Dirtiest. Musical. Ever.

"Let My People Come" opened Off-Broadway in 1974. Funny, you don't hear about it very often.

RockyMusic ("The Musical World Of Rocky Horror") also has mp3 files and several more explicit production photos here.

According to RockyMusic, "The show broke all box office records at the Village Gate and played for 1,167 performances. Its transfer to the Morosco Theatre on Broadway was not as successful though, and closed after 106 performances."

Abigail's "X-Rated" Teen Diary

If you've not seen it before, you should check out Abigail's "X-Rated" Teen Diary.

Despite the title, it is TOTALLY safe for work. The "X-Rated," she explains, is adult-speak for "You're not supposed to look at this, it's private."

The premise is that between the seventh and eighth grades, Abigail developed Bloomberger's Syndrome, which is this disease that, like, totally changes your DNNA 'n' stuff -- the upshot of which is that this thirteen-year-old girl happens to look exactly like a middle-aged man, though she still talks and acts like a thirteen-year-old girl..

She posts new videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the videos tend to run about thirty seconds to two minutes. The entire backlog of Abigail videos is available for viewing on her site and is available as a video podcast through iTunes as well.

If you know a man in the Bay Area who is over forty, preferably with facial hair and/or bald(ing), who is willing to do some kind of semi-scripted semi-improvisation on camera some weekend, let me know. I want to send a video response to Abigail, but I need someone to play my mother (can you say "adult-onset Bloomberger's?").

A Guy Like You - Alison Moyet

Have I mentioned how much I like Alison Moyet's latest album, "The Turn"?

Personally, I think it's her best album since "Essex".

I'm just sorry that we couldn't get tickets for the Yaz reunion tour this summer.

By the way, "The Turn" is NOT available from iTunes. I have seen it at Virgin Megastore, downtown San Francisco. Amazon says they have the import in stock for $35, but it's actually cheaper to order it from Amazon.co.uk (£5.97 plus shipping).

Rolling the ball...Rolling the ball...Rolling the ball...

I use my iPod a lot. My commute is 45 minutes in each direction. I also have iTunes open on my computer all day long at work with an earbud in only one ear (so I can still hear when people are talking to me -- sadly, this means that I can't listen to the Beatles or Bowie, because the vocals are frequently only in the channel I'm not listening to).

The longer I use these things, the more convinced I am that "Shuffle" is just simply not genuinely random. I mean, come on, if it were entirely random, there wouldn't be a "smart shuffle" setting that will make it more likely or less likely to play multiple songs by a single artist or from the same album.

My iPod tends to have its own personal favorite songs that it plays over and over and over. And what's even stranger is that iTunes on my work computer will often pick almost exactly the same tracks as the iPod has picked. For example, both iTunes and my iPod have been on an unusually big Kate Bush kick lately -- I've been getting "Sat In Your Lap," "Them Heavy People," "All We Ever Look For," "My Lagan Love," "Under the Ivy," "Wuthering Heights" from both devices on a daily basis in heavy rotation. It is rare that either device will play just one Kate track -- it's usually two or three Kate tracks in a row. And this is with the "smart shuffle" preference set dead center on "random".

And this is okay for a few days, but after a couple of weeks, even Kate starts to get old.

So I'm developing a stragedy [sic] for this.

A few weeks ago, I went through all the tracks on my iPod and made a playlist based on a few criteria: (1) if my iPod showed that it had played the track more than five times, the track could not go on the playlist; (2) if I felt a more-than-50% likelihood that I would hit "Next" whenever a track started playing, it could not go on the list; (3) if I could not recall ever having heard my iPod play a track it had to go on the playlist.

You can guess the result. After a couple of weeks, my iPod developed a new set of its own favorite tracks.

So now I visit the playlist every week or two and check the play count. The tracks that have been played most often have to get booted off the playlist.

It's a little high-maintenance, but I'm getting more variety out the iPod....

[UPDATE: Just now on my way home from work after writing this, my iPod played "Love and Anger," then two songs not by Kate, then three more Kate songs in a row -- "Rubberband Girl," "Rocket Man," and "Mna Na H-Eireann". See? I don't make this stuff up.]

MASSIVE!

Chip and I have been watching "Shameless" recently. Very enjoyable, but virtually impossible to describe briefly. But I'll try anyway.

It's a comedy-drama about an inherently dysfunctional family behaving as functionally as possible. Mom ran away two years ago, and drunken Dad is never home, except when he needs a place to pass out for the night. So the oldest daughter has had to become parent to her five siblings (aged three to sixteen). Surprisingly funny and warm-hearted.

You can see the first ten minutes of the first episode here. [WARNING: This video contains some extremely strong language and some extremely strong Manchester accents.]

The Sundance Channel is currently airing the second series.

See also the Wikipedia entry.

The first two series feature James McAvoy (BAFTA nominee for "Atonement") as one of the main characters. The show also features Maxine Peake, who played Twinkle in "dinnerladies".

Series One is available on DVD.

Massive.

In the beginning

This post is inspired by the way my improv class started last night. The instructor went around the room asking this question of everyone in class:

"What's the first thing you remember? "

My earliest memories, in no particular order:

• I remember seeing the orange and yellow swirl label on a Capitol Records 45 rpm single by the Beatles (I'm pretty sure it was "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"). I think the reason I remember it so well is that it looked different when it was still than it looked when it was spinning on the turntable. When it was spinning, it sometimes looked like one color, sometimes like two colors. I remember that this happened in my aunt's bedroom in south Georgia [but my sister informs me that I remember incorrectly and that the single actually belonged to her]. My aunt introduced us to Sonny and Cher, the Beatles and "Last Kiss."
  

• I remember hitting my head and having to have two stitches. I don't remember the actual fall, though. What I remember is my parents explaining to me what had happened and trying to describe it to me. It was on the back of my head, and I was frustrated that I couldn't see the stitches. Every time I moved to try to look at it, the back of my head moved, too.
  

• I remember seeing the Boogie Man (aka "the Booger Man") outside my second-story bedroom window. He looked kind of like the Grinch, only a darker green and with longer hair. My parents tried to convince me that it was just a tree branch, but even to this day, I know better. I also remember being confused, because it seemed logical to me that the Booger Man should be made of boogers, not of hair.
  

• I remember sitting under the ironing board while my mother was ironing. I was playing with a ball or some blocks, something simple like that. My mother was ironing a smock that was decorated with different styles of clocks showing different times, with ribbons weaving between them reading, "Haste makes waste" and "He who hesitates is lost" (or some such similar sayings). I was watching the clocks move up and down and from side to side as my mother ironed the smock. I asked her, "We're moving in three days, right?" She answered patiently, "Yes, that's right. Three days." "How much is three days?"
  

• Right after we moved, I remember meeting the little girl from next door. She came running over happily to introduce herself. I threw a rock at her and hit her in the head. I don't know why I did it, and I felt horrible for having done it immediately after I did it -- partly, I think, because I had intended my throw to miss her, so actually hitting her was an accident. Although this must have made for a terribly awkward introduction into the neighborhood, my parents' friendship with those neighbors continues to this day.

Otherwise, my first few years of life remain a closed book to me.

The Name of the Blog

Okay, the name comes from Shakespeare.

The Winter's Tale, Act I, Scene ii.

It's the lead-in to a monologue where Leontes convinces himself that he is not the father of the child that his wife is carrying. It marks Leontes sudden and unexplained descent into temporary madness:

"Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now;
And many a man there is, even at this present,
Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm,
That little thinks she has been sluiced in's absence
And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by
Sir Smile, his neighbour: nay, there's comfort in't
Whiles other men have gates and those gates open'd,
As mine, against their will. Should all despair
That have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind
Would hang themselves. Physic for't there is none;
It is a bawdy planet, that will strike
Where 'tis predominant; and 'tis powerful, think it,
From east, west, north and south: be it concluded,
No barricado for a belly; know't; It will let in and out the enemy
With bag and baggage: many thousand on's
Have the disease, and feel't not. How now, boy?"

Frankly, I didn't pick the title for any particular love of Shakespeare or for any desire to appear erudite and hyper-cultured. I picked the title mainly because a Google search did not turn up any existing blogs with this title. All the other titles that I thought of were already taken.

"Exit, pursued by a bear" (also Winter's Tale, arguably the most famous stage direction in all of history)?

Somebody has already used that name for their blog.

"Life is so tiny, so... daily" ( a line from "Take Me Out" -- the end of the speech is "This... You... take me out of it")?

There's already a blog with that title.

"Go, Play, Boy, Play"?

No blog references found.

In context, the sentence is a bit on the dark and crazy side. Out of context, it's more open to interpretation. So I would prefer that you take the title strictly at face value, as an encouragement to myself or to yourself or to someone you know. I don't intend to use this space to demonstrate or discuss jealousy, insanity, cuckoldry or paranoia. Or, for that matter, preciousness or pretense. Instead, I'd rather use it as a playground.

Nothing more meaningful than that.