Why I Love Theatre...

...And live radio: you don't know what's going to happen or how you'll get through it, but there you are!

Show three had some kind of electronic insurrection going on, and I lost my playlist about an hour in. We switched over to the "Emergency Back Up" playlist while I tried reloading, and that playlist is what was on the air on Mondays before I started: the blandest country and "smooth tune" crap you've ever heard. Considering that I opened with Alice Cooper's "Hello! Hooray!", it was a little jarring.

As soon as we were back online, I covered with Tom Petty's "Breakdown" while frantically rebuilding the set - only to have it go down again two minutes later. Well, let's see where the complaints come from this time! 8)

The play is finished now, and went about as well as I could have hoped. I was fun watching the other three guys go through the experience for the first time, but so much work went into making sure they didn't fall (or trying to - I made plenty mistakes of my own!) that I couldn't actually get around to acting. Mostly it was "remember your lines and don't run into the furniture" (h/t Cary Grant). Maybe next time!

No, Honest!

Picture this:

A husband and wife are wheeled into the emergency entrance of the local hospital late one night; she on the gurney, he in a wheelchair. His knuckles are bruised and cut, and she's got two lack eyes and facial lacerations.

Wait! It's not like that, and I've got the destroyed truck to prove it!

Missed the deer standing in the fast lane on the highway (so we were moving between 90 and 100 km/h) but somehow couldn't avoid the sapling-covered embankment. Spent the last 16 hours or so picking "popcorned" glass out of my hair and limping while getting the truck towed where I want it, picking the dog up, and fielding questions from various and sundry family members. Joy!

But now we are home, the Significant Other has been asleep since 11:00, and I'm about to join her. After a couple painkillers and a touch of food/drink to avoid waking up ravenous and screaming whenever I lift my leg (cracked patella).

Well, at least I'll have something to talk about on the radio Monday!

Just to Clarify...

...So I know what the Sam Hill the Idiot Imams* are thinking about: when you get the stupider of your followers all riled up about what goes on in other countries, what purpose does it serve?

I'm having flashbacks to the 80's and 90's, when women in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere in more conservative parts of the Middle East would speak out in town meetings about human rights, some jackasses seeded into the audience would jump up and start chanting "Death to America" over and over until the meeting ended. In this way, anyone who wanted to change or even to question women's rights would be effectively silenced with a distracting blast of otherwise purposeless anger.

So if you could answer a few simple questions for me about the whole "Draw Mohammed" thing, that'd be great:

1) Would Mohammed appear in a photograph? Not "would he willingly appear in one", but would his image physically be transferable to either physical or digital media?
2) What does he look like? If I painted a scene of an Arabic man in the 7th century leading soldiers into battle or preaching from his tent, would you assume it was the prophet? What if I called the painting "Bob on a Horse" or "Bob in a tent"?
3) Is there any way to tell if someone walking around right now looks exactly like the prophet did? Could there be a living twin of Mohammed in the world today who is being inadvertently captured on film, and if so is this against the will of God?

This isn't even getting into why your God can tell me what to do. I eat pork products (and lots of them!), happily drink alcohol, and own a dog I love very much. All of these things are haram - expressly forbidden. Lots of other folks around the world do that, too. What are you planning to do about them?

*These are a specific few who rile up ignorant mobs more frequently than the most devoted Tea Party Performers, much like the Westboro Church mob are not so much Christians as they are Conservative Christian Fuckos.

Into the Deep End...

Just finished my first radio show. The power was out in town this morning for just a second, but that was enough to knock it off the air, and the manager didn't know how to get it back. So we sat and babbled for twenty minutes or so until a tech came in and fixed it for us.

Didn't have a play list of my own yet, so I relied on theirs. Not great, and ended up accidentally playing some religious stuff (not exactly my thing...) but got the hang of what was going on. More my kind of stuff next week.

Got to talk about a bit about Matt Ellison, who's a local boy (from Duncan) playing in the KHL right now; and a bit about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yeah, I actually tried that name live on the radio) and when and why he decided on the work he did. I excerpted it straight from "Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist" by John Brockman. Fun book, and great for parents who fear their children might be "a little odd". Hey, you could be witness to the next great bio-chemist!

Station's here: http://www.cicv.ca/
Streaming's here: http://cicv.streamon.fm/

To Air is Human...

...That's gotta be taken already, right?

So a strange side effect of doing a bit of publicity for the amateur play I'm in: being a radio host. Apparently the local station has a dearth of volunteers, so when I went in to talk about the play I was asked if I wanted to come back on Monday "for a couple of hours" every week.

Well, why not? My brother was a DJ at a private (and, as it ends up, illegal) radio station on Salt Spring Island called TNFM a couple decades ago, and that sounded like fun! Of course, far more beer was involved at the time; I believe their slogan was "Beer Powered Radio!"

Where I'm going is CICV, which is either a radio station or the number or a savage misuse of Roman Numerals.

If you're bored or miss those Lake Woebegone days, the station can be streamed right over here. It's a wildly eclectic bunch of programming, just like you'd expect from a small town volunteer radio station, ranging from conspiracy theorists talking chemtrails and global warming being a hoax to suggestions on which wine with what meals to late night psychedelica. Jazz, country, big band, classical, rock, pop, classic radio plays... Whatever people bring with them, really.

Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but the space is there: I'm thinking just music and bits of science trivia from around the world and whatever's happening in town. We'll just have to see what comes out - should be interesting. For me, at least. You? You're on your own.

I'm on Monday mornings, either at eight or nine o'clock. Not sure about that yet, either!

Ministerial Awareness 101

Women are complaining about cuts to eleven support groups over the last two weeks. The timing of the leak is such that it happened the day after Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told told a gathering of women's groups to "Shut the fuck up" about abortion, or else.

"If you push it, there will be more backlash," Ruth said. "This is now a political football. This is not about women's health in this country."

Ruth's statement was apparently to try to stop women from talking about the Conservative policy of not supporting any health organizations internationally if they include abortion in the services thy provide. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, it could be that Senator Ruth fears too much trouble over the policy could have repercussions in domestic policy.

Or it could simply be the senator telling the truth about women's roles in the Conservative Party: Sit down and shut up; or else we WILL pay attention to you, and then you'll be sorry!

Or it could be that the Conservatives have no clue about what abortion means to the actual health of women, in this country or any others.

Just ask Transport Minister John Baird:

But Baird replied that the Liberals were trying to start a "culture war" by opening the divisive abortion issue. "Canadians don't want to drag the abortion debate in the maternal health discussion," he said. "This government is focused on how to make a positive difference in the lives of mothers and newborn children in the developing world."

Um. Tell you what, John: next time a question about transportation comes up, you can speak. But when it comes to women's health...?

Have a seat.