First half of the day: Watch Superbowl.
Second half of the day: Watch Hamlet.
This was the to-do list at the Bewley house today. We’re hosting a talk between Casey Spooner and Liz LeCompte at the museum, and since I’ve been dying to see a Wooster Group performance since my days as a performance art tadpole, Kellie got us tickets to see their production for Christmas. Largely a reimagining of the Richard Burton 64 television experiment in theatrical broadcasting, the staging is reminiscent of the classic KML sketch “James is Dead” – but in case you missed that – it makes live actions out of the peculiarities of video tape movement. Rewinding, zooming, edits, etc. While also telling the story of the cursed Prince, and managing to mine Burton’s vision for plenty of funny moments. Ingenious and commanding, the show is a great one and if you are in LA, go see it at the REDCAT theater. Oh, and my dinner with Leonard Nimoy was cancelled as he caught that cold that everyone in America had. Maybe we’ll have another chance…

Had a meal last night with some titans of the progressive movement. (Apologies to those 500 some people who could not get in to the public program at the Hammer….always hard to turn people away). Felt a little bad after dinner thinking about persimmon bread pudding immediately after discussing the hardships of Nigerians, so opted for just coffee. Around the table were Naomi Klein, Robert Scheer, Richard Kim, the Galefs, Ian Masters, Christina Pickles, and some folks from The Nation and truthdig. Naomi is both foxier than you would think and as smart as you would expect, which makes for a deadly combination. (Hey, Obama need a running mate?) Every word of her book The Shock Doctrine is worth reading over and over again. I also have to give props to the enchanting Christina Pickles, who along with doing a pilot with my friend Michael Cornacchia and my someday friend, Fred Willard (why did no one pick THAT up??), has some terrific stories, which I cannot repeat, about working on Friends and the sticky realities of doing voice overs for E! True Hollywood Stories. Up for tomorrow night, dinner with Leonard Nimoy. What a funny job I have.

I couldn’t be prouder. Kellie’s show has hit the airwaves. Tune into CMT to catch Gone Country. Bobby B! and Marcia Brady seem to be really hitting it off, though her being tied up in the lasso was one of the stranger things I’ve ever seen. Most importantly dig that beautiful set! It’s Barbara Mandrell’s cabin as reimagined by Mrs. Bewley!

For one thing it’s raining. Like really raining. Like the rain that flooded my apartment in the early-2005-all-the-time-seriously-stop- typhoons-must-be-easier than this, rain. And of course everyone in LA immediately forgets how to drive when it rains. So we just sit on the freeway together, praying that the lines are where we think they are. The sound outside of a million wipers all going at once must be intense. On the bright side, went to the Griffin last night and they had a pouring problem of a different sort, and one that when applied to an 18 year old scotch, certainly worked in my favor! Here’s to the mighty generous Griffin! Ca-Caw-Gur-Growl! (or whatever sound a Griffin makes).

I’m screening a mini-marathon of the Bob Newhart show to celebrate the life of Ms. Suzanne Pleshette, one of my original TV crushes. I know I’m not alone in having Emily Hartley impressed in my young 70s-boy-mind as the template for the ideal woman. Smart, brassy, and downright sexy, she ranks right up there with Lynda Carter on the greatest brunettes of all time list. The fact that she married Tom Poston late in life only makes me like her more. What were those dinners like? Watching Newhart again also reminds me that a) Chicago looks exactly the same and b) I need to own a Botany 500 suit sometime in my life.

Yeargh! What the hell is happening on MSNBC?!? I recently switched over to them from CNN cause I just couldn’t take anymore Showbiz Tonight at 9am (ugh, it’s called Showbiz Tonight, CNN!). MSNBC also has hotter babes. What they don’t have is better sound delay reduction technology. The anchor tosses a question to a field reporter, the field reporter or worse, a guest that is unfamiliar with being on TV, waits an entire, deadly 3 seconds, then responds, often overlapping with the next follow-up-point from the anchor, making for an awkward pause, then an attempt to speak, met with another anchor-panic-moment trying to fill time and on and on. You’d think the whole place ran on Vista. Oh wait…

I am addicted to the Peter Frampton Geico ad. Especially the line “I wanted to pull my hair out”. Just sing that when you’re stressed. It’s got such a classic rhythm to it. That guy talks through his guitar! Far out.

UPDATE: This post somehow managed to catch the attention of insurance bots all over the web, creating a tidal wave of comments all saying nothing. Internets is weird, y’all.

We hosted a lecture by Vancouver photographer and all around nice guy, Roy Arden tonight. One of his series – which I’ve grabbed a cropped sample of for this post, is called Terminal City, the old nickname for Vancouver. I was happy to have caught Arden’s major exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery during a failed bid for a relocation. Seeing this series again I was reminded of a major project that our civic leaders should pay attention to and that’s the real estate along our nation’s train tracks. If you’ve spent anytime on the Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, you know what I mean. We have the same problems in the international terminals of our airports. Landing in LA or JFK is like landing in a janitorial closet. Is this really the way we want to welcome people to our cities? We’ve got a lot of work to do, America!

Not long ago, I was hoodwinked into ponying up cash to take improv classes in Los Angeles. Though it represented a kind of ninth level of hell for me, I did it. One of the few pleasures aside from a lifetime of turd jokes, was the discovery of the talented Shauna McGarry. She broke both her ankles in a weird, falling off a curb incident, which meant she couldn’t attend classes past the fifth or sixth week, but we’ve stayed in touch and I’m thrilled to share with you her latest creation, Movies with Grandma Joy. I think you’ll agree it’s just about the darn cutest thing ever. Like watching a baby koala eat a marshmallow at the fair.

Riggin friggin grumble grumble. Do I have to declare that New Hampshire is now on the list of places I’ll never visit again? I so enjoyed the Bass shoe outlet and the clam chowdah at the Oyster House. I’ll give it up to Hillary. Personally I think it was the debate. I don’t buy that it was the tears so much, though kudos for welling up. I think it came down to the phrase, “words are not action”. That certainly prompted some discussion in the Bewley household. But Obama kept it close in a place where he was supposed to be far behind (despite what those pesky polls were saying TWO DAYS AGO…jeez). While that was happening in the world, at the Hammer we hosted David Sirota and John Dean, (yep that John Dean!) for a great discussion on the realities of the political world. Fascinating to hear their takes. Hopefully we’ll post the audio soon and I’ll link to it over at KCET.org.