Tai Chi Chuan, Everyday ...

So I took a Tai Chi lesson tonight, for the first time since I began rehearsing AM REV - which was maybe three months ago. I wouldn't have even gone this evening if Toni hadn't strongly encouraged me to. And yes, I am glad I went.

Even though I am lousy at it. I can't concentrate on anything for more than a moment, how can I breathe, relax and move without suddenly trying to make sure I don't forget to say this line differently, call so-and-so about an article, and damn do I really need to fart.

But tht's why I am there, to change all that. To improv. To keep moving towards ... something. I don't know. But I have a thing about those cute little shoes.

The new phone book is here!

Wow. The August print edition of theatermania.com came in the mail today. Woo boy! There's a photo of me in it! Way cool! Makes up for all the dumb things I said.

Seriously, though, it all helps. I am glad there is at least one publication in New York that has something on my show it. That's nothing but good.

Tech

Tomorrow we tech at Dobama. 8:30 in the morning. I should be in bed.

"Is Our Children Learning?"

The theatermania.com article on our show and several other Fringe offerings is now online, and a print version will soon be available all over Manhattan.

Yep. I cannot describe this show without making it sound wretched, no matter how I try.

"I get to share all the things I learned." Yes, I really said that. Because that's why we go to theater. To learn things.

There's Always Someone Cooler Than You ... In The New York Times

What's On David's iPod?
There's Always Someone Cooler Than You
Ben Folds
Sunny 16

Big, full-page article on the Fringe in the Times yesterday. No, we weren't featured, which is no big surprise - especially given what was featured. Some high profile plays or players, that's for sure.

What's a shame is that some of these shows were on my must-see list - and now I am almost certain there is no way I will get to see them. DOG SEES GOD: CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE BLOCKHEAD was a big favorite - an unauthorized look at what the Peanuts kids might have been like as teenagers. Right up my alley. What I didn't know was that the guy who was the gay friend in "Mean Girls" plays Charlie Brown. And now it's been written up in the Times. Might be sold out by opening. That happens.

I mean, I could see these shows, I could order my tickets now. But they are $15 a pop, and I want to see as many shows as possible. Unlike Minnesota, where Fringe artists see shows for free, we have to pay (admittedly, a discounted admission) and we have to wait until all other tickets are sold.

What obviously sucks about that last part is that you may wait until curtain to get in, not get in, and then you've blown any chance of running off to your second choice. Kinda messes up your schedule. I don't mind paying the five bucks, but this bit really ... well, it blows. Really blows. Really, really blows.

However, what I do know is that I will make it a personal goal for Saturday, August 14 to be ready and waiting with a handful of flyers to meet and greet the sell-out crowds leaving performances of YOU'LL HAVE HAD YOUR HOLE, BELIEVE IN ME: A BIGFOOT MUSICAL and yes, DOG SEES GOD.

Along with about a hundred other of us, I am sure.

Home at Last (Temporarily)

The Mayor of Cleveland, by the way, sends her regrets - she cannot attend the performance at Dobama on Thursday. But I was very pleased she, or rather one of her people, called. I thought that was classy.

So, anyway, we have made it home. There wasn't too much to report, at least as far as this show was concerned. Got a message from the BROWNTOWN peeps, apparently they, like I, have been "googling" ourselves to find out if there is any mention of us, anywhere. Other than that, we spent a largely stress-free three days getting home.

Okay, that's false, it was actually pretty stressful. Zelda couldn't understand why, after spending merely five days running around in the grass and sunshine and gravel and mud and seashells and everything it was necessary to get back into the damn car again (adorable photo of a sleeping child, notwithstanding.)

But I have a peculiar week ahead of me - beginning with my procrastinating, as a writer will, on a paid assignment. I need to turn in a five-hundred word piece on "what I did this summer" to Cleveland Magazine by Tuesday morning. Only this time it won't be about appearing naked in public, though it will be about something actually embarrassing. I will keep you in suspense, I will say it has to do with a ruffled collar and a pork rib.

On our way home we did stop in Elmira and check out Mark Twain's grave, speaking of dead children. The graves of the two daughters who predeceased him are there, as well as that of the one who lived. And did he not have a fourth daughter who died very, very young? We thought so, but there was no marker, at least not there. Now there was a man plagued by depression - and not without reason.

Oh, but about this week ... writing, getting back on top of my employment for Great Lakes Theater Festival (in this case - dry cleaning) and teching for the show at Dobama. Brian reassures me that everything is well in hand. I am not sure that means it will actually be a fun morning on Wednesday, especially as I will have to leave early to appear on Around Noon with Toni. The unvieling of Tunick's Cleveland portrait will be Friday evening, and they will we rebroadcasting our 'radio diary' on the first half of the show Wednesday, and then we're taking questions, live on the air. Hopefully Spencer will be available by phone, his next gig is this weekend in Buffalo.

Then the show Thursday, the unvieling at MOCA Friday ... and then I need to talk Brian and Kelly into leaving Saturday morning at, like, 3 AM or something to drive to NYC because I won't be sleeping anyway.

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - George W. Bush

"No News" Is Good News

Caught this on NeoPAL today - all three of you who read this blog regularly should be sure to check this show out tomorrow night at Cabaret Dada's Black Box. I would go, but I am in Maine. I expect a full report on my desk on Monday.

David Pratt has written a one-man show about his experiences dealing with the death of his daughter, Isabella. She had Thanatophoric Dysplasia and lived for a day. I have already been in touch with him - he says he had, at the age of 35, just finished his memoir when his daughter came into, and then left his life, and suddenly his "memoir" seemed a little self-involved.

I can say without fear of contradiction, I know exactly how that feels. I am so glad he has created this show, and hope I get to see it sooner or later.

Blogging Live from ... The Barnstable?

Friendship, ME
Who is here?
David, Toni, Zelda
Toni's entire family; Con, Chris, Locke & Adrienne
Most of David's family; Mom, Dad and Denny

Flood's Cove is not a very fancy place, and that's why we like it. The Barnstable (you can guess its origins) has brown paper on the walls to keep out drafts, and I was shocked when returning in 1990 after a five-year absence to discover hot running water and that a shower had been installed. This was luxury.

So you can imagine my surprise when, in a cabin with no cable (we received one and a half broadcast channels) and no phone at all - that Toni's iBook is receiving a WiFi signal. From where we do not know, there are a number of permanent residences in the area which may be connected, but none close. Denny suggested it may be one on Martin's Point - a distance from here, as the crow flies, of roughly a quarter-mile. But there's nothing between here and there but water, nothing to obstruct the signal.

It comes and goes. Cool. Weird. I should be walking in the woods, and not sitting here.

What Keeps David Moving
This morning's randomly generated playlist:
All Night - Sam Phillips
Piku - The Chemical Brothers
Pump Up the Volume - M/A/R/R/S
One Call Away - Chingy
Didi (Funk Club) - Khaled
I Do Not Want This - Nine Inch Nails

I have been running roughly three miles a day* since I got here, beginning with the hill that takes me out of the cove, and then following the road along Martin's Point. I get an excellent view of the water, the morning lobster boats (yes, I have chosen not the hear them) and the smell of the sea - today, the low tide smell. I usually run as far as my uncle Dave's place and back, but today I pushed it all the way to where the road ends ... another five hundred yards.

Moxie

I always drink Moxie when Downeast, the most horrific soda pop even invented. I am always surprised they still make it, I think it was bought out by Coca-Cola, but the natives raised such a hoopla they continue to make it just for them.

It's a less-sweet cola, which a subtle and extremely tasty licorice flavor ... and the nastiest aftertaste you can imagine for something that is supposed to be a sweet treat. But it's like your first beer, after a while you just enjoy the bits you like and stop paying attention to the parts you don't.

My entire extended family has taken to ripping on me every time I pour a glass.

[*actually 3.8 miles - 8/3/2014]

Full Fruit-Bowl

My article on the Spencer Tunick installation has been published in Cleveland Magazine. Three people, three different perspectives ... at least , that was the idea. Von Glahn was right, they all sound the same. We even all reported about the Nude Guy, ignorant of what the others were writing. Is that funny, or merely repetitive?

What's On David's iPod?
Everyone Is Someone in L.A.
Felix Da Housecat
Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever
(Do the kids still say "da bomb"? They don't, do they.)

"I want to introduce my dead son ..."

Friendship, ME

Okay, this is going back a few days, but something happened on Wednesday night I have reglected to recount. To me, it speaks volumes about the level of discourse in our nation at the present time.

We're getting ready to watch John Edwards give his acceptance speech at the Dem Nat Con. It's on PBS so Jim Lehrer is hosting, surrounded by a couple of stiffs, including David "isn't my skin smooth" Brooks. He writes luke-warm apologies for Bush for the New York Times. I think it's the luke-warm bit which supposedly makes neo-cons like to call him a liberal.

Anyway.

So Edwards is about to speak - he's been introduced by his wife, and she before by their eldest daughter. The talking heads make mention of the fact that their eldest child, a boy name Wade, was killed in 1996 in a car accident. I did not know this.

Brooks goes on to say (in a passing comment - the speech is about to begin) that he never talks about Wade in his stump speeches - and then he adds, but that will probably change tonight. Or words to that effect.

So. A man - a lawyer, yes, and a politican - has chosen to leave a great, tragic, one might suggest "life-defining" event out of his political rhetoric. This is not what I would call a casual decision. I am not suggesting he should or should not talk openly about Wade with his audiences. But it is obviously a decision, a decision for which there are definite reasons.

However, Mr. Brooks would suggest that John Edwards would go back on that choice out of some political need. Having decided to keep his personal reaction to the sudden, early death of his eldest son to himself (he does, always, acknowledge his son, by name, as a present member of the family, which is beautiful) what kind of man would he be to go back on that decision? What kind of person is Brooks suggesting he is by that comment?

I am just sick of the characterizations which have arisen in this campaign. From all I can see, Edwards is a good man. And he chose, once again, not to make Wade part of a campaign speech. Brooks was wrong, about an insignificant detail, perhaps, a small, thoughtless comment right before the speech, one we can all forget about.

... unless Edwards had chosen, instead, to make passing mention of the accident (he doesn't even do that, he refers to his eldest son as though he simply couldn't make it that night, which in a sense, it true) in which case Brooks could say "I told you so" and transform a new insight into Edwards' character as simply another political manipulation.

As Denny puts it, Brooks, like all the other heads, left right and non-existent center, are paid to write and say what people want them to say.

Talk to a local, they know what you need.

Hampton Inn: Bow (outside Concord), New Hampshire

Toni and I have a rule on road trips - no chains. We cannot eat in a franchised establishment without first making a legitimate attempt to find something home-grown. It's has always been very tempting, first leaving the Interstate, to pull into the nearest B*b E***s - D***'s - A****bee's or what have you, especially when your butt is tired and your feet are cramped. Even more so when you have an anxious toddler (who turned 18 months today, if you can believe that.)

Normally, we press on into whatever city is nearby, sometimes five miles up the road, some little burg, forgotten as a result of the big, nasty National Highway System. Thank you, Eisenhower. And we meet friendly people, the food is better, and cheaper. And it makes you feel like you've actually gone somwehere, and didn't just take a turn at Westlake.

Case in point - we load up from Syracuse around 9:30, with a resolution to go an hour before breakfast (it was a late night, we fell asleep watching Kerry's speech, and if that doesn't suggest we are all doomed, don't say I didn't warn you) and got off the turnpike at Hermiker, NY and decided to ask the Toll Booth Guy for advice. He was corpulent and had poor teeth.

"Can you recommend somewhere for breakfast?" I ask, handing him our ticket and cash.

"Okay," he says with a sigh, as though he knew I was going to ask that before we pulled up, "I can give you D***y's or a diner."

"Diner," Toni and I said, simultaneously.

He rattles off easy directions, and says the place is called "Chet's." And he was right, that place was great. Pretty homely, with lots of photographs of kids on the noteboard next to the bathrooms. The portions were not obscene and the price was right.

There was a McD*****'s up the street, the aforementioned D***y's we had passed, and a K** ... I wonder how much early morning business Chet's used to get, when it was "The Diner."

Holiday Inn: Syracuse, New York

Road Trip! We are headed for Friendship, Maine for a week with the extended family - mine and Toni's. Should be quite enjoyable - and make for a lame blog. Who knows. I have wondered whether taking a ten day vacation shortly before embarking on this NY Fringe gig would be an exercise in relaxation or futility. Will I succeed in taking an hour a day to rehearse my show, maybe out in the woods somewhere (or maybe in the outhouse, in order to approximate the size of our West Village venue) or will I merely whine about the fact that I am not rehearsing?

Yes. Interesting reading, indeed.

Anyway, Friendship is not so far afield I won't be able to check in on the company nor give regular reports on this thing. At least, I don't think so. And maybe there will be pretty pictures of puffins.

Oh, and we have indoor plumbing there. Not an outhouse. I just said that to be smart.

Next up: nagging Brian to pick up the postcards and posters to send to Harris and Liz in advance of our arrival, and then nagging them to distribute them around Downtown Manhattan (or, as they say, "Downtown.")

Nag, nag, nag.

First Views of "The Next Stage"

Oops.

It’s too early to get paranoid, it really is.

Theatermania.com has put up their Fringe 2004 page – and we weren’t featured. They were holding out for payment, and who could blame them. Only we sent a check last week. I don’t know what is up with that, but we took care of it early today … and I look to see if our show is listed and it isn’t and I send this short email to them asking where is it … and then I see it and send an equally brief, contrite (is that a word?) message … but when I check the page the graphic (you know, the one with the blackmail font) is missing – it’s just not there, and I refresh and it’s still not there, and then I fear I have offended someone, so I called them.

I am such a little weenie.

However, it has been a big day for promotional doubt. I printed the Fringe Guide – it’s got the entire schedule, you can get your as a PDF file from the FringeNYC site – and, man, a whole lot of people bought ads, and they really do sell the show. I was looking at all the ads and none of the listings. We bought a big ad when ANGST:84 went to New York three years ago, but when I took one out for the Fringe guide in Minnesota, I found I was one of maybe a half-dozen shows that bothered to.

When I was beginning college, I got an advertisement in the mail for a "Freshmen 1986" guide or something like that, it looked official, like it came from the university, and I thought it might be nice to have a year-booky, orientation, memory-type thing with the pictures of the Class of 1990 or whenever we thought we might graduate. And, of course, it was some stupid, cheap thing, that not very many people fell for.

Okay, I didn’t feel that stupid about buying an ad in the Minnesota guide, and it probably helped. But I am looking at this year’s FringeNYC guide and thinking "oops."

The Next Stage

Harris attended the meeting at The Next Stage yesterday, and now we have a much better idea of where I will be performing.

My living room. That’s what he said, start rehearsing in my living room. There’s even a fireplace. The air conditioner? It’s going to be behind me. It’s a small room, the stage is 12’ x 12’. There’s a piano in the room that cannot be moved. The idea of projecting slides has to be reworked. And, as he puts it, the sound operator will have to sit on the light operator’s shoulders.

Some of the other companies were miffed at what they found. Not me. I am looking forward to it. The last performance I had (okay, not counting the Rock Hall at 5 in the morning) we had no light cues, only sound and slides. It felt a lot more intimate, even though it was in a lecture hall, there was less artifice. That worked extremely well.

As for the slides, I have suggested getting a monitor, and using that, off to the side of the stage. The place is small enough, I think that would do just fine.

And of course, they were extremely helpful when it came to rescheduling our technical rehearsal. We will be putting the show together in two hours on Aug. 17, our opening date.

What's On David's iPod?

Zelda is.
(Thanks for asking.)

Local Media

Sarah Morton and I had a joint interview with Linda Eisenstein for the Cleveland Plain Dealer this afternoon. Even though our shows don’t open for several weeks, this story will run in time to get the word out for the Dobama performance on the 12th.

Linda is a playwright in her own right (write?) and asked a lot of really good questions about how artists influence other artists – the conversation just naturally flowed in that direction, I guess, because of the extent to which Sarah and my works have influenced each other’s. That surprises me, actually, I still think of myself as a novice writer or playwright, and I see Sarah as this genius, the idea of my having an effect on her work is flattering.

But the facts remain – I directed her first one-woman show, The Eighth Wonder of the World in 1998. That was the same year I also acted in her Love In Pieces and Eight Impressions of a Lunatic, the year Sarah told Linda she called the "David Hansen" year, though I referred to it as the "Sarah Morton" year.

Now, in spite of my being a great admirer of her work, I would have found it difficult to write my own one-person show without going to the 2001 Fringe and seeing the variety of solo shows I did. Sarah is an amazingly poetic writer, and she has a much broader vocabulary than I do. It was hard to think of writing for myself without thinking my work had to be 'heightened' in some way. However, I decided to just be myself with this story, tell it, use my journals, why not? It works for Trent Reznor.

Meanwhile, having broached such an intensely personal subject, Sarah says seeing IHT made it possible for her to feel comfortable (if that is the right word) tackling her own demons with 4 Minutes to Happy.

"Fubu"

"We just had our first line of urban apparel? Do you mean FUBAR?" - Brian

I might have meant FUBAR, but I think I really meant BUFU which means something similar, but a lot less passive.

G.O.D.

Harris is our man in New York (we have a woman in New York, too – Hi, Liz!) and he is acting as ACR at a technical meeting this afternoon. We will be asking the important questions, checking with other companies about getting a screen, or using our projector, or whatever deals he can carve. And he will have a camera, so we will have photos of the space tonight.

And then I will have a much better idea of where I will be, literally, on the 17th.

I pressed Harris for a bio earlier for the program and he asked what his title was and I said "Technical Operator" unless there was something else he preferred. He told me … and I suggested instead we call him "General Operations Director" so we don’t offend anyone.

AIR CONDITIONING

Yes, it is a lot of fun to open an email from your Authorized Company Representative that begins:

DO NOT PANIC WHEN YOU READ THIS EMAIL!!!

We have had our first major fubu. Every show gets one tech rehearsal, the duration is dictated by the length of your show. Our show opens Tuesday, Aug. 17. Our technical rehearsal has been scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 10.

A full week before our show opens. And four days before we can leave for New York. Suddenly the fact that the space we are booked for - the space a number of the shows we are sharing it with will also find surprising – which was touted for it’s a/v capabilities, has neither a projector nor a screen.

We have our own projector. The screen is a minor inconvenience. The tech rehearsal hurts.

Anyway, Brian is working on it, and Grundik will hopefully be able to work something out with the space. Hopefully. I am not sure what comes next if he can’t, but we are a small show, with very limited tech. Actually, I think all the shows in that space are, but hey, uh … we’re from Cleveland.

That’s the bad news. The good news? AIR CONDITIONING!

That’s going on the website. AIR CONDITIONING!

Happy birthday to me.

New developments: Harris has found a rocking chair in NYC. I always need a new rocking chair, it’s like the drummer in Spinal Tap. I had one in Cleveland, it split. Denny found one in Minnesota; I bought it, brought it home, it split.

Harris’ rocking chair is metal. Take that.

You can now download the haunting opening melody from the show, composed by the incomparable Dennis Yurich.

Calliope Katherine Koesters!

Nick and Carolyn had a baby!

Calliope was born Thursday, July 22 at 8:16 am at Lakewood Hospital. She weighed 7 pounds and was 20 and 1/4 inches long. Meg Chamberlain performed as doula. Everyone is "happy and healthy."

Gen X. Our kids' names rock.