Tom Lorenz

This is too great an idea for me to make any obvious jokes.

For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops – NYTimes.com.

Hello, castmates and patrons of  To Kill a Mockingbird! Looks like you followed up on what I wrote in my bio. Let’s get right to it.

Aside from the obvious, my most recent experience was as Joe Sobrinho in the children’s show Sunshine Again (available on DVD). Just before that I performed with the Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company as a substitute for their Christmas show. Just before that it was Play On! at Haddonfield Plays & Players where I took full advantage of my license to ham it up as Saul Watson playing Dr. Rex Forbes in the play-within-a-play.

Other lead roles I’ve had include Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, Harold Hill in The Music Man, and Jesse Kiplinger in act 2 of Plaza Suite. Supporting roles include Dr. Jim Bayless in All My Sons, Sheriff Reynolds in Bat Boy: The Musical, Hethersett in Me & My Girl, and Rusty Charlie, Joey Biltmore and the Hot Box Emcee in Guys & Dolls. I’ve also directed Picasso at the Lapin Agile and The Octette Bridge Club.

I can also say that I have performed on the NYC stage! Technically. We did a few live performances of Sunshine Again at a theater in Brooklyn. And since Brooklyn is a part of New York City, it therefore qualifies. Barely.

Then there’s the voiceover work. Most has been local, but I have provided character voices for three independent films, one for an automotive website, and some station IDs for WKDU-FM. I can also say with pride that two of my recorded bits have been played on the Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM satellite radio.

Musically I am a trained tubist and mostly untrained guitarist and bassist. In December 2009 I took part in TubaChristmas at the Kimmel Center, which was a friggin’ blast and a half. Can’t wait to do it again next year.  Favorite guitar gig was when I was in the band for The Rocky Horror Show at Triple Threat. What a treat that was.

Maybe later I’ll add a more comprehensive list of what I’ve done. For now, this will do.

For months I have railed against memes that advocate wearing a certain color on a certain day to show support of some cause, person or issue. As worthy and important as these causes may be, the gesture is absolutely meaningless.

The earliest example I can cite came a few months ago when an email was endlessly forwarded about how everyone should wear red that Friday to show support for our troops. What a great cause, right? Supporting our troops? Absolutely! But how on Earth does my wearing of some red garment deliver any sort of support to people half a world away? Why not do something meaningful instead, like volunteering for the USO or sending care packages to the actual people in the service? Wearing red did nothing.

How about after the Iranian elections when people of FaceBook began making their profile pictures green. Did it help? Not a stitch.

Today I read about Project Blue Light. The idea is to display blue lights this Christmas to show support for families of police officers killed in the line of duty. Again, a wonderful idea, but a completely hollow gesture. For one thing, only people informed of the project would be able to glean any sort of meaning from the blue lights. Second–and most importantly, blue is one of the three primary colors in both light and pigment. Thus it is one of the most popular colors in the universe. Isn’t it entirely possible that the vast majority of the US population will have blue lights on their houses anyway? That being the case, what meaning could there even be?

My house is a sterling example. Every year we put a sea of large blue lights on our front bushes. Every. Year. We did so a couple of weeks ago. Does that mean it suddenly has new meaning? No. It’s just what we do. Quite frankly this meme makes me want to take them down simply because I don’t want to imply that I’m dimwitted enough to think that displaying lights in one of the most abundant colors imaginable would have any sort of meaning whatsoever.

But no. I’ll keep them up. Why? Because I like them. I have liked them every year for the last fifteen years. Nothing as meaningless as this Blue Light Project will change that. Supporting families of fallen officers is absolutely wonderful. This is simply not the way to do that.

Today I received my original slides and a DVD of their scans from ScanCafe. I am thoroughly impressed. Not only are the scans fantastic and high-res, but the slides came back in the exact same packaging I had used to send them in the first place, and in the same order. How cool is that! I can now put them back in the same tray where they sat for the last thirty years, and in the same order.

Needless to say, I’m very happy with ScanCafe and am putting together an order of print scans for them even as we type.

Holy crap! For a mere $5 I can now play Arkanoid on my iPod Touch!

This was one of my absolute favorite games on my old Mac Plus. I was always a fan of Atari’s Breakout and, of course, Super Breakout, so when I saw that Arkanoid was available for the Mac, I had to spring for it. Sadly it never made it past the classic Mac OS, so I haven’t been able to play it in about a decade.

Well, that’s not exactly true. I do have it available to me via vMac, but it’s cludgy and it’s black & white. Not terribly satisfying for me. MacBrickout was fun, but that didn’t make it to the Intel-based Mac OS. Thus, I’ve been unable to play a good Breakout-type game in ages.

No more! Can’t wait for it to finish downloading so I can take it for a spin!

Here are the details: ARKANOID Review | iPhone Games App | Macworld.

On this day thirty years ago, one of the world’s worst concert tragedies claimed eleven lives.

It was at Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Stadium. The Who was set to play to a sold-out crowd of over 18,000, most of whom had general admission tickets. Between that, the few doors that were opened and the few ticket-takers that were on hand, the stage was set for mayhem at the very least. Sadly the result was far worse.

I was sixteen at the time, a big Who fan and Rolling Stone reader. The news hit me pretty hard. Some of the dead were even younger than I! That alone was kinda freaky. It seemed so unlikely that one could go to a concert and die. Yet there it was, on a grimly larger scale.

The events of that evening have stuck with me to this day–and I wasn’t even there! I can’t go to a large gathering without looking around at the exits, entrances and assessing the mood of the crowd. I don’t know exactly what I would do if things went badly, but I like to at least know the circumstances.

I was surprised to find so little online devoted to that awful night. Instead of one comprehensive source of information, I present to you three which offer different perspectives on the tragedy and its aftermath:

• Memories of Who concert tragedy linger
• Music: The Stampede to Tragedy
• The Who Concert Tragedy Task Force Report

It may not mean much, but I do remember what happened that night and I do honor those who died so senselessly. The silver lining is that general admission seating at concerts is now virtually non-existent. It’s just a shame that so many had to die for that to happen.

ScanCafe has scanned my slides and put them up for proofing. After a quick look I decided to get them all, so I said as much on their site and completed my order. Now I just wait for my slides to come back along with a disc containing the high-res scans.

Let me tell you one of my favorite stories. It may not be much, but for more than 28 years it has been a favorite of mine. Let me tell you:

The legend of my prom night

On the night of my senior prom, two friends and I went to dinner together, then to the movies. Dinner was at the York Steak House in the old, pre food court version of the Echelon Mall. The movie we chose to see was Nice Dreams. We all enjoyed Cheech & Chong’s previous movies, so this looked like a slam-dunk.

When we got inside the theater in the Cherry Hill Mall (yes it was inside the mall where Hollister is today–I think), the manager came in to anounce that this was a special Sneak Preview night where we would see a new film that was not due for release for another few weeks. Cool! Two movies for the price of one! None of us knew anything about the film to be previewed, but we didn’t care. We were high school kids; standards were already low.

What was this surprise movie? Stripes. Yes, the legendary Bill Murray vehicle. We absolutely loved it. Nice Dreams never stood a chance. Stripes is just too damn good. For the next few weeks we were able to brag about having seen this way cool movie (”awesome” hadn’t been invented yet; Jeff Spicoli was still a year away).

So the three of us enjoyed a decent meal, then got a two-fer at the movies–with one being an instant comedy classic. It was the stuff of personal legend, and I have enjoyed keeping that legend alive ever since.

Then came the Internet

A few months ago I decided it was time to commit this legend to the web. It was time to write about it here. So what does someone in my position do first? Visit IMDB, of course. First I checked the release date of Nice Dreams, as that was sorta the cinematic baseline for our night. The result: July 24, 1981.

Huh? How’s that possible? Could I have remembered things backwards after so many years? Even if that were the case and Nice Dreams was the preview, that means it would have been shown almost two  months prior to its general release–and that’s just not done. Not to mention the fact that the release date for Stripes was June 25, 1981, which was well after the prom.

Nothing fit–and I couldn’t understand why. Could IMDB be wrong? Sure. Wikipedia? Sure. Both at the same time??? Well, yeah. If there’s one thing a Google search can show is how quickly information can propagate. Right or wrong, if it gets out there it stays out there. Maybe one day some years back somebody got the release date wrong when filling in the old database information. That was made public, others saw it, spread it, and suddenly history was rewritten. I had seen it happen before, but these are two big, de facto authoritative web sites. The question remained: could they both be wrong?

I did another search tonight: “nice dreams released 1981″. Hit after hit showed the same July date. Scroll, scroll, scroll; same, same, same. Then I saw something I hadn’t thought of before: a newspaper review of the film. Of course! There must be some mention of its release! So I took a look. How lucky could I be! New York Times, Janet Maslin’s review dated June 5, 1981. Right there it says plainly: “opens today at Loews State 2 and other theaters”. That date fit!

But what of Stripes? I took the same approach and found Janet Maslin’s review of it, dated June 25, 1981 and states “opens today at the National and other theaters”. That date fit, too!

Legend restored

So there it was. My recollection was correct after all. Better still, my “legend” was intact. Like I said: it may not be much, but I still think it’s a decent story.

It also leaves me with a couple of tasks: getting the information changed on two large, authoritative sites. Wish me luck!

ScanCafe received my box of slides early this afternoon in Burlingame, CA. Now they get shipped to India for the actual scanning. Their best estimate is for when I’ll be able to proof the scans is December 12. Can’t wait!

I hate to say it–especially where technology is concerned, but sometimes newer isn’t better.

After many months of frustration with my Motorola Krave, I decided to downgrade to an LG Env VX9900. The Krave’s OS and virtual keyboard were giving me aneurysms, so I had to do something. I chose the Env mainly because it’s orange. The fact that it has a physical keyboard was equally important.

One of the few good things about the Krave was that it was pretty easy to sync it with my Mac. Motorola allows some data transfer via Bluetooth, so I was able to sync my address book and calendar with relative ease. Not so with the Env. LG and Apple don’t get along well at all. While the phone and my Mac can see each other, they cannot connect wirelessly. That really bites. I need to get my old address book transferred over ASAP. Being able to add my own ringtones would be a big plus, too.

Fortunately there is a solution. It isn’t as slick as Bluetooth, but I actually like it better. For those of you who are in a bind similar to mine, here’s what I did:

1. Ordered a USB data cable through Amazon. With shipping it’s about $4.
2. Downloaded BitPim, a free app for data transfers.
3. With BitPim installed and the cable hooked up, I went to BitPim’s preferences, selected my phone, and made the connection.
4. Exported the address book from my Mac into one big vCard, imported it into BitPim, then uploaded it to the Env.

For ringtones:

1. Make the same connection to the Env as before.
2. Click the musical notes + icon, then select the mp3 file you want to use.
3. In the dialog box that comes up, click Convert, then OK.
4. Your ringtone will appear in the Sounds folder of your phone. Control-click or right-click that mp3 and Move it to your Ringers folder.
5. Upload.

That’s it! What’s remarkable about the ringtone transfer process is that it’s actually simpler and cleaner than the Krave’s process, which involved emailing it to myself, converting it, etc. Pain in the ass. This is a snap.

As much as I wanted to love the Krave, its shortcomings were many and significant. Too much to to put up with any longer. Chances are you’ll be seeing mine on Ebay before too long!