"Dream Hou$e" builds at the Ent Center + Bike Season reopens in COS + Building a LEGO Lamborghini!
The Raven Express #13 - 2/2/24
In this issue of The Raven Express, I talked with GerRee Hinshaw, director of Theatreworks’ new production Dream Hou$e, I reflect on a year of bike ownership here in Colorado Springs and I build a LEGO Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica!
Building a Dream Hou$e at the Ent Center
In Theatreworks’ new production Dream Hou$e, a pair of Latina sisters work with a reality TV show to renovate and sell their family’s home after their mother passes. In the process, they discover far more about their heritage than they could have anticipated.
The screenplay, by playwright and performer Eliana Pipes, was handpicked for the 2023-2024 season by Theatreworks’ artistic director Caitlin Lowans and presented to Hinshaw, a local actor-writer-performer theatre vet of 35 years. Chatting with her as she explains the play and her own background, it becomes clear that she was a perfect match to direct what she calls a “two-hander with intruders.”
“They brought the script to me and asked me to have a read of it and if I would be interested in directing it,” Hinshaw says. “Everything about the script just completely spoke to me. It was like getting sent an amazing gift. It's always an honor to be asked to be part of a play that hasn’t really been seen in the region.”
On top of to Hinshaw’s theatrical bona fides, she actually has reality television experience, too.
“Something Caitlin couldn't have known [when they brought me on] is my husband and I were actually on Trading Spaces back in, like, 2006,” Hinshaw says. “So I do have personal experience being on a DIY home improvement show.”
In that show, which ran from 2000-2008, neighbors swapped homes and worked with interior designers and carpenters to completely reimagine a space. Hinshaw connected with the play’s themes of preservation when putting her foot down to save her friend’s antique fireplace from an overzealous designer on the show.
“There's a moment in Dream Hou$e where Julia says something like, ‘I'm just gonna sit right here and let this house rot around me.’ She's trying to keep demo from going forward with demolition,” Hinshaw says. “Our friend's home had this beautiful little 1920s cottage. The fireplace was fieldstone and it was the one thing my friend said, ‘Please don't touch this.’ I told the producer, ‘I'm gonna sit down with my back to the camera on the fireplace if [Trading Spaces interior designer] Doug looked at it twice. It will just be the back of my head, sitting there, disallowing anybody to touch it.”
(TLC omitted the homeowners’ names from episode listings, but there are several episodes in season 6 that line up with Hinshaw’s description if you’re interested in plunging down that rabbit hole. Also, they made, like, 40 episodes a season, which is absolutely ridiculous.)
Hinshaw’s Latino heritage informed her play Raised on Ronstadt, which she wrote and performed, allowing her to frame that tension between Mexican and American cultures and how they treat the concept of family differently. Here, there’s a thematic absurdity to a pair of Latina sisters processing their grief while also keeping up positive appearances for the reality TV show host and crew they’ve invited into their home. She points out that in our modern climate, the dream of owning a home and establishing a centralized multi-generational family history is quickly becoming a lot more literal as prices climb out of the reach of a lot of Americans.
“There's something so American about having to drag your pain out on live TV. [The play] is funny and it is also so, so poignant and heartfelt,” Hinshaw says. “As an audience, we get to feel the different pain and choices that that they're having to make, but we also get to laugh as we can relate to so many different aspects about what they're doing in front of a live camera.”
Go there:
Dream Hou$e by Theatreworks
The Ent Center for the Arts
5225 N Nevada Ave
February 1-18
For more info and tickets, visit https://entcenterforthearts.org/dream-hou%24e
Meow, meow… meow meow. That means “please subscribe by clicking the button below because that’s great.”
- Captain Kirby Jack Raven, a.k.a. You just ate!
Owning a bike in COS, 1 year in.
I’m not the superstitious type, but something felt wrong when I didn’t haul my Trek Verve 1 Lowstep bicycle out for even a brief ride a year after buying it at Old Town Bike Shop Downtown. Thankfully the urge grew so intense, brought on by warm weather, that I finally decided to mount my bike a few days later for the first time in months in a circuit around the neighborhood.
I’d been itching to buy a bike at the end of 2022 as a means to get around (I don’t own a car) and for the exercise over our town’s challenging terrain. Since the Indy’s office was Downtown, it was easy to make a case for a commuter bike to pedal the seven-mile journey each way. I also wanted to be a better advocate for bicycle transit in town too, which I knew had a very incomplete network despite our outdoors-y reputation.
As someone who hadn’t ridden a bike since I was a kid and had only done so in parking lots and very safe spaces, setting out for my first commute was terrifying. Google plotted a route that used a mixture of public trail, streets with painted bike lanes and low-traffic streets without them. (The only protected ones I’ve run into are downtown along Pikes Peak Avenue.) I finally summoned the courage to make the trip on a frigid, sunny morning. I popped my chain climbing up along the north side of Palmer Park (enlisting YouTube to figure out how to get it back together) but also my tire. Getting into Downtown, I took a rad spill crossing an icy bridge.
Google said the trip should’ve taken about 40 minutes. Mine took over an hour. As I switched to using Cascade and Weber’s bike lanes instead of the Shooks Run trail and became more comfortable riding altogether and learning how to use my gears properly when I never had before as a kid, I got it down to about 28 minutes, far faster than the bus. Coming back via a series of uphills was always slower, but I was able to bring that down to 50 minutes in time.
I didn’t ride everyday because it was exhausting and then eventually the season made it too hot. You can bundle up for cold weather — although ice is a danger, especially when the city doesn’t clear sidewalks fast enough… or at all — but in the heat, it’s a disaster. There seems to be a 40-50 degree band that’s just right for bicycle weather, but I know that with the proper equipment and outfit, commuting is merely a matter of will.
The day I was let go from the Indy (the first time), I had commuted to the office on my bike.
I got more adventurous with my bike rides from there, going on a 30-mile trip around the west side of town, scaling Palmer Park, doing the Legacy Loop and more, but the need to commute obviously dwindled as I was re-hired and went almost entirely remote.
I’ve learned so much since then:
Owning a bike is very empowering. It’s easy to move around and you can get into places cars can’t faster than walking can. Being able to move miles and miles quickly makes you feel like a time traveler compared to pedestrian travel, hence I named bike “Delorean”.
I’ve become relatively fearless about using bike lanes — a painted one being better than none at all — but I’m still frustrated there isn’t a cohesive network to get most places, something mirrored in our public transit system.
There are so many people who are connected here and dedicated to making bicycling better, like the Trails and Open Space Coalition, Bike Colorado Springs, Pike Ride, local shops and more. (Here’s a podcast I did with Jacqueline “Jax” Armendariz Unzueta and Cully Radvillas where we talked about the local scene and policy.) Allen Beauchamp at TOSC has been a huge help whether he’s showing me around town, giving me advice on riding or showing me how to maintain and repair my bike. Speaking of which…
Repairs are cheaper! It’s amazing to have something go wrong and it’s not a $400-$1400 bill like it is with a motor vehicle, it’s $40-$100 and you’re back on your wheels again.
Cushion helps — oh god, does it help. The bike’s stock seat was too firm, so I replaced it with a foam one and then I invested in padded shorts.
I don’t begrudge anyone who uses an e-bike. They’re pricey, yes, and some jerks would call it cheating or whatever but until you’re in a particular shape, tackling a lot of this city’s terrain is a challenge. There are hills that I rarely tackle without walking.
Spills are inevitable. I’ve learned to handle the speed and feel of my ride, but I have absolutely miscalculated and taken hard falls and busted equipment. You will think you have mastered the operation of the bicycle and get just slightly cocky and then shit shit shit shit shit! Learning how to get up from spills, how to repair your bike on the fly, even replace a tire, is a huge deal. Wear gloves and carry Band-Aids
Building our own LEGO Lambo
After finishing my Starfield review last week, I decided to tackle the LEGO Lamborghini Huracán Tecnica (42161) that’s been patiently gazing at me for a while now. I do these sets as a reward for completing the hours-long videos for my YouTube channel that take months to put together. I do these sets other times, too.
Seeing this at Target was quite a surprise because I pine for their Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 (42115), which is dramatically larger and more expensive and this was less so.
This car came with three sets of bags. This is a Technic-based set so there are a lot of pegs and holes and connecting stuff. It also means a lot of small pieces.
These are the contents of the “1” bags, still in their discrete piles before they all just kinda mooshed together. This first set involves building the base of the chassis of the car, so you need a lot of those long pieces at the top for structural support. This also involved building the steering and engine mechanisms. The engine, as one of the rear wheels rotates, rotates a rod underneath that pops the pistons up and down in a subtle rolling motion. It’s a structure that’s common to these mid- and large-sized LEGO cars.
It was getting late, so it was time to turn in before tackling the rest of the build.
Good morning! The number 2 bags are part structure and part body paneling as I take on the skirts and the roof of the car. I also finalize the steering mechanism which happens via a rotating cog on the roof aligned with the B pillars, rather than the steering wheel. That’s just too much to ask of a set of this physical size, but the larger vehicles do tie steering to the steering wheel.
Set 3 is all about finishing up with body paneling, the hood, roof and wheels.
And here’s the final product! If you’d like to take a test drive, please leave a comment below, I’m happy to give guided tours, show you all the various quirks and features and more.
This was a fun set to put together, similar to other LEGO Technic car builds and less like the more brick-oriented, smaller Speed Champions sets. It’s a pretty build, even if there are some clear gaps in some of the spaces due to the geometry of their existing pieces. It’s absolutely incredible how many unique models they can create with a base set of curvy Technic pieces.
The Raven’s Recommendation
This is something I’ve munched on in the past week that I want to share with you.
Following in the profitable wake of Conan O’Brien — as all celebrities seem to have these days — rapper Logic has a new podcast that’s cleverly called “Logically Speaking.” He’s only a few episodes in at this point, but it’s been an interesting ride. His views on cancel culture (all humor is fine because it’s humor, essentially) and his tendency to immediately dive into his guests’ love lives reflects his immaturity in his episodes with Seth McFarlane (Family Guy) and comedian Bobby Lee, but his desire to tackle more sophisticated topics shines through. I’ll give it a few more episodes to see how much he learns from all this.
This week’s episode really grounds writer-director-producer Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Red State), who talks about his excursion last year to Sierra Tucson — the renowned rehabilitation and mental health facility in Arizona — after what seemed like a mental break. Smith’s personal anecdotes have always shined so much more brightly than his fiction and this made me pine for his A Conversation with Kevin Smith specials where he provided lengthy, interesting answers and anecdotes to relatively simple fan questions.
The parts where they gloat about their privilege as rich, connected dudes is a bit cringe (they were both stormtroopers in the Star Wars sequel trilogy because they know director J.J. Abrams), but when it hits hard, especially in Kevin Smith’s closing speech, it was emotional.
I haven’t been on a bike in a while but I did buy tickets to Dream House today.
I was a longtime bicycle commuter in this city (also regular riding to work at the Indy year round, even when that meant wearing ski gear and sliding around on ice). Your observations are spot on about what’s lacking. But I’m glad you have found so many positives as well. Cycling is wonderful and you’re reminding me that I need to make time to get out more.
Love the diversity of local and pop culture in your newsletter. It’s introduces me to things like Legos that I haven’t played with since a kid and probably won’t get into as an adult but it’s enjoyable to see it through your eyes. Cheers!