Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Productive, Profound, and Profane

There’s just something memorable about the men in an audience singing, with gusto, “my vagina is eight miles wide, absolutely everyone can come inside …” Sure, it’s probably the most memorable song in Storm Large’s tour-de-force “Crazy Enough,” but it’s definitely not the only highlight. She is a special niche artist, what I would call a superstar, who has taken the sting of “not fitting in” to the heart-on-her-sleeve absolutely open-faced Storm sandwich method of method acting. I found her performance riveting, beautiful, joyous, immeasurably sad, and get-the-dictionary-out-for-every-adjective smart. Her mind is mercurial and her on-board editor is a tad slow. That makes for great theater. The more people who experience “Crazy Enough,” the better. It is literature. It shines a very bright light on what it means to be a human being. Here I am. Here we are. Deal with it. The show runs in Portland, at Portland Center Stage, through August 16. After it closes, I really hope it finds it’s way to DVD and makes Storm Large a household name (and a couple tons of money). The world can certainly use a big dose of her. She could make both Richard Pryor and George Carlin blush, but I see that as a good thing. Hello. Deal with it. Let’s start THINKING about what it means to be human. Let’s get rid of a lot of the bullshit that has been slathered on the experience like some kind of weird concrete glue. The potential we share as humans has never needed such a boost as it does now. Let’s smash the dogma with our kharma.

In other news, the golfing world is entirely unaware that I am actually receiving instruction in this ancient craft. This is probably a good thing because if golfers knew that I was aggressively focused on continuing my relationship with the game, they might hurt themselves. At the very least, they might succumb to despair and slit their egos. Heaven forbid! But yes, it’s true. I have decided that I need to stop whining about being a lousy golfer and move on up to relentlessly mediocre. I take so much pleasure from the few good shots that I hit that I fear I have become a tad greedy and want to experience that joy more often. Maybe I can even get to the point where I have to use my other hand to count my good shots. That would be stellar and an improvement, certainly.

I am also taking up the ukulele. Jake Shimabukuro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k) I’ll never be, but there is just too much fun to be had with this much-maligned little instrument.

Stay tuned. I’ll check in here with more wry observance in the near future. I’m kind of on a roll with my writing and this is a nice voice to relax into sometimes.