Slashdot Mirror
One-Man Star Wars Trilogy in Chicago
Apparently the One Man, Charles Ross, was a hit at the Vancouver and Toronto Fringe Festivals in 2002. Now he's in Chicago until January 3, 2004. I took my girlfriend for her birthday, a little nervous because she's a theatre snob and a huge Star Wars geek; luckily this production satisfied her on both counts. Coming onstage all in black, with elbow pads (he has many occasions to throw himself to the ground) he sings/hums the music, does all the special effects and sound effects, and acts all the parts. Skeptical? A reviewer who saw him in Toronto said "If George Lukas [sic] could see this, he'd rediscover the secret lost in the two most recent films: that it's imagination -- and not computer driven imagery -- which made the original Star Wars so great." I couldn't agree more: every scene he performed was brilliantly evocative of the original, and the audience -- on this second night of the run, a mix of hard-core fans and newspaper reviewers with press kits -- never ceased to be surprised at how spot-on he was, the whole way through. Other reviews raved about his "energy", which I feared would mean he was like my first roommate, a huge Star Wars fan but also way too energetic for me and didn't use deodorant. But his energy just kept the show moving along and by the end his sweat showed that the choreography of the visual effects was not easy.
Every article about the show says that Mr. Ross has seen the Trilogy "over 500 times", and his performance leaves little room for doubt on this point, but those who have also seen it as many times may find a few quibbles -- every now and then, reciting a memorable line, he changes it just a little, which would sometimes break my immersion in the world he created, but only for a moment. It did take a little time to get warmed up to him, but at 20 minutes per movie, he gets up to speed fast, so by the time he had Luke sullenly watching the double sunset on Tatooine, I -- and the rest of the audience -- was putty in his hands.
I highly recommend that anyone in the Midwest take a chance on this show. It's only an hour long, so if you're a total loser who hates it, you won't be stuck there for as long as you were stuck in The Phantom Menace. And, don't worry, the prequels never come up in the show: this is only the Real Star Wars."
...everything is better than the original thing since Ep1, Ep2 and certainly Ep3.
All thanks to George Lucas and the "CG" labeled crackpipe in his hand.
No doubt his relatives -- after being subjected to little Charlie's performances every holiday dinner, year after year -- put up the money to produce this show.
At least it gets him out of the house ;-)
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
His name wasn't Ghyslain was it?
...the Puppetry of the Penis guys didn't think of this first.
"Is that supposed to be...Jabba?! Oh man *retch*"
RW
I saw a show just l like this in London.. a two man re-enactment of all of Shakespeare's plays done very rapidly. This was very funny. I wonder who started this genre? Maybe bards used to sing the Illiad super fast to entertain each other?
I find myself wondering at the validity of that statement for about 5 seconds.
Quite how one could be both a theare snob and star wars - ahen - person - entirely slips my well defined features.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
It's hard to imagine one guy on stage singing "doo-dooo-da-da-da-deeeee-dooo-da-da-da-deeeee-doo o..." and reciting "Luke, I am your father," being at all decent.
.torrent to prove me wrong?
This has got to be a joke, right?
Anyone have a
Chicago is Midwest now? I must have missed something here...
Perhaps it was geography class.
Visit their website and type midwest in the search box. Enjoy several hundred references to Chicago being in the midwest.
I took my girlfriend for her birthday, a little nervous because she's a theatre snob and a huge Star Wars geek; luckily this production satisfied her on both counts. im glad you got laid
Armed bandits stormed Chicago a while back and carried it away to the Midwest. This never would've happened if Chicagoans were allowed to own guns.
Ok, Magellan. If Chicago isn't in the Midwest, perhaps you'd like to share with the rest of us just exactly where the fsck you think it is?
Dude seriously were the hell do you think Chicago is? ...
Yes and ther are 50 states and we live in the northern hemisphere.
Wow the highschool you went to was worthless...
Or, I'm betting you're one of those kids that rode the short bus and wore a helmet.... yeah...
No, not the football players, the ones that were smarter.... special ed!
Instead it was a thrilling hour of this guy jumping around reenacting Star Wars and doing voices and it was wonderful, and he brought the whole audience along.
Seriously, start dating.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
One Man And His Mare (as Chewbacca).
Frederic Martin gave a one-man live radio show parody of both Star Wars Prequel movies, on the regional french radio OuiFM. This guy has a thousand different voices, and he sings very well. And the result was a lot, lot more enjoyable than the original. He also did the same with Spiderman, XMen, Xmen2, XXX, XXX2, Star Trek, Daredevil, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, UFO Robot Grendizer, the Fantastic Four, The Jungle Book, Matrix Reloaded, Austin Powers: the Spy who shagged me, Men in Black, the Bible (!), Air Force One, Gladiator, etc...
If you understand fast-spoken slang French, you can find them on emule with the keyword "LMDMF".
Maybe we deserve this world ?
@leased it seems that way with the corepirate nazi /.puppeteers, & their whoreabully infactdead PostBlock(tm) 'moderation' devise.
more&more pretending is their idea of 'stuff that matters'?
All right, based on the good Commander's review, I'll bite. I'm going to be in Chicago next month, and since my neice lives there, maybe I can get advance tickets. Nobody who wasn't there can know what it was like to be ten years old in 1977 and watching Star Wars on the big screen. It sounds like Charles Ross has recaptured some of the magic. Lucas has certainly lost it. It can't possibly be any worse than what my family has put up with from me (Star Wars lines-wise) for the past 26 years.
The name "Reduced Shakespeare Company" (RSC) is itself kind of a spoof on the well-known Royal Shakespeare Company (also RSC). I also saw the show in London and highly recommend it. I heard when I saw it that they had done a tour of the US the year before, so maybe they will come back across the pond sometime soon.
Will this show be visiting other cities? I can't get to Chicago right now, but would love to see this show.
Thanks for bringing back news for nerds...it doesn't get nerdier than this!
Take the train back home. Get home about 4 in the morning. My kid is a night owl.
Any other suggestions?
with a DV camera? ;P
With all the attention he's getting, why wouldn't he just go on tour with it? A one man show needs what...three people to prepare every night? It could probobly be done with just two. I bet most people here would go see him if he came to your home town. This guy should think about it...
There was that petition and stuff and all... Did they put SWK in Episode 3?
They gas only one of those? Yeah, that would be the arsehole, dontyathink? Flappa-flappa-flappa...
Sigh. Every time I hear some AC whine about "you need to go get laid, this is dorky shit" blah blah blah, I conclude they are one of several people:
A) Has never been laid themselves
B) Has been laid, maybe ONCE or TWICE before and doesn't have any real understanding of relationships
C) Is probably an anti-social basement case himself, thus his misunderstanding that people can be geeks, like geek things, and still have social lives.
I have known geek sluts. A guy who had lost count somewhere in the upper double digits, but could still watch a geeky movie and enjoy it with you. My girlfriend is a geek, though she probably wouldn't admit to it. A mental health counselor, doesn't know shit about computers except what I have managed to impart to her, yet she exhibits many "geek" qualities, such as fascination with technology and cartoons/anime and antisocial behavior.
I lost the big V about 10 years ago. What does that have to do with anything?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I can't be the only geek who saw the quote from George Lukas [sic], and thought it would have been fun to write sik instead
I lost the big V about 10 years ago. What does that have to do with anything?
Happy 40th birthday!!
The midwest region is actually more north central - the states around the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley. Most people would include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (including Chicago), Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.
I saw this show at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. It's awesome, if you go to see it, believe me you won't be disappointed.
At the festival, the show sold out most of its performances, then sold out its "pick of the fringe" shows which is reserved for the best of the plays, and was held over again (not sure if it sold out there).
Charles Ross goes through the entire 3 movies, does a fantastic job of reenacting the battle scenes (yes without any props) and touches on all the aspects of the trilogy, including all the jokes we throw around here at slashdot.
Even if you're not a big Star Wars fan, the guy's performance is something to see. Oh and, it's not the kind of boring "theater" you might be thinking of.
And he probably told his family that after he's done with the Star Wars trilogy theater version, he's gonna tackle the Lord of the Rings trilogy one-hour theater play, and then he'll do The Matrix trilogy one-hour version (this is where his slow-mo special effects stunt work will shine).
And then they probably kicked him and his computers straight out of the basement, "By God, we told you that you wouldn't live at home forever, no matter how much of a nerd you think you are! We found you an apartment and we'll pay the rent, just get out and take your caffeinated beverages with you!"
I was one of the fortunate few who saw Star Drek , a musical takeoff featuring funny songs, nailed characterizations and cheesy special effects. The transporter beam, for example, was a handful of glitter tossed in the air under a spotlight. The show ran about a year and a half (94-95) before Paramount shut it down. Act one was the original series, act two was the next gen, with Q bringing Kirk forward in time on a bet with Picard that Kirk would be better able to cope with a plot to addict the crew to a traditional Romulan beverage called "jav-ya."
...another culture has been destooooyyyyed,
The night I saw it in Seattle the place was completedly packed, people sitting on stairs. Except there was a block of really good empty seats in one row. As the lights went down, four hooded figures shuffled in and sat in the seats. During Intermission they left, and the host came out and announced that it had been Nimoy and his friends, who were in town for one of his rare convention appearances. They had snuck in so as not to create a scene. The place went nuts.
I still remember parts of the theme song:
On boooooaaard the Enterpriiiiiiiise,
Our paaaaaants don't have any fliiiiiies...
but weeeee know Star Fleet won't be annooooooyyed,
becaaaaause,
We're Right!
Not long afterwards Paramount shut the show down on the grounds that it wasn't a parody of Star Trek, it was Star Trek. The producers had to fork over all the money they had made.
Repeat after me:
Paramount is run by soulless, clueless Assholes.
not much if they're posting crap like this
Well, not exactly, but I know where he got the idea from.
What about North and South Dakota
(at least the area east of the Missouri river)
I saw this two summers ago on my campus at the University of Toronto during the Fringe Festival.
This is not Star Wars Kid, I assure you. I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Fucking amazing! I'm hoping for some DVD of his performance to be released...
My brother and I went and were laughing more than anyone else, because this guy seemed to latch on to all the tiny little things that we always laugh at, the number one being in Jedi -- when Vader's trying to lure Luke out and says "Sistaaaaaaaaa"
When he imitates the AT-AT falling down, or the X-Wings crashing into the walls, when he does Yoda-with-ass-in-air digging through Luke's stuff, the Yoda death music, everything was dead on.
This has been done, and to equally thrilled audiences, by the Star Wars In 30 Minutes guys, who started at USC and premiered at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival (in a galaxy far, far away from George Lucas's lawyers). I saw it when it was in LA last year and it was hilarious.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Quite aside from being legally questionable and ethically bankrupt, isn't C&D-ing Shoggoth On The Roof a bit...risky? I mean, I sure wouldn't be reading the response from the Old Ones' legal team. (Does anyone doubt that the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, J.D., would be drafting counsel?)
For a taste of the horror that awaits these litigious fools, check out this 401 page from yog-sothoth.com ...
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
For years, hypesters have been working the lingo-circuit hoping the rest of the country will adopt their creation of Chicago as "the third coast". Somehow, I don't think it will ever fly.
Dog is my co-pilot.
So if I don't agree with America's gub'mint's imperialistic, corporate actions, I should "git out" - maybe move to Iraq? So I should support the murder of American troops and Iraqi civilians because they are getting "democracy" i.e. corporatism and a Wal-mart on every corner? So I should be glad I am living in the worst economy in a long time and live in fear of losing my job every day? So I should be thrilled that the Bush Administration is quietly considering a draft? So I should be ecstatic that Dubya has daily chats with his imaginary friend, God?
Fuck that. Dubya's got to go.
"Vote Republican - prosperity and peace are boring!" -- some bumper sticker
There was a show called Star Wars in 30 Minutes that played here in Los Angeles for a few months last year. Hysterical, and they run through the entire original trilogy in, yes, 30 minutes. I saw it twice and it was great. More than just one guy, but most of the cast plays multiple roles -- Threepio is also Yoda, Chewie is also Vader, Ackbar is also Jabba, Luke's tauntaun, and several other characters.
The props were hilarious -- folding chairs with lights on the feet were X-wings (held up in front of the actors' faces), Artoo was a trash can, and the aerial on the bottom of Cloud City that Luke catches onto was... a TV aerial. Ha!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Most people would include Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (including Chicago), Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.
On the other hand, most Chicagoans would include Chicago (including Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois), Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.
Though a lifetime computer geek I have recently returned to active cave exploration, and have gotten to reacquiant myself with old friends that helped me get started caving years ago.
On a recent cave trip, one of them remarked (to the other's wife, who's also a caver) that I had it lucky...that geeks were now totally cool and mainstream, where he and his friend had been geeks when it was definitely NOT cool!
Made me remember when I first knew him (helped him get dates) and snicker.
What about geeks that are also club musicians (narrowly avoided the term "clubbing musicians," whew!)? You have the perfect excuse to go out and meet single women/men: you're supposed to be playing! Worked for me for years *shudder*.
I'm 34 now, married and am sure I have little idea what a life as a Gen-Y geek is like, but it sure looks fun! Party on, little geeks!
I saw his One Man Star Wars in Victoria awhile ago. Liked it so much I went to see it again the next day. I brought my MD recorder, and now have the whole thing on Minidisc. Its perfect, because the whole preformance lasts excactly as long as my bus commute home!
What the hell? There already _is_ a third coast. The Gulf Coast -- from Texas to Florida.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Charles is an old classmate of mine from university. I, too, saw the show in Vancouver, and really enjoyed it. These were my thoughts: Last night I went to the 'Pick of the Fringe' and saw my former classmate Charles Ross use the Force in his excellent One Man Star Wars Trilogy. In an hour, he runs through the essential (and sometimes non-essential) bits of all three movies, pausing twice for drinks of water. It is a remarkably manic performance. He sweats excessively, and never stops moving for the hour. He flies the ships, does all the voices, sings the music and fights the battles. His mimicry is remarkably well-observed. From the gentle heaving of the X-Wing fighters to Yoda's cane work, he gets all of the details right. His rendition of the music is particularly effective, and proves a handy transitional shorthand between scenes. It's like watching an eight-year-old playing in his backyard. When the death stars blow up, Charles skips around the stage making explosion noises like every one of us did in 1983. In short, it's a show worth seeing.
There is an improv show in Chicago called Frodo-A-Go-Go which is supposed to do a parody of LOTR in maybe an hour and a half. It is as bad as the reviewer thought the one man Star Wars was going to be. Although seeing "Giblet" and "Legoland" become transvestites in blond wigs was amusing, the price just isn't worth it.
Man, your English and Grammar teachers musta been PISSED!
This post was indeed offtopic, but he raises an excellent point. This is why Slashdot is not truly a community - interesting ideas, or attempts at fraternal association or banter are crushed, and only the topics picked by the editors of the site ( like some oh so important tale of a lego dog or something ) are permissable.
Which is fine. But it's not a community, and it's far less important as a result. Meanwhile, slashdot still gets crapflooded to buggery, unimpeded by this 'moderation' system...
Gene, go home.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
You misspelt 'Vietnam'.
While there is a third coast, the Gulf of Mexico, it is not acknowledged by the powers that be. It has some of the nicest beaches around (quite frankly because nobody knows about them!). Driving along the Gulf on US-98 in Florida is some of the best driving out there to be had.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I ask, because back in 1997 I was the lighting/sound designer for "Jedi! A Musical Tour De Force", performed at the ImprovOlympic in Chicago.
It was the trilogy, performed in about an hour and a half (if memory serves) with heavy use of models and such to represent space battles and things -- it contained select dialogue from all three movies, and each installment of the trilogy began with the piano player singing an overture featuring the words that scrolled across the screen to open each movie.
Oh, wait. Did I mention it was a MUSICAL? Seriously. Princess Leia's "It's hard to be hard" was a particularly good Disco tune performed by the guy in drag playing Leia (there were women in the show, but not for Leia.)
My particular favorite was Obi Wan's climactic ode to the Force, "Feel The Flow". Feel the flow/feel it from above and below/feel it in every mountain stream/everywhere you go/feel the force/it will never lead you off course...and so on and so on. I actually have the cast recording on a CD-R at home.
So anyway -- the point of all this is, Lucas shut us down with a cease and desist. Hopefully this guy won't suffer the same fate.
Helevius
Hello Mr. Coward
can i please have your karma?? my family is very sick.
Sincerely,
mothertongue
Well we'd know -- you're at FSU, and I grew up in Tallahassee, and there's loads of nice beaches along the panhandle.
(OTOH, I also left FL as soon as I could for the Northeast -- I prefer city life to beaches)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yep, seeing that Chicago is pretty much the financial and trading center of the midwest. Built as the trading h
I have heard the eastern bit of the midwest referred to as the "mideast". Though it's not that common. Probably because there worried Texas will get it's geography mixed up and invade Michigan and Ohio for their oil.
I don't know abut anyone else, but I am Sooooo over Star Wars. Lucas should have left it at the first 3 movies. If it wasn't for Moulan Rouge, the last two would be at the top of my all time crappiest movie list.
hahahahaha
rofl
hahahaha
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
No matter where you go, you definitely must order the "stuffed special."
I saw this show in Montreal this past summer during our annual "Fringe Festival". You HAVE to see his impression of an AT-AT getting killed!
I went to see this at the vancouver fringe, expecting a comedy, a parody. But you could count the number of jokes in the script on one hand.
Otherwise, it was a straight readers-digest-condensed re-enactment. The laughs only came from the visual, incredibly energetic, performance. But by halfway, I was bored senseless by this guy leaping about the stage. It was as dull as a room of devout monty python fans reciting "holy grail".
The actor was great, energetic, excellent voice and accents. No amplifier used (or needed) in the small theatre. But the script, or lack of it, is only for serious star-wars fans, or lovers of pure visual gags. There was so much opportunity for parody that went totally wasted. It was almost reverent, as if parody would be sacrilege.
OK, the majority of the audience loved it, just
be warned.
My pick of the festival: "Toothpaste and cigars" - utterly brilliant. Co-written by the director of "one man star wars t.", BTW.
The term "midwest" comes from a time when the "west" was a lot further east than it is now. Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and I believe Michigan and Wisconsin all fall within the area of the "midwest". The usual way around the fact that there's a lot more west than there used to be is to term things like Kansas and the Dakotas as being either "central" or "plains" states.
So once upon a time, it made perfect sense - and the name just stuck.
~ Leilah
Personally I like Boston -- it's a big city, but it in fact is very very small. This means that the city and the dense suburbs all fit nicely within 128 (the equivalent of Capital Circle, i.e. a 'ring' highway) and beyond you get smaller suburbs, little towns, farms, etc. Plenty of industry, culture, excellent mass transit via subway and light rail. Dunno about crime, but I haven't ever had any real trouble. Give it a look.
Also I wouldn't call Tallahassee a city. You know why they put it there right? Because St. Augustine and Pensacola were fighting over which should be the capital, and so they settled on a spot literally halfway between them. Stupid bastards -- they should've put it at St. Marks or better yet, Apalachicola.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I agree about the silly placement of Tallahassee. However, while Apalachicola would have been a nice town to choose as the capital, I'm not sure it would have grown as easily into a city with a 100,000+ population. Maybe they should've chosen Two Egg instead... :^)
:^) Thankfully, I've heard great things otherwise.
I've been in Boston before, only for a short while when I was a kid though. All I can remember was the road leading into Logan Int'l -- a billion lanes, a billion cars, all moving about one billionth of a mile per hour... I hope all of Boston isn't like that!
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I've been in Boston before, only for a short while when I was a kid though. All I can remember was the road leading into Logan Int'l -- a billion lanes, a billion cars, all moving about one billionth of a mile per hour... I hope all of Boston isn't like that! :^) Thankfully, I've heard great things otherwise.
;)
Naw. While there have been some traffic problems resulting from the Big Dig (the project to put the downtown highways underground) generally you'll find that Boston traffic involves a few lanes, a billion cars, all moving about a billion miles an hour while bumper to bumper. I don't know why people say Boston drivers are bad -- they're actually remarkably good. And expect other people to be just as good.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
So, do you live in Boston now, or were you just referring to it as a city that seemed to fit my city criteria?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I used to live in Waltham. It's a small world.
As for Boston, I used to live there, I don't live there now, but I desperately want to get back there within the next couple of years at the latest, whereupon I plan to never leave again.
During the dot com era, I got a good job with a startup in Seattle running their design department. I didn't really want to move, but it was part and parcel with the job, so I ultimately did.
Having lived out there, I can definately say that the weather is great. Reports of it being crappy in the Pacific Northwest are grossly overstated. The summer is the dry season, and the winter is the rainy season, but the rain consists of fog and drizzle -- in terms of inches of rain, Tallahassee likely gets more, particularly given the summer thunderstorms that roll in from the Gulf every afternoon like clockwork. Temperatures are very mild, generally not breaking 80 in the summer or going below freezing in the winter. Snow is nearly unknown -- and I've seen it snow in Tallahasse on more that one ocassion, you know.
Further south though, the weather wouldn't be so good -- I had enough of hot weather in Tallahassee. (though note that I've seen outdoor palm trees living and planted in the ground as far north as Vancouver; my parents' palms barely manage to survive each winter)
The problems were
1) there is terrible urban sprawl. I don't know if you've been to Miami, but it has the same problem. Cities IMO shouldn't get _too_ big, at least not without having many small neighborhoods each having a very distinctive character. Boston just isn't that large. New York City is very large, but it doesn't have the problem AFAIK of every block seeming to be just like every other block, and the city having no character.
I think that a lot of this has to do with the age of the city. San Francisco is the only particularly old West Coast city, and the whole area now stretches very far north, south, and west and is sprawly. Older cities seem to me to have only improved in terms of livability with age, perhaps because changes used to be so haphazard and organic. I kind of side with Jane Jacobs in that the more planning goes into a city, the more it dies, at least in practice.
2) People on the West Coast suck. I just don't really like them, finding East Coasters more to my liking. Bear in mind that I presently am stuck in New Jersey, and while I don't like it much, the people are fabulous. With regards to this, I'm reminded of a Callahan cartoon -- The people in LA say 'Have a nice day' to one another but are thinking 'Fuck you,' while the people in NYC say 'Fuck you' and are thinking 'Have a nice day.'
Of course, both are rather dissimilar from stereotypical southerners who will say and think 'Have a nice day' in essence, but there really aren't so many of those as there used to be. Probably TV's fault. We're losing our accents too.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Tallahassee gets 77% more rain each year than Seattle, on average (I used wunderground.com to look this up). I'm glad Tallahassee doesn't have bridges, otherwise people would be jumping off of them. :^)
So why do you think that west coast people suck? I guess I'm curious about this point because I took a road trip out to California and back last summer, and I didn't really encounter any "meanies" along the way... I'd say the worst I encountered out there was one lady who cut me off somewhere around Modesto, CA, but that could have happened anywhere. People were more to-the-point and didn't coat their conversations with sugar, but that seemed to be the most of it. Somewhere around Bakersfield, CA, I helped one guy start up his ailing '75 VW Bug, and he and his wife sincerely thanked me for the effort. San Francisco was the only major city we visited out of our 6,000 mile trip where we could cross streets and the cars would actually yield to us without honking or otherwise getting mad.
I'm also unsure about your statement about organic vs. planning in cities... If S.F. has improved its livability because its changes aren't so organic anymore, why do you say that the more planning that goes into cities, the more it dies? Perhaps I'm not interpreting right...
Besides the planned vs. organic sides of the argument, I personally believe that there is a certain level of enthusiasm that must be had by citizens of a city in order for the city to thrive. Cultural events are one such outlet for enthusiasm. People here in Tallahassee have football as their common pastime, but that is about it. Occasionally, a good symphony rolls through town, or the North Florida Fair (yippee). I recently looked up the tour schedule for Eric Idle's Greedy Bastard Tour, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company, two tours which I would very much like to see, but unfortunately neither of them comes anywhere near the entire southeast U.S.. If you look around at Boston, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc., it seems like every performer worth their salt goes through these cities. If you don't have culture, all you have is a collection of roads, buildings, and people.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Tallahassee gets 77% more rain each year than Seattle, on average (I used wunderground.com to look this up). I'm glad Tallahassee doesn't have bridges, otherwise people would be jumping off of them. :^)
;)
Well, you could always jump off the Capital Circle / Thomasville Rd. overpass (which is quite FUBARed as it was premised on the idea that there'd be a lot of southbound traffic, but cannot handle reciprocal northbound traffic _at all_), or jump off of Apalachee Parkway where it goes over Franklin St., which isn't so much of a drop, but if you timed it right could result in your drowning.
So why do you think that west coast people suck?
I guess I never really found people out there to be very sincere; I'd rather people were sincere jerks or didn't care rather than if they tended to be pretty nice, but didn't really seem to mean it.
I'm also unsure about your statement about organic vs. planning in cities... If S.F. has improved its livability because its changes aren't so organic anymore, why do you say that the more planning that goes into cities, the more it dies? Perhaps I'm not interpreting right...
Well, I strongly suggest that you read Jane Jacobs' book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" or something like that. It was written mostly based on her experiences in NYC in the 60's working against infamous city planner Robert Moses who had a penchant for building big roads and housing projects and destroying neighborhoods.
The gist of it is that planners tend to not observe how people actually live in successful and unsuccessful cities, don't understand what the differences between them are and how the latter can be made into the former, but instead make changes based on unrealistic but appealing-sounding ideas of how cities _ought_ to work, regardless of whether or not that's how they really do work. In a number of cases, the planners tend to not even like cities, and would prefer suburbs, which themselves are not really all that livable.
Incidentally, now I should plug the farmer's market downtown at Park and Monroe on Saturday mornings, which my Mom runs. It's essentially intended to be a way of getting people to spend more time in the area, which is essential: an area that has people in it only, say, during working hours will be dead outside of those hours, and will be unable to sustain anything that cannot survive with such an overall small audience. If you bring different people in at different times -- people who live there, people who go there to do things, people who work there, etc. the area will be enjoy more vitality, and this can ultimately result in a positive feedback loop, or at least self-sustinance.
But really -- read the book, it's very good, and you might want to look at some of the examples of city projects that were going on at the time to see what it was a reaction against. In fact, bringing us back to Boston, the total destruction of the West End for highways and MGH was a real calamity, the Central Artery (the elevated highway) cut the core of the city in half, and Scollay Sq. was razed for the useless brick plaza at Government Center. The Big Dig, which moves the highways underground, is intended to try to rectify some of these big mistakes.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I will definitely look into the book you've mentioned. It does seem that planners often put too much trust into the "theory" of planning rather than the practical aspects of it. One such example is the crosswalk near the parking garage on Woodward Ave. here at FSU -- they closed down most of Woodward in order to reduce traffic at that crosswalk, but because tens of thousands of cars still drive in and out of the Woodward Ave. parking garage each day, the problem is nearly as bad as before.
Yeah, I can see where you are coming from. I didn't have a chance to interact with people for prolonged amounts of time while I was out there, mostly because I spent so little time at each location. I was still fairly impressed by the people I did meet, however.
I'm surprised that your mother runs the downtown farmer's market on Saturdays (I knew the world was small, but I didn't think it was that small.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
My only complaint is that the market isn't big enough -- you can often walk through it in 15 minutes, and you're done. I know the market is probably limited to the area between Adams, Park and Monroe though, so this may be a space constraint more than anything.
She's also the one responsible for angle parking on Monroe in that area -- when it was all parallel, it was utter hell to get in and out. Now it's a little better, at least.
Anyway, yeah -- they won't let her close off Monroe so that people could cross easily in that direction. And apparently the same goes for Adams. It's quieter at least though. The city still gives her grief about it at times, not liking their (largely unvisited) parks to get used, since it requires more maintenance. Meanwhile, some of the stuff the city's done on it's own has been laughable. Gailee Alley instantly springs to mind.
Anyway, at the moment there's something of a push to get some residential space available downtown. This will help things immensely, since it'll get more people in that area when it would otherwise be empty. They'll -- hopefully -- patronize the local businesses, making downtown more viable for retail. Of course, there'll never be any helping the area immediately south of the Capitol, since it's all government buildings and no one has any reason to walk around over there and do stuff.
I'll pass the compliment along. Feel free to talk with her the next time you're over there -- her name is Susan and she typically wears a large straw hat. Pretty much everyone down there knows her.
One such example is the crosswalk near the parking garage on Woodward Ave. here at FSU -- they closed down most of Woodward in order to reduce traffic at that crosswalk, but because tens of thousands of cars still drive in and out of the Woodward Ave. parking garage each day, the problem is nearly as bad as before.
Yeah, I was surprised to see how much of that was shut down -- but because the natural path for people is to go from the bookstore entrance (and the path along that side of the garage) across to the union, they're still waiting to cross.
I am reminded of the lesson of the college (I forget which one) that didn't put down sidewalks in the quads for a couple of years. They wanted the students to wear paths in the ground so that they'd know where to put sidewalks so that they'd actually be used.
If more city planners observed people living in and interacting with cities, instead of having idealistic visions of how they want to fundementally change cities. (Le Corbusier is a good example of a bad planner -- superblock housing projects were supposed to be wonderful, with lots of surrounding parks and no retail since zoning should strictly segregate functions -- turns out they're hellholes with lots of wasted park space that no one uses, too big providing no interesting or diverting differentiation, and no retail which would make living there, walking around and exploring convenient; and when there's not people out and around, you often get crime)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I was able to see this performance last night, which was sponsored by the Onion and BASS beer. My many thanks to the Onion for their nice gifts and to BASS beer for the 'Liquid Force'. :)
My review:
The theater where Mr. Ross performs his piece is surprisingly small and intimate, with probably a maximum of 90 seats---if that many!
The stage is small, maybe 8' x 18' or smaller.
There is only a plain black curtain as the back-drop.
There are no props or anything used for this performance, other than the floor. Mr. Ross wears all-black clothing T-Shirt & pants. The only notable element to his 'costume' are black elbow pads.
There is a bar in the room that serves before, during and after the performance. No one got up to get any drinks during the performance though, because Mr. Ross does his show with absolutely no breaks. Plus---you don't want to miss a second of it!
All of the reviews I read prior to viewing the show are true!
This is definitely worth seeing no matter how big of a Star Wars fan you are. Mr. Ross has distilled the essence of what makes the original trilogy such a classic story.
Not only does Mr. Ross act out the entire OT in one hour (20 minutes per movie), he does in fact play all of the characters, say all of the lines AND incorporate all of the special effects!
With a movement, inflection, gesture or mannerism, you will know exactly which character he is playing at any time.
Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru, Obi Wan, Han, Chewie, C3PO, R2D2, Jawas, Tusken Raiders, Rebel troopers, Stormtroopers, Tarkin, Motti, other Imperial Officers, the Emperor, the entire cast of Rebel Pilots, Mon Mothma and the Rebel leaders, Lando, Nien Numb, Lobot, Boba Fett, Yoda, Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna, Admiral Akkbar, Boussh, Tauntauns, Wampas, Dianogas, Rancors, Ewoks----they are all there! Plus he also most-convincingly reenacts all of the action sequences, saber duels, battle scenes and special effects. He even blows up the Death Star----TWICE! Mr. Ross even pays tribute to the original theatrical release version of the trilogy and doesn't employ any devices from the most recent special edition version.
Mr. Ross performs all three Star Wars movies in one hour. The action is non-stop. The laughter is non-stop. Nearly all of the dialog is straight from the movies with only an occasional humorous extra line thrown in.
I laughed so hard, my armor hurt!
I was wearing my stormtrooper armor for this performance. The Onion had sponsored and promoted last night's performance with a costume event.
How fortunate we are to have this performance in town for the next few weeks (through Jan. 3rd)
Go see it. You will not be disappointed.
TKvanB