Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Chuck Anziulewicz's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
11:03 am	The Charleston Gay Men's Chorale The group was formed in February, and I decided to attend a rehearsal in March. Here's the logo: I was a "treble" in the St. Raphael's Catholic Church Men & Boy's Choir when I was in elementary school, and I did the chorus thing when I was in junior high. My singing voice is nothing to write home about, but I can hold a note. The public debut of the Charleston Gay Men's Chorale will be on June 10th, when we perform a few pieces at the West Virginia LGBT Pride Festival. One of those pieces will be "Make Them Hear You" from Ragtime. The lyrics are below, and you can hear a recording by clicking on the CGMC logo above. We also have a Facebook page, which I hope you will "LIKE." Go out and tell the story. Let it echo far and wide. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. How justice was our battle And how justice was denied. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. And say to those who blame us For the way we chose to fight That sometimes there are battles Which are more than black or white. And i could not put down my sword When justice was my right. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. Go out and tell our story To your daughters and your sons. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. And tell them in our struggle We were not the only ones. Make them hear you. Make them hear you. Your sword can be a sermon Or the power of the pen. Teach every child to raise his voice And then, my brothers, then Will justice be demanded By ten million righteous men. Make them hear you. When they hear you I'll be near you again. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
5:47 pm	(2 Comments |Comment on this)
1:43 pm	More History In April of 1985 my mom took this photo of me and my great-grandmother, Pyranka Peters, who was 92 at the time: Previously I had posted THIS wedding photo of Pyranka seated front and center with her new husband, Wasil. Since this photo was taken in 1913, she must have been approximately 20 when this photo was taken: (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 16th, 2012
11:39 am	Here's a photo if me and my dad that was taken at my sister Ann's wedding reception, July 29, 1985. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 9th, 2012
8:27 am	Mom & Dad, Christmas 1957 My dad dug up this old photo of him and my mom celebrating their first Christmas together as a married couple in 1957. I would arrive about a year and a half later. They are both still on their feet, and they'll celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary this coming June 8th! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
6:46 pm	(8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
11:30 am	Yes, this is also possible ... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
10:15 am	For Chef Robert McDiarmid ... and ALL my foodie LJ pals: (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 26th, 2012
3:23 pm	(1 Comment |Comment on this)
10:40 am	Frathouse Humor (Comment on this)
Friday, March 23rd, 2012
11:57 am	FILM RECOMMENDATION: "A Separation" It is quite rare for a foreign language film to play in one of the four cineplexes in the Charleston, WV, area ... and I always make a point to see them when they do. So moviegoers like myself were fortunate to have the opportunity to see the Iranian film, A Separation, when it played at the theater downdown, just a block away from my office. You may be aware that A Separation recently won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 2011. I saw it yesterday, on the final day of its two-week engagement here, and MY GOODNESS I'm glad I did. In a nutshell, the film "focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, and the conflicts that arise when the husband hires a lower-class caretaker for his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease" (quoting Wikipedia), and I'll leave it at that, but this only hints at an intricately-plotted, emotionally powerful film that left my heart aching long after the closing credits rolled. This film was made without official support from the Iranian government, and director Asghar Farhadi has had some minor run-ins with the regime ... but the film still offers a fascinating look at domestic strife not to mention a lot of universal human themes, set in the framework of contemporary Iranian society. The screenplay and VERY naturalistic performances are wonderful. If A Separation is currently showing in your area, I strongly encourage you to see it while you can. I promise you'll be happy you did. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 10th, 2012
2:12 pm	Peter Bergman has exited left to the Funway. As Charlotte the spider once said, "We're born, we live a little, then we die." Having life means eventually losing it. Yet it's still sad when an important cultural figure in one's life passes on. I'll NEVER forget the night, during my junior year at West Virginia University, when my friend Jeff Parks slapped a big pair of headphones on me and played a vinyl record called I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus by some comedy outfit called The Firesign Theatre. It was utterly unlike anything I had ever heard before. It wasn't exactly "sketch comedy." It certainly wasn't stand-up. It was more like a long, elaborate, stream-of-consciousness sort of STORY that was told with sound effects, various characters, and tantalizing non sequiturs that slipped by so fast and so often I could hardly catch my breath. Very few people in my immediate circle of friends today have even HEARD of The Firesign Theatre, which I think is extremely sad. Their work was truly unique and revolutionary. So it saddened me greatly to hear that one of the four members of The Firesign Theatre, Peter Bergman, passed away yesterday. Here's what the New York Times had to say: Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72. The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group. Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest. “We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.” Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?” By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation). Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.” Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.” “It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.” When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described  Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.” Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said. While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game MYST. Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer. Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career. He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner. Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ” These are the first four Firesign Theatre albums, generally considered to be their best: Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him (1968) How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All? (1969) Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers (1970) I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus (1971) So now I need to buy a nice big pair of headphones, and do to some of my friends what my old college pal Jeff Parks did to ME all those years ago. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
8:38 am	For my LJ pal Dominic (aka CUBOZ): Chances are he's already seen this, but just in case .... (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
2:56 pm	And the winner is ... (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 25th, 2012
4:24 pm	Just little ol' Oscar. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
2:06 pm	(1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:28 am	Some Truly AWFUL Poetry To A Bugge By Anthony Sutton (Best read with a Scottish accent) Wha ha!?! A teensie buggie currillt up besite my bazemint pottie? Did ye fell victim t'ma lethal sprays meant t'kill all ye vermin who Dare inside my hoose to trottie? I sees a chunkit' meal besites thy dessicated frame Twas laced, ye knows, wi' killing likker. What a shame! Did ye consume th' dire, dour an'deadlie poison greedily In hopes that it'd sate ye speedily? Or did ye jus' bloonder by and get entrapped As the purply gas from the can o'Raid unwrapped? Och! Ha'my hort does bleed ta' see thee Curllitt up like a small dead insect unseemly With those sixteen teensie clawfers Clenched against th' fate that life had offered. For sure, whiles' y'were an ugly vermin' Now brought low by lethal fluorocarbin. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 20th, 2012
4:24 pm	A real old fashioned phone booth! Over the weekend I joined some dear friends of mine in Huntington, West Virginia, for a night on the town. There's a little neighborhood Gay bar there called Minibar that I had never been to, and in the corner was actually an old fashioned phone booth, the sort with a little stool inside and a light that goes on when you shut the door. I never thought I would ever see one of these again in my lifetime. Payphones are a rapidly vanishing species, and cute little phone booths like THIS one are very nearly extinct. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
2:07 pm	Mmmm ... BEER ... (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
6:22 pm	Götterdämmerung "Götterdämmerung" was absolutely GLORIOUS yesterday ... nearly FIVE HOURS of evil dwarfs, magic rings, sinister potions, greed, betrayal and revenge ... and that didn't include half-hour intermissions between the three acts. Deborah Voigt (Brunnhilde) deserved all the bouquets of flowers that were hurled at her during the ovation at the opera's conclusion.   (1 Comment |Comment on this)