Crazytown

A NEW DRUG

Fully funded by the FDA.
By Jennifer Anderson (actor/singer/pharmaceutical rep)

Crazytown friends, I recently wrapped up an amazing class at the Magnet Theater called Video Creation Level 1. Led by director, writer, and producer Joe Whelski, I (along with 8 other awesome fledgling filmmakers) wrote, directed, shot, and produced our own scripts over the course of 2 months.

So today, I'd like to present my final, finished product: "NEW DRUG." Hope you enjoy it!

 

Special thanks to my actors Manu Menon, Rachael Shaffer, and Garrit Guadan. And additional special thanks to www.bensound.com for providing the soundtrack.

JENNIFER ANDERSON is an actor and singer living in Brooklyn. She needs a refill on her thoughts and prayers. www.jenniferjanderson.com
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GIRAFFES...IN DANGER?!

A world without giraffes is hardly a world at all.
by Alex Syiek (Writer/Performer)

So my mother sent me this breaking news this week:

A world without giraffes is hardly a world at all.

If any of y'all reading this are close to me, you will know that I love giraffes. Favorite animal. Hands down. They are majestic, they are hilarious, they are survivors. So when I saw they were put on the endangered list, I was heartbroken. Of course, my enterprising mother suggested I put on a fundraiser performance of my musical, Giraffenstein and donate the proceeds to a wildlife rescue fund. I think it's a fabulous idea, and I will probably do it once I am back in the city after the holidays.

Giraffenstein was written for the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival, and I was lucky enough to have my brilliant sister and fellow Crazytown blogger, Joanna Syiek direct it. As the name suggests, the musical is the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, as told by animals of the African Serengeti. So you can get a lil' taste of what it looked like, here's our promo:

And we're all giraffes.

It was a joyous time of my life putting the production up. The company felt like a family, and I got to be surrounded by my favorite animals as they sang and danced. What could be better?

But tragically, the musical could end up a relic of the past if giraffes are no longer around in our world. So I implore you to step back and recognize the devastating effects both poaching and climate change are having on some of the most incredible creatures on Earth, including the giraffe, the African elephant, and coral reefs. If you'd like to find out more about humanity's unfortunate effect on our global animal family tree, check out Vanishing, a CNN report, which, by the time you are reading this will have already aired. I'm sure you will be able to find it online.

Climate change is a real threat, no matter what certain administrations may posit. We can be the change we want to see in the world. Let's save those long tongued, cute-as-hell creatures and thousands of other endangered species.

THE THING ABOUT HUMANS

By Eric Grunin

Humans are weird.

When a cat sees a bird in flight, it may think "I wish I could eat that," but it probably doesn't think "I wish I could fly."

But humans? Every child has a moment where they want to fly, or dive like a fish, or travel into space, or go backwards in time. We want to play in the snow and not die of exposure. We want to cross deserts without dying of thirst.

Humans, it appears, are everywhere and always chafing at the limits placed on them by nature.

Some of us go so far as to realize these impossible dreams. We invent clothing for warmth, hollow out gourds to hold water. We invent airplanes for flying and scuba tanks for diving, and rockets to take us to the moon. But also: we discover X-rays and inadvertently give ourselves cancer. We invent antibiotics and find ourselves facing superbugs a mere century later.

Now dig a little deeper.

Animals can be unhappy, can even get depressed, but short of excruciating pain only humans will actually do themselves in. Only people can want change with such intensity that they would rather die than to go without it.

This is kind of amazing. How could this be?

Think about infants. When a baby cries, it's generally expressing one of a very few needs: food, warmth, cuddle, new diaper. There is no difference, in the baby's experience, between physical pain and these needs. And this is how the bleakest, blackest depression works: it's a feeling as intense and constant and demanding of relief as a kidney stone. A baby will cry for hours until its needs are addressed; imagine an adult in that kind of torment, but unable to find relief. And yet animals seem immune. What's up with that?

That's the most extreme case, but isn't the general condition of humanity, as Thoreau suggested, that most "lead lives of quiet desperation?" Is the problem the subjugation of the many by the few? That's a very tempting reading, but looking into history it seems unsupportable. Unhappiness with one's lot is rampant at all levels of all societies as far back as any such subjective feelings can be traced.

Is desire itself the problem? Are we too much at war with our natural selves?

BEE FOR PRESIDENT 2016

The late term candidate you've been waiting for.
By Jennifer Anderson (Actor/Singer/Member of the Bee-hive)

I've heard a lot of complaints from friend and foe alike that there's no one they can really put their vote behind come November. They'd rather die than vote Trump, and they think Hillary is a criminal. (I leave my own political opinions out of such conversations because I'm a libra and I like to keep the peace.)

Well, I've got a solution for all of you out there with no where to turn at the polls. I present to you a new candidate for this year's race: Samantha Bee.

Watch the following video. (NSFW - Language. Just FYI)

 

JENNIFER ANDERSON is an actor and singer living in Brooklyn. She thinks Samantha Bee has bigger balls than any male she's ever met. www.jenniferjanderson.com
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FIVE WAYS TO JUMPSTART YOUR CREATIVITY

Simple life hacks to get your through your creative block.
By Brandon Rizzuto

As a writer, I spend most of my time trying to come up with new ideas. Ideally this creative process would start with me sitting at my desk followed by instrumental music that builds into a crescendo when inspiration strikes. Days will become nights. Months will fly off the calendar with flipbook speed. Crumpled up pieces of paper will be tossed over my shoulder and into an overstuffed trash bin. And in the end I will emerge with sunken eyes and 300 pages of pure literary genius.

Unfortunately though, the creative experience often halts at the sight of a blinking cursor on a blank Word document. Writer’s block will cripple my fingers until I give up with no pages of literary genius and 300 pounds of frustration and undefined creativity that can’t find it’s voice.

However, if there’s one thing the internet is good for, it’s life hacks and thankfully not all life hacks revolve around different ways to use binder clips. Some are actually beneficial to jumpstart your creativity and move through whatever creative block you’re going through.

REQUIRED LISTENING FOR GUITARISTS WHO LOVE THEIR GEAR

The Rock and Roll Archaeology Project does it again.
By Tom Rizzuto

The electric guitar is an amazing instrument. Sure, there’s nothing that sounds quite like it, but it’s deeper than that. No other instrument captures our imagination like the electric guitar. No other instrument taps into that quintessential human compulsion to create and recreate. To innovate and deconstruct. To tinker and engineer.

It fulfills our desire for art. It fulfills our desire for expression. It fulfills our desire…for toys.

10 bucks says this kid has more effects pedals than he's had guitar lessons. Just a hunch.

The Wah-wah Pedal, the Fuzz-box, the Phaser, the Whammy Bar, the Humbucker, the E-Bow: All testaments to man’s desire to wrestle with the power of sound by harnessing the power of machine!

Electric guitarists, perhaps more than any other group of musicians, covet their gear. As any young man who’s ever plugged a $98 guitar into $400 worth of pedals knows, you can make almost anything sound good with the right equipment.

For their latest episode, our good friends and generally awesome guys over at The Rock N Roll Archaeology Project podcast are serving up some of the finest gear-related information the music world has to offer.

Fans of the podcast will note that Episode 9: The Medium, The Message, The Music is a departure from their normal format. Rather than digging into a particular story or cast of characters from the history of Rock and Roll, the guys explore some nonmusical influences that helped shape the cultural phenomenon, namely LSD and Technology…among other things.

While the influence of drug culture on the music of the 1960s is undeniably interesting and important, it’s the technological angle that really made the episode for me. As a guitarist, I especially appreciated the respectful homage to Seth Lover. Lover, who’s name has often been overshadowed by innovators with more brand-recognition like Les Paul and Leo Fender, was instrumental in refining and shaping the sound of the electric guitar in Rock and Roll. Learning more about his inventions is reason enough to download this episode.

Listen up, kids. You might learn something.

If all that wasn’t enough to inspire you to listen to this podcast, there’s one more thing you should know. Yours truly, Tom Rizzuto, was given the opportunity to add my voice to the production. You can hear me speaking the words of writer Peter Ames Carlin towards the end of the episode. I am honored to have my voice be a part of such a great show.

The Rock N Roll Archaeology Project is doing important work out there, America. I’m proud to support them by listening and doing my part to get the word out, and you should too.

Tom Rizzuto is a freelance musician and writer working in New York. He has also taught guitar and music history at several local universities. Listen to this podcast. Come on. Why wouldn't you? 
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FORGET ME NOT

Forget Me Now.
By Alisha Giampola (Writer/Performer) 

Currently playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club, the play Incognito by Nick Payne is about that darling of gothic novels and soap operas everywhere, amnesia. I had the opportunity to see it this weekend and therefore get up close and personal with one of its stars, Charlie Cox, better known as Daredevil. I, like basically all of you, have been one million percent down with the new Netflix-helmed Marvel superhero tv series' currently containing seasons 1 and 2 of Daredevil, season 1 of Jessica Jones, and the soon-coming Luke Cage. Comic books fit, in my opinion, way better into the format of a TV series than a movie. The scope and style fits into the episodic format of hour-long chunks, and Netflix (may its reign last a thousand years!) is more than happy to bring us more binge-watching comic-strip-style content than we could watch during an entire decade of unemployment. 

I was quite excited to see Charlie Cox live on stage, hear his actual guaranteed-to-be-delightful British accent, and find out how he is at playing a non-blind character. I was satisfied on all counts. Also, let's talk about the play itself, because I spent like three hours after I got home Googling every bit of the source material referenced in the Author's Note in the Playbill. Incognito is a simply performed, intricately written play that demands each actor play roughly five characters, each of which have a different accent. 

Tickets here.
(Definitely do this if you're under 30 for $30 tickets! You whippersnappers.)

When I was in college, and mildly obsessed with the addictively-ridiculous soap opera Passions, I vaguely remember that the wealthy and mysterious Sheridan Crane suffers from amnesia after being in a boat explosion (duh), completely forgetting her identity and taking the name of Diana after her tragically dead old pal, you guessed it, Princess Diana. This is the kind of stuff amnesia plots are usually reserved for...long-running soap operas looking for a way to do an easy one-eighty on a major character. Actress pregnant and needs to spend a few months of filming on bed rest? Amnesia. Actor busy with another project and can only film a couple green-screened episodes a month from a desolate location? Amnesia. Child star's voice drops unexpectedly and you need to buy some time before you figure out if you're recasting or sending his character to a boarding school in the Maldives? BOOM: amnesia. 

Is there anything that can't be improved by an Arrested Development gif? 

Incognito anticipates audiences' familiarity with (and the usual ensuing campiness of) standard amnesia plots by immediately name-dropping a real, solid, respectable-yet-quirky scientific name to ground the thing in reality: Einstein. As in Albert. As in Moonwalking With. Through a fluid, almost free-associative script, Incognito tells the mostly-true stories of several people with amnesia, a few whose lives they intersect, and, of course, the Einsteins. It is acted beautifully, not just by Charlie Cox but also his fantastic co-stars Geneva Carr, Morgan Spector, and Heather Lind. The focus is on the words and the performance: no costume changes, minimal lighting, fairly unnecessary (but thankfully brief) choreography, and nothing but a few chairs onstage. 

This play reminded me of what might happen if Tom Stoppard listened to a few too many scientific podcasts on NPR. I enjoyed the wordy intimacy shared by the myriad characters of the story as well as the occasional more clinical details, revealed in monologues that could be delivered equally well by poet or physicist. I learned more than I ever knew about the science behind memory studies and what we've learned about amnesia over the past hundred years (surprisingly little!) and some of the most famous patients that doctors have been able to learn about this unusual brain trauma from (surprisingly few!) and I found myself both amazed and devastated by the complexities of consciousness. Clive Wearing, a still-living amnesia patient (who, combined with the famous Patient HM, was the inspiration for one of the play's characters) is one of the most heartbreaking and fascinating people I've ever read about. Start here and here to learn more about how he lives his entire life in 7 to 30 second increments. 

What's this? Oh, just The Saddest Diary In The World.

Kudos to Charlie Cox for choosing such a fascinating and unique project so soon after achieving comic-book-hero-fame. I am reminded of the fantastic contribution Lupita Nyong'o made this past week to Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter in which she defends the theatre and has a few choice words for anyone who might suggest that choosing a challenging play (read: less money) over a blockbuster film (read: oh so much more money) is a bad career move. 

 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer who....
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FRANK SINATRA THINKS URANUS IS HEAVEN

If you giggled at that headline, then this article is just for you
By Brandon Rizzuto

Frank Sinatra. Ol’ Blue Eyes. The Chairman of the Board. That singer your Italian uncle is always talking about. With an array of hits, Sinatra is a musical icon. His hits include “My Way”, “You Make Me Feel So Young, and “Theme from New York, New York.”

“Theme from New York, New York” comes from the album Trilogy: Past Present Future. The concept of the album is that each record of the triple vinyl set has songs from the past, present, and future. The past and present albums being covers of Sinatra’s favorite songs and the future segment is about Sinatra traveling through space. Yup. You read that right.

 

IF YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO HATE VALENTINE’S DAY, DO IT RIGHT

All you haters need to step your game up for next year, and I’m going to help.
By Tom Rizzuto

Do you know why I wear green to work every Valentine’s Day? It’s the same reason I was so careful not to wear any red or blue that time I drove through South Central, Los Angeles.

You can’t win, on V-Day. If you don’t wear red, you get accused of not being in the spirit. But, if you do wear red, you make enemies.

This pretty much sums up the first ten years of my romantic history.

“You know it’s a Hallmark holiday, right?” they say, as they smugly heat up their single-serving soup bowls in the break room microwave. “Don’t rub your happiness in our faces!” they yell, as they grit their teeth at every heart shaped box they scroll past on Facebook.

I implore you Valentine’s Day haters, if you haven’t yet succumbed to the urge to slam you laptop shut and curse my fowl name, stay with me. Unclench those fists. Open those sad eyes. Wipe the 75% discounted chocolate from that forlorn mouth. I do not come to you with ill will. I am here to help.

You see, my lone wolves…my strong, independent ladies…my steadfast, sovereign gentlemen, I would never tell you not to criticize this or any holiday! But we all know that the Hallmark line, while a valid point, is played out. It falls on deaf ears. It wilts, withers and tumbles to the ground like so many overpriced roses on the bedroom floors of the neglectful girlfriends of America.

There are plenty of good reasons to criticize, mock, and malign Valentines Day. Though, as I too scroll through Facebook and Twitter I see that none of you seem to be aware of them.

I hope that you all find love, my friends. But, if this year is not your year, and come next February the 14^th, you once again find yourself back on the offensive, I want you to be prepared to hit them with everything you got!

Never bring an arrow to a gunfight.

So if you’re ready to step your hate game up to the next level…read on.

SHE'S SO HEAVY

Gravity waves, we wave back.
By Alisha Giampola (Writer/Performer)

You guys. This week. What a week. We discovered that gravitational waves, long suspected and theorized about, are real and measurable. If you missed this amazing and historic announcement last Thursday, please avail yourselves of the many articles being written about it, as I am not a scientist, and therefore the only thing scientific about this article is how excited I am about science. If my science-excitement could be conveyed in one sentence, it would be: A COUPLE BLACK HOLES SMASHED INTO EACH OTHER A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME AGO AND WE JUST HEARD IT NOW, LIKE WITH OUR EARS HEARD IT, AND NOW WE CAN ACTUALLY MEASURE GRAVITY WHICH IS JUST RIPPLES IN THE FABRIC OF SPACETIME AND IT'S ALWAYS AWESOME TO GET TO USE THE PHRASE "FABRIC OF SPACETIME" AND MEAN IT.

Let's talk about black holes. This discovery has proven beyond a doubt that black holes can collide and merge together to create bigger, supermassive black holes. In 1916, without any anticipation that his ideas would be able to ever be tested, Albert Einstein theorized that ripples in the spacetime fabric, caused by an event such as a collision of enormous black holes (in and of itself, a theoretical proposition) would be measurable as gravitational waves. It took a hundred years, but now in 2016 thanks to the scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), we can say definitively that gravitational waves exist and can be measured. In fact, being able to detect gravitational waves is going to help us understand the collisions that happened way back at the very beginning of our universe and will possibly even be able to eventually answer questions about if ours is the only universe out there or if we are possibly connected to other, larger (or smaller) universes. THAT IS SO COOL. EINSTEIN WAS SUPER COOL. EINSTEIN WAS COOLER THAN EVERYBODY.