Sorry, make that "quotes."
Quotes, indeed. Quotes, oh, my. So many quotes to choose from, so little time. And all from the soul of one man. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) did land office business today in the Quote Department, and it's almost too hard to know which to pick from. There was, of course, his most news-getting quote, going into the gutter to attack state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-TX) who personally had an 11-hour filibuster that helped defeat a Texas anti-abortion bill, SB 5. The governor referenced Sen. Davis being the daughter of "a single woman" and then commented, ""It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters." This got enough comments from most decent-hearted sources -- including Ms. Davis herself, who said, "Rick Perry's statement is without dignity and tarnishes the high office he holds. They are small words that reflect a dark and negative point of view." So, it's hard to stop or add to all that. There was also his comment about the loud protests the proposed Texas law has engendered. "The louder they scream, the more we know that we are getting something done.” The problem, of course, is that he didn't get something done. The bill was defeated. Mind you, being proud about doing something so horrific that you force people to scream doesn't seem like a really great claim to fame to brag about. He also said that fighting abortion was "a way to remember the 55 million who have been robbed of life.” I would suggest that someone ask Gov. Perry if he could name one fetus or zygote who he wants to remember. Given that he has 55 million to choose from, it shouldn't be hard to come up with one. Additionally, he noted that there 80,000 unborn children were lost to abortions last year in Texas, and "It breaks my heart." No word from the governor about whether his heart is equally broken from actually-born human beings who were killed by guns. And no word from the governor about the zillions of unborn children who weren't born for any reason in Texas last week. But my favorite quote may have been one that relates specifically to his duties as chief executive of the state. He said, "We are under no obligation to make things easier for the abortionists." Actually, you see, abortions are legal in the United States, so the governor, in fact, is obligated to make things easy for them. It's been pretty clear for a while that Rick Perry is interested in running again for President of the United States after his last, abortive (no pun intended), disastrous attempt. It's possible that is position and statements on abortion will move him to a position so far to the right that he can get the GOP nomination. I don't expect it, but it's possible. But it's equally clear that his positions and statements are so far to the right that not only will he risk dragging the entire Republican Party over the edge with him, he risks tipping over the entire flat earth he lives in.
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Some stories have lousy beginnings but happy endings. As I mentioned a while back, I have a new novel coming out soon. The biggest challenge may well have been coming up with the right cover. The writing of the sucker? That I at least have in my control, for good or ill. But art is out of my comfort zone. Making this more problematic is that I couldn't use the wonderful guy, Bryan Larkin, who did my previous book. That's because he's a graphic designer, and for this I need an illustrator. (The book deals with women, and I need the drawing to be reasonably accurate to descriptions in the book.) And making this even more problematic is that illustrators are much more expensive, and I just don't have the budget. I finally came up with a guy who was very professional, an expert in the historical period the story takes place, and he did a respectable job when he sent in a pencil-drawing sketch. His style was much more old-world rather than that realistic, almost photo-quality look I dearly wanted, but he was far better than my other options at my budget. So, I could happily live with it. The problem though was that he was busy on a major project, something he never quite made clear. He took six weeks to get to the pencil sketch and kept putting off fixing it week upon week. And then he said maybe he hoped to get the next pencil draft done in three weeks. I estimated that at best, it would all be three months for the whole project, if all went well -- for a job that artists were telling me should take a month. Alas, I finally had enough and cut ties with him. It was all very polite, though he explained how complex and time-consuming my requirements were. (I scratched my head on that.) This was last Wednesday morning. I was feeling lousy, not knowing where I'd be able to turn, and what I could get at my budget. I had to start from scratch with zero idea. And my hoped-for deadline had drifted away in the distance. I was recommended to a website, Freelanced.com. You put up your job and wait to see if any freelancers are interested. I got about 60 responses, and quite liked about eight of them. Several even included personal notes about how the project sounded great and they’d be terrific for it, which I loved hearing their enthusiasm. Then, late in the day, another illustrator applied, and she also sent a personal note about how good a fit we'd make. I took a look at her website -- and was absolutely floored. Gobsmacked. OhMyGod stunned. It was brilliant, wildly creative work. And she drew women like I'd wished for. But I sent her a note saying that as remarkable as her talent was, I suspected she hadn't seen my posting of my budget, which was paltry compared to what work like this very realistic style gets, and she was out of my league. (It often uses rotoscoping, and I've been told that such an illustrator can cost a great deal.) Plus, she has was represented by a prestigious agency, which raises the price further. However, she wrote back that what I was offering was fine! Honesty, I have absolutely no idea why, I truly can't figure it out. The best I can guess from things she's said is that she likes the project. Who knows? Maybe it's my cheery charm. Hey, I'm not arguing. She has a full-time job at a photo agency, and has won awards, so I'm counting my lucky stars. She's anxious to do it, and that's good enough for me. She said she couldn't start immediately, but thinks it can all be finished by mid-July. I can live with it. Especially with someone this freaking good. She a) draws realistic-looking characters, b) is wildly imaginative, and c) half her samples are beautiful women. I'm so sorry I've lost months with this, but I truly can't believe my luck at finding her. It is SO far-superior from what I had. His work was good, very professional, but very old-world style,. Her work...is vibrant. She's quite remarkable. And a pleasure to deal with. So, from feeling lousy in the morning, to feeling giddy by the end of the day is quite a reversal. This is a link to her website here, the wonderful Dawn Austin. This below is just one of many samples in her portfolio. Not the most vibrant. Not remotely The Best. Just one that's typical of her quality and style. But this is only part of the good part of the story.
Two days later, she sent me a rough first draft. The fact that she already had a first draft is stunning by itself. That’s it’s so good – and in full color – is remarkable. (So much for how complex and time-consuming the project is...) But beyond that, it was absolutely terrific – one friend wrote back, "OhMyGod!" Another said simply "Awesome!" A third said, "You are so lucky." I am so lucky. The drawing wasn't “right.” The characters are a bit off, but she said they're easy fixes. Besides which, I wanted to leave her a lot of wiggle room for her own creativity to decide what’s best. Because she's got a whole lot of creativity. But she did the rough draft in just two days. And if I had been on a deadline and needed something that very day, I’d happily have gone with it. Sometimes, nothing more that pure praise is due. Dawn Austin is deserving of pure praise. Me, I lucked out. I was sorry to read yesterday that the Reprise! theater company is closing up shop in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, I was even more sorry that I wasn't surprised.
Reprise! was the Los Angeles counterpart to the very successful Encore! series in New York, where barebones productions of little-seen classic musicals are performed. It never caught on in Los Angeles. One big problem, I suspect, is that Los Angeles not only isn't the theater town that New York is...it's not particularly a theater town. Also, their ticket prices became wildly expensive for barebones productions with almost no sets and scenery and minimal costumes. Maybe the prices were justified, but they still were pretty high. But mainly, I thought the choice of shows was awful. I had been so uninterested that I hadn't gone in years. Part of that is a Catch-22. Do you do the deserving, but lesser-known shows that -- being lesser-known -- might have a harder time attracting an audience? Or do you do the recognizable titles that are so well-known that audiences have tended to see them enough that there's nothing special. The last production that Reprise! did, for example, was that "little-known" musical, Cabaret. (In fairness, a lot of people may not have seen the stage show ever, or at least for a long while. But its revival had just been running for years on Broadway. And what with the huge success of the movie, it was not remotely a little-known classic.) It's a tough decision. In a non-theater town like Los Angeles, you probably need the better-known titles. But that becomes so uninteresting, and not much different than any community theater or school. Yes, you get better-known actors -- but a) they weren't getting Big Names, b) they wouldn't know who'd be in the show until too late to really promote them, and c) you're charging a whole lot more than community theater and schools, many of which often offer pretty good productions. Me, I'd have opted for the lesser-known classics. Yes, that's easy for me to say, not being in charge of the money. But clearly the other way didn't work. And at least, then you're doing something unique. What it takes is a greater effort to promote it. But at least you have something to promote. For reasons it's hard to explain or grasp, I have just opened a Twitter account. If anyone around these parts has some burning desire to follow me there -- as if coming here isn't more than enough -- I go under the clever name of "RobertElisberg". And in honor of this inauspicious event, I figure it was appropriate to post this classic sketch from Monty Python. The Upperclass Twit of the Year. My friend Mark Evanier wrote a piece on his wonderful blog yesterday about Andrew Sullivan's scathing takedown here on The Dish of Peggy Noonan for her snide suggestion that President Obama may well have been behind the supposed IRS attempt to destroy the Tea Party corporations, making his election all the more suspect. With the new revelations arising about how the IRS also went after progressive groups, Sullivan writes, "So time’s up, Peggy. Put up or shut up – especially with the outrageous smear that the president was behind this. The IRS was trying to flush out bogus non-political groups on both sides. That’s what we pay them to do." And then he adds --
"I think this scandal just evaporated into thin air." Please let me know if you find any right-wing outlets that have pushed this untrue story that are actually reporting on this new IRS data (this attempt by NRO is lame or needs further clarification); and whether – God help us – they are apologizing and correcting. Over to you, Mr O’Reilly. And Ms Noonan." In his own piece, Mark notes: "And you know, I used to like Peggy Noonan. I think I linked to a lot of her pieces here a while back. But she, like a lot of people who are desperate for an Obama impeachment, have resorted to just plain lying." Me, I didn’t like her. Peggy Noonan is very smart and a good writer, and she had the patina of being fair-minded, but it was always after-the-fact, when it was safe. BobProof: two Hufferies I wrote. Here's one -- "Peggy Noonan Feels Bad About George Bush: A Nation Mourns" And this is the other -- "Peggy Noonan Regrets Sarah Palin: A Nation Weeps" Both are pure Peggy Noonan at her best. Critical shreddings of two Republican pariahs that make her look decent and fair-minded. Yet both shreddings were written long after she'd used her smarmy typing fingers to praise the two subjects extensively and build them up while slamming the dastardly Democrats and liberals for daring oppose them. And both were written long after the two subjects had long-since been discredited by most everyone who actually was decent and fair-minded. So, too, was her smearing President Obama pure Peggy Noonan. "One of the great questions about the 2012 campaign has been 'Where was the tea party?'" she wrote. "They were not the fierce force they’d been in the 2010 cycle, when Republicans took back the House. Some of us think the answer to the question is: 'Targeted by the IRS, buried under paperwork and unable to raise money.'" And from all this, she concluded, "Technological savvy plus IRS corruption. The president’s victory now looks colder, more sordid, than it did." That's Peggy Noonan. And as Andrew Sullivan so aptly put it: ""So time’s up, Peggy. Put up or shut up." A few days ago, I wrote about a wonderful performance by Kristen Chenoweth at the Tony Awards, which introduced her to the national public, and had the video of it and her joyous acceptance speech immediately after, when she won for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the revival You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It's a wonderful video and a joyous couple of moments. This tops it. It took place in 1990, when the actor Michael Jeter was nominated as Best Featured Actor in the musical Grand Hotel. The show has music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest (who also wrote the famous musical, Kismet. And the score was augmented with additional songs by Maury Yeston, who later wrote the Tony Award-winning Titanic. This particular song, "We'll Take a Glass Together," is by Wright and Forrest. Michael Jeter had always been a popular figure on Broadway. Exceedingly talented. What's noteworthy about this video, however, isn't that Michael Jeter was appearing in the show. It's that he was appearing anyway. He'd had a horrific drug and alcohol problem that not only destroyed his career, but came close to ending his life. But he went through a long and difficult rehab, got his life back in order and then got his career back in order. And Grand Hotel was his big return to Broadway, as much as it was his return to life. And he got a Tony nomination for it. This video will show you why. It's quite amazing. He performs with Brent Barrett, who does a terrific job in the number, but at a certain point you can see in his face that "This is Michael Jeter's moment, there is nothing I can do that will get a single person looking at me, and I am here to support him -- and it is my pleasure." He even briefly walks offstage for a moment, leaving Jeter his moment to shine. And good Lord, does he shine. Watch this video full screen -- the quality isn't great to begin with, and it's diminished a bit when full screen...but you will want to watch what Michael Jeter does, so you can believe you're seeing what you think you're seeing, and revel in the joy of it. And it's made all the more moving because the character he plays is a man who is dying, and just wants a friend and to "Take a Glass Together." But here's the thing. That's not the good part. Because then they cut to the nominations. And the presentation. And the winner is -- well, no one could top this performance, even if he didn't have that personal history to go with it. Michael Jeter wins. And the speech he gives is, I'm sure, remembered by everyone who saw it live. I know I do. That's why I tracked this down, and watch it every once in a while. And so, now you get to sit back and watch Michael Jeter perform and win his Tony for Grand Hotel. Not that I want to build this up or anything... (When the musical performance is over, you can jump to the 6-minute mark, if you want, and skip the long voice-over credits for the broadcast. And I recommend watching this full-screen for the fancy footwork. Trust me...) |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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