I Missed Ada Lovelace Day

This year the date of Ada Lovelace Day (like so many others) just slipped past me.  Named for the first computer programmer - who happened to be female - the day celebrates women in science and technology.  (In a previous year, I responded before with a post on early female architects  HERE.)

But today there's a great post over at themarysue.com that nicely expresses the Go-Girl-Tech! vibe of Ada's celebration: a  dangerous study of the remains from early huminins found in a cave in Africa, this mission can be accomplished only by paleontologists who are also cavers.

All Female Team of Spelunking Scientists!

 

Cave photo by Ik Ikrig - public domain at publicdomainpictures.net

TheMarySue.com is worth visiting for the girl-geek of pop culture and, as today, science.

Catching Up

Busy, busy...

But here are a few highlights from the books 'n movies front lately (as I scramble to get back into a regular schedule posting here... and in the rest of my productive life!).

Films:  Just saw the knuckle-biter Captain Phillips.  A very intense study of the real-life  story about Somali piracy.  Tom Hanks's performance is riveting.  I do wish the film makers had had the grace to cut away and end the film just a few minutes sooner - it just seems wrong to watch this tough character finally fall apart once he's saved.  He has every right to!  But give the guy some privacy, right?  The very human portrayal of the pirates makes the film, I think, turning this from just another action flick into art.  I'm hoping to see the other current crisis-on-the-sea movie, Robert Redford's All is Lost this weekend.

I tried watching This Is the End the other night on DVD.  I'm not at all the demographic the filmmakers were aiming for... but did anyone find this apocalyptic brat-pack film funny?  I could see it trying.  Pirates: Band of Misfits however, remains a light but amusing claymation/animation romp with a great alternative version of Queen Victoria.  Funny.

Books:  I lost steam in reading Telegraph Avenue.  Beautifully written, coming from Michael Chabon, but... after being interrupted I never quite got back into it.  I think because I can see the ending coming too clearly and don't (just personal taste) find the ambiance of jazz, blaxploitation/martial arts movies, midwifery, and Berkeley engrossing.  I may go reread The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay instead because I like the world of comics, golems, and Brooklyn better.  (Personal taste.)

I'm in a funny mood.  I want adventure and vicarious thrills, even a touch of the creeps.  Probably the Halloween/November weather.

I got all excited at the library because several authors I follow had new books.  Sadly these were all to some degree disappointing.  Charlaine Harris's last book in her Sookie Stackhouse series (basis for the True Blood TV show) was... O K.  It ended about as I thought it should, but I got the feeling the author herself was tired of the series well before it was actually all written.  (The TV show went off the rails completely at some point.)  I can, however, heartily recommend the first book Dead Until Dark as an entertaining stand-alone.  Then you may find yourself reading the whole saga just to see what happens to Sookie.

On the other hand, though I enjoyed the earliest Anita Blake vampire novels by Laurell K. Hamilton, the series... Well, first I stopped buying them, and after this last library trip I've now officially stopped bothering to check them out.  By page 15 or so it was clear the story has dwindled to boring vampire politics, confusing yet boring interpersonal relationships, or more sex... which reads like self-indulgence.  For me the books are now unreadable.  But the early ones?  The title of the first novel says it all: Guilty Pleasures.

Speaking of which... I'm working my way through a Buffy-thon.*  Enjoying it all over again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of course.  Now in mid season 4.  Then maybe Master and Commander again for further sea adventures.  Remember the fun film Cowboys and Aliens?  How about making a Pirates and Vampires?  Pure popcorn!

Und so weiter...

And so on.

The crush of theater work here has slowed a bit (I'm only behind on one, well two, shows at present) and I'm back from a quick flit to the seaside (shrimp!) and settling into my annual cool weather highly efficient work-mode.  Or so I tell myself, in a effort to become, you know, highly efficient.

So what's going on?

I'm off to Kitchen Dog in an hour to help strike Detroit.  I'm not exactly sure what we're going to do with all that sod!  On my board are final details for The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told at Uptown Players, which starts building soon, and designs for The Great American Trailer Park Musical for OMG Productions in [the greater] San Francisco [area].  

I'm presently reading a newish book by Michael Chabon called Telegraph Avenue... which I'm enjoying, but so far at least it hasn't bumped his Summerland off my "Chabon Favorites" shelf.  If you happen to be hot on jazz or Berkeley, however, it may become your fav.  Always a good writer.  I saw the movie Gravity recently - liked it.  A great sense of Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace as an unimaginable huge and hostile environment.  The admirable reliability of the Space Shuttles (a marvel of engineering, though, tragically, only mostly reliable) sorta let us earthbound onlookers forget just how inhospitable space IS.  This film reminds me.  i want to see the new pirates-meet-Tom-Hanks film but haven't gotten to yet.

But the thrill of my recent little beach trip was getting to see a poor quality photocopy of a map of Galveston Bay.  Unsigned... but then would he dare sign it? At the time he was both secretly working for the Spanish and against them.  Simultaneously he was working both-ends-against-the-middle with the Americans and the French.  And the Mexicans.  Plus Texan filibusters and Louisianans and who knows who else?  Pirating is complicated.

HERE's an earlier post on Lafon with a link to his most famous map.

I know, I know...

No posts lately!

But I know you'll understand when I tell you that I've been chained to my board (well, to my car, to my theaters...) because I've been working on three shows since I returned from that road trip - one now half way through its run, two others about to open.  Insanity!

Public domain image of the Mad Hatter

Silent Reading

So long, so silent.

Sorry, I've been absolutely slammed with three shows building: Detroit at Kitchen Dog, Hank Williams: Lost Highway at WaterTower and Too Many Cooks at Circle Theatre.  Phew!

Anyway.

While waiting for a substantive post here, try a little reading, right?

At the little teeny libraries of sculptor Marc Giai-Mainiet  and photographed by Michel Dubois HERE.

Le Grand library by Marc Giai-Mainiet 

photographed by Michel Dubois, 

found at Boing Boing

HERE's the artist's own webpage.  (ADDENDUM)

Or maybe stay in the Dewey Decimal themed hotel?  In Manhattan and HERE.  (Both bookish places discovered on the estimable site Boing Boing)

Congrats!

The DFW Critics' Forum recently ate their annual fried chicken lunch and handed out kudos to local theater companies.  So a general Congratulations! to the theater artists mentioned.  Well done!

Particular shout-outs of happiness from this blog for the recognition of so many Kitchen Dog shows (the home team, right?) and for praise of both Wingspan Theatre Company and Funhouse Theatre and Film's Daffodil Girls.  These are two examples (ones I personally know best) of small companies with small budgets that are nevertheless rich in ambition and talent and that do terrific work...

Here's to all the Little Theater Engines that Can and Do!

Believed public domain image.

Earlier post on Funhouse Theatre and Film HERE.  Daffodil Girls?  A clever adaptation of David Mamet's Glen Garry Glen Ross... morphed into the cookie sales of the Daffodil Girls.  A wonderful show written by Jeff Swearingen.

This'll Hold You...

I'm buried in Back-in-town-catch-up-work with a side order of Visitors, but while you're waiting for a new post from me, here's something addictive to keep you busy: that latest (to me anyway) entry in the competition to rewrite Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the Lizzie Bennet Video-Diaries.

Very funny retake on the classic story, with a clever spin on the Lydia scandal.

BTW  Just saw the film The End of the World at Dallas' spiffy new Alamo Drafthouse.  Fun.  Though I think I still prefer the film duo's previous Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Back in Town

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately.  I've been on a three week cross-country road trip (wonderfully scenic!), but writing on all things theater scenic related will soon resume!

Albert Bierstadt’s A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Brooklyn Museum