Happy candy hunting.

I've been back home for a week or so, and jumped right in to a "debate" with other school board candidates, and auditions for the high school one act play. I've been told that my 5 minute video for the city was a finalist and much-talked-about video (which makes me cringe, because it was last minute and sloppy as far as I'm concerned and done only to meet the requirements for being able to keep the video camera).

Today I get to take the kids out for candy hunting. I think I'll go as my friend Kootch....

One more show to go.

One more show to go, here at the Lit Moon World Theatre Festival in Santa Barbara. It's been a remarkable week of fascinating, wonderful, and even some "so-so" productions. I have found some of the after-show get-togethers of equal, or even more interest, than the shows themselves. Talking with performers, directors, and scenographers from Bulgaria and Poland, has been an incredible educational experience.

I will be posting reactions to specific shows on "My Theatre Journal" sometime next week.

Tomorrow it's off to Kansas City for production meetings for next year's Great River Shakespeare Festival.

Shakespeare of the world, in Santa Barbara.

It's been a busy couple of days, and I'm not done here yet, but I've been in Santa Barbara, CA for the last four days, and I've seen four Shakespeare performances, by companies from three different companies.

TIMON OF ATHENS and RICHARD II were both American company productions ... actually, both were co-produced by universities in the area.

JULIET & ROMEO was done by a Canadian troup.

And OTHELLO was performed (and spoken) by a Polish company. Without a doubt, the production of Othello was the best work I've seen here, and anywhere in quite some time. Powerful, strong, evoking emotions, and extremely well acted, this play was easy to understand, even though the words themselves weren't.

I have two more shows to see in the next couple of days, and I'm looking forward to them.

Today's birthdays.

According to The Writer's Almanac, it is the birthday today for two people who have had an influence on me. Thelonius Monk and Harold Pinter

The Pinter influence might be obvious to most who know me, but the Monk influence less so.

I have often said (more, lately, as I grow older and see opportunities slipping away) that if I were to do anything differently in my life, it would be to study and compose music. Some of the strongest musical influences in my life have been jazz music (thanks, Mo) and Monk's were some of the very first jazz albums that I ever purchased and listened to until the records nearly wore out.

It would seem to be a good duo to share a birthdate.

Where does the time go?

Can't believe how the days are getting away from me.

I put together a short video for the local city government, as part of a grant requirement. it was a real bitch to do and I wasn't helped any by a software program that refused to let me copy my edited video to ANYthing (not to disc, not to hard drive, etc) and i had to redo the whole damned thing in a short time frame on a program that I didn't like as well.

Yesterday we took the family to a "corn maze" and pumpkin patch just outside the Cities. They had a lot of fun. Me, less so. As I told my wife, I don't enjoy getting lost on purpose. I always like to know exactly where I am, so walking in to a maze is not fun for me.

The farm with the maze (Afton Apple) had LOTS of puns with the words "corn" and "maze", but not once did I see them refer to it as a "maize". How do you not capitalize on the obvious? (Then again, they did write "congradulations.")