Monday, February 26, 2007

We're Moving! Everything Must Go!

I'm moving my blogging activities to our new location at jaguarbennett.blogspot.com, which can also be reached at www.jaguarbennett.com. This new blog will be your one-stop center for Jaguar Bennett performance dates, rants, and embarrassing personal disclosures.

Since only Stephen checks this blog anymore, I don't think anyone will notice. Stephen, you know where to go.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

WOO-HOO!; or Democracy is Saved; or Ending the Long Silence

It's not as if anyone is still reading this stagnant blog or cares what I write in it, but I must break my long silence to comment on the results of the U.S. elections yesterday.

Anyone who saw me in the Tower District last night already knows my immediate reaction to the election results, which was to scream like an alcoholic football fan. As I explained to my nonpolitical friend on the next barstool, "This is like the Superbowl for me, and my team just won."

My next thought (which I did not scream at the top of my lungs) was "Wow. Democracy really does work, after all."

It's difficult to trust that elections are still free and fair in the U.S.A. these days. Since the 2000 election, one has heard so much about shenanigans in vote counting and disenfranchising voters. Just before the election, Republican officials — notably Karl Rove — were saying that they were confident of a Republican victory, despite all the polls projecting a win for the Democrats. Some reporters were so impressed that they started to suggest that just maybe the Republicans would hold onto Congress.

I wondered where this Republican confidence came from, and I had dark suspicions. All day yesterday, I had a worry in the back of my mind that the Republicans would pull some kind of voter fraud stunt — possibly through hacked voting machines — and would blandly proclaim that, actually, the voters had demanded two more years of total Republican hegemony.

Fortunately, the world doesn't run by my paranoid fantasies.

My apologies to all two of my regular readers for my four months off the airwaves. Coming soon: the epic life saga that explains why I've been silent these four months, plus a new-look relaunch of the blog. Stay tuned.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Awake for 24 Hours – or, Opening Night!

Since my mighty blog-roll of TWO POSTS (that’s right, count them, TWO) has disappointed Steffen, I thought it best to treat all four of my regular readers (you know who you are) with an accounting of why I have not been feverishly updating this blog every day, sharing with all four of you my wit, my wisdom, and random acts of cruel injustice.

In a word, I am a theater festival whore. And that really takes up so much of my time, especially now, during the opening of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, that I don’t have time -- yet -- to become the blogging whore that I am so obviously meant to be.

Do you have a theater festival? Would you like some help running it? Would you like me to give generously of my time as an unpaid volunteer? Well, I’m ready, willing, and able to help you out -- because I’m a theater festival whore. You have a theater festival, anytime, anyplace, I’m there for you. Come on, give me your festival -- you know you want to.

That’s how I got roped into lecram’s brainchild, the Rogue Performance Festival, and now (because I am a fool), how I got roped into managing the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, Fresno’s own Free Shakespeare in the Park event.

The Shakespeare Festival opened last night, and the preparations up to the event were a Bataan death march of endurance — like every furshlugginer theater festival I have ever worked. Why do I do these things to myself?

My day yesterday:

4:00 AM: Wake for live TV remote from Woodward Park to promote the festival. I had gone to bed at 1:30, and really, why would you need more than 2.5 hours of sleep? (Since April, I’ve been conducting an on-going experiment in sleep deprivation. I’m down to an average of about 3 hours a night.)

4:45 AM: Arrive at park to find that the actors from A Midsummer Night’s Dream are there, the TV people are there, but the one person who both knows how to turn on the lights at the amphitheater is not. Wailing and gnashing of teeth.

5:05 AM: Light person arrives. Still can’t turn on amphitheater lights. TV people assure me that their lights will do the trick.

5:20-7:45 AM: Broadcast six live remote spots promoting the festival on early morning TV. Lack of light proves hardly a problem at all, as sun comes up after first segment. The actors are charming, funny, and surprisingly PR-savvy, and the whole thing works like a dream.

8:00-9:00 AM: Treat the actors to breakfast at high-priced psuedo-French chain restaurant. You have to do something nice for people who worked for you at an hour when they’re ususally just getting to bed.

9:30 AM-3:30 PM: Office work. I’m the business manager of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, but I’ve given myself the much fancier title of Operations Director. There are an amazing host of niggling details to be dealt with. There needs to be an addendum to the program, freshly printed yesterday with the usual crop of omissions -- mostly people who ought to be thanked. There are signs for the venue that have to be designed and printed; forms to be filled and submitted to various local agencies; phone calls to be fielded, etc.

And of course, because this is a THEATER, all work is complicated by the constant onslaught of gossip, drama, politics and conflicting egos. I don’t mind. I’m a small, petty person, and I always enjoy having an opportunity to make someone else feel bad.

3:30 PM-5:45 PM: Errands. Programs need to be picked up from the printer. So do T-shirts. And the program addenda need to be printed and collected. Plus there’s some Woodward Shakespeare Festival vendorware that I’ve been storing at my ex-girlfriend’s house.

And in the midst of delivering things to the park, I’m conferring with the house manager, making sure the security guards will arrive, etc.

Now, keep in mind, that while I’m doing all this, I still have to go to the office, print out some bookkeeping and reserve seating forms, go home, shower off the Fresno summer heat, stick contact lenses in my eyes, and make it back to Woodward Park for the Festival opening ceremony, which starts at 6:00.

At 5:45, as I am stuck in gridlock traffic on Herndon, it occurs to me that I won’t be able to make it. I whip out my cell and start delegating my remaining errands. I call Brooke, an actress and our most hardworking volunteer.

“I’m not going to make it for the opening ceremony. Can you take charge and make sure things go OK?” I ask.

Brooke begins to cry over the telephone. Through her sobs she says, “Sure. Yes. Whatever. I’ll do it. Don’t worry about a thing.”

5:45-6:45 PM: Preparation. I am soaked through to the skin with my own sweat and filth. Shower. Change clothes. Stick in contact lenses. (I hate those furshlugginer things, but my ultra-fashionable Paul Smith glasses that correct my powerful astigmata aren’t very Shakespearean. And if I act blind, I’m likely to kill one of my fellow actors.)

7:00-8:00 PM: Finally arrive at the park ready to perform -- probably about an hour and a half later than I should be. Quickly check up on the concession stands, making sure everybody has what they need.

8:00-10:30 PM: The Performance. You’ll just have to see this for yourself -- there are 11 more performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream through August 12. Check here for details. I do have to say, my Bottom is magnificent.

10:30 -11:30 PM: Schmoozing with my many adoring fans (at least five); getting out of my filthy costume and into my filthy street clothes; theater cleanup.

12:00-4:00 AM: Drinking. Hey, after a day like that, I’m entitled to relieve some stress.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Pardon the mess while I’m moving in . . .

Starting a blog is a lot like moving into a new place -- nothing that you have right now is quite how you envision it looking in the future. You need to get your stuff out of the boxes (and you know it’s going to take months, if not years, to get everything out of the boxes), some of your stuff got broken in the move, you’ll probably want to buy new furniture anyway, and my God, isn’t this place bare and empty? Quick, buy some crappy ArtWork™ from Cost Plus, just to cover up the walls!

So it is with my new blog, created factory fresh from the wonderful people who design Blogger’s default templates.

Nothing yet is quite where I want it to be. Do I like the bare, blank white page, or should I go with color? What fonts do I like? How the hell do you format this thing so it looks halfways decent? My, but that’s an unpleasant picture of me.

Moving is the metaphor that springs first to mind, because I just moved in to a new place. Actually, I’ve been there a month, but I still haven’t put anything in order. Books are still in boxes, clothes are unsorted, the Internet connection is flaky --I’ve spotted several little home improvement projects I want to do, but right now I don’t have the time to do them.

It takes time to settle into any new situation, and right now my life is nothing but new situations. In less than six months, I’ve turned my life completely upside down -- different job, different house, no girlfriend.

That much change in so short a time is a mite disorienting. In our relentlessly, compulsorily positive culture, I know you’re supposed to embrace every change as a liberating new experience, an opportunity to improve yourself, a new beginning, bloppety bloppety bloppety blah.

Yeah, all that’s true enough -- actually, I believe all that crap to a frightening extent. (Starting this blog is just one of the several self-improvement/self-promotion schemes I’m embracing with all the fervor of a Baptist in cold water.)

But that always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life ideology looks only at the potential long-term benefits from dramatic change while ignoring the actual short-term disruption it causes.

I had this notion that changing my life would free me. But liberation is a tricky concept. To be free of something is to remove it from your life. If you remove enough things from your life … your life gets empty. Or at least devoid of familiar signposts.

Freedom begins in nothingness, Sartre says -- a creative nothingness, in which the conscious mind uses its power of negation to conceive of something other than that-which-is. Freedom and creation begin by denying that the existing situation is all that can exist.

Hope is pleasant, so we look at the positive side of the equation: destruction begets freedom begets creation. Without ever denying the value of hope, I suggest we shouldn't let hope distract us from the corollary -- creation implies freedom, and freedom implies destruction.

So is it a good thing to face a blank page, to live in a barely-moved-into house, to lead a drastically simplified life? It is what it is, and I don't know if there's much value to holding an opinion about it.

As a wise man told me, this is a dark time. Embrace the darkness.

Yours from the void,
Jaguar

Saturday, July 15, 2006

First Post! or, Plowing the Virgin Blog

Picture this scene ...

EXT. CITYSCAPE -- NIGHT


New York, circa 1935. Scenes of bustling streets, automobiles, glamour.


Focus on a towering skyscraper, bathed in searchlights.


At street level, a theater entrance to a red carpet premiere. Flashbulbs pop, celebrities exit their limousines to stand for the cameras on the red carpet.


A RADIO ANNOUNCER speaks excitedly into a microphone.

RADIO ANNOUNCER

... I've never seen a more excited crowd than the one here tonight ... this is quite possibly the most important, most earth-shattering event since Lindy flew solo to Paris all the way back in 1927!

Focus on the theater marquee.

RADIO ANNOUNCER
(VO)
The big sign on the entrance shows why everyone is so excited ... why the stars of stage, screen and radio are here tonight ... let me read it to you, folks ...

DRUM ROLL

RADIO ANNOUNCER

(VO)
"Tonight! World Premiere! A New Blog by Jaguar Bennett! 'The Mind of Jaguar Bennett!'"

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE and CHEERS from street crowd.

END SCENE


A Word from the Proprietor

Welcome to the very first post on my brand-spanking-new blog. Sit for a spell and make yourself comfortable. We are open for business, and interesting things will happen here soon ... but not right now. Stay tuned.