Flash Poison Apple

In the Van Ness Muni Metro station this week, the widescreen, real-time map of the system wasn't working, and the screen was frozen.



The small Application Error box from Adobe Flash Player 9 was explaining that the memory could not be "read," and nobody monitoring the screens had bothered to click "OK" to terminate the program.



Was the Muni system an innocent bystander in the war between Apple Corporation and Adobe over the web animation software, "Flash"? According to Laughing Squid, a brilliant T-shirt called "Poisoned Apple" has appeared with art by a Malaysian illustrator named Lim Heng Swee, which you can buy by clicking here.

On Top of Mt. Tam 1: View from Heaven

The top of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County has views that are just about unparalleled in the San Francisco Bay Area...



...rivaled only by those in the East Bay from the sinister Mount Diablo above.



Since 1913, an outdoor play has been performed annually in the summer at a natural amphitheatre.



Seating created out of local boulders was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s...



...and the place holds close to 4,000 people.



In 1977, after complaints about traffic, a dynamo named Marilyn Smith was appointed as Executive Director (not pictured, that's one of the army of volunteers above). She changed the format to Broadway musicals, increased the performances to six weekends, and started the huge fleet of shuttle buses from local school districts to ferry large crowds up the mountain. (Click here for a good article on the history of the place by Kim Taylor.)



And it's being on top of the mountain that is really the main point of going to The Mountain Play.

On Top of Mt. Tam 2: Caterers and Puppets

If you donate a bit of money, the Mountain Play organization will also feed you a lovely lunch in the woods...



...cooked by lovely caterers.



Next door to the lunchspot is a secret forest where a puppet show is produced...



...which made our guest George, above, very happy.



"I adore puppets," he declared before we stumbled onto "The Three Little Pigs."



The crowd was overwhelmingly white Marin County, with a pocket of Mexican families who were part of the "outreach" program.



Those same Mexican families looked totally bewildered by the afternoon's production of "Guys and Dolls," the classic musical glorification of gangsters, strippers and missionaries in a mythical, highly stylized 1930s-1950s New York.



They looked like they might just as well have been watching Kabuki Theatre performed in Japanese.

On Top of Mt. Tam 3: Guys and Dolls

When Marilyn Smith started the reign of musicals on top of Mount Tamalpais, she brought in James Dunn, head of the theatre department at College of Marin, and he's directed just about every production since.



This means that the theatrical style is very traditional, with a familiar formula of a few outsized props (usually vehicles or in the case of "South Pacific," planes), a family-oriented take on the material, and a very foursquare approach to staging.



This works for some pieces better than others. A bowlderized "Hair" three years ago was surprisingly moving while "Man of La Mancha" last year was something of a disaster.



"Guys and Dolls" turns out to be perfect for the old-fashioned approach, and the cast for this year's production is mostly wonderful.



Here's a special shout-out for Kimberly Jensen as Miss Adelaide and Randy Nazarian as Nathan Detroit, two characters who can be insufferable or totally entertaining. Also charming were Joshua Castro (above left) as Nicely-Nicely and Tyler McKenna as Sky Masterson (above right). My only request is that the live orchestra be brought out to the front or the side of the stage. The music is half the fun and their disembodied presence backstage is annoying.