2018 updates -- complete

News from 2018
(copied from my main updates blog -- and moved here)

recent performances 

• 12/28/18 filming "Karate Christmas Miracle" playing Laura; d Julie Kimmel; p Ken Del Vecchio
• 12/23 8 pm PIT Theater -- Mashed Potatoes Holiday Mashup
• Sketch of NY Alumni Show December 21, 22 and December 23 at 2:45pm Producer's Club d Joe DiNozzi; some sketches here (first 2 written by me. warning: 3rd contains profanity) Transport I; Transport II; Bad Secret Santa
• 12/16/18 Class show Musical Improv 101 d Eric Gerson, UCB East photos after show
• Bronx County Chorus,  12/9/18 4pm  -- here's my blog 
• 12/4/18 "Sleeping Ugly"  at http://www.regalheightsrehab.com/
• 11/29/18 "Sleeping Ugly" at Joseph Belsky House, Brooklyn, NY
• 11/27/18 "Sleeping Ugly"  at PS 195, Bronx NY (older group of kids than first performance)
• 11/26/18 Bronx County Chorus outreach concert, http://kingsharbor.com/ 7pm
• 11/20/18 "Sleeping Ugly, at Preschool of America, Battery Park
• 11/19/18 "Sleeping Ugly" at PS 195, Bronx, NY
• 10/26-28/18  R6 -- 3 private performances in Portland, ME
• 9/23/18 Cherub improv rehearsal with John Swift
• 8/18/18 105th Annual Randolph Mountain Club Charades
• 8/4/18 Participated in the Randolph Foundation Story Slam.  My story can be viewed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxmkL35CQg
• 7/26/18 9pm ET first airing of "Bizarre Love Triangle" on "The Perfect Murder," Investigation Discovery; can be streamed here https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/tv-shows/the-perfect-murder/full-episodes/bizarre-love-triangle
• 7/2/18 Diversity Jam & Mixtape at The Magnet Theater https://www.facebook.com/events/232110630903811/
• 6/5/18 Musical Mixer at Magnet Theater
• 5/30/18 Mixer at Magnet Theater
• 5/5/18 improv & monologue with Spooky Doings photos of me on stage
• 5/4/18 reshooting my music video for my song "Villain Song" Set photos here
• 4/16/18 "Creative Block" a film I appear in has been selected by the Philadelphia Independent Film Awards -- Please check my blog for other festival information for this film Blog link
• 4/12/18 Filming "Mandatory Gun Laws," d. Mark Hubatsek
• 4/8/18 Contestant in Cabaret Showdown https://www.facebook.com/events/222476835160743
• 4/8/18 Cherub Improv Rehearsal
• 4/3/18 Diversity Mixer, Magnet Theater
• 3/18/18, 4p.m.-5:30p.m., "The Boy in the Window," playing "Catherine," d Tym Byrz, The Point CDC, 940 Garrison Ave, Bronx NY 10474, 718-542-4139 -- more info at this blog Boy in the Window blog link to film of part of the performance
• 3/14/18 release of my webisode for Answers to Everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0b_deeT1FU 
• 3/10/18 filming "Leshiy" playing "Crone" in Rockland County d Ben Anderson & Sawyer Purman
• 2/8/18 Moriches, NY Filming Episode 501 of The Perfect Murder #ThePerfectMurder playing Mildred -- link to tweet with set photos d Kevin Kaufman @kaufmanfilms on Instagram
• february: staying home a lot out of fear of flu -- but I did have a couple of gigs on TV shows, but I can't talk about them, because they're confidential -- more later
• 1/19/18 filming in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, with "Uncomfortable Revolution" http://www.urevolution.com/ -- what not to say to cancer patients
• 1/16/18 My commercial live on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBQ-xxt40HU
• 1/16/18 performed in the Magnet Musical Mixer at the Magnet Theater
• 1/14/18 Filming "Answers to Everything; Episode 2" playing Dena, d Greg Lakhan, Bayside Queens
• 1/8/18 performed at the Diversity Improv Jam at the Magnet Theater More info about this event
• 1/6/18 performed with "Spooky Doings" at the Triple Crown Ale House link to FB event link to photos

performance courses completed

• Musical Improv 101 with Eric Gerson UCB 10/20/18-12/15/18
• "Musical Improv Power Up" with Jon Bander NYMIF 10/20/18
• Mary Tierney's acting class at Theater for the New City 1/16/18 instagram photo

Legal courses completed

• 11/15/18 NYIPLA One Day Program https://www.nyipla.org/assnfe/ev.asp?ID=242
• 9/27/18 Ethics in Intellectual Property Practice, sponsored by IIPS https://mailchi.mp/0be7f473b01e/iips-meeting-709949?e=c788d2df97
• 8/8/18 "Recognizing and Removing Bias from the Legal Profession" National Academy of Legal Education (online)
• 5/2/18 JPPCLE (massive patent law update) program agenda
• 2/28/18 Something For Everyone? Latest Developments On the Application of 35 U.S.C Section 101 and Sui Generis Protection in the Copyright Act. -- presentation by the ENYIPLA  short instagram video
• 1/10/18 SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF IP LITIGATION FINANCE: WHAT YOUR PARTNERS DON’T KNOW, NYIPLA link to program description

Misc

• blog about my artwork
• blog about my summer 2018 hiking photos

Shows & Media consumed this year

• Josh Groban & Idina Menzel 11/18/18 Madison Square Garden
• Lucia Micarelli, 11/10/18 Ethical Culture Society
• Second Boy in the Window workshop at The Point, Bronx, NY.  I wasn't in this one, because it was later in the play that is being written.
• "Always, Patsy Cline" at the Weathervane Theatre, Whitefield, NH
• "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Weathervane Theatre, Whitefield, NH
• albums bought recently:  Soundtrack for "Bohemian Rhapsody"; Peter Hollens “Legendary Folk Songs”; Lucia Micarelli “An Evening with Lucia Micarelli” (CD & DVD); Lindsey Stirling “Brave Enough”; Greyson Chance “Somewhere over My Head”; Josh Groban "Bridges" 
• I'm a subscriber to the NY Philharmonic, so I've been to several of their shows
• I went to see "Farinelli and the King" on Broadway
• Movies recently seen in the the theater: Bohemian Rhapsody, BlacKkKlansman, Won't You Be My Neighbor, Ocean's 8 (which I was supposed to be background in, but I'm not visible), Solo: A Star Wars Story, A Wrinkle in Time, The Shape of Water, Black Panther, 

Important issues

I've taken a couple of these polls recently where they ask you what issues are important to you.  These polls have been on progressive websites.  I've been short of shocked that they don't mention reform of election law -- given the nightmare we've been through recently.  Here are some possible points

• elimination of plurality take all voting (12 of 13 swing states in 2016 had no majority winner); 
• recall elections for federal office (by direct majority vote -- since it's unlikely that small states will agree to eliminate the electoral college for the initial election, but several states have recall elections); 
• requirement that federal candidates reveal 1040; 
• candidates receiving political contributions from businesses should be precluded from voting on legislation affecting those businesses; 
• statutory rubric for invalidating elections where there is substantial foreign interference; 
• return to paper ballots that are manually counted

Tulsi Gabbard and Syria

So I'm having a discussion on FB messenger about Tulsi Gabbard. I decided I want to memorialize it here. I'm not going to repeat the words of my interlocutor, just my words. 

This was about Tulsi Gabbard's stand on Syria, her visit to Assad, and her cautious statements about the standard story of who used chemical weapons there. It might be a little hard to follow without his words in between, but I hope you will get the idea. I'm adding some things in square brackets to clarify. I am preserving the structure of the message bubbles in the conversation -- even tho, perhaps, proper editing would suggest combining some of these into paragraphs

********

There are serious questions of who used the chemical weapons

But the point is that we can't help these countries. That's been clearly established in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our military intervention causes enormous suffering, but does not cure the problem. 

We can't help the Syrian people by escalating the war

Remember that the corporate media smears people who are against war. They're part of the military industrial complex

I think there is reason to doubt our government's characterization about what is going on in Syria. They lied to us about Iraq. I don't know that journalists are actually able to investigate this properly, in view of ongoing hostilities

However, I find the US holding chemical weapons while condemning others for using them hypocritical. We dropped napalm and agent orange on Vietnam

 Yet, ultimately, the devastation we wreaked there had no positive effect

We need to remove the log from our own eye first

 As to what happened in Syria, I sympathise with Tulsi for doubting

She went there. She listened to Assad. She made her own decisions as to what to believe.

She was a nurse in Iraq. She saw first hand what happened there. She doesn't want that to happen again. I agree

 My dad came here as a refuge from the holocaust. We bombed Germany, but refused to take refugees [my dad was fortunate to get a student visa]

We fight in Syria. We refuse to take refugees

 I don't know that she believed him [Assad]. But she has doubts.

Granted, I think Obama [who started our involvement] was far more moral than Trump, but that doesn't mean he didn't make any mistakes [e.g. Possibly about chemical weapons]

 We have no moral high ground to stand on here. That is false

Yes, brutal dictators are bad, but what we're doing to the people in the countries we attack is far worse

 War is the greatest human rights violation, aside from genocide

What we did to Vietnam, to Iraq, to Syria is far worse than their governments' abuses
I'm not saying that dictators are good. I'm saying that our military invention is worse, that we can't help those people by intervening militarily. We overthrew Saddam Hussein and instituted violent anarchy.

 Being progressive doesn't mean we have to blindly disagree with Putin about everything

My dad's laboratory in Madison was bombed by student radicals in 1971, who claimed to be trying to achieve peace. They missed the Army Math Research Center and hit my dad's laboratory instead. A student was killed. My dad had to be forcibly restrained from entering the ruins to look for other students. Finally, the fire department went down, and found Dave Schuster under the rubble, still alive, though injured. 

 My dad had no offsite data storage. 25 years of the records of his research were destroyed, research that was part of the basis of the cloudy crystal ball model of the atomic nucleus. 

I have no sympathy for self righteous bombers

 The fact that we've had a good government, at least for white people, domestically, doesn't justify our bombing countries with a worse domestic government. That's nonsense. 

Our international behavior has been, in many cases, execrable

***********

#Tulsi2020 #tusliforpresident #tulsiforpresident2020 #tulsiforamerica #tulsigabbard 

Boy in the Window

Here's some information about a show I just completed

Playwright: Jones Price Daniels
Title: "Boy in the Window"
Location: Hudson Guild Theatre/ Summerfest 2019
Director: CJ Williams
Dates: 8/15, 8/17, and 8/18


This production was only 3 scenes from what is going to be a full length musical, ultimately.

Cast interview with me:

This is the ad for the show on New York Festival Site

http://newyorktheaterfestival.com/boy-in-the-window/ 

Meet the Playwright ad in Times Square Chronicles Magazine

https://t2conline.com/meet-the-playwrights-of-ny-summerfest-jones-price-daniels/?fbclid=IwAR2hkvuH79iQ2LnxiY79KpPNVgiBcIMXx8tR3wRIbn7J0-O95MKYNf3PFDk

Gofundme for this show here If you can't go, it would be particularly helpful if you could donate, because they're going to have ongoing workshops as the playwright works on the script

Previous blog about this show

Boy in the Window Staged Readings

Cast for this summer

Why you should see this show:

This is an intriguing look at a young, gay, black man trying to find himself. It's actually only three scenes from what will be a full length rap musical.

I find the selection of characters from the urban landscape fascinating. Also the rap fugue that we're going to do is beautiful and moving. 

#nysummerfest2019 #boyinthewindow