Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

When Playing Hide & Seek With Gifts Can Be Too Silly

So, every year on the holiday pilgrimage back to Chicago to visit my wife Thomasin’s family, we have many friends and lots of family members to visit. Some of those visits have become traditions, like when we spend New Year's Eve with our good friends, John and Gabrielle.

Every year we exchange gifts, have a wonderful meal, and have a great time.

Last New Year’s, Gabrielle had purchased a lovely bracelet for Thomasin, but instead of gifting it directly she thought it would be fun to put it in my coat pocket. Now, I was wearing a big overstuffed parka, and Gabrielle hid it in an inside pocket I never use. And of course once we return to Virginia, I hardly wear that heavy coat during the warmer winters here.

Needless to say, I never knew it was there. So, today, the two ladies talked on the phone totally by happenstance, and Gabrielle asked if she had ever looked in my coat pocket.

Thomasin just got home from her show tonight and came running in and went into our coat closet frantically, and sure enough the bracelet was there, over 7 months later. Too, too funny.

Looking at the Myths of Creativity

Patrick Mayfield takes a look at the 6 1/2 Biggest Myths About Creativity in a neat post. Briefly they include:

1. Only a few people are creative.
2. Creativity is a solo pursuit.
3. Creativity happens best when you think outside the box.
4. When you suffer a creative block, there is nothing you can do but wait for it to pass.
5. The first idea is likely to be the best.
6. Love me, love my idea.

And number 6.5: Creativity is a serious business.

Like anything there are some truths behind the myths, if you want to call them that, and like everything they can become crutches if you put too much stock in them.

In my life in the theatre I constantly have to remind myself that what we do is work on plays. We often forget about the play part. Yep, it is hard work sometimes to work on a play, but if we remember the context, it, as a dear friend says, beats flipping burgers.

Nothing encourages creativity like the chance to fall flat on one's face.
James D. Finley.

 

Technorati Tags: creativity

Lessons from Honest Abe

Steve Rubel linked to this earlier today and I find it not only a wonderful read, but an intriguing blend of the past and the current.

Check out 11 Lessons to Learn From Honest Abe, the Bumbling Entrepreneur.

I like number one the best: Carry your notes with you. Apparently that stove pipe hat was used as a repository for Abe’s notes.

Sounds like he could have used a Tablet PC.

Technorati Tags: Abraham Lincoln,Tablet PC

Bye-Bye Scrabulous

You knew it would happen sooner or later and I’m just surprised it took this long.  Facebook has shut down Scrabulous, the popular time waster based on Hasbro’s Scrabble. Of course this comes in response to a lawsuit. I’m sure the sound you hear is the wailing that will build over the course of the day from Scrabulous users.

So, now Scrabulous users can either move on, play Scrabulous on Scrabulous on Scrabulous.com (that probably won’t last long) or play Hasbro’s version on Facebook.

Isn’t it nice that we can all get along.

Technorati Tags: scrabulous,Facebook

The MPAA Says Anti-Piracy Measures Contributed to Dark Knight Success

TechDirt says they are clueless. I think they are reaching for straws. The MPAA is claiming that anti-piracy efforts helped shoot The Dark Knight to record grosses. Give me a break. Let’s try these alternative answers:

• The movie was actually quite good. Something Hollywood has trouble with lately.
• Reviews were uniformly raves.
• The hype, which included the “watch a train wreck fascination” over Heath Ledger’s death.
• Return business. In our tiny town there were at least 5 folks returning for a second viewing that I talked to in my portion of the line. Extrapolate that out.

I also love how the LA Times article talks about protecting a stinker of a film from bad word of mouth. Ahem.

Former NASA Astronaut Says We’ve Been Visited by Aliens

Of course NASA, and I imagine just about everyone else, is denying this, but former NASA astronaut Dr.Edgar Mitchell is saying, yes, we have been visited by aliens. He says it has happened several times and that of course governments cover it up. Mitchell claims he that because of his job he’s been privileged to see info proving this and is hoping we’re heading for a time of greater disclosure.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

Check out a video interview here if you’re interested.

Technorati Tags: Edgar Mitchell,Aliens,UFO

Slapping Silly

Today in Moonlight and Magnolias rehearsal we are going to slap each other silly. Literally. There’s a section in Act 1 Scene 2 where Selznick, Fleming, and Hecht contemplate Scarlet’s slapping of Prissy and practice it. Well that’s just the surface, but they also use the opportunity to take out their pent up frustration on each other and a gentle slap rehearsal turns into a Three Stooges like slap-fest with full contact slapping for about two minutes. Two minutes of funny stuff, that over the next two weeks we’ll spend about 12 hours rehearsing to make sure no one gets hurt.

Should be fun. Can’t wait to say, try it again. I’ll resist the “with more feeling” part.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight and Magnolias,Gone With the Wind,Wayside Theatre

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Wired wonders, Has Apple bitten off more than it can chew? Methinks it might have, but only in the inevitable sense that getting bigger and attracting more users to more products has the same effect as gravity.

The New York Times wonders about the differences between reading online and reading a book. Declining reading scores? Linear attention in a non-linear world? Cognitive enrichment? Loss of print subscribers? Fascinating discussion. I’m reading this article on an iPod Touch.

Last week Scoble told us why tech blogging has failed us and promised to blog  more about things that are practical and useful and less about business.This week he’s offering condoms to protect against Silicon Valley Disease.

Steve Gillmor on what’s coming. He’s always writing about what’s coming, usually before anyone else knows it’s coming. Fake Steve Gillmor is trying hard but parodying himself more than the original.

Frank Rich on How Obama became acting president. He leaves out the part where our current lame duck forgot how to waddle, much less lead.

Islamist militants threaten the Olympics with suicide bombers and bio weapons. They’re pissed because suicide bombing was not allowed as a medal sport this year.

Michael Parekh on Art Like Twitter and history repeating. Watch the video. Yes.

Looks Like The FCC Is Going To Give Comcast A Shake

It won't happen until the August 1 FCC meeting, but it looks like enough FCC commissioners will follow Chairman Kevin Martin's recommendation and vote for possible sanctions against Comcast for throttling back service.

If the FCC follows through this will be an important victory for Internet users, as we've seen an increasing effort from broadband companies to find ways to throttle what they deem to be excessive usage and impose caps, (although it won't affect capping.)

Here's a statement sent from the FCC's counsel to Ars Technica.

"This vote reflects the bipartisan support for protecting consumers'
access to the free and open Internet. Comcast's blocking is a flagrant
violation of the online rights established by the FCC. If adopted, this
order would send a strong signal to the marketplace that arbitrarily
interfering with users' online choices is not acceptable. Internet
service providers do not get to decide the winners and losers online."

And This Week’s Claude Rains Award Goes To…

I’m shocked, shocked to find out that the Bush administration disseminated talking points to Fox News, and that the anchors and commentators supposedly used them to help the Bush team get its message out.

There’s a dust up and a kerfluffle bouncing around in the media because Scott McClellan owned up to this on the Chris Matthews show and everyone, lacking any real news to report (yeah, right) rushed to make this item a bit of news, long after everyone else, except one WWII Japanese holdout on a deserted island in the Pacific, hadn’t already figured it out. Give me a break.

What’s amazing is that anyone takes any of these political and media dopes seriously on anything they do or say these days.