Long Day's Journey into Shameless Plug

Hello folks,

Sorry it's been such a long, long time. A good deal of it has been spent tackling this monster of a play, Long Day's Journey into Night, which just opened last weekend.

It's being done by Quotidian Theatre in Bethesda, and directed by Bob Bartlett, whom you may remember from his production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," where I met Laura.

I think this is a very fulfilling, challenging and committed piece of theater, and I hope you get to see it. If you do, please stop and say hi afterwards.


DCTheatreScene calls it "old-school theater at its best: passionate, honest, intense, complex, and demanding...In less competent hands, Long Day’s Journey would be melodrama, but Quotidian presents us with a show about real people, each of them struggling to save the people they love while keeping their own heads above water."

I play Jamie Tyrone, the cynical, alcoholic son of a faded matinee idol. Favorite line: "Not after I wash my face."


For more information on show times and directions, go the the theatre's web page.

Here's the brief blurb:

Eugene O'Neill's
Long Day's Journey Into Night

O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece recounts the lives of the Tyrone family with a power unmatched on the American stage.

FEATURING: Michael Avolio, Andy Brownstein, Erika Imhoof, Steve LaRocque, and Stephanie Mumford.

DIRECTED BY: Bob Bartlett.

July 11 - August 10, 2008

Please note that evening performances for this production start at 7:30 pm, and matinees at 1:30 pm.

Bride of Facebook

Via my friend Leta, here's a uniquely British take on Facebook, which I think nails what is so peculiar about the phenomenon. See my own take on the same subject here.



PS: Since my last posting, I have been friended by another former high school girlfriend and the sister of my first love, whose parents hated me and forbade me to see her, who got married and befriended me again later in life, and who died suddenly and tragically at the age of 30. Jessica, wherever you are, I'm sure you'd find this all a little funny.

Cookiepuss Revisited

If you're like me, and happened to spend a good portion of your childhood in Philadelphia, you're likely to remember a certain voice, a voice that sounded to me like an emphysemic mobster and that comedian Patton Oswalt once likened to "Tom Waits gurgling hot asphalt." The voice would say things that didn't make much sense like, "Tuesday is Sunday at Carvel," always accompanying grainy, home-grown commercials for ice-cream cakes with absurd-sounding names like "Fudgie the Whale" and "Cookiepuss."

Yes, Cookiepuss. There are certain words that are able to conjure an entire sensory encyclopedia from my childhood, like a Northeast suburban version of "Remembrance of Things Past," and Cookiepuss is one them.

Cookiepuss was one of a handful of pre-fab ice-cream cakes that were a staple of birthdays for my friends and I until I was about 8, and we moved away. I had forgotten -- perhaps repressed -- Cookiepuss until several years ago, when Doug Bowles, a castmate in "Assassins", recalled Fudgie the Whale. It wasn't long before my friend Stephen Gregory Smith, who also grew up in PA, and I began reciting the absurd commercials. Tom Carvel was no doubt a kind and gentle old man, but in my mind, I always pictured him as the black sheep of a Mafia family, like Fredo from "The Godfather," with the voice of Krusty the Clown: "Come to Carvel...Tuesday is Sunday....We've got Fudgie the Whale...We've got Cookiepuss..."

Recently, during the production of "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Stephen and I were backstage, and he asked me, "Whatever happened to Cookiepuss?" This evoked the phenomenon once again, and I discovered, not for the first time, that, with or without the voice of Krusty, "Cookiepuss" is just funny. Maybe it's because I have the sense of humor of an 8-year-old, but when castmate Danny Binstock opened a conversation by saying, "I googled Cookiepuss the other day...," I started giggling like a girl. I could be wrong, but I think we may have accidentally stumbled upon one of those rare comedy rules, like the Rule of 3 or the Rule of 7: If you start a sentence with, "I googled Cookiepuss...," it's going to be hilarious -- no matter what follows.

Stephen actually googled Cookiepuss and discovered that the cake, like seemingly everything else in the universe, has it's own Wikipedia entry. Here's what we learned: Cookiepuss is actually a space alien. His original name was "Celestial Person," "C.P." for short, which later came to stand for Cookiepuss. Cookiepuss was born on the planet Birthday. He can fly, but requires a flying saucer for interplanetary travel. This is never explained. I also learned that there were special versions of the cake for St. Patrick's Day ("Cookie O'Puss) and Valentine's Day ("Cupie Puss").

Once again, google is my way of finding out that I'm not alone in my obsessions. Cookiepuss, as it turns out, has been mentioned in episodes of The Family Guy and The Critic. It's also lent its name to a somewhat raunchy, prank-call centered rap by the Beastie Boys, and to a clothing and cosmetic line.

That is what I learned from googling cookiepuss. And I'm still giggling.

Oh, the Humanity: Reflections on Reaching the 100 Friend Mark on Facebook

"Half the people you see these days are talking on cell phones
Driving off the road and bumping in to doors.
People use to spend quite a bit of time alone
I guess nobody's lonely anymore."
--Greg Brown, "Cept' You and Me, Babe."

"Where have all my friends gone?
They've all disappeared."
--The Jayhawks, "Blue."


I recently passed a curious milestone: I reached the 100th friend marker on Facebook, the internet social networking utility I joined somewhat reluctantly several months ago. The response of said friend, Keith Bridges, artistic director of Charter Theatre, perhaps said it all: "Dude, that's just sad."

There are, in fact, people out there with over 300,400 friends, but why quibble over the math? At what point, exactly, do you become a Facebook whore? But then something happened that got me thinking about this phenomenon, even more than the endless invitations from the site to become a werewolf, a vampire or a zombie, or the quizzes to determine what city, James Bond movie or brand of underwear is most like me -- with answers available only if you have the audacity (or shamelessness) to pass it on to 20 more "friends."

I got a friend request (number 107) from the girl I took to my 9th grade homecoming dance in Milwaukee. Actually, to say I "took" her is a bit misleading, as it suggests that a)I did the asking and b)that I had a vehicle to take her in. Neither was true. I was still at that awkward age where I was much too shy to ask anyone on my own, and even in a recent e-mail, she acknowledged what a good "sport" I was to go along. Adding to the angst was that my sister chaperoned us to the dance and the restaurant beforehand, as I had no car. Photographic evidence of the night (Polaroids show me with a suit my mom dressed me in and an expression similar to those in hostage videos from the Middle East--I had a major stick up my butt) was the source of endless ribbing for years afterward.

The picture that accompanied the request showed her with her baby girl. She located me because we had a "friend" in common, the person who is organizing the 20th reunion at the high school I went to briefly in Milwaukee (which I left after the 9th grade when we moved to Philadelphia, for reasons that had nothing to do with the homecoming dance). I put friend in quotes because my chief memory of this person was a fight we had in the 7th grade during gym. The scene: Outside, playing softball. I was catching, he was pitching. I may have said something like, "Can't you get one over the plate?" He then beamed me in the head with the ball. I rushed toward the mound. Mayhem ensued. Though I think I was operating largely in self-defense, we both got detentions. My "friend" had a reputation for being what we would have then uncharitably called a "spaz," and I will never forget the subtle smile that appeared on the face of my otherwise mild-mannered English teacher when he accosted me in the hall, and asked, "Is it true that you beat up...."

And there was my friend's photo on my computer screen, 20 years older (with tattoos, holding baby boy.)

There are further odd connections in my burgeoning pile of Facebook friends:

*The best friend of a girl I dated in high school in Philadelphia, who unbeknownst to both of us, had been doing props in DC at the same time I was getting back into theater.

*The person who played the loyal lieutenant to my corrupt colonel in an amateur production of "A Few Good Men" in college. He also lives in the area and currently works for the state department.

*Two close high school friends that were part of a comedy troupe I performed in during high school. One is a vice-president of a medicinal rubber company (it's not what you think) and the other is a film director in New York.

*The assignment editor of the newspaper I worked at in Albany, now flak-ing for a local college, whose favorite question was, "Hey Brownstein, where's my page one story?"

I think there needs to be a new word for the weird cognitive dissonance, the sense of compressed time bridged instantaneously, that comes from reconnecting with old memories after getting "friended" on cyberspace. Maybe "webui" or "netstalgia."

Don't get me wrong. For the most part, it's incredibly exciting to have people I was once close to back in my life. In some of these cases, we had previously tried to find each other through more conventional means, and discovered one another purely by accident (or a degree of separation) on Facebook. But it sure makes repression rather difficult. The phrase "The past is not dead; it's not even the past" takes on a whole new meaning when the past sends you e-mail with photo attachments.

A final note: There also needs to be a new word for people on the opposite end of the spectrum. I am not proud of this, but as of this writing, I have 7 Facebook friends whom I've never met, and 15 who I've spoken to only briefly.

What does that say about me?

Perhaps I should put a poll on my blog.

Yes I Can!

When I go to my girlfriend's place, I tend to leak coins onto the couch. By the time I leave, there's usually a big pile of quarters, nickels and dimes in the corner, sometimes on the floor. It occurred to me the other day that maybe someday I could be president. I, too, have a proven track record of making change.

Election

Today is primary day in DC, Virginia and Maryland. I offer this...just because I think its funny.

Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days

The first thing to say is that this movie shook me to the core. It is one of the most well made and well acted movies I've seen in a long time. The second thing to say is that I don't think I will see it again for a long time...maybe ever. That's because, in addition to all of it's well deserved accolades -- including the top prize at Cannes last year -- it is also one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen.

Briefly, "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days" takes place during one harrowing day in Romania and tells the story of a woman and her friend attempting to get an illegal abortion during the last days of the Communist dictatorship there. In many ways, it echoes my favorite movie of last year, "The Lives of Others," in that it powerfully evokes the brutalization of the Communist system. But this movie, while not quite as good as "Lives," nonetheless speaks more to our political and cultural circumstances in this country, especially in an election year where abortion once again is likely to be the subject of much polarizing rhetoric, division and grandstanding.

When I said the movie was disturbing earlier, I meant that in the best possible sense, in that it is genuinely thought-provoking and that it's images and themes will haunt you and spark conversation long after you leave the theater. Director Cristian Mungiu deserves much credit for his ability to drain every ounce of tension from this situation, and I couldn't keep my eyes off of Anamaria Marinca, who was so believable and sympathetic in her portrayal of the friend whose story anchors the film.

In tone and its sense of lingering claustrophobia and doom, the movie also reminded me a lot of the Hitchcock thriller "Rear Window." But the movie's ability to disturb never rests on cheap thrills, rather from its brutal depiction of a nightmarish scenario that many of us argue about, philosophize on and sometimes even vote on, but (thankfully) seldom experience.

What makes this movie closer to art is that it eschews the easy polarities and arch rhetoric that constitute much of the abortion debate in this country ("pro-life" "pro-choice," "the lives of the unborn," "a woman's right to her own body," "partial birth," "back allies"...and so on) and instead depicts a situation in which everyone involved is brought down by a culture that devalues life in all its forms.

When my sister and I discussed the movie later, we were certain that the director, while offering fodder for all sides of the abortion question, was pro-life. It says something about the subtlety of his approach that I learned later we were wrong: He is adamantly pro-choice. And,just to prove once again that I truly have my finger on the pulse of nothing in this country, I was equally surprised to learn that many pro-life groups were highly critical of the film. There are some people in this world who can forgive anything but subtlety, I guess.

I do find it heartening that this year has brought two movies that have treated the notion of unwanted pregnancy with thoughtfulness, compassion and, yes, subtlety. I absolutely loved "Juno," which delved into roughly the same subject matter. But where "Juno" is acidly funny, light and ultimately heartwarming, "Four Months" is it's mirror opposite: brutal, unsparing and dark, dark, dark.

Anyhow, if you've thought at all about this subject, I urge you to go see this movie. Go see it, and then talk to me later. I'll be thinking about it for a long time.