Attention: Hollywood

This morning, as I was pulling (uninstalling?) crabgrass from the garden Katherine planted in my backyard, I came across an odd thought. What if celebrities decided to go on tour like rock bands?

This happens rarely in comedy venues – you have your C-level stars like Dustin “Screech” Diamond and Christopher “Kid n’ Play” Reid trying their hands at standup careers, but what if a famous actor or group of actors just decided to tour, maybe doing one-act plays in rock clubs? Given that recent concerts by former New Kid on the Block and C-level reality star Jordan Knight have been well attended at Juanita’s, why not A or B-list actors? Something important to realize with national touring acts like Knight (or even popular rock acts) is that many people attend simply because they want to see someone famous (or in Knight’s case, formerly so).

I realize that there are touring versions of Broadway plays carrying celebrities across flyover land, but I’m talking about something less intensive and on a smaller scale: no sets, minimal props, no more than 4 people on stage. Why take a huge production on the road when everybody is there just to be in the same room with a celebrity? I think this could be a horribly lucrative thing (imagine, if you dare, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore doing scenes from Ibsen’s A Doll House), and now that I’ve thought this through, I’m actually glad it hasn’t really caught on, because then there would be far less music going on than there already is.

Imogen Heap on Flickr

Imogen Heap’s new album has just been released in the UK, and as I was tooling around her blog, I was reminded that the album photography was done by a guy she found on Flickr. Imogen has her own Flickr account, as well. This picture is so gorgeous. And this one is particularly hilarious to me because not only did she just buy her own album, but she bought it from the HMV at Oxford Circus where I almost got a job in 1998.

Thursdays with Ross

Memphibian-turned-Yankee Ross Rice has been back in Memphis these last several weeks settling up, playing gigs and finalizing the mix on his second album, Dwight. So far the record sounds amazing and will definitely be a worthy follow-up to his first effort, Umpteen (it should be, given that it has taken 8 years to make). So while Ross has been in town, he has played several gigs at his old haunt, the Blue Monkey. I knew that this week and next week would probably be my last time to see him for a very long time, so I drove to Memphis last night after band rehearsal to catch the show. I can’t tell you how insanely talented this guy is, and what a great show he puts on. I’m such a big fan, I made him a website for free and set him up on myspace. Check him out.

A Thursday night trip to Memphis will wear a man down, though. Ross finished up at 1:30, we were hanging out until after 2, talking about everything and catching up (with me drinking lots of coffee). I got on the road around 2:30 and got home at 4:30. So I’m running on two hours of sleep right now. Hopefully I can stay awake today.

Win Rock Drops Out

Winthrop Rockefeller has officially dropped out of the 2006 Arkansas Governor’s Race. He has a blood condition that may become leukemia. This saddens me greatly as it probably means I won’t be able to vote for independent Rod Bryan because the only other Republican alternative to Rockefeller is Asa Hutchinson. And I don’t want that guy running the state. Win Rock I trust. Hutchinson I can’t stand.

Doing a Google search on “Asa Hutchinson” brings up at #1 an error page at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s website. I feel really safe when HS can’t keep its website operational…

Wikipedia

I found links to my site in Wikipedia today under “pictures of Dogpatch.” Wikipedia, for those who don’t know, is a free, interactive, online encyclopedia. It stays remarkably up to date, as it notes below:

There are also quite a few pictures of the property, overgrown and decaying, posted on the Internet, suggesting frequent visitation. However, as of June 28, 2005, signs have been posted threatening prosecution of trespassers, and a guard has been seen camping in an RV on the property.

Good to know. I also found a local urban exploration site with more Dogpatch photos, Underground Ozarks.

Productivity

I kept myself busy this weekend cleaning house and car. My car is a 2001, and until last Saturday I had never vacuumed it. The driver’s side mat took 4 minutes of spray-washing. Bleah. I also took Zoe to the vet because she’s constantly scratching, wearing away the fur on her hind quarters and tail. Turns out she has some bacterial infection so we got her some meds and I gave her a bath with some special shampoo and she seems a lot better already.

The door to my bedroom doesn’t fully shut (ah old houses) so these animals that live with me keep sneaking in and sleeping on my bed, depositing massive amounts of fur and dirt thereunto. The other bedroom’s door does fully shut, and now that I have the option, I have switched bedrooms. I moved into the back bedroom and transferred all my music stuff to the front bedroom. I spent most of Sunday hanging posters and I even went to Target to buy some blinds. I couldn’t figure out the instructions, so I just tied them to my curtain rod with several loops of kite string. Bob Vila probably wouldn’t approve, but hey it works. Pictures of my new playground here, here and here.

And So It Goes

So I’ve been carrying on this semi-relationship with this girl Jamie since about October. She’s amazingly great and we’ve turned each other on to so much great music (notably, Spiraling). Context here. The only problem is she lives in Indiana, and so I’ve only been able to visit her once. Then about a month or two ago, her computer died so we’ve been communicating a lot less. Then she lost her phone for three weeks and we had no contact because my number was in the phone and her house phone doesn’t have long distance. But last week she came back online, explained everything, and although she’s not online as often as she was, I thought there still might be a chance.

Now I know there’s not.

For those who don’t know, the girl in the picture and the comments is Jamie. She’s got some other boy to play with now. Wisconsin is closer and I’m sure he likes Morrissey more than I do, so he’s probably a better match for her. I’ll assume that he’s what she needs. Really, I’ve been expecting her to tell me something like this for a month or two, but under no circumstances did I want to find this out for myself. Girls, if you’re ever looking to break up with someone, then please get over the fear of the thing and just let your boy off the hook.

Tragic irony of tragic ironies, I’ll going to be hanging out with Natalie tonight, who’s just recently moved back to town from LA. She left last February. She’s probably back because of her successful long-distance relationship with a great guy. If that’s the case, I’m going to try not to be crushed by jealousy.

The weather has just turned dark and stormy as I type this. I’m going to go stand in the rain and do my usual John Cusack in the rain impression (see heartbreak scenes in Say Anything and High Fidelity, what is it with that guy and the rain?). “The rain on my car is a baptism. The new me. Iceman. Power Lloyd. My assault on the world begins now! Believe in myself! Answer to no one!!”

Inversion of Priorities

One thing I’ve learned recently in a management course I’m taking at the office is that the goal of management (and business in general) is to train to a standard and manage the exceptions. I realized today that perhaps one of the main reasons why art and commerce don’t mix well is that the goal of good art is to be exceptional while having some standards and common points of reference.

It would then seem that art and commerce are diametrically opposed to each other. Polar opposites. Matter and anti-matter.

For Improved Cat Hoarding Awareness

Fark.com, as hopefully everyone knows, is the best place to get news. Fark allows odd news stories from various regions to be concentrated into a central location. These stories are the kinds of things you might read in your local paper but almost never see on national news. Something I realized today is that, as a result, Fark makes us aware of human behavior patterns that we might otherwise miss. For example, cat hoarding.

Headlines like “today’s house with 300 cats brought to you by X” show up on Fark with remarkable regularity. On a local level, cat hoarding might seem like a peculiar, isolated incident, but with the advent of Fark, we can see that it is in fact something of a national mini-epidemic. People hoard pets all the time. There are hundreds of pet hoarders out there. It’s a legitimate psychological disorder.

So there’s another benefit of the Internet. It allows us to discover how truly freaky we really are. Pet hoarding just scratches the surface if you consider that the Internet also allows people with niche fetishes to come together more easily.