LFS: The Storyteller

©2009 by LeeZard It was an odd convergence at the wedding held under the pecan trees on the Scarlett Roan Ranch just south of Cleburne, TX. The groom – and owner of the ranch – was Steve Stevens, Jr., a former Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association saddle bronc rider born in “The Valley” that is suburban Los Angeles. His Best Man was Kenny Call, a former World Champion steer roper and 12-time National Finals Qualifier, an honored guest legendary Cowboy Hall-of-Famer Larry Mahan and, the unexpected guest (Your Humble Servant), a New York City refugee with a cowboy heart. I was there as my sweetie Wende’s escort and, as is often the case, an observer of life. Steve Stevens, Jr., was born in Los Angeles and naturally followed his father’s footsteps into the movie industry. But rodeo also runs through his veins. “Dad” is Steve Stevens, Sr. After successful careers in acting, as an actor’s agent, a casting director for Screen Gems and a published author, Los Angeles-based Steve, Sr. (born ...

©2009 by LeeZard Some of you may remember a review of the play “Memphis” LeeZard did several months ago (“Hockadoo:” http://leezardonlife.blogspot.com/2009/02/hockadooooo.html). LeeZard submitted it to a Seattle-based news/commentary Web site but suffered rejection – apparently because the review was too favorable (Luckily, Leezard has outgrown taking rejection personally). No problem this time around with “Sunday in the Park with George;” LeeZard hated half the play and all of the music. “Sunday in the Park with George” is the Stephen Sondheim musical that astonishingly (to LeeZard) won a Pulitzer Prize when it first ran in 1984. In 2009 the show will run in three cities, London, New York and Seattle. LeeZard saw the Seattle production last night and vacillated between visual ecstasy and aural agony. Let me explain. The story premise has promise. It is centered on Georges Seurat’s revolutionary masterpiece, “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” The island is in the Rive...

©2009 by LeeZard I thought I’d done Disneyland – twice, in fact. That was until I flew through the Magic Kingdom via the pixie dust of my very own Tinkerbell. That would be Wende, The World’s Best GirlFriend (TWBGF!). LeeZard will never view “The Happiest Place on Earth” the same again. Wende was born in the Bay Area but lived for many years in Southern California. Over that time she began to channel Peter Pan’s little gal pal and made Disneyland her own fiefdom. Even today, living hundreds of miles to the north, Tink (as I now know her) maintains an annual pass and manages more than a few visits a year. Last week was LeeZard’s first fly-through with Tink. Let’s call it “Extreme Disneyland.” Ladies & gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts! Not that it was bad; au contraire, it was AMAZING. LeeZard didn’t know that he should have gone into training weeks before the journey. Along with Tink’s nine-year-old daughter Sarah (our self-proclaimed Minnie), we blazed through Disneyland and the ad...

©2009 by LeeZard This is about baseball but it is also about life. Have you been following the sob story soap drama of Alex Rodriguez and his admitted use of steroids? After ESPN.com reported that Rodriguez tested positive in 2003 for steroids, the New York Yankees’ third baseman came sort of clean (but, not until someone else outed him!). The “good” news for Rodriguez is that in 2003 Major League Baseball had no penalties for use of the performance enhancing drugs so he faces neither legal or league sanctions. The bad news for Rodriguez is that it already sullies his sullied reputation as a human being. In the interest of full disclosure, Leezard has been an Alex Rodriguez detractor since he took the money and ran from the Seattle Mariners in 2001. He came to the Mariners as a young 18-year old phenom without ever playing a minor league game. In his first full season – 1996 – he hit an amazing .358 with 123 runs batted in. Mariners’ fans – LeeZard included – took the budding young sup...

©2007 By LeeZard Her name was Faith Mulholland and she ruled her seventh grade class with an iron fist and a short, nasty temper. She was tall and very thin. She wore the same outfit everyday, a light tan, below-the-knee straight skirt and a white blouse. Either she washed them every night or had dozens of them in her closet. She wore little or no jewelry, nothing to enhance her ordinariness, and kept her dull brown hair in a bun with loose strands always falling down on either side of her face. To look at Faith Mulholland was to feel her loneliness in the world and it seemed she saved her resentment of that loneliness for her pupils. P.S. 147 Today ( From: http://schools.nycenet.edu/Region3/ps147/index.html) I was transferring to a new school and, unknowingly, into Faith Mulholland’s private gulag. My first elementary school in New York City’s Borough of Queens, Public School (P.S.) 176, only went as high as the sixth grade. So, for the seventh and eighth grades, I w...

©2009 by LeeZard Don’t know what “Hockadooooo” means? Go see the musical “Memphis! (Or, look below if you must)* It’s as simple as this; LeeZard loves the theater and I absolutely LOVED Memphis. I do not give my applause away easily, even less so do I participate in standing ovations. I found myself willingly and enthusiastically doing both last night during and following a preview performance at Seattle’s grand ol’ Fifth Avenue Theater, thanks to Wende (TWBGF). The rest of the audience agreed, breaking into shouts and whistles after many of the rousing, often emotional song and dance numbers, topping the evening off with an instant, spontaneous standing “O.” All well deserved. As described by Broadwayworld.com: “ Written by Joe DiPietro, composed by David Bryan (Bon Jovi keyboardist and founding member) and directed by Christopher Ashley, Memphis is a story about the passion and roots of rock 'n' roll featuring an original gospel, rhythm & blues, and early rock score fused...

©2009 by LeeZard It’s no secret; the days of the daily newspaper are numbered. Look around; cities across the country are faced with losing a major daily paper. It’s happening here in Seattle as well as in Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Baltimore. In city after city, newsrooms are going dark. Even the sainted New York Times is having trouble paying down its huge debt. Metropolitan areas that once enjoyed a plethora of hard-copy news coverage and editorial opinion are finding themselves left with just one voice – and, even that voice could be in jeopardy. It’s a sad state of affairs for an industry that is more than 300-years old. According to newspaper-industry.org: “The first daily newspaper was The Daily Courant in London, 1702. France's first daily newspaper appears in 1777, Journal de Paris, while the first United States daily was the Pennsylvania Packet in 1784.” There was a time when great cities bristled with newsprint. By the end of the 19th Century there were mo...