I should be more mindful of people coming into Pittsburgh for the holidays. Missed a couple of friends this year... Elizabeth Warren is great, but I'm not holding my breath... If you run a medical portal you should not provide an option for patients to send in questions electronically if you are not going to answer them - or if your only answer is to call the office, or to make an appointment. Just don't give me the option... It is difficult to gauge when people are going to respond to work emails over the break. I guess I should have pressed harder before classes ended. Now it's all hurry up and wait... Somewhere along the way the value proposition of waiting for a table at a restaurant just went away. The obvious reason would be the toddler, but I think it happened before that development. I just have better things to do... Science Channel has been running a Mythbusters Marathon over the holiday. That's still good TV... Even with just the three programatic posts each week, keeping up this posting is difficult, and now I have compounded it by adding a requirement to take photos all the time... Every day I try not to let it slip my mind that the US has thousands on probable refugees locked up in detention. I should probably be doing more... The weather I most associate with New Years in Pittsburgh is rain. That is also the weather association with most of the spring and fall... The Steelers were in it right up until like 2:00 after their last game ended. Or, alternately, they were out of it as soon as they had that week one tie. I guess it just matters what kind of fan you are... Two more possible blogs in my future: one for rigging resources and the other for articles I thought I would post on the Greenpage until I realized there was pretty much nothing to read. That would push me up to six publications if you don't count the Twitter streams. That's probably too much... My watch downloaded a custom New Year's Eve watch face. There is a feature I hadn't anticipated... The boy and I had a weekend breakfast thing going at Eat and Park for a few months. Last week I took him to McDonald's. So much for Eat and Park... I have a couple of MAGA friends on Facebook. Occasionally they post things that are verifiably false and yet I can't figure out a productive way to engage... This year was exhausting...
Monday, December 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Why High School Musicals Should Be As Respected As Sports Programs Are
www.theodysseyonline.com: When I was in middle school and high school, I felt like I lived for the musicals that my school orchestrated.
For those of you who don't know, a musical is an onstage performance wherein actors take on roles that involve singing, and often dancing, to progress the plot of the story. While it may sound a little bit nerdy to get up in front of an audience to perform in this manner, this is something you cannot knock until you try it.
How Rodgers And Hammerstein Revolutionized Broadway
NPR: We're going to hear from Todd Purdum, author of the book "Something Wonderful: Rodgers And Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution," which tells the story of their partnership. Purdum loves their music, but he's best known as a political reporter. He covers politics and culture for The Atlantic, is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and senior writer for Politico. We're going to hear some Rodgers and Hammerstein cast recordings. Purdum also selected a couple of Rodgers and Hammerstein interview excerpts that we'll hear.
Comedians and College Students Are Not Enemies
www.vulture.com: I wonder if Jerry Seinfeld knows that when he famously said colleges are too PC for stand-up comedy, he sparked a wholly unnecessary feud between stand-up comics and college students. At least in the comedy world, that’s how it feels. Earlier this month, the fire was stoked with the news of student organizers cutting former SNL writer Nimesh Patel’s set short at a Columbia University event.
50 Years of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
Make-Up Artist Magazine: Anybody who had the good fortune of meeting Stuart Freeborn knew he was a born storyteller. Freeborn, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 98, was a frequent visitor to IMATS London, where he was often surrounded by a crowd of spellbound listeners, right up until the moment he was packed into the back of a car to go home.
For actors and other theater workers, minimum wage is often the maximum, too
Datebook: In any other industry, the announcement of an across-the-board, $15 hourly wage wouldn’t be a big deal. Why celebrate a company for paying the legal minimum wage everyone else pays? And how was it ever allowed to pay less?
Yet for many working in the nonprofit theater industry, minimum wage is a welcome change.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Monday, December 24, 2018
Ellipses...
If you are a medical concern, and you provide a patient portal with some kind of electronic messaging, you have a responsibility to make sure messages receive prompt attention... Really, I think nobody in Washington has any idea on where to go with this shutdown... This year it seems like every time I finish cleaning up the leaves they very next thing I should do is clean up the leaves... That cork floor? It is probably dirtier than you think it is... The Steelers managed to lose one game and go from home field to out of the playoffs. It isn't a done deal yet, but not winding up there requires Cleveland to beat Baltimore. Well, they almost beat us... I kinda wish a Roku could use it's account feature to keep track of all the various logins. It is annoying when one or another just drop for no apparent reason, but installing a brand new device requires a truckload of logins that other devices on the network have already authenticated... The last day of Semester Reviews seems like it was more than a week ago... It had been years since we had been to Green Forest Churrascaria. It is still a good night out... The boy got a CD in the mail that had a song on it that was done to the tune of Louie Louie. That one I think is really just for the parents... Somehow my watch managed to put an appointment on my schedule for tomorrow without my having entered the appointment on any calendar. Some of these digital assistants are a little spooky... A guy I used to work with in Chicago passed away last week. He wasn't much older than I am. I hadn't seen him in forever, but it still sucks... We went to see Aquaman. In the DC series I would rank it behind Wonder Woman and in front of Justice League, although not my much. We probably should have gone to the Spiderman movie... I'm toward the end of reading a trilogy in reverse order by mistake. As it turns out it doesn't seem to be hurting the storytelling much if at all... Do you think the large chili at Wendy's is really only 300 calories? I've been trusting it but it seems unlikely... The Bumblebee movie is PG-13, but the boy is a pretty devoted Transformers fan. Probably still a miss... There's no Doctor Who Christmas episode this year. They've subbed in a two part New Year's ("Who Year's") event this year. I'm not sure if this was part of their effort to separate the new show from the old. Doesn't really matter to me. I don't even think we saw the first few in real time... I really wish we had shorted the market several months ago. I bet I'm not the only one. Good time to have your cash in cash... I've had the news on for like an hour and haven't heard anything about an attack in Kabul. TV News editors have their priorities mixed up...
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Do We Really Need to Watch Shows in Silence?
Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Growing up in Honduras, I picked up my knowledge of theatre etiquette from the movies (thank you Pretty Woman and Citizen Kane). I learned that I shouldn't talk, that I should unwrap my candy before the show and that I should sit as still as possible and wait for my cues to applaud and, perhaps, laugh or cry (though never too loudly). For years, I believed I should shun anyone who showed any signs of life while attending a performance.
‘Midnight Rider’ Case: Hillary Schwartz Asks For Shortened Sentence
Deadline: Midnight Rider’s first assistant director Hillary Schwartz, who in March 2015 was sentenced to 10 years probation for criminal trespass and felony involuntary manslaughter for her role in the death of 27 year-old camera assistant Sarah Jones, this morning asked a Georgia Judge to end her probation now. The Judge has not yet ruled on the motion (read it here).
Why I Broke Up With The American Theater
The Lark: As I waited for medical professionals to wheel me into the operating room, shivering under two blankets, I felt scared. I felt alone, and, for the first time, I wondered why I was there.
The obvious answer was I got injured while working on my last show. I suffered three herniated discs in my neck, and a badly injured back. It started as a back injury which I told stage management about twice. But I understood how stretched stage management was so, when nothing was done, I kept going. Until the major injuries happened.
San Diego Opera planning 'hackathon' on cutting-edge stage technology
The San Diego Union-Tribune: Hackathons have become an annual tradition for engineering and other students at UC San Diego. Now, the cutting-edge style of these cross-discipline innovation summits is coming to the world of opera.
Next July, San Diego Opera will host what is believed to be the nation’s first large-scale arts-themed Opera Hack event at the Microsoft campus in San Diego.
Is It Time to Rethink "Men's" Class?
Dance Magazine: Next semester, there'll be a new course name on the syllabus of Boston Conservatory at Berklee: "Constructed Gender Identities in Classical Ballet: Men's Variations."
But this is not a new course, just a new title. The old name is one you might recognize: "Men's Class."
Friday, December 21, 2018
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
David's Crit
So we did classes and summer. Students doing their reviews would talk about production. In a faculty setting it would seem appropriate to talk about production, service, and professional development.
My production involvement remained pretty much the same as in prior semesters. I continue to prescreen all the scene designs to get the reasonably close to budget before we put them into our process. The more we do this the less well I feel like it is working. We made an effort at the top of the fall to try to build some good will with the scene design cohort as a group. We had for some reason slipped into an adversarial posture and there was some question as to whether our motives were pure. I tired to get in front of it, but honestly it hasn't been long enough to know if it had any effect. We also did a little bit of a Crazy Scheme reboot with our own population to try to shake out some of the requirements and procedures that had spontaneously generated over the last few Project Managers. We didn't do our best work on the first show. I probably own some of that as I tried to convince them that we could do something to preserve the scale they were looking for that I probably shouldn't have. I just hate being the bottle neck everything has to pass through. Sometimes I may turn out to be unjustifiably optimistic.
Something nearly nobody would ever say about me.
The largest service contributions I made this fall were both about campus visits. In both cases the work turned out to mostly be a thousand emails rather than something more substantive. I guess I am good at legwork though, and neither event would have happened without it. The first was a direct outgrowth of the summer trip to TAIT. We arranged for a delegation to come to campus from Lititz to do some recruiting. We wound up with two class appearances a dinner and an open info session in Drama. They also did a few appearances in some engineering classes. It feels like there's a possibility that we'll make it a regular thing for the fall. The other event was that we hosted the USITT Glerum Rigging Master class. They were here for two days just after classes ended. It was well attended and everyone seemed to suggest that the event went well.
I also reprised my coordination of semester reviews - another task that centers on a thousand emails, but also has the added dimension of being something that nobody is ultimately happy with. We wound up doing 10 sessions over 4 days this round. I believe that if we make it into a world where we need 11 sessions something might break. If all the grad programs hit their recruiting goals we could definitely get into that world. Not sure what that would mean.
On the professional development end I continued - and reupped - as a Subject Matter Expert for the ETCP Theatre Rigging Certification. I attended the Glerum Class as an attendee to fill out renewal points for my certification. After taking the class I am seriously considering taking the Arena test; maybe next fall at LDI (or maybe by then the thought will have passed). For a minute I thought I might be getting a chance at something I had been lining up for... forever, but it didn't happen. Just didn't talk to the right people in the right moment. I continue to kick around ideas for books. I came up with one recently that would be really fun to do and would probably sell, but holds little value career-wise. Probably not the best idea.
All in all things went reasonable well for the fall and I am looking forward to a successful spring.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Ellipses...
Mondays are for Ellipses... Before you go saying the Steeler's defense is forgiven, remember that Brady got four shots at the endzone in the first place... The migrant detentions at the border are really troubling... I am strongly considering going off my food routine for the semester break. It'll probably mean a delay of my goals... The Fossil people sent me a link to a video on how to use their WearOS watch. Will it help? I guess we'll see... I don't know why, but I always seem to wind up paying more for parking when classes aren't in session than when they are... The leaves on the lawn are wet, maybe frozen. That's a chore I'm not looking forward to... A government shutdown would be really unfortunate. Here's hoping they get it together in time... The AHN people continue to impress on their time to appointment. On a call today the appointment is Wednesday... Should I spend the rest of this week prepping next semester? I would probably really appreciate making that decision in January... It has been cold and wet lately, but I think I would have found a way to do another credit ultimate had there been an appetite... There was a tweet today in the news where "border" was spelled "boarder." That happens all the time on rigging homework... 10 sessions, more than 150 students in four days. The end of semester reviews are a steep hill to climb... Do you have TSA Precheck? Do you think it is worth it? Seems like it could be... There is going to be a Hamilton ticket lottery in Pittsburgh. It'd be nice, but I think if I am going to win a lottery I would rather it be the Powerball... After more than a year I might finally get to take the photos off my phone. Something tells me I am doing it wrong... Today I had the thought that ScenoFab should be split into two full semester classes. That's a lot of material... Thinking about taking the boy to Aquaman, maybe to Spiderman. Probably too young... I am so, so hungry on Mondays. Also on Thursdays... Usually I fill out these posts by looking at a news page and making a comment on the top stories. Today I really don't want to talk about what I found there... The Greenpage is going on vacation tempo. Three posts each day. Maybe I'll put it on a hiatus for the last week of December...
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few articles from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Female directors provoked and excelled in leading roles
The Boston Globe: Cher has never been one to mince words, and she offered some typically blunt reasoning as she urged participants at a January Women’s March to vote for change. “If you want a job done right,’’ she said, “get a woman.’’
That maxim seems to have supplied the working template for Boston theater in 2018. This was a year when women, prominently including women of color, directed a hefty percentage of the impactful stage productions that are likely to linger in the memory as we head into 2019.
Parents Shocked By High School Play With Ku Klux Klan Uniforms
www.theroot.com: During a brief period of incarceration when I was 12 years old, I learned some valuable life lessons. I was serving three days of in-school suspension for a locker-room fracas that broke out when I punched a classmate who called me a racial slur because I had secured the co-starring role in our junior high production of Huckleberry Finn.
A star flutist has sued the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her case could change how orchestras pay men and women.
Washington Post: On a winter day 14 years ago, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that it had finally found a new principal flutist. The search had not been easy. Two hundred fifty-one players had applied, 59 were called to Symphony Hall to audition, and when it was over, only one remained.
Elizabeth Rowe, just 29, had landed in one of the country’s “big five” orchestras. And as a principal, she occupied a special seat, the classical musical equivalent of cracking the Yankees’ starting rotation.
“If I could have a dream job, this was it,” Rowe says.
The Evolving Fusion of AR, Public Art, and Virtual Public Space
AMT Lab @ CMU: Public art in commercial and recreational structures is a means to bring communities together and directly connect people with the physical space around them. Typically, public art is presented in the form of murals, sculptures, architecture, and environmental art. In addition to social bridging, public artworks can serve as identity-markers for particular locations, mediums to express distinct points of view, and vehicles to inspire personal and social change.
Suzanne Foellmer: Choreography As A Form Of Protest
The Theatre Times: Erdem Gündüz’s Standing Man was originally a response to the ban on public assembly imposed after the 2013 protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul. Gündüz just stood there, looking at the Atatürk monument and not leaving. Others later followed his example and stood next to him. The action quickly went viral on social media. Maybe it wasn’t extreme in expression, but in any case, it was a very much an act of resistance to which the police didn’t know how to respond.
Friday, December 14, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
David's Crit
Once we changed up the protocol and stopped doing semester reviews by class and started mixing things up we pretty regularly come out with an empty board or two in each session. A while ago I had the thought that it might be interesting to have instructors fill those slots and talk about what they did that semester. We often don't know those things as a faculty, let alone get that information downloaded to students. So it seems like a nice community building exercise. I've never formally suggested it because the only thing that might be an even bigger motivator is doing anything that would make a given session shorter. Instructor presentations would not do that.
Today was the first day of reviews, and by the time we got to the end of the day we did have a session with a free board. I started to think about what I might say if I were the one to fill it.
Fall presentations normally start with what people did over the summer. This past summer I returned to my role as Drama Precollege DP Coordinator. I also taught Drafting and Technical Production and I did a slot in the "Applying to College" workshop. The only significant change to the program this summer was a shift in how we handled Parent Weekend. In the past we'd really done nothing substantive which has generated a smattering of complaints. So this year we did a series of demonstration classes where the parents could take part as participants rather than only as observers. It seemed to be relatively well received.
Also over the summer Kevin and I managed to get in a trip to visit several TD alums as TAIT Towers in Lititz. The trip also let us tour Rock Lititz and get our hands on some new Navigator gear. The visit went really well and left us to wonder if in subsequent summers we should try to get to Scenic Route in LA or make somewhat wider rounds in NYC or Chicago. Food for future plans.
After talking about the summer students usually talk about classes. My fall slate of classes remained unchanged: Technical Direction 1, Technical Direction 3, and PTM Professional Practice.
TD1 came off pretty much the way it has for many years. That content is really well defined with the biggest challenge being actually getting to the content rather than spending the entire class talking about current production issues. I believe both are equally important, so it is actually a fairly tough nut to crack. The only significant change this semester involved my putting my thumb on the scale of the "Shop Layout" project. Normally I have the teams pick out five issues on their own. This year I changed it up and mid-project instructed them than one of their five issues had to be providing adequate volume for the storage of recovered material. In the end the results of that change were muddy, but I think I might keep it in the future.
TD3 changes every year based on personnel and production trends. I kept some of the projects and subbed in some new stuff. In here the biggest changes were probably the "Green Fabrication" project and the way we handled embedded electronics. Instead of dedicating 6 class sessions to the electronics content this year we did two long Saturday workshops and cancelled class six times. It seems like this was a favorable change and it will likely remain. The "Green Fabrication" project was a long footprint research project trying to quantify the impact of process and materials changes we might institute in order to make our process more sustainable. The process was confusing and through the course of the thing the students were really unhappy, but by the end of the thing I believe we actually did learn something. I'm not sure we will do the project again, but it is possible that the life of this project may not be over. I've discussed doing a one day workshop with these students along with the school sustainability committee and the scene design students and maybe the PM students as well.
The only significant change to PPP was that I FINALLY managed to actually get an attorney to come in to talk about liability and LLCs and IP. It turned out to be both a little shallow and a little wonky but I think the students did get something out of it and if they'll do it again I will probably keep it on the schedule for next year. One again I mused about dropping the "Elevator Speech" assignment, but after kicking it around with some students and faculty it seemed like there was appetite to keep it, so I did.
I haven't gotten to production, service, or development and I would fairly certainly be out of time (although I guess without faculty response there would be more time for talking). Maybe I'll do the rest in another post.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Monday, December 10, 2018
Ellipses...
It is possible that the new posting plan is working and that it also sucks. Time will tell... I need some home IT help. If you have time and the skill to help out I'd love to discuss it with you... Today was the first day of the USITT Glerum Rigging Master Class at work. I think it went pretty well. Everyone was really nice to me... I've been using this laptop for quite some time now and I am still not used to the keyboard, with no reason to ever assume I will adapt... Had to coat up today. Just too cold for the regular coat... Check you charge card statements. Bad things can happen when you don't check them. Well bad things can happen either way, but you won't even know it has happened unless you check... The programs are piling up on the DVR while we turn our attention to Mrs. Maisel... The boy went bowling for the second time this weekend. It didn't seem like he improved over the intervening time... The Steelers, WTF happened with the Steelers? I swear I left the room for 2 seconds and everything fell apart... I really hate giving bad grades. I think students believe I like giving bad grades, but I really, really hate giving bad grades... The job listings on the NFTRW_Feed are really picking up. It must be job hunting season... For a minute it seemed like there was a TD Gift Guide coming together, but it appears to have fizzled... Do you get concerned when you hear about wide spread power outages? It's enough to make one start to price generators... I did not think they would get a plea out of Butina. That felt very unlikely... Pittsburgh was apparently named the 25th best place for New Year's Eve. Truth be told I don't think I would play that up too much... Bringing Tim Shaw back for the end of the Doctor Who season was a nice touch... The other day the boy was talking to the Alexa, just chatting, and it started to ask him about what kind of gifts he liked. I disabled the chatting skill. It was creepy... Now that Voyager 2 has left the solar system do you think we'll get some kind of citation for littering from aliens? That would really derail Rachel Maddow's A-Block...
Sunday, December 09, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
The Use Of Children In Milo Rau’s "Five Easy Pieces": Exploitation, Or Confrontational Theatre?
The Theatre Times: This summer, as I was about to embark on initiating my fifth divisive performance with children and teenagers, the question about the ethics of engaging them in theatre for adults reintroduced a well-known fever and dilemma. The use of youngsters is a silver bullet that most of us get hit by; the effect is similar to using music to glorify a dramatic moment which may otherwise be too weak to stand on its own: it cracks our hearts open, and our cold, conscious judgment is mesmerized by the strong effect of our instinctive emotional reaction.
Radical Inclusion of Parent Artists
HowlRound Theatre Commons: Women in theatre are warned not to have children because motherhood will derail their career. If they choose to become mothers, they are warned to keep pregnancies secret from potential employers. Once those children arrive, parents are discouraged from asking for what they need, despite the prohibitively high cost of childcare and intense rehearsal and production schedules, especially considering artists generally get paid low rates. But there’s a movement happening in theatre communities all over: parent artists are bringing these particular challenges they face into the light and are advocating for change.
Here's a new concept for nighttime entertainment at water parks
www.themeparkinsider.com: How can you keep a water park open at night? Water and darkness are a bad mix for safety, so keeping pools and waterslides open at night requires quite a bit of lighting power. That's not a big deal for hotel pools and the other relatively small installations, but it becomes an overwhelming issue for sprawling water parks, which is why most of them close when the sun goes down.
Disabled Artists Launch National Disability Theatre
AMERICAN THEATRE: A group of disabled theatre artists have announced the creation of National Disability Theatre, a company that will produce fully accessible live performances. The company will exclusively contract actors, designers, directors, and staff who have disabilities.
Is There a Link between Creativity and Mental Illness?
Artsy: Plato and Aristotle thought about it. And like many of the matters they considered, which we still ponder now, it’s the sort of question your pompous college classmate would’ve called “eternal.”
It’s a question that’s still applicable and widely debated: Is there a link between mental illness and creativity? In other words, does suffering through some disconnection from reality confer upon the sufferer greater powers of creativity? From a psychiatric viewpoint, the answer is no, definitely not.
Friday, December 07, 2018
Wednesday, December 05, 2018
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Today was a banner day for modes of transportation.
Quite a while back now I gave up my campus parking for two reasons: the first being that I really need to exercise that I would get from walking, and two because it was just embarrassing to commute this short a distance in a car. This arrangement is mostly swell except when for one reason or another I have to go someplace in the middle of the day.
So today I drove my car (in the morning, taking the boy to school), then I took the bus (to work), and then things really went off the rails.
The boy's school calls and he needs to be picked up as he has a fever. I have no car. There is a bus that goes reasonably close to his school that I can pick up at work. There really isn't a bus that goes from his school to our house, or maybe there sort of is, or it could be done with a combination of two (or maybe three) buses. But I'm not certain he's going to be in any kind of head state to make a multi-bus trip home, or to make a fairly long walk.
Also, I don't know this yet, but there's a squall picking up.
I think I cam to the conclusion that what I should do is take the bus to go get him and then take him back to work with me on another bus. That return trip has the benefit of being simple. He was going to be picked up at the end of the day by his sitter anyway, and as it happens that sitter will be on campus where I'll be taking him anyway. In a staggering coincidence I had brought in our portable booster to give to the sitter in case they wanted to just pick him up in their car rather than doing something more complicated. So I grab the booster just in case and head out to the bus.
Buses in front of campus include 67, 69, 61A, 61B, 61C, and 61D. Four of those would be fine. Two would go by the house and I could pick up my car. Two would go within a block of the school. The other two are less perfect but really not that long a walk. Normally during the day, in a scenario where I would get on any one of those buses the wait would not be more than 5 minutes. When I got to the stop I looked at the realtime website and it said the next bus was 20 minutes away. That feels too long.
Ok, change of plans. Bring up the Uber app, hail a car. This takes less than 2 minutes. It costs money I wouldn't have to spend, but I've been lead to believe that time was a factor. So fine. Take the car to the school and pick up the kid.
This child is not coming with me back to work.
Change plans again. Out comes the Uber app again. Another car in less than 2 minutes - good thing I have the booster. Did I mention there was a storm coming in. Within one block of school on the way home we're in a blizzard. The car stalls out going up one of the more modest hills in our neighborhood. The driver turns around to go around the block and promptly spins out. The driver tells me I'm going to be his last fare. I'm hoping that's because he's going to take the rest of the day off rather than that we're about to have a terrible accident.
Oh yeah, while we're in the car coming home I juggled the schedule for one of my classes and cancelled another. I also changed up the schedule for the sitter and let them know they didn't have to pick the child up at school as I had already done it. What I do need is someone to come watch the boy for an hour at the house because I have to go back to the office for an hour because I had left all my stuff there (because when I left I thought I was going to be going back, oops).
So the sitter comes to the house and I take the bus again (to work).
I was thinking I was going to have to take the bus yet again to get home but things lined up in my favor and one of my colleagues happened to be leaving for the day reasonably close to when I needed to go. So I caught a ride home that way.
Car-car-bus-uber-uber-bus-friend's car. That's more complicated than it should be.
Tuesday, December 04, 2018
Monday, December 03, 2018
Ellipses...
There's some momentum, so maybe I'll see how far it goes. I think I have a template that actually could lead to pretty regular posting. I guess we'll see... I owe AHN an apology. They have a "call by noon, get in that day" type ad campaign that I've scoffed at. Last Friday I called by 9am and got an appointment at 11:30. I apologize for doubting... This is the last week of class. My students are under a mountain of homework. That means I am under a delayed mountain of grading. Looking at it that way I am tempted to make everything optional... I should turn off my Craigslist Lego alert. I've proven to be weak at resisting its wiles... Delete, delete, delete... The Steelers really made for a disappointing viewing experience last night. I mean, there's no expectation that they would win every game, and they made a game out of it, but really for the whole secind half you just had to know it wasn't going to be the good guys on top at the end... The government is apparently going to end the tax credit on buying electric cars. One would assume that's one of the principle inducements to buying an electric car. Let's hope this is an area where the government is internally divided... I got a new watch. It is pretty cool, but I am conflicted over the concept that I am now carrying two screens with me wherever I go (and that's not counting the three in my bag)... The state of Pennsylvania is going to have to have everyone in the state swap out their ID because they dragged their feet adopting RealID. Somehow I think it would have gone smoother had they been able to spread the replacements out over a long period of regular renewals rather than doing a single giant swap... I'm really enjoying the new Doctor and the new season of stories on Doctor Who. Some of the preshow press made me think I wouldn't be happy, but it turned out to be noise. It is a great incarnation of the show... Next week we're hosting a USITT Rigging Master Class. I went to one of those classes ages ago, maybe 1998 with Jay Glerum and Harry Donovan. I wonder what this one will be like... I'm fairly close to launching yet another web page. I have content that doesn't really fit on either of the two outlets I currently maintain. Just seems like a whole lot of web pages to do...
Sunday, December 02, 2018
Worth a Look
Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Snowflakes and trigger warnings: Shakespearean violence has always upset people
theconversation.com: We are repeatedly told that today’s young people are oversensitive, claiming to need “trigger warnings” and to be traumatised by literary texts – including the works of Shakespeare – that previous generations took in their stride. But is it really true that readers and theatregoers of the past were more emotionally resilient than today’s “snowflake” generation?
Taylor Swift makes a payout to all Universal artists a clause in her new record deal
Boing Boing: Taylor Swift's latest record deal contained a clause in which Universal finally committed to sharing any gains from a future sale of Spotify (which the company invested in along with Sony and Warner) with all its artists, not just those whose accounts are in the black.
It's a major victory that closes a loophole that let Universal promise to give money to artists without ever doing so, and still reaping the PR benefits.
Who Designs and Directs in LORT Theatres by Gender
HowlRound Theatre Commons: Of the 2617 director positions over the five years examined, 68.1 percent were filled by he directors, and 31.9 percent were filled by she directors. Of the 772 directors, 68.8 percent were he directors, and 31.2 percent were she directors. Over the five seasons, directors averaged 3.4 shows, with he designers averaging 3.4 shows, and she directors averaging 3.5 shows.Who Designs and Directs in LORT Theatres by Gender
HowlRound Theatre Commons: The following statistics are percentages of positions per LORT Stage Category, as determined by the LORT-AEA agreement (weekly box office receipts and Tony award eligibility) and the LORT-SDC agreement (C category divided into two categories by number of seats, over all five years examined. For more information on minimum rates for designers based on LORT stage categories, visit the United Scene Artists' list of LORT Rates 2017-2022.
Pennsylvania Subsidized Creed II With $16 Million in Tax Breaks, Even Though It Mostly Takes Place in California
Hit & Run : Reason.com: Pennsylvania taxpayers helped subsidize the filming of Creed II with $16 million in tax credits, despite the fact that the movie relocates its main characters (and perhaps the future of the long-running, iconic Rocky series) from Philadelphia to Los Angeles.
It's an apt metaphor for film tax credit programs in general—which are sold as a way to create local jobs in the movie business or as a way to get a state's top tourist destinations featured on the big screen—but mostly end up benefitting Hollywood production companies.
The myth of the tortured artist: How New Zealand is safeguarding mental health in the arts
NZ Herald: Although the notion of musicians and actors suffering for their art persists, rising Kiwi pop singer Josie Moon says her depression actually got in the way of writing and creating. However, much is being done in the New Zealand entertainment industry to safeguard mental health.
Friday, November 30, 2018
How'd I Do?
It is the end of November and so also the end of the posting sprint. The month was 30 days, so there should have been 30 posts. This makes 28. In my defense I sort of missed the starting bell. Things here in Pittsburgh were pretty tumultuous at the end of October and somehow I just missed the fact that it had become November. If you deduct what I missed at the top of the month I think I only missed one day out of thirty. So 28/30, or 28/29 if you get all litigious. All things being equal I think 27 is swell.
Of course 27 posts includes at least four "Worth a Look" posts, which arguably shouldn't count full credit. There were at least four "Ellipses..." Those have been a staple post on this blog going way, way back. Maybe those should count. I remember a long time back trying to do a whole week of Ellipses... posts and that was almost as hard as doing more conventional posts. There was at least one day where I just posted a picture, and then there was yesterday, where the whole post was a copy & paste of an email I'd received.
The photo thing seems legit. I think I could up my normal posting tempo if one day/week became a weekly photo dump. I shoot a fair number of photos in the day to day course of things: "Photo Friday" might have legs. I'm also a real fan of the "Couple of Things" post format - like the one I used on Thanksgiving. There's almost a format bubbling up here:
Monday: Ellipses
Thursday: A Couple of Things
Friday: Photo Friday
Sunday: Worth a Look
That's sustainable without ever actually writing anything. There should probably be at least one day a week as an open day anyway - Saturday feels right in that tempo. Although that leaves Tuesday and Wednesday as consecutive writing days. That feels more demanding than it needs to be.
I'm going to need all that structure. The actual writing part has become really difficult. Going back and looking at the content of the site shows a whole lot of political posts and that has become difficult. In these polarized times, and in a world where anything published online can go viral at the drop of a hat the downside of being outspoken online about politics just feels too extensive. There's still plenty of my politics on Facebook, where there's a little control of the distribution. One of the next biggest buckets was work. For one reason or another I am way more aware of the chance that someone at work would be rubbed the wrong way by a post on this site. I think there's still room for some work posting, but I have to say that much of what I am grappling with these days are differences in teaching now as compared with 15 years ago and that stuff has a real "get off of my lawn" dimension to it that might not make for the best posts.
I've never really posted much about family. I don't know why I would start putting those things here. And I've never really blogged about health issues. If you make a list of possible things to talk about and scratch off all the posts rooted in politics, work, family, and health the list becomes really really short. There are no Bad Ideas could rapidly become "David Blogs About the Weather."
We wouldn't want that.
As it turns out I had a fairly long list of topics to write about at the top of the month. Curiously out of a list of maybe 20 I think I really only used maybe 4. I was going to write about semester reviews, tech week, weight loss, Thanksgiving, green scenic fabrication, my work web publishing; there was a long list. Just because the sprint is over doesn't mean I can't follow through on some of those. Guess we'll see on Tuesday.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
So Now This Happened
Dear Members of the Pittsburgh Campus Community:
Today we learned that a book defaced with anti-Semitic language and symbols
was discovered in Hunt Library. I am distressed and saddened by yet another act
of hate in our community.
We must be clear: We condemn this evil. We reject bigotry in all its forms —
it has no place in society. To members of the Jewish faith who are
feeling especially vulnerable right now, please know that we are committed
to providing a safe environment for our entire community and, especially in the
wake of the violence at Tree of Life Synagogue, we are maintaining the highest
level of vigilance.
Both CMU Police and the Division of Student Affairs are taking appropriate
measures to investigate. I urge any member of this community with knowledge of
this incident to please contact Detective Bernarding of the CMU Police
Department at 412-268-4185 or jdz@andrew.cmu.edu.
This is an important time to reaffirm that inclusion and respect have a
singular place among the values of this university. I ask all of you to join me
in living out our commitment to those values and speaking out against any
acts of hatred that undermine the strength and resiliency of our diverse
community.
Sincerely,
Farnam Jahanian
President
Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair
Carnegie Mellon University
