The numbers of life

February 22, 2014 6:59 AM , 2 Comments ,

Have you ever read a book or a poem or listened to a song or looked at a painting and thought to yourself how perfect it is?  Have you ever looked at a landscape and pondered that it somehow resonates with you somewhere deep inside just because it is the way it is?

I don’t mean that these things are just pleasant to contemplate but that the way that these things are put together (whatever it is) are for lack of another word, perfect?

Well things like the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio do exist in nature and it seems many natural phenomena and living things use these ratios.  Life seems to be able to express itself using math in various wonderful ways.

But I want to focus more on human arts.  The way that you are sometimes reading a book and you read a passage and you stare at a sentence and marvel at the way it is put together.  Every word carefully chosen, the structure just right.  When you finish reading it the result is poetic or even melodic to your mind.  Any change, any word substitution would ruin it and the result would seem off-balance.

I remember a sci-fi show years ago where an alien civilization came into contact with humans and were amazed at our music as they had no such concept of their own.  They were a culture totally devoted to math.  They valued the music not for the song contents but for the mathematical expression of the musical notes.  To them this was a new way to appreciate numbers.

I sometimes wonder that if we were to express novels, or poems in some mathematical fashion that well written works would come out as well written and beautifully complex mathematical equations that balanced out.

Perhaps then maybe we too can be expressed as mathematical equations.  Maybe if we were able to express our lives in terms of numbers and equations we could clearly see what was unbalanced or wrong and take steps to correct it.  Would it be that easy?  Would we even be happy if we knew how to do this?  Or would we continue to live life as we have previously done so because to us the equation seems perfect no matter what the numbers say.

Posted in: art, prose, science, thought

The spat

February 20, 2014 6:25 AM , 2 Comments ,

Things aren’t always going to go well in your life and relationships.  Whether it’s friends, family, or even significant others, from time to time you will disagree with people in your life.  Sometimes it will be a small difference of opinion and sometimes it will be as though you never really knew this person.  How you handle it depends on the other person but it also depends on you.  Is it a matter that you are willing to lose a relationship over or is it something where compromise can be reached?

Firstly define the parameters of the disagreement.  Is this something close to your heart or to theirs?  Ask some unobtrusive and non-committal questions about the subject.  Try not to come down for or against the subject.

Let’s assume that it’s a minor topic to both of you.  Is there a possibility of just letting this lie?  Is it really worth the trouble to “iron out”  If it’s a small matter it is usually best to let this alone and sit in the background.  We are all entitled to our own opinions after all.

If it is something close to their heart, is it something that you can skirt around or something that doesn’t affect your interaction with them?  One thing to understand is that this other person has a different life experience than your own.  For whatever reason this topic is important to that person.  Maybe if they explained it to you, you would come to see it in a different light.

If it is something close to your heart then the advice is reversed.  Try to explain your position to them and see if you can bridge the gap.  Let them know why you feel the way you do.  Maybe you will convert them to your point of view, maybe not.

Now comes the hard part.  Something important to both of you where you hold polar opposite views.  This is where family fights begin, friends are lost, and relationships are sundered.  Here you must remember why you like this person in the first place.  Neither side is likely to change their views but the effort must be made.

The two important things to remember is that there is a reason why the other person holds the opinion that they do and that you like interacting with this person for some reason.  Maybe the reason that they hold these views on this topic are not a good reasons, maybe they are.  You need to find out those reasons.  Closing your mind and not attempting to understand will not make things better.  Reaching out and communicating is the best course of action.

Remember, not everything will run smoothly all the time.  Differences of opinion exist in all relationships.  But I think it’s these differences that make relationships special and unique.

Posted in: friends, life in general, relationships, talking

The doldrums

February 18, 2014 6:45 AM , 2 Comments ,

Despite trying to keep myself going at full speed all the time (or perhaps because of it) sometimes I get into periods of time where my energy is at a low ebb.

Work doesn’t appeal to me, neither does exercise, writing, not even brainless activities like web surfing.  I feel just drained of energy.  In Spanish I would say that I have no “animo” related to animation.  To be clear, it’s not a depression but a lack of will to do anything.

These type of days can play havoc with the rest of my week.  Specially on days when I have more than enough to do already.  I do what I can but without any real enthusiasm.  I feel overwhelmed as things get done hardheartedly or don’t get done at all.

I recognized these patterns years ago but never knew what to do about them.  I shrugged my shoulders and figured that this was the way that things were.  Falling behind schedule was acceptable to me.

But no longer.

I can’t allow errant fluctuations in my energy dictate my life for me.  So what to do?

Well firstly I recognize these periods of listlessness when they occur.  I don’t just hope that they will go away but address them.

Next, get onto my scheduled activities and force myself to go through them.  We all have things that need doing and need to be done well.  Focus, focus, focus.  Make an extra special effort to get things done right.

Lastly, economize my energy.  I have things that need doing and things that would be nice to do.  I focus on the essentials on these days.  Leave the other stuff for another day.  But note them down so I don’t totally forget about them.

The doldrums will still come and go over time but there is no reason why I need to let them rule my life.

 

 

Posted in: attitude, energy, habits, schedules

youtube, facebook, twitter and the rise of the new media model

February 16, 2014 7:01 AM , 2 Comments ,

Entertainment, communications, and advertising have been changing in the last 15 years as never before.  They are set to change even more radically in the next five to ten years.

The tried and true models of yesteryear; TV networks, movies, radio, sports, and the music industry have all been shaken to their foundations by the rise of the internet.  Some have adapted better than others and some are on the edge of extinction.

The power of a single internet event to reach out to millions and even tens of millions of people at a time is now undeniable.  How people, companies, and even governments harness that power is what is being debated and shaped at the moment.  The one’s that figure out how to utilize and monetize this force will be the winners in this bonanza.  The losers will fade into history and become little more than Wikipedia entries.

Facebook and Twitter have been publicly battling it out for the last few years.  Both are scrambling to add more and more people to their rolls and trying to capture people’s attention. YouTube also is also adding more people to their rolls but in a much quieter fashion.

All three are depending more and more on the mobile market.  The mobile versions of these sites all have advertising in one form or another.  Ads come in the form of static and unobtrusive side ads or full screen ads played before the featured content comes on.

In Facebook and Twitter you actually have to pay to promote your posts to appear to a wider audience but you don’t have the guarantee that people will actually click on your ad to see what you sell or do.

In YouTube the ads come in the form of the television ads that we all are familiar with.  These ads are either a minutes long ad that can be bypassed after 5 seconds or an ad that is 30 seconds or less that can’t be bypassed.  In order to catch the viewer’s attention, the advertisers have become very creative.  They take ads that on TV would be 1 to 2 minutes long and shrink them down to make their case in seconds and keep the person engaged.  The static ads in Twitter and Facebook don’t do this.

Another thing I have had pointed out to me is that in Facebook and Twitter the users take on the role of bait for advertising by creating content for others to come in and see or they’re potential targets for that advertising.  Other than getting access to the site they are not compensated for their content.

YouTube actively engages with the public in a different way.  YouTube of course wants people to click on ads, but content creators can be incentivized to create content.  YouTuber’s can monetize their content.  With persistence and creative content you could actually make YouTube into a full time job.  Further if you get a sponsor then you’ve really got it made.

Another thing I have been admiring lately about YouTube has been their attempts to organize their main content providers (channels) and get them to create new content, cooperate, and exchange ideas with each other.  In particular I have been amazed by 3 YouTubers.

Hannah Hart, Mamrie Hart, and Grace Helbig are three twenty somethings that each have followings in the hundreds of thousands.  They regularly appear in each others videos, they film each other, support each other, and just recently they parlayed their success into a feature-length film sold on their channels and only available online.

Recently one of them, Grace Helbig, left her old YouTube channel (owned by another group) to work on her own channel.  She basically left the  channel with 2.4 million subscribers to start from scratch.  As of mid February 2014 she is back up to 1.5 million subscribers and adding people all the time.  This at a time when conventional TV viewership is dropping.

It’s not only YouTube that is creating original content.  Other online powerhouses are creating content for online customers.  NetFlix, Hulu, and Amazon are also getting into the game by creating original online content and shows.  Some of it supported by advertising dollars and some by subscription fees.

Are Facebook and Twitter taking note?  Sort of.  Twitter has Vine and Facebook has Instagram. Both have short video formats that will be perfect for the mobile market advertising formats.  If advertisers are clever enough then they should be able to make use of these short formats to sell their goods.

But I am really liking what I am seeing out of YouTube.  The idea that talented people who were previously just viewers and unappreciated content creators can now monetize their content and become a part of the process is really appealing to me.  It’s not all sunshine of course.  YouTube still takes about 45% of the advertising revenue stream (which some content creators consider extremely high) but it’s something that can be adjusted over time.

As we move more and more into this digital age where ideas and thought are becoming more and more important, I think we need to rethink the old media models and start to consider that entertainment and information are no longer flowing down from central sources from on high but flowing freely up, down, left, and right across this world.  Those that realize this will successfully adapt and be able to reap the benefits of this new age.

Posted in: entertainment, future, internet, social media, television

lost opportunities

February 14, 2014 6:51 AM , 2 Comments ,

I know what you say when an idea is so obvious that you’re stunned that you didn’t implement it.

“Why didn’t I think of that?”.  

But what do you say when you did have that idea and had to watch it take off without you due to other people’s short-sighted vision?

Let’s go back to the mid to late 90s.  I’m working at a small consultancy that mainly did support work for the big oil companies.  We used satellite images to create geological maps for exploration projects overseas.  But satellite maps have various other applications such as agriculture, forestry, and city planning.  My supervisor was interested in the last.  He had contacts up in the city planning department and he had an idea.

We could use satellite images and the power of GIS (geographic information systems) to create online maps that would be used to catalog every feature on every property that the city owned and be able to serve it up over the web.  We decided on a small park just south of downtown as our pilot project.

Emancipation park is a large pretty park with baseball fields, a pool, and plenty of green space.  My supervisor and I spent an entire day with GPS units, a primitive digital camera, and lots of notepads to take measurements and record everything about the park.

Back at the office we took a satellite image and put it into the GIS and laboriously outlined the baseball fields, the pool, the playground, the sidewalks, the buildings, in short everything about the park.  Next we coded every feature we could think of and made large cross referenced databases.

Now came the bit that was exclusively my own.  I was no web designer or guru but I was a good second rater and had hand coded and designed the company website.  I added the satellite image of the map and coded regions inside the image to correspond to various web pages that would display information about various features in the park.  Everything from land use statistics to pictures to contact numbers.  Theoretically, a park superintendent could call up every piece of information he needed online.  My supervisor and I played with the website for hours, trying every feature and adding improvements here and there.  We amazed ourselves at how well it worked.

We loaded it onto a laptop and took it to a meeting with the Houston parks official my supervisor knew.  We explained the idea thoroughly and let him play with the website on the laptop.  He kept on going back to the statistics page and exclaimed “this is exactly what I need”

We thought we had him sold.  But as it turned out he was referring to the statistics.  He said that they were always looking for statistics to turn over to city council.  What he wanted was a nice thick binder of data to present to the council for budget time.  As for the website?  No thanks.  Too fancy and complicated for him.  It would never catch on he said.

So we had a very long and quiet drive back to the office.  The company owner said it had been a waste of time to try this project and we shelved it and went back to serving only oil customers.

But I kept at it.  I would tweak and poke at it in my spare time as best as I could without any formal coding education and without the benefit of the expensive GIS programs.

2002.  The company had folded and I was out on my own, trying to scare up consultancy work here and there.  I had secured a copy of the website we had made and got permission to use it as my own.  I pleaded and begged and got another appointment at the planning department and presented the website.  Again it fell flat.  But for different reasons this time.  The official I met typed in his own website and brought up the planning department’s new internal web-based site.

Time had not only caught up but passed me by.  It was all that we had made and more.

Today you can pull out any smartphone or tablet and bring up detailed maps that will find pizza places near you, calculate routes to get where you need to go, and even call ahead to make reservations.

I don’t claim to be the originator of any of these.  Many companies and individuals were working along parallel lines back in the 90’s.  But I do have to wonder what we could have accomplished if we had persisted a little longer or if we could have made that first sale.

Posted in: business, ideas, internet

The killer instinct

February 12, 2014 7:18 AM , 2 Comments ,

I had to choose a physical activity elective in college to meet the school’s physical fitness requirement.  I could have gone with something conventional like weight lifting, tennis, or running but I wanted to stretch my boundaries (that’s part of what college is for, right?) so I decided to try handball.

Handball is a little known sport.  Racquetball is the better known court game and with good reason.  Handball is not for the faint of heart.  The key differences between the two court games center on the ball and the equipment to return the ball.

Unlike the racquetball, the handball is a nearly solid piece of hardened vulcanized rubber.  This increases the amount of energy that it can return when it bounces.  It is also smaller in size making it a harder target to see.

The second difference is the equipment used to return the ball.  In racquetball you get a nice solid racquet to bat at the ball with.  In handball it’s your own fleshy palm that takes the beating.  The only protection you get is a kidskin glove that mitigates scratches but really does nothing to soften the blow.  I’ve seen people unable to remove their gloves after a match because their hands had become so swollen.  They had to soak their hands in ice water to get the gloves off.

Despite of the rigors the class was full to capacity and after learning the basics of the sport the instructors put us in a round robin style tournament.  We would play one match per day and the winner of the match would be the one that got to 21 points.  One particular match stands out in my mind.

I was playing against a slightly younger guy.  He was blond, tall, but not very athletic.  He walked slightly stooped.  He was heavy but not fat.  I recall that he had a very lethargic demeanor.  He just seemed to not want to be in the class and had an attitude of wanting to get this out-of-the-way and move on with his day.

We barely exchanged a word as the match started.  It soon became apparent to me that this guy was just going through the motions.  I quickly began racking up points.  8, 11, 15, finally the score reached 18 to 3 in my favor.  I was feeling cocky and felt some disdain for this guy.  He was barely trying after all.  Yet at the same time I felt pity.  Part of my brain thought “no one should lose like that.  Give him a few points.”  So I deliberately lost the service and let him serve.

I missed some easy returns and soon the score was 18 to 6.  I figured that was good enough.  Time to finish this off.  But then something happened.  His serves started coming with more force, his returns were running me back and forth and making me slam against walls.

18 to 12, 18 to 15.  Had he been gulling me?  If he had it was a masterful performance.  Did I just totally misread this guy and was he in fact a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Whatever the case may be, I was breathing hard and rivulets of sweat were pouring down my face, stinging my eyes.  I dove and missed another return.  19 to 18 in his favor.

The next point seemed to go on forever.  Finally I caught a return by the very tip of my middle finger flexing it farther back than it should go.  Somehow my finger didn’t break off and sent the ball back.  The ball just barely tapped the front wall and fell flat, taking him by surprise and making him miss.  I had the service back.

My finger throbbed in pain.  I felt sure it was either broken or dislocated.  He sauntered back to receive my service.  The smirk on his face irritated me.  I smacked the ball as hard as I could and lobbed the service right through where he was standing.  It made him scramble to get out-of-the-way. An “ace”.

19 all.

The fingers on my left hand wanted to fall off.  No choice but to serve with my off-hand.  Barely any strength in my service.  We go back and forth.  A lucky return into a corner and the ball ricocheted all over the place.  No chance for him to return.

20 to 19.  Game point.

Another weak slap and we bob and weave all over the court.  He returns a power shot straight back to me on my left side.  I have no choice.  Punching the ball is not illegal though it is rare and for good reason.  It feels like I’ve punched a sledge-hammer coming straight at me.  I can feel a jolt of pain shoot up my arm.  It must have looked as painful as it felt because he just stands there gaping as the ball contacts the front wall and bounces on the floor.

game.

He mumbles the customary “good game” and leaves.  I don’t believe I ever saw him again.  As for me I head over to a nearby bus stop cafe and buy a giant cup full of ice and stick my hand in it for the rest of the morning.

I had nearly lost the match because I had not developed my competitive instinct sufficiently.  Lord knows I don’t approve of carrying competition to extreme levels but I also have to be wary of being totally docile.  That type of passivity can also be a vice.

Posted in: attitude, sports

In-house or out, it’s still you

February 10, 2014 7:30 AM , 1 Comment ,

The trend towards moving functions to overseas companies for content and services has pretty much waxed and is now on the wane.  Our company has tried this route for a while now and the results have been mixed at best.

I will admit that at first the price rates that were quoted to us were pretty impressive and almost blinded us to everything else.  But then we came to grips with the realities involved with this lower price.  Some things that we found were service that was iffy, personnel that we could in no way vet nor even be sure actually existed (one company used bogus resumes to boost their image), delivery timelines that due to the location of their offices were hard to predict and would often be in the middle of the night for us.  Any type of live communication would have to be held early in the morning before work or late at night after hours.

We would spend an inordinate amount of time on QC (quality control) making sure that the standards of the product and the final deliverables were up to the quality levels that we set.  In one instance we had to totally scrap the content that they provided and had to redo the project in-house at the last-minute using our own people working late into the night to meet a next day deadline.

When we complained about this, the offshore provider merely shrugged and said that the deliverables “seemed fine to him”.  To me that is just beyond the pale.  How anyone, let alone a supposedly professional company would let a product out the door without doing any sort of editing is baffling.  This provider didn’t even have a clue as to what QC was.

The thing that companies that use offshore providers must remember is that whether the product is good or bad, on time or late, that it’s going to be their reputation that will be on the line with the customer.  You are not just being paid to do a job but trusted by a client to take on a task for their success and if you fail to deliver what you promise then you, not the offshore provider, will suffer the repercussions.  You will be known as someone who is unreliable and that does not come through when called upon to do these type of jobs.

Despite all of these problems we’ve continued on with “offshoring”.  We’ve had to implement stringent quality assurance guidelines that our current provider knows are unbreakable.  If they fail to meet these standards then they lose our business.

May seem overly harsh but we are paying for a service and though we may not be paying top dollar, we still expect that service to be done and to be done properly.  Nothing less will do.

Posted in: business, standards and practices

optimism, pessimism, and me

February 8, 2014 6:43 AM , 1 Comment ,

A funny cartoon I saw last year:

3 glasses on a table. All filled to about mid level with a yellow liquid.  The bubble over the first glass reads “I’m half full” and he has a smile.  The second bubble reads “I’m half empty” and the glass has a frown.  The last bubble reads “I think this is piss” and the glass has a shocked expression.  The caption below all of them reads:

“Realists: the only ones who really know what is going on.”

Attitude can color every fact and action in your life.  A crowd of people can read the same news story and draw entirely different conclusions.  An event can alter two person’s futures in totally different ways just due to the way that their frame of mind processes the event.  That crucial first impression can be read in different ways by two people meeting the same person at the same time.

I’ve been called a pessimist by people I know and by online tests.  But I think the term has been used as a broad brush for anyone that doesn’t always look for the bright side of anything and everything.  Thing is that optimism isn’t all that good an outlook either.  You can trip and fall just as much by assuming that everything will turn out alright as by assuming that everything will fall apart.  The real world is so multi faceted and complex that I don’t think you can look at everything in a totally optimistic or pessimistic way.

My outlook on life is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst and to always see things as they are and not as I hope or dread that they are.  Tough advice to follow sometimes.  Specially when I have to struggle with my own fears and desires that want to set their own agendas within my mind.

After I make a decision or form an opinion about an object, an event, or a person I have to think to myself is this really the way things are or am I letting some unspoken filter alter my thought process?

Did I make that sale?  Is the roof going to make it one more year?  Will the economy get better?  Does she like me?  So many things to be concerned about.  So few concrete answers.  All I have to go on is my gut.

Posted in: attitude, life in general, personality, thought

Dating do’s and don’t s

February 6, 2014 6:35 AM , 1 Comment ,

 

Truthfully I don’t remember what this post was supposed to be about.

I recall that I had an idea in the shower about a week ago.  I had several other things to attend to so I penned a short note in the blog and forgot about it.  Now that I’ve come back to it the note says:

“dating do’s and don’t:  mostly I don’t”

Not too clear.  However it’s on the list and since we’re near Valentines day I might as well write something about dating and get that semi-obligatory post out-of-the-way.

Right, so taking a cue from the note, mostly I don’t date.  Introverted and shy are not the best combination to work with as far as dating goes so that’s a handicap even before coming out of the gate.  However, even a broken clock is right twice a day so I’ve picked up the odd date here and there (some odder than the rest).  So here are some first date tips and hard-won lessons from memories of those dates from long, long ago.

 

…(long ago)

 

Do’s

  • Establish that this is going to be a date.  In most cases you don’t have to blurt out “This is going to be a date, right?”  But sometimes it’s needed.

Pro tip:  Start with something like “Do you want to go out on a date?”  Pretty unmistakable intention right there.

  • Know something about your date.  Not knowing that your date is vegan and taking them to a steak place is not advisable.  I mean I get it that you just met this person like a week ago and haven’t had any in-depth conversations and all but I think that might be a good detail to know?

Obviously something attracted you to this person so why not do a little research first?  Just don’t be too creepy and carry around a clipboard with a list of questions.

  • Confidence.  Dates can smell fear.  You must be relaxed yet assertive.  Cool but not cold.  Self assured yet not arrogant.  Act like that movie cool actor you saw in that movie (whatever that movie was) that you liked.

Just don’t quote lines from the movie verbatim and if you do, make sure that it’s not a movie that your date knows.

  • Have something in common.  Going out with someone just because they’re good-looking will usually be very boring.  The conversation will quickly start to revolve around how good-looking they are and what they do to stay good-looking and how they like to be around other good-looking people.  After that (say about the time that the salad arrives) things pretty much go dead quiet for the rest of the evening.

Going out with someone who you have something in common will give you something to start with and usually leads to other topics of discussion so at least your date won’t be boring.

  • Dress (yes, you must wear clothes) appropriately.  Going to a heavy metal bar in business attire is usually not advisable (meaning safe) nor is meeting your date at some high society function looking like you just came from panhandling next to the 59 and Kirby underpass.

Pro tip:  Soccer moms in mini vans are the best panhandling opportunities.

Showers are amazingly effective in making your dates not run away; as is some sort of deodorant/perfume/cologne.  Just don’t go overboard.  A clean smell is preferable to smelling like a Fort Worth stockyard in mid August or like a Marseille bordello.

  •  Ending the evening.  Always try to end the evening on a positive and cordial note no matter how horribly it went.  At the very least you will gain a friendly acquaintance from the experience.

Always smile and if they apologize for a terrible evening say something like “I never did mind about the little things.”  (bonus points if you can tell me from what movie that line came from.)

(Addendum).  Not really sure what the procedure is for a successful date as it so rarely happens to me.  I can however speculate.  One thing that springs to mind is to ask for another date.  Then if you’re successful at obtaining one, try to remember what you did right the first time, then, do it again.

Don’t s

  • Don’t do something involved for the first date.  Things like going to the movies together, or sports events, or spelunking.  Things that require both parties concentration.  You want to get to know the other person the first time around not just go to another event.  Save that for down the road.

Hang out together, talk.  Some people I know have had “phone” dates and chatted on the phone for 6 hours at a time.  Other people take walks or share a drink.  If you make it an alcoholic drink keep it to a mild buzz.  You don’t want to have to rely on your date to drive you home or to hold your hair back while you kneel in front of a toilet bowl.

  • Put away the cell phone, the tablet, the beeper, or whatever.  Unless you’re like a heart surgeon or a member of SEAL team 6.  Then yes, keep that stuff on…  People are depending on you.

But really it’s just rude and you’re cheating yourself of the experience.  This is time set aside for this person not just a regular part of your routine.  Make the honest effort to make the date special.

  • Don’t get too personal on your first date.  You don’t know this person that well.  Maybe they will get scared off if you get too personal or maybe you don’t want to see them after this date and you don’t want them knowing all this stuff about you.  Keep things casual and light at first.

On the other hand if you want to get rid of them and freak them out you can tell them that you’re carrying your meth-head ex-boyfriend’s baby and that he just busted out of prison and might be in the area.

  • Don’t try to be someone you’re not.  Be yourself and don’t try to over impress on the first date.  If you do this then you have to come up with a back story to frame your over impressive self-resume and that just devolves into lying.

You have to come up with various reasons as to why your private jet isn’t working and can’t fly you to your beach house on St. Kitt’s Island and I mean have you even looked into the price for renting a private jet by the hour?  Ridiculous!

  • Sex (there, I said it).  Just put that out of your mind for the first date.  Unless there are sparks and fireworks going off all around you (and it’s not just gunfire in the distance) you won’t even reach this level of intimacy for a few dates.

Focus on other things like not coming off as creepy or desperate (see confidence up above)

  • Don’t assume anything.  Maybe the date went better than you think; maybe it was a total fiasco.  A wait and see attitude is always best.

If weeks pass by and the other person’s phone number has changed or they’ve moved without any forwarding address then yes it probably was a bad date.

The best piece of advice that I could give is to try to have a good time.  That’s the point of the date, right?  It shouldn’t be a chore or a bothersome obligation or something that you dread.  If it starts feeling like that then maybe this is a sign that this isn’t going anywhere.

Posted in: activities, dating, relationships

Dr Faustus review

February 4, 2014 6:32 AM , 2 Comments ,

I love small theater venues.  You get a much better sense of what’s going on and the story becomes more intimate.  Actors spend long hours not just memorizing lines but practicing acting and reacting to each other and to the story.  It’s nice to be close enough to see all of that.  Large venues can be impersonal but small venues bring the action almost into your lap.

The Barnvelder (or the Barn) is such a place.  The stage dressing is minimal and the costumes are pretty spare but the acting is top-notch and really that’s what you’re there to see.

I first became aware of the Classical Theater Company at a convention a couple of years ago.  As the name suggests they do only classical works of theater but with small modernizing twists here and there.  Dr Faust was a good example.  The actors were all dressed in 1920s style clothes and old-time music played in the background on a Vitrolla but the story itself wasn’t changed.

Most people just know Dr Faust for the catchphrase “Faustian bargain” but know little more than that.  Often they will confuse it with the American short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and assume it ends well.

In the story a young German student is deciding what course his life will take.  He is bored with medicine, law, science, and considers religion to be stifling.  However he is fascinated with necromancy and sees it as a liberating field of study that will set him above his fellow-man.

He summons a devil called Mephistopheles and asks for this power.  Mephistopheles  answers that he can only do that if Lucifer allows him and the price for that would be Faust’s soul.  Faust readily agrees without thought and signs a contract for 24 years.  He assumes he has cheated Lucifer as he does not believe that the soul exists and that when he dies nothing will happen to him even though Lucifer has made it plain what it will happen and introduces him to the seven deadly sins.

So for the next few years Faust and Mephistopheles travel the world and do whatever they want.  They pester the Pope, they meet with royalty, they summon the spirits of Alexander the great and Helen of Troy, and generally Faust has a good time, until he meets an old man on a country road.

The old man tells Faust that he has squandered the most precious thing he owns for petty gains and that he will spend eternity in torment for it.  This creates doubt in Faust and his resolve cracks.  He thinks about repenting but Mephistopheles chastises him.  Faust says that he will never again repent if he could spend a night of passion with Helen of Troy.  Mephistopheles grants his wish.

As his time is coming to an end Faust becomes more and more worried.  He begins to see that he has made a horrible bargain.  On his final day on Earth he tries to repent and pray but is restrained by the bargain he had made with Mephistopheles.  He cries out to the mountains to hide him, to the ground to open up and swallow him and to the stars to lift him up but it is to no avail.  Hell opens up and drags him off.

The play itself was portrayed by 4 actors.

James Belcher from the Alley theater acting company portrayed Mephistopheles

Adam Gibbs played the title role of Faust,

Dain Geist who had previously played Hamlet played the part of the chorus as well as other small parts such as Lucifer, and the pope,

Joanna Hubbard who played Ophelia in Hamlet was also part of the chorus and other small parts such as Helen of troy and a cardinal.

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