Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Buddy Holly Opens Tonight

Rock and Roll. We've been having a great deal of fun doing a great deal of work on Buddy, The Buddy Holly Story, which opens tonight at Wayside Theatre. We've got a great performer, Robbie Limon, plaing Buddy and he's gangbusters as is the entire cast. As effortless as the show appears once it is up and running, mounting these kind of shows on our budget is never an easy task, and it has been a grueling week. But based on the reactions of the two audiences who enjoyed the preveiws yesterday, we're in for a great run. Standing ovations and hooting and howling were the order of the day.

I'm looking forward to this one being open and running for a bit, as we head into our adventures in the next two months.

If you're in the area, come check out the show and Rock and Roll with Buddy and Wayside Theatre.

Sunday Sometime Reading

Ok, it is not Sunday morning, so I can't call this Sunday morning reading which is pretty indicative of how things have been going here on the Wicked Stage lately. It has been a whirlwind of a month between holiday travel, CES, auditions, and rehearsals for The Buddy Holly Story here at Wayside Theatre. But hopefully we will get back to regularly scheduled programming here soon.

So for now here is some Sunday sometime reading to share:

YouTube or GoogleTube or YouGoog or whatever it will evolve into has announced that they are going to share revenues with users. Get ready for trailers, commercials, "The 20" and more advertising on videos of your sister doing stupid things.

The other big news in techland this weekend is that Intel and IBM both raced to announce new developments in chip technology. You know faster, cooler, smaller, that kind of thing. The side show around it though was much more fun. Robert Scoble pissed off everyone by saying Engadget and Gizmodo didn't link to his posts and video on the subject. Cue firestorm. Then cue Scoble backing off. The cue more discussion on the topic. I love it when the blogosphere goes all navel gazing on itself.

Google admitted that its much derided decision to censor itself in China hurt the company calling it a net negative.

Not current but still fun. Michael Parekh pointed to an interesting analyzer tool that looks at what words were used in the recent State of the Union. Fascinating.

Dave Winer tells us why politics is interesting again. Not sure it has ever not been interesting. Just stupid lately. Like for the last decade.

So a guy gets swallowed by a shark. Sounds like the beginning of a joke doesn't it? He lived to tell the tale.

So, this guy says he's Jesus Christ. I might be willing to give  him a listen, (hey it is foretold) maybe, if he didn't take the tax deduction for religious instructions.

Bears & Colts in the SuperBowl!

Yesssss! I'm thrilled to see the Bears and Indy in the Superbowl. We were in rehearsal all day and I couldn't watch the games until after getting home tonight to catch the final of the Indy/NE game. GBM buddy, Matt Faulkner, who lives in Indy, and I have been going back and forth all season hoping for this, and we got our wish. Now we need to come up with a bet suitable for two geeks.

Go Bears!

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

The only thing worse than the Christmas Creep is the Presidential Politics Creep. I'm waiting for the day that someone announces their child will run for president 42 years later the day after they are born.

Some interesting (and entertaining) reading on the PPC:

Howard Fineman looks at the Democratic field as a High School Musical. On many levels the analogy demeans high school musicals.

S.V. Dale in the Washington Post speculates on what things would have been like if we had elected Jeb instead of W.

The Red Tape Chronicles says Spam is worse than ever. My InBox attests to that. I still think we should pass a law to have some sort of violent, vicious, capital punishment for spammers. Actually, I think we should do this for the idiots who keep clicking on the stuff that makes the whole enterprise viable.

Congress wants to blame grassroots organization for their problems. This got picked up this week and of course turned into Congress wants to outlaw bloggers. As ill-conceived an idea as the original was, it has a point. I wish we'd all quite pretending that political and governmental operations were somehow separate from the human need for greed and ego. Then when we hold the mirror up, or expose a problem, we could do away with the feigned shock.

Dave Winer (and others) are leading a discussion that says our current RSS readers are broken because they remind us how lazy, or behind we are when we see how many feeds we haven't read. Just asking, but isn't this like an elected behavior that we engage in? Michael Parekh (as usual) has a good round and comment on the discussion.

Another Fan

Who knew? Dave Winer and I have something in common. We both like Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke.

Paging Marc Orchant: Batmobile For Sale

Marc Orchant is the biggest Batman fan I know and he should be interested in this. One of the original Batmobile's is up for auction in February.

Via Gizmodo

The 2006/2007 Grand Holiday Tour

I have been seriously remiss in getting more and pictures posted about our whirlwind tour this holiday season. Every year we head back to Chicago for a visit with my lovely wife Thomasin's very large family. We also take a nice trip to Lake LuLu in Wisconsin, which is always relaxing. I've posted quite a few photos of the trip to my Flickr feed (here's the link), and of course the nephews Matthew and Joey are featured prominently, as well as pictures from various Chicago gatherings, more Winterfest hoopla, and some shots of friends. It was a great trip, and as always was far too short as we headed back from right into rehearsals for The Buddy Holly Story.

Enjoy!

Interesting Reading on DRM

Some interesting reading on DRM from Ars Technica. And if like me you never completely bought the talking points about it all being about piracy, you should take a quick read here. Or go buy your own country.

Media Pirates Seek To Buy Own Country

So, I'm wondering if Gilligan every thought of this. I guess this is one way to try and circumvent international copyright laws. The Pirate Bay, who has been bouncing from country to country has set their sights on buying their own island and setting up their own country. The target: the small island off the coast of England.

I'm just going to say this. Instead of all the effort to raise money to buy your own country, which will probably not happen, how about spending some of that time and effort trying to do something legitmate to help the stated cause of "intellectual property reform."

Via ars technica

Tagged (Again)

Fellow Tablet PC MVP Frank LaVigne tagged me in the Things You Don't Know About Me Game. Since I was already tagged, and since four of those who I tagged haven't joined the fun, yet. I'm reprinting that original answer.

Jason Dorko of The DorkoTech Blog tagged me in yet another Internet tagging game that is running like a virus through the blogosphere. I've got to tell you 5 things about me that you don't know.

1. I'm a sucker for patriotic music and WWII movies.
2. My next desktop computer will be an Apple.
3. I love small diners, especially for breakfast.
4. I swear I saw a UFO once about 33 years ago.
5. I'd like to visit New Zealand.

Now, for the fun part. To continue the game, I'm tagging 5 fellow bloggers.

1. Steve Przybylski
2. Mark Sumocat Sumimoto
3. Josh Bancroft (sort of a belated birthday gift)
4. Matt Faulkner
5. Loren Heiny