Category: San Francisco

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

“An actor struggles to die onstage, but a puppet has to struggle to live. And in a way that’s a metaphor for life.” – Handspring Puppet Company, creator of puppets for the stage show “War Horse”

Over the weekend I had the great pleasure of joining two very dear friends and The Good Man for a night out on the town. We started at a little French restaurant for both dinner and great conversation. We lingered a bit over our food, but skipped dessert as we had tickets to the theater, and it was nearing showtime.

While I have seen quite a few stage productions in my life, I am not what one would call a “theatre geek.” All three of the other talented people at the table self-describe themselves as such, so obviously I learn a lot from them every time we are together.

On that beautiful night in San Francisco, we found ourselves at the venerable old Curran Theater with tickets in hand to see “War Horse.”

This show first came to my attention at the 2011 Tony Awards (where it picked up five awards). The brief yet enchanting moment when the puppet horse came on stage sent a jolt to my soul. I turned to The Good Man and said, “Let’s fly to New York to see it!” and he smiled, as The Good Man does, and inserted reason into my life. “I bet it will come to San Francisco. Let’s see.”

Of course he was right.

Life almost got in the way, because this past weekend was the closing of the San Francisco run of the show. Whew! I owe The Good Man so much for pulling this one together.

Now, while I love the quirky old Curran, she also makes me tired. It’s small, short on bathrooms, the seats are massively uncomfortable and it’s stifling hot inside. And yet I keep going back there because they stage some of the best shows in the world.

I went into this production with extraordinarily high expectations. They were all beat. Hand’s down.

This is the most magical and profound show I have ever witnessed.

It’s no secret that I am a horse person. I have spent time among horses. I’ve studied them. I was trained to ride by a protégé of Monty Roberts (the inspiration for “The Horse Whisperer”) and she taught us in his style.

Which is to say one must listen to a horse. You must note the posture of their ears. Understand why a foot stamp. Realize that a deep inhale or a deep exhale actually means something.

I’ve spent hours simply watching a horse so that I could hear what it was telling me.

So you know I was going to have an extraordinarily critical eye when it came to the puppetry in this show.

I’ll cut to the chase…they nailed it. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. From simple ear flicks, to a shivering coat when brushed, to head posture. At one point, there was a long dialogue between two human characters while two horses stood off to the side. The horses sighed, tipped a front hoof on edge, stamped, and shifted weight from side to side. If you’ve ever made a horse stand still you’ve seen all of those. It wasn’t affected, just simply natural.

These bits of metal and canvas transformed into actual horses in my eyes. It was absolutely magical.

And then woven around this astounding feat of puppetry was a really difficult story set during World War I.

A boy’s father wins a young horse at auction and the boy and horse embark on a deep friendship. Albert trains the horse, Joey, with ease and understanding. They have that special bond that only a horse owner can know. But when England goes to war, Joey is sold into service for the cavalry by Albert’s father. Quickly, our young Albert lies about his age and enlists so that he can find his horse and keep him safe.

It is an extraordinary journey through history, exploring many notable events of WWI.

I’ve often been told in crafting stories that there are no new plots and it is the job of the writer to find a way to bring a new perspective to a known story. In this play, the underlying story is one we know. War is awful. Ravaging. And it irrevocably changes those who were sent to the front lines.

We know that story, but when you add the majestic layer of these well wrought puppet animals, it becomes something almost cinematic. How they staged such an ambitious production on the Curran’s small stage is still a miracle to me.

From light cues to small movements to the amazing work of the puppeteers, this show transcends theatre. You willingly suspend your disbelief and don’t want it back for a single moment.

It was perhaps one of the most profound moments of live theatre I’ve ever experienced.

Now I’m sad that I waited so long to see it because I want to see it again. This despite the fact that I totally ugly cried right there in the theatre. I mean cried so hard I was afraid I couldn’t get my composure back. Thankfully I was in good company, most of the patrons shed a couple tears, too.

We were all that engaged in the story.

Driving home, The Good Man and I talked about the show. I wanted to know what he thought about it from a theatrical perspective. He wanted to know what I thought about the accuracy of the portrayal of the animals. Together we decided it was unlike anything we’d ever seen.

Whew. I was so emotionally done-in that I slept like a rock that night. Over Sunday breakfast The Good Man and I again idly discussed the show. Just trying to speak about one of the more powerful scenes in the show brought tears to the corners of my eyes.

It’s rare and beautiful to find a piece of creative work, be it a book, movie or play, that gets inside the cellular walls of your soul and hangs on. “War Horse” is that, for me.

I will be thinking about that show for a very long time and trying to find a way to see it again.

Hey Good Man, I think it’s still playing on Broadway. How ’bout a road trip?





Hard to believe these mechanical devices become real horses, but they do




Image from AlEtmanski.com



What Are The Odds?

Over the course of the past six months, I have had occasion to be on twelve different airplanes.

To my utter surprise, eleven of those twelve plane rides have gone off without a hitch. No mechanical failures. Nothing more than slight delays. Only a bit of notable turbulence over the North Pacific and also over Iceland. But even that was quite tolerable.

Eleven safe, easy, trouble free hops.

And then there came ol’ number twelve.

It had to happen sometime, right?

My day started in the dark hours of a foggy Alabama morning. I rose before the sun, packed my bag and climbed into the rental car. It was time to go home.

I had worried about a lot of the day. I had to drive the 75 miles or so back into Atlanta with commute time traffic. Atlanta is one of the busiest airports in the world so I fretted over planes being on time. And then there is the morass of the security process. It had taken almost an hour to get through SFO security on the way out so who knew was ATL would be like.

Turns out all of that worry was for naught. The drive in was easy. Turning in the rental car a breeze. There was a bit of a line at security but even that was no problem.

My biggest issue was that I had allotted so much time that I was ridiculously early to the airport.

So I had some breakfast, eggs and sausage hold the grits please, and I idly shopped the stores. I sat around a while too and even that was fine.

That big ol’ jet plane arrived right on time and in due course I was called to step onboard.

My seat wasn’t the best situation, I was in that first row at the plane door which meant every person who walked by took a chunk of my long limbs with them. I’m rather fond of my knees so I found myself hugging them to me to protect their little caps from further contusions. This made me cranky.

Soon enough the flight attendant was locking that door and running through the safety briefing required for takeoff.

She said at one point, “in the event of an emergency, which totally won’t happen, there will be lights along the aisle way leading you to exits.”

I thought it a bold statement. I should have known right then…she was calling down the Baseball Gods.

You know the Baseball Gods, those mythical entities that require you don’t speak of a no-hitter while it is in progress. The fickle hands of fate that will school you if you utter things like “when we win the division…”

And the baseball gods that occasionally smite a plane of passengers when our lead flight attendant says things like “in the event of an emergency, which totally won’t happen…”

Because it happened.

We were buckled in and cleared for takeoff. We taxied down the runway and took our place in line. There was one plane ahead of us and we were next. As the plane rolled, a man in the row behind me shouted, “we need help here! Get someone, we need help!”

The man seated at the window of that row was having a rather severe seizure. To his great fortune, the man seated next to me is a neurologist and there was also an anesthesiologist on the plane. These two doctors hopped into action and assisted the man through the worst of it.

Out of respect for the gentleman who suffered the seizure, I’ll keep all the gory details to myself, but I’m not going to lie, it was scary as hell.

The pilot was called and we had to step out of line and return to the gates where a group of EMTs waited. These EMTs were top notch, and they got the man stable and they got him off the plane.

Then there was the aftermath. The paperwork. The clean up. The “what the hell do we do now?”

All of the airline staff kept saying to each other “I’m just so glad this happened on the ground and not in the air.”

Eventually the airline got it all sorted out and the lead flight attendant commanded us to sit and buckle in. It was time to go.

We taxied out again to the runway and the passengers were quiet and tense. We took off and the wheels went up and other than the lady at the window in my row having a broken tray table and the bathroom running out of toilet paper, there were no more mishaps on that flight.

The pilot must have put the spurs to it because the flight was only maybe an hour late getting to SFO, and that’s not bad. Probably helped that prior to the emergency, we were due for a really early arrival (the jet stream must have been taking a smoke break yesterday).

And so…eleven out of twelve is a 91.6% chance of a flawless flight, which are damn fine odds as far as I’m concerned. I’d place a Vegas bet on that in a heartbeat.

I think what’s actually more amazing to me is the eleven flights that went off without a hitch. I’ve always considered getting on a plane to be something of a crap shoot. A little Google search advises that the odds of winning in craps is about 50%. So yeah, 91.6% is a far better bet.

As of this moment, there are no more plane rides scheduled for the rest of the year. Knock on wood and touch a lucky rabbit’s foot and with all due deference to the Baseball Gods.

I think I’m ready to stay on the ground for a while.






Photo by Jesse Clark and used royalty free from stock.xchng



A Rigged Game

Last evening I had a chance to meet up with a friend and a friend of a friend to have a girl’s night out. Our respective spouses were together at the baseball game and so we fell to conventions and did a boys night/girls night thing.

The ladies decided that dinner and a movie sounded all right, so we stopped off at a fabulous San Francisco restaurant that served a very nice sangria and happy hour soft tacos. The prawn and also the pulled pork tacos were divine.

And then off to the movie theatre across the street from the restaurant where we got three tickets to see Magic Mike.

Now, the IMDB summary of “A male stripper teaches a younger performer how to party, pick up women, and make easy money” didn’t make this seem like my kind of show, but it the film was directed by Stephen Soderbergh. He does good stuff. And the film gets a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So we decided to give it a try.

Let me cut to the chase: It was awful. The acting was terrible. The script was embarrassing and even the editing was terrible. In one scene the main actress had a tattoo. Then she didn’t. In one scene a supporting character had a full bottle of Pepsi, then it was empty, then it was full again. Sheesh!

Walking out of the theatre we wondered aloud how this crap movie could get such good reviews.

Which reminded me of the kerfuffle around the movie John Carter. The Good Man is a fan of the books and went to see the movie in the theatre. He genuinely liked it.

He said then that he felt the poor reviews were unfair. John Carter only gets a measly 52% on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the plane to London with time to kill, I decided to watch John Carter. I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, but I love a well told story in any genre.

I have to say, it’s a pretty good movie. Solid story line, well defined characters. The acting was a little sketchy here and there, but what rollicking lasers blasting sci-fi film has perfect acting, eh?

So after watching John Carter, I commented to The Good Man that the producers must not have paid off the right people to get the good reviews. I said it facetiously but after this whole Magic Mike debacle, it’s become my full on conspiracy theory.

Did the Magic Mike team pay off the right people while the John Carter crew did not?

Are movie reviews really bought and sold like trinkets on eBay?

Are movie reviewers on the take?

Could the whole movie industry maybe possibly be entirely completely corrupt?

Is the truth really out there?

Hmmmmmmm……







Image by Abdulhamid AlFadhly and used royalty free from stock.xchng.



That’s Still Me

Recently a long time reader of this blog added a comment to one of my posts about being in London.

It went something like this, “Awhile back you were whining because you don’t get paid to play golf. Would it help if we all let you know how much we envy you?”

I know when I’m being gigged between the ribs, and I didn’t take it bad. In fact I dug the comment because it not only made me smile but also think a bit.

There have been a couple other much less nice notes sent my way via email that implied that I’m bragging too much on my blog.

Here’s the thing, in my mind, I’m still this girl.




In cuts offs and a tshirt, leaning against a chicken coop in Logan, New Mexico. Brown from the New Mexico sun and days spent swimming in Ute Lake.

I can guarantee you the little girl in that photo never thought for a million years she’d ever leave New Mexico, much less visit Singapore, Costa Rica and London. Or attend a US Open Golf Tournament. Or meet the legendary Willie McCovey.

Ya gotta know, when I pipe up here and talk about what I’m doing, it’s because I’m still genuinely in shock and awe that I’m doing it.

This throwaway comment on Facebook about sums it up:




That was the most genuine and true sentiment I had in that moment. I was so in awe at the fulfillment of a dream that I was rendered mostly speechless. Not many words were needed to convey the truth of it all.

Maybe I do brag to much and I’m just too insecure to write it in a more humble way. But to be honest, I’m pretty freaking proud.

This past year has been nothing short of epic for me.

That the little girl at Ute Lake and this little girl in London ARE THE SAME GIRL boggles my tiny mind, still.




Of course, I’m also this girl. But then I’ve always been like that.




To sum it all up, if you think I’m bragging too much on my blog, you are probably right. I should warn you it ain’t a’gonna stop anytime soon, either.

And so that means it’s truly time to say:

Thanks for dropping by today, dear reader. For putting up with my random thoughts, disjointed posts and all around bad behavior. I owe you a deep debt of gratitude for reading my words.

I sure am having fun on this blog. It’s a party in 1,476 posts and 469,239 words!




Ute Lake photo from my family’s collection, Copyright Karen Fayeth. No use or reproduction without prior written consent. Taken with a Kodak Instamatic and no need for the flip-flash.

Photo from London’s Tower Bridge is Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license on the right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone 4s and the Camera+ app.


Every Once In A While

Every once in a while on a cliff overlooking Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the sky is blue instead of the usual gray because the sun is out.

It’s both not too hot and not too cold and there is no fog hanging out on the horizon, which means the wind is really not so bad.

And as I sit there next to The One Who Makes Me Happy, I think to myself…”San Francisco might just be the most beautiful place in the whole wide world.”

I’ve visited a few well known corners of this big planet over the past four months, and still, standing there looking over the Pacific Ocean makes my heart sing.

The light is so good that a photo off of an iPhone doesn’t need any touching up to properly convey just how blue the ocean actually is. It’s not being tossed and turned by an oncoming storm and the blue is mesmerzing.

That’s straight off the camera:



Click if you want to take a closer look


I had a nice getway with The Good Man and on our way home from Napa, we stopped off at Ocean Beach and I’m so glad we did.

Good to put my feet in the sand and hold The Good Man’s hand and just feel happy to be home.

Much needed.



Photo of Seal Rocks is Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license in the right column of this page. Taken with an iPhone4s and the Camera+ app and not a single filter, adjustment or tweak was made.