Yeah, I "Don't Know Why," either!
Would somebody please explain to me how Norah Jones, of all people, managed to nab a Grammy in every category in which she had been nominated?
According to Launch.com, “Jones was named best new artist, and her song ‘Don’t Know Why’ received the record of the year, song of the year, and best female pop performance awards. Her album ‘Come Away With Me’ was named album of the year, best pop album, vocal, best engineered album, non-classical, and received a producer of the year award for Arif Mardi.”
This quiet little songbird—whose face I’d never seen before the post-Grammy love-fest, and whose diaphragm has (judging from her speaky style of singing) all the strength of cold, wet tissue paper—is some sort of musical savior? I don’t think I could hear Norah Jones singing from the back of the room, and it doesn’t really matter how large or small of a room we’re talking about. I’ll admit that Jones has a very pleasant voice, but a pleasant voice sans breath support should not a Grammy juggernaut make.
I end this journal entry with a moment of silence for Avril Lavigne. All those nominations, and not a single Grammy for everyone's favorite (or so we'd all thought!) Canadian punk chanteuse.
Here’s to hoping that eyeliner’s waterproof, honey.
Posted by patrick at 10:59 PM | Comments (3)
February 20, 2003
Tooting our own horn...
Today was quite the full day. Notre Dame sent about two dozen of its cast members from our December production of “Hamlet” to the University of La Verne Theater Festival to present the last 20 minutes of the show. It was our first time out of the gate, so to speak, so it wasn’t as if we had to live up to a traditional of winning or anything like that. Our newbie status notwithstanding, we left at the end of the day with two individual performance trophies (for our Hamlet and our Laertes). We were also a strong contender for the Best Overall Performance Award, I believe, but were beaten by a school that incorporated musical instrumentation, dancing, and singing into their scene. They’re apples and oranges at that point, I think, but the fact still remains that they had to go triple- or quadruple-threat to surpass us. In any event, the day at ULV was a good experience for the students. It showed them what other drama programs are putting out, and whetted their appetite for competition (which breeds improvement, unless it’s pursued neurotically).
On a completely different topic, I read an article in the local paper today about a high school sophomore who died in a fatal, utterly avoidable car crash, injuring two of his friends in the process. Below is the letter to the editor I rattled off shortly after reading the article:
“According to Greek myth, Icarus was a young man who was given the freedom of flight by the gift of wax wings which his father had fashioned for him. The wings melted when Icarus disregarded his father’s warning not to fly too close to the sun, and the boy fell into the ocean, drowning. In the February 19 Press-Enterprise story about deceased 16-year-old Matthew Neal Clark of Corona (“Student killed, 2 injured in car crash”), his Ford Mustang Cobra was described as “a limited-edition model for car enthusiasts,” a 390-horsepower vehicle that could cost nearly $40,000. It was travelling at about 100 miles an hour when it shot off the road and then flew the better part of a football field before landing. Icarus and Clark both were given too powerful a gift at too early an age. Expecting a sophomore in high school not to be seduced by that power—even one smart enough to be enrolled in North’s International Baccalaureate Program, as was Clark—is like asking a boy of similar age not to soar as high as possible when suddenly granted the freedom of flight.”
I don’t hold out any strong expectation that it will get published. Drawing comparisons between modern incidents and Greek myths isn’t exactly in vogue right now. Nor is the implication that the victim, no matter how inexperienced a driver and no matter how fiercely he will be mourned by his friends and family, seems to have cooked his own goose by going almost twice the speed limit on a surface street. We shall see...
Posted by patrick at 12:50 AM | Comments (5)
February 18, 2003
"Oh, we don't have that, sir..."
And now, from the “Life Imitating Art” department:
Last Sunday, I drove up to San Luis Obispo with my girlfriend to get out of Southern California for a few days. We were on the Los Angeles-to-Santa Barbara leg of our journey, figuring that that would be as good a place as any to get some lunch and switch drivers. While still about 30 or 45 minutes south of Santa Barbara, folks started pulling up alongside us and waving over at us. When I rolled down my window, a guy told me that my rear driver’s side tire was almost flat.
I thanked the guy and had my girlfriend pull the car off the freeway, all the while fuming and muttering darkly to myself. After a trouble-free five years with my previous four tires, I saw fit about three weeks ago to buy a new set. I do a fair amount of driving out to Los Angeles, and I’d rather not suffer a blowout on the 60 or the 405. Not only was this flat tire the second such flat I had endured since replacing the tires last month, it was the second time the rear driver’s side tire had gone flat. Its first deflation took place a mere week after I bought it. The folks at the local America’s Tire Co. swore up and down that it was repaired and that everything looked A-OK. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
But back to the story. My girlfriend and I pulled off the freeway into the sleepy hamlet of Camarillo and onto the town’s main drag (I don’t recall the name). We limped our way into the parking lot of a tire store. They were closed. Seeing as how we didn’t have much of a choice, we decided to make lemonade of our lemons and have lunch.
We walked down the street, encountering an inordinate number of Mom-and-Pop diners, barbershops, and antique stores—all of which lead me to believe that the townsfolk of Camarillo are the hairiest people in California, and that they own the oldest furniture. Everything was closed. Finally, we found a diner with an open door, people eating inside, and folks working behind the counter.
“Sorry,” they said when we were about to walk inside. “We’re closed.”
People eating? Cooks cooking? Waitresses serving? And they’re closed? Pardon my skepticism.
We walked down the town’s main street (probably named Main Street), desperate for some sign of life at the late hour of one in the afternoon. In the distance, we saw folks eating at outside tables in front of a small storefront cafe. Bingo! We trudged down there.
“We’re closed for the day,” we were told. Again, this news was relayed over the hustle and bustle of people eating and cooking.
By now, I was reading for some kid with a pitchfork to jump out and start yelling, “Outsider! Outsiderrrrrrrrrrrr!” Hell, man, I’ve seen “The Children of the Corn”. I know what sort of madness and badness happens to couples stranded in small towns when their car dies on them. The only restaurant in town that was open was the Chinese restaurant, and I was so embittered towards the town as a whole that I didn’t feel like rewarding the immigrant family whose work ethic had out-Protestanted the Protestants.
And how, you might wonder, if this a case of life imitating art? The theater company my girlfriend co-founded will be putting on an evening of David Ives one-acts in March as their inaugural event. One of the plays, called “The Philadelphia,” deals with a poor schmuck who wakes up one day and can’t manage to get anything wants, no matter how basic of a request (e.g. aspirin at a drug store, or a newspaper at a news kiosk). It turns out that he’s in a Philadelphia, a metaphysical state of being where your every request and desire is thwarted. His friend who explains his plight, on the other hand, is in a Los Angeles—where everything is hunky-dory, no matter how dire the news. As luck would have it, we had held call-backs for the one-acts only the day prior to all this madness going down.
A tire place with no tires? Seemingly open restaurants which can’t seem to cough up any food for the out-of-towners? You call it Camarillo. I call it Philadelphia.
Posted by patrick at 10:14 PM | Comments (4)
February 12, 2003
(Channel) One is the lonliest number...
Today’s journal entry is brought to you by the fine folks at Channel One. Channel One puts out a daily news show, if one can call it that. It’s really just a front for advertising in the classroom. Channel One has struck a Faustian bargain with schools across America, donating TV sets to be installed in every classroom. The only catch? You guessed it—that Channel One be given unfettered access to your school, the freedom to monopolize ten minutes of my teaching time every weekday. It’s one part Mister Rogers and one part Shylock, with just a pinch of journalistic integrity tossed in for appearance. Grrrr…
For those of you who haven’t had the distinct pleasure of watching Channel One, let me give you an abridged version of the show’s basic format.
LIGHTS UP
(Camera swoops and swirls around the Channel One set, which has been fastidiously decorated with all manners of hip tchotchkes and flair, a la TGI Friday’s. It focuses in on two young people, both impossibly clear of skin and bright of smile. One might make the mistake of assuming they are print models who stumbled into the wrong studio. Nay, friend, they are our news anchors.)
PHOTOGENIC MALE: Hello, and welcome to Channel 1! We don’t credit you with the intelligence or interest to absorb grown-up news media, so we’re going to dumb it down for you.
PHOTOGENIC FEMALE: Here comes the airplane! (Swoops arm forward as if cajoling an infant into opening its mouth for a spoonful of blended peas.) Bzzzzzz…bzzzzzzz…
PHOTOGENIC MALE: (dropping fake British accent in his panic) I don’t see an airplane!
CUT TO: NEWS STORY #1
(We see the slightly less photogenic male who has been banished from the set and now must serve as lowly field reporter).
SLIGHTLY LESS PHOTOGENIC MALE: We’re probably going to go to war with Iraq. Can you say “Iraq,” kiddies? Good! I knew you could!
CUT TO: COMMERCIAL #1
(All manner of useless crap is crassly marketed to young people who, after all, don’t have any major financial commitments and whose allowances are begging to be spent. Ninety percent of the time, this commercial will be for a video game, Mountain Dew, some upcoming film, a teen-based TV show, or clothes. One in every ten or so times, the commercial will be an anti-drug PSA, so sinister in its vibe that one must wonder if they hired actual crack addicts, drunken drivers, or acquaintance rapists as consultants.)
Repeat this combination ad nausium for about ten or twelve minutes, and you’ve had the Channel One experience. The principals under which Channel One operates offend me. They’re operating under the assumption that teenagers are chimps who can’t be bothered to look beyond their own navels unless they’re given young anchors, pabulum for content, and a Top 40 song to usher in each new segment. Intellectually speaking, they’re the news equivalent of those pull-up diapers for kids who are in the midst of their potty training. "Here you go, Junior. They look like big-boy pants, sure, but they’re really just gussied-up diapers, just in case you suffer a relapse and crap all over yourself."
Did I mention the TVs they gave us are cheap, and that if you turn them up loud enough to hear anything, people’s dialogue starts sounding like any adult from any “Charlie Brown” animated special? Well, friend, they are and it does.
Posted by patrick at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2003
Traffic around here is picking up...
Howdy, folks. Looking at my site statistics, I see that more and more people are starting to access the site. I hope the addition of the sound clips served to "sweeten the pot," so to speak. The guestbook is on its way, for those might be inclined to sign it. Please do so, by the way; once it's up, I'd like to have some idea of who's coming through and what they think.
Yesterday morning, I went through my second audition from the directing side of the table. It was my first L.A. audition as a director, meaning there were headshots, resumes, many thousands of dollars' worth of successful orthodontia...the whole deal. There were five directors in all, looking to cast five David Ives one-act plays.
You'd think that yesterday's audition would reinforced what I already intellectually knew--that whether or not you get called back and/or cast has so much to do with the subjective opinions/needs of the director, and not nearly as much to do with talent as non-industry people would assume. Instead, I found the process a wee bit depressing. All of an actor's experience and training is moot if the director can't imagine that person fitting into their preconceived notion of the text. So much of it rides on the impression the actor makes immediately. Who knows? Perhaps the guy who impressed the hell out of you at auditions has pretty much shown you all that he's got, and won't improve any during the rehearsal process. Along similar lines, perhaps the guy who didn't do anything for you at the auditions is the sort who could be molded over the rehearsal process to exactly what you want. Of course, everybody has to operate under the assumption that a person who impressed you at auditions will continue to improve, at that a person who left you indifferent at auditions won't get any better for the part if they're cast. It's not always true, but if you don't pick some standard and just stick to it, for better or for worse, you're liable to drive yourself nuts.
I dunno. I guess I shouldn't let it bother me so much, but I'm no great fan of futility or wasted efforts. We're having our callbacks next weekend, so I'll have more to say about the one-acts soon enough.
Posted by patrick at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2003
Oh, this is ironic...
Howdy, all. This is my second attempt at writing a journal entry tonight. The first one, entitled "Excuse me while I revel in the power,"--a gushing celebration of the thousands of years of human evolution which have culminated in my having my own website--was lost when I tried to bold some selected text and quite suddenly popped over into my browser's e-mail function.
I like Greek tragedies; I should have known better than to let loose with such e-hubris on my maiden entry.
Anyhow, this draft of the journal entry promises to be shorter than its predecessor, if for no other reason than that I’m too paranoid now to wax rhapsodic at any great length.
I hope that PatrickSeitz.com will serve a variety of purposes. For those who know me personally, I hope that this site will allow them to keep track of what I’ve been up to. For those whose interest (or potential interest) in me is industry-related, I hope that this site will provide them with enough information that convince them that, indeed, I am the [fill in the blank] for which they’ve been searching.
If absolutely nothing else, I aim to get my $12 worth from registering the domain name. C’mon folks…if we can’t rattle $12 of use out of this site in a year, that’s just sad. Sad in the same way that unused corsage in your freezer is sad. You remember. She called a few hours before the dance, swearing up and down that she was sick. You volunteered to drive over with some soup, but no, she didn’t want you to go to any trouble on her account. That next Monday, when you passed her in the halls, she didn’t even say hello…and it looked like she hadn’t been suffering from anything worse than an advanced case of the hickies.
Yeah, that corsage, man. That corsage. Abandoned. Forgotten. Twelve dollars of iconoclastic flora, tied up with a sporty little ribbon and sprigs of baby’s breath.
Don’t let this website be that corsage.
Posted by patrick at 10:51 PM | Comments (5)