Prototype for iPod commercials?

I caught this 1989 video from the Belle Stars over the weekend at a bar in Los Angeles:



Check things out just before the 2:00 mark.  Silhouetted guy dancing wildly in front of neon color backgrounds?  Hmmm, where have we seen that in recent years?

Just a curiosity, of course.

Letter of Comment: “Trapped in the Closet”

This letter was sent to the Seattle Weekly, in response to this February 27, 2008 article (titled “Seattle, You Love Your Mainstream Country Music” inside the issue, but “Trapped in the Closet” on the cover).  It was published in the March 19, 2008 edition, but the online  version only carries a portion of the letters.  (Which makes no sense: online is where you can easily print them all.)  The letter was edited slightly (which is fine); original content removed is [blue in brackets].  Special thanks to Spencer for letting me know the letter was published.

Brian Barr and the Weekly’s editor must be wearing their Wranglers a size too tight.   How else do you cover feature a story with a blurb like “Trapped in the Closet” without making any mention of the gay and lesbian side of things?

GLBTQ country-western dancing and music is alive and kicking [(up its heels)] in the Seattle area.   The non-profit, volunteer-run Rain Country Dance Association currently produces dance nights at the Cuff Complex on Capitol Hill every Friday night and alternate Wednesdays, providing both dance instruction and all your favorite country-western dance music.   Rain Country is also in an expansion mode this month: we are adding a classic country music night at the Seattle Eagle, and Monday lessons and dancing at Swank in Kent.   (Kudos to the Weekly for your recent story on gay life in Kent!)   We also produce a monthly non-bar dance night at a Seattle church.

[Rain Country’s biggest news, of course, is the upcoming Emerald City Hoedown on April 25-27, with a whole weekend of dancing and dance workshops, including guest instructors from San Francisco.]

And [since someone will be thinking the question,] no, you don’t have to show your “gay card” at any of our dances.   Everyone is welcome.   [We don’t care who you sleep with, so long as you like to dance!   Check us out online at www.raincountrydance.org.]

-- Jim Drew
    [President, Rain Country]

Theatre Review: Young Frankenstein

The new Mel Brooks’ musical, Young Frankenstein, is in the middle of its world premiere engagement here in Seattle, prior to it heading to Broadway.  This is the fourth big musical to have such a premiere here in recent years: Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza, and The Wedding Singer preceded it.  We saw it this afternoon.

“Ah, sweet mystery of life…”

The biggest problem with this show is the most obvious, but also the one no one really puts their finger on: it’s not in black and white!  (You have to have seen the film to understand what I mean, I’m sure.)

More seriously, they did a great job with the show.  Perfectly dandy casting — especially for Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor, channeling Marty Feldman, and Megan Mullally’s Elizabeth has a love of the late Madeleine Khan in her.  (It’s a deep love.  You have to see the show to get that joke.)  Roger Bart isn’t Gene Wilder, but he was quite fine as a loopy brain doctor (having previously been most familiar to me from Desperate Housewives, playing a loopy pharmacist; typecasting?).

Few of the songs are especially memorable, but that really means only that they are there to feed the jokes and to advance the story.

The show is definitely still new.  There were a few flubbed lines in today’s performance — most notable Inga saying “Put the candle in!” (huh?).  And a couple schticks just don’t have the timing down yet: the “Where wolf?” bit thudded, and the “hump” jokes didn’t come off as well as they should have.

Of course, this brings up the really big matter: when you’re doing a musical version of a beloved film, how can you preserve everything that’s important to people who can quote the film back to front?  (Mind you, Young Frankenstein is probably my fourth most watched film, after The Rocky Horror Picture Show [which had a musical on Broadway recently], Monty Python and the Holy Grail [which had a musical on Broadway recently], and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan [God help us if it ever has a musical on Broadway].)  It’s a tight line to walk, getting in all the quotable bits and adding 10-20 songs. Sometimes they manage it, and sometimes they don’t.  (Spamalot didn’t, in my opinion, and came off the worse for lifting a song from Life of Brian and not having any crucifixions to go with it.)

Fortunately, Young Frankenstein succeeds admirably.  Right now in the other room, Josh is watching the movie and I’m listening to bits, and being pleasantly surprised by some bits that I forgot about that made it into the show.  (The two significant bits lost that I’ve noted — and there are surely more — are “You take the blond, I’ll take the one in the turban” and the game of darts.  Oh, and “Damn your eyes / Too late”, but without Marty Feldman and close-up camera work, that’s quite forgivable.  I didn’t miss people not understanding what Kemp says, either.  And indeed, even the lost bits are adequately covered with new content which precludes the original pieces.)

Of note as well is that Brooks didn’t just add a bunch of songs, he added some new running jokes, fleshed out some back story, and did a decent job of avoiding things feeling like it was just songs pasted onto a movie script.  (And let’s not forget Susan Stroman’s choreography.  There some really great hoofing in the show, and that includes the horses pulling the [roll in the] hay cart.)

The show only runs in Seattle through next weekend, so you’ll probably have to wait for it to go up in New York..  Until then, take your sedagives and wait.

Letter of Comment: “Swarm Theory”

I sent this letter to National Geographic regarding their July 2007 article on “Swarm Theory”:

I was very interested on the article on Swarms in the July 2007 issue of National Geographic.  I immediately thought of three places where swarm theory works for humans:

Consider crossing a street: tasks include wait for the light, cross at a reasonable pace, don’t jostle others, and avoid colliding with those coming the other way.  Especially interesting is how the crowd shuffles about, deciding whether to break out before the light changes.

Or at a concert where there are no assigned seats: sit close to the stage, sit close to the exit (or concessions, or the bathroom), sit with friends, sit far enough away from your neighbors.

And on the dance floor: don’t collide with others, keep the beat, move in the right direction, keep the right pace.  (And for some, “have fun” and “innovate” are tasks that should be included.)

Also of interest, though understated in the article, is the idea that we can predict what the swarm will do.  Any individual may vary behavior or break out, but as a group, the actions are roughly predictable based on known inputs.  For fans of science fiction, this is the basis of Isaac Asimov’s “predict the future” science of psychohistory.  We’re still a long way from the stuff Asimov wrote about, but the first step is recognizing that in the big, big picture, masses of humanity aren’t any different from a swarm of ants or a herd of caribou.