Hear Maureen Miller Hallock muse on the current state of advertising to men and to woman, all wanting to boost their sexual power with meds you see on the 6:00 PM news.

And as if Maureen's brilliant observations about Suburban Wifery weren't enough, she will work in tandem with absolutely the opposite voice, Steve Bellwood. British, coal mining kid from Northern England who will dazzle you with his "When the Old Man Died" monologue.

Sunday, Oct. 27th, doors open at 4:00 PM, show starts at 4:30 PM.

$20, open seating, at La Roue Elayne at Cobbs Mill Inn, 12 Old Mill Road, Weston (203) 227-7221.

10% off dinner with ticket purchase. Dinner reservations strongly suggested.

 

 

Fairfield's own home-grown but celestially bound, Julie Benko, makes a one time appearance at La Roue Elayne at Cobbs Mill for our "Live Magazine at the Falls " show.

Tickets are selling quite briskly. Paid reservations are recommended for seating. For dinner, please add your name to the booking list as requested. The restaurant management is separate from Mousemuse. 

Two boots  of Bridgeport has whole-heartedly signed us on again for our Singer/Song/Writer show.

Monday, September 23, 2013.

7:00 PM door open. 7:30 show.

October Show is seeking submissions.

Writers take note!

We are looking for 1500 or less words of your own work to be read publicly.  Non-fiction and fiction.

Send submissions through ina@mousemuse.com.

 

Debra Coleman - Got thrown out of a bed & breakfast, in a bridal gown.

 

 

 

 

Pete Pastorelli - Lived in indigent affordable housing in Westport in the 1970's, with his brother and sister who owned a vintage Mercedes and vintage Cadillac. How indigent were they?

 

 

 

   Chad Kinsman - Was at a party at midnight on a beach in Barcelona, when they pulled a wounded man from the water. (File Photo)

 

 

 

 

Arch Currie - Didn't care for his boss, and let it be known; what could possibly go wrong?

 

 

 

 

Fran Dorf - On a first date, got mauled by gorillas.

 

 

 

 

  Mark - A macho retired firefighter, started a lucrative second career as a drag queen.

 

 

 

 

   Ina Chadwick - Two soft hearts find a rat in the garbage pail, but don't want to kill it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emcees: Our way too funny wise-guy women, Maureen Miller Hallock, Siobhan Powers and Maryann Villanueva will be a Greek chorus of emcees for the show,"Live Magazine at the Falls."If nothing else these three broads who can riff off one another are worth the ticket price. Broads? Mae West, they ain't, but they're just as funny.

 

Maureen Hallock is one of our premier storytellers and has wowed the crowds with her performances for close to three years. She taught English Literature to Catholic schoolgirls while enlightening them in the sexual subtext of works they had just glossed over. Her teachings were a hit with the girls, but not with the nuns. She is an experienced caterer and a devoted animal rescue volunteer.

 

 

Siobhan Powers is the director of Landmark pre-school, and a dealer in the one-tough-cookie mode, though she looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She wears a tiara at work. Her first appearance with MouseMuse was hit when she told the tale of making a tactical choice to supervise her stubborn preschooler while on a grand train journey through France and Italy.

 

 

 
 Maryann Villanueva prides herself as being a NYORICAN standup comic, bartender and the youngest of eleven children.  During the daytimes she is a dental assistant in Westport, CT. Patients almost beg to come and sit in the chair just to be entertained by Maryann’s sassy wit.

 

 

 

In 2008, Duncan Christy created a song cycle for the Obama constituents called “The Blue State Blues.” His play “Magazine,” a musical comedy with dark overtones re the death of print, is in production. His music, poetry and written work will be available on his new website soon.

Hear a song from "Magazine" 03 One of the Boys

My mother-in-law, a widow, and a woman of confusing and often conflicting ideas, recently dug in her heels, though she thoroughly disapproves of any exercise requiring the use of her legs) and went on a cruise by herself.

Despite the fact that she claims to be unable to walk from a parking lot to a restaurant door, she managed to get herself and her multiple suitcases containing three outfits with a change of shoes for for each day and for each outfit, and three for each night, to the airport. Using handicapped travel services she was wheeled around the airport carrying multiple plastic bags filled with post-its and old expired coupons in her lap, and then again wheeled through the cruise ship long lines for registry to get onboard.

Presumably she walked narrow ship's aisle - since she is not technically handicapped.

When she settled into her cabin, she truly settled in.

We called her several times when she was in other ports besides Miami. We had been very worried about her mobility issues. She is 85 and was befuddled at 45,((or maybe 25?) so this decade has not brought much clarity for those around her as to explanations of why she does this thing or that thing.

She has always loved cruises, though she doesn't love the quick stops at other ports if she can't stay in the duty free shops for five hours. Beaches and museums hold no interest for her.  She loves the planned meals, the all you can eat concept that still thrills many of those seniors raised during the Depression (1929). Though she is a doctor's daughter, she claims she grew up so poor that she didn't have a nickel to go to the movies. We know that this is an internal feeling of poverty. Her parents owned a brownstone in New York City from 1920 to 1960-something. They may have had to cut back but there was indeed food and a place to live.

Toward the end of her trip when I asked what she liked most about the trip, she said, "My bed." She had been sleeping in a 47-year-old mattress until eight years ago when she moved from a house to a condo. When she bought the condo she bought the owners' 25-year-old mattress.

On the ship she slept on a "Memory Foam" mattress. She awoke with no aches and pains. She reported that she only got out of bed for dinner. "This is the best nap I have ever taken." When we tried to convince her that she should treat herself to a mattress just like the one in her stateroom, her overly thrifty side went into overdrive. "Pay for a new mattress when the old one is still working?"

"The nightly rate for a cruise is what? " I asked.

She didn't answer.

"This was a very expensive nap," I said.

Yesterday, we learned that my mother-in-law was driving around looking for a tailor to hem her king-sized bed sheets from the Flower Power days. Why? She bought a memory foam mattress that is a queen. "Why should I throw away perfectly good sheets?" she said.

This time I didn't try to convince her that she could go to Marshall's and buy a set of sheets for less than $25. She has to do her "own thing." She will be a taking a much cheaper nap from now on. And she can surely call her linens custom fitted.

 

I've been a writer since the day I started speaking. Yes, even before I could write I was painting pictures of things that were happening all around me, and to me, and to others. Things that I found extraordinary and that other may have not even noticed. Most of the time what I marvel in is the stuff of everyday life. Today, I begin The Chadwick Papers (thank you, Mr. Dickens, and thank you Mr. Christy for naming these adventures and sometimes misadventures)  which I hope will keep you amused at times, thinking at times, and realizing that we are all in a "story" together.

 

You don't get a prettier place with a grand performance space as well as a more open booking agent than Elayne Cassara. La Elayne accepted a MouseMuse proposal to launch one of our most dynamic ideas to date. "Live Magazine at the Falls."

What does a print magazine do?  It gives you compelling content from issue to issue. We are going to give you a  "Live Magazine" with lots of variety from event to event. We called it a magazine because of the diverse nature of spoken word and entertainment mixed in. We have three dates already booked. We chose a summer date to show you what we are all about...July 16.

 

It has long been my goal to find a troubadour who could carry the storytelling programs a little bit further. I have now found Duncan H. Christy of Norwalk who will be playing at the last show at FMHC on April 4, 2013 starting at 7:00 pm. Usually people just milled about drinking wine and chatting until 7:30 which they now can still do. But there will be accompaniment in the vestibule and the songs will be  themed to "The Art of the Deal" which is the title of the show. Well, show up and hear the six stories we've got lined up from four men and two women. It's usually the women who outnumber the men.

Steve Bellwood, Peter Bloom, Derek Bolcer, Tom Fiffer, Kathleen Kiley, Maryann Villanueva.

Graveyard marriages, bartered 747 jets, size matters issues, buying a first class airplane seat for gorillas, getting burned in the kitchen and then run over by a Hummer, and the mafia chasing you for a silly bar bet you made half kidding. Those are the deals made, kept, broken, lived with....

 

When Steve di Costanzo came to our Storytelling show at Fairfield Museum and HistoCenter more than a year ago he invited us to do a segment on his Monday  late night show, and we were quite happy being folded into Radio Base Camp at 11 pm.

When the rapidly growing listenership for WPKN began to request more community involvement for the independent station, the Program Director Ebong Udama picked Dennis Quinn a communications professor at Hofstra and an experienced radio drama buff  for a show they folded easily into MouseMuse "Real People, Real Stories,"  with little cross over but lots of parallel pathways.

We both debuted with a Saturday show. Ours is at Noon. We debuted  in December right after Christmas. On January 26. 2013 we aired our second show. The response was heartening, We offered free tickets on the air  to the first emailer who defined disorderly conduct in respect to theme for our next show: The Wheels of Justice--Crimes and Misdemeanors on February 7, again at FMHC. See our facebook page for  the quote from our radio listener, the first email to pop into the queue. Thanks to the two others who got there, but not first. Thanks to the 3 listeners who signed up on this site to receive our notices.

Storytellers from our archives,  Bill Bosch,  Ivy Eisenberg, Joe Limone, Blake Schneering can be heard on the www.wpkn.org archives. If you've been a storyteller,  you'll be sure to hear one of your tales at some point. We post the program in advance.

New Storytellers or people wanting to be Storytellers should get in touch through our website, and we will surely be in touch.

We are becoming mechanically whole again in our household. The last time we were whole was in 1988 when remote controls for the TV required batteries, before Blue Tooth, before touch pads.

I didn't even know what items in our house ran on batteries until my husband was in the hospital for 2 weeks in 1988. Every day, I'd come home from visiting him, exhausted. I relied on network television as if I were sucking my thumb.

In the morning, I'd drag myself out of bed, ready for work, and as I have always done since I was a teenager,  I'd weigh myself, gingerly stepping on the scale after removing even my rings.  I feared weight gain, and if I felt fat, I'd wait another day, and maybe another, until I felt I could handle what the scale said without getting so disheartened that only a jar of Hellman's mayonnaise with teaspoon of oily tuna could console me.

The hospital cafeteria and coffee shop, where I took breaks from soothing my husband, both before and after a painful spine surgery, presented salivating challenges that no one could surmount. Deep fried fish in batter that you only get in a alluring dives,  french fries swept into a cardboard boat that made you feel like the antiseptic smells all around you were really boardwalk odors. Grilled cheese, bacon, and canned cherry pie al la mode. I indulged.

On the seventh day of his hospitalization,  I weighed myself carefully. The scale didn't give me a readout. There was nothing but zeroes in all three slots. I moved it around. Nothing. Broken, I said to myself.  I didn't tell my husband. He always thought I was nuts for weighing myself daily. On demerol he wouldve not cared at all.

For two days I also sat in our dark TV  room because the intricate set of switches he designed for turning on anything had a master switch that I couldn't find.  On the eleventh day, the TV remote didn't work.  My home life was getting dimmer and dimmer. I sat in various rooms, ones where bulbs hadn't blown out. I read in an upright Pilgrimesque chair in the dinning room, where two high-hat recessed bulbs were blown, but there was a working lamp.

On exactly the same day, both the old Sony TV in the remote and the cordless phone died. Oh, the phone charger and the bottom of the phone were not making contact. There is a remedy for that I've since learned. Rubber erasers.

That was it! I got up from a seated position and used an on/off button on the TV. It actually had those words rather than now ubiquitous red open circle with a vertical line . I went to a department store home good section and bought a scale with a real needle in the dial. One my doctors has a rusted Detecto one next to dreaded real deal that measures your height too. We all like that dial and the fact that the springs respond to a gentle step by rewarding you with a lower weight seems only fair if you take your time.

Over the past 25 years our home remote control system for working anything, including the air conditioner has become obscene. There is the LG, there is the Mitsubishi, there is the other thing that controls the Blue Ray, and then there was the stereo tuner control that required 10 lines of instructions so that even my young grandchildren who could program a space ship didn't even try. They'd just yell out for "help!"

Last week my husband began a conversation in the car. I could tell where he was going. I had so objected to the million dollar BSR 10 Universal remote for the B & K that he purchased 10 years ago, (and still required several satellite remotes around its "Universe.) that he was now  telling me he was going to make me happy. Finally one remote for everything! It did however come with a ten thousand pound box ( not to mention dollars) that needed two boys to hoist in onto the shelf below the TV, below the Apple airport, below the Apple TV to install an Arcan system in place of the B &K. He promises he will sell the B & K on Ebay.

The Arcan came with a new remote, a clickie that is quite sleek and fits into a base like the phone on a charger. I have already tried to answer the remote when the phone rings.

Every morning for 10 days I'd find my husband with the new remote in hand, "programming it," and finally "getting the pause button working."  I must admit it was a pleasure to turn on every media device in the house by just aiming this sleek baby at the device. I dropped out my clickie support group and began to feel free to watch TV. I even got so far as to learn all of the input options and music and film and actually see my computer screen at 52 inches wide. Whoa!

Nervous breakdown on its way. Christmas Day brings a revolt. The new remote won't play the sound into the speakers, but only into a headset. Manufacturers guarantee this tres cher item, so it is going back into the box after we hire two sumo wrestlers to put it in the box and pay the shipping as if it's an armoire.

Rabbit ears are looking better and better on the vintage bakelite TV we bought and got working just for fun.

TOTALLY Kimleigh made a debut in New York a couple of years ago at the Fringe Festival. Every critic, including the Wall Street Journal raved. She moved to L.A. where she is a sell-out and well-known talent who has been on the "Mentalist" and other TV Shows. On DECEMBER 8, we bring Kimleigh to The Bijou Theatre, www.thebijoutheatre.com for a jaw dropping solo performance that will have you laughing, crying and applauding the miracles of humanity. This is not just a woman's show. This is a life-transforiming experience. See the trailers and make sure you get there. There are high wire moments in www.TotallyKimleigh.com

But the best moments are the ones where you see her live.

Doors open at 7 PM

Dinner is available, drinks are fabulous, table side service or auditorium seats.

www.info@thebijoutheatre.com