The greatest challenge in producing Moliere’s “The Misanthrope” at Gulf Coast Community College, said director Jason Blanks, had nothing to do with the elaborate costuming or the historical accuracy of the setting.

It wasn’t even the usual challenge the leading actors face of learning a vast number of lines.

“One of the unique challenges of doing Moliere or any of the classic French comedies is it’s done in rhymed couplets,” Blanks said. “The challenge is to make sure that it doesn’t sound like an elaborately costumed Dr. Seuss book.”

Webster defines “misanthrope” as a person who hates or distrusts all people. In Dr. Seuss terms, he’d be something of a Grinch — cuddly as a cactus, charming as an eel.

The show opened Friday, and has a matinee performance today at 2:30 p.m. Encores will be Nov. 21 and 22 at 7:30 p.m. and next Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for kids under 18; GCCC students, faculty and staff get free admission with a college ID.

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In this play, the titular character (played by Nathan Simmons, who may want to start worrying about being typecast) is blinded by his infatuation with a flirtatious woman (Allison Fleckenstein) who embodies all the qualities that he dislikes in other people.

(Personal note: Don’t mistake this column for an unbiased examination of the production. I know most of the young men and women involved, and I contributed to the procreation of one of them. Having said that, what I saw of dress rehearsal on Wednesday was pretty darn funny.)

“You have to make it sound normal — normalized speech — but also there are points where accentuating the rhyme scheme actually makes it funnier,” Jason said. “So it’s skating the fine line between normal speech and heightened rhyming speech.”

The misanthrope in question engages in wordplay throughout the show, sometimes mimicking the delivery of his intended’s other suitors. Compared to those fops, he’s a bad banana with a greasy black peel.

Certainly, the style won’t work for everyone, but you shouldn’t mistake it for Shakespeare: There’s no iambic pentameter, the scenes are more madcap romantic/comedy style than that, and the rhymes come fast and furious, often disguised in the witty dialogue. Part of the fun is seeing what words will be matched and how they’ll be played.

That, and seeing if the misanthrope’s heart grows three sizes that day.

Peace.

But maybe not for long, if you believe any of the 2012 hype. You know, the Aztec calendar ends in 2012 (on 12/21, or 12/20, depending on who you ask). That could mean a new age of enlightenment dawns, or terrible catastrophe that destroys the world.

Which one do you think would make for a better movie? Here’s the trailer for “2012,” the latest end of the world movie from the guy who brought us the original Stargate and Independence Day. It was released to the interwebs today. Say what you will about his movies, but the image of a giant wave cresting the Himalayas is pretty awesome.

The scariest thing about 2012?

In the Hammocks neighborhood, the music of the night was the giggling of costumed children who spent the early evening hours of All Hallows Eve rushing house to house and filling bags, pillowcases and boxes with treats. Hannah Montana was as ubiquitous as the many clones of Batman and Spider-Man, and some put more effort than others into their presentation.

More than a few of the goodie bags extended on this evening were grasped by children wearing no costume at all to cover their street clothes. But their lack of effort just made the imaginative one stand out all the more, like the child dressed as a mouse in a trap, or the little turtle who paused to model her head gear and berate me for rushing her before speeding along the sidewalk to the next house.

Before we knew it, the streets were empty. The ghouls had gone home to nurse stomachs packed too full of sweets. Porch lights all around were extinguished.

Later that night, in a house near downtown Panama City, the music was delta blues, but it carried an eerie edge, almost the whine of a theremin, like you’d hear in a 1950s sci-fi film. The keening moan came from a saw wedged between the knees of artist Heather Clements, who flexed the metal and excited it with a bow.

She accompanied guitarist and singer Slim Fatz, who worked the strings of a box guitar and sang the blues.
The location was the UnReal Artists Gallery, 839 Oak Ave., which was hosting an after-hours Halloween “Spooktacular.”

Host and owner Paulette Perlman encouraged guests to take a candle and wander through the darkened back rooms of the house on a self-guided art tour. They moved carefully, studying walls adorned with art — paintings, collections of objects, photographs, and a room decorated with ghosts and spider webs. Some held their candles perilously close to the work to pick out details.

Outside, in the “outdoor house,” the air was cool and clear. Though people milled and mingled, nothing went bump in the night.

Before we knew it, morning broke with Christmas music in the retail stores and on the radio. Jingle bells rang as crumpled Jack O’Lanterns dropped into garbage cans and candy wrappers got scooped off the floor. The sudden change was jarring, but then I had a flash of Jack Skellington in his Santa suit, and realized everything was going to be OK.

Peace.

He once tried to convince me to write a story about the resurgent popularity of garter belts. He stood at my desk, towering over me through no fault of his own, and explained how these fashion accessories, so necessary in the days before pantyhose, were catching on again.

“They’re the new craze all over town,” he said, and he wanted me to do man-on-the-street interviews (only, you know, with women).

I thought he was joking, so I laughed, and then I thought he was pretending to be frustrated by my lack of enthusiasm. He wasn’t pretending. The next Monday, a story ran on the front page about garter belts (he was the weekend editor at the time, and we had a new general assignment writer who did as he was told).

Sometimes you couldn’t tell when he was joking, such as his adamant assertions that Elvis had merely “disappeared.”

One time, he stopped by my desk, visibly excited, and said he wanted me to drop what I was doing and drive a few blocks west on 11th Street, where I would see some kind of tree in full bloom. I couldn’t miss it, he said, and we needed to do a story about it.

“It’s got to be the talk of the town,” he said.

I think I grinned and shook my head and said something like, “Oh, Claude,” and he stomped away in a huff. A few days later, if I’m not recalling this wrong, we featured a photo by Tom Needham of that very tree.

Claude Duncan could write a moving treatise on the name “Myrtle” or the migration of butterflies. He could illuminate modern issues by quoting from 200-year-old essays or examining the root and evolution of words. He could wound or heal with his words, as the case required.

If he liked you, you knew it, and if he didn’t then he could clearly articulate why in a manner that you couldn’t really argue against and make you consider changing to become a more Claude-worthy person. He was passionate about many things, but particularly human beings, the quirks that make each one memorable, the things in our lives that drive us. He was insightful beyond my ability to describe.

Periodically after he retired, he sent me emails directing me to stories online about advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, the subject of my story in our “Millennium” newspaper project in 2000.

He once wrote a column about me, and I told him I thought it was a rule that a person had to die before friends could publish such nice things about them.

I was wrong, and oh, how I wish I had done this sooner.

Peace, Claude. Say hello to Elvis for me.

Yes, those are real people walking on real selenite crystals in a cave in Mexico, not a special effect. How awesome is that?

—–

So, what did you do this weekend? We traveled to Tallahassee to watch FSU students perform a play my son wrote (and which was first workshopped last May at Gulf Coast Community College). The play was one of five one-acts put on at the drama department. And the town was BUSY. Not only a game day but also Parents’ Weekend. Traffic was nuts. But we got to see some people we don’t see enough of, like Claire, who took us on a brief campus tour and joined us for the show, and Turner, who showed us various student housing (and who directed Nathan’s play), and JV, who just showed up unexpectedly. It was a beautiful autumn day, and there was a great sense of life and energy all around.

What was your weekend like?

Peace.

But I’m afraid that clear boundary would become blurred if I chanced upon a large group of people made up to look like zombies shambling along our city streets, as happened in Toronto last weekend during the sixth annual “Zombie Walk.”

See, I’ve read “World War Z” and “The Zombie Survival Guide.” I’ve seen most of the “Living Dead” movies and remakes, all three of the “Resident Evil” movies, and of course, “Shaun of the Dead.” I know my zombie lore.

I even scored a 79-percent chance of survival in an online zombie outbreak quiz. (I lost points for admitting I would try to get across town during an outbreak to find my family.) ((I can’t find that quiz right now, but on THIS ONE I earned a Z+ survival rating. And that’s a good thing.))

My goal here is to explain why I think I’m prepared when (not if) the outbreak occurs. That means, however, that I’ve developed a low tolerance threshold when it comes to signs and symptoms of the coming zombie apocalypse. A large group of moaning, blood-splattered, pale people lurching along a street: strong symptom that Something Isn’t Right.

I can imagine the headline: “Zombie role-players killed when truck runs through crowd.”

At least there’s a precedent: Some of the zombie walks staged in urban centers around the world in recent years, according to reports floating on the Internet, have been marked by the defensive reactions of innocent bystanders who, just for a minute, thought they were living in a George Romero film.

One year, a group of zombie walkers reportedly was injured when a woman in a Jeep tried to force her way through the crowd. Others have reported being battered by shopkeepers who whacked them with brooms and bats. Luckily, no one has yet been shot in the head while getting their ghouly groove on.

Still, my advice to those considering dressing up this Halloween as one (or a mob) of the living dead: Don’t come to my door or shamble down my street. It won’t go well for at least one of us.

Peace.

Buying graphic novels at the Goodwill store: The Spirit, Daredevil, Ultimate Xmen, Superman/Batman.

Watching episodes of Space:1999 on DVD.

DVR shows: Chuck, Fringe, Life, Life on Mars (not as good as the original British series, but enjoyable), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, My Own Worst Enemy, Primeval, Sanctuary, Stargate Atlantis. That’s right, I never sleep.

Listening to: Various mix CDs, Matchbox 20, Bush, Garbage (going through a 90s phase, apparently).

Checking out graphic novels from the Bay County Library: Hellboy: Weird Tales, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall.

I’ve been playing a couple of video games to the point of obsession: Peggle Nights and Zuma. Don’t try them or you too will be hooked.

And finally, I’ve been doing an obscene amount of writing. I post daily short stories or poems or thoughts here.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his professed superficiality, Andy Warhol would have appreciated the irony and even might have been amused by the artistic value of the stunt.
It happened one evening last month at the Gallery Above. Local artist Matty Jankowski arranged to have three young women (Tabitha, Mary and Amanda) show up to act as models, and he supplied his own piece of artwork a portrait of, Warhol printed on a discarded muffler and mounted on a bedpost, to serve as the centerpiece.
His concept: “Shooting Andy Warhol.”

(Click here to see a photo gallery from the event.)

(Click here to see VIDEO of the event.)

Matty started by giving the audience a history lesson via published reports and essays, bringing them up to speed on Warhol’s philosophies of art, death, time and reality. Tabitha sat with a wood-handled revolver in her lap and read aloud the tale of how Warhol got plugged in the chest by an unbalanced and marginal member of his Factory scene one day in June 1968.
Then the virtual carnage began. Toting real guns, the models took turns aiming at the muffler, at each other, and at random points overhead and all around. They also traded off posing with an antique Polaroid, shooting each other shooting “Andy,” and in turn being shot by Matty and any other person holding a camera or using a cell phone camera.
Electronic flashes whirred and snapped. Hammers click-clickclicked as the triggers tripped. This continued in fitful starts and stops for a quarter-hour, reflecting Warhol’s famous pronouncement that, in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes.
The audience was encouraged to participate further by writing about their experiences in a book Matty passed around. Some wrote notes or quick poems or sketches. I attached a short story I had read earlier in the evening.
The “shooting” spree was part of last month’s Open Mic Night, which next occurs from 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29. The Gallery Above is at 563 Harrison Ave. For details, visit galleryabove.com
As a photographer attempting to capture the other photographers as they stalked the models that night, I became acutely aware of the audience, one step farther removed from the action, observing even me. It spun an already surreal happening into the realm of the absurd.
I had the experience of existing outside myself for a few strange minutes, and I think Andy could have sympathized.
Peace.