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What a Crock

So I have this Crock Pot.  It sucks!  I put the stuff in over an hour ago and the top is still cold! These things were not invented for the work-at-home set. 

I keep looking over there and NOTHING IS HAPPENING!  There isn't even any good smell emanating.  I'm making chili.

If you think the crock pot was hard, try soaking beans.  At least I went to sleep and woke up to soaked beans.  Now, I have to put in eight more hours before I get chili?  Who invented this, Satan?

Actually, it's a good idea.  For the Electric Company.
Here's the do-nothing damned crock pot now.  It isn't even made of crockery.  God I'm hungry!

Recipe:
Throw in a bunch of really good, tasty stuff.
Wait until you die of hunger!
Serve at your funeral.

Someone please bring me a burger!

Creating Yellow Wallpaper for Walls

The cast of Walls, the new play by Kristina Meek, presented by Lotus Theatre Collective, had a great time creating the yellow wallpaper that figures so prominently in the story. You could say it is another character in the play. Here Jennie Olson (Charlotte), Kathleen Masse (Lottie) and Jo Dempsey (Charlie) work together to make wallpaper. This is one of many projects dreamed up by director Sophia A. Ziebell. By working together, the actresses, who all play different aspects of the same woman, come to realize their common and uncommon talents. Each brings something unique to her role. As the painting unfolds, thoughts, emotions, feelings and ideas about the characters and the play evolve.





















As the wallpaper comes to life, it takes on all the energy from the actresses who created it and becomes a living memory of the day spent processing. The thoughts, feelings and activities all coalesce into yellow wallpaper. The very same stuff they these actresses will be discussing, looking at, hating and finally disappearing into as the play Walls unfolds.
To see more, click here.

Award Winning Play Reading: Love, Unrequited, in Three Galleries by Kevin Six

My suite of plays, Love, Unrequited, in Three Galleries was read last night (Friday, Nov. 21, 2008) at The Scripteasers.  Two of the plays won (first place and honorable mention) in their recent Script Tease of New Plays so I walked out of there $150 richer.

Here I am with Kymri and Miriam.  Kymri is a longtime Scripteasers member and advocate of new plays, playwrights and Kevin Six.

Kymri played Alice in the second play, Afternoon: (Asian Gallery).  Miriam played Devon in the third play, Evening (European Gallery).

Both were great.  In fact, everyone who read was fun, dedicated and gave great comments to me after the plays were read.

Thanks Scripteasers!

Here's Jack G. White with Kymri.  Jack made a point to come and read Arthur in the third play.  He was fantastic!  His depth of emotion, crispness of delivery and mental acuity were excellent.  And to think: he picked up the play and read it once before performing.  He's a great man, a great actor and a great friend.  And, perfect for the role.  I hope we can get this produced!

Here I am discussing how the evening will go with Scripteasers president John Greene.  John played Andre in the first play, Morning (American Masters).  This play was the one that won first place, the second play won an honorable mention.  I heard from an unnamed source that my first place entry had more votes than any other and that it lead the next place finisher by the most points in Scripteaser history.  Since they've been around for 60 years, that feels real good.

The plays caused quite a stir.  Coming in at just under thirty minutes, the three plays were discussed for about two hours.  This was a good process.

Here, (l-r) Miriam, Mike Brizkowski (who read Tony), moderator Mary Boersma and Jack G. discuss the third play.  Each play takes place at a separate gallery in the San Diego Museum of Art.  Each one has a separate feel and they get less and less real as the day progresses.  They all have to do with love that can't quite get expressed -- or is not expressed properly.  In the first play, a widowed arts patron and a museum security guard can't quite tell each other how they feel.  In the second, a pair of typical couples discuss much but say nothing in a frustrating and sad dance of love lost.  The men take on traditional wife roles, emotionally, as the women act standoffish about love.  In the third play, a divine messenger finally sorts out the love that's missing in the relationship between a young couple -- in counterpoint to that of an older one.

After the reading, some of us went to a cool place.  Lucha Libre Gourmet Tacos.  Check out their website: www.tacosmackwown.com.  A very cool place in which Mexican wrestling films, kitchy wrestling paraphernalia and great food mingle to give you a tack smack-down.  Try it!

Here's What I've Been Up To

I got involved in a theatre collaborative.  It's with a number of people I have been working with lately anyway, so... I'm now a founding member of the Lotus Theatre Collective.  We're just a bunch of theatre artists doing theatre.  Here's our website.  Here's our first play.  Come and love it!  Tickets are only $10.

Please consider bookmarking that website (and the blog and all the other websites you ever see here!) as it really helps our Organic Marketing efforts.  I coined that phrase and just you wait and see everyone use it.  Organic Marketing is just like Viral Marketing only it doesn't make you sick.  It's a way to drive up your database (and that is increasingly an email database), drive traffic to your website ans the old axiom of butts in seats.

Walls has two performances only, December 13 (8pm) and Dec, 14 (7pm) so see it fast.

The next play on the horizon for me is Love Negotiated and, yes there's a website (www.lovenegotiated.com) and, yes I want you to bookmark it, post it and get all your friends to visit it.  There's also a blog attached to it and all that Organic Marketing stuff too.  The play, written by Yours Truly, opens on February 14 and if you don't know what day that is, you need a date!  It's a love story yo!  Auditions are December 13 (yes, the day Walls opens) for those males who are looking for parts.  All the women were retained.

So I'll be busy and if you want to see me you'll have to buy a ticket!

Love and Kisses
Kevin

Scripteasers

Hello, friends:

 

1.  Next Scripteasers reading: Friday, Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m.

 

LOVE, UNREQUITED, IN THREE GALLERIES, a suite of plays by Kevin Six

 

The three plays, each set in a San Diego Museum of Art gallery, look at love and the absence of love with the sometimes ominous, sometimes helpful presence of fine art and the sacred spaces where it is presented.

MORNING (AMERICAN MASTERS) (First Place: 2008 Script Tease of Short Plays)

A love affair that isn't, and might never be, between a museum guard and an arts patron. It shows the love one man has for his job, the paintings in his charge and a special woman who comes to visit every Tuesday. It is full of propriety, and much of the best dialogue is unspoken.

 

AFTERNOON (ASIAN GALLERY) (Honorable Mention: 2008 Script Tease of Short Plays)

There is a little role reversal as two men try to understand why two women aren't more demonstrative. Two couples talk about all the mundane things that middle aged couples talk about. There is something missing and the men want to know where it went - if it was ever there in the first place.

 

EVENING (EUROPEAN GALLERY)
A low-budget wedding with all the elements: artist bride, nerdy groom, comic book-loving best man, art lover, art work and a little help from the other side. The young couple shares only the love of a painting with the odd man who sits in front of Apollo and Daphne. A transformation before the couple can be happily married, but will it happen?

 

About the Author…
Kevin Six was recently named the 2009 Playwright-in-Residence at Swedenborg Hall. He co-wrote and co-starred in A CHANGE OF HEART and MIND ("Audience Choice Award," 2005 San Diego 48-Hour Film Project), and was part of the Emmy-winning New Image Teen Theatre (KPBS television).  THE CAKE WOMEN was published in The Best 10-Minute Plays of 2007.  He is also the author of two books: Creating a Beautiful Art Business and Hell's Swells.

 

Proper Etiquette for Surfing on a Sunday

If you were to get your hair done on a Sunday, there might be a sigh which reads: Drop-ins Welcome.  If you're surfing, however, dropping in is a no-no.  Dropping in on a wave is one thing but dropping in on someone else on a wave is uncool, rude and sometimes dangerous.

On Sunday, there are usually more people out in the lineup and many of them don't even know what a lineup is.  The lineup is a group of surfers sitting waiting for a wave to break.  One by one, they take turns taking waves.  Like an assembly line all nice and easy. 

Surf etiquette is something that is handed down, sometimes rudely, from surfer to surfer.  So few people take the time to educate others and just yell at them.  Or, like me, they let the dangerous surfers -- the worst ones are the ones with new longboards they can't control out surfing with the big boys -- get away with dropping in.

It's like playing Frogger or Whack-a-Mole riding a large wave in on Amateur Day (Sunday).  First, there is a person who doesn't know you have priority and drops in like the fellow on the right in the picture.  On the next wave, you almost run over a kid on a shortboard (and it's a longboard day!) who never sees you as you almost paddle into his head.  On the third wave is a girl on a Bic board (these surfboards, like their namesake pens, are made of plastic) saying, "sorry" as she doesn't pull up but rather gets blasted into the way of an oncoming surfer.

Here's the way it should be: People should know the rules when they go out; and, people who don't know the rules should be politely informed of them. 

The rules are simple, too: don't go out if you can't handle it, surfers already standing up on a wave have priority, the person deepest in gets priority when two or more people are going for a wave.  In the above photo, the surfer deepest in is on the left.  The wave is a left in that it's breaking to the left of both surfers, so the person furthest in (to the surfer's right and the viewer's left) has priority.

So to the people I surfed around last Sunday, I say this: please learn the rules; please look both ways (and behind you) before going; and please don't drop in. 

The best way is to be in communication with the others in the line up, i.e. "you going left?" That tells the surfer to your left that you're going right even though you have priority on his/her left.  Some times they'll say, "go" meaning you get the left but always they are happier for you having spoken up.

The worst case scenario is a person who drops in on someone who can't manage his/her board and then there's a bad crash.  Boards break, people get cut and bruised and tempers flare.  I guess that's why I'm going to speak up next time and educate the people who are doing these things.

Peace, Mahalo and be safe on the waves.

Proper Etiquette for Classical Music Concerts

I just got back from the San Diego Chamber Orchestra concert and, as I have often noticed during concerts, I am a music snob.  I don't know a lot about music, I'm not terribly musical but I did receive an education about listening to music.  It seems, though, that no one else in San Diego did!

While there were no paper un-wrappings, for which I am grateful -- they are the worst -- there were several coughs.  Now here's the deal people: coughing is done during the applause!  That way no one cares.

There was also no applause between movements, the audience actually waited for the conductor to put his hands down.  It helped that there were several short pieces but people pretty much coughed at will, without regard to the audience or musicians not to mention the people recording sound and video.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  It's impossible to hold back a cough or sneeze, right?  Wrong!  You can breathe deeply through the nose and stop any cough until the end of the piece.  Sneezing can be done into a wadded handkerchief or stifled. But if you really can't hold a cough or sneeze -- if you're actually that sick WHAT IN THE SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL ARE YOU DOING IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE!!?

Candy unwrapping is a minor sin but bag crinkling is a major one.  There is a special place in Hell for bag crinklers!  There were none at tonight's concert but I'm still upset about an incident that happened to me at the San Diego Symphony over seven years ago.  I would like to now address the man who ruined a concert for me:

What in God's name is so important that you have to bring it to a concert in a plastic Vons bag?  What also is so important that you have to dig around in the bag all throughout the second movement of the Eroica Symphony?  I am sure it was one of those hard candies you idiots are fond of clinking your teeth against throughout the symphony. 

Fifteen years ago (no I'm still not over it!) there was a man who insisted he take his former concert-pianist, now paralyzed wife to La Jolla Chamber Music Concerts.  She screamed.  During the piano solos.  She screamed her way through at least five concerts that I worked during.  Not a lot (her scream-per-concerto ratio was about 2-1) but enough to put people on edge, off their dinners and me out of my mind.  It was the kind of scream that said, "God!  If you exist, why did you paralyze me and give me such an asshole for a husband that he takes me to see that which I can never again do!?

Why indeed.

My favorite concert goers are split down the middle.  One who was a railroad man in the 30s and 40 who loved chamber music.  None of his friends, or his considerably younger wife did but that didn't stop him.  His pretty younger wife (she was in her 50 and he his 80s) dropped him off, where he sat stalk still with a smile on his face that was truly angelic.

The other was a great old codger who came to the San Diego Symphony on two canes.  He sat in his chair, a cane in each hand like a biker on a chopper, and dozed quietly, peacefully, beautifully as the music no doubt swirled around his brain, body and soul.  He, like the railroad man, was truly in a state of bliss.

Neither cared much what they wore.  It matched and fit reasonably well.  They didn't care about who else was there, who wore what or who was with whom.  They cared only for the music.  The sweet, beautiful music.

And each one of them shared something with me that I will share with you.  A look.  I looked each of them in the eye after the concert we attended together and they looked back.  The look said: wasn't that beautiful?

Yes, gents.  It was.  There is no doubt in my mind that you've passed on, so it is my fond wish that you have gone on to your reward and I know that it is a place where the musicians are great, the instruments excellent and the music superb.  And that everyone in attendance acts and feels exactly the way you (and I) do around music: awed into harmony with the eternal and quite quiet about the profound experience, which you may, if you choose, relive, comment on or share at a later time.  But for now it is just the music.

That, my friends, is how you act at a Classical music concert!

Shameless Self Promotion

I need to get my ego on and gloat a little bit.  I have won a contest and will be picking up my check on November 21.  Those of you in the area can see me do this and see the award-winning plays read.  Yes, I won a playwriting contest and, as such, my plays will be read.

I wrote a suite of 10-minute plays as an exercise with my playwright's group, Aspire Playwrights.  The idea was to write short plays set in galleries at the San Diego Museum of Art.  I had a friend who worked there and, while she's still my friend, she doesn't work there anymore...  So I have been submitting the plays to contests and festivals, mostly 10-minute or one-act festivals.

The Script Tease of New Plays, sponsored by Scripteasers, allowed me to submit three and judged each of the playlets.  I won first place for the first play, Morning (American Masters), honorable mention for Afternoon (Asian Gallery) and bubkus for the third -- and my favorite play -- Evening (European Gallery).  Each of these plays will be read by Scripteasers members (and a few special guests) at the next Scripteasers meeting (Friday, November 21, 2008).

If you want to come to see the readings, and discussions afterward, e-mail me here.

Here, you can Download scripteasers_press_release.doc announcing the winners. 
Here's the programme for Nov. 21, 2008. 
And here is a smattering of the words that won.

Camping the Coast: Last Day

Joel Crockett helped us charge our batteries (literally, figuratively and emotionally) at his bookstore in Gualala, California.  What a great guy and a great bookstore!  Joel, and his brother Jeremy gave us comfort from the non-linked world, free coffee and as place to plug in the tired camera battery.  We sat for a long time in the comfy confines of The Four Eyed Frog Bookstore.  Check it out here.

We returned the hospitality and bought a great book from the Crockett Brothers.  I recommend that you shop there next time you're in town.

We also saw a book about that odd building we passed in Sea Ranch and decided to go back.  But first, a view of the incredibly large surf at the beach there.

Here's a long shot of the beach and the spillway of the Gualala creek.  You can see the surf but here's how big it was... You can see the people on the beach and, just ten yards outside of them, the waves are easily overhead.  We tried and tried but couldn't find a way to the shore.  Finally we noticed people walking across the highway, over a hill and down a path.  It was a long walk and we were hungry for lunch so we motored back to the campsite at Point Salt, Light and Stars.  We called it that (instead of Salt Point) because that's the play Jennie and I met while performing.  Romantic, eh?

Then we saw the great little Sea Ranch Chapel, designed by San Diego area artist James Hubbell.  I have met James Hubbell and seen a lot of his work, including a guest house at a La Jolla/Pacibic Beach mansion.  He uses earthly imagery, materials and lines.  Check out this great little piece of art among a lot of cookie-cutter houses at Sea Ranch that is a nondenominational resting place.

The inside is much prettier than the outside as the wood, stone, tiles, colored glass and inlaid elements are not exposed to the elements.  The whole place is designed to take advantage of the many types of light that fall on it.  The lights fall on beauty and excellent craftsmanship every where you look.

Look at all the artistic elements in this little area!  The blond and red woods, the metal and glass, the shells and stone inlaid.  All framed by light in various shades coming from the stained glass windows.  Bravo James Hubbell.

For more on the chapel, look here.

After this, our last day traveling North, we showered, slept on the ground for the last time and sprinted home for an art opening.  We had a blast.  Found a lot of great beaches, campgrounds and people.  We're definitely coming back.  And I'm bringing a surfboard.

Camping the Coast: Days Six and Seven

After San Francisco, we went up the coast again.  This time it was through Mendocino County towns like Seaside Ranch, Salt Point and Gualala -- a great name for a town if you ask me.

It was the weekend so our first priority was to find an open place to camp.  Point Reyes?  Nope.  Salt point?  Yep.  We got two nights at a private campground for the price of one run by the feds, so we did.

Here's Salt Point Campground, which was very friendly, big and full og nice views.  The bathrooms were portable and the shower was a out-door thing but otherwise it was a lot of fun.  From there we viewed various state beaches, campgrounds (with bathrooms and showers) and a great bookstore.

Salt point and Fort Ross near the Russian River were the best places to get Abalone and we saw several hearty divers getting into very cold water to get some.

As luck would have it, we found a perfectly good Abalone shell on the rocky beach at the Salt Point State Park's beach

We saw two sunsets and a great cubist vision in the cliffs that I couldn't capture as the camera battery was in serious need of charging.  I did menage to get one night's sunset over Salt Point.

On our second day of Salt Point roughing it, we drove up the coast, got the Abalone shell (but no pictures of the great scenery) and passed Sea Ranch, an exclusive community in which it is rumored that Sharon Stone has a house.  They all look alike, as gated some associations are wont to do and all of the architecture was boring.  All but a small, odd building we passed on the way to our best time in Northern California.  Gualala and Four Eyed Frog Books.  Check out the links and I'll blog more soon.