Crazytown

I LOVE U, MISSED CONNECTIONS!!

DO YOU FEEL THE SAME I HOPE SO PLZ RESPOND
By Alisha Giampola (Actor) 

The Missed Connections feature of Craigslist provides one of the more fascinating studies of modern human social behavior. If somehow the entire Internet could be encased in a fossil record that future homo sapeins, or aliens, or cockroaches could dig up 3,000 years from now, Missed Connections would surely become the focus of future college sociology classes. (I do really love thinking about this scenario. Will these future universe-dwellers think we worshipped cheeseburger-eating cats? Will they think The Onion was actually America's Finest News Source?)

When archeologists found graffiti on the walls of Pompeii we were reminded that people have pretty much always been exactly the same and that we have always been obsessed with approximately one thing: sex. I like to think of Missed Connections as the Pompeii-graffiti of the new millenium. Hastily scrawled, misspelled, grammatically horrific and pretty much always hoping to get laid.

If you've ever been out in public, it's possible that you've been a part of a missed connection! That chick at the coffee shop you accidentally brushed elbows with? The dude you always see on the train coming home from work that you think is totally gorgeous? Perhaps they are fantasizing about you too. Want to find out? All you need is an internet connection! Basically, if you are reading this right now, you already have all the tools required to find the love of your life! Missed Connections contains all the thoughts on the minds of everyone we have ever accidentally bumped into on the street, be they M4W, W4M, M4M or W4W. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Some friends of mine from college had the inspired idea a couple years ago to mine this hilarious treasure trove of comedy and created a show that is pretty much exactly what you have always wanted to see: comedians reading Missed Connections on a stage in a venue that serves alcohol. 

The creator-performers of Missed Connections: The Show. From L to R: Jake McKenna, Jennifer Jean Anderson, Ricky Dunlop and Lauren Roth. I had the pleasure of going to school with these cool people. 

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF A PATRON KIND: DELUXE EDITION

Because the best characters really are in the audience.
By Annissa Omran (Writer/College Student/Usher) 

(Palais Garnier, theater perfection embodied)

I recently had a very interesting series of run ins with patrons at the theater where I work as an usher and I think they deserve a little more attention than the usually brief segment Close Encounters of a Patron Kind.

This past week I worked double shifts to accommodate the final six-day-stretch of a show that has been in town for almost a month. I, being no stranger of repetition, absolutely love the chance to watch a show more than one time. It gives me the chance to see different parts (as an usher we can only partake of the show while patrons are seated, after tickets are counted and holds are observed) and it provides me with the opportunity to appreciate swings and full cast members alike.

As a result of such long term exposure to a series of rambunctious audiences, I happened to rack up a nice little medley of encounters that I now present to you for your reading pleasure:

I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAYYYYYY!!!

You'd better 86 the 69 talk.
By Alisha Giampola (Actress) 

My best friend from college and I are still best friends. He was my best man at my wedding. We have a lot of jokes that we don't even remember how they started. For our entire friendship, we have both been obsessed with the long-cancelled Comedy Central cult tv hit from the early '00's, Strangers With Candy. I, personally, have used this show as currency when forming new friendships. Can you quote it? Do you dream of meeting Amy Sedaris in real life? Is this what made you fall in love with Stephen Colbert, long before he became a regular television presence? Ok. We can be friends.

Last week, on Valentine's Day, I found myself finishing up some things around the classroom where I teach, and had a handful of plain red construction paper hearts that seemed sad to just throw away, even though the holiday was essentially over. But my Valentine's Day, which involved plans for a late lunch with Jake, my aformentioned bestie, had not yet begun. Inspired, I went online to find some Strangers With Candy Valentines to print out and affix to the red paper hearts. Shockingly, despite the plethora of other random crap that appears to be readily available on the internet, Jerri Blank and/or Strangers With Candy inspired Valentines do not appear to be a thing. 

Supremely irritated, I printed some graphics from the show and proceeded to make them a thing. Honestly, I should really start a business. Amy Sedaris would be way proud, because she's all about crafting:

It's just a collective cooperative community service operation outreach program project.

WEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

Ali reflects on inappropriate times she's shed tears in the past, and makes a case for a few more inappropriate times in the future.
By Ali Gordon

Recently, I was sitting in the Actor's Equity building waiting to be seen for an audition, and I thought I should fill my waiting time by reading (read: tearing through) the recent comedy issue of Vanity Fair. I was thrilled, as many were, to discover a lengthy article dedicated to the one and only Martin Short, the only man in the world who seems funnier, kinder, and more sincere the more you know about him. As the topic turned, inevitably, to the passing of his wife Nancy, I found myself getting deeply emotional.

I don't just mean "sympathetic" emotional.

I mean tears emotional.

 

You feel me on this one, Emma?

 

"The miracle of Nan and I is that it never stopped,” Short describes in the article, "There was never a time of ‘I’m packing my bag.’ The party and the laughs and the immediacy never stopped."

And then I had to go to the bathroom because I was 100%, fully crying in the waiting room of the Actor's Equity building, and I knew that I had to hide because if anyone asked what was upsetting me, "I'm just really emotional about Marty Short's wife passing away in 2010" wasn't an acceptable answer.

But in retrospect I'm thinking: what if we lived in a world where that were an acceptable response to the question "why are you crying?" What the hell is our problem with crying, anyway?

"A PERSISTENT SCHIZOPHRENIA LEAVES SO MANY OF US TRAGICALLY DIVIDED AGAINST OURSELVES"

He can say it far better than I can myself.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

"One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.”

...

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

Whether you are celebrating Dr. King, celebrating the inauguration, taking the day off, or working your butt off (that last category is me!), take a minute to let those words sink in, and ask what you can do to move yourself from that place of schizophrenia to a world where “practice” and “profession” become one.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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"WHEN I GROW UP I WILL BE A SPY. I WILL BE THE BEST SPY THERE EVER WAS."

On growing up, but not completely. 
By Alisha Giampola (Actor)

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a lot of things when I grew up. Which is why I became an actor. Hypothetically, the plan was to get to vicariously be all those things I wanted to be while I was growing up, but never actually have to get a degree that specialized in any of them. This seemed like a great plan, although I think I forgot that REAL lawyers and princesses actually make a lot more money than most actors. 

Mostly, what I wanted to be for most of my childhood, was Harriet The Spy. 

I mean, look at her. She just oozes cool. This is a girl that sees everything and then writes it down in her notebook. She has SPY TOOLS. She loves tomato sandwiches, just like me!! She hates math, just like me!!! And best of all: she actually sneaks into other people's houses and spies on them.

That is what I liked best about Harriet...her audaciousness. And, of course, that she was as interested in other people as I was. She watched ordinary people doing ordinary things in their everyday lives and wondered why they were doing them- and if, perhaps there were sinister or criminal motives behind their actions.

People-watching became my new favorite sport. I actually asked my mother to buy me a composition book, just like the kind Harriet used, so I could write down everything I saw in block letters, like she did. I decided I needed to follow a "spy route", just like Harriet, but I was only allowed to walk by myself in our neighborhood as far as the road that interesected with the entrance to the subdivision. This enormously limited the amount of people for me to spy on, and I longed to live in Manhattan, like Harriet, where interesting people lived with 26 cats or dumbwaiters. No one in my neighborhood seemed to have anything even remotely that fascinating, but I dutifully wrote down everything I saw in my notebook: "CURTAINS CLOSED IN ALL WINDOWS OF GREEN HOUSE NEXT DOOR. WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?" 

BEHIND THE MADNESS: JOE ICONIS, VOL. 1

The first in a series of conversations exploring all things craft and crazy/cool with the new mad geniuses of musical theater.
By Michael Ruby (Writer)

Ice-T, the rapper and star of both Law and Order: SVU and Ice Loves Coco, made a brilliant documentary, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap - available on NetFlix and freaking' fantastic. In it, Ice interviews fellow MC's and dives deep into the craft of how they write and revolutionize the rap game. And I thought, hey, that looks like fun! More than that, I think it will be enlightening for writers and fans of musical theater to discover the method to the madness of some of today's most exciting "emerging" musical theater writers (More on why "emerging" is in quotes to come).   

My first conversation (to be posted in two parts) is with the awesome Joe Iconis, the author of The Black Suits (book co-written with Robert Maddock; Barrington Stage Company), Bloodsong of Love: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Spaghetti Western (Ars Nova/NAMT), ReWrite (Urban Stages, Goodspeed Opera House Festival of New Artists), Theaterworks USA’s The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks and We The People (The Lucille Lortel Theater, National Tour). Joe's upcoming projects include The Hunter S. Thompson Musical (with bookwriter Gregory S. Moss) for the La Jolla Playhouse/Broadway Across America, and a musical adaptation of Ned Vizzinni's Be More Chill (with bookwriter Joe Tracz) for Two Rivers Theater.

I've been blessed and fortunate enough that Joe has collaborated with me and my writing partner Rob Rokicki on several occasions, and even more fortunate to have befriended this wonderful and wonderfully talented dude. But amid the hustle and bustle of working, we've rarely had the chance to sit and really talk one-on-one at length. So, I was thrilled when Joe jumped at the chance to be my first victim on Crazytown.

ASK ALAN CUMMING: NEW ADVICE COLUMN FOR THE NEW YEAR

Entirely real questions matched with entirely real things that Alan Cumming has...at one point...said. The Dear Abby for the new generation.
By Joanna Syiek (Director/Producer/Blogger)

You may have at times find yourself asking, "how does Alan Cumming do it?" That charisma, that accent, that self-titled cologne. When people say you can't have it all, they clearly haven't taken a gander at this man. And now he's here to share his wisdom with you. Alan Cumming has taken your questions,* and will now impart his fantastically Scottish ways with you all.

----------------------------------------------------

Dear Alan Cumming,

I met my boyfriend’s mother this weekend when she was visiting from Tennessee. I love my boyfriend very much and really wanted to impress his mom, so I turned up the charm and was as hospitable as I could be. I set up a room for her in our apartment, put fresh flowers in there for her, and cleaned the place so it shined. When we picked her up, everyone was very friendly, exchanging pleasantries and what-not. Everything seemed to be going really well, until we got home and my boyfriend left us alone while he showered. All of a sudden, his mother’s smile vanished and a vindictive horrible look washed over her face. She got right in my face and gave me a whole speech about how no girl was going to take her boy away from her and that she was going to kill me unless I broke it off. She knew where I lived and said she would come find me if I didn’t heed her warning. Abby, what should I do?? I love my boyfriend and wouldn’t dream of breaking up with him, but his mother is obviously crazy!! He has no idea and would probably think I was lying if I told him about this. Please help!!

Terrified in Tennessee

 

Dear Terrified in Tennessee,

Remember, you're the brave one, you're the honest one. You're the one who knows who you are! They're the scared uninformed self-deceiving cowards. Be yourself and that's good enough. 

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Dear Alan Cumming,

How exactly does one "drop it like it's hot"?

Getting Down with Her Bad Self

 

Dear Getting Down,

I usually can find a way to make it real and work. But sometimes it's a struggle sustaining that, because there's such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness. 

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Dear Alan Cumming,

I don’t know how to feel about President Obama’s reelection. Everyone I know is a card carrying liberal, and I still classify myself as the same, but I find myself disagreeing with his policies more and more. Is there a way to be at peace with the next four years even knowing that the man running the ship isn’t the one I really want as captain?

Doubtful Donkey from CA

 

Dear Doubtful Donkey,

I’d like to see Obama naked. ...Someone told me that they worked out with him in a gym in Chicago, and it was big.

*Alan Cumming's reponses may not be from the same exact context he originally provided them. Nonetheless, I'm sure he means well.

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JOANNA SYIEK is a Los Angeles-based music junkie with a penchant for long road trips, original theatre work, clean graphic design, and really good Indian food. She directs around the City of Angels and writes about nourishing creativity, Broadway favorites, and talent obsessions over on her blogging home. www.thoughtsontheatre.wordpress.com
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WHAT TO DO AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD

Here’s my recommendation.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Chenowith also gets to make a hilarious joke about masturbation in the same episode.
Here she’s talking about our need for human interaction.

I'm not going to give you a “top ten things to do in 2013 to make your life wonderful” list. There is no such thing. What I am going to tell you to do is “LET GO” a little bit -- and fall in love -- this year. And here’s why:

You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)

And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.

PS You have to be brave.

Author Jeanette Winterson wrote that incredible passage in one of last year’s best books (and it was for kids!): Big Questions from Little People & Simple Answers from Great Minds. Go check it out for some absolutely wonderful musings on everything from dreams to stars and everything in between.

And fall in love this year.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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SUMMING UP A MIXED-BAG YEAR: TAKING THE GOOD WITH THE BAD

It’s the end of the world as we know it . . . and I feel fine. Kinda. Here's why.
by Loren A. Roberts (guru of multi-hyphenate media)

Let's just keep this in mind for the next few days. Wake up, people.

The events of last week (shootings on both coasts, wars and rumors of wars, missiles being launched into space) have me down. And I guess I should be, since the Mayans tell us that the world is ending in a few days.

But I’m going to try and give you a silver lining, with the things that have made me stand up and take notice this past year.

TOP FIVE “WOW” MOMENTS OF 2012

Number One: Obama.

I will freely admit that I did not vote for Obama the first time around. I still believe that both major political parties are so beholden to big money that there is no way either party -- Democratic or Republican -- can properly represent the people who elected them. So I'm not that happy with either party.

But this time, the stakes were a little higher. And the right person won the election. (I know: my opinion, but this is my blog post. You write your own if you disagree.)

Surprising. It kinda renewed my faith in the American people. A little bit.

Number Two: Curiosity.

If you ever need reassurance that the human spirit can overcome just about anything, you should go two places: the slums, or offworld. In the slums, you have people like Mother Teresa doing incredible work; as soon as you leave our planet, you have people like Bobak Ferdowsi (mohawk guy) and John Grotzinger (Curiosity's project scientist) doing incredible things too. These people are scooping dirt and analyzing it on another planet! How much cooler can you get?

You may ask: why put Mother Teresa and a couple of JPL scientists in the same sentence? Because, like a true Trekkie, I believe that science is, in the future, going to be able to solve many of the socio-economic problems that plague our world today. (Obviously, that only will be true if we allow society to progress from where it is now.)

Number Three: self-discovery.

I am an artist. It has taken a long time to get there, but I have no reason to step away from it. I love art. I love creation. (I love getting paid to play music!) I love collaboration with other creators. If I had more money, I would employ more creators to collaborate with me. For now, I pay a few, and I work with a bunch for free, and we'll figure out the finances as we go. I still have a day job, and that provides me some money.

Number Four: family and friends and faith.

This has been one of the hardest years ever for my family, and yet here we are, still ticking, still plodding forward, still -- all of us in our own ways -- creating. Yes, I have a family of creators/artists, and that can be crazy-making sometimes, but my family is awesome. And my friends have helped keep me sane this year. Beers and friends after work have become more frequent, and that's a good thing. Finally, I have kinda “come back into the fold” -- or, I'm on a faith journey that I walked away from ten years ago -- and I'm cautious, but optimistic.

Number Five: the fullness of life.

Since I began this post with a quote from a 1990 movie (Joe vs. the Volcano), I'll finish it with a quote from a 1991 flick entitled Grand Canyon. Mary McDonnell's character is trying to make sense of her life, and she turns to her husband and says "Everything seems so close together…All the good and bad things in the world. Everything. I feel it in myself, even. And in us." And that's me. This world is so screwed up -- once a day I expect that someone is going to push a red button in some secret bunker somewhere and we'll all be dead; but every day, I also look up and see an incredible sunset, or have an awesome talk with a friend, or sit and play Boggle with my daughter, or sing an incredible song with my band, or watch some project that I work on do some amount of good in the world, or...

And that's it. The good and the bad are all mixed together. You can't separate it. You can't just have a perfect life. 'Cuz if you had a perfect life, you would never know how perfect it was, 'cuz you would have never seen the other side.

So go and live your life. Live it to the fullest. And enjoy the new year.

LOREN A. ROBERTS produces films, videos and music, designs magazines and logos, plays and sings in a rock-and-roll tribute band, and is a student of what happens when science and technology and the arts and culture collide. www.hearkencreative.com
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