In Memoriam: Lawrence Edward Leaf

Lawrence Edward Leaf, a man of humble beginnings, was born on his family's 100-acre homestead June 19, 1926, in Addy, Washington where he would walk uphill to his one one-room school house carrying a metal pail of food even in even in blistering heat and deep snow. From a young age, Larry developed the passion for books and knowledge that would carry him through his life. Citing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as one of his early favorites, Larry longed for adventures of his own, a story he could tell. Little did he know, his life would be full of marvelous adventures.

            His first big adventure would call in the form of World War Two which was in its final years when Larry enlisted in the Navy. After being shipped around to several engineering training centers, Larry was deployed near the Phillippines to find and deactivate bombs left in the ocean. Since this was an invaluable service, Larry remained on duty six months after the war concluded and was eventually sent home on a crowded cargo ship. The war endowed Larry, and his future wife, with a deep sense of compassion and anti-violence. The turmoil they saw forcibly ingrained in them an appreciation of humanity that explains the generosity of their future careers and lives.

            Now, back in the homeland Larry worked with his father in the Addy garage fixing cars, and then went to take care of his ailing grandmother. The dinky jobs he had during this time motivated him to go college and satiate his need for knowledge. Earning both a bachelors and a masters in math and science fields, per his teacher’s glowing recommendation, Larry was immediately catapulted into teaching at various military bases around the world.

            For many years, Larry embarked on the globe-trotting adventure that would eclipse even the fantasy worlds of his favorite books. He ventured to four continents, saw the world’s greatest sights, mingled with locals of the most diverse cultures of the Earth, enjoyed beer in Germany, collected pottery from Iceland, went on a safari in Africa, and everything you could think of under the sun. The world was literally his oyster. On quieter nights, Larry continued to nurse his vibrant inner life, reading enough books to fill a mansion and listening to as many records. He even saw a couple productions of the great Broadway musicals of his generation, like My Fair Lady and South Pacific.

            Larry was an admittedly shy and reserved person which most of the time acted to his benefit. However, in the female department, Larry’s reticence left him dumbstruck. He once confessed to me that while on a date with a girl he liked, he didn’t say anything past the first hello which made her leave in a huff believing he was the biggest jerk she ever met. Perhaps Larry was just waiting for the right woman because he certainly had no problem opening up to his future wife.

           

Larry met his wife Fumie, or Faith, whilst they were both in Germany in the basement mail-room of the base they were staying at. Both teachers and world travelers, it was an instant connection for they proceeded to talk for several hours and then got married a few short months later. Funnily enough, their mutual friend had suggested that they meet up but Larry was to shy to instigate a meeting and it was only chance that eventually pushed them together. I guess that goes to show true love finds a way. Another of Larry’s great, unexpected adventures.

           

            Shortly after their marriage began, Larry and Faith Leaf embarked on the greatest of adventure of all, raising children. Deciding that given their age they would rather not start with a newborn baby, they opted to adopt. Serendipity played its hand again sending them to Korea where a maid told the couple of a woman looking to give her child the opportunity to receive an education deserving of her large intellect. As they’ve told it, Larry and Faith were sitting in a room when a vivacious, young girl burst in greeting them in Korean and lighting up the space. Larry immediately said, “she’s mine. That’s my child.” Their new daughter, Grace, would come home with them a short time after.

One could say that while on his travels, Larry collected a treasure trove of souvenirs, many of which have made their way into the loving hands of his descendants, but his most beloved gifts came from the Orient. His newfound wife was Japanese and his two daughters would both come from Korea. When Grace was 11, the couple adopted another girl, this time rescuing her from an orphanage and finally giving her a stockpile of food that could fill her starved stomach.

Throughout the rest of his life, Larry taught students in Chewelah, Spokane and the Language School. He continued to give of himself to his students, his wife, his children, and eventually, his grandchildren. Papa, as us grandkids refer to him, sprang into our stories as a venerable old man complete this his trademark dry wit and the magical ability to pull coins out of our ears. We got to know him from out frequent after school visits and family game nights when he would thoroughly trounce everyone at Scrabble.

His still mostly reserved demeanor betrayed no hints of the amazing life he had led. The eyes that had seen the innards of the world’s greatest conflict, the Earth’s most fascinating cities, the purest form of love… Those eyes were forever searching, forever contemplating and, if you were lucky, the contemplated you.

And so was the way Larry led his life: with grace, dignity, and humility.

Two days before he died, I sang some of Papa’s favorite songs for him not knowing they would be a farewell gift. I imagined he was remembering the night he met Faith, a stranger across a crowded room, as I sang “Some Enchanted Evening” as well the rest of his life’s journeys.

Papa didn’t want to live a life where he couldn’t continue his adventures, whether it was in the books he read or with the children, grandchildren, and students he now supported. So, with reluctance, but bowing to his wishes, the family detached him from the machines that tethered him to an inadequate, bed-ridden state of life of which he wanted no part…and we said goodbye.

While none of us is ever really ready to let go of the people we love, in the words of J.K. Rowling, “To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

Happy Adventuring, Papa.

DISEASED

Dear Hiatus,

I return from you because it's been a really long time since I've written a blog post and I'm finally fired up enough to rant to 19 followers and whoever else has the misfortune of clicking on my Facebook redirect. I sincerely apologize for leaving you, Hiatus, but you had nice run as I furiously scribbled some of my more private musings this summer while I was trapped in an endless expanse of shriveling cornfields. Be content with the time you had eating up my succulent, unfiltered thoughts. Now it's time for me to go public with only slightly less inappropriate diatribes.

Love,
Ben


Dear Readers,

Welcome back! I missed you. I'm sure you didn't miss me, because, guess what! I'm going to whine over the internet about things I cannot control so I feel like I were an agent of change for mediocrity and stupidity worldwide! Truthfully, my audience is probably cognizant of all the things I'm going to say, the people I wish to inform of their imbecility will never read this, and even if someone who reads this fits the bill of my tirade, they'll most likely lack the self-awareness to experience a revelation. So, let the feckless fulmination full of gross generalizations get cracking!

DISEASED

I just spent a summer in the heartland of America- Nebraska. I met many wonderful people who you all would benefit from knowing. I also met the most unhappy (and almost the most close-minded) people I've ever had the pleasure of learning from. I say "learning" because I've come to a point in my life where I see it as a disservice to myself not to gain something from every interpersonal interaction. So, this summer I came to the conclusion that the bigotry we associate with the under-educated "hicks" of our nation are a product of geographic isolation, ideologic inbreeding, the "escape" mentality that draws its antimony out of the heartland (and southland) like a needle drawing blood, and the abeyant despair that awaits these people should their convictions, religious or otherwise, be discredited by "academic bull-shit" and "liberal media" lest the bounty of their piety and endured suffering be merely fictitious. (This warrants a longer post in about a month's time.)

Obviously, to the overly-educated, the fact that our actions have sociological, economical, and psychological underpinnings will come as no surprise. But now that I'm back in New York City, the place where any variety of whack-a-doodle can find unflinching acceptance, I find that these supposedly educated aren't augmenting their understanding or compassion or finding an effective outlet for change. On the contrary, I find they've chosen to foster bitter resentment towards people who don't share their views thereby mimicking the behavior of the alleged "bigots" whose ideas they seek to unravel.

These were the thoughts stewing in my head as I sat through diversity training today. DIVERSITY TRAINING. Diversity training, designed to mitigate these obstinate and restrictive attitudes! Instead, I felt that this supreme "open-mindedness" came off as superior and ultimately just as unproductive as "close-mindedness". With the former, you must comprehensively recognize all of a person's potential identifiers but are allowed no discriminatory or likewise abilities of discerning based on those identifiers. With the latter, you needn't bother with this process because you already know everything there is to know about people. Now, unless my fellow students were cleverly concealing similar brainwaves, they did not diagnose these opposing parties with the same disease.

This disease gone continually untreated has created the toxic political environment you know and hate today. It is the disease of bland interaction. The disease of absent, truly open dialog. The disease of self stagnation. The disease of overestimating your own understanding of other people's beliefs. The disease of then reducing that person and all others like them to brainless oafs who don't have as much heart, passion, and well-intentioned aims as you do. The disease of pandering. The disease of silence. The disease of putting amicable but inane social interaction above constant maintenance of your principles. 

Being on the side of minorities does not automatically spare you of dim-wittedness. I find many who share my political views scare me just as much as those who don't. Perhaps, if you are not blessed with considerable brain power or else taught true critical thinking skills you are doomed to espouse the views of your dominant influence without venturing on an intellectual odyssey that earns you the right to make epistemological decisions. Perhaps it's too hopeful to expect anatomical reduction of bias from everybody. Still, I'd settle at the very least for people to see that self-righteousness suits no one. Maybe for dessert I'd like us all to realize that an antithetic opinion does not warrant a reduction of another's humanity and my indulgent midnight snack would be engaged discussion in place of snubbing the conversation or a return to "politer" matters.

So what you can take away from this? I think everyone's wrong and I have joined the ranks of fierce intellectuals who've seen the light. Jk.
But for realz, do try to see how
a) someone else's convictions are probably as deeply entrenched and well-intentioned as yours, even if they represent a completely contrasting set of values.
b) your angry tirades, like my angry tirades, will do nothing to change them.
c) undercurrents of resentment and superiority do nothing to bridge the gap. Let go of your tightly squeezed anus for heaven's sake.
d) championing the oppressed does not make you right.
and finally e) totally letting go of your discriminatory abilities and staying "safe" in conversation is a detriment to your growth, others' growth, and the growth of our ever ailing national discourse.

A member of the diseased looking for a cure,
Jamin

Mononucleosis

This goes out to all my peeps suffering from bad living situation mono.


If you come home to a room full of drunken idiots, you have a roommate problem.

If you sit out in the hall for a few hours to avoid getting written up for an alcohol violation, you have a roommate problem.

If you retreat to a friend's dorm at midnight in the hopes that your roommate will pass out by the time you get back, you have a roommate problem.

If your arm drapes over the side of your bed and spills a giant beer can, you have a roommate problem.

If your desk is littered with homework papers and empty chasers, you have a roommate problem.

If your recycling bin overflows every week even though you never buy bottled beverages, you have a roommate problem.

If you deposit said recycling into the floor below's receptacles so no one can trace the beer cans to your room, you have a roommate problem.

If you are woken up at 3 in the morning by a gaggle of giggling girls who your roommate doesn't even know, you have a roommate problem.

If those boozed up bimbos bump your roommate from the premises, you have a roommate problem.

If you wake up at 4 in the morning to the murmurs of a romantic skype conversation, you have a roommate problem.

If on another drunken escapade your roommate makes out with a picture of the girl he shares these romantic, late-night colloquies with, you have a roommate problem.

If you huddle at the base of the bathroom door to make sure your roommate is still breathing, you have a roommate problem.

If you can't see the floor because apparently laundry is an ancient, mysterious art, you have a roommate problem.

If you feign sleep in an attempt to make your roommate and his talking-at-a-perfectly-audible-decibel friend leave because it's 1 in the morning and you have an 8am class (which you have every day except Friday), you have a roommate problem.

If conversely you have to go about your daily activities silently because hangovers produce nocturnal creatures, you have a roommate problem.

If while cleaning the bathroom you find your sink is clogged by an indistinct goop that strangely resembles your roommate's facial cream, you have a roommate problem.

If after your roommate has attended the live version of alcohol EDU you open the fridge to find a massive beer can of which you have no idea where he keeps getting these abnormally sized things, you have a roommate problem.

If you waste inordinate amounts of time complaining about your roommate to sympathetic friends who are nonetheless tired of hearing about it, you have a roommate problem.

If your roommate transfers, you have a roommate problem... solved.

#roommateproblems

Thank goodness my other roommate is quiet.

Hoping the replacement is just as wonderful as this one,
Jamin

A Jewish Night to Remember

Sunday night before finals week, Curtis and I had tickets for "Jackie Hoffman's A Chanukkah Carol". For those of you who are unfamiliar, Jackie Hoffman is currently playing the grandma in "The Addams Family" musical. She is Jewish, a veteran stage actress, and really bitter.

So we arrive at the theater and start descending the steps to our seats. We're 11 rows from the front and about 6 from the back. We arrive at what we think is our row but our view is obstructed slightly by an unusually tall man with huge limbs. Sitting comfortably, his arms fully cover the arm rest and therefore obscure the lettering denoting the row number. He looks oddly familiar to me. I have a thought about who he is but suppress it for the moment. I lean in front of him to see if the empty seats beyond him and his two compatriots are ours. Upon confirming this my eyes are startled by the most amazing sight. NATHAN. LANE.

The voice of Timone, the star of The Producers, A Funny Thing Happened..., and a hundred other things, the Theater Hall of Fame inductee, one of the few male musical theater stars of his generation, the comic genius is sitting right next to us. My suspicions are confirmed and I realize that the small fry and giant are respectively Pugsley and Lurch from "The Addams Family". For some reason, I am completely calm. I ask the big guy if we could get by him to our seats. They all stand. We brush by them and in my head I'm thinking "OMGIBRUSHEDNATHANLANEHESTOODUPFORMEAAAH".

Curtis is evidently oblivious to the greatness we are so near so I pull out my phone and start typing in the text message composer "Do you realize who's sitting next to us?!" Curtis jerks his head back to see and I exclaim, "Curtis! Subtlety!" He realizes who's sitting next to us. Quiet outbursts of awe and amazement ensue.

The show commences and it is an absolute laugh riot. As Curtis put it, enjoying a show next to Nathan Lane is surreal. He's a good audience member with a generous chuckle and he golf claps for his favorite sections. At one point, Jackie did impersonations of people in her synagogue asking about Nathan Lane. Our heads turn to make sure Nathan is laughing at jokes about Nathan. Nathan deems it appropriate to laugh at himself. We join in. Thank goodness Nathan has a sense of humor.

Needless to say, laughing at a show with a comic icon multiplies the pleasure of the experience. Several larger outbursts occurred post-show when it was safe to act like maniacal fans who just met their idol. As Steph put it in his comment to my facebook update:

Merry Christmas! Here's your present!

~God


I love New York,
Jamin

Moments- You'd Never Know You Had One

"Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not."- Uncle Iroh

New York City. One of the most famous cities on Earth. A little island packed with buildings, industry, theater, mental disorders, ethnicity, wealth, tourism, miscellany, vandalism, bridges, dreams, rats, pomp, prestige, parks, people, life. Many flock to the neon-lit gates of cultural heaven hoping to become the next big artist, performer, CEO, writer, headhunter, innovator, professor, TV Producer, social worker, diplomat, lawyer, celebrity, person. It's true, New York is brimming with opportunity. It's the lazy man's portal for entertainment, the hyperactive man's satiation. But living there a semester made me realize that life's lessons were just as accessible a continent away.

New York as well as the other big metropolises around the globe offer life on an "accelerated" level. The grandiosity is appealing. Perhaps the biggest reason we admire people who make their pilgrimage there is because we think they'll forge some part of the new world,. The knowledge and expertise they'll receive will allow them to become the movers and shakers, the icons from which the rest of the world draws its example. For some this becomes reality. But even if great influence comes within your grasp, the power to enjoy it doesn't necessarily come with it.

Indeed, I've met a strange and wonderful assortment of people. They're the sort of people you might find anywhere. They dream, they struggle, they hope, they breakdown, they create, they try to live. They, like me, came pursuing a dream. In that pursuit, it's easy to lose ourselves to that dream and forget to live the moments in between. I sometimes wonder if people going to college in remote locations are gaining more than kids here. However brilliant or talented my peers, the living embodiment of their dreams comes in their orbit so much they forget that years of discipline separate them and their counterparts. The ultimate manifestation of their crafts exists so close that they try wring wisdom from them as desperately as a killer strangles his victim. But the best wisdom always springs from within yourself. Maybe it takes a change of perspective or maybe you really do need the buzz of the city. However, the making of a wise man requires a mirror not binoculars.

We all hide. The city dwellers hide in the vastness, the home dwellers in the possibility. What both can sometimes miss is the opportunity for life. You have to believe in what you're doing, not where it's taking you, but the exact moment you are doing it in. You have to love your friends and family. Who cares about the relationships other people have? They can't enrich your life. These are the faces that color your journey and that will aid you through it. And finally, you have to realize there is no unreality. You're alive every second. Even if it's not "out in the real world" or measured in facebook posts, each moment is just as important as the ones you capsulize in your memory.

Life happens. It doesn't happen forever. So make it happen well.

Merry Christmas.

Love,
Jamin

Blue Flower Needs A Green Thumb

Ok, here is example #2 of good production, bad piece.

Half a century. Two continents. The two worst wars the world has ever seen. Four star-crossed lovers. Treachery. Death. Rebellion. Revolutionaries. Horror. Heartbreak. Ex-patriotism. Regret.

This is essentially how Second Stage Theatre sold The Blue Flower...along with name dropping Stephen Schwartz as the producer. Sounds pretty exciting right? I thought so too. So much so that I wanted to see this show since it was in its American Repertory Theatre run. Alas, what Stephen Schwartz deemed to be "the most creative and original piece of musical theater that I have ever encountered in my [his] life" turned out to be one of the least accessible pieces of musical theater that I have ever seen in my life.

The description above should give you a pretty good idea of the subject matter. It's a World War story filled with the many tragedies typical of that time: lost love, lost country, lost freedom, lost opportunity. The Blue Flower centers on historical figures Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Hoch, and Marie Curie. If you want to know about them , read a book or check Wikipedia because after seeing the show, I know little more about them than I did before the show despite the barrage of expository information I received during their frequent breaks from character to act as narrators. From what I could tell though, these people led really interesting lives deserving of a musical...just not this one.

As Stephen Schwartz said, this was definitely "creative". A screen behind the actors continuously streamed images, either to aid the narration with artifact-like clippings, provide a backdrop, or service a character within a scene (ex: a lecture board from Max's time as a professor). The actors switched from playing characters to narrating with every change of stage direction. The music was ethereal and gave a sense of unreality. The house shook with the sounds of war, lights flashed, actors crawled; clearly you were supposed to feel the anguish.

But despite the attempt at a visceral stage experience, one crucial element was overlooked in the making of this show: investment in the story. Maybe I'm a mainstream whore, but I would loved this show had it been told in a more traditional format. The screen was distracting and I wasn't sure whether to watch it or the actors. Not to mention it hurt my poor aging eyes. I really wanted to care about the characters, but their dual purpose as historians and dramatists undermined the few immersed emotional moments that were present. The music's devotion to mood setting as opposed to story expansion made the songs boring and indistinguishable from one another. The stage flare didn't excite you because you weren't entirely sure what was going on.

If I could steal the rights and reproduce this show, I would. There was a great story dying to be told, literally. I would move Schwartz from his producing position to his more usual role of composer and thereby create another Grammy-winning, show-stopping soundtrack. While I was at it, I would hire Winnie Holzman to write the book. I would rehire the entire cast of Broadway veterans to realize these characters in a production that actually highlighted their talents instead of theatrical experimentation. And finally, I would pump it full of cash and a chorus and give it some edgy dance numbers. That's as "creative" as it needs to be. A great story told well needs no special tinkering.

Dreaming of Becoming an All-Powerful Theater Tycoon,
Jamin

Lysistrata Jones is No Sondheim

New York is where bad theater goes to be expensively produced... and die. For all the amazing stage magic, the innovative works, the re-imagined classics, the celebrities, the divas, the industry greats who uphold the integrity of live theater, the process of finding theatrical gems is still a messy one. Maybe in readings people have a harder time discerning the quality of material. Perhaps they think the theatricality of a piece can't be totally explored until it's a fully fleshed production. If this is the case, finding good art has long burned through the pocketbooks of hopeful producers and interested audiences.

The first of two posts in which I will explore this concept of good production, bad piece will focus on Lysistrata Jones. First, let's start with the facts. Lysistrata Jones is a modern musical retelling of the Aristophanes play Lysistrata. The concept translates thus: Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands in order to force them to negotiate peace and end the Peloponnesian War= Lysistrata Jones, so named by her hippie parents, wants to do something with her life and decides she wants to end the Athens University basketball team's losing streak by not "giving it up" along with her fellow cheerleaders (on a cheer team she created by the way). Sounds like a simple enough idea modification. Could be a nice vehicle for exploring sexuality in the modern collegiate environment or perhaps activism in youth or even just a nice throwback to ancient Grecian playwriting.....It was none of these things.

Lysistrata Jones was, what the kids would call, a hot mess. The best thing that can be said about this show is that it was an exercise in duality. Here, in list form, are the many ways in which Lysistrata Jones was stratified:

1) Romp vs. Real- Lysistrata Jones couldn't decide if she was a farcical romp simply wishing to entertain or if she was a show with depth that explored real issues. The songs' lyrics were vague enough to give a dance jam feel but scene set up suggested that the power ballads were meant to be taken as serious character drama. This indecisiveness left the show as bare as the cast members during the locker room scenes.

2) Character vs. Characterization- Similarly, the characters were at times trying to be real people struggling to find themselves outside of the roles they've been forced to play...but mostly, the actors were trying to find characters in the grossly over-stereotyped mess of lines that was their motivation. Lysistrata and her friends came across as what old people think of college kids: dumb, hyper-emotional, vain, and somehow not a real person yet. Maybe this wasn't the greatest situation to explore young adult angst, but seriously, go sit in the quad of a college campus and do some in-person research. We are not soulless blots of human beings waiting for adult fulfillment. I cannot stress this enough, THESE CHARACTERS ARE THE WORST CARICATURES EVER.

3) Sexy or Sexy Not- For a show about withholding sex, the topic rarely came up. As I mentioned earlier, among the things Lysistrata Jones could have been, a meditation on late adolescent sexuality it was not. For a while it sounded like they skirted around the subject in an attempt to be a family friendly show (Psh, yeah right). But a few swear words and exposed genitalia later, it was clear this was not the case. Once you've crossed this line, why not go all the way (hehe)? Such subject matter is going to turn parents away anyway. Make this delve into the real issues people in their late teens are facing like what sex says about identity or the excessive interdependence in modern budding relationships. Or, if you expose your toned, young cast at all, make it count. The little skin we were shown was more awkward than sexy. Fail. Broadway dancers know sexy. Give them sexy back.

Remember when I queried that perhaps creatives couldn't tell if a show was good or not until they fleshed it out? Well, this show having already gone through out-of-town tryouts and an Off-Broadway run would have seemingly been through the goodness filter. The results should have yielded BAD. Maybe other people like this show, but for my taste the question I then imagine the producers asking themselves is "I wonder if other theatrical elements will cover up our book and score?" The reason I think this is because the hip-hop dancing was definitely the highlight of the show. Oh, and the busty black narrator who, like the other elements of her show, couldn't decide which sense of the word "muse" she was, story teller or gentlemen's play thing.

Maybe audiences will get distracted by the zingy one-liners or the indiscriminately high belting or the biggest rack to ever be bedecked in a golden leotard, but for theater's sake, I hope not. Here, let me do something hip and modern cuz I'm an edgy blogger. Hashtags! Ooooo #cantbelievebonnie&clydeisclosingbeforethismess

In the words of Russell Brand, "Doesn't matter how much you tart up a corpse. You could be the world's finest embalmist; I would not be swayed." Yes, I just compared a musical to a corpse. Too much? Maybe. Do I want you to see this regardless? No.

Tune in tomorrow when I rip The Blue Flower petal by petal,
Jamin