Bio - Midsummer Night's Dream 2006

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Chanticleer Theatre
March 10 - 26, 2006
Role - Egeus

John appears in this show with his daughter (who talks to the animals) and his son (who wrote the book of love).  When not on stage, John interprets dreams, designs websites, boosts the American economy, defends the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, works on the railroad all the livelong day, frightens small children, seduces lonely housewives, and boldly goes where  no man has gone before.  He also cooks a mean chile con carne.  John let the dogs out, but he never once told Pete Townshend who he was.  In his spare time John researches a cure for cranial-rectal inversion.  But what he really wants to do is direct.

Almost Manly

Two or three years ago I bought a little electric chainsaw off the clearance rack.  I used it a few times, but was never impressed with it - seemed to take forever to cut anything, and the chain was always slipping off the gears.  So it's mostly been relegated to the basement, alongside all the other tools I hardly ever use.

This year I found myself having to trim back the bushes out front before the little costumed people came begging for books and candy.  Just like every other year, because I'm too lazy to keep these things maintained all summer.  And, also just like every other year, I expressed a deep desire to just cut the whole thing down.

At which point, Robin urged me to do exactly that.  "Why don't you just get your chainsaw and do it?"

I call my shoulder sprites "Short Term Lazy" and "Long Term Lazy".  At this point STL was crying, "But it's wor-hur-hur-hurk!"  But LTL countered with the argument that we're working anyway, and by doing it this way it might mean less work later.  STL conceded.

So down to the basement I go to fetch my nearly-useless chainsaw.

This went about how I expected.  There were about eight main trunks to this bush. and the first one took at least ten minutes to sever.  However, it made a big difference in the amount of foliage present, so continue we did.  Halfway through the next branch the chain slipped off.  I'm used to this, I had the tools nearly at hand (just a socket wrench to loosen the nuts) and carefully put it back on just the way it originally was - as I have done since I bought the thing.

Let's just pretend that I repeated this part of the story in some original way two more times.  In truth, it was not original at all, and getting a little tedious.  But the third time, I noticed something wrong.

See, all the tiny metal teeth on this kind of chain point in the same direction.  The sharp side moves away from the motor at the top, and toward the motor at the bottom.  I've made note of this because of how often the chain slips, so I know it works that way.

But when replacing the chain, it's necessary to turn the saw upside down.  And by now you're all way ahead of me.

The chain on this damned thing has been backwards since the day I bought it.

After an appropriate amount of cursing and face-palming, I reversed the chain.  The rest of the job took less time than the first two trunks, and was almost fun.

I'm almost looking forward to clearing the shrubbery from the fence now.

I know that we Americans have short memories, but...

I recall in the mid 90's seeing a for hire message at the Mickey D's in St. Peters. The starting pay was $10 per hour. McDonald's made huge profits at the time despite paying double the minimum wage and they didn't have to raise prices to do it.

Today we're expected to believe that they'd go broke if they paid a living wage of $12 per hour, but that figure doesn't even keep up with inflation ($10 in 1996 is equivalent to nearly $15 today).

And it's bullshit.

Then we're told that people just need to "work harder." Great, so now you're working two (nearly) full-time jobs and still not making enough money to keep up with inflation, and the employers are just fine with paying you the bare minimum of what they can legally get by with.

Yeah that's bullshit too.

I'm so tired of seeing this systematic effort to keep poor people poor and powerless. This is not a competition with winners and losers. So long as any Americans live in poverty, we as a country are a losing team. When those same people can work themselves to death and die in poverty, then we're just pathetic.

First, Do No Harm

Guest post by Calandreya

I know this will offend some people and I'm sorry about that but I don't actually care what either candidate gives as a plan for their future leadership.  The plans fail.  They seldom, if ever, accomplish even a fifth of what is planned.  Obama, as just one example, intended to do a lot more than actually got done and, truthfully, it's a miracle he's even done as much as he has.  I am not voting for Obama's plan. 

I'm voting for Obama because I trust him to do his best to prevent further harm.  That's all.  It's very sad that this is all I can expect from a candidate but that's where we are, and I suppose it's better than having two candidates that would make things worse.  If he succeeds in marginally making things better, as he has done the past four years, then great.  I don't expect it.

I mentioned in a previous post that Democratic interruptions of a long term trickle down process might be responsible for derailing the plan.  Well, I think Republican interruptions will derail the process of recovery, long or short term.  They've already proven they'll put politics over people, money over ethics, and all of this worries me.  If we don't get some serious changes to our political process, we're doomed as a nation - primarily removal of the hidden money.

We are taking some huge strides backwards and have been for a long while.  We're not even getting one step forward to every two back anymore.  Maybe most people are unaware, in their day to day lives, of how politics affects them in very real dollars and cents.  I think a lot of them are just too busy trying to keep their heads above water - and that some politicians want that ignorance working for them.

There are no consequences for lying in politics.  Any normal person caught lying on a resume would be immediately fired no matter how great they were as an employee, but we can't expect that of our country's leadership.  Average Joe often has to take a drug test to work a nearly meaningless job but we don't ask our Congress - public employees - or our presidential candidates to prove they're not on something mind altering.  I think we should begin holding them to the standards expected of regular citizens, at the minimum.  If we want fair laws applied to us, maybe we have to make them see the unfairness of what they're imposing on us, men and women.

I won't see it in my lifetime but I can dream, too.

A handy guide for public figures

Here is what an apology sounds like:

"What I said was incredibly insensitive. I should never have said such a thing. I certainly do not believe it to be true, and I hope you can forgive me."

And then, IF you think you can do so without making things worse, you can try to explain what you really meant.


Here is what an apology does not sound like:

"I'm sorry if you were offended by what I said."

Because, seriously. This is the kind of thing a six-year-old does when ordered to apologize. Mom says, "Billy, you apologize to your sister for calling her stupid."

And Billy says, "I'm sorry you're stupid, sis."


Get it straight. You are in the public eye. Everything you say and do is recorded for all time. And we are watching.

BIO for 1776 (BLT)

The year: 1976. John, a freshman in high school, failing his required speech/drama/debate class. His teacher, a short, stentorian Egyptian with the unlikely name “Wedge Crouch.” The offer: a passing grade in exchange for playing George Read in 1776. Thus began an endless journey as John was inexorably drawn into the world of live theatre, never to return yet now come full circle. Or is it – perhaps – an egg?

1776 Revisited - John and Abigail

Well gang now I'm doing 1776 again - this time as Stephen Hopkins, for the Bellevue Little Theatre.

Since I started directing, I've become much more interested in background research for the plays I'm involved in. It's kind of like the changeover marks in movies - once you know that they exist, you always see them. So anyway, here's an interesting bit about John and Abigail Adams.

John catalogs Abigail's faults (she asked him to): http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17640507ja
And she answers: http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17640509aa

This kind of teasing is something that most of us would never expect from people of that time. They were not yet married - it's the kind of exchange one might see between high-school sweethearts (John was 29 and Abigail was 20) They were third cousins, but then, so were a lot of people in the colonies.

At about this time they were writing to each other daily - sometimes more often. John was being inoculated for smallpox - the method used was to expose the patient to known mild cases of the disease, under close doctor's care. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation - it's kinda yucky how they did it) All his letters were smoked before being sent, and after being delivered, thinking that this killed the disease. (Parents used a similar method of inoculation, up until the time that killed-virus injections became the norm. One kid in the neighborhood got measles or chicken pox, it was sleepover time.) Once it became common knowledge that people who got cowpox were immune to smallpox, then smallpox inoculation wasn't so popular anymore and was eventually banned because it was FREAKING DANGEROUS. John got off light, but this procedure sometimes killed people - 2% as opposed to 20% of those who got it naturally.

You can also see that by now they were regularly using pet names for each other in their letters. John called Abigail "Diana" after the Roman goddess of the moon, and she called him "Lysander" after the Spartan war hero. When John was in the Continental Congress, Abigail signed her letters "Portia", the very patient wife of Roman politician Brutus. No doubt she needed patience!

I'll write more as I come across stuff that interests me.