jimsjournal
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I'm in a bit of a rush here... I've got links to some amusing (and/or strange) videos that I have wanted to share with you and I haven't had a chance to write an entry to post them. Jill and I went to 2nd Story Theatre last night to see Moliere's The Misanthrope (in a very witty rhymed verse translation by Roger Wilbur). They did it on a bare stage -- just a carpet in the middle and a chandelier overhead -- and put the cast in costumes from the antebellum South. The wide hooped skirts on the women made for some marvelous sight gags. It was wonderful to see Ed Shea -- the founder of 2nd Story who directs most of their plays -- return to acting for the first time in years to play the part of Alcest (the misanthrope). He is a fine actor and I hope he will not wait more years before taking another part on the stage. Lara Hakeem was a hoot as Celimene. Jim Sullivan (a friend and a former colleague of mine) was a very funny foppish would-be poet and Walter Cotter did a fine job as friend and foil to Alcest. Heck, the whole cast was great. 2nd Story Theatre over the past five years has gathered a strong troupe that has grown in depth and skill and nuance. The next play this season had been scheduled to be Berrigan's Trial of the Catonsville 9 but I see that they have made Beckett's Waiting for Godot the final play of this six play 2005/06 season and rescheduled Trial of the Catonsville 9 to June to be a script-in-hand staged reading with net proceeds to benefit the Rhode Island Military Family Relief Fund. And tonight Nancy and I are going to see How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at The Prout School (a Catholic high school in our town). Okay -- now for the video amusements (there are an incredible number of people putting video clips on the Internet!): This one is called Urban Ninja and is a home video of a very athletic (and foolish) young man performing kungfu movie type stunts. Tiger sometimes makes strange sounds when sitting by an open window -- we always say he is talking to the birds -- but here is a video some people made of their cat making strange chirping and barking sounds. This is a long one -- about nine minutes -- In 1978 Claude Lelouch -- a French filmmaker -- mounted a camera on the front of a Ferrari 275 GBT and had a professional race driver drive through Paris at dawn. This was an entirely illegal and unapproved stunt. He is driving on open streets, running red lights, and at one point hitting almost 140 miles an hour. So he got through that without crashing... but it seems that there is a very long tunnel in Russia that sometimes has water leaks that then freeze coating part of the tunnel floor with ice... so here is a collection (about eighty seconds total) of clips from a traffic monitoring camera in the tunnel.
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