"A country road. A tree. Evening." So go the opening stage directions of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, one of the most important plays of the 20th century. But if the set description seems minimal, Tides Theatre's interpretation of them is anything but.
"It's almost like you can see the tree pulsating, because the way set designer Richard Colman has painted it has so much energy," says director Jennifer Welch. It'll be a fuchsia tree against a black-and-white background, together with an angular, industrial soundscape, by Jon Bernson -- an unusual stamp on Beckett's existential "tragicomedy" and a bold beginning for a new theater company.
John Hodgman knows everything but not everybody.
He'll make up for that at this week's SF Sketchfest. There, Hodgman -- the celebrated author, expert, Tumblr, fabulist, pretend-judge, deranged millionaire, computer-imitating pitchman, and life-giving fount of nerd resplendence -- will talk up his new book (his best), perform in a kabillion shows (listed below), defend his mustache, and cozy up to select famous-type people who have thus far languished without his cozying.
SF Weekly spoke to Hodgman last week. With real passion and heart, he explains the beauty of the internet down toward the bottom of this discussion, after talking up his famous friendships and telling all lesser nerds to suck it.
The first time I saw your Deranged Millionaire character was on the They Might Be Giants Venue Songs DVD. Was that his debut?
It was. I had met the Giants through McSweeney's at the end of the last century. John Flansburgh asked me, first, to narrate a performance of their venue songs at a concert in New York City. He had worked up a number of the jokes and stories that I was going to tell, and I created this character that would weave them all together-- I imagined there would be a deranged millionaire in Brooklyn who would be their arch-nemesis.
Little did I know that not a decade later I would become that character: deranged, financially independent more or less, and situated here in Brooklyn. None of those things I was exactly in 2004 or 5 when I did that thing. But I am not their arch-nemesis. I think I'm among their biggest fans - certainly their most deranged fans.
