Stephen Quint and the ZOMBIE MIKADO

Don't worry

Mr. Steve is not home now. You can leave a beep after the message (yeah, you heard me, you got a problem?).

Now if Mr. Steve really cared about you, he wouldn't have left you in the hands of someone so totally hostile to the whole blogology thang. I can tell you that this will probably be an even bigger waste of your time than the usual amateur movie review, "I just got a new puppy; arent' they the cutest?", "I just found out about the greatest club (restaurant, gym, band, laundromat, cable access TV show) and you just HAVE to hear all about it", "Don't you just hate it when the Chinese restaurant waiter doesn't bring you your change and just assumes it's their tip (wait a sec, why do they do this)?, "I'm so depressed since 'Friends' went off the air and doesn't 'Joey' suck"?, "Bush (Bloomberg, Hillary) is a dumb idiot" and blah and blah.

The state of my bowels is not nearly so interesting as Mr. Steve's; you won't learn about them here. I also have tales of noxious infestations and personal infirmities that you will never hear about. You can thank the big guy (yeah, you know who I mean - yokozuna Asashoryu) for all this, big time.

Now, that doesn't mean that I'm just going to let you off to do your la-de-dah tree trimming or ritual sacrificing of gentiles (I can't think of anything Kwanzaa, Wiccan, Hindu or Ramadan related to make this more ecumenically offensive, but feel freeto fill in your own blanks in this special holiday edition rant).

First of all, what the hell can any of you tell me that will make make it possible for me to get through the rest "The BIrth of Tragedy"? That Freddy N. was one ball busting muthafucka and I need someone to cut me some slack on this. I know, Dionysian - Apollonian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, give me a break already. It's making my head hurt.

What is that guy begging on the A train saying anyway? More than a decade and I still hear "I'm hunheee" (probably - I'm hungry - what else would he say to introduce himself?), then he says something like "I ga ayeeeyhhssd" and I'm lost. This didn't bother me for the first few years, but now it's gone on long enough. Mind you, I'm plenty glad that he is not preaching like that idiot that rides between 125 and Columbus Circle, I just wish I knew what he has been wailing for so long.

Roscoe Holcomb. If you aren't listening to him by now, get the fuck outtaheah.

- littleman

On holiday

People want to know my performance schedule. I'm doing all the "Mikado"s and the "Trial." You'll find the schedule on the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' website -- www.nygasp.org ,or do a search on nygasp schedule .

No new posts until the new year. Bahamas for me! Ha, ha, so long, suckers! Merry Christmas! Glad the subway's back!

Blogs are Creepy!

OK, here it is, my first rant. You know it had to happen. Get used to it. With the intent of making my website better for YOU, my readers, I have been visiting other people's TypePad blogs, checking out how they use photos, what their layout is like, and what they talk about. MY GOD, THEY ARE STUPID. And a lot of these people claim to be writers, with a Friday deadline, or else they want to be writers. Boring? Yeah, boring. "We went to the supermarket, and my kid said it's raining, and aren't you going to wear your coat? And I said no, it'll be all right, and I got soaked! I guess she showed me!" "I need to get new glasses and can't decide which frames. If I had a friend I'd ask them to help. But I got a person in the store to take these pictures of me. Which ones do you like?" What the -- ? Don't publish stuff like that! Do you want to CONVINCE people how lame you are? One woman told about going out to dinner with her parents last night, and what everybody ate! If I was an asshole I'd give you links to some of these seriously sad sites and let you see for yourself how PATHETICALLY DULL AND SNORE-WORTHY people are. But instead I'll share my wisdom. DON'T BLOG-SURF. And thank your lucky stars for guiding you to my site, which is NOT STUPID, though I can't vouch for some of my commentors, especially Eva.

On the other hand, my site is easily the worst looking of the bunch I've examined. AND MAYBE I'LL JUST KEEP IT THAT WAY.

G - A - Ssssssss

Farts had to be discussed sooner or later. Yesterday I finished this blog's biography section ("ABOUT," to your left) in which I briefly described my colitis days, now long behind me. Back then my farts were nothing to be sneezed at, he said, with a wistful glimmer in his eyes and a sigh full of nostalgia. Back then, in my late youth, when my guts were rotting and I was taking sulfa drugs to control the inflammation, THOSE were farts such as no living girlfriend should have had to survive. I still maintain that these privileged women must have held a grudging admiration for the thick, heavy, rotten meat stench that could only be produced by a very sick person. More than once Lesley had to leap out of bed and flee to the living room, full of curses. "OH, GOD! Why can't you do that in the bathroom?!?" "How'd I know," etc. I had to spend so much time in the bathroom in those days that few people were ever in the same room when I broke wind (I use that phrase for the ladies in the audience, because I am a gentleman). Honestly, I've been witness to all manner of flatus. Some of the more horrible have been horse, large old dog, Thanksgiving dinner gas, Bert Bell garlic farts (the breath was no laughing matter either), and sick Eva lactose-intolerant milk farts.

Yes, deriving humor from the smell of a really bad one is an acquired taste. No one who was there will ever forget the dizzying fog once emitted from BILL FABRIS, that's right, BILL FABRIS, the director/choreographer. NYGASP was doing a Pirates of Penzance with grown up principals and a grade school chorus, somewhere on Long Island. Bill, a big-boned person, was center stage and had just taken part in the capture of the Major-General's daughters. He farted hugely and horribly and completely without detectable sound just before my entrance. I came onstage to find little kids rolling their eyes, coughing, and not attempting in any way to deal professionaly with a gag-inducing expulsion of intestinal horror. This was a thick fart -- a heavy greenish-yellow mist that took FOREVER to disperse. Performers were laughing at it, but that made us inhale through our mouths, which seemed even worse. As is usual in such conditions, nobody confessed. Eva and I decided that she should claim responsibility, without actually lying and confessing to being the one who dealt. It wasn't until the drive home, when the fart was on everyone's lips, that Bill sheepishly admitted that the monster was his. Naturally we cheered.

Curly Howard's friends say that the great Stooge loved to fart and would brag "N'yuk, n'yuk, n'yuk, I can clear out a room!" No doubt! I don't know of any other celebrity to brag about farting.

Do you think farts have always been funny? Do you think Jesus and his buddies had a lovely guffaw over a particularly raucous wine/fig/olive/goat meat/unleavened bread fart? Or was humor maybe not as sophisticated back then. I don't know, Jesus demonstrated a satisfying propensity for irony in his parables. Whether a fart is ironic, though, is arguable. Or maybe it isn't.

And let us touch upon the anus briefly. If you didn't realize before let it now be known that fart sound is produced entirely by the anal opening. The force of the fart and the suppleness of the sphincter are what cause the delightfully amusing variety of sounds. Buttock quantity has nothing to do with it. Learn EVERYTHING about farts at http://www.heptune.com/farts.html    Sorry, I just can't get this 'link' button to work as it should. So copy and paste, you won't be sorry.

Kinduvva "Kong" review

I saw King Kong on Wednesday, the day it opened. I saw it again on Friday after school, with the family. The three hours went by even more quickly the second time! Have you been accosted yet by attention-deficient people complaining about it being too long? "Too many notes, Mozart." The damn thing takes as long as it has to. Is anyone really in a hurry to see those dinosaur fights end? And ever since I saw the 1933 version (the "real" King Kong, as Lucy, 7, refers to it) I've wanted to learn more about Carl Denham, and Ann, and Jack, their voyage to Skull Island, and a thousand other details the new movie throws in. Maggie and Lucy paid attention just fine. Maggie applauded every time Kong overthrew an enemy (including hurling airplanes down on 32nd St.) and Lucy made a fist and hit her seat with disgust at Carl Denham's repeated acts of recklessness. I do suggest you be aware of the state of your digestive system before you try to sit for 3 hours. It can be done. You should never eat movie theater popcorn anyway.

The reviews in the New York papers (all raves) take up more than half their space synopsizing the story. Assuming, I guess, that there really are people with any consciousness of movies who don't know what King Kong is about, for crying out loud. All I'll say is that if you have any appreciation at all for fantasy/adventure -- and a surprising number of people don't, too many lead paint chips, or something -- you'll have a swell time at Jackson's "Kong."

On the way out of the theater I said to Lucy,"Well, Luce, the airplanes got 'im," and she responded with the correct line of dialogue. It pleased me mightily. I beat my chest.

This site

I just looked at some other TypePad sites and am APPALLED at how pathetic mine looks, though I am kind of partial to the putrid green and pink. Please be patient, and focus on the riveting content.

Maggie in the frying pan

Last night was 10-year-old Maggie’s first rehearsal with NYGASP. She’s playing a kid (!!!) in  The Mikado. Fortunately this was not the first time she had met Al, and she basically knew what to expect (extravagant, unsettling manner, bald, etc.). It was a full Mikado rehearsal, for some reason beginning at 8p.m. (too late) at a big echo-y studio at City Center.

We started with the first act finale. Maggie’s first bit of staging consists of taking a sword from a guy, bringing it offstage, and returning to a group stage right. She managed to do all that. But then the fans opened, weird Japanese positions were assumed, people had to take 2 steps to the left and 2 steps to the right, the damn ear-splitting chorus singing started, and Maggie was out there without a clue! It must have been like a nightmare. So Al starts bellowing directions at her and actually imagines she’s going to know what he’s yelling about, with all the unrestrained vocalizing going on. At least he didn’t get up and start physically moving her around, a directorial method used unreservedly on Katisha. Maggie was a little stunned but faked it OK. Fortunately she had been placed with a group of 4 jolly nice, helpful people, who got her doing some semblance of the staging. When Katisha enters Maggie runs offstage screaming, and I had already made my exit, so we spent the next 40 minutes working with her fan and studying some words.

Later we rehearsed the scene of the Mikado’s entrance, in which Maggie again does everything the chorus does. Again, she couldn’t do it with any confidence, but what do you want? At least this morning she was singing the music, and she brought her fan home to get that wrist action perfected.

The New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players’ website is www.nygasp.org. It’s pretty gay, and gets updated about every 5 years, but you’ll learn all about Al Bergeret. Check it out right now!

Getting this started

Sorry this site looks like shit. Give me a couple of days. Click on "About," I've been working on that.