Must See Theatre: Roller Derby Saved My Soul

Three years ago, Vicki and I took in Hamilton Fringe and one of our favourite of its shows was called Roller Derby Saved My Soul.  Its creator and star, Nancy Kenny, was a delight to watch as she brought the two female leads to life in the form of a pair of very different sisters.  Her script was full of pop culture references to Buffy, Xena, Wonder Woman and other iconic figures, and the physicality of Ms Kenny's performance was amazing... she actually does a good portion of the play on roller skates, motoring around the stage at a good clip as the story, and her derby skills, develop before our eyes.

This summer, Nancy has brought Roller Derby Saved My Soul to London, as well as several upcoming Fringe Festivals, including Toronto and Montreal.  I was fortunate enough to get a lunch date with her today so I could ask her a few questions about how the play came to be and what it's like to do a one-woman show on roller skates.  She told me she'd been inspired by seeing a one-man show back in 2009 and had decided, more or less on the spot, to write something of that sort for herself.  Not too long after that resolution she happened to see a newspaper article about a local roller derby league and was intrigued by what she read.  Several months of in-arena research and rough draft-writing later, Roller Derby Saved My Soul was born.

The play has been tweaked in some interesting ways since we saw it in 2011, but it's still the tale of Amy and June, two sisters with almost nothing in common.  And it continues to overflow with laugh-out-loud moments, powerful stunts and a terrific all-round performance by Ms. Kenny.  I was able to get out to see the new and updated version last week while Vicki was busy doing some volunteer work, and we're going to see it together later this week.  It's just that good!

And don't let the title fool you: while RDSMS celebrates the world of roller derby in its own funny way, you definitely don't have to be a fan of that sport to thoroughly enjoy Nancy Kenny's creation.  Everything you need to know about it comes out over the course of the hour, and (as Bill Cosby used to say), if you're not careful, you might just learn something while you're at it!

There are three performances of the show still to come this week before the tour moves on:

Tonight @ 8:30
Thu night @ 10:00
Fri night @  7:00

All of them are at the McManus Studio (downstairs at the Grand Theatre on Richmond) and tickets are $10 at the door, although you'll also need to spend $6 on a Fringe Button (also at the door) if it's your first Fringe show of the year (all the proceeds from the ticket sales go to the performers, so the button money pays for the venues and other expenses).  Even at $16 per person, this show will over-deliver, big-time, on the laughs and thrills, trust me.

Don't miss this opportunity to see a truly wonderful one-hour show!
 

Roller Derby Will Save Your Soul Next June

Two years ago, Vicki and I went on the road to take in Hamilton Fringe Festival, and when we came home I wrote about all the plays we'd seen there, even going so far as to provide our personal rankings for each.  Very near the top of both our lists was a wonderful one-woman performance called Roller Derby Saved My Soul, featuring Nancy Kenny.  Ms. Kenny was funny, poignant and totally engaging in RDSMS, and I've hoped ever since that she'd someday be able to bring her wonderful act here to London.

Well, as she blogged about yesterday, it's happening!  She's doing a multi-city tour next summer, and she's kicking it off with a stop here during London Fringe (June 4 - 15).  I'll be sure to promote this great show again closer to the start of the festival itself, but I wanted to get the word out nice and early.  Any fans of humour and pop culture will definitely not want to miss RDSMS in 2014.

The Fringe Experience

One of the best shows we saw at Hamilton Fringe a couple years ago was Roller Derby Saved My Soul, a one-woman (on skates!) extravaganza featuring Nancy Kenny.  We subsequently bumped into Nancy at London Fringe through her friendship with PeterJ and got a chance to chat with her for a bit, and then I started following her on Twitter.  She just finished doing her show at Edmonton Fringe, and blogged about what it was like.  I found her description of the festival fascinating, and really wished Vicki and I could've gone to another Fringe festival this summer. Hopefully Nancy will bring RDSMS to London one of these years and I can promote the Hell out of it to all of you out there.

Dr Emma Who

Yes, that's a sonic screwdriver in her hand, which she just received on this, her 19th birthday!  Some kids dream of being given a 40 ouncer or case of beer on their 19th, but our girl was absolutely giddy at the sight of Doctor Who's second-favourite device (after the TARDIS).

At The Intersection Of Music And Sci Fi

I was doing a little research on Don Maclean's epic '70s hit, "American Pie" today, and was quite surprised to learn that the musician has managed to keep mum on most of the references he wrote into it over 40 years ago.  That sort of thing seems almost unheard of to me when it comes to pop culture these days.

Anyway, one of the sites I visited was "20 Things You Might Not Know About Don Maclean's American Pie," a very worthwhile stop on my journey.  While most of the items were fascinating, I have to say that far and away the most rewarding one was # 18, the Weird Al Yankovic mashup of Star Wars Episode I and "American Pie," which I didn't even know existed before today.  If you've never seen it, you have to watch this thing of beauty!




I especially love the chorus:

"My my
 This here Anakin guy
 Maybe Vader, someday later, now he's just a small fry
 And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye
 Sayin', 'Soon I'm gonna be a Jedi... soon I'm gonna be a Jedi.'

I have an inexplicable affection for those 3 Star Wars prequels that most members of my generation seem to lack, and I have to admit that just watching that video made me want to put Eps I, II and III into the DVD player once again...

All that notwithstanding, if you love "American Pie" (as I do) then you should check out the other 19 items, as well.

When Insider Jargon Enters The Mainstream

I have to admit that I still get a bit of a thrill when some hitherto obscure comic book fact - say, the origin of Captain America's strength stemming from the World War II 'Super Soldier' project - becomes common knowledge (thanks to a popular movie, in that example).

Here's a similar but different sort of example, coming from economist and Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman:

"I very much agree with Avent and Smith that Cowen, who worries that such a policy would largely lead to inflation in Germany rather than a boom in Portugal, is completely missing the point; that’s a feature, not a bug."

See what he did at the end there?  He used an expression that's been prevalent in our software industry for decades, and which has apparently now become recognizable and accessible to the general public: it's not a bug, it's a feature!

I love that sort of thing.

Use The Force, Harry

Emma just brought this to my attention as a fine start to a Monday morning:

I know this has been around for awhile, but it still delights me because of all the geek buttons it pushes. It's like it was genetically-modified to cause the greatest possible consternation within the typical nerd mind with the fewest possible characters and images. My hat goes off to whoever came up with it.

Needle Drops Explained

When I come across something like this, I can't help but want to share:

"In theatrical and television production, a ‘needle drop’ is industry jargon for the insertion of licensed music into a scene on a specific cue."

[Via a Newsarama article.]

Your Trivia Answers

Thanks to Vicki, Tammy, Boneman and Jimmy Hinckley for playing our Trivia Game this holiday season (and shame on the rest of you who didn't!). They all did well, given the eclectic nature of the questions. Jimmy picked up 8 Blog Points for his 16 correct answers, Tammy and Vicki each got 7 BPs and Boneman wasn't far behind with 6 BPs (including a small bonus for making me laugh). Leaderboard standings should be updated momentarily.

For those who'd like to know the actual answers, I've provided them below:

1) Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, told his aides he was "hiking the Appalachian trail" while he headed down south to Argentina for a tryst with his girlfriend there (his wife would later leave him). (2 of the 4 respondents got that right, to some degree)

2) It was the Texas Rangers, formerly owned by George "Dubba Ya" Bush, who lost to the Giants in this year's World Series. (2 right answers)

3) DC Comics' Green Lantern was front and centre for this year's Blackest Night event, just in time to get prepped for his leading man role in next year's GL movie. (2 right answers)

4) I'm currently - almost literally so - playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. Too easy! (4 right answers!)

5) It was poor Rascal who had to be put down this fall. (3 right answers. "Patches", Boneman? Really?!?)

6) I currently have just over 28,100 comics, so 28,000 is the winning answer here. (only 1 right answer to be found)

7) Pi is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. (4 right-ish answers, although part marks were deducted for misspellings of "pie" and "pii")

8) KTD = Kill to Death, as everyone knows who reads this blog. (4 right)

9) It was Roy "Doc" Halladay who pitched a no-hitter this October in his first ever postseason appearance, of course. (1 right)

10) Arsenic and old lace go together, but who knew that arsenic could be a building block for Life? We do, now! Well, some of us do, anyway. (1 right)

11) 2011 is the year of Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America movies. (2 right)

12) Robin's secret identity is apparently very secret, as no one knew that Damian Wayne (illegitimate son of Bruce Wayne) is currently wearing the costume. (0 right)

13) Back to back shutouts for the respondents here, as nobody seemed aware that the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is just around the corner, since it went down in April 1912! (0 right)

14) Chris Nolan's first film, which Vicki and I watched not too long ago, is called Following and is quite the weird little gem. (1 right-ish, although Vicki got the title partly wrong)

15) Only one Star Wars fan knew that The Hidden Fortress is the Kurasawa film that George Lucas borrowed so heavily from for Episode IV. (1 right)

16) Branding apparently works: everyone knows who Brown is: UPS! (4 right)

17) I guess only a comic fan would remember that Tony Stark's father's name is Howard, although after he appears in next year's Captain America film, maybe more will. (0 right)

18) The Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, despite being blogged about here not long ago, confounded all but one of our respondents. To quote Boneman, it's "when you are in a sitcom for one episode, and only ever referred to from then on" (hey, close enough!). (1 right)

19) Not surprisingly, nobody recalled that Pedro Martinez started off as a Los Angeles Dodger, before being traded to the Expos and making his name there. (0 right)

20) On the other hand, everyone knew that James Ford took the name "Sawyer" after a con man by that name caused the murder-suicide of his parents. (4 right)

21) Only one true film buff named Roman "Hey little girl, wanna party?" Polanski as the director of Chinatown. (1 right)

22) Much to my amazement, no one tagged 1919 as the year of the Black Sox! (Maybe we'll get another scandal of similar proportion in 2020?) (0 right)

23) Probably the toughest question of the lot involved the given name of Captain "Sully" Sullenberger. Jimmy came closest with "Chester", for which he got part marks. Right answer? Chesley! (1 right-ish)

24) Surely only surly Sean Connery could deliver the line about bringing a knife to a gun fight, as two of our respondents knew. (2 right)

25) Steve Rogers has better name recognition than I'd expected, as everyone ID'd him as the Star Spangled Avenger, Captain America! (4 right)

26) Who could ever forget the 5 notes that the aliens played for us in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Well, apparently some could, as only half the people got that right! (2 right)

27) Almost everyone (surprisingly) knew that Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird! (3 right)

28) When do we get a leap year? In any year that's divisible by 4 but not divisible by 100 unless it's also divisible by 400, of course! So 1944, 1996 and 2000 each got an extra day for their troubles! (3 right)

29) What kind of people don't remember that it was Doomsday that killed Superman back in 1992? Apparently your kind of people, as no one got this right! (0 right)

30) And last but not least, it's of course my lovely wife Vicki and my wonderful walking buddy Julie who join me for frequent Movie Nights, as most of you knew. (3 right)

I hope you all enjoyed the trivia, even if you didn't take part!

Holiday 2010 Trivia (3000 Posts Later!)

Hey look, it's my 3000th blog post!!!

As promised, here are some trivia questions to help us all celebrate the milestone. Please answer from memory, rather than looking things up. Provide your answers in the comments. I've turned comment moderation on, and will hold off publishing any relating to this contest until after it closes, at midnight on Wednesday, December 22, 2010. If nothing else, this should provide some pre-holiday distraction and shake things up a bit on the Blog Point Leader Board.

And so, without further ado, here are 30 questions in random order, spanning a wide range of topics. Each correct answer will be awarded a 1/2 Blog Point:

1) Which American politician inspired the recent euphemism for stepping out on your spouse, now immortalized as "hiking the Appalachian Trail"?

2) Which team lost the 2010 World Series?

3) Which DC Comics superhero was at the center of the company's Blackest Night event in 2010?

4) What video game am I currently spending much of my free time playing?

5) What was the name of the pet that Vicki and I had to euthanize earlier this year?

6) To the nearest thousand, how many comic books do I currently own?

7) What symbol represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter?

8) What does KTD stand for in First Person Shooter games?

9) Who began his professional postseason career in 2010 with a no-hitter?

10) What element surprisingly formed the basis of a new life form discovered in Mono Lake recently?

11) What three big name superhero movies are scheduled to be released in 2011?

12) What is the secret identity of the Robin currently appearing in the main Batman titles published by DC Comics?

13) In what month and year did the Titanic sink?

14) What is the name of Christopher Nolan's first feature film?

15) Which Kurasawa classic is said to have provided inspiration to George Lucas in creating Star Wars?

16) Never mind figuring out "What Brown can do for you?"... who the heck is Brown?

17) What is Tony Stark's father's given name?

18) What is the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome?

19) On which team did Pedro Martinez begin his Major League Baseball career?

20) Why does James Ford go by the name "Sawyer" on the TV show Lost?

21) Who directed the 1974 film Chinatown?

22) In what year did the infamous Chicago Black Sox scandal occur?

23) What is Captain "Sully" Sullenberger's given name?

24) Which Academy Award winning actor slammed his on-screen opponent for bringing a knife to a gun fight?

25) What is the superhero name that Steve Rogers usually operates under?

26) How many notes comprised the initial musical message offered up by the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

27) Who wrote the novel To Kill a Mockingbird?

28) Which of the following were leap years: 1900, 1944, 1962, 1986, 1996, 2000?

29) Who killed Superman back in 1992?

30) Who are the two women with whom I enjoy Movie Nights?

Good luck to all!

Today's Homework Assignment: The Chuck Cunningham Syndrome

I'll going to come right out and admit it: I love when I learn some new, completely-useless bit of trivia.

In this particular case, it was a reference to the "Chuck Cunningham Syndrome", which I just had to find out more about. Cue the Internet, and I quickly had my answer: he was the older brother to Richie Cunningham on Happy Days who headed upstairs at the end of one season and then was never heard of again!

That's so awesome! I think the same thing happened to my "girlfriend in the States" when I was a teenager...

Cultural Shifts: E-Mail Vs Texting

I'm old enough to remember when having a colour TV in your home meant you were something special, and can still vividly recall the excitement when we got our first. Telephones were pretty much standard household appliances even back then, but my mother lived through that particular revolution. When e-mail first entered my life, it was strictly a work thing, as Vicki and I didn't even have a computer in our house until somewhere in the mid-1990s. Then we cruised through a period where only old people and Luddites didn't have e-mail, to the point where I began to rely upon its asynchronous method of communication as a primary means of keeping in touch with friends and family where I didn't need an immediate response. Instant messaging took that a step further, but generally required both parties to be engaged at the same time (synchronous communication), making it suitable for slightly different scenarios. We all learned fairly easily when to use which.

Now, however, I've run into the divide between those who use e-mail versus those who text. Two different (female) friends of mine have e-mail accounts but rarely check them (often going days, or even weeks, between accesses). Because I'm so accustomed to people who respond to e-mails within minutes or, at worst, hours, this has become a growing source of frustration as my particular model of communication hasn't been fitting well with theirs. Lately I've thought that perhaps I just need to finally break down and buy a cell phone (never owned one; hadn't planned to ever own one) but over this weekend I went looking for alternatives. And I've found something that seems like it may work.

Who knew that it was possible to send e-mails to text message accounts? Well, I certainly didn't, but it seemed like a simple enough feature to offer, conceptually. So I started searching for articles about it. Sure enough, many cell carriers offer (in some cases, free of charge) a service whereby you can send an e-mail to ##########@blahblahblah.com, where the ########## is the cell phone # and the blahblahblah domain name is some variation on the company's regular e-mail domain extension. Different services have different limitations, such as whether they truncate your e-mail down to 150 characters, send multiple ones, or do something else, for example. But the bottom line is that I can now e-mail these texting-focused friends of mine and have some reasonable hope of them seeing it in pseudo-realtime. All for the low upfront cost of a little bit of time spent researching the problem. So maybe I can hold off on buying that iPhone 4, after all!

A New Term?

I may simply be the last person on the planet to encounter this new word, but I was struck by its appropriateness when I came across it this morning:

screenager

I assume it's a play on teenager with the added dimension of reflecting just how much screen time the current generation gets (TV, Internet, video games, text messages). As I mentioned in my Math book, one study said that kids were averaging something like 7 hours a day in front of screens. This word may therefore be way more applicable than we'd like to admit.

Funny Stuff You May Not Know About

Over the weekend, Amazon.com inexplicably listed hundreds of comic book-related items for ridiculously low prices. It was mostly Disney Comics (nee Marvel Comics) material, with items that normally go for anywhere from $30 to $100 appearing with prices of $8.49 to $14.99.

In the Old World, this might have happened, been noticed by the odd person, and then eventually corrected days or weeks later, once someone at Amazon realized that they were losing money on these items. However, in the shiny New World of 2010, Rich Johnston picked up on this glitch, reported it on his Bleeding Cool rumour site as well as tweeting it, and all Hell broke loose. Comic fans by the hundreds or even thousands placed orders, and Amazon was flooded with money-losing sales. This caused them to cancel most of the orders and send apologetic e-mails out, explaining that a mistake had occurred and those items were no longer available (when in fact, they were still being listed, but now at the correct prices). Johnston has even heard, apparently from an Amazon insider, that his site showed up as a bullet point at a high-level meeting held to discuss the matter.

If nothing else, this shows just how different things are now than what most of us are used to. "Viral" is a pretty important adjective to get your head around right now, and it's probably going to get even moreso as we move into the second decade of the 21st century.

Can Comic Books Become Any More Mainstream?

Earlier this week, I was watching the latest installment of Totally Lost, the "Doc" Jensen/Dan Snierson feature that recaps and analyzes the most recent episode of Lost. In it, Jensen was shown to be reading an issue of Big Numbers, the aborted 10-inch by 10-inch comic series by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz from the early 90s, only two parts of which ever saw print before the artist bailed on it. (Lost, itself, has of course shown several comics over its lifetime so far, including a Flash/Green Lantern special and a trade paperback of Y: The Last Man, both of them in Spanish, strangely enough!) That shot of Big Numbers reminded me that, in the previous Totally Lost, there had been a hardcover edition of DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths sitting prominently on one of the hosts' bookshelf. OK, so Lost is pretty sick with comic references, but so what?

Well, today I visited CNN's website, and what should I see when I get there but the cover of Detective Comics # 27, the Batman-introducing comic, a nice copy of which recently sold for over a million dollars!

Add in the fact that at least a dozen comic-related movies are in various stages of development right now, and it's pretty clear that the genre has - for the moment, at least - undeniably thrust itself into the popular culture.

Somehow that development has not elevated me to Pop Culture God status, as it should have... but there's still time!

Name These Things (First In A Series)

The following are "things" that I don't know a name for. However, maybe one already exists, or if not, then perhaps we can all make one up for each. You tell me.

1. Missing one or more blog entries because you think you're caught up (as you read backwards chronologically) but in reality you've simply gotten back to a post that you started to read earlier before being interrupted. Therefore you miss out on whatever was posted earlier, and are plagued by oblique references to posts that you don't even know exist. Obviously this doesn't apply if you get your posts through an aggregator of some sort.
   
2. When a blogger or site owner ends a long period of inactivity by posting an apology for being away so long with a promise to communicate more frequently from now on... only to enter another long stretch of nothingness! I've seen this enough times that there must be a name for it, mustn't there?
3. That moment when you realize that some bit of information or entertainment has gone from being something that you and a select few knew about or were interested in to something that your mother or next door neighbour might mention the next time they see you. This one can go either way: sometimes it's very cool to see "your" thing go viral, but oftentimes it's just downright annoying.
   

'Twas The Night Before Christmas (For Fans Of Comic Books And Popular Culture)

Newsflash: Tomorrow sees the kickoff of the 2009 version of the San Diego Comic Convention (or "SDCC" to an ever-increasing number of people in the know). As such, the next few days are among the year's most interesting and exciting for geeks everywhere... like your truly!

There will be tons of announcements between now and Sunday, most of which probably won't interest me all that much. But there will almost certainly be a handful of news items - whether it be about an upcoming comic series, TV show or movie - that will undoubtedly speed up my pulse at least a bit. And I'll try to post the very best of those nuggets, right here.

The "Try And..." Epidemic

In my never-ending quest to document every single human foible that gets under my skin, here's the latest...

While I realize that we often say things like, "I'll try and be there on time", what we're really saying is "I'll try to be there on time." In fact, the first version doesn't even convey the same meaning, if you actually parse it out. The "and be there on time" portion sounds like a commitment is being made, whereas the whole point of the statement is that there exists some doubt as to whether it'll actually happen (it's mostly about the "trying" part).

Now, hearing that sort of thing spoken (even coming from my own lips), is no big deal to me. Who doesn't adopt all kinds of weird slang and examples of laziness in the immediacy of verbal communication, after all? But when I see it in writing, it's disappointing... especially so when I see it in places where I'd expect them to know better. Take this recent entry on the White House Blog, for example:

"A reminder about why we are here to try and undo some of the fiscal mess that we are in."

Setting aside the fact that the sentence isn't a complete thought (it sort of works because it further elaborates on a point from the previous sentence), why in the world would someone in the Office of Public Liaison write up a press release and include the words "try and undo"? Is the education system in the U.S. really that bad? What kind of message does that provide to the people reading those words? I expect better from someone in Obama's administration, personally.

(If you page down at that White House link, by the way, you'll see a picture of a woman named "Buffy." I kid you not!)

Bobby Jindal = Kenneth The Page?

It didn't take long tonight for Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, who provided the official "opposition response" to President Obama's speech to Congress, to pick up the new moniker of "Kenneth the Page" (from 30 Rock). I gotta love it that Tina Fey's show has seeped into the culture like that!

One of the stranger bits of Jindal's response was his apparent stance that governments get in the way of volunteerism during crises. I guess Louisiana must have some pretty screwed up emergency response services for him to hold that perspective (I'd much rather have my fate in the hands of highly skilled police, fire fighters or rescue workers than have to rely on people as untrained in such matters as I am!)

Of all the many great statements that Barack Obama made, I thought that his goal of "by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" was perhaps the most amazing. That speaks volumes for what he thinks is wrong with his country, and how to correct it. Maybe by 2020 there won't be anyone left in the U.S. who thinks that "nuclear" is pronounced "nukuler" (or at least, not in the White House!)

More Breathless Insight From The Quarantine Zone

For whatever reason, over the past couple of weeks I've seen at least a half dozen different examples of people using "compliment" when they meant "complement" in online posts (eg. "Our strengths really compliment each other.") Is it really all that hard to remember that the former means "to praise" while the latter means "to complete, or make whole"?

This latest addition may, in fact, end up joining other notable "sadly common faux pas"s like:

• "it's" for the possessive form ("The dog licked it's tail.")
• "irregardless" (negating an already negative term)
• "could of/should of/would of" etc.
• and others I'm too woolly-headed to think of right now