TowleTech V.94

In this week's tech news, Jon Barrett looks at the newest application designed to facilitate online activism, a ship of sinking Mazdas, 3-D maps of the moon, composting, and the first videogame to utilize Microsoft's 'surface' multi-touch technology which may appeal to those of you who spent your childhood evenings trapping lightning bugs in the backyard.

These 1,301 glowing florescent bulbs aren’t plugged in, they’re planted in a field in England and are being powered by the magnetic field produced by the power lines above. See more photos here.

Apple updated its MacBook Pro computer this week, most notably by adding a multi-touch pad. But if you’re planning on buying one and you live in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood, be careful. One Mac owner this week told Gawker about a house burglary —where the burglar took all the Apple products in the apartment but left behind a Dell notebook computer.

Wired.com’s Joshua Davis has a terrific feature up about the Cougar Ace, a cargo ship that flipped on its side in Alaskan waters. The piece, which includes a video, describes a sea-salvage team’s efforts to save the boat and its cargo—millions of dollars in Mazdas.

A Facebook application launched this week is taking a new approach to online activism. Called Ultimatums, it lets users float an idea, set an arbitrary “tipping point,” and then track group members’ commitment to the common goal. As Wired.com’s Underwire describes: “Instead of abstract ideas (like Facebook group Make Poverty History), Ultimatums lets users set concrete goals. The end result is a straightforward app designed to transform a vibrant online community into a vehicle for specific social change. For example, one group calls for Wal-Mart to provide health care benefits for its employees. If a million users sign up, all million pledge to boycott the company if the demand isn’t met. Each ultimatum is an online petition created by users that requires a tipping point of participants to induce action.”

And when you’re not busy changing the world, check out this video: How to Not Get Caught on Facebook.

Nokia and the University of Cambridge are showing off a new concept for a stretchable and flexible mobile device called Morph. The new concept phone, which is part of an online display in conjunction with the “Design of the Elastic Mind” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, uses nanotechnology to allow users to “morph” the device into whatever shape the want.

If you want to compost but live in an apartment, check out this indoor compost, called NatureMill. It will process up to 120 pounds of food per month, and a red light will shine when the compost is ready to use—whether it’s for your houseplants or your window garden. And don’t worry about the smell; a built-in carbon filter absorbs the odor.

Seems that Obama-mania has resulted in a shortage of campaign paraphernalia, leading one supporter to create ObamaCycle, which is being touted as sort of a Craigslist for supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate. The site, which has nearly 900 registered users, is aimed at reusing Obama campaign materials rather than throwing them away. Users, who have to register and create a profile, can leave messages to each other on the site and advertise their material needs and offers on the front page.

TOWLETECH TUBE

ANDROID'S STREET VIEW: Things are progressing quite well for the Google phone.

CYBER CELEBRITY: A new vlog examines the phenomenon.

MOONSCAPE: A 3D map of the moon.

SURFACE APPEAL: A demo of Firefly, the first-ever game developed for Microsoft's Surface.

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Do you Have What it Takes to be a Larry Craig Intern?

Find out, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Barack Obama Responds to Hillary Clinton 'Children' Ad

Barack Obama has responded to the spot the Clinton campaign put out that I posted earlier today. There's a bit of his response in the clip above...

Via politico, here's the rest.

OBAMA: "... I just want to take a moment to respond to an ad that Sen. Clinton is apparently running today that asks, 'Who do you want answering the phone in the White House when it’s 3 a.m. and something has happened in the world?' We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on peoples’ fears to scare up votes. Well it won’t work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is — what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer... And I’ll never see the threat of terrorism as a way to scare up votes, because it’s a threat that should rally this country around our common enemies. That’s the judgment we need at 3 a.m. And that’s the judgment that I am running for president to provide."

Previously
Hillary Clinton Ad Depicts Candidate as Nation's Night Watchman [tr]

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Tales from Air New Zealand's 'Pink flight' to Sydney

And yes, that is Kathy Griffin running down the aisle of the plane in a bra.

Advocate film critic Kyle Buchanan's account of the gayest flight ever.

With photos.

Previously
Pink Flight: Gayest Airline Flight Ever Takes Off [tr]

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On the Stage: Crimes of the Heart, Sunday in the Park with George, and November

Kevin Sessums last reviewed Come Back, Little Sheba and Next to Normal for Towleroad. You can also catch up with Kevin online at his own blog at MississippiSissy.com.

I recently saw two productions of previous Pulitzer Prize winners in the Pulitzer’s drama category — though neither is a drama. One is a a kind of Chekhovian comedy, that is if Anton Chekhov had read any Fannie Flagg. The other is a musical by Stephen Sondheim who, between perusing his famously dog-eared rhyming dictionary, seemed at the time to have been reading art history essays on neo-impressionism by the two Johns Rewald and Russell.

Beth Henley’s bittersweet Crimes of the Heart, which won the Pulitzer in 1981, has been revived at The Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre. Actress Kathleen Turner is making her directorial debut with the production and she acquits herself admirably, mining the show’s darker qualities while not skimping on the laughs embedded in the emotional mayhem that ensues when the three grown though not completely grown-up Magrath sisters congregate in their childhood kitchen in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. I’m a Mississippi native myself and one of my old Mississippi buddies, Johnny Epperson (AKA Lypsinka) is from Hazelhurst, proving that we shouldn’t be shocked that this particular small town can be the breeding ground for such sweetly eccentric characters who bravely own their innate diva qualities.

The Magrath sisters were raised by their grandfather after their mother hung herself along with the family cat when they were children and he is now dying up at the town’s hospital. One of the sisters — Meg — has flown in for the deathwatch from Los Angeles where she is a failed singer. The other two sisters still live in Hazelhurst. One — the mousy Lenny — is forlornly single and the other — the sensual yet ditzy Babe — has just shot her husband because she “didn’t like his looks” and is now out on bail. Woven throughout all the play’s woebegone kookiness is the noxious anger that is the residual result of their mother’s suicide.

Henley’s most famous work is a maddening dramatic concoction that, like a souffle, seems so simple to get right yet often falls flat. Turner’s production almost rises to the occasion. She has cast the play with three wonderful actresses. The tiny Jennifer Dundas as Lenny is just the dollop of emotional starch the play needs; there is nothing sentimental about what she achieves with the sentimental inchoate old-maid role. Lily Rabe, who is becoming one of New York’s most reliable young stage actresses, strikes just the right notes of danger and ditz and downhome heartbreak as Babe. Sarah Paulson as Meg manages to be both off-puttingly condescending yet painfully needy at the same time. And I was especially taken by Chandler Williams who plays Babe’s smitten lawyer, Barnette. In the original Broadway production the role was played by Peter MacNicol as a kind of nerdy joke. But Williams is surprisingly sexy, which is a good description of Turner’s take on the play itself.

T T 1/2 (out of 4 possible T's)

Crimes of the Heart, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th St, New York. Ticket information here.

***SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE

Another Roundabout production, this one at the Studio 54 Theatre, is a revival of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, which won the Pulitzer in 1985. It is a transfer from the highly acclaimed London production that originated at the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre before it moved to the West End where it won several Olivier Awards. The two leads from that production have recreated their roles here in New York City and the theatre season is richer for it.

Continued AFTER THE JUMP...

Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters created the roles and I thought they could not be bettered. But their British counterparts now over two decades later, Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell, bring new dimensions to the dual roles that each plays in the musical’s scheme. At their curtain calls at the matinee I saw, they blew the roof off the place as the audience rose in unison to give them a standing ovation and shouts of bravos. Evans in the roles of painter George Seurat in the first act set in 19th Century France and of his grandson George, a sculptor of light, set in the New York art world of the 1980s, is remarkable. He finds in each character the incongruent impetuses that make up an artist’s swagger: an unbounded ego lashed to a lovely insecurity, a sweetness leavened with cynicism, a wanton addiction to the discipline of creativity. Russell is less sexy than Peters was in the role of Seurat’s mistress, Dot, in the first act. But she is earthier and more moving. In the role of the grandmother Marie (the daughter of Seurat and Dot) in the second act, she is feisty and touching. The rest of the American cast is marvelous as well, especially Mary Beth Peil in her roles as the Old Lady in the first act and the art world aficionado, Blair Daniels, in the second, and Santino Fontana as the Soldier in the first act and, in the second, as Alex.

The first act of the musical still works better than the second, but the production’s young British director, Sam Buntrock, who got his start in animation, brings an astonishingly fresh eye to the proceedings and utilizes his animator’s expertise to the show’s advantage. There are some breathtaking touches — visual punctuations that highlight the show’s subject matter which involves the art of creation and how science can either enable it or deaden it, depending on your perspective. Seurat, in a letter stating his thoughts on the process, could have been summing up Sondheim’s take on the making of his own art, when he wrote, "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of the similiar ... considered according to their dominance ... in gay, calm, or sad combinations."

Two of the finest examples, in fact, of Sondheim’s art and philosophy are found in this show, the songs, “Finishing the Hat” and “Move On.” And at the end of each of the acts there is the transcendent, “Sunday,” during which Seurat’s masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, is assembled for our benefit in all its pointillist and, yes, human glory. To paraphrase Mama Rose in Gypsy, a character in another musical for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics to Jule Styne’s score and Arthur Laurents wrote the book, in which perhaps Sondheim’s philosophical take on art was summed up best: the audience can forgive you for a lot if you give ’em a great finish.

T T T T (out of 4 possible T's)

Sunday in the Park with George, Studio 54, 254 W 54th St, New York. Ticket information here.

***NOVEMBER

An Afterthought: If you’re a Nathan Lane fan — and who really isn’t — then perhaps you should catch him in David Mamet’s afterthought of a play, November, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Mamet won the Pulitizer Prize for Drama the year before Sunday in the Park with George did for his Glengarry Glen Ross. November won’t win any prizes. But the audience howls with laughter at the vulgar language and hoary jokes with which Mamet has packed this sitcom of play about a Bush league president of the United States. The plot revolves around selling favors and pardoning turkeys and gay weddings. Lane gets every laugh — and even some that aren’t in the script. Laurie Metcalf, as his lesbian speechwriter, is as expertly deadpan as Lane is in his frantic genius. The only real turkey on stage, however, is the play itself.

T (out of 4 possible T's)

November, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th Street, New York. Ticket information here.

Previous Reviews
On the Stage: Come Back, Little Sheba and Next to Normal [tr]
On the Stage: The 39 Steps and Almost an Evening [tr]
On the Stage: Is He Dead? and The Little Mermaid [tr]
On the Stage: Holiday Fare — The Drowsy Chaperone, West Side Story, Xanadu and The Color Purple [tr]
On the Stage: Doris and Darlene and The Homecoming [tr]

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News: Edible Martini, Prince Harry, Food War, Goldfrapp, Alzheimer's

Illinois state senator Dave Koehler proposes legislation legalizing civil unions in that state. Koehler: "This is going to be controversial because people are going to try to get all other kinds of issues about the morality of being gay. I hope that can stay to the sideline, because that's not the full intent of this bill. This bill is merely to recognize there are long-term committed relationships that right now do not have the law behind them."

Meet the edible martini: looking pretty good about now.

The History of War told through food, quite literally.

Britain's defense chief pulls Prince Harry from duty in Afghanistan saying media coverage puts him and his fellow soldiers at risk: "Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup, chief of the Defense Staff, said he decided to withdraw the prince after senior commanders assessed the risks, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. Harry, third in line to the British throne, has been serving on the front line with an army unit in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province since mid-December. He was originally due to return to Britain within weeks, but 'the situation has now clearly changed,' the statement said."

David Beckham hits South Korea to show off a shiny new phone.

John Stamos takes a kayak break in Hawaii.

UPenn students urge university to examine how FDA's ban on blood donation from gay men conflicts with the school's anti-discrimination policies: "Despite a national blood shortage, millions are prohibited from donating by the Federal Drug Administration's lifetime ban on men who have had sex with men (MSM) since 1977. The FDA argues that this type of sexual activity puts them at a higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases that could be then transmitted through blood transfusions. After a controversial, lengthy debate, the Blood Donor Discrimination Proposal passed by a margin of 17 to 9 with three abstentions, College senior and UA chairman Jason Karsh said. When Lambda Alliance first raised the blood policy issue at a University Council meeting last March, the UC never followed up, said Wharton and College junior, UA member and DP columnist Lisa Zhu, who coauthored the proposal on behalf of the UA. The proposal is an attempt to revive the University-wide debate and "pressure the administration to reevaluate their stance," said Karsh."

The Feeling's Dan Gillespie-Sells covers the new issue of Attitude.

A look at the new Goldfrapp album, Seventh Tree.

LGBT Latinos unify in support of Obama.

Janet Jackson hopes her drag queen kicks Madonna's drag queen's ass.

More rumors surface about Florida Governor Charlie Crist's sexuality: "I just wish he would come out and admit it. That would be a great thing if he did."

Anti-gay marriage group in Iowa which staged demonstration at the Supreme Court accuses lawmakers of holding up proposed amendment banning gay marriage: "Several legislative leaders quickly denounced the group's claims, calling their tactics hateful. 'I have a problem when people say, 'We are good, they are evil,' House Majority Speaker Pat Murphy, a Dubuque Democrat, said in response to the group. 'The bottom line is, I believe that every person should be treated with dignity and respect in this state.'"

Could Alzheimer's Disease be cured with a 'reset button' for the brain?

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