Taco Truck Taste Test Two

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Mark Baratelli of the Daily City organized a second Taco Truck Taste Test this truck is located at the corner of Conway and Curry Ford in a gas station parking lot. The trucks main dish is Monfongo Relleno which is from the Dominican Republic. Monfongo is made from fried green plantains or yuca which is mashed and seasoned with garlic, olive oil and pork bacon. As I walked up to the taco truck someone approached me and said “Hey if you want to get your truck cleaned be sure to call me, I do good work.” He handed me a business card that read: Rambo’s Car Cleaning. About a dozen people gathered for this taste test. After saying hi to Mark, I immediately sat down leaning up against a tire air compressor. I sketched as quickly as possible to try and catch the individuals who had shown up. I found it odd that one man stood on a milk crate next to the truck so he could see into the truck and presumably talk to the chef. A second truch weas located behind the gas station and many of the cooking impliments were strewn around on the ground. I presume they were retrofitting or upgrading the Taco Truck.

There were just two of those generic white plastic chairs that you see everywhere. People ended up sitting on the curb and leaning up against the gas station walls while they ate. The prices at this truck were on the high side. For instance a shrimp Monfongo was $12, you could also get a lobster Monfongo for $14. Because of the prices I decided to pass on sampling the food. I finished up my sketch and headed home.

Crimes of the Heart Callbacks

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This sketch shows Kylie Kusco and Heather Leonardi on stage with Beth Marshall and Aradhana Tiwari watching. Some monologues from the auditions were quite memorable. One fellow had a monologue about being strip searched. The whole time he was talking he was angrily throwing items of clothing on the floor, first his shoes, his socks then his belt. I stopped hearing what he was saying and started to wonder just how far he would go to get the part. The director put her hand over her face in amusement and embarrassment. Another actor rather than recite lines from a play started talking about how he ended up in Orlando after a student work exchange program for Disney and about his first love. I enjoy hearing slices of life like that but I don’t think it got him a part.
Actors who made it to callbacks were in serious consideration for a part. They would pair up and act out scenes from the play. Some scenes I must have heard close to a dozen times yet certain performances had me laughing out loud or swept away in the romantic drama while some left me unmoved offering me time to focus on the sketch.
Any time actors would leave the stage Beth and Aradhana would turn to each other and discuss how certain actors really worked well together or how several actors bought different energies to a particular role. I do not know how they would ever decide since every actor bought something new to the table.
One actress named Kylie Kusco, really stepped up to the plate and she was asked to perform an exercise where she and Beth could only say two lines “Their is not enough time” and “their is enough time”. Each actress had to convince the other she was right using body language and raw emotion. It was like watching two matadors in a ring each circling and moving in for another emotional exchange. The director let the exercise go for a long time and I thought the performances were some of the best I had witnessed that day. There is magic in moments like this.
Near the end of the day Beth and Aradhana placed all the photos out on the table and began to organize them into groupings of possible cast scenarios. They talked about the possibilities for the longest time. I’m reminded of a line from the play Sunday in the Park with George “a blank page or canvas, so many possibilities”. I finished my sketch and packed up to leave. As I left the endless discussion continued and all the actors who had made it through the day were coming back at 5 PM to continue the process. I had to go out to Sanford to do a sketch For Orlando Home and Leisure. Here is the final cast and cheers to what should be a great show!

Crimes of the Heart Auditions

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I went into the “Crimes of the Heart” auditions not even knowing the story of the play. I hoped to discover the story through the actors constant readings . I arrived at the Lowndes Shakespeare Theater at 11 Am and only the Stage Manager Chasmin Hallyburton and the Director Aradhana Tiwari were on hand. Aradhana was busy reading a stack of papers in front of her so I just sat in the front row of the theater and started sketching the stage. I figured I could draw the stage and then just draw in the auditioning actors when they arrived. I was a bit disappointed since I had hoped to find a long line of aspiring actors all waiting for a chance to be in the play. The morning started off slow.
Beth Marshall showed up and she told me the rough outline of the story. Crimes is the story of 3 sisters in Mississippi. One sister has sacrificed her life to take care of the father and the family estate. Meg is the black sheep of the family and she is a force of nature and larger than life. The third sister is a bit of a socialite and is concerned with her reputation. The play revolves about these women coming to terms with their fathers death and coming of age. The women’s names are Babe, Meg and Lennie. There is also a cousin named Chick.
Slowly actors began to arrive and each would enter the theater and then present a short monologue. If this monologue was good enough, the director then asked the actor to go in the hallway and rehearse a scene from the play. When they returned Jason Horne would often read along with the them so there could be some interaction. Jason would even read the female parts if needed, which was quite humerus. In this sketch Jason is reading with Britni Leslie. She had on light southern summer dress and looked the part. She was ultimately cast as Babe and Jason was cast as Barnett.

Winthrop

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The next leg of the trip involved finding a horse stable where Terry could get in a trail ride. By iPhone she found a lodge just outside of Winthrop Washington. We stopped at Winthrop an walked about for a bit to take in all the renovated Western architecture. Bikers were around in abundance as well. I decided to sit outside of a saloon to get this view of the main street with the Harley’s in the foreground. I miss timed adding color to the bikes and before I knew it the bikers had roared of. I threw down splashes of color wherever I felt the sketch needed them partly from memory and partly from direct observation. Terry had scoped out a cinnamon bun and ice cream store that I hope we will go back to tonight.
I also sketched the horses just prior to the trail ride. I ran into similar issues where I would start sketching a horse and then immediately a child would hop on and the horse would wander off. Life just keeps forging ahead with little regard to the limited patience of an artist. “Stand still laddy!”

The Killer Whale Pod

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As the Mystic Sea sat quiet in the water, a pod of killer whales swam right towards us. They swam by on both sides of the boat and one crossed right under the boat surfacing right near where I was perched as I sketched. Since I wasn’t crowded up against the railing on the opposite side of the boat, I was the only one who got to see him that close. I felt his spray.

Terry was getting annoyed that I was spending more time sketching the tourists than watching the whales. Sketching the tourists as they ran from one railing to the other was definitely more entertaining than watching the blow spouts and dorsal fins. One person would point out to sea and then everyone would rush to that railing tipping the boat slightly. Digital cameras and binoculars would come out and thousands of shots must have been fired off catching every nuance of the whales brief surfacing.

After this sighting the captain maneuvered the boat several more times to follow the pod, giving everyone on board more views of the whales. At one point the whales churned up the water feeding on a school of fish. One slapped the water’s surface with his tail.

I spoke with one fellow passenger that once lived in Orlando but moved to Seattle 3 years ago to work for Microsoft. He said he never regretted the move. He also said his son is studying to be an artist. Are every one’s children studying to be artists? Kids wake up, art isn’t easy.

The Mystic Sea

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We boarded the Mystic Sea at Anacortes in Washington State. Anacortes is about a two hour drive north of Seattle. The boat traveled through the myriad of islands heading to a spot near San Juan Island where the spotter plane had last seen a pod of Killer Whales. On the several hour trip out the captain informed everyone that a fishing vessel had capsized and sank the night before in the waters we were traveling in. He asked us all to look for debris. When we got to the location the spotter plane had mentioned, there ware no whales to be seen. It took us another half hour to find the pod of whales.

There were 20 to 30 whales in the pod and the captain stopped the engine when he saw that the whole pod was swimming right towards the boat. There are very strict rules about how a boat can function when spotting whales. One woman a week before had slapped the water with her hands from a smaller craft and she was fined $12,000. Our boat was used in the filming of Free Willy 2 when that film was being shot.

Producing Large Arts Events in Orlando

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Mark Baratelli hosted a two hour event at Rollins College which gathered together the people who organize large arts events in Orlando. Mark is planning to organize an Improv Festival and as the moderator he asked each of these people advice on how he might best organize his Festival.
The Organizers in the sketch are (Left to Right):
Jamie Donmoyer of the Orlando Puppet Festival
James Schoepflain of the Orlando Hispanic Film Festival
Beth Marshall of the Orlando Fringe Festival
Carol Moreland of the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival
Chris Blanc of the Florida Film Festival
John Carter of Nerdapaloosa
and Mark Baratelli
The line from Chris Blanc which best summarized how to set up a first attempt at a festival was:
“Keep it simple. small and centralized”.
I became interested in the comments of Beth Marshal when she started talking about the Lake Eola incident I had witnessed the day before. She spoke about the larger issues revolving around the incident. Beth and all the panelists had a heated discussion to hear it all head to The Daily City and listen the audio from the event.
Beth said, “There is one thing about how to get a permit with the city, that has its own set of problems, but it is really pretty much self explanatory. It is relatively inexpensive. It is not something that can be done quickly. I completely understand why this small group who was just doing this 20 minute thing, didn’t get a permit because they were just going to the park and dance, big deal.”
“The issue isn’t getting the permit as much as it is the logistical hassles. The problem is in the fine print, for example, if I have someone who decides they want to put a poster on a city light pole, that can’t happen, because there is some fine print prohibiting that. So the city will come and take a picture of the poster on the light pole and they send that to me and tell me, Beth, you have to do something about this poster on a light pole. So I walk and I take the poster down. Then I get an e-mail from the city that says, you need to do something about the tape on the light pole.”
“If the city wants us down here doing our events, if the city wants us to have a community presence that generates dollars that come out of market back into our community, then you have to make it easier for us to do it. Period end of story.”

Welcome Home, Pay Up

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I just got back from a beautiful trip to the Pacific Northwest and started going through the pile of mail. I discovered a letter from the City of Orlando saying I had not paid a parking ticket and since payment was overdue, I owed a fine as well. What Parking ticket? I had never seen one. I discovered after some research that the ticket was issued on the opening night of “War of the Worlds“. On that night I had gone to an opening night pre-party at the Savoy. Parking is near impossible in the antiques neighborhood where the bar was located and I drove around for quite some time to find the perfect spot. I parked in a residential neighborhood far from the congestion and enjoyed the long walk to the bar. I didn’t get the ticket for parking in a no parking zone but instead it was for parking with the butt of the car facing west instead of east.

I had just experienced a surreal display of authority at Lake Eola and decided I needed to further my experience in the city by dropping off my $45 parking ticket check in person. I was shocked when I walked up to the City’s Parking Division. The city placed this cash cow in the ground floor of a 5 story parking garage. This bureaucratic edifice resembles a movie ticket booth only a little bigger. It is playfully decorated by 32 colorful ceramic tiles decorated by school children to give the passer by a warm feeling that art is alive in the City Beautiful. I expected a long line at the pay out window but instead found I could just walk up to the window and deposit the check as if in a bank. I was curious to see my original ticket but knew that would cause a long and arduous wait. I just smiled and paid keeping my comments to myself. I don’t think I could have reasoned with the woman behind the window anyway. I am sure she has seen it all, besides video cameras were located everywhere. Big brother was watching.

As I sketched homeless would wander by, some with bikes and some with loaded carts, heading back to Parrimore returning from their day downtown. A young couple shouted down to me from the parking garage 2 floors above “Hey, don’t forget to sketch us!” Every 15 minutes or so another person would walk into the Parking Division to drop off a check or cold hard cash. The stream of people was steady and sure.

Post Script. I got a mutilated letter crushed into a plastic postal bag that says “We Care” in the mail today from the City for my Parking Violation Notice. A quarter of the letter had been ripped out by some sorting machine. I got to see the picture of my truck beautifully parked with no warning signs in sight. Sigh, I am so innocent.

Activists or Anarchists?

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I arrived at the Lake Eola Band Shell a few minutes late for an MP3 event called “Push Play“. Since the event was downtown, I asked my wife Terry to come down during her lunch and enjoy the show. People had their headsets on and had already begun to perform. All the participants had MP3 players with an audio file they had downloaded from the internet. Following the example of Improv Everywhere the participants would listen to the audio for instructions. The audio began…”This experience is about joy and fun. It is about embracing the unknown and each other with an open heart and a playful spirit.”

Not being a techie I did not have an MP3 player so I observed as an outsider. Everyone began jumping up and down waving their arms in the air. They then began to form long lines behind people who like me had no clue what was going on. Terry arrived with a long line of people walking behind her and mimicking her every move. She waved to me as did her line of followers. When Terry settled in all the 30 or so participants began to dance. Periodically everyone froze and then began to dance again.

Then the unexpected happened and the event turned surreal. 4 park Rangers showed up and they looked concerned and confused. The participants all began to lie down on the benches for a nap and what was a playful experience suddenly looked like an anarchist demonstration to the Rangers. The lead Ranger started shouting and asking to see the person in charge. Since everyone had headsets on no one heard him. I turned to Terry and said “This is bad, there is a law in Orlando against performance artists in public places and there is a No Loitering law forbidding people from lying down on benches in Lake Eola.” The parks Rangers used their walkie talkies to call in several Bicycle Police Officers.

When the police arrived and asked for a leader, the participants began to laugh uncontrollably as they had been instructed to do on the audio file. They then placed a finger to their lips as if to say Shhhh and they all raised a hand and made peace signs. The police blindly interpreted this as an anti war demonstration that they had to get under control. The police and Rangers thought the participants were mocking them. As the Rangers forced everyone out of the Amphitheater the MP3 participants were listening to a song titled Peace, Love and Happiness on their headsets.

Terry and I were asked to leave the area as well although my sketch wasn’t finished. It turns out that most of the entrances to the theater had NO TRESPASSING signs hung on velvet ropes. In order to sketch in the final details I sat at the edge of the roped off area adding background details. With the crowd contained on a grassy knoll the lead Park Ranger became more indignant claiming he had been ignored and everyone should be sent to jail. He was finally able to assert some authority to a captive audience. Jane Thompson stepped forward trying to reason with him and assumed responsibility for the group. A Police Officer took her license and issued her a summons that banned her from Lake Eola Park for one year. You might wonder what her deviant agenda might be, well she is the President of A Gift for Teaching which helps transfer the communities surplus materials and resources FREE to teachers and students in need. I applaud her efforts to bring this organizations work to the public’s attention. My simple act of sketching suddenly felt like a quiet plea for freedom of expression. The police watched me with suspicion until I finished my sketch. The irate Park Ranger asked me to step aside so he could take a picture of the NO TRESPASSING sign I was sitting near. Perhaps he needed that photo for his trophy case or to remind me that I was sitting dangerously close to the forbidden zone. In Iran thousands of brave people took a stand for democracy but here in Orlando you might face possible arrest for dancing in a public park.

A related article at “The Daily City“.

Deception Pass

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Our Washington State vacation was quickly drawing to a close. Deception pass is a straight separating Whidby Island from Findalgo Island. It connects Skagit Bay with the Straight of Juan de Fuca to form a churning boiling water mass. Tourists can walk across the Deception pass bridge. You can barely see the small forms walking the bridge in the sketch. Construction of the bridge was completed in 1935. Vertigo dampened Terry’s desire to walk across the bridge for the view. Instead we drove down to the water where fishermen were busy trying to catch Salmon.
I set up shop and started sketching near a barefoot young couple who were snuggling on a blanket and enjoying the view. I liked the way the bridge sort of mirrored the gentle curve of a large drift wood log. Some people took the flat smooth stones and skipped them across the water, others caught fish as the sun set. After a fish was dragged up on shore the fisherman would then bash it in the head with a rock, the bloody details of which I really didn’t need to see. Several other fishermen were arguing with each other about where they should be casting. These guys almost came to blows simply because one fisherman was casting to close to the other guys sweet spot near a rock. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing!