A speculative mind

Not much of a blog today because I am writing a play! I signed up for the 72-hour play writing challenge with the Red Octopus Theatre Company. Participants have three days to write a play. The play has to include 5 prompts that are randomly drawn from a hat or a bag or something. The five prompts that were drawn for this challenge included a prop, a sound effect, a character, a costume piece and a setting.  Actually I don't think the setting was randomly picked as is is "an on screen communication,"  a video call etc. That seems a little spot on for the current situation if it is to be performed in a quarantined world. There are no guarantees that any of the 72 hour plays will be performed. But if they are, it will probably be via Zoom or some such. I have done this before (write play to a deadline). The last time I did this I had to write a Christmas play in a month. And one time I did the 24 hour theater, which means I had eight hours to write the play. It's ...

I was on Twitter yesterday and someone asked the question whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Someone else posted that they thought it was a fruit but there is always a picture of one on a can of V-8 so, maybe it wasn’t. That got me responding with more vehemence than it probably deserved but hey, I worked hard for my Biology degree. Sometimes it is fun to let it out of its case. First and foremost, yes, it is a fruit. But what is a fruit? A fruit is the ripened, seed-bearing ovary of a flowering plant. Okay, then what is a vegetable? From a human dietary standpoint, a vegetable is any part of a plant that you eat that is not a fruit. So, it could be a root (like carrots, or radishes), or the leaves (like lettuce, or cabbage), or the stem (like celery). A potato is a tuber which is actually a fleshy part of the stem that grows underground, so it is a vegetable. A fruit does not have to be sweet, and it does not have to be edible (to humans). The purpose of a fr...

Yesterday, one of my friends on Facebook posted that she was in the mood to watch an old sci-fi movie from the 1950’s and was looking for suggestions. A lot of people suggested The Day the Earth Stood Still , which is a fine movie in its own right, but the first thing that popped into my mind was The Thing , or as it was originally titled: The Thing from Another World. In the movie, Captain Hendry is ordered to fly to an Air Force base at the North Pole and investigate the crash of a strange aircraft. The craft turns out to be a flying saucer (the movie was made in 1951 when flying saucers were all the rage). From the wreckage, they recover the body of an alien frozen in ice. Of course, the ice thaws, the alien comes to life and general havoc ensues. It is a cracking good monster movie. The Thing was either directed by Christian Nyby or Howard Hawks depending on who you wish to believe. Hawks was credited as the producer and Nyby as director. Some say that Hawks direc...

As I may have mentioned before, I participate in community theater. I mostly participate as an actor but sometimes as a playwright, or, if someone is extremely desperate, a director. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, theater, all theater, is shut down for the near and unpredictable future. I was not in any planned shows when the shutdown hit, but I have a number of friends who were in rehearsal for a show that came to a full stop. I know that it was devastating for many of them because acting (and every art form) takes emotional investment in the project if the project is going to be successful. It is a lot more than just memorizing words. You have to inhabit the character. So, when a show gets stopped, it is gut-wrenching. This is why we have so often heard the phrase “the show must go on.” Actors, directors, and stage managers, constantly live with the precariousness of live theater. To put it bluntly: things go wrong. I have been in a lot of productions in the la...

I just finished Erik Larson’s book The Splendid and the Vile . I would have to say that it is much more splendid than it is vile. The book is subtitled: “A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz.” I have read several books about Churchill. Many of them touch upon his quirks, his temper and his fabulous oratory ability, and all that is to be found in Larson’s book as well. But Larson delves more deeply into Churchill’s family and personal relationships. The book focuses on Churchill’s first year in office as Prime Minister. And what a terrible first year it was for Britain. The lion’s share of Nazi bombing raids on Britain took place during that first year.   The enormity of the Blitz is something that I don’t think anyone can really grasp if they didn’t go through it. And the people of England, especially London, went through it night after relentless night. I was reminded of Connie Willis’ science fiction novel Blackout which lets you feel just an in...