Yes, I expected the Lakers to take this series in five games. I didn’t give enough credit to the amazing transforming men in green and their astounding bench.

When I lived in Los Angeles, I accepted the Lakers as the hometown team, but I was always uneasy with the fanatic and frenetic support they received from the citizenry. I detested Riley’s Gordon Gekko hair and demeanor, I admired Magic Johnson, but found his persona cloying, and the air of entitlement that the team exhibited was off-putting. And I could never get tickets. The Forum was routinely sold out, even the nosebleed seats.
When the Clippers hit town in ’84, I became a fan of the Worst Franchise In Professional Sports. They put some truly awful teams on the floor in those days (and in the years since) but they played in the decrepit Sports Arena. And they were fun to watch, in a train wreck sort of way. Because the Sports Arena never sold out, you could buy cheap tickets and move down to watch great basketball played by their opponents. True, you had to put up with Billy Crystal, but you could get in. Now of course, both LA teams share the Staples Center (though the Lakers, as the ‘senior tennant’, have much better locker room facilities than the Clips.)

The Lakers will be back to the finals soon, I’m sure. Despite the horrendous series that Bryant had, and the complete lack of bench support, they will return. I will hate them still.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Boston over the past few years, and I’d notice that while you could buy Patriots gear in any store, and Red Sox gear on any corner, Celtic hats , sweats, tees, and jerseys were rare to the point of extinction. Some places did carry the stuff, but it wasn’t on display. You had to ask for it, as if you were buying pornography or fire arms. I’m certain that’s changed this year. Good on ya, Celtics.


Now, these photos, eerily similar:

Tags: Basketball Jones, Movies, Name Check

The Daily Jazz download is outta here! Careful study of the metrics for this site showed an alarming trend: You didn’t give a crap. So, no more free jazz for you. (Unless you sign up at AllAbout Jazz.com, which I urge you to do.)

There’s also been some further shuffling of the sidebar, and you can now follow my most recent Twitter tweets there, or do it here.

The RSS Feed has been added to the top of the page, in case you simply must to add it to your FeedReader of choice (NetNewsWire, any one?) immediately without bothering to scroll to the bottom of the page, where it also lives.

The new swag is taking the boys in R & D a bit longer than they’d estimated, so you’ll have to content yourselves with thongs n such from the CafePress store for the time being.

Still to come: further optimization of the photos in the galleries for quicker loading, a fix for the tag cloud, and I’m told there will be a noticeable change in the look of the site in the next couple of weeks. Yowza.

Tags: Site Stuff

Tags: Name Check, "News"

It’s been averaging over 100 degrees here (figuring with the heat index) and very dry as well. But, we had a storm last night. Thunder. Lightning. Intermittent power outages. Oveflowing downspouts. Lasted about 2 and half hours. Just down the street, a neighbor’s huge Oak tree blew over into the road, blocking traffic to the local swim club (which had its own problems early Sunday: the Club House burned to the ground in the wee hours of the morning!) You’d think the rain might’ve cooled things off a bit. Well, temporarily, yes, but now the humidity is oppressive.

We have six large trees in our front yard and one very large one in the back. Lost a relatively smallish branch from the back yard, which barely missed putting a hole through the cover of the hot tub. In the front yard, we only lost one branch as well, but it was a doozy. I spent the better part of the morning cutting it into smaller pieces to bundle for curb side pick up next week.

When I came in the house after wrestingling branches, Jo told me to look in the mirror. I figured I had mud on my face or something, but no. I saw this:

So, it’s official. I’m really just a big sweatheart....(Please click here for rimshot).

Tags: Labor

... of a Lakers win in 5 games, in retrospect, was hasty and ill-considered. Mr. Leon Powe has shown me the error of my ways.

That said, the C’s still need to take at least one game at Staples Center, and that’s a tough room.
When the Lakers play, I mean. Not so much when the Clippers are in residence.

Tags: Basketball Jones

• Awaiting the start of NBA Finals Game 2.
Just how much was Pierce taking advantage of an opportunity? I mean, he and Kendrick Perkins couldn’t have plotted out the whole thing. (“Hey, man...in the third quarter, try to ‘accidentally’ land on me at some point. I got a way to fire up this crowd.”)

• I’m giving The Sunlight Dialogues another try. Last time was a long time ago in an alcoholic fog. I may have actually read the entire book, but of course, I can’t tremember. Why now? Last night, we watched Beowulf, the amazingly horrid Zemekis zombie animation version. And of course, there was Grendel. Not John Gardner’s Grendel (how I wished it were so!). Naturally, that got me thinking about Gardner and THAT led me to recall Sunlight Dialogues.

• Speaking of booze, I’m approaching my the anniversary of my sobriety. 17 years on June 21.

• I’ve been in touch, briefly, with old friends recently, and I’m looking forward to catching up with all of them.

• I have a new gig. The paperwork’s not fully processed yet, so I won’t divulge, but if all goes through, I won’t have to travel for a while.

Tags: Basketball Jones, Career, Peeps

Its been Computer Issues Week around the house. Jo’s Aluminum PowerBook has been gradually petering out for a while now, and she’s been working more and more on her Compaq laptop. (The Real Estate business is heavily PC-centric; most, if not all, major MLS sites are written to be used with Internet Explorer only...Firefox works intermittently, and Safari almost never... and the various tools that realtors use depend heavily on Active-X and Outlook integration. Some wise programmer could make a kajillion bucks by rewriting all of these services to be Mac-savvy or platform/browser independent.) I’ve suggested many times that we sell both of those machines (and the Rev B iMac, and my old 12” iceBook, and the Clamshell, and the Wallstreet...) and trade up to at least a new intel iMac or a MacBook, but she’s remained unconvinced that VMWare Fusion or Parallels would suit her. (Another problem is that we dont have Windows install disks). But the AlBook nearly croaked again, so off we went to the Apple Store. As usual, the gang there were very helpful, walking us through both Fusion and Parallels, which they have installed on two side by side iMacs. Both virtual machines are smooth, nearly seamless in the integration into OSX, and play very nicely with Tiger (which she’s running) or Leopard (more of which in a sec). So, now the spirit is willing, but the checkbook is weak. We really can’t afford to upgrade right now, even if we did get rid of the stockpile of outdated machines, so we’ve decided to replace the dying hard drive and boost the ram in the AlBook. That’ll give us another couple of productive years.

My iBook has been chugging along, and recently passed the 3 year mark for AppleCare service. That’s right: no more warranty repairs for me. This is more than a little frightening, as the motherboard was replaced 2 years ago, and the hard drive failed twice as well. I finaly broke down and replaced the battery last month, which was long overdue. So I don’t trust that all will be smooth sailing from here on out. I can’t afford a new machine right now, either. Probably won’t be able to for many many months. I was an early adopter of OSX, installing the first version on the old 12” on the day of it’s release in 2001, and I’ve upgraded quickly to each new point release. I held out, though, on Leopard, the iBook doesn’t have the most powerful graphics card and imagined that the new system - what with its dependence on CoreImage and all - would be sluggish and unresponsive. Nevertheless, I knew I’d have to upgrade sooner rather than later, because some of my favorite tools were adding Leopard-only features.

Sooner came Tuesday. I cloned the iBook to my external firwire drive, removing cruft beforehand, and the install process (I chose upgrade rather than archive and install) took the better part of 90 minutes, but when the book rebooted, there was OSX 10.5 in all its science-fictiony glory. And I was immediately connected to our Airport network. Software update asked to install version 10.5.3, which I did, and restarted. I carefully pored over the disk, making sure that all the stuff I wanted to retain had been, in fact, retained. It was. In several hours of use, I felt no sluggishness. The CPU monitor showed a few minor slow points, but nothing that was noticeable in the actual use. This on a three year old iBook with a 1.33 ghz processor and maxed out as much as it can to 1.25 gigs of RAM. (Try getting Vista to work on a 3 year old PC laptop.)

I back up regularly. Religiously, even, with SuperDuper. I was anxious to set up Time Machine, Apple’s dead simple back-up and recovery software. I partitioned the eexternal drive, cloned my hard drive to it so it was bootable, and told Time Machine to use the second partition for back up. I didn’t need TM to copy the entire drive, since I have the clone, so the incremental hourly back ups don’t take long at all. But something went awry during the night, and on Thursday morning I was greeted with an alert that Time Machine Back Up had failed.(I knew it was to good to last!) Happily, a search turned up a post over at Daring Fireball. Seems that John had had a similar system quirk. He linked to this post on
bumppo.net, and after running a Disk Utility repair on the offending files, all is well.

For the record, I’m now a huge fan of Spaces, the virtual screen option, particularly in conjungtion with Exposé. My work flow, such as it is, is much smoother and more intuitive. I can’t say I’m sorry I waited to upgrade to Leopard, but I’m happy that I made the jump. Now I have to hope that the machine holds out for another year or so.

Tags: Site Stuff

Alert readers–both of you–will notice that the Amazon dohickey that previously resided in the bar to the right has been removed.

It was interfering with the page loading time, and that, my friends, is simply unacceptable. Precious seconds were wasting away while you, my loyal audium, were waiting for the script to execute.

I do this because I care. The thousands of dollars I was making on referrals is just not worth the frustration.

The Daily Jazz link remains, for now. Mainly because I need something to fill that space....and because its FREE JAZZ, damn it!

Tags: Site Stuff

UPDATE: Stupid blowtorch.

Massive Fire at Universal Studios

AP photos

The New York Times has an article of about various Broadway stars recalling the first Broadway show they ever saw. Which set me to recollectin':

My first was a matinee of Chapter Two, at the Imperial Theatre, starring Judd Hirsch, Anita Gillette, Cliff Gorman, and Anne Wedgeworth. I remember the "split screen" telephone conversations between Hirsch and Gillette; watching Gorman and knowing he was the guy who originated the role of Lenny Bruce on stage in Lenny, the film of which I'd recently seen. Anne Wedgeworth won the Tony that year, and many years later I would direct and act with her daughter (by Rip Torn), Danae Torn, at FirstStage in Los Angeles. Whenever I see Hirsch on screen, I think of him in Chapter Two.



That evening–it must've been a Wednesday–I saw the revival of The King and I. It was playing at the Uris Theatre, which seemed (and was) cavernous compared to the Imperial, and though our seats were in the nosebleed section, it was evident that Yul Brynner was astoundingly good. Constance Towers was his Anna, tall, elegant, and a bit frosty, which gave the Brynner something to play off of. The king's right-hand man, The Kralahome (Michael Kermoyan) was particularly effective, and brought so much inner life to his character.

Tags: Theatuh, Name Check

The Spurs are done.

Even though I really enjoy watching McDyess...

The Celtics will take the East in 7.

The Lakers, it truly pains me to say, will win the finals in 5.

Tags: Basketball Jones

New swag!

Not necessarily spiffier, mind you, but a new design to go along with the old favorites.

Tags: Site Stuff

Is this Yaz named for this Yaz or this Yaz? What's the connection?

Tags: Science, Branding, Baseball, Musik

Senator Specter is "incensed" about the NFL's Spygate (non) scandal: Apparently, soaring oil prices, war, economic uncertainty, a presidential election, and his own fight against recurring cancer just aren't enough to fill his plate. He has to defend the honor of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Pennsylvania Republican was unforgiving of his criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, saying that Goodell has made “ridiculous” assertions that wouldn’t fly “in kindergarten.” The Senator said Goodell was caught in an “apparent conflict of interest” because the NFL doesn’t want the public to lose confidence in the league’s integrity. “They are enormous role models for everybody,” Specter said. “If you can cheat in the NFL, you can cheat in college, you can cheat in high school, you can cheat on your grade-school math test. There’s no limit as to what you can do. I think they owe the public a lot more candor and a lot more credibility.”

If he really wants to involve himself in NFL business, maybe he could get a law passed banning Bill Belichick's ratty sweatshirts.

Tags: Ass Hats, Govmint

In no particular order:

• Booking another job.

• Larry Brown coaching the Bobcats.

• Mike D'Antoni coaching the Knicks (and how he'll get rid of Marbury).

• Moonlight and Magnolias in Florida vs Moonlight and Magnolias in Vermont, and if I should pursue Moonlight and Magnolias in Tennessee.

• The "when Obama wins" meme.

• Camelot at the NY Philharmonic . Gabriel Byrne, sure...but Fran Drescher?

• Watched Gone Baby Gone the other night. I've read Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gennaro series (of which GBG is the last) and appreciated them. The character development over the course of 6 books is extraordinary, and the translation to film works very well. Casey Affleck makes a convincing Kenzie, and although she's under used, Michelle Monaghan is an ideal Angie. I've spent a fair amount of time in Boston over the past few years (I rented rooms in Dorchester, which is dicey around the main drag, Dorchester Ave. and Fields Corner), and I recognized many of the Dorchester locations used in the film.

• I don't care for sweet pickles at all.

Our buddy Rocky was euthanized last night. His kidneys had been failing since late October, and despite the medication, it was only a matter of time. During the past week, his health became much worse, and what strength he had was ebbing quickly. When it became apparent that he was in pain, Jo made the decision to go to the vet. I wish that I could've been with them at the last, but of course, I'm in Florida until next month.

I hope, where ever he is, he has a shoulder to snuggle on. (Right shoulder only...very important!)

Tags: Kitteh

A few comic-strip/cartoon cross-overs that have succeeded as Broadway musicals:

Annie

The Lion King

Beauty and The Beast

Lil' Abner

You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown

And a couple that have not:

It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's Superman!

Tarzan

Snoopy

Doonesbury

Next up:

Shrek

and

Spider-Man....with songs by Bono and The Edge, under the direction of Julie Taymor. (The story linked is dated last year, but this is really going ahead, and has been in the works since at least 2004)


If anybody can make Spider-Man work, its Julie Taymor, and Shrek is probably going to be a hit on name value alone, but I can't say I'd pay to see either one.

Tags: Theatuh, Musical, Super Hero, Crap

Here's the Story: 'A Very Brady Musical' Will Premiere in L.A.

The project is a real family affair: The show's director and co-writer, Lloyd Schwartz, is Sherwood's son and business partner; Hope Juber is Sherwood's daughter, married to co-writer Laurence Juber (a one-time guitarist for Paul McCartney in Wings); Lloyd's wife, Barbara Mallory, will play Carol and is also associate producing the show.......Elliot Kevin Schwartz....as Peter

The story even references the cringe-inducing Happy Days -The Musical that I took issue with a while back. (Yeah, that thing is still breathing.) This show will probably make pots of money.

There's got to be a way I, too, can recycle material from the 1960's into good old American de-valued dollars. Hmmm- fifth and sixth grade Spring Recitals? As I recall, the material was snappy and topical and funny.

Folks I attended grade school with have stopped by this site recently....

Does anybody still have Mr. Benedict's script?

Tags: Theatuh, TeeVee, Crap

Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins A massive biography by Amanda Vaill. Robbins was, of course, a theatrical dynamo, and most show biz people know of his major works, but I had no idea just how many projects the man had a hand in. A clear picture emerges: He was driven, ambitious, energetic, creative, catty, neurotic, ambisexual, and brilliant. And immensely talented.



I also picked up Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee. Albee is a marvelous essayist, and his commentary on subjects ranging from Clifford Odets, Samuel Beckett, and Noel Coward, to Louise Nevelson, and Jonathan Thomas, to Three Tall Women, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? is a rich, wonderful glimpse of the man, his influences and friends, and our world these past fifty years.


Next on my list: Hi Concept, Lo Tech: Theatre For Everyone in Any Place, about which you may learn here. Not a new work (published in 1996), but one that seems it may have much to offer in today's environment.

Tags: Books

An alarming docu-drama, which explores the criminal mind. A delinquent foster child, Jack Henry Abbott was imprisoned at a young age. He was robbed of nurturing, cut off from any human contact for more than twenty years. Knowing only primal survival instincts, he lived a constant struggle to remain human, like a solitary light bulb flickering in and out of Sanity. Once released into the world, the ravishing beast inside took over any human spirit he had left.

That's the synopsis from the Florida Studio Theatre web site, and that's where I'll be for the next six weeks, appearing in In The Belly of the Beast. I'll fly out Monday morning, meet my co-players (there are three of us), get settled in to housing, and start rehearsals Tuesday.

The script is intense, and I imagine rehearsals will be as well. I'll post updates throughout my stay in Sarasota, but like much of this record, the updates will be intermittent.

Tags: Theatuh

We experienced some downtime today. Apparently, a ghost in the machine caused "an issue with one of our shared storage devices". Hrmph.
All is well now, but if you tried to access us today around 10:30 a.m. EST, you may have been greeted with a terse note from Fat Cow, our hosting service (who, to be fair, have a really decent uptime record).

The "Live Person" software they use as their 'help' system, though, needs a lot of work, and the agents on the other end of the live chat need more training in how to answer a customer's question properly.

Tags: Site Stuff

Tonight, Jo, Maia, and I headed down to the Bobcats Arena to take in a Checkers game. The Charlotte Checkers, now in their 15th season, are our local ECHL franchise, farm team to both the Hartford Wolf Pack of the AHL and the New York Rangers of the NHL. Which means that its Minor League Hockey, and that tickets are cheap. Also because its Minor League Hockey, the games are lightly attended on nights when the opponent is one of the lesser teams in the league. And as tonight's foe was the fearsome *cough* Pensacola Ice Pilots, great seats were readily available. We had three on the blue line at the glass (actually a couple of rows back from the boards). The Checkers, who were in the midst of a 4 game losing streak, easily outplayed the Ice Pilots, who appeared tuckered out and frustrated. Final score Charlotte 6, Pensacola 0.

Nearly every Checkers game has some sort of theme or promotion, and tonight was "Thirsty Thursday", which I think is a two for one beer deal, enabling the many bankers who work uptown to come to the game and get buzzed for half price. Were I a drinker, it would've been a good deal, but I settled for some popcorn and soda. Aside from a couple of goofballs who settled in behind us during the second period, we didn't encounter any untoward behavior, though a guy on the other side of the ice was escorted out by security, which was documented on the jumbotron and seemed to be at least as interesting to the crowd as was the game.

Friday night's big promo is the unveiling of the new Checkers logo. It's felt that the current image is too 'soft', I guess. The team name is a nod to the NASCAR crowd (for the checkered flag that is waved for auto racing), but the mascot, as you can see above, is a cartoon polar bear. A polar bear named Chubby. Chubby Checker. (Yes, The Twist is played at least once during each game.) To my knowledge, polar bears aren't native to North Carolina, and another team in the league, The Alaska Aces, also use a polar bear as their mascot, and Polar Bears have been sighted in Alaska fairly regularly. So, will the new logo somehow reflect the auto-centric culture of the area? A Cars-like mascot? We'll see.

Friday update: Nope. Meet the new Charlotte Checkers logo:


And, for reference, The Alaska Aces logo:


Hmmm. Sort of city mouse/country mouse, if you ask me.

I wonder if the Checkers will alter the mascot outfit, which reminds me of one the Banana Splits suits I wore in my first job years ago at Kings Island? (Ugh. I just looked at the Kings Island site. Understandably, the place has changed so much in 30 years. I doubt I'd recognize it.)

Chubby Checker


Bingo, Snorky, Fleegle, Drooper (seated)

For the record, though not in this publicity still, I was Drooper the Lion. And years later, when I was doing The Adventures of Doc Savage radio series, I worked with Robert Towers, who was inside the Snorky costume for the original series in the late 60's.

Tags: Hockey, Name Check, Super Hero

Jason Kottke lists the cities he's visited each year.

Here's my 2007 list:

Charlotte, NC+
Richmond, VA
New York, NY
Chapel Hill, NC
Rockingham, NC**
Charleston, SC
Boston, MA*
Easton, MA*
Tucson, AZ

For comparison, here's 2006:
Montclair, NJ+
New York, NY*
Boston, MA*
Easton, MA
Charlotte, NC
Dorset, VT
Richmond, VA
Greensboro, NC
Asheville, NC

In all cases, there was at least one overnight stay. The plus sign denotes the home base. Asterisk means multiple non-consecutive visits, and the double asterisk means it was not an overnight visit, but felt like one.

Tags: Travel