Getting ready...

My Way

“And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain.”

These are the words that Trump chose to ring in hispresidency. I could never make that up in a million years. As one of my favorite reviewers once said “I’m sad that I lack the talent to make that up!”

I’ve written letters and made calls to my government reps to block Trumps nominees, proposals, and general ideology. I’ve made funny memes, I’ve made fervent pleas. I’ve watched hate explode with civilians and politicians claiming that they're now free to do these things.

 A man who hates Jewish people (among other things) has power in the white house.  Wednesday, Jewish community centers across America (including one in my backyard) were evacuated due to bomb threats.

He's coming after my hobby, my safety, and my future. "The Heritage plan calls for cutting things like the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women Grants and reducing its Civil Rights and Environment and Natural Resources programs. It also outlines cuts in funding to programs within the Department of Energy that focus on renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions. Additionally, the Heritage blueprint suggests gutting funding for the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the UN's panel on climate change."

 I still have my bully pulpit. I'll still sign and sing and snap and scour the news for ways to block the next four years of insanity.

"For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels, and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way."

It's not your way, Trump. We will not kneel. We will not fall before your blows. We will keep speaking. We will do it our way.

Moana, or, witty title about colonialism here.

I saw Moana this week. I really enjoyed it. I liked the songs, the animation, the characters, the story, everything. It has vast critical praise. My friends like it. All is well.

Then I found out that some (if not all) the people who it represents are offended. There's a  FB page detailing grievances, from the costume incident to failures to properly portray characters, whitewashing, brownwashing, and everything in between.


This essay  is dense. I read it, but I'm confused. The author demands the native consultants on the film step up and explain Disney's motives, or at least reveal their names. They accuse Disney of  Brownwashing the perspective, and painting the time before colonialism as too idyllic.

I felt guilt while watching the film. 'Gee, this place seems nice. Of course white people fucked it up.'

People are mad because Maui is fat. I thought Maui looked muscular, buff. No other person in the film was even a little rounder, either muscular or fat. People claim it's fat-shaming, and steryotypical to show a native that way. Am I allowed to point out that Maui is heroic, strong, smart, and does things no other character could? Maybe providing a role model for rounder people? Or is that racist? I'm not being passive aggressive, I'm honestly very confused.


My knowledge of that area is limited; there was a post-movie fight where Bahamute had to explain to me that Polynesia covers far more than Hawaii, all the way down to New Zeland. That the Maori are part of it. I was ignorant and wrong, I admitted it.

Then somebody said the coconuts in the film are offensive, as Coconut is a slur, and they do a Maori dance. I don't remember any dancing in the movie by those things. I had no idea Coconut was a slur. I've learned more about racism towards Polynesian people in the last ten minutes than the rest of my life.

Why should I feel guilt for things done hundreds of years before I was born?

Why shouldn't I carry the weight of what people like me did to people who looked different?

Who am I to say what's racist?

Who am I to deny how much I loved that film?

What can I do? How should I feel? This isn't my fight; if I try and make it so am I just taking a stance away from someone it actually effects?

There's racism and oppression at Standing Rock right now; why am I worried about this, where nobody's been physically hurt or arrested?

What do I do? How should I feel?

I think it's too late for me not to like Moana. I've seen it. The attachment is done. Do I just feel guilty for that and move on? Am I blowing this out of proportion? Aside from educating myself, do I have a responsibility to this idea, these people, this fight?

I feel ill.

Beauty

When I was four years old I'd probably already been to the old Cinemark I II III theater many times. My father took me on this particular trip. It was a Disney movie. I don't remember if I saw any trailers or commercials or even know what was happening.

Then the lights dimmed and I saw this:

The golden light slanted across the screen as piano tinkled in the background. I sat still, in shock. I had a singe thought:

'This is beautiful.'

It's my earliest memory of understanding beauty. Not cuteness, not something merely pleasing to the eye; what I saw was beautiful. What I heard was beautiful. And both those things worked together to produce something even better than the sum of its parts.

Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie. It goes beyond the basic visual beauty, of course; a bookish brunette on the outs from her peers? That was much of my childhood. I still own my VHS copy (along with the special edition DVD and Blu Ray; what can I say, they all have different special features). I'm participating in my second run of the musical at my local theater. I know the lines, I know the words, I even know the dances (despite my general malaise towards choreography).

And now we have the live action remake.

I've spoken out against remakes and reboots.  Disney seems determined to make live action alternate universes for their properties, and my whinging won't stop them. But I'm actually for this version. Great care seems to be in place with the casting. Alan Menken returned to do new musical numbers. There is great respect for the original, not just the desire for a quick buck (I hope).

I cried when I saw Belle touch the bell jar in the teaser. I admit it. I'm tearing up just thinking of the music. This movie has impacted me in so many ways. And yes, I'm excited for the remake. There are things that bother me (why is Babette named Plumette? Why is she a bird? Why does Lumiere-McGregor look like that?) but I'm still very excited. Many of my fellow cast mates are dubious about Emma Watson as Belle, but I've enjoyed her as Hermione, and see nothing thus far that's bothered me about her Belle.

The Beast looks and sounds great. I've never liked the Beast on the Broadway soundtrack (sorry Javert!). The deep resonance of Robby Benson (HA) has been my standard, and Dan Stevens is doing a fine job with it. A far cry from 'That Guy who did pretty well in Night at the Museum 3'.

We won't be getting the Broadway songs, but Menken has penned new numbers that I'm sure will be perfect. He's Alan Freaking Menken for God's sake. 

Gushing aside (and I could go on about my pleasure over Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, Josh Gad as LeFou, etc), I'm overall excited for the new take on the tale as old as time.

The world could use a story of daring sword fights, magic spells, and princes in disguise right about now. We need something to take us away from all this, if only for a little while. Let us forget who we...WHAT we have to face as a nation. For those few hours let us peer into the world of the Beast, and understand that those different from us are still human. We can't let what we don't understand scare us. 

We need to remember that Beauty is found within.

Reality

Tonight PTIV's 'Beauty and the Beast' opens. And, like so many times before, I'll be hovering behind the scenes, behind curtains, and behind drops.

A drop, for any of my non-theatrical readers, is the painted cloth hung on the stage to simulate a background. Ours is of an old city street, helping flesh out the provincial French town Belle lives in. 

Behind the drop are props and the stage's back wall. You can walk across the stage behind it and not be seen; the shadows won't show to the audience. If you go very fast you can make a ripple. But otherwise you're in a place between worlds. A place of quiet. An in-between place. Not reality, not even staged reality. Just outside of the edge of reality.

It's a Lovecraft space. A rip or a tear could let you through; it's the thinnest of barriers, but seems to be a whole world.

I feel like I'm there now.

The unreality of the last few days is still with me. I see things from the outside world, through the drop of internet, the media, Facebook; all hyper real, and beyond my touch. I am behind the drop.

The drop is going to fail. I am going to go through the other side. Something will pull me through. Something will make me tear through. The tiny rips are starting; a riot in a Royal Oak school. Friends terrified they or their loved ones will be attacked.

Will I push through a rip or be pulled through? What will do it? A sit-in? A protest march? My brothers in law being accosted? Someone deciding I look 'too ethnic' and doing something about it?

I'm no elder god. I'm no squid-faced horror from the beyond. I'm not even outside of reality. All I am is an actor who is scared. Fear that's sent me clawing at the drop. I'm trying to create my own rips with safety pins and internet barbs. Neither are very sharp. But the barrier is very thin.

Tonight I'll trod the boards and stand behind the village drop. I'll stroke the red velvet curtains that I've know for twenty years. I'll stand in darkness, alone, or with my cast. I'll forget the otherness and dissolve into the show, if only for a moment. Our drops, castle and town, will stand.

When will my Lovecraft space meld with reality? What will tear through? And, dear God, will I have the strength to stand it?

Pumpkinhead 2: Bloody Hell

Pumpkinhead 2: Bloodwings is an awful film. This isn't news, the movie came out over twenty years ago. But the badness of this film goes beyond unlikable characters (which it has), and a boring plot (another get for this film).

 You look like a mogwai.

The main plot centers on Officer Dad-From-Hellraiser trying to solve a set of murders in a sleepy little town, and a murder that happened in the fifties that are somehow interconnected.  SPOILER: the people getting killed by the title character committed the murder in the fifties. Also, some kids pushed/murdered an old lady and dug up the demon in her backyard and the demon is after them as well.

Yet, with every stupid thing I just mentioned, it pales in comparison to the film's ultimate sin; SHODDY POLICEWORK!

It makes Wiggum look competent.

I'm no cop, but I do know they can't share details of an ongoing investigation with their family. Especially crime scene photos!

Autopsy reports take more than a few hours to come back. One strange blood sample won't have the chief of police and the head medical examiner jump to demons committing murder. It takes me right out of the movie.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is a 'so bad it's funny' affair. But only just. I'm very happy it was part of a collection with three much better movies: Wishmaster, Wishmaster 2, and Leprechaun. That's right, LEPERCHAUN is better than PH2!

PH2 is better than Leprechaun Origins, however.

This is the closest I've come to regretting a purchase since Cabin Fever. I give this movie half a pumpkin out of a whole head. Skip it, unless you're a big Soleil Moon Frye fan.

Once more, with feeling?

I took Spanish and French classes in High school and at University, with mixed results. I can speak a little Spanish and read a little french, but probably not enough to carry a conversation. Yet, as it often does in the fall, my urge to learn another language, fluently, has reared it's head.

The first one that comes to mind is Japanese, but for shallow reasons. I like manga, anime, and the rich culture. Not sure I'd ever visit the country, so outside of being a possible Weeaboo, the applications are limited.

Then comes my own heritage and culture; Hebrew or Yiddish. I know a little of both, stray words here and there that have been peppered into my daily life. But my contact with that side of the family is minimal, and another venture where I'd have little chance to use it.

There's always re-learning Spanish, probably the most useful in my area, but with little reward. I managed okay the first time, but it wasn't of that much interest.

I could learn Russian and induce Hubby to re-learn it alongside me, but aside from having our own communication system, it's a limited application.

German interested me; I'm part German, I work for Volkswagen, and I started on that path with Duo-Lingo. But that went nowhere.

I'm torn. Aside from theater all attempts at a hobby have fallen away. Do I have the wherewithal to try this again? And if so, what do I start with?

Out of everything, Japanese seems the most interesting, and with the most application to my own interests. But can I really justify learning the language just to watch movies and read manga? Can I reduce a rich culture down for the possibility of running into another speaker? A country I'll probably never go to? I don't know.

Does it make me a Weeaboo?

Clowns to the left of me, clowns to the right.

So, clowns have invaded two towns in South Carolina. Children report the figures are trying to lure them into the woods with money. With over 2 months until Halloween, it's a little early for antics this hardcore. And that's coming from someone who's favorite book is literally about a clown stalking and killing children.

Also, they're a giant spider. Not kidding.

My original joke was that this was a marketing campaign for the new IT remake. There's speculation that it's viral marketing for Rob Zombie's new film 31. If this was the case I'd assume it'd happen in more places, with less emphasis on kids. No studio or director is going to want a promoter shot in the name of marketing. There's reports of residents randomly firing into the woods to deter the clowns. So...yay.

I'm all for scaring kids, creepy clowns, and horror movies. But this is a step too far. Scare kids on Halloween, in haunted houses, or a hayride. Not in their backyard, unannounced.

Best case, this is misguided marketing. Most likely it's a prank.

I don't want to consider the option that mentally ill people are doing this, and what they might intend. Killer Klowns are one thing, Creepy people are another.

The world just lost some magic

Gene Wilder died today.

What can I say to explain how he affected me? The dry sarcasm of Willy Wonka. Jim's color blindness. Dave's reaction to actual blindness. Dr. Frankenstine's character arc. Leo's panicked screams. 

How many gags have I stolen, how many lines have I repeated, how many times did I watch my sister's old VHS of Chocolate Factory?

I don't have the words. I have DVD and VHS and a million laughs. That's what I have.

I'll leave you with the description from Gene's twitter, a more brilliant line than I'll ever pen:
 

Now THAT'S funny.

The IT Spot: Pennywise

So, we've finally gotten a glimpse at Pennywise. Behold!

Hm.

Well, it's creepy. The facepaint is nice and different. And I like old-tyme style clown costumes. In theory. But I'm hoping this is a 'final form' Pennywise; he's supposed to have a colorful, attractive outfit. He scares kids, but he also attracts them. Nothing about this clown would bring in a kid.

I'll be interested to see more.