PARABASIS-- Chock Full O' Culture

Isaac Butler of Parabasis

2006-10-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

Isaac Butler of Parabasis
Originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Here's a photo of me!

arg!

2006-10-03T12:32:00.001-07:00

I AM TESTING THIS BLOGGER SOFTWARE!

Hello?

2006-10-03T12:32:00.000-07:00

Yet another test.

2006-05-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

this is a new post to fix the templating.

Doing a test run

2004-06-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

So for the next week, I'm trying out new digs to see if we like them or not. So for new posting please go here.

And please pleaseplease let me know what you think. If you guys like the new blog, I'll shell out the ten bucks a month and make the move permanent! Also on this new site is a photo album of photos from First You're Born with some commentary. For those of you interested in what the final product looked like (or, at least, what a reasonable representation on photo call night looked like).

Yours,

Isaac

Quote of the Week with Bonus Explication!

2004-06-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
-- Hamlet
---

Right after Reagan died, I wrote a little (oh who am I kidding, a lengthy!) post about the force-feeding in meaning that is happening in this country. To recap briefly: I argued that meaning was being manufactured on two levels, both a quantity level (“we will all remember what we were doing when we heard Reagan died”) and a quality level (“everyone loved him. Our nation is in mourning”).

I’ve been thinking a lot about this idea lately—about the manufacturing of meaning and why it is such a problem. Here’s some reasons: first, it’s authoritarian. What could be more dictatorial, more restrictive of our freedom than instructing us that there is only one way to interpret the world, and furthermore what exactly that way is? Second, it’s anxiety-inducing when you find yourself incapable of having the reaction everyone else expects you to have. Third, it’s alienating to have your reactions and interpretations mapped out for you in advance. Even if you would have those reactions and interpretations anyway, there’s always a part of you that will realize that you’re being programmed to have this response. Fourth, it turns everything into advertising. In his truly brilliant essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, David Foster Wallace writes about this very problem. While talking about the Manufacturing of Meaning done by a Frank Conroy essay in a cruise ship brochure, he suddenly launches into a tirade on how the difference between art and advertising is that art wants to give you something and advertising wants something from you. At first, the two seem unrelated, but in fact they go hand in hand. Dictating the meaning (quantity and quality) to you is the first step in getting something else out of you—your continued viewership, for example, or your vote on Super Tuesday.

I’ve been thinking about this Meaning Problem in both art and politics. I think the political instances are pretty damn obvious, because it’s so pervasive that our political landscape resembles nothing so much as a highway littered with billboard signs telling us that we’ll be sexier, livelier, smarter, more meaningful if only we agreed with this person or that person or voted for a party captivated by military/oil interests instead of a party captivated by finance interests. When George W. Bush said yesterday that the 9/11 Commission report didn’t contradict his claims that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked he wasn’t just protecting himself—he was re-mis-interpreting the report’s meaning, telling us not only that its meaning didn’t contradict him (when in fact it did) but that it wasn’t particularly meaningful or worthy of our attention because of this lack of argument.

Let me move away from politics to art, for a second. As a director, I am very cautious about dictating meaning to my audience. This puts me in a tricky situation. part of the director’s job is to help sherpa the audience through the landscape of the play. At the same time, telling your audience too much is infantilizing and reduces your audience to mere consumers instead of having a conversation with them. In other words, it turns your art into advertising. You are, in effect, demanding the audience have a specific reaction in order to get something from them-- their interest, their applause, their good reviews-- usually the reaction is something that will make them feel good about themselves. Creating a piece that allows the audience room to think and move and have their own reactions is a more interesting, human goal. At the same time, it’s an incredibly unsettling experience, because audiences will surprise you. Navigating the river that runs between anarchy and authoritarianism with your audience is a difficult, never ending learning experience.

Ambiguity is not the only strength of theater. I believe, however, in this age where film and TV have won the war for audience share and won it decisively, it’s time for us to think about what it is about theater that makes it theatrical. One of these things is ambiguity. One of them is live-ness. One of them is textual stylistic experimentation. One of them is anti-naturalism. One of them is flesh-and-blood humanity. Does this mean there’s no room for realism, or artificiality or even (gasp!) unambiguous moments on stage? Sure, but let us try to advocate in our work and our words for boldly theatrical theater, instead of overpriced live films and art as advertisement. Let’s challenge our audience by engaging with them instead of dictating to them. This, I believe, is the only way theater can survive.

(also, check out George Hunka's thoughts on the necessity of ambiguity in theater. I disagree with his swipes at Kushner and Wellman, but he has some additional thoughts on the subject you might find interesting.)

Groud Zero gets its Groove On

2004-06-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Well, they’ve decided on the cultural organizations that will fill the new space at Ground Zero. The winners are:
Dance: the Joyce Theater
Theater: The Signature Theater Company
Art: The Drawing Center
Misc: The “Museum of Freedom”

The response from our tastemakers has been just short of a Bronx Cheer. In the New York Times yesterday, John Rockwell wrote “the winners were picked not because anyone gave first thought to their worthiness as art, but because they represented a canny mix of institutions likely to make downtown a better place to live and do business.” While Terry Teachout (in an article entitled “Culture By Committee”) gets in a tizzy about the selected arts organizations. Teachout is bemoaning two things at once: he faults the choices for being “modest and safe--the inverse of the magnificent cultural opportunity afforded by the coming reconstruction of Ground Zero,” while also decrying the lack of Greatness amongst the (admittedly “worthy”) institutions.

I would love to offer up a contrary viewpoints (as you can read here, Teachout and I don’t see eye to eye on a few things), but I agree that there are multiple problems with the choices. First, as Teachout points out, the Museum of Freedom just sounds plain old silly. The proof will be in the proverbial pudding of course, but Museums often house the dead as a way of keeping them alive (like old paintings or the Native American culture we went out of our way to destroy) and last time I checked, Freedom is still alive, if on life support in our current epoch. Also, what are we to put in there? Art? Cultural documents? Propaganda? I anticipate a whole lot of problems when people start arguing about what “freedom” means and pointing to America’s illustrious history of crushing freedom while fighting for it simultaneously, usually dependant on the skin color, political affiliations or economic usefulness of the people involved.

As to the other three, their worthiness aside, would we really be happy with the choice of any currently existing arts organization? Many people point to City Opera, but I doubt City Opera would draw new audiences if it moved downtown. Just think about it for a second. Name one arts organization you would want housed in a new arts complex in downtown New York. I can’t think of any (although the Joyce certainly comes the closest). I really don’t mean this as an insult against the existing companies, it’s just that nothing currently around strikes me as bold or symbolic enough.

The opportunity missed was for a brand new endeavor that would charter new territory in arts presentation. What we needed for lower Manhattan was the new Harvey Lichtenstein, a man possessed of a vision for what kind of art is missing from the New York scene. What we needed, in other words, was a new BAM, not something exactly like BAM, but rather something with comparable scene-changing long term vision.

My idea: a space dedicated to cultural communication from all over the globe. (don’t laugh, read me out, here) The new space would import acts from all over the world (including the world within the United States but outside of New York City). BAM, the Kitchen and PS 122 have pioneered new frontiers in the arts, but having a well-funded network of various-sized spaces that could bring us lower profile, smaller budget work we would never see on these three stages would do an immense service to the New York arts community. Also, they could keep their ticket prices in the range of affordability, something that BAM (bless their hearts) are really unable to do at this point.

The space would also be founded with a second mandate of exporting American Culture oversees. Many truly excellent theater, dance and music companies simply don’t (and may never) have the budget to export their work. Trisha Brown and Richard Foreman tour their work around the globe all the time. Why not export Elevator Repair Service or Tiffany Mills while we’re at it?

One of the great breakdowns that 9/11 exposed was the breakdown in communication. We scream at each other all the time instead of talking with. We try to dominate instead of trying to understand. We look away from what is possible and instead work towards what is immediately gratifying. A new cultural center could work very actively against this, bringing smaller work from all over the globe here to New York, and exporting our wonderful shows overseas.

Of course, that would be a much bigger risk and probably cost a lot more money. Clearly, both of these things would have caused it to be DOA on the committee’s desk.

2004-06-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

Happy Bloomsday everybody!
This is important for us bookstore employees and culture bloggers!
Maybe we'll finally move a few copies of Ulysses so more people can pretend to have read it!
(oh, I kid I kid I love I love)

I'll have a real post up later today when I get home from work, sorry about the thinness, my younger sister is in town and I'm trying to get out of the house more.

Creeping fascism

2004-06-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

You want a good read on arts and culture and war?

Check this out. Well argued, well researched, and some interesting stories I didn't know about.

More Other News

2004-06-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

A good reason to revoke the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status (and yet another reason to Boot the Bush in November). Archaeologists found a 1,000 year old padded bra in China.

In Britain, they just don't know how to keep their cyclist-terrorizing buzzards happy. And in Scotland, perhaps they should pick substitute teachers better.

Soon you won't be able to get the smell of Britney Spears off your clothes. Also, she may be Jewish.

Finally, in arts newsall links courtesy Artsjournal.com: Tintin's final adventure will be out soon. Charleston, South Carolina may be the place to beat for best widely-over-looked summer festivals. And, if you don't think Frank Loesser, Cole Porter et al are doing the humpty-hump in their graves after reading this then I don't know what to tell ya.

A brief story

2004-06-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Rather than commentary today, I thought I'd simply offer up an anecdote. This is story that happened to me roughly 18 hours ago, and it's totally true. I know I have a habit of exaggerating to make things more either dramatic or comedic or at least more interesting but this story I'm about to tell you is totally true. It's a perfect example of what I talk about when I say I feel my neighborhood is spiraling slowly out of control (And the anecdotal reason I don't believe the statistics about crime in the City).

Coming out of the subway, Bergen and Smith. There's a large group of teenagers and they're walking down the
street in a kind of rambunctious blob. I suddenly realize that the blob is kind of shifting back and forth, almost certainly because someone is shoving
someone else. Then the shouting begins.

I live in a loud neighborhood, and teenagers tend to be pretty rowdy, so it always takes me a second to figure out "fun or fight". It's becoming pretty clear, though, in the 2-6 second before things actually get bad that this is a fight breaking out.

I whip out my cell phone to call 9-1-1, and as I look down to see that I have NO RECEPTION the fight breaks out. There's a tall black kid with a blue du-rag and he and a small arab kid seem to really have it in for each other. I can't really make out what's going on, even though it's only about 10 feet away from me, but I see that someone's being held down, and that person is being beaten by someone who has either a stick or a length of pipe, no it's definitely a stick, there's no fleshy clang of metal contacting flesh going on, oh shit this is really bad, there's a fight breaking out and someone is getting pummeled.

Okay, now everyone's been separated, it's still unclear exactly who is on whose side, but there are adults out so things should get better. Stupidly, I
walk down the block down the same side of the street as the fight, still trying to get my phone to work and as I look down the fight breaks out again. Except now I'm standing pretty much in the middle of it.

Picture a circle with a point at its center. The fight is the cirle, I'm the center. No one's actually hitting me or trying to to hit me or anything like that, but people are getting the crap beaten out of them all around me. It was surreal, and terrible. There was nothing I could do. Most of the teenagers
were larger than me (Except for the scrawny arab kid) and I knew that if I tried to do anything, I would certainly get the crap beaten out of me by everyone. I think about shouting, but it's verry very loud, and the breath doesn't really come and I see a doorway open to a construction sight and I duck inside to try to get reception. As I do, I see one kid holding the arab kid down and at least one, maybe two or three of the other kids just wailing on him.

A bunch of adults are standing around, totally ineffectual (as ineffectual as this adult writing this right now) and I suddenly think "we should all do something" but then it's over, the group of black kids is moving down the street, a group of arab kids and adults is talking to the one kid. I close my phone, and look at the kid who got the beat down. He has two silver-dollar welts rising on his face already and his eyes are filled with tears and hate. He ducks into the pizza parlor next to the construction site and emerges with a very long knife.

Everyone's trying to hold this kid back now and get the knife from him, but it's not working, the kid loosens the grip of his hangers-on and runs down the street after the gang of kids who just left. I pull out my phone and just then cop cars start showing up, one after other, one every minute or so until there's about 6 cop cars and an ambulance and they've shut down the entire block.

As far as I can tell, the cops only were able to detain the kid with the knife. There were a bunch of adults talking to the cops trying to explain what
happened. I thought maybe there was something I could do, but I realize that I only really saw this conflict from the middle, had no idea what anyone involved looked like, or what caused the whole thing, or anything like that.

I've seldom felt so useless, I had witnessed quite a bit but had absolutely nothing of value to offer anyone. I couldn't do anything to stop it, I couldn't
do anything to clarify for the police what happened, and I was smack dab in the middle of it.

Bizarre. The ancient Greeks wouldn't show violence on stage. They considered it a greater obscenity than sex. It makes a little more sense to me now.

Bad News For Bush

2004-06-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

There’s been quite a bit of bad news for Bush these days, much of which has been eclipsed by the Reagan canonization, and I feel that it bears repeating here on this corner of the blogosphere.

Let's start with the Reagan stuff. As this Talking Points Memo Post points out, the startling thing about GWBush's website is how little of it is about him. It used to be all about John Kerry (the front page of the website was filled with goofy Kerry photos) and now it's all about Reagan. What this essentially means is that Bush is no longer running as himself, but instead as the anti-Kerry and sorta-Reagan. I'm pretty sure that's a terrible position for an incumbent to be in. Challengers are automatically the anti-incumbent. If the incumbent is the anti-challenger, it should give the challenger the edge in defining the terms of the national discourse.

Meanwhile, according to two new posts on the AP wires, Bush is getting little credit for the news jobs and a majority of Americans no longer feel that the Iraq war was justified. Regardless of whether you supported the war or not (I didn't) that's bad news for a President who boldly sold the American people a war of choice.

These two AP articles, taken together, are especially bad. Bush has always been good (and lucky) at switching focus. Just as things in Iraq spiral towards an experiment in chaos theory BAM the economy adds some jobs. Just as gas prices go up up up WHAMMO the new Iraq government begins to take shape.

Reagan's funeral has rescued Bush Administration from its dya of reckoning vis-a-vis torturing prisoners. This story continues to get worse and worse and worse as it moves slowly up up up the chain of command. Slate.com has a good article on the recently leaked memos from the Pentagon justifying use of torture of prisoners. Now I think there's a very good chance that Bush himself will escape from this torture hullabaloo unscathed. Hell, there's a chance he was kept in the dark about everything Rumsfeld and Ashcroft were planning for our prisoners, but I doubt that his administration can escape unscathed. Bush will almost certainly be left with a tough choice-- get rid of someone powerful and important in his administration (say, Rummy of Ash-face) and thus reveal his adminsitration's incompetance, or keep them on to "show strength" and look like someone who has no idea how to manage the "dream team" that his "CEO Presidency" promised us.

Kerry's chances look good. And his 7% lead in recent polls ain't bad either.

Everyday I Write The Book

2004-06-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

In other news, “Reading To My Kid” an anonymously written blog about a young mother/writer/reader named simply “E.” critiquing the many books she and her (presumably) pseudonymously titled daughter “Tulip” tackled together is shuttering its doors for the time being.

This is sad. I don’t have kids, but I certainly get a fair share of questions about books for them whilst working at the book store, are “Reading to my Kid” was a valuable resource for me (having not read a kids’ book since I myself was a kid).

Anyway, I thought as a little tribute I would reprint one of my favorite entries which also happens to be one of the last, it’s about the Arthur books. I myself remember reading only one Arthur book, the one where Arthur has a secret admirer, and his fear of being kissed by her actually leads him to be rather cruel and bail on a date with her in the middle of the movie. This is supposed to be funny, as opposed to cruel. It always struck me that the Arthur books were not possessed with particular empathy for their subjects, indeed, for children’s books, their empathy level was shockingly low.

Anyway, here is E.’s entry on the Arthur phenomenon, which you can read here:

"Tulip read her first Arthur story as part of a treasury of children's literature I got from the library. It was a mixed bag, the treasury. The best of a certain publisher's backlist, plus some filler, it seemed to me. One of the stories was about Arthur's sister D.W. being a picky eater. Finally, she is kind-of tricked into eating spinach and likes it very much. Didactic, boring, simply illustrated, pretty much harmless.

Tulip was wild for it.

Next trip to the library my kid finds another Arthur book and begs for it. She could clearly tell somehow that Arthur was the hero of these books even though D.W. was the star of the first one she read. I don't know how she knew, but she did.
Anyway, we got Arthur's New Puppy, which was confusingly written, involved the threat of sending the new puppy away "to a farm" if Arthur didn't train it properly, involved several euphemisms for pee and poop ("ooh, he just went! I think you need some newspapers") in detailing the puppy's misbehavior, and when Arthur finally trains the dog, no mention of training him to "go" outside -- and had an unfunny plot twist about the dog hiding things it didn't like that was way over Tulip's head but might well delight older children. It featured bland, orange-y pictures of simple domestic scenes; a typical suburban nuclear family, which is all very nice but not how or where we live.

Tulip loved it.

She asked for another Arthur story at the library (she knew there were lots because the covers are featured on the back jacket of Arthur's New Puppy) -- so I figured, let's start with the original: Arthur's Nose. The first one must be the best, right? It will explain the whole appeal.

Arthur's Nose is the story of an aardvark whose unkind friends constantly make fun of his enormous nose. He decides to get a NOSE JOB and goes to the "rhinologist" -- a rhino named Doctor Louise -- who essentially offers to surgically alter his nose to improve his self-image. He is clearly a schoolchild. There is no mention of HOW she will change his nose, but she is a doctor, not a magician.

She gives him cards of all different animal noses to try up against his face to see what he'll look like with, say, an elephant's trunk. There are several amusing pictures of him with different cards, which I'm sure are very appealing and funny to elementary school-aged children.

Cut to: A's friends wondering what he'll look like -- and then he emerges from the office saying he's gonna keep his long nose: "I'm just not me without my nose!" Then the last sentence reads: "There's a lot more to Arthur than his nose." -- although it doesn't say WHAT and suggests that he hasn't learned to love it, but just to live with it and not think about it so much (which is okay, I guess).

Don't children ask HOW the doctor is gonna change the nose? Don't parents have trouble answering this question? Don't all to many children KNOW people who have had their faces surgically altered? Shouldn't we teach them that such surgery DOES NOT change the way you look in the radical ways that Dr. Louise promises, and that it is a painful and expensive path for attempting self-love? Should we have a picture book about this topic at ALL? Shouldn't Arthur tell his friends to STOP TEASING HIM or go find some friends with big noses or tease his friends back, or SOMETHING other than his lame attempt to change? he does nothing but consider surgery to rectify his situation.

And last -- but certainly not least -- the subsequent books HAVE LOPPED OFF HIS NOSE. On the cover of Arthur's Valentine and Arthur's Halloween, he still has a very slightly elongated face; by Arthur Writes a Story (see image below), he is completely castrated/anti-semitically altered/rounded. Effectively negating the entire message of the first book anyway.

I did a web search to see if Brown discusses the change in Arthur in any of his interviews, but haven't yet found anything. I'll keep looking around, though. "

Dead Celebs

2004-06-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

I meant to write about socialized medicine today. Or maybe Pinter vs. Ionesco. But those will have to wait...

I just found out that Ray Charles died. Sad. I’m watching it on MSNBC now, and I guess because they already had stock footage available they’re playing Ray Charles appearing at the Republican Convention, so it’s this kind of double-whammy of Charles and Reagan merging in a kind of orgy of nostalgia.

Is it true that Charles went hysterically blind upon watching the drowning of his younger brother in a lake? I heard that in college, but I basically might as well have gone to “Urban Legend University”. I remember when a story went around that Dave Matthews had died. No one seemed particularly upset except for the guy who smoked a lot of pot and lived on the third floor of my building. And then there was the time when we were told that Mayim Bialik (star of TV’s blossom) died of a drug overdose. She didn’t, by the way, she just primarily works in voice over now.

Perhaps it is this constant sense of fake-death that keeps me alienated from real-deaths of celebrities. Or maybe it’s the fact that I don’t know them. It didn’t used to be this way. The first one of my heroes whom I remember dying is Jim Henson. My mom told me, and I was playing in my little nook in the family room. I said “oh” and five minutes later I burst into uncontrolled sobbing, unable to stop, really beyond being comforted just thinking about how sad it would be to never see a new entertainment with Kermit the Frog in it.

Then, shortly thereafter, was the tribute to Jim Henson. The whole idea was based on “The Jim Henson Show” a short-lived (but surreally brilliant) TV program hosted by Henson made up of two equal halves. In the first half, Kermit and pals had various misadventures in the backstage of a TV show you never see. In the second half, we were treated to the magnificent John Hurt as “The Storyteller” as he told (and various muppets reenacted) various folk tales. Anyway, the idea was Kermit is on vacation (or something) and they have the job of paying tribute to Jim Henson. They don’t know who Henson is. Then the muppets look down, notice there are people underneath them and collect a bunch of celebrities to pay tribute. It featured, amongst other things, an amazing performance by Ray Charles of “It’s Not Easy Being Green”.

And then… Kermit walked in. And it wasn’t Henson but someone else and he said “You did it, guys! You paid tribute to Jim Henson!” and I burst into tears again, for about half an hour, unable (once again) to stop or be comforted. It was like they had murdered Henson on screen.

Of course, I was in grade school then. Now I’m not. What I’m amazed by is that our entertainment/news industries appear to be in the same place I was in fourth grade. They treat each death of a (beloved) celebrity as if we should be rending our clothes and lighting widows on fire. A good example: during the televised service for Reagan in California, the three networks suspended the crawl at the bottom of the screen. That’s right, people, Reagan’s death is pretty much the only thing since 9/11 solemn enough to suspend the crawl. I think it’s about time we collectively get a grip here, people.

Why can't they just cover news?

2004-06-09T05:01:00.000-07:00

I just heard Bill Hemmer say the followng thing on CNN when announcing this hour's stories:

"And in the Laci Peterson case, a bomb shell revelation... her father reveals he went fishing on the day of her disappearance"

I don't even know if that needs commmentary...

It's All About Me

2004-06-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lite posting days, everybody. It's been a busy around here, as I add in extra shifts at the bookstore and still try to plan my next season of work.

Also, ReaganFest 2004! has really knocked everything else out of the news.

If All Things Reagan is really what your interested in reading, well, you can scroll down for my post on the whole thing, go to Slate's rather exhaustive and entertaining coverage, keep up with atrios as he performs the thankless task of fact-checking the BS said about Reagan over the past (and next) few days. George Hunka reminds us all about how crappy the 80's really were, while Laura Axelrod provides a more personal context for how she feels about Reagan.

I will (not-so) briefly digress thusly:

The problem with the "Me" decade was exactly that, it was all about individual greed. I think it's pretty clear that one of the essential values of conservatism is selfishness. Ayn Rand ("who college freshman think is a philosopher" to quote The Daily Show) was at least open about this-- to truly believe in capitalism unbound is to believe that a society organized around "getting" (selfishness) is better than a society organized around "giving" or, well, just about anythign else. This is how Republicans scare working class people into voting for tax cuts that will destroy them rather than benefitting them. Because such large percentages of people either A) think they are in the wealthiest 1% bracket or B) think they have a real shot at making it into the echelons of the Middle and Upper Classes, Republicans can easily say, "ah yes, but when you get here, you'll want to be as selfish as possible too, and these class warfarin' Dems are gonna come along and EAT YOU ALIVE so that dark people can have Health Care is that what you want?".

The true success of the Reagan years was to put the final nails in the coffin of the New Deal and the Great Society. A mixture between our need to shed blood on foreign lands and our fears (justifiable and non-) about Communism and the ascension of American Empire conspired to destroy most remnants of a giving society. What we have now is a society organized around getting.

A society organized around getting is a society organized to benefit those who already have. Thus the rich become the super rich (the wage gap has increased with such remarkable pace from 1980 to 2000 it'll make your head spin) the powerful the uberpowerful, the privileged the Masters of the Universe and America becomes an Empire more powerful than anything ever seen on this Earth. In order for this to work, the cost (financially and otherwise) of not being part of the Uber Group increases and increases and increases while the number of people who benefit from it will shrink and shrink and shrink until it excludes just about everyone.

This is why I think new conservatism is so dangerous. I have a certain grudging respect for old-school small government conservatism, but this isn't what we're talking about anymore. These days, conservatism isn't about making the government smaller, it's about restructuring the entire society to make sure that it all benefits those already on top. Reagan was the prophet of this movement. He didn't shrink government. In fact, he made it much much larger, but did it in a way that hurt programs that helped people in need and enriched defense contractors. This is why, in my book, he was a terrible President, plain and simple.

But moving beyond Reagan, the question for all of us as the getting paradigm breaks apart (just wait, for example, until there's no more oil to get) is what can we do? How can we organize our society around a common good, a lifting up, a "giving"?

Quote of the Week!

2004-06-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

This weeks quote comes from Frank Hauser and Russell Reich's "Notes on Directing" a very funny and very wise short guide to the art and craft that I am trying to make a life out of:

RULE # 23: Assume that everyone is in a permanent state of catatonic terror.
This will help you approach the impossible state of infinite patience and benevolence that actors and others expect from you.

Ding Dong

2004-06-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

I remember when Nixon died. My girlfriend at the time’s mother danced around her house singing “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”. I don’t remember the day, or where I was when I found out about either the dancing/singing or Nixon’s death. But I do remember that happening.

Last night on CNN, Aaron Brown was taking his usual role of trying to historicize things as soon as they happen. He told us that we will all remember this day and where we were and just like- well not quite just like, but you know what I mean- pretty much just like the Kennedy assassination. It’s that big.

I could write a lot about what I think about Reagan (no big fan, me, because I like it when people don’t have AIDS, when our arms race isn’t out of control, when our parties stand by their principles, when we don’t prop up and support dictators when they repress their people or gas the Kurds etc. and Reagan was apparently against all of these things) but I wanted to write instead about historicization and our immediate quest for meaning.

We like to behave as if meaning is an inherent property of events, people, places, objects, actions etc. We do this collectively to things in both a quantity (how much meaning X has) and quality (what it actually means) sense all the time. Aaron Brown last night was instructing us that the well-expected and oft-fortold death of a man who had been slowly dying for over a decade in his home well beyond the point where he could say or do anything of any import has a similar quantity of meaning to a beloved (if not particularly good) President being shot and killed on television in the midst of a parade.

Of course, Brown has to do this. It’s his job, after all, to continue to get ratings for his network. The more meaning you believe Reagan’s death has the more you’ll want to watch CNN’s constant coverage of all things Reagan over the next few days.

I’m not arguing that the story isn’t newsworthy. It is clearly newsworthy- a President has died. It is newsworthy in a way many other mega-stories aren’t—Laci Peterson, for example, or Gary Condit, or our numerous “trials of the century”. But there is a real difference between reporting the news and instructing your audience exactly how and in what ways they are to react. The latter is vaguely totalitarian, and definitely pernicious.

The truth is, I don’t know what Reagan’s death means. In terms of world events, it is prima facie totally meaningless, because he had no control or impact on world events any more. The only thing left for him to do was die, and via death become a world event. In terms of Reagan’s family it is almost certainly intensely meaningful (and painful) and I don’t wish that kind of experience on anyone. In terms of the Republican Party and the Conservative agenda its meaningful because nostalgia is the ultimate conservative mindset (a love of the past will certainly keep you trying to recreate it) and with their beloved leader gone they can call forth all the nostalgia there is to muster.

This is unfortunate in terms of public discourse. When a public figure dies, it should be a time to reckon honestly with what they did in their life and public actions. It shouldn’t be a time to piss on their grave, but nor should it be a time for deification. By constantly telling us how much everyone loved Reagan, and by constantly instructing us to find meaning in his death, our news organizations are ensuring that that complex conversation about Reagan, his legacy, and the social forces swirling around his life in politics can almost certainly never happen. We will be divided into ding-dongers and deifiers, and I don’t know if we can really learn anything about the modern Presidency or American politics from doing that.

Trust etc.

2004-06-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

I saw "Trust" last night over on theater row. Now, I said when starting this thing off I wasn't going to do theater reviews, and it pains me when I see a show and can't, you know, give you my full impressions of it. But I don't do theater reviews for a few reasons: first, it's a professional thing. This is a public website, and I'm an aspiring theater DIRECTOR not theater CRITIC, and I don't really feel like making enemies (and friends) based on what I think and say about people's work. Second, I don't want to watch a play as a critic, I want to watch it as an artist.

So let me say this about "Trust" (full disclosure: I went to the same college as the director, and the light designer designed my last show): It's really quite good. The script is taught and intense, the acting is good (Except for the lead actor and actress- they give powerhouse performances) the directing is smooth and effective, it has (this will sound weird, but see the show and you'll know what I mean) easily the ballsiest, most risk taking set changes I've ever seen.

I'd describe the show more, but it's a thriller (that's all I'll say) so the discovery of the relationships between the characters is part of the fun. Listen hard when you go see it- the Irish accents are thick and the slang flows a mile a minute. "Trust" is one of the best pieces of realism I've seen in a long time, and definitely worth the price of admission.

On to other matters- George Tenet resigned yesterday, as you probably well know. The coverage of this has been *insane* so far, and I have nothing really to add. I would recommend reading Slate.com's two pieces (here and herer) and Josh Marshall here. I know these are center lefties, and you may (like me) put yourself further down in the "looney" area of the spectrum, but their analysis is good (and there's a couple of great jokes in there to boot).

I think President Bush is in some real trouble. Both Marshall and Fred Kaplan point it out, Kaplan saying that the temple is about to fall down on Bush's head. Let's review: his administration has already been called criminal for its Medicare propaganda, which is probably the least of the crimes committed (including attempted bribery of a congressman) in pursuit of passing a bill no one likes, Bush is hiring a personal lawyer for the Valerie Plame affair (remember her?), he had to fire his CIA chief because either A: they couldn't hide his massive incompetance anymore or B: he makes a good, loyal fall guy for everyone else, the American public will almost certainly see through the whole "handover" charade and realize that if over a hundred thousand troops are still in the country, nothing's really changed. And then there's Abu Ghraib, WMD, the death toll, the 9/11 commission, etc. etc. and so forth. Things are not looking good for him.

So where's John Kerry? Now might just be the time to get ambitious and say "see, all of his ideas were wrong. Here's some new ones." This is what people mean by a positive alternative vision. Bush's Presidency is a failure from top to bottom. I wish Kerry would stop saying "here's my similar idea to Bush's, but I'm a different guy, so I'm gonna do it right this time" and get creative for once. It feels like Kerry is trying to redo the cabinets in a burning building.

That said, he's a much better choice than the current guy.

Critiquing the Critics

2004-06-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Terry Teachout’s “About Last Night” is one of the reasons why I became a blogger. I figured that if a theater reviewer could figure out a way to be a cultural critic using a blog and still exercise enough discretion to keep his job, I would probably be able to as a director as well. Also, I find his writing funny, illuminating, intelligent and challenging. Terry’s also a good deal more conservative than I am, at least in taste (Balanchine instead of Trisha Brown or Cunningham, Satchmo instead of ‘Trane, etc.) Recently, Teachout used the burning down of the Saatchi warehouse in Britain as an opportunity to reflect on what he wrote about the Saatchi show “Sensation” at the Brooklyn Museum. There are a few troubling assertions made in the article that I would like to challenge as vocally as possible.

“Sensation”, you may recall, was the show at the Brooklyn Museum that New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani took great umbrage toward. Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary”, a take off on medieval icon painting using elephant dung instead of gold leaf had him so upset that he threatened to cut the Brooklyn Museum's public funding if they didn't close the show. The other artist to get enormous press off the show was Damien Hirst, who famously created sculptures using dismembered animals preserved in tanks of formaldehyde.

Teachout hated the show. Of course he did, the show was bad. Most of the art in it was ridiculously smug and pompous and served little purpose other than to be…well… sensational. I liked more of it than he did, but that’s really beside the point.

What’s not beside the point is the following quote: “To be sure, most contemporary British art is boring, and has been for as long as I can remember. . . British novels and plays are still about class war, British composers are still trying to figure out minimalism, British choreographers are still into angst—and British artists . . . are still trying, poor dears, to be outrageous.” There are three ways to take this quote, and all three of them are troubling. The first is that he’s trying to be funny. I see no evidence to support that in the text, but perhaps he was. The second is that he’s trying to be provocative, in which case he is guilty of the same vice for which he faults the show. The third possibility is that he’s being serious, and that’s the most troubling of all.

The number of prominent English plays and novels that are not “still about class war” is astounding. (Were they ever about class warfare? I mean, they were about class, but rarely about class warfare) Novels: Graham Swift’s “Waterland” and “Last Orders”, Julian Barnes “History of the World in 10.5 Chapters”, the work of Jeanette Winterson (and she’s an avowed Marxist!), Kate Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Will Self, the list goes on and on. In fact, the only prominent English writer I can think of who writes almost exclusively about class is Martin Amis, and no one seems to take him seriously anymore.

Playwrights have even more distance from the topic: post “Mad Forest” Caryl Churchill isn’t about class, neither is the work of Tom Stoppard, Ben Elton, Harold Pinter, late period Martin Crimp or anything by the late Sarah Kane. Not to mention Peter Schaeffer or Alan Bennett. Is class inevitably in there somewhere? Sure, the Brits are conscious of their class system, and we’re (willfully) ignorant of ours. But none of these works or authors (all of them famous, at least in England) are about class warfare.

Moving on to music: I don’t really know much about British composers, but “classical” music is the wrong referent for “Sensation” anyway. “Sensation” was the art world moment of the “Cool Brittania” movement in the early to mid nineties. “Cool Brittania”’s representative music isn’t Benjamin Britten, it’s Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Massive Attack. “Sensation”’s artists are rock and roll artists (Hirst, for example, directed the video for Blur’s song “Country House”) just like Pop Artists in the states was better represented by The Velvet Underground and David Bowie than they were by their contemporaneous composers Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

I could go on, but this is a blog post, not a manifesto. The point is this: Teachout is a cultural critic who displays (in this article) a disturbingly simple-minded view of culture. I’m pretty sure it’s a much narrower view than he actually possesses, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that a cultural critic acts like an entire culture can be summed up and dismissed in a few short sentences. If this were about African or Arabian culture, everyone would get their panties in a bunch about racism.

Teachout also spends a great amount of time in the article defending Giuliani’s right to threaten to cut funding for the Brooklyn Museum because of their choice of art to show. A few salient quotes:
“you'd damned well better voice unequivocal agreement that the show must go on, Rudy or (preferably) no Rudy, if you want to keep getting asked to the right cocktail parties.

Me, I don't go to cocktail parties, and I also don't much care for the odious smugness displayed by the likes of Glenn Scott Wright, the London representative for Ofili, painter of "The Holy Virgin Mary," who claims that Giuliani's determination to shut the show down "is both totalitarian and fascist, a reprisal of the Nazi regime's censorship of the contemporary art of its time which it labeled 'degenerate art.' " I suppose it's possible that Ofili has been arrested by the New York branch of the Gestapo and shipped off to a prison camp on Staten Island, but if so, nobody told me about it…
(large edit)

The only people to emerge from this fracas unmutilated will be the lawyers, though the museum has more at stake and may be likelier to lose, the First Amendment not yet having been rewritten so as to stipulate that Congress shall make no law abridging the absolute right of taxpayer-subsidized museums to spend public monies in whatever way they see fit.”

Teachout is doing two things here. He’s chastising the Brooklyn Museum for staging a publicity stunt and calling it an art show. This is an important point to make if you think that’s what they’re doing. Charlatans and hucksters need to be exposed. The second thing he is doing is arguing that since it is legally permissible for the government to coerce a museum into changing what art it displays (or “censor” the art displayed) and since this particular show is displaying “bad art”, Giuliani’s efforts to crack down on questionable art should be greeted with a shrug, or maybe even encouragement.

In the NEA-4 case, the Supreme Court decided that Teachout is right about this. I happen to disagree with all of them, but leaving aside letter of the law for a second, let’s talk about spirit. Freedom of expression exists as a legal and social concept in order to protect expression we don’t like, not to protect expression we like. It is a concept borne out of restraining government’s ability to interfere with the ways we see and interact with the world, for this is art's most vital and important (and difficult job).

Giuliani specifically stated that he wanted to censor the Brooklyn Museum’s show because it offended his Catholic sensibilities. Teachout gives our mayor a pass because he doesn’t like the art that would be censored. I didn’t particularly like “Sensation” either; it was a record of a cultural moment that had already passed gussied up as something new and hip. I still support the right of the museum to display what they want, and that the government should not have the right to cut funding because they are disturbed by the art displayed. Otherwise, we are on the fabled slippery slope, sliding towards “official” art, forever perpetuating the status quo, never challenging ourselves, churning out boring semi-realist print after boring semi-realist print, unable to see the world in new and interesting ways.

As an artist, that’s a frightening thing for a critic to shrug his shoulders at.

Civil Liberties have a fighting chance!

2004-06-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

go read

Abu Ghraib: finally finished

2004-06-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

Part Three: Shouldn’t We Have Guessed?

Next time I decide to write a post in several parts, i'll just write the whole thing at once and post it serially. Sorry its taken me like two weeks to get this thing done, but its still important I feel so here is part three.

For the introduction click here
For part one click here
For part two click here
----

The third way Abu Ghraib affects us is actually two ways in one. We are simultaneously hit with outrage (“What the hell is going on?! How could we have done this?!”) and a sense that we should’ve seen this coming. We gave the government carte blanche to set human rights policy, it in turn gave soldiers carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted (or “deemed necessary”) to soften up mainly innocent people for interrogation in order to extract information they didn’t have.

The question remains: why didn’t we see it coming? Or, to rephrase, why did we trust the government?

I am not some conspiracy theory spouting street preacher, or Lone Gunman wandering around seeking evidence of government ill will, nor am I part of the International ANSWER end of the left, where the American Government is the Great Satan attempting to spread its pernitious imperialistic influence wherever it goes. The fact still remains, however, that democracy requires of us that we be always skeptical and investigative of our government, and we have failed miserably at that as a nation.

Besides lofty political-theory reasons, we also should not have trusted our government because of history. History, especially the twentieth century, has shown us that governments are not to be trusted. Just to name a few examples from the US involvement in twentieth century politics: Japanese Internment, the overthrowing of Salvador Allende in Chile and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Watergate, both Red Scares, Jim Crow and Iran-Contra. All of these were done under cover of protecting us (or our “interests” those shadowy, never articulated reasons why the government does things). Judging from this list (and this leaves off other countries’ actions like Apartheid, the Holocaust etc.) there’s no reason why you would ever listen to someone in power when they say “trust us, we’ve got everything under control”.

But we did. We all did. Our elected representatives failed us, and we failed to hold them accountable (is anyone going to pay for voting for the Patriot Act in November? I doubt it). Colin Powell told us that we are observing “the spirit” of the Geneva Conventions if not the letter and we said, “oh, of course, the spirit. That makes sense.”

In effect, we turned a blind eye towards history. These United States are often singled out for how we have unshackled ourselves from the bonds of history, or at least slipped loose the coil of knowledge of history. Some people (especially neo cons) seem to think that’s what makes this country great. We are unburdened by our history and thus able to Dream Big. For some people (especially socialists and people from very old countries) it is what gives this country its dominating, debilitating ego. By ignoring history, we are lost, trying out ideas with no referent to guide us, navigating by dead reckoning, without even Polaris or some sense of humility to guide us.

I’m going to posit here that we did this willfully, if not necessarily knowingly. In the wake of 9/11, we wanted our government to be able to do whatever they wanted so long as we didn’t have to be confronted with what was really going on. We did this because we thought it would make us safer, and as long as we didn’t have to be confronted with the hypocrisy of drastically compromising liberty in order to defend it, we were okay.

This poses two problems, a factual one and a moral/ethical one. The first one is whether or not this actually made us safer in any way. According to the government, some amount of torture has yielded some amount of useful intelligence. Any safety created by this has however almost certainly been destroyed by the widespread knowledge that we torture people. This knowledge was created in part by these photographs, and it is only going to get worse. Indeed, the story of how Abu Ghraib went down seems to get worse every forty eight hours (the fact that “specialists” from Gitmo were at Abu Ghraib, for example, has all sorts of frightening implications). As more information comes out, we will get noticeably less and less safe. Retribution will be sought, and ranks of killers will swell.

The second problem is the moral/ethical one. Is it okay to torture people, ever, for whatever reason? My personal opinion is no, at least of a physical kind. Psychologically, I don’t really know where I stand, because the line between interrogation and psychological torture is almost nonexistent. Physical torture is not acceptable in my book, but it is in some. The “ticking time bomb” example is often used to justify torture. There is a terrorist. You know there is a bomb going to go off. You know that the terrorist has knowledge about the bomb. He’s in your custody, do you torture him? The “ticking time bomb” theory, however, is hard to take seriously if you think about all of the criteria that have to be met. You know this man has knowledge, you know a bomb is going to go off, but yet you don’t know where it is. Outside of “24”, the odds of this happening are staggeringly low. This example is used in order to make a case for torture and start us down the slippery slope. Once you say “okay” to this torture, why not say that every Arab in Iraq knows someone who is an insurgent (we think) so why not torture as many as possible to get information?

We have a government that is rounding up people and putting them into camps. Most of them almost certainly fought against our country. Most of them (at least the ones who have been there for awhile) almost certainly have no more information to give us. We can guess from Abu Ghraib and what has come out since that the people in those camps are being tortured.

We have turned a blind eye to this ever since September 11th, and that’s not all. We’ve turned a blind eye to the fact that we have almost certainly killed more civilians in our two wars that died in the World Trade Center. We’ve turned a blind eye to the fact that our government never had a public reason for declaring war, that our opposition party totally and completely failed in its duty to the American public, that the man running for President for the Democrats was part of that massive failure. We’re turned a blind eye to the fact that, in Israel, we arm one side of the conflict while telling everyone we’re an honest broker. We turn a blind eye to the very idea that these people we’re killing are human beings. And finally, we’ve turned a blind eye to the fact that in a representative democracy, we are responsible for what our leaders do.
Abu Ghraib startles us because we have discovered that torturing people isn’t exactly kosher with us. We thought we could stand it so long as we didn’t have to hear about it, but now that we can see it, a bit of our humanity has crept back in, and it is scolding us for allowing this to happen. This, above all else, gives me hope. We live in the wealthiest society in the history of the world, and we have systemically eliminated as much humanism from our government and social spheres as we thought we could abide. It is throwing our society into crisis on all sorts of levels. Abu Ghraib is a psychological crisis. Americans are capable of this. They were almost certainly ordered to do it. This is the true face of war. We allowed it to happen.

In the face of disasters like Abu Ghraib, our obesity epidemic, a mendacious President, our murder rates, our child poverty rate, our incarceration rates, the price of good health care, and the brave men and women of our armed forces being picked off by insurgents all over a foreign land, only a bold change towards a new humanism in government offers and kind of lasting solution. Hopefully we can heed the call to make it come about, since our elected “leaders” certainly don’t seem to have any problems with business as usual.

Do they read their own paper?

2004-05-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

William Safire has (yet another) ridiculous op-ed piece in today's Times that is more than contradicted by his own newspaper's reporting. You'd think the editors would pull the column to save their writer some face, but I guess not.

Safire: "Have you read the encouraging headlines from Iraq? "Monthly U.S. Combat Deaths Down by Half in May" is one. "Radical Shiite Cleric's Militia Decimated in Holy Cities" is another, and finally: "Iraqi Leaders, Defying U.S. and U.N. Dictates, Choose Prime Minister."

No, those were not headlines anybody could see. In Gloomy Gus newsrooms, good news is no news. And as Handover Day arrives in a month, casualties may well rise, the semi-truce with al-Sadr's force in Najaf may break down ("decimated" means reduced by 10 percent), and — most likely — political bickering may break into the open in the selection of an Iraqi sovereign transition government. But consider the possibility, for a change, that on our Memorial Day, we have cause for cautious optimism."

Headline in today's Times website: "2 U.S. Soldiers Killed as Truce in 2 Iraqi Cities Unravels"

From Safire again: "But the naysayers were astounded, along with the U.N.'s Lakhdar Brahimi and the White House's Robert Blackwill, when Iraqi leaders started acting last week like Iraqi leaders. No thanks, they said to the U.N.-U.S. notion of an interim government of toothless technocrats, and rejected Brahimi's choice for the top slot. Like real politicians, they cut a few deals and chose one of their own — a secular Shiite, not an Islamist or a Sunni or a Kurd — to be prime minister."

He follows this quote up with detailed (and head spinning) meaningless blather about how he thinks it all went down. But that doesn't really matter, when you could just read the Times this morning and get this: "One person conversant with the negotiations said Mr. Brahimi was presented with 'a fait accompli' after President Bush's envoy to Iraq, Robert D. Blackwill, 'railroaded' the Governing Council into coalescing around [Allawi]."

Why is Safire considered seriously in public debate in this country? Why does the Times still employ him? Why is his commentary considered anything but outright lies?

Quote of the Week!

2004-05-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

In honor of Memorial Day, I felt it was important to put in an anti-war quote, so here we go, it's from Wilfred Owen (again), only this time, it's a whole poem:

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Some thoughts instead of a review

2004-05-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

Last night Mary and I went to see "The Day After Tomorrow" the new Roland Emmerich-helmed disaster flick about massive sudden global climate change. I was originally going to write a review of it, but since you can read those pretty much anywhere, I thought I would offer instead a few reflections that I had whilst watching and talking about the movie.

.5) "The Day After" is a much much better title than "The Day After Tomorrow".

1) We need a new definition of "indie film" or perhaps we need to scrap the category all together. What does it mean, precisely? Does it mean "not made by a big studio"? If so, then "Attack of the Clones" is an indie movie. Does it mean "executed with creative control by the director"? If so, then "The Day After Tomorrow" is an indie film par excellance, it's co-written, co-produced and directed by one man who has a relentlessly single minded focus on a specific type of movie. But it is clearly not what we mean when we say "indie" film. So what does the term mean?

2) The film is shockingly not-bad. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is good. It is a ridiculous cgi fest filled with cardboard cutout characters, clunky dialogue and one particularly laughable section involving wolves so poorly animated they look like they came out of "Clash of the Titans". That being said, as a retread of the 70's disaster flick, the film is tense, hopeful fun.

3) Having lived through a disaster movie two and a half years ago, let me offer some tips to the Emmerich and the rest of his staff: after witnessing something horrible (like a tital wave hit midtown Manhattan) and surviving/escaping it, the next scene between you and your friends would be one of shell shock, not comaraderie and tactical plannning. I remember September 11th, I remember sitting in someone's apartment, someone who I didn't even know that well but fuck it we went to college together and I had her phone number on me somewhere, and staring at the TV, unable to even cry as the BBC played shot after shot after shot of the plane. Talking was pretty much pointless. Someone would crack a joke every now and then and someone would distantly giggle. This is the horror of experience horror, the fact that for awhile it kills you even if you are actually still alive. And then the guilt sets in. Also, when survivors of tragedy find out there are other survivors, they would most likely WEEP, not SMILE KNOWINGLY because everythings gonna be okay.

4) The movie is beautiful. Except for the aforementioned terrible CGI shots, the movie is gorgeous.

5) The left-wing-isses-checklist that the movie runs down is HILARIOUS. There's global climate change, immigration, homelessness, pollution, human kindness and empathy, weak Presidents paired with domineering VPs etc. It's great. If you're a registered Democrat, you'll probably get a big knowing kick out of the film.

6) A far more interesting version of this movie would have been the following: The action takes place after the global climate change has already occured. Everyone knows that NYC freezes over because we've seen the ads. So anyway, we focus on the absentee father character, Jack (played by Dennis Quaid), as he ventures from Washington D.C. to NYC to find his son. That way we get as many shots of white-hued destruction as possible (because this is what is best about this movie especially a lake of frozen corpses straight out of Dante's "Inferno") and you can have all the Jack London style survivalist kicks anyone could ever want. Anyway, so we follow Jack and his party as they make their way North, not knowing what they will find. As he travels (in largely dialogue free "The Fast Runner" like segments) we cut with flashbacks where we learn how we got there. In the end, he doesn't find his son (who we learn is alive, but simply unfindable) and instead helps some people form a new society. Or something. I haven't figured out the ending, but the sea-of-white existential quest to find someone almost certainly dead would be more suspenseful, artful and interesting.

7) Keifer Sutherland used to be the low-rent Dennis Quaid. Since the start of "24", Dennis Quaid has become the low-rent Keifer Sutherland. I think soon it's gonna switch back again, but I'm not sure.

8) To answer the questions posed by the gang of 9 incredibly noisy teenagers sitting right behind me in no particular order: That was not Tobey Maguire, that was Jake Gyllenhall, although they do look a lot alike. Also, that was not the girl from "The Princess Diaries" that Jake Gyllenhall was in love with. That actres is Anne Hathaway, whereas Emily Rossum is in "The Day After Tomorrow". You may have seen her in "Mystic River" then again, probably not. Also, I don't know if the movie could reall happen, to tell you the truth, although I'm going to talk with my father about it (he's a scientist who knows a lot about this kind of thing). I think it could probably happen, just no where near that quickly. Also, that black guy hanging out with Ian Holm in Northern Scotland was most decidedly not the black kid from Parenthood, who's father, to answer another one of your questions, was played by Tom Hulce. None of the actors in this movie were in Harry Potter.

9) To answer some questions not posed by the gang of 9 sitting behind me: Yes, breathing on someone's neck bothers them, but not as much as screaming in their ear. No, you are not supposed to talk on your cell phone during a movie. Yes, you almost certainly ruined the movie going experience of everyone sitting anywhere near by you. No, "I'll write you letters" is a terrible pick up line. Yes, I will call the manager the next time I'm sitting anywhere near you.

In other news...

2004-05-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how to forge art to make money? New York Magazine tells you how!

Apparently spamming can get you prison time now. And so can selling you underage daughter into "marriage" in Rochester. Australia is href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/27/ 1085641653649.html">itching to ban gay marriage. In my favorite country (Denmark) a member of parliament is pleading self defense as an excuse for breaking and entering. And in Sweden cops confiscated the cannabis plants on display in an art exhibit.

Meanwhile, in all seriousness, the details of the widespread, pervasive nature of Abu Ghraib get worse and worse and worse. Too bad the televised media (and congress) seems to have moved on, because the AP wires and the New York Times seem to be all over this like white on rice.

3 Impacts Part Two

2004-05-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

So I realize that Abu Ghraib has faded from the news a little bit and perhaps this essay's current-events value has decreased dramatically, but I haven't had time to blog much lately and I said I'd finish this thing, so here is the second impact for you all:

2: The Horrors of War

Under his helmet, up against his pack,
After so many days of work and waking,
Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.

There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,
Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quaking
Of the aborted life within him leaping,
Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.

And soon the slow, stray blood came creeping
From the intruding lead, like ants on track.
- Wilfred Owen, “Asleep”

Throughout history, one of the artist’s primary duties during wartime has been to render the reality of the horror of war. Homer’s Iliad (perhaps you’ve seen the movie?) is filled with graphic and disturbing descriptions of disemboweling and other battlefield mutations. The Bible is one of the most graphic books around, and contains within it one of the few instances of a people recording their own genocide in the Book of Joshua. Pistol in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” is given the job of explaining to the audience that the patriotic battles they’ve seen have a terrible cost in human lives and souls.

Wilfred Owen was just a young man when he died during World War I. Despite his youth, he left behind him a cache of poems that elucidate the horrors of war better than any photograph. In reading his “Dulce Et Decorum Est” or the callous irony of “The Last Laugh” one cannot help but be struck by how dehumanizing the day to day life of a soldier is. “War is hell” is a cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true. War is hell, and all involved are casualties, be they actual dead or walking wounded.

We have been spared this. We have been shielded from the consequences of the actions done in our names. This is beginning to change, and change fast. According to Frank Rich in this Sunday’s New York Times, Michael Moore’s new film will show us all the mutilations of our troops, the blood and gore of our soldiers that our government and self-censoring media have kept from us. We will see what the war is doing to our sons and daughters.

Abu Ghraib is a shock to our system in a very similar way. It brings the hell of war home in a way nothing else has thus far. The photos of flag draped coffins are beautiful in their solemnity. The photographs of stacked up naked men with smiling cherubic soldiers flanking them are neither solemn nor beautiful. They are parodies of everything war is supposed to be: all of the hell, none of the dignity.

The Bush Administration has done its best to keep knowledge of consequences as far away from our minds as possible. By not asking us to sacrifice anything (indeed, we couldn’t find the strength to even repeal a single tax cut!) or to change our lives in any way, shape or form, this administration has told us to not think about the war in any concrete or critical way. By not bringing it home to the citizens of this country, we are allowed the psychic space to avoid the cost of our government’s actions.

Besides shielding us from any real burden, the administration and its apologists have sought to limit our knowledge of things going wrong. This effort has led to the massive credibility gap between what Bush says and what the American public’s perception of reality is. He’d like to blame it on the media, but it is his own efforts to white wash the war that have cost him dearly at the polls.

I’ve already discussed how the soldiers in the pictures could be anybody. When the pictures remind us of the horrors of war it is because we realize that the captives could be anybody too. This everymanness is reinforced by the hoods over their heads and the blurring out of all distinctive characteristics. Looking at the pictures, it is easy to think that in this day and age when nothing is certain it could be someday be yourself under that hood, being strapped to electrodes, having dogs maul your genitals, being water boarded, stripped naked, anally raped.

Once we enter that particular circle of waking hell, we are left to reckon with the morning paper. The papers are filled with euphemisms for torture, calling it “abuse” or naming the specific industry term for the tactic used. This linguistic distance is no longer available to us, however, because we’ve had the images of their meaning burned into our minds. When we see “casualty” we now have graphic representations of the casualty. Not flag draped patriotism, but rather a rotting body in a bag, covered in ice, a smiling soldier posing as if in front of the Empire State Building.

Reviewing the Reviewers

2004-05-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

We got in the new book by Dale Peck today at my bookstore. Dale Peck (for those who don't know) is the infamous book reviewer responsible for some of the most stridently vitriolic prose about contemporary fiction around. He has written, for example, both that Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation and that David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest is not work the paper its printed on. His book of collected lit crit is called (ironically enough or not, whatever) “Hatchet Jobs” and includes endorsements from, amongst others, Susan Sontag.

In her quote, Sontag talks about how Dale Peck is an important literary critic and she appreciates his especial attention vis a vis misogyny. For his focus on misogyny, Peck should perhaps be lauded, but the simple fact of that matter is, he’s not a critic. He’s not even a reviewer. He is to the book review what talk radio is to NPR: perhaps more entertaining, but full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely diddley squat.

It is Peck's right to have his opinions, and to hate much of contemporary American fiction. It is somone else's right to publish his rantings, but they should know that what they are getting is a showman, a leech schooled in the art of controversy. What bothers me about Dale Peck is this: It is a vile practice to make money pissing on the labor of others. It is doubly disgusting if you have nothing to give to your audience and nothing to advocate for on behalf of the art your criticize. And Peck doesn’t. He rarely (if ever) chooses one of the millions of books out there to champion. All he has to give is his wit, which he puts in the service of furthering an incredibly narrow view of what writing is acceptable.

His criticisms are also often facile, and he takes advantage of liberals’ lack of confidence in their own tastes. When the New York Times Magazine praised Peck’s “work” (such that it is) they said that you can’t read one of his reviews and not have your opinions challenged, shaken up, forever altered. They’re wrong. You can have your opinions challenged by Peck if you didn’t really believe them in the first place. People who read Rick Moody because other people read Rick Moody will indeed be challenged by some random frustrated novelist calling him “the worst writer of his generation”. Someone who reads Rick Moody because they love Rick Moody will recognize a self-promoting, controversy inviting performance artist when they see one. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never read Rick Moody.)

Or take his critique of “Infinite Jest” (I have read, and very much liked this book). He starts his review from what seems like an understanding place. He writes about how some people like Pynchon and some don’t and he (Peck) doesn’t. He then explains why he doesn’t. He then explains that DF Wallace loves Pynchon and out-Pynchons Pynchon. Okay, you think, he doesn’t like the book, but he’ll explain it from the point of view of the anxiety of influence etc. and so forth. But no, instead we are treated to sentence after sentence of cleverly crafted poison. D Foster W’s Infinite Jest may not be more than the sum of its parts, but to completely degrade every part in a sweeping “paper its printed on” bon mot is to prize appearing smart over being smart and reading David FW’s book.

Dale Peck is the Simon Cowell of the literary establishment-- getting famous for being unjustifiably cruel to people who have done nothing more than try to express themselves through art.

Compare this to the reviewing of John Leonard. For some time now, Leonard has been churning out great prose in the service of critiquing great prose in the back pages of Harper’s Magazine. Leonard is, quite simply, the most exquisite book reviewer around. Regardless of whether or not he likes the book (or you’re interest level in the subject matter) Leonard’s critiques are always elegantly written. He can write fascinatingly about the Haitian Revolution one month, switch to Richard Powers the next and hover around a new biography of Philip K. Dick in the third.

Leonard is also great because he is a champion of the obscure, rather than a degrader of the obvious. He chooses books that you may not have heard of, or that pique his interest, or that fit in with other books he’s pretty sure his readership will like. You’ll never read a review of the latest Joyce Carol Oates because who needs another review of Joyce Carol Oates? In this way, Leonard avoids being stuck in the Kakutani-Peck continuum. Both Michiko Kakutani (New York Times) and Dale Peck are trapped in the establishment. They’re either too busy justifying and encouraging it (Kakutani) or trying to set it on fire (Peck) that they never really notice that their job is actually to advocate for the reader, not themselves or their industry.

John Leonard is an excellent advocate for his readership, while at the same time remaining an elegant writer himself. Take his column from this month's Harpers. It features three books that I’ve never heard of (and I work in a book store). One is a biography of Philip K. Dick, one is a biography of Dylan Thomas and one is a historical novel about Henry James from 1895 to 1899. Besides connecting these books by theme, we then get a recurring theme throughout the piece on Leonard’s thoughts on his own generation’s failings. Example (from the section on Dylan Thomas): “We only thought the sixties were so self-destructive because we forgot about the equally deranged forties and fifties, with hydrogen bombs and Elvis and the Beats, jazz musicians strung out on heroin and race, abstract expressionists slashing at the rain-forest landscapes in their very sore heads, poets lost to lithium, loony bins, and suicide, and the rest of us complicit in our celebration of their excess. We egged them on. They were the fuel we burned.”

No other reviewer writes like John Leonard, and that is why no other reviewer is quite as deserving of his readership as John Leonard.

Quick Note:

2004-05-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

read Nicholas Kristof" today. I think it's safe to say that I agree with most of what he has to say.

Now playing on a continuous loop: The Decemberists.

2004-05-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

I’m continuing to write two ongoing posts for this blog, the first one being part two of “3 Impacts” the second one being an attempt to pick up the gauntlet thrown by Rob Grace while he was guest-blogger and run with it like a bat out of the props loft.

Honestly, I don’t feel like posting anything deep today, it’s been a long day and it’s hot up here. So instead, I’m going to briefly champion a band that I love, and try to get you interested in their music to.

Ever wonder what would happen if Edward Gorey started a rock band? The chances are they’d probably sound something like The Decemberists, a quintet from Oregon currently on Kill Rock Stars. Mixing a wide range of influences from sea shanties to rock anthems, The Decemberists combine literate, creative lyrics with evocative music. Both of their albums (“Castaways and Cutouts” and “Her Majesty The Decemberists”) find front man Colin Meloy telling cautionary tales, spinning short stories in verse, singing about famous authors and painting landscapes with his words.

The one thing you won’t find on either album are love songs. Meloy and his band (Jenny Conlee on accordion and piano, Chris Funk on theremin and pedal steel, Nate Query on bass and Ezra Holbrook on drums) clearly aren’t interested in boy meets girl. They’re more interested in toe tapping folk rock sung from the perspective of the ghost of a stillborn premature baby who is in love with the ghost of a chimney sweep or 3/4 ballads about being an actor and treading the boards.

It isn’t just subject matter that sets the Decemberists apart. It’s also the quality of their lyrical content. Take the terrifying nightmare of “Odalisque” which builds from a mournful solo guitar number to a thwomping organ and rock drumming Nick Cave epic:

they've come to find you odalisque
as the light dies horribly
on a fire escape you walk
all rare and resolved to drop

and when they find you odalisque
they will rend you terribly
stitch from stitch til all
your linen and limbs will fall

lazy lady had a baby girl
and a sweet sound it made
raised on pradies, peanut shells and dirt
in the railroad culdesac

and what do we with 10 baby shoes
a kit bag full of marbles
and a broken billiard cue? what do we do?
what do we do?

fifteen stitches will mend those britches right
and then rip them down again
sapling switches will rend those rags alright
what a sweet sound it makes

and what do we do with 10 dirty jews
a thirty-ought full of rock salt
and a warm afternoon? what do we do?
what do we do?

lay your belly under mine
you're naked under me, under me
such a filthy dimming shine
the way you kick and scream, kick and scream

and what do we do with ten baby shoes
a kit bag full of marbles
and a broken billiard cue? what do we do?
what do we do?

lazy lady had a baby girl, and a sweet sound it made

Doom and gloom isn’t all they’re capable of. Their first album includes the exuberant hippies-spinning-around-while-gleefully-dancing number “July, July!” (which, while joyous, is actually about the ghosts of murdered people) and “Her Majesty” contains songs like “Billy Liar” and “Song for Myla Goldberg” both of which will put a grin on your face.

The thing about The Decemberists is that when at their best they combine their lyrics and sensibility with a versatile instrumentation. This synchronicity happens more on the second album than on the first (“Castaways” has a few too many slow guitar songs) but when it happens, you find yourself listening to catchy pop rock about the darkest subject matter imaginable. In this way, The Decemberists are the love child of two of my favorite bands: Belle and Sebastian and Firewater. From Firewater, they get the amalgamation of influences from Kurt Weil to the Beatles to Tom Waits to gypsy music and the dark ironic take on the shaggy dog joke of life. From Belle and Sebastian they get a certain sweetness and folksy attitude towards misery.

If you like neither of these bands, don’t get anywhere near The Deceberists. If you like your rock poetic, intense, dark and fun, check them out.

"3 Impacts: Part One"

2004-05-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

(note, for the introduction to "3 Impacts" click here)

FIRST IMPACT:

Abu Ghraib is the brick through the window of American Exceptionalism. A key facet of any empire is the belief that you are exceptional, the salt of the Earth, all evil means necessary for beneficent ends, too busy being a lamp that lights this dark dark world for generations to really worry about the consequences of your actions. It took several wars and many battles of independence to shake England of this most pernicious of diseases. Seeing Americans destroying innocent Iraqis in the torture chambers of a mad dictator we said we were liberating these people from is a painful wake up call. Whether we heed it or not is a different story.

We have tried to limit the damage to our exceptionalism by claiming these despicable acts of torture were limited to a few individuals. Regardless of whether or not the Abu Ghraib scandal goes all the way to the top (I think it does, but that’s not really relevant to my argument) the “bad apple” theory is so obviously an exercise in cognitive dissonance that it shouldn’t require debunking. The prison guards at Abu Ghraib were not exceptional. Put another random group of Americans, and you may very well have gotten the same thing.

Philip Zimbardo knows this probably better than anyone else. The mad scientist behind the Standord Prison Experiment has been getting a lot of TV time lately. He tries to explain how, in barely anytime at all, a group of random college kids became brutal totalitarians, systematically dehumanizing their fellow students as part of a mock penitentiary. And that was at a college campus in the 1970’s, not in a battle field where your friends are being picked off by an anonymous enemy and this guy in front of you covered in shit might have the information you need.

If we need more proof that Charles Grainer, Lyddie England et al are merely ciphers, we need look no further than our hazing rituals. Limbaugh was onto something (inadvertent, I think) when he claimed that Abu Ghraib was like a Skull & Bones initiation. Remember when video tape emerged of a soccer team hazing ritual amongst suburban teenage girls? The older girls covered their younger counterparts in buckets of feces and made them chant and sing. Several of the guards at Abu Ghraib weren’t much older than those high schoolers. Who knows what wisdom they were supposed to gain in those scant few years that would help them grapple with the immensity of holding another human life in your hands, combined with the permission to do whatever the hell you want.

Our exceptionalism led us to believe that we could make this war work, that we could do it on the cheap (and be greeted as liberators to boot!) and it leads our President to be upset because the pictures don’t represent the true character of the American People. The President is both right and wrong at the same time. We are not a nation of torturers. We are, however, a nation of humans, capable of everything that humans are capable of, good and bad. You cannot say that Americans are categorically incapable of torturing people while there are photos swimming in our national consciousness of Americans torturing people. In order to make that particularly worthless argument stick, you have to argue either that those people aren’t Americans, or that they aren’t human beings. So far, the “isolated incident” arguers are taking the latter step: these people, we’re now told, are monsters. This argument is counter factual with what we know, however. There are torture chambers all over the world, some of them operate with our government’s complicity and knowledge. There are now (we know) relaxed regulations for torturing people in US custody at Gitmo and elsewhere. How many isolated incidents does it take to make up a systemic problem? How many monsters must people this world and the United States before we admit that they are merely human, just like us?

My point is not that America is evil. My point is that this country is made up of human beings. In post WWII US culture, we have been told time and again that we are the exceptions to the rules of how the rest of the world works. We have the best system of government, made up of people interested in nothing more than the public good. We are caring, compassionate people, who are always trying to do right even when we do wrong. We are, in other words, supermen, only without kryptonite to keep us back, our shining city on the hill getting its powers from the Earth’s yellow sun and spreading peace, justice and the American way throughout the globe. If it takes propping up some petty dictators, forgiving genocide and toppling democratically elected socialists, that’s just the price of doing business.

This exceptionalism is not unique. Exceptionalism is merely the psychological counterpart to the ideology of nationalism. Why are we nationalists? Because our country is the best. What does that mean? That we are the best, plain and simple. We are not alone in this, and it is becoming increasingly clear that exceptionalism is a debilitating psychological disease that robs people and nations of their potential. The Chinese failed to colonize much of the Middle East (and some of Eastern Europe) in the 15th century in part because they believed the land already belonged to their Emperor, regardless of whether the people in the land realized it or not. You don’t even need to belong to a state to fall victim to nationalism and exceptionalism. We Jews often claim victimhood as our exceptional property. Whenever you hear “6 million Jews and 6 million others died in the Holocaust” you are hearing exceptionalism rear its ugly head. By grouping everyone else into “others” we deny that the “others” (gays, Christian Scientists, gypsies, Jehova’s Witnesses, the elderly, the handicapped etc.) were also systematically hunted down and exterminated. We become a particular kind of Holocaust denier, denying that anyone other than ourselves has experienced the pain and suffering that we collectively have. By denying this, we deny the essential humanity in those other groups that also went to the camps.

This is not to mention Norway, which has one of the most humanitarian systems of government in the world, but ranks dead last in foreign aid. Or the Academy Francais’ dedication to making France’s intellectual progress remain distinctly French. Or Islamic Fundamentalism with its call to slaughter infidels.

No one is special. Certainly, no one nationality or religion or ethnicity is special. We are all humans. We are all just trying to make our way in the world and our humanity is both beautiful and terrifying, capable of descending into a Hobbesian state of nature or writing the works of Shakespeare. We can invent systems that limit the damage one human can inflict on another and even, if we’re lucky, encourage the best that humanity has to offer. Much of religion, for example, seems to exist for this purpose (the Ten Commandments, turning the other cheek, etc.), as do many systems of government.

These systems can be manipulated, perverted and bent toward pernicious ends. For the past few years, if not decades, our politicians have been spoon-feeding us endless ego gratification—America is the best! We will create democracy by force and bend the world to our ends, for our ends are just! After 9.11, this practice slipped the bounds of reason entirely. “Our President is infallible,” the oracles and pundits shouted, “a god-like figure that we cannot touch!” People who dared claim that maybe we weren’t going into the war in Iraq for good reasons (or who pointed out that no one seemed to know what the reasons were) were laughed at as pessimists and traitors. After all, we’re Americans, and what we decide is true and right and just is True and Right and Just.

American exceptionalism is important to talk about because it got us into this mess. Indeed, this war was fought at least in part on the basis of proving that we were exceptional, and it is going so badly because we are not. We are extremely powerful and extremely wealthy and many of our citizens are dedicated to the Rights of Man, but we are not superheroes and we are not messiahs.

Abu Ghraib is another nail in the coffin of our godhead. Learning that we’re merely mortal is traumatizing, and this is one of the ways we as a nation have been traumatized by these pictures and the graphic acts of dehumanization that they depict. 9/11 showed us that the violence of the world can be inflicted upon us. Abu Ghraib shows us that we can inflict the worst violence of the world on others. If we’re lucky, our misfortunes in Iraq and these photographs in particular will steer us towards a more human (and humanist) public and foreign policy. Perhaps then we can fulfill America’s promise without sowing destruction in our wake.

New Feature: Quote of the Week

2004-05-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

I'll have part two of the Abu Ghraib essay up later today (to read the introduction, just scroll down, it's the next entry after this one). In the mean time:

In an attempt to shake things up around here, I’m starting to implement a couple of ideas I’ve had floating around in my head. The first one is the quote of the week. So here’s the deal: I’m going to try to supply an interesting quote every week. These are not necessarily quotes I agree with, they are just ideas (often well phrased) that I think my readership will find interesting.

Hey, speaking of readership, we’re up to roughly 40 unique hits a day. Sometimes more (you people like reading blogs on Tuesdays, I’ve noticed) sometimes less. This is great! My blog hasn’t been around for very long and already an average of forty unique page views a day. Please remember to tell your friends about Parabasis! Let’s try to get the readership up up up!

Anyway, here’s the quote for this week:

“Anything under the sun is beautiful if you have the vision—it is the seeing of the thing that makes it so. The world is waiting for men with vision—it is not interested in mere pictures. What people subconsciously are interested in is the expression of beauty, something that helps them through the humdrum day, something that shocks them out of themselves and something that makes them believe in the beauty and the glory of human existence.” -- Charles Hawthorne

"3 Impacts: An Introduction"

2004-05-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it is the elitism of our newspapers that has led them to consult critics, artists, linguists and other non-politicians to help us sort through Abu Ghraib. Certainly, those war supporters who wish to silence the dissent of the Creative Class will claim it is. Personally, I’m pretty sure it’s the utter uselessness of our politicians on both sides of the aisle that has led us to finally, out of necessity, contact a few skilled writers and say “guide us”. This is not to say that the inquiry into Abu Ghraib isn’t important, or that there isn’t good work being done. There is good work, much of it being done by Republicans like McCain, working against Republicans like Inhofe and Democrats like Lieberman to get to the bottom of the Abu Ghraib outrages. It’s simply that while the investigation may eventually create a coherent narrative of events, causes, people, places, things, this determination will be ultimately unsatisfactory.

It will be unsatisfactory because while the hearings will construct an “official story”, we are living in this postmodern hell of complete media coverage, where everyone can have a voice as long as their story is sexy enough and there is no single tale to be told. We live in a Rashoman world of multiple narratives grasping at something like truth, always out of reach, always the next street over, always, ultimately, non-existent. We have seen this time and again with official calamities. Who really thinks the Warren Commission got to the bottom of things when Kennedy was assassinated? Who really thinks we know what happened in the lead up to 9/11 that made it possible? We respond to these things with convenient answers- in the case of Kennedy, we pick an explanation and hold onto it as an article of faith, in the case of 9/11, we claim it as an act of God so beyond the pale that no one was really to blame. With Abu Ghraib, we are already seeing the contrasting narratives taking shape: It was an isolated incident or group of isolated incidents involving these several bad apples. It was authorized from the highest levels of government. It was merely a translation of tactics already approved elsewhere and applied in the Iraqi prison. It was the result of a culture of laxity vis a vis human rights in the DOD. It was pornography. It was a Skull and Bones hazing ritual. It was the result of women in the military. It was necessary to finding the terrorists. It was totally unnecessary to finding the terrorists. The people who killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 never apologized, so that’s explanation enough. It was the United States’ fault. It was the Iraqi’s fault. It was Don Rumsfeld’s fault. It was Charles Grainer’s fault. It was the digital camera’s fault.

What we are really searching for is a Platonic Ideal of a congressional report. We want the Senators to call down from a misty metaphysical plane hereby untapped by NASA satellites or Sunday morning sermons some distant codified version of real events that led up to the torture, A-to-B-to-C style. Somewhere deep inside us, however, we know that even that wouldn’t do, for facts have no meaning for the current government of the United States and facts would not explain anything about Abu Ghraib. The fact that Grainer was (let’s assume for just a moment) ordered to torture inmates would not explain why the order was given, or why he followed the order or anything like that.

And so it is that we turn to the very same people we often make fun of for not living in the real world: the creative class. Unbounded by facts, our architects of fiction, our champions of subjectivity, our lords of postmodernity finally have found a use. When all else fails, call an artist. At least they’ll tell you how to screw in the light bulb in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

I have this to say to those now seeking the counsel of artists: be careful what you wish for. Call on a cultural critic, and you’ll get a critique of culture, and there’s a good chance it won’t be one you’re particularly interested in hearing. After all, the artists America derided before the war were more on target than the so-called experts, including Presidents Clinton and Bush, PM Tony Blair, multiple secretaries of state, many functionaries at the UN and the majority of public intellectuals on both sides of the political aisle. Can you blame us for saying “I told you so”? Can you blame us for letting America know we have a use? If we dabble in self-righteousness from time to time, can you forgive us for seeking this small comfort in a world so actively hostile to what we have to say?

I say this all as a rather lengthy preamble to some thoughts on Abu Ghraib. I don’t know why Ghraib happened and as I’ve written above, I’m not sure its possible to know. I want to suggest answers as to why the impact of the photos is so powerful in American culture. I have three thoughts on the subject. I’ll post at least the first one later today or tomorrow.

I'm baaack

2004-05-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Special thanks go to talented actor, writer and blogger Rob Grace for filling in for me over the past few days. Give him a round of applause, folks. Hopefully we'll have some more guest bloggers coming in for a day or two over the next couple of months. I'm also toying around with adding multiple writers to the site, so instead of guest bloggers, we simply have a group of people writing, but I don't know yet. We're not that popular (fifty hits a day is our max right now) and I kind of like being lord of this domain. I'd love to know your thoughts about what to do with Parabasis. Let me know by e-mailing me at parabasisnyc@yahoo.com, or just posting in the comments section.

One of the great things Rob's posting did was give me the free time to think of some things to post about here. One thing I've realized I've been a little too obsessed with is currentness of what I'm talking about. This sometimes leads to hastily thought out, not particularly interesting or new content. I, after all, don't really have anything to say about the Tony awards (I really, really couldn't care less) but I do have some thoughts on te relationship between actors and the creative process, for example, that I'd like to share.

So expect a different kind of post over the next few days, at least for now. There'll be current events stuff too, but I've been thinking a lot about Abu Ghraib and its impact on us, the role of the artist in society, why we do theater, the idea of being giving as an artist etc, and I'd like to share some of that with you. I'll start by posting the first section of an essay I'm working on about the impact (culturally, of course!) of Abu Ghraib and the war in Iraq tonight. I hope you enjoy it!

Wrap-up

2004-05-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

by "Guest-Blogger" Rob Grace

This is officially my last entry, and after today, I will return you to the capable hands of Mr. Isaac Butler, whose fingers are no doubt itching with a desire to type and communicate the myriad of thoughts that for the past week has been trapped inside his mind.

I enjoyed my time as guest-blogger here, but what have we learned?

I feel we've learned quite a bit, and yet absolutely nothing.

Do we know where we are traveling from and what we are traveling toward? We learn and we grow, but do we have any assurance that knowledge and growth, in the end, will amount to anything?

Do we believe Tolstoy when he says, "The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless"? Or do we believe psychologist Viktor Frankl when he says, "What is demanded of man is not to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms"? Shall we discuss these two statements? Shall we debate whether or not they are, in fact, contradictory? What shall we do?

Life is a quagmire of moral relativity. There is no way out. We do not know why we do the things we do. We do not know what is and what is not virtuous. We do not understand the meaning of the events of the world around us. We are ignorant. We are fools. We will never know the answers to our impossible questions.

And by the way, if anyone wants to see me do stand-up comedy, come to "Don't Tell Mama's" on June 2 at 9pm.

Thank you for your time.

just one question . . .

2004-05-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

by "Guest-Blogger" Rob Grace

Why haven't you read the Satanic Bible?

What are you afraid of? Are you afraid you'll agree with it? Are you worried you'll find within it some truth?

What does the Christian Bible say about the matter?

"Seek and ye shall find."

"The truth shall set you free."

"Happy is the man who finds wisdom and understanding for the gain from it is better than gain from silver and profit better than gold."

Am I saying the Satanic Bible contains within it the truth? Not necessarily. I am saying - Who are you to dismiss it?

Many people do read the Satanic Bible and they come to accept it and live their lives by what it preaches. These people are also prone to commit human sacrifices, sometimes of newborn babies. Do you think this is wrong? Do you understand this behavior? You don't want to understand it, do you? You don't feel you have the capacity to perform such a gross act, do you? You think you are morally superior to a Satan worshipper don't you? Are you worried that if you understand the rationale for committing a human sacrifice, you will somehow gain the capacity to do it yourself? Are you worried you'll become less of a person?

Perhaps you're wondering: Is Rob a Satan-worshipper? Is he using his time here at Parabasis to spread the word of evil throughout the world?

The answer to both questions is no. I'm simply wondering, why haven't you read the Satanic Bible?

Actors

2004-05-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

by “Guest-Blogger” Rob Grace

I don't know about you, but when I hear about what goes on behind the scenes of a theatrical production, I am somewhat interested in the gossip about who hates who and who's sleeping with who, I'm somewhat more interested in the trials and tribulations of the rehearsal process, but, above all, I'm most interested in the existential crises occurring in the minds of the actors.

They always seem to emerge, these existential crises.

How can actors justify what they do? Tens of thousands of actors live in New York City alone. Everywhere you go in Manhattan, there is an actor. There are actors on your subway car. There's an actor in the elevator with you. At least two actors work with you to support themselves. If you go to see a play, and you think the only actors there are on the stage, you are greatly mistaken. There's an actor working the ticket booth, an actor running the soundboard, an actor backstage helping with costume changes. Who do you think made the programs? An actor. Who do you think swept the lobby before the show? An actor.

The world is not in need of them. The world is in need of teachers. Our country is in need of soldiers. In this troubled economy, wouldn't it be more worthwhile to start up a business to provide not only jobs, but a valuable service to society?

Ask an actor why he does what he does. He will have an answer ready for you.

"I really enjoy the creative process."

"I like being a part of something that shows an audience some inherent truth about human behavior and has the potential to help people better understand themselves and their society."

"It's the only time when I feel fully connected to my body, my emotions, and my intellect all at once."

"I like to make people laugh, think, and feel. People need the stimulation. They need the catharsis."

These are good reasons, but they are not honest answers. Here's the only honest answer:

"I don't know."

Nobody knows why they do it. I know this for a fact because I am an actor and I don't know why I do it, and I have yet to encounter an actor who has provided me with a reason that I felt was genuine and sufficient.

Prove me wrong. Actors, writers, photographers, dancers, everyone. I challenge you to put into words the drive to create art.

Consider the gauntlet thrown . . .

moods

2004-05-19T06:23:00.000-07:00

by “Guest-Blogger” Rob Grace

What kind of mood are you in today?

I'm in the mood to resurrect Thomas Paine and Soren Kierkegaard, lock them in a room together for a week, and see what happens.

Both men spent the later years of their lives engaged in failed attempts to battle the current state of Christianity. Every time I hear George W. Bush reference his devotion this religion, I sense both Paine and Kierkegaard rolling over in their graves, or at least banging on their coffins to try to get out and shut him up.

Paine authored the brilliant piece, "The Age of Reason", which quite intelligently rails against the absurdity of The Bible. He must have known it would be a controversial work, since he purposefully waited until the end of his life to write it. He was living in Europe at the time and most certainly underestimated the extent of the negative reactions he would elicit. He returned to America, which promptly turned its back on him, slandered him, and called him an atheist. The backlash sent him spiraling into obscurity and poverty, where he died, and his bones were shipped to England where they disappeared forever.

"My mind is my own church," he wrote.

He argued that man could find God through science, through observing and studying the works God created, rather than by studying ancient outdated texts written under false pretenses. He criticized people for blindly following The Bible when so much contradictory material seems to question its authenticity. In one of his more clever passages, he says of the Gospels, "The originals are not in possession of any Christian church existing, any more than the tablets of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the handwriting in either case."

He argues that even those who claim to abide by The Bible do not actually abide by The Bible when he writes, "The church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears."

Fifty years later and halfway around the globe, Kierkegaard fought against this same hypocrisy. He differed from Paine in that he was a faithful Christian, a man of The Bible, and he made a name for himself by spending entire chapters analyzing a single passage. However, he too was deeply discouraged by the disparity between what The Bible teaches and what was preached and followed by the so-called Christians of his day. You can watch his ideological battle unfold over the course of hundreds of pages in his brilliant book, "Works of Love".

He says, "By foolish and ingratiating Sunday-talk, Christianity has been deceptively transformed into an illusion and we have even been tricked into the fancy that we, just as we are, are Christians."

Christianity, in its truest form, is a quiet religion that risks preaching its own destruction by teaching that we should not only let our enemies harm us, but allow them to harm us more than they initially desire. For this reason, a true Christian will never be an effective political leader. One cannot very well love his enemy and turn the other cheek and at the same time, defend his nation from people who wish to attack it. It cannot be done. This is why, in colonial America, the Quakers were removed from power in Pennsylvania. They refused to defend their citizens against Indian raids, allowing countless civilians to die under their leadership.

George W. Bush claims to be strong on defense, but it is not because he is Christian, but because he is blatantly unchristian. He blatantly ignores those very tenets that the Quakers of Pennsylvania held close to their hearts.

Soren Kierkegaard. Thomas Paine. I am in the mood to resurrect you. Be glad that I lack the technology to do so. Even if I could resurrect you, perhaps I would not, to spare you, so you wouldn't have to see that the battles you fought against hypocrisy and foolishness are still being fought today, and will most likely be fought until the end of mankind. In fact, they will most likely lead to the end of mankind.

Guest-Blogger

2004-05-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce myself.

I'm Rob.

I was an actor in the show that Isaac recently directed, "First You're Born", and I am also the author of "Questions and Answers", the play which Isaac referred to in a previous entry as "a Pinteresque, quiet, pause-filled piece about redemption and morality." Isaac and I are currently in the preliminary stage of planning a workshop production of the piece, and at a meeting over the weekend to discuss the matter, Isaac offered me the opportunity to serve as "guest-blogger" for a few days on Parabasis and after only mild hesitation I graciously accepted.

You should know that I enjoyed working with Isaac on “First You’re Born”, but I will say that during the run of the show the stress of it began to take its toll and slightly impair my ability to perform ordinary tasks and make simple decisions.

Here's an example of such an instance . . .

One afternoon before a show I walked into a deli to get some juice. Afterwards, halfway down the block, I suddenly realized there was a bottle of juice in my hand.

How did it get there?

I remembered entering the deli, but had no memory of purchasing the juice or leaving the deli. I was certain that I had left the deli because I was no longer in the deli, but it quickly became clear that the reason I had no memory of purchasing the juice was because I had not purchased the juice. I had stolen it. I had walked into the deli, picked up a bottle of juice and left without paying for it, completely oblivious of my actions.

The question: Should I or should I not return to the deli to pay for the juice?

It was quite a simple issue and I was determined to resolve the matter quickly and rationally, so that I could continue with my day and prepare for the show.

The first thing one should do when faced with such a dilemma is consult Socrates. Socrates, of course, believed that a man cannot knowingly commit a deed that he believes to be evil, so according to him, if I did not return to the deli to pay for the juice, I must inherently believe it is right for me to do so.

Certain laws should be broken and perhaps this law was one of them. As Thomas Jefferson said, "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

The task at hand seemed clear. If I could rationalize that the law preventing me from stealing the juice is unjust, according to Jefferson, I would be obliged not to return to pay for it.

I then looked at the context in which Jefferson made that statement, which was, of course, the American Revolution. Jefferson’s revolution wasn’t just a reaction to certain laws, it was a reaction to the very system of government by which he was ruled.

I wondered that if I decided not to return to the deli and pay for the juice, could this decision have deeper ramifications? Would I be advocating the elimination of private property and perhaps the establishment of a new system of government that's not built on the premise of ensuring the preservation of private property? Could such a change be accomplished within our current system of government without some type of violent revolution? Would I be able to gain enough support for my cause?

Again, I consulted Socrates, who was ultimately condemned to death for charges that he believed were unfounded. At his trial, he said of his accusers that "they have scarcely uttered one single word of truth." He believed he did no wrong and though he expressed hostility toward those who condemned him, he retained his respect of the legal system that allowed them to do so.

It seemed that I was doing the opposite. I was questioning my system of government for upholding a law that I believed to be just. I realized that I didn't truly advocate the elimination of private property. After all, I’m thinking about buying a new computer and I’m not sure how that would work if the concept of private property were abolished. In our current system, I certainly would not want someone to steal from me and therefore could not justify stealing from someone else. It would be nothing other than hypocritical for me not to return to pay for the juice.

However, I didn't return to pay for juice.

Why not?

I had been to that deli several times before and each time, the man behind the counter was extremely rude to me. One time I asked if I could get a plastic spoon even though I hadn't bought anything, and the man threw a fit. Another time, I had no money and attempted to buy a drink with a credit card, and once again, the man threw a fit. "There's a ten dollar minimum for credit card purchases!" he yelled, "You should have known!"

So in the end I chose my own personal revenge over the laws of the state. A morally questionable choice, I agree. A choice many would make without giving a second thought, I also agree. But as I wandered along the sidewalk, juice in hand, I was quite disturbed by the liberties we take with this unspoken contract we have with our government. Like Christians with Bible passages, we pick and choose what we will and will not obey.

I was certain only of one thing: The stress of the show was certainly taking its toll. When a simple trip to the deli to get some juice turns into a journey through the mysterious web of justice, virtue, and morality, I know I must need a vacation.

And now, some music

2004-05-17T12:46:00.000-07:00

So, like I said earlier, I went to go see the Ted Leo and the Pharmacists show (hereby Ted Leo/RX or TL/RX) last night at bar 13. This was a “secret” show—minimal publicity, announced on his website and on a couple of others, but not the website of the venue. I had heard of secret shows before—a friend of mine saw Guided By Voices under the nom de plume “Homosexual Flypaper” at CBGB’s and was treated to an intimate evening of covers and old material that people hadn’t heard in awhile.

Mary and I went to the show, and let me tell ya, it was pretty awesome. First off, if you haven’t heard Ted Leo/RX, well, you need to. Besides the fact that Ted Leo is a big Homestarrunner fan, and founded Chisel, one of the greatest bands in the history of the DC punk movement, he's also a fantastic song writer. TL/RX are the 21st century American answer to Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Literate smart lyrics with poppy, complex vintage punk instrumental backing. That’s about the easiest description I can come up with, although those guys at AMG can probably do better.

The special treat of tonight’s oh-so-secret show? Well, TL/RX head into the studio tomorrow to start recording the new album, and they decided they’d demo it by playing it for us from start to finish in order. The new album is going to be great, I think. I can already pick out several songs I really like, including this obsessive arpeggiated number that apparently will finish off side one if you happen to buy it on record and one about taking a walk, or walking around, or something like that. I really like songs about taking a walk. Marvin Pontiac’s “Runnin’ Round” or Spoon’s “Take a Walk” or TL/RX’s “Bridges, Squares” always put me in a good mood.

The new album sounds great, the band is really tight (the RX’s drummer and bassist are a sickly tight backup band) and the fans are cute, and nice (not as attractive as Firewater’s fans but much, much nicer). Ted Leo is a charming front man. He constantly makes cracks at the expense of the band’s last effort “Hearts of Oak” which (I’m just guessing here) hard core fans must not like too much. Oh well, their loss.

After they finish playing the album, the crowd goes a little nuts. Ted Leo struts over to his amp to tune his guitar, and then turns the audience and says “well, that’s the end… of the new stuff. I guess we’ll play some old stuff now. Any guidance?” They proceed to play several cuts of “Tyranny of Distance” and older material based on people’s recommendations. At the end, he plays an oldie that I haven’t heard before and thanks the audience for “not requesting a single song off of Hearts of Oak, really, I’m touched”.

You see, the problem is that TL/RX’s album “The Tyranny of Distance” is basically an instant classic. It’s a beautiful album filled with one excellent song after another. It’s almost overwhelming in it’s power. That kind of success is unrepeatable. No matter what, you’d be headed to dissappointmentville after that. It’s almost inevitable. I happen to quite like “Hearts of Oak”, but then again I heard it before I heard “Tyranny of Distance”, so there you go.

Anyway, they’re playing again in NYC soon and I’m definitely going to see them again. TL/RX are some of the most energetic musicians I’ve ever seen. Every song is played a good 1.5 times the speed on the album, and then they gradually speed up as it goes along. This becomes something of a miracle when you realize how complicated many of Leo’s guitar lines are. Meanwhile, his poor drummer has to go apeshit at least once on every song. By the end of the show he was grimacing, drenched in sweat, looking like he was 2/3rds of the way to a massive coronary. This was the point when someone requested “Dial Up” which probably has the hardest and fastest drum part of any TL/RX song I know. Leo looked to the drummer, seemingly asking permission before agreeing to do the song.

Go see them if you get a chance. Many of their shows are cheap/free and it’s well worth it.

Onto other music business… my friends over at One Ring Zero have a new album out, it’s called “As Smart As We Are” and features lyrics by many awesome writers, including three of my favorite authors (Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem and Clay McLeod Chapman) and many other well-knowns (Rick Moody, Neil Gaiman, Myla Goldberg, Margaret Atwood, Dave Eggers etc.) . Normally, ORZ do instrumental prog-klezmer-circus-jazz or something like that. Anyway, this album is a little more straight forward, it’s a pop/rock album, but it’s a prog-klezmer-circus-jazz pop/rock album. A lot of fun to listen to and worth checking out.

Also finally got my hands on Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” which I fucking love. “18” was the moment when Reich left behind rigid systems, allowing them to inform his song writing without being the be-all and end-all. In pieces like “Drumming” (which I’ve written about here), Reich made realization of the formal system part of the ecstatic beauty of listening to his music. As ‘Drumming” layers version after version of one pattern in occasionally different tempos over and over, and music gets complicated, but the writing is very simple.

“18” is very different. While there are glimpses of phasing, and the style remains rhythmic and repetitive, this music is about something very different. Part one (“pulses”) moves through 11 chords, each one repeated twice for the length of one breath. Then you are treated to variations and expansions on those chords in each of 11 sections. And then we get back to the 11 chords played again as a kind of epilogue.

It’s difficult to describe and, if you’ve never heard it before, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. The closest thing I can compare it to is the film scores of Thomas Newman, who presents a kind of watered down, listener-friendly version of Reich’s rhythmic building of themes and variations.

I think I’ve written enough about music today. Three cds you should go pick up if you’re interested:
Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” (get the 1997 version out on Nonesuch)
Ted Leo/RX, “The Tyranny of Distance” out on “Lookout” records
One Ring Zero, “As Smart As We Are” published by Softskull

Happy listening!

Shh... It's a secret!

2004-05-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody.

Went to a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists concert last night, a "secret" concert, apparently. They played the new album (which they go to record today) from start to finish in order, and then took requests. It was awesome, I'll have more on that later today, along with some other music stuff about Steve Reich and One Ring Zero.

Also, good news! Starting Tuesday, First You're Born actor (and geneal all around good guy) Rob Grace will be guest blogging from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Temposphere.

As for now, I'm off to meet some people for lunch (slept later than I meant to, sorry!) so there'll be posting later today and guest posting starting tomorrow.

More news you don't hear

2004-05-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

Please please please check out AfricaPundit a blog about current events in the continent of Africa. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but it's not like we hear a lot about Africa in the news, and a gagillion people do live there.

And in other news... we may have a guest blogger this week! More to come later!

More News You May Have Missed

2004-05-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

When you think about 17 Year Cicadas, does the phrase "won't somebody think of the children" spring to mind? Well someone has, thank god.

For those of you thinking "how great would it be to have the Olympics here in America" this article may make you think twice about it. Two words: interest groups. It seems that a mixture between the legalization and unionization of prostitutes in Greece and the tough regulation of brothel placement has caused a bit of a conflict. Prostitutes are worried about safety and the reputation of Athens, and this is causing some headaches for the city and the prostitutes union

Meanwhile Senator Zell Miller is trying to tie Joe Leiberman for worst. democrat. ever.

Over in our science and health section, a well known nobel laureate is telling us to develop laws that ban genetic discrimination before developing the science to alter our genetics. Perhaps another screening of Gattaca is in order? Anyone else here a mild appreciator of Andrew Niccol's faux-Phillip K. Dick stylings?

Thanks to ArtsJournal we have this unfortunate story about what happens to all that art the Nazis looted.

Finally, in a blast from the past, Harpers has reprinted a hilarious exchange between the creators of "That 70's Show" and "Freaks and Geeks". Not for the faint of heart, this correspondance will give you a lot of good excuses never to work in television.

Politics, Theater, War, Abu Ghraib, it's just a thematic clearing house over here!

2004-05-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to return to the subject of theater and politics. This is largely due to an e-mail conversation between myself and good ole George Hunka about my last play (First You're Born) his plays, politics and art in general etc. At some point he wrote that he looked forward to seeing more about this on the blog, and I thought i'd start by adapting a few of my e-mails to him into a post. Let's see how it works:

A lot of really serious shit has been hitting the fan in the newspapers lately. The War in Iraq has turned into (what I believe Atrios called) a Chomskyite nightmare of American power. Nick Berg's beheading was a grotesque reminder of the cycle of violence we're engaged in. The war in the Central African Republican rages on, largely thanks to child soldiers. Simply put, it's easy to think "ah, welcome to hell, nice handbasket you got there!" And as artists, isn't it our duty to respond in some way?

There was a point in the midst of First You're Born where I was basically like.. what the hell am I doing? Rome is burning and I'm fiddling about with this romantic comedy, this stupid little trifle in the midst of all of this carnage!

But then I took another look at the play and said... you know what, the audience may or may not get this, but this play is about surmounting your alienation by connecting with other human beings in a real way. And that theme of seenig the humanity in everyone and finding joy in that is very relevant to today, even if it may not look it on the surface. This is why in the set design we isolated the characters in their own apartments (past productions had them share the same space) and why the dream sequence is about them busting out of their worlds by stepping through the walls of their apartments. I wanted the audience to feel these characters getting over themselves in as powerful a way as possible.

The next play I'm thinking about doing a workshop (or, if resources don’t allow, a reading, sorry 13P! I’m developing this play!) of a new play by one of the actors in the show. It's a very Pinteresque, quiet pause filled piece about morality and redemption. Or really, it's asking some big time questions like in the absence of an objective morality (i.e. a divine one), is redemption even possible? This is an important question for us to grapple with in these times.

I guess what I'm saying is that right now my interest lies in finding what is topical about the themes in plays whose literal subject matter isn't topical itself. Some find this cowardly, but you know what, I'm an artist, not an essayist. I use Parabasis to talk politics overtly so that I can ask questions in my theatrical work, not answer them. Theater that answers questions isn't trying to explore or discover or illuminate anything. It's agit prop, plain and simple. How many plays have there been about crazy Gulf War I veterans this season? How many of them have been any good?

The only really topical play I know that I really love is Caryl Churchill's "Mad Forest". "Mad Forest" (which chronicles life before during and after the Romanian "Revolution" and features, amongst other things, a vampire and a talking dog) was written immediately (like two months) after the Romanian Revolution as Churchill, director Mark Wing-Davey and the cast traveled to Romania to work their Joint Stock research magic on the community there. If the "Mad Forest" of the Iraq War came along, I'd do it, and I'm glad current-events plays are out there. I just don't feel like as an artistic community we have enough of a perspective on the thing right now. It's happening to us, and we're perpetuating it, and I'm trying to do theater so I can say "hold on, slow down, what about this?" and see what happens.

This doesn't stop me from being on some level disappointed in myself. I am inundated with politics, and yet I'm not doing work that is a direct response to our political realities of our day. Instead, I'm doing plays that are thematically related to the issues affecting us in this day and age. Some days, I don't really know if that's enough. I don't know if I'm shirking my duty to do socially responsible art.

These are the days when I start thinking "what if I opened my own space?" What if I just had a space where I could just throw anything out there. Sam Shepard once was interviewed, and talking about La Mama he said that one of the great things was you could write a play on Monday and they'd show it on Saturday. What if there was an environment that existed so that the more politically motivated of us could serve as like a "rapid response team" and just throw things at the wall and see if they stick. Try to create interesting, vibrant theater out of today's newspaper and see what happens.

Well, I don’t have the kind of money to do that, so then I got to thinking… What would that kind of theater even look like? Who would be the people who did it? Who would write it? What would its production values be like? It would be a great experiment to try. Just say "for these two months, I'm going to do the Rapid Response Team" group, and we're gonna perform every Monday night at the Kraine Theater and we're going to perform a new play or group of short plays based on whatever is in the news that week."

And the more I think about it, the better an idea I think it is. If you could get a team of writers, actors and designers together, and just really dedicate yourself to it for a couple of months, you could all do some really fun and interesting work. Of course, I feel like I have a lot of ideas like this—things that would be really interesting and fun to do but I lack the logistical resources (or know how) to make them happen, and then the next hair-brained scheme comes along and this one vanishes. Anyone wanna help me raise money for it?

Satire Blogging

2004-05-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

For some fun political satire blogging, check out Jesus' General if you haven't already. He (or she, I suppose) can be really hilarious.

And now for someting completely animated...

2004-05-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve been watching quite a bit of animation recently, both web-based and otherwise. After months of lobbying from my good friend Ben in Boston, I finally broke down and watched “King of the Hill” for the first time since the fifth episode of the first season. Also, with my partner’s sister and her boyfriend in town from Malaysia we ended up watching a surprising amount of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”. Add this in to my usual diet of “The Simpsons”, “"Homestarrunner", “South Park” and all sorts of flash content (“"Rather Good”, anyone?) and animated movies and I guess you could say that I’m fairly well versed for a layman.

And one thing that I’ve noticed unites all of the animation that I like is a certain amount of creative absurdism balanced out by creative and consistent character building. Of all of the things listed above, “The Simpsons” and “Homestarrunner” succeed the best. Take, for example, this Strongbad e-mail from “Homestarrunner’s website (flash required, of course). On its surface, it’s an amusing bit of witty slapstick—Strongbad pretty much makes fun of people, hurts/breaks things and then gets accidentally beaten up. This slapstick exists in counterpoint with the usual absurdist dialogue that makes up the website’s scripts. When Strongbad is stealing swiss cake rolls from Bubs whilst invisible, Bubs (seeing only the rolls flying away) shouts “My chocolates! Come back guys! I didn’t mean those things I said!” and when the pile of rolls (i.e. Strongbad) punches Homestar, Homestar exclaims “Ow! Those things are bad for you!”

So on its surface, we have slapstick and absurdist humor. But if you are a frequent visitor to the website, there’s a third level the e-mail operates on—that of character knowledge. Strongbad will pretty much always make fun of everyone around him, and his fantasies of things that are cool often turn out to be severely lame. Furthermore, Homestar Runner will always find a creative way to be blissfully, sublimely stupid. This cartoon gets funnier the more you watch it, because it builds off of your existing knowledge of the characters and lets the characters grow and develop from comedic short to comedic short.

Animation also allows the fantastical to invade the everyday. There is no suspension of disbelief when you’re watching animation; it’s fundamentally impossible. This does not mean that you can’t empathize with the characters it’s just that the bizarre becomes possible. Take the Simpsons: Homer can shine his bald head in the “shine-o ball-o” without suffering any kind of real damage, Marge can have a tower of blue hair without it being weird and a man named Jasper can freeze himself in a deli freezer awaiting an age of robotic sex slaves. This is all possible because the flights of surreal fancy are balanced by tight plotting and well developed characters.

The golden age of the Simpsons (roughly seasons 3-7) also uses this mix between the surreal and the everyday beautifully. Most jokes worked on several different levels- they played off your knowledge of the characters, were witty, often came from somewhere beyond left field and also usually set up the next joke or plot point beautifully. The dramatic fall off in quality in the Simpsons largely comes (I believe) from an abandonment of all character development for the cheap gag, the surreal moment, or the mean spirited gross out joke. Without loveable characters to root for, the jokes fall flat. It becomes like the worst of “The Family Guy” (itself a frequently funny but artistically bankrupt Xerox copy of the Simpsons).

The only animation that can really survive the dip into pure surrealism seems to be short from animation. There are plenty of shorts (including on Homestar’s site) that make no coherent sense, yet are so clever and inventive that you can’t help but be moved in some way. The Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” family of short shows (“Aqua Teen”, “Space Ghost”, “Harvey Birdman” etc.) all rely on this. They are so short (twelve mintues, by God!) that by the time you ask yourself “no really, what the hell is going on here?” they’re over, and you’ve already laughed your ass off. The only thing that the Adult Swim shows have to watch out for is their increasing need to feature lots of annoying voice characterizations and shouting instead of witty craziness (“Shake” on Aqua Teen, I’m lookin’ at you).

The point I’m trying to make is that longer-form animation has a real balancing act to commit itself to. It has to be just outlandish enough to justify its existence as an animated piece, while remaining character based enough to make you care to watch it. Some animation is too concerned with character development. I’ve watched quite a bit of “King of the Hill” now and, while occasionally amusing, the show is basically a boring family sit com a la “Home Improvement” or “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Simply put, there’s no reason for the show to be animated, and the limited range of visual acting that animated characters can produce often undermines the show’s occasional moments of wit. It could really use a dream sequence with a space coyote voiced by Johnny Cash or two, it would liven the show up, and take its tame unimaginative visual style to another level.

Sorry, George

2004-05-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

So I forgot to mention in my news roundup feature that the idea is actually a parody/outright theft of George Hunka's excellent roudup of the daily news. I decided to do a kind of "off the beaten path" with it, and I won't be doing it every day, but here's to giving credit where credit is due. Hunka and Slate.com's "today' papers" are definitely my ancestors on this one.

Busy busy day. More blogging later, I hope.

And, in other news...

2004-05-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

I just thought this would fun, what with the fact that media can’t really focus on more than one or two issues at once. Here’s some stuff to check out:

Over at the Guaridan, we find out that the world is turning it’s back on US consumer products, as the symbols of American might suffer from the images of American power misused. Over in Houston, they seem to now think it’s okay for same sex couples to attend prom together. In Poland, a sexually aroused horse bit a man to death, in Virginia you can apparently now see Nascar Ballet, and if you haven’t heard the “This American Life” about price fixing at ADM it’s like the most brilliant thing ever. Set aside an hour, click here and search the site for "the fix is in". It's a story so amazing that it couldn't be made up.

I promise I'll have some cultural stuff coming down the pipes soon.

Unconnected Thoughts on Abu Ghraib and American Culture

2004-05-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

So I pretty much haven’t written anything about Abu Ghraib. To tell you the truth, I’m having a lot of trouble controlling the steady flow of bile that wants to come out of my mouth into coherent thoughts on the page. So instead of going for coherence, I present the following to you as a jumble of musings on Abu Ghraib.

First off, if you haven’t read Senator Inhofe’s comments during today’s testimony, you really should. To get good commentary, check out Atrios here or Talking Points Memo here. I don’t know if anyone has the link to a video recording, but if you do please send it to me at parabasisnyc@yahoo.com.

The reason why is this… look at the recording of Inhofe’s statement (in which he said that he’s outraged by the outrage about Abu Ghraib and these prisoners got a slightly inappropriate version of what they got comin’ to ‘em) and now look at the woman sitting behind the Senator. She can’t contain her befuddlement at what the Senator is saying no matter how hard she tries. You can see a “what the fuck?” cross her face over and over again. That’s about the best commentary on this idiotic monster of an elected representative as I can think of.

Next unconnected thought: you know, even if no prisoner abuse had ever taken place, even if we were the knights in shining armor our President keeps saying we are, holding Iraqi citizens at one of the main centers of Hussein’s Gulag was a monstrous error. I mean, it's trivial by comparison, and maybe it's just the liberal arts major in me, but symbols matter. As does language. You get an anti-intellectual administration, you reap what you sow. We’re running the country from Hussein’s palaces, and imprisoning people in his old torture chambers and running around telling the world that the rape rooms are now closed. This is a disastrous mistake.

And speaking of intellectual curiosity and symbolic meaning, has anyone noticed all the attention Philip Zimbardo and the Stanford Prison Experiment have been getting? Did anyone notice furthermore that the experiment (which I studied in probably three classes through high school and college) is decades old? What did we think we going to happen when we removed all real oversight or control from these folks running the prison?

Next unconnected thought: I just heard on the news the other night some Senator claiming that Rumsfeld’s resignation would be a victory for the terrorists. Look, Al Qaeda and all of them are going to do what they’re going to do to spin whatever we do into the best possible light for their organization. We can’t govern by trying to anticipate what they’re going to be encouraged by and discouraged by. If we do that, than quite literally the terrorists have won because they have intimidated us into changing our nation’s actions to avoid certain consequences. I really wish someone (maybe, say, Kerry, showing some backbone) would just come out and say this. Just say: politicians invoke terrorists in order to scare you into agreeing with them. The truth is we’re fighting against these organizations, but at the same time we’re going to continue to do what’s right, and what’s right may be something that the terrorists think is good for them, but they’re deluding themselves because we’re still on the hunt, we’re going to disrupt these networks, and do what we can to prevent future attacks against civilians, Americans in particular. Doesn’t anyone else think the voters would respect someone who did that?

Next unconnected thought: look, Pentagon, just release the photos and video. We’ve all been told what’s in them. Keeping them from the public eye and dribbling them out is only making the worse. Don’t use the excuse that you’re worried about American safety. What, you don’t think people are pissed just hearing that there’s rape on those tapes? You think they need to see it to support beheading American civilians? I actually think withholding it is more dangerous, not less. Releasing the tapes won’t put Americans in harm’s way. Sending them to Iraq without enough support did that just fine.

I wonder what the people advocating for “enemy combatant” status and Gitmo etc. think about the government’s “trust us” argument now.

As to Rumsfeld resigining… well… shouldn’t he (and his neocon cronies) resign for botching the occupation so thoroughly? I mean, isn’t the torture scandal just a convenient way for supporters of this war (The Economist, T. Friedman, F. Zakaria etc.) to kick his ass out of the back door instead of owning up to the fact that the theoretical war and occupation were never going to go as well as the wars in their heads? Don’t get me wrong, I think Runsfeld should resign, and I think that he and his team took definite steps that encouraged and allowed Abu Ghraib (relieving JAG from its oversight duties, making comments about gloves coming off, setting up the war in total contempt of international standard, practices and laws etc.) but there’s a real plethora of reasons for him to go, and I hope we can focus collectively on all of those over the coming days. That being said, as someone has pointed out somewhere out here in the metaverse, Bush has pretty much tied his political fortunes to Rumsfeld, so it’s pretty clear that Rummy ain’t resigning or being fired any time soon. And unpopularity isn’t going to change it either. Dick Cheney is immensely unpopular, even among registered GOP voters, and yet the Bush team keeps him on as the VP candidate.

Something about Abu Ghraib has really shaken David Brooks. You should read his column today. It isn’t his usual “oh, the Bush administration is kind of fucked up but their hearts are pure and the neocon agenda is just”. He really seems to be undergoing some kind of metamorphosis. It’s interesting. I’m not saying I agree with everything he says, but it’s interesting.

Now for something from a cultural angle: I’ve said it before here in Parabasis and I’ll say it again. The events at Abu Ghraib legally fall under the definition of torture. Calling it “abuse” softens the blow and keeps us from really reckoning with what went on at Abu Ghraib. I find it an interesting coincidence that as a society we’ve been obsessed with questions around the American sensibility and its lack of a tolerance for disruption. The gay marriage debate and the FCC obscenity smack down are both fundamentally about Americans not wanting to deal with that which offends, challenges or disrupts their worldviews. Gay marriage is anathema to conservatives for many reasons, but the most interesting to me is of course the hidden cultural angle. If gays choose to get married it really takes the wind out of the whole scary forbidden subculture lifestyle choice argument. American’s views on homosexuality will be challenged as more gay couples embrace a public life through civic marriage. If there’s one thing the status quo hates, it’s being challenged.

And then we have the FCC (I know this reads like I’m going out on a serious limb, but I’m trying to explore an idea I’m having as I’m writing it, just bare with me). The entire FCC debate centers really around the government protecting the American public from the knowledge of taboo subjects. Some people want the government’s protection, some people don’t. Either way, there is this idea that information can fundamentally corrupt you. By showing you nipples, saying the f-word, talking about sex or drug use or whatever these little bits of information will disrupt your worldview, and by offending your sensibilities somehow damage you.

And now, tangentially related, we have Abu Ghraib and what appears to be a concerted effort on the part of the news media to treat the American public with kid gloves. We need to know what our citizens are doing to people in other countries. We need to have our outrage provoked. We need to be shown what we as a society are capable of. We need, in other words, to have our sensibilities (those very things the right wing is trying to protect) challenged again and again and again. It is our right and obligation as citizens in a democracy to be well informed, and using euphemisms like “abuse” is a good way for the media to protect us from having our worldview rocked by the horrible events at Abu Ghraib.

The definition of a quagmire is, if I remember correctly, when everything you do makes the situation worse but at the same time, pulling out would be a disaster. I don’t know if Iraq will remain a quagmire forever, but it certainly fits the definition right now. I can only hope that things get better and fast. Honestly, at this point, even if that meant that public opinion would swing back to the Bushes and their disasterous plans for the world, I just hope that there is a shot at redemption for the American people and a glimmer of hope for the Iraqis, who really deserve a better version of freedom than this.

Busy busy busy

2004-05-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

I have family in town from Malaysia this week, and it is kind of impairing my ability to keep up with the blog, so I apologize for that.

There is lots to talk about in the world of arts and politics. There is seemingly no good news coming out for the Bush administration right now, or rather I should say the bad news these days seems totally unspinnable, although I’m sure they’ll find a way to spin it. Atrios is keeping a good watch over the dribbling details of our massive human rights violations over in Iraq. Meanwhile in the arts, there are the now-thanks-to-Daniel-Okrent controversial Tony Awards of which George Hunka has written eloquently and passionately and rather representatively of my own opinions.

Also on the New York Times, in a cross roads of arts and politics, Luc Sante, writer of "Low Life" perhaps my favorite book about New York City, has a great piece on the Abu Ghraib scandal in the op/ed section.

Listmania

2004-05-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

And now for something fun…

Over on my old school chumEve Tushnet’s blog, she’s starting a discussion of the greatest titles of various forms of entertainment. Some on her rather exhaustive list include Everything That Rises Must Converge and Gone With The Wind.

I thought I would add a few, sorted by category, to the list (and while making the list, I realized that right now I’m in a “long titles” phase, anyway):

Books/Stories:
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Avengers of the New World
The Artificial Nigger
Beyond Good and Evil

Plays:
I Am At My Best When I Am Singing Very Quietly
Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty
Much Ado About Nothing (just think about it again, just think about it, it’s fucking brilliant)

Albums:
If You’re Feeling Sinister
The Tyranny of Distance
14:59 (this one only works in context, said context being the TERRIBLE but very popular band Sugar Ray’s third chart topping album which they presciently predicted would be pretty much the end of their fifteen minutes of fame. Brilliant!)

I challenge you, culture bloggers and culture readers! Get out there and make some lists!

Words matter

2004-05-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Hey, New York Times, guess what? What happened at Abu Ghraib prison was torture not abuse. Rumsfeld tried to defend a legalistic difference for like a day, but even he gave up on it eventually. Rape, degradation, beatings, sexual humiliation and cold water treatments (to mention a few) are examples of torture. Their systematic, planned and documented nature only makes them worse.

What Rumsfeld was trying to do when he split the nonexistent hair between torture and abuse was take away the reason for our outrage. The New York Times should be ashamed of itself for helping him in his mission. Neither does using the term “abuse” present a more nuanced or objective picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib. It is simply denial of the fact. By all established law, what happened at Abu Ghraib was systematic, dehumanizing torture, and no other term will suffice.

Language is important. What you call something alters its meaning and value. This is one of the many reasons why intellectuals are culturally important figures and why the Right’s fervent outspoken anti-intellectualism is one of the most dangerous things about them.

Daniel Okrent, theater crusader

2004-05-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

Anyone who cares about theater should read the NY Times’ Public Editor’s column this morning. It’s about, curiously enough, the Tony Awards. Or, to be more specific, it’s about how the Tony Awards are a giant sham destroying American Theater and how the New York Times should stop participating in said sham by covering them.

Wow. Pretty potent stuff. I could offer commentary (I agree with you, Daniel! And let me also say...) but just read the article. It's great.

2004-05-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

From David Brooks this morning:

"To conserve our strategy, we have to fundamentally alter our tactics. To shore up public confidence, the U.S. has to make it clear that it is considering fresh approaches.

We've got to acknowledge first that the old debates are obsolete. I wish the U.S could still go off, after Iraq, at the head of "coalitions of the willing" to spread democracy around the world. But the brutal fact is that the events of the past year have discredited that approach. Nor is the U.N. a viable alternative. A body dominated by dictatorships is never going to promote democratic values. For decades, the U.N. has failed as an effective world power.

We've got to reboot. We've got to come up with a global alliance of democracies to embody democratic ideals, harness U.S. military power and house a permanent nation-building apparatus, filled with people who actually possess expertise on how to do this job. "

Great idea. A league of Democracies. For anyone actually interested in what this might look like, look up David Brooks' New York Times colleague (and brilliant anti-war writer) Chris Hedges' articles in Harper's magazine from about a year ago. (hey, David, give credit where credit is due!)

The Spanish Prisoner Strikes Again

2004-05-07T17:07:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been on this internet thingy for quite some time. Not in the blogosphere, mind you, but just out there in general. And it’s taken this “quite some time” (I got my first e-mail address maybe eight or ten years ago) for me to finally get the spanish prisoner scammail that’s been going around about stashed money in Africa.

Now, I got it, not in the yahoo.com address I use for all spam-related things (the one I give Amazon, moveon.org etc.) but the address I set up especially for this blog roughly six weeks ago.

So I’ve been out here in the interweb for like eight years, but my new e-mail address (six weeks old) gets this:

Here’s the text, if you’ve never seen it before, it’s a hoot:

MR.MOHAMMED SALA
AFRICA INTERNATIONAL BANK PLC
DAKAR SENEGAL

PLEASE REPLY ME TO MY PRIVATE EMAIL
ADDRESSE:-mohammedsala@mail2world.com

ATTN: Dear Sir,

STRICTLY A PRIVATE BUSINESS PROPOSAL
I am MR MOHAMMED SALA, The manager, Bills and Exchange at the Foreign
Remittance Department of AFRICA INTERNATIONAL BANK Plc. I am writing
this letter to ask for your support and co-operation to carry out this
business transaction in my department.
We discovered an abandoned sum of 14 million US dollars (Fourteen
million US dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign
customers who died along with his entire family of a wife and two children in
the Sept.11 2001 terrorist attack on america. Since we heard of his
death, we have been expecting his next-of-kin to come over and put claims
for his money as the heir, because we cannot release the fund from his
account unless "someone" applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the
deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines.
Unfortunately,none of their family member nor distant relative has ever
appeared to claim the said fund. Upon this discovery, I and other
officials in my department have agreed to make business with you and release
the total amount into your account as the heir of the fund since no one
has come for it nor discovered he maintained an account with our bank,
otherwise the fund will be returned to the bank's treasury as unclaimed
fund.
We have agreed that our ratio of sharing will be as stated thus; 30%
for you as our foreign partner, 65 % will be for us the officials in my
department and 5 % for the settlement of all local and foreign expenses
incurred by us and you during the course of this business. Upon the
successful completion of this transaction,one of my colleagues and I will
come over to your country and mind our share. It is from our 65% that
we intend to import Agricultural Machineries into my country as a way of
recycling the fund. To commence this transaction, we urge you to
immediately register your interest by a return e-mail enclosing your private
contact telephone number, fax number, full names and address and also,
your designated bank coordinates to enable us file the letter of claim
to the appropriate departments for necessary approvals before the
transfer can be completed.
Note also,that this transaction must be kept STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
because of its nature. I look forward to receiving your swift response.
MR MOHAMMED SALA.
Manager bills and Exchange
Foreign Remittance Dept.
AFRICA INTERNATIONAL BANK Plc
DAKAR, SENEGAL.
Tel:00221 663 4584

So on to culture for a change

2004-05-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

So last night several playwright bloggers (George Hunka, Mac Rogers, Dan Trujillo and Laura Axelrod, all of whom you can find links to on the side bar) came to see the show as group and we all went out for a wee drinkee afterwards. Let me just say that this lot of playwrights are as intelligent and witty in person as they are in the blogosphere. It reminded me of my days running a BBS in the heady, pre-internet days of Washington D.C. modem culture. Once a year, each BBS would get a mini convention together of regular users. Usually these happened at someone’s house. You’d go have a swim, drink some soda, talk about the on line world, and you’d always meet someone you thought was cool but who turned out to be a gigantic creepwad.

Luckily, there were no creepwads in attendance last night, although there was one woman in the audience who sees 350 shows a year and has a reputation amongst NYC’s theaters of being absolutely crazy-go-nuts. She, however, doesn’t run a playwright blog so I didn’t have to go speak with her afterwards.

Anyway, they all seemed to really enjoy the show, and it meant a lot to me to have them there. Mac Rogers mentioned that other than the lifting up the curtain entries, Parabasis remains basically a political blog. Part of this is because I’ve been so deep into the show that I haven’t really experienced much culturally. I make a few stabs—politics and theater, a night at the Kitchen etc., but mainly I’m talking about politics these days.

Well, that’ll change, people! We’ll have more culture blogging over the next few days, starting right now.

(Okay, this one’s kind of about politics but you know one step at a time, people)

Via Arts Journal I read this story about the denying of arts funding for political art in Melbourne. Although the article is about visual art, somehow the story ended up in the theater section (probably because of its resemblance to the NEA 4).

I wholeheartedly support massive state funding for the arts. As I wrote in the early days of Parabasis, the arts have never existed without some form of subsidy, often a combination of private patronage and government sponsorship. This is nothing to be ashamed of, but many believers in democratic capitalism believe that it is. If art can’t find a way to support itself, they say, than art should get out of the art business. This belies a fundamental misunderstanding of both commerce and history. All industries are supported in some way or another by the government, whether this takes the form in tax payer funded subsidies, tax breaks, “profit guaranteed” contracts with the government, loosening of regulations etc. This is as true in countries that massively support the arts (like in Denmark, where corporations are barely taxed) as it is in countries that don’t (like the United States with its massive corporate welfare program).

Furthermore, the arts are the way that we communicate, not only with each other, but throughout the ages. The Greeks are still responsible for a large part of our understanding of civic life, and that understanding is as encapsulated in the difficult questions of The Orestia as it is in Plato’s Republic, itself as much a work of literature as polemic. William Shakespeare helps us understand what it is to be human in all of its messy beauty, and no person in history has given us a better phraseology with which to attack this complex world. Freud’s understanding of human consciousness was informed by the drama of his day, particularly Arthur Schnitzler. And this isn’t even beginning to tap into the visual arts, music or dance.

All of this is a way of saying that the arts are necessary to humanity. I really, truly believe that. Art will always exist, regardless of whether or not there is money in it, but when artists can make a living doing their art, output and quality often increase (just look at good ole Willy Shakes if you don’t believe me). Making a living doing art is almost impossible without outside aid, and that aid has to come in a combination of private patrons and government sponsorships. The latter often leads to the former, and that is why it is important that governments support art.

This necessary support creates a tricky relationship, however. Artists in this post-enlightenment age are pretty sure they have the right to do whatever the hell they want; at the same time the government (any government) is interested in artists churning out art that supports their worldview. This will always create tension. Macbeth was banned from the English stage by James I, and wasn’t performed again for quite some time. The HUAC meetings destroyed the WPA and the Federal Theater Project. These events will continue to happen throughout history, and negotiating this relationship is part and parcel of the difficult job of being an artist. Sometimes, necessity will demand a cloaking of your art’s subversive qualities, as in Shakespeare’s 12th Night where a basic mistaken-identity-sex-farce hides a dark struggle between Puritanism and Paganism for the souls of the English. It is an unfortunate part of reality that as long as government is paying the bills, the chances of your being able to do whatever you want will narrow dramatically. I’m not saying this is the way it should be, I’m simply saying this is the way it is.

The government in these cases almost always tries to claim that what it is banning isn’t art. In this case (as in many), the Melbourne City Council claims that the art is agit-prop, and the very fact that it is overtly political should disqualify it from public funding. The counter argument is pretty simply and goes something like this (from the article itself):
---
"The artistic director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Chris McAuliffe, said: "If local government gets involved in supporting culture, then it's got to be prepared to support culture in all its forms. "If it's getting involved in culture in order to support only certain kinds of expression or only certain kinds of ideology, it might as well admit that it's supporting its own form of social engineering or propaganda."
---
Which brings us back to our old adage: art is political, if the politics are invisible, it supports the status quo. This is the thesis that McAuliffe is inherently embracing. The City Council doesn’t want non-political art; they want political art that agrees with them. You can probably guess who I agree with.

The Earthling Lands Again

2004-05-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note:

Pretty much my favorite writer to ever grace the bits and bites of Slate.com is back! That’s right ladies and gentlemen, Robert Wright has finally graced us with a new “Earthling” column. Check it out!

PS: I promise I’ll have more blogging later. Really.

From the “always important to read more than the headline” department.

2004-05-06T04:35:00.000-07:00

New York Times this morning:

Headline:

Rumsfeld Chastised by President for His Handling of Iraq Scandal

I think:

Ooo, this seems juicy. The President is slapping around Rumsfeld for his less-than-prompt-and-outraged responses t what’s going on at Abu Ghraib. Or maybe the fact that he dithered with the press about whether or not the abuses counted as torture. Or something. Wow, maybe Bush has a small kernel of human decency and empathy.

And then,

From the article itself:

The disclosures by the White House officials, under authorization from Mr. Bush, were an extraordinary display of finger-pointing in an administration led by a man who puts a high premium on order and loyalty. The officials said the president had expressed his displeasure to Mr. Rumsfeld in an Oval Office meeting because of Mr. Rumsfeld's failure to tell Mr. Bush about photographs of the abuse, which have enraged the Arab world.

I think:

No, I was wrong, he’s just mad about the fact photos were taken! This point is repeated again and again, he’s angry about the photos because this makes the torture much worse. No it doesn’t. It makes the PR campaign to save your ass much worse, Mr. President. You should be dressing him down for the fact that the torture happened in February and you didn’t hear about until now. You should be dressing him down for going on TV and not admitting that it was torture. You should be dressing him down for the absolutely ridiculous level of failure in the defense planning for postwar Iraq. You should be, quite frankly, asking for his resignation for his consistent mendacity towards the American people.

But no, Mr. President. You dress him down because there was photographic evidence of wrongdoing by US soldiers. Not for the wrongdoing itself, but because you weren’t told there was documentation.

Nice one, Mr. President. You’re a real class act.

Last weeks' Democratic Radio Address

2004-05-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

Becuase no one listens to the DRA's, I thought it would be helpful to post this one. It's written by a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I think it's pretty powerful. Check it out:

Remarks of Paul Rieckhoff, Democratic Radio Address to the Nation Saturday, May 1, 2004

      Good morning. My name is Paul Rieckhoff. I am addressing you this morning as a US citizen and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I served with the US Army in Iraq for 10 months, concluding in February, 2004.

      I'm giving this address because I have an agenda, and my agenda is this: I want my fellow soldiers to come home safely, and I want a better future for the people of Iraq. I also want people to know the truth.

      War is never easy. But I went to Iraq because I made a commitment to my country. When I volunteered for duty, I knew I would end up in Baghdad. I knew that's where the action would be, and I was ready for it.

      But when we got to Baghdad, we soon found out that the people who planned this war were not ready for us. There were not enough vehicles, not enough ammunition, not enough medical supplies, not enough water. Many days, we patrolled the streets of Baghdad in 120 degree heat with only one bottle of water per soldier. There was not enough body armor, leaving my men to dodge bullets with Vietnam-era flak vests. We had to write home and ask for batteries to be included in our care packages. Our soldiers deserved better.

      When Baghdad fell, we soon found out that the people who planned this war were not ready for that day either. Adamiyah, the area in Baghdad we had been assigned to, was certainly not stable. The Iraqi people continued to suffer. And we dealt with shootings, killings, kidnappings, and robberies for most of the spring.

      We waited for troops to fill the city and military police to line the streets. We waited for foreign aid to start streaming in by the truckload. We waited for interpreters to show up and supply lines to get fixed. We waited for more water. We waited and we waited and the attacks on my men continued...and increased.

      With too little support and too little planning, Iraq had become our problem to fix. We had nineteen-year-old kids from the heartland interpreting foreign policy, in Arabic. This is not what we were designed to do. Infantrymen are designed to close with and kill the enemy.

      But as infantrymen, and also as Americans, we made do, and we did the job we were sent there for-and much more.

      One year ago today, our President had declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. We heard of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, and we heard him say that "Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home."

      Well, we were told that we would return home by July 4th. Parades were waiting for us. Summer was waiting for us. I wrote my brother in New York and told him to get tickets for the Yankees-Red Sox series in the Bronx. Baseball was waiting for us. Our families were waiting for us.

      But three days before we were supposed to leave, we were told that our stay in Iraq would be extended, indefinitely. The violence intensified, the danger persisted, and the instability grew. And despite what George Bush said, our mission was not accomplished.

      Our platoon had been away from their families for seven months. Two babies had been born. Three wives had filed for divorce and a fiancee sent a ring back to a kid in Baghdad. 39 men missed their homes. And they wouldn't see their homes for another eight months.

      But we pulled together - we took care of each other and we continued our mission. The mission kept us going. The mission was to secure Iraq and help the Iraqi people. We saw first-hand the terrible suffering that they had endured. We protected a hospital and kept a school safe from sniper fire. We saw hope in the faces of Iraqi children who may have the chance to grow up as free as our own.

      And still, we waited for help. And still, the people who planned this war watched Iraq fall into chaos and refused to change course.

      Some men with me were wounded. One of my squad leaders lost both legs in combat. But our platoon was lucky--all 39 of us came home alive.

      Too many of our friends and fellow soldiers did not share that same fate. Since President Bush declared major combat operations over, more than 590 American soldiers have been killed. Over 590 men and women who were waiting for parades. Who were waiting for summer. Who were waiting for help.

      Since I've returned, there are two images that continue to replay themselves in my mind. One is the scrolling list of American casualties shown daily on the news - a list reminding me that this April has become the bloodiest month of combat so far, with more than 130 soldiers killed.

      The other image is of President Bush at his press conference 2 weeks ago. After all the waiting, after all the mistakes we had experienced first hand over in Iraq, after another year of a policy that was not making the situation any better for our friends who are still there, he told us we were staying the course. He told us we were making progress. And he told us that, "We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change."

      Our troops are still waiting for more body armor. They are still waiting for better equipment. They are still waiting for a policy that brings in the rest of the world and relieves their burden. Our troops are still waiting for help.

      I am not angry with our President, but I am disappointed.

      I don't expect an easy solution to the situation in Iraq, I do expect an admission that there are serious problems that need serious solutions.

      I don't expect our leaders to be free of mistakes, I expect our leaders to own up to them.

      In Iraq, I was responsible for the lives of 38 other Americans. We laughed together, we cried together, we won together, and we fought together. And when we failed, it was my job as their leader to take responsibility for the decisions I made--no matter what the outcome.

      My question for President Bush - who led the planning of this war so long ago - is this: When will you take responsibility for the decisions you've made in Iraq and realize that something is wrong with the way things are going?

      Mr. President, our mission is not accomplished.

      Our troops can accomplish it. We can build a stable Iraq, but we need some help. The soldiers I served with are men and women of extraordinary courage and incredible capability. But it's time we had leadership in Washington to match that courage and match that capability.

      I worry for the future of Iraq and for my Iraqi friends. I worry for my fellow soldiers still fighting this battle. I worry for their families, and I worry for those families who will not be able to share another summer or another baseball game with the loved ones they've lost. And I pledge that I will do everything I can to make sure they have not died in vain and that the truth is heard.

       Thank you for listening.

Hitchens... what a blowhard.

2004-05-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

I don’t really know if Christopher Hitchens destroyed all of his credibility when his crusade against the Baathist regime of Iraq turned into a crusade against everyone who disagrees with him, or if it just revealed to the left that he’s a close-minded, arrogant little nugget of hate who happens to also be a great writer. Either way, it’s really a shame. Hitchens is a provocative spirit, a powerful master of prose, and a quick wit. Unfortunately, all of this has turned him into a total propaganda machine for the Neo-Con wing of the Bush administration.

My biggest problem with Hitchens is a fairly simple one: he’s sneaky. All he does is either misrepresent his opponents view points and argue against his misrepresentation or selectively pick the most fringey, insane thing out there in the blogosphere and make it as if it is a representative idea of his opposition. Throughout the build up to war in Iraq, he refused to take the anti-war argument seriously, arguing instead against the International ANSWER coalition’s ludicrous statements about Milosevic and Hussein. Very few people in the anti-war movement took them seriously; ANSWER got to be included because they filed for permits early. But they provided brilliant fodder for didacts like Hitchens to smear the entire anti-war movement.

So now, in the past seventy-two hours, we have Hitchens going further off the rhetorical deep end. First, on Scarborough Country, Joe was talking with a round table about the recent torture of Iraqi prisoners. One of the people Scarborough had on was a Democratic Strategist. He asked said Strategist a strategy question: how does the torture play out in the broader campaign for President and for the hearts and minds of the Arab world. When she answered the question, Hitchens jumped on her for talking about people as political capital instead of as poor human beings. She got caught up in it (maybe it was the English accent) and argued the point with him instead of saying “look, you bastard, no one takes you seriously, I doubt that your sober and I was asked a strategy based question”.

And then we have Hitchens’ latest piece in Slate.com, where he used the torture cases to argue in favor of the continued involvement of Ahmed Chalabi in the reconstruction efforts of Iraq. Here’s the key sentences:
“The secretary of state is quoted as saying that he often thinks our biggest problem in Iraq is Ahmad Chalabi…. It's a change, though, from the authorized smear and jeer of last year, which was that Chalabi was an American puppet. Since then he has called for an earlier transfer of sovereignty, earlier elections, and a sterner line on de-Baathification than the patrons of Abu Ghraib would like. He's said and done some other things that I'm not so sure about, and I don't know what happened in the Jordanian banking system many decades ago (and neither, dear reader, do you). But he's not a puppet, and anyone who thinks he is the problem is probably readying some puppets of his own whom you don't want to think about.”
The main argument (in the US at least, but I don’t think Hitchens ever claims he’s arguing about Arab thought) about Chalabi has never been that he was an American puppet. The main argument against Chalabi’s continued involvement is that he’s a liar who was using the US to get rid of Hussein and be forcibly installed as President. That argument was there before the war and now that none of Chalabi’s claims about Iraq WMD are true, and now that he’s screwed over the occupational authority time and again, more and more people are coming to agree with the anti-war folks that Chalabi is not our ally, he’s a simple huckster.

But it was nice of Chris Hitchens to confuse the issue further rather than actually try to make a case for Chalabi’s integrity. Then again, since there’s no case to make, it’s probably easier for Hitchens to argue against something no one really believes.

(oh, PS: the Hitchens article is here.
(and TalkingPointsMemo has great stuff on Chalabi. Check it out!
Ooo, and Salon.com too!)

I couldn't think up something clever; this one is about the death penalty

2004-05-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

So I guess Massachusetts is like the anti-Illinois or something like that.

Governor Mitt Romney convened a blue ribbon commission in order to study ways to bring the death penalty back to MA in as fair and even handed a way possible.

They’ve come up with ten recommendations, all of which seem to be about keeping away wrongful convictions. The ten provisions thought up by the committee include having all decisions to seek the death penalty reviewed by the Attorney General, having accusations of wrongful conviction examined by an independent body, only seeking the death penalty for torture killings, terrorism, multiple homicides and killing of law enforcement officer etc.

These proposals seem well and good. Certainly, if one is really jonesing to put people to death, the commission seems to have found a good way to do it as fairly as possible. But doesn’t that beg the question… why is killing someone so important that you would spend this much money and this much public legal brain power in order to do it?

Just think about it for a second. Regardless of whether you’re for or against the death penalty (I’ve gone back and forth many times in my life but am for now comfortable ensconced in the “against” camp) doesn’t it seem a bit odd that being able to put people to death is that important to Governor Romney and the people of Massachusetts? Many of the arguments against capital punishment have been fairly definitively debunked in the past decade. For example, putting people to death is more expensive for the state than giving them a life sentence in one of America’s hellish maximum security prisons, and statistically, the death penalty does not work as a deterrent. Furthermore, no matter what you do you can’t be 100% certain that everyone you put to death is actually guilty, unless you have easily verifiable footage of them doing it (etc.) and in those cases the person will almost certainly plead guilty anyway, which usually means that the state won’t put them to death, because no one wants to punish telling the truth.

There are arguments in favor of the death penalty that I don’t agree with, but I understand them, and they’re more subjective. Arguments like the Message argument, which states that this is a good way for society to make it clear how unacceptable certain crimes are. Or another one, which is simple vengeance. They killed someone, they deserve death. How would you feel if your wife was raped and murdered? Wouldn’t you want the killer to die? How can you withhold that right from someone to whom it happened to?

I can understand being not-against the death penalty. On a good day, I could even understand supporting the death penalty. What I can’t understand is being so in love with the death penalty that you would think Romney forming a commission to study better ways to be certain you’re killing the right person is a good idea. It just seems like a waste of money, talent and brain power to focus so tightly on returning to the age of Leviticus in our sentencing procedures.

(oh and PS: the NYTimes article is here)

Oh what fools these mortals be

2004-05-03T08:57:00.000-07:00

Want to see something truly ridiculous?

Check out this report from the AP wires:

“May 2, 2004 | BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, said Sunday he regrets a statement he made more than six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration was "paying no attention" to terrorism.

Bremer said any implied criticism that President Bush was not acting against terrorism was "unfair."

Ahead of the November election, Bush is facing criticism he didn't make terrorism his No. 1 priority before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center and then weakened the war on terror by invading Iraq and shifting the focus from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The resurfacing of Bremer's comments added to administration frustrations.

At a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001, Bremer said, "The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?'”

So… he said this six months before September 11th, and he only regrets saying it… now?

More on the War on Terror will be coming up from Parabasis this week, partly in response to the NYTimes Magazine, and partly because, well, tis the season.

Poor Justice Souter

2004-05-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Souter is one of my favorite Supreme Court Justices. I just love how he ducked under the Right's ideological radar and has managed to be one fo the more consistent and thoughtful judges on the bench. And he's the one dissenting vote on the NEA four case.

Anyway, apparently he was attacked and beaten up today. That's no good. Luckily he's doing fine.

Bush and Relgion, some more questions

2004-05-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, I suggested that Bush be put through the press ringer for his use of religion as a campaign tool. I realized that he has never really been asked a single tough question about his faith, and yet he uses his faith as a kind of cure-all guide to public policy. So I posted the following questions:
In what ways does it [religion] guide his actions? Does he believe god talks to him? How does that manifest itself? Does he see visions or hear voices? Is his policy towards Israel dictated by the Christian Zionist movement or not? Why doesn’t he go to church? What sort of worship ceremonies does he follow?

Here’s some other ones I’ve thought up:
Does he believe in evolution? Why or why not?
Does he believe he is a greater authority on the will of god than his church? If not, why did he support the war in Iraq when his church supported it?
Are hell and heaven literal places? Who is going where when they die? Why?
Was 9/11 God’s will? If so, do you have any idea why god wanted it to happen?
Jesus specifically listed earthly possessions as something blocking us from the Kingdom Of Heaven. If this is true, why are you so wealthy?

Also, if the War in Iraq is God's will, how was that will communicated? Did god mention how bad the postwar occupation was going to go?

Anyway, anyone else got some questions about Bush’s religious beliefs and how it affects public policy and the way he runs the country?

A Night at the Kitchen part two

2004-05-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

(a rather lengthy part one can be found here)

So now for the second half of my night at Town Hall for the Kitchen Gala.

Jon and I are smoking outside. I see Fred Schneider of the B-52’s. He is dapperly dressed, and is the only man I know who can make Paisley work. I don’t go up to say hi. I go to the bathroom to get some water instead. We’re filing back in. John Schaefer is taking the stage again to announce that, as Richard Foreman might say, OVER OVER THE INTERMISSION IS OVER.

Town Hall is a beautiful place, but I think that they’re honestly not set up to handle a sold out crowd. The halls are narrow, the stairs don’t fit that many people, there aren’t that many entrances. The lobby is teeny. The bathrooms have like four people in them max. I have a feeling intermission has been longer than fifteen minutes, but whatever, on to Robert Ashley’s “Love Is A Good Example”.

Robert Ashley, like many of the composer/performers here tonight is like a genre unto himself. To give you some idea, Love Is A Good Example is one of 49 songs ranging in length from 15 to 120 minutes that make up an opera called The Immortality Songs. Each “song” (they’re really bizarrely stilted monologues) is about a character or group of characters. The Immortality Songs is apparently an opera for television. Maybe if the televised part of the opera was played during the song I would’ve gotten it but honestly, it left me a bit cold.

“Love Is A Good Example” isn’t really even a song. It consists of Ashley talking at different pitches and in strange rhythms while someone manipulates large amounts of reverb on his voice. There are two other speakers. They say “sure” after every time he says “love” and they say “person” after every time he says “schizophrenic”. There is so much reverb that I can barely understand what he says. He keeps sliding through different pitches and it basically sounds like poorly performed Chuck Mee. I can tell the man’s smart, and what few sentences I can make out are well written, but as a recital the three people at music stands lacks a bit of punch.

My mind wanders:
The last time I was at Town Hall was to see Eddie Izzards “Circle”. He was heckled. Often. But he made it work.

I wonder how “First You’re Born” is going tonight?

I can’t wait to hear Laurie Anderson’s new piece.

I wonder what Jon thinks of this.

Schizophrenic people? What does that have to do with anything?

The Kitchen. What a great idea. The Kitchen, part of the holy trinity of performance art, along with BAM and PS 122. All three exist to give cutting edge performance a house to play in. PS122 does theater though, and the Kitchen really doesn’t. But it’s amazing that this place is still around.

Look at this crowd. Who knew old people liked this music! Who knew so many young people could afford tickets to see it. Who knew you could sell out a night at Town Hall for what Laurie Anderson used to call “difficult music listening hour”

Oh wait, Ashley’s done. Maybe I’m an idiot, the crowd is hooting and hollering, but I just couldn’t get there.

It’s pretty clear when Schaefer comes out again that everyone really really wants to see Laurie Anderson’s new work-in-progress. I last saw her at Lincoln Center where she performed a stripped down piece called “Happiness”. It was awesome. I wrote a paper on her in college, and I have many of her Cds. If you’ve never heard her, go buy “The Ugly One With All The Jewels” today. All the stories on it are true, and they’re all amazing.

She’s also the only person in this group to have had a #2 hit single in the UK. Good old “O Superman” a song which might drive you crazy, freak you out, or make you burst into laughter depending on your mood.

The new piece is good. The piece seems to be primarily about beauty, but it also has a real mean streak and she’s attacking non-gender politics, something she doesn’t do all that often. I mean, there’s not a whole lot of progression in the Anderson oeuvre. She performs stories and poems, sometimes singing, sometimes talking, sometimes playing on the violin. She manipulates digital effects and soundscapes using a synthesizer, foot pedals, a sound board, a sampler and some other stuff. Often there’s multimedia work involved and crazy new musical inventions. She’s most famous for the inventions, probably, many of which involve totally fucking up what a violin in supposed to be.

She also has a hypnotic idiosyncratic way of talking. Kind of like Garrison Keilor with a lot of menace. I’ll try to approximate it versically (this is, of course, a paraphrase of what she said at one point):
And then I got to thinking
You know, it was like
Right after the Iraq war started
And
People were
Walking about in a daze
Just walking about in a daze
Asking themselves
“Why do they hate us?
Why do they hate us?”
And then we all decided
They hate us cause we’re rich
They hate us cause we’re free
They hate us cause we’re democratic
And I kind of thought
This is like when you’re in high school
And the pretty girl says
“Everyone hates me
cause I’m beautiful”
And you’re like
“No.
Everyone hates you
Because you’re a jerk”

The audience goes crazy when she says that. Everyone’s loving it. She does a bit about the 9/11 memorial site. Seems no one finds that one funny but me, although it’s clearly meant to be. Guess you can’t mention 9/11 and crack a joke at the same time. Anyway, Jon has never heard Laurie’s work before, and I hope he likes it (which it turns out, later, he did. Very much).

Laurie wraps up her set and even quotes her legendary “United States 1-IV”: “Hello? Can you tell me where I am?” It’s chilling when asked like a genuine question.

The crowd is happy to hear something new. Happy to hear something political. Happy to hear something leftist. Happy to see a rock star in the middle of this evening.

John Schaefer presents an award to Robert Hurwitz, the founder of Electra Nonesuch which carries many of the artists performing tonight. Robert Hurwitz seems like the nicest record executive ever.

The evening closes with a new Philip Glass piece called “Track Sweat”. “Track Sweat” is the result of a collaboration between Philip Glass and legendary kora player Foday Musa Suso. The Kora is in there in the top ten favorite instruments with the cello. It’s basically an African lute-harp. It sounds like a guitar from another planet. I love it. There’s a guy who plays the kora in the subway at 59th street. If you get a chance to hear him play, it’s hauntingly gorgeous.

Foday Musa Suso’s Kora has his website on it in big letters. Accompanying him are Glass on piano, Michael Riesman on keyboards and Andrew Sterman on saxophone.

Is there a more divisive figure in modern so-called high culture than Philip Glass? Some people think he’s a symbol of everything wrong with post-modern art. Some people rally around him, praising his simple beauty, buying boxed sets of Akhenaten and going to see the latest slow-mo collaboration between him and Robert Wilson. I’m somewhere in the middle. I love Glass’ music, but at the same time believe that too much of his work gets out in front of an audience. Every little piece he writes gets published or put on CD and the sheer quantity of it diminishes the greatness of his great work. And his great work really is great. Beautiful, soaring, moving, delicate. Pick up his solo piano CD or the soundtrack to Kundun if you don’t believe me. They’re both amazing.
This new piece doesn’t sound anything like anything I’ve ever heard from Philip Glass. There’s barely an arpeggio or duh-nuh-duh-nuh-duh-nuh in sight.

I’m having trouble trusting my judgement about this one, because at this point I had been in Town Hall for close to three hours, and the gin and tonics I had drunk at the before-party were taking their toll on my ability to focus. That said, and having spoken to several other people were there, the new piece is kind of dull. Beautiful, but really underwhelming. It doesn’t really go anywhere, it doesn’t really develop at all, and it even lacks the usual hypnotic quality of Glass’ work. What it is instead is pretty and easily forgettable. I blame part of this on the Soprano Sax, which makes it onto my top ten list of least favorite instruments. Really, the Kora is so delicate that bringing in the warm, overpowering Kenny G tones of the soprano sax seems a real mistake. And the song basically is one thing repeated twice and then it’s over and on to the afterparty.

The afterparty is a lot of fun, more booze, more food, more good people and now they’ve switched to old .45s of garage rock played along with archival video of the Kitchen in performance. All in all a great evening, and a historic opportunity for this young lover of postmodern music.

Peggy Noonan, critic at large

2004-04-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

Besides being an apologist for the worst the Republican party has to offer, and a fawning fan of Mel "some Jews did die in WWII" Gibson, Peggy Noonan apparently also writes theater reviews. You can read her trying to claim that Raisin in the Sun is pro-life here.

I honestly don't know whether "Raisin in the Sun" is supposed to be pro-life or pro-choice. I doubt it was really trying to be either, considering all the other things that play has on its mind. What the play does contain is a discussion by a character who is thinking about abortion. Audiences have their own agency, and are going to take away from an experience many different reactions. The fact that some audience members thought her getting an abortion was the right idea and a symbol of liberation doesn't make them monsters, nor does it mean that they don't get what an abortion means. It simply means an abortion means something different to them, Peggy, than it does to you.

Maybe you should think about, for a second, just for a second, why an urban audience would view abortion as a good thing. Maybe you should just think about what your party is trying to do to people of color, poor people, women in this country. Maybe instead of condemning a portion of the audience's view point, and accusing them of supporting murder, you should realize that only a minority of this country views a fetus as a life, and that minority was actually smaller when "Raisin" was written. And maybe you should remember that there is not a single quote you can furnish from the play to back up your interpretation of it, so maybe, just maybe, there's multiple ways a scene can be, well, seen.

When I read Peggy Noonan's article I thought for a second (just a second!) we'd be seeing something about how telling it is that "Raisin" is still relevant today. But she doesn't really think it is, or rather she only thinks its portrayal of difficult moral choices is still relevant. Apparently the Civil Rights movement was not only a complete success but is now over. After all, Bill Cosby was a doctor, and his wife a lawyer.

When will the Right offer up a credible public intellectual?

Do I smell? Do I smell home cooking?

2004-04-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

So, as I said several days ago, eventually I wanted to write a post recapping/reviewing the Kitchen’s New Music, New York 25th Anniversary Gala.

First of all, the evening was well planned and executed throughout. John Schaefer, host of WNYC’s Soundcheck was the perfect man for MC. He’s charismatic, got an amazing voice, and actually knows and loves all of these avant-garde crazies he’s throwing out on stage. The evening itself (a concert at Town Hall) was itself a recreation of an event from twenty five years ago when the then-semi-known composers Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson and Robert Ashley all performed together. The evening was a once in a lifetime chance to see these now quite accomplished artists on stage together, each performing a ten to fifteen minute set.

The evening opens. John Schaefer says some witty things. John Schaefer says some things about the Kitchen. John Schaefer pauses and says “And now… some music” his catch phrase from WNYC. It breaks my heart, but only like seventeen people in the audience seem to get it. Anyway, I see over to the side of Schaefer are three sets of bongo drums and my heart stars racing. Steve Reich is going to perform the first movement of his “Drumming”, one of my all time favorite pieces of music. Reich and his three intrepid drummers take the stage to start the evening off with a literal bang. And sure enough, when they come out in matching white button down shirts and black pants (Reich also has on a black version of his trademark baseball cap) that’s exactly what they do.

I’ve seen “Drumming: Part One” performed three times in my life, and I’ve seen the whole piece performed as part of an evening length dance piece choreographed by Anna Teresa de Keersmacher. For those of you who’ve never heard it, well, it’s everything that is great about minimalism. The first movement is for four plays playing six bongo drums. The drums are tuned to three different notes (if memory serves correctly, B, C# and F, but I’m not sure) and the drummers one by one play a pattern. The pattern is roughly two measures long, and every time you repeat it a certain number of times, you add a note until there are no rests, and then you start taking away notes. So it starts out with only one drum hit and eventually builds to something more complex.

The other thing complicating all of this is that the drummers are “phasing” live. Phasing is a technique Reich developed originally using two reel-to-reel machines. The idea is you and I play the same thing but gradually one of us changes the tempo we play at so that the patterns eventually interlock and become totally different. Drumming is an experiment in doing phasing with this cyclical pattern. The first part is nine minutes long and is played on bongos, the second part is for marimba and voice, the third for glockenspiel and whistle, the fourth movement for all of the above. I know this all sounds like the kind of music a car mechanic would write; trust me, it’s brilliant.

Tonight is probably the weakest performance of Drumming that I’ve seen. Not that it’s bad, just not the best. Because they just perform part one, they actually add in a little more variation than it’s supposed to have. Indeed, it seems like two of the drummers (one of which is Reich) are taking turns taking solos at the drums. Weirdly enough, this makes the piece less interesting by obfuscating the central rigidity of the interlocking patterns. It’s like a play whose idea isn’t quite clear so you can’t really get into it. Either way, it’s still technically impressive, and the audience (myself included) goes crazy-go-nuts at the end, hooting and hollering. Steve Reich takes two curtain calls.

A little more from the ever-affable Mr. Schaefer includes showing us some clips from the thousands of hours of archives of Kitchen performances that are being remastered. It opens with Talking Heads playing “psycho killer”. I remember reading somewhere that their first gig (pre Jerry) was at The Kitchen because no one else would let them play. They billed themselves as performance art and played at the Kitchen. Judging from this video, David Byrne has had a great amount of dental work done since striking it rich. The video proceeds, out of chronological order, and is like a who’s who of interesting music of the last thirty years and includes multiple clips from all the artists here tonight. After it finishes, Schaefer introduces Pauline Oliveros and says that Oliveros often deconstructs the boundary between artist and audience. Uh oh. It’s an often-right stereotype that theater people hate audience participation. I know I do. But whatever, it’s a gala, I’ll play along. Oliveros comes out, a sweet little bear of a woman in a reflective silver button down shirt and nice slacks. She tells us that we will be doing the Tuning Meditation. The whole point is really simple: sing a tone (any tone), when you feel like it, change to singing someone else’s tone and then, when you feel like, change to singing a unique tone, a tone you can’t hear anyone else doing. She tells us that she can’t dictate when it starts, when it ends (but it has to be ten minutes) or when we should change from unique to nonunique tones. Oh, and she’s performed this with anywhere from six to six thousand people. And here are, I would guess, seven to eight hundred people at Town Hall. So would we please start whenever we’re ready. Oh, and make a vowel sound, wouldya?

I’m game, and I turn to my friend Jon who is taking Mary’s place for the evening and who’s also a theater director and I see he’s game to. We start singing. I’m sticking pretty much with the good old “ah" sound at least until my jaw starts cramping up. So I’m sitting there singing my note and then I hear a note a fifth above it and figure “oh, what the hell” and I jump to that note. A little while later, I feel like doing my own thing, so I drop down a semi-tone. The human ear can only process something like 24 sounds at once, and there are hundreds of people singing, I would guess, many more unique sounds than that when we’re split apart. So the whole experience is living, breathing, sensory overload. Remember the Dark Crystal? It’s kind of like when the Mystics sing to open doors, but with hundreds of people.

After about five minutes bizarre things start happening. First off, some people start doing their own yipping and hooting kind of thing. This pisses me off a little bit. We’re supposed to make a tone on a vowel sound not fucking vocal percussion. And at this point I realize how committed I am to making this Tuning Meditation work, even though I don’t really know what I’m doing and even though I don’t really know what “work” would even mean. And then I notice that most of the audience and I are singing the same note. Some people are doing it two octaves beyond my range in any direction, but most of us are singing the exact same note. And it’s really really really loud, because it’s the dominant sound in the room. Then the note breaks apart and shatters into what sound like a million other notes. It’s breathtaking. I feel like weeping. Jon has this amazing shit eating grin on his face. Oliveros is on stage, eyes closed, head down like in prayer, with the microphone far away from her mouth. She’s tuning along with us. I am tuning with some of the greatest composers of the second half of the twentieth century. I am one with these seven hundred rich avante garde music lovers.

And then all of us are singing. And then 80% of us are singing. And then, within thirty seconds, 20% of us are singing, and then no one is. It ends in a flash, semi-simultaneously. The crowd goes wild. Jon turns to me and we both say to each other “I’m stealing that for rehearsal!” people are going nuts. It’s like they’ve never experienced a communion like this that they were actually part of. Pauline thanks us and leaves.

John Schaefer comes out and tells us that we were great. Everyone giddily laughs. He says that we clocked in at almost ten minutes exactly. Which is amazing. I think for awhile, I lost all sense of time, but apparently as a crowd we remembered it. We all know something amazing has happened. Schaefer introduces Thomas Buckner who is being presented with an award. Buckner is a performer, producer and promoter, who works a lot with experimental vocal techniques. He’s worked with many composers I’ve never heard of (but you might’ve) and has founded two different record labels. His current label is called Mutable Music. Everyone seems to love him. He tells us he walked in to the middle of the first Tuning Meditation performance back in 1979 and was backstage for this one, and one day, goddamnit, he’d like to perform the thing. We chuckle. He talks a bit. He leaves.

Onto Meredith Monk’s “Dolman Music” which is clearly one of John Schaefer’s favorite pieces of music like ever. Meredith Monk is kind of hard to describe. Have you seen the Big Lebowski? In the scene where Jeff Bridges meets Julianne Moore and here’s this weird breathing sound in the background as she swoops down nekkers and paints on a canvas? That music is Meredith Monk. She does absolutely crazy things with the human voice. It sounds like something very medieval and at the same time very very modern. Lots of whooping and hollering and sustained tones and gibberish. The piece is very funny and, in it’s own way, very moving. It is accompanied by cello. In the midst of this piece, I will decide that cello is absolutely my favorite orchestral instrument to listen to.

Dolman Music is just a wee bit too long. The ideas play themselves out and as someone who has relentlessly experimented with trying to get my own voice to make weird sounds, the novelty wears off quickly. Once it does, you’re left with a piece of pretty, funny but ultimately repetitive music where the whole never really adds up to the some of its parts. Still, I’m glad I saw it, and glad I finally saw Meredith Monk. The performers are amazing, their singing impeccable, their ranges broad, and if it had just been five minutes instead of ten (or even seven minutes!) I would’ve loved it.

I seem to be in the minority, however. Schaefer is in love with it, the crowd cheers and off we go to chain smoke for intermission.

I’ll stop here and post the second half later today.

Can anyone answer this question for me? Please?

2004-04-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

This from the AP:
“The House worked Wednesday to lower taxes for some married couples, its first election-year attempt to keep alive some of President Bush's most popular tax cuts.

The bill would permanently change three parts of tax law that cause some married couples to pay higher taxes than they would as single individuals, reducing their taxes $105 billion over the next decade. Some married couples face a tax increase next year if the changes expire as scheduled.

‘‘When the only thing that changes is that they fall in love and get married, only to discover that their tax obligation is dramatically increased ... that just doesn't make sense," said Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y.”

Could someone please explain the following (because it is never ever explained):

When we say that the government penalizes married couples because married couples get taxed more than they would if they had remained individuals, does this actually mean:

The married couple’s total tax bills exceed the total tax bills of both individuals added together

Or

The married couple as a unit pays more taxes than either one would on their own?

It’s a big difference. The first one really does charge married couples more, the other one simply fails to lower tax rates on individuals once they become married units.

TV!

2004-04-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

Later on today, I hope to have a post up about the concert I went to last night for a benefit for The Kitchen. The concert was a recreation of an event in 1979, a music festival which had Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley and Laurie Anderson in it. So, anyway, it was the first time since then (And the last time, most likely) that group, or any significant percentage of that group of important artists was on stage together. I’ll be writing more about it when I’m more awake.

But…. On my way out of the shower this morning I got to thinking about Television. Mostly this is because I just wanted the series finale of “Sex & The City” a couple of days ago and I was just thinking, it’s amazing the terrible rut that television has fallen into. I remember a couple of years ago when people were heralding a new golden age of TV. It turns out what they were actually heralding was the brief spurt of creativity that would mark that golden age’s dying out.

Now let me also be clear for a moment and say that when I say “television” I mean American Television, and there are, occasionally, very good (or at least very fun) programs to be found out there. Truth be told, however, most of it is just unbearable, including shows I used to love.

Part of the problem is that the much-talked-about golden age of television revolved around increasingly high concept shows. Once you get used to the high concept (IT AL HAPPENS IN REAL TIME! IT’S ABOUT FORENSIC PATHOLOGISTS!) the shows are revealed for the essentially boring, poorly written, poorly acted disasters they really are. I enjoyed watching four episodes of CSI on my way to Singapore this year, but the monotone acting, unfortunate penchant for talking badly about social issues, and constant Michael Bayisms rob the show of any kind of staying power. 24 on the other hand, has devolved into self-parody, eagerly accepting and then immediately casting off plot lines when they don’t work. For a show that is all about logistics and plotting, it has some of the most incoherent plots and badly constructed structures out there.

Then there are the once-greats. My list of once-greats would probably include “The Simpsons”, “West Wing”, and (if you include once-goods or once-funs) “Will & Grace” and “Friends” but whatever, I’m sure you have your own. The shows that should’ve been cancelled long ago, but keep plodding along, raking in cash and breaking your heart. It’s pretty clear that the wheels have come off all four old wagons listed above, and some of them have been on TV for less than six years.

And then there’s reality television. The old grandmothers of reality TV, “The Road Rules” and “Real World” franchises are now nothing more than blowjobs and survival competitions. I miss when they were about fighting and alcoholism. Survivor was never interesting, and continues to be filled with an arcane, inaccessible mythos all its own. The first season of “American Idol” was hilarious, like being a sober fly on the wall to America’s drunken karaoke binge. But now we have to put up with the same tired formula flogged again and again, like that karaoke binge was going on in the most boring hell you could ever think up.

On and on and on, if there’s a good idea on television (The Apprentice happens to be mine) you can be sure it will be robbed of all its life blood within three seasons. Cable, then, remains or savior. For now you can watch syndicated re-runs of the shows you used to love (West Wing on Bravo) as well as the only good original programming around outside PBS. Where else will you find shows as funny as “The Daily Show” or “South Park”. From what I hear, “The Shield” is doing a good job making corrupt cops loveable again. And then there’s “Showbiz Moms and Dads” one of the scariest, funniest reality shows I’ve ever seen.

Finally, how is HBO? Well, honestly, I don’t know. I cancelled it and rely on my mother’s videotaping ability to watch most of it. Hey, thank God, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under all keep coming back. But none of their new TV show ideas seem to work. Carnivale is Twin Peaks robbed of everything interesting, Deadwood is ridiculous self-parody (cowboys can swear too!), K Street was only interesting to people living in DC or from DC, etc. Hopefully HBO can keep it going almost single-handedly until the other networks figure out how to rob it of everything, make it accessible, and put it on the air.

Lifting Up The Curtain: A brief recap

2004-04-25T21:36:00.000-07:00

So a lot has happened over the past week in the process of moving into the space, running in the space, previewing and making extensive revisions to the show. Quite a bit of it I'm not really at liberty to talk about just yet (but when I am, I will post it here, I promise, I just want to wait for the appropriate moment, trust me, the story of our second and third preview is prett priceless).

In the meantime, however, here is the first review for First You're Born and it's a good one, for the most part. Even better, this reviewer apparently came to the first preview, when the play wasn't even really done yet. In the interest of fairness, I'll try to post any negative reviews that may or may not come. Might as well present an accurate portrait of the press' opinion for those of you unable to see the show.

Anyway, enjoy it.

All my links are broken

2004-04-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Bit of site upkeep:

My cut-and-paste html code for linking contained a typo in it, so none of my links I've put up over the past week in my posts have worked. Sorry about that. I've corrected it, and will be linking just fine from now on.

The Military-Religious-Industrial Complex Can Bite Me

2004-04-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

I wanted to expand on two points that I’ve raised below, part of which was about religion, and part of which was about nuclear research. They’re unrelated, but I’ll combine them in one post.

Religion and politics: On the specific issue of the Catholic Church’s ridiculous attempt to sway the election towards pro-life politicians, Atrios has it exactly right here and right again here. Really, the big things that Atrios is examining is the media’s reaction to the Catholic Church’s advising vis-à-vis communion and pro-choice politicians. There are pro-choice Republicans and that’s not being looked at.

Also, Atrios points to an interesting post by Amy Sullivan that points out how little Bush goes through the performance of being devout. His church (United Methodist) opposed to war in Iraq and Bush doesn’t even really attend church these days. What does that say about his faith? I’d say it says that he prefers to worship in private and thinks religion is a private matter, but he clearly doesn’t think so, and the media tortured Howard Dean for saying pretty much that, so I think it’s time to examine Bush’s faith a little more clearly. In what ways does it guide his actions? Does he believe god talks to him? How does that manifest itself? Does he see visions or hear voices? Is his policy towards Israel dictated by the Christian Zionist movement or not? Why doesn’t he go to church? What sort of worship ceremonies does he follow? I just think that if everyone else is going to have to go through the faith-based wringer, let’s not take Bush at his word when he says he’s a devout Christian and let’s see how much his faith dictates his actions.

And also, I think it’s important to say that, in my humble opinion, in any movement (religious or otherwise) there’s a fine line between devout believer and barking lunatic. I’m not saying that Bush is a barking lunatic, I just think that getting some of the questions above would help the American people figure it out. I mean, even most religious people would probably have a problem with a commander in chief who hears god’s voice regularly and has visions, right?

Anyway, on to the nuclear research thing.

Hopefully, you’ve read Fred Kaplan’s great Slate piece on nuclear research. If you haven’t read it here. Now read this New York Times piece from this morning. An interesting juxtaposition, eh? We’re spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons that we won’t/couldn’t/shouldn’t use, in other words, we’re putting our national security at risk with foolish Cold War appropriations requests, while at the same time hanging the very people protecting our national security out to dry (the article, if you just want to skim, is about a homeless Iraq War veteran).

Surely some of that 30 billion dollars over four years for nuclear research could be put to better use, like paying people risking their lives a wage that allows them to live.

They really might be that crazy

2004-04-24T06:49:00.000-07:00

Oh Jesus Christ. Why isn’t this enough to get this guy out of office.

Just to drive the point home.

2004-04-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

This one's from the AP:
"April 23, 2004 | VATICAN CITY (AP) -- A top Vatican cardinal said Friday that priests must deny communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, but stopped short of saying whether it was right for John Kerry to receive communion.

Cardinal Francis Arinze spoke at a news conference to launch a new Vatican directive clamping down on liturgical abuses in Mass which bars lay people from giving sermons, non-Catholics from taking communion and rites of other religions from being introduced in the service.

The document restated church teaching that anyone who knows he is in "grave sin" must go to confession before taking communion.

Arinze was asked whether that meant that Kerry should not request or be given communion for his unapologetic support of human rights, including a woman's right to abortion."

religious fever strikes the blogosphere

2004-04-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

Apparently, we are now on a religion kick in the blogosphere. Good, it’ll distract me from my every-time-I-do-a-show nervous breakdown that happens.

Let me preface this by saying that I am an atheist, and that I used to be a very devout Christian with a Jewish mother, whose Judaism has been extremely influence to me culturally.

To add a few cents:

Simply put, I don’t really think religious people realize how hostile this country is to people who don’t believe in god. In the 1950’s, Congress passed a series of laws inserting “under god” into the pledge of allegiance and changing our national motto from “e pluribus unum” to “in god we trust”. This was done specifically to separate us in the US from the “godless communists” and I guess that means those of us who don’t believe in god don’t belong in the country. After all, we can’t swear an oath, we can’t publicly and honestly recite our dedication to the country, and our very currency calls our beliefs illegitimate. After September 11, we were all told to go to our temple, mosque or church to find community. I guess that means the 8% of us who don’t believe in god don’t have communities. Oh wait, I suppose we could shop, right?

Furthermore, I think it’s pretty easy to make a prima facie case that organized religion has a pernicious and conspiratorial influence on government, pushing government towards hostile, racist, retrograde policy that is ripping the country to tatters. Take, for example, what happened in Michigan this week. At the urging of the Catholic Church, the Michigan state legislature made it okay for doctors to refuse treating patients who they find morally questionable. That’s not particularly in line with Jesus’ teachings or the Hippocratic Oath last time I checked.

And then there’s the Catholic Church’s attempts to deny holy communion to politicians who are pro-choice. A fundamentally anti-Christian activity if ever I head of one.

I also think that there is a big difference between the organizations themselves and their members. There are many people (my father comes to mind) whose Christianity leads them to a more tolerant, progressive, loving, generous worldview.

So what is to be done? I think we need to remove religion’s stranglehold on government to start. Or rather (sorry, Christians) Christianity’s stranglehold on government. Under God in the pledge is unconstitutional, as is “in god we trust” on money, as is opening proceedings with a prayer, as is funding for faith based initiatives as are exemptions those organizations can get to discriminate against people. Government needs to be religion blind.

Play Development, some director's thoughts

2004-04-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Mac Rogers and Dan Trujillo have been talking a bit about play development from the playwright’s perspective. I thought I’d try to chime in on it from a directing point of view.

This was all started because of the formation of 13 Playwrights, whose slogan is “we don’t develop plays, we do them”. I know a couple of the 13P, enough to say that it is a really interesting group of people and it’s nice to see playwrights seize the proverbial means of production.

I’ve been reading over some materials the Director’s Lab gave me for their summer program, and one of them contains tons of interviews with directors and playwrights. Universally, they seem to despise the current system of developing plays. Countless readings, workshops, more fully staged workshops, even more fully staged workshops and then, if you’re lucky, a showcase-code production that technically can’t even be called professional.

Anyway, that’s the dark side of it. There’s also a pretty good chance that you’ll end up developing your play with a director (for example) who is really uninterested in helping you write the best version of your play you can. What the director is often interested in is writing the play for you or, rather, getting you to write the play the director’s not a good enough writer to write.

One of mentors used to work in the literary department of New York Theater Workshop, and (at least at the time) they developed a way of commenting on plays that gave control to the writer, and demanded that everyone structure their ideas towards helping the play get better.

The five step process went something like;
Read the play
Have everyone say one positive thing about the show
The writer asks questions of the people assembled. The answers must be value neutral
The assembled people ask the writer value neutral questions. In other words, what they don’t understand not what they like or dislike about the choices made
The writer can then choose to take suggestions from people if he or she feels like it.

I’ve had a couple of experiences developing scripts like this. It is really really hard and takes a lot of discipline. Sometimes you feel like you want to scream “just rewrite this scene this way and it’ll be better!” but that’s not really the point.

I’m coming to realize more and more in theater that a good process does not guarantee a good product, but a bad process doesn’t guarantee a good product either. So you might as well have a good process, a collaborative one, an artistic one that’s open to change between everyone and is also respectful of people’s boundaries. Let the writer write, if you don’t like the end result, don’t direct it.

That’s how I view it as a director. I don’t get particularly assertive about changes and notes until there’s a real trusting relationship developed and until it becomes clear that the writer can handle that kind of “scene 10 is too long” conversation. If you’re working with a good writer, they should be able to anticipate those kind of notes anyway as they see the show develop in the rehearsal process.

The reading-workshop-production format is only helpful if the processes are designed right. If not, they’re useless or even worse, harmful to the integrity of the project.

Of course, many of the 13P are involved in development processes that they would call helpful. The Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab (full disclosure, I used to intern there) produces really fascinating anti-naturalistic work. New Dramatists is of course one of the more famous places to develop new work, and several of the 13P come from there.

The problem is, like in so many other things, a problem of economics. Let’s say you’re a development house. You have a development program. There really isn’t a lot of money out there, so you fully produce two plays a season. The rest of the time, you’re giving things readings and workshops, sometimes multiple times. It’s not that you’re hostile to new work, it’s just that you’re trying the best you can and there’s really nothing else you can do. There isn’t enough money. The best you can do is give the artists a chance to create and progress and hopefully get a little exposure in the hopes that someone will come along and provide the money for a real production.

Anyway, my thoughts are starting to ramble and repeat themselves, and I have to go to the space soon, so that’s all for now.

Come see First You’re Born!

Lifting Up The Curtain: Everything Wrong is Right Again

2004-04-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

Finally had our tech today. We ended up inadvertently canceling Saturday’s half of tech. We got into the space, spent the first half adjusting the blocking to the real set (instead of the rehearsal room) checking out sight lines, and listening to some of the great sound cues our designer, Brian PJ Cronin has come up with.

Then at six PM, Shelly showed up, surveyed what had been done and said, “I can’t really go into tech with the lights like this. We need to hang a bunch of lights, we’re missing all of the practicals [real lights, like table lamps, Christmas lights, wall sconces etc. that appear in a set], very few of the lights are focused. We can do everything on Sunday, it’s okay.”

So I took the actors upstairs for some work memorizing the lines, and did some physical work with them and went home.

That was Saturday. Simple, busy, and a little bit discouraging. I worked into the schedule two days of 10-out-of-12s, one for Saturday and one for Sunday. Because of union rules, if you end up rehearsing the actors for 12 hours (and there are restrictions on when, for how often, and how many times you can do this), you must give them two hours worth of meal breaks, hence, 10-out-of-12. Anyway, my TOOTs had both turned into less than that (one 8 and one 10 hour rehearsal) and it seemed at some point like we weren’t going to get anything done.

Then came Sunday. Thank God for Sunday. Not a day of rest (sorry Jesus) but rather a day of extreme activity. For those of you who have never been in a tech rehearsal, this is pretty much what they’re like: you make your way through the show (slowly), usually in what is called a cue-to-cue. A cue-to-cue is where you jump from tech event (i.e. a change in the lights or the sound) to tech event, stopping at each one and getting them to look/sound/be timed correctly. It is very slow going (in the first four hours of tech, we got through maybe ten pages of the script) but also very rewarding. It is the first time when you see the play really come together. It’s also the only overtly product oriented part of the whole rehearsal process. Tech is also probably the most boring time for an actor. You basically don’t get to act all day, because by the time you get to anything interesting, someone is screaming at you to stop and go to the end of the scene.

Food is also really important during a twelve hour rehearsal, especially since the tech staff always works through the meal breaks. Everyone eats. Usually, they eat shit, because it’s all that’s available. Saturday, I ate shit. I must’ve eaten about twenty Dunkin Donuts Munchkins in the course of the afternoon, on top of the soda and the Worst Coffee In The World brewing in the theater’s coffee pot. And I smoked too many cigarettes. I felt, quite frankly, like I was going to die.

None of that for me on Sunday! No, no! Animal Crackers, Edamame, Chinese Chicken Salad, Water, only two cups of coffee, no Diet Coke at all, and I felt great.

It’s hard to describe tech rehearsal without going into too much detail. Basically, it’s both head-spinningly productive and mind numbingly dull to recount at the same time. I loved it. Takeshi Kata, our set designer, and Shelly Sabel, our light designer, are not only wonderful people, and great designers, and great artists with good suggestions for me to improve the look and feel and arc of the show, they also get along with each other well. As the day wears on, things get sillier and sillier, of course. Tak starts biting people for no obvious reason, and then he starts kissing the tops of people’s heads, blurting out “before I felt like biting people. Now I feel like kissing people”. It’s Tak’s anniversary with his wife tomorrow, and here he is on a Sunday night in a theater while his wife tries to make a living as a production designer in LA. Two nights ago, Shelly pulled an all-nighter designing a window for Ralph Lauren, and yet here she is teching away.

Why do people do this? What could possibly be worth living across a continent from your wife, or basically not getting a good night’s sleep for two weeks? We’re not saving lives, we’re not creating anything particularly tangible or real, and yet we believe very strongly that what we do has meaning. Meaning enough to not get paid a living wage to do it. Meaning enough to spend an enormous amount of money on education and be in debt for the rest of your life. Meaning enough to come here to the Peter Jay Sharp theater and hang out with people for a few hours literally looking at how light looks on a wall.

And it has meaning enough to drag me here, to plunk me down in a chair and start making some real decisions. It has meaning enough to make me choose what I like and what I don’t. It has meaning enough to make me work through my breaks and feel tired and cranky but still make the effort to be nice to everyone. It has meaning enough, in other words, to get me over myself.

The show is beautiful. If nothing else, if nothing else works, if, for some reason, I’m a terrible director, the actors are having an off night, you hate the play, whatever, if nothing else, the play is simply gorgeous. The scene that has been my bugaboo for this whole process, a scene is which the different characters share one dream and are all on stage at the same time, has been solved through sheer simplicity and a great sound design.

In other words, I feel like we’ve gotten our groove back. Now it’s just time to make it good.

LIFTING UP THE CURTAIN: HOW DO YOU SAY TIRED IN DANISH?

2004-04-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

It’s Friday, the day before our first Tech rehearsal, and here I am, at the Sharp theater. It’s roughly 10:45 AM, and I’ve just zipped up on the F train to go help build my set, which, while it’ll hopefully appear simple, is actually a complicated and gigantic undertaking. We’re understaffed, I have the day off, so that’s why I am here.

Our jobs today:

Gromit all the fabric for the surround. In other words, take the fabric that will form the U-shape around the set, and punch little holes in it that form these metal-ringed things called gromits and get it ready to hang from the ceiling of the theater

Put roofs on the three set areas. The set is basically three apartments. The apartments (reading left to right) decrease in size, and each has a ceiling exactly the same size as its floor. So thus we get a 12’ X 12’ X 12’ apartment, a 9’ X 9’ X 9’ apartment and a 6’ X 6’ X 6’ apartment. In honor the characters, the first one is called Axel’s, the second on Lis and Pis’, the third one Viktor’s. Anyway, they all need roofs. Only one of them has one (the 6’ one) the other ones need their roofs put in. Did I mention that they only really have one wall apiece and thus the roofs need to be tied to the ceiling using a complex array of different aircraft cables?

Assemble the furniture which has arrived from Ikea

Hang and focus the lighting instruments

By the end of the day, only one of these jobs will be done. Thankfully, it’s the second one. The fabric turns out to be a complete disaster, much of which is my fault.

For those of you who have never built a set or hung lights or been around tech people in general, well, there’s kind of a bizarre culture that’s arisen. First of all, everyone working tech becomes possessed of a sense of humor that would get you fired from most non-carnival-related gigs. So, for example, when you’re up a two-sided ladder with a girl and she says “okay, you go down first and then me” everyone in the theater will burst out laughing and make jokes about your skills at cunnilingus versus hers at fellatio. For some odd reason I can’t put my finger on, this isn’t sexual harassment, it just kind of comes with the territory. Or maybe it is sexual harassment and no one’s figured it out yet, I don’t really know.

The other thing in building is that everything becomes your bitch. That IKEA table you just assembled? “I just built that bitch” that person who just helped you might tell you that you are their bitch now. Certainly anything difficult becomes “a bitch” to do.

The third thing is the ever-present music. I’ve brought my iPOD today, and we’re listening to various mixes. Yesterday, someone brought inn Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, or was it Godspeed You Black Emperor! I can never remember, anyway, it was pretty good. Today, I’ve got my iPOD playing every Morphine song known to man. This brings back memories of high school and making out to Mark Sandman singing “I can tell you taste like the sky/ Cause you look like rain”. Looking over at the build crew, I can tell that some of them have made out to this song at some point in their lives as well.

The fabric catastrophe strikes roughly 5 hours after I’ve been sitting there gromiting. My partner comes to help me gromit. I buy an extra gromiting set so we can do it together. Gromiting is tedious, blistering work. You take a special tool and punch a hole in the fabric using a hammer, said tool, and a block of wood. Then you use this other tool to attach a metal ring to the whole using said tool, a hammer, and a specially designed metal base. Anyway, we’re gromiting away like zen masters of gromiting. Gromiting becomes increasingly fun to say and we’re sitting there, shooting the proverbial breeze, and finally they are ready for us to hang the bitches on the set.

Only it turns out that, unbeknownst to us, we’d gromited the wrong side of the fabric. That’s right, people, bitches that we are, we gromited the side that’s supposed to hang down. If they hung the fabric by the gromits we’d attached, the fabric would hang three feet off the ground instead of hang all the way down.

Also, at this point, it’s three PM, we’re supposed to give the space over to the lights people so they can focus the lights. Also, they need the set built (which includes the now-improperly-gromited surround) to be able to focus. Also, one of the ceilings isn’t done and nothing is pained.

Oh, and then Shelly realizes that the apartments are all in the wrong places by about 6” to a foot each. Crap.

I pull the light designer aside. She is a fabulous woman, Shelly Sabel, dressed like a rock star, and often calm under pressure. “So… um, Shelly. Should we cancel tech tomorrow and just, you know, build and focus?”

Please say no, please say no, please say no, please say it’s salvageable, please don’t let’s cancel anything just yet please find a solution, Shelly, please…

“I don’t know. Honestly. We’re really behind.”

Fuck.

So then we confab for awhile. Shelly figures out a solution for the apartments (moving one of them 6” accomplishes a lot, as it turns out) and we find a solution for the mis-gromited panels (overlab the gromited areas, and regromit on the correct side) and we decide not to cancel tech and get back to work.

My partner goes home, she is exhausted, and we have a dog to walk. I said I was going to leave the theater at 5:00PM, but we’re short staffed, and it looks like I’m staying until nine. Which I do, gromiting gromiting gromiting and then, finally, it’s time to hang the ceiling for Axel’s (enormous) apartment space.

You might find this hard to believe, but the way we put the ceiling up there is to have two guys on ladders in the back of the ceiling, and two ropes in the front. Then we have people on the ropes, which are thrown over pipes, hoisting this goddamn thing up until it’s high enough to stick a big 2 X 4 under, and then we shimmy it into place.

It takes roughly half an hour to get it into the right place. I’m on one of the ropes, two very little women are on one of the others. Something smells horrible. Really really horrible. I realize, eventually, that it’s me. We hoist. We hoist. Up, mateys! Pull, mateys! The ceiling is rising. When it gets about seven feet off the ground (it has to get roughly 11’ up, remember) the guys run to the ladders to get a grip on it. Then we pull with all of our might and they lift with all of theirs and Yasmine, our wonderful producer, runs and gets a 2X4 and pops it into place.

Now the guys on ladders get hammers and other things to bang the (enormous!) ceiling into place. For the next hour they are tying something called aircraft cable onto the ceiling using something called a circus knot. Someone suggests we put some festive calliope driven circus music on the system. I mention that I happen to have several variations of that. No one seems to bite. I go back to gromiting.

This was all a little over 12 hours ago. Today, we start tech. I’ll have more on that later. I promise.

Show Announcement

2004-04-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

A few people have written me to ask for details about when and where FYB is, how to buy tickets, etc. so I just figured I'd post the propaganda e-mail I've been sending out like a demon this past week. Here it is!

First You’re Born

A play by LINE KNUTZON

Translated by CHARLOTTE BARSLUND and KIM DAMBÆK

Winner of Denmark’s prestigious Reumert award for best play.

WHO:

Directed by ISAAC BUTLER

With:        GEOFFREY AREND, HANNA CHEEK, ROB GRACE, BRADFORD
                LOURYK, ALEXA SCOTT-FLAHERTY and PHOEBE VENTOURAS

WHERE and WHEN:

April 21- May 8, 2004

The Playwrights Horizons' PETER JAY SHARP THEATER
416 West 42'nd Street (between 9th and 10th Avenue)

HOW to get TIX:

All seats $15

For tickets call (212) 279-4200 or visit www.ticketcentral.com

SOME PROPAGANDA VIS FIRST YOU’RE BORN:

As the third production of its 2003-2004 season, Studio 42 and In Medias Res will present the American premiere of FIRST YOU’RE BORN, a play by Line Knutzon (winner of Denmark’sReumert Award, the country’s highest writing honor). Directed by Isaac Butler (Studio 42’s redbird), FIRST YOU’RE BORN will begin a three-week run on April 21, 2004 at Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater (416 West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues) which will conclude on Saturday, May 8.  FIRST YOU’RE BORNis produced by Yasmine Falk for Studio 42 and In Media Res. Tickets are $15 for regular performances.

The cast of will feature Geoffrey Arend (Super Troopers; Comedy Central’s Porn ‘n’ Chicken), Hanna Cheek (The Pumpkin Pie Show), Rob Grace (Calabi-Yau; The Bakkhai; Hamlet), Bradford Louryk (Klytaemnestra’s Unmentionables; redbird; Hamlet), Alexa Scott-Flaherty (redbird; Hamlet; LAByrinth Theater Company member), and Phoebe Ventouras (Sarah Silverman’s Jesus is Magic; redbird; Hamlet).

Meet Lis (Ventouras) and Tis (Goethals), twin sisters who’ve never been away from home. Meet pessimistic Axel (Arend) – who fears he is slowly disappearing – and his lonely roommate Tudeberg (Louryk), who obsessively keeps house. Meet Viktor (Grace), who suffers from a constant migraine, and meet Bimsy (Scott Flaherty), who just can’t seem to unpack her bags.

Just wait until they meet each other.

From Line Knutzon, Denmark’s most critically acclaimed contemporary playwright, comes First You’re Born– a stylized, irreverent romantic comedy about loneliness and isolation – in which six awkward and impulsive innocents search for love with hilarious (and potentially hazardous) results.

I hope you can make it!

Yours

Isaac

Lifting Up The Curtain: Christ It's Busy

2004-04-15T05:32:00.000-07:00

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about First You’re Born.

How’s it going, I feel you all (all six of you) screaming into your computer monitors?

Well, pretty good, actually. We enter the process known as Tech Week this weekend, which is when you get into the theater itself, and try to get the timing and look and feel of all the lighting and sound cues (and props and set pieces) exactly right. It’s a long, tedious process, but at the same time, I actually kind of find it fun. Tech week is one of the few times where my instant-gratification receptors get any kind of satisfaction. Theater is a process, and sometimes it’s difficult to know whether what you did is right or wrong, or if the show is going to be any good. With Tech Week, it’s pretty clear whether or not a light cue works. Very rarely do you find yourself going “um. Yeah. Well, we’re going to have to sleep on that and come up with something smart on Thursday” or whatever, which is a common occurrence in rehearsal.

And rehearsal is what we’re smack dab it the middle of. Half the cast is sick. Everyone’s running out of money. The set is forty eight hours behind schedule in terms of building. We just hired the costume designer like ten days ago. Everyone’s exhausted. I won’t see my partner today until midnight at the earliest. I don’t understand it, but for some reason this has had little effect on rehearsals lately. Sure, everyone’s a little tired, and I have to keep the energy in the room up, but people understand that hard work is what the play requires.

Before a play goes into Tech, it really turns into fine-toothed-comb time. What are the moments in the play that we’ve neglected? What do the actors still have questions about? What parts of the play work fine, are going well, but feel stale and over rehearsed? What staging that I’ve done looks god-awful and forced? When do people not know what they’re doing? Is the combat safe? (there’s one scene of pretty extensive combat that includes chasing someone with an over-sized kitchen knife). Basically it’s a lot of nitty-gritty and getting in there and getting as specific as possible.

In light of this, we are slowly making our way through the play from start to finish, to get as clear a sense of the arc as possible. Each scene can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour to get through (the scenes themselves are three to six pages long and in a big font, the play is an hour and fifteen minutes). This kind of work feels tedious, and isn’t particularly invigorating, but is what the play needs right now. The play needs some attention to detail and some new shit thrown into the mix so that we can be as prepared as possible in time for tech.

I know I haven’t been writing on Parabasis much lately, and, actually, that’s been kind of sad. I’m going to try to keep it to a post a day, except for this weekend, when I will be ensconced at Playwright’s Horizons from 10AM-10PM on Saturday and from 12PM-12AM on Sunday. But I’ll write about tech week on Monday!

Brief Other Articles to Check Out

2004-04-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hellaciously busy, people, so here's some reading:

In the New York Times we learn that our government has decided to reward ethnic clensing so long as an ally does it.

Slate.Com is really starting to get it's teeth back. Which is good, because it counteracts the dramatic fall off in quality over at Salon.com (really, other than their TV column "I Like To Watch" it's almost like... why bother paying?) I'm finding Slate as addictively readable as I did when my friend Dan was first like, "hey, they've got all these great writers! And today's papers!".
This article by ballotbox's suddenly-prone-to-outrage William Saletan is a beautiful takedown of Bush lost, as Louis Lapham put it, "in the sea of self" during his last press conference.

And here we have a fun little article on how the GOP taxes Democrats. Very odd little conspiracy theory.

Fareed Zakaria has a great article on the postwar occupation of Iraq, how it's gone wrong (specifically) and maybe some ideas of what to do about it. I don't always agree with him, but he's a good writer, and smart, and passionate, and intellectually curious.

Over at Everythings Ruined, JP does some brilliant comedy bits about Bush's press conference.

That's it for now, gotta run.

Picking Up Some DaBrooks Slack

2004-04-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Everythings Ruined has yet to post its obligatory response to a David Brooks op-ed, so I thought I’d chime in.

David Brooks pulls a classic Thomas Friedman in this one—he boils down a complex series of arguments into two essentialist positions and then applies them to a debate, thus distorting everyone’s position.

In this case, he creates two new worldviews: The Schultzes and the Weinbergians. The Schultzes (named after George Schultz) are those that argue for aggressiveness in the face of uncertainty, the Weibergians are those arguing for caution in the face of uncertainty. Brooks clearly shares the Schultzian worldview (after all, he spends three graphs on it, and only one sentence spelling out the Weinbergian position) but, in the interest of fairness he writes that both “were clear and mature. Both understood there is no perfect answer to terror and both understood the downsides of their respective positions”.

He then contrasts this clear maturity with our current crop of administration critics:

“If you follow the 9/11 commission, you find yourself in a crowd of Shultzians. The critics savage the Clinton and Bush administrations for not moving aggressively enough against terror. Al Qaeda facilities should have been dismantled before 9/11, the critics say.

Then you look at the debate over Iraq and suddenly you see the same second-guessers posing as Weinbergerians. The U.S. should have been more cautious. We should have had concrete evidence about W.M.D.'s before invading Iraq.

Step back and you see millions of people who will pick up any stick they can to beat the administration. “

Can you spot the rhetorical bait-and-switch? People on the 9/11 Commission supporting harsher action vis-à-vis Al Qaeda pre-9/11 are largely people like Bob Kerrey, fervent war supporters and hawks. Furthermore, there was no uncertainty about Al Qaeda, they had attacked us before both at home and abroad, we had some details floating about in the ether about a specific plot using hijacking on American soil, etc. etc. and so forth. What we didn’t know is what the specific details of the 9/11 plot were. In other words, the uncertainty was only about the very specific details, we knew Al Qaeda was a threat to the United States, we’d known it for years.

What we didn’t know about Iraq was whether or not it was a threat. What we did know was that its ties to Al Qaeda were tenuous and none of the intelligence about its WMD programs was confirmable. This is why all us doves supported inspections. We didn’t know whether or not Iraq was a threat, and attacking a country that doesn’t pose a threat isn’t being strong in the face of uncertainty, it’s being foolish. If the inspections were allowed to continue, we would’ve seen that Saddam didn’t have anything and that war was unnecessary in this case.

I agree with DaBrooks that the world is uncertain and vague and that every now and then you just have to make a decision and live with consequences. When those consequences are thousands of lives lost, however, there is an obligation to the human race and to the country you govern to resolve as much of that ambiguity as possible. The Bush administration did not try to resolve the ambiguity; they tried to eliminate it with a campaign of half-truths, conspiracy theories, and flight of fancy fed to them by a group of exiles who had publicly stated that they were using the United States to do their dirty work for them.

And none of them be missed no none of them be missed

2004-04-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

Terry Teachout writes “James Tatarecently posted a list of "the last twenty books of fiction or literary essays I have read." I enjoy reading this kind of list, in much the same way that I like looking at other people’s bookshelves. When the listkeepers in question also happen to be famous, of course, the results are interesting for a different reason. Justice Holmes, for example, kept a written record of every book he read as an adult, and I find it both amusing and illuminating to know that he read (among many other things) both Swann's Way and Rex Stout. Yet I take equal pleasure in knowing what my fellow bloggers are reading, looking at, or listening to, not only because I’m interested in them as personalities but also because such knowledge can lift me out of my own preoccupations and preconceptions.”

Well, okay, Terry, I’ll make a list for you, although keep in mind that whilst doing a show, I tend to not read or see many movies or other plays or anything like that. Anyway, here we go:

Plays recently seen:
The Curvature of the Earth
King Lear
A Thought About Raya
Aunt Dan and Lemon

Music I’m Listening To:
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “The Tyranny Of Distance”
The Decemberists, “Her Majesty the Decemberists”
(The Real) Tuesday Weld “I Lucifer”
Pullman, “Turnstyles and Junkpiles”
Bob Dylan, “Blonde on Blonde”

Web Animation I’m Watching Too Much Of:
Strindberg and Helium
Homestar Runner

Books I’ve Read Recently:
Candide
(re-read) A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Timon of Athens
Midnight’s Children

Last Movie I Watched on TV:
O, Brother, Where Art Thou?

Last Movie I Saw in a Theater:
I hate to admit it, but… Starsky and Hutch

Arts and Politics-o-rama

2004-04-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

Wow!

Thank you to Dan Trujillo, Laura Axelrod, Rob Matsushita, Mac Rogers, George Hunka, Noah Smith and everyone else that I might not know about who has weighed in on this conversation!

Something that's coming up in multiple posts is preaching to the choir, something which I hope to try to explore my own feelings about sometime this weekend.

More on Art and Politics

2004-04-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d respond to George Hunka, Noah Smith and Dan Trujillo, all of whom have posted plenty of food for thought both on this site and outside of it.

The argument that I was trying to make (albeit not very well) is that you cannot escape politics, so you might as well embrace it and ask yourself a few political questions while examining your work. As Hunka points out via David Mamet, politics and political correctness can often get confused. To me, artists should ask themselves questions of representation. This matters because, as Mamet points out, telling the truth is one of the basic jobs of theater. How you represent people (And groups of people) on stage is an issue relating to telling the truth. At the same time, Mamet is right, getting bogged down in questions of representation is a pointless PC exercise that, at the end of the day, will keep you from doing any work. My problem with Mamet is not his representations of women, it’s the dramatic fall off in quality of his projects starting with Oleanna, in which he finally seems to embrace the reactionary within himself and get further isolated from anything real or true.

My example of Angels in America was not, perhaps, the best one to use. I was holding up Millennium Approaches as a good example of what is possible in terms of overt political conversations within a play. Why it works for me is that Louis and Belize have this intense political conversation that manages to illuminate them as characters and stay related to the dramatic and thematic events of the play. It’s a fairly Herculean task to try to do this, and I think Kushner deserves some kudos for it. It’s one of the reasons why Millennium works so well, Kushner manages to cram discussions of politics and a very real debate that is going on in the world into these characters’ mouths and make it believable.

The far better example from Kushner’s oevre would’ve actually been “Hydriotaphia or the Death of Sir Thomas Browne” but considering I’m one of 5 people I know who has ever read that play, I decided to ignore it in favor of Angels.

(I’m curious, George, as to why you “loathe” Tony Kushner. Is it his art, his politics or both? I think exploring why we dislike certain overtly political writers and like others would be a good way to guide the conversation. I love Kushner, although I don’t think him flawless. I think he writes bloated, messy madcap plays that contain enough moments of lyricism and clarity and real brilliance to keep them together, most of the time. “Bright Room” and the second half of “Homebody/Kabul” both suffer from a kind of didacticism and sloppiness that can occasionally intrude on his writing, but Hydriotaphia, Angels and Caroline Or Change are all wonderful and deeply moving theater pieces. And PS: I know Dan Trujillo and I both love Caryl Churchill, I was wondering what other people thought of her and why they thought it.)

And but so anyway… (to quote David F.W.) what is the place of politics in theater? Perhaps where this conversation is starting to go (especially via Noah’s highly entertaining post on this) is what is the writer’s job? What is the director’s? How do these two jobs relate to politics? I’m beginning to become of the opinion that the questions about politics and art change depending on what your role in the theatrical process is and what kind of play you’re doing. Certainly, politics is going to have a different place in Richard Foreman’s work than it is in, say, Neil Simon’s. It’s interesting that Foreman is so much a part of this conversation, considering his latest work. If one reads the reviews of Foreman’s “King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe” one will see a major debate: does the overt anti-Bush content finally ground a Foreman show in something beyond his own (often sexual) neuroses, or does it corrupt what is essential about Foreman’s work? I tend to come down on the former side rather than the latter. For me, this was the first Foreman show I saw that I can clearly say that I enjoyed (rather than learned a lot from, or I’m happy I had the experience of or whatever) because for once there was something approaching a point in his madcap world of funny noises and deadpan vaudeville.

Anyway, I also just wanted to briefly touch on Aristotle, since Noah brings him up in his posting on art and politics. Why are we so beholden to Aristotle? I understand that he’s an important voice, and I’ve read Poetics plenty of times, but he really isn’t the alpha and omega of what theater can be. He’s a guy advocating a specific vision of drama that didn’t really exist even in his own time, to fit a very specific cultural/religious function over two thousand years ago, and his writing on comedy is lost forever. Furthermore, audiences and artists both seem to hunger for the more ambiguous Euripides, who was the least Aristotelian (and least well liked) playwright of his age. To me, it’s like when I read critical essays written in the 1990’s and all they talk about is Freud, as if no one has bothered to try to understand the human mind since then, or like Freud solved everything and Hamlet really is an everyman only because he wants to bang his mother. In other words, his theories form the foundation of a kind of theater, but theater’s come a long long way since then, often in spite of Aristotle.

(Noah also has lots of good points about satire and getting audience to see theater, both conversations I definitely want to be having sometime in the near future here on Parabasis. As per usual, your thoughts are welcome in my lonely comments section.)

I stall for time by watching John Kerry

2004-04-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

There is so much that I want to write about art and politics, that I don’t even know where to begin (I have a rant on my computer that I’m halfway through and then going to revise etc.) so I thought I’d turn to just politics for a moment:

I was watching some of John Kerry’s town hall meeting in Wisconsin and I have to tell you… this Presidency is really Bush’s to lose, not Kerry’s to win. I mean, that’s always to a certain extent true with incumbent Presidencies, but Kerry is just not very good at making the case that Bush is bad and that Kerry would be better.

A large amount of this is, unfortunately, purely stylistic. My dog Ramona napping next to me was far more interesting than the lockjaw up on the screen, and his audience knew it. They stared like zombies until he said something that was supposed to get applause, and then they passionately applauded and settled back in.

Personally, I just feel like Kerry needs to fire some of his staff and get people who can write great speeches out there. His speech today, what I heard of it, anyway, was at least 45% about a speech he made three days ago. He’s day “I was talking three days ago about pudding pops [or whatever], and I was giving this speech and you know what I said at that speech? I said `President Bush should spend more time looking at the economy and less time doing what Bill Cosby tells him to do [or whatever, usually by the time he got to the punch line, I had forgotten the set up]”.

I’m sure any of the playwrights out there who read this blog will recall somewhat at some point someone saying that one of the first rules of drama is show it don’t say it. In other words, Kerry, don’t reference the time when no was paying attention but you were pithy and passionate and wise just be pithy and passionate and wise and a good leader. You don’t have to be “one of us” to be a good leader—that’s W’s (and America’s) fallacy, you can be John Kerry and still be a good leader, you’re just choosing not to.

I wish they'd hire a director to take him through his laborious monologues, is what it basically comes out to. They should hire some good writers and a good director and just rehearse him non stop. Take him to some Alexander classes, or have him study Balinese mask work with Per Brahe, or some Suzuki method or biomechanics or even Bolislavsky and Meisner I don't care just get him to do something so that it looks like he's a human being and that he's worthy of our vote.

Luckily for us lefties, W could easily lose the election just based on (de) merit alone. Kerry could easily craft a strategy of getting surrogates out there in the mud constantly pointing out Bush’s total failure to do anything worthwhile. Let’s hope, however, that Kerry can paint a picture of why he deserves the job, not why W doesn’t.

Some more on Condi

2004-04-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

From Sidney Blumenthal in salon.com:

"n January 2002, Rice launched a serious effort to restart the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. She hired Flynt Leverett, who was a professional foreign service officer on the policy planning staff of the State Department, as director of the initiative on the National Security Council. Rice told him and those assigned to work with him that she understood that the absence of peace process was hurting the war on terrorism and that Leverett should propose any and all measures he thought necessary, regardless of potential political controversy. "She told us we should go for the long bomb, using a football metaphor," Leverett recalled to me.

Leverett then developed a plan on final status dealing with security, Palestinian political reform and Jerusalem; the core of the plan was essentially the same as President Clinton's ultimate proposal. Rice rejected it; her own mandated team had come up with something she judged as "unworkable" and politically untenable for Bush, who would have been forced to confront Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to enact it.

On April 4, Bush delivered a speech calling for a "two state" solution, but without any details, and sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region. Leverett traveled with him. Powell gained agreement for the basic outline of the original plan, but just as he was to announce his breakthrough in a press conference Rice intervened, instructing him not to discuss any political process and that the whole burden of accountability must be put on the Palestinians and none on the Israelis. In private, Powell seethed but did not fight Rice."

De Politics

2004-04-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

I put in a call to some fellow culture bloggers to get their thoughts on arts and politics. Laura Axelrod has pointed me to a section on her blog where she’s archived such writing. Rob Matsushita wrote me an e-mail, and George Hunka, ever the good sport, wrote an excellent post on the subject. I promised I’d post my own thoughts on the issue, and here is where I am circa 4/7/2004.

Also, if you’re out there, Noah Smith, I’d love to hear from you on this subject!

One thing that Rob and Laura both make clear is that politics has it’s place, but aesthetics are of primary importance. Laura Axelrod writes about this subject passionately here in which she reacts to some anti-war agit prop installation art on display at a certain “Times Square Arts Complex” (I’m guessing it rhymes with Obama). She writes, “there was no sense of style. And that's what I find offensive about the exhibit. It's not the political message.” This was echoed in Rob’s e-mail to me, “As far as current theater, I think it always depends on the work itself. Personally, I think that it's too hard to write in a vacuum. When I start, it's usually because I'm pissed off about something, political or otherwise. But, at the same time, it's always story first with me. The story is driven by my feelings about some issue--even if the story has NOTHING to do with that issue, if that makes sense.” The emphasis on story, character, style, all of these are aesthetic issues as much as they may be political ones as well.

Meanwhile, Hunka talks about how politics should shape our art, arguing that politics must inform our art, but that our art must challenge, must ask questions, must avoid preaching. Illustrating the point, he quotes Richard Foreman, “The real politics of America, it seems to me, have to do with the conflict between people who can sustain ambiguity and uncertainty in their lives, and people who get terrified by it and want everything to be black and white and clearly defined, and so become reactionaries or conservatives. That's the political situation in America. I think my plays always deal with exactly that issue, and therefore are very political. But they're obviously not terribly political in terms of what particular political party you happen to belong to.” He then expands on this idea, talking about the metaphysical questions we should be asking, and arguing for an inherent link to the metaphysical and the political, writing “to convert, not to preach to the converted: this is the political challenge of American theater today, and a metaphysical conversion is what we should aim at.” Foreman’s sentiment is echoed by many an anti-naturalist playwright and director, that the political conflict is one between certainty and ambiguity, between simplicity and complexity etc.

To add my own 3.5 cents :

I think our gang discussing this is talking about many definitions of the term politics. The first (espoused by Axelrod, Matsushita and, when I originally framed the question, myself) is of the more bread-and-butter variety. This is the politics of issues, of how groups and people are represented on the stage, of voting, of social awareness and consciousness. I think it is fundamentally irresponsible of artists to think about themselves as totally apolitical or, as Rob put it, making art in a void. Art exists in the world, it speaks in communication with the world, and ignoring one of the major facets of our world is cowardly head-in-the-sand avoidance. It’s the kind of art that screams “please like me” and “don’t hurt Messers Helmes and McCarthy!” simultaneously.

It is also, fundamentally, an uninteresting posture to take, it kills a part of your personality off, and boring artists make boring art. We live in a world that needs our active participation, regardless of your profession, but that is ruled by people who want you to participate as little as possible. If anyone is going to challenge this, artists are. Get out of the bunkers and into the streets.

At the same time, Laura and Rob are absolutely correct, aesthetics matter. Character, plot, story, all of these things are just as important. We are creating theater, after all, not writing pamphlets, and there is a very important difference. Let us not forget that Shaw and Shakespeare were both intensely political (although the former was much more polemical and pedantic than the latter) and absolutely brilliant writers who gave us unforgettable stories, characters and lines.

So how do we synthesize this with the other definition of politics that George has so handily given us? As Foreman posits (and most anti-naturalist playwrights, especially folks like Mac Wellman concur) the fundamental mission of art (beyond being entertaining, a concern that’s fallen a bit by the wayside) should be to challenge the way we view the world, and to change our methods of perception. This is a political activity, and this speaks very clearly against agit prop. Agit prop seeks to answer questions before they are raised, great theater exists to frame the world in questions you never really knew were there.

This is why I love playwrights like Caryl Churchill, Chuck Mee and Tony Kushner. When they are at their best, they simply rock your worldview. When they are at their worst, they walk down the spiral staircase into the depths of pedagogy. Take Kushner’s wholly unsatisfactory Bright Room Called Day. The play is split into two separate narratives, one of which is a rather fascinating portrayal of a house full of dissidents during the rise of Hitler. It asks daring, bold questions about the individual’s place in the world and in relation to history, and never comes up with any kind of satisfactory answer. The problem with the play is the narrator character, who stomps all over the proceedings by comparing (at length and frequently) Hitler to Ronald Reagan (AIDS being the new holocaust, I suppose). Regardless of what you think of the comparison, it single handedly destroys the play by painting over all of this fascinating ambiguity with easy answers and trite polemics.

Now compare this to Angels in America. No one can enter that play and not have their worldview challenged. I know people all across the religious and political spectrum, and that play has a little something for all of us. This is most evident (for me) in the liberal Jewish character of Louis, in his ever-famous argument with Belize that forms one of the central parts of the Millennium Approaches. Kushner is clearly not siding with either character, he’s letting them duke it out and letting the audience live it and that is what is so powerful.

Kushner, Mee, Churchill and many others are making theater that, in Mac Wellman’s words “teaches you to think rather than what to think”. That is the boldest kind of art imaginable and it is what we should all be striving for. This goal demands of us that we experiment with language, that we create bold characters, that we do not lose ourselves down the rabbit hole of genre, and that we continually challenge ourselves to ask interesting questions rather than give the right answers. Part of this political mission is to constantly challenge theater (both the art and the institution) and how it is formed. As artists, we should care about who makes cultural decisions, whose voice gets represented on stage and by whom, and other concerns that shape the politics of theater itself.

At the same time that I am writing all of this, I am directing a delightful little romantic comedy that I am absolutely in love with. So where does all this political mumbo jumbo fit in? To me, the politics (and they’re there, mainly around issues of isolation and alienation vs. collectivity and connectivity) are one of the guideposts that I can use to figure out the play. They’re their with everything else—the language used, the tone, the motifs, themes, symbolisms, characters etc.—as a tool to help me create the world more clearly for the actors and audience. This might sound like a cop out, like I’m excusing myself for doing not-particularly-political art, but I believe that my political consciousness informs the play and helps create the questions we ask of ourselves and our audience. And hey, you can’t go around doing Caucasian Chalk Circle all the time, anyway, it’ll make you want to kill yourself.

A quick roundup, etc.

2004-04-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

Busy busy day, production meetings, designer meetings, rehearsals, putting my dog in the day care (or kennel or whatever) for the day. Probably not going to really be able to post, so I thought I'd just write two quick things:

1) So you may have noticed a distinct absence on this blog of writings about the situation in Iraq.

Frankly, I don’t know what to say or what to write about what is going on in there except that there was a certain faction of the anti-war movement who were not opposed to taking out Saddam Hussein but thought there were non-military ways to do it that hadn’t been exhausted and that furthermore this group of clowns were the wrong guys for the job. I was one of those people. I rejoice at the greater freedom that Iraqis enjoy today, I think capturing and trying Saddam Hussein is a great thing. Programs like the Iraq Memory Foundation and important steps in the right direction. I also think that it’s a shame that I should feel it necessary to list all of those things in order to legitimately be able to make the point that the Bush administration was fundamentally incapable of handling this mess that they’ve gotten so many countries into. Hopefully, they’ll pay for that dearly, both on election day and in the annals of history.

As to the specific day-to-day, well, go read Daily Kos, Atrios or Talking Points Memo. They’re much more informed and much better writers on this subject than I am.

2) I put in a call to some fellow culture bloggers to get their thoughts on arts and politics. Laura Axelrod has pointed me to a section on her blog where she’s archived such writing. Rob Matsushita wrote me an e-mail, and George Hunka, ever the good sport, wrote an excellent post on the subject that you can read here.

I'll be responding to them (and anyone else that wants to write about the subject) over the next couple of days, but First You're Born beckons today, and I must answer the call.

Jabba the Hut Goes Back on His Word

2004-04-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

So apparently Ariel Sharon has dipped a toe back into the assassinating Yasser Arafat waters, teasing us with some words about how his three year commitment to Bush not to harm or exile Arafat was no longer applicable.

Regardless of how you feel about Arafat, you really must ask yourself: how reckless is Sharon really? Here’s a good example, a salient quote from a Sharon spokesman:
"The important thing is to exert a stern warning: `Don't even try to use this to instigate more terrorist activity,'… It's more of a deterrent measure than an operational message."

In other words, we said this thing right before Passover to deter you, not to provoke you, so you better not be provoked. This shows the dehumanizing insanity of the Likudniks in Israel. Essentially it boils down to this: “We are saying X, and we mean Y and if you take it to mean Z, well, we don’t accept that”. Evidently no one in the Sharon government read “Death of the Author”. It doesn’t really matter how you want someone to take what you say, people are going to react how they are going to react.

Furthermore, since we clearly are in the realm of reverse-psychology between the Israelis and the Palestinians, saying to the Palestinians “don’t take this as a provocation” is a pretty good way to ensure that it is taken as a provocation.

Ariel Sharon clearly does not care about the Israeli people or their security, he cares about a particular reading of the Zionist mission. If he cared about their security, he would be working towards finding a safe end to this conflict. It is pretty damn clear that his government’s actions during this seemingly endless Intifadah have done nothing but perpetuate and worsen the cycle of violence. Sharon is a General, viewing his citizens as (occasionally unwitting) soldiers in an ongoing fight for the land promised his people in the Bible.

If you want evidence, look no further than his statements today. What kind of fool goes in front of the press and says “Hey, right before what is basically considered Wabbit Season for terrorists, I just wanted to say that we’ve got plans in the works to kill the closest thing you have a leader, even though he’s got a foot and a half in the grave already, just because, well, just because we can”. I’ll tell you what kind of fool, the same kind of fool who tells insurgents to “bring it on”. The kind of fool that wants carnage so that he can justify doing whatever the hell he wants.

Well, I guess there is another reading to the situation, but it's no more complementary. Maybe Sharon just has a final solution in mind for the Palestinians, moving them off into Jordan and other countries or killing them all, whichever is easier, but his hands are tied by the US and the possibility of global thermonuclear war. Perhaps by provocing the Palestinians into doing something even more horrible he can get what he wants. Either way, he's willing to put up with an endless amount of civilian casualties in order to fulfill the Zionist mission. (here's more good evidence of why zionism is bad for the jewish people, but we can get into that kettle of fish later).

What shocks me is that the Israeli people seem to persist in thinking that Sharon and the Likudnics have done anything to make them safer. There must be other solutions than collective punishment, administrative detentions, provocative threats and targeted assassinations. There are international law reasons why you shouldn’t kill Arafat, but there are also practical ones. How would killing Arafat make the situation any better? You think by taking him out a new, more docile Palestinian Authority is going to spring up in his place?

The Palestinian people need real leaders. Arafat is not a real leader for the Palestinian people. Arafat was a stooge, brought in during Oslo because the Madrid people were proving to be too difficult to shove around. Arafat was promised power on one condition, that he stop the first Entifadah. That accomplished, we were all happy to watch him undermine any chance of democracy in the occupied territories, because he was doing a pretty good job of being the enforcement wing of the IDF. Then he betrayed his Israeli and US sponsors by not agreeing to Barak’s peace plan and turned into the crazy, terrorist supporting, Parkinsons-riddled road block to constructive peace that he is.

The Palestinians need a leader who will represent their interests. They need a leader who is good on US television. They need a leader who will be tough to the Israelis and demand real concessions on real issues. They also need a leader who will find a way out of the spiraling and attractive blood lust that has gripped so many. Assassinating Arafat is not a way to find that person, assassinating him is a way of making sure that the Palestinians will never get the leaders they need.

Some loose thoughts on theater and politics

2004-04-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is meant as the beginning intellectual wanderings in what will be an ongoing thing. I’m interested in the relationship between theater and politics, and I’m actually focusing on it this summer at Lincoln Center, so I thought I’d start to get some issues on the table and begin talking about here at Parabasis.

So I’m reading this back issue Lincoln Center Theater Review from 1999, and there’s a great interview with Stephen Daldry. Daldry is most famous in the states for directing “An Inspector Calls”, but he’s also been the director of the Royal Court Theater, and is a trustee of the Old Vic. He’s also a film director (Billy Elliot, The Hours and the I’m-almost-positive-it’s-doomed-to-a-noble-failure Kavaleir and Clay).

Anyway, the interview is great. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s got a really fascinating perspective and, being British, he cares deeply about the relationship between politics and art. There’s one concept, however, that I’d like to debate him on. Here’s the key graf:

“The theater that I would want to be a part of needs to be at the center of dissent. I believe that most serious theater is a form of dissent of one sort or another. By that I don’t mean party-political, but simply questioning and challenging and upsetting and exploring and investigating the role of society. If a theater’s not doing that, it’s part of a different sort of tradition, and entertainment, which is also important and vital and useful and theaters are very good at it. But you do need to choose your theater like you choose your church, to quote George Devine. Different churches have different uses, and the church that I want to be a part of is a theater that is engaged, heavily engaged, within a questioning society.”

I agree with Daldry about the kind of theater that I want to be a part of, although I wish he’d choose his films like he chooses his theater, I mean, boys can be dancers is hardly a message of dissent. What I question is this dichotomy: we have political, dissenting theater, and we have apolitical entertainments. I think every play has at its center some questions, issues for explorations, whatever, that are political in nature. Sometimes (most of the time, probably) these questions are engaged in a form of dissent. Sometimes they agree with the national consensus.

I once had a professor who, in my freshman drama survey said “All plays are political, if you don’t see it, it’s just reinforcing the status quo”. I think this is also overly simplistic. There’s a politics at the center of just about any play, and if you don’t see it, maybe you aren’t looking hard enough.

Anyway, I also think that if you focus solely on a script’s politics, you’re really limiting your options. First of all, you run the risk of running straight into agit-prop land, and great theater should ask more questions than it answers. You also come up with a simplistic world-view. Characters aren’t (in general) solely extensions of their political and historical conditions, and focusing on how they’re representative of this or that phenomena isn’t particularly helpful to getting a specific detailed nuanced and truthful performance out of the actors.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I’m still trying to figure out what I think. Because, as you can tell, I’m a pretty politically active person. And I’m also an artist. And I tend to direct not-overtly-political plays with a political consciousness. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so e-mail me at parabasisnyc@yahoo.com, or post in the comments section, and I’ll try to use that to build this discussion further.

Lifting Up The Curtain: Elmo Sings the Blues

2004-04-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted about the ongoing (mis)adventures of First You’re Born. This is mainly because I’m incredibly busy with the play, and it’s easier for me to toss off some thoughts about a political nugget of the day than it is to sit down and try to compose a (semi) interesting story about My Life In Art. Maybe this says more about me than it does about theater… like, maybe it says I should be going into politics or something. Actually, what I think it says is that I live/think/do theater a lot right now, and I’m using this blog to occasionally get away from all that.

But no more! Or at least, not tonight! Tonight, I will give you an update and tell a brief story about overlapping space usage.

As I wrote earlier, I’m forcing myself to change some of my habits and do things differently, specifically related to staging the show. Instead of blocking things fairly minutely from the get go and then gradually refining and rethinking the details, I decided to restrain myself and block things very generally, allowing the actors to play around as much as possible, and then after the first run thru start getting specific. Let me just say that development is painful. Really painful. It’s hard to just let it go and actually collaborate with people, knowing they won’t give you what you want (because you haven’t told them what it is), and banking that, in not getting what you want, together you can create something better. That’s tough, and it tends to leave me feeling like I haven’t gotten anything done.

That is again our good friend the ego talking (and my ego, boy is it ever super) screaming “if the show isn’t an extension of ME than it is not worth it!”. I have to continuously remind myself out loud that this isn’t about me. Me is not the reason I got into theater; love of the art is. That, and theater’s one of the few things I’m any good at.

This has been my ongoing mission with First You’re Born: to force myself to let go of the ego investment. Directing, as many have pointed out, is it’s own ego fulfillment. The show needs to have a piece of myself in it, and my personal interest and passion is important, but all of those things have their place. That place is most certainly not “sole basis for creative decisions”. This is why I’ve created some constraints for myself, to encourage collaboration all around and allow everyone’s impulses to develop to the point where we’re making some really interesting choices. So far, it's been rewarding but tough, and I'm happy I'm doing it and I'm getting a lot more out of the actors than I have in the past. So all is for the best.

Anyway, that’s where I am, now for the anecdote of the day.

The funny business with the children. First You’re Born opens in a park, where Axel and Bimsy are sitting on a park bench, celebrating their one year anniversary. Little does Bimsy know, but Axel has come to break up with her, here in public. The scene begins with an exaggerated sound of birds. Then the dialogue:

BIMSY: STRANGE! STRANGE HOW THE BIRDS ARE SINGING!

AXEL: SINGING? SOUNDS TO ME MORE LIKE THEIR SCREECHING!

BIMSY: I DIDN’T KNOW BIRDS SANG WHEN IT’S OVERCAST

AXEL: WHAT?

BIMSY: I SAID I DIDN’T KNOW BIRDS SANG WHEN IT’S OVERCAST!
(pause)
BIMSY: (con’t) IT’S NOT LIKE LAST YEAR.

AXEL: WHAT?

BIMSY: I SAID IT’S NOT LIKE LAST YEAR.
(pause)
WHEN WE MET THE SUN WAS SHINING AND EVERYTHING WAS PEACEFUL AND SERENE. MAYBE IT WON’T EVER STOP
(birdsong stops)
NOW IT’S STOPPED!

AXEL: Bimsy!
(etc.)

Now, surreally enough, there was a fortieth birthday party that had booked space adjacent to ours at Playwright’s Horizons. Theater people tend to reach financial security at a later year than most other people, and thus tend to have kids later in life. So this fortieth birthday party was filled with screaming under-five-year-old kids. Running up and down the halls, playing twister, shoving their faces with cake, throwing a beach ball into our rehearsal room door etc. I have no real beef against kids. I don’t want them, but I don’t resent people who do. The main problem was the huge distraction of having a playground outside the door.

So we’re running through the scene. Axel and Bimsy are on the parkbench. They hold glasses of bubbly, trying desperately to think of something to say to each other. And there are the exaggerated birds. And as Alexa and Geoffrey sit there trying to “be in the moment” the same thought occurs to them at the same time: those screaming kids… they make a great substitution for the birds, don’t they? The thought flickers across their face, and everyone in the room is picking up on it. A little devilish, commentative smirk flickers across Alexa’s face and she says “STRANGE, STRANGE HOW THE BIRDS ARE SINGING” kids are now screaming outside the door, and Geoff has the same little grin and he says “SINGING? SEEMS TO ME MORE LIKE THEIR SCREECHING!”. And now we have on our hands one of those heartbreaking moments in rehearsal where a moment of magic is created based on conditions that are simply not repeatable. The actors took their frustration and the aggravation of focusing during a surprise birthday party and suddenly realized the solution was to embrace the external reality of the rehearsal room. The scene has never been funnier, and then we might have taken it a bit far.

Geoffrey does a lot of voice over work. He’ll be in the next Grand Theft Auto game, and he was many of the voices (including Walken) on Celebrity Death Match. Geoffrey notices that the kids are eating pizza. Geoffrey is starving, and he stares at the door of the rehearsal room and says “What if I go out there and get some pizza”

Alexa: “Hey, Geoff, how’re you gonna do that?”

“I’ll charm someone,” Geoffrey says. “You know, tell one of them she can be my girlfriend if she gives me some pizza”. Geoffrey meant this totally innocently, but innocent was not the direction it eventually went in.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that a as a group, our humor tends towards the tasteless. Like really tasteless. And the more we get comfortable around each other, the more the dark side of our humor comes out. I also want to add that the Sesame Street puppeteers are pretty famous for their rowdy holiday parties, where they tell blue stories and do weird skits involving their characters. And what he said was neither in the presence of nor overheard by children. I would also like to say that this is a lot funnier if you say it to yourself in an Elmo voice, as that was the voice Geoffrey was doing as he said the following:

“Hi kids! This is Elmo! I’m over here in the closet! Why don’t you join me? Oh, the closet is too small to fit your pants! Here, see that bucket of butter, why don’t you bring it over here!”

The entire room bursts out laughing. I step out of the rehearsal room and run smack dab into the woman organizing the party. She tells me we’ve been so sweet and cooperative and understanding about the noise, can she do anything for us? “Well, um, Geoff really wants some pizza. Can I take some? It would really make his day”. She tells me of course, and I run and grab him some, and after a good fifteen minutes of time wasted making fun of small defenseless little kids, we stumble along back into the scene, birds and all, trying to make the end of a one-year relationship truthful and hilarious at the same time.

Flip-floppery-shmoppery

2004-04-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

Will Saletan has a really interesting piece in Slate about “flip-flopping” and Bush’s credibility. It’s a fresh counterargument to the charge that Bush levels against everybody who critiques him and it’s a lot better than “Bush is a flip-flopper too!”. Basically the theory goes like this: The Bush Administration are con artists. What they do is convince you to support an idea of theirs for a specific reason, and then quickly pulling a fast one. When you cry foul, they point out that they have your support for their policy on record (be it a vote, a quote or a… smote?) and call you a flip-flopper. Saletan draws on a vast web of examples: Democrats’ support of No Child Left Behind, tax cuts, the war etc. Richard Clarke’s 2002 confidential congressional testimony, John DiIulio’s fall out over faith based initiatives etc. Or, as Saletan puts it: “Once you vote with Bush, serve in his cabinet, or spin for him in a classified briefing, you're trapped. If you change your mind, he'll dredge up your friendly vote or testimony and use it to discredit you. That's what he's doing now to all the politicians at home and abroad who fell for his exaggerations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction”. It’s an interesting Grand Unifying Theory of the evolution of anti-Bush sentiment amongst the centrist political class.

I find it pretty convincing, except for one key paragraph:

“That's how Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt got whiplash. They supported tax cuts in 2001 when Bush challenged them to give back some of the surplus. Then the surplus vanished, Bush demanded more tax cuts, and they decided they'd been conned. They supported Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education bill in 2001. Then the administration withheld money for it, and they decided they'd been conned. They supported the Patriot Act after 9/11 when Bush urged them to trust law enforcement. Then the Justice Department took liberties with its new powers, and they decided they'd been conned. They voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq after the administration promised to use the resolution as leverage toward U.N. action, reserving unilateral war as a last resort. Then Bush ditched the United Nations and went to war, and they decided they'd been conned.”

Honestly, I can’t help but think that a lot of this is simply buying Democratic party spin when Kerry-Edwards-Gephardt really should’ve known better. There’s a whole bunch of questions begged by this paragraph. If Kerry-Edwards-Gephardt believed the resolution was meant to encourage multilateral action, why were there no demands in the resolution that Bush seek cooperation? The Bush administration and the Republican party have never been able to play well with others, so why trust them to do so now? What evidence, other than K-E-G’s claims, do we have that the Bush administration ever made them this promise anyway? Are they so naïve to accept a vague and off-the-record handshake? Why would K-E-G trust the Bush administration after he had so routinely lied to them over the past few years? When has the Justice Department even not taken liberties with its powers? Isn’t that why the Constitution exists in the first place?

In other words, I’m pretty sure that K-E-G did the politically expedient thing. They pretty much said so on the talk shows and, after all, wasn’t it Tom Dashcle who wanted to “move on” from the gravest issue facing this nation (whether or not we should go to war) and go back to promising seniors that their entitlements were secure? And let us not forget that Kerry re-embraced the war when it became politically helpful by saying that if Dean were President, Hussein would still be in power. Besides, what kind of defense does Kerry have for his post-9/11 voting record? “Hi. This is John Kerry. I know I supported the very policies I’m criticizing but… well, I kinda… um… trusting. And innocent. And easily duped. Vote for me. I have integrity, I’m not a flip-flopper, I’m just monstrously gullible.”

Let me reiterate here that at the end that we absolutely have to have to have to get rid of Bush, he is bad for this country and, more importantly, an absolute disaster for this world. We have to get someone else elected who is to the left of Bush, and the person with the best chance of doing that right now is John Kerry. We could’ve also done a lot worse: John Kerry has a consistent (especially pre-9/11) liberal voting record. He is not totally in the pocket of the DLC. He is very intelligent, cares about the details of the issue, and is slowly learning how to engage the American People. We also have to work hard to get a Democratic Congress and Senate so that they can start to turn back some of the great harm done to us during this administration. But none of that is going to happen if the Democrats are so scared of losing that they forget who they are and where they come from. They should remember: they lost the 2002 congressional races in a very dramatic fashion by trying to play it safe. It’s time to take risks, and it’s time to be decisive.

By the way: still haven’t seen John Kerry anywhere. Maybe we should stop giving him money until he comes out of hiding. I know he’s having shoulder surgery, but isn’t there some surrogate he could put on Crossfire. Or maybe it’s the infighting. I don’t know. But if you go over to Talking Points Memo, you will see what is perhaps the least-inspiring web ad ever trying to convince you to give money to Kerry. I mean, what kind of a slogan is “The choice couldn’t be clearer: elect a new President… or re-elect the current one”.

Coffee Wars

2004-04-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

In my neighborhood are many many fine places to get coffee. My personal favorite is Boerum Hill Food Company, which proudly serves Peet’s Coffee, the deliciously strong San Francisco Treat. Anyway, with all of these independent coffeehouses (and coffeehouse-bakeries) it just really takes me aback that there is a Starbucks a block away from four good coffee places in my neighborhood. Let me revise that: four MUCH BETTER coffee places in my neighborhood.

I went into Starbucks and got some coffee for the first time in about a year and you know what? It’s no good. The latte tasted like hot milk, I was corrected for asking for a medium, and everything was overpriced. I really do not understand why in New York City of all places, which has plenty of coffee, people go to Starbucks. It’s crap. I’m sorry, people, but it’s expensive mediocre product. The beans themselves are okay, but no one there seems to know how to make coffee. I know I’m not the only one who has this problem.

Which is just a really long-winded introduction to this which my Cousin Drew sent me in the mail today.

I promise I’ll get back to blogging about culture and politics and such, but I thought this link above is funny. I’m just trying to spread some joy into our dark, dark lives

Lies, Damn Lies and that Liberal Media

2004-04-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

According to Reuters (and reprinted in this morning’s Times about fifteen minutes ago) the US economy created roughly 308,000 jobs this past month. This is great news, and I congratulate the 308,000 people who are no longer unemployed, and offer my condolences to the roughly 1.8 million out there who still can’t find work. The Bush administration is probably breathing a small sigh of relief as they see these job numbers, after all, almost every other economic indicator is doing well (home ownership? up up up! Productivity? The hightest ever!) so having a robust job market is good for them and good for their reelection chances.

Except, wait a minute, we don’t have a robust job market. We have one good month. One month of jobs growth is not, as Reuters would have you believe, “a decisive break out of a long slump” in job losses. It's only a month. Consistent high job additions would be a decisive break. So, if it happens for the next two months, then we can start talking about how great the news is.

There are some additional problems, of course. First of all, as the article itself mentions that “a long-hoped for rise in manufacturing jobs did not appear”, which means the sector we talk about the most on the news is not recovering. Second, there are roughly 120,000 new workers every month graduating into the work force needing jobs, so in any job report, 120,000 of those jobs are needed simply to break even. We’re still up this month, but by the considerably smaller figure of 288,000 jobs.

Then there is the larger issue: what kind of jobs are people getting? For example, the retail sector accounted for 47,000 of the 308,000 jobs. Retail tends to be low wage, benefitless, part time work. Certainly there are people who need the money, and let’s not look a gift horse in the you-know-where, but still. If good jobs (ones that pay well and offer benefits, regardless of what kind of work you do) are vanishing and bad jobs (low wage no benefits no union) are cropping up in their stead, this is not a good thing. And furthermore, it offers less comfort to the Bush administration. If you are one of the often-profiled ex-tech types who is now working at Starbucks, are you going to be thinking “great, the Bush administration created this job for me! Their economics plan must be working!” or are you thinking “I’m forced to work at Starbucks when I used to make $80,000 a year plus stock options. I hate this economy and I hate this President”.

Don’t forget, of all the jobs to disappear under Bush’s watch, only 20% of them went overseas. The rest simply don’t exist anymore, and while productivity remains obscenely high, they aren’t likely to be resurrected either. Not to mention that we're in more debt than we've ever been, and once jobs start getting added, interest rates go up. What's going to happen when the birds come home to that particular roost?

All of these are some good reasons why Twain wrote his famous line: “there are lies, damn lies and statistics”.

What I want to know is... why is Reuters repeating Bush spin instead of spending some time noting that this welcome news is not quite as welcome as the White House would like it to be?

Just a quick thought...

2004-04-01T12:21:00.000-08:00

I've been listening to a little bit of Air America, and you know what? I'm really, really glad that it's out there and I really like Franken et al, but I don't think I like the tone and temper of talk radio at all.

Yesterday's O'Franken Factor dealt with, amongst other things, a comedy sketch involving locking Ann Coulter (played by Bebe Newirth) in a closet and letting her go crazy. Kind of funny, but maybe a bit too vitriolic for my tastes. And then we had today's, when someone asked a question Franken didn't like and he refused to even answer it or consider it. After this he went on for a long long time taunting Rush about his drug addiction.

This is all well and good, it's the milieu of talk radio but my question is, is this the level we really want to stoop to? How is this any different from the Right Wing's Talk Radio, just with the names switched around to the other ends of the sentences? I think Franken is a really funny, really intersting comedian, but honestly, this kind of almost completely devoid of real content framing of the issues in increasingly dogmatic ways might help the Democratic Party win elections, but on some level, is bad for democracy, liberalism, discourse and apple pie.

In which I get schooled and also bitch about Thomas Friedman

2004-04-01T12:01:00.000-08:00

I am a doofus. Simply put, as Bloom County would put it, I am a “goofus doofus”.

The Doctoroff quote is an April Fool’s Day joke. I got it as an e-mail forward late at night after meetings and rehearsals have kept me exhausted for days and I fell for it. Let this be a lesson to you bloggers, restraint is good. Don’t post when you’re half asleep. I’m keeping the post up, because I think the substantive points about the stadium are worth it, and I don’t want to hide from my mistakes. So now every time you quote me, you can write “Isaac Butler, who fell for a very obvious April Fool’s Day joke, says X Y and furthermore Z”.

That being said, what I wanted to write briefly about Thomas Friedman.

Thomas Friedman has a new op/ed piece out today, this one about India and China taking jobs that normally would’ve gone to Mexico.

Suffice it to say, my Thomas Friedman axe gets a lot of grinding lately. Here are some of my problems: he’s a lazy writer, he often seems to be manufacturing quotes from people in poor countries who agree with him, he has a particular worldview (unshakeable, it seems) that he gives us as objective reality, he really should no better about globalization and the Palestinians and he’s often little more than a sloganeer. Instead of arguing passionately about how to frame an issue, he often goes: “this is because of what I call the three Letters: the X the Y and the Z”. After this, he’ll explain each of them and when he’s finally boiled down a complex (and potentially unresolvable issue) to two-to-three categories, you’ll find that there’s only one way to interpret the situation: however he wants it interpreted.

Anyway, my categorization thing is not my beef today. Nor is the smelliness of his anecdotes. There’s a lot of problems with this article, but because I’m a little bit tired today, I think I’ll just simply focus on the facts laid out in the article.

The main factual issue: While listing why India and China are whomping Mexico in the global capitalism market, he lets this one out: “While China and India each send tens of thousands of students to be educated abroad every year in science and engineering, particularly in the U.S., Mexico sends just 10,000.” Not in and of itself factually wrong. Simply very very misleading. The population of Mexico is roughly 1/10th that of India’s and slightly less than 1/10th that of China’s. So if they are sending 10,000 people abroad from Mexico, and China and India are sending tens (i.e. under a hundred) of thousands of people abroad, than Mexico actually has the comparative edge in percentage of population educated abroad in science and engineering. In other words, this isn’t the problem, Tom, nor is the level of education more than a red herring here. The problem is that this level of education doesn’t matter. You just spent the last few weeks in India, now famous for it’s call centers. You don’t need a college education to work at a call center providing bad 24 hour customer service to people. Nor do you need to be an engineer to be shown how to assemble computer chips under threat of violence in China.

There is also Friedman’s restatement of the fallacy that Democracy breeds global Capitalism and vice versa. As authors like Naomi Klein have argued quite persuasively, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Friedman lumps in opening Mexico’s energy to foreign investment with reforming its judiciary. The first will help foreign companies make money, and may allow money to flow to the government’s coffers, but there is no guarantee that this will help Mexico substantially. Just look at Nigeria, where the government executed a Nobel prize winning playwright to make life easier for foreign energy companies. Second is the idea that reforming the judiciary will help Mexico make money. This is clearly a fallacy. Just look at, for example, Singapore, which has done very well for itself financially but still remains a heavily regulated, quasi-authoritarian shadow of a Democracy.

The idea that Democracy and Global Capitalism are somehow chemically bonded is the main fallacy in the selling of globalization. They often have very little to do with each other. In fact, the inclusion of China with it’s always low labor costs undermines democratic reform in countries reliant on global capitalism all over the globe.

Little Bit of Upkeep

2004-03-31T22:03:00.000-08:00

Added Dan Trujillo's quite entertaining blog to my list, and Parabasis is now listed on a few directories.

I would only ask this of you, dear readers: if there's a blog on the links list you haven't read, please click on one of them and try something new!

This One's For You, Dan (and Tia and Carl)

2004-03-31T21:28:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who is busy at work trying to stop a stadium from being built on the West Side of Manhattan, and two friends busy at work trying to stop a stadium from being built in Downtown Brooklyn. Hopefully, they’ll agree to guest blog on this site and share some of their much-better-researched reasons than mine for why these stadiums are a bad idea. They include that our tax dollars will go to subsidize massive private industry that will never return on the City’s investment, that once a stadium or two crop up in this already greatly overcrowded city, there’s very little you can do with public space (like, oh I dunno, maybe some affordable housing and a park or two would be nice).

There are many other issues, including the abusive eminent domain statutes, the uselessness of seven skyscrapers in Brooklyn when we don’t need any more office space, the West Side Stadium being built against the explicit wishes of the residents and elected representatives of the area etc. etc. and so forth. Some good arguments are laid out here, in this New York Times Op-Ed from yesterday.

Simply put, land is a very valuable resource in New York City, and just giving it over to developers while trying to minimize democratic process is not only bad for the long terms interests of the City, but smacks disturbingly of later-years Robert Moses, strong-arming his way to the ruination of the Bronx and the destruction of the glorious original Penn Station. Can anyone truly say that architecture is better off in Manhattan because of the modernist monstrosity that now attaches to Madison Square Garden like a leech fresh from a suckle? Does anyone think the Cross Bronx Expressway has increased the quality of life in the Bronx or made driving in New York City any easier?

(oh and PS: we can’t afford textbooks, Bloomie, the arts are struggling to afford space to work, there are more homeless in the Subway every week, we don’t have affordable health care and rent is out of control. Do you really think we have the kind of money to spend on this stuff?)

Anyway, this is what was going though my mind when I opened my weekly Time Out New York, and saw a three-question interview with Daniel Doctoroff. Doctoroff is the Deputy Mayor whom Bloomberg specifically brought in to get a West Side Stadium and bring the Olympics here to New York. TONY asks him “what ese have you got in the works?” His answer:

“Filling in the East River… do we really need two rivers? I think the Hudson should stay; it’s bigger, it’s prettier, it separates us from New Jersey. Tchnically, the East River isn’t even a river—it’s an estuary. The real estate opportunities afforded by filling it in are simply too great to ignore. It would also ease traffic across the bridges and make connecting the LIRR to the East side much cheaper, since there would be no tunneling underwater. As for the bridges themselves we could… turn them into promenades. And we can charge to use them We’ve already done some preliminary research on this, and everything we’ve seen tells us people will pay.”

Now, assuming he’s not joking (which might be a big assumption)… can we now stop taking seriously anything this guy says? When Rick Santorum said what he said about gays, I felt “okay, you’re disqualified. Now the Press should insert `who thinks that consensual adult sex is the same as bestiality’ before any time they quote you”. Similarly, I think it would be great if we now precede everything Doctoroff says with “whose hubris leads him to support a crackpot scheme to pave the East River” before anything he says about cost/benefit analysis w/r/t the Stadium Scheme.

Anyway, contact Mayor Bloomberg. Let him know what you think. (212) 788-9600.

From a friend of mine who shall remain, for now, nameless

2004-03-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

I got this e-mail in my mail box recently and thought I'd share it with the world:

I've been reminded of late that a lot of my feelings on current issues are pretty retro. I keep finding that a lot has already been written that seems to basically sum up my feelings on current events.

On the practice of locking up American citizens without charge, trial, or counsel because of fears of terrorism:
"No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment V

"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury . . . and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment VI

On "Gay marriage":
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment XIV

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment IX

On the role of the government in determining what expressions or philosophies are damaging enough to be regulated or proscribed. To me, this goes to most cases where proponents of government regulation argue that God says something is bad:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment I

On the role of religion-based arguments that underpin proposed government action:
"[O]ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence . . . is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; . . . that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, . . .
We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
- Thomas Jefferson, "A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom"

On the role of the government in determining whether I can choose to be armed:
"[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment II

On the right of the government to look into my personal shit:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause."
- The Unites States Constitution, Amendment IV

On those in government who would pursue courses of action in opposition to the stipulations of the Constitution:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same"
- From the oath taken by military officers, enlisted, members of Congress, and others.

Oh, that goes for the President too:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
- The Unites States Constitution, Article II, Clause 8