Jose Feliciano through the Looking Glass
 While we wait to complete the instrumental tracks on the All That Jaws album, Brian Descheneaux and I decided to form a band that would be impervious to studio delays, musicians' schedules, and mountain road closures in that it would consist of ourselves.
We chose the name Fogelfoot, an abbreviation of Croce Dan and Seals Bread Fogelfoot, to pay tribute to the earnest 70's songwriting traditions of Jim Croce, Bread, Seals & Crofts, Gordon Lightfoot, Dan Fogelberg, and England Dan And John Ford Coley.
And because the name "Cormorant" was already taken, inexplicably, by a San Francisco metal band.
So each week we set ourselves a task. This week I wanted to pay homage to every 70's song that used the word "Lady" and write a story a la "Brandy" about an inaccessible love interest with a past. Because the past involved a Mexican soldier, I wanted the song to be reminiscent of Jose Feliciano's "Chico and the Man" and to incorporate as many 70's props as possible, including a creepy narrator, amulets, and cocaine. Finally, the narrator needed to solve all his love interest's problems by telling her that she was pretty.
I also borrowed a little from "Love in the Time of Cholera."
The song is called "Lady And the Man," Brian did all the music, and it is available on the Flight of the Mavervorl podcast. Subscribe now!
Lady is a lady
Long-legged sultry lady
She sways her hips for the gentlemen
On the lonely side of town
When it's midnight in the city
I go to see my Lady
And I bring her gifts of sweet white wine
And spices from the East
She tells me, "I would like to make sweet love to you
By the torrid Tampiquena Sea
But you cannot catch The Cormorant, can you?
It's only when she's dancing that she's free."
There's a sadness in my Lady
So I feed her rails of cocaine
But the rain it falls like honey in the snow
OK!
'twas a horseman named Felipe
Not a word could she comprende
But she understood his urgency
'fore he marched off to the West
And I'm dancing with my Lady
And she has something to tell me
She shows to me the amulet
That dangles 'twixt her breasts
And when the letter came one chilly Friday
Saying that he'd been et by ants
She knew of nothing else to serve his mem'ry
Than to love him through her dance
So if you see my Lady
Just tell her that she's pretty
That's all a lovely lady
Needs to know
See also: The Flight of the Mavervorl, All That JawsLabels: "all that jaws", fogelfoot, performance, podcast, pop
Predictable drinker, perennial favorite
 Once I directed a pub crawl version of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough And the Stars" in Boston. Plays performed in bars are an Irish tradition, and the scene from O'Casey's play about the 1916 Easter Rising was even more appropriate because it took place in a bar while the uprising commenced outside.
Anyway, I cast an elderly gentleman for the role of Peter, an ineffectual loudmouth and "lemon-whiskered oul' swine". He was about 70. I don't know why he wanted to schlep all around the city doing plays in bars for not much money, but it might have had something to do with the fact that there were four or five 22-year-old women in the cast playing spirited agitators, bar wenches, and prostitutes. He must have thought, "Good odds."
One night as reheasal was breaking up he tried to get the young ladies to go home with him. They politely declined, and he said:
"I have alcohol."
...and they politely declined again. I filed the exchange away. Did he think that alcohol would tip the scales?
The other night I had my annual Los Angeles birthday dinner at the Irish bar Tom Bergin's in Los Angeles. One by one, my friends came bearing gifts of alcohol, particularly Jagermeister. I got three bottles of Jager, which is my biggest birthday haul of the substance to date.
"I thought, 'I could be original or I could get you something you'd use'," one friend said. Indeed, we killed two of the bottles right there at the table as the long-suffering waitstaff rejoiced that it would be a year before they saw me again. (We tipped the living shit out of them.)
I also had Jagermeister at my 20th birthday on Martha's Vineyard. A lot of it. I threw up most of it. But I was poorer then and I was drinking it without any food. The other night we were able to drink it with dinner, and I didn't have a hangover the next day. In this world the poor are even denied vices.
Here is my friend Gabriela with the evening's take, which included a bottle of wine in a Chinese suit. I consider myself lucky because I think my friends and family would have shown up even if there had been no alcohol.
(I could be wrong about this - I'm no longer a 22-year-old woman.)
See also: Full. Metal. JagermeisterLabels: alcohol, boston, food, los angeles, martha'svineyard, performance, personal history
 All That Jaws premiered last week to much rejoicing. We are currently seeking investors for a full scale production and tour. We have had a few interesting bites (pardon the pun) (I hate when people say that) (and yet I just did) (I must be one of those self-hating Jaws) (Pardon the pun).
I am tempted to put the whole script and cast album online, but it's probably not a good idea. I want you to buy $400 seats in Vegas with the topless shark.
For more information on the show, where it's been, and what it's up to, visit The Jaws Blog.Labels: "all that jaws", performance
 I am very impressed with the work of the cast and band of All That Jaws, which has reached the stage that I can sing its praises without feeling like I'm bragging. I've been spending a lot of time in the fire-prone mountain town of Wrightwood, CA at the Analog Cabin where the band is rehearsing, and this Friday's preview performance in Santa Monica is going to be very impressive.
All That Jaws debuts at L.A.'s Out of Bounds West Improv Festival at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, May 25, 2007. Tickets are available here (choose the Saturday May 26 at 12 a.m. option). Songs include "I Use My Throat", "Jesus H. Christ Hooperstar", and "Eating Me Softly". THE CAST: MARC ANTONIO PRITCHETT as HOOPER
DAVID KAUFMAN as QUINT
MARTY BARRETT as BRODY
BRITTAN EGNOZZI as ELLEN
PAUL HUNGERFORD as MAYOR VAUGHN
ANASTASIA WASHINGTON as MRS. KINTNER
JESSICA HOPKINS as CHRISSIE
BRIAN DESCHENEAUX as TOM
TYRONE MERRINER as GOTTLIEB
and JASON SECHREST as BRUCE
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: TYRONE MERRINER
See also: All That JawsLabels: "all that jaws", performance
All That Jaws premiere May 26
 All That Jaws will close the Out of Bounds West Improv Festival on May 26 in Los Angeles. I am very excited about this show, which I wrote with my friend Brian Descheneaux.
We are both fans of the movie Jaws, which led us to read the book by Peter Benchley. We both have lived on the island of Martha's Vineyard, which is the "Amity" of the film.
Brian and I last worked together on a play called "Domestic Disturbance", which premiered in 2004.
Fans of the movie who haven't read the book would be surprised to find that Amity wasn't originally an island, that Mayor Vaughan had some Old World motivation for keeping the beaches open, that Ellen Brody was a former rich girl with a life of her own, and that Chief Brody and Matt Hooper were not the fast friends the movie made of Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss.
We call it a "meta-musical" because we take apart some of the characters and also compare them to their counterparts in either the book or the movie. We make Hooper a supernatural character, question Quint's grasp of history and Ellen Brody's morals, and pay tribute to everything from "Jesus Christ Superstar" to Phil Ochs.
But the biggest change is in The Shark. The book and film don't give him a real reason for his murderous actions, and both are so entertaining that it takes repeated viewings and readings to start wondering why. We give him a reason. He's a little like Lenny in "Of Mice And Men" - a Lenny who can sing.
We have partially cast what will be a staged reading of the musical on May 26, but we'll be sending out an extended casting call in early May for singers comfortable with rock and for musicians comfortable with not getting paid.
See also: All That Jaws site, Out of Bounds WestLabels: "all that jaws", performance
Time to start ambiguously
 What We Know about Singapore closed December 27. Recent Dubious Achievement: "Marty Barrett is the funniest guy who ever left Boston." - Boston Globe.Labels: performance
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