Buttermilk bread

Looks great ... how will it taste?

Sorry, Seattle

I am rooting for Denver, which is to say for old man Manning; and because this UCLA man remembers the USC roots of the Seattle coach. In fact, a blow out would suit me fine.

Fridays

I think of Fridays as recovery: from the exhaustion of teaching, which gets greater the older I get. Hence today, practicing ukulele, cooking dinner. Tomorrow, a tall pile of student work to start at. But not today. A full day of Recovery.

The Pledge

Was able to tape this, an indie sleeper, Nicholson at his best, directed by Sean Penn, based ln a rare novel by Durrenmatt, my favorite playwright. How can you lose with talent like this? A fine film indeed.

Headline of the day

"Metal band Skinny Puppy send US government invoice after finding out their music was 'used as torture device in Guantanamo Bay'."

Capitalism marches on.

Basketball courts

I know. Let's play on a court-sized screen so we can have a slide show of ads during the game! Score during a Nike ad for an extra point!

Stanford almost crashes

Women blew 30-pt 2nd half lead over Cal to win by 6. Very uncharacteristic.

Nike strikes again

Tried watching UCLA game in Eugene but the bball court makes me sick in my stomach. The Ducks have become Fashion Queens of the worst kind. So far the track team has escaped but I worry about the future.

Olive bread

Next bread challenge

Buttermilk bread. First try was disappointing. Will try again. Present dough in refrig is olive bread. Last loaf baked was sesame wheat. Coming soon, rye.

3 standards are rye, wheat, olive. Want to add buttermilk. Then rotate them.

Pete Seeger: a Dissenting View

Pete Seeger: a Dissenting View » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names:



"Seeger faced loss of livelihood and even prison for standing up for what he believed. He lent his voice and strength to many good causes over the years; and yet, even though I enjoyed his music and many of the songs he sang have become part of me, I cannot bring myself to join in the celebrations of his life. Why? Because the standard I apply to those I take seriously is not simply their support for peace, civil rights, labor and the environment, but their willingness to oppose the misleaders within those movements, and that, so far as I know, he never did. I guess some would call me sectarian."



Interesting argument: Seeger as ideologue.

Free Screenwriting Tutorial

Free Screenwriting Tutorial:

Highlights of my archive

My archive is here.

Here I list my personal favorites in my body of written work.

• Hyperdrama
  1. Chekhov's The Seagull
  2. Changing Key, a video project introducing hyperdrama.
  3. The Last Song of Violeta Parra
• Plays
  1. The Half-life Conspiracy
  2. Famililly
  3. Christmas at the Juniper Tavern
• Screenplays
  1. The Brazen Wing
  2. Sad Laughter
• Fiction
  1. Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones
  2. Baumholder 1961
  3. Kerouac's Scroll
• Essays
  1. Liquor & Lit
  2. Birthing Little Richard
• Poems
  1. In My Old Age
  2. Varmints, a libretto.
• Audio
  1. Dark Mission, an opera by John Nugent, libretto by Charles Deemer. The MIDI files.
  2. Ramblin': the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie
  3. Real Audio Screenwriting Tips
• Video
  1. Deconstructing Sally.
  2. The Farewell Wake.
  3. The Heirs

In the office

Giving my students a challenging in-class exercise today. Wonder how they'll do.

Heard from a former student, thanking me for showing him the power of using sentence fragments in a screenplay. Cool. I learned it from Pinter. Passing it on.

Energy

In my old age, I seem to wake with a finite allotment of energy for the day. When it's gone, it's gone.

Today's sesame wheat bread

Pooped

A few scripts from advanced students to look at - but I'm done for the day. Ran out of gas. Try and do them before I leave in the morning.

Ah, it will be nice to have nothing I have to read ...

Retired Army General To Tea Party Group: I Would Lead A Coup Against The U.S. Government | ThinkProgress

Retired Army General To Tea Party Group: I Would Lead A Coup Against The U.S. Government | ThinkProgress:



This is why they buy so many guns.

Amazon.com: Quick Reads #2: Three Short Novellas eBook: Charles Deemer: Books

Amazon.com: Quick Reads #2: Three Short Novellas eBook: Charles Deemer: Books:

New bundle.

Quotation of the day

"I know I am old because passionate anger has turned into weary disgust: nothing impresses me." --Martha Gellhorn

A very under-rated writer!

A mere job is the curse of the creative class

One of my former students, talented, creative, a dynamo, just went to work as a claims adjuster at an insurance agency. Sounds like a necessary, stopgap job to me, but what do I know? Talent deserves more, that's what I know. Ah, me. The world is too much with us ...

Retirement mode

Really in retirement mode this morning, tying together loose ends (Overlook project, in this case), wrapping things up, getting in a position where only one "literary" action is incomplete: the new CJ.  I am ready for this. I feel good about this. Simplify, downsize.

STORIES IN OVERDRIVE: A new form of narrative: the Overdrive experiment

STORIES IN OVERDRIVE: A new form of narrative: the Overdrive experiment:



I am ending the Overdrive experiment at ten novellas. I pass the torch. I consider the experiment an aesthetic success and a commercial disappointment, typical of my work ha ha. Onward.

Martha Gellhorn

PBS profile. Remarkable woman, life, journalist.

5 essential songs of Pete Seeger - Yahoo News

5 essential songs of Pete Seeger - Yahoo



Not a bad list.

Memory

The death of Seeger inspired an old friend from the Army Language School to write ...

It brings back memories of Monterey, The Pad, and drinking beer behind some bushes in the park.  Remember?

Oh yes, I remember indeed. Those were great times (1959-60)..

Magnum Opus

The Chekhov Hyperdrama

 From the introduction:

In the late 1980s, after I had several produced hyperdramas under my belt, I became aware that a great deal of audience education would be necessary before the power and significance of hyperdrama were appreciated. At best, hyperdrama was appreciated as a kind of eccentric entertainment, the way "happenings" were appreciated in the 1960s, a trend that would continue with the later production of the most popular hyperdrama to date, Tony and Tina's Wedding.
But I took hyperdrama more seriously than this. I had come to believe, and still believe, that this dramatic form, more than traditional theater, mirrored reality as the new physicists had come to define it: traditional theater was Newtonian, a passive audience observing in the dark, while hyperdrama was modern ("quantum"), the audience defining its own play by the choices it made.
So the question I posed to myself was: what can be done to give hyperdrama respect, to have it taken seriously? My answer became: by adapting a classic work of theater to the form.
This decided, it did not take me long to decide that Chekhov's The Seagull was a perfect vehicle for this purpose. There was even an appropriate speech in the play to justify the experiment:
"Uncle, what we need is a new kind of theater," says Treplev. "A theater with new theatrical forms!"

An orderly transition

Several recent books have made my hard copy archive much more "user friendly," which means, more attractive to browsers and easier to find similar writings. That's the entire point of the exercise. As soon as I update my digital archive section heads, I'll be in great shape ... and I anticipate only one addition to the literary part of the archive, the new CJ, after which I hope to focus on the audio area, which has been neglected. Music, maybe some readings.

So I feel damn good about where everything is at now. One other change: I am ending the Overdrive experiment at 10 books. I'd gather 9 of them in 3-book volumes (one already done), leaving the Christmas story to stand alone. Grunt work I'll do after retirement, I expect.

The Overdrive experiment has mixed results. A few readers understand its new and even ground-breaking contribution to narrative. A few more hate it, expecting traditional and more verbose writing. But I think a champion of the new form, with more energy than I have, could make it work. I'm not the guy to do it. I hold out the baton for someone younger to run with it.

The new CJ story is very clear to me. What is not clear at all is the right take on the material, the style, the attitude in the telling. Maybe I should try some page ones in different styles and see if anything excites me.

Ever onward.

A Short Guide To The Extraordinary Life Of Pete Seeger | ThinkProgress

A Short Guide To The Extraordinary Life Of Pete Seeger | ThinkProgress:

Daily Kos: Testimony of Pete Seeger before the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955

Daily Kos: Testimony of Pete Seeger before the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 18, 1955:



"Mr. SEEGER: I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it."

Where is the will?

Last night I watched a PBS documentary on Hartford, the fuel-making part of the Manhattan Project, and once again I watched in awe at the American ability to meet incredible challenges. We did it with the bomb. We did it with reaching the moon.

Too bad we don't bring the same focus, energy and will to feeding our starving children ... and educating them properly after we feed them. We could improve the world in a generation. But we won't. Sounds too much like socialism.

The New Yorker - April 17, 2006: Profile of Pete Seeger

The New Yorker - April 17, 2006:

R.I.P. Pete Seeger

Became a fan in high school, esp of The Almanac Singers and The Weavers. Never got into sing-a-longs, though.



Once considered doing a play about his relationship with Burl Ives. As young men, they hit the road together to sing at labor rallies. Then Ives grew more conservative, went to Hollywood, and got rich. Seeger kept the faith all his 94 years. (Look at the length of that banjo neck!)

Hat pin

Explanation (as told years ago):

I loved Classical Greek, and my professor urged me to take second year. But I was in graduate and get out of Dodge mode, I just took language because I needed the credit.

I thought that was the end of it. It wasn't. Something over a year later I'm at the University of Oregon, a grad student, when I get a letter in the mail from UCLA. They want me to march with Oregon's undergrad seniors to be admitted into Phi Beta Kappa a year late for my graduating class at UCLA. What what what? This is absurd. But a phone call reveals they are serious, I've been admitted into Phi Beta Kappa at UCLA a year after the normal time, which is graduation. It didn't make sense because I had about a 3.3 average, too low for the honor society, and this low because I took, a 21-unit overload every term, picking out a course I'd just get a C in but take for the reading and discipline and lectures. Broadening my humanities education with all the energy of an ex math/science nerd.

So I march, get my Phi Beta Kappa pin, which I wore on my baseball cap till it was stolen ... but never figured out what was going on till I got my certificate from Phi Beta Kappa ... which was signed by my Greek teacher! She was the President of the Society!

So here's what happened. She thought I was hot shit. She was stunned the computer did not kick me out as a candidate for the Society when I graduated. So she took it upon herself to investigate. She discovered I indeed was on the Honors English Program, had an A average in my major, but for some reason took an overload each term, getting a C in things like Chinese Literature, Indian Lit, Introduction to the Opera, African Song Poems and whatnot. So she petitioned that an exception be made and I be admitted into Phi Beta Kappa and since she was the Prez at this time, she got her way.

A fav "total accident" story, obviously. Decided to wear the pin in my old age in protest of the democritization of art.

Stanford band

Stanford women destroying USC. The Stanford band here, as entertaining as ever - eccentic, whacky, Nerd Nation doing its own thing. Love it!

Women's basketball

ESPN (secondary channels) showing a lot of games this season. Dig it! Not many dunks, which I prefer. I think basket should be raised in men's game.

Prep city

Busy morning ... an hour or two yet to do.

Pass out midterms this week. Tempus fugit.

No energy

Got most my prep done this morning - good thing because my energy is tanking.

Buttermilk rolls

America in the world

Caught part of interesting BBC panel this morning ... at one point Sen. McCain complained that his President didn't even believe in American Exceptionalism. Man, did that bring on the UK and European charges of McC's arrogance, rightly so. The world is tired of such bullshit.