What a Wiz It Was!

It was my great honor and privilege to assist with the production Flying Dragon's Wizard of Oz.  This was a great production performed the first two weekends of February.  Pictured above was our phenomenally cute Lullaby League: Hannah, Marin and Madison.

I was proud that my son Benjamin played the Wizard, playing the character with flair and confidence.  This also shows our amazing Toto, Daykota, who was perfection and the hit of the show.  The Dorothy is our Cast One week Dorothy, Katie, whom I am very proud of.  She is an outstanding young actress with a tremendous amount of potential.

This is Emily, the daughter of my good friend and co-director, Kimberly.  She was the cutest Scarecrow ever, and very expressive.

Another picture of Toto, played by Daykota.  This young lady always hit her spot, doing all the right things at exactly the right time.  The audience loved her.

Cast One Lion played by Andrew, who was very charming and humorous as the Lion with well crafted dance moves.  In back are our scarecrow Emily and our Tin Girl, Anna.  Anna really impressed me with how she took control of her part, showing a lot of heart!

Out Green Man Group, playing our talking trees.  Their movements during the Tin Girl/Man song added an extra special layer of fun and enjoyment for our audience.

Our Cast Two heroes...Ally as Dorothy (very sweet, amazing, and sang beautifully), Gage (perfect character and singing - hard to believe he was only eight), Adam (fabulous - just about stole the show!) and Krysta (Cowardly Lion extraordinaire).  Many I want to recognize I don't have a picture of, but I want to thank for their performances, including our two talented witches, Amara Grace and Sydney, who interestingly, last year split the part of Dorothy.

I was very impressed by the contributions of so many to make this show work.  We had over fifty children, all learining their parts and having a great time.  We had tremendous support from parents, who helped get their kids to rehearsal and contributed so much backstage.  We had full house audiences every performance, showing fantastic community support.

I felt like I contributed very little to the success of the show.  I did as much as I could given the overwhelming nature of my job, particularly when tax season started.  I appreciate everyone who stepped in to help.

I did start with the vision that maybe we should do the play with all young people cast.  I wanted to try it, but was unsure we could pull it off.  That fear lasted until tryouts began.  I was impressed by the depth of talent at the Flying Dragon.  In fact, there were so many worthy young people trying out, that we actually made the potentially insane decision to double cast!  We had ten roles, including most of the major ones, that switched from week one to week two.

Amazingly, we pulled it off!  Each cast was both individual and brilliant.  It was a tough thing to keep going, and sometimes I had to be the Tiger Dad, a role I hated but at rare times felt necessary.  I am grateful that all the hard work we did paid off in a performance that was fun and entertaining for both the kids AND the audience.

As much fun as it all was, I think I need to pull away from theatre for a little while.  There are some things I need to think about.  I want to take some time  for some other things.  I want to improve my physical and mental health.  I want to see if there are other things, supplemental and otherwise, that I can do to help support and assist my family.  When I go back into theatre again (which I will), I can do so refreshed and renewed.

Again, God bless all of you who contributed so much to make this one of the area's most spectacular shows, reaching the stratospheric heights for successful children's theatrical productions.  and...that's all, folks!

Saturday Political Soap Box 19 - Original Sin

Let me make it clear. Bush Jr. was a rotten President, arguably the worst in American History. So no, I did not have a lot of good things, or even neutral things to say about him when he was President of the United States. So I want you to fully understand the impact of this when I say it. When gas prices rose under the Bush administration, I did not blame the Bush administration and would tell that to anyone who would listen to me.




Why not? The country was being run by two oil executives who clearly had the interests of the industry at heart more than they did the American people. They started, under false pretenses, an unnecessary and immoral war in Iraq that helped destabilize the oil markets. They had no intention of using federal reserves or price controls or any other domestic measures. So why didn't I blame them?



Two reasons. First the price of oil is largely determined by speculators. We've handed over the oil markets to gamblers who've helped to destroy every market they've touched. When you turn investment into a casino, these things happen. And you have players who try to cash in on volatility no matter what it costs the rest of us. This is what happened to the sports card industry and comic market in the 90s, the tech bubble, the real estate bubble, the derivative scam, etc. Bush Jr. encouraged this environment but he didn't start it. Speculation is sometimes created by actual events (hurricanes, wars, refinery fires and shutdowns), but it is taken to greater extremities and wilder swings because of it.



The second and more important reason for this is the nation's original sin, which dates back to the late seventies. A moment where had Americans reacted differently, the entirety of human history could have been changed. And that moment was President's Carter's so-called "malaise speech". He laid it on the line the future direction we had to take to survive, that we had to turn our backs on oil, learn to conserve, and develop alternate energy sources. But instead of endorsing this message and taking us on a road of energy independence and wiser energy use, we turned our backs on him. We voted in a President who, amiable old man that he was, ignored energy entirely and told us we were Americans by God, and we didn't need to change our consumption at all, didn't need that newfangled stuff, and we could keep right on chugging on our giant cars and spitting out pollutants, as we head towards that shining city on a hill (albeit a little hard to see through the smog).



We've had opportunities to turn towards a better course. In the 90s, Al Gore raised the idea of a fifty cent gas tax that would have helped develop mass transit and fuel alternatives. Last decade, scientists laid very clear the scientific certainty of where we were headed with man-made climate change and global warming. And each passing year, the damage caused by our use becomes more and more apparent, and harder and harder to deny. If President Obama has a flaw or responsibility, it is in not doing more to help us grasp this fact.



So who do I blame? I blame ourselves, each and every one of us who insist that lower gas prices are more important than the very future of this planet. And every time we are faced with this reality, we turn our backs to it.

This Blog Has Not Been Abandoned

It only seems like I went away.  Looking at other blogs, I see many with huge gaps between postings, and others that look like people tried for awhile and just lost interest or focus.  For better or worse, that has not been the cases with me.  I do concede to some seasonal variations.  The preceding two and a half months were very busy, as I was involved in both tax season and directing The Wizard of Oz for The Flying Dragon Arts Center.  Tax season still slogs on (not even half way through it yet), but that still should leave me some time for at least sporadic postings.

As usual, the thematic structure of this blog will vary.  I would love to go through a cookbook from start to finish, or review every Superman comic in order since 1938.  But I'm afraid my interests are too eclectic to keep that kind of focus.

What to look forward to?

The Greatest Christian Heresies of Modern Times.

More Saturday Political Soap Boxes.

Further tales of my not so wayward youth.

Comments on theatre, books, movies and comics.

More pictures and bragging's about my beautiful family.

Short stories and poems.

And hopefully by mid-April to resume The History of The Trap.  I also hope to reformat the prologue and make it available on Smashwords (for free, of course - I may be egotistical but I'm not insane).

I'm not completely out of the submarine yet, but I should be able to post at least enough that no one feels abandoned.  Hang in there.  The best is yet to come.  Or at least more stuff, best or not.