By MFV - Monday June 27th 2011 |
Venice High School acknowledged its Centennial tonight with a screening of the 1978 film Grease, starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing and the late Jeff Conaway. The unmistakable significance of both the high school’s longevity and its place in Grease history was a special energy in the air that brought out Venice neighbors and alums and friends of friends with blankets to the football field. We waited for the sun to go down so we could all sing “Hopelessly Devoted To You” and wonder after the accomplishments of Travolta and Newton-John amid the peak of innocence of the salad days of 1978. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and Jamba Juice had a presence at the back of the field, but the sheer idea behind a road stove notoriously entitled “The Greasy Wiener” went hand-in-hand with its parental advisory change to PG-13, mostly to the chagrin of those who blushed at Greased Lightning being called a Pussywagon and other things parents probably didn’t remember. But hey… Grease is the word. I had no idea the bleachers on the northwest end of the field are where Danny Zuko and the T-Birds sing “Summer Nights”, but thanks to the Class of ’11, a clearly-marked photo-op is what they were tonight. The establishing shot of “Rydell High” could not have been any more obvious to alums and students, and all gave a spirited round o’ applause for VHS upon first sight of the landmarks.

»continue reading “Grease” Sing-A-Long at Venice High, June 24, 2011


Just a few words. Why so little? I haven’t the heart. 

My neighbor is writer and guitarist Jeremy Simon of
Van Dyke Parks takes his piano bench. He’s friendly-looking, wears a neatly trimmed mustache and Country Time Lemonade suspenders. He looks to the untrained eye like the gentleman smart-ass Samuel Clemens or Tennessee Williams was, a piano-playing Brer Rabbit. And so does his first bit. There’s no question he’s a marksman of piano: each time he throws his fingers down on the ivory, a black quarter note on his sheet music gets a hole blasted through it. He cries out “Now!” and the whole song turns madcap, or falls apart, with a nod to high society and true ragtime authorship. The Reasons (who back him up on violin, cello, and bass) move right there in formation with Grant Geissman, his favorite guitarist (and author of two hardbound books on the history of Mad magazine).
Thomas Wolfe said (maybe I’m paraphrasing) that you can’t bring candy and gum into the Troubadour again. That’s because they sell it inside. My emphasis is on sweet, sweet 
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I’m happy to report the smashing success of 

The technology for self-funded flight exists in ever-increasing quantity, as does the drive to claim space for private use. Since the Ansari x-prize was taken by Scaled Composites in 2004, the latest challenge has been the Google Lunar X Prize, a 30 million dollar international competition to land an autonomous robot explorer on the moon no later than December 14, 2014, an autonomous robot that perhaps is like the fully functional “See-Threepio Jones” model now lining the sidewalks of Admiralty Park.
They most certainly puppet up, sometimes they puppet out, sometimes they pup themselves into hoopy, poopy pieces of no-fun. It’s a hybridization of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and The Muppet Show, and once the shock wears off, it goes to hell but it comes back. 
