Farmers, BBQs, and Dogs

Had a pretty good weekend. It started with a viewing of "The Real Dirt on Farmer John." It showed at the La Jolla Museum of Contempary art and was the first movie of their fall season so they had free snacks and sold beer afterward. After the movie they had an interview with the producer and then a Q&A. It was a lot of fun but I did discover what I want to call social liberals. This is the equivelant to Lindsay Bluth from "Arrested Development." So, it was an odd mix of artsy people with funky clothes, died hair and pierced earings and young socialites who were there because it was part of the art "scene."

"The Real Dirt on Farmer John" was a great movie in itself. It was a documentary that looked like it was made for TV but was shown at a few film festivals. It portrayed that life of an alternative lifestyle farmer who eventually became an organic farmer. It was well filmed and delightful to watch.

On Saturday was sponcered by rpg-sandiego at Fiesta Island which is an island in the middle of Mission Bay across from Sea World. It was drizzly when we arrived but they had a fire going and it was a ton of fun. Stephanie went with me and she also had fun when we weren't talking about gaming (which was about %90 of the time).

In the evening Stephanie and I went to a play called "Dog Act." This was a post apocalyptic play that is described as "Mad Max meets Shakespear" which is a good description. It was produced by Moxie Theater, a group the promotes woman in the theater and "Dog Act" was written by Liz Duffy Adams and directed by two women: Sonnenberg and Kraus.

The play itself was amazing. This is the first time I had seem a genre piece in theater (ie scifi, cyberpunk, post-apoc) and it was done well, really well. If it was still playing I would have taken a bunch of friends to it. Here is a synopsis:

"Dog Act" is set in a post-apocalyptic time, when the world has been decimated by wars between "tribes" such as the Panamerican Casino Nation, the Lone Star Revisionists and the Nuevo Aztecs, and each season arrives with the force of a nuclear blast. The war's scrappy, mostly illiterate survivors subsist on genetically mutated wildlife and their spoken language has devolved into choppy, obscenity-laden doggerel ("good" has become "mooey jiggie" and a well-known expletive is now "Jesse fuggit crisco"). Violent "Mad Max"-style scavengers Coke and Bud, whose dialect is more than liberally peppered with the "F" word, rove the American countryside for victims to rob and rape, but they steer clear of the oddball-filled vaudeville wagon troupes that roam the villages.

One such troupe consists of Rozetta Stone and her talking Dog (Jason Connors), who are working their way toward a mythical engagement in China. Their act includes songs, dances, plays and a big finale in which Dog recites beautiful classic poetry. Dog isn't a canine, of course, but a seemingly well-educated, guitar-strumming man who chooses to live a subservient existence as a mysterious act of contrition (in this topsy-turvy world, nobody seems to question his pedigree as a loyal pet).

One day, "Zetta" and Dog are approached by two other "vaudsters" who ask to join their troupe ---- the ironically named Vera Similitude, who offers a "tableau of human tenderness" as her act, and JoJo the Bald Face Liar, who delivers nonsensical folk tales at hyper-speed and ear-splitting volume. JoJo's on the run from scavengers and Vera plots to enslave Dog (she's the keeper of his darkest secret) and to kill Zetta.

I had attempted to write an cyberpunk play 4 or 5 years ago which turned out really silly and I gave up on the thought of ever seeing a genre piece on stage. I'm really glad I saw this and have hope that more attempts will be made.