The Designer Monologues

End of an Era....

The Designer Monologues
Tuesday, September 03, 2002 - Thursday, September 29, 2005

As of today, I will no longer be posting to gmskarka.blogspot.com. I found over the past year that I much prefer the sense of community that occurs over at my Livejournal, and I've really only been cross-posting here anyway.

So, update your links. You'll find me over at http://www.livejournal.com/users/gmskarka.

Thanks for the attention, and I hope to see you there.

-Gareth-Michael Skarka
Lawrence, KS

The Reason I've Been So Busy....


Now that's it's officially announced, I can disclose why I've been so busy for the past week:

RPGNow is splitting into two sites, one for the top publishers, and one for the small-press/indy guys.

Adamant is #15 on the top publishers list, so we'll be on the flagship site.

Serenity Quiz Thingy

Huh. Apparently, I am an equal tie between One Who Cares For His People, and a Whore.

Yeah, I guess that's about right. :)

You scored as Capt. Mal Reynolds. The Captain. You are the captain of the ship, so the crew are your responsibility. You just want to do the job, get paid and keep flying. Why is that always so hard? Capt. Mal Reynolds 69% Inara Serra 69% The Operative 63% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 63% River Tam 56% Shepherd Derrial Book 50% Simon Tam 50% Jayne Cobb 50% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 44% Kaylee Frye 25% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I

So, after hearing about this at the KCRF Morning Meeting on Sunday, I dug around until I found the details:



Helen Mirren is starring as Elizabeth I in a new 2-part miniseries on Channel 4 in the UK. The miniseries, which will air this Thursday and next, will also feature Jeremy Irons as Dudley and Ian "Emperor Palpatine" McDiarmid as William Cecil, Lord Burghley.

Bittorrent willing, I will be getting a copy of this, and I think a viewing party should be in the offing.

KCRF Fourth Weekend: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good:

• The Show. It's evolving slightly, changing a bit at a time as we drop stuff that isn't working or that we're bored with, and experiment with new stuff. Quite the change from scenario/court, where we slogged through the same staff day after day, regardless of how the audience responded. Being able to tailor a show to the audience as it is happening is exhilirating, and I'm blessed to be working with performers who are talented enough to do that without a second thought.
  
• Friends coming to see the show. It's always great to have people you know in the audience, whether they are Festival Performers or Patrons. This weekend we performed for some of Red's Girls, Friends that we comp ticketed, Co-workers, and even a friend of mine from High School that I haven't seen in at least a decade. Seeing the moment on their faces when you transform from "Somebody They Know" to "Funny Show" is a wonderful experience to have.
  
• Quotes that I will carry with me: "That's what happened! She became a whore through osmosis!", among others.
  
• Wonderful dinner with friends after the show on both days. Especially Sunday night, where we filled a Chinese restaurant with laughter.
  

The Bad:

• Aside from the usual (temperature, humidity and my physical infirmities), I honestly cannot think of anything bad from this weekend. At least nothing that rose to the level of being noteworthy.
  
• EDIT: Actually, an email that I just had to send to the management reminded me of two:
  
• While our 11:30 show was moved from Merlin's Berm to the Crown & Rose (yay!), our name and scheduled perfomance did NOT appear on the stage sign, on either Saturday or Sunday, despite staff being alerted.
  
• A patron pointed out to me at our last show on Sunday that none of our shows in the schedule were given the "Not For Little Ears" asterix, as they had been on the first 3 weekends. Given the nature of our show (and, hell, our performers!) that's a problem....and might explain why we had so many kids showing up at shows this weekend.
  
  

The Ugly:

• Spoke at length with a couple of the wine wenches, and found out that the reason we were given for the after-hours pub being cancelled was bullshit (surprise, surprise). Honestly, do these stupid motherfuckers really think that we don't talk to people outside of our own discrete little groups? Despite the fact that WE were told that THEY didn't want to have to pay people to be there after closing, THEY were told by the front office that ALL alcohol sales must stop by 6:30, because "management is concerned about the liability of people leaving the festival drunk." Which, of course, is a laughable legal position....and yet another example of a decision made for church reasons by church people. Congrats, kids....apparently we work for the Kansas City Jesus Freak Festival. We're on our way from "tits and beer" to none of either.
  

Stage Show Changes....

So, I just checked the schedule for this weekend (which just went up), and I'm really happy to note that our schedule for the weekend has changed.

Gone is the 11:30 show at Merlin's Berm,

in favor of:

an 11:40 show at the Crown and Rose!

Woot! Yay! Much better stage! No clump of dirt!

Friday Music

I love rainy days....except when I think about performing out at KCRF tomorrow in the resulting mud and humidity. Ah well. Let's listen to some cool music, OK?

First of all, this is my current favorite song. Omaha-based singer-songwriter Conner Oberst records under the name Bright Eyes, and has gotten some serious critical and industry acclaim. He's very young, but is already being compared to a young Dylan, and has people like Emylou Harris guesting on his albums. He's probably best known for his protest song "When the President Talks To God", which he performed on the Tonight Show a few months back. On this track, he takes the basic tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", and runs with it: Bright Eyes - "Road to Joy"

For fans of Lost, here's the music that they featured on the season premiere-- the favorite song of Mr. Lives-in-the-Hatch: Mama Cass - "Make Your Own Kind of Music."

The thing that I like best about New Orleans? The barely-disguised pagan rituals! Nothing brings that across to me more than this song: The Dixie Cups - "Iko Iko" "Look at my King, all dressed in Red...."

Not much to say about this song, other than the fact that I love it. Interesting instrumentation, cheeky lyrics...what's not to love? Space - "Female of the Species."

Another great track from Morphine, who still amaze me at what they achieve with a drummer, a 2-string bass, and a saxaphone. The last time I posted a track from them it was "Buena", this is from the same album and tells a delightful little story about infidelity: Morphine - "Thursday."

When this song first came out, my son Ian was barely 2, and it was his favorite song. When it would come on when I was driving him around, he'd bounce up and down in his car seat and when it got to his favorite word, he'd yell out, with perfect timing: "BEATS!!!" The Chemical Brothers - "Block Rockin' Beats." To this day, one of the best bits of big-beat electronica reminds me of a two-year-old manically bouncing around in the backseat of a Toyota.

My favorite song from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy Cast (Joss Whedon, composer) - "I've Got a Theory." "Bunnies aren't as cute as everybody supposes....

Since I know a lot of you weren't able to get it last week because of the site's server trouble, here's another copy of the best track from the Akira soundtrack: Geinoh Yamashirogumi - "Kaneda."

There you go. Let me know what you think!

Since I doubt we'll see this in the American media....

Next time you hear some Neo-Con claiming that the situation in Iraq isn't fucked beyond repair, think of this:

British Army battling Iraqi Police in Basra

"Heavy clashes erupted Monday between Iraqi police and British soldiers based in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, witnesses said." Our largest ally is under attack from the official police forces of the puppet government that we installed.

No, nothing fucked up about that, nosirree-bob.

KCRF Third Weekend: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good:

• The weather on Saturday was PERFECT, and subsequently brought the patrons out in droves. 12,000+, according to the official tally.
  
• Our 1:20 show on the Robin Hood Adventure Stage on Saturday was our best show yet. We filled the seats (even those that didn't have shade cover), and even had a few folks out in the "Puke-n-Snot crowd overflow hay bales" section. The front row featured a group of high school actors who are currently in rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet, who thought we were the coolest thing since, well...EVER. "These guys ROCKED!", as heard while we picked up our props. The crowd was electric, we had our shit together....everything just came together.
  
• Going out to dinner on Sunday night. An entire section of a Chinese restaurant filled with a stage show, shop keepers, whores, and Sherwood outlaws. Good times. This was the sort of social stuff that I've been missing since the bastards killed the after-pub, and I want more of it.
  
• Mike's propensity for adlibbing material that breaks me. He's a bastard, and I love him for it. This week, his digression about a cousin who "masticated" and is now blind and has hair on his palms....
  
• Vicodin. Sweet, sweet vicodin. Thanks to the kind heart of one of the Sherwood crew, I was relatively pain-free Sunday night.
  

The Bad:

• The weather on Sunday. Rain in the early morning, which ended right before Opening Gate. The rest of the day: Uck. Mud, humidity that leeched the energy out of you, and, as my oldest daughter used to say as a toddler, "Hot as a muffin." (She had heard my ex-wife refer to the temperature as "hot as a mother", and her toddler-brain translated it thusly, which I find to be a nifty simile in its own right) Our first show at Merlin's Berm was atrocious, as we could literally feel the steam coming up out of the damp dirt. Performing in a sauna: Not So Much With the Fun, as it turns out.
  
• Over-did it just a bit on Saturday, and didn't sit as much as I should've....which made Saturday night an oddysey of new experiences in pain and suffering. Lesson learned.
  
• Even on a day with great attendance, our tips haven't been too stellar. Wish that would change, but not sure if there is anything to be done about it.
  

The Ugly:

• They fired the Prince (the one who had come up with the whole "Maestrobation" bit), due to an "anonymous patron email" claiming that he had hit on a 15-year old and given her his phone number. Despite the fact that he was never alone in the lanes. Despite the fact that he didn't carry around a pen or paper. Moral of the story here: Don't piss off the Princess. This is, of course, complete and utter bullshit, since he was the best new performer that they had managed to get. I was really very impressed by him. Ah well.
  
• Stupid motherfuckers who don't understand that a 30 minute show means that you wrap it up after 20-25 minutes or so, which gives you time to pass the hat, gather your crap, and gives the next group scheduled on that stage time to hawk to fill the seats that your no-talent asses have emptied over the course of your show. The next show needs to get their stuff in and done, so that the show that follows THEM can be on time, etc. It's been said during morning meetings twice already, but we have the unfortunate fate of following one group who seems to think it doesn't apply to them. We're sending Laura to talk to them about it, since she's far less likely to deal with the subject in a manner which involves stabbing.

KCRF Third Weekend Weather Update

Just read this over at the Journal-World:

Overnight, the temperature will drop to 55 degrees by early Saturday morning, he said. Saturday's high will be 83 degrees, with clouds increasing Saturday afternoon.

A storm system will come across the state Saturday, bringing the possibility for some isolated showers Saturday afternoon into early Sunday morning, he said. The chances for rain on Saturday start about 4 p.m. or 5 p.m., he said.

"It looks like the best chance for rain will come Saturday night into Sunday," he said. Winds will be from the south at 10 to 15 mph.

Sunday's morning low will be 65, with the high reaching 83 on Sunday afternoon.

Sounds like a great weekend....hope we get some patrons.

Friday Music

Yeah, I know....earlier than usual. Had to get up to drive Laura to work, since I need the car for errands today.
Now, on to this week's selections:

10 years ago, DJ Shadow released his groundbreaking debut album, Endroducing. Absolutely amazing. Shadow is a turntablist--he haunts used-record shops grabbing obscure bits of vinyl (the cover of the album was a simple photo of his fellow crate-divers searching for material). Then, using a sampler, he grabs a bassline from here, a drum loop from there, a horn stab from another source, and spoken-word from yet another, and painstakingly mixes it all into a new whole. Hearing this album for the first time was an epiphany. Here is my favorite track from the album: DJ Shadow - "Building Steam With A Grain of Salt"

I had to share this-- Finntroll is a folk-metal band (yes, that's right) from Finland, whose songs are exclusively about....well, Trolls. Yup-- The Norse Troll legends of their homeland. Pretty much what you'd expect from a band that looks like this, right? This stuff is just too geeky-cool for words. Take this track for example, which starts with Finnish folk music (which sounds vaguely Celtic)...but then rrrRRRAUGH! OUT COMES THE METAL!!! Finntroll - "Trollhammaren." Troll power, baby.

Alias fans might recognize this track from the first season. It's a nice bit of spy-beat trip-hop, all cool electronic stabs and twangy 007 guitar: Supreme Beings of Leisure - "Under The Gun." Makes me want to hop into an Aston Martin, sip a vodka martini and go fight some ninjas. Russian COMMIE ninjas.

Robbie Williams did an album full of jazzy standards called Swing When You're Winning, which I've talked about before (when I posted the duet he did with Nicole Kidman). This is another great track from that album, a hilarious duet with Saturday Night Live alumnus Jon Lovitz ("Yeah....That's the Ticket...."): Robbie Williams (with Jon Lovitz) - "Well Did You Evah!" What a swell party this is....

Dead Can Dance are an odd group who defy categories...I've seen them classified as goth, as electronic, as world, and even as rock. This is my favorite track by the group, from the album The Serpent's Egg: Dead Can Dance - "Ullyses."

My favorite anime film of all time, Akira, has a brilliant soundtrack, by the Japanese musical collective, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, which combines electronics, traditional gamelan music (wooden xylophones, gongs, etc) and choral arrangements, sounding simultaneously ancient and futuristic. This is the opening track from the film, which played against the images of the neon-shrouded streets of Neo-Tokyo and the chase of the bike gangs. Geinoh Yamashirogumi - "Kaneda."

There you have it. Only 6 tracks this week (I've been busy...sorry). More next week.