then I discovered an alternative to YouTube called Viddler. You'll notice that not only is the video quality significantly better (and judging from other Viddler videos, if I had saved it as higher quality it would be better), but there are some neat features. You can leave comments at specific places in the video for example. Place the cursor on the top edge of the video to see all the options.

The train was at 4:15pm. A short passenger train that we assume



We assumed that this train was headed for Whittier or possibly Seward. So I thought I'd be really clever and check the Alaska Railroad schedule and tell you exactly. The train passed Indian at 4:15 pm or so. The Seward bound trains leave Anchorage at 6:45am and arrives in Seward at 11:05am. So that can't be it. So let's check the Whitter Schedule and we get:

Departure Information:
10:00 AM depart Anchorage Depot, arrive Whittier 12:20 PM

So I guess this is the mystery train running on its own schedule. Or is this one of those trains that goes from the Bill Sheffield Depot at the airport and is only for cruise passengers?

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in Anchorage

Fleck was on my radar enough to know that I should go hear him, but I don't know that I'd heard him before. We were up so high that the seat belt sign was on through the whole concert, but not high enough to be able to use our electronic equipment during the flight. So I took my pictures before, during intermission, and at the encore. I figured that didn't really count as the concert. We were so high up, and it was so dark, it didn't really matter.




In fact, these two shots during the encore give you a much better sense of the music. It was definitely the kind of music I like - sort of a combination of electronic, jazz, with banjo. The guitarist and (Fleck on) the banjo pushed those instruments about as far out of their normal ranges as Hendrix pushed on the Star Spangled Banner. Not the same way he did, but that far. Often it was like a where's waldo, and every once in a while there'd a shadow of be something I thought I recognized - Norwegian Wood, Amazing Grace (well that was more than a shadow), Come Together, Chopsticks, etc. But mostly it was combinations of sounds and silences that one doesn't normally hear put together.


And in his final banjo solo, Fleck had the spirits of all the great pickers of stringed instruments of the US hill country, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia helping him.



I obeyed the written instructions on the program and didn't record. But you really can't report on these guys without some sound, so I found this video on Youtube. It isn't our concert. All four performers we saw are in it, though we didn't see this number.






And when the concert was over almost three hours later at 10:30pm, we spilled out into a balmy evening.

We Need to Know More About Bob Penney

In an earlier post I discussed Lisa Murkowski's selling back the land she bought cheap next to real estate developer Bob Penney's house on the Kenai River. (For the non-Alaskans, that's KEY-nai, emphasis on the KEY.)

But I suspect the really interesting character in this story is Bob Penney. His name has been in and out of the news since we arrived in Alaska 30 years ago. He's been a big proponent of sports fishing. We really need to learn more about all the things he's been involved with. The quote below and then the video deal with Penney's knowledge of the value of the land.

From a Richard Mauer and Brandon Loomis Anchorage Daily News piece on July 25, 2007,

“The denial of knowledge of the value of a prime piece of real estate by a multimillionaire developer who lived next to the property and an attorney/real estate investor turned U.S. Senator took on comic opera overtones when Penney told the press: ‘Word of honor, I did not know what the assessed value was … I thought it was still $120,000,’” Boehm wrote.
“It doesn’t pass the straight-face test or the laugh test,” Boehm said in an interview. “On what planet is that an excuse?”

To add to Boehm's point, here's a video from Veracifier at Youtube in which

Real Estate developer Bob Penney testifies at a hearing on the "Ecocomics of Sports Fishing," April 24, 2007

By the way, I still haven't heard back on the email I sent Penney's company on the 27th offering to buy the land he'd just gotten back.

[More on Penney here and here.]

GRRRR! Youtube Quality destroys Salmon Video

Took Beth (who's visiting from Texas) to Campbell Creek as the rain mostly ended Friday afternoon. Salmon were making their way up the creek and they are red enough at this point that this one showed up pretty well in the video I took. But saving it in a format small enough for Youtube made this all but unviewable. But I've been playing with it for so long I'm going to put it up anyway in hopes that someone can suggest a better way to save it or a better video host than youtube. (I saved it from i-movie. The best quality was 332 MB - too big for youtube. The next best was 12mb - that's the one you see here. Pretty awful. Not only does the crystal clear water water look muddy, you can barely see the fish until near the end.)

Time for Us All to Stand Up to Bush and Cheney

Attending and posting on the Anderson trial has kept me from addressing another important issue: the commuting of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. With so much to be said about this, how does one zero in on the truly important issues here? Let me try to articulate why I think this is such an important event.

Our nation is founded on the rule of law. The Constitution spells out the compact that Americans have. It outlines the procedures by which we will make decisions. It is this set of procedures and the laws made following those procedures that have made the US a special place in the world. We make decisions based on a set of rules we that all have a role in establishing and changing. We don't make decisions through the whim of a monarch or through violence. Not everyone follows those rules, and we may not always find 'truth' in the court, but even if there are mistakes, there are further procedures with which to correct those mistakes.

Thus obstruction of justice is not a minor crime, it is an assault against the foundations of the United States of America. Bush has now said, "Fuck the Rule of Law. Libby is one my friends and I don't want him to go to prison." [I almost never use "Fuck." Not because I'm a prude, but because if we use it all the time, it loses the power it has as a taboo word. I use here, then, with all the shock value it once had, to say, "This is serious."]

But he hasn't denounced the Special Prosecutor or the Judge. When Clinton was impeached, he faced a conservative Special Prosecutor and a Republican controlled Congress. But in Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald and Judge Reggie Walton, Libby was facing people appointed by George W. Bush.


Essentially, this event should make clear to even the most obstinate Bush supporter that

• the rule in the administration is not the rule of law, but the protection of their own interests. But we knew that after the 2000 Florida voting theft.
  
• Criminals aren't people who break laws, they are people Bush and friends don't like. There is nothing wrong with five years at Guantanamo for people who have never been charged with a crime, but one night in prison is one too many for our close friends.
  

I'm convinced this is not just, or even, a gesture to a friend. I'm persuaded by Marcy Wheeler it is also a way to insure that Libby will not reveal what he knows about Cheney's and Bush's obstruction of justice in the Plame leak and who knows what all else. There isn't one single event that is the turning point in any trend, but this one shows that those who are guilty in Bush's campaign to dismantle the Constitution and establish a dynasty, will be taken care of and that American justice as we knew it (think Guantanamo, secret detention camps, firing US attorneys as well) no longer exists. If we don't stand up now to stop this assault, it will be much harder to stop things later on.

Even if you only say, "Commuting Libby's sentence is an outrage. I expect you as my (Representative/Senator) to do something immediately to get to the bottom of this" now is a good time to write to you legislators.

Other bloggers are all over this.

I've mentioned before a minor addiction to the Blog Next Hurrah and the key blogger there, Marcy Wheeler. She and her commenters mostly write with knowledge and insight. She sat through the Libby trial and blogged live from the Libby sentencing. She knows this as well as the attorneys involved almost.Here's what she has to say about commuting his sentence. Her take is that commuting Libby's sentence (and presumably the fat legal defense fund that was raised to help Libby will take care of the $250,000 fine) will ensure that Libby won't say what he knows about Bush and Cheney's involvement in obstructing justice. Here she is on MSNBC in the video.

Sierra Leone Refugee All Star Band Rolls Anchorage

The movie didn't really prepare us for how fantastic this concert would be. These guys have come a long way from their first concerts at the refugee camp in Guinea after they fled the slaughter in Freetown, Sierra Leone. But the movie had introduced us to the story of how they formed and we felt we knew most of those on stage.

The concert was incredible. From the very first note, there were people in front and some in the audience dancing. By the two encore pieces, only the deaf and lame were still in their seats, the rest of us were up and moving to the music. I'd strongly recommend checking out their schedule and going to see them when they are nearby. They have a very busy travel schedule, through the US - west coast from here - with some stops in Europe as well. It's an interesting mix of venues from the University here to the Hollywood Bowl in LA. Get their CD Living Like a Refugee

The video just captures a few snippets. Remember, this is with a little Canon digital camera, so the video and audio are just a hint at what we experienced.















After the show, members of the band came out of the auditorium and talked with audience members in the parking lot. Reuben wrote most of the songs and was the original leader of the band.






Ashade Pearce just bubbled with warmth as we talked.



Signing autographs on posters and CD covers.

"How else can you explain the lack of legislative outrage?"

Let's look at a couple (of the many possible) references to political corruption. John Strohmeyer's column in the ADN yesterday calling for the Alaska legislature to move out of Juneau and Marcus Stern's Pulitzer Prize winning book on Randy "Duke" Cunningham.



"This is about as crass as bribery can get. But such is the environment in Juneau. It is a cesspool for political corruption. There are no whistle-blowers in the legislative chambers. Legislators learn soon they are accountable to each other more than to the people they represent. How else can you explain the lack of legislative outrage when Senate president Ben Stevens, R-Anchorage, who was paid a total of $243,250 by Veco, prevailed without challenge last year in the thick of the negotiations over oil and gas taxes." Drag political cesspool out of Juneau, ADN, May 22, 2007.

My question echoes Strohmeyers lament about the lack of legislative outrage: why it is so hard to stand up to corrupt politicians? OK, I know the basics, but if we are going to make being corrupt harder, we have to really understand the forces that keep the good politicians from bringing down their corrupt colleagues and keep the public from voting them out. I'll start a few conjectures here and I hope to pursue this further.

OK, let's start on factors that 'allow' corruption to flourish:

1. Strohmeyer's conclusion is that Juneau is the problem. Juneau is too small and too isolated. But the Cunningham case took place in Washington DC, so do we move the US capital out of DC? I suspect that wherever the capital is, these forces will converge there. So we have to understand the forces.

2. Power certainly plays a big role.
A. Minority v. Majority power - Minority leader Ethan Berkowitz chastised now indicted Rep. Weyhrauch on the house floor of being at the beck and call of lobbyists. You can hear that exchange in an earlier post. Berkowitz made the attempt to call attention to the blatant behavior, but to little avail. Or maybe the accumulation of a lot of evidence like this played a role in the eventual investigations and indictments.
B. Bullying and bluster - Ken Silverstein, in a Harper's interview with Stern writes, "When former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder stood up to challenge him [Cunningham] he called her a socialist and told her to sit down." He links to this video:

Standing up to such bullying is tiring. It would be interesting to study politicians who shout down their critics with anger and name calling and questionable behavior.
C. Retaliation - Seats on important committees are taken away. Favored bills are sabotaged. Funding for one's district is cut. Those willing to stand up to corruption often find themselves isolated and powerless. This is closely related to A - Majority v. Minority power.
D. Structural interdependence - how committees are established, assignments made, the power of committee chairs over agendas, the need for campaign funds, all weave a net that makes it difficult for politicians to fight as individuals against corruption. All these entanglements mean that every politician is liable to have some skeleton in the closet - an earmark for an important donor, a paid trip, attendance at a conference that later gets tied to a questionable person or cause. Thus anyone who stands up, invites scrutiny of his or her record, and attack, whether justified or not.

3. Time and resources - In today's Fresh Air, Marcus Stern said Cunningham first came to his attention seven years ago when two women staffers he knew told him about being invited to Cunningham's boat one night. He looked into it, but eventually gave it up.

4. Access to information - Moving suspicion to proof isn't easy. Rep. Berkowitz and others in Juneau couldn't secretly tape the conversations in the Baranof Hotel's Room 604 the way the FBI could. Tracking down who bought Cunningham's house for $1.6 million and later sold it for $700,000 less takes research skills and the knowledge to make the necessary connections.

5. Stories, Models, Narratives - Beliefs people have in their heads play a critical role in limiting or empowering them. The stories about how things work, about what's important, about what they can and should do, all affect how they react to others. Whether they even see the corrupt behavior. And when they do, whether they accept it as normal or outrageous. And if outrageous, whether they have the power to do anything about it. And if they take action, what they might lose. So, some fellow legislators see nothing wrong in what their corrupt colleagues are doing. Others see it and accept it as 'the way things are.' Some stand up to it. What differentiates them?

OK, that's enough for this post. There's lots more to explore here. I haven't even touched why citizens reelect someone with clear signs of problems such as the FBI searching his office and carting off files and other evidence.


Ultimately, it seems to me that if it is true that the vast majority of legislators are honest and well intended, that they must unite and stand up as a block against violation. It isn't easy, if getting tainted is inherent in the fund raising necessary to get elected. The possibility of not winning the next election is clearly the price one has to accept in order to keep one's honor (if only to oneself) and to look after the public's interest.

There are examples of people successfully standing up as I've mentioned earlier. The current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, stood up to her party bosses and beat them. Ray Metcalf kept after Ben Stevens, in what seemed like a Quixotic effort until the FBI stepped in.

Midnight Soapscum:Porn! #6 at OutNorth

Christian Heppinstall has been writing, directing, and acting in a live soap opera- Midnight Soapscum:Porn! It was supposed to be a playful, but serious exploration of the porn industry and Christian did a lot of reading and websurfing in preparation. The porn studio was going to do all the Shakespeare plays as porn. We were out of town for the first two episodes. We caught the third episode, but have missed the next two and finally Saturday night got to see episode #6. It was held at OutNorth, beginning in the art gallery with music by Tom Begich and friends. The ADN wrote (and I can't say it any more succinctly):

"Queer Space will attempt to capture 2,500 years of gay and lesbian drama, poetry, essays and short stories in a single night of theater this weekend at Out North, culminating with a melodramatic, absurdist soap opera about people trapped in or happily employed by the porn industry.

"It is a straight-friendly celebration of inspiring and funny literature from the Greeks through today that concludes each night with Alaska's most contemporary gay and straight performance work, 'Midnight Soapscum: Porn!'?" said Christian Heppinstall, the director of both shows.

The cast at the opening of the episode.

Thirteen performers will enact works by the likes of Sappho, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Whitman and Maupin, followed by the sixth episode of a live soap opera that includes a riotous hostage crisis, space aliens, a post-operation tryst between a transsexual and hermaphrodite from Transylvania, and far too much smooching."

Queer Space was 13 black clad actors sitting in a circle on a black stage The readers alternately stood and each with passion, wit, humor, and all with considerable talent and great timing read short passages from the writers spanning over 2000 years. The passages variously praised, described, lamented, and condemned love between same sex partners.


Soapscum never quite lived up to its promise to seriously consider the impact of pornography on society, though the relationships, the lies (Narcisso really didn't have a wife and ten children it turned out), the emotions, the money, the titillation, and the press' fixation on celebrity and various other consequences and impacts of porn were there on the surface as the scenes rapidly changed. The quality of the acting was impressive and it was never dull. Considering that Broadway plays spend a lot of time on the road working out the kinks, and that Christian has been writing the episodes as the run proceeds, with little time for the ensemble of actors to rehearse before the performances, it was quite good. And considering how much a Broadway play costs, I'm sure the value here (quality of script and performance/time+money spent) is considerably greater than any Broadway show.


Things went by so fast, I really don't remember where the aliens came from, though I guess the point was that other people were not necessary for sex if you have the right technology (they had a pleasure ball, that produced spectacular orgasm when you held it.)

I'm not sure if this clip from a previous episode that I got from Youtube proves that a) the live show just can't be captured on video tape or b) the show, isolated from the whole environment of the theater, is pretty thin. All I can say is that we enjoyed the two episodes we saw, and I stand by what I said above - this is a a rough draft that needs the kinks worked out and some of the social commentary originally envisioned to be slipped in.

Denali Trip 3 - Bears, Wolf video

Thursday was a great animal viewing day. Lots of caribou, hares, ptarmigan. A Northern Harrier. At the Teklanika River bus stop the tour bus passengers were using the facilities and out on the deck looking out over the river. Way over on the other side was a mother grizzly with three cubs, probably last year's. With the binoculars you could see them enjoying themselves first on the ice and then in the brush. There was also a herd of about 20 caribou grazing its way slowly toward the bears, maybe a mile or two off. But we wanted to walk. The road is blocked off for cars at that point, but you can walk. We quickly got down to the bridge over the river. And then continued on along the road for an hour. Part of the time we walked with a young Spanish couple who were going on to camp for a couple of days. They were equipped with their bear proof food containers (the park supplies those to backpackers) and their bear spray. They weren't happy that there were no rental bikes available this early in the season, but were enjoying the fact that we had the road pretty much to ourselves and the various park service vehicles. At mile 33 we said goodbye and turned around as they continued on.

When we got back to the bus stop the four bears were still there, and a quarter mile up the road cars were parked looking at another two bears playing on the ice shelf. I'm sure the giant telephoto lenses people had are great, but you have to wonder about their phallic symbolism. Anyway, I decided to try a little video since maybe the movement would show up better than I could get with a still. Had to push the telephoto all the way so it's pretty rough, but it gives you an idea. The second part of the video (and don't worry, it's very short) is much better. It's a wolf that came onto the road about 15 minutes later as we were driving along.

It crossed the road and disappeared. Some cars stopped to find out what we were stopped for, but they couldn't find the wolf. After they left, we saw it again, loping through the brush. Fortunately for the others, it was pretty fast, and a mile or two later we saw the cars stopped along the road watching the wolf continue at very good speed. Again, the pictures are great. This documentation rather than photography.