Wednesday, June 27, 2007

“… we’ve relinquished … imagination to the marketplace.”

Well worth a read to remind us of the importance of the arts—all of them—to our lives and society, these remarks by Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, at Stanford University's commencement. A snip:

The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young.

There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I will iPhone

We're just a couple of days away from what the media are frequently reminding us is one of the most anticipated personal electronics launches in history, the release of the Apple iPhone. From the very product announcement, I was certain that I would own one, someday. But I've relaxed my tendency to live on the bleeding edge. I will wait, I thought, until my current cell phone contract runs out, about a year hence. By then, there will probably be a new version with more features and even more whiz-bang.

Then I watched this video and decided I needed one sooner. Much sooner. With any luck, I'll own an iPhone by summer's end and will tithe the penalty to be released from my current contract with pleasure.

Here's the thing: I'm not unhappy with my current phone. In fact, the Treo 650 I've been toting is probably the best I've ever owned. It permitted me to give away my Palm organizer, stop fretting about toting a camera everywhere I went, gives me a great sounding phone experience on a broad Sprint network and serves as a perfectly acceptable—considering its limitations—web and e-mail device.

And it looks antique next to the iPhone. Which will, oh yes, be mine.

That's because it's that last bit of feature I've come to rely on the most: access to e-mail and, especially, the web. And that's what all of the reviews to date (1, 2, 3) say the iPhone does best.

I can't get away from the phone; I'm in the professional communications business after all. But even sitting at my desk, even spending a few hours a day on the phone, I spend much more time in the web browser and pushing e-mail around. It has changed the way my business works and drastically reduced the number of people I actually have to speak with daily. If you took the phone off my desk tomorrow, I'd adjust and hardly miss a beat. I can't do my job these days without Eudora or Firefox.

So what I need most when I'm out and about (and not schlepping a lightweight laptop) is a great e-mail machine, a web browser, my calendar and contacts and a phone—in that order. That's what the iPhone appears to be. If I can use it to update the websites I administer, dash off e-mail replies to media queries, do modest research while I'm stuck at an airport gate (and, more than occasionally, consult the IMDb to settle a bar bet), manage my schedule and even from time to time call my mom, then it's exactly what I need.

The web is my backup brain (with apologies to Tom and Dori) and I can't wait for the iPhone to help me make a synaptic connection.

Can't. Wait.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Butterfly tramplin’

A site analyzing Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies:

Time travel has been a staple in Science Fiction since H.G. Wells. Unfortunately, much of what passes for intelligence in this area is poorly considered.

For example, it is not possible to return to the past without changing the past in some way; nor is it possible to change the future based on information from the future. Doctor Who realized early on that changes to history were hazardous, and avoided them assiduously. Movies built on a time travel theme frequently become dissatisfying when the thread of time is closely examined.

[via Jason "McFly" Kottke]

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Now and forev--oops!

Cat Destroys Lloyd Webber's Phantom Sequel Score. Insert your own joke here.

Feedback back

I think I've managed to get the comments feature working again, although I've borked the "Preview" template so, well, let's get it right the first time, OK? I've also upped the anti-spam mojo a bit, which means nothing to you, dear reader, but the world to me.

As always, new comments are held for moderation—the only sort of moderation we endorse around these parts—but Typekey-authenticated comments or comments by previously trusted correspondents zip right through.

Your two cents are once again welcomed and encouraged here.

A Pulitzer conspiracy?

According to comments on its MySpace site, it appears that the Newsies flashmob I mentioned a while ago didn't happen as planned. Anyone know what happened? Is Christian Bale OK?

Be a part of it!

I'm pleased with how the television promo for the new Mainstage season came out. Cinevative put this together for us.



Interested? I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that subscriptions are on sale now.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Pimp my Firefox

Three new (to me) Firefox extensions I'm enjoying:

• Add to Search Bar: Makes it easy to add new site search engines to the Firefox search box. I just added the search on the theatre's website and it works a treat.
• Fission: Puts a progress bar in the address bar, ala Safari.
• Smart Link: Makes it easy to open plain-text URLs with a contextual click.

Sneaking feeds from the PD

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch website is a bit of usability nightmare, but most vexing is its spotty use of RSS feeds. You can generally get news headlines and section headlines, but they're not full-text feeds and they have a firehose approach (for example, you can get a feed of all columnists but not just pick and choose your favorites).

Last year, the paper launched a bunch of blogs and they continue to roll out others. Powered by WordPress, the PD Blog Zone is as frustrating to navigate as the rest of the site and its feed selection is no exception. If you rely on auto-discovery, you wind up with a feed of comments from all blogs, not the original content. The individual blogs have no obvious links to their feeds either.

But last week, I accidentally discovered how to trick the PD into giving up its blog feeds: Just take the address of the blog and append /feed/ to the end. So, for example, if you're a transit geek like me and want to follow the new Driver's Seat blog, the feed address would be http://www.stltoday.com/blogs/news-the-drivers-seat/feed/. Alas, they're still not full-text but at least they provide a few lines whenever the site updates.

Are the blogs themselves any good? It's a mixed bag. The Driver's Seat is new and largely focused on the roads (necessarily, given the current mania around the I-64 reconstruction), but there are occasional public transit and Metro tidbits and it may improve with both breadth and depth in time. I've only sampled a few of the others and haven't found anything else particularly feedworthy to stick into my NetNewsWire yet.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Clearing the Cache: June 11, 2007

• This is about eight different kinds of wrong, but it's at least a couple of kinds of funny: United 300 or What happens when the Spartans play air marshalls? (Everybody loves a muscle boy!)
  
• A remarkably comprehensive site dedicated to the British police box, otherwise known as the most famous TARDIS disguise in all of time.
• Fission adds a progress bar to the address field of Firefox.
  

Tomorrow is Mouse Day in San Francisco

The City by the Bay celebrates my fictional avatar tomorrow, June 12; San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has declared it "Michael Tolliver Day", celebrating, among other things, Armistead Maupin's newest novel, Michael Tolliver Lives. Therein, we find Mouse a little older, perhaps a little wiser and still living in the San Francisco wonderland.

Of the new book, Maupin says:

"I wanted to illuminate the process of growing older as a gay man, and make it easier for people who think life is over," he says. "Gay men who are growing old are incredibly lucky to be here."

Maupin's life hasn't been untouched by AIDS; like so many, he lost a loved one. The optimistic outlook he has today has been hard won.

"But if I'd known that 63 was going to feel this good, I would have been a lot more cheerful along the way," says Maupin.

Another anniversary, of sorts, coming up

This coming Saturday, it will have been eight years since I published a braindump I called Why I Weblog. The piece grew from a post and dialog on the earliest weblog-related listserv, was linked to by a lot of folks who were doing this sort of thing back in the day, and three years later was even published in a book.

I concluded my ramblings with this thought:

As the weblog movement matures, our sites will wrest editorial authority from the few editors of today and divide it among the many. “They” can continue to publish the chaff; we’ll be there to point our hungry readers toward the wheat. Hopefully, we’ll have fun doing it and learn a lot along the way.

And so it goes, my friends. And so it goes. Try not to let a day go by without having fun and learning while we’re revolutionizing the media, okay?

The 50(ish) percent solution…

I was 12 for 25 with my hypothetical Tony Awards votes. If I had "voted" my gut instead of my heart, I'd probably have made 75 percent, at least.

I added the actual winners from last night's Tony Awards to my choices.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Success in America

Actor Frank Langella, accepting his Best Actor in a Play honor, gave the best Tony Award speech earlier tonight, the best in several years of my recollection:

There's a line in Frost/Nixon which says, 'Success in America is unlike success anywhere else. That feeling when you're up...it's indescribable.' And I'm very grateful to the theatre community, to my colleagues in Frost/Nixon here and overseas, and to the New York theatregoing public for allowing me that feeling this season.

The line in the play then goes on to say, 'But there's another feeling when it's gone, to somewhere else, to someone else.' And I know that feeling. Everyone in this room knows it. I suppose we can't stop people from putting us into competition with one another, and once we're here, I suppose we all want to win. But I think we must honor the common bond in us, the struggle, the striving for success, because that's a race you simply can't lose.

I am very proud and very honored to work and live among you splendid people. Thank you. Thank you for giving me that indescribable feeling. I wish it for you all.

Amen.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Clearing the Cache: June 7, 2007

• I really like this design for a faux sugar packet shim for unstable tables. [via J-Walk Blog]
• That Lady. We've all been there, Matthew, but I'd prefer the sign read "12 Eccentricities Or Fewer."
  

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Clearing the Cache: June 6, 2007

• Chicago's gay and lesbian community Center on Halsted has officially opened. I can't wait to visit. Congrats!
• It appears that the CBS drama Jericho may be coming back after all. Hooray! Now I may actually get to find out how the end of the world ends.
• The cost to stage a musical number on the Tony Awards tops $250,000. Ouch.

The Tony Awards: If I had my way

Updated June 10: I've added the actual winners in brackets at the end of each of my choices.

Faithful (and handsome) correspondent Stefan asked, after reading my roundup of theatre moments over the past season, if I'd consider sharing my predictions for Sunday's Tony Awards.

While I'm loathe to turn down a request from a hottie reader, here's the thing. I don't do predictions. I suck at them. I mean really, really suck.

So half a bargain? Here's who and what would be taking home Tonys if I were king of the forest:

• Lighting Design: I'd give it to Chris Akerlind for 110 in the Shade; Chris always does wonderful work, but he really hit it out of the park here. It was just gorgeous. I'd give three trophies to Brian MacDevitt, Kenneth Psner and Natasha Katz for The Coast of Utopia trilogy. [Musical: Kevin Adams, Spring Awakening; Play: The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Costume Design: William Ivey Long for Grey Gardens, and Ti Green and Melly Still for Coram Boy. [Musical: Grey Gardens; Play: Catherine Zuber, The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Scenic Design: Bob Crowley and Scott Pask for The Coast of Utopia; Christine Jones for Spring Awakening. [Musical: Bob Crowley, Mary Poppins; Play: The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Orchestrations: Jonathan Tunick for LoveMusik, closely followed by...Jonathan Tunick for 110 in the Shade. [Duncan Sheik, Spring Awakening]
  
• Choreography: Kind of torn here, since I loved what Jerry Mitchell did with Legally Blonde, but I'd give the nod to Rob Ashford's work on Curtains. [Bill T. Jones, Spring Awakening]
  
• Direction of a Musical: John Doyle for Company. He really pulled the whole production together, and his conceit of actors-as-orchestra worked ideally here. [Michael Mayer, Spring Awakening]
  
• Direction of a Play: Another toughie, but my award goes to Michael Grandage for Frost/Nixon, a superlative production all around. [Jack O'Brien, The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Featured Actress in a Musical: Karen Ziemba in Curtains. (As I noted before, I'd love to see her up for a leading lady Tony sometime soon.) [Mary Louise Wilson, Grey Gardens]
  
• Featured Actor in a Musical: John Gallagher Jr. for Spring Awakening, closely followed by Christian Borle in Legally Blonde. [John Gallagher Jr., Spring Awakening]
  
• Featured Actress in a Play: Jennifer Ehle in The Coast of Utopia. [Jennifer Ehle, The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Featured Actor in a Play: Stark Sands in Journey's End. [Billy Crudup, The Coast of Utopia]
  
• Leading Actress in a Musical: Man alive, this is the hardest category for me to choose, because each of the nominees gave performances that knocked me out, but I'll go with my first choice, which is Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens. [Christine Ebersole, Grey Gardens]
  
• Leading Actor in a Musical: Raúl Esparza in Company. Hands down, no contest. Best. Bobby. Ever. [David Hyde Pierce, Curtains]
  
• Leading Actress in a Play: I loved Eve Best in A Moon for the Misbegotten, but I really want the Tony to go to Julie White from The Little Dog Laughed. She split my sides. [Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed]
  
• Leading Actor in a Play: Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon. An amazing, mesmerizing performance. [Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon]
  
• Best Theatrical Event: Alas, I missed both nominees, but Kiki & Herb are my sentimental favorite. [Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!]
  
• Best Revival of a Musical: If Company wasn't in the running, this would be 110 in the Shade's award. But I gotta go with Mr. Sondheim's masterpiece under Mr. Doyle's direction. Almost perfect. [Company]
  
• Best Revival of a Play: Journey's End. [Journey's End]
  
• Best Original Score: Spring Awakening. [Duncan Sheik, Steven Sater, Spring Awakening]
  
• Best Book of a Musical: Spring Awakening. [Steven Sater, Spring Awakening]
  
• Best Musical: While acknowledging that Spring Awakening has the edge here, my award would go to Curtains for sheer fun. [Spring Awakening]
  
• Best Play: Mr. Stoppard's marathon The Coast of Utopia, trailed by Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon. [The Coast of Utopia]
  

Got something to say?

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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

The way I saw it

I've been trying to organize my thoughts about the theatre season just passed but they're about as jumbled as the stack of ticket stubs on my desk. I've spent more time in New York this season--on trips short and long--and since I seldom let a night in the city go by without seeing a show, that means I saw nearly everything worthwhile that opened on Broadway, a rare year for me. I got to see a lot of shows elsewhere too and, of course, we produced a few. Herewith some non-comprehensive notes:

• The very best things I saw on any stage this season were both limited-run, concert editions of favorite shows. I sat gleefully third row at Ravinia in August to see Patti LuPone as Rose and Jessica Boevers (now Bogart) in the title role of Gypsy. This was hardly a scaled-down production, however; for a "concert", it was pretty fully-mounted. It was simply thrilling, absolutely, and one of those nights in the theatre I'll treasure forever. (I strongly suspect it was an event that will become like Woodstock and, years in the future, thousands upon thousands will claim to have been in the park that night witnessing LuPone's "Rose's Turn".)
• Neither snow nor rain nor flesh-eating bacteria or any other unlikely fate that might have befallen me could have kept me from Encores! concert of Follies at City Center. I wrote a few lines about that show while still basking in its afterglow.
  
• Company: I first saw this show in Cincinnati with our pals at the Playhouse in the Park; I documented my thoughts on the production pretty well here at the time. I'm pleased to report that the show (which did, in fact, transfer to a Broadway run) held up to my expectations in New York. I saw an early preview and another performance a few weeks ago. It remains, of the many, many I've seen, my favorite production of the work and I am certainly pulling for Raul Esparza, the best damn Bobby I've ever seen, to take the Tony Award this weekend.
• Journey's End was the best drama I saw in New York this season, and The Little Dog Laughed was the most entertaining (if unevenly wrought) comedy. I also adored The Year of Magical Thinking, and Vanessa Redgrave's performance therein. Not forgetting, of course, The Coast of Utopia; I had seen Voyage in London several years ago and ran the marathon at Lincoln Center this spring. It's a sweeping drama in a class on its own.
• I also explored the fine line between pain and pleasure by sitting through an early performance of Terrance McNally's Deuce, easily one of the most poorly constructed plays I've ever seen. It was redeemed only by marvelous performances by Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes. Delightful as they were, they couldn't improve the material, but I consider my ticket price a worthwhile investment for the hug I received by Ms. Lansbury at the stage door while reminiscing about her performances at The Muny.
• Repeat performances: I made another trip to see The Drowsy Chaperone, since I'd missed Sutton Foster on an earlier visit. Bob Martin's performance at the Man in the Chair was as witty as ever, but the show as a whole doesn't hold up terribly well on repeated viewings. I also dropped in again on the New York production of Altar Boyz; call it field research.
• After I saw Spring Awakening, a friend asked for my impression and I said what I've repeated often since: "I'm not in the target demographic." That said, I enjoyed the heck out of the show (probably helps that I'm a Duncan Sheik fan) and was delighted to see a younger audience in attendance than at any other production all season. I've had the cast album in my car stereo for weeks. It's not revolutionary (as it occasionally has been hailed), it's not a Rent or a Hair in either its ambition or its realization, but it is a great evening of theatre very well-performed.
• I suppose I am in the demo for Legally Blonde, aimed as it is squarely at teen/tween girls and gay men, and I have to say I had a great time with it. The whole show starts at a sprint and never slows down, the music is bouncy, some of the choreography is amazing and all in all, the show is a lot of fun. What it doesn't do--unlike, say, Hairspray--is reveal anything particularly new about the material; if you've seen the Reese Witherspoon movie, there's nothing here to surprise you. I certainly wasn't surprised about one other thing: Laura Bell Bundy's performance as Elle Woods. She is fierce. Snaps to her.
• I loved Grey Gardens, and will not be at all surprised or disappointed if Christine Ebersole takes the Tony Award for her dual role at big and little Edies. The show isn't for everyone and I have some questions about how well it will tour, but I found the show--especially Act Two--astonishing.
• Likewise, as a Kurt Weill fan, I thoroughly enjoyed LoveMusik, which I saw at an early preview and hope to revisit now that it's more settled. Donna Murphy and Michael Cerveris give--surprise, surprise--amazing performances. Murphy, in particular, just disappears into Lotte Lenya. It's another show that is not particularly commercial and probably wouldn't survive outside the rarified world of non-profit theatre, but I'm so glad I saw it.
• I saw two revivals at the Roundabout this year, The Apple Tree and 110 in the Shade. This was the third production of The Apple Tree I've seen in the past few years and while I enjoyed Kristin Chenoweth's performance, I don't need to see another one for a great while, I think. 110 in the Shade, on the other hand, was a joy. New pal Bobby Steggert (who was in our production of Shakespeare's R&J last season) is going to be a big star, mark my words. Audra McDonald was perfection as Lizzie. Forget the naysayers who opine that she's too beautiful to play a plain old maid. Lizzie isn't necessarily actually plain, she just needs to believe that she is. McDonald makes you believe she believes and, of course, she sings the hell out of the role. I had some goose bumps.
• I've saved the best for last. A few years ago, when I first saw Hairspray, folks asked my opinion of it and I honestly said it wasn't the best musical I'd ever seen but it was, hands down, the most fun I'd had in the theatre in a long time. I am now saying the same thing about Curtains, the Kander and Ebb (and Holmes et al) musical at the Hirschfeld. If you're a fan of musical comedy--a real, diehard, dyed in the cotton musical theatre fan--hie thee to Telecharge and get the best seat you can. The songs, the jokes, the production numbers, the inside jokes...it all added up for me. I left dancing onto 45th Street and wishing I could see it again right away. David Hyde Pierce, Debra Monk and Karen Ziemba (someone get this gal a lead, please!) deserve all the awards they can carry. I'm gushing? So kill me. This show did.

I'm leaving out of a ton of things I saw and, to varying degrees, enjoyed, but that'll have to do for now. Perhaps I'll roundup some favorites from the day job and other local theatres in a day or so.

Monday, June 4, 2007

The BradLands turns nine

It was around 3,300 days ago that I flipped the switch and transferred the moribund site first called The BradLands from its home in AOL's wonky FTP space to this brand-new domain. Along the way, the site got a state-of-the-art Adobe PageMill makeover and took on the form of something new: we called it a "weblog".

That's nine years of pushing bits and pixels around this joint, and nearly 13 years on the web altogether. Good gawd, y'all.

Nearly a decade later and the place is still a mess. I'd really rather hoped to spruce things up a bit in time for this year's anniversary, but lots of archives still rest in old text files, broken internal links abound and the whole shooting match is about as far from "standards-compliant" as can be.

I love the old girl, though, I do. Thanks for stopping by.