Show choir and Bridezillas!

So, I follow several Broadway themed blogs... including Andrew Keenan-Bolger's. He recently posted a clip of the failed (maybe?) MTV series SHOW CHOIR and it made me (for about ten minutes) obsessively look up other YouTube videos of show choirs in all their sequined glory. I found this... and about died. No offense to anyone in it, or anyone who was ever involved in show choir. Trust me, I'm a cheesy, musical theatre obsessed goon and only wish the show had made it to MTV... my DVR would have a new responsibility.



In other news... one of my dearest friends, Angela, is featured in the new (new to me anyway). You can check it out below. Angela's the one to your right of the center bride. Love it!

GREASE to get Speared?

I'm incredibly conflicted. Broadwayworld.com posted this news piece about 3 hours ago and I've been struggling with this ever since.

On the one hand, I loved Britney up through (and including) her STRONGER phase. She was fun, we all enjoyed her. We thought, "Now that is a good 2.5 minutes of pure bubble gum pop." It was almost (repeat... almost) as fun as Debbie Gibson and Tiffany.

On the other hand, she's gone bat ass crazy it seems and her stock has plummeted, risen a tad, plummeted, split shares with Cheetos, inched up, dove, yada yada. Now this.

So... I offer two scenarios:

A) This is an ingenious move by the producers to generate buzz for a show that has received generally negative reviews. In doing so, they generate sales, could possibly offer super-priced premium seats, run the show longer, yada yada. (The risk here is in turning the show into the revolving door of TV celebs like the 90s revival.)

or

B) This is a train wreck waiting to happen and the show will crumble under the weight of craziness, the paparazzi, the... you get the idea.

So, this will either be a major coup for the show... or the biggest disaster on Broadway since Bobbi Boland.

Stay tuned!

A light goes out in Hollywood

Actor, director, producer... genius... Sydney Pollack passed away today. The NY Times offers a respectful and thorough obituary (linked) but I wanted to take a moment to thank the gentlemen who directed so many amazing films ("Tootsie" being one of my favorite of all time). As a director he won an Oscar for his his 1985 film “Out of Africa” as was nominated for "They Shoot Horses, Don't They in 1969 and "Tootsie" in 1982. Yes, I was seven years old when that movie came out but I remember thinking it was funnier, sadder, sweeter than anything I would normally watch on TV.

Ok, maybe I wasn't that precocious (maybe I was), but seeing it on VHS and TV in later years, I knew it was something special.

Underwear: A Space Musical

So, it's official. I'm producing a great show by a really good friend of mine and his writing partner. UNDERWEAR: A SPACE MUSICAL will make its NYC premiere during FringeNYC.

Check out the link above (it is the title of this post) for details.

You can also click on the UNDERWEAR MySpace page to listen to some samples from the show. It's incredibly hysterical and you'll love ever irreverent minute of it. Come, enjoy, believe in your drawers.

The sad truth about online friend boards...and I'm not talking about "Hung Up"

Sitting here tonight I realized a great truth about myself. ALL of my friends have more friends than I do right now... what the &@*^!? Granted, I was never the BMOC and certainly didn't hang with the A crowd in high school. I chose the path less traveled and fluttered in and out of the B, C, D and on occassion A crowds. There were far too many interesting people to just sit back and soak in the company of a few select members. No no. Not for me. I did carry the closest people close to my heart and have kept up with them as best as I can as I've grown older. But now technology has caught up with me and like a preoccupied man walking into one of those fresh fish market's near the wharf... I got slapped in the face with a flounder of reality!

My only consolation is in knowing that most of these friends have "friends" who are not truly friends but are simply "acquaintances" who they have gotten to know over the years.

Perhaps this means I've been too picky and not permitted my "suburb" friends to join me in the "downtown" of my life. That's it... it's open bar at Tommy's and EVERYONE'S WELCOME! God dammit... join me on Myspace!

And the #1 most overplayed song on Myspace is...

...ARGHH... Madonna hasn't been this popular since 1984. What the hell is up with every queen, sorority girl, and certified public accountant posting Hung Up (song or video) on their Myspace page. Ridiculous.

On that note, I despise the music playing on Myspace. When I do check it - and I do often because like the inane addiction to The Sims when it debuted, I have to see who in the world is online all the time now - I get inundated with techno beats or horribly depressing songs that make me want to alert the nearest suicide hotline of these pages.

Operator: Suicide Hotline, how can I help you?
Me: Yes, there is a Myspace user who is playing Cinderella's "Don't Know What You've Got (Till It's Gone)".
Operator: And the username sir?
Me: MorbidlySadAngelofDarknessinaPitofDespair247
Operator: Thank you sir, we're sending a rescue unit to that location immediatly.
Me: Just doing my civic duty.
-click-

So annoying.

Pick a "friend" place and stick to it...or YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY PERSONALIZED DESK ACCESSORIES!

So, my latest rant involves the frustration that I have over too many "friend-networking" websites. I had Friendster and everyone was on there. Then everyone started using Myspace so I went over there... I NEED TO BE CONNECTED! But then people switch back and forth and confuse the living b'jesus out of me and now I'm floating in "friend-network" hell. (Little none fact, Myspace and Friendster actuall co-exist on Dante's fourth level of hell... read the book.)

Anyhow, I'm now focusing on Myspace... if Friendster send me a little hello via email now and then I will take it as a lovely gesture and move on.

This attitude has worked for me since I switched from a Hotmail account to one on Gmail about three months ago. Do I love Gmail? No... but I'm courting it. Gmail gives me FAR FEWER "service interruptions" than Hotmail ever did so I'm good for now. Is the interface dreamy? As Kenneth Cole is my witness "No!"

I'm a little convinced that there is one guy at MSN whose job it is to make sure that Hotmail kicks in "service interruptions" periodically just to see if the members will react. It works like this... no reaction, no members are trying to log on... reaction, Hotmail is thrilled that people are aggressively trying to log into their account to see if Lillian Vernon has sent them a new catalog update. YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY PERSONALIZED DESK ACCESSORIES!

Anyhow, enough ranting. My friend Mike is touring with Utah Shakes educational tour of Macbeth. The van is amazing and I know he's frustrated and wishes that he wasn't trapped within its confines, but it is a SUPER COOL VAN! Check it out at his blog.

That's it for me tonight. Sorry I wasn't funnier. It'll come back to me... I just need 8 glasses of water, two lemon rinds, and a teaspoon of pepper and I'll have flushed this bitterness RIGHT out of my system. Ciao!

The rootkit of all evil...

Well, it was bound to happen. Sony went and infiltrated our deepest darkest secrets by forcing software onto our computers and then leaving the kitchen door open so that the pesky kids from down the street can get in and mess things all to hell. And what do Americans do best? We SUE!

Technically, the State of Texas is filing a civil lawsuit against the entertainment-megacorp because "several of the company's music compact discs require customers to download Sony's media players if they want to listen to the CDs on a computer." Wierd, hasn't Microsoft been forcing us to do that all along with Media Player?

Anyhow, I do wonder what this means for Celine Dion's Vegas show... after all, she's the Canadian stepchild of Sony entertainment. Everyone out there who weeps over "Love Can Move Mountains" on their PC is now vulnerable to hacker attacks. And trust me... hackers are more than happy to futz with anyone who claims to be a Celine Dion fan. Futher down the line of course is that bad PR this could cause for the Playstation 3 (sched to come out sometime between now and 2015). With the PS3 being capable of connecting online, what else can Sony do to sneak into your home?

Hmm... Scooby Doo, where are you? We've got some work to do now!

Tells me I'm bloody damn Bubbles does it?

After reading my friend Mike’s blog and hearing about his results on the Which Golden Girl are you? Quiz, and then watching AbFab tonight I decided to take the Which AbFab character are you? quiz. (Click here to take it if you wish...AbFab Quiz).

Turns out I'm Bubbles so of course the bloody thing is faulty. It can't tell its digits from its whozits much less who I am and how much I'm not like Eddy. Ridiculous. That scowling BBC quiz sitting there, staring at me, judging me... like a big glowing electronic canker sore. Bastard. I'll tell you who I am darling and it's not loopin' loony Bubbles that's for sure. I'm more a Jane Seymour and Julia Sugarbaker combined that's what I am sweetie but you know, puters just don't have that kind of knowledge yet. Yes darling, PUTERS, p-u-t-e-r-s, the little bobblies with the blinking lights and the click-click board for putting in words, you know. Like the Apricot or the IBS... puters damnit! Anyhow, they aren't smart enough to know the difference between people you know. It's not like you walk into the room and hear, "Hello dear, how was your day?" from a $2000 Light Bright do you sweetie? No, you don't. So the quiz was bully and I wouldn't wish the results I had on anyone. Except maybe Elizabeth Hurley, the skinny bitch.

Nell Carter... a zombie?

I think if you're going to have a nightmare, as I did last night, it should be a full out nightmare and not just a bizarro-creation from the deepest regions of your subconscious. Mine... the bizarro-creation.

I was traveling through New York (or some German expressionistic version of NYC) on a schooltrip (odd, since I'm not in school and haven't been on a "schooltrip" in nearly 15 years). Suddenly, and without warning, I was standing on top of a car fighting off zombies in a sad attempt to save my classmates. Suddenly, a greyed out and crackily skinned Nell Carter (God rest her talented soul) comes out of nowhere and attacks me.

Now, you may ask, "Why would Nell Carter attack you?"

Well, George Romero has taught us all that zombies need to eat the brains of living humans in order to survive but as I learned from my dream last night... some zombies are coming to you for help. When, in my dream, I fought of the zombified creature that had once been Nell Carter she yelled at me and asked me "What the hell are you doing?" Now consider for a moment the shock that has befallen me by first being attacked by zombies, then realizing that one of them is none other than Nell Carter, THEN realizing that Zombie-Nell is intelligent and inquisitive. This was a conundrum.

In the dream, I put down whatever blunt object I had in my hand (beam, shovel, who knows) and just looked at this Zombie-Nell laying against a brick wall looking at me while she rubbed her head. "I come looking for help and you're gonna knock me down?" (Ever the diva. Love it.)

Turns out Zombie-Nell wasn't much of a zombie. She had (from what I remember) covered herself in oatmeal or some other clumping goo and only pretended to be a zombie so that she could escape. I would have thought that zombie's could smell the difference between humans and the undead but maybe their sinuses have dried up and decayed and thus Ms. Carter's theory for escape would be plausible. She had only been trying to climb on top of the car with me because her oatmeal (or some other clumping goo) had begun melting off her face in the hot Manhattan sun.

Somewhere around this point in the story, I either woke up or "changed channels" and moved on to something else. I suppose my brain decided that Zombie-but-not-Zombie-Nell-Carter was enough of a creative stretch for one evening and now it was time to rest.

Thank you Nell Carter for filling my sleep with interest. I like to believe that you are in the big Broadway house in the sky, singing some Ain't Misbehavin' to house filled to capacity. (OMG... I'm so gay.)

My teaching site

I just uploaded my “professor” site to the UA server. Eventually (i.e. once I get back to the office tomorrow) I can upload my syllabi and get everything in order for students to access. We’ll see how that goes. If you’re interested you can visit the site here… www.bama.ua.edu/~adkin012.

Eons... yes, eons...

I know. I know. It's been eons (as the headline says) since I've posted anything on here. Call me lazy... or call me INSANELY BUSY but I'm sorry.

Anyhow, to catch you up... it's Later that Same Day... Rhoda is on the phone with Mary and Ted is busy trying to write a feature for the evening, wait a minute, that's not my life... that's Mary Tyler Moore. Damn it! I thought I was awfully successful for my age. At least I haven't lost a beret (sp?) by tossing it haphazardly into the air in the middle of downtown.

Seriously, I've been super busy with school... not taking classes but teaching, believe it or not. I'm currently serving as Interim Co-Director of the Theatre Managment program at UA and let me tell you - if you thought your professors had it easy b/c they came in, lectured, and went home... HA! You were sorely mistaken.

I'm on guard all day working to insure that the marketing and front-of-house efforts are going off without a hitch, molding young minds to be creative thinkers for the future of our industry, and constantly planning my next career move. (Baby steps, baby steps.)

When I do have some down time I try desperately to catch up with those that I have lost touch with... if you haven't had that from me, don't worry, it's coming.

I got on a kick recently and decided that since I couldn't be with my dear Addie that I would send her off on a new tour with our favorite leading lady of the Country stage (and screen), Ms. Dolly Parton. Their "tour blog" is here (http://addiedollytour.blogspot.com/). It's tons of fun and Addie loves it which is pretty important in the endeavor. One might assume that our obsession with Dolly is unnatural but you see, she is the hero to all children of the Smoky Mountains and must be treated with the respect she deserves. Others might assume that I am not treating her with respect b/c of the "humorous" adventures she is having unbeknownst to her. Well, to those who believe that this is a ridicule of Dolly... poo poo to you. This is my way of sharing in the life of a celeb and a distant best friend through comedy, satire, and love. (Author's Note: no one has actually said I am disrespecting Dolly... I just see it coming... like the plague or the Spanish Inquisition. Oh wait, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Damn, wrong again.)

Well, that said I must away to bed. Between Benedryl and the stress of daily life I am exhausted. Ta ta for now and please write soon (wthomasadkins@hotmail.com) and let me know how you're doing.
T

End of July

So another July has come and gone. I've turned 30 (finally) and am about to
leave school with my Masters degree in 2 weeks. Woohoo! Currently I'm
sitting in on the final dress rehearsal for a graduate production of "The
Winter's Tale.". We'll see how it goes. I want to say something like "Not
one of Shakespeare's most produced plays, 'The Winter's Tale' is..." But I
think that might be a bit too ecoteric for my tastes. People would look at
me quite perplexed and wonder what pea-pod had taken over my body.

I CAN'T FIND A SPACE!

This may not seem like a huge tragedy but I have lost my space in NYC for our graduate showcase. We were hoping to be in the Signature Theatre's Peter Norton Space like we were last year but we lost out to a rental with a 10-week contract. Who can blame them? Not I.

Now I am feverishly on the search for another location where we can produce our ONE-NIGHT ONLY Showcase on Monday, August 15th. If any of you readers out there can think of someplace let me know... I've sort of plowed through the traditional rental spaces with very little luck. Actually, no luck, but I feel better believing that I might be on the brink of a breakthrough at any moment.

Let's do a little exercise (make sure you read this first because I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and imagine something). Now, close your eyes (see I told you) and imagine if you will the entire island of Manhattan. Now, out of that bustling jungle of concrete and steel lies a tiny, tiny space that might seat anywhere of 99-200 people. Now that space is actually going to be vacant on Monday, August 15th AND it's going to be reasonably priced AND it's going to want to house us for approximately 8 hours. It's perfect. You realize that I need to know about this space immediatly so you pick up the phone or log onto the internet and call/email me and let me know about it. Agh, relief. You've saved the Class of 2005 from a disaster. Now don't you feel good.........?

WELL I DON'T! Because it was just pretend. Now, all of you New Yorkers (and NY transplants), please dig through the windmills of your minds and think about any spaces that you thought were a) cool, b) the right size, and c) might be available and actually tell me about them. Sigh... to be in the city again where I could just go ip and inquire about someplace. Oh sweet mystery of life...

Well, I'm back to the grind so that I can call "Hallelujah" and rest easy that I have secured a location. Holler at me! :)

Back... with a vengeance

So I haven't posted in over a month and that's because I couldn't afford cable anymore, thus the cable movem and hence the Knology web account. (Can you tell I just got out of Theatre History?) Anyhow, please know that the site will be flourishing with blogs again soon. Just keep you eyes peeled and your hands washed and I will be back with news soon.

Woody Allen and Shakespeare

I really want to like Woody Allen movies. I do. But I have this anti-Woody-Allen wall that comes slamming down and I just can't break through it. Sort of like reading Shakespeare, I think I'm supposed to like reading it but nothing happens. Which is tough when you work for a Shakespeare theatre. It's sort of a given that every mood your in should exude Shakespeare somehow. But not me.

With Woody Allen the problem is even more curious then that of Shakes. With Shakespeare at least the language is tougher than modern, the references are obscure, the philosophy a bit dated... people are expected to have a hard time with him. But with Woody everyone I know seems to say the same thing, "He is such a comic genius! I love his films." Everyone I know says this! Literally. I could line up the first 100 people that I know (in no specific order) and you could walk along (preferably at a cocktail party or some other location where random acts of banter are expted) and mention "Have you seen the latest Woody Allen film?" Every one of those 100 friends will say, "Oh yes, he is such a comic genius! I love his films." Something else that bothers me about Woody Allen is that people ALWAYS refer to his work as "films". No one really says, "Hey, that new Woody Allen movie is out" or "Woody Allen is a movie guru." It's always, "We should check out the new Woody Allen film playing at the art house" or "Woody Allen is a cavalier of contemporary film."

WTF?

It's a movie. They are pretty much ALL movies... except for the foreign ones, THOSE are films. Yes, Woody Allen is kinda artsy and yes people talk about him in coffee shops, but it's really just a "film" veneer for what is in all actuality a movie.

I don't begrudge Woody Allen. I wish him all the success in the world. I begrudge those who think that carrying a martini around, doing kiss-kiss in the air to either cheek, and fawning over these "films" makes them "tres sophisticate".

Super Size Me

So I went out with the intention of rollerblading today. I got about a 1/4 mile down the road, fell, decided I would rather be riding a bike. It's not that I can't rollerblade. I can... just not super well.

Instead of working out I instead went to the mall, Target, and then back home after a stop at the McDonald's drive-thru and then home to watch Super Size Me. God save Netflix for sending this to me and heaven reserve a place in line for Morgan Spurlock for making that movie.

I was halfway through my sandwhich and only 1/4 way through my fries when I dropped them both into the trash can. The realization that I was putting pure poison into my body was a horrific thought. Granted, I know McDonald's isn't good for you... but it's convenient. And it's not like I eat it everyday, just every once in a while.

What has really set this off is the press release from the Childrens' Television Workshop stating that Cookie Monster is cutting back on his cookie intake...even leaving his anthem "C is for Cookie" in favor of "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food".

So starting today I am banning myself from McDonalds, Wendy's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, etc. As much as possible I am going to steer myself toward better eating habits before the explosion of obesity plops its ugly rump down on me.

Blast you cholestoral, blast you saturated fat! Out damn spot!

Crash! Bam! Alakazam! 

Rollerblades... or, the Kiss of Death

So yesterday I went out rollerblading with Meg, my comrade in arms for horribly bad ideas. Now, it wasn't so bad that I wouldn't do it again... in fact, it was great exercise and a lot of laughs, mostly at Meg's expense. I will never claim to be a good "blader" but I can stay up and, within reason, move from place to place with some ease and decorum. Meg is also reasonably well skilled at "blading". But when fate finds it appropriate to trip her up and send her careening off the sidewalk and into a muddy patch of grass and bugs, she tends to loose her confidence. (Maybe at this point I should have given her a false name like on Dragnet, "to protect the innocent". But that would infer a sense of innocence on her which is completely out of the question!)

We made it through the park for an hour and a half, trepidatiously climbing hills and skirting down some frightful embankments. A few bumps and scratches but not more worse for wear.

I digress.

Somewhere on this page will be an unfortunate photo of Meg somersaulting through the air en route to her final destination - face planting in the dirt.

What a terrible dilemma... help a friend in need or stop to take their picture and laugh in their face. I chose the latter.

I painted this in 2003 as a graduation gift for Ma Jones from me and Patrick.