Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

30 Days Of Music: Day 1 – Your Favorite Song

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So…My friend Heather has been doing this here list for a few weeks now. I have to admit that I’m a lot like her in that this is likely not going to be done in anything remotely resembling 30 days, but it does give me some quick fodder to actually put some content out on the site.

The whole point is that you have this list of 30 different music based topics you’re supposed to write about. Day 1, for example, is your favorite song.

I hate this question. With a passion. I don’t know that I have a favorite song. I have favorite songs of the moment. When you ask me what my favorite song is the answer that comes to mind wouldn’t be the same answer I’d have given you six months ago, and it probably won’t be the same answer six months from now. So telling you what my “favorite” song is becomes kind of a problem.

That said…

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The Reviews Are In (Dead Man’s Cell Phone)

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As has become the tradition here on my little ol’ blog, I am posting up links to all three major reviews that have come in for Dead Man’s Cell Phone. For the most part, they are overwhelmingly positive. There are some quibbles about the script itself, but even with those caveats all three critics had tons of lovely things to say about our little production.

“A fine production of Dead Man’s Cell Phone, an imaginative if flawed play by the ubiquitous Sarah Ruhl” – Mark E. Leib, Creative Loafing, June 9th, 2010

“‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’ starts out strong, then fades out” – Marty Clear, The St. Petersburg Times, June 10th, 2010

“‘Cell Phone’ message is loud and clear” – Kathy L. Greenberg, The Tampa Tribune, June 10th, 2010

I’ve said it before, but I’ll emphasize here again. I don’t do what I do just to get a nice review, but I sure as hell don’t mind it when that happens. All three of these reviews are awesome, and two of them are especially complimentary to me personally. Mark says that it might be my best performance, and Marty refers to me as “always excellent.” I’ve heard similar comments from some of my peers who have seen the show.

Is this my best work? I honestly don’t know. I can tell you that it’s some of my most honest. I can tell you that the things that have been praised about the show are things that the cast and crew consciously worked on and that they were not “happy accidents.” I can tell you that the audiences that have seen the show so far have seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and that we’ve been getting lots of positive feedback on Facebook and Twitter.

Another show that I got high praise on, personally, was Playing with Fire : After Frankenstein. Unfortunately, in the realm of ticket sales, not a lot of people came to see that show (despite great feedback and positive reviews). I hope that doesn’t turn out to be the case again.

Please, if you can possibly spare the time, give us an opportunity to entertain you for an evening. I promise you that you won’t regret it. If money is an issue please contact me directly. We have several means to get discounted tickets available and can possibly work something out to help you get into a seat.

If this sounds a little early for me to be all desperate and pleading…It’s only because I’m proud of the work and I want to share it with you. I have had people tell me that they “wished they could have” seen one of the shows so many times it makes my head spin. Don’t be that person!

Run for your lives!

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Image via geishboy500 on flickr

Are you tired of the same old exercise routine but not quite brave enough to strap on the leg warmers and swing around a pole? Are you convinced that Max Brooks is a prophet and not just an international bestselling author? Do you get pissed off anytime someone makes a joke about zombies craving brains because that was something that was added in by the folks who made Return of the Living Dead and was never part of George Romero’s universe?

If so, we’ve got the workout for you.

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Works in progress (Dungeons & Dragons)

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Picture taken by Krystalle during one of our recent games

Editor’s Note – The following 2000+ word post is not going to be of any interest to you at all unless you’re into tabletop role-playing games (and even then you may not care if you aren’t playing Dungeons and Dragons). I give this warning in advance to spare your precious time.

If you follow my Twitter or Facebook feeds you’re probably aware that, over the last few months, some friends of mine and I have been regularly playing Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. It has been a great deal of fun on many levels. Not only am I gaming again on a regular basis (a pastime that has played an integral role in my life since I was in my early teens), but I’m doing so with my family. Finding activities that all of us enjoy can be a bit of a challenge, and the fact role-playing fell into this category just makes it all the more awesome.

The more time I spend gaming these days, the more I realize that during the years where I spent most of my free time playing games like City of Heroes and World of Warcraft I was really just trying to fill the tabletop RPG void in my life. Now that I am tabletop gaming again on a regular basis I realize that it was a less-than-fulfilling replacement. As much fun as I had playing MMORPG’s (and let’s be clear – I DID have a lot of fun), there just isn’t anything quite like making up your OWN stories and having adventures that aren’t pre-determined by a set of programmers. The exhilaration of defeating an epic monster in a scripted encounter is nothing compared to the joy of defeating a party of kobolds while sitting around a table with your friends making Monty Python jokes.

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Sunday in the office with Mike

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There is a stillness to the world when you’re up at 7:30 AM on a Sunday morning. At least there is in my house. No televisions are on. No music is playing. Nobody is walking through my office to get to the kitchen or sitting in the living room playing on a console. It’s nice, but at the same time it’s somewhat disturbing. I truly enjoy moments of quiet and solitude when I can find them, but when they occur at any time after the sun comes up it feels somewhat unnatural.

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By the light of the silvery iPad

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Image via Silly Rabit, Trix are for Kids on flickr

Back in the late 1980’s Science Fiction and Fantasy author George R. R. Martin cobbled together a group of talented writers to create Wild Cards, a series of alternate history novels set in a universe where super heroes were real. One of the recurring characters in the series was a man named Croyd Crenson, alternately referred to as The Sleeper. In the Wild Cards universe people who were exposed to a virus had a chance to either die, become horribly deformed, or develop extraordinary abilities. The Sleeper was unique in that every time he fell asleep he would be infected with the virus anew, awaking in an entirely different form. Convinced that one day he would draw the “Black Queen” and die as a result of his re-infection with the virus, Crenson fought sleep for weeks on end.

Needless to say, this made him a bit crazy.

As anyone who has seen a Nightmare on Elm Street film can attest to, sleep is important (unless, that is, a scary dude who is covered in burns and has razors on his fingers is going to kill you in it). Going without sleep for long periods of time can have very negative effects on the psyche, but many of us aren’t likely to find ourselves in those kind of situations. What we do commonly face, however, are situations in which we simply do not get enough sleep. The average adult gets about 7 hours of sleep a night, but most studies suggest that in order to be fully rested they should be getting 8. Those numbers come from a study in Consumer Reports back in 1997. Chances are that if you did the same study today we’d probably be getting even less sleep.

One of the reasons? iPads.

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I’m going hungry

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Image via just_clicked on flickr

In the 1987 Oliver Stone film Wall Street Michael Douglas, in the role of Gordon Gekko, uttered the famous words that defined the “me” era of the late 1980’s –

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.

Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for his portrayal of the reviled Mr. Gekko, and while I won’t spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it (and if you haven’t, I do suggest you make an effort to do so) it is safe to say that by the end of the movie the philosophy that he espoused came back to bite him in the ass.

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National Security : It’s what’s for lunch

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Image by chidorian via flickr

I have many fond memories of my school days. I remember my friends and some of the teachers I had that really made a difference in my life. I remember all of the awesome things that I got to experience at the arts focused high school that I went to. I remember how fun my senior prom was, and how thankful I was that my date for the evening had convinced me to go. I even remember how much I just enjoyed learning new things, but that may be a case of me looking back with rose-tinted glasses. If my grades were any indicator learning was the last thing on my mind in school.

What I do not have fond memories of, however, were the school lunches. In fact, I distinctly remember hating the cafeteria so much that I never set foot in it once after my Freshman year in high school.  (My friends and I would either brown bag it or go without and hang out in the theater or a sympathetic teacher’s classroom.) Not only was the threat of bullying higher in the loosely supervised cafeteria, but the food was horrible. Our school’s gastronomical oddities included strange, pinkish meat on rectangular slices of pizza, spaghetti with thick, rubbery noodles coated in disgustingly sweet sauce, and cheeseburgers made from some kind of textured vegetable protein that were often dotted with a slimy gray substance.

The school cafeteria was a pit of doom that smelled of death and sadness. It was my version of Hell, and a few years ago when I sent to my son’s school to have lunch with him I confirmed that nothing has changed. In fact, there were a few items there even more disturbing than I recalled.

What I didn’t know, though, was that the food being served in our schools was not just a threat to the emotional and physical well being of the poor children who actually have to eat it. The problem, it turns out, is far more acute than bad taste.

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Gross Generalizations (Not A Lot Of Truth Here)

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One of my former High School classmates recently posted a note on her Facebook page that was titled “A Lot Of Truth Here.” The post was a laundry lists of “truths” about Liberals vs. Conservatives, and it was clearly written by someone who sympathized with the Right side of that particular battle.

I didn’t respond in depth to that particular post. For one it was pretty clear that she agreed with it and nothing I could say was going to convince her otherwise. Two, she very clearly didn’t write it herself. Lastly, however, was due to the fact that the post ended with a “Oh ha-ha, this is just a joke and if it offends you clearly that means you’re a liberal and everything that is written here is true” kind of statement.

As I said to her there, it didn’t offend me. It was just wrong.

At the time I pretty much tried to leave it at that, but it has stuck with me since reading it so I’ve gone back and grabbed the post so that I can respond on my turf. My thoughts are behind the cut.

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Squeezing into your genes

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image via dullhunk on flickr

Tell me why, oh why, are my genetics such a bitch?

– Shiloh from Repo: The Genetic Opera

The 1997 movie GATTACA portrayed an ugly future where people were pigeon-holed in society based upon their genetic make up. In order to live up to his life-long dream of being an astronaut, Ethan Hawke’s character in the movie had to assume the genetic identity of another man (played by Jude Law) who did not suffer from the same genetic impurities that Hawke did. Hawke was considered to be an ‘in-valid’ – someone who would never succeed in life because his genes would prevent him from doing so.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but if you understand Hollywood at all, you can probably assume that one of the central themes in the story is that our genetic make-up does not necessarily have to determine our fate. Yes, you might be born with some kind of flaw in your DNA that makes you more likely to suffer from heart disease, but that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to.

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