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September 29, 2004Known but to James Morrow and Patrick Seitz...
An odd moment the other night. I was reading James Morrow's Bible Stories for Adults when I came across "Known But to God and Wilbur Hines," a story narrated posthumously by the spirit of the corpse interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Although the overall thrust of Morrow's story is different than that of the one I'm working on currently, I hit a section of his story that mirrored mine almost exactly (a WWII soldier and French whore getting in an argument over money that only gets worse when she threatens to accuse him of rape, and the whole conflict). And I know that I've never read this story before, so it's not that I'm subconsciously swiping Morrow's work. He's a really good writer, though, so I can at least content myself that he and I are lapping from the same wellspring of literary inspiration. It sure beats being beaten to the short-story-idea punch by some hack...
Posted by patrick at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
The 2003 ITL awards...
The Inland Theater League awards were given out yesterday evening. I skipped the ceremony, so I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the following members of the "Wit" cast/crew for their awards:
Deborah McFatter as E. M. Ashford
David Wayne Nelson for Director
Jerry Longman for Light Design
Patricia Scarborough as Vivian Bearing, PhD
I'm especially happy for Patti, who received a Founders Award--meaning, basically, that she was nominated for an ITL by every judge who came to see "Wit". Unanimous accolades? Not too shabby, and entirely deserved.
Congratulations also go out to Tamara Griffey for her two ITL awards for direction and set design for "The Dining Room"; the entire cast of "Wally's Cafe" (which received an ensemble award); Jeff Richards for his directing ITL, Tom Hurst for his scenic design ITL and Vicki Janis for her set dressing ITL (also for "Wally's Cafe"); and Deborah McFatter for another ITL for her work as Phyllis Gold in "The Twilight of the Golds".
For the complete list of nominees and winners, click here.
Posted by patrick at 02:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2004
The Valentino interview...
The segment about Valentino ran late yesterday evening, according to a friend of mine I ran into at a voice recital today who certainly hadn't expected my mug to pop up on Channel Four. It's a bummer that I didn't get to see it, but I'm going to try and scare up a copy. Really, though, my seeing it is a peripheral concern. The important thing was getting the word out.
Posted by patrick at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)
The strangest, most frightening thing I've seen online since Colin Powell doing karaoke at that conference in Asia...
ZURICH (Reuters) - Europe's biggest mushroom growth, spanning an area 800 by 500 meters, has been discovered in a Swiss national park, scientists said Friday.
The 1,000-year-old fungus, covering an area equivalent to around 100 football pitches, was found near the Ofenpass in the mountainous southeastern canton (state) of Grisons and judged to be a single growth after a detailed survey.
"The majority of the fungus is an underground network that looks a bit like shoelaces. The surface mushrooms look like the normal type you would pick, and are brown to yellow," said Muriel Bendel, a spokeswoman for the Swiss research association for forestry, snow and countryside (WSL).
The fungus, "Armillaria ostoyae" or honey mushroom, is edible, the WSL said, adding it had been known since Roman times for its cleansing effects on the digestive tract -- as long as it was eaten raw. But certain forms can kill trees.
The WSL said Switzerland's monster mushroom was trumped only by a growth in the United States which covers a surface area of nine sq km and weighs an estimated 600 tons.
Posted by patrick at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2004
Get your Snout away from my Bottom...
I got cast in the University of Redlands production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" yesterday afternoon. I guess they'd been having some difficulty finding an actor for the role of Theseus, and a guy I've worked with before recommended my name to the director, who then brought me in to read with their Hippolyta. It's been going on ten years since I was in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" over at Riverside Community Players, so it will be fun to revisit the show—and it's always a good thing, both artistically and pragmatically, to branch out and work at new venues.
The production has a very reasonable rehearsal schedule, and Theseus really only appears twice. Rehearsals won't monopolize my evenings until production week, at which point you could hardly expect otherwise, regardless of the show in question. Tonight's my first rehearsal, and I'm looking forward to meeting some of the other cast members.
Posted by patrick at 04:09 PM | Comments (3)
Hey, my summer's no bummer...
This is the last day of my summer vacation. As of tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. when I meet with the professor for whom I'll be serving as TA, it’s back into the school routine. Not that I’m complaining, mind you—UCR's always been good to me on a variety of levels, not the least pressing of which has been the financial. Still, one can't help but look back over the summer they just had and wonder, "Did I waste my time this summer, as is so often the case, or was I productive?"
At first blush, the former seemed to be the case. I wasn't working a full-time job, I often stayed up and slept in way too late for my own good, and didn't do as much writing (either fiction or screenplays) as I had hoped.
Still, the summer wasn't a total wash. Far from it, as a matter of fact. I went to my first (and second) baseball game in memory, discovered or cultivated a love of the boba, went rafting for the first time, made going to the gym something of a habit (one I've neglected these last few days, but hey—nobody's perfect), did some voiceover work and attended my first anime convention, visited my family up north, read about three dozen books, got some use out of my PS2, and relaxed to a degree that probably won't be possible once I'm dealing with screenwriting deadlines again. And while I didn't write as much as I should have, I did get about 7,000 words into a piece that, once finished, will be my longest short story to date.
It was a good, relaxing, productive summer. That's my story, as the song says, and I'm sticking to it.
Posted by patrick at 04:04 PM | Comments (2)
September 20, 2004
I went into L.A. this
I went into L.A. this afternoon for a VO audition, the results of which I probably won't know for at least another three weeks. The project is very interesting, and I'm really jonesing for the role, but that won't make the days pass any quicker--quite the opposite, if anything. Luckily, with school starting this Thursday, I'll be too busy to let the delay in notification drive me too batty.
I was a little nervous about the drive back from North Hollywood after the audition, seeing as how my last L.A.-to-Riverside trek went, but everything was fine. The 134 and 210 East are nothing if not accommodating. I headed home at a quarter to four in the afternoon, and even with a few times where the traffic came to a complete stop and taking surface streets for the last few miles to avoid the 60/91 crunch, I made it home in two hours. Somebody passed me on a motorcycle, a stuffed ALF doll strapped to the back of his seat. I wonder if the biker had lost a bar bet, or if the chopper craze is such that even '80s nostalgia geeks are joining the Wild Bunch.
For those of you who don't remember 1986-1990, ALF (voiced by Paul Fusco) was an alien life form (hence the acronym) from the planet Melmac who crash-landed in a suburban family's garage. He freeloaded off of them, cracked wise and longed to eat their cat.
Think it couldn't get any better? ALF's real name was...wait for it...Gordon Shumway. ALF made guest appearances on shows like "Matlock," "Blossom" and the new "Love Boat," if you can believe it. He even had his own animated series. Then again, so did M.C. Hammer.
Posted by patrick at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2004
Don't shoot people on the freeway, okay?
Somebody got shot and thrown out of a car yesterday evening on the 60 East, which led to the freeway being completely shut down. I was on the 60 East when this happened, and a drive from Venice to Riverside that should have taken me two hours (for that time of day) turned into a 4.5-hour epic that included my car overheating, me worrying constantly that my ex-girlfriend's cat (which I was driving back to Riverside for a week of cat-sitting) would die of heatstroke and/or fright, and an hour-long break from the traffic that the cat and I took in an El Pollo Loco/Foster's Freeze right off the freeway at the Nogales Avenue off-ramp.
There's no way I could have known the 60 would be shut down, and having the cat in the car with me was just the luck of the draw, but the issue of my car overheating seemed entirely unnecessary. Considering that I laid down $1,500 on repairs a mere eleven days ago--including all sorts of repairs to the thermostat, cooling system, pumps, etc.--I was not terribly pleased by this.
When I finally got home--thanks for the alternate directions, Missy--my friend Jenny was kind enough to come over and help me wash the cat, who had wet herself during her almost five hours in the carrier. Considering how long she was in there, and how frightened and uncomfortable she was, I don't blame her at all. I was just about ready to wet myself if the evening got any worse.
The upside to all of this is that my simple soft-serve vanilla cone at El Pollo Foster's last night was the best ice cream I've ever had. I think I was pretty close to heat exhaustion at that point. I'd had the heater on full-blast for about an hour, trying to keep the car from dying on the freeway. My face and fingers were tingling as I stumbled into the restaurant, cat carrier in hand, but that one ice cream cone (and huge cup of ice-cold water) set me right again. Man, when you need ice cream, nothing beats it.
Posted by patrick at 02:47 PM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2004
Gluck be a lady tonight...
I got some good news yesterday morning via e-mail. It seems that I was awarded a Gluck Graduate Theatre Fellowship for 2004/2005! I'll be taking playwriting into the community--a local high school, most likely, to work with the students. It's a good experience for all parties involved, and a nice chunk o' change for me. Good times!
Posted by patrick at 04:31 PM | Comments (2)
September 11, 2004
Here's a recipe for Stuffed
Here's a recipe for Stuffed Cuttlefish (Seppie Ripiene), courtesy of www.fooddownunder.com. The link goes to the page with the amounts for the ingredients.
"In a medium bowl, combine the chopped cuttlefish with bread crumbs and eggs. Chop two of the garlic cloves with the onion and add 1/3 cup parsley and add to bread crumbs. Stir in the milk and 3 tablespoons oil and mix together briefly. Add salt and pepper, cheese, olives, and tomatoes. Using your hands, mix well, and stuff each of the whole cuttlefish loosely with the mixture.
"Finely chop the remaining clove of garlic and mix with the remaining 3 tablespoons parsley. In a pan large enough to hold the cuttlefish in one layer, heat remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat and add finely chopped garlic and parsley.
"When aromatics begin to sizzle, arrange stuffed cuttlefish in the frying pan, open-side down. Brown for about 3 to 4 minutes, then carefully turn, and brown on the other side.
"When brown on both sides, add white wine to the pan, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook, uncovered, for about 30 minutes, or until cuttlefish are tender. If the pan starts to look dry, add more wine.
"Serve immediately with lemon wedges, if desired, and the small amount of sauce left in the pan spooned over the liquid.
"This recipe yields 4 to 8 servings."
There's just one problem:
Cuttlefish look like Cthulu, and there's nothing anybody could do or say to make me eat 'em.
Truth be told, I only put this recipe up so that I'd have an excuse to post a picture of a cuttlefish. I just can't wrap my brain around the fact that people would willingly put these in their mouths.
Posted by patrick at 03:27 AM | Comments (3)
September 10, 2004
Danny Elfman's the man. No question about it.
When it comes to soundtracks, Danny Elfman is the man.
When you hear the theme from "Beetlejuice," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas," either of the Pee-Wee Herman movies, or even the opening melody for "The Simpsons," you immediately know what film it’s attached to—and you immediately know Elfman did it.
There just something about his scores that’s creative and lush and voluptuous in a way that I really appreciate.
And he's married to Bridget Fonda, thus serving as a beacon of hope for nerdy guys everywhere.
Posted by patrick at 05:13 AM | Comments (2)
September 05, 2004
"Hey, where all the directin' women at?"
It's usually pretty easy to notice when somebody's taken something from you. It can be a lot harder to sense the absence of something you never had in the first place.
I was watching "Near Dark" this evening with a friend's cat. I’m house-sitting, the friend's other cat ran away recently, and I don't want the remaining cat to get too lonely while his mom is on vacation. Anyhow, the cat and I are enjoying "Near Dark," which I picked up (used) on VHS for $5 at Blockbuster. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good—good enough that you can see how/why subsequent writers and directors tried to incorporate elements from it into the likes of "Vampires" (which, heaven help me, I love—the film and the guilty-pleasure novel both) and "The Forsaken".
I looked "Near Dark" up on IMDB.com to find out more about the cast, since everybody but Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton were unfamiliar to me, and found out that it was directed and co-written by a woman, Katheryn Bigelow. She also directed "K-19: The Widowmaker" and "Strange Days"—the latter of which fell into the cinematic ocean with nary a ripple, but which I've always keenly enjoyed. Can I get a little more gritty cyber-punk with my dystopia? Yeah, that's the stuff.
It's not often that you see a woman directing a horror film, and it got me to thinking about the female director of "Ravenous" (another odd favorite), Antonia Bird. I looked her up on IMDB, also, and while she had other credits, "Ravenous" was the only project I'd ever heard of.
Katheryn Bigelow and Antonia Bird. She doesn’t do horror, but Nora Ephron makes three.
Okay. Where are the rest of the female directors?
It's simple. They basically don't exist.
According to a very interesting article on Salon, only four percent of the films coming out of Hollywood are helmed by women. That's bad enough as it is, but as the article goes on to mention, many of the films in that meager four percent are romantic comedy or "chick films"—the only sorts of projects Hollywood thinks a woman can direct, apparently. Imagine the outrage if Hollywood pigeon-holed men the same way—only letting them direct Westerns and brainless shoot-em-up movies, say—and had eunuchs or asexual aliens direct everything else.
Hollywood's defenders and detractors both so often paint a picture of it being an enclave of liberal thought that doesn't really reflect the rest of the country's mores (for better or for worse), but on the issue of gender equity, the nation at large has Hollywood beat: Nine percent of the country's senators are women, to Hollywood's four percent of women directors.
And apropos of nothing, here’s an intriguing tidbit of trivia from Lance Henriksen’s IMDB biography. Apparently, he was illiterate until age thirty, at which point he used film scripts to teach himself to read.
Posted by patrick at 02:48 AM | Comments (2)