APOCALYPSE NOW: A war in Europe, impending computer havoc, the stock market’s playing Icarus, Nostradamas is a bestselling author and “Dr. Strangelove” is released on DVD – do the math in your head. Time to reserve those front row seats for the second-coming, Birth of the Beast ’99 coming live to Bethlehem – New Years Eve, 1999 – Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
A one way ticket to Jerusalem is about $1750 (subject to availability) according to Shelli Yerion of Petaluma Travel – a small price to pay to be first of the last (a dubious distinction for believers, but it beats being fed to the lions). Call Petaluma Travel at 762-2787. Ask for the Yeats Package: “And what rough beast, its hour come ’round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born…”
Those with flight fright may choose to travel by ocean liner – a P.O.S.H experience (Port Outbound, Starboard Homebound) suggests sidewalk Socrates Dick Hoorn. In other travel news, once local poet Gustav C. Jensen, was denied entrance to Yugoslavia several months ago because the middle name printed in his passport is Clinton.
SYNERGY: Poet Clay Anders, at the behest of Aspen, Colorado music act Déjà Vu, sent the songwriters his poem “Forever Unseen” which they turned around in two days as a “poignant travelin’ man song.” One wonders what would result if the hit-makers were sent the Petaluma phonebook presented as avant-garde fiction. A hit list?
STAGE BOUND: Stage One, Sonoma State University’s resident student theater company hosted its New Works Festival the Saturday before last.
The audience to performer ratio with healthily skewed in the right direction and many fine works were debuted including local composer Jason Sherbundy’s bar born study of romantic dissipation “Yesterday’s News” and Cara Cadwallader’s series “A Three Week Time Period, Part I: The Waking State,” “Part II: I Am Not a Guy” and “Part III, Reprise: Untitled.” As Cadwallader explains “This three-part piece traces the disjointed, yet rhythmic pattern of emotions I experience every twenty-one days – thanks, in part, to my reproductive cycle.”
Ending the evening was director Wes Fredenburg’s “Stick It,” a pantomimed fable of unrequited love doused with German-Expressionism and featuring the sterling Mike Anino, Andrea Cruz and a cow’s heart. Unique theater served rare.
FROM THE WIRE: Local cafe bon vivant Richard Stark forwards this original gag from his brother Fred in Turkey: “What kind of acid do you take for indigestion? Formic, because it’s an ant acid.” Stark also offers his one word poem entitled “Nut With a Cold,” it reads, “Cashew.”
