Michael Douglas was the subject of the first post here.

Keep Writing

2012-02-07T10:39:00.000-08:00

We can write and read what we write. That may be all that comes from self expression, yet these words appear on a public forum. Look at the volume of content... This post gets lost in infinity.

So my usual concerns are simple...I make them sound like complaints... I have a complaining nature... I don't know what tone to apply, or how to vary my tone. The adventure of clash and conflict is ultimately a learning experience. What good is learning? Well, it is a priority. It applies to future challenges.

My mind has everything yet an external stimuli creates the access. It is one thing to have possession of everything in the universe and another to be able to find it, to lay hands on it, to access the useful and applicable experience and information.

This is all by way of introduction to the very little I feel comfortable and qualified to announce here or anywhere. I am afraid of knowing my own thoughts. This is the experience of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding of my shorthand language is not apparent to me but rather becomes apparent when other people bother to consider what I'm saying. I'm not sure that for others who consider what I think that they are engaging in a profitable enterprise. What do I have to offer beyond the volumes of advertisements vying for attention?

And yes, I love attention, even in my loneliness, and I'm not particularly alone. We're all somewhat alone...

Before concluding, do I wait for the facts? No, I can fill in the blanks; just give me the short announcement and I'll imagine the rest. This person passed away from being struck by a train?

A long time ago I placed my imagination under a leash, to be loosened only by a comparable reality. In this particular case, reality well exceeded the limit of my imagination.

Comments on Leah Maddrie's Chasing Heaven and Sondheim's reaction to an article on the Gershwin Estate's Porgy and Bess Revamp

2011-09-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

I composed music for an upcoming Fringe Fest play that meditates upon the Suzan-Lori Parks/Gershwin Estate collaboration (the play is Leah Maddrie's "Chasing Heaven."), so I've been considering this Porgy and Bess revival since January. How can I begin to share the treasure-trove of inspiration Gershwin's piano music provides? He teased from an equally-tempered-tuned instrument (and he accurately notated) the "blue-note" sounds of inspired voices discovering hypnotizing rhythms and melodies.

One thing "Chasing Heaven" and its dramaturg, Trevor Weston, announces is that Heyward's "Porgy" was site-specific, taking place on an island of Gullah people off Charleston. George Gershwin even visited there to research their inspired music. (They are arguably responsible for introducing the rhythm in the 1920's dance craze called The Charleston!)

But Gershwin's accurate music notation was part of his gift to the world. His intuitive creative powers kept rising as he embarked upon to his next big project, Astaire and Rodgers' Shall We Dance! ... and as is so often the pattern with leading radical musical innovators, he passed away shortly thereafter...

The Gershwin/Heyward Porgy and Bess is a great script and score. What could be more broadway-worthy than to reinterpret its story in the wake of Top Dog/Underdog, Scarlet A, Girl 6 and other pieces by Suzan-Lori Parks?

The Porgy and Bess score notates the grandeur generated by powerful singers orchestrally accompanied. In order to reproduce that effect, it's best to follow the score. Hopefully in this version everyone will sing and play all the notes because they do work well together, as they do in the romantic score Sondheim notated for Sweeney Todd.

May I also suggest a creative reinterpretation of the romantic script and score Richard Wagner wrote for that great German folk opera, Tristan and Isolde? (The lyrics could use an overhaul...)

As for a genius assembly of sounds originated by other relatively obscure musicians, the song cycle I adore (and recommend) is Beggars Banquet by The Rolling Stones. (I'm suggesting that it sounds like a Muddy Waters record... and their cover of Prodigal Son is an almost note perfect reprodcution of the original...yes?)

2011-06-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, Theater for the New City's annual Lower East Side Festival of the Arts continued its 16th season this past Memorial Weekend, with a circus of events in at least two theaters, the Johnson and the Cabaret, with some adjunct activity at the Community Space (poetry) and outdoors on East 10th Street (music and poetry), plus artwork and video in the lobbies. The fest provides a chance encounter with friends and favorites, featuring long-term contributors Ellen Steier (actor singer pianist composer), Chris Force (playwright) Keith Ninesling (double bass and ukulele), Richard West and Lissa Moira. I returned to participation there in 2007 with help from Maria Micheles, then a volunteer, now a Masters candidate in the Columbia School of Journalism.

My familiarity with Theater for the New City dates back to 1983 when I followed playwright critic Jay Padroff there (and everywhere). Then it resided at 2nd Avenue and East 10th Street… (162 2nd Avenue). It was a late night live theater multiplex where you could walk through a hall and slip into one theater after another. The most memorable events were those assembled by the tall accordionist, Ethyl Eichelberger whose warmth and talent supported everyone on stage. (A souvenir flyer lists an 11PM start time for "Ruth, Ruth," by Eichelberger, with Harvey Perr, Barbara Wise, John D. Brockmeyer, Steven Burkick, Jack Mallory, Agosto Machado and Ivan Smith." ovary-ture by Evan Lurie. )

Here we are in 2011 and Theater for the New City is as exciting as ever in 30,000 square feet of space at 155 First Avenue between East 9th and East 10th Streets. I wonder whether one person can absorb an entire TNC Festival of the Arts. My comments are limited by my presence there… for example… Rachel Trachtenberg, daughter of my friend Jason, was performing outdoors with her "Supercute" band while I waited in the cabaret for the screening of my 80 minute Question of Solitude DVD. By missing Rachel, I enjoyed the last 20 minutes of Andru Cann's 84 minute A Lower East Side Odyssey. I know Andru, and Jason Trachtenberg too, from the days of Lach's Antihoot. Steve Espinola, also a friend from the Antihoot, who joined us later for dinner, reminded me that Andru, a thin/tall charming British fellow wrapped in his personal odyssey persona, was known to us then as pianist/guitarist Andrew McCann. Notable in Andru's film was the continuous camera coverage of a committee meeting of band members, where his girlfriend in attendance agrees to an open relationship, but walks out upon the arrival of Andru's former girlfriend (Andru and the camera following her into another room.). The dialogue of many people speaking at once in that scene was difficult to differentiate yet it conveyed immediacy and a jist of meaning, just like in real life…Either months of painstaking script-doctoring and storyboarding or single-take random documentary achieves that kind of cinema perfection.

Following the first public screening of my "A Question of Solitude" DVD was a great animated 30 minute musical episode called "Icy Trouble" by Ian James a/k/a William Electric Black. It built slowly toward revealing the sedentery anti-social solitude provided by computer games, and glorified the teamwork in a real game of ice hockey. I was thrilled to see Kat Yew as one of the cartoon voices… she was also one of the eight stars of A Question of Solitude… and that was the extent of my film-fest experience. The curator, Francess Maingrette, asked questions of the artists between screenings.

After dinner we were hoping to see Joe Franklin but instead caught a bit of Lanford Wilson's Sex is "Between Two People," directed by Lissa Moira, in the Johnson Theater. There was also acrobatics from a fellow capable of winding his limbs around a rope and keeping track of the tangles with which he suspended himself. Looking at the rest of Saturdays program we missed many fantastic events including a scene from a play by the Israeli Neil Simon, Hanoch Levin.

Friday, the night before, I presented an introduction to a new musical project, "The Floaters." I heard a bit of Ben Harburg and Friends. I walked in on his "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?" His voice somewhat disturbingly drawls. I almost thought he would lose the notes but instead he etched them ever deeper into my brain. "SAY DON'T YOU REMEMBER, THEY CALLED ME AL … ". Say, do you remember that Barbra Streisand put her own indelible mark on that verse? Ben's grandfather wrote those words. Apparently Ben lives upstairs in the outrageous jettison to what was formerly a city market and sanitation building. Given the creative self-sustaining redistribution of air rights and public property I am deluded into thinking that Crystal Field's Theater for the New City is here to stay.

Ben's performance was in a room with 40-foot ceilings called The (Joyce and Seward) Johnson Theater (A common enough surname suggests great prosperity when doubled, ie., Johnson of Johnson & Johnson…).. Late Friday evening we returned for a glimpse into the Johnson. Looking upward we saw acrobatics near the ceiling by "Suspended Cirque," three trapeze artists with four limbs capable of sustaining their weight, four limbs, any of which is capable of throwing or catching the weight of their entire bodies, and for their finale, dropping and catching each other, they functioned as a single 12-limbed organism.

Sunday evening we saw a Bina Shariff double-featurette, she herself performing in her "Stream of Consciousness," an art piece with two gentlemen silently sipping tea while the other two, she and Kevin Mitchell Martin, confront the impossibility of suicide. We ran downstairs to see Chris Force's "Angel of Death," which was immediately followed by two of his cast members (Ellen Steier was one) sharing strictly entre nous Bina's "Happy Day."

To paraphrase: Wake up with your happy day. Do not begrudge me my, do not expect me to share with you my, it's a lucky secret that I have my Happy Day.

Mike Amato made comments worthy of the male predicament, self effacing and engaging. Ultimately he justifies being the brunt of his own jokes. Ordinary men are anything but gentle so he observed that the term needed to be added as an acknowledgment.

To paraphrase: Good evening, tough women and gentle men. Welcome!

Lorcan Otway sang beautifully in a traditional Irish style. I recently met him at his Theater 80 St. Marks. He shared its speakeasy history. I understand there's a gangster museum there... and even ran a bit of my Question of Solitude DVD in his theater, demonstrating that it looked and sounded good enough to submit to Francesse's LES Film Fest.

On Sunday night Kim and I, also saw "Midnight Fantasy," a ferry play by Laurence Holder. Dixie Lee sang and recited poetry with Keith on double bass.

Bob Homeyer, who hosted the cabaret in place of Robert Fitzsimmons, introduced and acted impeccably in his own staging of a short play by David Mamet. He played a radio talk show host addressing half-baked ideas from late-night callers in "4AM."

Dawoud Kringle hypnotized everyone with his sitar meditations… I kept hearing the unvarying open fifth between its two lower strings.

Dr. Sue won me over with an introduction to her musical "El Senor X," which she performed accapella after interaction with her mike stand. Please note her last ballad has a beautiful commanding melody.

When we first left the Johnson for the Cabaret after Bina Shariff's piece, we caught the bilingual tale-end of Dada NewYork's "A Dog is not a Hammock," which struck me as fantastic authentic dada.

I just got the cast names for the readers who sat in for "The Floaters" introduction: Maria Micheles (the others were her cast), Newton Schwartz, Lena Gora and Charles Casano. Joining me on guitar and voice was Annie Levey-Allauzen (the La-Loop member of The Steppes).

Elijah Black played songs between our pieces.

Maria's piece, "From Memory," showed a young lady searching for friendship from a salesman at a bookstore who can't help but expect more…

Dorothy August and Carol Polcovar wrote "Gorilla Kisses," portraying values from the "1970's." I suppose the '70's were a permissive "me" decade, where people engaged in open relationships. They could accept casual intimacy by not caring about one another. In this case a female gorilla comes between the couple.

In Claire Helene's set she did something amazing with her low register. She ended with Dr. Feelgood, but her highlight for me was a torch song whose name I can't remember. A Michael Tilford (The Mole King in Hermaphroditism Through the Ages) played a wild piano accompaniment.

Then Joe Bendik played perfect guitar accompaniments while singing his own tightly wound songs, as well as a lieder by Robert Schumann. To see his hand move about the neck of that guitar suggests that he was born playing it. He may be the most musically trained musician ever to embrace the punk aesthetic.

On Memorial Day that followed TNC's LES Fest, Kim Mossel sagely suggested we go early to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There we saw the Alexander McQueen and Richard Serra exhibits, a study in contrasts, and the black and white night photography collection. I love existing light photography, Richard Serra always makes me crazy and I'm grateful to Mr. McQueen for visualizing Plato's Atlantis, a possible destination for my new project, The Floaters.

The song Claire Helene sang wasn't a torch song but rather a companion piece to Yip Harburg's Brother, Can You Spare a Dime. From Claire: "that was 'Nobody Knows You,' an old blues tune. Bessie Smith and Derek and the Dominos recorded it."

Final note Concurrent with the Saturday LES program, Lach, with Anu and son, Henry, hosted an apartment sale as they prepare to sail across the ocean to Scotland...Lach's anti-hoot is now part of the Edinburough Fringe Festival.

2011-03-20T18:28:00.000-07:00

Notes on visit today to The Explorers Club, in the Lowell Thomas city home... his Putnam County home is now the Quaker Hill Golf Club. Casey and Jared explained that limestone helps create coral reefs and caves. Various names given to the places they visited in China are Karst Sun Men Hai Sye-Feng Shan Geo Park and Guangxi. Chana financed their trip to enter the dry caves of that region to discover underwater caves coneccting the Three Door Sea, which are a series of sink holes. There are many of them and Casey and Jared mapped the caves connecting them by scuba diving throught them, as many as 300 feet below the surface of the water. They knotted a line off a dotted reel to navigate. They used fun looking underwater propeller motors. They used surface marker buoys. They went from two sink holes and eventually met in the middle.
Then Leonard Sonnenschein of worldaquarium.org reviewed the various prophecies leading toward December 21, 2012, more to engage us in conversation. His slides identified Dabbah al-Arel as a creature from the earth, said in the Koran to be coming soon. Cyrus is predicted in Isaiah. A big yuga, a Mahayuga, is on the horizon. Yanchian Mayan, December 21, 2012 11:11 AM a strong man will sieze the city. In the Mayan culture near Honduras people played sports but the victor's head was chopped off. Iben Browning, Joseph Smith and Riald Cizik help predict. Maimonedes recomends a calm and joyous constitution. Fish markets have been mutating allowing cod to repopulate... We went from cod to orange roughy to sea bass to tilapia.... to branzzini? anyway, I don't enjoy eating cod. There was some major misstatement about the preservation of rain forests in Brazil, anyone with money is able to buy out the tribes and the government is unable to monitor Amazon activity. Thank you Kim for finding this event!

2011-02-17T20:19:00.001-08:00

When last I posted here I was shopping at Borders and now it's in some kind of receding receivership restructuring contracting state... contracting describes something that draws within itself, a contract recedes into a smaller state, and there are laws governing contracts. Tomorrow we have a non-party deposition in Nassau, it may help move forward the underlying case. My father may come along...

2010-12-03T13:37:00.001-08:00

At the beginning of our movie night at SideWalk show last Wednesday I had much to say about Kat Yew's choice of movie, Rules of the Game. First it was an adventure to find a DVD copy because it turned out Kat couldn't find hers. After buying one from Borders on 32nd and 1st I heard from Sam Moree about how he was enjoying watching the movie at home, how it devolved/evolved into marx brother's slapstick and he was wondering how it all ended... He was preparing for the our show. He had rented it, the two disc criterion version, from Two Boots... He had a copy of the movie for us to run during our set. I didn't have to look for it at all... Meanwhile I had already walked down St. Marks where I used to buy packaged media such as Long Playing Vinyl Records, to find that all the Sounds stores had become tatoo shops.... I knew J&R would come through as they always do and they did not come through. The copy I bought cost 40 dollars at Borders, two discs... I began watching it and did notice a beautiful looking black and white image. The film looks timeless and yet exotic, as if the costumes were anachronisticly modern while the setting was old Versaille. We're in the post war modern world of pre-world war II. The lawyer star -- he has quite a comedown in Casablanca where he works the roulette table -- remains ever cheerful and sincere. As far as I remember, he only lost his temper once. The lightness of the drama throughout the movie gradually becomes shocking and I suppose offensive. Jean Renoir may wish to deconstruct the discreet charm of the bougeousie but he is part of the charm. He's the bear. The mechanical musical doll gets a striking close-up. The Germans in France are well represented by the Game Keeper, the Rules of the Game Keeper. The hunting scene is a slap in the face today and probably would elicit offense. There's a surrealist offensiveness to the entire proceeding if one has investment in the real world, if one considers the historic context, but in its own world, the Rules of the Game is pretty smooth sailing slapstick. If Renoir has any animosity toward high society, he contains it in an engaging pop film. A synopsis of the film can be highly detailed. It opens with the successful completion of a solo transcontinental flight across the Atlantic! But where's the welcome from the Austrian orchestra conductor's daughter? Oh, that's right, she's home with her husband, the lawyer who collects mechanical musical toys. The aviator's radio broadcast makes clear to anyone who knows them that the aviator and the lawyer's wife are friends.... You learn a lot from these movies. Renoir is the filmmaker who let Stroheim teach us to clip geraniums at the end of Grand Illusion...

2010-10-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

Reading about Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the New Yorker inspires writing. He wrote as a politician intent on shaping the world about issues that concern everyone. His efforts will help restore Penn Station's glory, and the new Penn Station, invading like an alien utility into the interior of the massive 10001 post office, will bear his name.
I remember that post office as the place where Robert O'Connor's father worked. We would go to the local Blarney Stone nearby... A comparable building may be the Union Square Consolidated Edisons Building, tucked away.
In other news, preparing a production of A Question of Solitude, with a great ensemble, by the way, I'm lately getting in touch with my solitary self. That means evaluating, too, the possibility that my creative work is entirely personal and has little to offer others, let alone even improving my own life. But that is the challenge assumed by all artists. I'll continue to move forward.

2010-09-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

I should reiterate here that Michael Douglas was the subject of this blog's first post. I knew Eric Douglas and that helped draw my attention to the rest of his family.

A limited update follows, because a public posting means that I can even access it... After contributing a suite of music to Maria Micheles's Around the Night Park directed by Richard Vetere at Theatre for the New City, I'm participating in the premier of Myron D. Cohen's The Last Lafayette with two songs written for the script. That will have three performances in three different venues, The New York City Bar Association, The Lambs, and the Cold Spring Public Library... next will be a first staging of the musical playscript, A Question of Solitude. And I have a bit of running around tomorrow with the help of Public Transportation... Hope everything's going well with you... Peter

2010-07-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 4:15 last night to catch the rest of samson and the vampire woman... I'm sure I've got the title wrong but I was surprised at how readily accessible are the details of this legendary film. The CUNY station ran it... I only watched a few moments. It uses Samson, or rather, Santos's, actual wrestling matches... Then I saw Diane Arbus be Nicole Kidman in Fur... I didn't get to Robert Downey's Elephantisis... Again, there's something about Ms. Kidman I just plain like... she really became quite intimate for Mr. Kubrick and then was really giving her all in that Moulin Rouge musical... damn that botox.. oh, and she did a good job in that spanish ghost story... the visitors? My big issue as a couch potatoe was that Fox Movie Channel is now a pay channel... I'm already paying almost 100 a month for media content they should be paying us to digest... then I went to bed with the air conditioner on and the dreams that followed, other than seeing my grandmother pass away before my eyes with a vision of her in the basement of fox funeral home... anyway, the place I keep going to while asleep is accessible through floor boards... I get in through a cellar hole... we live in a communal building that has secret entrances I access through the ceilings and floors, there are holes near the walls... It was dangerous to arise from them. I had to be careful... How I manage to live with these people I'll never know... there is clearly no supervision... nobody's presence can be traced there... we're off the grid so to speak... Meanwhile, the tall woman next door (in this imaginary village) opened her doors to the cast of Night Park, they all got to see her home and receive a grog bag while I was stuck waiting outside... Wow, a grog bag, whatever that is...

2010-07-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/2/2010, 2:08 pm, in reply to "Re: SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster"
There is a pristinely clear recording of our set last night -- of the invasion of the sound spectrum by four Steppes! was that 8 distinct sounds sources? at least... Thank you, Ben! The major moments for me as an audience member... Nan's song, How High Does Your Ceiling Go...beautiful! Nan's rapid performance nuances in her rap songs confirmed for the friends I was sitting with that they were in the presence of a unique and magical artist. And then Tanya O'Debra ran the spectrum of acting and singing, including the birth of Cher, The Bohemian Girl, with "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," a major song and a personal favorite... THANK YOU! (I refer to it with reverence in our opening number, Almond Eyes...) Tanya, I will accompany you with live piano if you want. When is the next chapter? Sarah M-Kelly opened at the piano... with a sound of sarah mclaughlan in the air... That was Mike Hill's observation. My frame of reference is the song, " I can't make you love me..." yes? "Let's give them something to talk about!" no... Later that evening the science jerks gave an audio visual lecture on the thermodynamics of rock guitar/vocal... So a pretty wild program night with many suprise audience members. We had a reunion with Jean Free whom I hadn't seen in like 25 years...30? On facebook Jean alerted me with a quote from night of the living dead that he was coming in from Minnesotta...so I naturally thought another person at the bar earlier that night was Jean Free! and that person convincingly played along. I even acknowledged his father for helping establish the solo Michael Jackson venture for Epic records -- off the wall?... yes, i'm off the wall... He said, are you sure you remember me? I kept giving him more memories... like remember when we met Warhol backstage with The Clash... see I'm quite the name dropper... Oh boy... Anyway, I dedicate our show to the establishment of a long overdue federally funded banking program, Truth in Sarcasm... because there is... Peter Dizozza
Link: WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

SideWalk July 1st Schedule wow Last night at Webster
Posted by dizozza on 7/1/2010, 2:14 pm
Last Night in The Darkroom... Happy Birthday, Timothy! Now it's July 1st, your Steppes for the night are = Mike Hill Peter Dizozza Kat Yew Annie Levey At 9PM we're playing at SideWalk on a great bill and here it is: 8pm - Sarah Marzalek-Kelly 9-Peter Dizozza Mike Hill Annie Levey and Kat Yew (THE STEPPES) 10-Nan Turner (nan solo like hans) 10:45-Tanya O'Debra (reading the next installment of her CHER MUSICAL.) 11:30-The Science Jerks (chris anderson &co.- what will he do next?) STEPPES SET LIST We are the Drivers Someday Love Cinco de Mayo The Good Life Gone Away See Me Through Forgotten Cat Let Me Be (With You) Out of My Mind Straight for Your Heart PLUS SideWalk of New York Speak Low Bok Choi Plus special guest audience members, you!!! 94 Avenue A at East 6th Street 212-473-7373 don't you know... Peter 917-915-7635

2010-01-26T20:43:00.001-08:00

Perhaps before turning to internet movie database or some other links that come up through a click on the google page I can consider what I actually thought of the unique film from 1962 called Jules and Jim, a flamboyant work and one that anticipates some of the charming interaction I know from ken Russell's films. These unique individuals following their own call somehow disappoint me in the end when all that is left is an expression of underlying tension and hostility, or something else I can't understand, in that they drive off a cliff, basically, and that the rules of what can be done with their ashes must be followed... who are these people, and what is the meaning of the German heritage of one of them, well, I suppose he is austrian, and a second world war is brewing as the lifestyles come to an abrupt halt. There is such happiness, joy and beauty experienced in the end result of the film. It is flashing about at images, ever unexpected and certainly there is great sadness in what seems to bring us back to reality, that there is an underlying tension fomenting...Maybe there's something else there. I wish there was because the vision was beautiful, or, what may be my own limitations, hauntingly familiar, and as I am a product of that familiar behaviour, I'd like to see a thriving outcome... well, bringing me back to my own perceptions versus reality. My favorite scene is the slap followed by the laugh. There is a moment of antagonism, one of several where Jules says something that offends Catherine and in my present state I am unable to recall what the comment was. She slaps him. he laughs and the all three laugh... the threesome is a French genre when I think of films of Bertrand Blier, which I haven't thought of for some time. There is another moment when she throws herself in the water... Ms. Moreau, after hearing quotes from Beaudelaire following their attendance of what might have been a strindberg play. the flamboyant Ken Russel style now seems to have its origin in Truffaut. All in all, a yearning arose from the film, and for that I'm grateful.

2009-08-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

EDIT of January 4th, 2010: I have expanded the short last sentences of this post.

Waking up in the early hours of the morning I turned on the TV and saw the end of The Pianist, a mostly silent journey through towns in spectacular states of destruction, before the arrival of the Russions. The closing credits feature a close up of a pianist playing what I thought was a concerto... it's a chopin polanaise for piano and orchestra. The first words spoken thereafter on this IFC channel were announcing an upcoming show... Someone in the ad asked, "Isn't masturbation a form of prayer?" reminding me of the play I'd seen earlier, Viral by Mac Rogers, a Gideon Production. Playwright Mac Rogers articulately takes his audience on a descent into a realm we'd never imagine entering. As it confronts someone's need for suicide, it addresses the state of mind of one who is there... In fact, I thought that state of mind would pervade into others, but no, it is unique to the one character, and the transformed character is a woman who grasps her own identity by rejecting the temptation of the soon-to-be-deceased. I so respect and admire the ambitous scope and risk of the work. Last year's Hail Satan was uniquely humourous in its conviction. Here again there is attention to boss helper domination, but the whole viral enterprise is so enobled that I was forced to confront my general confusion about suicide... The one thing I know in my life is that I'm going to die, so the need for acceleration escapes me. Our material presence exists as a blip in time, although I'm sure it's eternal in some other dimension...Moving right along to the standard fare that inspires me as I attempt a musical coherency for A Question of Solitude was the further return on TV of the Kubrick film, Lolita... You can turn to a Turner Classic movie on demand menu and press play... I always identify Lolita as containing the great example of a real time scene... the diary discovery into the car accident... Seeing th 20 mintues last night I remembered the forbidden nature of human attraction surpassing unhindered attraction. Then I thought, oh, yes, of course, Pianist Director Roman Polanski suffered some euro-ostracism in America for a collision similar to Humbert's... My exposure to Lolita was at an age of, well, 15. At for the quote from the IFC channel that "masturbation is a form of prayer," as it relates to the play, "Viral:" Viral addresses that the collective observation of an event (a suicide) can be achieved through the use of RECORDING EQUIPMENT. It announces a market for recordings documenting the passing from the body of life. The willing participant in a documented suicide is the gold mine. With not a hint of cancer or some other slow torture to rationalize the death decision, the decider decides on suicide... We confront the right to die against the right to life... Our presence or absence makes a great difference in the material world...

2009-07-06T10:24:00.001-07:00

Just to change what has been my latest Michael Douglas blogpost, I'm writing now. The East Village was quiet over the 4th of July weekend because the fireworks moved to the west side, a great idea whose time has come, thanks to the anniversary celebration of Henry Hudson. The Hudson River is majestic; The East River is turbulant!

My minimal Time Warner Cable report for the weekend includes some thanks... The Sundance channel permitted an on demand broadcast of "The Man Who Fell to Earth and feel from grace and skimmed both his knees...

oh those days. I really went to the movies then. It was 1976, the 200th anniversary of Independence Day. I remember seeing Taxi Driver, The Fury and Carrie...

I was reading online the various biographies and descriptions of the great acting foursome, David Bowie, Candy Clark, Rip Torner and Buck Henry. My discovery this weekend (Aside from the possibility that the anxiety conveyed by David Bowie was real.) was the musical contribution of John Philips to the MWhoFTE soundtrack. Do you remember when a full length screening of that movie became available? I had already seen it a few times at two hours and loved what I saw... It lacked 20 extra minutes.

I acknowledge that the story of alien discovery and wonderment came to me, not by way of the 1963 novel, but through Alexander Keys' scholastic books publication, The Forgotten Door. Another movie broadcast this weekend was Escape to Witch Mountain, also based on a book by Alexander Keys, which also has a likeable cast.

I don't want to leave out from this litany of titles, The Wild-Eyed Boy from Free Cloud, a song by David Bowie.

The mob chases the alien to the mother ship, or the door, which is why I connect most with The Forgotten Door.

As for Nicholas Roeg and his hilarious casting, I still love the transition scene from space mission to the hidden hotel room. There's a fellow who dives in and lifts his wife out of the pool and onto the pool deck...I thought it was filmed in reverse, but it looks like he really did that.

Another great movie document broadcast on demand this weekend was Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth, an important telling of the doomed lovers' story. It is sad, as is the Man Who Fell to Earth, and equally colorfully vibrant. The Man Who Fell to Earth, though, at its most morose and awful, and it reaches uncharted depths, is just too much fun.

You know, Mr. Bowie got to work with Oshima on Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

Well, I'm sure there are great movies coming out today... I'm just at least 20 years behind, and even when I do see them it's just as likely I will hate them. In fact, hating the movie experience tends to be a good indicator of how much I will love it later... The best recent example is There Will Be Blood.

I also saw a dvd of Orlando, which also plays with agelessness through the passage of time. I think that is a good barometer of the opposite level of cinematic dedication. Everyone can parade around, but if you want to see people in a movie, see The Man Who Fell to Earth...

2009-04-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

It is helpful to keep track online. So on Monday a plane flew around downtown manhattan for purpose of having as a backdrop the statue of liberty. And it was a beautiful day... just buzzing around with a little jet satelliting it. Somehow that led into the ted kennedy gift of a dog... does this make sense? Everything's going to be fine.

2009-03-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone accessible, I'm on another real estate adventure; I think there was one posted here previously... I think these postings are only searchable on my cinema vii mirror site... I'm not sure that this blog is searchable. I hope this posting is helpful to you. As my memory needs constant refreshing I can't begin to measure how helpful it is to me.

It all started March 4th, 1996, the date of death...Anyway, the first advice I have is what started this adventure... it's called "going public," and the public announcement is sent out via the filing of a tax lien on a property... Be aware of that event. Entrepreneurs, be sure to review those tax liens and investigate the status of the property for future foreclosure or for some other way of getting an interest in it.... The name of the case is NYCTL 1998 - 2 Trust vs. whomever... New York City sells their tax liens! Good idea. Popular purchasers of the uncollected debt have names like Expand Co (New Jersey) and JER (Connecticut) and these3 companies pursue collection which announces the property to the people looking at the tax lien listings and that's when the calls begin awakening interested parties... It may actually be possible to show the court caption to an elderly disabled interested party and buy up that party's interest for say... $1,000 now with the promise of more later at the option of the entrepreneur as the research continues and the value of the property becomes apparent. However, the interested party, the beneficiary of an estate, sees a lawsuit caption marked as follows: FORECLOSURE case type...so, it looks like a big debt even though the amount of the lien could be quite small and the value of the property quite high... The awakened interested party sells, or agrees to sell, agrees to agree. The entrepreneur provides a service here in awakening distant heirs... Today is March 25th, 2009...

2008-12-10T14:12:00.000-08:00

You've got to ask yourself, why am I publishing my innermost thoughts... is it because I myself can't even keep track of them, or that I can forget them once written?... anyway, all information is out there for the obtaining, and when the volume grows so great, the relevence is lost, unless we choose to be universal, in which case everything emenates from the oneness of us. I don't mean to be a tell tale tattler, but I'm not clueless, either. In general I want mutual awareness. Kundera said the only way to have intimate relationships is to maintain privacy and secrets, and of course my current status proves he's right.

Governor Patterson impressed me last night with his well-spoken speach for Judge Kaye. What an amazing circle is her career, why... why do you think...? She took over for Sol Wachtler, and Governor Patterson who will appoint her successor took over for Eliot Spitzer, and what do Wachtler and Spitzer have in common? They both were unable to reconcile their personal with their professional lives and resigned, and Judge Kaye walks in and out of chief judgeship in the wake of that. Who will be her successor?

Mayor Bloomberg also spoke, and aside from his humor about the gentleman civil servant, reminded us February 14th is his birthday and we'd better call him, all eight million three hundred thousand of us.

2008-08-22T11:19:00.001-07:00

Re: Yessay
Posted by dizozza on 8/21/2008, 2:35 pm, in reply to "Re: Yessay"
Thanks for the memory, and the observation that anti-prowess instrumentation from CBGBs punk followed prog-rock. I did not understand Yes words but the sound of their records impressed me. The first impression was from hearing Long Distance Run Around... I hung out with older kids, so I'd hear these records new... amidst the pot smoking (in that row of spanish stucco houses on Fleet Street????). Close to the Edge is my favorite of theirs ("And You and I" is worth carrying everywhere...). Their album packaging was also quite beautiful. Their release of tales of topographic oceans was an exciting current event and it began very well. I can't say I got to the end, though. When I was in high school my band liked Yes but not as much as Gentle Giant, Genesis, Queen and King Crimson. This band, Steak and Potatoes, was proud of their ability to cover these songs. They may have covered Roundabout. So this is Prog-Rock... wow. Rick Wakeman's Wives of Henry the Eighth was interesting... Oh, Emerson Lake and Palmer recorded something called Tarkus, which was interesting and contained a 2 minute piece that surpasses everything called Jeremy Bender. I love their Letter song after Tchaikovsky's. Top moments for me are Supper's Ready by Genesis,, The latter half of Gentle Giant Glass House King Crimson's Fractured one note guitar solo... I'm not sure, they all had similar overlapping names... maybe the album is called Red. This was all british school-boy rock...

2008-08-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

Today is a beautiful August 17th, a Sunday, and I woke at 10 and went to the Mary Help of Christians Church where a somber mood prevailed over a loss of one of the parishiners. Father Joy said the mass. I arrived late enough to catch his Allelulia, as always perfectly pitched in G, leading into the gospel reading, about a woman whose demons Jesus removed at the request of her mother who appealed to him by saying, dogs appreciate scraps that fall from the masters dinner table. Mother and daughter were gentiles and their inclusion was apparently the theme, that all are god's children, and the chosen are the ones chosen to lead all toward salvation, and not just battle fiercely the heathen "other" without regard. I played Whatsoever You Do, Make of Our Hearts a Home, and Amazing Grace

My quest for objective awareness includes all religious explorations. My upbringing still activates me...

Tonight is my Cow City opening, and that piece confronts the awareness of all life forms, including spirits. ("You feel for them." "The true Aspergers makes me capable of designing these.") The universe is in a single room, on a mountain, in a greenhouse cellar, in a meatpacking plant (a humane one..), between a single couple -- I believe in the synergy of two. Of course there are pop elements of a murder mystery with the interchange between victor and victim, predator and prey. It's a sequel to a previous play entitled "(The Expanding and Contracting) O."

I share the apartment with three cats and I see how they reach a peace and balance, that includes both co-existing and attacking each other. They are just restless and active and curious and their universe is here. I'm happy that the apartment has many lovely areas.

The reason I've gone to blogland is the email I received from The WAH Center of the upcoming Milton Celebration through art and theatre, including my own "Paradise Found," which, a month and a half away, is Collaboratively Formulating. Paradise is a resort in Afghanastan. I haven't been there but I've heard it exists, as it existed for Kipling a hundred years ago, when today's hotspots were British Colonies.

Next up, in December, The Chekhov Festival of The Brooklyn Playwrights. I'm adapting the story, In the Ravine.

Then January 9th, the Bentley Kassal show!

Of course I look forward to singing the songs that arise from all the above in concerts at the SideWalk music venue.

And while I return to and learn from the (universe contained in the) familiar, I am ready for an exploration into realms hitherto unknown to me; hopefully to live through it. Cough...

Yes, I attended Oliver's celebration of his third Kidney, transplanted into him 30 years ago yesterday. Of course the Kidney's name is Stanley. He circled the martial arts room demonstrating the Chinese swordplay that signifies different breaths of the I Ching. He's in good shape. (The fellow in the bed next to him got the other kidney and died a year and a half later... )

Let's see how much longer I'll be coughing here. Otherwise I feel fine. Honestly, my eyesight is not too stable. Still the world is bright and beautiful.

2008-06-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Mister Roger-nist meets the narcissists and the gearheads, in that order.

The starz channel fills two hours of its premium content-providing obligation with an extended death proof, which means two 45 minutes of build separated by a conversational walk through a hospital corridor. There are single long shots of continuous dialogue and dance, as well as a select group of frames visualizing clinically graphic action moments. A recording of a Serge Gainsborough song ends the movie. A recording of a Lieber and Stoller song provides the lap dance accompaniment. These recordings (from a great juke box!) enhance an ensemble of memorable actors.

2008-06-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

all right, I saw some of the PETA video...
Posted by pd on 6/2/2008, 12:57 pm, in reply to "Cow City Theme Song...I have a script..."
I didn't watch much... here are some voyeur lines (at the end of tentagatnet)... they sit watching a movie of some cannibal holocaust, the guy says, "Turn it off... I feel so powerless sitting here," the girl says, "so go back in time and save them." Food processing...an ongoing carnage of intelligent beings. The energy released is dangerously powerful... poor victim... poor killer...

2008-05-25T07:53:00.000-07:00

Good morning on this lovely Memorial Day Weekend Sunday. I was up until 2:30 a.m. last night watching "The Chicago Ten" with Bob Fass at Theater for the New City. All right, director Brett Morgan, congratulations. Obviously you can't take your eyes off it. At last I have some idea of what went on then. I recall the days of protests and riots. My friends had older brothers always running off to Washington. That 1968 Democratic convention was a non-communicative mess, especially horrifying considering the revolutionary origins of this country... and what happend in 1968? Humphrey won to lose against Nixon.

TNC's Lower East Side Festival for the Arts runs through Memorial Day in New York City, and it's full of great surprises, this one beginning at 12:30 AM, following the beautiful "Lower Eastside Stories." Much earlier in the evening I saw parts of a film that explained the origins of square dancing, that the swing your partner director was reciting battlefield encounters with Ulysses S. Grant. I see now that this was a mockumentary called "The Bentfootes."

Earlier in the evening I was on the West Side hearing Woon-Sung Choi articulate "Pictures at an Exhibition" on the Merkin Concert Hall Steinway. She also played another Carnival piece, this one of Vienna, by Schuman, (Fauschingsschwank aus Wien). The music in the movie and piano concert were similarly dynamic in range, although the film's score had a very loud playback. The sound design in the film, well, everything about it is a documockumentary accomplishment.

In other entertainment news, Chris Force and Maria Micheles shared a reading night at the Brecht Forum, the way Elizabeth Versalie and I shared one the month before. Chris's play is called "Adam Delved;" Maria's is "Round and Round the Night Park."

I saw an impressive staged reading of Les Hunter's full length play, "To the Orchard."

Cry Baby the Musical turns out to be great. I loved the song collection on the movie soundtrack, which took me until the end of the night to remember. It's a sub-genre of the 50's nostalgia show, the misunderstood Juvenile Delinquent. The lyrics and score, orchestrations, arrangements, directing and sets are great, as are the cast, crew and orchestra performing them. The script reminds me not to confuse John Waters with Tim Burton, although the camp film genre is a treated seriously and sincerely by both.

Quick note on meta data, a CLE lecture taught us that meta data is the record of every word I originally typed and evey change I made in this entry.

Lawyers, there are programs you can feel obligated to buy that can strip clean your meta data. I say, Be Proud of Your Meta Data!

2008-03-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

OWL
Kristen, you're gonna be mad at me.
PUSSYCAT
Why?
OWL
I swear if I see that Bruno again I'm going to kill him. I can't go back to Albany.
PUSSYCAT
All right. I'm not mad at you.
OWL
You will be. But I think I know the way to give your career a shot in the arm.
PUSSYCAT
You don't have to do that. You're already paying me.
OWL
Well, you're allowing me to explore a beautiful example of the very species to which I am held accountable, and to whom I play a role that can only be described as ministerial.
PUSSYCAT
What do you do again, Mr. Fox? I'm kidding.
OWL
If I see that Bruno again, I will murder him and that will just devastate my family. This is better.
PUSSYCAT
What are you going to do?
OWL
It's complicated, and yes it involves you.
PUSSYCAT
Is it safe?
OWL
No, it's going to pretty bad, mostly for me, though. However, with the pressure mounting, it does provide an immediate out as governor. Your boost into stardom is somewhat secondary.
PUSSYCAT
Thanks. So what's happening?
OWL
I've been churning some of my trust accounts, in a small way. The banks wouldn't even notice except I've goaded them into uploading software to detect a pattern in suspicious transaction activity.
PUSSYCAT
How goaded?
OWL
I hold them accountable for crimes they fail to detect without it. So they have to report me to the IRS. It looks like I'm being blackmailed.
PUSSYCAT
Why are you so sure they're going to bother checking you?
OWL
You know why.
PUSSYCAT
You keep saying how everyone hates you. Why is that?
OWL
How many times have we seen each other? You know I'm not one for toadying. They're right to hate me, because I hate them, especially Bruno. It's a problem for me. I've got to get out of this. I'm going to snap at any minute. I'm so sick of plastering this smile on my face.
PUSSYCAT
I'm going to call your wife.
OWL
Get her on the phone. Call her cel.
PUSSYCAT (picking up the phone and dialing)
Are they here?
OWL
No, my family is home in New York.
PUSSYCAT
I thought we were having breakfast with them?
OWL
Next time.
She talks to the phone.
Silda, it's Kristin, that's right, your husband's call girl. What? Yes, he called me. No, through the agency. Yes, I gave him my number. No, he insists on calling them. Here let me put him on.
OWL (talking to the phone)
Silda, I'm resigning from office. I'll be out in a month at the most. Yes it's possible.
No, it's not a lot of effort on my part, I don't have to do anything except churn some accounts and spend a lot on Kristen here, which is one of the reasons I was put on this planet. I know, her CD is great, and the children like it; that's the decisive thing, if it plays well with the young folk, anyway, it's great publicity for her. Yes, I want this more than anything. Yes more than anything I also wanted to govern. It was the obvious next step. It was a mistake. Look, I tried but I can't help it. Sometimes you just don't take to people and when I see Bruno I see red. It's only going to lead to trouble so I'm thinking, we'll help Kristin here, make her the call girl of the century. Why not? It's only 2008. No, I think the Ambassador club will have to go down. Oh, it's the Emperor Club, by the way, like Caesar, not Kissinger. Actually, I, too, am going to have to go down. Why? I'm paying for sex.
PUSSYCAT
You are not. You're paying for my company, but yes I'm very available to you.
OWL?
Doesn't your fee make you feel a little Pre-disposed?
PUSSYCAT
Yes, pre-disposed to follow your command, oh Emperor, so long as you keep safety a priority.
OWL
(Shaking his head, returning to his phone conversation.) Anyway, Silda, I even had her take the train to DC so in effect I'm trafficking over state lines for an illicit purpose. It's a Federal offense. If I'm caught they may fine me, send me to jail, but definitely they'll force me out of office. I know. It sounds too good to be true. No. Right now they think I'm on the take. They're going to be very disappointed, but I've been pretty severe about the sex trade. This'll turn the gun back at me. I'll be forced out of office. Hypocrites will take to calling me a hypocrite and I really won't have done any harm to anyone except myself, especially with regard to sleep deprivation.
PUSSYCAT
You have to wake up early tomorrow?
OWL
I have a very busy day. We'll wrap this up in a minute. You probably need to get home, too.

PUSSYCAT
I was hoping to join your family for breakfast.
OWL
Next time. I only brought you here to trigger Federal law. I want nothing to do with New York State.
PUSSYCAT
Look, I'm going to go.
OWL
Yes. Go ahead.
PUSSYCAT
Don't you want to jerk off on my tits or something?
OWL
No, I'm fine. Just hearing you say it is enough. Thank you. Hey, I love that CD. So when the Feds contact you, just tell them everything. I should apologize for putting you through this but if you'll forgive my instinct, I sense that you are up for it.
PUSSYCAT
Yes, Mr. Fox. I can't imagine you abandoning your work.
OWL
No, I'm abdicating. If you knew my colleagues and caught a glimpse of New York's future, you'd want to do the same.
PUSSYCAT
I thought the whole point of these trysts was to sharpen your focus.
OWL
A good night's sleep would also help.
PUSSYCAT
Good night.
OWL
Good night. Silda, are you still there.
SILDA (She is suddenly audible on the other end of the phone line)
Yes. Are you sure this the right thing, Elliot?
OWL
It's better than the right thing.
SILDA
Just let me stand by your side throughout it.
OWL
OK. I probably won't take questions, then.
SILDA
Don't bother. You don't have to. Let them do everything.
OWL
Thanks.
SILDA
Did you just let her go?
OWL
Yes, she left. Is that OK?
SILDA
I hate seeing you blow through your family trust fund.
OWL
It stimulates the economy.
SILDA
But the dollar, Elliot, you're exposing the true value of a dollar.
OWL
Please. Good night, Silda. Oh, Silda, what about our daughters, are they going to be OK?
SILDA
No, Elliot, nice of you to think of them. It sounds like you've already pulled the trigger on this one. Good night.
A sexy dwarf appears offering advice about sex.
Hello, sexy dwarf.
Oh, just call me Mae West!
------
February 13th, 2008, Mayflower Hotel
from "Client Nine from Outer Space"
A play script by PETER DIZOZZA

2008-03-09T03:06:00.000-07:00

I've got these opening characters, Cis and Ces, from the two endings for the two spellings of Francis/Frances. One of them survives while the other disappears into a mystery void, like the Vertigo couple. The end result disrupts the education at the school they both attend. It's an all boy's school, but Cis and Ces are male and female versions of the same name. Raleigh Horn and Georgina Abbot Masters return to re-enact their ritual of inquiry into matters outside their experience. The catalyst is Raleigh's son who calls on his father from the school overlooking the Hudson river, even though his father is agoraphobic and living across the continent, even though his mother is happily remarried and has a daughter still in kindergarten.

I may be falling into the Sin City trap. I loved the concept but not the film. The title of my project is Cow City. That is the saddest thing, though, going to Cow City. I came across an aspergers story in an Oliver Sachs book, it's probably the title story, about an anthropologist on Mars, whatever that means. It's a horrifying story about designing abitoirs. Arbitoriums? The idea of such a makes me so sad. In fact, I feel an underlying sadness and am at crossed purposes regarding telling about it, even about writing here, and withdrawing into a shell.

Oh wow, and now the airwaves will carry not analogue but rather digital signals, by law. $40 dollars of government funding will go toward each citizen's purchase, if necessary, of a digital analogue converter.

I don't know, and tonight the clocks sprang forward. Tighten those clock springs. Cheer up.

2007-12-23T05:22:00.001-08:00

I was completely engaged by a performance last night at Theater for the New City. I was attempting to connect with my southern Italian druid roots by attending the solstice dance of the Tarentella. The existence and Italian nature of a spider dance was news to me. News to me now is the memory of making passing reference to the word after a visit to Mama Leone’s in 1982. Mama Leone’s was a theater district restaurant featuring a hodgepodge pageant of Italianate cooking and traditions where, after a visit there, I equated the Tarentella with the Mexican Hat Dance. I remember now coming from a Broadway Production called Marilyn which I saw because Debra Dotson was somewhere in the ensemble.

By the way, last night I was coming from an open house at the Ferencz residence. George, the director and his wife, Sally and son, Jack, extended their hospitality to family and friends and I spoke with a few of the Experimenta playwrights, Kim Merrill, Michael Zeitler (Waiting for Mert), and Yasmina Rana (The Warzone is My Bed) as well as the author of the upcoming White Whalers show, Mark Gorman. A fellow named Brian Johnson was moving from helping costume "Is He Dead?" to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas where Bette Midler takes over for Celine. Meanwhile, Julie Rosier is joining forces with Grace Lee Boggs, and I suppose with Julie's sister, too, to leave New York, to clean up Detroit and spread the good news (which goes well beyond the transition at Caesar's Palace).

This was a night of enjoying old friends directly and indirectly, beginning with Yasmine’s update on Kenny Nowell and Justin Lambert, and their two daughters. Justine’s Looking Glass Theatre was one of Yasmine’s first producers in New York. She heard from Justine that Kenny and I were roommates. Remember, in one of these other posts my mention of Kenny’s adaptation of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening.

I arrived at TNC at 8:30... the 8:00 curtain rose forTarentella in the Johnson Theatre to a packed room with additional chairs already added so Angelina sent me into Queens of Heart by Sabura Rashid, and I'm grateful. There is an important element of salvation there and the voice that comes through to the main character, a voice that is often supressed under the term schizophrenia, is of an acknowledged savior, an elder, a grandmother. The piece includes a therapist's hilarious acknowledgment of spirituality behind and beyond professional therapy, and a general sense that the voice of the playwright is aggressively healing.

At the end of the piece I met Fred (Fedele) Spadafora again. His oil painting of Sabura is in the Theater Lobby along with a few other still life canvases from photographs. He is a photographer and designer who has worked in publishing. For example, he designed the Pro-Choice on Mental Health CD and the privately released Prepare to Meet Your Maker Soundtrack Recordings. He also took photographs for The Marriage at the Statue of Liberty. We went to Otto's Shrunken Head, a Trader Vic bar with music programming by DJ Shred...

While there I got a message from Jeff Marino that he and his family were near and I joined them at an Indian Restaurant. They had just seen The Golden Compass. They came by the apartment. It was a surprisingly eventful evening.

2007-12-23T05:08:00.000-08:00

इ वास कोम्प्लेतेली एन्गागेद। वहत'एस गोइंग ओं हियर?

2007-09-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was entirely engaged by a work in progress last night, a reading of "Ribbons" at Theater for the New City. This play is a fantastic ensemble piece of naturalistic interaction and bonding occurring under a perfect absurdist catch-all for disabilities. It builds to a rioutous comedic sequence, and continues from that to show the joy of people allowing themselves to connect with one another.

Then I joined Bob for dinner at the Frank restaurant. Earlier that evening Bob had marked a cel phone message for me as urgent because my myspace icon wasn't loading. I hope I was able to transfer to that dinner meeting a fraction of the glow I gained from attending the reading.

Welcome to Haiti! The most generic bit of information I have to relate is that before falling asleep at 11:30 I watched a 1/2 hour of a dvd on my computer of a 1932 independent film called "White Zombie." Waking up at 4:30, I saw the other 45 minutes. Bela Lugosi makes a familiar appearance...familiar if you've seen Robert DeNero play horror.

This achievement of masterful filmmaking probably required the minimalism of its budget.

One scene of dialogue runs 5 minutes without a cut, even when the Dr. character fumbles a line.

The matt montages are awe-inspiring.

The ocean cliffs, the castle, the piano room, are spectactular.

Three soundtracks run concurrent throughout the film.
One: The synched dialogue.
Two: The continuous music, percussion, chanting or crickets.
Three: the synched sound effects.

And it's the first Zombie film!

2007-08-26T07:29:00.001-07:00

Anyone who enjoys accelerated storytelling has a fondness for cartoons, I suppose. "The Boy Who Would Be Queen," an episode of the Fairly Odd Parents cartoon is basically the premise of 2.2.2, Hermaphroditism Through the Ages. Both explore gender switching between couples of the opposite sex.

The cross-over of Fairly Odd likings includes skull crusher comics and goo goo love soaps. I turned on the TV show because the "Fairly Odd" term had already become part of my consciousness when it appeared in my short play about the retired electric train engineers... That play featured Rosa and David, a lovely couple.

The Fairly Odd cartoon episode included a brief voodoo moment of a girl in a mall ripping up another girl's photo and the other girl on a perhaps not too distant escalator, suddenly stricken as if by an invisible lightning bolt, i.e. suffering a stroke. (Strokes are thus named because suffering one is like being struck by lightning?)

In addition to turning the boy into a girl, the Odd Parents have to switch their own genders for the time, apparently at the whim of that boy; is he their son?

In the Fairly Odd Parents, oh it's a mutation of Grimm's fairy godmother...The two sexes with their two languages are called geeks and girls.

This morning I made a reverse discovery. I have another cartoon to credit (Porky in Wackyland inspired "The Last Dodo"), but this latest one is completely after the fact. I continue to write with broad strokes.

The execution of the basic idea is another step in the creative process.

2007-08-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

Recent review of events.

I wrote 2.2.2 (Hermaphroditism Through the Ages) to offer a cure for war. The opening lines of Orpheus expanded a quote from George Bush, that "we will not leave until victory is achieved." The additional lines are, "until then I return to my home and my family. Thank you, good-bye..."

Zeus says, "To forestall armegeddon I will turn them into hermaphrodites."

There are three depictions of this metamorphosis, an exchange of plugs for sockets, sockets for plugs, between three couples on three different islands, in three different time zones. The transformation is more than a distraction, it is a defusing of inner tension and turmoil. There is a definition of yoga that it unites the male and female energies, that the practice of yoga is the process of moving toward hermaphroditism.

The mole king calls for the marriage of the three couples before a fresco from Pompei. That artwork indeed graphically depicts the lovemaking implied throughout the piece. I looked closer at this accomplished creation of artist Richard Scott. Incredible. Now what am I supposed to do with it?

The backdrop for the entire play, painted by holographic artist Sam Moree, which is a 10' 6" x 7' canvas, currently hangs across the back wall of my home office.

The mole king character is an independent force. He is a little mole, the recipient of people's calls to the dead.

This is a relatively upbeat and encouraging new musical combined with Ballistic by Ed Malin and Aphrodite by Maria Micheles in "Oh Happy Three," a production of Manhattan Theatre Source for their summer series, Straight from the Source! Directed by Sarah Marck, it ran for eight solid performances.

More fringe update: A stage adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman film Cries and Whispers?

Sharon Fogarty's contribution to the Straight from the Source summer series is "Portrait of the Artist as a Dumb Blonde, a musical in one stupid act." It ran for five performances and received a review last Tuesday from the New York Times, and it was not even a favorable one. Why did they bother saying they didn't enjoy it, especially during the Fringe Fest when they could have used the space to draw attention to something they DID like?

Blinded by Blondeness...After seeing Sharon's show I saw Nelly McKay's show at Joe's Pub. She was at the piano with her piles of music, making that instrument sound great, playing as well as any piano player around. Her casual pure ennunciation and the pitches of her voice were both abrasive and joyous.

I also saw Walmartopia which has mighty fine material. (My typically clueless remark about never having been to the Paris Hilton applies here.)

I read some of Marc Eliot's 1993 Disney bio. (I didn't realize until Mr. Eliot's website alerted me of a controversy that his publisher added a Max Shreck shadow to the book jacket's cover photo of Mr. Disney.) Am I mistaken or does Mr. Eliot ultimately admire Walt Disney's maverick tendencies? In case we're concerned our children are missing out on voyeuristic yearning, there's something out now called High School Musical, which probably uses the same musical theatre gestures found in Walmartopia... Help! I'm just trying to add to what's out there.

Oh, in keeping with my attempt to post useful observations, there was a big building block, it was a former Deutsche Bank building, made entirely of asbestos, opening the boulevard of Hamburg's Reepabahn. I remember walking by it on my way to the Dom back during the early nineties. It couldn't be torn down because of its materials so it just blackened the skyline. I wonder if it's still there.

2007-08-20T03:23:00.001-07:00

The Fringe Fest play, Dirt, was misleading. Is the production an Austrian import? Transferring an illegally immigrated Basra roses peddler from 1992 Hamburg where white faces break glass upon him, to New York City where he yells over the sound of the subway trains, did not resonate fairly... hopefully Hamburg's population is not that hostile either. I kept thinking of Mahfouz's The Theif and the Dogs, and also of Lawrence Durrell's culture shock in his Alexandria series. I hope, anyway, that Dirt or Dreck, by Robert Schneider, did not accurately portray the personality of this City.

This is the second European import I've seen in this festival. The other, Baaah, was also something of a repackage. It is The Suede Coat, by Stanislav Stratiev (1974). Felipe Bonilla, who originated the role of Gormin Dials in TentagatneT at La Mama was the lead.

One more, dare I call it, repackaging... Dan Fogler's Elephant in the Room... based on Rhinocerous by Eugene Ionesco.

2007-08-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the world of blogging... I saw Mac Rogers Hail Satan last night, tone perfect, plenty of writing on it in addition to in it. Such mixed feelings on the dry, light, unwaveringly satirical presentation. Here, from one comment (I think it is Mac's...)... "But a playwright who only writes plays like Ruins or Hail Satan is essentially telling lies by obscuring part of the truth, the truth that the human race is genuinely capable of compassion and empathy and companionship and the accumulation of wisdom. "

Keep up the good work. Yes, I want to see more. This material, engaging on a basic level, establishes your newer, better Omen series. Do you actually want to write more here? The source material is devries bible? (Anton LeVey's Satanic Bible) It's hard for me to distinguish the book from the play. Everyone did such a great job.

I'll write the sequel if you want...

2007-08-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Promise of tens of billions of dollars in us weapons and military aid to fight back extremism at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, by Sue Pleming and Andrew Gray. Before leaving for the middle East, Rice announced military aid to Egypt of 13 billion of 10 years, the same level as for at least the last six years. But Washington is offering Israel an increase of about 25 percent to 30 billion over 10 years. Defense officials saidArabia and other gulf states would get at least 20 billion in arms sales and other help over the next decade but final figures had not been agreed yet.

2007-06-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

You can't get away from those Sopranos. "It was sometimes hard to bear the encomiums" (Alessandra Stanley). Skimming the post-last-episode newspaper writings from AM New York and the New York Times, I was moved. Did you know that the black-out scene was a "hit" from the victim's point of view? And as any death should be, it is followed by credits. Can we get some credits rolling?

I credit Tony Hightower for getting my apartment hooked with a cable maybe six months before September 11th, 2001 because when the TV antenna went down with that tragic landfill complex from the 70's... we still had reception (which supplemented our view from the roof), which became an essential part of my life almost up to the present day.

Yes, I watched television as a child... the re-broadcasts of the Flintstones and Lost in Space and those late night screenings of Peter Medak's "Negatives"... and then I watched regularly, from September 2001 until December 2006, favoring (while attempting to follow the news progression from Afganastan to Iraq) first South Park, then Curb Your Enthusiasm, then The Daily Show, then The Colbert Report, and finally, ultimately, Sponge Bob, which leads back to an appreciation of our own nightmares... ever savoring my digital access to The UN Channel by manually entering the number "78" into the cable box.

Media content is still provided to my apartment at a hunderd a month including internet access which I don't even use because I just get it from the air...

THEY SHOULD BE PAYING YOU!

Anyway, so at only a hunderd a month I mustv disconnected premium which means I'm missing out on "movies," and hit series like The Sopranos, so my channel serfing led me to watching a Mandarin ballet montage from 8 minutes of Kill Bill...The Tony's were also on... (I love Kenny Nowell's adaptation of Wedekind's Spring Awakening)...

As for not getting away from the Sopranos, last night one of its castmembers, Dominick Chianese, contributed his acting (and singing!) skills to a benefit stage reading of "Nightingale" part of a one act festival that included a clear rendition of my own "Associative Behavior," complete with song, "Somewhere Under the Radar."

And watching Larry Pine in horn rimmed glasses during Mark Mitchell's sci-fi piece that closed out the night, I couldn't help but remember how fond I was of his performance in John Turturro's staging of "A Spanish Play."

With kindest personal regards! pd

2007-05-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

One thing I could remember for next performance is to thank the audience for the accompaniment. Thank you, you are a great audience!

And before they reset my compuserve password, my new answer to the secret security question, "What's your favorite band?" is

"Urban Barnyard."

Today, May 20th, Mary Help of Christians closed to become a Chapel of Convenience. Father Mark sees himself next in Ohio. The R&B guy who moved with the weekend flea market from the MHC yard to the public high school yard said the MHC yard was sold to NYU.

Howard said the funeral home on A and East 12th is not selling.

The parochial school with the Chico Mural will become college dorms?

At least keep the church as a Turino landmark.

The church has steep steps, a tradition in Manhattan. During the packed service, some attendees were pulling the bell rope. At first one of the priests was doing it. You couldn't hear anything. I thought, wow, that's a sound proof entrance, but then some of the bigger fellows came along and, yes it rang and rang until the rope broke. I went upstairs. Howard had gone from the alter to the top floor by the organ. We went to the bell tower, one of two. I climped up to the rafter and attached the frayed horse-hair with my usual knot that pulls against the lower knot, and slipped the rope, which begins as a ribbon through one hole, then downstairs through another then looking from downstairs tieing a little knot in the ribbon, through a hole in the crawl space then someone pulled from below, pulling the length of the rope down. That's a heavy bell.

Cardinal Eagen's name came up today.

Try to remember you have a beautiful jewelbox over there (East 12th Street between 1st and A). The interior colors are a pale gold beige with light blues, it's such a light fresh air church. It's your chapel of convenience. Anyway, I, understatement, recommend you allow for the maintainenance of this charming legend. It never looked more beautiful than today, and thanks, Salesians, for being friends to the friendless. Good point about the batteries that look the same but only some power the flashlight.

Howard heard me play war-is-over songs on WBAI last month. Bob Fass must have rebroadcast his Phil Oches tribute.

Today's service incorporated many beautiful musical moments. They played a lovely recording, "si signore" and during "The Lord's Prayer" sang what I believe was the "our father" words in Spanish to the tune of "Sounds of Silence."

One of the attendees, who usually attends the church on 12th between Avenues C & D said that Bishop Sullivan, who led this service, was a priest to watch.

Mary Help of Helpseekers!

2007-05-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

I recommend the writing of Pearl S. Buck. Her book, "Voices in the House," is a riotous clash between the compassionate civilized landowner and his sense of intrusion which extends beyond his own extending family to grandfathered servants in his employ. This attorney married the daughter who grew up on the Manchester, Vermont estate. He commutes to the city to at least give counsel to the indicted mobsters in their constitutionally preserved right to assert their defense. Meanwhile people are growing up around him and finding their own way, and one of them has dreams of inclusion that are denied, which creates her imbalance as daughter of the cook.

I remember standing in the dark peering into some diaramas of turn of the century New York, and would have remained there, in fact, did so in my imagination. This girl, of course, truly fits the part of leaving the servants' quarters and luxuriating about the main house. She also learned to speak well and receives favorable verbal descriptions of her general aura of lovliness.

Ms. Buck's reserved and curiously objective descriptions extend to all parties. At some point she pulls back from the main family, the husband and wife, to suggest this is all we can expect from them. Ultimately they explore and acknowledge their part in the bizarre turn of events...

Truly high level bizarre material has transpired by this time, involving a large protective attack dog and even sewing needles ???...

"We didn't just -- let her into the house."

Good idea! Welcome her. We grow from our dreams when we explore them in reality.

At the time of this book's publication, 1953, Ms. Buck was writing under the pseudonym of John Sedges.

To convey the pleasures and insights to be found within, here is an exerpt from the book which illuminates the meaning of Adam's Rib:

"Eve, made from the rib of Adam, was only the legend of the perverse and female moon torn from the side of the newly created globe of billions of years ago, and the gaping wound of the Pacific basin, raw basalt at the bottom, was still unhealed as man himself. And here was the moon as he had seen it last night, whirling above the yearning earth, remote and unreachable, never again to be joined, and yet pulling the earth's tides toward herself, only to reject them again and again in the ceaseless rise and fall of the rhythms of untiring creation. "

I read the 35 cent 1960 paperback Cardinal Edition with a cover that looks like it was painted by Darryl Green.

2007-02-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

I will write an opera, even after seeing the greatness of The Magic Flute and Therese Raquin. Never mind the composers, consider the challenge to the performers. The breath control is strenuous. Their diaphram muscles must be well toned. Both productions, The Met's and Dicapo's, exercised creative staging, capturing the tone and content of the operas, content which is made crystal clear through concurrent titles. I like English language titles to supplement not only German but even English language operas. I'm searching my recollection for an exciting moment of music. When did I recently hear one? I do think Adam Green is inspired, with his oratorio style. I saw him last Sunday at SideWalk. His chords supplement his melodies rather than guide them, and of course, melody guides Tobias Picker's opera, and Mozart's as well. Audiences grant opera drama the time needed for exceptional musical moments to develop. I suppose there was a 2nd act Mozart moment when the Mason members were at rest, contemplating wisdom and beauty. Good heavens, there's actually little I remember from that opera except the hazing, and the fact that the wicked queen night witch was the one to provide the magic of flute and chimes, indirectly perhaps, via her three handmaidens. She also provided the three heavenly soprano boys. And with regard to the sun king, our first impression of him is through his prison guard, who did not represent his master's temperence in the kidnapping perpetrated for purposes of getting someone to join the masons. I can be pretty clueless. Let's see what other indiscriminate demonstrations of incomprehension I can display herein.

The Magic Flute: It's a mathemetician's air display by Ms. Taymor. I only THOUGHT I knew the content of that yogic journey, watching the three hour triumph of the spiritual male triumph over the chthunic female, at least until nightfall.

Therese Raquin: The Postman Always Rings Twice with a Place in the Sun/Leave Her to Heaven drowning. I suppose the opportunity to musicalize a paralyzed mother watching justice self-inflicted by and upon her son's murderers is reason enough to musicalize one of the Zola stories exposing the underbelly of the urban middle class.

My third opera came in the form of the score to The Most Happy Fella, which I took from the Performing Arts Library today. Oh, you were looking for it? Yes, it was me. I'll return it on March 10th. Anyway, it's another opera of sorts and a great series of beautiful character songs. The notation is pristinely playable.

Back to the drawing board. I have some corrections to make on my own scores so that through them the first time player will easily breeze.

(I heavily revised the above today, March 3rd. I just returned from John Turturro's actor's actors Spanish Play. The moment I loved was when the couple (Denis O'Hare and Linda Edmond) lay on the floor watching while another of the five characters (Katherine Borowitz) searched her bag for her melodious ringtone celphone. I liked seeing the two of them laying there enjoying what was going on before them (And since CSC is a theatre with seating against three of the four walls, it may have been only my wall saw it.). Robert Thurman reminded us to love others, like a mother loves her child, and keep learning.)

2007-01-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

C14 THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2007 Deaths

LEIMAN-Eugene A., died peacefully in his sleep at age 92 on January 20th, 2007. Gene was our law partner for many years and retired as counsel only two years ago. A graduate of City College and NYU Law School, he practiced law for over 65 years, including almost 50 years in insurance litigation at this firm. Gene served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County under Thomas E. Dewy and Frank S. Hogan, and was a Captain in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. A former Chair of the Admiralty and Entertainment Committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Gene was also the principal lyricist, song writer, and musical director of the Associations' Twelfth Nights and annual shows for over 50 years. His beloved wife Betty Ann predeceased him; a brother, Harmon, age 83, of Scottsdale, Arizona is his only immedate survivor. Memorial Service will be held at 5pm, February 9, NYC Bar Association, 42 W 44th St, New York, NY.
Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass

LEIMAN-Eugene A. The City Bar Entertainment Committee mourns the loss of its beloved songwriter, lyricist and music director. For five decades, Gene was the guiding force behind our annual musical revues. "The song is ended but the melody lingers on." A memorial service will be held at the Association, 42 W 44 St. 5pm, February 9th.
Peter Dizozza, Chair

2007-01-15T20:25:00.000-08:00

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

Four people read from four copies of the same script and the drama was intensely and hilariously involving. A reading can be the height of theatre... I loved seeing the free reading of Augusta, by Richard Dresser, directed by M. Z. Ribalow at the Players Club (presented by the Players Playwrights Workshop in association with New River Dramatists). I'm writing this to urge the Mr. Dresser to arrange to see this cast working together.

Christopher Ceraso read the part of Jimmy; Patricia Randell, Molly; Laura Heisler, Claire, with Narrative by Rosalind Rita. The play's setting is immediately visualizable... A National Chain Service Provider employs the near-unemployable to clean mansions using the bureaucracy of a self-monitoring hierarchy (everyone pointing fingers at everyone else in a cutthroat climb to an imaginary top). A new supervisor's appointment of a cleaning crew team leader turns out to involve a team of two. The pettiness of the three-person power plays means that a near-cold reading of the script is probably the most effective way to present it.

The actors are perfectly cast, both individually and as an ensemble.

This is one of my favorite evenings at the theatre (memory accessible other two: Elizabeth Ashley, Kier Dullea and Fred Gwynn help perform Mr. Williams original "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" script at the Connecticut Stratford Theatre, Philip Bosco does Macheath at the outdoor Delacorte Public Theatre 2nd try of the 3P Opera). Thank you.

2006-12-29T04:25:00.000-08:00

Songs for the Four Corners of the Room

"Keep Trying" is one.

"Squares One through Four" (another title for the "Square One/Set the Prisoners Free" Song) is another.

For now "Chimney Flu/Heigh Ho" can be the two others.

----------------

The conclusion of the assignment of a counting numeral is always an opportunity to examine all that it contains, and the year 2006 is no exception.

Well, for now there is too much hidden meaning in everything I write for me to write an assessment of the year that was. Suffice it to say, in addition to turning a national election tide, and a low level grade of generalized optimism bolstered by a return to interpersonal enlightenment (how upbeat can I be?), 2006 was eventful on a personal level.

----------------

In the One Dream stage production of "Legs Like These," in 1989, the director suggested that all the participants would find each other and marry. In retrospect, I see something like that happened to four of them. I wonder how they are today. That composing job for me arose from a recommendation from one of my fellow participants in the BMI Music Theatre Workshop, and it was great challenging fun...

----------------

In case it is not already apparent, I have been ploughing through the Memoirs of Tennesse Williams (Tennessee Williams Memoirs "A raw display of private life"--New York Times Book Review), actually reading them after all these years, thanks to Mr. John Waters' recent essay published in the New York Times Book Review. Previously I'd only opened to the index to find some fragment, particularly those on Williams' collaborations with one of the guiding forces of Italian Cinema, Luchino Visconti (What a name that fellow had! It just looks great as a title on the screen.). Tennesse Williams has a credit in Visconti's Senso, a vaguely annoying Italian Nationalism period story of the choice, such as it is, between military glory in the field of battle and cowardice in the field of the bedroom, with tennis player Farley Granger. I guess that story is an expression and examination of challenging human conditions. Furthermore, I guess the weight of Visconti's name connects with the weight of his work product. He was an independent Hollywood. Mr. Williams' book touches briefly on how TW got or gave the film that gratis TW credit; it was in appreciation to LV for making a woman named Maria part of the production. The comprehension test question for readers of the Memoirs is, Who was Maria?

Obviously at this rate I'll never get to a full examination of the Memoirs, which I imagine myself comprehending, so consider this fingernail journal entry something containing the DNA strand to generate an entire human body, living, breathing, interactive. So, thank you, John Waters, for alerting me to the readability of Tennessee Williams Memoirs, illustrative of the personal breakthrough that followed his hobo years. It looks like he used his heart problem to good effect in that it got him, not just out of gym class the way mine did, but out of his job as a shoe salesman.

That's one 2006 personal event worth mentioning, after all those years ingesting oral beta blockers I never had a heart problem. My debilitating palpitations break when I do the opposite of cringe and wilt into them, which is to stick out my chest in silly defiance.

----------------

2006-11-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

I saw 54 televised minutes of Mel Gibson's Aramaic Passion Play before becoming completely disagreeable. I love the blue beginning and very much enjoyed seeing a soldier's torch add spectacular color to the blue. It was also a pleasure to welcome back the demons in the desert. I suppose they are always out there, waiting for our imaginations.

It is my recollection that the messiah is indeed supposed to be coming, if he hasn't come already, and many have claimed they were he... Sabattai Zevi is my favorite. What is this coming of the messiah? It accomplishes what? Given expectation of one, it is understandable that when one of us among us takes on the title for him or her self that we might become disillusioned and pissed off from the elevated hopes and inevitable disappointment.

Only the heights of salvation can achieve the depths of despair. Who else wants to claim messiah status? And remind me, what good will the messiah do again? Perhaps his or her coming will release the tension I feel compelling me to write this. Although Paul's success with Rome is undeniable, Mr. Gibson's film is a great reminder that Christianity is a sect of judaism.

2006-09-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Briefly with regard to visiting West Point, I only cried twice, once after the recruiter urged the posthumous white star recognition for his close friend's father... They pinned it on the soldeir in the battlefield, and wouldn't acknowledge it thereafter. Witnesses still live to confirm... To the children surrounding him as we walked by, overhearing, spellbound by his extemporaneous speech, he said join if you're devoted and passionate, beyond the ability... have the willingness to give yourself. You can take the man out of the military but you can't take the military out of the man.

He walked off with a limp...

It was homecoming for the graduates of 1981, of which I was one, FROM QUEENS COLLEGE, a City University, not a military academy....

The morning tatou of chopper-dropped paratroupers, guiding their chutes as they descended, surfing to the parade field on purple smoke streams, then the afternoon football game where Army mostly loses to dedicated football universities; you see, career football players get a better deal at Ohio's Kent State, but Kent State lost by three points in overtime as the kicked football came sailing at us in the sun.

The Kent State/National Guard incident occurred on May 4th, 1970. It went into Watergate Overtime.

OK, the Army team is called "The Black Knights," no, not Black Nights of the Soul. They have two mascots, the helmutted comic book black knight and the buff mule, muscles rippling washerboard style on the suffocating costume... no problem wearing those outfits for the cadets... the cheerleading girls with black warpaint on their cheeks, throwing themselves across the sidefield, bouncing, flipping, bouncing, moving fast forward, always landing on their feet.

Then the mules parade out during half-time... "A mule is the issueless offspring of a horse and a donkey..." The half-time orchestra covered "Hey Jude."

The great orchestra is sitting in the stands with percussion and horns, playing throughout the game.

Yellow low level horns blow out burial ground elephant calls. The cadets do their push-ups on the field at a touchdown. The girls flap their arms, tiny dancers standing on the the outstretched hands of the strong men.

They played against the Golden Flashes...the name of the Kent State football team.

So The Black Knights beat the Golden Flashes. !!!

Greeting the arriving freshman, blasting Linkin Park, the Eagles, Zeppeline, Modest Mouse... beer and an aromatic Bar-B-Q!

High School graduating military devotees, get to know your congressperson. Each member of congress selects two enrollees a year.

For those black nights of the soul, Bushnell Night Vision! View photons on a phosphorescent screen.

Free army visor with a completed Visa application, and you'll need the visor for the sun.

All the fodder for a wonderful essay, right here in semi-comprehensible phrase scraps... Thank you.

2006-08-16T06:17:00.000-07:00

100% Community Betrayal

I actually love watching baseball but the pro-leagues lost me during a strike the teams held some time ago.

Sorry this is so late but today's groundbreaking is like hitting me over the head with a hammer.

The young audience members at Yankee Stadium can take their bats and balls and catchers mits and go out to the fields of Maccombs Dam Park, their PUBLIC PARK, where they can play their own game, learn from the pros across the way and maybe someday, themselves play in the big league stadium next door...Yippee! Oh, no, this sport is for professionals. Let's build a new stadium where the park is and give the local kids the old stadium as a memorial to baseball embalmed.

This concludes the credibility of the very well spoken and intelligent Mayor Bloomberg.

2006-07-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

Enough moaning. The serious issue of "tenancy and home" needs to stabilize in fairness to all parties, but with regard to my own living quarters, thank you for your kind consideration. Now it's up to me to make it work.

Meanwhile, welcome, another million people, to the population of New York City!

Guess who loves New York? I do. Peter Dizozza

2006-07-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

The 315-321 East 12th Street buildings are just east of the Elizabeth Home for Girls.

Let's see the old map.

Stuyvesant's farm extended to Tompkins Square Park.

His street, the one that bisects the East 9th and 10th Street grid between 2nd and 3rd Avenues (where St. Marks Church is) bisects East 11th and East 12th between 1st and 2nd.

Oh, I can read the map now! What a wild goose chase. All this time I thought the map read "St. Marlos," it actually reads "St. Marks."

Stuvesant street ran along the border of St. Marks Cemetery. My apartment is built over the North corner diamond of old St. Marks Cemetery...

That makes much more sense.

2006-07-23T02:51:00.000-07:00

July 23, 2006

Dear Sir:

I am having another sleepless night here in your apartment.

Does government rent regulation law so forcibly affect your speculation plans that you must make a “free market” offer to your unregulated tenant that is that much more financially debilitating?

You are forcing me to buy or leave my home of 17 years without regard to what I can afford because it is what the letter of the law allows.

You are acting within the letter of the law even though my apartment is part of the 86% of shares in a “non-eviction” cooperative residence plan that have remained unsold for 17 years while the real estate market rose precipitously, and while the tenant therein, me was ever told he could only rent, never buy.

You, as incorporator of an LLC formed to be the third “purchaser” of UNSOLD shares, pay a monthly maintenance of $872, to yourself as managing agent, while I pay $1,625 to you.

Although in your final offer you allege to have “shot your wad,” and “tapped yourself dry,” please note that in order to fulfill upon your offer, I must do the following:

Because I can only pay $75,000 of your purchase price, I ask a bank willing to underwrite mortgages in a less-than-51% owner/occupied building to lend me the rest.

After closing, my monthly payment will be $872 to you and $3,128 to the bank.

Rather than paying $1,625 a month, nearly double your maintenance cost, I will pay, at a minimum, $4,200 a month, for the next 30 years.

If that is your idea of free market negotiations with people and their homes, then re-exam the GBL Article 23-A language, which you swore the attorney general you would uphold. This is the same language you say housing judges in Manhattan will ignore based on an appellate term decision involving a tenant who took possession of an apartment 5 years after it went "Condo."

First let's look at a dictionary.
The holder of UNSOLD shares in cooperative corporation is NOT a PURCHASER:
"Sold" means "to be purchased."

You swore to the attorney general to comply with this language.

GENERAL BUSINESS LAW
ARTICLE 23-A. FRAUDULENT PRACTICES IN RESPECT TO STOCKS, BONDS AND OTHER SECURITIES

NY CLS Gen Bus § 352-eeee (2006)

§ 352-eeee. [Expires June 15, 2011] Conversions to cooperative or condominium ownership in the city of New York

1. (e) "Non-purchasing tenant". A person who has not purchased under the plan and who is a tenant entitled to possession at the time the plan is declared effective or a person to whom a dwelling unit is rented subsequent to the effective date. A person who sublets a dwelling unit from a purchaser under the plan shall not be deemed a non-purchasing tenant.

2. (ii) No eviction proceedings will be commenced at any time against non-purchasing tenants for failure to purchase or any other reason applicable to expiration of tenancy; ...
(iv) The rentals of non-purchasing tenants who reside in dwelling units not subject to government regulation as to rentals and continued occupancy and non-purchasing tenants who reside in dwelling units with respect to which government regulation as to rentals and continued occupancy is eliminated or becomes inapplicable after the plan has been accepted for filing by the attorney general shall not be subject to unconscionable increases beyond ordinary rentals for comparable apartments during the period of their occupancy. In determining comparability, consideration shall be given to such factors as building services, level of maintenance and operating expenses.

187 Misc. 2d 243; 721 N.Y.S.2d 459;
2000 N.Y. Misc. 573,
Park West Village Associates, Respondent, v. Chiyoko Nishoika, Appellant, et al., Respondents.
# 99-562
SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK, APPELLATE TERM, FIRST DEPARTMENT
187 Misc. 2d 243; 721 N.Y.S.2d 459; 2000 N.Y. Misc. 573
October 26, 2000, Decided
LEXIS OVERVIEW: Appellant entered into possession of the apartment at issue under a lease agreement five years after the residential building premises underwent a non-eviction type conversion to condominium ownership. The lease agreement expired, and respondent landlord brought a holdover action. The appellate court held that, in light of the legislative purpose underlying § 352-eeee, appellant's post-conversion leasehold did not fall within the statute's reach.

2006-07-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

"Tryin' to make a dollar out of thirty-two cents."

In purchasing the shares entitling me to lease my apartment, financial debilitation is not my only concern. I asked the seller's attorney for permission to review the coop minutes for the last three years. She referred me to the anthropologist who sold his interest in the building's unsold shares after his decade of using them for rent income.

Six months after selling (and not to me, I might add), he still attends the coop meetings. His Park Square Associates are still the managing agent for the building, although Arthur, sole principal of the newly formed LLCs created to buy the unsold 86% of the building's coop shares, is president of his own perfectly good managing agent company, ABC Realty.

A great luxury renovation is to commence upon the facade and hallways of this six story walk-up. Who will be in charge? Will it be someone sensitive to cosmetics or to the long-term residential aspect of the building?

And speaking of quiet enjoyment, one of the traditions of this landmark lower east side six-story tenement neighborhood and of this building in particular is its ever potential structural demolition via sound-waves from the floor to ceiling speakers connected to the dj system in the cellar.

It is notable to consider the success of sonic defense weaponry in warding off pirates on the high seas. Apparently a well-aimed sound blast can trip a heart attack.

Could there not also be a frequency, which only floor-to-ceiling speakers ensconsed against the cellar walls are capable of amplifying, that compromises a building's support foundation?

Every solid object has a rattle note.

Are low frequency sound waves what produce the layer of white dust here, or is it the pneumatic renovation drills?

This building celebrates its centeniary, but the land beneath it has a much longer past and I have some maps that will help decipher it.

As for the great WPA movie personifying a tenement building -- giving it a life of its own, so to speak -- I recommend, at every opportunity, seeing Sylvia Sydney play an activist who does her best to care for her increasingly demented younger brother, played by Sidney Lumet, in "One Third of a Nation."

2006-07-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits from reading the writing of Hannah Arendt is her unleashing of the English language as instructive. As I found myself saying with my limited reading of the works of Freud, I would call her writing Great Literature.

And I'm, of course, currently in the enviable position of feeling pressure from human forces external to me, which excites the hell out of me if, if, if, I CAN WRITE ABOUT IT.

For previous chapters in my East Village Residency I refer you to the controversial song cycle with monologues and mini-play entitled, "Pro-Choice on Mental Health." For an update on the contact address listed on that album, 321 East 12th Street, Apartment #8, look no further. Here's the story thusfar.

The Rhodes Scholar anthropologist investors for Oscar Gruss were the first to buy my home's unsold securities, in 1995. These Gruss wonderkids are the two Michaels who put the Lenin statue on top of Red Sqaure (It's a Beetlejuice-designer building on Houston Street). Although Michael Rosen is the more published Pace University Professor, the memories burned in my mind are with my encounters with the furtive Michael Shaoul in 1995 after he sent me a lease renewal nearly doubling the rent I was paying.

Watching my friends move out (Under unregulated leases they were being subjected to eviction and unconsciounable rent increases from a generically named managing agent, "Park Sqaure Associates.") I said, sell it to me, but they would only rent, never sell, which they did for 10 years. After coming to terms on the lease, in fact, most fairly, I remained for the eventful decade that brings us up to the present.

They really were pretty fair, although there had to come a time when they cut off personal communication.

During our meetings, Michael Shaoul was not at all devoid of appreciation for my artistic side with my monthly piano set at SideWalk, and my theatre work at La Mama, then of my liaison work with the City organizing the East Village Singer/Songwriters' yearly outdoor concert in Tompkins Square Park (This year it is Saturday, August 12th.)

My rent under Bernadette Mineo's lease in 1989 was $789. In 17 years it went up to $1,625, which I currently pay, Month-to-Month, so I am a testiment to the possibilities of a free market tenant/landlord relationship. Yes, the identical shares (numbering between 1440 and 1470) assigned to apartments currently under rent regulation therein are, well, let's see the schedule. $197, 631, 526, 741, 305, 132, 628. hmmm... and the monthly maintenance assigned to those shares is between 836 and 884. So at least my rent payment is covering the maintenance paid by the purchaser of unsold shares plus $753 a month, said 753 going where? It is paid to the MANAGING AGENT, the same people who under an LLC are the holders of the unsold shares.

In a coop conversion, the Landlord sells his building to a corporation, then, under his own corporate name, may buy UNSOLD shares in the corporation. If he vows "non-eviction" he may buy as much as 85% of the building, thereby getting that 1903 built tenement building out of government monitored rent regulation.

Since the landlord became the holder of UNSOLD shares, the appelate term court in Manhattan contorted the conclusion that he is a PURCHASER under his "plan," and therefore no longer bound to his non-eviction promise to his post conversion tenants.
(The appelate term applied NOT the language of the General Business Law governing coop securites, but rather the legislative INTENT producing it...)

The words applied to such a transaction look like this: With a closing date of October 29th, 1989, 315 East 12th Street Associates sold its building to 315-321 Apartment Corp., a corporation in which they momentarily sell 15% and hold unsold 85%of the shares. They will eventually hold 86% after they foreclose on the purchasers who were over-optomistic about paying the monthly debt service and maintenance, taking back AS UNSOLD those purchased shares that helped qualify for the conversion.

This foreclosure, of course, refers back to the Keith Feibush story in "Pro-Choice on Mental Health."

I saw Law Review articles on illusory coops suggesting that 10 years of pure rental activity raises the inference: Cooperative Apartment Plan Abandondoned.

At the 10 year mark, Oscar Gruss/Park Square Associates/PSA 321 East 12th Street LLC sold its unsold shares to Arthur Cornfeld/East 12th Street, LLC/ABC Properties/ABC Realty. The tenement's going luxury. It's time for me to buy or vacate. The market's getting shaky, look at those interest rates, look at that glut of new apartments and conversions. Forget about yesterday. TODAY, the gatekeeper standing in the doorway between me and my home is selling.

My current calculation for my lowest monthly debt service and maintenance nut for the next 30 years after a $75,000 downpayment is $4,200.

How did I come to live on East 12th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue on the isle of Manhattan? What am I doing here? Why does the value of the US dollar and money in general continue a precipitous decline without anyone noticing?

Let's consider all that in the next installment.

My albums, including "Pro-Choice on Mental Health," are available through itunes, CD Baby, antifolk.net, olivejuicemusic.com and Amazon.

2006-07-20T14:49:00.000-07:00

People call me with bizarre problems, because I work as an attorney, an associate at a law firm specializing in personal injury, particularly those arising out of motor vehicle accidents. What a bizarre accident I just heard about. Driver and passenger in a car were having an argument when its passenger pulled the emergency brake (lovers' quarrel, accusations of betrayal and infidelity?), this on the West Side Highway near dawn, while the car behind them was doing 80.

All miraculously sustained minimal injuries in this short stop rear-end highway smash-up. Amen.

I listened, I shared my experience, but when push comes to shove, what are my skills? Jerry, successfully settling at trial today, reminded me he can make people look bad under cross examination. He's a former legal aid trial attorney who has discounted testimony from the toughest witnesses the prosecution could offer. I suppose he has a gift that threatens, that results in the profitable outcome once he reaches the standoff, the front lines of the battle.

That ability to threaten victory under pressure sustains the office where I work, paying the salary for me and his seven other employees, even as we sustain him, sending him forward to that crisis point.

My results tend to be considerably less threatening, unless I threaten people with my thinking about them.

What can I do that no one else can?

Let's see, I can absorb and tolerate worry and aggravation as I "happ'ly wait for my next happy moment."

What are my goals? James Chladek, during my 15 minute New Yorker interview last night, asked, where do I see myself in five years? I said, I see myself living in Manhattan, with my shows running with lives of their own, and a country place to work and raise a growing family with my loved one.

Well, facing eviction or financial debilitation, I acknowledge that, in fear of ridicule, I have ridiculed just about everything I could have held sacred in my life,

Even the term "loved one" used above carries with it the funeral director's dearly departed connotation...

My life, my priorities, my loves... my belief is, they, me, everyone, we all withstand ridicule.

I was bullied as a child. I never reached the stand-off. I ran home, then resented my parents when they lost faith in my ability to take care of myself.

Wounded, I act wounded, attracting the similarly wounded and sometimes appearing to reject what I perceive to be their wounded offer of assistance. I'm afraid.

I read on a church's outdoor marquee during last week's Jitney ride, and I paraphrase with my usual gift of faulty memory: "Jump. Sometimes you have to build your parachute on the way down."

Then the song reprise begins. "We're in this love together."

We are all in this universe together.

2006-06-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hello. Yes, I continue to be Up In Arms... "Up In Arms" is the title of Danny Kaye's first film, and probably the only time his manic energy was matched/tempered/balanced by a uniquely musical female lead, Dinah Shore.

Look, I've been dealing with pressure from work and the apartment and all I ask Dick Parsons to provide for my 144 dollar a month cable bill on the rare occasion when I would sit down for more than an hour and relax and actually watch something worth watching coming from the premium digital cable television, is that his cable provide an uninterrupted digital stream broadcast, not this jamming and scrambling of random stills and missynched sound that Turner Classic Movie Station broadcasted last night from 8PM to 9:30....

Manic Depressive Pictures Presents
"Hello, Fresno. Goodbye!"
Produced by Manic
Directed by Depressive
And hopelessly jumbled by Time Warner Cable's premium digital television stream.

As for the increasing homogeneity of media content, gentle readers, please, another time...

2006-02-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

The Movie Experience at the Film Forum, Febrary 7th, 2006

So often, my backlog of interests guides my actions, such as wanting to see all the films of James Whale and Val Lewton, and I’ve at least heard of the director, Edgar Ulmer. A film of each comprised the triple feature at Film Forum last Tuesday during the Karloff festival. One present day development comes to mind, my preference for stories told in an hour and fifteen minutes. I suppose the more gruesome the subject matter, the shorter the better. It’s amazing how eventful the time can be. Ultimately, though, I did spend four and a half hours at the movies, basking in the reflected glory of 35mm prints, one, The Old Dark House, from the archives of our own Library of Congress!

I intended to miss “The Black Cat” and when I arrived there, that was the one starting.

When I bought a ticket at 2:40 they warned me that the theatre was almost full. When I left at 7 a crowd of people waited to get in and the line for standby tickets extended half the block.

The art deco home of an architect portrayed by Karloff, built atop the remains of a fort that 10,000 people defended to the death, made use of overhead fluorescent light, giving the actors from the 1930’s a shadowless pallor, as if they were in a bland office of today.

Boris’s reward for his nasty behavior toward his guests and colleagues was to be stripped to the waist and flayed by Bela Lugosi.

In a parlor with a bay window overlooking the Alps, this film, “The Black Cat,” staged a chess match for the lives of the young couple, so “The Seventh Seal” of Ingmar Bergman comes to mind.

I want everything to be pleasant and harmonious, yet it remains my intention to make a horror film, so I found these films to be worthwhile. I justify fantasizing by adding conflict to the fantasy. I deny myself what I want for purpose of exploration and growth, yet I’m too frightened to actually live conflict. I’m simply considering an invented reality, such as a novel or a movie, or an audio recording.

In the Maxfield Parish Elysium I put a snake in the grass just to keep it real. Dave Chapelle shared, in a 2004 rerun last night, what happens when keeping it real goes really wrong.

The fly in the ointment.

In Storm Cloud I pretended I was famous through an alter ego, Kevin Vargas, but chose to explore giving him everything I wanted by adding a fear of exposure to the fame, yes, in the ugliest way possible. Sure the casualty is supposed to be a misunderstanding, but someone in his film Dies and the unpleasantess, the reality of the fantasy goes well beyond my capabilities.

The Robert Wise adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatchers was gruesome. Take me back to Disneyland! The Satanism of the Black Cat is consistent. Guess what, facilitating destruction upon others brings it ten-fold upon oneself. That’s easy. I’m not entirely convinced Karloff didn’t want to be flayed by Lugosi.

I actually want peace and harmony, which I see existing in nature. The mere finding of a cause worth dying for is enough to call the confrontation upon oneself.

There is a crossover into beauty one finds in a horror film that may be worth exploring, but what are the emotions that support it? Has the director crossed over into an embrace of nastiness? I haven’t seen “Carrie” for many years but I recall how utterly hilarious I found the hand reaching from the rubble matching the hand from (Amy Irving’s) mother, and the music pounding away. In retrospect I’ll call the Carrie finale a reasonable victim backlash. It’s a warning of victim victorious, with the caveat that the expedient way to put destruction to rest is to put all its participants to rest.

2005-11-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

Galapagos Introduces Sara Silverman... Not Catholic so she needn't feel guilt for her thoughts

On Wednesday, November 9th, they actually took two little 35mm projectors and showed her movie. It was a free screening so I can't complain that they only played the secondary soundtrack, which means you couldn't hear the words to the songs.

(Gene Stavis explained: "Undoubtedly they were playing the optical track and were unable to synch the digital tracks which are common today. Or, perhaps, the equipment they used was of an older type which does not properly reproduce a more modern red track.")

It has a great escalating opening from a drab apartment room to the big stage.

"American Airlines: First through the towers."
Ron Jeremy keeps his pinky out "'cause he's classy."

She takes cluelessness to the level of high art. As a narcissist, she has also mastered the art of expressing heartless compassion.

Despite her obvious capacity for empathy, she has one weakness, the desire for a pretty jewel that is only found on the tailbone of ethiopian babies.

We make fun of people we're not afraid of.

"I'm not racist, I speak facts. You can't smell yourself..."

And now, I keep returning to the following issue.... What is pornography?
Hem haw, I KNOW it when I see it.
She doesn't, thank heavens! A&E were cast from paradise not because they were naked but because they KNEW they were naked.
-------------
In other comedian news: Apologies to Robert Shapiro for my mistaking him for his brother, Rick on Monday by the 6th Ave Bus stop... SORRY! Jeez.

Then there's the wit & wisdom of the Drew Blood...

2005-11-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

From the point of view of Cupid, David Souter (GHW Bush USSC nominee, 1990) and Harriet Miers (GW Bush USSC nominee, 2005) were a match made in heaven.

On to other matters.

Oh, vote!

In very local news, the New York County District 60 voting machine at the Sirovich Center accepted four choices for Mayor.

I discovered this today at 10:00 AM while considering a vote for the "Rent Too High" party candidate for the position of Public Advocate. He was actually one of the candidates bunched in for Mayor.

The levers should lock after the maximum number have been pulled. They did for all the other choices.

I only voted for one Mayor, but I could have voted for four! I was actually inarticulately upset by this but did manage to convey the discovery to the pollers.

My getting upset tends to help no one, unless it is my intention to achieve the opposite result.

In more general local news, say good-bye to mechanical voting machines.

Do you suppose this evening will bring any election result surprises? I do not.

And thank you, New York 1, for last week's full week profile on "Top" Independent Party Member Fred Newman. What was the connection again?

2005-10-04T08:23:00.000-07:00

Oedipus was a detective in search of himself.

How could Harriet Miers know her path was his as she led her search committee toward the next Supreme Court Nominee?

How could I know how similar to Jackie Mason I would feel in expressing that parallel?

Is a "how could you" question answerable or rhetorical, asked by someone making a point?

Yet I ask it.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.

Sunday, October 2nd from 5PM to 6PM at the Bryat Park Book Fair, continued.

As for my Book Fair report, following Art Spiegelman in the New York Times Book Review tent was Pamela Paul to personally introduce us to her new book, "Pornified."

If you sense a kinetic energy in your hotel room, then perhaps it's because, sniff-sniff, it's been pornified!

In case I was not already alarmed by my potential comments about a hundred million dollar industry, following Pamela Paul and a summer camp break with Christopher Lehman-Haupt, was author Ariel Levy, introducing her new, red book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, describing her undercover work during the spring break shoot of a show called "Girls Gone Wild." (This show, immortalized by Larry David in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, is mostly comprised of minimally solicited public-breast-bearing "reality" clips. In syndication, perhaps it should rerun as "Girls Went Wild.")

If I add anything to the self-perceptions of the "wild" ones whose body displays were freely offered to cameras in those episodes -- especially to those who masturbated –- it is this suggestion; rather than being victimized in retrospect, consider the respect you offered to a 100 million dollar industry and its customers by mooning them.

Perhaps there are times when the act of observing something does NOT change it. Let voyeurs watch. The power to change in their observation is negligible compared with a scientist looking for an electron through a microscope.

Yes, bodies are fascinating, ever-surprising in their breath-taking beauty, and worthy of time spent looking at them.

No, I haven't seen March of the Penguins, but I'll bet we benefit by observing them, too.

If pornography is images of people who prepare and present themselves and others in various displays of sexual arousal then, yes, the world is pornified.

But what is pornography? The knowledge of it, like the knowledge Adam and Eve acquired about being naked in the Garden of Eden, was contained in the definition; "I KNOW it when I see it."

The standard has become what a community/planet will tolerate.

Perhaps for sexual arousal to be pornographic a measure of self-hatred is required.

Pamela Paul's featured video description was of “sheiks” clenching Abu Ghraib prison photos as they surrounded the military-garbed woman they held responsible.

In this video after a suggested decapitation they drench the woman with their self generated kinetic fluids.

“Masturbatable,” perhaps with self-hatred. Consider, in response to the blinding rage "generatable" from the previous near-dada description, how powerful emotions (i.e., hate, love...) readily couple with physical feelings of sexual (reproductive) arousal.

-- Don't just stand there, do something.

-- I can't. It's on film; it already happened.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.

2005-10-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

To write one of these MD posts I like to have some kind of general interest update to share.

I just returned from a day of jury duty in 2d Dept. Federal Court, and no I wasn't picked but I was among the first called to join a panel seated within a beautiful courtroom jury box after watching a hypnotizing video projection. I didn't catch the video title but it was directed by Jody E. George of the Federal Judicial Center and screened in double projection with capital-letter-captioning, white on black.

"We're going to show you a film. What the film does is give you a brief idea of what it's like to do jury service here in Federal Court."

Yes, it cast a spell upon all, turning random individuals into prospective jurors.

Only by the judge saying these magic words, "You are excused," may the juror spell be broken, and he did to me, so I missed out on determing the controversy raised by Ralph Lauren suing Jordache and the United States Polo Association for trademark infringement of the double horse logo, which I confess I cannot picture.

The judge conducted the voir dire of the jurors as the eight attorneys and two rows of interested observers sat with senses on alert.

"Do you rent or own where you live?"

In addition to clearly establishing the trial schedule, Judge George B. Daniels asked other probative questions, and unearthed amazing coincidences. (i.e. My husband is a partner in the plaintiff's firm, I'm friends with one of the defense attorneys (waves exchanged) and I just submitted an opposition brief to your honor on another matter., or -- I provided fringes for Lauren clothes, I met him often and yes, he was very good to me., -- Or, most generally, my attorney suffered a psychotic episode and was disbarred during my med mal trial.)

A jury of eight was quickly, impressively, and admirably had.

I went for lunch to the corner dim sum place and ran into the owner of a sea food restaurant, "Up the River," in Westley near Mystic. He and I struck up a conversation because I couldn't help noticing that his shirt had a bright polo insignia of a man on a horse swinging a mallet. Now there's an original trademark for a polo shirt.

Look, if you invest, time, money and effort in some(any)thing, then you should have at least the modicum of self-interest (and intelligence) to create a defendable ownership stake in it...

The jury service waiting time after lunch was an opportunity to read the daily free paper, "AM New York." A brief article within it speculated about the identity of Bush's next supreme court nominee. Will it be his former personal attorney?

Again, if you, the term-limit-public-servant, have a choice discretion, you may also wish to factor self-interest into the equation.

Suddenly here appears a general header for everything I write:

Dear gentle reader, I don't readily access past sensory observations as readily as I access the internet so an additional purpose served by this writing is to refresh my memory.

Furthermore, my undercover expose' tone (like I'm a spy on the "Girls Gone Wild" shoot) is a reverberation from what I enjoyed yesterday afternoon when I attended -- and forgive me because any literature distributed at the event had run out by the time I arrived at 5PM -- some kind of book fair at the park (Bryant) behind The New York Public Library.

Multiple tents were up, plus a carousel! One tent had a waiting line extending throughout half the park, because a panel discussion by New York Times Op Ed writers was soon to ensue within.

Another little tent was wide open for seating. I heard the buzz word, Heidegger, and asked a distinctively tee-shirted attendant. She said that speaking in there was Harry Frankfurt (I am only now realizing that the City of Frankfurt is his surname) reading from his philosophical treatise "On Bullshit." (on dancer on donner on prancer...).

The word "Bullshit" still has its punch as a period, a conversation stopper, or at least, as an argument starter.

Mr. Frankfurt's primary observation is that the bullshiter simply doesn't care if what he says is the truth in contrast with Iago, that liar, who does.

He concluded by reading from his treatise what I will paraphrase as follows: Our general acceptance of bullshit means that we, yearning for its substitute, discern and respect sincerity. A person whose expression holds the ring of truth, from being true to him or herself, is the final exemplar of bullshit, because in truth, no matter how true to ourselves we sincerely are, reality exists apart from our perception and expression of it.

I agree, even as I, with all my sensory caveats, seek clarifying expressions of reality.

That little reading tent was like The New York Times Book Review, Live, and I kept getting up, and then sat back down after they announced the next author.

I knew of Harry Frankfurt's book, as well as Pamela Paul's Pornified and Ariel Levy's Female Chauvenist Pigs from the past year's New York Times Book Review. And the novel The Mad Cook of Pymatuning was read by its author, Christopher Lehman-Haupt, a reviewer of books for the New York Times.

As for the Target Logo appearing within the New York Times banner behind these authors in the little tent, although it remains unclear what the "Target" trademark represents, I am familiar with it because its trademark holders, whoever they are, had bought out an entire New Yorker issue’s ad space for red and black graphics, making that issue so obviously a collector’s item that I promptly threw it away.

Also appearing within the tent was the amazing Art Spiegelman. He followed Mr. Frankfurt and I sat down in disbelief immediately upon hearing his name as I greatly admired Maus and enjoyed his attention-grabbing New Yorker Covers. He crucified the Easter Bunny over some tax forms and illustrated the slurp kiss between two people who would more likely share an employer/employee relationship, among other covers suggestive of George Grosz paintings. Mr. Spiegelman did the black on black World Trade Center cover in the wake of their demolition. What better person to do the cover? Not only does his family live two blocks from the calamitous site but his is wife the cover editor for the New Yorker. After his presentation he went to sign copies of his "graphic novel," In the Shadow of No Towers.

I am sorry to only now think of asking him, does he have any update on the activities of his fellow Raw comic book artist, Mark Beyer?

I must go now. MORE LATER...

tail-end notes...

Supposedly you could get your book appraised from professional booksellers at this fair; someone showed me multiple hardcover first edition copies of On The Road. No, I could not imagine what they were worth and thanked him for letting me look at them.

Somehow, the idea that buying a 15 dollar N.Y.T. tote bag would entitle one to enter an area of, and fill the bag with, gently used books was vaguely annoying.

Oh, thank you for telling me about the book fair.

2005-08-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

Movie making consists of capturing and communicating an experience not otherwise safely available to our senses, at least not in this lifetime. One such experience is a visit to Vegas.

Vegas is infinitely trashable.

I've never been to Vegas, and movies that use it as a backdrop lessen my desire to visit... Bugsy, The Godfather Part II, Casino, Leaving Las Vegas, the Tristan Isolde segment of Aria, Oceans 11, and The Cooler. Any others?

Yet Vegas inspires a degree of greatness in those films.

2005-08-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

As he does most every day Jackie Mason on August 18th, 2005 presented himself on the Broadway stage, making observations and asking people, challenging them with the question, "Do you understand this?"

Thanks to an attorney friend at 13th Street Rep, I finally saw Jackie Mason.

I wanted his take on current events, and will probably get that by tuning into his comcast radio show. My favorite observation was a pure joke about job discrimination and fat people... fat people can't get a job. Fat people are starving to death. Do you understand this?

He criticises to improve. Would he if he didn't care? No. He loves this country.

He uses dirty words because he recognized the audience was comprised of a lower class of people.

Change the station if the abusive words offend.

For those of you no longer satisfied with verbal abuse, consider a friend who attended a warrior workshop at the Catskills Nevely and came back with a limp and a bandaged knee.

It was a workshop where martial arts experts (physical, versus verbal, comedians) suprise-attacked and hospitalized many.

Now THAT's abuse.

As for those of you prefering the beauty of the ethereal, listen to Jackie Mason's singing voice...

2005-06-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

"Under-promise and over-deliver," is one of the kernels of powerful advice imparted to B. Keith Fulton, an executive at Verizon and graduate of New York Law School, by the speaker he introduced, the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Time Warner, Inc., Richard D. Parsons.

Dick Parsons appeared before a group of people at New York Law School last evening (Wednesday). As Time Warner's CEO he earned in 2004, according to Forbes, not including stock options, $13,245,165.00. He is a great spokesperson for the concerns of a company whose soul is in both (journalistic) media content providing and (journalistic) media content CREATION. Create, then distribute! Look for reruns of CNN news episodes in syndication.

Prior to spinning off their music business to Warner Music Group because the music business is too substantially afflicted by the ability of people to pirate peer to peer, Time Warner Inc. was the world's largest copyright owner.

Before fielding questions, Mr. Parsons spoke of two of his concerns, journalistic confidentiality and intellectual property protection.

He felt compelled to consider the first concern because two nights ago Mark Felt identified himself as the 1970's media informant, "Deep Throat." It's safe to say we wouldn't be where we are today if it weren't for his help in bringing Gerald Ford to power.

Jump to the 21st century when journalists Judith Miller, Matt Cooper and Time Warner, Inc. as Matt's employer, are threatened with prison and fined, respectively, for not revealing to a Grand jury the source that leaked the CIA status of Valerie Plame. Identifying a CIA agent is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, since another country might hear CIA as synonymous with SPY! While we recognize as protected confidential communication between certain parties such as priests, spouses, doctors, lawyers, the shield protecting communication between journalist and confidential informant is in question. Forty-nine states have a shield law but the Federal Government does not. The First Amendment right that protected Woodward, Bernstein and the Washington Post arguably protects Miller, Cooper and Time Warner from revealing the identity of their government informant source.

The U.S. Supreme Court is next in line to determine this controversy, if they rise to the writ.

New York Law School Q&A Moderator, Michael Botein, announced plenty of time for questions. I was one of five people who had the opportunity to ask during the program. During the reception Mr. Parsons stayed to answer others.

The journalists' government source committed a felony by breaching CIA cover. I questioned the distinction between a reporting that endangered the wife of U.S. Diplomat and non-CIA agent Joseph Wilson. (Mr. Wilson was critical of US reasons supporting the starting of a second gulf war.) versus the first amendment protection of free speech during Watergate.

Mr. Parsons clarified his concern that the dialogues of inquiry into the identity of a journalist’s information source must be made before the public, not in some place behind closed doors resembling a star chamber. Furthermore, the objective of the press is to inform the public. The Federal investigation forced reporters to reveal their source in private.

I believe Mr. Parsons was referring to a Grand Jury investigation, which is secret and one-sided, involving not the accused but only a potential prosecutor seeking indictment of a crime. Reporters' objectivity would be compromised if they could be compelled to cooperate therein.

(U.S.V.P. Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, the government leak source, waived his right to confidentiality and Time Magazine's Matt Cooper testified before the Grand Jury in August of 2004.)

Dupes no more. In other news, we're in The Digital Age. This led into the second concern that Mr. Parson shared last night.

Do you remember the beauty of diminished copy quality? Black and White contrast became gray. Pure sound became hiss-filled. Xeroxes of xeroxes became pockmarked as text widened and lost crispness. Those copies were of a pre-Digital Age.

Technology today gives the public the capability to reduce media content to electronic impulses that can be moved around and recreated almost perfectly. Perfect copies, distributed to one or one billion, stretch the rights of intellectual property ownership. Here's another controversy for the courts to determine. In 1984 The Supreme Court found that Sony's sale to consumers of its Betamax was not an infringement, being merely the instrument of potential infringement, as well as of other lawful uses such as fair use and time-shifting (Sony was the defendant with exposure and ability to pay substantial damages.). Today, intentions of software programmers will face renewed Supreme Court scrutiny.

Where do rights of property owners stop and rights of casual users begin?

Mr. Parsons just got back from China. 95% of China's media content is pirated. They neither have nor enforce copyright laws, thus in China there is a barren creative community. China used to be by far the most developed cultural country. (I love those carved ivory chess sets.) Today artists there can't make a living. All their invention is stolen from them. Creativity atrophied because there is no legal protection afforded to the creators of intellectual property.

Do you remember the incentives arising from ownership? There are always those with the creative urge (I'm one.), but for it to be part of a vibrant thriving community/industry, we need enforceable laws to let us know where we are and how we are protected. If not, we may as well abandon the field and go be farmers.

We need more laws. The last person to ask a question, Bob Mendez, included this reminder: laws inspire creativity (like those athlete artists on the playing field who win while abiding by the rules of the game). Throughout the term of our agreement to abide by laws we become increasingly creative in how we do so.

2005-05-23T16:02:00.000-07:00

2005-05-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

I contributed songs to a series of 10 new one act plays called "Love Bites" which ran at the Neighborhood Playhouse tonight, Tuesday, May 17th, and last night. At first I thought the title referred to computer bytes because I remembered going to the Neighborhood Playhouse to see a reading of a musical about the love affairs of the computer dependent, among whom I count myself. No. These are hickeys, plain and simple, and I can't tell you how much I enjoyed introducing each one with a song.

Patricia Watt produced the series and Steve Ditmyer directed it. Steve picked out the songs from a collection I assembled for the occasion. We chose "Absotively Posilutely (Through with Love)" to open and close the evening. That's the Keely Smith/Louie Prima style song that Owen Kalt and I wrote for our musical adaptation of "Next Stop Greenwich Village" in 1993.

On the first night, the show opened with the one man dream play, "Hymie's Angel" written and performed by Jamie Lorenzo. You could see him grow from his experiences in Hell's Kitchen as he relived them with us.

Dan Calloway sang "Never Too Sure," (1980) a kind of catch-all song about distant memory recognition relationships... "Haven't I seen you somewhere? Haven't we met before?" That introduced Craig Pospisil's devastatingly blunt inner monologues of four people misreading one another. Basically, although they yearn elsewhere, the two men give into the wills of their women companions. It establishes hell on earth for all, and in addition was a great acting vehicle for Jamie Bennett, Danny Cleary, Jane Petrov and Darcie Siciliano.

The play that promised to make the whole evening superficially obscene turned out to difuse itself into a subject worthy of awareness; and if you already examined the subject (I believe John Giorno has...), then this play would be a compendium of redundancy, since everthing anyone could imagine was imagined and/or assembled for us from modern art history by playwright David Brandon Harris. The characters were likeable, especially the bad Russian painter who spoke the word as a multispectrum woof: "Piss." I played incidental music (Doomy, Colonial Williamsburg and an instrumental Mountain Casino) during that. Dan introduced "Piss" with an excerpt from the aptly titled song "Golden Age," (1997) which includes the lines, "That stream is mine." and "Please put it away!" Stephanie Rose directed with all her heart. It featured Colette Bryce, Dan Callaway, Ben Hersey, Gregory Korostishevsky and Marina Kotovnikov.

The transfiguring "Almond Eyes" introduced "Rewind," a play by Renee Flemings about gameplaying childhood sweethearts who grow up to be parting lovers. Given that there is a real gun in the boy's house, it confirms the black girl's mother's quote that white people are scary. Erica Ash and Michale McEachran shared chemistry in the roles.

Darcy Siciliano sang the early song, a last minute inclusion, "Resume" (1979) to open the young man/older woman conversational exchange of hopes and dreams called "The Keeper of My Dignity." It could indeed be called The Keeper of My House, because the boy's family occupies the older woman's home and learns, and is nearly sucked into, all the past curses therein.

The next night opened with Craig Pospisil's "Whatever." He described it as a spinoff of Poe's Raven, but it seems to be about a needy, dependent woman (perhaps Megan Bryne) exerting her dominance over her inquisitive reality-checking friend (perhaps Cassandra Seidenfeld). They both recently lost boyfriends. They both stay in for the night.

Darcy sang an ominous "I Love You Much," (1979) introducing the monologue "Rebound" by Georgia Metz, performed by Helen Lantry which had attributed celebrity status to a descendent of Calvin Coolidge. The casual sex convincingly degenerates into anger.

"Never Too Sure," as a duet this time between Darcy and David Macaluso, opened Con Chapman's "Welcome to Endive." There's a long standing mountain restaurant in Danbury Connecticut called Ondine. Same restaurant? It was a full meal for three couples without the food featuring Margot Avery, God Engle, Barbara Halas, Christine Pedi and Joseph Schommer.

"Good Way to Be" opened Father Figure. Make no mistake, the truth can make you damned (A well-adjusted husband admits to his wife his approval of his childhood abuse by his father.). However, the instinctive protection a mother affords to her unborn child is what keeps us, the human race, alive over time. Thanks, mom. Michael Patterson and Colette Bryce played the husband and wife.

We used the "I've Come to Know Them" part of the song "Love them Both" (1997), changing the line "I've come to love them both," to "I've come to know the truth" as the opener for Bruce Jay Friedman's economical play The Trial, a powerful confrontation showing the triumph of the pure at heart. (His characterization of God in his play, "Steambath," made a lasting impression on me. ) Stephen Bradbury and Paul Haller saw themselves as interchangable in playing the two roles.

Singer David Macaluso's opera training allowed me to play a big piano accompaniment to the last song.

2005-05-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

I did go out this weekend. I saw on Saturday "Music from a Sparkling Planet." It had a poignant production beautifully acted and staged at The Amateur Comedy Club, directed with all the non-sequitor challenges surmounted by Scott Glascock, whom I know as a fellow Lamb. This play explains why playwright Douglas Carter Beane wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Bewitched. It also alerts us to the volatility of the late baby boomers who had their deepest relationships with television. The bursting optimism of fictitious TV personality Tamara Tomorrow is stimulating. What will the future bring? There's a Manhattan public access guy who always says what Tamara says in the play, "I'll see You in the Future!" Anyway, as we learn about her past in the play, we observe three mid-life crisis fellows uncover her present whereabouts.

Oh Brave New World!

I didn't live in Phillie where Mr. Beane's fabulous construct is set. The days of neighborhood networks are past; well, we have Manhattan Neighborhood Network, but not those cartoons in syndication... I'm sure we do somewhere.

Do I regret that the highlight of my youth was the films or TV shows that I saw?

I currently also demand unrestricted access to foreign broadcasts.

The other highlight on Sunday was a film that followed the Arlene Grocery Picture Show Screening of "Songs from Prepare to Meet Your Maker #10." What followed was a film called "Farming with Stanley." It's an impressively paced family documentary about a fascinating topic, tobacco, a sticky big leaf plant with tar residue. I want to buy a pack of camels.

There is a feeling of Deja Vu about this film. I spoke with someone about this, perhaps the filmmaker, once before, probably at Anthology during the Dolemite event, and basically repeated the exact questions I asked today. Anyway, I'm glad David Hollander scheduled the two films back to back because it reminds me, I should really considered going to Philip Morris for PTMYM funding.

There was a Camel cigarette photograph, backlit for barroom placement, of a woman, complexion blue as death, with smoke escaping from her face, which caught my eye during our performances at SideWalk.

My noticing and remembering this ad better than a conversation I might have had two months ago is an indication of my late baby boomer status, where an artistic represention, even a Camel Cigarette poster, competes for the sum total of my human experience.

So the farming film is a reminder of how people commerce in the miracles of nature outside of the big cities. Obsessive drudgery is a trap for all, is all I have to say.

Please note, I'm feeling particularly self-centered and down on myself of late because of my abject failure as a husband.

2005-03-14T14:13:00.000-08:00

Apparently, arts conventions begin with suites at a hotel, and eventually grow to move to the armory. The organizer, i.e., "divafair," rents the suites and subdivides them into exhibition booths, nice ones at that, with bathrooms... On Sunday, after a walk through the incongrous new Irish Hunger Excavation Site overlooking the majestic Hudson River (Does a speck of ancient construction exist within Battery Park City? I suppose everything there has to be new since it is built upon WTC landfill.), I went to the Embassy Suites Hotel. It is indeed filled with two room suites attached by a hallway that overlooks the lobby atrium, kind of a mini Time Square Marriott Marquis without the wrap around and the 50 floors. This one has six. The third and fourth floor were occupied from March 10th-13th, with the various digital video galleries who joined the divafair. That's Divafair.com, the digital video fair, and the winner is, from the curator of Williamsburg's First Two International Surrealist Film Festivals, who is ever partial to Wago Kreider's "Marvelous Creatures:"

Ivan Toth Depena's video, "Incidental Antinomies," which, for purposes of stimulating the memories of others who may have seen it, may be called "Trees Lit By Street Lamps."

Second Prize: Nomad, by Eva Koch

Alexandre Castonguay converted a Brownie Camera and used its lens. Honorable mention...

And it is always a pleasure to see further incendiary material from the Dada Changed My Life crew... What happened in Fallujah???

The fair was a tribute to the work of Bruce Nauman.

2005-02-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

Was that Rudy Ray Moore on the phone?

From Dave Hollander: that was indeed, rudy ray. thanks for films peter and very nice to meet you. i look forward to watching what you gave us.
--------------------
On Wednesday, January 26th, Dave Hollander screened a DVD of “Dolemite,” at Anthology, not without first calling Rudy Ray and amplifying his permission and blessing over the P.A.

Rudy Ray is Dolemite. Is the 2005 Sundance’s “Hustle and Flow” a remake?

I learned a lesson in independent filmmaking from the directing. In framing your photoplay, use plenty of light with a mostly stationary camera observing the action from angles mostly unavailable to those seated in the audience of a stage play.

After an hour seated, neck craned, in the front row with Orin Buck, who invited me to this free alcohol/film submission event of which the screening of Dolemite was the centerpiece, I left to enjoy Steve Espinola, Jordan Corbin and Jon Berger at SideWalk. I left Orin, who wanted to vault at the opening credits, enthralled. I wonder how it ended. Well, for all, I hope, for the cast was exceedingly likeable. I stayed long enough to catch Rudy’s titanic rap. That was somehow a toast that gave birth to rap and hip hop. Jon Berger knew about Rudy Ray, as someone others reference. This was all news to me.

I repeat here that the film that comes foremost to mind at the mention of black seventies cinema is Ossie Davis’s, “Cotton Comes to Harlem.” (February 5, 2005, Why didn’t he direct more? He leaves behind a great legacy.)

From Orin: 1/29/2005 1:28:39 PM EST
I'm sorry to say that several people did not end happily -- the other black guy who tried to take over the club died in a hail of bullets. The mayor, after having an angry phonecall in the nude which grossed out the delicate members of the audience in the back, died trying to leave town, shot by the black FBI guy off the wing of his private jet. All in all, I think you were there for the most culturally revealing parts.

Reply . 1/29/2005 2:30:37 PM Eastern Standard Time
Yes, I thought as much. Shot from a jet. Watch out for that... When there is a battle between the bad and the not so bad, some will die. When there is a battle between the good and the not so good, some will live. Rudy Ray is famous for his toasts. I'm glad I caught his titanic rap.

The 80’s rappers owe, from the 70’s, Rudy Ray Moore, who owes, from the 60’s up until the present day, singer songwriter Steve Depass.

Yours truly,

Mantan Moreland.

2004-11-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

I am my own grandpa.

As one of my songs runs through my head, I realize that I am a spokesperson for people in my position, including myself.
I'm my target audience.
I exist on two levels, as the creator of my universe, and as a character within it.

2004-09-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

My Ebay,
by Peter Dizozza

Ebay provides a recreational auction environment where sellers meet bidding buyers and guarantee their profit by lodging it within the shipping cost. Shipping fifteen pounds across the country costs $1.30 by non-priority USPS mail in a makeshift folded cardboard box. Shipping cost charged? $15.00. There is absolutely no problem with that and is more telling of my jaded tone. Better to get beyond that to the content herein, filtered through my sieve-like brain, as I grasp experiences trickling like sand through my fingers.
----------
MAY 2006 NOTE: The above suggestion of a mere $1.30 for shipping is a great example of me drawing a conclusion from insufficient data... The $1.30 stamped on the package that I wrote about then was for "insuring" the package, and was in addition to the shipping postage which runs around $10.00. PD
----------
Ebay listings last 60 days, and those ebay-constructed webpage addresses run for, well, not pages, but for maybe a thousand characters.

(At the computer I can check my statements written longhand. It’s not a thousand…Here’s an address link to a silly page that fails to include as a selling point the redemptive aspect of poor Pasolini’s last film, Salo. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=6319579625&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT)

Payments through “Ebay” are easiest made through Paypal. I already established a Paypal account for my CD sales through Amazon. My ebay adventure began when my wife, Diana, asked for Mr. Magoo in Egypt. It lives in her memory although I haven’t found it. “Tut Tut Magoo” it is not.

I browsed Ebay. I understood its concept. Friends used it to sell electronics surplus, Sears catalogues and cigars.

When I clicked “browse” for Magoo, a raincoat attired UPA plastic movable parts Magoo doll appeared, from 1958, my birthyear. Wow, that’s adorable. I’ll bid 20. It sold for 100. OK.

The first Magoo film feature from 1959, Magoo’s Arabian Nights (my shorter title) went to me for 35 dollars plus 15 dollars shipping. Color faded, 16mm, on two spools, ready to spill, sold by kinneman. A cute film, surprisingly involved, he’s Aladdin’s lamp making uncle. The music is subtle and the graphics are unique and pleasingly psychedelic, or rather kaleidoscopic (1959), and not entirely without blue. (Color film loses blue with age. Cold temperature slows the loss. Though silver nitrate film holds color, it is often more valuable melted down. For 50 dollars, no buyer should expect either Magoo’s or Pasolini’s “1001 Arabian Nights” to be a silver nitrate 16mm print.)

Unspooling Magoo, I recalled pre-VHS (pre-1980) private film dissemination, in the form of 16mm optical sound prints. The animated Magoo film must have been shot from cells onto film bearing width of 35 millimeters, about four times the area of the “amateur” format of 16mm film. It ran in theatres at 24 frames per second, as does the smaller 16mm film. US TVs scan 30 frames per second so every few cinema frames are blurred in their TV transfer. Please clarify.

Then consider the phenomenon of optical sound. The sound is etched on the side of the film, often in patterns resembling record grooves. In addition to smoothly flickering frames, the projector lights decode sound.

So for 50 dollars I bought an old rental print of Magoo’s first and only movie screen feature. Magoo was an Academy Awards favorite. Columbia Pictures proudly released his films. I know, he is not a real person. Although the depicting of a man infirm, or challenged, and unapologetically at that, may have fallen into disfavor, his cartoons are benign. Anyone attempting to bring harm upon Magoo brings harm upon himself, and I think we can learn from that.

Ever incongruous, my ebay adventure continues.

Next on Ebay I bought three pruning shears, two for a penny with a cell phone antenna enhancer thrown in, and a third with a special Japanese blade for 15 dollars plus (A "Corona Razor Tooth"). That third one broke sooner, piece by piece until at last the entire blade was gone. I’m referring to mini 7 inch folding saws. I love to prune. During the summer I trimmed expansive hedges that hadn’t been pruned in 30 years and their thick sprouts extended to 10 yards to catch a space of sun. Through long hours of continuous pruning I became physically invigorated, especially from the smell of spruce.

Exploring a midlife career change to that of an arborist resulted in subsequent ebay purchases. I bought a 100-foot spool of white vinyl rope with flecks of gold thrown in, to throw up the trees to climb them and remove their dead branches. Last winter was particularly harsh, but those majestic evergreens refused to die, completely. Actually, pruning is a basic Dizozza issue. I regularly bite my nails and shred my cuticles. In fact, I’m falling behind. Excuse me.

The inevitable result of constant self-pruning is going too bloody far in an attempt to achieve smooth perfection. Did you read my pruning story from the 1980’s. Like the spruce, “I leave to others the job of pruning me.”

An ebay search for army cots began after our visit to the Shabby Chic Shop of Soho. Online, I bought two cots, one useless, the other simply used, plus an army pup tent, which is great, and a hammock tent, which may be missing something to secure it to the trees. I’ve yet to confirm.

I gradually discovered that anything one can imagine is available on ebay, and chances are that only an hour is left to bid on it. My wife, Diana, requested a white furby with pink ears. It was something she needed. Through the bidding process I found myself the winner of two. Ah, the serendipity. Two furbies are better than one. To be more life-source-specific, in searching the online animal shelter for a pet, remember to get two. Cats keep each other alert. Two cats are better than one. Two cats together have fun!

However, for security conscious readers choosing between a ferocious watchdog and a Sloman Home Alarm System, I have this to add: A Furby is a sensor motion detector empowered by four batteries, and when all is still, it turns itself off.

In addition to providing guaranteed intruder trepidation, a furby does seem to learn from its awakenings. Furbies develop a rhythm to their response and they will talk with one another. 1999 was their year. I think Hasbro bought them from Tiger (a toy manufacturer from China) just to shut them up. Actually, one hears the mechanics as they move. Can you imagine the next generation, true baby robots that you can even send to school for improvements? “I’d like my furby to become an authority on Home Economics, and I’m willing to pay the cost of tuition.” Little does the mechanical robot’s parent suspect that classes consist of a software download.

Following these uncharacteristically tangible acquisitions, many sending us into the great outdoors, I retreated to the browsing of ebay’s outrageous sales of celluloid.

Home screening received an additional boost when, during the summer, I performed at an open mike at the Player’s Club. One of the fellows there was comedian Bob Greenberg. In describing my “Golf Wars,” I referred to Martin and Lewis and Laurel and Hardy. He said he was one of the Sons of the Desert, a group of aspiring comedians who collectively assist in the appreciation of Laurel and Hardy and other teams like Bud and Lou, the Stooges, the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers. I expressed curiosity about the Ritz Brothers, and the next day he emailed me an invite to see one of their moments in film history, a version of “The Three Musketeers” with Don Ameche. I dropped by the screening location, could not stay, but glimpsed the setting, a residential loft.

I said to the 16mm projectionist/curator, “I’ll bring over Magoo’s Arabian Nights if you’d like.”

He said, “I have it.” He has everything in 16mm. He assembles movie soundtracks; actually symphonic scores, from the discs and tapes or whatever on which they were recorded and from which they were transferred to their films. Complete scores by Max Steiner, Alex North and Alfred Newman, including parts not in the films, he transferred to audio CDs, lovingly packaged.

During the next film night he showed Zanuck’s Wilson, just in time for the Republican National Convention. The following timely political issues arose before us.

No Wilson’s League of Nations membership for the United States. Dispute over a concept that mutated into the United Nations continues. We report to no mortal. I think John S. Hall said it best on Russell Simmons’ Poetry Central. We do what we want “until God or the aliens come along…” John inhabits male thought patterns. I almost miss the joke, and isn’t that what acting is all about, ever since the days of Robert DeNiro and his filmmaking obsessed friend, Martin Scorsese! So here we are, in 2004, unaccountable to anyone but ourselves, because, basically, and here’s that feel good refrain, “America Kicks Ass.”

I blame feel-good movies for securing our need for the addictive feel-good charge.

“Wilson” is a Technicolor film from 1944. The same writer, Lamar Trotti, scripted both it and Zanuck’s Razor’s Edge (in which occur hallucinatory moments between Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney.). Diana was touched by President Wilson’s expressions of love, his willingness to sacrifice career for love. He didn’t have to, reelected for a second term, but he seemed to be so inclined.

The presidential lead actor embodying Woodrow Wilson also played the writer in a Warner Brothers film, “The Sea Wolf.”

And there was much posturing. The “Wilson” cast carried themselves at least as well as did Daryl Zanuck in his day-to-day regimen.

Off to ebay. A bookseller sent for a dollar, three dollars shipping, the Mosley Zanuck Bio book, Hollywood’s Last Tycoon.

I’m enjoying it. It’s used. Its former book owner must have been a heavy smoker, ah, the memories triggered by its imbedded stink, first edition, 1984, stamped “not for resale.” Hm. “Not for Resale?” Perhaps it received that stamp when in England where a first sale doctrine applies, or doesn’t apply. I never remember which. (It doesn’t apply… In England when you resell your copy of the copyrighted item you pay a resale royalty to the copyright owner.)

16mm films for sale on ebay embraces (or does it reject?), the first sale doctrine (Ebay sellers are embracing it!). Bootlegged 16mm was a black market before video proliferation (1980). In 2004 what could be sillier than buying a degenerating color print of Powell/Pressburger’s “The Red Shoes” when you can scan through a vibrant 35mm transfer to DVD that you bought for 20 dollars?

I lost on “The Red Shoes,” always a blessing in disguise, for we are but stewards of what we possess. I took, instead, responsibility for ownership of an old faded “flat” print of a widescreen masterwork entitled “Oliver!”(exclamation point) on four big spools needing to be wound on reels for a savings of five dollars. Spend the five.

As a result of my attention being redrawn toward “Oliver, exclamation point,” a film I enjoy watching over and over again, I learned:

n That director Roman Polanski is refilming the Dickens book.
n That the practice of attractive peers seducing runaways into slavery is timeless, meaning timely, for it is still happens, to a more frightful extent, today.
n That the film’s morality repartee is spot-on ambiguous. (Witness the sublime lunacy level achieved in its last three shots. As Jack Wild’s Artful Dodger does his Lewis-Carroll-Alice-Pose for a crocodile-innocent Ron Moody, the camera turns to catch their infinite dance into the sunset, transitioning into the arrival of a carriage to the white house and the close-up apron strings embrace of Mark Lester by his Uncle’s wife? The End!
n That I am an extoller of the film’s cinema-craft, and
n That the flat cropping of the 2:1 wide screen canvas was actually done with some finesse.

Viewing Oliver! stimulates a concern, a life’s purpose. I see it as an end in itself, an achievement of vision. Musical theatre is a distillation of stories oft told. Musicals go through many stages of development. We begin a hundred years ago with Dicken’s source material. We wind up with exaggerated childish platitudes, “I’d do anything,” sung by children! We get integrated choreography, detailed continuity, plenty of medium shots with evocative detail, long shots with breathtaking detail, the butchers, the elevated train. The song, “consider yourself” is the vehicle for displaying every aspect of 19th century commerce in London. “Oliver!” has, as far as I can tell, two major sets, one of London’s main streets, by the Thames, and through the alley to the other, a spectacular swamp decaying group of tenement buildings. They are visually connected. Every inch of them is used.

The director loves medium and long shots. He gives no close-up for the end of “As Long as He Needs Me.” Carol Reed is a dispassionate observer. He’s a director who shows where things are. He went into the City of Post war Vienna and preserved its squalor in “The Third Man.” Here, in Oliver, he created the city. He also went to a Tavington Square Circle row of white houses for the “Who Will Buy?” segment. It is “the ordered world.” I imagine Sherlock Holms living in one of those town houses, Henry Higgins in another and of course, Oliver Twist’s gentleman uncle a few doors down.

My Michael Douglas Blog is called that because in its first post I thought it worthwhile to observe that Michael Douglas, the actor/producer returned to his family in the film, “Traffic,” but went with one of the other cast members in real life.

I think it also worthwhile to observe that the director of Oliver, which tells the story of a foundling saved by his uncle, is Carol Reed, castmember Oliver Reed’s uncle. Actually such oddities delight and fill me with faith in the serendipitous.

Oliver! is a lesson in filmmaking. Learn from it. Watching it after so many years made me want to see more. The medium was becoming the message, when it is really merely the delivery tool…

In my enthusiasm for 16mm films I ordered what turned out to be another Romulus Production, Moulin Rouge. Black and White. That’s the John Huston film that won best color cinematography. I haven’t seen it but it came, the only good news is that the color didn’t fade to pink. Descriptions don’t necessarily include what’s missing. A Black and White print -- (shhh) of a Technicolor film.

By the way, favorite recent filmmaking is Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and the Christopher Guest films. They grew from Robert Altman’s Mash.

Looking for another "Oliver!" I saw a few minutes of Little Shop of Horrors on TV. The lyrics, the concept, the creative film directing are great. Howard Ashman revived the musical. We are in his debt. He wrote The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.

My other recent dose of entertainer entertainment was through meeting Spats Donovan, Hooch Houlihan, Dennis, I don’t know his exact name, but he is a spot-on impressionist with a singing voice to match. I played piano for his “Let’s Be Frank” at the 13th Street Repertory Theatre. I subbed for Aya Misoshoru, his amazing pianist, arranger, music director. Patrick Jude did a dead-on older Frank Sinatra impression, Jim Davidson was Dean Martin, everyone is great. They re-enact scenes from Robin and the Seven Hoods.

Oh dear. I wound of bidding a winning a copy of that.

The Laurel and Hardy Bohemian Girl, is a mysterious filming of a light opera. In search of antagonistic lyrics for my song, Living in Freedom (Again) I included the line, “Bohemian girl bring your sunshine to me,” and, yes, I bidded on a copy of that as well.

So a little Ebay goes a long way.

Oh, one of my colleagues here just ordered a fisherman’s spear gun so he can reenact those silent film scenes from the James Bond Horror film, Thunderball. It’s OK. I hear he eats his catch, the creatures from the black lagoon.

"We must bless and not curse."

I hope you enjoyed your glimpse into My Ebay.

Let’s collaborate on creating new treasures!

Peter Dizozza

2004-07-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, late baby-boomers, and you know how crazy we are, another brilliant contemporary, lost!

Eric Douglas was friends with my friend, Jessica, some 20 years ago. It was always a pleasure to spend time with him. He was warm, energetic, helpful, funny and crazy. Parents found him suprisingly rude and this was on Candlewood Isle which, back then, was, well, a community most indulgent of the pranks of those late baby boomers. You'd think he'd have fit right in, but by then the 1970's were already a fading memory.

His awareness of a legend was compounded by his resemblance to it. His father's personality performance risks compounded the length and depth of the shadow over Eric. A man who follows his own code, sets his own standards, reveals his vulnerability as Van Gogh, how can you possibly live up to that without first buying the rights to One Flew Over the ... ???

There is seething anger and the feeling of alien presence in the appearance of Kirk Douglas in studio films of the 1940s. The man who put Kubrick behind a 70mm movie camera, who sang The Sheik of Araby with Hoagy Carmichael, so much more... Condolances to this liberating individual and his wonderful family.

I feel another example of: I lost touch with him and he probably could have used some friends.

He lived less than 20 blocks away.

Being once pro-choice on mental health I described the loss of Keith Feibush in uninvolved surface-terms of choice.

Well, I lost touch with him, too, indulging him... Another loss.

The full life.

Maybe all lifespans are the same length.

For some people, time moves faster than for others.

2004-07-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Glagolitic Storm

It's all Janecek on WKCR. He turns 150 tomorrow.

2004-06-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

The 1935 MGM film, Mad Love, is in syndication on TCM, Turner's Classic Movies Station. It was on this morning -- what a great way to start the day.

Cinema VII has a film library, too, The Big Tip Off with Richard Conte, a great Wire Service episode with George Brent (Forbidden Ground), Bob Hope with Judy Garland, Betty Hutton and Lana Turner recording a disc for the WWII boys (and girls) overseas, the scat jazzy white girls color short film, Big Sister Blues, I can't believe this stuff is in my brain...The Burl Ives Bluebeard TV episode, Mr. Walkie Talkie (a friendly Korean War comedy), One Half of the great WPA film, One Third of a Nation, and the bright silver nitrate print of Anthony Eisley's Lightningbolt with those maniacal Cinema VII edits...

It also administers the entire creative catalogue of films, shows and songs by Peter Dizozza.

2004-05-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

"They rejected the perfection. Entire crops were lost."

So we'll see how far we get here. Tony Hightower set up the cable I still pay 134 for today, and he did that a short time before Keyspan, formerly BUG, imploded the twin Greenpoint gas towers and those idiot paradise-seekers imploded the World Trade Towers, and as the second group of ruptured towers fell I was hooked back on tv, blessed in that the cable had not been severed. The alternative would have been no cable, no more hightower antenna, no more reception tv until, maybe, now when it is again possible to trade cable for rabbit ears.

Cable also gives us roadrunner internet connection which Tony needed. Tony was unemployed at the time, so that's how this apartment got cable. What I mean is, getting cable is a job. Much has changed in these years since, but I still have the overblown cable which means, while not seeing the whole thing, I can rewatch sizeable chunks of the Matrix Reloaded.

My sequel is The Matrix Rewritten, and in that I'll show what persistence achieves on a shoestring. Those brothers did, too, with Gina Gershon in Bound. I forgot that but thanks to quick internet, I looked up "matrix," with the internet movie database, the only website for film info I can think of off the top of my head, obviously introduced to me by Mr. Hightower, my actions being a function of info received.

By the way, my most recent selfquote of any personal resonance is simply, and I finger-wrote it in an arbitrary date page of my visor while listening to the beautiful NY Composer's Circle music at the 2nd Presbyterian Church,
"My writing is so crazy that I am in effect not a real person."

I read The New Yorker Magazine's Nellie McKay review. To summarize, 'cause my copy's gone now, she's playing the crazy card... Her anger's a generous muse... That brings me to my stingy safe-haven entrapment. Come appreciate my wealth of creative work, let it empower you. Alas, I'm too much in the way, having fun. What a mess, and I have so much talent, so much to offer...

These brothers made films. I would call them major cinema achievements. Yet my search, my surf, my safe-search-off search, stopped at the left-his-wife-for-a-dominatrix-and-explored-his-feminine side tattling. Oh.

Is a Matrix Reconciliation around the corner? Maybe the Ilsa exploration will be fruitful for all. Say, who's getting hungry for another bite of forbidden fruit?

Ah, the brothers are 7 to 9 years younger than I am.

Mr. Hightower's blogger is accessible at NervousNero.com.

Now back to the paradox at hand. Oh, it's late...

Peter Dizozza

2004-04-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

Amir Motlagh created Dino Aldino.
His most recent film is called Pumpkin Little

Hi, Before I lose your email in the compuserve autopurge, let's see, too. The pope watched breakdancing, I think, during his public convalesence.

Your film is a world unto itself. I basically love it.

My love of film would include you creating a breakdance segment that actually adds to the intensity of the breakdancer. I am fond of film segments, as the number of films increases. something like the dna molecule from which you can create the entire being.

The last scene of the old wb 42nd street was on tv. it's the song with new york images, ending with the producer sitting on the stage door steps outside, his energy sapped.

Busby Berkely also shot babes on broadway. a few minutes of that may elicit actual horror at how much continuous camera movement he forced upon the mgm cast. That realtime continuity of ensemble movement deserves dogma applause.

I never saw a cassavetes movie. His performances are so memorable and, although often portraying him as corrupted, also relatable. all i know of john... rosmary's baby, a depiction of the problems that arise when perfectly assembled (by bob evans) talents (polanski and abominably perfect cast) function full force, ignoring all concerns for protecting their audience from the void,
and the depalma sequel to Carrie with music by john williams... The Fury, cassavetes head floating to the floor after his explosion.

godard filmed breathless. i was bored by contempt. i never saw weekend. i didn't follow the politics in sympathy for the devil, only the discovery of how the rolling stones evolved the famous song from their best album.

truffaut wrote breathless and filmed 400 blows... somehow bertolucci continued truffauts alterego growing up in last tango...

romer? marienbad? who made claire's knee?

fassbinder hollywood style film, marriage of maria braun has unforgettably funny moments. i don't know if i've grown out of it. poor hanna shygulla, so wonderful a person, is he showing her corrupted, i think so, she is germany... are you familiar with any of this?

Are you writing scripts?

yours truly, Peter Dizozza
In a message dated 4/4/2004 4:47:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, dinoadino@hotmail.com writes:

Peter, very impressionistic meta mail. Um lets see, where to begin. Yes they are Philopino, well the main character Mike anyway. This film is very specific to location and linked directly to a suburbian immigrant experience. When i was growing up, this was the route of many good kids, and only some regained their composures. Not only was this for asian americans, but iranian americans, and so fourth. These groups usually didn;t associate with the prevalent white experiece(surfers,rockers,skateboarders etc..) and so found exceptence in ethnic, and more urban culture(hip-hop..etc) and so breakdancing in the early ninties in the most suburbian of places immerged. And a few people embraced that form and associated themselves with that lifestyle. At the same time, with the influx of all these races grouping, many started to click together and call themselves crews and party together. This is universal, but really a southern california phenominon. Party Crews, Tagging Crews and then just plan Street Gangs. Lots of Philopino Gangs, Vietnamese Gangs and the rest followed suit. Racial tensions was prevelent between white, black, mexican, and the rest(asian, afgan, middle eastern) and these new groups had become the new minority as they felt everyone was against them. Of course not all the kids went that route, but i still cant tell what gets you there, and the circumstance that takes you the other route, which in this case is usually typified as the "ideal student". The typical sterotype of asians being smart etc......

So with that context, when i came back to my Mom's house one weekend, i ran into Mike. ANd i was shocked that he still breakdanced(as i did in my youth with him) let alone applying to Grad school ,and when i saw that he was in a way a father figure, a mentor to kids that are at the same age as most kids getting involved with gangs i had to shoot it. There situation is like a commune, as opposed to the aggressive, more egotistical days of breakdancing. Its rather beautiful.

As for the the film itself. One thing you might of noticed is that the music is not in anyway hip-hop or the music they would dance to. This was a consious way of pulling it past the cliche and putting the situation out of the Urban home for which the form of breakdancing emerged. The openiing scenes are with his girlfriend, and i felt it was a very intimite and naturally action. Though this film is a doc, i shot some sequences to look like a narrative fiction, so as create a tension between persepctions. The shots are slow, and very rudimentary, so as not to add to much tricks to the pace of life. HIs voice over is also very specific, as he drops names of his youth, and nobody would know what he is talking about, but that intimacy, and very specific experience was what i was trying to get at. It doesn't really matter who for example "John" is, what you can sense his being and influence on Mike. This contrasts the general and sterotypical eight grade stories and puts his story into context. Mike started breakdancing in 8th grade, and in a way that has been the one stable through line in his life, and is a large aspect of his life. So decisions we make when where young, no matter how we might deny them, rearrange our life in ways beyond a certain control.

Now another thing i wanted to stress, was this new, post modern character of self. This group breakdances and they play guitar together, and so this was impossibly five, ten years ago. Breakdancers never played rock and hip-hop was all encompassing. The same with people who like heavy-metal, or indie rock, never do that, or this. Those lines have recently dissapatted. Identity is not the same for the youth as it was. That to me is very interesting.

As for the the sequences with 8th grade stories, the shots where in a way suppose to resemble the way we sat in our parents car, as they drove the same routes everday, and how the eyes wander around. The breakdancing sequences in those shots are from Mikes 8th grade and i will tell you something else, i myself am in the film. You just have to find me. And no, my brother is not in the film as i am an only child, and who the fuck knows what that means.

The reason Peter, that i didn't have more breakdancing was because i didn't want this to be a showcase for the dancing. I could have shoot and edited there best moves, instead of the ones i chose which are not the most gracefull but shots that are practice, struggle, persistence which drives there obsession.

In your other email you said those other films reminded you of Mean Streets in a way. That along with ALice Doesnt Live Here are the only two films i really love of Martin Scorsese. Mean Streets was in a way a complete ripoff of my favorite American film maker, the late great John Cassavettes(the man was brilliant). The other filmmakers i really like are French in origin, Godard, Truffant, Romer(My Night at Mauds), and Fassbinder(crazy, productive workhorse) and a few others. I rarely watch movies these days, i have to get over that.

Well, sorry for the length of this letter, i really don't know if its cohesive since i'm to lazy to read it. I think i got some things out, but skipped around quite a bit and for the grammar and spelling, God awful. But if you have any thing else to ask, or comment on, or wonder about, please feel free.

This electronic age is amazing Peter. I have never met you, we live on the other side of the country, different ages, experiences, and i have your CD, you have my films, and there is dialogue. Truly amazing.

amir

>From: Dizozza600@cs.com

>To: dinoadino@hotmail.com
>Subject: Re: Two films, a half hour.
>Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 12:37:11 EDT
>
>The camera didn't often move, the frame was set and action sometimes crossed
>its path. It allowed for brilliant composition and an odd way, a real way, of
>seeing the world through the limitations of our periphery. The world is of a
>group of people that I can not readily identify. Asian in that they're
>hawaiian or from the phillipine's originally? The opening scene with the film
>going out of synch was disorienting, the sound seemed to improve when it went out
>of synch. The crossover for when a group of friends becomes a gang, and the
>distinction of heirarchy, I suppose, that causes some to act on the will of the
>leader, and the possibility of market domination, that was a memorable and sad
>depiction, a degeneration of neighborhood. Those houses always look so
>innocent. I would love some more breakdancing segments, what was there was
>beautiful and the shooting of them, with the ending showing the sluggish breakdancer,
>was cool and aloof. I'm a fan of Robert Marshall's recent fast shutter speed
>camera choreography (is that who filmed "Chicago?), you could create
>something both flashy and seemingly incidental that will send the movie into the realm
>of musical cinema. Frederick Weisman has a musically choreographed way of
>documenting the deranged world of titicut follies. These are first thoughts.
>It's daylight savings time here. I like hearing people's memories of eighth
>grade with the still graphic design. This film assembles of wealth of beautiful
>images. Enhance my viewing experience. Tell me your thoughts of
>this...Thank you. Is your brother in the film? In a message dated 4/3/2004 6:40:50 PM
>Eastern Daylight Time, dinoadino@hotmail.com writes:
>>Thanks for the watching Peter.
>>
>> Please reply about the DVD of Pumkin Little when you watch that, as that is
>>my essential style when i'm completely behind the camera, like the film
>>Still Lover. I would like to know if you find similiarites between all the
>>works.
>>
>> amir
>>
>>
>>
>>
Hi, Amir,

I saw the two Motlagh films, Dino Adino and Love @ 11:47. They are well made and they had a realism that transcended the notion that you might actually be in them. It looks so much in the first one like the filmmaker is behind the camera.

The split screen of the second worked well. The right screen showed the fixed idea, either the cracker box or the foooot, or her... I realize there is a film with four pictures by the Leaving Las Vegas filmmaker... I think I saw some of it. Was there a film called Wicked in the 70's that employed that device?

Although both your films are location specific time capsules, they are expressing an ageless condition that one is always in danger of slipping into.

Now that we've met Dino, his character can appear more interactively elsewhere.

These films were very likeable and watchable. Not having watched those mtv reel documentaries, what were they called?, my only frame of reference was Martin Scorsese's basic film, Mean Streets. You have a similar willingness to observe unpleasant things happening to basically likeable people. There is an element of humor prevailing.

Thank you. I look forward to screening these at the next opportunity.

Ah, "Shipping the Satellite." The content could be humerous and outlandish and the people who performed it on that one occasion are great. I hope to one day have a listenable recording. peter

In a message dated 4/2/2004 10:37:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, dinoadino@hotmail.com writes:

Hi Peter, I listened to your CD a few times, and low and behold, i woke up singing lyrics from it. Here is my impressions.

Subversively Poppy. ALmost seems to have a little punk rock asethic, mixed with musical theater and Frank Zappa. Very mixed refreneces and intellegent. It also has a sweetness that is very evident. The production was very good, mininal, but that helps i think. It is a unique concept albumn.

The only thing that i(my opinion is worthless) didn't like was the bonus tracks, as i thought adding the live performances only took away from the the tightness and listenability of the rest of the albumn.

Another thing that really impressed me was the way the albumn works as a whole. It goes through all the tracks as one and doesn't get tiring at all.

Overall, this work is very impressive. Keep up the work, as i know from your site, you will do just that.

amir motlagh

>From: Dizozza600@cs.com
>To: dinoadino@hotmail.com
>Subject: Re: an offer you might refuse
>Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 10:24:18 EST
>
>Dear Amir, I also have the tape you sent The WAH Center. I look forward to
>seeing it and the dvd this weekend. Thank you! Peter In a message dated
>3/31/2004 7:02:19 PM Eastern Standard Time, dinoadino@hotmail.com writes:
>>Hi Peter,
>>
>> Got your CD. Am excited to listen to it. I sent you out a DVD as well,
>>though you got the one before the packaging, sorry, but at least its numbered.
>>
>>amir
>>
>>
>>
>>

2004-03-23T15:12:00.000-08:00

Has storytelling ever been more palatable?

These Dan Brown debunking books offer interesting concepts which vaporize, somehow, at the end. I read Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code, and I found, on our common hall radiator, a copy of his Deception point which I'm currently reading.

Here's what I remember of the first two: The lead character was able to successfully parachute from an ascending helecopter into the Tiber river. That description is too delightful for words. Also, the story imploded into its plot -- I'm thinking of the Angels and Demons illuminati conspiracy. By revealing it as a hoax, enacted virtually solo, the author is one step from admitting that it is the product of his own imagination. And does he, perhaps, pander to my desire to say, "Leaders protect us from their own attacks."

The DaVinci Code leaves behind no memory except the feeling that I couldn't put it down until I had finished it. I kept thinking he was going to say something interesting. He must have. Oh, the grail's underneath I.M. Pei's glass pyramid. The buried apocraphal writings tell the true history of the outrageous behaviouralist, Christ. Oh, that's right, Christ's progeny are uniting still, they are the real sangreal, that most precious sacred blood.... Oh yes, Matthew's Gospel, first paragraph, establishes Jesus descending through Joseph from the house of David, and in the second paragraph describes Mary's immaculate conception.

Both books are written to occur within 24 hour segments, which enhances their urgency. I suppose part of my disbelief and awe arises from that achievement. Also, the wind is described blowing an increasingly familiar crew over a glacier in the page I've reached in Deception Point and I enjoy that too.

The theme of books left on the common lobby radiator seems to be the arctic. The last one I found there was Smilla's Sense of Snow. That one revealed a tendency toward leaving us in the snow near a living meteor, comparable to the realization of a dead end in the foreign film (pre Todd Graff reworked) version of "Vanishing."

I remember an Aristotelian requirement for tragedy being that it occurs within 24 hours.

In other news of pop culture:

The movie, 2010, was on TV. HAL the computer, by cooperating with orders, is redeemed. 2010 was released in 1984.

Winged Migration was on the Starz channel. Those geese are stars! One species travelling earth's 12,500 miles, reveals the true meaning of the term, "Bi-Polar."

Coming soon, the new TV show, "Soul Search" tm...

2004-02-01T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Turner Classic Movie Cable Station broadcasted the 1941 WB film, Dive Bombers
What about the smoking? Everyone in the film connects with a cigarette. Shockingly technicolor footage makes sense when the support of the us airforce is so apparent. The footage is authentic. The comraderie plays almost romantically. As always, Alexis Smith bears the brunt of female intervention. I'm not sure if she has any better outcome than in leaving the men to their own concerns, our concerns, our country's..., and turning for masculine attention to THE MARINES.

The airforce G tests have increased dramatically, but then, so have the physiques, thanks to what, less smoking?

The film's other female appearance is comic relief as one of the wives attempts to get her alimony and finding her husband in the sick room; eventually he must remain there after he's exposed there to someone with measles. His language-comedian friend has dinner with his wife, meeting her at the familiar apartment housing development she need only mention by name, the parker towers? Her outfits anticipate Marisa Tomei's in MCVinny.

According to the fine headline review of this film, which considers Flynn's possibly traitorous involvement, was it therefore not San Diego but rather Pennsicola Florida where the authentic air/naval base footage was shot?

A performance of Warner Publishing's "What's New" plays in the background during one of the neglect-the-woman-but-attend-to-their-lipstick-dispenser scenes. It is a beautiful green enameled gold lipstick dispenser.

My Diana attributes incremental technological advancements of the last 60 years to the alien visitation at Roswell. How else can we explain the computer chip?

Another good early airplane film, released eight years earlier in the wild 1930s when it was Howard Hughes running air traffic control: Flying Down to Rio.

2004-01-29T08:07:00.000-08:00

“Not all the costume changes in the world will matter if the messenger has squandered his treasure by altering his message to suit the convenience of the audience." Edward T. Oakes.

2003-12-19T13:41:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

I received a year-end newsletter-in-a-holiday card and, rather than just copy from it, I'll attempt one here.

Almanac, 2004:
Earth's northern hemisphere's shortest day approaches, suggesting a sun birth, something along the lines of, "For unto us a sun is born..."
The days enlarge through the winter, but December is named for the 10th month (sept, oct, nov, dec)? So 11 is Jan and 12 is Feb, and this year's 12th is a leap year. Happy upcoming birthday, leap year babes! It is also our real New Year's Eve!

As for now, Happy Kwanikamas! (tm antifolk.net)

Cinema VII has a handy review of year 2003 at http://www.cinemavii.com/Events/EventHorizon.htm.
May I here highlight the wedding of Diana and Peter? Remember, to those who think it will never happen, stay alive!

This year's Jean Cocteau offshoot, the ballet with dialogue, "The Marriage at The Statue of Liberty," is now available to help fundraise the statue's reopening. Post production of four colorful performances has resulted in a watchable video/dvd!

Olive Juice Music released "Songs of The Golf Wars," which has received favorable year-end attention by The Yale Herald and London based TrakMARX.

Now, when shall we see each other? -- perhaps at one of the following events appearing in the near sunrise event horizon:

INVITETONIGHT
Yes, there's a reading at the Lambs Club, and I'm sure Don Flynn, the author, will benefit from your feedback. It's an out of the bag secret... it's at 7, it's called Cleopatra's Eyes, the readers include Diana Dizozza and Peter Dizozza... 3 West 51st, 5th floor...

Friday, December 19th, the first night of the 8 days of candle light and
"I feel like a spinning top or a dreidel. The spinning don't stop when you LEAVE the cradle, you just slow down..." (Don MacLean)
I'm the collie at the Lambs, 3 West, 2m. 5th floor. 8pm

SATURDAY at midnight at SideWalk, 94AveA I'm playing Sinatra songs with Eric LaCaine, and You are Singing so bring your sinatra songs.... "you keep saying you got something for me, something you call love but confess...."

and Earlier that Saturday Evening:
Olive Juice Music and Boog City Holiday Party
Sat. December 20, 9:00 p.m., $7
The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
NYC
13 NYC musical acts reinterpret the classic holiday album
A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector
---------------
One more show: I'm doing a set before Jon Berger on Tuesday, December 23rd at SideWalk, 94AveA, see you there at 9!
-------------
here's the rest of the Phil Spector Show Info:
White Christmas Derek Richmond
Frosty The Snowman Bad Teenage Moustache
The Bells Of St. Mary Knot Pinebox
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town Aaron Seven
Sleigh Ride Peter Dizozza
Marshmallow World The Leader
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus Phoebe Kreutz
Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Schwervon!
Winter Wonderland Trouble Dolls
Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers Recording Angels
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) The Domestics
Here Comes Santa Claus Brer Brian
Silent Night Huggabroomstick
With readings of Jewish-themed work by Jewish poets
Nada Gordon, Bob Holman, Erica Kaufman, and Ian Wilder
We'll also be lighting the menorah for the second night of Chanukah
A portion of the proceeds will go to a charity helping to prevent domestic violence.
Hosted by Olive Juice Music head Matt Roth and
Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum
For further information call 212-842-BOOG (2664) or
email editor@boogcity.com
Directions: F train to Second Avenue, or 6 train to Bleecker Street. Venue
is at foot of 1st Street, between Houston and Bleecker streets, across from
CBGBs.

Yours truly,
Peter Dizozza

2003-12-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

I went to Orin Buck’s new residence on East 49th Street tonight to dub his video of "The Marriage at the Statue of Liberty" (TMATSOL) the latest addition to the Cinema VII Catalogue of projects. For the past three days I've enjoyed editing the different tapes. There are three, two are of the last performance, the other, Orin's, from the performance the night prior. Both nights contained and lacked different elements of music, movement, dialogue and song. By editing the two performances, there was the possibility of assembling a complete version of the play.

The digital formats copy, full length, into the computer, and the VHS dub of Orin's rather professionally shot tape copy into the computer 3 minutes at a time, which made the assembling process somewhat primitive, like editing in 35mm with 400 foot reels of film.

I was editing in my old fashioned way with the modern computer system. Before computers, I edited film that had sound already printed on it, recorded on a magnetic stripe, or, preferably, visible to the eye on an optical stripe. Film sound is ahead of its image. In digital video the sound is married to the image. I don’t think it has to be. A program, proprietary in that it must create its own files, called Final Cut, has separable sound/video capabilities. I've chosen, instead, to edit a big "avi" file, perhaps the product of Avid, that familiar word in film production over the past 20 years, and I'm using a program called Videowave. I use the program, maybe, because it came with the purchase of my videocard, and maybe I like it because its video graphics have film sprockets.

As to why bother, two reasons, the first being that I wrote to our Mayor suggesting that the show, A Modern Ballet with Dialogue, could be used to assist in fundraising for the reopening of the Statue of Liberty. The second is a phenomenon created by the dance troupe involved. They performed the last of their three dances in blacklight, assembling the statue with different pieces in white.

Being a "hands on" videographer, if I am also the subject of the video I tend to make horrible mistakes that result in faulty preservation, the best example being forgetting to press a record button.

The last night was the best night, of course, and there are two videos of the last night, both incomplete. About 40 minutes before the performance I pressed record on the one-hour tape in the camera used by my wife, Diana, giving me the first 20 minutes to work with. Roy's fiancée, Linda, has a public access cable show so I got her tape at first off the TV, and eventually from her video camera. She chose random moments to video but got about half the show, perfect to splice in with Orin's complete tape, with Diana's adding additional angles. Orin, however, although not already familiar with the show, did a good job. He laid mikes on the floor, and he even taped the whole show! I needed his original to match the originals of the more arbitrarily taped versions.

This essay is called Incidental Terrorism...

2003-11-18T10:26:00.000-08:00

Ah, what part of myself shall I choose to reveal today? ?

2003-10-23T12:34:00.000-07:00

Finally, something of more than purely personal news, a box of art with a stray piece by Rockwell Kent went from 20 to 16000 at the public administrator auction yesterday. Thanks to Diana, I got the signed music by Richard Strauss. No one knew who Dwight Frye was. The direct prints from the complete alice woodcuts were a pleasure to behold. The Knabe piano was a great one. Furniture, chandeliers,
all the ghosts were there.

2003-08-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

Anything can happen on the olivejuicemusic.com message board.

Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by zzzzzzzzz -- is he sleeping? on 8/19/2003, 5:01 pm

Record labels and musicians, want to get your releases reviewed here? We need review copies of your CDs and LPs for our reviews section. Please contact us at reviews@weirdomusic.com

Pro-choice on mental health by Peter Dizozza is a weird CD. In fact, we don't know what to think of it. Is this guy serious? According to his website "he devotes his working life to creating innovative and stimulating entertainment and helping his audience develop confidence, enlightenment and serenity through self-expression". He can't really sing and the 'mini-plays' on this CD ramble on without making much sense. So check it out if you're into really weird stuff, but don't blame us if you fall asleep! (added august 2003)

Link: weirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweirdweird

Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by Wide Awake Producer on 8/19/2003, 5:47 pm, in reply to "Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

That's not very nice. Peter doesn't deserve to be dissed like that. That cd is what it is. To call yourself Weidomusic and knock that cd for being weird is a weird in itself. Working on that thing was hard. Things are much more complex than meets the eye. The music itself somehow combines Sondheim with early New Wave. It all seems a little confusing until you hear Peter's off the cuff monologue about his friend.
I'm proud of the work that went into that & the results. If you want to sleep to it, well good luck, but I know one thing: A critic is a critic is a critic is a critic (repeat & fade).

Link: M M Musica

Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by Oblivious on 8/19/2003, 9:34 pm, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

I like Pro Choice... its inventive, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable. I love the wit and humour engendered in it. I think that dude has not a clue and instead of admitting he isnt smart enough to understand what is an essential antifolk album they cut it down in their snide little way. Weird is a way of saying "I dont understand".

A Champion!
Posted by fenton lawless on 8/20/2003, 12:35 am, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

Peter Dizozza is a champion. A first rate guy and a wonderful musician.

(no subject)
Posted by peter on 8/20/2003, 10:40 am, in reply to "A Champion!"

Thank you for the kind words.
I prefer that the CD get reviewed.

What people say is up to them.

I sent it to weirdo cause they include raymond scott, daniel johnston, henry mancini and frank zappa on their short artist list.

Link: review page

Re: Nothing wrong with being weird!
Posted by MMM on 8/20/2003, 11:17 am, in reply to "(no subject)"

Looking forward to your show during the fest Peter!!!!
Wed. Aug. 27-7:30-Lippe
8- Breck Alan
8:30- Peter Dizozza CD Release Party
9- Patsy Grace
9:30-Randi Russo
10-Danny Kelly
10:30-Simple
11- Toby Goodshank
12-Phoebe Kreutz

Re: Nothing wrong with being weird!
Posted by Meow on 8/21/2003, 12:56 am, in reply to "Re: Nothing wrong with being weird!"

Peter has a hot wife
Have your wife reviewed at my site

Link: Wife swap

hi
Posted by Peter Dizozza on 8/21/2003, 6:54 pm, in reply to "Re: Nothing wrong with being weird!"

Thanks. There's really no comparison.
PARENTHETICALLY:
I can't help but find the generic meow link (it was for porn.com) funny since, aside from meowing in the Polar Bear Song, I did send my PConMHCD to be reviewed by a site with the generic weirdomusic.com name (and I love the music they list there.).

Anyway, I take exception to the suggestion that spouses could just send each other, like CDs or other possessions, somewhere to be reviewed.

I wonder if there's a site, asshole.com, to send… oh, of course, for images of sodomy. Forget it.

This post provides a forum, thank you very much, for a current event issue worthy of comment,

That poster for a porn site currently up at Times Square, did you see it? with the slogan, “who said they cleaned up Times Square,” plastered across the body of a menstruating woman. It means what, that she’s dirty?

Actually, the poster woman is dressed in that slightly stupid shade more suggestive than the “Guilty Pleasures” style of haute couture.

Having been alerted to the conclusion suggested by that ad poster, I take exception to it.

As for the other stuff, I don’t know how to define it but I KNOW it when I see it, why, because I ate from
The Tree of Knowledge!

Re: hi
Posted by Oblivious on 8/21/2003, 9:56 pm, in reply to "hi"

yeah so did I then I drank from the River of Forgetfulness to wash it down and hence my nick
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Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by Weirdomusic on 8/26/2003, 10:13 am, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

Yup, I admit it: I don't understand what Peter's CD is all about. Has nothing to do with me being a smartass or whatever. Maybe the language barrier is a problem here (English is not my native tongue). I honestly tried to make sense of what is going on - but this is just not my cup of tea. Peter seems a very nice guy (hi Peter!) but for now I'll stick to my conclusion.
Link: Weirdomusic.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by peter on 8/26/2003, 5:00 pm, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

Hi, Marco, wow, you're writing from the Netherlands...
Well, if you know about this message board you probably know about the music info-sites connected with it but here goes,

antifolk.net,
antifolkhomestead.com,
unicornsounds.com
this site's olivejuicemusic.com
new! antimatters.com
also, I first heard some of the music your site highlights through
http://thefeveredbrainofradiomike.com/

Thanks for writing back.

Peter

Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by Weirdomusic on 8/27/2003, 4:15 am, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."
Hey Peter, it was pure coincidence that I ended up on this site - I was checking which sites link to me.
Anyway, I'll take a look at some of the links you suggest.. and yes, maybe I must pop your CD into my player again for another listen...
best wishes,
Marco

Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you...
Posted by Peter on 8/27/2003, 3:21 pm, in reply to "Re: Send it to Weirdomusic.com why don't you..."

Wow, the internet. A great communication resource!
and for another listen, this time pop the PConMH cd in the computer for the hidden MPEG files...

although the film they're from remains unfinished...

2003-07-30T07:29:00.000-07:00

I dreamt Nicole Kidman and Mick Jagger were married and lived in an apartment we visited, nicely laid out; she had her own room. I wanted to respectfully acknowledge her film career but she suddenly dismissed me for a moment of privacy. I rejoined Diana who was walking (through a hall along an indoor pool) with Julia, another woman friend of Mr. Jagger. They were commenting on the ugliness of the art. I liked it. Peter

Say, those high fallutin' Sparks are back with a new album and a concert in the park!

2003-07-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

"Thank you mama for the nine months you carried me through."

I lost a particularly detailed blogger here. Remember to save your work. I cannot recreate it. Why must my brain be so parsimonious about expressing details?

We're back from our Honeymoon on the independent island of St. Kitts where we stayed at Ottley's Plantation Inn and had a wonderful amazing time.

Eric Lippe called back this morning. I asked him to photograph our wedding (Thank you Julia Schell, Bob Strain, Kathleen Sweeney, Tyr Throne and Orin Buck).

Eric was in Tennessee documenting the showtoppling performances of the Trachtenburgs, Langhorn Slim and James Brown.

He also said that Aaron Wilkenson passed away. I remember Aaron as a songwriting, guitarplaying singer with a uniquely south western US style, he also ran lights and sound at SideWalk for many sets including a few of my own. He was always a welcome presence and his youthful condition in no way prepared one for its organic demise.

(I spoke with Jon Berger since then, who reminded me that Aaron was also once part of the band, The Moldy Peaches. )

A substance abuse doctor is visiting St. Kitts to further research of that pro-choice spiral with assistance from monkeys drafted from the rain forest.

Tourists plied with rum also assist.

Gleeful paranoics agree, the island's veterinary school and the animal testing facility do whatever they can to keep funded. Help stamp out substance abuse!

2003-06-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

Fibrillations synchronize into a pulse pounding steadily as the story progresses.

2003-06-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

The rain pounded down harder than I'd ever heard seen or felt it, and it was, after all, the day of the shower.

2003-04-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

I know I don't have much to add. I do have some innovative new material in the form of songs I've been performing live. The need to watch television for the news was quite time-consuming. Other activities involve getting married, soon. I've also completed post production for Songs of The Golf Wars, my new CD.

It's great to hear Kenny Davidsen's CD, Goodnight Baby, which is production perfect. I hope you like Queen. I hope you like songs getting stuck in your head. He's phenomenal, and rather personal.

Filmmakers can be powerful. I saw Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger (1986) and saw sown in it the seeds of war for 2003.

2003-03-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

The Last Two Jews in Kabul by the man who wrote Harry and Tonto directed by George Ferencz at La MaMaETC is sure fire entertainment with a spectacular set.

2003-03-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Matthew Barney presents, "Find the Orgasm," the cycle of genitals rising in beaded tapioca and petrojel vomit.
with Norman Mailer, Richard Serra, Ursula Andress and the footless paraplegic.
Running through the spiral path, white with pink and green pale colors mostly, with the satanic black and red satin flags reserved for the black plumaged pigeons decorating the back room with their droppings.

The leopard woman, the dropped gonads, the silliniess. Where's the orgasm?
The shimmer of video images white based against a white background.
Alarmingly plain.

2003-02-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

I received this correspondence over the weekend:

Subj: To Michael Douglas esq
Date: 2/9/2003 8:31:42 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk
To: dizozza600@cs.com
Received from Internet

To Michael Douglas esquire dizozza600@cs.com
Dear Mr Douglas,or should I say Michael Danielovich Demsky ?I am writing to you in earnest as a fellow Russian- Jewish - origin film maker for help !
You apparently have been involved in the putting together of a film about John Drewe .
John Drewe was charged and served a prison sentence in England for defrauding the Tate Gallery as you well know !
Before he was caught I had been assisting his ex partner Batsheva Goudschmidt to let out their house at Rotherwick Road,London NW11.
I stumbled on his fake paintings whilst organising the rooms in their house as I had been left keys to the whole house and one had the paintings in it !
I had moved the paintings to the garage in the house to protect them as there were to be tenants afterwards.
Whilst sorting out and organising the property I also stumbled on M16 top secret papers whoch showed dealings over the sales of weapons to China.
It seems as if Drewe was involved in spy-type activities as well as fake painting production !
Soon after my discovery of the fake paintings and the spy papers my own house was burnt and Drewe is still suspect in regards to this !
The police put him in a line -up but according to the New York Times article on him he had shaven off his moustache and beard and could not be identified !
For eight years since the fire at my house at 49 Lowfield Road,London NW6 I have not been paid out any monies by Zurich insurance company and I have never been given a letter as to why this has been the case !
This has placed my and my children ,now in Israel :Amir 25,Yaron 21,Tali 15 in a continuous state of homelessness and they have not been able to come and stay with me !
Yaron is a paratrooper and teaches hand- to -hand combat and Amir has been in two wars and they need a break !
Kindly help me please .
Yours sincerely,
David Konigsberg Perry C/O 17 Heathcroft,Welgarth Road,London NW117HW & email :megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk and mobile tel 078903 44970

Subj: Re: To Michael Douglas esq
Date: 2/9/2003 1:58:11 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Dizozza600
To: megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk
Dear Mr. Perry, I will post your letter on my journal if you'd like but I have no direct communication with the celebrated and talented actor/director/producer Michael Douglas. I was friends with his step brother, Eric but I have not seen Eric in about 10 years. Yours truly, Peter Dizozza

Subj: Re: To Michael Douglas esq
Date: 2/9/2003 2:46:25 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk
To: Dizozza600@cs.com
Received from Internet
Thanks...very kind of you..!!!..David

Subj: Re: To Michael Douglas esq
Date: 2/9/2003 3:03:18 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Dizozza600
To: megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk
Oh, is it all right with you to publicly post the entire email as it was sent to me? See below for the content. Peter

Subj: Re: To Michael Douglas esq
Date: 2/10/2003 5:03:57 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: megaworldd@yahoo.co.uk
To: Dizozza600@cs.com
Received from Internet: click here for more information

Sure thing ! Have a nice day and you're doin' a very good deed !.David in the UK

2003-02-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

Ah, I heard a good song, and why have I never heard it before? I don't know. It's how old?

This is a comment about Queen, one of the few music bands with connections to Zoroastrianism. They sing, "Leave it in the lap of the Gods," a statement both funny and emotionally resonant. Kenny Davidsen said, the great Queen album is called Sheer Heart Attack. The song I always listened to, coming in at under three minutes, is Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy. They wrote performed and recorded so well that one's imagination can't help but go wild from listening to them. They are a testiment to excellence. The good song, the companion piece to GOFLB, is called, "Killer Queen."

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films return to the film forum. He's another dead overproducer. One of my favorite films is the Marriage of Maria Braun. Many of his films have great titles like, "The Year of Thirteen Moons" and "Ali, Fear Eats the Soul."

2003-01-29T13:40:00.000-08:00

Amy Philips' writing about the antifolk compilations is at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0305/phillips.php. The Dufus song she mentions is noticably exceptional. She draws worthwhile attention to Schwervon. Hooray for innovative songwriting!

2003-01-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

I heard the Jazz Band, Mr. Kite, cover Lennon & MaCartney's Mother Nature's Son at DUMBO's Redhouse. Cheryl Crow also covered it for a film called I Am Sam. It's a pretty song.

2003-01-07T12:36:00.000-08:00

I don't resent Catch Me If You Can.

I resent About Schmidt and I'm beginning to question the futility in Election. The director is also responsible for Citizen Ruth.

Mr. Nicholson is playing a former Treblinka Commandant masquerading as a Nebraskan husband/father and retired insurance actuary, hence the title. -- oh, did we cut that scene?

The memorable musical moment is by Satie.

In generating an audience for this noble effort, which is a matter of perfect timing, congratulations to the marketing people.

2002-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

By the way, those plastic green water bucket tree stands? -- collapsable, and nothing says Bunuellian Christmas better than an evergreen toppling on santa's elves as they're giftwrapping. Tim-bur. Resurrect it, redecorate it and tie it to a picture hook on the wall. It is beautiful again, even more so away from the radiator.

2002-12-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

This wake a week pattern has got to break. Richard Pretzer, Deceased as of December 18th, 2002.

2002-12-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

Christmas trees that are identified as Frazier Firs are very traditional looking. In fact, they have that artificial tree look, but they are real. Put 7-Up in the stand. They'll drink it up. Oh to have a clipped tree, seperated from its undergrowth, vicegripped into a plastic green platform. It smells great and gives the apartment that home feeling. It's right next to the iron curlicued morrocan daybed. Now all we need is the HO train set circling the little town at the base, and a glowing embered fireplace.

Rosebud.

2002-11-13T12:38:00.000-08:00

Finally, a new post to put into the past the CD burner problem. However, this post is a followup to a post of the past regarding "two in one through the subway turnstyle." I think it was Abbey Hoffman in Steal This Book who first suggested it and I referred to it as common practice by John and Sally in the novel, The Resurrection.

Maki is 8 months pregnant. She went with her husband together through the turnstyles, and, as it was their second offense, they were HANDCUFFED AND TAKEN TO PRISON. Members of the New York City Police Department kept her safely off the streets and in jail for over three hours. Her husband was in jail for nearly 24 hours. Dear Members of the New York City Police Department, does it help jaywalkers to run over them for crossing the street against a red light?

My 8/19/2001 post includes, deep within it, my two-in-one-turnstyle experience.

(Aha. Note that Blogger's archive does not work for me, nor for you, perhaps. I have a michaeldouglas.blogspot mirror site at http://www.cinemavii.com/MichaelDouglas.htm.)

2002-10-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

Here's the rest of the CeQuadrat CD maker correspondence.

Subj: RE: CeQuadrat
Date:10/30/2002 2:29:11 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
To:Dizozza600@cs.com
Peter,
With the problem you are describing you will need to contact Windows Media. I am sorry but the CeQuadrat can not help you.
Good Luck

Subj: Re: CeQuadrat
Date: 10/30/2002 3:08:13 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Dizozza600
To: Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
Dear Ms. Upton, Please, you can help me if you can tell the computer my pre-installed program is OK. Windows Media Player is not doing shutting down my CeQuadrat program unless you told them to do it. Someone in your programming area came up with this unregistered shutdown device. Peter Dizozza

Subj: RE: CeQuadrat
Date: 10/31/2002 8:02:58 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
To: Dizozza600@cs.com
I am sorry this is not something I can do for you. If you need technical support for the version of software you will need to pay for support. It is a $35.00 per incident charge. When calling in we will get your information and arrange for a call back. Please call 408-934-7283, for the support on this software. You could also check the web site for your product at http://www.cequadrat.de/english/support/top5.php3 , this site has all the updates along with trouble shooting tips. I am sorry but I do not have any knowledge about this product. Again your best resource for the assistant you are asking for would come from Windows Medias Player.

Subj: Re: CeQuadrat
Date: 10/31/2002 10:08:13 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Dizozza600
To: Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
Someone at your office must know what I am talking about. Please ask. Peter

RE: CeQuadrat Date:10/31/2002
10:38:55 AM Eastern Standard Time
From:Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
To:Dizozza600@cs.com
NO I do not have anyone I can ask. I am sorry I can not assist you. I have given you your support options. Sorry.

Subj: Re: CeQuadrat
Date: 10/31/2002 11:12:35 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Dizozza600
To: Kathie.Upton@roxio.com
Oops, sorry. Roxio is responsible for the identification of an unregistered version of CeQuadrat's CD burning software on an old computer that came with the software. Congratulations on a piracy device that also causes planned obsolesence. How silly of me to think I have a right to software that came preinstalled on my computer. Either someone there knows what I'm writing about or I am not really corresponding with anyone at Roxio. Some support.

2002-10-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

Ah, I see this is the blogger where I referred to the CD burning capabilities lost upon downloading windows media player beta 9x.

Here's today's correspondence from Roxio, the microsoft media player affiliated company which coincidentally bought the German cd burning program, CeQuadrat, which compaq included on my machine back in 1999.

"Thank you for your letter, my name is Kathie and I have been assigned to provide you with the information you need to get help with the issues you addressed in your letter.

"When CeQuadrant is preloaded the support that you may be entitled to on complimentary bases would come directly from the company that furnished you with the software. In your case the support would come from Compaq. There phone number is 800-652-6672.

"You can also go to http://www.cequadrat.de/english/support/top5.php3 , this has all updates that are available for the software along with trouble shooting tips. This is a free update.

"If you would like to speak to one of our Technicians it would be at a $35.00 per incident charge and we would have to arrange for a call back. To speak to Technical Support you will need to call 408-934-7283.

"Again I want to thank you for taking the time to write us.

"Best regards,

"Kathie Upton
Customer Service Representative
roxio
The Digital Media Company
6900 Wedgwood Road Suite 200
Maple Grove, MN 55311 USA
Customer Service: 408-946-4949
Fax: 763-494-7303
kathie.upton@roxio.com
www.roxio.com
NASDAQ:"ROXI"
Featuring the Best-Selling CD-Recording Software in the World"

I wrote back as follows:

Dear Kathie,

Thank you for your response!

You actually may be able to help me from where you are because I downloaded Windows Media Player 9 Beta and that notified you, meaning Roxio, of the existence on my computer of the old CeQuadrat software. My compaq computer is over three years old and I suppose it is to your software's credit that it continues to run well and usefully. I just need your permission, now, to run it. Please provide the information I need to assure my computer that it is OK to run the program. Please send my computer something (the way it obviously sent something to you through the media player and then you sent something back to it) to let my computer know that I have the software legally and that it doesn't have to arrest itself or me as a result of my purchase of a computer.

I hope that this proiblem I am having is not the result of roxio/CeQuadrats dissatisfaction with compaq, in that you feel they have not fairly compensated you for including your software in their computer. In that case I don't know what to do. I will notify them of your position and how it affects their customers.

Sincerely,

Peter Dizozza

2002-10-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm typing in the words of Beck Hansen which appear on my Visor.
"I don't want to be in a situation like some of these musicians who might as well not have a front door -- anybody can walk in and see everything. I'm about making art and music and performing. I'm not a big believer in the everything's-on-the-table philosphy. I don't understand these people who overexpose themselves. What kind of a life is that?" uh.

"I'm about making art and music and performing" is a good reminder for one's life purpose. Is it in answer to the question, Who are you? No, it answers, "What are you about?" About face!

Right now, my life is about playing piano and teaching everyone their singing parts for Salad Days!

This is while other things go on about me.

By the way, I lost all CD burner capabilities by downloading Windows Media Player Beta 9x...

And why doesn't timewarnercable carry the UN channel (78 in Manhattan)?

2002-10-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Is the woman on the phone arguing with her errant marginal lover who keeps getting in trouble with the law, or with her errant 6 year old son, who keeps stealing the other child's pokeman?

2002-10-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

Spike Lee re-earns his reputation as a filmmaker with his short subject, "We Wuz Robbed," a spectacular construct of interviews/portraits and photos. I was most affected, previously, by his biography of Malcom X, a man who, during my schooling which embraced Martin Luther King, simply did not exist. The depiction of Muslim rigor in contrast to the post slavery malaise was inspiring and disturbing, as is any facist neatening and ordering in our lives. I also enjoyed a scene, a descent into a crack building, from one of his films, was it the Malcom X one? using Stevie Wonder's Living for the Ci-tay... Uh, actually Stevie Wonder (remember Gangster's Paradise?) is simply too great a composer not to enhance anything that draws upon his source material...

Definitely NOT Bush, yet neither Gore, nor Lieberman, really wanted to win. They were conceding. They were forced to put on an opposition. Lieberman likes Connecticut. Gore enjoys writing knowingly about subjects he wants to learn more about. With unfinished business, continuity is important, referring to the son of a former president becoming president in time to strengthen his family's oil business. We Wuz Robbed discusses events from a few days prior to the election up until the US Supreme Court denial. One is left simply flabergasted anew.

The Palestinian film, Divine Intervention, was at least moderately budgeted. I asked, were those real border checkpoints? No, he built them within Jerusalem. "Oh my, what am I doing in Hizballah?" asked some tourists who drove upon the set. Mr. Pena's description in the program defines the film as "a provication, but one rooted in a reasoned expectation of both justice and peace." Upon seeing the film I ask, what is going on there? and want to issue a blanket apology.

With the pit and the pendulum, bullies victimize, and enoble-ize and enable-ize.

2002-10-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

And have uncentered everything else.

2002-10-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Ah, and now I have centered the little button.

2002-10-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

Oh my, can you imagine. I'm inserting a little paypal button!