Save Maya Krypto!
A lot of stuff has been happening lately—some I can talk about, some I can’t—but the main thing is that
our dog is sick. Like, $10,000 worth of sick. Read more
I Yam What I Yam Thanks to Robin Williams
At 5 p.m. my editor asked me if I had anything to say about Robin Williams’s death. Yeah, I said. I really do.
My tribute to a childhood hero is up on KQED Arts. Read more
Suddenly an Artist
On November 22 I’m going to make my playwriting debut as part of the San Francisco Olympians Festival, with a staged reading of my Helen of Troy play Ellen’s Undone at the Exit Theatre, directed by Mina Morita and starring Maggie Mason and Armando McClain. I wrote a blog post for Theatre Bay Area on what a strange experience it’s been to suddenly play at being a theater artist after so long as strictly a critic, so go check it out.
Dude, What’s Up with the Blog?
You may have noticed I haven’t been posting much for the last couple of weeks. I’m not abandoning the blog or anything; I’m just neglecting it a bit. That’s due to a combination of factors all at once: the busy period in the magazine’s production cycle; a few days out of town with my wife to celebrate our anniversary; and some kind of flu or something that’s laid me low for a couple of weeks and is still lingering. All of that has meant not much showgoing, and not much time to devote to my pro bono writing. In short, life intervenes. But I’ll be back posting regularly before you know it. Thanks for your patience.
Please Stand By
All of a sudden I’m a bit behind in the writeups. I caught four shows this weekend, it’s deadline week at the magazine, and I’m just too knackered to write this evening. Please stand by — we will return to your previously scheduled blogging shortly, after this very important good night’s sleep.
Tech Update
I’m writing this on the same MacBook that suffered a meltdown yesterday morning, but with a new hard drive and a blank slate. The friendly folks at M.A.C. weren’t able to retrieve any data from my suddenly collapsed hard drive, which proved completely unresponsive.
The next step is to drop a thousand or two to have the specialists take te drive apart in their Clean Room and try to work their magic on the disc inside, or to try this crazy home remedy that some people swear by: putting the HD in the freezer for a day inside multiple plastic bags to keep the moisture out, which supposedly will make it come back to life for maybe 20 minutes so I can try to grab what I can off it it. People swear that it works, though they can’t say why, but the potential to damage it further worries me. I certainly don’t have a thousand bucks to spare, but at the same time that’s three years of writing, photos and whatnot that would be lost to me if I can’t retrieve them somehow. My gut feeling is to spend the money and take it to the pros, because it’s just not something I’m comfortable taking a chance on.
In the meantime, here I am typing on an amnesiac computer, which is mostly distressing but also a teensy bit liberating.
Please Stand By
Naturally, because it is The Way of Things, no sooner do I start a blog than my faithful laptop fails me, suddenly making the Click of Death and plummeting into hard drive failure. While I was writing my next post, in fact–which it seems will have to wait.
For now, off to the repair shop to see if they can salvage all my writing from the last few years. And yes, I know, I should have backed that up. Thank goodness I emailed some of it to myself over the years, anyway. In any case, I’m hopeful, though it may get spendy. In the meantime, we’re experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.
If You Build It
I’m impressed by how johnny-on-the-spot these web-savvy theater types are. I’ve held off on linking or otherwise directing anyone to this site until I’d written some more and played with the look of it a bit, but I’ve already seen a couple of Facebook links and even a blog post about it.
So welcome! Please excuse the mess–we’re still moving in.
