Family History

My daughter, one of them, age 35, is getting ready to visit distant relatives in Australia: distant geographically, and in every other way. She is unmarried, and, apparently wants to find out why. Pretty good idea to visit relatives and see how they did with the marriage bond. She has promised to have a photo taken of herself in front of her grandmothers grave on a beautiful hill overlooking Sydney Harbor, so deep and blue. She said she wants an amusing shot of her apparently standing at her own grave: the names are identical. Can't give the name because of the stupid AOL trolls who think it their duty to dig up old bones of the people they hate, them, and their relatives. Fascist pigs.

My daughter has learned a lot already through my brothers, and or their wives, depending on who's dead and who is not dead. One fascinating turn I learned of very recently is that one proud, establishment family related by marriage, has fallen on hard times. They owned their town's only department store. That store no longer exists. I'm afraid the high and mighty had a great fall. God likes us to evade hubris. 

Barry 

 

 

Acting theory

Modern acting theory probably began with Stanislavsky's An Actor Prepares.  On the anniversary (Centennial?) of Stanislavsky's death the only American Russia invited to attend was Lee Strasberg co-founder of The Group Theater, and The Actors Studio.

Cut to the 1960-70s (somewhere in there) 10th floor Carnegie Hall, NYC.  Strasberg's acting class, the one you paid for, not the free Actors Studio, Lee is chatting with early arrivals about the student, female, who gave him credit for her finally being able to conceive a baby. No, not that Lee was the father (athough he did father a child when in his 70's - his Oscar Nomination also came in 1976  for The Godfather ll ) but that she declared in class she learned to relax enough so that all of her body and mind was present with her in bed. Lee didn't necessarily believe her, he just reported what she'd said. Wink. And, he was serious. He was in the habit, in class, and at the Studio,  of off-handedly, sometims in fun, telling a theater-related anecdote or opinion. He said for example that The Catholic church was "Good theater." (It requires what acting requires: belief!)  He opined that Shakespeare had a mental collapse late in life.

Some theater people, not enough in my opinion, take the so called 'Method', and the study of acting seriously. Lee's son David works at The Strasberg Institute on Santa Monica Blvd in LA. On one of my visits to that building, to watch a play, I found on the counter near the entrance a copy of an essay on acting taken from the Encyclopedia Brittanica listed under ACTING. It was written by Lee Strasberg.

Barry

  http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

 

 

........................in talking about

..............acting in life, as well as acting onstage, I should have avoided any chance of voting  on Kirk Douglas taking place.

To be honest, when I start a blog entry I often have

no idea where I'm going with it.  Better, I figure, than writing about nothing....

 

But since you bring it up, I'll give an example of Kirk

Douglas the atrociously bad actor. His portrayal of

Vincent Van Gogh is a perfect example of failure to

play a character, and instead give vent to an hysterical sketch

of how Van Gogh is perceived as an ear-hacking madman,

instead of as a religious character trying to find God in Art.

99% of the time IMO Van Gogh was probably a quiet, gentle soul

much loved by many people.

 

Onscreen what we see is Kirk Douglas and another scenery

ripping, over-ambitious, over-the-top 'results' actor  competing

with him, Anthony Quinn. John Houseman should have known better than to let those two destroy the credibility of the characters'

relationship.

 

But again I really didn't want to talk about professional acting and

certainly not Hollywood acting, but instead acting as a human skill of great value in ordinary life.

 

Barry

 

  http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

No subject

What do you think about acting? As I'm hunting and pecking here much-aged Kirk Douglas is selling his fourth autobiography on Larry King Live. He's seriously speech impaired, and wisely promotes the acting of his son rather than have anything to say about his own acting (or the lack of it.) He's 90.  For his sake I hope he secretly, or not so secretly, knows he couldn't act at all. All he did was parade his various mental imbalances, anger, and pathological hatred of all people. If he did kiss anyone on stage, which I doubt, or of course on screen, I bet he actually bit them. When asked to kiss professionally I bet he said, "Oh no,  couldn't!"

In other words he's the extreme opposite of the aged Marlon Brando who not only kissed onscreen, but he also kissed Larry King, live, on Larry King Live. On the lips while smiling! Way to go Marlon! Good actors are good kissers. In short, a good actor kisses good, sleeps well, is good at sex, lives long, reproduces (Brando of course had children all over) and genuinely applauds other good actors. 

Odd that actors have such diverse reputations. Lots of successful people, with no relationship with theater, the movies or acting, are very good actors. Life seems to require that we be good actors, regardless of our professions. How's that for a novel point of view??

Barry

That is, perhaps, acting is not lying, it's telling the truth.

  

 

Sight and Sound

Do you respond to the notion that some music can be "seen"?  Or, phrased another way, is music complimented by being told it's "visible"?  The other day I was startled to see and hear a California Lexus Dealer's TV commercial put forward the idea that seeing a new Lexus was like listening to Beethoven's Chorale (Symphony #9.)  Excerpts played over and under the 'sell.'

Some tired advertsing copy writer must have read, and misunderstood, my journal entries about Symphony #9. I mean how much classical music have you heard played with a TV auto commercial? I think they should have hired me to write their copy. For one thing, a metaphor is stronger than a simile. And how on earth is a Lexus "like" music? It's not never no-how ever like Beethoven, and saying so is like trying to gain favor  by name dropping.  But then it is all too apparent that TV commercials will do anything legal to draw attention to themselves.

What the advertiser got pretty much for free was use of the world's best music without having to pay royalties. The legalities of same are as opaque to me as the mystery of how music is written, rehearsed, heard, and recorded; wouldn't the orchestra have a say about whether their performance could be used to advertise an automobile?! 

I've nothing against Lexus, advertising, or similies.

Just in case that copyrighter reads this again I have a suggestion: find out why an infant won't cry while riding in a Lexus, but will howl its head off trying to sleep while riding in a Mercedes Benz.

Barry

 

 

 

   

 

Rambles

I want to keep in journal-contact with the fine friends I've made here even though life (four young children in particular) keeps me from the keyboard most of the time. But anyway, here goes.

Our baby thrives, that's the most obvious good news. We do so love him mightily. The photos I've taken often don't seem sharp, a product of my too-cheap digital camera (my first) and partly because I don't understand its functions. Everyone here posts splendid, sharp pix shaming my paltry efforts so far. I love being able to live off my 2 GB memory card and being able to go to the CVS drugstore and print up the latest for 15 cents a frame if I print 50 plus.  But even there there's a problem: one Kodak self-printing machine is far sharper than their huge machines that look like they came from Detroit.  Elsa, my wife, has new photos taped to the refrigerator; Elsa makes-do: what a woman!!  Holy smokes she shouldda done better than me....

Mini-drama. I mailed a rude letter to a relative by marriage who lives (lived as it turnd out) in Australia. No problem the postmaster forwarded the letter to another city, and another relative by marriage. Astounding!  I got a reply, with info on who's dead, from "Susan" who informed me she married into that family. She had opened and read my letter, as well as perused the outside of the envelope which I'd decorated with explosive verbiage, and, God Bless her, returned all of my posting in her envelope which was minus a return address. This latter I attribute to her not wanting to enrage her husband. Ah, but the cancellation stamp is partially legible showing "Wool..." which could mean Woolongong. (Woolamaloo?! Ha!).

My original letter was sent with a newspaper clipping about the world's chagrin and astonishment at the vile rudeness of the present Australian World Champion cricket team. The team actually deserves a thashing for their rotten bad sportsmanship. It's embarrassing, low class like American message board trolls. One troll I've now unmasked has lived all his life on inherited money: no wonder he turned out to be a talentless lout and sadist!  He gets his jollies from tormenting me about my poverty!  Ha ha ha ha ha  ha ha........      I know another one of those from colleges days: that one lives in mortal terror that someone might take his money away! ha ha ha. Actually I know two of those, and from the same college. No!  Three. One died of AIDS.  Money couldn't save him. Pity. He was kind. Stood up for me. Literally. That poor little rich boy played a Southern general who dies in Ted Turner's GETTYSBERG. His name appears in the end credits, small white letters on a huge black background, memorialized bcause he too had died.

Oh dear.

What's it all about Alfie?

It doesn't pay to give God a raspberry. That's for sure, that's for damn sure.

Luv ya....

Barry