Doing a Number(s) on The Disney

"Here's a how-dee-doo...!" Just like a Gilbert and Sullivan lyric. The "keystone kops" filming at the Disney Concert Hall? Can you believe it? Yes, we are finally allowed to see inside this modernistic L.A. Landmark but only to stage a "kidnap and killing" on stage...not a Philharmonic or Master Chorale Concert, but a "lurking sniper's" execution and double cross of a fellow kidnapper. Why? Disney Management? Why? Is it money? or the lack of it to support the on-going cultural highlights and ground-breaking musical tributes that the L.A. Public isn't able to support?

I'm a "Numbers" fan. This is a cutting-edge TV show on Friday nights that uses a Cal Tech professor and his colleagues to help the FBI solve crimes in L.A. It is fascinating the way the theories and theroms and equations are displayed on "see-through" boards on the show. I doubt if any or all of this "math" really exists but it sure sound feasible. This latest show was about a drug lord's son being kidnapped and how he had to cooperate with the FBI, and they with him, to solve the case on a desperate time table. A sub-plot was the "boss's pyschological analysis and therapy all during the case without him even being involved. He had to turn off his cell phone and trust his "team" and talk about them. It was excellent in every way. His brother, the math genius, and his girlfriend (math genius too? yes, a girl math genius) actually have to do some fast, creative probability extrapolations to come up with the location and senario of the kidnapper/killer.

It all ends up out in front of the Disney Concert Hall on Grand Ave. in L.A. at a public phone booth (do they actually have those any more?) and racing labyrinth of phones at Olvera Street and the Union Station all within "running distance" carrying a heavy duffle bag of $3.2 Million in cash. It is "on-the-edge" of your couch viewing and then they throw in the magnificent "interior of the Disney Hall" and all it's lovely wood and accoustics. This is where I go, almost once a month, (season ticket) to my L.A.Master Chorale performances and am not allowed to "take pictures" of any kind. They actually jumped on the stage from right where I sit, stage left, down left. The kidnapper comes out from back stage right with the kid and is killed at center stage by his sniper boss in the third balcony back right. The "logical" math thinking that correctly put him there was a "process of elimination" of exits and entrances and room for a clear shot. The FBI agents are sneaking and laying around all over under the seats and in the aisles on the beautifully colorful carpets.

"Some Pig" i.e. "Some Publicity" for the Hall I'd say!...but I'd rather it was for a wonderful concert...what it was originally built and intended for. Poor Walt was probably "turning over" in his cryonic freezer. I've had some "thrills" there these past few years and plan to continue but frozen my memory is that image of the "killing at center stage" Why? I ask you, why? Yes, I used to teach "drama" and staged many a "fake" killing or sword fight but it is just not the same "Performing Art" i.e. "The First Art" Vocal/Choral Singing. Bob in Bb Minor!