Ghosts from the Past

A friend and I made the trek to Whidbey Island last night to see David Ossman, original cast member of Firesign Theatre in a production of "Don't Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers." It was a riot. I grew up listening to Firesign on records, and it was very engaging to see this story and one other done on stage. The actress that both Steve and I could not peal our eyes away from was Deana Duncan, a Langley local. It took me most of the show to realize that she was the same Deana Duncan that I had known in Reno Nevada 20 years ago. She was a well-established actor then, and I had a rather large crush on her. I dabbled in theater, so I showed up at an audition for Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love" and tried out for the lead. The director put Deana and I together for a scene during the audition, and in the course of reading some of the material, we ended up getting a little physical. I remember it being sort of sureal, but most of my intermitent acting experiences felt that way. The weird part is, I don't feel any different than I did 20 years ago. I hope I'm a little wiser. Deana looked good. The planet is small.

I love EMP

On a lighter note, I attended the first class of my third semester of EMP/UW's song-writing certificate program. This semester is being taught by Jon Auer of Posies fame. He introduced the sylabus and walked us through his vision for the semester. We are going to produce and record a song that will serve as our final project. We are also going to have a final show, probably at the Science Fiction Museum stage. As with our other two instructors, Sean Nelson and Carrie Akre, Jon was very personable and down to earth. He had each of us play a song we had written for him. I played "Dream-line Alligator Revisited," and he gave me an idea how I could accentuate one of the songs hooks. The fact that Jon Auer thinks there is a hook in one of my songs makes me smile. As has been the case with both of the previous classes, I am having more fun than a republican at a book burning party.