Haines His Way

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I think artists should be judged on their best work (if they have any) - everyone has off days, even geniuses.  

OKAY - get in trouble time:

BK

What do you consider your best work (CD wise)?
What do you consider your worst work (CD wise)?

(If posssible, discount the performers in your evaluation)

der Brucer

Cillaliz, I very much like the turntable I got from the airline mail order catalog - it's an EON, and they sell them at amazon.  it comes with easy software.

OKAY - get in trouble time:

BK

What do you consider your best work (CD wise)?
What do you consider your worst work (CD wise)?

(If posssible, discount the performers in your evaluation)

der Brucer

Too hard.  I'm proud of almost everything I've done, in one way or another.  My best?  Well, I'd certainly put Unsung Irving Berlin high on the list for any number of reasons.  Worst - I don't think that way, really, but I do know that everyone's least favorites seem to be Bed and Sofa and The Paul Simon Album - the latter, in retrospect, is something I shouldn't have done - it was a no-win album because many of Mr. Simon's songs don't need to have B'way singers singing them.  I was forced into doing it after the Burt Bacharach Album - I was in the middle of prepping what was to be that album's followup - The Randy Newman Album - I shouldn't have let myself get talked out of it, but I did, and the compromise (the Paul Simon Album) was a compromise and it sounds like it.  That said, I like the sound of the album, and I like many of the tracks (especially the Tammi Tappan and Amanda McBroom tracks).

... but I do know that everyone's least favorites seem to be Bed and Sofa...

I suspect that in this case the source material is, in fact, the villain.

How does my personal favorite, Das Barbecu, stack up?

der Brucer

It was based on a recurring character (real-life) in A. J. Leibling's WWII stories, a guy (Mollie was a guy) who happened to be an enlisted man under my father's command.  

Sounds like it would have made a nice film:

Wes Phillips

Best of all his war writing, I think, was "Quest for Mollie," which is collected in Mollie and Other War Stories. Mollie (Karl Warner) was a private Liebling met in Tunisia—well, met posthumously, since Liebling saw him as a roadside corpse on Good Friday, 1943. But Mollie's friends regaled him with tales of Mollie's life back in New York City, so upon returning to NYC, Liebling set out to learn more about him.

New Yorker

In “Quest for Mollie,” Liebling tells of travelling during one offensive on La Piste Forestière, a dirt road on the northern coast of Tunisia, where Allied forces had fought Italian and German troops, and coming across the refuse of fighting—“bits of the war . . . like beads on a string.” He encountered a lone corpse, “a private known as Mollie.” A month later, after the Allied victory in North Africa, Liebling heard more about “Mollie,” evidently a colorful native of Hell’s Kitchen, and so, back in New York, he moves around the city, from bar to union headquarters, reconstructing the often contradictory details of Mollie’s life, and giving an ordinary young man a representative immortality. “When I walk through the West Side borderland between Times Square and the slums, where Mollie once lived, I often think of him and his big talk and his golf-suit grin. It cheers me to think there may be more like him all around me—a notion I would have dismissed as sheer romanticism before World War II. Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.”

Wild Bill Guarnere

From the New Yorker June 2, 1945. Told by an American infantryman to reporter A.J. Liebling

"Mollie was the biggest pop off and the biggest screwball and the biggest foul-up I ever saw and he wasn't afraid of nuthin'. Some fellows get brave with experience but Mollie never had none to begin with. Like one time on the road to Maknassy, the battalion was trying to take some hills and was gettin' nowhere. So Mollie stands up and says "I bet those Italians would surrender if somebody asked them to. What the Hell do they want to fight for?" So he walks across the monefield and up the hill to the Italians, waving his arms and making funny motions. So they shoot at him for a while and then stop, thinking that he's crazy. So when he gats to the Italians he finds a soldier who was a barber in Astoria but got drafted when he went home to Italy to visit. So the barber translates for him and the Italians say "Sure! We'd love to surrender!"

So Mollie comes back down the hill with 568 prisoners."

der Brucer

We had some LA rain, i.e. about four minutes worth.

Blech...and the directing experience already hits a roadblock.

To basically sum up how the one-acts work at LACC, provided there are enough student directors (this time, we have seven), they divide the shows up into two bills - The Blue Bill and the Red Bill (creative, huh?) - based on content, actors, sets, etc.  We have three shows on the Blue Bill -- and the other four on the Red (one of which is mine).  Our project over this break was to set up our rehearsal schedules and get them to our instructor by tomorrow.  Of course, everyone has waited until the last minute...some didn't start until today...and the previously ignored problem of shared actors came immediately to light.  

We had around 18 or 19 actors on casting, and a grand total of 43 parts (leading to double and triple-casting in some cases).  For most of the parts, actors are cast on separate bills (which have different two-hour rehearsal times), yet in a few, really problematic, instances, actors are utilized in really important parts in shows on the same bill *cough*REDBILL*cough*.  Two of my fellow directors are sharing a girl who has a lead in both of their shows; both of them and another director are sharing a girl who has a part in all three of their shows; and one of them has a show that requires 14 or 15 women, which gobbles up all the girls in my show.  All of this - and just a two-hour rehearsal time each day.  

So, I initially wrote up the schedule as I'd like it, if I had my druthers...which it is quite apparent, I don't...and sent it to the one director I really conflict with.  As we talked, I felt like the best thing to do would be retool mine and see what she thought.  I have now effectively cut down my rehearsal time to an hour on most days - so she can have all of the actresses the second hour (my lead is one of the "women" in her show, and in my show is in every scene, so without her, there is no point in me having a rehearsal) -- and this is just a minor conflict.  So, that director is going to speak with the director SHE has the MAJOR conflict with, and they'll see if they can work something out, and then get back to me if I need to make any small changes.  All by tomorrow's deadline.

All of this hassle for nervous, first-time directors.  No wonder directors are crazy...

Does everyone here know that Cason put up the All About Men song on the Brain's myspace page?  Go listen, if you haven't www.myspace.com/thebrainfromplanetx.  You have to endure Guy Haines' vocal instead of Cason's wonderful vocal, but you'll be getting that soon enough.

I feel your pain, baby, and I had NO conflicts :-)

Which is why I refused to use anyone who was in Al Rossi's show - because even though he said he'd work it out with me, I knew he wouldn't.

Let me just pray that my actors don't start making conflicts or running late...which sadly I feel will be inevitable.

KITTY OF THE DAY


POOCH OF THE DAY


(Just like on Letterman, last night)

der Brucer

The special edition OBC is still available on Amazon.com.  Click HERE for the link.

Hmm... Thanks for the link, DR George.  It looks like Amazon changed the initial listing for the product.  When I look up my past order history, the item no longer comes up "highlighted".  -And it looks like the original price has dropped too.

Cillaliz, I very much like the turntable I got from the airline mail order catalog - it's an EON, and they sell them at amazon.  it comes with easy software.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

we've been promised a really bad Jan-March 20007

Well, at least that's a ways off...
 

I was in the middle of prepping what was to be that album's followup - The Randy Newman Album - I shouldn't have let myself get talked out of it

Can we talk you back into it?