Glen Hirshberg's Blog, page 2
September 19, 2015
Rolling Dark 2015
The line-up for the last (?) Rolling Darkness Revue shows. Dates and location should follow by the end of the weekend. And just wait until you see the chapbook cover...
The contents:
The Voyage of the Dead (framing play by Peter Atkins and Glen Hirshberg)
"He Wasn't There Again Today" by Peter Atkins
"Cheap Medicine" by Thomas St. John Bartlett
"The Ones Who Are Waving: A Last Rolling Darkness Revue Story" by Glen Hirshberg
Show features the great Kevin Gregg, reprising his role as Ganymede, the gentleman-butler of the Underworld...Kate Hirshberg, reprising her role as Ms. Blister, the Queen of Hell...music by the Rolling Dark House Band (Jonas Yip and Rex Flowers)...Glen and Pete...and a few other surprises.
Once more, with feeling, y'all. Last call. Can't wait...
The contents:
The Voyage of the Dead (framing play by Peter Atkins and Glen Hirshberg)
"He Wasn't There Again Today" by Peter Atkins
"Cheap Medicine" by Thomas St. John Bartlett
"The Ones Who Are Waving: A Last Rolling Darkness Revue Story" by Glen Hirshberg
Show features the great Kevin Gregg, reprising his role as Ganymede, the gentleman-butler of the Underworld...Kate Hirshberg, reprising her role as Ms. Blister, the Queen of Hell...music by the Rolling Dark House Band (Jonas Yip and Rex Flowers)...Glen and Pete...and a few other surprises.
Once more, with feeling, y'all. Last call. Can't wait...
August 29, 2015
Motherless Child Paperback out this Tuesday
In my fifteen-plus year publishing life, I've had books come out in snazzy hardbacks and trade paper, gorgeous limited editions and illustrated SPECIAL limited editions, e-book and audio. But I've never had anything of mine appear in one of those so-called "mass market" paperbacks people take on the bus. Leave (or discover) in the library at school, or at the B&B on vacation. Secret in a desk drawer for lunch hour. Dog-ear. Spill coffee on. Read.
That changes on Tuesday with this edition of Motherless Child. So if you've got a reader in your life you think might appreciate knowing about this, could you let 'em know? Thanks...
That changes on Tuesday with this edition of Motherless Child. So if you've got a reader in your life you think might appreciate knowing about this, could you let 'em know? Thanks...
Parenting: the rewards
What my son did with his summer (thanks in no small part to his aunt, Susan Liss). Also what he's still doing with an amazing amount of his time, now (he was up until we-don't-want-to-know-when a couple nights back writing a letter to the editor he hopes to place in the L.A. TIMES or somewhere comparable shortly). Training for the kind of work he wants to do for the rest of his life.
Like Bernie. Only with more smiling. And even more shirt rumples.
Kind of proud of him...
Like Bernie. Only with more smiling. And even more shirt rumples.
Kind of proud of him...
Failure: A Love Story
One of those magical L.A. nights. My kind of magical L.A. night, anyway. It was Kim's birthday yesterday, and she wanted to go to a play, as she often does, and I'd heard about this one somewhere, from one of my trusty someones, so off we went.
The theater was pay-what-you-can, a 99-seater in a building with all the romance of an Airstream in the middle of a park along the nowhere stretch of Olive Avenue west of the 5. We wouldn't even have found it--it was around back, behind the volleyball gym at the community rec center--if a couple ringers (maybe one of the search parties the theater troupe probably sends out) hadn't steered us onto the path.
But we did find it. And we paid what we could. And so the four of us got to spend the evening watching another twenty of the thousand or so most talented people on earth take an astonishing script by a playwright entirely new to me and blow most of the Broadway productions I've ever seen straight out of my memory. How even to describe it? "Our Town" in Chicago with talking clocks and escaped parakeets and a python named Moses? All I can say for sure tonight is, this was "Stoneface"-at-Sacred-Fools good. So sad and so funny and so relentlessly inventive in its staging, its (occasionally self-conscious but unfailingly winning) wordplay, its sheer joy in living,and making art out of living. Worth the price of admission--whatever you decide that should be--for the song about hating Johnny Weismuller alone.
I think tomorrow's the last night. Angelenos, if you don't go, you'll be sorry. And these people and this production are worth every penny you can give them.
The theater was pay-what-you-can, a 99-seater in a building with all the romance of an Airstream in the middle of a park along the nowhere stretch of Olive Avenue west of the 5. We wouldn't even have found it--it was around back, behind the volleyball gym at the community rec center--if a couple ringers (maybe one of the search parties the theater troupe probably sends out) hadn't steered us onto the path.
But we did find it. And we paid what we could. And so the four of us got to spend the evening watching another twenty of the thousand or so most talented people on earth take an astonishing script by a playwright entirely new to me and blow most of the Broadway productions I've ever seen straight out of my memory. How even to describe it? "Our Town" in Chicago with talking clocks and escaped parakeets and a python named Moses? All I can say for sure tonight is, this was "Stoneface"-at-Sacred-Fools good. So sad and so funny and so relentlessly inventive in its staging, its (occasionally self-conscious but unfailingly winning) wordplay, its sheer joy in living,and making art out of living. Worth the price of admission--whatever you decide that should be--for the song about hating Johnny Weismuller alone.
I think tomorrow's the last night. Angelenos, if you don't go, you'll be sorry. And these people and this production are worth every penny you can give them.
August 14, 2015
Wylding Hall
Full disclosure: Elizabeth Hand has been consistently generous and kind about for years, and I know her personally just well enough to consider her a friend, and one of the most genuine and trustworthy colleagues I've met.
But if you know me at all, you know I have a contrary streak, or at least a careful one, and I really do try never to like something because I'm supposed to, or because I like the artist as a person, or because I wish I could.
To make matters even more complicated....
Read the rest of this review.
But if you know me at all, you know I have a contrary streak, or at least a careful one, and I really do try never to like something because I'm supposed to, or because I like the artist as a person, or because I wish I could.
To make matters even more complicated....
Read the rest of this review.
July 25, 2015
Summer. Finally.
90 minutes alone before anyone else woke up with good coffee and new Richard Skelton music ghosting from the speakers and my notebooks and laptop open and the words coming easy...(brief annoying interlude to clear massive ant invasion)...great movie with Kim and Kate ("Mr. Holmes," just lovely)...long sunset walk downhill from the theater--sprinkled liberally with KateKim laughter as they closed ranks behind me to hide the split seam down the ass of my shorts, necessitating a Vans store pitstop--to the little neighborhood Basque tapas bar for small-plate supper.. long early-evening walk back up the hill, with a stop at the Asian bakery for toasting bread and the Venezuelan chocolate shop for, you know, Venezuelan chocolates...home in time to sit quiet with the cats in the cooling house, read, play a little Scrabble.
There, summer. Was that really so hard?
There, summer. Was that really so hard?
Rock & Roll Just Can't Recall
Maybe the most astonishing thing about the rock music I love most is how many different natural resources can fuel it: you can get there from sexual frustration or fulfillment, bliss or the blues, righteous fury or your right to party, explosion or implosion (by fusion or fission, cold or blazing), remorse or absolution, travel or transformation, rebellion or re-engagement. According to Lester Bangs, all it takes in N-E-R-V-E, though the stuff that sends me takes more than that (but that, too, even if it's the nerve to stay quiet, hold still, which Lester rarely sanctioned).
Even as the music dies (and it does seem to be doing that), spectacular new artists keep surfacing, from soil they mulched and tilled themselves. Like these dazzling people, who seem to have erupted from a whole new source of roaring, sizzling, songful rock rejuvenation: kaleidoscopic disappointment.
Even as the music dies (and it does seem to be doing that), spectacular new artists keep surfacing, from soil they mulched and tilled themselves. Like these dazzling people, who seem to have erupted from a whole new source of roaring, sizzling, songful rock rejuvenation: kaleidoscopic disappointment.
July 22, 2015
The Sellout
If only because it's more a collection of riveting, astonishing beats than a narrative about specific characters, Paul Beatty's The Sellout may not be the best novel I've ever read about maybe the defining American subject (race). It may only be the best writing, I've ever read on this topic, in any genre, period. It's sure as hell the funniest, and there is a fiercely beating heart in there amid the righteous fury and frustration. It's a great, great book, and I can not recommend it highly enough. The Clarence Thomas bit alone, my god...
But be forewarned: this one really pulls no punches, leaves no sacred cows untipped, won't leave any sentient American of any color comfortable in their skin. I mean, check this riff, delivered at the Supreme Court, where our African American narrator is ostensibly on trial for attempting to re-segregate the schools in his disincorporated South Central L.A. neighborhood:
"I'm no longer party to that collective guilt that keeps the third-chair cellist, the administrative secretary, the stock clerk, the not-really-all-that-attractive-but-she's-black beauty pageant winner from showing up for work Monday morning and shooting every white motherfucker in the place. It's a guilt that has obligated me to mutter 'My bad' for every misplaced bounce pass, politician under Federal investigation, every bug-eyed and Rastus-voiced comedian, and every black film since 1968...I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. In the way that cooning is a relief, voting Republican is a relief, marrying white is a relief--albeit a temporary one."
But be forewarned: this one really pulls no punches, leaves no sacred cows untipped, won't leave any sentient American of any color comfortable in their skin. I mean, check this riff, delivered at the Supreme Court, where our African American narrator is ostensibly on trial for attempting to re-segregate the schools in his disincorporated South Central L.A. neighborhood:
"I'm no longer party to that collective guilt that keeps the third-chair cellist, the administrative secretary, the stock clerk, the not-really-all-that-attractive-but-she's-black beauty pageant winner from showing up for work Monday morning and shooting every white motherfucker in the place. It's a guilt that has obligated me to mutter 'My bad' for every misplaced bounce pass, politician under Federal investigation, every bug-eyed and Rastus-voiced comedian, and every black film since 1968...I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. In the way that cooning is a relief, voting Republican is a relief, marrying white is a relief--albeit a temporary one."
July 21, 2015
Twelve Angry Glens: If on a Winter's Night More Jury Duty
Okay, former students: what was the first rule of creative writing I ever taught you?
No, not that one. Not the one about never, under any circumstances, ever using the "And then I woke up" twist, either.
But the one about no creative writing rules anyone ever gives you being rules (more like... guidelines...), 'Cause, you know, creative and all. So:
They'll be talking, all year, about yesterday's stunning, expectation-shattering conclusion of "If on a Winter's Night More Jury Duty." Especially the moment, five minutes from the end, just as the jury was being polled, when Glen WOKE UP...shot straight up in his seat...blinked...flapped his filmy gums...realized...IT WAS ALL A DREAM. Summer hadn't even begun. He was home, his kids and cats around him, writing implements on his lap. Time was unfolding, stretching its long, timey-wimey legs. Also whinnying (although the creators admit that having time whinny was a particularly odd and questionable choice). Startled, stunned, Glen smiled. Laughed. Started to stand to hug his world and his loved ones to him....
And then WOKE UP AGAIN (that's right--he really did it--the DOUBLE and-then-I-woke-up). To realize that the dream had been a dream. And also the whole trial. That jury duty was just starting. That he hadn't even heard opening arguments yet. That there were plans afoot for Season Two...
His filmy gums flapped. Glen's silent scream reverberated over the murmuring courtroom as friendly coffee ladies and security guards patted his shoulders, and the fluorescents faded to black...
No, not that one. Not the one about never, under any circumstances, ever using the "And then I woke up" twist, either.
But the one about no creative writing rules anyone ever gives you being rules (more like... guidelines...), 'Cause, you know, creative and all. So:
They'll be talking, all year, about yesterday's stunning, expectation-shattering conclusion of "If on a Winter's Night More Jury Duty." Especially the moment, five minutes from the end, just as the jury was being polled, when Glen WOKE UP...shot straight up in his seat...blinked...flapped his filmy gums...realized...IT WAS ALL A DREAM. Summer hadn't even begun. He was home, his kids and cats around him, writing implements on his lap. Time was unfolding, stretching its long, timey-wimey legs. Also whinnying (although the creators admit that having time whinny was a particularly odd and questionable choice). Startled, stunned, Glen smiled. Laughed. Started to stand to hug his world and his loved ones to him....
And then WOKE UP AGAIN (that's right--he really did it--the DOUBLE and-then-I-woke-up). To realize that the dream had been a dream. And also the whole trial. That jury duty was just starting. That he hadn't even heard opening arguments yet. That there were plans afoot for Season Two...
His filmy gums flapped. Glen's silent scream reverberated over the murmuring courtroom as friendly coffee ladies and security guards patted his shoulders, and the fluorescents faded to black...
July 20, 2015
Twelve Angry Glen / Glen of the Flies
Tomorrow...on the thrilling concl--well, maybe the conclusion,because that's part of the genius, isn't it--of this summer's most time consuming (er, engrossing) horramedy, GLEN OF THE FLIES:
In a devilish masterstroke, Glen, having spotted the decrepit, furred-over coffee maker in the corner, smuggles in a bag of first-class, fair-trade coffee, ground just so, and proclaimed a feast to celebrate the slaying of the beast (um, I mean, reaching of a unanimous verdict).
Of course, he's mentioned to no one his contingency plans, just in case some wannabe Ralph, Piggy, or Simon infiltrates the chamber...
In a devilish masterstroke, Glen, having spotted the decrepit, furred-over coffee maker in the corner, smuggles in a bag of first-class, fair-trade coffee, ground just so, and proclaimed a feast to celebrate the slaying of the beast (um, I mean, reaching of a unanimous verdict).
Of course, he's mentioned to no one his contingency plans, just in case some wannabe Ralph, Piggy, or Simon infiltrates the chamber...
