Consequence of the new Google Images

Visitors to my news blog plummeted from around 200 a day to around 2 a day.

How is this Google Images fault? At one abrupt point in my referring URLs, they change from predominantly Google Images to "unknown."

So how come the new Google Images is suddenly ignoring The Daily Freep?

The Cider House Rules Rules

Reviewed by Michael Dare

 

At this point, I find the productions of Book-It Repertory inseparable from the books themselves. Every show I've seen has impeccably mirrored the source material. If you didn't like their production of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it's because you don't like Tom Robbins, not because you don't like Book-It Repertory. They have found a magical spot, right in the middle of literature and theatre and bedtime story, where dad's rendition of Dr. Seuss has been replaced by a brilliant collection of adapters, directors, and performers who miraculously and precisely subjugate their needs to the needs of the original author in spectacular displays of talent and stagecraft.

 

If they're doing a book you love, you will fall in love again. If they're doing a book you haven't read but discover you hate, hey, at least it was over in just a couple hours, and you can sort of say you've read it.

 

I've got my own little list of authors whom, after reading one book of theirs, I said to myself OMG, I must read every single word this writer ever writes, and John Irving is one of them. I read The Cider House Rules when it first came out, didn't like it as much as The World According to Garp, but saw the subsequent movie, enjoyed it, and yet it wasn't till halfway through the Book-It theatrical production that it dawned on me it was a masterpiece, WAY better than Garp, not just good, not just great, but a genuine masterpiece, encompassing the highest possible principles that make up the foundation of Art with a capital A. It's hard to imagine a more sensitive issue treated with more dexterity or vision, more than a novel, more than a play but the most intimate expression of the human condition known to man, to make up stories that encompass everything our pathetic species is up to, seen from every angle, pretending that objectivity is possible while subjecting us to a funhouse mirror of reality where you know it's true, you can feel the truthiness, but it's never looked like this before. If you don't know that art can illuminate, can make you aware of every troubling aspect of life and death, of what we're doing on this planet, that it can ask the deepest of questions in the most profound manner, why do we treat each other so badly and what, just what, can one single man can do about it, you must see this production immediately.

 

Calling it Dickensian is too easy and too apt. Anyone who starts listing the similarities between The Cider House Rules and David Copperfield or Oliver Twist will find themselves in a whirlwind of academic trivia. You do it. It makes no difference. You don't have to have read Dickens to get Irving. When he quotes the opening sentence of David Copperfield, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," that's all we need to know. We're going to get variations on that theme brought to an incredible height.

 

There seems to be no question as to who the hero is in the life of Dr. Wilbur Larch, the founder of St. Clouds hospital and orphanage in Maine in the '30s. Just ask the hundreds of orphans and pregnant women who have gone through his door who the hero is of THEIR lives and they will answer Dr. Wilbur Larch.

 

Except for one. Homer Wells is an orphan who literally owes his life to Dr. Wilbur Larch, and yet he makes it his life's quest to be the goddam hero of his own goddam life. To do so, he must rebel against the only authority figure he knows, Dr. Wilbur Larch, for whom he's been participating in abortions for years, and here's where a six-hour theatrical production, broken into two pieces, beats the hell out what we can expect from a mere movie. It's with the telling of Larch's back-story that the melodrama reaches epic proportions.

 

Let's say you're a doctor and a patient is brought to you, a thirteen year old girl, pregnant, for the third time, by her father, a serial rapist, and the previous pregnancies had caused such scarring of the uterus that regular childbirth would be impossible, no choice but a Caesarian if the pregnancy is brought to term, yet it's early enough to simply end the ordeal for the child, a fifteen minute procedure you're completely capable of performing. Such is Wilbur's dilemma.

 

Or let's say you're a teenage orphan who wants to be a doctor asked to participate in surgery that just happens to include the scrapping of a uterus. Would you refuse to participate once you saw in a trash can what was scraped from the uterus, a tiny being that never took a breath? Such is Homer's dilemma.

 

Any theatrical production demands you identify with SOMEONE, whoever's closest to you, but in general we rely upon the dramatist to supply us with a simple protagonist, antagonist, and conclusion. Irving muddies the waters with a protagonist with a protagonist. Homer's savior, Dr. Larch, is clearly the hero of Homer's life since, after all, he's the one that decided to let the pregnancy go to term, since every female visitor to Saint Clouds leaves her baby there, whether born or not. Irving, and his brilliant adapter Peter Parnell, pull off this hat trick with no moralizing or proselytizing, just a lot of compassion. Though it's an incredibly entertaining morality play, it's not a lecture on morality. Irving's too smart for that. He approaches it from every possible viewpoint, women who shouldn't but do, women who should but don't, women who's lives are made better and others much much worse, husbands who want the baby but wives who don't, rejected patients who end up dead by going somewhere else, even the incompetent abortionist who kills as many as they help and they're not evil because, well, at least they're doing something. The subject has never been approached more thoroughly, without lying platitudes or easy slogans, recognizing that the abortion question is as complicated as it gets. Extremely graphic descriptions of the abortion process are accompanied by equally graphic descriptions of sex, treating them both equally, a perfectly rational approach since you can't have one without the other. Irving tells you much more than you ever knew about his subject. He tells you everything but what to think about it, figuring that reality is the best teacher, that you can't make up rules, even in a cider house, that you've got to take everything on a case by case basis. There's an episode of Mad Men where they're given the assignment of trying to find advertisers for an episode of The Defenders about a woman who got an abortion and the best they can come up with is lipstick. Abortion's a hard sell artistically as it's a tricky subject entirely devoid of easy answers. At the end of The Cider House Rules, one would be hard pressed to say whether John Irving was pro or anti, just smart.

 

This production is a perfect example of why the six-hour approach is imperative with certain novels. There's a death by drowning during a log jam in The Cider House Rules, one of many many tidbits left out of the film but left in the play. All the events of Last Night in Twisted River, Irving's latest, are set in motion by a death by drowning during a log jam. Leave the log-jam out of The Cider House Rules and you're leaving out one of the best things about John Irving, the themes and sub-text and entertaining quirks that tie all his work together: the wrestling, the seduction of the innocent, the dismemberments, the logging, the oral sex, the bears, god, what's with the bears. One of the treats of indulging oneself in the work of any great novelist is reveling in their personal obsessions, and Book-It never neglects to give us that same thrill.

 

A massive shout out to director Jane Jones and the entire ensemble cast of nurses, orphans, and derelicts who inhabit this mad world. Every one of them had a moment to shine and that they did. Dr. Larch, one of the most compassionate and empathetic characters of all time, is played by Peter Crook, and his Larch is so on the money, so innately American, it makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking casting a Cockney Michael Caine in the film. Crook is way more like the George C. Scott who played the part in my mind. While most of the characters remain steadfastly who they are, Homer is the one with the arc, the Candide of the piece who grows in front of our eyes, and Conner Toms is well up to the task. I can't wait to see who he eventually becomes in Part 2, coming this fall. 

 

But you've got to see Part 1 first. All you princes of Ivars, you kings of Mercer Island, get thee to Book-It Repertory before it's too late.

 

Through July 11. Get your tickets here.

 

MD

 

"You may disapprove, but you may not be ignorant or look away" —Dr. Larch to Homer

Homer Wells (Connor Toms, left), the never-adopted orphan becomes a surrogate son, and a medical protégé to the orphanage director, Dr. Larch (Peter Crook).  Doctor Larch and nurses (Melinda Deane & Julie Jamieson) help a pregnant patient (Mary Murfin Bayley). Photos by Adam Smith.

The BP Oil Spill Re-Enacted By Cats in 1 Minute

Colbert Your Soul

More than six months ago, I made four incredibly stupid entries in the contest to appear on The Colbert Report, all of which are still up at http://community.colbertnation.com/profile/michaeldare. The website provided a zip file of dozens of clips of Colbert that we were invited to edit ourselves into. I went nuts. The front page of the contest is still up at http://community.colbertnation.com/, where one of my videos remains featured, but with NO MENTION OF THE CONTEST. It's like it never happened. No winner has been announced and nobody from the site has appeared on The Colbert Report. It's like the whole thing was a cheap publicity stunt to get a bunch of free material posted to the Comedy Central Site with no intention of ever letting someone on the air. Maybe the moderators didn't really like any of them. Many were even worse than mine. I'm not saying I should have won, I'm saying WTF!? Pick someone else, I don't care, I need closure. I can't live forever with this pathetic dream that someday I'm going to be on The Colbert Report. Would I have to appear as the lunatic character I play in the videos or could I just be myself or, holy self-revelation, maybe there's no difference. Would it be okay to turn my appearance into performance art? Could I jump over the desk and try to strangle him and get taken away in a straightjacket? That would be cool. Right now, life is like a  production of Waiting for Godot with Stephen Colbert as Godot.

Idea #2: We start out having a normal conversation which leads to something like this...

SC: How do you like New York?

MD: A lot of people on the streets asking for money.

SC: Why don't you just ignore them like I do?

MD: I wish I could. I mean when YOU ignore a beggar, it's because you think they should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and they'll probably just spend it on booze, but when I ignore a beggar, it's because I don't have any money to give them.

SC: Good. YOU'D probably spend it on booze.

MD: Let me ask you something, Stephen. How much money do you have in your pocket right now?

SC: I don't know, why?

MD: Because I'd like you to give it to me so I can give it to beggars when I leave the studio.

SC: I don't understand. What do I get out of it?

MD: Satisfaction at having helped somebody who needs it?

SC: BLANK STARE

MD: Okay, look, you can film me giving the money away. That way you can use the footage to show how benevolent you are without ever having contact with an actual homeless person.

SC: So I would look good to liberal dupes in my audience and all it would cost me is the money in my wallet?

MD: You got it.

Stephen hands me 20 five dollar bills.

EXT. COMEDY CENTRAL

I give a five dollar bill to the first homeless person I see.

MD: You see, Stephen, that really felt good.

The homeless person puts a knife to my throat. I give them all the money.

MD: Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would.

THE END

My ludicrous entries in the "Appear on The Colbert Report by Cutting Yourself into our Footage Contest"

Lunatic on a bus

Lunatic in a basement

Kno-o-o-o-ow!

No-o-o-o-o-o!

May 20: Draw Muhammad Day

Dareland offers these ASCII and Emoticon versions of Muhammad to cut and paste into your communications on this important day.

http://www.drawmuhammadday.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everybody-Draw-Mohammed-Day/121369914543425?v=wall

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/05/their_turn_12_top_cartoonists.html

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These Mohammed smileys or emoticons are called ‘Mocons’ or ‘Frowneys’. 

Mocons aka Frowneys are the most efficient way to digitally propagate the maximum amount of Mohammed imagery per byte.

Muhammad (((:~{>

Muhammad playing Little Orphan Annie (((8~{>

Muhammad as a pirate (((P~{>

Muhammad as Moshe Dayan (((P~{>

Muhammad on a bad turban day ))):~{>

Muhammad with sand in his eye(((;~{>

Muhammad wearing sunglasses (((B~{>

Muhammad giving the raspberry. (((:~{>

Giving Muhammad the raspberry. ;-P 

Mohammad with a lit bomb in his turban *-O)):~{>

Mohammad with a lit bomb in his turban *~@:~{>

Mohammed, full of booze and pork, pukes up Allah (((:~Oالله

Intoxicated Mohammed (((‡o{Þ

High Mohammed ((( ¦o) >

The devil Mohammed  ]:~{>
Sombrero Mohommed ⊂∫≡(:~{>>
Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. *@(((:~{>>
Mohammed with a nuclear bomb in his turban. @=(((:~{>

Carmen Miranda Mohammed ڨڭڿۺ((:~{>

Muhammed without beard O:-|
Muhammed without beard; or Jesus O:-)
Muhammed having a vision) O8-)
Muhammed with goatee) O:-)*

Muhammad pissed off that his favourite goat ran away (((B-|>

Muhammad being shot by Starship Enterprise =-o * * * (((:~{>

Mohammed with a lit fuse coming out of his turban *-(((:~{>

Mohammed on a *really* bad turban day )8(:~{>

Muhammad sees a Danish cartoonist !((((8~{o>

Muhammad turns Christian (((+:~{>

Muhammad imitates Charles Manson ((((x8~{>

Muhammad wears his Johnny Carson “Great Carsoni” turban (((0))):~{>

Muhammad after going quail hunting with Dick Cheney (:(:(:((8~>:::::::::::::

Saudi Arabian/oil shiek version of Muhammad (($$(((:~{>

Muhammad wearing his personalized designer turban (((MOE)));~{>

Muhammad wearing his “elevator” turban ((((((((((((((;~{>

Osama bin Laden dressed up as Muhammad on Halloween (((:~{>

How to Work With a Writer the Carl Gottlieb Way

by Michael Dare

Carl Gottlieb put it best, though the tape wasn't rolling, we were just hanging out, having bagels on Fountain, so all I've got to give you is my lame memory of what he said. You've got to believe me that Carl put it better because he's one of the greatest writers in Hollywood (Jaws, The Jerk, WGA hotshot) so he should know. He tried to explain to me what the relationship was between a producer and a writer, or a book editor and a writer, or a newspaper editor and a writer, ANY relationship in which someone is paying someone else to write.

The writer knows what he's supposed to be doing, writing, and if he's a writer, he knows how to do it, rain or shine, writing will happen.

But his boss? Whoever's PAYING him to write? What do they have to do to encourage the emergence of the best possible writing from their employee?

To discover the answer, all you have to do is create an analogous situation, another job where someone is hired to build something, let's say a wall instead of a script, using bricks instead of words.

As the employer, you've hired someone to lay those bricks. You've seen other walls the bricklayer has built and were impressed, which is why you hired them.

But on the first day of work, they show up with weights attached to their arms. You watch them work and can't help noticing they're going slow, sweating enormously, and taking breaks every ten minutes. You go up to them and say "Hey, why don't you take those weights off your arms?"

"Good idea," says the mythical bricklayer, "why didn't I think of that?" And so he takes off the weights and whatayuh know, he picks up speed, stops sweating, and takes less breaks.

Writers use their brains, not their brawn, so it's the duty of anyone hiring a writer to remove the weights from their brains. Find out what they're worrying about. Relieve the worries and the writing will go better. You want maximum brainpower, you won't get it from someone worried about ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING, important or trivial, whatever it is, the gin soaked mind of your average writer will be able to justify NOT writing by any means necessary. You don't cure writer's block by building anything, you do it by tearing something down, whatever dam is jamming up the imagination, send out the brain commandos to obliterate the hindrance.

So ask your writer if there's anything bothering them. Let 'em get it off their chest, then do something about it. Yeah, hiring a writer can actually be harder than being one. Being a writer, the only demons you have to battle are your own.

Obama in the Middle

The Downside of Pot

10 Questions for Neil Innes

The last time I saw Neil Innes was with Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl and he showed the audience his butt after singing Sit on my Face and Tell Me That You Love Me, so I wasn't expecting reverence when I bopped to see him at The Triple Door, an incredibly beautiful refurbished burlesque house blocks from the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. I'm not saying you have to be drunk to see a show there, just that happy hour should legally have to precede every concert in America.

I'm happy to report that seeing Neil Innes live is a joyous experience. Whether you know his work or not - and if you don't, what the hell's the matter with you - his warmth and humor are sure to win you over. What's overwhelming about seeing Neil Innes in concert isn't just the astounding catalogue of entertaining material, his mastery of parody, and the toe-tapping rhythms of the classic songs. It's not just the jokes and stories from his extraordinary career or the simple pleasure of seeing that guy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail sing "He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp. Or to have his eyes gouged out and his elbows broken. To have his kneecaps split and his body burned away and his limbs all hacked and mangled, Brave Sir Robin." All of that I was expecting.

What surprised me, what you rarely learn from simply seeing someone in concert, is the basic core of decency that shines through everything Neil Innes does, a philosophy that somehow makes none of the jabs nasty at all but a plea from the heart for compassion toward your fellow man. I came to be enthralled by the entertainer and left in admiration of the human being. When he sings "Old Age Becomes Me," you'll think Damn right.

He placates his rabid fans with ancient music hall songs, highlights from The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and the Rutles (WARNING: if you listen to the Rutles' Archeology before hearing the Beatles, you will never, ever, be able to figure out who was making fun of who), but it's mainly the new material that rocks. At various times you will be reminded of Randy Newman, John Prine, the Beatles, the Kinks, XTC, Elton John, and Tom Lehrer, a rockin' sorta heartfelt folkie political activist with a PhD level sense of humor.

I love seeing Mick Jagger in concert but I'm not really sure I like the guy. He seems like sort of a dick. Though their music is diametrically different, the vibe off Neil Innes is more like that of Bruce Springsteen. You don't just love the music. You love the humble sincerity. I liked him so much that now I feel bad for all the cheap laughs I got at his expense in the above video.

At one point, after moving from the guitar to the piano, he noticed the guitar stand was blocking my view and he got up to move it, just for me. How can you not love a performer who does that? Go out and see him if he's anywhere near. Maybe he'll move a prop for YOU.

http://www.neilinnes.org/

Scumbags of the Week

The Oregon Supreme Court who ruled today that medical marijuana patients can be fired from their jobs even if they have a state issued card authorizing its use.