Something to see

Some friends will be performing "action theater" at 8 pm on Saturday, 31 Aug 02 at Western Sky Studio at 2525  8th Street, Berkeley. Tickets are $7-$10. For info & reservations call 510-915-3883 or e-mail: katarinaeriksson@aol.com. Among the performers is my friend Jenny Schaffer, with whom I performed songs a couple of times several years ago. Jenny's a dream on stage; I'll bet the rest of the gang is top-notch, too. Yes, it's improvisational theater, but the good kind. Not like those comedy shows on TV or like "Big Brother."

Speaking of which, I watched "Big Brother" pretty religiously the first year (summer 2000) and got sucked in again last summer. But this year I turned it on once, and turned it back off in about five minutes. The people all seemed like total unreal creeps, and the producers have neautralized all of the weird audience participation stunts, like hiring airplanes towing banners on which viewers had composed with cryptic messages to the hamsters. I'm enjoying my free time this summer a lot more than I would enjoy this year's version of the show.