Middle School Drama Competition

As with with the high school competition, most groups were average. Still, I was surprised to see how creative and talented the middle school students could be. I was impressed early on with the lead actor in a piece about the Holocaust. I gave that group a good score, but they didn't advance for some strange reason. Another group did a good job with that scene from The Crucible when Mary tries to confess to faking the affliction from the "witches" and Abigail goes nuts with visions of birds attacking her. Some actors were weaker than others, bringing down the overall quality of the piece.

I noticed a curious trend in the large group comedies. Many groups seemed to favor obscure pieces of bizarre writing. I'm not against the use of such writing. Some of my own writing is very similar to one such piece which featured a kind of existential game show. The problem I found with some of these pieces that their experimental nature seemed a bit beyond the grasp of some of the students. Either that, or the writing was simply deficient. Sometimes the quality of the writing was hard to determine because the performance of the group was loud, fast, and frantic. I have no objection to such an artistic choice, except that several groups that I saw seemed to cling to this choice throughout their performance. The noise became a monotone, the speed was uniformly fast and therefore lacking in variety of pace, and the frantic energy eventually became tiresome and also lacking in variety. It seems to have become a common trend, and I find that disappointing.

I did enjoy the musical finals. Avenue Q and Suissical surprised me with their inventiveness and strong performances.

A Jack Sparrow Halloween

I dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow for Halloween and joined my cousin and his family for a Fall Festival event at there church. There was a chili cook off and some trick or treating. I mostly just wanted a chance to show off my new costume.

Later, I went to Sardo's, a local karaoke bar. Two people I didn't know came up and asked to take a picture with me. Cool.

High School Drama Competition

I went to Valencia High School in Placentia, California, to work as a judge at drama competition for the Drama Teachers' Association of Southern California. Most performances were about average. Some of the student-written scenes were interesting. One scene was about the Japanese internment camps in California where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. The subject matter had merit, but the performance and direction were lacking. Another piece with merit was about Rosa Parks, but, for some reason, portrayed her planning in advance to sit at the front of the bus. That doesn't fit the facts. Strangely, two of the student written pieces were about Charles Manson. I placed one of them as my first place choice. Some of the monologue actors achieved a fine depth and range of emotion in their pieces. The last show I saw was an amazing performance of two young actors who did a scene from Moliere's Forced Wedding - in French! Almost no one understood what they were saying, but the scene was still hilarious. Of course, they won.

Yes on 87 Party

I spent the whole day yesterday trying to give my apartment a quick makeover. I was about to host my first party in my place and I wanted it to look good. The party wasn't really a party. It was a get together of sorts for Yes on 87. I ran out of time for the home makeover and ended up moving the mess in my living room into my bedroom.

The get together was nice. My five guests were mostly free-thinking people who, like me, would like the State of California to get the extraction fee from oil drilling companies that other states get. The oil companies have been getting a free ride for years and it's time for that to stop. We watch a video on my internet connection, but the conference call didn't work. The number wouldn't take a call from my Skype internet phone program. Whatever. It was still the first successful party at my place.

First Blog

This is my first time using Blogger.com for blogging.

I have other blogs at songwright4ever.livejournal.com and www.myspace.com/songwright.

The Problem With Education

This was my last day in that assignment as the yearbook advisor at a middle school in the San Fernando Valley. When this school offered me the job of substituting for a computer teacher, they didn't tell me that I'd be adopting a dysfunctional yearbook staff. They didn't tell me that I'd have to be the one to dislodge the yearbook from the pit of apathy and neglect where the last advisor dumped it. They gave me almost no help at all. I told the kids in the staff that if it hadn't been for me, they would have had a different substitute teacher every day. They asked me why I cared, as if I shouldn't. I cared because it's just wrong for the school to let things get this bad and I hate that. I didn't tell them that, though. I was struggling to lock them out from the computers to keep them from playing games.

I wrote letters to all the parents of the yearbook staff as well as the principal. Only one parent called me, and that was only because I had called her. If the other teachers don't care, and the principal doesn't care, and the parents don't care, why should I? This speaks to the problem with education in Los Angeles, and also with America. The parents just want school to be a place for them to dump their kids, a day care center. The principals are too busy to care about what's going wrong. The teachers who I thought were all saints turn out to be just as apathetic as anyone else. The students who just want to party in the classroom win, and the good students who really want to learn lose. I'm starting to think that I need to get out of education.

My Bronze Medal

The International Society of Poets sent me a bronze medal. I won third place in the monthly online contest for the poem I posted on poetry.com, "My Microwave." That's nice, but it would have been even nicer if I had gotten a little money with it.

Once again, here is the award-winning poem, "My Microwave":

My microwave helps my cooking achieve simplicity
I don't see complicated recipes on my horizon.
I choose my frozen dinners by their ambience.
Otherwise, I could only approach my cooking with courage.
The garlic salt and ketchup I use have such fortitude
That my digestion must occur with a sense of faithfulness

Letter to the Principal

I've finally had it with the yearbook. I just wrote a letter to the principal complaining about the lack of help I got from last year's yearbook advisor. He could have spent just fifteen damn minutes showing me where the kit for the yearbook is, but he just brushed me off. When I found out that I could have been using the correct curriculum from the first day of school, I was furious! My biggest complaint is that one of the A students in yearbook just transferred out. I believe that students like her deserve a better experience in the yearbook. It seems tragic to me that one teacher's apathy and the destructive influence of students with bad attitudes drove her out.

Holding Down the Fort

I've been holding the fort for this new teacher for a week, but I've gotten no help. When I accepted this assignment, there was no lesson plan, and no technology plan for the computers. No one told me that I would be substituting for the yearbook advisor. I never did anything with the yearbook when I was in school. How am I supposed to know what to do with the yearbook staff? Many of the students take advantage and disrupt the class by toying with the computers and making as much noise as possible. How could this school allow this kids to get into the yearbook staff?

Work at Last

After a long summer of unemployment, I got an assignment at Van Nuys Middle School. I'm substituting for a computer teacher who's still being hired. With the way the downtown office takes forever to do anything, I should get at least a week of work from this one.

Mom Flies to Texas

Mom was in a good mood when I woke up. She and James were already preparing for the flight to Texas. The medication had worked. She wasn't quite normal yet, but she was much better. There would be no need to worry about if she would panic on the flight. I drove home, hoping everything would turn out all right.

Mom's Medication

The biggest problems with Mom was that she hadn't taken her medication for several weeks. We didn't know what she had done with her pills. The only way for us to get her medication was for someone to track down the doctor who prescribed them to her when she was in the hospital and get a new prescription. Our phone calls to that hospital, Chapman Medical Center in the City of Orange, and to the doctor himself yielded nothing but messages that the doctor was out to lunch or unavailable. I decided to drive to Chapman and make them pay attention to me until I got the prescription. It turned out that the doctor had his own office in Costa Mesa. After I drove around in the summer heat and traffic for hours, I met the good Dr. Alva and got the prescription. More hot driving and I was back in Sun City at Best Pharmacy, filling the prescriptions.

It took a little persuasion, but Mom eventually took the medication. The first one made her quiet. At first, it was a nice change from all the manic behavior, but she was scary quiet. She took a chair outside and sat in the driveway under the night sky, saying nothing, almost catatonic. I sat on a landscape wall, watching her. After an hour or so of this, I helped her stand up, leading her back into the house, feeling like I was teaching her to walk again, maybe a bit like she way she once taught me how to walk. Later, she woke up from that zombie state. James convinced her to take the last medication for the night.

Looking After Mom

I drove for two hours to take care of my mother. A neighbor had complained to the police that she was letting gas from her stove fill up her house and was using her microwave oven, making the neighbor think that Mom was about to blow up her house. Two sherrif's deputies were there when I arrived. They told me about what was happening until a social worker from adult protective services showed up. Mom was, in her own words, "out of touch," but with the way she was worrying about losing her keys and all the ways people could break into her house and whether the power company would do something to make her computer blow up, she was really in more serious condition than that. I stayed with her for the next couple of nights, waiting for my brother, James, to fly in from Texas to take care of her affairs and move her back there with her.

Writing In the Park

Sitting on an iron bench
At the corner of the park,
I look at the statue of Amelia Earheart
Holding up a propellor.
Should I write about
The racist kids who beat me up
When I was small?
Cars at the stoplight grumble and roll,
Drowning out my thoughts.
The sun is bright, but
A tree covers me with shade.
Should I write about that woman who fell for me
And trashed me when I couldn't fly
Around the world to see her?
An insect crawls across the paper.
A horn honks.
A man sleeps on the grass nearby,
His blankets and clothes in a shopping cart.
And what about those dreams of wealth,
And that golden statue, all that fame?
When will I see that?
The paper flutters in the wind.
I hold it down.
I haven't given up yet.
I'm glad to see
The yellow and orange carnations
Growing around Amelia
In plots with little fences.
I'm glad to feel
The cool summer morning,
Glad for wide green grass
And two dogs smiling as
They stick their heads out of a car window.
This is good enough for now.
I'll read this later
And be glad again.

Poetry Conference

I went to Las Vegas, hoping to win a few bucks in a poetry competition at the annual conference of the International Society of Poets. I drove there on Thursday through the desert, almost overheating my Geo Storm. Something interesting happened at a lecture at the poetry conference. One of the lecturers had us poets do on excercise to help us learn how to write a sestina. He asked seven of us to write one of seven stanzas. I voluteered to write the fourth stanza. Six words are supposed to appear at the ends of the lines in each stanza. Dr. Martin, the lecturer, asked poets in the audience to volunteer the six words. I found the word choices a bit pretentious:

Fortitude
Ambience
Horizon
Faithfulness
Simplicity
Courage

I noticed that a lot of the poets try to hard to be lofty and significant. I felt like those six words were just asking to be shot down, so I wrote my stanza this way:

My microwave helps my cooking achieve simplicity
I don't see complicated recipes on my horizon.
I choose my frozen dinners by their ambience.
Otherwise, I could only approach my cooking with courage.
The garlic salt and ketchup I use have such fortitude
That my digestion must occur with a sense of faithfulness.

I wish someone had been videotaping at that moment. Everyone laughed and Dr. Martin said, "That's not bad!" Later, he told the other poets that they should just write simple sentences "the way Ramon did." That was nice. I'll probably post that poem on poetry.com later.

After going to a couple of days of poetry seminars, I read my poem on Saturday. The next morning, I sat with 2,700 other poets, all of us waiting to hear if we won the $20,0000 prize, or at least sixth place. I won nothing.

Slovakia: Conclusion

I traveled around the country, climbed a mountain near Polana, drank beer, stayed at a luxury resort hotel, met more relatives, saw another castle, and finally had a date with Eva on the last night I was in Trnava. It was fun, but eventually I had to leave. I'll always remember Slovakia.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Picnic at the Old House

Dad took me to lunch at a restaurant at a penzion in a small town called Bytca. Later, we went to a picnic dinner at the "old house," the house in Bytca where Anna grew up in the days of Communist rule. It's an old farmhouse surrounded by tall trees that make it look like an island of greeen where it sits in a small sea of highway construction. Ernest and Ondrej where there, and Eva was barbecuing a lot of food. I met Anna's brother Stephan, who is quite a character. Ondrej was entertaining us with his jokes. Louis was there with his family. He translated Ondrej's jokes for us. I'll paraphrase one of them:

"When Gorbachev was the premiere of the Soviet Union, ten of his general died all at once from eating poisoned mushrooms. After the KGB investigated, they reported that three of the generals had also been shot in the head. When Gorbachev asked the KGB about those three generals, they said, 'Oh, those were the ones who refused to eat the mushrooms.'"

I filled up with food quickly, so when Christina and Steven were ready to go back to the penzion in Sulov, I went back with them. We ended the evening by watching the DVD of King Kong that I had brought with me.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Sulov

We stayed at a penzion in a canyon by a village called Sulov. It's a nice place to hike in the hills, which are craggy and jagged in places.

Pieštany

The family and I went to visit family and friends in Pieštany, a nearby town in Slovakia which is known for its spas. (By "the family," I mean Dad, Anna, and Louis with his family: his wife, Karen, and his kids, Christina and Steven.) People have been going to Pieštany for a thousand years, seeking the healing powers of the spas there.

The family we visited was Ernest, Anna's brother, and his wife, Eva. Ernest is an engineer who works with the wind turbines that have recently appeared in Slovakia. He and Eva live in one of those ugly high rise apartments with an elevator inside that's not much bigger than a phone booth. The inside of Ernest's apartment looked a lot better than the outside. On one wall, they have prints of drawings by Alphonse Mucha, the famous Czech painter from the Art Nouveau period. For lunch, we had soup, haluški and kolác. Haluški is a dish with potato noodles in cheese. Kolác is a poppy seed pastry. It was a good meal. Ernest showed me a video of the wedding of his daughter, Lenka. She married a British Royal Marine.

The friends we visited were Peter and his wife. Peter used to work as a nuclear physicist, but now he works as a consultant, and he seems to be doing very well. His house is a mansion with its own workout room, laundry, spa, and wine cellar in the basement. The paintings on the wall vary from fine art to modern art. A curving staircase leads upstairs. The upper floor is an apartment for his daughter. She wasn't there, but we met her cat. After the tour of the mansion, we went to an elegant restaurant at a local penzion for dinner. The muzak they were playing was strange. It was Slovak bands playing rock hits from the 60's and 70's, including some Beatles songs. They didn't sound like the Beatles. After dinner, we walked around town and saw the sights, which were mainly the local parks, hotels, and a nearby church. The sun was still up in the evening. It was muggy and hot, so we got some ice cream.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Max: The Mall

There's a mall in Trnava called "Max." It has about 20 stores and looks pretty much like any mall in America, except that it has a pub that sells alcohol. There's a Sony store and clothing stores selling the latest fashions while hip hop music plays in the background. There's also a movie theater showing Over the Hedge, except with Slovak subtitles. I had just learned how to take still photos with my camera when I went there, so I walked around and took a few stills. A couple of cops came up to me and started talking to me. I don't know what they were saying, but they were pointing at the camera. I got the message. I thought it was strange that they wouldn't want me to take pictures in a mall, but I didn't want to make any trouble. I turned off the camera and left to make them happy.

Bratislava

Dad and I took the bus to Bratislava, which is only about a half-hour's drive from Trnava. We walked around in the old city, which developed around a castle during the Middle Ages, like so many other towns in Europe. Many of the buildings there were rebuilt during the eighteenth century and look like buildings in Prague. You could say the Bratislava is Prague Light. We visited a museum showing items from the history of Bratislava, starting with a model of the old town made of copper. One of the first exhibits had tools found in the area dating back to the Stone Age. The museum itself was in a building that used to be the castle. We found an exhibit displaying instruments of torture in the dungeon. Areas in the upper floors displayed art artifacts from various periods, including weapons and coins. A tower with a clock on it took us up where we got a great view of the old town. Back in the old town, we saw other fascinating sights. There is a church there that was once bombarded by canon fire. One of the canonball is still stuck in the wall. It has been left there intentionally, as a kind of momento. The old town was once surrounded by a wall with four gates. The wall is mostly gone now, and the only gate remaining is one called St. Michael's gate.

After our visit to the old town, we took a boat ride on the River Danube. The boat ride started by a steel bridge built during the communist era. It has a just one suspension arch which looks like an A-frame leaning toward the land at a strange angle. There is a disk-shaped restaurant at the top of the arch. It looks like a UFO ran into the arch and got stuck in it. The whole effect is aggressive and unattractive, as if the Communists were trying too hard to impress the world and failed. It's close to Bratislava Castle, which is currently being used by the government as an office building. The Parliament building is next door. During the boat ride, we saw a couple of guys on jet skis rocket past the boat. One of them wiped out. After he righted himself, he wiped out again. We all found it rather entertaining, since the guy didn't get hurt.

While we were waiting at the bus station for the bus back to Trnava, Dad and I saw a guy trying to pull the grill off the bottom front of a vending machine. He looked like a yound punk. I don't know what he was trying to do. We didn't do anything about it. I was showing Dad some of the video I had taken with my camcorder. The young punk came up and started talking to us and pointing at my camcorder. It seemed he thought I was taping him. We tried to tell him that I wasn't taking his picture. He didn't go away at first. I thought I might have to kick his butt. He wasn't as big as me, so I didn't think it would be hard, but he eventually left us alone.

Back in Trnava, Dad and I waited for Anna to bring my stepbrother Louis and his family to Trnava from Vienna Airport. We waited at Trnavsky Dvor, a restaurant and bar across the street. Dad said this place was an empty lot just a few years ago. Now it's an open air tavern made of red bricks and unvarnished wood. When this place gets crowded, people start sitting in the empty seats next, according to Dad. Later, that's exactly what happened. A lovely woman named Eva and her friend, Egil, sat with us. Eva was curious about Dad. She thought he was Japanese. Dad explained that he's Filipino. We had a few beers with Eva before Dad left to check on Anna's progress. Egil and Eva told me that Egil was working with her on translating a book of her poetry from Slovak to Norwegian. I had no idea I'd meet a published poet there. Several times during the conversation, Egil would make speeches about how the European knows his own heritage but the American must struggle to find out who he is. I had to agree as someone of mixed race who grew up in America. Often when Egil would pontificate about society, Eva would give me a playful smile, as if to say, "Isn't it funny they way he goes on like that?" I told her the one Japanese phrase I know: "Nihon go'a hanase masen," which means, "I do not speak Japanese." She laughed and told me the phrase which means, "I do speak Japanese." We hit it off right away. I got her phone number. We agreed to meet the next week, after she was finished working with Egil.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Prague

The drive from Trnava to Prague took six hours, but the drive was quite scenic. Everything is green here, from the potato farms to the forests. Every few kilometers we saw a village of houses with red roofs nestled among green hills. Usually there's a church steeple in the village. Each one of these places looks like a painting. There was also the sight of drag concrete high rise apartments in Bratislava left over from the communist era. They look more like tall cinderblocks.

When we got to Prague, we got lost looking from the penzion, a kind of small hotel. The streets wind around like spaghetti, so it's easy to get lost. Once we found it, we stayed overnight and went downtown. While we were waiting for a tour of the city to start, we visited the Museum of Communism. It was interesting to see the samples of propaganda vilifying the west with cartoons of an evil Uncle Sam infecting crops in Czechoslovakia with parasites. A replica of a communist store offered a few shelves of the same boring canned goods. There was an interrogation room with information about how the communists turned each other in as traitors to gain favor with the Russian government. Another room showed a video of the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in 1989. Plain clothes cops were beating up protestors. I found it amusing that, just outside the museum of communism, there is a McDonald's.

The tour of the city was great. Prague is fantastic. It's full of beautiful buildings from the eighteenth century, but the buildings aren't as official and imperial as the ones in Vienna. They're friendly and colorful. We saw the Charles bridge and the National Theatre building, which burned down just after it was built, then rebuilt. Prague Castle was an amazing sight. The oldest parts of the castle date back to the ninth century A.D., but successive rulers continued to add to it until the eighteenth century, so the place is a mix of building styles. The Cathedral of St. Vitus is a Gothic cathedral bigger than some aircraft hangers. The outside has buttresses, gargoyles, and statues of saints, like most cathedrals of the time. The inside seems to have enough space for a blimp to fly around in it. The church of St. Charles is next to door. It's a much older and simpler church, except for one entrance with a Baroque style that was added later.

Dad and I walked along the Charles bridge after the tour and had lunch in the square beyond. There's a church there with mechanical saints who look out through a door when the bell rings the hour. The square was crowded with tourists. I found out later that this area is a tourist trap with overpriced food, but it was still fun.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Vienna

After I got up in the morning, Anna served me breakfast. Along with coffee, she gave me a piece of bread with a kind of sheep cheese called brina. It's not salty like goat cheese and tastes like feta cheese, but smoother.

Dad took me to Vienna. On the way I saw some of the new developments in Slovakia since the fall of communism. We passed by an Ikea at a mall. It reminded me of the Burbank Mall. I saw signs for a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut. Later, when we got to the capital, Bratislava, we passed over the River Danube, I saw that it's not really blue, but more of a muddy color, like the Mississippi River; it's probably been like that since way before the communists lost power. We drove over a bridge spanning the river. I could see Bratislava Castle from there.

Vienna was interesting. We had to get to a travel agency in the center of Vienna to pick up tickets for our tour of the city. That was complicated. Some of the streets are big and straight, but toward the center they snake around a lot. That's because they were designed for foot traffic centuries ago. After we got the tickets, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant. They had the best lasagna there I've probably ever had, lasagna made by an Italian chef.

The tour bus took us around to show us important buildings in the city, most of them built around 1800 by the Hapsburgs, such as Belvedere Palace, built by Prince Eugen, who fought the Turks for forty years.. We stopped at palace of Schönbrun, the favorite summer palace of Maria Theresa Hapsburg. It was huge. She had sixteen children and each one had to have five rooms and five servants. The tour gave me a chance to break in my new camcorder. I wondered who'd want to live in a place that big. You'd have to spend all your time walking just to get to another room. Also, in the time of Maria Theresa, there was no indoor plumbing. No water, no toilets. No thanks.

Click here to see pictures of Slovakia.

Trnava

My father picked me up at the airport in Vienna and took me to a little town in Slovakia called Trnava, where he and his wife have a house. As soon as we got inside, their Shi-Ztu, Shamu, was happy to see me. He kept jumping up on my leg. Anna, my stepmother, gave me a tour of their house. There's a garden in back with a well-manicured lawn. There's a bedroom upstairs that's larger than the one I have at my apartment at home. A large window in the room reveals a view of the garden. There is also a computer here with high speed internet access. This is the room of my sister Monika. She's in London right now. The room I'm staying in is across the hall. I tried to plug my laptop in with the power transformer that I bought in California, but it doesn't work for computers. It only works for charging up my camcorder. Bummer.

Dad gave me a tour of Trnava. It's just like any beautiful little European village you've ever seen. I was thinking, "It's nice to see that not all of the world is Los Anageles," but then I saw that some buildings have graffiti on the walls. We had pizza at a local restaurant. The place looked like a cowboy tavern because it was all made of unfinished wood. We had pizza, but it didn't taste like American pizza. The crust was very thin. The beer was good. It's called Pilsner. It's very smooth. I'll have to buy some when I get back to Los Angeles.

After dinner we walked back to the house. I was tired. I showered and went to sleep quickly.

On to Vienna

I slept in Terminal 6 at LAX, lying on three seats in a row. I didn't sleep very much or for very long. I thought of that phrase from The Da Vinci Code, "So dark the con of man," and how I would change it to fit the situation: "So hard the cot of LAX." There weren't many people there in the terminal, but I kept my hand on my stuff when I was sleeping, and often tried to sleep with my eyes half-open.

My flight left at 7. The in-flight movie was Firewall, which I thought was an exciting Harrison Ford vehicle, except for the part about the dog. Why didn't the bank robbers kill the dog if they were willing to kill one of their own fellow thieves?

My flight from New York to Poland was also delayed by an hour. The LOT Polish Airlines people said that it was because of the cleaning crew. I got to chat with some people in a missionary group. They were planning to tour Europe, starting in Russia, with a chorale called Savior. They had an orchestra, a choir, and a dance troupe with them. Later, when I got on the plane, I heard someone hammering downstairs in the plane. Was that the "cleaning crew"? Or were they putting one of the wheels back on? I didn't much like the service on that flight. When they flight attendants came around with drinks, I asked for a 7-Up. On the United flight out of L.A. I got a can of Sprite and a little plastic glass full of ice, but on this plane, they gave me a little plastic cup of warm 7-Up with no ice. I asked for ice. The stewardess put one little ice cube in my glass. I suppose the ice is for first class on Polish Airlines.

In Warsaw I transferred to an Austrian flight to Vienna. It was a small plane, so after we landed in Vienna, the captain said that we could get our luggage just outside the plane. Many people did. I waited there with a guy from Chicago who was on his was to the Czech Republic. The two of us were trying to figure out if we were supposed to get our luggage by the plane, since we had both transferred from other flights. We explained the situation to a lady from Austrian Airlines who was carrying a hand radio. "You are not allowed to get your luggage here!" she said. "Get on the bus!" Man, they're strict in Austria.

Europe Delayed

The past few days have been hectic. On top of getting ready for my trip to Europe, I was also making a DVD of the staged reading of my play, meeting with the artistic director of my workshop, buying a laptop, setting it up to fetch my e-mail, doing laundry, having my mail held, and telling the substitute teacher computer that I'm not available for two weeks. After all that I finally take the Metro train to LAX, but guess what? I won't be able to make it because of a bullshit homeland security rule. I checked in at an electronic kiosk 55 minutes before my flight. I thought I'd be fine, but the screen said I can't check in and told me to use the courtesy phone. The phone was black and I could barely hear the lady on the other end; didn't seem like courtesy to me. She said that because I'm taking an international flight, I'm supposed to check in an hour before my flight. I could have done that by cutting in line! I had to wait in line to get a paper ticket. The lady at the counter said there was no way to get on my flight, even though it wasn't going to leave for another 20 minutes! She gave me a flight that leaves at 7 in the morning. I have to wait around in the airport like Tom Hanks in The Terminal until the sun comes up. I'll be able to make the connecting flight to Warsaw, but I'm not happy about this new rule. A flight from Los Angeles to New York is not an international flight. It's a stupid rule.

The Omen Birthday Party!

The Omen Birthday Party was more fun than I expected it to be. This is the power of karaoke. Where else can people sing dopey fun songs like "I Will Survive" and Bon Jovi's bubble gum classic, "Shot Throught the Heart"? I sang the Styx classic, "Renegade." My Satanic minions brought offerings of beer and the appetizer sampler plate. Next time, I'll sing a song by Led Zeppelin, the favorite music of my father, Satan! Muahahaha!

Vampires - The Staged Reading

The staged reading of Vampires of the Red Moon was a success. The energy of the actors was exciting and the music was electrifying. The audience enjoyed it. Here's a message that someone sent to Gary, the composer:

What a great show! Thank you for inviting me. As I said, I usually don't like readings, but this one worked really well -- partly because it was well directed, but mostly because the material was so strong. Everything was excellent: the book, the lyrics, and of course your music. My friend Justeen raved about it for the rest of the evening -- she sees a lot of musicals, and she said "Vampires" seemed just as polished and 'ready' as a lot of the big shows she sees. Anyway, I hope you're proud of it, and I hope there's a possibility for the show to go somewhere.

Again, congratulations!

Vampires - First Rehearsal

We just had our first rehearsal of Vampires of the Red Moon tonight and it was awesome. I took the day off from work to rewrite the end of the script. The ending needed to have dimensions to it that would make it operatic, tragic, and personal. When we were done, I knew I had it. Tom, the director, was happy with the script. Gary, the composer and music director, said, "Good job." The cast we got is great. We have a young opera singer named John Quale playing the lead and he's got a great voice. We got Kendra Munger from the recent production of City of Angels playing Roxana. Bill Haller is playing Andrei the vampire; another powerful voice! Gary's music sounds great. It's just for a staged reading, and we still have to write a lot more music and fix minor problems in the script, but I can already tell it's going to be a great show. The spirit of Jonathan Larson is with me!

Pilgrim, the New Rock Musical

Pilgrim is an entertaining but unusual event. It is a rock musical by John Stothers, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics. Performances will run at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood until April 9th. The characters seem to come from a medieval sector of the world of Mad Max. There is a social class conflict between "crafters," who make things, and "guildmasters," who rule a town with no name. The crafters are well played such fine actors as Lowe Taylor, who recently appeared in I Come for Love at ANMT. Their costumes make the crafters look like workers at a Renaissance Faire, except with MTV-type variations in the costumes, like dreadlocks and a bare-chested tinker. The guildmasters wear long black leather outfits that may have been worn by the sadistic demons from the Hellraiser movies. The tinker, played by Tom Korbee, is the hero of the story. There are some interesting bits between him and Anna, a guildmaster's daughter, played by Jessica Rush. She marries him to avoid marrying Metsys, a guildmaster played by Jeffrey Stackhouse. The love triangle and the love story are the most satisfying stories in the play. A political drama runs through the plot, beginning when the tinker is put in prison and meets a mysterious madman named Hieronymus, played by Robert Patteri. He gives the tinker obscure clues in Latin to help him complete his quest.

The rock concert sensibilities of the show spawn some of the most interesting and entertaining aspects of the show, but also the most puzzling. The music is an effective fusion of standard rock sounds with musical theatre. It's as if some head bangers from the 80's grew up and put some intelligence into writing a rock opera. The result is lyrical or dramatic melodies over power chords and a script that mostly makes sense. After that, the choices become curious. The world of the play occurs in a deliberately non-specific medieval town, but the culture of that world seems to come out of specific developments, like the establishment of the power of trade guilds in late Medieval Europe. The effect leaves you feeling that this world lacks grounding. If John Stothers had drawn a more detailed picture of his guild culture, by describing what kinds of guilds these are, for example, it wouldn't have been quite so disorienting. By leaving out such details, Stothers seems to be relying on the power of ignorance to mystify and enthrall. That works well for illiterate adults or teenage boys hooked on their Playstations, but it might not be enough for many adult theatregoers. The word "pilgrim," for example, makes you think that the tinker will go on a religious journey, but the "pilgrimage" of his dreams makes no reference to anything that would make the journey in his dreams anything that specific or special. If the town had a name, like the name of the town in Urinetown, the world of the play would have a stronger anchor, but as it is, it contributes to the feeling of this world, and Stothers intentions, being in limbo. The clues in the tinker's quest are Latin words like "despero." Hieronymus explains what they mean, but theatre is about showing, not explaining. It would have been clearer if the tinker had met an allegorical character named Despero in his dream who helped him get through a specific step in his journey, like Virgil helping Dante through The Inferno. Still, I would recommend this show for most adults who enjoy theatre, just so they can see the fascinating work of the designers and performers. The acrobatics of the Myo Dance Company offer intriguing new possibilities for the potential of using dance and acrobatics for storytelling. For example, in one of the many dream scenes, an acrobat dangles from a red scarf for a moment, seemingly in a moment of ecstasy, and then falls into a flaming pit. It seems to depict Anna's emotional turmoil, as if she were going from heaven to hell, but the reference is generic enough to refer to anyone enduring hardship. If the effect had added new information by telling something about the story from the point of view of a dream, it might have achieved significance, but as it is, it's just a fun idea to watch. Still, the fact that the spectacle comes this much closer to telling the story in a new way is an achievement which ranks above whatever storytelling you might think happens at a Cirque du Soleil show.

The tragic ending of Pilgrim doesn't quite payoff. It depends on sympathy for the poor crafters which is not possible, given the lack of detail which would help the audience empathize with the crafter society. This is another area where Stothers seems to have left the writing unfinished. Still, this show is worth seeing. There's a guy on stilts who seems to represent someone, I'm not sure who, but he does some cool things. The music is entertaining, though the only memorable song is a love ballad called "Iron and Silver." All of the performers are excellent. The costumes, lighting and sets have a great rock show feel. The set is a scaffold with catwalks reminiscent of the set for Rent, except that it has a wooden wheel on it to make it look medieval and the whole thing spins on a turntable. It's interesting at first, but by the second act, the scaffold becomes tiresome, as if it were a frame for something that you never get to see built to completion. This is an entertaining show for everyone other than octogenarians who hate rock 'n' roll. High school kids will especially love this show, even if the second act isn't as intense as the first. The creators should publish the show specifically for the kids to perform at their schools. They'll make a mint if they do. Spread the word to your local high school: The next step in the evolution of the rock musical is here!

The Vanusi Tribe

Last Friday I was substituting for a P.E. teacher. The classes started outside at the basketball courts at Van Nuys Middle School, but the rain drove all the classes inside. The regular P.E. teachers set up a game for the students to play which involved several large inflated balls like beachballs, only tougher. Some of the balls were around eight feet tall. Others were smaller, about three times as wide as a humand head. The four classes sat in quadrants around a circular area on the gym floor where two or three teachers stood. The students were supposed to push the balls around to the other quadrants while music played. If a ball went to the center, a teacher would volley the ball out. I was one of those teachers.When the music started, one of the kids grabbed a ball and threw it right into my face. A yell of enjoyment went up from the crowd. Some of the kids don't like me in this school because they know how strict I am. Maybe watching me get hit was their chance to get revenge for the detentions and referrals I had given them. I decided to stand my ground. Rather than push the ball back politely the way the other teachers were, I decided to hit them like a street fighter. I was wearing a brown bomber jacket over my T-shirt and jeans, so I was already dressed for the part. When one of the big balls came my way, I would launch it back with a jab or a right cross. Shouts of approval went up from the crowd. The climax came when a big ball ricocheted of a kid who quickly sent it toward my head. I quickly deflected it with a left uppercut. The kids yelled a big "Oh!" in surprise. After the game was over, one of the bad kids said, "Hey, Mr. Sanchez! Nice moves!" I felt a bit like I could have been in a scene in an Indiana Jones movie where Indy endures a challenge from a tribe of pigmies, let's call them the Vanusi Tribe, and wins their respect.

Parents I Hate

I just got out of a class where I was assisting a math teacher. I was sitting in the back next to a boy who sat in his desk doing absolutely nothing. I told him to do the warm up, but he kept saying he didn't know how to do this. Of course, the real problem was that he just didn't want to. The teacher was there to show him and everyone in the class how to do proportions. I made him copy the problem on the overhead projection to a piece of paper, but didn't do anything after that. I asked if his parents make him do his homework. He said that they make him do his homework, except for math. His mother doesn't know how to do this math. His father does, but his father lives in Corona. The heart of the problem has nothing to do with which parent knows how to do the math. His parents have taught him to give up on himself.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is full of students with parents who teach their children to give up. Parents and politicians can punish teachers all they like, but teachers can do nothing to stop bad parents from ruining the education, and by extension, the lives of the children. All I can do about such parents is hate them.