Arts DEVO

Winning! If you wanna coax those goosebumps to the surface, summon the hairs on the back of the neck to attention and well up all over with local pride, visit prairiehome.publicradio.org and listen to the incredible (and winning!) performance by local faves MaMuse on A Prairie Home Companion’s Duets contest. Not only did Karisha Longaker and Sarah Nutting blow the roof off the place (performing the moving “Hallelujuah” during the contest and “Glorious” with the band at the end of the show), but their interaction with Garrison Keillor was charming and priceless. Congratulations, you two! Chico is glowing.

We are Giant! Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.—The Shawshank Redemption

The Beard went down. The Freak went funky. Melky juiced. The Reds went up 2-0. The Cards went up 3-1. Despite a very fun and successful season (Matt Cain’s perfect game, Buster Posey = likely MVP, lapping up delicious Dodgers tear drops), there were several times this year when the post-season hopes of the San Francisco Giants were all but lost. But this is baseball, and our weakened hearts were soon enough tested as the hopelessness took a turn for the weird, was immediately replaced with disbelief, and then morphed into an embarrassment of babbling giddiness. Quicker than you could say “grand slam by Posey” or “Marco Scutaro is my new favorite Venezuelan on the Giants,” a sweet October rain washed away the badness and the Giants floated, drunk and disoriented, into the World Series.

Someone pass me the horse tranquilizers.

… crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

RIP Brad On Monday, Oct. 22, Brad Moniz, Chico theater legend, died at the age of 54 after battling cancer. I didn’t know Moniz personally, but I’ve seen his plays—from his gripping one-man performance in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in the old Whispering Clam Room a couple decades ago (my first theater experience in Chico) to his direction of the excellent Dead Man’s Cell Phone at the Blue Room earlier this year—and I’ve heard local theater folks offer their admiration of the singular local character. I’ll leave the rest to them:

Outside the theater (and his prickly exterior) [Brad] was good people, and over the years I grew to like and respect him. He touched a lot of people. Of course sometimes that touch left bruises, but a couple of generations of actors learned a hell of a lot more doing one show with him than throwing money away to sit in a classroom for a few years. Now that’s a legacy.—Craig Blamer, local director, actor and CN&R film critic

[Quoting Moniz] “There are actors who suck, and there are actors who blow. Decide which one you are going to be, and just fucking do it god damn it.” He would also specify that it was better to be an actor who blows, because when you blow you’re giving something. Actors who suck are just selfish.—Betty Burns, Rogue Theatre

Mr. Moniz is responsible for disrupting community theater here, forever. Each and every one who saw or performed in one of his vivisect creations was affected by him and it, and I mean in a profound, lasting lifetime way. I must think of his mind every goddamned day. I am sorta p.o.’d about [him dying]—probably no more then he was. Goodnight Brad, but not goodbye.—Liz Gardner, friend