The reason I went to LA was to see my baby sister perform in a staging of Two Rooms, a play written by Lee Blessing. My sis had the female lead, and I watched her run herself through a devastating emotional wringer for two hours, first on Friday night, then again Saturday afternoon. The last show I'd seen her do was an adaptation of Shakespeare, and I'd told her that I really wanted to see her do something contemporary, so that I could spend more time just reacting to the play, and less time translating it for myself.

Because I remember when she was a baby, it's very hard for me to think of her as a grown-up - even though she'll be 29 in a couple of months. This role was the most visceral thing I've ever seen her do, by far the most challenging thing I've ever seen her attempt, and she hit it out of the freakin' ballpark. Of course I'm biased, but I'm pretty sure everyone who saw it was impressed. There's that weird thing about live theater - that thing where the audience and the actors, all present in the same space, make this agreement with each other - "OK, we, the actors, are gonna pretend that we don't know that you, the audience, are there, so that we can tell you this story on stage up here." The audience then "replies", "Cool, actors - we'll forgive the limitations of the performance space, and time constraints, and we'll pretend right along with you; we'll put ourselves in your hands, and go with it."

There were times where my sister's performance shocked and unnerved the audiences I watched it with - her pain was so real, her explosions of anger were so shocking, I got the feeling that some members of the audience wanted to call off the "contract", and run up and help her in some way - to protect, console, remove.

Powerful stuff. That's my sister doing that, I thought, while I was forgetting to breathe.

I got more about Los Angeles, but right now I gotta go see the Storm play.

I don't usually talk plot in these "reviews", but here's the setup for this one: 14-year-old girl is flirting online with a 32-year-old photographer. They decide to meet in person, at a coffee shop. After an awkward conversation, she invites herself over to his house.

Yeah.

So, the subject is disturbing on its face. But things get so much darker than you can imagine - let's just say that once they get to the photographer's house, the 14-year-old girl turns the tables.

Neither of the two characters, and the movie is literally almost nothing but scenes between the two of them, are very easy to like or identify with. Of course, we're talking about a thirty-year-old who would let a 14-year-old girl invite herself over to his place, so he's obviously not a squeaky clean fellow. But when events turn, and we watch him have his Worst Day Ever, at the hands of the World's Smartest Ever Teenaged Sociopath, you end up wondering, does even HE deserve this?

The two major actors are just fantastic. The girl is played by the actress who just played Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand, but she's nearly unrecognizable in this part. The guy has a tougher job, in that we as audience members are going to find him repugnant as a person, yet we have to sympathize with him.

Whoa. Certain plot points don't really work once you think about the movie after it's over - like I said, the girl would have to be The Smartest Teenager In The World to do what she does, and we're never given any sense of why she's doing it. She drops hints here and there, but then we also learn never to trust a single thing she says.

But in the end, I don't think any of that matters while you're watching the film. This is dark, disturbing stuff, but if you're the kind of person, like I am, who is looking for art that really reaches out and grabs you by the lapels, then I can't think of too many movies recently that knocked me on my ass like this one did. And in my book, that's high praise.

Mom: if you're reading this - this is NOT a movie for you.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

And uh... nice nurse, Steve!

In Led Zeppelin terms, this movie is Pixar's Presence. Still pretty damned good, still a lot to recommend it, but nowhere near as great an overall experience as The Incredibles or Monsters, Inc., or the Toy Story pictures.

Cars ain't no Physical Grafitti, sad to say.

So, the movie aside - that's just really, really, really stupid. Many of the arguments are raising points (many of them political) that have nothing to do whatsoever with the actual content of the film. Which of course is probably to be expected, given the hyper-polarized state of the public dialogue right now. I understand it, I myself have gotten caught up in it, especially in 2004 in advance of the last Presidential election. I was so appalled at the Bush administration and so worked up about the idea that they could actually get re-elected, that I was overwhelmed. Something happened after Dubya got himself re-upped, though - I calmed down. I pulled my head out of the political mess that been consuming me for months, years, maybe. I didn't change my opinion of Dubya or his policies, or my disgust at how his party had been co-opted by the right-wing religious crazies. What I realized, though, was that getting emotionally caught up in all the hoo-ha wasn't serving me very well. So, I backed away from all of it. The President still embarasses me. But I can no longer look at him as the personification of All Things That Are Evil. I agree with him on exactly one issue (though, I think for different reasons), and that is his pragmatic approach in regards to illegal immigration. And while I do believe that the Dubya Administration might be the Worst One We've Ever Had, and that they've done an unbelievable amount of damage in five years, I think that their jig is largely up. People have started catch on. As bad as they are, I think they're already lame ducks until the Constitution kicks 'em out in January 2009.

Hmmm. Tangent much?

OK, back to the movie. What all the previous paragraph was trying to get to is this: I don't mind reading criticisms of the points Al Gore raises by people who have seen the movie. So there.

I've seen it. I don't accept everything presented in it as 100% Gospel Truth just because Al Gore said it was so. But I can say that Al makes a very compelling presentation that makes me want to know more. There's a great deal of very disturbing information in the movie, that if true, is enough to make you start to look at your life and see where you might be able to make some changes. Because to do nothing would be... well, it might be criminal. Certainly, it seems immoral.

I didn't vote for Al Gore in 2000, by the way. I voted for the Libertarian candidate as a protest, since Al Gore was such a terrible candidate, and I couldn't vote for Bush. I don't think I could ever vote for any Republican as long as the American Taliban has their talons clamped around the necks of the leadership of that Party. My state went for Gore, though. I wish the Al Gore in the movie was the one we'd seen in the campaign of 2000. I wish Al was President right now.

But he isn't. But he seems to be using his "status" (such as it is) to try and serve people by educating them about what seems to be a very serious threat to life on this planet as we've known it. The Earth will keep spinning with or without us, and if we screw ourselves (and most of the other species we know of right now), in a few million years, a whole bunch of new species will evolve and that whole process will start all over again. We'll be to that new set of species what the dinosaurs are to us.

And I can't help thinking about what a sad waste that would be. Al believes we can turn it all around. I sure hope he's right.

Heck, it's hard for me to fathom that I've been working at the new contract for over a month now. This job is turning out to be an awful lot better than the one I was on for the last eight months. Obviously, the pay is better. But for this kind of work, the work is better as well. The system I'm working is huge. Which means it's also pretty opaque, even after being here more than a month. But at least the stuff I'm working on this time isn't stupidly designed like that last job. I'm doing things that make sense here, and reinforce skills that are actually in demand by employers in this business. Which of course bodes well for me continuing to be able to get jobs that pay well, which in turn finance the art projects.

Speaking of art projects, it's been a while since I've been able to talk about the current one. We're getting to the point where we should be able to get into the studio once again. I'm putting final touches on one more new song, and then the band will go in and do the basics for three more tracks. I think that will be it for basic tracks for this project. I'd wanted to record a lot more material, but I think we'll have more than we'll actually use after we get these songs into the mix.

And we have a gig in a week at the Central, and we've been working up our set list for that. Another after-midnight start time, so only you die-hard true believers will be expected to attend (Hi, Hodgy!). We've been sounding really good in rehearsal lately, so I think it should be a fun gig. Hopefully I can talk Darin into coming and shooting us with his Amazing Godlike Cameras again, and hopefully we'll play well enough to have some cool new video content on the Web site. It would be nice to get some good performances of some of the new songs to post. Or maybe our version of "No More Evil." I like our rock trio version of that. It would seem like we shouldn't be able to pull that song off, but I think we do. I've also gotten hold of a new amp that I'll be using at the Central show - the first HZ show that I'll have ever done without the Fender HRD that I bought in advance of opening for the Mike Keneally Band for the New Year's show of 2002. It's good to change up the tonal palette every now and then, at least I think so.

Speaking of the Mike Keneally band, I highly recommend checking out their new live CD/DVD combo, especially the DVD. It's as close as you can come to seeing them play live, without, like actually going to a club, and uh... SEEING them live. And it sounds fantastic.

2006 is turning out to be a good year for new music, believe it or not. I've been picking up a lot of CD's that I really like this year. New records by old faves like Tool and The Devin Townsend Band, but I've also recently been really digging the Flaming Lips, and the new record by Dresden Dolls. I got a CD by a woman named Amy X Neuburg that is really fabulous, and that new band that Jack White is in, The Raconteurs, made a fun little album, too. I picked up Wolfmother at my bro-in-law's urging, and that's stacking up as a nice guilty pleasure. At first I really kinda hated it, but the record gets better as you keep going. It reminds me of The Cult circa 1987, with Jack White singing. I think it's interesting that my bro-in-law loves any band with a screechy tenor vocalist, especially if he sounds like Jack White (which the Wolfmother dude TOTALLY does - I mean he's practically stealing Jack's whole schtick). I'm just sayin'. In any event, I think my year-end 2006 Mix disc should have a lot of good songs on it this year.

In the next week or two I'm going to try to at least get Part 2 of the "Making Of Our New Album" video series posted at the Half Zaftig Web site. There's plenty of footage for it, it's just a question of forcing my butt to sit in front of the computer for a few hours to get it done.

Speaking of The Cult, a song called "Spiritwalker" from their debut album Dreamtime is now playing on my iPod. Have you heard this record? It's completely cute.

So, who knows what the title of this entry references? Answer in the comments.