The ADN Won't Review This Play

Seafarer at Cyrano's before Act I

We only got back to Anchorage late Wednesday night, but I was getting emails already in LA inviting me to give money at receptions Thursday night, for about five or six candidates, there was a talk at UAA, and an email from Cyrano's about The Seafarer.  

"...each member of the cast nailed it. I felt intoxicated myself just from watching the booze go down. The way they tossed those lines around, with that Irish version of the English language, was the best, most realistic conversational exchange I've ever seen in a play (didn't seem like I was watching a 'play')." -- Kerry Feldman

"The Seafarers is FANTASTIC. I'm super impressed with the acting. Congrats on a great show." -- Scott Schofield  [Note:  Everything else calls it The Seafarer.]

Sandy Harper, Cyrano Producing Artistic Director, post show

I've known Kerry for a long, long time at UAA, and I've met Scott a few times now at Out North and if they both gave such strong recommendations, I had better pay attention.  ( I didn't realize until I read the program Thursday night, that Kerry is a member of the Cyrano's Theatre Company and one of Scott's 'sustaining volunteers' at Out North was one of the actors in Seafarer.) 

I called to see if there were still seats left for tonight's show and there were.  

I'm not a fan of literature that focuses on dysfunctional alcoholics. (Are there functional alcoholics?)   It's painful to watch and it's not a world with which I identify.  But  these works take me into a world I don't know and can learn from.  If they're done well.  It took me a while to get over my bias, but as things progressed, the play had a lot more to say than I was expecting. 

Dick Reichman as Richard Harkin (after the show)

It turned out to be outstanding - five male parts, all with Irish accents - and the playwright, Conor McPherson is hailed in the program as "the best new playwright of his generation."  Of course, I had to check that.  Wikipedia says, "He is considered one of the best contemporary Irish playwrights."   The LA Times review of his recent movie "Eclipse" was very positive.





And I feel a responsibility to let Anchorage folks know this is really good theater and you have just Friday and Saturday evenings at 7pm and Sunday afternoon at 3pm to see it. I asked Sandy if there were tickets left and she said yes.  But tonight's show was pretty close to full, so I'd recommend you get tickets ahead.  Cyrano's is downtown at 413 D St.

Why a responsibility?  The play's program says:

So, here I am online telling Anchorage and beyond. 

You aren't allowed to take pictures during the performance so the ones here were taken before the play started - at the beginning and during the intermission - and after it was over.  So the actors I caught were out of costume.  Except Sharky's band aid which Rodney Lamb forgot to take off. 

The Guardian wrote about McPherson and this play:

Mark Stoneburner as Nicky Giblin (post play)

There's a distinctive sound Conor McPherson makes when he describes how he writes plays: a sort of viscous, splurting noise, like something gooey landing, splat, on a table. Plays come "very much from the unconscious for me", he says. "I describe it as coming from the body and your brain is catching up." It starts when an image arrives unprompted in his head; slowly the people it contains start to move and talk, then splurt: there they are on the page.

It's not an explanation that quite does justice to the poetry and magic of his work. Ever since The Weir opened in London in 1997, when he was just 25, McPherson has held audiences and critics spellbound with his tales of lost souls and troubled lives. Often, the trouble he depicts reflects his own: although he says he never sets out to write about his own experience, you can trace the path of his life in the stories of alcohol abuse, broken relationships, death and disappointed hope he depicts.

Rodney Lamb as Sharky (post play)

Next week he makes his debut at the National Theatre with The Seafarer, a fable about two brothers - one an incorrigible drunk, the other newly, tentatively sober - playing host to the devil on Christmas Eve. McPherson is the first to admit: "I'm all the characters in the play" - perhaps most especially the disappointed demon, Lockheart [all the other sources leave out the 'e'], who envies the men among whom he moves. McPherson wrote the play in fewer than eight months; it could be his most moving, accomplished work yet. .  .

 By the way, Wikipedia says the play's name comes from an old poem by that name.

The Seafarer is an Old English poem recorded in the Exeter Book, one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry. It contains 124 lines and has been commonly referred to as an elegy, a poem that mourns a loss, or has the more general meaning of a simply sorrowful piece of writing. . .

It is told from the point of view of an old seafarer, who is reminiscing and evaluating his life as he has lived it. In lines 1–33a, the seafarer describes the desolate hardships of life on the wintry sea. He describes the anxious feelings, cold-wetness, and solitude of the sea voyage in contrast to life on land where men are surrounded by kinsmen, free from dangers, and full on food and wine. . .  [There's more at Wikipedia The Seafarer.]

Just before Act II

 

 I probably better mention that Brian Saylor did the set design.  I worked with him at UAA  too.   

Boxing, Soccer, Private Jet, Lemons, and an Old Chair

I still have things to post from LA, so they'll show up for the next few days.


I ran around the Santa Monica airport Monday and here are a few shots.


These two guys - Ignacio and Rudolfo - were working hard in the hot sun.  (The fog rolled in Monday evening and Tuesday was cooler.)

At the same park overlooking the airport there was 

a woman's soccer (real football) team practicing.

People have their private jets parked along the fence next to the park.  If we want to talk about government services for the wealthy, I'm sure that the fees folks pay for using the Santa Monica airport don't pay for what it costs the City of Santa Monica - especially if you consider the lost property taxes on this huge area.  Now, I do believe in government infrastructure, and keeping this open land rather than increasing the population density is a good thing, but I suspect a relatively small percent of the population actually use this one and a large percent of the users are probably in the higher income levels.  (This is all speculation.  Someone else can see if there's something there or not.  A lot of the airport is being filled in - Santa Monica City College buildings, restaurants, more soccer fields and playgrounds, a place for live theater, etc.)

The birds of paradise were blooming.

I ran down this Santa Monica alley to see the backsides of the houses.

This lemon tree leaned over the fence into the alley.

And this chair beckoned, but I kept on.

LA - SLC - Anchorage

We biked down to Venice Beach to get in a bit of beach time before leaving.  The fog had cleared up about 11am but was coming back at 1pm already.  But it was nice being there and the sun was visible, barely.

There were flu shots available at our gate at the airport.

There was an entry for Free Public Wifi at LAX on my computer, and it checked it off, but I wasn't getting anything.  I think they want you to pay T-mobile instead.   I forgot to mention that Vancouver's Airport had free Wifi. 

The fog was pretty low at LAX.

 But we were above it in ten or fifteen seconds.  (Two people and google have told me that black spot is on my sensor and I have to open the camera and clean it.  Now I'm back home I'll take it in.  Someone else said it was easy to fix in Photoshop.  Sometimes I've cropped it out.  A couple of times I've rubberstamped it out.  Mostly I try to get it on a background where it won't show.  And it isn't always there with other light source exposures.)

This picture, according to the map in the plane, was almost at Victorville.

We landed in Salt Lake City about 8:45pm and were back in the air at 9:35pm.  Enough time to find our gate, pee, and buy a sandwich.  And take this picture. 

Flying Delta through SLC added two hours and saved $100 each compared to the LA-Anchorage nonstop on Alaska. 

Too dark and too bumpy to get a sharp shot, but here's Anchorage as we pass by to turn around and come in from the north.

People coming off the plane in Terminal B.

And for the record, there's now a Humpy's in Terminal B. 


It's good to be back and the low 30's (about 1˚C) didn't feel too bad.  But it did feel like we've been gone forever, not three weeks.

No Spoiler Movie Reviews - Catfish - The Movie

The best way to see a movie is to go knowing nothing about it.  No preconceptions, no expectations, it's up to you to see, figure out, and experience the movie on your own.

On the other hand, you could go to a lot of junky movies.

As I tried to find a movie that was playing in LA but less likely to be in Anchorage Monday, I ran into the problem of having to look at the reviews.

Well written and well thought out reviews are good after you see the movie.

What we need is a new form of movie review.  The reviewers list about 20 films they really liked, 20 that were 'OK', and 20 they didn't like.  Then you can see if a particular reviewer's taste matches yours.  Then you could see if he likes a movie or not and decide on that alone without getting any spoilers.

Another option would be to list what you like and don't like in movies.

That said, I like movies if:

they are technically interesting
they draw me in so that I forget I'm at the movies
the actors are so good I forget they're acting
I learn something
I'm amazed
They stretch the medium a bit and me as well


I'm not excited about seeing a lot of violence, especially if it isn't integral to the story.

While I didn't read more than a bit of one review, I read enough to take away some of what I should have discovered myself while watching the movie.  So, my review below will be very careful NOT to do that.

I liked Catfish.

It fused internet visuals appropriately and cleverly, the main actor was very engaging and likable, and the story was relevant to the modern world and poignant.  It dragged a bit toward the end, and you do learn why it's titled Catfish.  I suspect they started out with that idea and then the movie went off in its own direction and in the end the explanation of Catfish seemed a little contrived.  That's all I'm going to say.

The movie made me think of  "Run Lola Run."  It's not nearly as tight and good a movie, but it's clever in its own way.  There are problems, but they are minor.

Oh, yes, at the Landmark, not far from my Mom's, you have to choose your seat before going into the theater.  As we did that, I thought, "Gee the theater must be tiny."  It turned out that we were in the "lounge."  A theater with maybe 25 seats - but all very cushy couch like seats. 

Sorry about the photo, it was the best I could do quickly as we left.  But you get the idea.





[UPDATE:  October 17, 2010:  This NY Times piece "Documentaries (in Name Only) of Every Stripe" talks about the tantalizing questions in Catfish I didn't address here so as not to spoil the movie.  Don't read this until after you've seen the movie!]

Night Window Shopping on Westwood

We managed to see a movie and have dinner last night. Then walked along Westwood Blvd. for about ten blocks.

California's Prop 19 to Legalize Marijuana

See what we miss in Alaska by not having billboards?

Actual Billboard

Sunday's front page LA Times article about the marijuana initiative by Shari Roan begins:

"In 1969, Carol McDonald was 28, married and the mother of two young children, out for an evening of fun with a couple who smoked marijuana. By the end of the evening she was on her way to a 19-year addiction."

Then it wanders through research that finds marijuana fairly benign to studies that are more critical.  And it looks at a lot of issues.

• Impact on Mexican drug cartels?
  A:  Make them less powerful or Make them push harder drugs harder. 
  
  
• Impact on addiction? 
  A:  Addicts will be treated rather than jailed or more people will become addicted.
  
  
• Impact on driving? 
  A:  Little or moderate impact, but significant if mixed with alcohol or no lab detectable effects on driving ability.
  
  
• Impact on lungs? 
  A:  Hard to tell "because a large portion of heavy marijuana users also smoke tobacco, which muddies the picture of marijuana's effects."
  
  
• Impact on brain functions?
  A:  "Experts tend to agree that smoking marijuana causes short-term memory loss, they disagree widely on the overall cognitive effects of the drug."
  
  
• Impact on people moving up to harder drugs?
  A:  Not really, but the younger kids are when they start, the more likely to be addicted.
  
  
• Impact on school performance?
  A:  Not as bad as alcohol, but will put you behind.
  
  
• Impact on marijuana use?
  A:  No one knows, but some say use will go up, others say with legal medical marijuana and widespread illegal use, it shouldn't increase by much.

Some things are generally agreed on:

• "that marijuana should be avoided during pregnancy and that it is harmful for people with mental illness or who are at risk for developing a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia." 

•  " Marijuana is addictive for about 9% of adults who use it (compared with about 15% who use alcohol and 15% who use cocaine), according to federal data. Because it is the most widely used illegal substance in the country, marijuana dependence is more common than addiction to either cocaine or heroin despite its lower addiction potential."

"The bottom line is that marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes," Gutwillig added. "It's far less addictive than either of them. People tend to use marijuana in smaller amounts. It does not have alcohol's noxious association with violence and reckless behavior. And you can't overdose."

Then there are some concerns about how the law will be implemented.  Finally it gets back to Carol McDonald.  After chronicling her years of addiction, the article ends

Even after what she went through, McDonald said she would like to see marijuana legalized so that people who have problems with the drug will be steered into treatment.

Even "as someone who has been far down the rabbit hole, I still don't think it's as dangerous as alcohol," she said. "But if I'd had any inkling of what it would do, I would have been more careful."

My take is that marijuana is a symbolic issue.  It goes back to the 60's.  If you were around then and believe the 60's represented a blossoming of freedom, opposition to hypocrisy, and the beginning of a new awareness of human rights and the environment, then you probably lean toward legalizing pot.

If you were around then and think those times began the slow collapse of the family and American tradition, then marijuana is the symbol of all that was wrong back then and you're likely to oppose legalizing pot.  (If you feel that way about the 60's, but weren't around then, you might not make the ideological link between pot and the 60's, especially if you experienced pot as you grew up.)

Alcohol brings a lot of problems to our society and one could argue that marijuana would just add to that.  But it seems to me that marijuana is far more benign than alcohol and we don't ban many things that carry risks (driving cars, owning guns, bungee jumping, etc.)  And banning marijuana (and other drugs) has spawned a huge illegal trade which is having catastrophic impacts on Mexico and the US. 

It seems reasonable to me to try this out in California and see what happens, see if we can't make things work better with legal marijuana than with illegal marijuana.  It won't be without harmful side effects, but we already have huge harmful side effects with it being illegal.

Besides, it's practically legal already according to an LA Times piece by George Skelton:

In California, selling marijuana for non-medicinal use is a felony. But possessing less than one ounce — about a sandwich baggie-full — is a low misdemeanor punishable by a fine.

Starting Jan. 1, pot smoking will be even less of a state crime. Under a bill recently signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it will be deemed an infraction, equivalent to a traffic ticket.

Since 1996, when voters approved Prop. 215, it has been legal in California to grow, sell and smoke marijuana for medical purposes, subject to local control. A "patient" needs only a doctor's "recommendation," not a prescription.

Merely a quarter of buyers at medicinal pot shops "are truly in need of it because of a medical condition," says attorney George Mull, president of the California Cannabis Assn., which advocates "reasonable regulation of medical marijuana." [emphasis added]

But I haven't studied this proposition in detail and lots of prominent people oppose Prop. 19. 

The LA Times endorses a NO vote.

Their print version on October 10 says that both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor (Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown) and for US Senator (Carly Fiorina and Barbara Boxer) and US Senator Dianne Feinstein oppose Prop 19.

So does the attorney for the California Cannabis Association quoted in the Skelton piece above:

Mull opposes Prop. 19, illustrating a split in the marijuana community.

And it would still be a Federal felony setting up a showdown between the Feds and the State.  Where are all those states' rights conservatives on this issue? 



Ballotmedia also has a lot of information on Prop. 19 including the full text.

A Weed by Any Other Name is Called Green Landscaping

Before we moved to Anchorage 30 some years ago, I checked annual precipitation.  Anchorage and LA, despite what people may think, get just about the same annual precipitation. LA's average is about 14 inches a year and Anchorage's is about 16.  (Note:  different sources offer different numbers, but they're not too different.) But in Anchorage the ground is covered by snow a good part of the year so the water in the soil is not used up.  What also sets them apart is that Anchorage gets its precipitation in relatively low amounts over many more days than LA. 

Here are a couple of lawn alternatives I saw as I ran today.  This is still not the majority of yards by a long shot.  But it's happening.

HGTV's post on lawn alternatives says in part:

Why plant a lawn that needs to be mowed 40 times a year when you could have a type of lawn that needs to be mowed four times a year, says alternative grass guru John Greenlee. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand that then you've got more time to do other things--like gardening."

. . .

Save money, time and resources
Meadow lawns are more expensive to plant than sod initially because many native grasses are difficult to grow from seed and thus potted plants are necessary. "Lawn is the cheapest thing to plant but it becomes the most expensive thing in the garden to maintain. So once you've planted a meadow, you'll get your money back--usually within the first year--from reduced maintenance, reduced water, fertilizer and all of those other things that a lawn requires."

The Freelibrary offers this:

No logic explains why most homeowners insist on a green lawn in this semi-arid region. We know our water has to be brought to us at great cost to the environment. And the water problem isn't likely to improve in the future, as more people crowd into the Los Angeles basin The Los Angeles Basin is the coastal sediment-filled plain located between the peninsular and transverse ranges in southern California in the United States containing the central part of the city of Los Angeles as well as its southern and southeastern suburbs (both in Los Angeles
..... Click the link for more information..

Some changes in our wasteful pattern of cultivating velvety vel·vet·y 
adj. vel·vet·i·er, vel·vet·i·est
1. Suggestive of the texture of velvet; soft and smooth: velvety skin.

2.
..... Click the link for more information., picture-perfect lawns are sure to come when water gets more expensive and California's rhythm of drought returns. Get a head start and begin planning a garden instead of a grass carpet that needs constant mowing, watering and fertilizing. Here are 10 alternatives to growing turf on your property. Each one requires less water than grass. [You can get those ten here.]

 And the Sonoma County Master Gardeners tells us that some cities are encouraging the move to green landscaping:

Cities and water agencies around the county are firmly on the bandwagon to help with the cost of water conservation and lawn replacement. Sonoma City and Valley of the Moon Water District both have "cash for grass" lawn replacement subsidy programs and the City of Santa Rosa also has a rainwater harvesting rebate program. Several other cities offer rebates or programs, and the Sonoma County Water Agency may again offer a low-cost loan or other program--stay tuned.

One important big weather difference between Los Angeles and Anchorage is that Anchorage is in the Top 10 Clean Air Cities and LA is in the Top 10 Dirty Air Cities.

The California Budget Deadline and Human Capabilities

Article IV, Section 12 c(3) of the California Constitution says:

The Legislature shall pass the budget bill by midnight on June 15 of each year. 

This past Friday, October 8,  the legislature finally passed the budget - more than100 days after the fiscal year began. 
How can this happen?  How can the legislature be in violation of the State Constitution - 23 times out of the last 24 years it seems.

If your boss told you to jump over the building you work at, you'd laugh.
But if your boss told you do some report that was as impossible as jumping over the building, odds are you'd start scrambling to do it. 

We understand our physical limits better than we understand the limits of the more subjective aspects of our lives.  Is the

In addition to the June 15 deadline, the budget has to be passed by a 2/3 majority, a requirement added in 1933.  Given that the Republicans and Democrats ideologically disagree about how the world works and how human beings work, and given that each legislator has control only of his or her own vote - I suspect the deadline and the 2/3 majority requirement is like asking the Legislature to jump over the Capitol Building. 

The Constitution is a piece of paper created and recreated by human beings.  It's real to the extent that people believe in it. 

The California Constitution requires the budget to be passed by June 15, but if everyone looks the other way, it doesn't matter. 

To add one more hurdle to getting to the deadline on time, in 1978, as part of Prop 13, a 2/3 vote requirement was added for increasing revenues. 

[from Wyoming Legislature]

A California State Senate document on the History of the Budget from Fiscal Year 1965-66  to FY 2009 - 2010 shows that of the budgets between 1965-66 and 1978-79 (Prop 13 passed in this Fiscal Year I believe),  six of the 15 years, the budget was 'chaptered' after the beginning of the July 1 fiscal year.  All but two of those were done within a few days of the deadline (by July 4.)  One was July 6 and the worst was July 13.  (The deadline to pass the budget was missed 14/15 times, but only six times late enough to miss the July 1 beginning of the Fiscal Year.)

Since FY 1978-79, the budget was chaptered by July 1 nine times out of 31.  (I'm not completely sure I'm reading it right since FY 2009-10 says they passed the legislation in February which isn't the case.)  The delays are much longer - this year over 100 days.

Does this mean that Prop 13 made it worse? There's a correlation, but we don't know for sure that's the cause.  It could be that the political divisions got too fractious. 

Proposition 25 on California's November ballot would eliminate the requirement for a 2/3 majority to pass the budget.  It also adds a consequence for legislators by, according to Sunday's LA Times Voter Guide, "causing them to forfeit their salaries and expenses for every day they fail to settle on a spending plan."    (In Alaska, State judges have their salary withheld if they fail to submit an affidavit that they have no pending decisions or opinions over six months old.)

Remembering that some things we expect others to do, or others expect us to do are impossible, is useful.  Actually knowing when something is impossible is a lot harder.  

Pew Poll: Religious Ignorance

Nicholas Kristof, in today's NY Times, has a column about the Pew Research Center poll on religion.  He writes,

Almost half of Catholics didn’t understand Communion. Most Protestants didn’t know that Martin Luther started the Reformation. Almost half of Jews didn’t realize Maimonides was Jewish. And atheists were among the best informed about religion.

 Looking at the questions he samples in his article, I can see why people failed the test.  He picked 13 that he characterized as dealing with extremism and fundamentalism.  Here are the first three:

1. Which holy book stipulates that a girl who does not bleed on her wedding night should be stoned to death?

• >ddd
a. Koran b. Old Testament c. (Hindu) Upanishads

2. Which holy text declares: “Let there be no compulsion in religion”?

• >x
a. Koran b. Gospel of Matthew c. Letter of Paul to the Romans

3. The terrorists who pioneered the suicide vest in modern times, and the use of women in terror attacks, were affiliated with which major religion?

a. Islam b. Christianity c. Hinduism

 You can find the other ten questions and the answers in Kristof's editorial.  (The NY Times online is still free, but you may have to register to read it.)

I bring this up only because I just put up three posts (Part I: Snowy Plover, Part II: Beach Hoppers, Part III: Kelp Flies) about how complicated the world is and the need to recognize how little we know instead of making bombastic  authoritative statements about things we don't understand.    He says the same thing this way:

. . . the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts.