Miscellany

A few weeks ago, my son, Kieran, and I happened to hear a fresh new sound on KCRW that really grabbed our attention. It was a quirky, up-tempo tune that had us tapping our toes instantly. Turns out, it was a song titled "A-Punk" from a NY band by the name of Vampire Weekend. As often happens when we listen to Anne Litt's "The A Track" show, we'd found another gem that demanded further exploration!

In response to a solicitation from the campaign for words to woo super-delegates, I posted the following today to the Obama website:

I'm a technology professional who's lived most of my life in So. Cal. I've been a registered Republican for my entire adult life - until very recently. Over the years, I've become increasingly disenchanted by the direction of the Republican Party. I'm a fiscal conservative (believing in small government, low taxes, individual responsibility) but a social moderate (believing in abortion rights, gay rights). I've never voted strict party lines, always looking for character in our public servants rather than specific positions on issues.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, I'm hoping for a tidal wave. I'm secretly praying for a seismic event of national proportions - a political upheaval across America. And when we wake up the day after Super Tuesday and look around, I'm hoping we see Barack Obama at the epicenter. This country desperately needs that kind of day tomorrow.

I do not often critique music. However, KCRW's recent release, Sounds Eclectic: The Covers Project, is so delightful, I'm motivated to share my impressions. KCRW has a long tradition of recording artists appearing on its flagship music program, Morning Becomes Eclectic (MBE), and releasing compilations of these recordings as membership premiums. Over the years, I've collected several of them, yet none have evoked emotion, nor sustained my interest like this latest offering.

Listening to KCRW a few days ago, I discovered this week the Nuart Theatre in West LA would be presenting the return of the 1964 classic, Becket. While I still remember my mother raving about it decades ago, I'd never seen it myself. So I was keen to experience it on the big screen, if at all possible. A little online research uncovered an LA Times review by Kenneth Turan, in which he spoke glowingly of the classic performances of Peter O'Toole as Henry II and Richard Burton as Thomas Becket. My son, beginning an acting career of his own, would do well to witness two of cinema's greatest actors at their best, I thought.

So my good friend Tom Chatt has "tagged" me to reveal five little-known facts about myself. Since this sounds like a fun challenge (and since I'm woefully overdue for a post here), I'll give it a try. Here goes:

1. I have only two joints in my index fingers. Where the tip joint would normally be, I've just got solid bone. Now, before you get too grossed-out, let me add it's really no big deal - useful as fodder for exercises such as this one, but otherwise completely unimportant. It's a quirk of genetics that I inherited from my mother, who had a number of subtle oddities in the morphology of her hands. Evidently, my grandmother was furious with my grandfather when, upon the birth of their daughter, she realized that the deformities in his hands were not (as he had told her) the result of some accident, but rather a genetic trait which had obviously been passed to my mother. Luckily, this hiccup in my maternal gene pool is slight, causing no noticeable impediment in the use of either my or my mother's hands. Except for her wedding ring, she never wore hand jewelry, so as to avoid drawing attention to them. It seems this trait may be recessive, as in the past two generations, it's manifested itself in gradually less-evident ways. In fact, much like my sister, my son has perfectly normal hands. Now, if I could only get rid of that hump on my left shoulder...

Year Of The DogThis week, I celebrated the completion of my 48th year on Planet Earth. I was born in 1958, which - according to the Chinese Zodiac - was The Year Of The Dog. Unlike our occidental zodiac of 12 months, the Chinese devised a 12-year cycle, each year denoted by a different animal. Individuals acquire the strengths and weaknesses attributed to the animal associated with their birth year - or so the theory goes. Therefore 1970, 1982, 1994 and 2006 are also Dog years. At 48, I'm celebrating my fourth full cycle and, on this occasion, I've been reflecting on the events of my life at each of the previous three cycles. So many changes - from boy to man, from one love to another, from school to professional career, from child to father - and yet so much good fortune along the way.

There's a delightful little theater company once again bringing the magic of Shakespeare to Greater Los Angeles this summer - and doing it, once again, free of charge. Shakespeare By The Sea is the company and this summer's productions are Hamlet and The Comedy of Errors. Their mission is daring and difficult, striving (and succeeding) to bring top-quality productions to anyone and everyone. The group is small and mobile, performing each play of the season in over a dozen outdoor locations from El Segundo to Laguna Niguel. The cast is also the crew, setting up and tearing down their stage for each performance and then moving on.

The latest production at The Mark Taper Forum is Anton Chekhov's classic "The Cherry Orchard". As a portrait of late-nineteenth-century Russia, the play captures the contradictory comedy and tragedy of that chaotic period. Unlike most Taper productions, this one included two well-known actors in its unusually large cast. Annette Bening plays a believable Ranyeskaya, the matriarch of an aristocratic family facing financial ruin. Opposite her, Alfred Molina's Lopakhin has emerged from peasant ancestry to become a successful businessman who, in a delightful twist of irony, winds up purchasing Ranyeskaya's estate at auction - the same estate on which his father and grandfather worked their entire lives as serf slaves. The owned becomes the owner, and vice versa.

Today, the sea of internet blogs is vast and deep, sometimes difficult to navigate and often featureless in all directions. Luckily, there are noteworthy gems - islands of inspiration that serve as welcome sights to all of us sailing about. One of my favorites is UpWord, the intellectual home on the internet of my good friend, Tom Chatt. I've known Tom for over 20 years and have always found his ideas and opinions cogent, thought-provoking, often inspiring and always worth considering. His writing inspires me to pursue my own. I invite you to check out UpWord and enjoy Tom's unique perspectives.