Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

Seattle Rep: Noises Off

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Prairie and I just returned from using her dad’s Christmas present to her, which while it originally appeared in the form of cash, was soon converted into two tickets to the Seattle Rep‘s performance of Noises Off.

If you’ve ever been involved at all in theater and haven’t yet heard of Noises Off, you’re really missing out and, if there doesn’t happen to be a local performance anywhere around you in the near future, you should at least rent the movie version (it’s a very good stage to screen adaptation). The story is that of a touring troupe’s troubled performance of ‘Nothing On’, a stereotypical British sex farce. With love triangles, murderous jealous rage, alcohol, and far too many plates of sardines all in play, it’s not long before things start to take a turn for the worse — and just get funnier and funnier as they go along.

The Rep’s production was outstanding and very well cast, but for me it was Bhama Roget as Brooke Ashton who stole the show (and not just because she spends the majority of it running around in her underwear). Even when Brooke didn’t have any immediate business, her wonderfully spaced-out moments and hilarious facial expressions had me cracking up throughout the show. Stephanie Timm as Poppy Norton-Taylor, Michael Patten as Frederick Fellowes and Mark Chaberlin as the long-suffering director Lloyd Dallas all also gave standout performances as well — though this certainly isn’t to slight the rest of the cast, as there certainly wasn’t a dud in the bunch.

As an added bonus, the program contains a secondary program for the play-within-a-play ‘Nothing On’ which is quite funny in itself, from the cast bios to the sponsor advertisements and the hilariously deadpan excerpts from ‘Eros Untrousered: Studies in the Semantics of Bedroom Farce’ printed on the back page:

The cultural importance of the so-called ‘bedroom farce,’ or ‘English sex farce,’ has long been recognized, but attention has tended to center on the metaphysical significance of mistaken identity and upon the social criticism implicit in the form’s ground-breaking exploration of cross-dressing and trans-gender role-playing. The focus of scholarly interest, however, is now beginning to shift to the recurrence of certain mythic themes in the genre, and to their religious and spiritual implications.

The show runs for the next two weeks through January 15th, and tickets are very reasonably priced (Prairie and I had second row center seats for \$35 each) — if you’re into theater at all, this really shouldn’t be missed.

Other reviews:

iTunes “Where the Lemons Bloom Waltz” by (unknown) from the album Ultimate Classical Collection, The (1995, 9:08).

Santa’s Flight Exam

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Santa Claus, like all pilots, gets regular visits from the Federal Aviation Administration, and it was shortly before Christmas when the FAA examiner arrived.

In preparation, Santa had the elves wash the sled and bathe all the reindeer. Santa got his logbook out and made sure all his paperwork was in order.

The examiner walked slowly around the sled. He checked the reindeer harnesses, the landing gear, and Rudolf’s nose. He painstakingly reviewed Santa’s weight and balance calculations for the sled’s enormous payload.

Finally, they were ready for the checkride. Santa got in, fastened his seatbelt and shoulder harness, and checked the compass. Then the examiner hopped in carrying, to Santa’s surprise, a shotgun. “What’s that for?” asked Santa incredulously.

The examiner winked and said, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but you’re gonna lose an engine on takeoff.”

(via The Usual Suspects)

My Netflix

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I’ve just added a new page to the site (and linked it in the header navigation of every page): my Netflix queues.

Thanks to the plugin goodness of the Netflix Suite, it lists the movies I currently have checked out, the last 90 days (?) of movies I’ve watched and returned along with what I’ve rated them, and my entire Netflix queue (sitting pretty at 441 as of this moment).

Christianity and the ACLU

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John Scalzi is looking for Christian lawyers who work for the ACLU:

Someone who is very close to me (who will remain nameless for the moment) just presented the opinion to me that, for various reasons, she strongly suspects there are no lawyers who work for the ACLU who are also Christians, since she was also of the opinion that the ACLU isn’t interested in the constitutional rights of Christians…

Naturally, I was appalled at this statement and told her that I would make it my mission to find her an ACLU lawyer who was also a Christian, and that upon finding such a specimen, that I would ask her to consider the possibility that one could be a Christian and a lawyer and consider as one’s mission the constitutional rights of all Americans.

If you are a lawyer who loves Christ and are either on staff or has worked for the ACLU, would you please come forward to say hello?

The ensuing comment thread on his post is getting very interesting, too. Worth checking out (though it keeps getting longer, so give yourself a few minutes).

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes “I Believe” by Absolute U.S., The feat. Palmer, Suzanne from the album This is the Sound of Tribal U.K. Vol. 2 (1995, 9:23).

Quick Review: Quills

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Really, really good. Admittedly, they had a couple things going for them to start with — interesting subject matter and a powerhouse cast (Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade, Kate Winslet as Madeline, Michael Caine as Dr. Royer-Collard, and Joaquin Phoenix as the Abbe du Coulmier) — but that’s not always a guaranteed success.

Geoffrey Rush was loads of fun to watch, though, as the Marquis. I commented to Prairie not long after the movie started that while there are a lot of actors who can read and deliver their lines competently, Rush is one who obviously loves language and all the verbal games that can be played with it, and the Marquis’ neverending stream of innuendo (and frequent out-and-out blatant obscenities) was perfect for him.

“Well worth the dig!”

iTunes “Ignore the Machine” by Alien Sex Fiend from the album Gothik (1983, 6:42).

Legend

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Years ago, my brother and I found a cassette tape on the floor of the family van. Neither of us knew where it came from or who had left it there (as it wasn’t either of ours), but neither of us are generally likely to refuse free music, so into our collection it went.

Upon first glance, it didn’t seem all that special — Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘Legend’ album. When we tossed it in the stereo and started listening to it, though, it turned out that we were in for a bit of a treat. It turned out that rather being the “normal” Legend album, this tape instead had early 80s-era dance remixes of all of the songs. We were confused: it was all the same tracks in the same order as any other Legend tape, but versions we’d never heard before. Since Kevin is more of a reggae fan than I am, and I’m more of a dance music fan than he is, I ended up with the tape.

Over the next few months, every so often I’d try to track down where the tape came from, all to no avail. None of our friends remembered leaving it in the car, or even hearing it in the first place. Since it was an official factory-produced tape, I took it down to Mammoth Music (the single best locally-run music store in Anchorage) and had them punch the catalog number printed on the shell into their system, and they came up blank — no record of that particular version of the album existing at all.

Over time, unfortunately, the tape died, and I eventually resigned myself to its remaining a mystery.

Then, one day a couple years ago, one of the ladies I was working in at the Microsoft print shop came in with a new two-disc deluxe edition of Legend that she’d just picked up. We listened to disc one, she popped in disc two…and I damn near blew a gasket when the long-lost beats of the mysterious remixes came out of the stereo. I don’t have the liner notes available to me now, so I don’t remember all the details, but it turns out that all the remixes had been done between 1980 and 1984, and had been out of print for years before the deluxe edition was released onto CD.

That deluxe edition is now available on iTunes, complete with every one of the remixes I spent so much time enjoying after they appeared in my car. If you think you can handle the admittedly somewhat odd experience of 80’s dance mixes of Bob Marley reggae tunes, I’d definitely recommend giving it a listen — my personal favorite of all the tracks is the remix of Buffalo Soldier.

iTunes “Buffalo Soldier (Remix)” by Marley, Bob and the Wailers from the album Legend: Deluxe Edition (1984, 5:25).

Tsunami

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My lord — I hadn’t even heard about the disaster around the Indian Ocean until I started browsing through headlines this morning, and now they’re putting the death toll at somewhere over 33,000 people.

Scary stuff.

Christmas Weekend

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Good Christmas weekend this year.

Christmas Eve Day I got up at my usual time, dinked around on the ‘puter for a bit while I woke up, packed, and headed down to the train station. Hiked down the hill to 3rd, then caught a bus over to Jackson street and killed time for about an hour before the train left.

I spent most of the train ride in the observation car, listening to the Kleptones and watching the scenery fly by. It was a pretty grey day, but I did what I could to get some interesting shots, trying to catch some of the graffitti on the train cars and bridges we passed.

Prairie and H picked me up at the station, and I got to see Prairie’s new car (something of a Christmas present to herself, as her old Jetta finally became too much of a hassle to keep over this past week), a cute little silver Honda Civic. We swung by Prairie’s mom’s house to drop off bags, and then Prairie and I went over to her dad’s place. I gave her dad some pointers with his new iBook, H and K joined us a little while later, and we had a nice Christmas Eve dinner, complete with decorating Christmas cookies. Eventually, we all headed back to Prairie’s mom’s house to crash out.

Christmas morning rolled around, and Prairie and I joined her mom and sisters downstairs to open presents. My stocking was stuffed with socks and M&M’s, I got a good pile of new clothing (all black, save one shirt that’s black and grey), a few books, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Season One of Buffy (so I can eventually own them all). Lots more than I was expecting to end up with!

That afternoon, Prairie and I went driving around the Woodland area, heading down by the Columbia river, and then a little way up past where the Louis river joins the Columbia and up to a train trestle spanning the Louis. I was a good son and called my parents after we got home — this is the second Christmas I’ve been away from home for, though Prairie and I are discussing seeing if we can head up to Alaska for next Christmas. H’s boyfriend P showed up in time for Christmas dinner, and later on I did my best at playing photographer for the traditional Christmas family photos.

Monday was another day of resting and lazing around. Lunch with P and H over at Prairie’s dad’s house, and then packing up and heading back north to Seattle.

As usual, I’ve got a selection of photos posted to Flickr (61 of the 200-some I took over the course of the weekend). Now I’m back at work, and Prairie’s doing her best to fend off a cold before the New Year’s weekend rolls around. Life returns to normal…for a few days at least.

Happy Holidays

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Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Fröliche Weinachten, Merry Solstice…whatever works in your particular instance, have a good holiday weekend.

I’m off shortly to take the train down to Woodland to spend the weekend with Prairie and her family. I’ll be back sometime Monday evening.

Try not to burn the place down while I’m gone. :)

iTunes “Frosty the Snowman” by Cocteau Twins from the album A Very Rare Christmas