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.