Rick Reynolds gets to the heart of the matter

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Argus-Courier Staff

For Rick Reynolds, switching the punchline with the set-up gives his routines a poignant staying power.

“I was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper and my son Cooper was watching ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos,’” Reynolds told his audience at the Stage Door Theater. “He likes to watch people get hurt,” adding agreeably, “And, really, who doesn’t?”

After the laughter subsided, he added that apropos of nothing, his son climbed onto the couch, kissed him, and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

Reynolds, whose show “All Grown Up – and No Place to Go,” has just been extended to Sept. 3, is bucking the current trend to toss put downs at an audience like so many hand grenades.

Promotional materials say the show pursues the question, “Who would I rather be: the kid I once was, or the adult I am now?”

Promoted energetically as the next big thing in comedy, Reynolds now enjoys a following. When, a short way into the program he announced, “By the way, I’m Rick Reynolds,” the audience burst into prolonged applause. The 300-seat room was filled for this first of two shows.

It’s considerably less shocking than his first foray, “Only the Truth is Funny,” in which he detailed a painful childhood, his father’s early death, and the abuse of his mother first by a stepfather, then a succession of mates.

In that piece, Reynolds careened sometimes too widely for comfort between moments of jarring starkness and that magic zone where belly laughs and tears meet. This show is seamless, tighter, gaining from the narrower focus of the material.

Reynolds looks all grown up, having eschewed the baggy, gray secondhand suit of “Only the Truth” for a better-fitting gray suit. As he talks, he paces back and forth in the set, an ersatz living room.

He talks about his difficulties with his wife, Lisa, who he tells us he “loves more than anything in the world.”

Turns out that while he was surfing the waves of success that came with “Only the Truth,” she was dry-docked with their baby son, and feeling very much alone. She grew to resent his absences, and he resented her for “raining on my parade.”

Clearly, Reynolds is not after easy laughs. In fact, much of his show is not meant to be funny at all.

At times, the show felt like a combination group therapy/motivational speech, with Reynolds telling the audience that if he and Lisa could overcome their marital troubles, we could overcome ours too.

But his anecdotes about marital sex (“Nothing turns a woman on like badgering”) or the combination of love and worry that parents feel for their children brought tear-wiping howls from the audience.

In his funniest bits, he recounted a session with a marriage counselor, a stand-up performance at a Vacaville prison, and walking in his own front door.

It’s not for kids. There are plenty of references to his pre-Lisa s-e-x life. An endearing bit has him confessing how uncomfortable he was disrobing in front of a woman for the first time.

He has the physical grace of Charlie Chaplin and the rubber face of Sid Caesar, and when he uses his physical skills, such as in role playing a guy who has no qualms about disrobing, the effect is hysterical. One wishes for more of these moments.

While the show perhaps suffered from one too many Bradshaw-like moments of revelation, it is refreshingly heartening. Those who flock to comedy clubs to hear jabs, put-downs and ridicule will find little to laugh at here.

On the other hand, it might awaken a latent sense of humanity. Now, there’s an appealing thought.

Smuin mixes styles in new ballet program

by Rebecca Rosen Lum

IJ Reporter

Michael Smuin can do whatever he wants.

In the Smuin Ballet’s new program, which opened at the Cowell Theater Friday night, the former director of the San Francisco Ballet mixed moonwalking, breakdancing and tap with the tour jetes.

It’s pure show biz, and the sell-out crowd loved it.

The show began with “Starshadows,” a paean to lasting love choreographed to music by Ravel. Three couples alternated adagios under a movie-perfect starry sky. The gifted Sara Linnie Slocum, another SFB alumna, created faceted columns of light that enhanced the piece’s dreamy quality.

“Very Merrily, Verdi” offered up the most classically virtuosic of the evening’s three ballets. Particularly impressive were the impeccable Rodolphe Cassand and Claudia Alfieri, who moves with a sinuous musicality.

A planned fourth entry, “Homeless,” was scrapped when the dancer for whom it was created, Herman Piquin, was injured.

But the evening’s highlight was “To the Beatles, Revisited 2001.”

The 12-part ballet was funny, friendly and sweet.

Smuin can put on a show better than anyone: His credits include Broadway plays “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Anything Goes,” for which he won a Tony Award, and films “Rumble Fish,” “Cotton Club” and “The Joy Luck Club,” and many televised “Dance in America” forays.

The many-faceted array of dances to Beatles songs included two reworked in the style of Bach improvisations on piano, to fine effect.

The exquisite Shannon Hurlburt had all the character, swiveling grace and dance vocabulary necessary to bring off the hilarious opener, “Help.” Sure, it mixed styles. People weren’t doing the moonwalk or breakdancing when the Beatles were cutting records.

No matter. It perfectly captured the youth, that spectacularly fleeting burst of energy and bravura that made the Beatles so endearing.

Throughout, Smuin peppered the choreography with surprises, such as Amy Seiwert and Easton Smith’s tandem rowing movement in “Michelle” and Allison Jay’s pointe action atop a pile of blue stools in “Girl.”

Alas, Smuin may have strayed too far afield – even for Smuin – with a solo tap number done by Hurlburt under a blacklight. What, no strobe?

Cassand and Sarah Barber-Wilson danced with witty calypso “And I Love Her” with dash.

But the show-stoppers were Robert Cisneros and Anthony Huxley, two young boys who amazed with classical technique to spare and a voracious appetite for dancing.

In the liner notes, Smuin says his views of the Beatles have changed since he first choreographed to their tunes in the 1980s.

“I saw them as rock ‘n’ roll ruffians smashing ‘50s crew-cut conformity,” he says. This time around, he zeroed in on the wit, earthiness and poignancy that permeate the songs.

Smuin dedicated the piece to his late father, Harold Smuin.

Sandra Woodall crafted the costumes. For whatever it's worth, not since Bejart’s “Ballet du Deuxieme Siecle” have men appeared so consistently bare-chested.

Smuin said in trading the War Memorial Opera House for the Cowell, he has traded “splendor for intimacy, and emphasized personality over spectacle." It also has required him to trade an orchestra for taped music. Would that he could have it all.

Contact Rebecca Rosen Lum via email at rrosenlum@marinij.com.

Easter Eco-Palms do wonders for the wild

Congregations turn to specially produced fronds that help protect rain forests and habitats -- and harvesters.

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Contra Costa Times

Apr. 1--Each year on Palm Sunday, Christians jubilantly re-enact Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, waving a combined 300 million palm fronds in the United States. That makes for a green market in more ways than one.

But environmentalists say the traditional method of harvesting palms wastes more than it nets and damages valuable rain forest. And although sales may shoot through the roof, middlemen consume most of the profits.

Enter Eco-Palms, an ecologically and socially sensitive frond brand.

The niche-market palm comes from a method of harvesting and marketing developed at the University of Minnesota. It preserves more of the species, which in turn protects birds and wildlife that flourish in shaded forests.

Proponents say Eco-Palms will do for the Chamaedorea palm species what Fair Trade has done for coffee and chocolate -- create a sustainably produced crop while generating a good living for communities that harvest it.

The university works with communities in Mexico and Guatemala to produce the fronds, and with Christian denominations to get them into the hands of praying congregants.

Interest is booming: "Oh, my goodness, yes," said Kattie Somerfeld, Fair Trade coordinator for Lutheran World Relief.

Churches in 49 states and, Washington, D.C., Canada, and a U.S. Air Force base in Japan will buy a combined 360,000 Eco-Palm fronds, up from 80,000 last year and 5,000 the year before, Somerfeld said.

"We grew 450 percent from last year to this year," said program coordinator RaeLynn Jones Loss. "Last year, we got the Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians on board. Next year, we'll keep growing."

Eco-Palms don't come cheap. Congregations pay 22 cents per stem -- more than double the cost of traditional palms. But they pay and happily.

"For these indigenous folks who are struggling to make a living, we can support them directly," said Martin Morly, director of worship, music and the arts at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Lafayette. "Also, the palms are harvested in an ecologically sound, sustainable manner."

Eco-Palm harvesters earn their pay based on the quality of the fronds they deliver, not the weight of the crop.

"Now they know how to cut the palms so they keep growing," Jones Loss said. The trees with serviceable fronds continue to regenerate, and the imperfect palm is left alone, preserving its shade value. With a traditional harvest, 50 percent is lost in the sorting process, she said.

The harvesters capture a higher price because they do all the sorting and packaging themselves. For each frond, they receive a 5-cent premium that comes back to their community. Groups have used that money for scholarships, teacher salaries and expanded packaging centers to accommodate the rising demand.

Congregations in Berkeley, Clayton, Castro Valley, Lafayette, Richmond and Walnut Creek will use Eco-Palms for the first time in today's Palm Sunday services.

"We ordered one for each person," said Dianne Werner, secretary at Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church. "We don't even know what they look like."

Churches integrate palms into services in different ways. Parishioners at Grace Lutheran Church in Richmond listen to the story of Palm Sunday outside, then carry the fronds into the sanctuary, singing, said music director Martin Schaefer.

At Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Castro Valley, congregants take home the palms, which are folded into the shape of the cross. They tuck them into a dresser or bathroom mirror and bring them back next year to burn on Ash Wednesday.

Holy Cross parishioners already drink Fair Trade coffee, and they scrapped foam cups in favor of recyclable ones. Youths raised $5,000 to buy livestock for impoverished villages.

"We're doing things like that," said the Rev. Mark Spaulding. "It's stewardship of, as we say, 'this fragile Earth, our island home.' As far as ecology goes, man! We're that little blue marble out in space."

Families fear for Americans trapped in Beirut

Rebecca Rosen Lum. McClatchy - Tribune Business News [Washington] 19 July 2006.

Jul. 19--As U.S. helicopters and a Pentagon-chartered cruise ship began moving thousands of Americans out of Lebanon, Marina Krikorian voiced fears about a friend trapped in that country.

Only three weeks ago, Krikorian, 22, left Beirut, with its vibrant culture and nightlife, to spend a summer in her hometown, Berkeley.

Since then, Hezbollah guerrillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, kicking off a deadly retaliation that has reduced parts of the city to rubble.

Krikorian's friend, Lucy Mardikian, an American with family in the United States and Lebanon, is holed up in Anjar, in the Bekaa Valley.

"She can't leave, the roads have all been bombed out, and there is no Internet access," Krikorian said. "I'm worried."

She's not the only one. Some 25,000 Americans remain in Lebanon, about 10,000 of whom have requested transport out.

The U.S. State Department has stepped up the evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon -- 368 by Tuesday evening -- in helicopters and a cruise ship flanked by military guides. Beirut International Airport, crippled by bombings, remained closed.

The evacuation could take days. The Pentagon-chartered Orient Queen can hold only 876 passengers. And U.S. officials are cautioning against taking a land route into Syria, which they say is a major culprit in the crisis.

"We're trying to move quickly, trying to move large numbers of people as fast as we can," said Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, the top U.S. naval officer in the Middle East.

Complicating the evacuation is Israel's naval blockade of Lebanon. All foreign governments ferrying their citizens to safety must coordinate their rescue operations with Israeli authorities.

State Department officials say while Syria is admitting Americans without visas, border crossings along the northern Lebanon-Syrian border have sustained damage. They also urge Americans who try to cross the border to exercise caution when traveling on major roads as air strikes could hit at any time.

The department Web site is instructing travelers not to bring pets along, and to limit baggage to one suitcase.

Amid fierce criticism, the government Tuesday abandoned its insistence that those requesting transport to safety agree to reimburse the government for the cost of the trip to Cyprus, and a flight to the United States if necessary.

By late Tuesday, Italy, France and England had shipped hundreds of their citizens and other westerners to safety.

Friends and relatives of Mardikian eagerly await her return to the Bay Area.

"The last time one of us talked to Lucy, there was shelling right near her," said her boss at Berkeley's La Mediterranee, Garbis Bagdassarian. "She was very scared."

Bagdassarian's brother Zareh is still in the country, but is safe, he said. His niece and nephew left Beirut for Atlanta the day shells tore into the airport.

Nick Weise of Walnut Creek has heard all the news reports. But he doesn't worry about his sister Rachel as long as they can keep up their daily e-mail contact -- and as long as she stays away from air and seaports. Israeli jets have bombed the ports of Beirut, Tripoli and Jamil Gemayel.

"It would be better if she weren't there," he said quietly.

Rachel Weise, a 21-year-old political science major at UC Berkeley, went to the Lebanese American University in Beirut to study Arabic for the summer. She remained in Beirut after violence erupted.

The last Weise saw of Beirut, she could see the airport smoking and hear bombs and anti-aircraft fire. An eerie quiet filled the street.

"I remember walking into the cafeteria during a coffee break and all the Lebanese students were really excited about something. It was the capture of the Israeli soldiers," she said in an e-mail message.

She hunkered down at the university, which she described as one of the safest spots in Beirut, then she moved to another location. The State Department has cautioned her and other Americans against divulging their whereabouts, thinking Hezbollah might take Americans hostage.

"All I can do right now is wait to hear anything from the government about getting out of the country," she said.

Weise said much of what has been said in the media has been exaggerated. Although parts of the country have been reduced to shambles, in many areas, life goes on as usual.

But for Krikorian, who is 10 months away from a master's degree in Middle Eastern studies, returning to Beirut, the city where she recently saw rapper 50 Cent in concert, is uncertain.

"It was a beautiful, beautiful city -- very western in certain parts," she said. "Since the civil war, they've done a fantastic job of renovating the old downtown.

"I don't know if I can go back. I love living there. The really tragic thing is that they've spent the past 15 years rebuilding the city. It's heartbreaking."

Credit: Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.