Two Singers: Nnenna Freelon and Elliott Yamin

Two singers I catch around town as often as I can just happened to be in the neighborhood (or close enough) in the last couple of weeks: Jazz artist Nnenna Freelon and American Idol alum (season five) Elliott Yamin. They don't have terribly much in common, except I like them both for their unique voices. You don't mistake them for anyone else.

(And you know that's why I like Clay Aiken, too, but while he is working on his surprise for my birthday next month--which I am guessing is going to be his plan to collaborate with David Foster on adapting my screenplay into a Broadway musical--I have to spend this time pursuing my other interesting interests. Pardon my daydream...)

Both Nnenna and Elliott played to less than packed houses at the Strathmore and the Birchmere, respectively. This is unfortunate, but it didn't affect their performances.

Nnenna goes into her own world in her dreamy interpretations, bringing the audience along into the experience. "Skylark" gave me chills, performed with simple bass accompaniment.

One difference between a Nnenna/Strathmore experience and an Elliott/Birchmere one is my level of inhibition in clack-gathering. It's just taboo in a concert hall like Strathmore, and an artist of Nnenna's elegance, well, it would just seem like a violation to try to video her performance. At the Birch, with a guy like Elliott joshing with his E-Train riders in the audience, the pictures and videos are almost expected.

So to give you Nnenna's "Skylark," I borrow from someone else's lack of inhibition. This is from a year ago:

And "God Bless the Child," which made me feel as though I never heard or understood it before:

Now, Elliott, on the other hand, I had no problems mustering courage to video, so these are mine. My only problem was the tall fellow directly in my line of sight. (Situation normal.)

Here he is previewing some new songs, and delivering a heartfelt version of an earlier hit.









Love, hosaa
hearing (really great) voices

Fahrenheit 21C

Back from Round House Theater's production of Ray Bradbury's futuristic classic, Fahrenheit 451, with special multimedia effects that really do make that future feel now.

The credit for that stunning stagecraft, as well as the directing (Sharon Ott) and two of the principal actors--David Bonham ("Montag") and Aurora Heimbach ("Clarisse")--goes to the Savannah College of Art and Design.

The story is well known enough: Firemen burn books because books contain ideas, which just confuse and upset people. In a culture that fears dissent, ideas are weapons of mass destruction. (H. G. Wells also foresaw a book- and thought-free future in The Time Machine.)

What makes this production so contemporary is not just the cool multimedia elements, but also its reflection of our relationship to multimedia itself. Look around at how many people are connected to their devices, hooked on media walls that aren't just on the walls anymore--they never leave our hands. And yes, in many ways, this does detract from our ability to focus, reflect, think, and question.

But for me the real foresight of Bradbury comes through in Montag and Clarisse's escape to the woods and in the preservation of books through oral storytelling.

Futurist William Crossman has long been forecasting the rise of voice-based computing and the lessening need for text. See VIVO [Voice In/Voice Out]: The Coming Age of Talking Computers.

Frankly, as much as I love Moby Dick, I can't imagine memorizing it. Nor do I necessarily buy into the idea of rote memorization as valuable for critical thinking. But Bradbury's point about conveying cultural knowledge through the medium of storytelling is valid, and Crossman's point about advanced societies relying less on text to do the conveying is becoming increasingly validated.

Bradbury's prescription for his hero, escaping to nature and away from the oppressively conforming and soul numbing city, is the same prescription we hear today from Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle. Louv writes about his prescription for children hooked on technologies and suffering from nature-deficit order in the next issue of THE FUTURIST.

The Voice of a Master Twit

For my fellow Edward Duke fans, I've been trying to locate digital versions of the audiobooks he recorded for Buckingham Classics, which no longer seems to exist.

Best we can do commercially is the audiocassette compilation All About Jeeves, which repackaged Edward's two original Buckingham cassettes.

The stories are:

"Jeeves Takes Charge" and "Bertie Changes His Mind," which were Acts I and II, respectively, of Edward's stage production, plus "The Chump Cyril" and "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg," originally packaged as "Jeeves Comes to America."

(Incidentally, Act III of the Jeeves Takes Charge stage production--"Wooster in Wonderland"--was Edward's invention, pulling together all of the best characters and plot devices of the Wodehouse universe--including aunts, country fairs, newts, fiances, and the world's worst tap dance, performed by Bertie while singing "Look for the Silver Lining.")

Sadly, I had ordered my copy of "Jeeves Comes to America" right about the same time dear Edward died, in 1994. It was recorded in 1993, and I fear he was likely quite ill at the time. I tried only once to listen to this recording and just couldn't get through it. My heart couldn't bear it. It's about time I tried again, now, isn't it!

There is one more piece of Edward Duke audio in my collection (also on tape. It was a sad decade, the technologically transitional 1990s). It is the interview that he conducted with WETA TV and radio personality Robert Aubry Davis, for his show Desert Island Discs. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Davis in Edward's dressing room--and the audacity to ask for a copy of the interview.

I'll see what I can do about converting some of these tapes into digital audio, and will try to share as much as I can within the limits of fair use. I miss Edward's laugh, his wit, his mastery of the art of the twit.

Love, hosaa

looking for the silver lining (and tap dancing, very badly indeed)

Errant Heirs, Apparently

Back from last night's invited dress rehearsal for The Heir Apparent at Shakespeare Theatre's lovely Lansburgh venue on 7th Street.

The early 18th-century French farce by Jean-Francois Regnard (1655-1709) retained period costuming, while the text (all verse) had a complete 21st-century American makeover. Incongruous at first, but delivered with such energy and daffy deftness that it kept the audience roaring for just over two hours.

The brains of the operation (which was to extract a will from miserly Uncle Geronte that favored the Bertie Woosterish nephew Eraste) was the quick-thinking (and self-serving) valet Crispin, played with winking naughtiness by Carson Elrod.

The set design by Alexander Dodge was a character in itself. I hope it isn't too much of a spoiler to say that the big ugly clock--as noisy and elaborate in its machinery as it was fascinating in its ornate face design (Deco? Nouveau? Rococo-koo-koo?)--had personality that demanded its own plot point.

The play officially opens September 12 and runs through October 23. See it.

Credits as follows:

The Heir Apparent
Adapted by David Ives from the comedy by Jean-Francois Regnard
Directed by Michael Kahn

Crispin: Carson Elrod
Geronte: Floyd King
Eraste: Andrew Veenstra
Lisette: Kelly Hutchinson
Isabelle: Meg Chambers Steedle
Madame Argante: Nancy Robinette
Scruple: Clark Middleton

Set Designer: Alexander Dodge
Costume Designer: Murell Horton
Lighting Designer: Philip Rosenberg
Sound Designer: Christopher Blaine
Composer: Adam Wernick


Meet the cast event at Shakespeare Theatre: (left to right)
Playwright David Ives with the cast: Andrew Veenstra, Nancy Robinette, Carson Elrod, Meg Chambers Steedle, Floyd King, Kelly Hutchinson and Clark Middleton.

credit: Shakespeare Theatre

New Blog: Shakespeare Readers

I've started a new blog for the Shakespeare Readers group (formerly the Washington Shakespeare Reading Group), which meets one Sunday a month at American University Library.

Check out the new blog and the 2011-2012 reading schedule here.

"In Bard We Trust!"

Better to Be Lucky Than Smart

My brother always says it's better to be lucky than smart. So my neighborhood dodged Irene's bullet last night. My building never lost power or water, which is good for me because the bathtub-full-of-water trick didn't work. I should have checked the plug, which apparently was designed only to stop the water from draining long enough to let someone take a bath. The tub was bone dry this morning.

Anyway, I took my copy of Barron's to the Tastee Diner this morning. (I had a pocket full of quarters in case the Washington Post's delivery person made it to my building; no surprises, she/he didn't.)

Barron's isn't something I normally read on my own, but I got a gift subscription from a friend with points of some kind. Anyway, I normally can't decipher my way past the front editorial, but this week's Streetwise piece by Jacqueline Doherty, "Prospering in a Weak Economy," contained some interesting perspective.

Citing analyst Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research and the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, Doherty notes that unemployment is only 4% for Americans with college degrees and 14% for those with only high-school diplomas. Moffett concludes that 40% of Americans have no discretionary income.

What does this mean to Barron's readers? I.e., well-educated people with money to invest? There is growth in companies that provide services to below-poverty consumers.

"One area that's growing: those servicing cellphone subscribers below the poverty line who receive government subsidies," writes Doherty. "Moffett recommends MetroPCS Communications (PCS), which saw its shares tumble from north of 18 to a recent 10.67."

I interpret this as advising rich people how to further exploit the poor. Well, the poor don't have a lot of leverage, but they can learn the same lessons (even if they don't read Barron's.)

Not that anybody should take advice from me, especially when it comes to choosing between satellite TV service and "a third meal." But maybe there could be a way to turn the tables on the exploiters: save for shares in Disney instead of saving for a Disney vacation, or give up Happy Meals for a year to open an education Roth IRA with McDonald's shares (reinvesting the dividends, of course). In other words, invest in what you'd normally buy. The rich guys are.

(Disclosure: I own Ford's shares; and I've been a Ford-vehicle owner since 1982. Okay, so it's only three vehicles in 30 years, and it's only 200 shares. In me, Ford's may not have a frequent buyer, but it has long-term customer loyalty.)

I've known for awhile that my capital was worth more than my labor, even in a down economy (and a down market). The jobs that are gone are not coming back; employers have outsourced or automated them.

Back in the early 1980s, one of THE FUTURIST's authors wrote that we should all own robots not so they'll do our work for us, but so we can live off the income they generate when we sell or license them to do other people's work. Applying that same principle generally, I figured the only way to beat the rising costs of gasoline and health-insurance premiums was to own stock in energy and health companies (and since I'm not smart enough to pick those companies, I let the mutual-funds managers do that work).

This might be my most blindly ignorant blog ever. I am entirely too uninformed, lazy, and risk averse to write on this subject. I have no mortgage or college tuition to worry about, as most people do. Anyway, it just rankled me to see how already-rich people are being advised how to profit from the already-exploited.

Last piece of ignorant advice for anyone who can't start saving or investing. The trick my mom gave me before I had enough to even open an IRA was to pretend to save. She subtracted $20 from her checking account (every week? every month?) and recorded the amount in the back of her checkbook. The money was still in her account, but if she didn't see it she didn't spend it. Eventually she saved enough for whatever she needed it for.

I did the same and managed to get enough for an IRA. My arbitrary goal was to match my rent in monthly savings. I did it for about two years, and it got me enough to actually begin investing for real.

Not all the water is in the same bathtub. Thanks to inheriting my Dad's credit union account, some of my water is in a different, less-leaky tub than the stock market. So hopefully I'll never run completely dry--or get completely soaked.

Love, hosaa
A little smart, a little lucky.

Good morning, Apocalypse!

There's the old joke among survivalists in the woods: You don't need to outrun the bear. You just need to outrun your buddy.

I'm a little too late to outrun the hurricane heading our way in about 12 hours or so. I know I can get as far as Kalamazoo in a day with clear roads, but people who had the same idea would already be on the roads by now.

I've read the sites telling you what you should have on hand, what should be in your emergency kit. How to survive with no modern conveniences or public services for at least five days. My biggest problem will probably be water, not because I can't fill up some bottles and jugs in advance, but because I don't have bottles or jugs.

You see, I've been de-cluttering lately, and among the first things to get cleaned out were the two very dusty "go" bags of emergency provisions that I prepared in 2001. That wasn't because of 9/11 but because of the anthrax scare here that immediately followed. I thought I was preparing myself to flee through the woods.

Anyway, the batteries and protein bars all expired in 2002. The blue jeans don't fit anymore. The toiletries, well, truth be known, I no longer require all those packs of feminine hygiene products. (Yay, me!)

The containers of water wouldn't have been fresh even if they hadn't cracked open and leaked. I'm not sure what I did with the Brita bottle. I never read the instructions anyway.

The transistor radio doesn't work. It wasn't just because the 9v batteries I tried to use were dead, but there was a wire loose.

I was trying to remember why I needed a radio anyway. Am I going to sit up all night with news announcers telling me I'm in a hurricane and I should take all necessary precautions? I live in an apartment building that is usually pretty security-conscious, so if they need to evacuate us, they'll notify us in the form of a very loud alarm bell. So I plan to sleep in my clothes, and maybe in my closet (away from my one big north-facing window). I think I'll be fine.

Since I was up early this morning and still wanted to scout around for at least a can opener (hee! The non-electric can opener disappeared several years ago when a neighbor wanted to borrow it; I said to keep it, I have an electric one). The Giant was open, of course, when I got there at 7:30 a.m. I got some fruit that wouldn't need refrigeration. I already have peanut butter.

I really don't plan to cook a Thanksgiving meal on votive candles, but I got an extra candle anyway for the light. All that they sold were those smelly ones, so I got a green one, fir-tree scented, which will no doubt send me out into the streets in search of fresh air as soon as the aroma clouds my thinking in this tiny apartment.

My neighbors are out jogging as usual, the earnest middle-aged ladies and their former-Marine drill sergeant coaches. Dogs are being walked. The hardware store was the only sign of panic, and the good men and women of Strosniders took it all in stride. Plenty of D cells, which I picked up for my old boom box. I couldn't find any new transistor radios to replace my broken one, so I snatched one of the Red Cross emergency crank-ups. Has lights and sirens, too, oh boy! I didn't know it was over a hundred bucks till I got to the cash register. Sigh.

It's sultry out, and the wind is picking up. The restaurants have not secured their outdoor tables and chairs, I suppose because they're expecting business as usual before the storm. It's Saturday. It's business.

I give the disaster-preparation award on our street to the Apple Store, boarded up but open for business.



As for the bear of the storm, well, I doubt I'd be able to outrun it, pudgy couch potato that I am. When Mom and I went to Alaska and were advised to make a lot of noise if we encountered a bear, I joked that I could go into the Gershwin songbook. Without water, I may have to sing for a sip.

There's a somebody I'm longing to see,
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me....

Love, hosaa,
anticipating apocalypse