Presale for "Tuna Does Vegas"
2/8/2010 5:37:47 PM
Celebrity Attractions is bringing "Tuna Does Vegas," the fourth -- and newest -- tale of those colorful denizens of the third smallest town in the Lone Star State, to the Tulsa PAC March 9-11 for four shows only.
A special internet-only presale is taking place through midnight Wednesday -- just go to the Tulsaworld.com/mytix website, find the "Tuna Does Vegas" entry, and when you are asked for the Coupon Code to buy tickets, type in the word "ROLL."
Bartlesville native Joe Sears and fellow writer-actor Jaston Williams dreamed up Tuna, Texas, as a party gig while both were working with theater companies in Texas. With director Ed Howard, they developed the skit into the play "Greater Tuna," with Sears and Williams performing all 20-odd characters.
They since expanded the "Tuna-verse" to include "A Tuna Christmas" (which earned Sears a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor when it played Broadway in 1994) and "Red, White and Tuna."
The latest installation begins with Arless Struvie and Bertha Bumiller deciding to renew their relatively recent wedding vows in Sin City, and ends up with most of the population of Tuna, Texas, heading out to the land of neon and casinos.
It also features a few new characters, including a security guard known as Shot and a snakeskin-muumuu wearing hotel manager named Anna Conda.
Michael Kaiser on the universality of the arts
2/3/2010 11:14:19 AM
Michael Kaiser, the executive director of the Kennedy Center, came to Tulsa in October as part of his "Arts in Crisis" tour, discussing the current dilemmas facing performing arts groups of all kinds, and offering suggestions as to how these problems might be overcome.
He talks about some of the things he's learned in the course of his travels in his latest blog on the Huffington Post:
"As I was preparing for my "Arts in Crisis" tour stops in a series of southern states, I was reflecting on the claims of too many politicians that the arts are the province of the elite in big coastal cities like New York and Los Angeles. This is used as an excuse for denigrating public support for the arts, and by extension, the arts themselves. The argument goes that investing in the arts only affects a very small, very rich, and very concentrated segment of our population.
"While it is true that many of our largest arts organizations are in large Northeastern cities and that these arts groups have raised their ticket prices so high as to make them unaffordable for many, the arts play a vital role in virtually every community across the nation. It is not simply rich New Yorkers who care about music or dance or theater. People of all backgrounds and income levels are involved with the arts across the United States.
"Why else would 400 enthusiastic people come to my presentation in Kalamazoo, Michigan and 750 attend in Kansas City, Missouri? In fact, I have already spoken with over 7,000 people on the 38 tour stops to date. I have met with passionate advocates for arts and arts education in Tulsa, Des Moines, and Wichita. These arts leaders were no different in knowledge, sophistication or creativity than their counterparts in New York, Chicago or San Francisco."
The entire post is here:
 Read the story: Why are the arts important?
No more refunds for AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
1/31/2010 9:54:23 AM
Because the final performances of "August: Osage County" will go as planned, the PAC will not be refunding people's tickets if they are unable to attend.
The only time a venue provides refunds is if a performance is cancelled. The Thursday night show was, so people with tickets for that performance were the only one eligible to request a refund -- although PAC officials said the majority of those patrons exchanged their tickets for another show.
The official word is this:
"It is of the highest importance that all ticket holders are informed that no more refunds are allowed for any performance of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY.
Ticket exchanges are allowed for the remaining shows of AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY during its Tulsa run. Tickets for the Tulsa engagement will not be honored for any other show locations. These exchanges MUST take place prior to the date and time of the ticket holders purchased tickets.
Please call 596-7109 for any questions on ticket exchanges."
So -- enjoy the show. It will be presented at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. today at the Tulsa PAC/
Jazz Hall concert Sunday postponed
1/30/2010 11:43:48 AM
Sunday afternoon's concert at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, "Pam Swings the Classics" with vocalist Pam Crosby has been postponed unti March 28, due to the weather.
Gone a-"Rye"
1/28/2010 2:08:49 PM
I this book is somewhere on the shelves in my house.... |
I have to confess two things.
First, when one of my editors read off the wire alert that J.D. Salinger had died, my immediate response was, "How could they tell?"
Yes, Dorothy Parker said the same thing when informed of the death of President Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge. It still gets a graveyard chuckle, though.
And it's about as appropriate. Salinger last allowed something to be published -- the long and rambling "Hapworth 16, 1928" -- in 1965. The few times he made any sort of public statement in the decades that followed, he would often say he was writing all the time, but that it was strictly for his enjoyment and he didn't care about any of it appearing in print.
The second thing: I've never read "The Catcher in the Rye."
I own a copy, of course -- the old, russet-covered Bantam paperback with which most of the members of my generation are familiar. I dug it out once some years back with the idea that I'd give the thing a try, but other books got in the way.
I did read and enjoy "Nine Stories," which may be Salinger's best book.
And while I never read the book that made Holden Caulfield an iconic character of 20th century American literature, I did read the story in which he first made an appearance.
In 1981, Esquire magazine ran a piece on the 30th anniversary of "The Catcher in the Rye," that included a short description of Salinger's story, "Last Day of the Last Furlough."
It had been published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1944, and tells of a soldier preparing to be shipped out to combat during World War II. Salinger later dismissed the story as one of his "commercial" stories, but it has been described as the seed from which "The Catcher in the Rye" came.
The story certainly has some personal touches -- the main character's serial number in the story was Salinger's own. And then there is the main character's friend, Vincent Caulfield, who shows up because the two of them will be leaving together.
When Vincent is asked about his visit to New York, he replies:
"No good, sergeant. My brother Holden is missing. The letter came while I was home”...said Vincent. He pretended to look through the pages of the book in his hand. “I used to bump into him at the old Joe College Club on Eighteenth and Third in New York. A beer joint for college kids and prep-school kids. I’d go there just looking for him, Christmas and Easter vacations when he was home. I’d drag my date through the joint, looking for him, and I’d find him way in the back. The noisiest, tightest kid in the place. He’d be drinking Scotch and every other kid in the place would be sticking to beer. I’d say to him, ‘Are you okay, you moron? Do you wanna go home? Do you need any dough?’ And he’d say, ‘Naaa. Not me. Not me, Vince. Hiya boy. Hiya. Who’s the babe’ And I’d leave him there, but I’d worry about him because I remembered all the crazy, lost summertimes when the nut used to leave his trunks in a wet lump at the foot of the staircase instead of putting them on the line. I used to pick them up because he was me all over again.”
Something about that brief description of this story hit me, and I ended up spending a day or two paging through the University of Oklahoma Library's bound copies of the Saturday Evening Post for 1944 until I found the story. I still can remember the look of that magazine page, reading what was at that time an almost 40-year-old story, and wondering what audiences in 1944 thought of this sweet and strange tale -- and if any of them remembered the comment about the brother Holden who had gone missing when they cracked open "The Catcher in the Rye" six years later.
Miscellany: "August: Osage County" part two
1/27/2010 11:41:54 PM
In the prologue of "August: Osage County," Beverly Weston (played by Jon DeVries in the touring production now at the Tulsa PAC) recites a couple of snippets of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" -- in fact, the play begins and ends with quotes from that poem.
But Beverly Weston also quotes another poem, John Berryman's "The Curse," which follows:
Cedars and the westward sun.
The darkening sky. A man alone
Watches beside the fallen wall
The evening multitudes of sin
Crowd in upon us all.
For when the light fails they begin
Nocturnal sabotage among
The outcast and the loose of tongue,
The lax in walk, the murderers:
Our twilight universal curse.
Children are faultless in the wood,
Untouched. If they are later made
Scandal and index to their time,
It is that twilight brings for bread
The faculty of crime.
Only the idiot and the dead
Stand by, while who were young before
Wage insolent and guilty war
By night within that ancient house,
Immense, black, damned, anonymous.
Miscellany: "August: Osage County"
1/27/2010 4:27:29 PM
This is the epigraph for the published version of "August: Osage County." It comes from Robert Penn Warren's classic novel, "All the King's Men."
"The child comes home and the parent puts the hooks in him. The old man, or the woman, as the case may be, hasn't got anything to say to the child. All he wants is to have that child sit in chair for a couple of hours and then goo off to bed under the same roof. It's not love. I am not saying that there is not such a thing as love. I am merely pointing to something which is different from love but which sometime goes by the name of love. It may well be that without this thing which I am talking about there would not be any love. But this thing in itself is not love. It is just something in the blood. It is a kind of blood greed, and it is the fate of a man. It is the thing which man has which distinguishes him from the happy brute creation. When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a hame trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can. And the good old family reunion, with picnic dinner under the maples, is very much like diving into the octopus tank at the aquarium."
Rules of Thumb No. 1
1/26/2010 2:26:00 PM
Why do I have the feeling this dog really, really doesn't want to be seen with this person? |
Today's entry is from "It's a Dog's World: The Savvy Guide to Four-Legged Living" by Wendy Diamond (Ballantine Books), a "pet-lifestyle expert" who appears on morning TV shows such as "Today," and who has written books on how to understand men by knowing their canine companions, and how to figure out what women want from the cats with which they surround themselves.
Actually, Ms. Diamond's Maltese, Lucky, is credited as "co-author," and the book includes a number of "Lucky's Tips," ostensibly penned (or would that be pawed?) by said dog. (Lucky is the one with the dark eyes in the photograph to the right.)
And so: Page 47. From Chapter 3, "Go West, Young Dog...or East or North or South":
"Lucky's Tips: One of the most important things to remember when traveling with humans is that they are calling the shots and, in some cases, taking them, too. Remember you are their pet (or so they think -- wink-wink, woof-woof) and you will probably have to acquiese to their itinerary.
"...Don't forget that your owner in on vacation as well and well be even more attentive and open to your comfort level than usual. So if you've been stuck in the care for five hours driving through the Rocky Mountains and it's time for a little relief, express yourself.
"Bark, whine, or scratch on the car seat. Trust me, it won't be long before you and your two-legged friend will be pulling over and taking a nature hike; she probably needs a little break from the constant driving anyway and just needed you to remind her -- silly humans!"
I'm a cat person, myself.....
This day is just sad.
1/25/2010 12:25:00 PM
No, really. We have the math to prove it.
About six years ago, there came out of England a press release, supposedly by a tutor at Cardiff University who described how he had worked out a formula to determine "the most depressing day of the year."
According to this fellow's highly dubious mathematics, by adding together the weather plus the debts one owes, multiplying that by the length of time since the joys of the Christmas season increased by the length of time since we gave up on our New Year's resolutions, all divided by one's lack of motivation multiplied the feeling we have that we should take some positive action of some kind, you get the result that, for the year 2010, Jan. 25 is officially "Blue Monday," the single most depressing day of the year.
I write for a living, and the last math class I took was my senior year in high school. Even I can tell that's dodgier math than the state legislature would use.
The Independent, an English newspaper, decided the mark the occasion with a list of wonderfully depressing books to capture the mood of this "Blue Monday." Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" -- maybe the most unrelievedly bleak novel ever written -- topped the list.
Read the story: Read 'em and weep
And then, there's this:
As for me, I'm planning on having as happy as day as I can -- even if blue is a favorite color.
ADDENDUM: I spoke too soon. So much for a happy day....
Spenser is no longer for hire
1/20/2010 12:57:00 PM
Robert B. Parker, whose novels about the Boston private investigator known only as Spenser, died Monday at the age of 77.
Most of the 40 novels Parker wrote in his career featured Spenser -- his first name was never revealed -- and there was a time when I practically consumed his books.
It was a reading phase I went through ... good heavens, more than 25 years ago now....and after a while, my tastes moved on from private eye stories (although I still follow the adventures of Bill Pronzini's matchless series of "Nameless Detective" stories).
I haven't read a book by Mr. Parker since then, but I remember the clean, tight prose that always contained a spark of self-referential, self-deprecating humor.
And I always liked the fact that he dedicated every novel to his wife, Joan.
This is just to say...
1/20/2010 11:45:57 AM
Enough with the "Pants on the Ground." It was cute. For a while. And the Neil Young parody by Jimmy Fallon was remarkably accurate and even funny.
But please. Stop. Just stop. Mr. Pratt's 15 minutes are up. Nothing to see here. Move along, please. Move along.
Oh, Poe....
1/19/2010 10:44:11 PM
Edgar Allan Poe -- the mystery remains. |
For the past 60 years, a cloaked individual has left a bottle of brandy and a handful of roses on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, sometime in the early hours of Jan. 19, Poe's birthday.
Except for this year.
It's become a tradition in the Baltimore cemetery where Poe was laid to rest in 1849 for a chosen few people to wait and watch this nocturnal ritual. No one has ever tried to interfere with the "Poe Toaster," as he -- at least, it's been believed to be a "he" -- has been dubbed. No one knows why the tradition started, although some years ago it was noted that a younger person had taken over the task.
But this year -- nothing. Perhaps, since last year was Poe's bicentennial, the person responsible decided that the time was right to bring this unusual yet poetic activity to an end. Or maybe the person is ill. Or maybe the event is becoming too public. Or there could be any number of reasons.
Maybe next year there will appear on Poe's grave another gift of drink and flowers. But whether the tradition ends or continues, it is only appropriate that this bit of Edgar Allan Poe's life and legacy be shrouded in mystery and darkness, and take place in a graveyard.
Mondo Tulsa
1/18/2010 5:21:51 PM
Tulsans with long memories might associate the word "Mondo" with an Italian restaurant of years past. But in this case, "Mondo Tulsa" is a new video project by former Tulsa World writer Robert J. Walters, that takes a very light-hearted and slightly skewed look at some of the places and events around Tulsa.
The first episode is up on YouTube as we write:
Of "O's" and Sundays and little green men
1/16/2010 3:19:42 PM
Uh-oh. In every sense of the word.... |
Three icons of the 1960s died last week:
Jan Gabriel, the Illinois racing promoter and pitchman who coined the phrase “Sunday Sunday Sunday!” – bellowed at the top of the lungs – in his radio adverts to make sure everyone knew what day the “hemi-charged funny cars” would be “tearing up the track!!!!!!!!”
Then Art Clokey, who created the character Gumby, the oddly shaped green fellow who ended up starring in more than 200 short films that I remember were endlessly replayed during the 1960s.
And – maybe the least known but probably the most influential – Donald Goerke, who in 1965 came up with the idea for SpaghettiOs.
Some of my formative years were spent in the Chicago area, so I heard Mr. Gabriel’s hyperactive style of ads first-hand. It sound became a cliché, with every ad having anything to do with cars featuring some over-caffeinated announcer hollering for all he was worth.
My sister was a big fan of Mr. Goerke’s invention, although from the start I thought SpaghettiOs were pretty vile-tasting.
And the gentle sweetness of the Gumby films has been co-opted to some degree by Eddie Murphy’s dressing up in a big green suit and striking a mock-defiant attitude.
It all just reinforces the fact that the things of the past always disappear.
The Slush is no more
1/15/2010 5:57:30 PM
And we're not talking about the residue of our white Christmas a month or so ago. This is about the end of a dream for a vast majority of aspiring writers -- the hope that his or her manuscript will be plucked from anonymity of the "slush pile" and their genius realized and rewarded.
Read the story: The death of the slush pile
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