Gallery: Zorba set.

Here's my original sketch for the set of the musical Zorba, based on the movie, Zorba the Greek. Very often, it's give-and-take on design. I had to give up the small arch on the right plus almost three feet of depth on the big arch on the left to give the dancers more room for choreography. The photo of the final set is below. The backdrop was painted by Susan Van Schaick, my talented partner and wife at the time. It was a good show at Neil's New Yorker Dinner Theater in Mountain Lakes, NJ.

Kindle Crazy.

I bought two more books today to add to my reading list on my Kindle, Amazon's amazing e-reader. One of them sounds like a brain-bashing, nostalgic horror story stemming from the narrator's childhood, and the other is a chronicle of Mao Zedong's communist triumph in China (Mao's Great Famine).
I'm partial to history, realism, true crime and politics, not horror fiction--not Stephen King (though King is a master storyteller, horror and otherwise--a literary phenomenon who could write anything and make it stick. See The Shawshank Redemption).
My friend BG has invested a small fortune in Kindle books. He will probably never catch up on his reading, though he's a compulsive intellectual investigator. No matter what happens, he considers his Kindle library a perpetual comfort, a hundred and fifty books ahead of himself.
Trouble for me is, my TBR  (To Be Read) list may be exceeding my TLTL (Time Left To Live)--which is okay.
At least, I'll die happy.
Here's Burgess Meredith at the end of an episode of The Twilight Zone, after the end of the world, then, at the end of his own world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2VNU3R0gA

Gallery.

God Only Knows.

Last night, I started thinking that God doesn't want me taking vacations.
Two years ago, He sent down several days of pouring rain to obscure my view of the beautiful, rocky coast of Maine. The morning fog alone killed any chance of taking pictures. Again, last year, He sent Hurricane Irene after us, barreling across the Northeast as Gayle and I curled up in a cozy Bed & Breakfast in upstate New York, bound for an outdoor music festival in the Adirondack Mountains. The rain came down hard all night, and the police knocked on the door at noontime the next day to tell us that an evacuation to higher ground was mandatory, as the picturesque stream outside our window swelled into a churning cauldron of brown water and flooded the parking lot, twenty feet above its normal level.

We spent the rest of the day at a public shelter in the basement of a church, with electricity nonexistent, and we had to organize a bucket brigade to a nearby stream in the woods to keep the only two toilets flushing.Thankfully, the fire department arrived with a huge platter of cold meats, slices of cheese, loaves of white bread and bottles of water, not to mention potato chips and Coca-Cola.

The authorities eventually announced that we could go back to our beds before nightfall, which we found by flashlight.
The next morning, I walked to the nearest town and stood in two inches of mud inside a store to satisfy my craving for cigarettes, which the sorrowful store owner sold me in the semi-darkness. The main street of this town was a disaster area, with police stationed at each approach to the town, and debris, including vehicles and whole trees, strewn across front lawns.
We hung on to hear one great afternoon of music at the foot of Hunter Mountain, performed by the hardiest of the scheduled blues musicians, including Robert Cray and the great showman, Buddy Guy.

This year, we set out for one of our favorite destinations in Ogunquit, Maine, and God turned to His Top Angel and chuckled, "Look, there go Tom and Gayle again. Watch this." Everyone in heaven laughed, but those of us on the ground got whacked by a nor'easter which punished the coast for two days with high winds, pelting rain and even dumped a foot of snow further inland--in April! On the third day, about 5:30 am, I woke up and spotted a small break in the clouds outside our window, so I had to get up and go out in search of a sunrise, though it was chilly and the wind was still brisk. As I reached the "Top of the Way," an outlook along the "Marginal Way" that weaves alongside the rocky coast, the sun's rays broke through the clouds and formed the body of a perfect, glowing pyramid climbing to the sky with a base of shining silver sea out on the horizon, huge and shimmering as the clouds moved. It was too late to run for my camera, so I just stood there, mesmerized.
"Wasn't that nice?" God turned and said.
"That was very nice," said the Angel.
"I should do that more often."
The scene lasted only a minute or so, but I wholeheartedly agree with God.

Gallery: Fighter Approach.

Oil painting, 18" x 24" on canvas, based on a photograph I took in 1968 of an F-4 Phantom fighter landing on an aircraft carrier. The image is only slightly distorted by my amateur photography; the horizon line was deliberately tilted in the original painting in an attempt to convey a feeling of sailing on a slightly rolling sea. The "yellow-shirt" men on deck are maintenance personnel or "plane captains" who are in charge of moving the aircraft on the ground. I added one "green-shirt" intruder to represent myself, an electronics guy who would not normally be authorized to appear so far aft on the deck.
                                                                                    by T. St. Laurent.-
P.S. It looks much better in real life.

Inspired Indeed.

I think they should come up with a new name for the category "inspirational" books, because from what I've seen, the only thing these books inspire you to do is to go buy another "inspirational" book almost identical to the one you just finished reading.
The authors of these dreadful tomes recycle old ideas by switching to fashionable buzz words and even twisting the definitions of time-honored concepts, then stringing them in endlessly emotional loops, all of which are open to your own interpretation, like horoscope entries in the daily newspaper.
There's no end to them, and no end to thinking about them; you might as well be a Buddhist monk sitting on a rock in the Himalayas.
Even a "get-rich-quick" book can get you off your ass quicker than an "inspirational" book.
I'm sure there must be good books in this category, and I'm partial to Buddhism myself, but most of these self-help offerings sound like lowbrow Zen and assume that you have all the time in the world to find yourself, or to discover the meaning of life or the source of the universe.
Life, after all, means what you make it mean.
So, if "inspiration" is not making you happy, try "motivation."
Create the quilt.
Conduct your business.
Raise a child.
Live real life.

Uncle Monster: An excerpt from The Great French Newspaper Caper.

My great grandfather's store could be a forbidding place because back in one corner, up five or six stairs, you had a clear, floor-level view of the living room of an attached house, a place comparable to the bell tower of Notre Dame de Paris because, up there, somewhere lurking about, lived not only my great-grandfather (Pepere) but also my grand-uncle Ti-Lou, short for Petite Louis, or Little Lou, who resembled Quasimodo with a bad attitude. People felt sorry for him until they actually met him and experienced his foul demeaner. Family legend portrayed Uncle Ti-Lou as the victim of a terrible accident many, many years ago when he was just a boy, but family whispers confided that he was born, plainly and simply, a monster.

The store was a popular source of penny candy for kids, but each and every one of them, including me, hoped that my quiet and mild-mannered Pepere, not Ti-Lou, would be the cashier. If you walked into the store and Pepere was nowhere in sight, you would glance up the stairs into the living room and see Ti-Lou start rolling off the sofa with a snarl, aggravated that you interrupted his fascination with the latest entertainment, black-and-white television.

And, his was a grim visage.
To neighborhood kids, he was celebrated frightfully as--HIM--"THE HUNCHBACK."

He moved slowly, one arm swinging in a wide, high arc, his impatience and physical struggle palpable:
Step, lunge, grunt, off the couch and across the floor.
Then, down the stairs, one step by torturous step, step, lunge, grunt.
Some children ran from the store at the sight of such an awful man, but I had a nickle in my pocket and I was eager to purchase a wide variety of goodies, a penny each, and I had to think about my choices as Uncle Ti-Lou crouched behind the glass case.
"One of those," I would point, as Uncle Ti-Lou grabbed my goody and dropped it into a small paper bag (what a great sound!)."And, uhm..., let me see.... One of those, and...uhm...."
To me, this should involve a lot of careful thought, but not to Uncle Ti-Lou. When I paused to think again, he barked loudly, "Come on, come on! I don't have all day!"
His growl was so threatening that I had to pick out my last two pennies worth of candy by settling for "two more of those."
I was lucky I got any candy at all, according to some of the kids in the neighborhood.
                                                                                                                         T. St. Laurent

Signature.

If you see this, it's me.

Gallery: Saratoga.

Here's a felt tip rendering based on a photo of a horse after a rough workout at the Saratoga racetrack, 12" x 16" on paper. As tired as it looks, the horse seemed to retain all the glory and dignity of a professional athlete. Excuse the amateur photography.

Which reminds me--My great nephew, only 18, Connor Coburn, formed a band called HORSEMASK COLONY, and these kids already sound like pros. If this alternative rock is not your bucket of oats, call in your kids--or grandkids. As Michael J. Fox said after shocking the 50s audience in Back to the Future, "...but your kids are gonna love it."
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Horsemask-Colony/323975844316743?sk=app_2405167945

Nuclear Armageddon.

I don't like it when people tell me the ending of good stories before I've heard the story, but everyone must have seen this by now, and it's worth seeing again. It's the ending to one of my favorite movies, Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. Whoa, here we go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls

Blogmaster.

I'm still trying to get this blog to look and feel the way I want it, but it involves a lot of nerdy stuff over my head--for now. In the meantime I'll try to slog and blog along until I become--BLOGMAN--who emerges from the telephone booth in a colorful costume and rockets through the blogosphere for Truth, Justice and the American Way.
...which gives me an idea for a cartoon. Hmm...Should BLOGMAN have a cape?

Out of the Loop.

On the table in the cafeteria, I spotted one of those celebrity magazines and thought it might amuse me for a few minutes. I didn't recognize anyone on the cover, so I started flipping through the pages--page after page of complete strangers.
Where the hell were Paul Newman and Jack Nicholson and Dinero? Where was Cher? There was not even a Michael Douglas or a Meg Ryan or a Bill Murray, never mind Jessica Lange or Shirley MacLaine or Lee Remick or--forget-about-it--Ingrid Bergman. A co-worker, a woman in her early forties, sat down across from me, and I waved the magazine in frustration. "Who are these people?"
She started pointing them out and naming them, one by one, and, still, only a few feint bells rang. I finally pointed at a picture of a woman who looked like she was on her way to a Halloween party.
"Who's this?"
"That's Lady Gaga."
"An actress?"
"She's a singer."
"Hmm," I said, flipping one page back and forth, "I seem to be out of the loop."
She laughed at me as I tossed the magazine aside. "You're way out of the loop."
As we headed back to work, I knitted my brows and kept murmuring to myself, "Lady Gaga?"
Well...so I'm out of the loop.... It wouldn't be the first loop I've been out of.
Back in high school, my best buddies gloried in buying illegal beer and spending entire evenings getting drunk--Yeah! Let's drink a lot nasty stuff until our bellies swell up and we can issue gigantic belches at the moon, then stagger around and puke on each others shoes! Yeah, yeah! What a blast!
I participated a few times, then told our beer buyer to get me two Cokes to supplement the cases of beer. I didn't abandon my friends, just the beer.
"The King of Coke," my buddies mocked.
"Better than that carbonated piss you guys drink."
We all laughed and laughed, they drunk, me sober.
The operative question is: Who's out of what loop?
The loop I'd love to be out of is the one where I work for a living.

Music: Elvis' Blue Moon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLfTjTLnVIo

Gallery: Phantom of the Opera.

Oil on Masonite.

Jesus Almost Walked On Water Again.

I was a set designer for about 20 years (nope, never joined the union to work on Broadway, although I painted for a couple of Broadway designers, one nominated for a Tony award). As set designer for the Seacoast Repertory Company in Portsmouth, NH in the 90s, we sat down for our first production meeting for JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, and the producer said, "We need something spectacular."
I stopped the meeting cold when I said, "We make Jesus walk on water."
After the chuckles died down, followed by a long pause, the producer said, "How're we going to do that?"
"Just imagine the scene," I said, "we have a small pool out of the way in an upstage corner. Jesus enters and walks about six feet across the top of the water, then an apostle who saw this happen tries to follow him, steps onto the pool and splashes down up to his waist."
"How would we do that?"
I was prepared with the answer. "We need a 4x8 foot sheet of clear plexiglass, one inch thick. The plexiglass sits in a slot one inch below the surface of the water. After Jesus walks across, we slide the plexiglass out of place, leaving a deep pool."
I had seen this movie--go to BEING THERE ending scene.:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+sellers+being+there&oq=peter+sellers&aq=9&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=youtube-psuggest.1.9.0l10.3521.6863.0.16440.13.13.0.3.3.0.166.774.8j2.10.0.

"That would be fantastic," said the producer. So, we started the construction of the pool and started shopping for the plexiglass. Unfortunately, the plexiglass was too expensive for the producer, so we kept shrinking the pool until it came down to a 2x4 foot piece of plexiglass, about $500 worth. No can do.
The production was a notable success because we went with the producer's idea of embedding the cross in the surface of the stage floor, invisible to the audience until the crucifixion scene. Here's a composite photo of the set. A jagged cross is disguised in the floor as a dry, cracked riverbed.

The Lottery.

It boggles the mind.
Last week, the Mega Millions lottery had built up to a prize of $640 million, and people were standing in line to buy five, ten or twenty tickets. I ran into a co-worker just ahead of me at a convenience store (I stopped for a six-pack of beer), and she said, "Don't forget your ticket," as she waved a handful of lottery tickets.
"Yeah, quick way to throw away a buck," I said.
Then, I had a thought. Wouldn't it be freakish and wonderful if I bought one ticket in 15 years and won?
Years ago, a girlfriend and I used to buy one New Jersey lottery ticket each every week because she liked watching the drawing on TV with her ticket in her hand, and one night I was amazed to discover that I hit five out of six numbers, Second Prize! Since First Prize amounted to about $10 million, we figured Second Prize had to be at least $50-100 thousand. I didn't get much sleep that night because I was busy spending the money in my dreams.
The next morning, I listened to a cashier with my mouth open as he explained that there must have been a lot of Second Prize winners, because the booty amounted to only $250. Oh well, it would pay for a good night out and an inspection sticker on my car, no new Mercedes this time.
I always figured that gambling was a loser's game; it's designed that way. Otherwise, giant casinos wouldn't be sprouting in deserts. And, the bigger the pot, the longer the line of losers.
My father loved betting money on horses. He always bet within his means, had fun, then walked away, win or lose, spending at most $100. I went to the horse races with him a few times, but I never understood the excitement. It wasn't as if I had my last million dollars riding on a horse. In the homestretch, my father would be yelling like a man possessed to save a $5 bet.
I wanted to say, "Excuse me, Dad, but your horse won't run any faster if you yell at him"
Same as me.

The Mother (as requested).