Global "Freeze" Sparks Social Media Frenzy

Talk about creative sparks bringing people together, New York City based "Improv Everywhere" staged this "freeze" event in Grand Central Station in January. The group has quickly gone global with similar social media events in other major cities around the world.

Inspired by the Grand Central event, so far freezing time events have taken place in London's Trafalgar Square and Toronto.

Here's Grand Central Station on a cold Saturday in January. The London event clip follows with a 1,000 people participating.

Very cool!



London's Trafalgar Square Freeze, February 2008

Beagle Takes Best In Show

One feisty proud Beagle named UNO took Best In Show last week at the Westminster Dog Show. UNO is the first Beagle to ever win a Best in Show and the first Beagle in the Hound classification to win in about 100 years. Beagles are great little dogs and wonderful for children. I've always loved Beagles, my first puppy was a Beagle named Gertrude. I remember going to the pet store and picking her out, she was about 8 weeks old and cost $25.

Photo Credits: Associated Press

Barking Up The Right Tree

Sally Dyal's first book debuted in December, her adoring friends and family were thrilled to receive a copy.

Diablo Cody in "The First Church Of Harpo"

I was reading through the latest script written by one of my clients in early January, and kept thinking about Diablo Cody's script for "Juno"---figuring that Cody would definitely end up with noms throughout the awards season.

Cody previously blogged on "blogger" and has now moved over to My Space. She's been appearing all over network shows from Letterman to Oprah. Cody shares that appearing in "the First Church of Harpo" was "peyote-weird"--since I have a day job, I missed Cody's "O-gasm" experience with Juno cast members. But the fact remains, appearing with "O" sells movie tickets, books, and presidential candidates.

And when I did return my client's script, I also sent a copy of "Juno"---I figure that it helps to read screenplays that work and get a feel for why they do---character, language, storytelling.

Campaign 1968: Robert Kennedy Jr. Announces Death of Martin Luther King

Almost 40 years ago, Robert Kennedy, Jr. traveled across the U.S. campaigning for the Presidency. And on April 4, 1968, Kennedy sadly announced to a crowd in Indianapolis that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed in Memphis.  Two months later, Kennedy was assassinated after making a campaign appearance in Los Angeles.  This audio recording of Robert Kennedy's message on April 4 honors a legacy of hope and Great Dreams.

And a link to my previous posting: "I Have A Dream"

Are The Times Really Changing?

The Times They Are A-Changin'
by Bob Dylan, Great Dreamer



Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Puppy Night Before Christmas

Let Them Eat Pie!

"If Only Life Were As Easy As Pie" then Mrs. Lovell and Sweeney Todd may have survived happily ever after. Two of 2007's most delicious adventures in filmmaking used pie baking as a basic recipe for storytelling.

Adrienne Shelley's "Waitress" premiered at Sundance in January. Refreshing, quirky, sweet, and genuine, the late filmmaker penned her script while pregnant with daughter Sophie. A toddler by the time the film wrapped production, Sophie appears as LuLu with actress Keri Russell dressed in look-a-like bright yellow waitress uniforms at the film's end. Given Adrienne Shelley's murder, this joyful final scene becomes all the more poignant.

Take 1 part great script, 6-7 parts great characters combined with equal parts great casting, mix together with 1 part passionate and talented filmmaker and bake. "Waitress" is as easy to digest as all those pies. What a treat!

On the other end of filmdom's pie bake-off is Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd." A difficult theatrical stage production to pull-off well, Burton succeeds in bringing his adaptation to screen.

If you love Burton and Depp together, you'll appreciate Sweeney Todd. It's beautifully filmed with brilliant acting. Unfortunately, Stephen Sondheim's best compositions are lost-in-translation as Depp and Helena Bonham Carter deliver them. That said, they were great as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovell.

Watch trailers for both Waitress and Sweeney Todd below:

The Christmas Song

A most beloved holiday song transcending the 20th Century into the 21st is Mel Torme's The Christmas Song. Torme also was one of the most gifted entertainers in the industry. I remember discovering how wonderfully talented he was in about 1964 or '65 on a trip to New Orleans with my parents. We caught his dinner show high atop The Roosevelt Hotel's Blue Room--my first "nightclub" experience. Here's a real holiday treat, Mel Torme with the incomparable Judy Garland:

Queen Latifah Lights Up Symphony Hall

Queen Latifah gave fans a taste of the blues, jazz, funk, and soul Sunday night with her Trav'l'in Light tour swing through San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall. Davies proved to be a great intimate venue that worked well for Latifah's easy style, humor, nine piece band and three talented back-up singers. The only thing I wanted more of was the Queen singing more songs. And it seemed awkward to sit down rather than stand up during her more robust numbers---you know complete audience engagement?

A generous entertainer, Latifah devoted a little too much time featuring her band members and over produced a finale number with her back-ups. A good singer, not a great one, Latifah holds her own doing funk,the ballad "I Know Where I've Been" from this summer's box office hit, Hairspray, and gives an enjoyable cover of "Poetry Man" and "Georgia Rose."

Queen Latifah's career in show business reads somewhat like a fairy tale, along with hard work, talent, a keen business sense, image shaping, and marketing. There were few young people in the San Francisco audience, which reveals how her career has evolved in demographic positioning over the years. From rapper to film actress, talk show host, film producer, author, product spokesperson, and trying new muscial genres, Latifah more than once thanked us for supporting her throughout her career as she has tried a little of this and that.

She introduced an audience guest, who happened to be the daughter of the songwriter/musician who wrote Trav'lin Light for Billie Holiday. Latifah introduced her father later, he stood onstage behind huge speakers throughout the show. After a standing ovation and leaving the stage, her father reappeared coaxing us to continue applauding--- a little weird since no one needed cajoling to want an encore.

If Queen Latifah comes to your town, go see her. If it's other than a huge stadium, even better.

Photo Credit: Michael Thompson

On Pocket Change

Once upon a time, children spent a rainy day inside building castles out of pennies and other loose pocket change. We relied on our own imagination---it was a time before great dreamers made it possible for us to own a personal home computer with fabulous software to help us create something wonderful with pennies and loose pocket change.

Lessing Honored With Nobel In Literature

I was introduced to Doris Lessing's work well into my 40's when I returned to graduate school. One of my professor's was, and is, a Lessing scholar. My favorite Lessing novel remains "The Grass Is Singing," her first and rather slim novel published in 1950. It's a little daunting to write a final essay for an English Lit professor who's a well-known published scholar on Lessing--- and Woolf, for that matter.

So, when I approached writing an essay on Lessing's most widely read novel,"The Golden Notebook," I did so with a fair amount of trepidation. What could I say that had not been said before? Fortunately, my bookshelf held a fairly recent book "The Six Thinking Hats" by renowned psychologist and physiologist Dr. Edward DeBono. He associated thinking and decision making to emotion, creativity, intuition, or negativity and represented each by color. It struck me when reading "The Golden Notebook" that Lessing's protagonist Anna very much associated color with thinking--I took off on this notion with my essay. And was excited to learn that this approach really was a fresh one in studying Lessing's work!

A few years later, I read where Lessing was coming to San Francisco and had hoped to attend, I think it was to be at the Herbst Theatre. Lessing was not able to come after all due to health problems---she was well into her 80's. What a nice honor today to receive a Nobel for her prolific and audacious body of work.

Let The Sunshine In . . . HAIR Turns 40

Maybe it's me. And I don't mean 'all-about-me'---now I know how my parents felt as pivotal moments were reflected upon 25, 40, or 50 years later. It's not really about where one was when, yet more about do our hopes and dreams make a difference along the way.

October 17th marks the 40th Anniversary of HAIR's off-broadway premiere.

Brainstorm of James Rado and Gerome Ragno, the team created an American Tribal Rock-Love Musical which follows a group of bohemian activists living together in a NYC apartment.

A cultural shock to most people living outside NY, HAIR introduced everyone else to serious political activism and rebellion focused on the Viet Nam War and conservatism--along with the sexual revolution, free love, different strokes for different folks, be-ins, and hash.

I admit to having no clue . . .

Even as a budding theatre major listening to the original cast album in 1968, I couldn't imagine myself performing nude on stage. As for all the rest, I was still innocent though enamored with HAIR's lyrics and music. HAIR had created a furor throughout the U.S. and abroad by the time I heard the album, mostly due to the show's nudity, language, racial integration, and assorted political statements.

Rado and Ragno's creative spark igniting off-Broadway in 1967 continues to stir new generations around the world today with one musical tribute after another.

More than 35 songs tell the tribe's story:

* Aquarius
* Donna
* Hashish
* Sodomy
* Colored Spade
* Manchester England
* Manhattan
* I'm Black
* Ain't Got No
* I Believe in Love
* Ain't Got No Grass
* Dead End (cut during run and re-added)
* Air
* Initials (L.B.J)
* I Got Life
* Going Down
* Hair
* My Conviction
* Easy to Be Hard
* Don't Put It Down
* Frank Mills
* Be-In (Hare Krishna)
* Where Do I Go?
* Electric Blues
* Oh Great God of Power
* Manchester England (Reprise)
* Black Boys
* White Boys
* Walking in Space
* Abie Baby
* Three-Five-Zero-Zero
* What a Piece of Work Is Man
* Good Morning, Starshine
* The Bed
* The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)

A few notable "tribe" members from the original cast and other productions:

James Rado
Gerome Ragni
Melba Moore
Diane Keaton
Paul Jabara
Ted Lange
Keith Carradine
Barry McGuire
Kenny Seymour (Little Anthony & The Imperials)
Joe Butler (The Lovin' Spoonfull)
Peppy Castro (The Blues Magoos)
Heather MacRae
Ben Vereen
Meat Loaf
Ted Neeley
Jennifer Warnes
Dobie Gray
Joe Mantegna
Elaine Paige
Marsha Hunt
Donna Summer
John Waters
Harvey Fierstein
Jennifer Hudson
Rupaul
Michael McKean

Trailer of 1979 film version directed by Milos Forman and starring Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, and John Savage:

Luciano Pavarotti . . . Great Dreamer

Torino, Italy Olympic Ceremony

Billy Bob, Chicken John, and Grasshopper Heat Up San Francisco's Mayoral Race

Only in San Francisco would citizens be given the option of voting for mayoral candidates with such diverse backgrounds--a solid record in office or similar leadership qualifications are not required. Presumably, candidates can prove they live in San Francisco County.

Maybe someone qualifies as a great dreamer--if not for mayor:

retired teacher and blogger
nudist activist
former supervisor
juvenile probation department manager
flower shop owner
taxi driver named Grasshopper
nonprofit program director
music teacher
sex club owner
showman named Chicken John
educator named Billy Bob
blogger who spent 7 months in jail (journalist right to protect sources)
incumbent mayor