We reached out to Daniel, but he was headed to the NYC polls. I shouldn’t say how he voted, but maybe you could guess. We finally connected. It had been a while since we last spoke with Britt and Dan. Their big news is that they leave next week for England. They said London but are planning on doing much more than just the city. They are going with Britt’s sister, Clorinda, who is a bit of an anglophile and travels to England every year. Each traveler got to pick a site to visit. Britt picked the White Cliffs of Dover. Clorinda picked a new show that will display the gowns of Marie Antonette. Dan picked Nottingham, not for Robinhood, but for Games Workshop and Warhammer World. Pictured below is Britt’s Halloween costume for this year that Dan handmade for her.
This violin is the focus for the second of five automatons that Dan made earlier this year for a show in NYC. The first, a pair of opera gloved hands clapping was previously featured here. The gloves were my mom’s. As always when posting about Dan’s work I must be somewhat circumspect, but this week with the opening of the immersive theater show Masquerade the “gloves” have mostly come off. Masquerade is a version of Phantom of the Opera. Reviews have been positive. Playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber approved this production and even came to see a performance. Dan finished and delivered his five pieces before coming to the cabin, but while vacationing in Michigan all of the wheels came off sort-of-speak. Dan was able to put all to right upon his return to NYC. Anyway, he got paid and might also get comped tickets to see the show. This show has a dress code. He might have to rent a tux.
This is not Dan’s first foray into immersive theater. Last year, he worked for almost a year on another show called Life and Trust. We visited him in NYC near the end of his employment there. Emursive, the production company. had previously produced the highly successful Sleep No More and when we visited Dan, I got us all tickets for that show, but arriving at the theater that night we were shutout. Sleep No More closed quickly afterwards. As it turns out Emursive owed their landlord $4.5M in back rent. This may also have something to do with the quick demise of Life and Trust, which closed after only a brief run. Its reviews were positive too. I am reminded of The Producers, a show about theater flimflam artists. Anyway, Dan got paid and he also got comped tickets.
Dan has repurposed a pair of formal ladies’ gloves that were once my mothers. They have been incorporated into an automaton that he created for an upcoming show. It shows a woman applauding. It is just one of a series of these unique automatons that he made. Other creations in this suite include a disembodied playing violin and a horse’s head. He likes the work. He is very good at it and other people seem to like it too. He has just finished this job and now has two more job offers. One of these jobs calls for building devices that are computer controlled, and he plans on using a Raspberry Pi for that. I assume that the noise of the mechanism will be drowned out by the music from the show, but I hope that the metronome will still be heard. He has been making these copper filament creations since art school. I find it interesting after all of these years of working in movies and TV, he finally seems to have found some traction with live theater. Lookout Broadway, because here he comes!
Anne says that I am not a trust fund baby, but rather a trust fund septuagenarian and I thought that I was her baby. I am actually a successor trustee, which makes me a sort of hand me down. Still, there is gold to be mined in that. I need a break though. This blog needs a break. How about a political rant. What is Trump up to these days? I hope that he is not off misbehaving again.
Dan, our family’s successor torchbearer for Democratic liberalism continues to burn brightly in NYC, lighting the way for others to follow. Especially this week, with the nomination of Zohran Mamdani for mayor. His neighborhood in Queens went +69% for him. So, it was with some dismay that I read that New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D) has called on Mr. Mamdani to denounce the globalization of the Intifada. I know that he is Muslim, and he might have said something in the past that triggered her comment but can’t we all just get along?
The photos are from the Brooklyn Museum, which we visited earlier this year with Dan. A much nicer institution than I had expected. Maybe not as good as the Met, but not for lack of trying. It had many interesting juxtapositions of different styles of art among its displays.
Kokopelli is a mythical figure in Native American culture who is often depicted as a humpbacked flute player with feathers on his head. The name Kokopelli is thought to come from the Zuni and Hopi word koko, which means God. This artwork was acquired at Indian Market in Santa Fe. This festival was a big draw that drew my parents all the way from Dallas. This work’s intricate design is more beautiful in real life than this photo can possibly show.
We had a couple of wins yesterday. We managed to reclaim the majority of dad’s savings from its estate limbo. Work continues to reclaim it all, but we are slowly making progress. Once his money is in our hands, I can distribute it to my bros. Our other big victory was more ephemeral. Frankly, we were left reeling after the realtor’s aesthetics coordinator visit, and it was for the silliest of reasons. She wanted to see a king-size bed in the primary bedroom, where Anne and I are currently sleeping. Even though we could buy a new bed and have it delivered for just a few hundred dollars, the waste involved with this strategy kind of stuck in our collective craw. That sleepless night we were lying awake in bed devising alternative plans. We figured that we could move the two twins from downstairs, shove them together to make a faux king and then haul the upstairs’ queen downstairs in their place. Easy-peasy. The next morning, we were pleasantly surprised when the realtor called and proposed the exact same plan. I know that it is silly to be niggling about such small stuff as the price of a cheap bed, but as I told our realtor that’s just us. However, now we have to move two beds.
Dan is overjoyed with the results from yesterday’s NYC mayoral election that all but installed Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor. He was crowing this morning about the almost autocratic levels of support that he had garnered in Dan’s own precinct. Gone are the days when New York can no longer have nice mayors.
I’m not saying that it was DOGE, but it sure followed their MO. All last year, Dan worked on Wall Street, building the set for Will & Trust, an immersive theater project that was being produced by the same group that had produced the highly successful and long running Sleep No More. This new set spanned six floors of an old bank building. It then came as a shock and surprise when without warning this play folded on Easter Sunday. The only notice given was that tickets would be refunded. Employees discovered this closure when their work emails stopped working. No further explanation was given. So, rumors abounded, but facts were nonexistent. It is a mystery. Currently, Dan is now working on another as yet cannot be named immersive theater project, but instead of having to troop to work somewhere else, he is working from home. He is tasked with making half-a-dozen specialty items for this new show.
