Limited Perspective

  My dad doesn’t tell “dad jokes.” He tells those long, story jokes. The ones with lots of characters and situations and detours. They seem to go on and on. Then, by the time you almost forget the set-up, he comes in with the punch line, “It’s too, too, too late!” or something like that. Sometimes when people try to tell these jokes, they start off, “You see there was this famer and he goes to the bank, then the farmer says – no the banker says – no wait he didn’t get into the bank yet because the guard stopped him at the door …” Not good! I’d read a book of those old jokes.   It’s an art form.   Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

I watched M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening tonight. I never like to speak poorly of something, so I will let one of the stars, Mark Wahlberg say it for me, as reported on the films Wikipedia page. “Wahlberg offered his own opinion of The Happening in 2010, saying that Amy Adams, who was in consideration for the role of Alma Moore, had ‘dodged the bullet’ by not starring in the film. He said, ‘It was a really bad movie... F**k it. It is what it is... You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.’” Wikipedia goes on, “In 2019, Shyamalan said he takes some responsibility for the way the movie turned out: ‘I think it's a consistent kind of farce humor. You know, like The Blob. The campy, 1958 debut of actor Steve McQueen, featuring a mysterious, growing amoeba that takes over a small Pennsylvania town. The key to The Blob is that it just never takes itself that seriously. I think I was inconsistent. That's why

I had an acting gig the other night with Dacha Theatre . It was Bainbridge Island High School’s graduation and we were asked to entertain the no-longer-students on their bus trip from the ceremony to the ferry and on to the Ballard Elks Lodge. The kids would board six different buses and one of our actors would join them as their tour captains. My thoughts were, most likely, a good portion of the kids would find this contemptible and we would struggle to keep them engaged.  How wrong I was! They were absolutely delighted. We invented a scenario where we were a bus tour company on the skids. I was Ted, the CEO and if my captains did not get high marks, I was going to have to get rid of them, or maybe even shut the whole thing down. This really got the graduates engaged in helping their captains, and vilifying me – though some of them liked me, too and asked me to pose for pictures. It was wild! We had a competition to choose a song – Party in the USA, of course, and then filmed them all