I always wanted to be in a famous painting. Well, my dream came true.
All I can say is if Al gets $2000 for his painting, the terrorists win.
Link!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
ABBA
Holy crap.
I don't know what just happened.
You see, I HAAAAAAAATE that "Mamma Mia".
I think it's the ultimate irony that sweet little Christian ladies from the south love that musical.
Because the musical is about being a SKANK. Somehow, dumb Christians have been bamboozled into plunking down the money God gave them on the notion that licentiousness and cheating and promiscuity is cause for celebration.
But something happened today.
I...
I don't want to admit this.
I listened to ABBA today.
I DIDN'T MEAN TO! The tunes are just so damn CATCHY! I'm SORRY! I didn't mean for it to happen! I was weak! It won't happen again, I SWEAR!
I don't know what just happened.
You see, I HAAAAAAAATE that "Mamma Mia".
I think it's the ultimate irony that sweet little Christian ladies from the south love that musical.
Because the musical is about being a SKANK. Somehow, dumb Christians have been bamboozled into plunking down the money God gave them on the notion that licentiousness and cheating and promiscuity is cause for celebration.
But something happened today.
I...
I don't want to admit this.
I listened to ABBA today.
I DIDN'T MEAN TO! The tunes are just so damn CATCHY! I'm SORRY! I didn't mean for it to happen! I was weak! It won't happen again, I SWEAR!
Friday, March 20, 2009
Working, Building, Never Stopping, Never Sleeping..
Freak snowstorm in New York this morning. On the first day of spring, too.
I'm at work today.
You know. For my *career*.
My *acting career*. I'm not ALWAYS nekkid, you know.
It's a print ad for Buhrizum. The phone company. You know. "Can you hear me now?"
They're doing a new campaign to push their global network offerings.
And to prove to consumers their phones work in England, they've hired me and 14 other guys to dress in authentic Buckingham Palace guard attire.
Like, at some point in time, each of these uniforms actually stood in front of the bloomin' castle. There's even an expert on guarding the Queen Mum or Crown Jewels or whatever it is we're guarding. He's teaching us how to stand authentically. Example: "It's not chest-out, it's stomach-in."
Meanwhile my other friends sit in office buildings refreshing the Drudge Report.
Some people have all the fun.
I'm at work today.
You know. For my *career*.
My *acting career*. I'm not ALWAYS nekkid, you know.
It's a print ad for Buhrizum. The phone company. You know. "Can you hear me now?"
They're doing a new campaign to push their global network offerings.
And to prove to consumers their phones work in England, they've hired me and 14 other guys to dress in authentic Buckingham Palace guard attire.
Like, at some point in time, each of these uniforms actually stood in front of the bloomin' castle. There's even an expert on guarding the Queen Mum or Crown Jewels or whatever it is we're guarding. He's teaching us how to stand authentically. Example: "It's not chest-out, it's stomach-in."
Meanwhile my other friends sit in office buildings refreshing the Drudge Report.
Some people have all the fun.
I don't make this stuff up
Thursday, March 19, 2009
What I Did On My Birthday
The music video.
Please feel free to leave comments here if you managed to stomach the entire thing. I'd LOVE to hear what you all think.
I'm not going to try to say anything clever. I've...I've got nothing. Nope. I'm done.
Please feel free to leave comments here if you managed to stomach the entire thing. I'd LOVE to hear what you all think.
I'm not going to try to say anything clever. I've...I've got nothing. Nope. I'm done.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Forkish Reviews: West Side Snorey
There's a reason the Jets have trouble playing it cool, boy.
It's because they all have 'roid rage.
Every one of the goofy, pirhouetting gang members wear little to no sleeves, showing us that the Jets were the true pioneers of physical fitness back in the early sixties when gyms had not yet been widely embraced by society.
Early sixties or whenever they've decided to set this flaccid revival of West Side Story now playing at the Palace Theatre.
For while the script is in tact (replete with embarassing 'daddy-o's and all that fun jive talk that was dated by the time the original production got out of previews), the cast looks like a bunch of 21st century twenty-something hipsters who just got back from raiding the vintage clothing shops in the West Village.
Someone must've misinterpreted the choreographer's request to make dancers "look more in sync" (an unfortunate problem with the 'ogrophy which will likely become worse with future changes to the ensemble) with making the dancers "look more N*SYNC".
The exception is in the production's Tony (Matt Cavenaugh) and Maria (Josefina Scaglione). Maria looks (and acts) like she hasn't yet had her quinsineara and Tony looks like he could be her father.
Taller, older, and even more ridiculously muscled than any of the other kids on the block, it begs the question, in those brief scenes where we see Tony at his job--the job description apparently being: must be able to wipe a bunch of stuff with a rag--how heavy is that rag anyway? Because Tony looks less like Romeo and more like he's training to be a space marine on some distant mining colony.
Indeed, instead of singing "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria" it might be more appropriate to change the lyrics to "Jailbait, I just met a girl who is jailbait."
After all, they've done changed enough of the songs as it is. You see, in attempting to keep up with the In the Heights Joneses, the director went with the bold, fresh choice of making 75% of all the Puerto Rican songs and dialogue Spanish.
Now, I was down with that concept in short scenes. It added a nice vocal layer that was pleasing to the ear. But in the longer scenes that take place in Maria's apartment--(or CASTLE? This West Side Story's famous fire-escape version of "the balcony scene" goes for broke and gets an ACTUAL Romeo and Juliet-style BALCONY. Think of the parties she could throw on that thing!)--in those longer scenes where it's just two "P.R.'s" on stage, you get that same funny longing to hear English after watching too much Telemundo.
And a number of these well-known songs are sung en Espaniol as well.
And so, okay. I'm all right with this Spanish thing in short bursts of dialogue. I understand. You want to make the $100-a-seat Broadway show more accessible to the mobs of young Latinos from the Barrio who are clammoring for expensive orchestra seats every night. I dig it, daddy-o.
But that means all the old Jewish ladies (who made up the VAST majority of the audience last night) are going to be awfully crestfallen when they find they can't sing along to the all-Spanish version of "I Feel Pretty".
It's weird. It's the same thing that left me scratching my head at the end of In the Heights. You try to make your show accessable to the ethnic masses and bring a little taste of the slums into a Broadway theatre. Then you charge $120 a seat to sing about it and the only people who can afford the tickets are cheery white tourists.
If that ain't irony I don't know what is.
The show isn't hateful. It's not AWFUL. It's just really disappointing. It's so safe and stagnant when compared to the abusive shows like Spring Awakening that it comes off as corny--the ULTIMATE no-no when you're trying to convince a corn-o-phobic public that Broadway musicals can kick ass too.
Even the excellent revival of South Pacific managed to evolve gracefully with these cynical times. That show feels every bit like the piece of expensive, mature entertainment that it is with its well-crafted sense of impending doom. Nellie may be as corny as Kansas in August, but that happily pitch-dark production certainly isn't.
We live in an age where the grisly Watchmen is the flick of the week. Entertainment centering around violence--from music to video games to wrestling--has become much more in-your-face. And while, yes, dancing is pretty, we can't accept twinkle-toes dance moves for urban gang warfare anymore.
I earnestly believe a 2009 revival of West Side Story should be rated R. As it stands now, it's fun for the whole family.
The other problems are manifold: the flimsy and surprisingly uncreative set pieces, lack of chemistry between Tony and Maria, Riff's unfortunate lisp, dull staging (Tony steps through Maria's open window with comical nonchalance), tons of dead air that cause the snappy dialogue to sag...
But all these pale in comparison to the ultimate sin: Mr. Cavenaugh's mouth-coveringly bad performance.
It's right up there on Seagull level, folks. He may have won the critics over, somehow, but I'm here today to tell you the tenory, hyper-nasal "New Broadway" voice emitting from his massive bulk made my brain hurt. Cavenaugh is simply too big and too old to play a Romeo. In trying to "act" 17 while flexing his bodybuilder arms and singing through his nose about being in love with a 12 year old girl and "why can't we all just get along?", this Tony doesn't feel like a hero. He feels like a goober.
It would be one thing if, when the bodies start piling up, we caught a glimpse of the "HULK SMASH!" power that made Tony the original leader of the gang.
But since we never see it, since he plays Tony like a muscle-bound pansy and a dope--his Maria certainly doesn't help by treating him like a buffoon so she can score some laughs from the audience (which she looked VERY proud of, I might add)--you don't really care when they fire that cap-gun at him in the end. And that's a BIG problem.
At least Anita was good--when you could understand her. But what made her good was all that anachronistic sass. I don't care who you are, everyone cheers when they see a girl snap and do that head-swivel thing.
All this leads me to an unfortunate conclusion: maybe 'West Side Story' isn't really that great of a show. Don't get me wrong, the music is still marvelous.
But when you watch this production, you start to feel as though this musical was one of those musician/choreographer vanity-projects. Some folks who don't know anything about Shakespeare decide they're going to be cutting-edge and write a hip, all singing, all dancing modern day version of 'Romeo and Juliet'. Yeah! The kids will go NUTS! It'll be exciting!
But this production is NOT exciting. It feels like an antique. It's quaint. You start to feel that the show exists merely to showcase the songs and dance numbers instead of telling a story by seamlessly weaving in song, dance, acting, the whole bit, which is what a great musical is supposed to do. It struck me that Bernstein probably intended for the show to just be a ballet--it would be his "Raphsody in Blue"--but figured he could make more money by making it into a musical.
Songs pop up seemingly out of nowhere, and, in the case of the disappointing 'Officer Krupke' number, at completely inappropriate times (where is the shrewd revivalist director who can see the 'Play it Cool' song belongs in the second act?). The stakes are low. The cast lacks energy. The stage combat looks fake. The dancing fights are sloppy when they don't look totally gay.
And those of us who were hoping for a bold, bracing revival, something a little more keeping with the original intent of crafting a bad-ass musical retelling of R&J, will wring our hands and wonder why, WHY, after all these decades, Maria STILL doesn't have the huevos to shoot herself in the end.
Little old ladies are sure to love it.
It's because they all have 'roid rage.
Every one of the goofy, pirhouetting gang members wear little to no sleeves, showing us that the Jets were the true pioneers of physical fitness back in the early sixties when gyms had not yet been widely embraced by society.
Early sixties or whenever they've decided to set this flaccid revival of West Side Story now playing at the Palace Theatre.
For while the script is in tact (replete with embarassing 'daddy-o's and all that fun jive talk that was dated by the time the original production got out of previews), the cast looks like a bunch of 21st century twenty-something hipsters who just got back from raiding the vintage clothing shops in the West Village.
Someone must've misinterpreted the choreographer's request to make dancers "look more in sync" (an unfortunate problem with the 'ogrophy which will likely become worse with future changes to the ensemble) with making the dancers "look more N*SYNC".
The exception is in the production's Tony (Matt Cavenaugh) and Maria (Josefina Scaglione). Maria looks (and acts) like she hasn't yet had her quinsineara and Tony looks like he could be her father.
Taller, older, and even more ridiculously muscled than any of the other kids on the block, it begs the question, in those brief scenes where we see Tony at his job--the job description apparently being: must be able to wipe a bunch of stuff with a rag--how heavy is that rag anyway? Because Tony looks less like Romeo and more like he's training to be a space marine on some distant mining colony.
Indeed, instead of singing "Maria, I just met a girl named Maria" it might be more appropriate to change the lyrics to "Jailbait, I just met a girl who is jailbait."
After all, they've done changed enough of the songs as it is. You see, in attempting to keep up with the In the Heights Joneses, the director went with the bold, fresh choice of making 75% of all the Puerto Rican songs and dialogue Spanish.
Now, I was down with that concept in short scenes. It added a nice vocal layer that was pleasing to the ear. But in the longer scenes that take place in Maria's apartment--(or CASTLE? This West Side Story's famous fire-escape version of "the balcony scene" goes for broke and gets an ACTUAL Romeo and Juliet-style BALCONY. Think of the parties she could throw on that thing!)--in those longer scenes where it's just two "P.R.'s" on stage, you get that same funny longing to hear English after watching too much Telemundo.
And a number of these well-known songs are sung en Espaniol as well.
And so, okay. I'm all right with this Spanish thing in short bursts of dialogue. I understand. You want to make the $100-a-seat Broadway show more accessible to the mobs of young Latinos from the Barrio who are clammoring for expensive orchestra seats every night. I dig it, daddy-o.
But that means all the old Jewish ladies (who made up the VAST majority of the audience last night) are going to be awfully crestfallen when they find they can't sing along to the all-Spanish version of "I Feel Pretty".
It's weird. It's the same thing that left me scratching my head at the end of In the Heights. You try to make your show accessable to the ethnic masses and bring a little taste of the slums into a Broadway theatre. Then you charge $120 a seat to sing about it and the only people who can afford the tickets are cheery white tourists.
If that ain't irony I don't know what is.
The show isn't hateful. It's not AWFUL. It's just really disappointing. It's so safe and stagnant when compared to the abusive shows like Spring Awakening that it comes off as corny--the ULTIMATE no-no when you're trying to convince a corn-o-phobic public that Broadway musicals can kick ass too.
Even the excellent revival of South Pacific managed to evolve gracefully with these cynical times. That show feels every bit like the piece of expensive, mature entertainment that it is with its well-crafted sense of impending doom. Nellie may be as corny as Kansas in August, but that happily pitch-dark production certainly isn't.
We live in an age where the grisly Watchmen is the flick of the week. Entertainment centering around violence--from music to video games to wrestling--has become much more in-your-face. And while, yes, dancing is pretty, we can't accept twinkle-toes dance moves for urban gang warfare anymore.
I earnestly believe a 2009 revival of West Side Story should be rated R. As it stands now, it's fun for the whole family.
The other problems are manifold: the flimsy and surprisingly uncreative set pieces, lack of chemistry between Tony and Maria, Riff's unfortunate lisp, dull staging (Tony steps through Maria's open window with comical nonchalance), tons of dead air that cause the snappy dialogue to sag...
But all these pale in comparison to the ultimate sin: Mr. Cavenaugh's mouth-coveringly bad performance.
It's right up there on Seagull level, folks. He may have won the critics over, somehow, but I'm here today to tell you the tenory, hyper-nasal "New Broadway" voice emitting from his massive bulk made my brain hurt. Cavenaugh is simply too big and too old to play a Romeo. In trying to "act" 17 while flexing his bodybuilder arms and singing through his nose about being in love with a 12 year old girl and "why can't we all just get along?", this Tony doesn't feel like a hero. He feels like a goober.
It would be one thing if, when the bodies start piling up, we caught a glimpse of the "HULK SMASH!" power that made Tony the original leader of the gang.
But since we never see it, since he plays Tony like a muscle-bound pansy and a dope--his Maria certainly doesn't help by treating him like a buffoon so she can score some laughs from the audience (which she looked VERY proud of, I might add)--you don't really care when they fire that cap-gun at him in the end. And that's a BIG problem.
At least Anita was good--when you could understand her. But what made her good was all that anachronistic sass. I don't care who you are, everyone cheers when they see a girl snap and do that head-swivel thing.
All this leads me to an unfortunate conclusion: maybe 'West Side Story' isn't really that great of a show. Don't get me wrong, the music is still marvelous.
But when you watch this production, you start to feel as though this musical was one of those musician/choreographer vanity-projects. Some folks who don't know anything about Shakespeare decide they're going to be cutting-edge and write a hip, all singing, all dancing modern day version of 'Romeo and Juliet'. Yeah! The kids will go NUTS! It'll be exciting!
But this production is NOT exciting. It feels like an antique. It's quaint. You start to feel that the show exists merely to showcase the songs and dance numbers instead of telling a story by seamlessly weaving in song, dance, acting, the whole bit, which is what a great musical is supposed to do. It struck me that Bernstein probably intended for the show to just be a ballet--it would be his "Raphsody in Blue"--but figured he could make more money by making it into a musical.
Songs pop up seemingly out of nowhere, and, in the case of the disappointing 'Officer Krupke' number, at completely inappropriate times (where is the shrewd revivalist director who can see the 'Play it Cool' song belongs in the second act?). The stakes are low. The cast lacks energy. The stage combat looks fake. The dancing fights are sloppy when they don't look totally gay.
And those of us who were hoping for a bold, bracing revival, something a little more keeping with the original intent of crafting a bad-ass musical retelling of R&J, will wring our hands and wonder why, WHY, after all these decades, Maria STILL doesn't have the huevos to shoot herself in the end.
Little old ladies are sure to love it.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
Today. Show!
Okay guys, get your tivos ready because it looks as though Wednesday the 11th is *the* day. They're not 100% sure...I guess current events and breaking newses can result in segment-shuffling, but that's what they told me!
Holy crap. What have I done...?
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Wrong Side
I don't care what kind of bad day you *think* you're having.
Because there's no way it beats mine!
The only thing that's still fun about this morning is the Japanese pop star on my iPod singing, "Doh-oon'tuu woo-ddee baayuu-bee."
It's been a New York morning.
So I'm working with the impossibly famous classical realist (at least, impossibly famous by painting terms) Yacob Collans. Right now he's working on the portrait or, to speak in the vernacular, my mug. So I have to make sure I'm clean-shaven.
The problem is, this new electric razor uses the patented "PainTech" which means it doesn't really *cut* the hair so much as it *pulls it out*.
After dropping three F-bombs over the bathroom sink (and all before breakfast!), I decided to switch back to the regular razor and shaving cream combo and contemplated throwing out the electric one once and for all.
Only the blade was dull. And in my grogginess, I failed to realize that was why it was painfully snagging on my neck and conjuring images of Sweeney Todd.
By this time I was running late. There would be no time for breakfast today. Just pack food to last through the ten hour session and pick up an oatmeal at Morebucks.
I got the new latte and oatmeal combo. I usually add a dash of cinnamon to my bowl of porridge but the cinnamon shaker wasn't on the counter. I asked the barista making my coffee drink for the cinnamon.
She picked up the shaker from her barista station and started dumping its contents into my latte.
"Want more cinnamon?" she asked.
"Actually, I was going to put that in my oatmeal."
She apologized eight times.
Outwardly laughing but inwardly crying, the Bad Idea Fork appeared on my shoulder.
"Good morning!" it said. "I have a good idea! Today, instead of going your usual way, why don't you take a *different* train to the upper east side?"
"Good idea!" I said to the Bad Idea Fork.
"And relax! You've got plenty of time. Why don't you just put your brain on auto-pilot?"
"Good idea!" I said to the Bad Idea Fork.
The auto-pilot remembered that the alternate way to get to the 6 train was to hop one of the uptown blue trains.
Just as I swiped my metrocard, a train pulled up. My New Yorker instinct screamed, "DON'TSTOPGO!!!!" and I hopped aboard.
When we arrived at Columbus Circle I remembered the C train doesn't go across town.
I hopped on the next downtown train.
Only you can't cross the platform at 50th without going above ground and paying to get in again.
So I rode down to 42nd.
I crossed over to the uptown-bound side.
A train pulled up. My New Yorker instinct went off again. "DON'TSTOPGO!" So I did as I was told and hopped on.
Fortunately I realized I'd climbed aboard *another* uptown C train before it was too late.
Then came modeling. We're doing a shoulders-up portrait which means I can wear pants this time. It's a very simple pose--chest out, shoulders back, head turned slightly to the right.
But after doing four ten-hour sessions, chinking away at the 50th hour today finally became a little...torturous.
Because Yacob is a little crazy. He's got so much energy the only way he can focus is by listening to audiobooks. So that means I stand stock-still in complete silence from 8:30-6:30, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
I had a difficult time keeping it together today. I almost went bananas.
Then I got an email from ol' Ally Adkins, the costume lady from Alma Mater U. She informed me that my arch-nemesis Dan deDeman was in town with his wife and entourage doing some show. And he wanted to network with Alma Mater U alums once they were finished.
I felt a little bit like the witch in Sleeping Beauty. I probably wouldn't've gone anyway, but I'm pissed that I wasn't invited.
So that was my day. Oh, and I found out they're turning my beloved Times Square Virgin MegaStore into...
...a Forever 21.
Shoot me in the head.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Too Good...?
I've completely failed to mention 'Henry Vee'.
Yeah, I've been in rehearsals for this one for about a month or so. We open at the end of the month.
I guess the reason nothing's been said about it is because it's going so well. Everybody in the cast is really nice, talented, pleasant...it's cake! Almost too good to be true.
So yeah. No drama or anything. And that's a good thing. Can't remember the last time I did a show that was really FUN to do.
I'll keep my eyes open for some juicy nastiness to report but so far it's just good, old-fashioned, boring theatre-time fun. When you're dealing with a cast of 20 everything becomes a wash.
Meanwhile, I looked in the mirror today and stopped. I think I've gotten bigger. Like, holy-crap-I-think-I'm-getting-*bigger* bigger.
And I'm not the only one.
Yesterday I was doing a favor for everyone's favorite hippie, Four-Stringed Guitar Bill (remember him?). He wrote this protest song about Wall Street bakers ruining the economy.
His old buddy, Levi Epsteinberg--who produced the very first video for a certain cone-boobed, gap-toothed blonde--decided he wanted to try his hand at producing digital entertainment with the intent of creating the next big internet sensation. And so when Four-Stringed Guitar Bill cooked up this tuneless tune, Levi decided to make "Vampire Banker Conspiracy" his pet project.
In addition to recording the song at the studio, they also wanted to get footage of us playing ukuleles around the mic.
But we all needed to be wearing Hawaiian shirts. Because all ukesters wear Hawaiian shirts. (*rolls eyes*)
Well, like any normal person, I don't own a Hawaiian shirt. So Levi offered to bring one for me to wear. When asked what size shirt I normally wear, I said that it depends. Small or medium.
I walked into the recording studio and Levi immediately said, "I'm lookin at dis guy and thinkin, 'Is dis the guy who said he wears a small?'. It's a good thing I brought a medium. You ain't no small."
I thought little of it until I saw myself in the mirror in the church restroom this morning.
Man. All that log-lifting must be doing something.
Next week we film the video part of the music video. We're all going to be dressed up in maroon robes like weird cultists. We're going to chase vampire bankers through Wall Street.
Man. I want a desk job.
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