CD imitates LBJ

LBJ, 1966

CD, 2012

Home sweet home!

A new dilemma: 20s energy on 70s knees. I see a pattern here. Homo robotus.

Details re the operation, the nature of medicine, the denial of death, later.

When it works out

From a former student:

I was in your class a couple of years ago. I don't know if you remember me...I wrote a screenplay/musical that you suggested I adapt to a stage play. It was titled "Somewhere" but I re-named it "For Pete's Sake!" and wrote lyrics for all the songs. I took your advice and made it into a play. 

I have had it read by theater critics and got some very encouraging feed back- it could actually be produced! I just wanted to let you know and thank you for being such a great professor! 

Since I've worked professionally in virtually all forms of narrative, one of the things I can do well is see when a story will work better in another form. Many students resist this advice. But now and again someone takes it and it works out.

Room 277

Private room with room service ... just ordered food ... give me a break ha ha. I need to get sick more often.

Kindle at hospital bed

All is well. I am a bionic man. No pain so far. Hardest coming with very restricted activity for two mos. More later. I am good.

Last post as a natural man

Appreciate the good wishes. Back in a few as a bionic man.

Last lunch

Old school Chicken Chow Mein

Over the years I've ordered Chicken Chow Mein perhaps a dozen times at a dozen Chinese restaurants in the area and got a dozen different dishes. It can be anything a cook wants it to be. Only one of these resembles the dish I love and grew up on in Southern Calif, one ordered at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Main St in Tigard, where H took me to lunch today for my "last meal" ha ha. I don't know why it's so hard to find any more. Bean sprouts, crispy noodles, chicken. Love it.

My signature verse in all the wide spectrum of music

Runner up:

Last day

On this, my last day as "a natural man," ha ha, I have some prep stuff to do before checking into the hospital bright and early tomorrow. Lab work mainly. Not sure what time I come home Wed., just that I'm staying overnight. Operation apparently takes only an hour.

This, of course, has become quite an ordinary routine -- just not for me.

LATER. After some snooping on the net about post-operation activity, I realize this is a bigger deal than I thought. Looks like a month before I'd be back to normal activity. Well, at least the Olympics are on to watch.

The comfort of home

Sketch's actual snoring.

USA women's soccer

The team gets a head start on the Olympics, playing France on Wed, early morning our time. I'll be in the hospital after surgery and staying overnight -- hope I get to see it. I am taping it but live is better. No idea how long my "recuperation" is on this bionic gadget but at least the Olympics start and I'll have plenty of distractions.

Love the little Bloggie. Want to have it in my pocket as a habit, always video ready. But I still need a video project that turns me on. Other than the possible adaptation of the novel. Something more vignette-based, on-going. Haven't found the key, the point of view, the voice, for such a project. Still brooding.

World's shortest R&R album

Room with a view, Astoria

Sketch sucks on a blanket

Testing the Bloggie

But on the other hand, baby

That video project is too static. Back to the drawing boards.

Annotated video memoir

What I'm considering for my video project is an annotated reading of my memoir.

• Short sections within chapters, modular construction, lending itself to a series of short videos
• commentary allows upgrading, reevaluations, asides
• would fill months of time, the distraction I'm looking for
• might inspire other, more ambitious projects
• functional as overview and intro to my archives, i.e. immediate home
• easy to do

Not committed yet but almost sold because it's immediate and practical and would take up considerable time, all pluses.

---

Meanwhile enjoying R&R though definitely moving slowly, dizzily. 

R&R brooding

Think I have my video project. More later. Meets the criteria and can be foundation for more creative ambition later.

RR report

Fuzzy and well ... details follow ....

R & R

Need a little diversion before surgery. Sketch is ready!

Left hand, right hand

Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? Now they moved my surgery up to next Tuesday.

Oops, a long wait

Heart surgery scheduled for August 2.

I'm reminded of something Woody Guthrie wrote in his journal, that I included in my show:

But I sure am glad I inherited my Huntington's Chorea because now I can stay dizzy and drunk all the time without paying my bartender one little blue cent.

Once upon a time

Here I am arriving for the opening of my hyperdrama in the Pittock Mansion, Chateau de Mort, 1986. Sold out at $100/ticket, which in Pdx in those days was astronomical, about as high society as the city could get, which was enough to get written up in a Seattle arts magazine in glowing terms. I don't show it but I was a total nervous wreck, here and later and still later. This was my first white tux opening, which became my signature for a few years. Then I returned to my normal slob casual self.

Watch Out, Mama, Hyperdrama's Gonna Mess With Your Pittock Mansion!, my essay about this experience.

Or more seriously, The New Hyperdrama.

Or more seriously still, Changing Key, a video lecture-demonstration.

Hyperdrama drives computer game narratives. Here's Ellen Page on the challenges of acting in a computer game, i.e. in hyperdrama.