Teletubby go bye-bye, etc.

My softly glowing teletubby pal, aka iBook, had seizures and died yesterday, and this is seriously going to impair my blogging. Since I have gotten used to doing it while doing other things, it’s going to be a big change to now do it staying put at a desktop machine. Hey-ho. Meanwhile, I’m hoping for a miracle — namely, tt’s recovery. With the loss of my machine, all my “favorites” are of course wiped out, and this has implications for my lurking habits. There are blogs that I’ve been visiting but haven’t put on the sidebar for one reason or another. (Laziness? Yes, that too.) Since I now can’t jump to these sites via my “favorites” links, I’ll add them this weekend: there’s Chris Locke’s blog Rageboy; Frank Paynter’s blog Sandhill Trek; Wendy Koslow’s blog The Redhead Wore Crimson; and Philip Greenspun’s Weblog. I don’t know these guys at all, and I’m shy enough to feel strangely, as though I’m taking liberties with anybody whom I blogroll, but I think I need to get over it. I mean, it’s not like I’m asking them if I can “borrow” their undies. On to other things: A couple of days ago I came across a notice I should have known about earlier. It was in Monday Magazine, in the Arts section. This is what it said: Happy actors need not apply Pop quiz: What do Vivian Leigh, Stephen Fry, Patsy Kensit, Patty Duke, Jim Carrey and Drew Carey all have in common? (And no, they haven’t all slept with Madonna.) The correct answer is they’re all actors who have suffered from some sort of clinical depression, just as local actor David Jure has. Now, Jure is looking for other depressed actors to join his Journeyman Players. “If somebody’s a performer and they’re starting to feel really, really tired and their energy is just going down the tubes, they’re crashing out all the time . . . that’s the person we want to connect with,” says Jure, who’s holding auditions this Thursday and Friday at the George and Dragon for actors living with depression, bi-polar syndrome or chronic fatigue syndrome. (“Bi-polar is a buzzword right now,” laughs Jure. “I prefer ‘fantasy challenged’ myself.”) Journeyman Players is already six people strong, but they’re hoping to get that number up to about 12 or 14 so they can tackle some larger productions. “Even if we get two or three really essential people, we’re just so much further ahead,” notes Jure, who says his dream project would be to mount a production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. One recent Journeyman project is Citizen Pain, what Jure calls “a hard-hitting look at poverty issues in Victoria” that’s also a “very funny rip-off of Beckett.” “These are brilliant people,” he says, “they all have incredible IQs, but they’ve all had a period of time where they just couldn’t function.” Given professional theatre’s constantly dwindling local prospects, it shouldn’t be hard to find some depressed actors out there. “That cattle call I went to was depressing,” sighs Jure (…). If you can find the energy to audition, you can get all the information from Jure at 380-4089. Subsequently checking the web, I found that about a month ago Victoria IndyMedia ran an article written by David Jure himself, wherein he describes the frustrations (many specific to Victoria) that led to trying to start a theatre troupe with actors who have experienced mental illness. I know there are only about 3 of you out there reading this, but I figure this means that you’re probably a tad deranged, so this might interest you. I bet you know someone who would fit the bill of what David is proposing. And if you’re not here in this area and ready to audition, perhaps you know someone who could benefit from this idea. Coincidentally, as I type these words Victoria is hosting the stars: Pamela Anderson (of Baywatch fame, and a Vancouver Island native), Deborah Kara Unger (ditto from here), Kiefer Sutherland, Wayne Gretzky, and others (supposedly also Robin Williams). They’re here for the Courtnall Celebrity Golf Classic, raising money for …mental health care. The golf tournament will raise money for a new Emergency Mental Health Crisis Stabilization unit for the Greater Victoria Hospitals Foundation. While media attentions focus exclusively on the glitterati, activists like David Jure try to organize the talent on the too-invisible street.