Karma's a Hell of a Thing

I think the Cosmic Hand of Serves You Right is about to smite me upside the head. Over the past six months I've developed balance problems serious enough that I even fell down the stairs in front of my apartment once. Whilst I wait to get into my doctor next week I've been doing some research. I should tell you that when I was nine years old my hands began to shake when I tried to do things like hold a pencil or pour a glass of water or anything else that needed some dexterity. This was diagnosed as Essential Tremor, and I've dealt with it the last 36 years by developing strange-looking yet effective ways of performing tasks that most people take for granted. I assumed the head tremor that showed up ten years ago was just exhaustion or stress. I can't ignore the leg tremors, or the fact that my hands and head shake even when I'm rested and relaxed. Even if they had told me at nine years old, I don't know if I'd have understood what it meant when a syndrome is "progressive." As a kid I always made fun of my shaking hands before the other kids got a chance. Karma's a hell of a thing.

F***ing Geniuses

The MacArthur Foundation has awarded its foundation grants for 2008 to 25 amazingly smart and talented humans who make me wish I had paid more attention in school. Just imagine, 25 people given $500,000.00 over 5 years with no strings attached, and they didn't have to walk on hot coals or eat goat penis or otherwise degrade themselves to get it. They just have to keep doing what they obviously love to do and make the world a little better than it was. How cool is that. Even cooler is that one of the group is a theatrical lighting designer. Yeah home team!
I know you can't apply for one, but I'd love to see the look on the faces of the Foundation's committee when I walked up in bibbed overalls and a "Beer School" baseball cap asking "hows ah go 'bout gittin me one uh them there genius grants y'all handin' out." And that's why I'll never get the call. I should have cured a disease.

I'm Baa-aack!

Sorry I've been MIA for most of the summer. The job got hectic, then uncertain, then depressing, then rage-inducing, and now has settled into a pace akin to King's "The Long Walk." If you must fall down, be the last to fall down. For my own sanity and hopefully your amusement, I'm going to try to post on a regular schedule. This world is just too wonderfully weird not to document.

Charlton Heston Put A Vest On

(FYI,the title of this post is a line from a song by an '80's band named Stump. The song was called "Charlton Heston.")
If you noticed the picture to the right of this post, you could conclude that I'm a fan of the Planet of The Apes movies, especially the first one. What set that film latex-simian head and shoulders above the others was the great performance of Charlton Heston as time traveling astronaut Taylor. Even though I own a copy on DVD, I'll still stop and watch it whenever it pops up on late night cable.
Of course he did a couple other decent movies. Soylent Green, The Omega Man, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, and over a hundred others during a seven decade career. I even liked his cameo in that wretched Marky-Mark remake of the aforementioned Planet of The Apes.
So one morning in the early '90s I came into work here at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and was informed by my boss that a special event had been hastily scheduled for that evening and I'd need to work it. All I was told was that a big-wig friend of the theatre's benefactor, Mr. Wynton Blount, was going to speak to a group in the smaller of our two theatres. I parked myself in our green room at 6:30 and waited for Mr. Blount and his guest to arrive. At 7:00 on the nose two black SUVs pulled up on the lawn outside the stage door and a bunch of people in suits entered the building. The mob pushed their way into the room where I was trying to look officious, and then it happened. The mass of people (sorry) parted like the Red Sea and Mr. Blount and his friend walked up to me, and Mr. Blount said "Chuck, I'd like you to meet Clay Koontz. He keeps everything running around here." I shook both their hands and tried not to sound like a gushing idiot. We made some small talk while the audience took their seats, and I reminded Mr. Heston the name of the theatre's artistic director two or three times, because he said that years before he had to choose between remembering people's names or his lines.
He spoke to the audience for about 40 minutes, asking them to be supportive of our theatre and the arts in general. He performed Prospero's last speech from The Tempest (quite well) and some pieces from a play about Sherlock Holmes he was working on at the time, and then the black SUVs swept him away to a Republican fund-raiser at Mr. Blount's estate (hey, nobody's perfect.)
Everybody can close their eyes and hear his voice saying those iconic lines: "let my people go." or "Soylent Green is people." or "damn dirty apes." I feel fortunate that I can also remember his voice intoning those last words of Prospero, asking an audience for the blessing of their applause.

Enigmatisms

I changed the name of the blog. The old name just gnawed at me as self-centered. The new name isn't a sure bet either. I think the definition of enigmatism is "a vision problem related to over-analysis and/or an inability to accept anything at face value, however benign said thing seems." I have developed an enigmatism, and everything puzzles me.
I should also cop to a couple other bothersome and somewhat embarrassing ailments. The first is a sarcaneurism, which involves bleeding from the nose or tear ducts while being brutally sarcastic. The second is Situational Tourette's Syndrome, which comes over me in the face of extreme stupidity. Both of these usually occur at work.

Farewell Mr. Clarke

I was saddened this morning when my buddy Neal told me that Arthur C. Clarke had passed away. I was disappointed when Neal told me that the two people he had broken the news to before me had responded with "who's Arthur C. Clarke?" Damn kids today need to read a book once in awhile ( I'm turning into my dad.) At least they knew 2001: A Space Odyssey. My favorite is Rendezvous with Rama. What a great read, and what a great man. Writer, explorer, thinker. The world sure could use more humans like Mr. Clarke. Farewell.

The Speech

If you missed Barack Obama's speech yesterday, find it online and watch it or read the transcript. It is maybe the finest piece of oration since Obama's convention address four years ago. A thoughtful, nuanced examination of the issue of race in America that sought to explain the roots of the problem but avoided demonizing any side or offering any simplistic cure. As John Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show, he spoke to us like we were adults. That's different.