Changing looks and computing plays

A few days ago I decided to change the look of this blog to Google's new dynamic approach, which means that not only can the writer of the blog change how everything appears on the page at the drop of a hat, but so can the readers.

However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it.  For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box.  Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL.  The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently.  Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.

So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term).   In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger.   Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.

I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so.  In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.

Not so hot.

Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade.   It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth.   Here's the list.

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank, 2006 (The Playhouse)

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me, May 2008 (Globe  Theatre)[also co-directed]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre)

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married, May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre)

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre)

8.      Pianist for Love – or Nearest Offer Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre)

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands, May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre)

10.  Paravicini in The Mousetrap, October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre)

I've kept a journal since 1987 (the first entry discusses my daughter waking up in the night with a rat in the room - the only time such a thing has happened - and dropping it down the toilet to get rid of it) you'd think it would be easy to track down the dates of these productions.   But for some reason there are chunks of time when I didn't make entries in the journal, and often they seem to coincide with the productions of these plays.  Furthermore, I've often written about these plays on this blog - or so I thought.  But in fact I hadn't.  I only seem to have mentioned Anne Frank in passing - after it was finished - and the two earlier Narnia plays barely get a look in.  Odd.

The Star newspaper is supposed to have some references to a number of these plays, but when you click on the Google search results, invariably you find that you locked out of the archives.  So you try the Star page...worse still.  The search box that's supposed to be available according to the help page is missing and when you try to access 'all' newspapers, it happily gives you nothing more than 2011. 

The photo is from The Mousetrap: all cast members on stage in Act II (Natalie Ellis, who played Mrs Boyle, doesn't appear in the second act).  I'm sitting comfortably on the couch keeping the audience guessing as to my role in the situation.  The photo was taken by Andy Cook, who designed the set.

Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge.  This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations.  The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed.  The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).

Enchanted Glass

I read one of Diana Wynne Jones' last books, Enchanted Glass, over the last few days.  It zips along at a great pace, has the usual bunch of strange characters, and oddball events, and is infused with magic as being a normal state of life. 

Interestingly, in this book, magic is seen almost like it was a kind of faith: two of the characters go through a stage of repudiating it in their teens and then coming back to it later.   But also curiously, the Gran of one of the young characters, Aidan, has insisted that he go to church on Sundays while she is in charge of him (and she's seen in retrospect as a positive character in the story) - she has no time for those godless people who don't go to church.  This little detail is just mentioned in passing, but it's something that I haven't seen come up in any of Jones' other stories. 

Like C S Lewis in That Hideous Strength, Jones brings some of the old mythic British characters into her story: Titania, Oberon, Puck, and Oberon's 'first wife', Queen Mab.   The countryside in this story is full of magic, and is accepted as normal by the circle in which the main characters live. 

Andrew, who's inherited his grandfather's 'field of care' early in the story, is an absent-minded Professor...according to some other characters.  In fact, he's anything but, yet he's certainly forgotten a great deal of what he learned as a child from his magical grandfather.   A runaway, Aiden, turns up at the house, and also seems to only be half aware of his magical powers.  The story shuttles back and forth between these two with aplomb, in a way that only a highly experienced author could manage.  The characters, like those in several other books by Jones that take place in the modern world, work with computers and cell phones and the like while equally being at home with panes of glass that reveal more than just what's on the other side of the door or window, or with invisible boundaries that, when crossed, give you a particular shudder, and so on. 

There are some moments when the story falters a little - the climax seemed a bit rushed to me, but that may have been because I was trying to read it in the intervals between performing on stage in The Mousetrap.  Otherwise this is another superb entry in the Jones canon.

Catching up on HitTail after a spell

It's quite a while since I checked out HitTail's results for this blog - I used to do it regularly (partly for something to write about), but I notice that they've got results going back to March this year which I've never looked at.

That's okay, we'll sort that in due course.

Meantime, I also checked the search words that people have used that bring them to my site.   Amazingly athlete's hand continues to do well - it's at the top.   One little post from I don't when - and a joke post at that - and this is the result.   Crazy.

The second in line is a bit of a newbie to me: googleads.g.doubleclick.net.  I looked at that and wondered what the heck it was, since it seems an odd thing for someone to enter in Google's search box.   Anyway, doing exactly that, I find that it comes up with an explanation from Google's help desk itself.   I began to read the explanation, got bogged down a couple of sentences in, and let my brain say, Pooh, don't get that - too difficult to understand without concentration. 

Another curiosity keeps coming up on the list - it's currently third in line: Zirka circus.   The post I did on this in 2010, has obviously drawn some people over and over.  Zirka circus is a NZ-based group, with mostly an Asian cast.   Some very good stuff in it too.

Surprise, surprise, my own name comes up fourth on the list.   Wow, I must look for myself an awful lot, or else there are a lot of other Mike Crowl's out there doing the same thing.   (One was a headmaster at a high school in the States who got himself into strife, being accused of harrassing his staff.  He resigned, and I haven't caught up with what happened subsequently.)   In Google.co.nz, by the way, this blog comes up first if you enter Mike Crowl as a search term.

Zirka Circus review gets fifth place, and The Great Divorce notes sixth.   This latter search term has been one of the tops for a long time, although you won't ever find any 'notes' on C S Lewis' The Great Divorce on my blog.   It's just the fact that the blog title has 'notes' in it that makes the difference!

Nintendo jewellery and Brent Stavig make seventh and eighth - again two items that have earned pride of place on this blog for their regular appearances (mostly because I keep writing about them because they keep turning up on HitTail - it's a bit of a Catch 22).

James Berardinelli and Frederick Buechner marriage are the last two in the top ten.   I haven't mentioned Berardinelli for a long time: he's the film reviewer who has hundreds of reviews on imdb.com - not ibdm.com as I first typed: they have a site too, and it's also about movies.  Cunning!

People must look for the quote on marriage by Buechner and find it on my site.   Guess it's a helpful thing to use at your wedding...

The hundreds of other search terms that make it onto my list are often repeats of the above ones in some form or other, and all the old favourites are still there.   Before I go I just need to mention some of the 'keywords' that have sent people to the blog; some quite intriguing ones...top heavy body builder, armwrestling my wife, [like that one] skinny ties versus normal ties, where to buy cigars in Dunedin, drugs corner cut off of credit card [what?].

It has to be said that if you went looking for any of these in an Encyclopedia it's doubtful you'd find them.   Good old Google!

Google pays up!

My first ever cheque from Google in payment of Adsense credits arrived today. $125.65 in NZ dollars.

It's only taken me four and a half years to get that much - I first started collecting from Adsense way back in late 2006 after I finished up at OC Books. And because the income came in so slowly - and Google doesn't pay out to overseas customers until they've got $100US in the kitty - it's been a long time coming.

However, in recent months there have been considerable amounts coming through Triond; for instance, up to today for June, I've earned US$5.94, which is about ten times what I use to earn in a month, or three months even. So the next Google cheque may not be quite so far away...2012 rather than 2016!

On another tack, I've been using Evernote for a few months to keep track of odds and ends I come across on the Net, or other bits of info. It's great because it syncs onto a cloud, and I can pick it up on other computers. Occasionally it's a bit clunky...like when it copies something from a site, and insists on putting a box around it so that you can't insert other stuff easily...but in general it's a great storage space.

And it has a great search function. For instance, I wanted to see if I had anything that related to the phrase laminate flooring. I couldn't find that phrase exactly, but in the process of looking I found all sorts of other interesting things (that I'd forgotten about!)

A note about where the first floor plans for the house are stored, for example. The following "MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:... ATD: At The Doctors. BTW: Bring the Wheelchair. BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth. FWIW: Forgot Where I Was. GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low. GHA: Got Heartburn Again. IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On? LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out. OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas! ROFLACGU: Rolling On Floor Laughing And Can't Get Up. TTYL: Talk To You Louder".

This odd ending to an interview with N D Wilson (who is currently writing the screenplay for C S Lewis' The Great Divorce : Let's just say, I used to hate coffee, and now I don't. I've also gotten pretty good at deep breathing exercises and lying on the floor. [Don't ask me what that's got to do with the rest of the piece.]

Or this intriguing introduction to The Annual Turing Test: Since 1991, the Turing Test has been administered at the so-called Loebner Prize competition, an event sponsored by a colorful figure: the former baron of plastic roll-up portable disco dance floors, Hugh Loebner. When asked his motives for orchestrating this annual Turing Test, Loebner cites laziness, of all things: his utopian future, apparently, is one in which unemployment rates are nearly 100 percent and virtually all of human endeavor and industry is outsourced to intelligent machines.

Or from a piece on urbanisation: Once, while jogging on a treadmill on the top floor of a Sao Paulo hotel, I tried to count the many helicopters buzzing by. The city has the highest rate of private helicopter use in the world -- a literal sign of what heights people will go to in order to avoid the realities of the world below.

Okay I haven't found anything helpful in relation to 'laminate floors' but I'm having a ball going through these old files...

Playing an unsympathetic role

In an article by Luaine Lee on actor Peter Mensah in the freebie paper that comes with the ODT on a Tuesday, I was interested to read the following quote:

Mensah admits it takes daring to be an actor. "Becuse the job requires that I put myself out there and just lay it open. It is a courageous thing to do for a living because you are emotionally bare at times..."


I'm not in the least taking the mickey out of Mensah here - he plays an in-your-face gladiator in the TV series, Spartacus. I agree that there's an element for actors in which they have to take risks, even in the most 'ordinary' roles. I'm still getting used to those first days of rehearsal when you're exploring the character you're playing and having to say and do things that don't necessarily come naturally to you. You have to get over 'yourself' and become something/someone else.

Curiously enough this can be even harder with a role that isn't particularly over-the-top, when you're playing someone 'ordinary.' The ordinary character can be harder to play because he requires less extrovertness. The person I've been playing in Shadowlands, over the last week or so, isn't particularly unusual, doesn't seem to stand out in a crowd (in fact, in the first act of the play he says less than ten lines all up) and seems difficult to play in any way but 'straight.' There are no quirks or peculiarities to him.

So it seems. However, it came to me during rehearsals that he's shallow in his Christianity, and is a surprising person for C S Lewis to have as a friend, because his narrow view of Christianity is quite at odds with Lewis'. I'm not sure how you play 'shallow.' Just speaking the lines doesn't cut it, and you have to find postures, gestures, and facial expressions that portray what he's thinking inside.

On Saturday night, after the performance, a friend who'd been in the audience said she didn't like him: "he's so unsympathetic." And while I hadn't thought consciously about this, I'd obviously brought this to the acting of the part. He is unsympathetic, and thinking about this since confirms that I'm getting hold of what's in the character.

Why I quoted Mensah at the beginning is because Rev Harrington (the role I play) isn't liked by the audience - and I was very aware of it once we actually had audiences. While other characters get audible response from the audience (and that's been the case with most parts I've played in recent years), Harrington doesn't. People will be thinking about how they react to him, no doubt, but you can't hear this, and it's rather isolating for the actor playing him. You have to trust your acting instincts and hope that what you're doing with the part is actually communicating to the audience - and that you're not making an absolute ninny of yourself in doing so. I think that's what Mensah is getting at.

By way of an afterthought: when I first started working on Harrington as a role, I was playing him sympathetically, as it happens. It's my natural default approach to a part, to find the good in a character, and 'enjoy being him.' And this isn't an impossible reading of the role, by any means. I was thinking through the lines again on the way home from the performance last night, and the part could be played this way, as someone who's a step behind the other characters he interacts with, and who's Christianity is still in a stage where he needs to learn some more depth.

But this would leave C S Lewis as something of a bully, because in a couple of scenes in the second act, instead of us having something of an argy-bargy about the issues, as we do now, Lewis would be trampling over the sensitivities of a lesser soul. And I don't think that would put him in a very good light.

Of course, Lewis himself could be played differently. In an early scene, Joy Gresham accuses him of using his intellect to undermine an argument she's making, and in the second act she talks of him being an 'intellectual bully.' This line isn't pursued in this particular production, but in an entirely different one it could easily be.

The fascinations of what you can do with words on a page....

Mensah on the left putting everything out there, and on the right in everyday mode.

Shadowlands Review

A full house thoroughly enjoyed - and in some cases wept along with - the Repertory Society's production of Shadowlands, which opened on Wednesday the 18th May at the Playhouse Theatre. The play presents the period in the life of the writer, C S Lewis, when, after many years of bachelorhood (and somewhat to his surprise), he fell in love with an American poet, Joy Gresham, and then had to suffer the pain of losing her to cancer within a few short years.

Natalie Ellis' direction of this often complex play, which not only shifts moods quickly, but also requires a number of shifts of scene, was excellent, and shows the value of long years of experience in the theatre.

Phil Cole and Denise Casey play C S (Jack) Lewis and Joy Gresham respectively, and both bring great subtlety to their demanding roles. The other major part, that of Major Lewis, Jack's brother, was played by Bert Nisbet with humour and warmth.

In the minor roles - and also acting as stagehands - were Bernie Crayston as the pompous Riley and Mike Crowl as the shallow Rev Harrington. Greg Brook played various small roles with aplomb while Andrew Cook and Rosemary Richards (also working backstage) appeared briefly as a doctor and a nurse.

Two boys, Andrew Hughes and Alexander Byars, share the role of Douglas, Joy Gresham's young son, and bring innocence and struggle in the face of death to their roles. Eli Gray-Smith presents piano music that evokes the 1950s and ably covers the changes of scene.

The production runs until Wednesday the 25th, with a matinee on Sunday the 22nd.

Shadowlands

The poster says the 'life story of C S Lewis' - it might be more accurate to say the 'love story of C S Lewis.'

Suffice to say, this play is being presented by the Dunedin Repertory Society at the Playhouse Theatre, 31 Albany St, Dunedin from the 18th to the 25th May at 7.30.

No performance on the Monday night, and the Sunday 22nd performance is a matinee at 2.00

Directed by Natalie Ellis.

Adults $25, Students $15, Groups $20 per person.

Book at 03 477 6544

Cast includes: Phil Cole and Denise Casey in the main roles, Bert Nisbet, Bernie Crayston, Mike Crowl and Greg Brook.

plumb

Here's a question I don't often ask: what is testosterone? I'm not going to try to even begin to answer that question in any technical sense, since Wikipedia does it infinitely better than I could. I suggest if you really have no idea what testosterone is, start with their article on the subject.

I really only asked the question to get your attention. What I want to talk about concerns a man (so one could say testosterone is involved) but this is a fictional man who appears in a novel called A Spot of Bother, which I've been reading during the rehearsals for the play Shadowlands, which I have a small part in. (Shadowlands also concerns a man, except that he wasn't fictional.) This play goes on in a couple of weeks, starting on Wednesday the 18th May and running through till the following Wednesday. It's about the period in C S Lewis' life when he met and fell in love with Joy Gresham (nee Davidman), an American poet who came to visit him.

Anyway back to the book. It's by Mark Haddon, who wrote the bestselling, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. A Spot of Bother is about a man who's convinced he's dying of cancer - even though his doctor says the 'growth' on his body is only eczema. This man, George, has retired early, and is going through a nervous breakdown, which causes him to do some exceptionally irrational things during the course of the book. It's also about his wife, who's having an affair with one of George's former work colleagues, his perpetually angry daughter who's about to get married again to a man she doesn't deserve, and his gay son. Surprisingly, perhaps, it's a book full of humour and wit.

There are many themes in the book, but one of the prime ones, which George thinks about a good deal, is dying. Like so many people, George has managed to go through a great deal of his life without thinking much about death - even the death of a friend on the first page of the book doesn't affect him much -and it's only when he faces his own mortality that he starts to give it serious consideration. Unfortunately, his mind being in the state that it is, serious might not be the best word to use.

Related to this, I came across a poem on the Writer's Almanac site called The Death Deal, by Ron Padgett. Its opening is similar in thought to George's viewpoint early in the novel:

Ever since that moment
when it first occurred
to me that I would die
(like everyone on earth!)
I struggled against
this eventuality...

PS - After having given up on Naipaul's A Bend in the River, I'm now re-reading A House for Mr Biswas, his first major book, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed several years ago. The contrast between the humour in this book and the dour tone in A Bend in the River is striking.

Paul Tankard and C S Lewis interview

In the light of the soon-to-be-presented production of Shadowlands (mid-May at the Playhouse) the following may be of interest:

Library Talk Sheds New Light on C.S. Lewis

Fantasy film and literature buffs – especially those with fond memories of The Chronicles of Narnia – are in for a treat on Friday 29 April from 5.30pm, as a talk at the Dunedin Public Library reveals an undiscovered side to children’s author, religious writer and literary scholar, C.S. Lewis.

Dr Paul Tankard, senior lecturer at the University of Otago, has been on a ten-year search for a missing interview with the much-loved creator of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was made for a British television programme two years before Lewis’ death in 1963.

The interview was never aired due to the racy subject matter – the erotic in literature – and has been long since lost, but with much help, Tankard searched the globe until a transcript of the interview was in his hands. The words provide a fascinating insight into a highly original writer who rarely gave interviews.

The discovery has caught the attention of the international media, and Dr Tankard’s essay on his discovery recently appeared in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement in the United Kingdom

Perhaps even more interesting to a general audience is the story behind the discovery.

For those of us who checked the back of their wardrobe as children – or now have children doing so - this is a rare opportunity to discover more about the brilliant mind behind that fantasy, and to hear something of his views about the real world in which we live.

It is also an opportunity to celebrate the tenacity and success of Dr Paul Tankard, a very dedicated member of our own community.

• Eros: A New Discovery about C.S. Lewis
• Friday 29 April 5.30pm, 4th Floor, City Library
• Free but bookings are essential.

Shoes, boots, lines and Shadowlands

At the beginning of March I wrote about buying a pair of shoes online and the peculiarities of some websites in terms of what they will allow and what they won't. The shoes are fine, though they're taking a bit more wearing in than I expected. Still they should also last a good deal longer than shoes that wear in within days. And there's a slight squeak to the right one, which I can't see any good reason for. Still, people know I'm coming! Just saw the boot in the picture advertised online - it costs a good deal more than my shoes cost, and I really don't have a use for such a boot (or even a pair of them); at least I haven't so far planned on going tramping in my retirement... The boot is something called a Lowa Banff Pro (I thought it was Iowa until I looked properly); apparently they're made in Germany, although the site I found them on is in Vermont. These boots will stand up to pretty much everything, although the site notes that they haven't been tested for 'wildlands firefighting.' Well, there you go, you can't have everything. 

 Anyway, I actually began this post with the intention of mentioning the little digital dictaphone we bought a couple of weeks back, mainly because we wanted to have something that would record accompaniments for the singers who come for lessons at my house (I don't give them the lessons - I just play for them). The singing teacher (and also another one for whom I record accompaniments) have for years used increasingly doddery cassette players for this purpose, but these are giving up the ghost, and it's also getting hard to find new cassettes. The dictaphone records beautifully, though it doesn't play back music quite so well (speech is fine). However, when you play the music through the computer, the sound is good. My aim was to record the accompaniments here at home and send them to the people needing them. They could then play them off the computer or burn them to a CD. Slightly to my surprise this has caused a little frazzlement amongst the teachers and singers. I would have thought digital recorders were pretty old hat by now, but seemingly not amongst this group (except one, who already has his own). Anyway, it's a matter of training the people in the 'new' technology, and seeing how it works. It must be superior to a creaky cassette player that tends to make everything sound under pitch because it's running slightly slow. I've found another purpose for the digital recorder too: I've recorded my lines and cues for the play I'm rehearsing at the moment, and, while it makes me work hard and stretches my poor brain, it's effective. The cues keep coming and I have to keep being ready! I've mentioned before that the play is Shadowlands. It's the story of C S Lewis' meeting with Joy Gresham, how they fell in love, and how she died before their marriage was more than a few years old. Anthony Hopkins starred in a (to my mind, inferior) movie version of the play, but prior to that there was a superb TV version starring Josh Ackland and Claire Bloom. I've got the latter on videotape, but the video player dislikes our TV set (or perhaps it's the DVD player it dislikes) and has refused to come to the party in the last year or so. One of these days, before videos vanish completely from civilisation, I'll try and get the copy transferred to disc. By which time, no doubt, some other technology will have come along and made both of them redundant!

Blasphemy is a tribute to God

Michael Gerson reminds us that : British author G.K. Chesterton argued that every act of blasphemy is a kind of tribute to God, because it is based on belief. "If anyone doubts this," he wrote, "let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."

If all else fails, quote Chesterton. He'll back you up every time. Gerson's article is called, What Atheists Can't Answer, and was published in the pages of the Washington Post. This is what he's discussing:

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

So who's Michael Gerson? Well, I didn't know either, but here's the bio the Post helpfully provides:

Michael Gerson writes about politics, global health and development, religion and foreign policy. His column appears on Wednesdays and Fridays. He also contributes to PostPartisan.

Gerson is senior research fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement's Center on Faith & International Affairs. He served as a policy adviser and chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush from 2000 to 2006. Before that, he was a senior editor covering politics at U.S. News & World Report. His book "Heroic Conservatism" was published by HarperOne in 2007.

The HitTail List - first count for 2010

It's very annoying when you have an idea for a great post in your head and somewhere during the course of the day it vanishes. Of course, I know I should have written it down before I forgot it, but this time I didn't. Some master post gone for good.

Meanwhile, it's that time again: the checking-up-on-of-the-HitTail-Top-Ten.

Of course there are plenty of old favourites here (sorry, acne treatment reviews hasn't made it yet, for all those who think it should have). In order, they are:

1. athletes hand - sans apostrophe, as you might expect.
2. mike crowl - surprise, surprise - and sans capitals.
3. the great divorce notes - a perennial. One of these days I'm going to put some real notes about the Great Divorce on here.
4. googleads.g.doubleclick.net - a total newcomer, which meant nothing to me. I checked it out on the Net, and it brings up the I'm Feeling Lucky page on Google. Hmm. Can I really have been the end result of so many lucky searches?
5. nintendo jewellery - with jewellery spelt correctly, you'll notice.
6. brent stavig - our old friend whose main claim to fame now seems to be the fact that he turns up on my blog!
7. james berardinelli - considering that I haven't mentioned James' name for some time on here, it's interesting that he still gets on this list.
8. karl maugham - only because I misspelt his name so often.
9. shrinking shirts - a constant problem for people, obviously.
10. athletes fingers - just in case you missed number one on the list.

Those who only made it into the top twenty are a real mixed bunch:

mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.com - why would anyone actually search on that?
athlete hand
postile
lesley martin euthanasia
the great divorce chapter summaries
henry lewis gates
here lies eric ambler
religious jeans
crowl
john gray philosopher

I know I've written about all these, but surely other people have too? I'm not going to go further down the list, but Chrissy Popadics only made it to 21st place this time, and how do you pronounce Boise, 22 - and 26 and 28 and at least once in each of the next decades as well. The people of Boise must wonder why the name of their town is such a problem for the rest of the world. Maybe it's time to change it.

It's checking out HitTail time again!

It's worth going back to HitTail on a regular basis to see whether the things people search for and find on your blog vary much over time. I haven't looked for a while, but anyone who's read this blog consistently over the last year or two (the multitudes who have...) will probably find that this latest list isn't much different to previous ones. People plainly keep on looking for the same things, which is a bit unnerving for anyone wanting to be original. Not only does athletes hand (sans apostrophe) have twice as many hits as the next item, but athletes fingers and athlete hand also both get in the top ten (as nine and ten, respectively). [The hand in the picture is a genuine athlete's hand. So I'm told.] 

My own name, Mike Crowl, is second, the great divorce notes and Brent Stavig come next; James Berardinelli, the film critic, is still going strong in 5th place, followed by our mysterious old friend, Nintendo jewellery (with jewellery spelt the correct way, you'll notice). Karl Maugham, the artist, with everyone spelling his name incorrectly - as I did for years - comes next. (It's Maughan.) And eighth, we have our old favourite, shrinking shirts. 

It seems that the last time I checked this was late last year: as I say, things haven't altered much. Here's the latest list compared to the previous one: 

athletes hand...........................athletes hand 

Mike Crowl.............................Mike Crowl 

the great divorce notes...........James Berardinelli 

Brent Stavig............................Brent Stavig 

James Berardinelli.................the Great Divorce notes 

Nintendo jewellery.................shrinking shirts 

Karl Maugham......................Nintendo jewellery 

shrinking shirts......................Karl Maugham 

athletes fingers.......................athletes fingers 

athlete hand...........................Chrissy Popadacs 

James has slipped a couple of notches, Brent has maintained his place. Karl has snuck up a place, and shrinking shirts have dropped two places. C S Lewis' book has risen, and so has Nintendo Jewellery. Interestingly, Chrissy Popadics has slipped off the radar completely - but she's still in 13th place on the top 100. 

You may not be excited with what people look for on the favourite search engine directory, but I'm always intrigued. As I've no doubt mentioned before: if I wrote about nothing but these ten topics (or the variations within them) I'd probably get people checking out my site galore. But do I want to? I should no doubt be inventive, and find ways in which to drop one of these names/phrases into each post. I'm not sure that it would help me climb to the top of the Google tree, but it would be an interesting exercise. Perhaps I should give it a try over the next ten posts, just for the fun of it (and add Chrissy Popadics - pictured at left being squashed by her then future husband - in for good measure!)

The Horse and His Boy

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they go t married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.

From the last page of The Horse and His Boy, by C S Lewis.

Aravis is the heroine of the story; Cor (known mostly throughout the book as Shasta) is the hero.

A different Top Ten

A few posts past I wrote about the Top Ten search queries that bring up my site according to HitTail.
Curiously enough, the Top Ten on Google Analytics vary somewhat from this.
1. The Great Divorce notes makes it to the top.
2. Athlete's hand comes in second. No great surprises so far.
3. Here Lies Eric Ambler comes in third. It doesn't even appear in the other top ten, though it does turn up further down the list of queries.
4. Karl Maugham - the misspelt version gets to number 4.
5. The Great Divorce chapter summaries comes in at 5. But why? I don't think I've ever written about anything like this. Must be just another version of The Great Divorce.
6. Brent Stavig Starbucks is next. Not sure what Starbucks has to do with it, but there you go, our old friend Brent makes this list too.
7. Diana Crowl music. You won't find any reference to Diana Crowl in my blog. I have no idea who she is, but she keeps causing searchers to find me. Well, she's now in a post, so we'll see how popular we get from that!
8 & 9 are both covered by Nintendo jewellery, but with the two different spellings of the second word.
And lastly at 10 is 'new home ministries' - a total left-field one.

Updating the HitTail Top Ten

18 more posts to go before I hit the big 1000. The aim, as I said in an earlier post, is to do this before the end of 2008. I guess I could write a lot of idiotic, meaningless posts - one-liner posts, even - but I'm going to play fair and aim to keep up the extraordinarily high quality of my posts. (Did I hear someone say, Phooey?)
Anyway, it's a while since I checked out HitTail. For various reasons it's gone on the backburner in the last month, along with a few other things. (Partly because I've been more busy musically than I have through most of the year, and partly because of the prostate stuff which I've discussed in several posts on Workreport.net.)
I thought I'd see if there's been any change in the top ten search items that pick up on my site. And nope! They're pretty much the same as they've been in a long while. Here they are again:
1. Athlete's hand - the all time favourite; currently running at over 152 searches, but if we count all the variations on the theme, there'll be far more than that.
2. Mike Crowl. Well, there's a turn up for the books.
3. James Berardinelli. This film critic has been amongst the top for some time. Don't ask me why: I don't talk about him that much.
4. Brent Stavig. Another top name on the list. Extraordinary.
5. The Great Divorce notes. I have never listed any notes about C S Lewis' The Great Divorce. It's only the combination of having mentioned the book and having 'notes' in the title of my blog that brings this one up so regularly. Other books get the same treatment, but obviously not as often.
6. Shrinking shirts. Another one of those items that got mentioned in a post once and have kept this blog in the public eye ever since.
7. Nintendo jewellery. I sometimes suspect that I'm the only blogger to have ever mentioned Nintendo jewellery. I still have no idea what it is.
8. Karl Maugham. Due to my inability to spell Mr Maughan's name correctly, anyone else who spells it incorrectly finds my site.
9. Athlete's fingers. One of the other variations on number one in the list.
10. Chrissy Popadics. I mentioned Chrissy once many moons again - maybe mentioned her again briefly in a later post, and ever since then she's turned up trumps. Wierd.

Comparing this list with the previous one I did in August, there's only one change: The Great Divorce Notes don't appear there. Instead, my name comes up twice, the second time as Michael Crowl. Scary.

Narnia reviewed

While trying to see if the review of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was in the Otago Daily Times online, I found the short article and photo that we've all been waiting to turn up in the newspaper. The lack of this piece in the newspaper has been a bit of a sore point with us, as it would have helped with the advertising. As it was, the review took two days to get in, and then was not quite buried in an obscure part of the Saturday paper.
Anyway, I can't quite figure out how to copy the original version of the review and still make it readable, so here's what it said:

Painstaking Presentation
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Mayfair Theatre
Sept 18, 2008
Barbara Frame

That huge dedication has gone into Dunedin City Baptist's Productions' presentation of C S Lewis' classic is evident. The detailed sets, props and costumes have been meticulously designed and constructed. Music and lighting have been selected with care, and the performances are clearly the result of painstaking rehearsal.
The story is a fantastic one: Lucy and Edmund, well known to Narnia fans, find themselves obliged to spend a long summer with their disagreeable cousin, Eustace. An argument about the merits of a painting suddenly propels them into another world, where they are reunited with their friends Aslan and Caspian, and during the course of the voyage to the end of the world they find out a great deal about themselves and the nature of existence.
Everyone in the large cast does a good job. Matthew Scadden, as Eustace, convincingly goes from nasty to nice-ish after a harrowing spell as a dragon, Dara Caradus is a confident and radiant Lucy, and Mike Crowl occasionally steals the show as Reepicheep, the pugnaciously noble giant mouse.
A good pace, co-ordination, and indeed just plain hard work are much in evidence. Erina Caradus' adaptation of the children's novel tidily condenses many adventures into two hours, and a great deal of thought has gone into every aspect of the production.
About 100 people attended last night. This is a great entertainment for families.

There was some quibble amongst our lot about the use of the word 'painstaking.' I thought it was complimentary, but some felt it emphasied 'pain' too much (!).
I met Barbara, who's someone I've known for about twenty years (she's a librarian), in the supermarket the day the review came out. I told her that I'd intended to steal all the scenes, but she said she felt she had to mention at least some of the younger ones (!).
We think there were rather more than a 100 people present on the Thursday night: the theatre was at least half full, and it holds around 400.
Nevertheless, it was a very positive review, and gratefully received!

More on the Dawn Treader

I’d never enjoyed the book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as much as some of the other Narnia stories, but working on it as a play has made some its values clearer. Nevertheless, the episodic nature of the story isn’t easy to overcome, and the curious way Eustace is redeemed long before the ending makes that part of the book seem less important than it is.
Alongside this part of the story is the quest for the seven lords, and Reepicheep’s desire to get to the ‘utter East’. These three are mixed together in a way that perhaps isn’t totally satisfactory; in other words none of them is quite important enough of its own, or rather none of the three is stronger than the others. Even Eustace’s change of character after meeting Aslan isn’t given the prominence it might deserve. I’m not sure what the point of finding the seven lords is, apart from its being a hinge to hang the story on - or as my wife suggests, a story about finding ‘that which was lost.
However, the audiences seem to find the play works for them, and perhaps I’m unusual in not enjoying the story as much as some of the others.

In general the play's gone well since opening night, although the houses haven't been too good. Seemingly the houses for Ruddygore and Cats weren't good either. Perhaps it's the economic climate, or maybe the large number of shows on at present; or perhaps the upcoming Arts Festival has already chewed up the 'discretionary' income...

Two rehearsals

On one hand Narnia is hotting up in terms of more rehearsals, and getting closer to the opening night, while on the other hand all the work on the acting side is struggling to survive against the necessities of sorting out all the technical logistics jobs. And being a Narnian production, the technical aspects are considerable: frequent lighting changes, music and sound effects and voice-overs. But over and above this is the complexity of the scene changes, which in this production are made more difficult by having to shift the Dawn Treader around the stage – constantly.
Often it’s the script in a production that gets cut; today it was some of the scenery. Parts of the boat are just so unwieldy at speed that they’re going to go. This will truncate it a bit, but better that than having people getting steamed up backstage because the thing is just so awkward.
Last night we had a straight tech rehearsal without lines; the problem with these is that the actors lose interest after a while and starting playing up. Not seriously, but concentration becomes an issue. Today we had a proper rehearsal, but with all the scene changes incorporated. Oh, dear. It’s the sort of rehearsal that makes you want to go out and refund the ticket money. Well, it would if you didn’t keep a positive attitude. Fortunately the backstage people are, for the most part, fairly equable characters. They don’t need to be temperamental like the actors (!). However, it must be said that the actors were pretty well behaved too, all things considered, and in spite of injuries…
Firstly Caspian tripped up the poop deck stairs and took some skin off his knee – enough to have him dropping blood all over the stage. Secondly, Eustace, who, you might remember, have a bit of his forehead skinned the other night with Caspian’s sword, twisted his foot while running below the stage from one side of the other. And then, right towards the end, as I was being lifted up out of the ‘water’ – after Reepicheep has inadvertently gone overboard – I gave my shin a sharp enough knock against the side of the boat to give it a nasty graze, something that shouldn’t happen again, as that part of the boat is due for removal.
So all in all, a tough rehearsal today. Another long one tomorrow, and then the dress rehearsal. Fortunately there’s a night between the dress and the first performance. That may give those who need it, time to sort out all the last minute details – the ones that seem to be accumulating by the hour!

Narnia Productions

I'd forgotten that there's a Narnia Productions site, and have just spent several minutes checking out the photos from the previous productions, and the backstage shots. It's a great collection, and well worth a visit. The various reviews from the media are on there too, for the most part, including the sequence of photos taken when I had my beard shaved off (rather publicly) for The Magician's Nephew.