I always think my style, such as it is, is a compound of all my deficiencies, but maybe that’s what style is anyway. – Alan Bennett (LRB)
Author Archives: weinberg
“Slain LA theater director-producer Ben Bradley is remembered”
LAT: Bennett Bradley of Hollywood’s Fountain Theatre won awards for directing and producing plays that burrowed deeply into the African American experience, but friends and colleagues remembered Monday that he savored and contributed to nearly all of the arts.
Bradley, 59, was found stabbed to death early Saturday evening at his Mid-Wilshire apartment. Police are investigating Bradley’s death as a robbery and murder.
When he didn’t show up to lead a 5 p.m. rehearsal of the Fountain’s West Coast premiere of “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” the show’s stage manager went to his home and found his body, said Stephen Sachs, the company’s co-artistic director.
who wants to be sad?
Tolstoy does! Ahem:
“Don’t leave,” was all she said to him, in a voice which made him wonder whether he ought indeed to stay, and which he remembered long afterwards. When he was gone, she also did not cry; but for several days she sat, not crying, in her room, not interested in anything and only saying from time to time: “Ah, why did he go?”
But two weeks after his departure, just as unexpectedly for those around her, she recovered from her moral illness and became the same as before, only with a changed moral physiognomy, as children get up with a different face after a prolonged illness.
-Tolstoy, WAR AND PEACE, tr. Pevear/Volokhonsky (Vol II, Part Three, XXIV, 482)
with my freeze ray I will…stop!…the world
First day of intersession course on musical lyrics was very exciting. We watched and discussed DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG. Tomorrow: TOPSY-TURVY, and Gilbert. I have told the students that the thesis of this class is that lyrics can and should be as good as any other kind of writing, and that we are going to hold them to the same standards we would a short story or a poem. To make this statement makes me very happy.
in stalling,
A friend gave me WAR AND PEACE in July, and I’m still not finished. Last night, unable to sleep, and cheered by my recent success in plowing through MOBY-DICK, I picked it up again, and found a scrunchie inserted at page 349. Picked up where I left off: just in time for Pierre to join the Masons! This book is so full of events.
Into the woods
it’s time to go;
it may be all in vain, you know —
Into the woods,
but not forgetting
why we’re on the journey.
Intersession course on musicals starts tomorrow. Let the whirlwind commence!
apparently
you cannot embed music files in WP without a $20 space upgrade. I guess it makes sense, considering how long I’ve been freeloading here. But I’m not going to do it now. I’m creating a free PBWiki for the class instead.
this is a test
to see if I can embed an MP3 file in a post without breaking a nail.
a few words from Robinson Jeffers
While this America settles in the mold of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
from “Shine, Perishing Republic.” Here’s hoping for a little less of that “heavily thickening to empire” business in 2010, unlikely as it seems. Happy cautiously optimistic New Year, everyone.
dr. complainable
Snark follows. I received my Dr. Horrible DVD in the mail today. Although I enjoyed it when I first saw it, and still enjoy it, I think the lyrics are one of its weakest points. With the exceptions of the Bad Horse numbers, and, to some extent, the medley-created humor of “So They Say,” I am getting sick of the bad-on-purpose writing. Like this, from “My Eyes”:
Listen close to everybody’s heart
And hear that breaking sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground
Blah. It’s not even funny any more. After a week of Gilbert, Sondheim, Hart, Willson, Harburg, and Ashman, this is embarrassing. Even in the Bad Horse choruses, which are my favorite parts of the film, because a) they are choruses, and b) they are better written, there are, sorry, really horrible touches:
He saw the operation you tried to pull today,
But your humiliation means he still votes “neigh –”
And now assassination is just the only way.
There will be blood, it might be yours —
So go kill someone —
Signed: Bad Horse.
That “just” in the line “and now assassination is just the only way” is awful. It’s, er, “just” there to provide another syllable.
It’s better to have nonsense words than bad writing — it’s better to have unrhymed text than bad rhyming — and it’s better to do anything than write this, from “Everything You Ever”:
So you think justice has a voice,
And we all have a choice?
Come on. Grateful as I am to this team for experimenting with new methods of distribution and production, and for creating a humorous Internet musical, and for employing Neil Patrick Harris, it seems pathetic mismanagement to have spent 200K on anything and still have lines like that left in.
Also, to ensure my credentials as a curmudgeon, the habit of putting lyrics online without any punctuation is driving me bonkers. In trying to create handouts for the class, I spend way too much time fiddling with semicolons. I can’t give them handouts without punctuation. It completely undermines the premise of this course that lyrics are serious writing. (Gilbert, I am sure, would never have allowed his lyrics to be printed without punctuation. If I’m wrong about that, and I guess I should probably find out, then I disagree with him.)
Dara Weinberg 