No comments about Making Stage Props: A Practical Guide.

No comments about Presentations in Everyday Life: Strategies for Effective Speaking (2nd Edition).

No comments about Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel.

2 comments about Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town.

1. "Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town" opens with a puzzling, rather humorous letter from Mayor Milford (isn't he always?), which gives the pace to the rest of this tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-guide of Twin Peaks, Washington. There is some fun stuff in here, like mini bios and mug shots of the more relevant cast members (but why did the waitress from the Great Northern get such a large bio?), town maps, and even the jukebox selections at the Double R Diner, plus some recipes for any Twin Peaker's diet: cherry pie, coffee, and doughnuts.

   However, this book is absolutely brimming with useless facts, like an excerpt from Andrew Packard's will, a ten-page section on Packard Sawmill (oh, thrills), Washington State history, first explorers, Native American tribes, flora, fauna, geology, weather, and a bizarre advertisement for Tim and Tom's Taxi-dermy (one part blind taxi driver; one part taxidermist). Even if you condensed the more important stuff, it would never reach the current 112 pages, but less than 1/4 of that, if that much.

   I wouldn't consider this book necessary reading, even if you are a Twin Peaks fan; but if you love to collect Twin Peaks stuff (like I do), then you might consider buying this book. Even so, Twin Peaks fans looking for info on the series will more than likely be disappointed, because this book reads more like a boring tourist guide or junior high history textbook than a TV tie-in. I'd recommend checking out "Welcome to Twin Peaks: A Complete Guide to Who's Who and What's What" and/or "Twin Peaks: Behind the Scenes" instead.




2. What would a third season of this great television show provided? This book provides the clues as well as other interesting tidbits, including a drawing of the Owl Cave petroglyph and other oddities. Some entries are sketchy a best, but this is a must have for any fan of the little town with a popualtion of 51,201

5 comments about The Official All My Children Trivia Book.

1. This is just a fun trivia book for fans of ALL MY CHILDREN. It has a lot of facts, some you might know, some you might not. A lot of quizzes, even one for the famous Erica Kane! While its not as comprehensive as the 1994 ALL MY CHILDREN coffee table book, it still has loads of facts and fun for trivia and AMC fans alike. It's pretty cheap too so its worth it if you want to know more about AMC or just enjoy trivia books.



2. I love this book The Official All My Children Trivia book from the hit abc television show and at the first of it had the horse. This book looks like Tuck Everlasting, Tuck Para Siempre a spanish book of Tuck Everlasting, Owls in the Family, Black Beauty, Rodeo Bloopers 1. the video, Toby Keith's album Pull My Chain & Clay Walker's album If I Could Make A Living. In 2000 I made videos of William's America's Funniest Home Videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 which is the Tenth Year Anniversary, 11 which is the tenth year anniversary, Special Edition of Bareback Riding, Calf Roping & Steer Wrestling the three rodeo events on video & All My Children/Roping Funnies the graduation of William's Funniest Videos 13 and someday I will put them in the store so people will by mine and order them on the website ...and they will love them ...My favorite T. V. shows on abc are All My Children, General Hospital & Who Wants To Be A Millionaire my favorite T. V. shows on abc. This book also looks like Mary Kate and Ashley's videos How The West Was Fun & The Case of The Logical I Ranch. This is an amazing trivia book.A



3. As a 20+ year fan of All My Children, this book not only brought back great memories of my years in Pine Valley, but let me in some stuff I did not get to see, because I was too young.This is a MUST HAVE for an All My Children fan, old or new!!



4. This book is great. It is filled with so much information which the dedicated fan should know. It also has some great pictures. However, it is paperback and not hardcover like they say.

   It's a great book, so pick it up because it's a low price for all that info.




5. This is an excellent book for ALL of us AMC fans: I'm pretty much a novice and it really gave me a good background and tidbits. It helped me learn the history and about characters who were gone before I started watching. It really helped put pieces of the puzzle together. My sister is a veteran and she was kept going "I remember that!" or "No way! Even I didn't know that!!!" And, it has great pictures. I recommend it for those of you who starting watching in the 1970's, and for AMC fans who were born in the 1970's.

2 comments about Why Is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy.

1. Why Is That So Funny?: A Practical Exploration of Physical Comedy is an amazing look at physical comedy written especially for performers, directors, students, and teachers. Topics covered include complicity, finding and declaring the game, states of tension, rhythm, comic timing, clowning, parody, satire, pastiche, caricature, burlesque, and buffoon. A thoughtful and meticulous deconstruction of the elements of humor, the better to improve one's performance or playwriting.



2. This book has been such a help! It is based on lifetime experiences and not the theories that other books are based on. It has put things in an entirely new perspective and allowed me to grow as a performer.

4 comments about Tango Zen: Walking Dance Meditation.

1. "Tango Zen is an innovative yet natural way of meditating while dancing Tango..." Chan Park, p 9. I mistakenly thought the book was about Tango. - I had hoped it might give me some insight or means to finding that elusive communication between dancers. I should have read the fine print before buying: 87 pages, 5" X 5".
   
   What you get is an attractive small book, very nicely laid out, with 17 B&W full page head-shots of couples with eyes closed in embrace and 24 pages of quotes on Zen, Dance and other topics (the kind of quotes that make nice signature tag-lines). Tango Zen Exercises begin on page 69. The exercise are comprised of instruction and photos: 1 paragraph on Warm Up, 2 pages on Individual Standing, 3 pages on Stretching, 3 pages on Individual Walking, 2 pages on Couple Standing and 2 pages on Couple Walking.
   
   That's it.
   
   My advice is to take one of Mr. Park's live workshops on Tango Zen - the book might have more value for you then, it has little value to me now. But then it was only $10.



2. As a tango dancer, I am all too aware of the tension in tango between the show and stage style and the more intimate milonguero style. There has been a tendency for the showy style to be considered to be more advanced but, in truth, the levels of skill, musicality and connection are so much higher in milonguero. I was so delighted to discover this book which encapsulates within a fusion of tango and zen, all that is wonderful in tango. This book ought to be required reading for all those who find the athletic, gymnastic form of tango neither possible nor to their taste. Power to your elbow Chan Park! You have made an old tanguero very happy.



3. Tango and Zen - this sounds like a culture clash. But it isn't. Of course everything is Zen once you are in it. But maybe Tango is a little bit more, just because there is no direct familiarity.
   
   For everybody doing Zen this familiarity is quite obvious, because one should try to reach maximum awerness every single moment.
   
   But for most Tango Dancers this is a new approach. Normaly we just dance, try to do the correct step, stay upright, opening our mind for what the partner is up to now. Once we get in the Zen-Mind, all this is not important anymore. We are there, floating free, just music, all movement. Doing Tango-Zen helps us to reach this state of mind, it combines the best of both worlds.



4. Tango is hot! If there aren't tango dances or classes taking place in your town now, get ready: they will be there soon! The tango is on MTV, in new movies, and young people worldwide are discovering that it is the best way to have fun, meet people, and be incredibly beautiful and sexy all at once!
   
   So who knew that you could combine the tango with meditation? It seems that not only can you do so, but even Buddha himself practiced meditation while walking. Zen meditation can be practiced in more active ways than the sitting posture. Chan Park says "One can meditate while dancing Tango, experiencing deeper appreciation of physical, emotional, and even spiritual aspects of inner-self." You know those books that offer a new idea whose time has come? This may well be one of them. Tango zen is such a beautiful concept that it is bound to catch on.
   
   This book includes a bit on Zen philosophy as well as well-illustrated exercises which should help any beginner to get started. It is a small book, but it contains all you need to learn this fascinating new meditation/dance technique - and the book can be easily held in the hand while learning to do the exercises. It does not attempt to give extensive instruction on all tango moves.
   
   Anyone can benefit from this technique, and Chan Park's book is highly recommended. Personally, I would be very happy to see our parks full of people doing tango meditation together! What a civilized sight that would be!

5 comments about Of Mice and Men (Play) (DPS Acting Edition).

1. Before I begin my criticisms, I will mention that my focus of this review is not on my personal preferences regarding characterizations, settings, themes, authors, etc. I understand that I cannot expect all authors to write a story that I personally enjoy and can relate to. Even if the subject matter of Of Mice and Men had interested me, I still would have given the novel a one star rating because of my criticism that I will explain in this review.
   
   I am giving this novel a one star rating because it has a lot of vulgar dialogue. There is an average of about 4 profanities per page.
   
   Secondly, even if I were to set aside my moral views of this novel, I still would choose to give this novel a one star rating. In my opinion, the plot structure is not all that good. The climax and resolution could have followed directly after the first 1/3 of the novel. There are too many conversations that seem to fill up space with unnecessary dialogue which describes the backgrounds of characters and personalities that do not play a significant role (if even a role at all) in the outcome of the story.
   
   Furthermore, Of Mice and Men has too many characters for its very simple plot. In my opinion, the advantage to having a lot of characters is to create intricate subplots which play a significant role in the outcome of the story
   
   I do not insist on reading action-packed stories. In fact, I sometimes prefer stories that are mainly comprised of dialogue. However, I do always want to see that there is a CLEAR DIRECTION in the conversations that progressively leads to the climax. In my opinion, the dialogue in Of Mice and Men did not meet these criteria. In fact, mid-way through the novel, I really felt as though the story was approaching a dead-end, and I think that John Steinbeck probably felt the same way. Therefore, he made the climax take a sharp turn off course just so the plot would not slam into a wall.
   
   Due to the offensive content and weak plot structure, I do not recommend Of Mice and Men.



2. "I'm finding Steinbeck to be just a really reliable author. I've enjoyed everything that I've read of his. This short novel was engaging and meaningful - I especially enjoyed the richness of the characters and the themes of companionship, dreams, and dissapointment."



3. The book, Of Mice and Men, has to be one of the good books I've read in a long time. The good parts about it are at the start, you get to meet the characters on how they act and the way they get along. Of course, there are some bad parts in books. One of them is when one of the bunk mates picks a fight with Lennie, because he is taller than him!
   Of Mice and Men, Lennie Small and George Milton take a bus, after getting chased by a mob, to a new job. After a couple hours and a lot of walking, they get to the job only to get the job, get in a fight for no reason, and work for good money. About the characters, George and Lennie, George is a quick-witted man that became friends with Lennie back when they were younger. Lennie was told to go with George to get a job by his aunt Clara. They both have a dream of a ranch, where their friends can stay, and people they don't know can leave. Lennie dreams of tending the rabbits. After a while, George and Lennie meet Candy, a nice old man that said he would help in the dream ranch. The dream ranch may work out; they have most of the money, but somewhere along the way someone messes it up, and it falls back to the way it was. Do you think they get the dream ranch? Read the book to find out what all happens.



4. Of Mice and Men is a novel based on the lives of two men, Lennie and George, who travel together. Lennie is a mentally unstable grown man, who acts like a child but has amazing strength-which inadvertantly gets him into trouble. After a misinterperated mishap in Weed, Lennie and George escape to avoid being lynched. They are left a long distance from their work after the driver of the bus on which they were travelling tells them that the distance is not far. Here is where we learn about Lennie's dream of living in their own house... which, at this point, is only a made up story to keep Lennie busy. The next morning, they travel to a working ranch, where they meet Slim, who is not the boss but seems to have the upper hand among the men, Candy, an old worker, Crooks, who works and is forced to live in the stables, and is mistreated because of the color of his skin, and Curley, a pugnacious character who also happens to be the boss's son. After a while, George begins to believe that the dream of owning a house could be possible, seeing how Candy offers to help to avoid being canned. Also, George confides in lim, telling him the story of himself and Lennie. As the story progresses, another mishap causes anger among the men, and forces George to make an important decision...



5. This is again one of those great American classics that deserve to be read by reluctant high schoolers. Sorry. I may have only given this three stars, but that does not mean by any means that this is a lousy book. This is a harsh look at the challenges to the Great American Dream, told through the eyes of a few ordinary people. Steinbeck's writing is sparse, but as usual he tells a fantastic, soul-stirring story that is, yes, tragic. But the symbolism and the meaning of it plus everything else makes this a worthy classic.

5 comments about The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film.

1. I am glad I got this book. It proves to me how much the Big Lewboski really rocks!



2. I've never felt so intellectually abused by a book as to resort to writing a scathing review like this on Amazon. This book is mind-bogglingly aweful! It reads like an 8th grade book report. It has no pretense of a plot and does amazingly little to actually delve into the making of the Big Lebowski. Don't buy it! Half of it is literally just the author monotonously describing what *happens* in the Big Lebowski. YES, repeating what you've watched in the movie!! Page upon page reads like "and then the dude goes into...and then...and then..." Much of the rest is an incredibly egotistical author bragging about how "in" he is with the Coens and prattling on about his interactions with them and how well he knows them. The author's grasp of english is profoundly poor and his "hip" slang falls utterly flat and non-sensical as he tries to invent numerous non-words. Even the pictures have nothing to do with their placement in the text. The ONLY redeeming characteristic of the book is that the author includes many long quotes from the Coens and the people who work closely with them.



3. Every once and while I look for books to re-inspire my need to make films. This is one of those useful books for people interested in the real filmmaking process. This book doesn't have useless interviews about how much fun the actors had working with a director but covers every thought and decision the crew had to make in the production. If you're a Coen Brother's fan, you'll also be interested to gain some insight into how they invent and produce their signiture films.



4. This book was co-written by William Preston Robertson who is someone, if you've studied the end credits of the Coens' early film, who has worked on their films in various capacities. He's often provided voiceovers where needed and even offered a place for them to crash when they developed writer's block while working on the screenplay for Miller's Crossing.

   So, he writes this book with an insider's perspective. At every opportunity he makes fun of them (as only a close friend can) and spends the first part of the book tracing their career up to The Big Lebowski. The rest of the book plays out as a quasi-Making Of that is quite an entertaining read. For example, he places their film in the grand tradition of bowling noir, a very rarified subgenre of the film noir. Robertson is quite funny as he pontificates about this subgenre at some length.

   If I had one complaint about the book is the amount of detail that is gone into about the storyboarding process which I could have done without. But this is a minor quibble at best.

   Robertson's style of writing is very casual and easy to read--it won't take you long to get through this book. If you are a hardcore fan of the Coens, then you will definitely enjoy this book and all the little, inside jokes. It will certainly deepen your appreciation for the film and acts as a great companion-piece.




5. The Big Lebowski is my all-time favorite movie; I bought this book hoping to read lengthy interviews with the cast, see behind-the-scenes photos and stills from the film, etc. Instead, this book deals with the technicalities of the Coen brothers' film making in general, with The Big Lebowski only serving as the most-often referenced case-in-point. So I'd say read this if you're interested in the Coens' film making technique, but if you're interested in The Big Lebowski specifically you won't really find much here.

5 comments about Uncommon Knowledge.

1. Judy Lewis lived a life as a Hollywood star's child that no other offspring of a celebrity can claim - believing that she was the adopted daughter of Loretta Young, she was in fact Young's natural child, conceived during a brief affair with the King Of Hollywood, Clark Gable. However, the Tinsletown of the 1930s, out of wedlock pregnancies were unacceptable, and Gable's status as a married man and Young's Roman Catholic faith forbade any chance of the two ever to be linked in matrimony. Loretta carried out a plan with the help of her mother, in which she let it be known that she was embarking on a trip to Europe, when in fact she was in seclusion, waiting to secretly give birth. The baby girl was placed in an orphange while Young returned to Hollywood to put gossip to rest and resume her career. She reclaimed her infant daughter some months later and let it be known that she had adopted the child. Although the open secret around town was that she and Gable had a love child, it was one that everyone kept mum about. Thus, little Judy grew up with low whispers, a stepfather who turned on her the moment he fathered two sons with her mother, and Loretta's own strange ambivalence and detachment. Although Clark was aware of his daughter (even coming to visit her a few times as an infant), he never publicly acknowledged her. One of the most painful passages recalls Judy's hurt by being called "Dumbo" at a birthday party because of the size of her ears (inherited from her famous father). Young used her little girl's negative experience as an excuse to have Judy undergo excruciating surgeries to reshape her ears so that Loretta's secret would remain safe. When Judy did meet Gable as a teenager, she was still in the dark about her parentage and was awed by the famed actor's visit to her home. Her stepfather became emotionally cold and cruel to his stepdaughter while her mother was off busily doing her work. It wasn't until she was grown that Judy learned the truth about herself - from her fiancee, who admitted that everyone knew that she was the child of two legendary stars. In adulthood, Judy married, had a daughter of her own, and eventually became a psychologist (after working as an actress), and was able to piece together and analyze why her parents made the choices they did, and why her mother continued to deny the truth. With her own background of abandonment, Loretta felt that Gable's distance and lack of financial support of their baby was yet another example of how men were unreliable. Unfortunately, she inflicted her own sense of shame (reinforced by her religion, no doubt), guilt and anger on her daughter. God took the place of a father in Young's life, and she used her religion as a defense with many situations. At the time Uncommon Knowledge was published, Young still had not confirmed that Judy was her biological child, and they two were estranged. Loretta sniffed to the press after the book's initial release, "I cannot imagine why she wrote this book." It was only shortly before Young's death from ovarian cancer in 2000 that the star admitted the truth publicily and mother and daughter reconciled.
   
   Judy Lewis was courageous in revealing what had been denied to her entire life - her father, and the truth. Most of us take for granted our lineage and our identities, but one thing's for certain - looking at photographs of Lewis there is no mistaking who her parents were. Loretta Young's "mortal sin" was in fact something that was hypocrisy at the time, no child is ever a sin, nor is love a sin. But Young's own psychology and the standards of the time prevented her from emotionally stepping up to the plate, the same can be said of Gable, and their child suffered as a result. Judy Lewis continues to inspire with her story, refusing to give into the shame that so affected her mother, and she maintains a close relationship with her daughter and granchildren. She was able to overcome the patterns and cycle that had emotionally crippled her forebearers, and has gone on to live a fufilled life.



2. Great book. Very interesting. I couldn't put it down. I respect Judy Lewis much more than I do, say, Christina Crawford, because she had the guts to write this book while her mother was still alive to defend herself. This book makes me feel bad not just for Judy Lewis, but also for Loretta Young. What a terrible position to be in. I think she did the best she could at the time. I feel awful for Judy Lewis that she never got to know her father, Clark Gable as well. The book was very intriguing, highly recommended!!!



3. When I was a little kid, my mother never missed the Loretta Young Show on TV. I grew up knowing that Young was a big Hollywood star who had always been a devout Catholic and therefore a `good girl' - unlike so many wild Hollywood stars.
   
   I'm not immune to all celebrity buzz, but I missed the news years ago that Loretta Young's "adopted" daughter was in fact her own baby, born out of wedlock and fathered by Clark Gable, no less. When I did hear that recently, I had to read this book by Judy Lewis for all the scoop.
   
   A lesser person could have published a shrill "Mommie Dearest" type of book. Instead, Lewis wrote a thoughtful, heartfelt memoir which takes the reader into the heart of a family - the good, the bad, the lovely and the ugly. That the family in question lived under the spotlight of Hollywood fame, wealth and influence is relevant, but not the focus of the story.
   
   Lewis looks at her mother's family and traces patterns of attitude and behavior through the generations: beautiful, strong and talented women left to raise their children after their men left them, and "giving away" young children temporarily to allow them to have better living conditions than a struggling parent could manage.
   
   A key fact is the devout Catholic faith of Loretta and her mother, Gladys. Already starring in pictures in her late teens, Loretta succeeded in the transition from silent films to the talkies. In 1935, the 22-year-old Young went on location to the mountains of Washington state to film "Call of the Wild" with Clark Gable. The production encountered severe winter weather and serious delays, and the stars fell in love. Young had been briefly married at age 17 (then divorced, but since she hadn't been married in church it somehow didn't "count" in Catholic terms), and Gable was married. When Young learned she was pregnant, abortion was out of the question due to her faith - which also told her that her child was a "mortal sin."
   
   Young's machinations to keep her pregnancy out of the news, and to eventually publicly "adopt" the child when she was 23 months old (or so, the kid's exact age was also fudged as part of the smoke screen), from a children's home out of town where she had sent her baby to stay for months, are chilling to read. By the time Judy Lewis knew the truth about her parentage - facts which were "common knowledge" in Hollywood where she grew up - it was too late for her to get to know her father.
   
   I wouldn't have been surprised if this book had been a long self-pitying whine. But Lewis has the gift of a loving and empathetic nature. She looks beyond her own story - backward to her family of origin, and forward as she revels in her daughter's happiness in adulthood - and thus gives us a frame of reference for the hard decisions taken by a young, beautiful and fiercely ambitious - and fiercely Catholic - movie star in the 1930's.
   
   Lewis dishes up a little more psychotherapy than I thought was really necessary, but it's understandable. At the time she wrote this book, Lewis was a newly-minted therapist, having finally obtained the college education that her mother had so firmly steered her away from when Lewis had graduated from high school. Yet another strange thing to me; you'd expect a wealthy, successful woman to *want* her daughter to get a good education. But this story has many strange turns, and I'm glad I got a copy of this book and read about all of them. Sometimes, you just can't make this stuff up.



4. This book really delivers if you're looking for a fair, in-depth look at what Loretta Young was like and to understand her daughter's difficult journey. This book is especially useful to Loretta Young fans since Young always seemed to want to paint an angelic saint-like image of herself. Loretta's human, just like the rest of us, and it's too bad she never figured out that it is okay to be human and make mistakes. I thought this book gave her mother a fair examination, and I would recommend it to Young fans as well as anyone who was ever raised to feel abandoned and unwanted.



5. I could not put the book down. Even though I am in my thirties, I love old movies. This was a very entertaining book and I am so glad I purchased it. The writer, unlike many other similar books, does not pity herself. She states the facts in a compelling manner. I found myself wanting to just reach out and give her a hug for the way she was brought up and treated. She really makes you feel like you were there. The pictures are great and really lend to the story. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly!!! It left me wanting to know what happened next in their lives.