I Declare

Turned 35 this morning. An announcement concerning my bid for the presidency in 2008 will come soon; I'm still talking it over with my family.

Pretty good year this year. Ending on a good note. Well, not for this guy. Great, now my birthday has to compete with Christmas, New Years, and the execution of Saddam.

Christmas with the extended family today, party at the house tonight. See you there.

Christmastime, Interrupted

About a week ago I wound up watching a bunch of people salsa dancing in a bar where not so long ago a bunch of people were swing dancing.

I tried that whole swing dancing thing when it got trendy, but I could never make it work. Love the music, but I just can't make my feet go the right way. I'm doomed to have horrible coordination, which is why I never participate in most public dancing or the occasional basement ping-pong tournament.

Spent my time buying T a couple of beers and chatting with some coworkers crammed into a corner booth. Eventually got out of there, headed to the car, but I felt like a pint so we walked to one of the only proper pubs in America's #2 Best City to Live.

Had a quick one, talked about plans for the Christmas break, listened to the middle-aged band playing your typical mix of Boring Adult Rock Hits of the 60s-90s. After I drained the last from my glass, we left, making sure to hold our breath as we walked past the man with incredibly noticeable b.o.

The night was warm, for December at least, and a thick fog had settled in. Street lights reflected off the wet streets and the trees glowed with strings of white Christmas lights. Got a few decent photos as well:





Might tinker with this one a bit more and make it a new banner:



Lots of birthdays this time of year, so I should take a minute and wish a Happy Birthday to both honestbush and MC, who, along with myself, have been stuck with having late-December birthdays. Never time to do a proper celebration when you're shoved in-between Christmas and New Years. Two more days and I join a new demographic. Ouch.

Christmas, Part One

The Second Annual Holiday Feast by Those Theater Guys, In Which I Have the Elder Statesman's Honor of Carving the Turkey.

Brems always gets the turkey leg.

There was also an argument about milk.



Watch the Video

Those guys are always a lot of fun, but like last year, after eating and helping clean up, I excused myself early. Let the young ones have fun their own way.

Oh, and before we hit midnight here in the midwest, Happy Boxing Day to those in the Commonwealth.

Back soon with more stories and pictures.

Apollo 8

On Christmas Eve 1968 three men broadcast this message from the orbit of the Earth's moon:



The world had been torn apart by The Vietnam War, a difficult presidential election, and the deaths of both Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Boorman were the first humans to visit the moon, and also witnessed the first Earthrise on their fourth pass around, which Anders captured in the picture featured below. (The picture also provides a link to Wikipedia's excellent Apollo 8 entry.)

Boorman described the moon as "a vast, lonely, forbidding type of existence or expanse of nothing." Lovell thought it looked like Plaster of Paris.

After their broadcast, after the risky Trans-Earth Injection burn of the SPS engine, as they reappeared from the dark side of the moon, after Mission Control reacquired their signal, Lovell announced, "Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus."

The three men were chosen to be Time's Men of the Year for 1968, and Lovell of course was the commander of the famous Apollo 13 mission.

One of the singular highlights of my life is when I met Jim Lovell at his Lake Forest restaurant a few years ago. Jumped up from my seat and shook his hand like I was a kid meeting Santa.

Whenever I wonder where this country, this world, is going, I always think of the achievements of the space programs of the world, and how even something dark and sinister like the Cold War politics of the age can produce something so inspiring, so lasting, so admirable.


"From the crew of Apollo 8, we pause with good night, good luck and merry Christmas and God bless all of you - all of you on the good earth."

Winter Solstice

Today is the Winter Solstice, which means that tonight will be the longest night of the year. After that, we start getting a bit more daylight with each rotation of the earth.

It's rainy but the temperature is mild today. Planned out some summer theater over a long lunch, did some Christmas shopping, and now I'm apparently going salsa dancing with T tonight. Which means we'll probably just stand around and watch other people dance forbidden-like.

I'm headed down to central Indiana for an early Christmas with lil' sis and her family on Saturday. I'll try another post or two over the next few days, but I'm sure we'll all be busy with holiday celebrations and travels.

Merry Christmas to everyone out there, near and far. Hope the road is safe, and that you arrive to a warm house with family and friends waiting for you.

Random Notes

Last day of work today before a nice long break. And since I haven't even started my Christmas shopping yet, I'm going to need all the time I can muster. All the money as well. Gonna be a tight Christmas this year, but the suits came through and paid me my club stipend early. (I run an after-school environmentalist/outdoors-type club.) So it's kind of like a Christmas bonus.

Neil Gaiman linked this for all you Coraline fans.

Blogger beta is now just a new version of Blogger, and from what I can tell, it's still kind of shitty. I have vague plans to switch this over to my own server next year, but I'm not quite there yet. One step at a time.

Spinning Girl marks the ten-year anniversary of Carl Sagan's death, and also comes eerily close to describing my job.

Speaking of, Sylkk's got a new home.

One more link: The PhoenixNYC offers up some good thoughts on user-created content and the role of "gatekeepers" in the media.

A Dash of Pepper

The other night I was trying to explain this song that was stuck in my head. Something about "mama quiero" and a "dash of pepper." It was from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon and I also remembered something about a cat dressed up like Carmen Miranda.

Cori just about spit out her cereal this morning when she saw it on TV, remembering my attempt to sing the song. And thanks to the miracle that is YouTube, I present for you the entire cartoon.

Watching it brought back about 50 other buried memories, including a vague one where my buddy Mike would imitate the little girl who dresses Tom up like a baby. Goddamn those cartoons kicked ass.

5 Things You Don't Know About Me

JaG tagged me to do this, and you can't ever refuse a hot Dutch girl, so here goes...

1. For a few years I worked as a hired hand on a farm. Fed cattle, shoveled pig shit, cultivated fields, etc.

2. I scored a perfect on my last written driver's exam.

3. While I usually say I grew up in Sandwich, Illinois, to be truthful I also lived in St. Cloud, Florida for a few of my early teen years. Not sure how that impacted my formative years, but it probably made me over-nostalgic for a small town that I ended up obsessing over for too long.

4. I was Colin Firth's stand-in for the film A Thousand Acres, filmed not too far from Sandwich. I could have had some screen time as a double for Keith Carradine, but I couldn't get a hold of a tractor on 24 hours notice (despite #1 above.)

5. I had a hernia operation when I was five years old. Tried lifting a cement block in my grandma's garage. Oops.

Does this mean I have to tag five more people? Because I'm surprised I did this much. Really. I'm no good at memes.

A Wonderful Night

(Click the above pic for a better view of the cast in action.)

After the curtain went down on my last several productions, I rarely felt happy. Usually felt uneasy, confused, and frustrated. What did I do wrong, where could we have done this or that better, why didn't they applaud at this line or laugh at that one.

Wasn't sure what to expect while putting this one together. Been trying to get back to my old self for quite a while now, while taking the slings and arrows from myself and others and trying to figure out where I took the wrong turns. A radio play of It's a Wonderful Life. A story I know well, for better or for worse.

Lots of pitfalls with such a well-known story. Gotta do it just right: too much like the movie, not enough like the movie. "Radio" lets you strip away all the clumsy styrofoam sets and preconceived visuals and suddenly you have to learn the story all over again.

Kids looked damn good in their suits and fedoras and bright red lipstick. Big black microphones and the dark piano and the utilitarian set design of the foley troupe all came together to create this small, perfect thing.


Just did one night, not knowing who would come, and one night is all we needed. Small crowd again, but they loved it, surprised at how entertaining it was to watch a radio show. Shook hands, hugged a few people, wished them Merry Christmas and gave a long-overdue mea culpa.
Wished I could have had everyone I knew in the audience that night, to share this great show, to repair the damage and to look towards better days to come, to wish everyone peace on earth, good will towards men.

Packed everything up, turned off the lights, closed the curtain. And in spite of the chill air, the chest infection, and the complete lack of physical energy, I felt like that guy I used to be.

FINAL UPDATE: Got the video link working properly--here's a short clip from the radio show, featuring Brems on Stereotypical Italian Voice.

Click To Play

A short film about the radio adaptation of It's a Wonderful Life we (limelight) did recently.

Bella the Magnificent

Two great things happened this weekend.

1. The show was really, really good. More on that later.

2. Bella gave me a Flickr PRO account for Christmas!

Lots of great pictures being uploaded and organized here. For now, thank you thank you thank you Bella, you wonderful Canadian friend from afar!

Flickr PRO

I cough and I hack and I ache and I can't sleep for nothing and I'm trying to get this show ready to go and I seem to have forgotten all about this other place where I work or something.

I'm also thinking of springing for the Flickr PRO account and phasing away from Buzznet. Just can't dig what they're selling these days.

Back soon.

George, Why Must You Torture the Children?

I've been working on a show for the past month, a small show, with a small cast and short rehearsal times.

It's a radio play production of It's a Wonderful Life. After last year's bizarre crazy make-'em-ups holiday show, I thought it might be a good idea to do something a bit more traditional. And doing "Life" as a radio play seemed to take away the burden of trying to recreate such an iconic story on the stage.

We do all the sound effects live on stage and a company of a dozen actors play over forty roles. It's been fun, and relaxing, and for the first time in quite a while I've stayed positive and haven't let myself get angry and frustrated over everything.

We're doing one show only this Friday, December 15th, at 7:00 at our usual home of Bednarcik Junior High. Not sure what kind of turnout we will have, but we will be making several ANNOUNCEMENTS regarding next summer's theatrical season, and so I encourage all of you Limelighters that read this thing to come support the show and learn what's coming up next.

It'll be worth your while, I promise.

John

The Light

Drove downtown yesterday to the hospital, to see an uncle of mine, an uncle that has a bad case of cancer.

Long story could follow, but I don't have the desire to write about it. Those that know me know the whole story, and those that don't, well, it's a long, sad tale that hasn't had many happy moments in the past several years. You've heard me rant about my father on here in the past, and this is all wrapped up with that situation.

Needless to say, it was a very difficult thing to do, to go to NMH while Michigan Avenue sparkled with lights and shoppers and the city snow still very white and wintry. The visit went well, better than expected, but there's still that dark angry side to everything, the thing that still gets me in the middle of the night and seeks to once again create division and hurt feelings between Jane and I.

So right now my thoughts are with my uncle, and they're with my cousins, and my sister, too, and they're with all those people out there in the world, all those people I know, the friends and the family and the estranged ones and the exes and the future ones. And I just want them all to be well and happy and I just want there to be nothing but peace and good will and now this story has gone on longer than it needed to.

So I hope all of you are well today, this cold wintry day, where the sun tries to peek out every now and then and it hits the snow and sometimes it's almost blinding, that light.

Kids and the Things They Say

More awesome 5th-grade conversation from the classroom...

Boy 1: "I'm John Wilkes Booth."*

Girl 1: "You're going to the crazy hospital!"**

Boy 2: "Uh, I believe it's pronounced 'loony bin.'

*Referring to some sort of class role-playing thing I'm guessing.

**Which isn't historically accurate--Booth was shot in the neck and died during his apprehension from a burning barn.

I'm off to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, people. More on that at a later date...

Blog Update

It's a good thing I had a snow day on Friday, because I spent most of my free time working on this new template.

I think it's just about finished. Holywriter, I agree: it's a bit too white right now (it's the anti-Myspace look,) but since I don't really know how to add boxes or borders to html templates, we'll have to leave it as is. Mark, glad you like the new look, although I wound up subconsciously stealing a few ideas from your layout. Consider it an homage...

Due to me being a public educator, I'm trying to distance myself from my real last name. It hasn't been much of a secret in the past, but from this point on it's probably best to use a pen name. Not that it'll chase away those that like to lurk here anonymously, waiting to slag me when the time is right, but that's what comment moderation is for I guess. (Hi Myrt!!)

You'll also find the archives have been repaired, and I've created a detailed list of what I would call the "best-of" from this blog. Updated all of my feed links and wish lists and PayPal buttons. Now if you wish to subscribe, send me presents or monetary donations, or read some of my past essays, everything is just a click away.

Consider this The State I'm In Version 2.0. The original version of this blog is done, to be replaced by a new look and a new direction. Not sure where it'll go, but I'm looking forward to the journey. Thanks to everyone that has stuck by this thing over the years, through the dark times and the occasional highlight.

Now, to teach myself how to vlog...

Thunder Snow 2006!!!

Supernintendo Chalmers called the first snow day of his five-year tenure in my district this morning, after a massive snow storm dumped 6+ inches of snow across northeastern Illinois.

It's not that bad by me yet, but it's expected to continue for several more hours. I had no less than two people request to crash at my house last night in order to avoid the long commute to work today. Mom won out, so honestbush decided to tough it out and make alternate arrangements.

So now I have a glorious three-day weekend to relax, read, and rest by my fire. Sometimes it's good to be a teacher...