And We Shall March

Tickets Now On Sale For Saul Williams & Douglas Kearney @ The Geffen Nov. 3, 2008 (And Also A Bit Of Joe Frank "Just An Ordinary Man")

Yeah, so I was going to let the Hamilton High/Octavia Butler sit here at the top of the blog for a while while I'm busy elsewhere, but you amazing people I don't actually know who read this site took care of that in less than a day. Wow. You rule and I have always deeply loved you always for realz no baby I mean it.

So here's info & eye candy originally set to run next week to hold down the fort for a bit!

 
Douglas Kearney and Saul Williams in performance at The Geffen Theater on Nov. 3 @ 7:30 p.m.!

Since the Geffen's website is actually made of ass, you're not going to be able to tell that Saul Williams and Douglas Kearney are going to do some sort of show there next month. What you're going to have to do is call the box office at 310.280.5454, and after waiting on hold for a bit - how long perhaps depends upon the phases of the moon - you might have a conversation similar to this slightly reconstructed exchange from earlier in the week:

BGF: I would like to purchase a ticket to the Nov. 3 Williams & Kearney performance.
Box Office Lady: Those are also available on our website for your convenience. <note:  this said after being on hold for 23 minutes. - the editors>
BGF: How?
Box Office Lady: It's part of the Readings & Conversations series.
BGF: There's nothing on your website that says readings and conversations.
Box Office Lady: ... Really? Did you look at the entry for Red Hen Press?
BGF: There's nothing on your website, that I can find, that says Red Hen Press. Or Saul Williams. Or Douglas Kearney.
Box Office Lady: ... Did you try the search function?
BGF: There is no search function on the Geffen website. That is immediately obvious, anyway. Not even in the teeny links at the bottom of the page.
Box Office Lady: ... Really?
BGF: <with obviously clenched teeth and a tone implying bitchihavehadjustaboutenoughoftalkingtoyou> I have not been on hold for 23 minutes waiting to lie to whoever got around to picking up the phone.

With that, she finally stopped asking me fucking questions about the website of the place where she fucking works and took my goddamned money.

Later, at home, with a comforting mug of Whaler's, I decided to wander more on the site, trying to figure out if it was just Me because the Box Office Lady sounded so very Certain that Everything's  On The Website For Your Convenience. After I don't know how long of Type-A ocd clicking, I discovered that if you click 'purchase tickets' up comes a vast Ticketmaster list. Scroll through those, the only entry for Nov. 3 is called "Language Uncoiled." Click on that, and you get a phenomenally unhelpful entry void of the names 'Saul Williams' or 'Douglas Kearney' let alone 'Red Hen Press' or, need it be said, 'Readings & Conversations'.

What makes it all even funnier is that the chatter under 'purchase tickets' reads "Know which play you'd like to see? Click below for quick purchase." So you have to know that you're looking for something that's *not* a play, that's part of a series *not* mentioned in any way on the main website, that it is called "Language Uncoiled," a title *not* mentioned at all on the main website, and you have to know the date. Because the ONLY WAY to purchase tickets for this event on the website is by knowing the date of the show, and letting Process Of Elimination take it from there.

Should I mention that, according to Ticketmaster, these tickets have been on sale since AUGUST?!!! Two months of onsale and the Geffen website hasn't bothered to mention it? The only reason I started calling at the end of last month was because it hit me that it's September, the show is in November and that means tickets must be available by now. Maybe the Geffen is the kind of theater set up for subscribers, and not really for folks who just want to pop in for a while every now and then... 

So what I'm saying is that there is zero on the Geffen's site to tell you that SAUL WILLIAMS IS PERFORMING LIVE IN LOS ANGELES AT AN INTIMATE AND LOVELY SPACE ALONG WITH DOUGLAS KEARNEY. So if you happened to find out about it by accident over the summer and thus have been monitoring the Geffen's site waiting for word of tix? That's not going to help you.

What other helpful advice can I give? Oh! Do not trust the 'call back' option that will be pushed upon you while on hold. Because the REASON I waited it out on the phone is because the first TWO TIMES I called to get through the result was nada. Once, I got no call back. The other time they responded not with a call, but with an email. Two days later. On a Sunday. Which I pulled in the wee hours of Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I did go to the Joe Frank "Just An Ordinary Man" experience at the new Largo/old Coronet. I can't possibly write it up like the almost but not quite write-up of  his last show, but here's an article about it. I'll just share that at the end I was in tears and also there was a hottie seven-piece band, a hottie & very flexible dancer and smokin' hot Julie Christensen w/vocals live onstage!!!  And also that bald guy who mans the gate will possibly physically remove you from the premises and stomp on your ass in the alley if you don't turn off your cell before the show starts, a mindset of which I highly approve. One more show on Oct. 8 is scheduled...dunno if it's sold out. Also don't know if they'll extend the run as was done last time out. But if you have a chance to go see this, GO.

It is amazing what those Largo people have done to redecorate the Coronet. I was walking around with my jaw hanging open. There was a bar! But I didn't have any money, so I went home right after and collapsed.

Which is what I'm off to do now. Wotta week it's been.

Also? I think I have figured out the New Muppets thing. More on that later.

 

Ricky Jay @ The Geffen: No, Really ... WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT TATTOO????

Recap! 

I went to see Ricky Jay perform. Insert knock me over with a truck here. Though this involved sacrificing both NIN's upcoming show at the Forum and a even more of my Geek Vegas food & drink stash to pull it off, I have no regrets. 

The next morning I realized something possibly happened during the show that was so subtle I didn't realize it until the next day. Either that, or my mind is just messing with me again and what I *think* happened actually didn't. But that man is so good I'm inclined to think It Happened, but I didn't pick up on it while in the theater.

On the off-chance that somebody who plans to go to the show wanders past these posts, I'm going to do this with a few spoilers as I can manage. Apologies for the Vague.

There are two tattoo incidents in the show. One is a tattoo referenced as part of a wonderful old-school story he spins out. The other tattoo is physical, revealed with much humor and deliberate obviousness during the second half. It is the second tattoo that is at issue.

After he showed the physical tattoo, he moved on. We, the audience, went with him, meaning that after he's done talking about it, we're no longer paying attention to the tattoo. Especially after the clockwork doll thing, not to mention the vegetables and fruit appearing out of god knows where. You can say we had other things to pay attention to, but in truth it's more along the lines of Jay *owns* the people in the audience, and despite best efforts that audience will see *nothing* he without his granting permission. If I were allowed to use shorthand cliches such as When You Sit In Ricky Jay's Audience You Are Ricky Jay's Bitch, I would do so here. But I've got six more months before I'm allowed to say things like that again, so I can't. 

Anyways. What happened to that tattoo?! 

That's all I'm gonna say. I need an answer! I'm putting this here in hope that down the road an attendee of the current run will come across this post. Perhaps, unlike me, they did not distract easily and so tracked what happened to that tattoo between the time it showed up and the time the show ended. That person will Take Pity on Moi and, via the email addy handily provided over there on the siderail, drop a note telling me if I *actually* saw what, when pondering the day after, I *think* I saw.

It can happen! Two years ago I wrote about a woman who had a very unpleasant experience at The Black Panel held at Geek Vegas. One year later she happened across that post and contacted me. I have the patience of Job when necessary. I'll wait.

What happened to that tattoo?!

Ricky Jay: Too Distracted By The Amazing To (Immediately) Succumb To The Teary Bits

So. Ricky Jay.

As directed by David Mamet.

In a 90-seat theater.

<swoon>

<thud>

Don't think there's a point in attempting a write-up of a sold out show because it's not like you can go check it out later in the run. How I got in at the last minute, long after the sold was out, is a Kitchen-Aid Mixer Mystery. So I'll give you this conversation held among strangers wandering in a stunned pack back to the parking garage.

"But WHERE did the vegetables come from?!"

"But where did the vegetables COME from?!"

"But where did the VEGETABLES come from?!"

"Actually, only two were vegetables. One was a lime." <odd silence from the group> "But yeah, you know? The FUCK with the vegetables?!" (this one was Me.)

"EXACTLY."

Let's just say I was not the only on in the audience to go O MY GOD when the vegetable thing happened. I was just the loudest.

(Update, next day: You know what hit me in the shower the next morning? What happened to the tattoo??? Update II, a couple of hours past lunch: The what happened to the tattoo??? question has been making my head hurt all day. Update III, after home from work, four loads at the 24-hour drug dealer laundromat, brief grocery shopping and the trauma of the Beverly Center <shudder> because only now did I remember that I am in desperate need of a pair of black pants but am too busy with other people's sewing projects to make some and H&M has that $5/$10/$20 sale going on: I'm gonna give it a stand-alone post.)

It was such a fantastic show! There were a couple of points when you could hear everyone in the room gasp, and so many when you could hear the central air running because the entire room was dead silent watching him with WTF wonder. You hear about performers who have 'timing'? Jay has astounding timing when it comes to manipulating silence. When the curtain zipped open and he walked onto the way coolio set, it was a couple of minutes before he said a word...just looked at us while rolling up the sleeves of his suit jacket and then opening up a sealed deck of cards. That said, Jay uses language wonderfully - he was as much fun to listen to as he was to watch. I don't know how much of what he was talking about was made up and how much of it was fact-based (of the many historical magicians/gamblers he talked about I only recognized two names, but I was rather Proud of Moiself at catching all but one of the poetry references) but who cares because his patter was both entertaining *and* educational. He was also extremely funny.

I did get the sense that something was up with the blonde woman he pulled onstage during the second half of the show. When she got up she tossed a look at a couple sitting on the far (stage right) end of the front row and they all had a huge laugh. I don't know who that couple was, but everyone in the front row paid $250 for the privilege, the man got double-takes in the lobby, and while waiting for the curtain to come up the two of them practically had a receiving line. See, during the first half of the show, when Jay made his first call for volunteers, he said he didn't want anyone he knew to volunteer. Later during the first half when he was going down the row having people pick cards, he stopped at this couple and asked a woman sitting *behind* them to pick a card. So put it all together and the guy in that couple was probably a Somebody (and a Somebody powerful enough to walk around with a neon green sweater knotted over his shoulders in 80s High Preppy Style as if that was normal), and someone Jay and the blonde woman knows.

Down the road won't be surprised if I find out by accident who this guy was and laugh at how stupid I was not to recognize him. I have a long history of failing to recognize celebrities, starting with my first week in California, when I was a grocery store in Palm Springs and talking to the woman who played Brenda Walsh without a clue until the checkout lady said do you know who that was? She never talks to *anybody*! Last month I was at Amoeba standing behind Sara Silverman and her giant bodyguard, completely clueless until I noticed folks doing the stop/stare/photo/autograph request thing and asked one of them who she was. Though I did recognize James Cromwell that time in the Whole Foods down on Fairfax, that was only after wondering why all those little kids were staring at this guy in awe while their embarrassed moms were trying to shoo them away. That guy is *really* tall. You gotta see it in real life to get the impact. He's like Magic Johnson tall.

On the other hand, I recognized Kelly Link instantly on the floor of BEA, even though all I've ever seen is an author mugshot.

This was only my second time at the Geffen, in part because I dislike that part of town, but mainly because they don't have a Hot Tix or similar program and so the whole place is out of my price range. I'd forgotten about the well-stocked bar in the lobby and the pretty twinkle lights in the courtyard. It's a nice space. I can't wait to go back in the fall. Before the show I got to talking with a guy who flew down from the Bay Area for Jay's performance, which he found out about by accident and a couple comprised of third- and seventh-generation Los Angeles natives. (!!) They saw Jay when he last did this show a decade ago and we all got to talking about various local Mamet shows we'd seen.

Back home, Cuddle Kitty thought the ticket was tasty:

I think I'll make a shadowbox! This ticket & playbill, toss in the ripped playing card that black magician from Alaska let me keep after his set at the Magic Castle a few years ago, and add the teeny scrap of cloth alleged to be from one of the capes of Blackstone, Jr. That'll make a nice one.

Man, I love this town so very much. Never thought I'd ever get to see Jay in live performance but figured if the chance ever came up it would happen here. The only thing that would have made it all perfect would have been the hours-long (possibly days long) geekout conversation with The Departed going over every single detail. I miss not being able to bring things like this back to him so he could enjoy them, too. I can get used to the rest of life without him, but I will probably never get over the whole Not Fair of it all.