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Two coffee stories today:

1) years ago, when Dunkin Donuts had their business on University Avenue, a few friends and myself were going through the drive-thru. A couple of us had ordered ‘double doubles’. Anyway, when the lady was giving us our coffees at the window, as she handed them through, she’d tell us what each was. For the three double double’s she said “dauble dauble…dauble dauble…dauble dauble” in a flat monotone voice. I replied to her that she sounded like a turkey. She wasn’t impressed with this observation.

2) today, I was going through the Robin’s Donuts drive-thru across the bridge. I recognised the driver of the car ahead of me, who was placing his order. It was Bobby MacMillan (he might go as ‘Bob’ now), who used to be manager at Myrons. He was very nice to me and the rest of the Annekenstein and 4Play casts when we performed a couple of otherwise fairly unspectacular seasons of comedy at Myrons. Anyway, I recognised him by his voice but didn’t bother to acknowledge I was behind him in the drive-thru. He drove up, I placed my order (extra large gobble gobble), and drove on to the window. When I got there, the woman told me that my coffee was already paid for.
Bobby bought my coffee. What a nice thing to do. Thanks Bobby.

I realise that saying this might crack it, but I think there’s some good Karma hitting me the last few days.

I cannot remember a day when I was in such a good mood for such a long period of time without any obvious reasons.

I am incapable of enjoying it without reflection, so here are five potential reasons why I’m smiling today:

1) my wife loves me.
2) I am involved in a show that can only be described as an unqualified success.
3) I am staying on top of a big pile of work at work.
4) I appreciate my music collection.
5) I have no reason to believe so, and it doesn’t really show I don’t think, but I feel better, like I may have lost a few pounds.

I’d add “I had lunch with Matt today, and he even paid for mine” as a reason, but I was already in the good mood before that.

So, thanks! Thanks to those reasons and more for giving me a happy day today.

Would you rather:

a) be as smart as you are good looking?

or

b) be as good looking as you are smart?

Me, I’d rather be as good looking as I am smart.

I was gonna add a third option: c) be as good looking as you are funny… but I didn’t think anybody would want to be funny looking.

That is all.

Assume for a minute that you had the physical strength to do it. That you had the ability to dig to China (or to the opposite side of the Earth). Assume that you had the capacity to deal with the claustraphobia and the heat.
You still couldn’t do it.

Sure, you could make it to the Earth’s core, it’s centre. That’d be no problem. But after that, it’s an uphill battle so to speak. Once you began the second half of the journey, you’d then have to deal with gravitaional forces working against you. You’d be digging above your head.
So you still couldn’t do it.

Unless you were wearing some type of jet-pack.

If you’re planning such a feat, this is something you should be aware of. Just giving the bad news to you straight.

In a post I made some time ago, I talked about how I had been looking forward to the time when my son could compete fairly against me in video games. For about 5 years (from his age 4 to age 9) when we would play games, I’d always play at a skill level lower than my abilities, so that the competition would remain close. I’d have accidents, lapses in judgements, whatever necessary to be deceptive worse than I actually was, just to keep the games close. This wasn’t so fun for me, yet I didn’t want to discourage Cameron from playing against me. I knew that someday, when he was older, we’d have real battles. I looked forward to those years of game-playing.

About a year ago, we were probably on an even level in the games that he liked to play. At the time of that initial post, he was getting close to beating me as much as I beat him. Now, I have very little chance at beating him. I’m guessing there was a one month window of opportunity where our skills were comparable. If I was to attempt to challenge him, it’d take some dedicated practice and playing. This, I am not willing to do.

To be fair to me (and to keep a modicum of dignity and pride) I will say that we really only play games that Cameron enjoys, and which he’s played for hours upon hours. If we were to play games like Madden Football, I’d be all over him.

BooYaa!

There are a handful of directors whose latest project will always pique my interest, no matter what.

John Waters is one of those directors. His latest movie is called A Dirty Shame. The trailer looks like this might be fun. That it has been rated NC-17 only makes it more appealing.

Too, I love you, Edith Massey, wherever you are.

Our show was reviewed in the August edition of The Buzz, under the headline Mature Content. I thought I’d post my thoughts on the review.

If I had any criticisms of ‘theatre reviews’ in The Buzz (and, of course, on those rare occasions that a review of a “local” show actually appears in The Guardian), it would have been that they were not reviews so much, but, generally, endorsements written by a fan/friend of the people involved in the show being reviewed. On a small island, where so many in the arts community know each other, it’s difficult to be willing to make negative comments on a production. To this end, reviews have become little more than another form of advertising (and, it should be noted, for productions with such limited budgets as ours, they are welcome advertisements). With this in mind, I’d like to applaud The Buzz, and reviewer Jane Ledwell for writing a review that actually contains more than laudatory comments and fluffy praise. In fact, I find, lately, that The Buzz seems to be more willing to print ‘critical (and fair)’ reviews than it has been in the past. This is good.

I cannot really complain about most of the criticisms that Jane offers. Generally the comments she makes are valid for the opening week performance that she saw. There are a few points she makes that I disagree with, but these are merely point-of-view, or matter-of-taste comments, and her view and taste is just as valid as mine.

Some things I would like to address, though:

– “They need to drop the pop culture impressions and bad accents-other-than-the-Island-one (which risked being obscure, absurd, racist, or poorly executed).” I was (along with the rest of the people in the production) confused by this sentence. I was not sure what “pop culture impressions” we do, or what “bad accents” she was referring to. The somewhat troublesome implication that we “risked being… racist” raised a few eyebrows within our group as well, as we couldn’t figure out to what Jane was referring. Her reply to an email questioning that implication left us, frankly, dumbfounded. I don’t think it’s fair to Jane to reprint her response here without her permission. Perhaps it will suffice to say that her interpretation of a certain character’s origins and purpose is surely hers alone, and maybe speaks more about the need to analyse and find meanings behind comedy than it does about the intentions in making comedy. Sometimes a funny voice and costume is simply a funny voice and costume.

–“I was just disappointed that “Sketch-22” alienated part of its audience with crude material when the truly “mature” content still had edge and still got laughs.” This is a fair comment, we have found out. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Jane saw the show during the first week of our run. We have since realised that some of the crude material was a bit too juvenile or shocking-for-shock’s-sake. After week one, the show was cleaned up (and shortened) somewhat, so hopefully, we’ve found a better balance between taste and distaste.

– “Rob provides the show’s most truly “mature” content”. I hope this means what I think it means, and it’s not just another way of saying that I’m the oldest in the cast. 🙂

– I’ll not comment on her wish to see more Seagalls or shamless hussies.

After reading the review a couple of times, I’m still not sure if Jane liked the show. She says she wore herself out laughing and that the show is hilarious for those not easily offended. This implies she liked it, yet the general tone of the review seems, to me, to somewhat bely that laughter and hilarity. Maybe it’s just my frail ego reading too much into the criticisms?

Still, apart from that one mis-guided opinion on us risking racism, I appreciate very much having a person write critically about our show.

Thanks, Jane. And, thanks, The Buzz.

Yes, you’ve come a long way, baby. But I gotta say, you’re tampon commercials are getting a little too… descriptive.

Used to be the closest we’d get to any sort of reference to the actual goings-on was a woman (and before that, a man in a white scientist coat) who’d pour a pleasantly innocuous blue liquid on two tampons, showing how one was more absorbant than the other. Or we’d see an animation of a flying tampon, to illustrate the fact that such-and-such brand now had wings.

Now, though, they seem to have turned a corner in their marketing direction. Case in point, the latest ad, which shows a couple of women, in tight, pale slacks, who have been supposedly crouching down behind a sofa, waiting for a surprise party “Surprise!!!”. The voice-over talks about how awful it is when a gal’s been in a certain position for a lengthy amount of time and then suddenly changes position, causing the embarrassment of leakage and shifting, or some such thing. The ‘leakage’ line happens just when the visuals show the women jumping up to shout ‘surprise!’, and then freeze frames. I literally have to avert my eyes from the television, in fear that I’ll catch a glimpse of some leakage. And what an ugly word. Leakage. Ugh.

I really don’t like the images this commercial conjures up in my head when it’s on as I’m eating my suppertime hamburger, taco or sloppy joe.

Can’t they go back to the way it used to be. Suggestive advertising was so much nicer. How about some nice animated butterflies flying out from the crotchal region? Or a cartoon of a beaver building a dam in some idyllic stream, surrounded by lush vegetation? Or get Bambi to be your spokesperson.

Or even go back to the scientist guy telling women that such-and-such napkin will serve you fine. Just fine. Didn’t you trust that guy, girls? I trusted him. He was a scientist. He must’ve known. He probably did leakage research with copious amounts of pleasant blue liquid.

Can’t we bring him back?

Confed Centre cancels ‘Men’ show

CHARLOTTETOWN — The poor tourism season has struck the Confederation Centre of the Arts, forcing it to cancel one of its summer productions.

The play Broadway Heroes: A Salute to the Great Leading Men was scheduled to play in the Studio Theatre in August. CEO David MacKenzie cites poor ticket sales for the cancellation, and blames this summer’s downturn in P.E.I.’s tourism industry.

“This year’s tourism is down significantly to date,” says MacKenzie. “We were aggressive in our selection of productions and the number of productions this year. With visitation being down we wanted to concentrate on the shows that are doing better.”

David MacKenzie says the centre will not be cancelling any more shows this season.

It’s not the downturn in this summer’s tourism industry, David. It’s a show called Broadway Heroes: A Salute to the Great Leading Men.

That’s the reason nobody was buying tickets.

Some of the anti-Bush people have been supposing that Osama Bin Laden will be ‘found’ in the next couple of days, during the Democratic National Convention. Some presume that Bin Laden’s location is already known, and that the US government is waiting for the most opportune time announce his capture, and that during the DNC would be a goot time, taking headlines away from the democrats.

I cannot believe that the Bush administration would be so blatant as to do this during the DNC. I don’t think it’ll happen, but I sure hope it does. Poor some gasoline on that conspiracy, folks.

Do it. Do it. Do it.