It’s strange to see projects you’ve been working on for months in some form or another FINALLY take shape. Back in July a scene partner-turned-boyfriend and I decided to stage Danny and the Deep Blue Sea after some work we’d done in a class taught by the fabulous Bekka Eaton Reardon (and, though I know those in the acting community are given to hyperbole, I’ve known Bekka for more than a decade now; I’m entitled to it). This is my first time producing, and if I can pull it off in addition to acting in the show…I dunno how to end that sentence…it will be damn awesome?
It’s a rough, beautiful show, simple in all the right ways but full of a million emotions. Ugh, what did I say about hyperbole? Whatevs. Just come see it. April 1, 2, 8 and 9 at the Clifton Performance Theatre on Ludlow Ave.
Also, I can’t get over these posters Joshua Mattie made for us, which you’ll hopefully see around town soon.
lights on for safety
This is a tumblelog, kinda like a blog but with short-form, mixed-media posts with stuff I like. Scroll down a bit to start reading, or a bit more to read more about me.
go for the headshot
Spent the week listening to this fun 2009 podcast about zombies in film over at filmnerds.com. Sean Hoade, who actually teaches a course on zombies at the University of Alabama, is the guest host for the series. It’s the right mix of humor, gravity and film history. Episodes 3 and 5 might be my favorites. Happy Halloween, kids!
I would be saying this even if I wasn’t friends with the women of Fabricate and Ryan P. Young, BUT:
Mr. Young’s new show HUMAN / NATURE is opening at Fabricate this Saturday. 7pm. Fabricate is at 4012 Hamilton Ave (but ya enter through Red Polly, which is 4016 Hamilton). Free wine. DJs. And you get to see/buy some great art. (Haven’t seen the new stuff yet, but here’s some of his old work)
National Novel Writing Month
I’m 99% sure I’ll be doing this next month. It’s been a long time since I finished a story I cared about, largely because I get crippled by the idea that it’s got to be good. Every single word that hits the page has to be good, even though I know that’s not how writing works (For reiteration: I took two scene study classes this summer and Bekka Eaton Reardon talked often about not being afraid to suck, and that you can’t learn unless you fail and fail a whole hell of a lot. I would say I knew that, but it was really nice to hear it articulated, even in regards to acting instead of creative writing. Also, the notion that no art can happen when you’re comfortable). ANYWAY it’ll be nice to have the primary objective be to get words on the page and not create a damn masterpiece.
Of course you could argue that’s there’s no point in creating bad art, but that doesn’t get me anywhere, does it? Point here is to write and write and write. Oh well, some books that have stuck with me particularly long have been bad ones—and I’m not saying what out of fear of embarrassment—and crappy horror movies are what got me into writing to begin with nearly 13 years ago. Not sure what that means. Probably that I’m a horrible person.
Whatever, National Novel Writing Month. It’s 99% on. And I’m gonna do my damndest to not resort to that obnoxious abbreviation.
Oh yeah, and there’s more to come regarding that scene study class. Awesome stuff came out of it.
Friend and I toured some recently discovered tunnels/beer-making cellars beneath the streets of Cincinnati on Sunday. There’s a new book, When Beer Was King, chronicling the city’s beer-y past and our tour was given by the author. The thinking is that there are more of these throughout Over-the-Rhine that haven’t been found yet. This is in what will be the new Christian Moerlein brewery and companies occupied the building for years without knowing about the tunnels.
milling about!
my friends make this. i help out sometimes. and it has pretty much my favorite theme music ever.
Milling About: Episode 1x12 - Acronym Adventure
So I do a podcast w/ a few friends called Milling About. The penultimate podcast for season 1 is in iTunes now. Its the standard fare of nonsense.
iTunes link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/milling-about/id344709811
direct MP3 link:
http://milling-about.theprojectmill.com/podcast/MillingAbout-Episode012_Acronym_Adventure.mp3
Ugh. Labor Day is here and summer is ending. This was my view on my last three-day weekend.
WOXY es mort! Vive WOXY!
WOXY.com, aka The Future of Rock and Roll suspended live broadcasts indefinitely at 10am EST today. And it looks like this will be last time, so I just wanted to say something about it.
Paige Maguire, the director of marketing WOXY brought on board in Austin, brought up the nine lives analogy on her blog Flux-rad and yep, that’s what it feels like, especially to the many fans who’ve endured the station’s tumultuous existence over the past few years. That’s to say nothing of its dedicated, long-suffering DJs.
The first time this happened – when WOXY left terrestrial radio in 2004 – I cried. Openly. Like, in class (Creative Writing: Fiction 203 to be exact. Understandably, people thought I was crazy.). I’d found that station when I was 15, back in 1998, and it taught me what music was, what it could be. It’s not hyperbole when I say that this station and the music it revealed to me played a role in making me who I am today. And no, after several incarnations, the station – from the switch to internet-only format, the addition of non-WOXY-produced shows like The Waiting Room, and the move to Austin – is not what it used to be. But it’s just different, not bad. Of course, independent music isn’t what it used to be either. And, obviously, the financial landscape for producing that music and the vehicles that promote it has changed too.
So I suppose what I’m saying right now is that I’m not crying. Really, I’m most upset for the DJs who uprooted their lives and families to leave Cincinnati for Austin in an effort to keep this station alive. They believed in it that much. But today’s loss of WOXY – both the station and the name, since FutureSounds now owns the rights to that – to me, is less like a friend just died (how I felt in ’04) and more a manifestation of how “the man” really can bring us down, despite all our resolve and conviction. That, sometimes, good things just have to die. Fans, not to mention labels and bands, love WOXY so much, and yet there’s no one who believes in it enough who also has the funds to sustain it in the long term. Today, on eachnotesecure.com, WOXY’s Joe Long wrote, “We have always said that if we could turn your goodwill into cash, we could do this forever,” which is both heartwarming and so fucking frustrating. Fans such as myself owe WOXY so, so much.
It’s a manifestation that, yeah, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and sometimes they keep going, and going some more, but at some point they have to stop, either by force or by burnout.
And it almost feels weird to get so worked up, because this has happened several times before. But I don’t want to take this station for granted. And if it does come back again, who knows what kind of incarnation it will be (we just lost WOXY 4.0 or 4.5 depending on how you look at it). That’s not to say that the terrestrial WOXY that was on-air for 20 years is the “perfect” form of the station. We’ve just come a lifetime from it in five and a half years. Brave new world, and so on. I just got back from SXSW, where we bandied around the idea of stopping in on the WOXY studios. We didn’t, and I’m kicking myself now. I cannot imagine how the DJs and staff there feel considering all they work they put into showcases and lounge acts for the festival.
All I can really say is thanks so much, WOXY. And long live the future of rock and roll.
Future Sounds Pulls Plug on WOXY
I wrote this big long post about how much I love WOXY and how they were like a family to me when I worked there for two years.
But I can’t even bring myself to retype everything.
From the WOXY homepage:
WOXY Listeners, Fans and Friends…
Due to current economic realities and the lack of ongoing funding for WOXY’s operations, we’ve been forced to suspend our live broadcasts as of March 23rd. We’re continuing to explore options to keep The Future of Rock and Roll alive. For business inquiries, please contact Bryan Jay (bryan@woxy.com) or John at Future Sounds (john@futuresounds.com).
Thanks for your years of dedicated support.
About
I really like live music, Cincinnati, exploring subways, and movies with bad cop cliches—the ones where they things like "You're a loose cannon." I fulfilled one of my life goals a few years ago by appearing in a zombie movie, and I'm working on the next goal, which is competing on Jeopardy. I wrote a novel when I was 15 and it was really bad but at least I wrote a novel when I was 15. If I had my way, I'd always be on a road trip with friends.
