Baron Dave Romm
Caroline, or Change
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater podcasts
Caroline, or Change
I'm still not sure I like Caroline, or Change, but I'm glad to have seen it. I went with Johanna, a Broadway musical maven who has been in more productions of musical theater than I've seen live (or thereabouts). She was blown away.
I still have mixed feelings. Caroline is a "musical" in roughly the same way that a Jackson Pollock is a "painting". And I don't like Pollack's work. Caroline extends the Wagnerian trope of using music as theme and exposition more than just as song, mushing it into John Cage's exploration of ambient background noise. One of the major character is The Washing Machine. Like the rest of the play, when it works it works spectacularly. When it doesn't work, it's... interesting but doesn't come to resolution.
The settings are important as well. Southern Louisiana, as Katrina demonstrated, is very near or below sea level. Few places have a basement, yet the basement of a well-to-do Jewish musician's family is where Caroline spends her days. She asks, "underground or underwater", which reflects the choices in the title.
If at all possible, you should go see it. Here in Minneapolis, the Guthrie is pricey but the production is stellar and the singer/performers are exceptional. It's best to go without knowing all that much about what's going to happen and let it wash over you. I'll just mention that it takes place in rural Louisiana in 1963 and that one of the main characters is exactly the same age I was at the time, and we share similar (though not identical) experiences.
PS: That's Caroline, not to be confused with Coraline...
A short column after yesterday's Father's Day pictorial.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog maintains a Facebook Page, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Froma Harrop: Deficit Worry Is the Greenest Shoot (creators.com)
Never mind firmer retail sales, rising stock prices and moderating job losses. The greenest shoot is Americans' changing economic fixation. There's less panic over collapsing banks, home foreclosures and the prospect of another Great Depression. Attention has moved to budget deficits and the resulting federal debt. These are worries of a more stable time, when people had the luxury of looking at the long-term.
Susan Estrich: The Fourth Estate(creators.com)
The great danger these days - and this was also true in the post 9/11 days of the Bush administration - is not just that the only critical coverage comes from the ideologues, who are dismissed as that, but that the public understandably comes to forget why it is we put up with all the excesses of a free press. How could they not?
Gina Kim: Arrested journalists' TV network on a mission (McClatchy Newspapers)
"Vanguard," the program that jailed journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling work for at San Francisco-based Current TV, has a simple mission: to tell stories the mainstream media are not.
Craig McLean: The Killers' time has come, says Brandon Flowers (timesonline.co.uk)
Only U2 and Radiohead rank higher in the pantheon of globe-conquering rock bands. But now the Killers' time has come, says singer Brandon Flowers.
Roger Ebert: Review of "FOOD, INC." (PG; 3 1/2 stars)
The next time you tuck into a nice T-bone, reflect that it probably came from a cow that spent much of its life standing in manure reaching above its ankles. That's true even if you're eating the beef at a pricey steakhouse. Most of the beef in America comes from four suppliers.
Troy Patterson: Make It or Break It (slate.com)
The 'Friday Night Lights' of women's gymnastics.
Simon Pegg is deadly serious about his Hollywood ambitions (timesonline.co.uk)
Far from the hapless image he portrays on screen, Simon Pegg is deadly serious about his Hollywood ambitions. Here he may be best known for his roles as an uptight cop or zombie chaser, but in LA he's a friend to A-list stars and hotly sought after by directors from Tarantino to Spielberg. Lucy Broadbent talks to him about fame, films - and imminent fatherhood.
The magic of Wimbledon (guardian.co.uk)
Every year for a fortnight, we all fall in love with tennis. On the eve of this year's Wimbledon Championships, Richard Williams picks his 20 favourite moments - from last year's sublime men's final, to the ridiculous ...
Rosanna Greenstreet: Q&A with Martina Navratilova (guardian.co.uk)
Q: What has been your biggest disappointment?
A: The direction my country took in 2000-2008. Compare that with Monica Lewinsky... I mean, really!
Julie Hinds: Dane Cook's newest stand-up routines draw on personal pain (Detroit Free Press)
Dane Cook knows that people love him, especially his army of fans on the Web. He's got more than 2.5 million friends on MySpace, and more than 470,000 followers on Twitter.
Moira Macdonald: Francis Ford Coppola gets personal with his new film (The Seattle Times)
Francis Ford Coppola, at 70, is back where he started. The legendary filmmaker has watched his career rise and fall over the past four decades, from the awards and acclaim for "The Godfather" to the disappointment of "One from the Heart," to the long eight years following his troubled last studio project, 1997's "The Rainmaker." So, during that fallow period, he looked back to his early years.
Lily Quateman: Porn Star Sasha Grey Likes Gang Bangs -- Live With It, Tyra Banks
Porn star Grey, who has achieved success as a mainstream actress, has gotten tons of criticism for working in porn.
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The 'Eye for an Eye' Edition...
The recent domestic terrorist murders of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, Army recruiter Pvt William Long in Little Rock, Arkansas and security guard Stephan Johns at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. occurred in jurisdictions that have the capital punishment. Prosecutors of these crimes will, no doubt, consider asking for it due to obvious premeditation of the perpetrators.
Are you in favor of Capital Punishment?
Send your response to
said:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Link from BadtotheboneBob
Motown At 50
Another Link From RJ
Dams
Hi there!
Here is a possible link for you. Thanks for taking a look at it!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Not much of a marine layer.
Director Pitches Hissy
Michael Bay
Powerhouse Hollywood director Michael Bay, who returns to theaters worldwide on Wednesday with a "Transformers" sequel, has blasted the marketing efforts of the film's studio, Paramount Pictures.
In a memo sent last month to top brass at the Viacom Inc unit, and published on Sunday by celebrity gossip Web site TMZ.com, Bay complained there was no buzz surrounding "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."
"Right now we are not an event. We are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to 'Spider-Man 2' -- it was everywhere," he wrote.
Bay added that advance word on the $200 million robot extravaganza in publications like Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times had been an "abject failure," and he described as "lame" a plan for him to preview a small clip at the MTV Movie Awards this month.
Michael Bay
University of California, Los Angeles
Jose Iturbi International Music Competition
An American soprano singer and a Ukrainian pianist have won top honours at a competition that combines elements of "American Idol" and classical music.
Leah Crocetto, a 29-year-old first-year fellow with the San Francisco opera, won the $50,000 first prize in the vocal portion of the third annual Jose Iturbi International Music Competition at the University of California, Los Angeles.
She also received two separate $3,000 prizes, including the people's choice award for the weeklong competition whose $252,000 in prizes were announced this weekend.
Dmitri Levkovich, a 29-year-old pianist from Ukraine, won the $50,000 first prize in the piano competition.
Jose Iturbi International Music Competition
"Fete de la Musique"
France
Thousands of musicians took to the streets and stages across France on Sunday for the annual "Fete de la Musique", one of the nation's most popular festivals celebrating rhythm and sound.
Even the Elysee presidential palace joined in the festivities, opening its grounds to an eclectic programme of jazz, swing, gyspy and Caribbean music for the second year running.
Launched in 1982, the "Fete de la Musique" has spread to more than 100 countries where the festival held on the day of the summer solstice has taken off.
Some 850 free concerts are planned across the globe in Brazzaville, New York, Hanoi and Beijing, mostly held at the local French cultural centres.
France
Top Gear's 'Stig'
Michael Schumacher
Formula One legend Michael Schumacher was on Sunday unveiled as "the Stig", the mystery man who test drives cars on British cult motoring show "Top Gear".
The identity of the white-clad driver is kept a closely guarded secret, but Schumacher, who was Formula One world drivers' champion seven times, finally revealed himself in the first of a new series of the show on Sunday night.
Presenter Jeremy Clarkson pretended not to recognise him at first, asking him what he used to do before he became famous as the Stig, but then excitedly shouted to the studio audience: "It's Michael Schumacher!"
The show is shown in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Michael Schumacher
Virginia Man Wins Title
Spelling
It took Michael Petrina Jr. 51 years to finally win a national spelling bee.
The Arlington, Va., man bested 45 other spellers older than 50 to win the AARP's annual National Spelling Bee Saturday in Cheyenne. The 64-year-old's winning word was "woad," a plant whose leaves yield a blue dye.
AARP spokeswoman Joanne Bowlby says Petrina won his state's national spelling bee when he was 13, but then lost at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
In second place Saturday was 55-year-old Scott Firebaugh of Knoxville, Tenn., and in third place was 66-year-old Gil Couts of Bigfork, Mont.
Spelling
Hunt Like Hannibal Lecter
Sharks
Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight.
The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that's been hard to observe beneath the surface.
"There's some strategy going on," said study co-author Neil Hammerschlag, a shark researcher at the University of Miami who observed 340 great white shark attacks on seals off an island in South Africa. "It's more than sharks lurking at the water waiting to go after them."
The sharks feeding at Seal Island could have just hovered right where the seals congregated if they were random killers-of-opportunity, Hammerschlag said. But they weren't.
Sharks
Pricing A Moneymaker
Variable iTunes
In April, soon after Apple gave labels the ability to set different prices for their songs on iTunes, every track on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" was raised to $1.29.
Some music fans complained about these price increases, and many technology executives and bloggers proclaimed that labels were making the wrong move. But while sales of individual tracks from "Dark Side of the Moon" dipped by 11%, album sales remained steady. And all sales combined generated about 12% more revenue in the six weeks after iTunes implemented variable pricing than they did in the six weeks before that.
These are the results labels were hoping for when Apple relented and began selling music at three price tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. They certainly put enough work into getting there: It took years of negotiation to get Apple to break its one-price-fits-all format.
A Billboard analysis of Nielsen SoundScan data on February-May sales of hits and a sample of popular catalog songs shows that "Dark Side of the Moon" isn't an anomaly. While variable pricing made sales volume decline, higher prices compensate for that to create more revenue.
Variable iTunes
Greener Diet Reduces Methane
Dairy Cows
Vermont dairy farmers Tim Maikshilo and Kristen Dellert, mindful of shrinking their carbon footprint, have changed their cows' diet to reduce the amount of gas the animals burp - dairy cows' contribution to global warming.
Coventry Valley Farm is one of 15 Vermont farms working with Stonyfield Farm Inc., whose yogurt is made with their organic milk, to reduce the cows' intestinal methane by feeding them flaxseed, alfalfa, and grasses high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The gas cows belch is the dairy industry's biggest greenhouse gas contributor, research shows, most of it emitted from the front and not the back end of the cow.
"I just figured a cow was a cow and they were going to do whatever they were going to do in terms of cow things for gas," said Dellert. "It was pretty shocking to me that just being organic wasn't enough, actually. I really thought that here we're organic, we're doing what we need to do for the planet, we're doing the stuff for the soil and I really thought that was enough."
She learned it wasn't. The dairy industry contributes about 2 percent to the country's total greenhouse gas production, said Rick Naczi, a vice president at Dairy Management Inc., which funds research and promotes dairy products. Most of it comes from the cow, the rest from growing feed crops for the cattle to processing and transporting the milk.
Dairy Cows
Sinkholes
Dead Sea
Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.
After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the 10-meter-(30 foot-) deep hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.
These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.
The phenomenon, Raz said, stems from a dire water shortage, compounded in recent years by tourism and chemical industries as well as a growing population. "This is the most remarkable evidence of the brutal interference of humans in the Dead Sea," he said.
Dead Sea
Weekend Box Office
'The Proposal'
Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds' "The Proposal" took in $34.1 million to open as the weekend's No. 1 movie, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Disney flick delivered the biggest opening ever for Bullock, nearly double that of her previous best of $17.6 million for the 2007 paranormal thriller "Premonition."
"The Proposal" took over the top spot from the Warner Bros. bachelor-party comedy "The Hangover," which slipped to second place with $26.9 million. A surprise smash hit, "The Hangover" raised its total to $152.9 million.
Disney's animated adventure "Up" was No. 3 with $21.3 million, lifting its total to $224.1 million and following Paramount's "Star Trek" as the second movie of 2009 to cross the $200 million mark.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Proposal," $34.1 million.
2. "The Hangover," $26.9 million.
3. "Up," $21.3 million.
3. "Year One," $20.2 million.
5. "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," $11.3 million.
6. "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," $7.3 million.
7. "Star Trek," $4.7 million.
8. "Land of the Lost," $4 million.
9. "Imagine That," $3.1 million.
10. "Terminator Salvation," $3.07 million.
'The Proposal'
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
