I do think there is a future that informs the past. If you pull open the perspective wide enough you see that the future and the past are connected as one thing and they can practically be felt, simultaneously.
When I feel the geopolitical future, I sense that this present (the past in relation to the future) only solidified a great decimation of enormous proportion in The Middle East. The future in that region is hundreds of years of war and what we did was to make sure that happened.
Maybe we had to do that. The future informs the past, somehow.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Timeless Humor
There is almost nothing timeless about filmed humor. Slapstick kind of sticks.
In my lifetime, spanning just a few decades, humor for mass consumption has changed so much. For better or for worse? I don’t know. I particularly liked the smart, verbal comedy of Annie Hall. Now, the shenanigans just seem like behavior, not humor.
Attitudes do not hold. Jokes often mock the current vanities of the era. Once the era passes, the particular humor of that age loses its leveling punch and is no longer needed. So, when reading or watching this humor, your mind reacts more to the era than to the comment on the era. This audience perspective saps the funny.
It’s really too bad.
I have a small theory that farce is timeless. But farce is often poorly done. And if farce is filmed, it suffers the same fate as all other comedy. Unless it is extraordinarily crisp. I believe the humor of The Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera holds exceptionally well, even if some of the bits go on too long. The fast tempo chaos outshines the period. This keeps your attention on the pacing, the relationships and the gags and the era becomes just the era.
Written, unfilmed farce has the best chance of survival since it can be produced to be contemporary (as long as the language is not too era-bound). My suggestion, if one wants one’s comedy to last through the ages, is to write a farcical play that relates to relationships and nature. It should hold up for future productions.
In my lifetime, spanning just a few decades, humor for mass consumption has changed so much. For better or for worse? I don’t know. I particularly liked the smart, verbal comedy of Annie Hall. Now, the shenanigans just seem like behavior, not humor.
Attitudes do not hold. Jokes often mock the current vanities of the era. Once the era passes, the particular humor of that age loses its leveling punch and is no longer needed. So, when reading or watching this humor, your mind reacts more to the era than to the comment on the era. This audience perspective saps the funny.
It’s really too bad.
I have a small theory that farce is timeless. But farce is often poorly done. And if farce is filmed, it suffers the same fate as all other comedy. Unless it is extraordinarily crisp. I believe the humor of The Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera holds exceptionally well, even if some of the bits go on too long. The fast tempo chaos outshines the period. This keeps your attention on the pacing, the relationships and the gags and the era becomes just the era.
Written, unfilmed farce has the best chance of survival since it can be produced to be contemporary (as long as the language is not too era-bound). My suggestion, if one wants one’s comedy to last through the ages, is to write a farcical play that relates to relationships and nature. It should hold up for future productions.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Speed It Up
Speed up your computer!
I have been in a sluggish mode for months.
Finally, thanks to my friend Jeff, I downloaded this program and cleaned up the hard drive.
There are gremlins out there. And they want your information.
Get them out of your life.
Ad Aware
I have been in a sluggish mode for months.
Finally, thanks to my friend Jeff, I downloaded this program and cleaned up the hard drive.
There are gremlins out there. And they want your information.
Get them out of your life.
Ad Aware
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Suicide: A Condition of Obstinacy
Death is so instructive.
Two artists kill themselves in Manhattan. If there’s no one around to review it, did it really happen?
Reports begin with the externals, “They were so beautiful, intelligent and moneyed.” Ah, American press, with its competitions, its grading, also implying, “They had everything. This seems so random.”
This angle makes for a story.
However, they were paranoid. Something about Scientologists coming after them.
Chances are, it will be revealed that someone or both of them went on or off some drugs, prescription or non-prescription, and the thought patterns got into a loop. First, the beautiful, literate woman said, “No more,” in the comfort of her own home, like any good writer. And then the visual guy walked into the sea. How pretty.
Suicide is something people do who are very rigid in their thought patterns. They hold onto some idea that does not serve them until they expire from it. The idea was more important than living. What egocentrism.
Many psychological problems arise from being very attached to wrong thinking.
Albert Ellis, the founder of R.E.M.—Rational Emotive Therapy—just died. He made cognitive therapy very popular in this country. “Stop thinking that way! Think this way!”
Good idea.
Two artists kill themselves in Manhattan. If there’s no one around to review it, did it really happen?
Reports begin with the externals, “They were so beautiful, intelligent and moneyed.” Ah, American press, with its competitions, its grading, also implying, “They had everything. This seems so random.”
This angle makes for a story.
However, they were paranoid. Something about Scientologists coming after them.
Chances are, it will be revealed that someone or both of them went on or off some drugs, prescription or non-prescription, and the thought patterns got into a loop. First, the beautiful, literate woman said, “No more,” in the comfort of her own home, like any good writer. And then the visual guy walked into the sea. How pretty.
Suicide is something people do who are very rigid in their thought patterns. They hold onto some idea that does not serve them until they expire from it. The idea was more important than living. What egocentrism.
Many psychological problems arise from being very attached to wrong thinking.
Albert Ellis, the founder of R.E.M.—Rational Emotive Therapy—just died. He made cognitive therapy very popular in this country. “Stop thinking that way! Think this way!”
Good idea.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
VHEMT
Join us! Take a look outside. See all that traffic? The smog? The endless intersections of gas stations? Wouldn’t it be so nice if there was so much less? Stop what you’re doing and take ten minutes to poke around this website and really consider it.
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
Doesn’t it make complete sense?
Now the least you can do is click on the following link to tell the senate that you just can’t believe they are cutting money for public transportation. It’s outrageous.
Subways for all!
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement
Doesn’t it make complete sense?
Now the least you can do is click on the following link to tell the senate that you just can’t believe they are cutting money for public transportation. It’s outrageous.
Subways for all!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Drop that Name
Recently, I made the mistake of mentioning someone’s name in my blog. That person found it. He didn’t like it.
It wasn’t law suit stuff. In fact, it was kid stuff. The entry was light hearted. And though it was not flattering, it was truly not meant to inflict harm.
It ended with me deleting the post because not only was the guy upset, but so was his mother. I haven’t seen these people since 1973. I did not even imagine they were alive, never mind having access to the world wide web. Mistake.
If you do not want your past to come back at you, don’t use real names of private citizens. They won’t get it that you are just skewering them as if they were celebrities. The irony is missed and they are not used to being used as subjects for public consumption.
Make fun of George Bush. Make fun of Rosie O’Donnell. But don’t use the real name of that girl you continued to fornicate even when she was puking. Or the guy who used to pick his nose and eat it. Even if you were on the receiving end of peer abuse, no need to exhume those entities from the grave of your past to have them come back at you. They don’t need it. You don’t need it.
Interesting lesson. Fundamentally, I dismissed someone as even being alive.
Now it is time to mention the REAL MONSTER who lived across the street from me and made my life so miserable I barely left the house for five years. His name was ________, and he was on average three years older than the kids he controlled on the block. One day...
It wasn’t law suit stuff. In fact, it was kid stuff. The entry was light hearted. And though it was not flattering, it was truly not meant to inflict harm.
It ended with me deleting the post because not only was the guy upset, but so was his mother. I haven’t seen these people since 1973. I did not even imagine they were alive, never mind having access to the world wide web. Mistake.
If you do not want your past to come back at you, don’t use real names of private citizens. They won’t get it that you are just skewering them as if they were celebrities. The irony is missed and they are not used to being used as subjects for public consumption.
Make fun of George Bush. Make fun of Rosie O’Donnell. But don’t use the real name of that girl you continued to fornicate even when she was puking. Or the guy who used to pick his nose and eat it. Even if you were on the receiving end of peer abuse, no need to exhume those entities from the grave of your past to have them come back at you. They don’t need it. You don’t need it.
Interesting lesson. Fundamentally, I dismissed someone as even being alive.
Now it is time to mention the REAL MONSTER who lived across the street from me and made my life so miserable I barely left the house for five years. His name was ________, and he was on average three years older than the kids he controlled on the block. One day...
Monday, July 23, 2007
Advice
"You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose."
-Gandhi
-Gandhi
Friday, July 20, 2007
Hostile
I needed to see what the kids were up to so once I joined Netflix, I put Hostel as my first pick. After sitting on the table for a week, we finally watched it.
It was just awful. Quentin Tarantino as producer and Eli Roth as director lamely make a case for the existence of this movie in that it is “Based partly on actual events”—but really, it’s Vorn. Vorn is a neologism created on this web log one sentence ago. Violence as Porn.
The movie’s narrative is as slight as a porno until the last fifteen minutes of the gore when it is revealed what the movie is about. Warning: spoiler coming for those who have not seen this splatter flick and want to endure it.
The story ultimately hinges upon men who pay to torture and kill people. It is just awful. Because it lacks character development, it presents true evil at its most existential. Maybe this is the genius of the movie. Actually, this is the genius of the movie.
Absolute darkness exists on earth. It exists in comic books. It exists in history. It exists today. It exists in this movie.
I have a friend, M, who shares with me an ease in conversations about sex and anything else. At a party recently, after a couple of drinks he said to me, “Don’t you sometimes look at a guy and want to grab him by his legs, hold him sideways and slam him into a cement wall? Watch his head crack open until it’s bloody pulp?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “I’d like to do it. Just to see how it feels. Come on.”
And I said as flat as the day, “No, not really. Things like that don't cross my mind.”
I did not judge him for it. I was actually in awe that he could admit it so freely. In fact, since he shows such restraint by not performing this deed, he should be applauded. But still, it was a shock to hear this from someone. I was almost jealous that I never felt that way. I was also aware of this chasm between myself and others. Was I missing something? Is he really off?
Big Jump:
I fear that insemination and aggression are part of the same impulse. If aggression was reduced and human beings were palatable, non-warring, peace loving primates, I bet the birth rate would decrease greatly. I bet the collective sperm count would decrease greatly. I bet the species would disappear. The species exists partly owing to this destructive force.
As long as there is insemination there will be this murder impulse. And there will be these movies. "And when you're done, just slip it into the mailer provided and once it is received, we will send you the next movie in your queue."
It was just awful. Quentin Tarantino as producer and Eli Roth as director lamely make a case for the existence of this movie in that it is “Based partly on actual events”—but really, it’s Vorn. Vorn is a neologism created on this web log one sentence ago. Violence as Porn.
The movie’s narrative is as slight as a porno until the last fifteen minutes of the gore when it is revealed what the movie is about. Warning: spoiler coming for those who have not seen this splatter flick and want to endure it.
The story ultimately hinges upon men who pay to torture and kill people. It is just awful. Because it lacks character development, it presents true evil at its most existential. Maybe this is the genius of the movie. Actually, this is the genius of the movie.
Absolute darkness exists on earth. It exists in comic books. It exists in history. It exists today. It exists in this movie.
I have a friend, M, who shares with me an ease in conversations about sex and anything else. At a party recently, after a couple of drinks he said to me, “Don’t you sometimes look at a guy and want to grab him by his legs, hold him sideways and slam him into a cement wall? Watch his head crack open until it’s bloody pulp?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “I’d like to do it. Just to see how it feels. Come on.”
And I said as flat as the day, “No, not really. Things like that don't cross my mind.”
I did not judge him for it. I was actually in awe that he could admit it so freely. In fact, since he shows such restraint by not performing this deed, he should be applauded. But still, it was a shock to hear this from someone. I was almost jealous that I never felt that way. I was also aware of this chasm between myself and others. Was I missing something? Is he really off?
Big Jump:
I fear that insemination and aggression are part of the same impulse. If aggression was reduced and human beings were palatable, non-warring, peace loving primates, I bet the birth rate would decrease greatly. I bet the collective sperm count would decrease greatly. I bet the species would disappear. The species exists partly owing to this destructive force.
As long as there is insemination there will be this murder impulse. And there will be these movies. "And when you're done, just slip it into the mailer provided and once it is received, we will send you the next movie in your queue."
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The List
I have much to sell.
I have three plays, a book, three television pilots and a movie in various stages of being marketed.
No kidding.
I wrote all this stuff. And while I’ve been writing, I have also been taking meetings, pushing my stuff around, on both coasts. But then, after the phone calls and the iced teas, I just get back to writing. Writing. Writing.
I have this feeling that something is about to sell. Then, maybe more things will sell because of that thing selling.
It’s like those musicians who have three hundred songs, ready to go.
The limiting factor in creativity is usually not the creative, it’s finding an audience. Often, one is made fun of for the hubris of fathoming an audience exists.
I think creative people actually create the audience, too. Not being far fetched here. The painter lets people know that they need to take a look at the world in a different way. The painter creates viewers. From mere mortals.
It is an ego thing. It is also childish. Grown-up, self-involved children push forward the culture. Of course they do.
I have three plays, a book, three television pilots and a movie in various stages of being marketed.
No kidding.
I wrote all this stuff. And while I’ve been writing, I have also been taking meetings, pushing my stuff around, on both coasts. But then, after the phone calls and the iced teas, I just get back to writing. Writing. Writing.
I have this feeling that something is about to sell. Then, maybe more things will sell because of that thing selling.
It’s like those musicians who have three hundred songs, ready to go.
The limiting factor in creativity is usually not the creative, it’s finding an audience. Often, one is made fun of for the hubris of fathoming an audience exists.
I think creative people actually create the audience, too. Not being far fetched here. The painter lets people know that they need to take a look at the world in a different way. The painter creates viewers. From mere mortals.
It is an ego thing. It is also childish. Grown-up, self-involved children push forward the culture. Of course they do.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Culture War, Smulture War
The divide, the great divide, has been forever.
In some countries, the divide is over and the populace has settled into one camp. It’s less hectic that way. Perhaps less vital. Perhaps kinder. Perhaps not. But mostly, it’s a world of Lords and Serfs. Lords and Serfs.
No matter what, there will be people who side with the bosses and people who side with the workers. Oddly, in our country there are so many more workers than bosses—but everyone wants to be a boss.
I’m kind of bossy. A lot of people are unmotivated. Being bossy, I often feel I need to motivate people. I can understand why people prefer to give the Lords a lot of power. Because often (or at least the impression of often), the Lords are a busy lot, making sure stuff gets done. Why not give them as much power as possible since they are the ones out there, making the big things happen?
But I loathe authority, so I cannot give these people too much power. Because usually, power hungry people are blind. They cannot see anything greater than the need to maintain their power position. Taking this stance, they concretize their positions and beat away anything that is a threat. If the world becomes greatly polluted because of their position or people die because of malnutrition or poor health care because of their position, no matter because the position is everything to them. And they blind others with the light of this position. Others follow because of adolescent thinking-following, accompanied by the need to be with the Lord class, in addition to a general patriarchal genetic coding. It is natural in many ways.
To turn one’s back on this patriarchal set-up, to join the Serfs is an act of trust. It’s the Christ thing. It’s the Buddha thing. It’s the human thing. But it is naïve and it assumes that everyone would be better off as Serfs. All together. Working together. But if there is no master with a whip making the Serfs work, would they? Really? I mean, I imagine I would (but please, not until the afternoon). Some other people would. But most would not. Then, we would starve to death. But if we could all become Serfs, happy ones, who are happy to chop some wood, to haul some water, and then go enjoy the day then, why wouldn’t we? Power would certainly become more evenly distributed. Lovely. To organize it all, hm...it would take a lot of education and again, trust. Though let us all remember, the French, after much reeducation (including the Enlightenment, the Revolution, Napoleon and Josephine Baker) only work thirty-five hours/week, forty-seven weeks/year, and they have the highest productivity rate on earth. Of course, they also have incredible soil, abundant water sources and a temperate climate.
This culture war is the natural state of human affairs. It is the perceived but also very real conflict over how things need to get done. Whether we need bosses and incentives (real and imagined) to keep us motivated or whether we trust ourselves to motivate ourselves without sticks, carrots or anything else, this is where we are in the conversation. Many men are frightened.
We had the experiment of the great push rightward. The pendulum swings toward personal freedom now. This time, let it swing very slowly. Not a reactionary swing. An adjusting swing just to the left of center. And let it stay there until I’m dead.
In some countries, the divide is over and the populace has settled into one camp. It’s less hectic that way. Perhaps less vital. Perhaps kinder. Perhaps not. But mostly, it’s a world of Lords and Serfs. Lords and Serfs.
No matter what, there will be people who side with the bosses and people who side with the workers. Oddly, in our country there are so many more workers than bosses—but everyone wants to be a boss.
I’m kind of bossy. A lot of people are unmotivated. Being bossy, I often feel I need to motivate people. I can understand why people prefer to give the Lords a lot of power. Because often (or at least the impression of often), the Lords are a busy lot, making sure stuff gets done. Why not give them as much power as possible since they are the ones out there, making the big things happen?
But I loathe authority, so I cannot give these people too much power. Because usually, power hungry people are blind. They cannot see anything greater than the need to maintain their power position. Taking this stance, they concretize their positions and beat away anything that is a threat. If the world becomes greatly polluted because of their position or people die because of malnutrition or poor health care because of their position, no matter because the position is everything to them. And they blind others with the light of this position. Others follow because of adolescent thinking-following, accompanied by the need to be with the Lord class, in addition to a general patriarchal genetic coding. It is natural in many ways.
To turn one’s back on this patriarchal set-up, to join the Serfs is an act of trust. It’s the Christ thing. It’s the Buddha thing. It’s the human thing. But it is naïve and it assumes that everyone would be better off as Serfs. All together. Working together. But if there is no master with a whip making the Serfs work, would they? Really? I mean, I imagine I would (but please, not until the afternoon). Some other people would. But most would not. Then, we would starve to death. But if we could all become Serfs, happy ones, who are happy to chop some wood, to haul some water, and then go enjoy the day then, why wouldn’t we? Power would certainly become more evenly distributed. Lovely. To organize it all, hm...it would take a lot of education and again, trust. Though let us all remember, the French, after much reeducation (including the Enlightenment, the Revolution, Napoleon and Josephine Baker) only work thirty-five hours/week, forty-seven weeks/year, and they have the highest productivity rate on earth. Of course, they also have incredible soil, abundant water sources and a temperate climate.
This culture war is the natural state of human affairs. It is the perceived but also very real conflict over how things need to get done. Whether we need bosses and incentives (real and imagined) to keep us motivated or whether we trust ourselves to motivate ourselves without sticks, carrots or anything else, this is where we are in the conversation. Many men are frightened.
We had the experiment of the great push rightward. The pendulum swings toward personal freedom now. This time, let it swing very slowly. Not a reactionary swing. An adjusting swing just to the left of center. And let it stay there until I’m dead.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Corn Fed Hogs
All this talk about Americans being obese is fine. People should change their habits, etc.
But what no one talks about is the psychology of Americans, not to mention the difficulty in locating healthy food.
Because our nation has no safety net, people are naturally anxious. It is in everyone. There is genuine concern that survival or at least dignity is something that can be taken away, swiftly. Part of the obvious tragic nature of this set up in this work camp called The United States, is the daily message, “There is not enough. You are not enough. There will never be enough for you.”
This triggers emotional starvation. What are people then left to do, but eat?
Then, sadly, what is mostly offered to people, as they devour their way into trying to assuage their psychic hunger, is corn and wheat, both, hog makers.
Why there has not been a revolution in this country is hard to figure. Not a violent revolution, but a quiet one where people put down their forks, dump the corn syrup, come to their senses and insist on a quality of life that, yes, is loaded with entitlements. Huge, healthy ones.
But what no one talks about is the psychology of Americans, not to mention the difficulty in locating healthy food.
Because our nation has no safety net, people are naturally anxious. It is in everyone. There is genuine concern that survival or at least dignity is something that can be taken away, swiftly. Part of the obvious tragic nature of this set up in this work camp called The United States, is the daily message, “There is not enough. You are not enough. There will never be enough for you.”
This triggers emotional starvation. What are people then left to do, but eat?
Then, sadly, what is mostly offered to people, as they devour their way into trying to assuage their psychic hunger, is corn and wheat, both, hog makers.
Why there has not been a revolution in this country is hard to figure. Not a violent revolution, but a quiet one where people put down their forks, dump the corn syrup, come to their senses and insist on a quality of life that, yes, is loaded with entitlements. Huge, healthy ones.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Why Get Out of Bed?
Now that I can type a text message and send it right to my blog via go@blogger.com--My dog and I can just hang until meal times.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Filthy World
My car is parked on the street because the filthy cats took over my garage stall. I have allergies and a small heart, etc. It is now a pussy palace, complete with rugged towers, a cheap couch from Ikea, a circulating water bowl, a window ledge, many different lamby mats and cushions, a litter box and a mountain of dry food. It’s been almost three years.
It’s nice.
And I do not have much sympathy for homeless cars. Filthy, awful beasts. Worse than cats.
Tomorrow, the ten year period is up and I have to go to the DMV to get my license renewed. In my vanity, I did not drink any alcohol today. I’ve had much water. I exercised Monday, Tuesday and today. There is something about a picture that you have to look at for ten years that really motivates a person. The Drivers License photo is worse than actor headshots. The latter can be tossed as soon as the mood hits.
It is odd to me that the card one uses for identity is connected to the automobile. It really wreaks of, “Drive, drive, drive! If you believe in your citizenship, then get behind that wheel and put the pedal to the metal!” Soul destroying.
I wish my car was a box that linked into a cabling system. Just punch in your destination and off you go. Magnets powered by the sun. No fossil fuel. One day, there will be something like this. It will be so fun to hear the stories about people punching in the wrong location, falling asleep and then waking up in Bakersfield. Or Camden.
I have a strong need to visit Iceland. Before they turn it into an aluminum tailings dump.
It’s nice.
And I do not have much sympathy for homeless cars. Filthy, awful beasts. Worse than cats.
Tomorrow, the ten year period is up and I have to go to the DMV to get my license renewed. In my vanity, I did not drink any alcohol today. I’ve had much water. I exercised Monday, Tuesday and today. There is something about a picture that you have to look at for ten years that really motivates a person. The Drivers License photo is worse than actor headshots. The latter can be tossed as soon as the mood hits.
It is odd to me that the card one uses for identity is connected to the automobile. It really wreaks of, “Drive, drive, drive! If you believe in your citizenship, then get behind that wheel and put the pedal to the metal!” Soul destroying.
I wish my car was a box that linked into a cabling system. Just punch in your destination and off you go. Magnets powered by the sun. No fossil fuel. One day, there will be something like this. It will be so fun to hear the stories about people punching in the wrong location, falling asleep and then waking up in Bakersfield. Or Camden.
I have a strong need to visit Iceland. Before they turn it into an aluminum tailings dump.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Democracy
Democracy to each person means something different.
To some people it means, “The freedom to enslave others so I may have a huge mansion.”
To some it means, “Full rights for all the Righteous who believe in God.”
But for me, I think The Pursuit of Happiness is the big deal. More fundamentally, I think it means that each person should be able to maximize their aliveness. Not a mania. But a true aliveness. Without apology.
To some people it means, “The freedom to enslave others so I may have a huge mansion.”
To some it means, “Full rights for all the Righteous who believe in God.”
But for me, I think The Pursuit of Happiness is the big deal. More fundamentally, I think it means that each person should be able to maximize their aliveness. Not a mania. But a true aliveness. Without apology.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
A Mighty Heart
Don’t kill yourself (or cut off your own head) to go see it. But, this is the first movie I’ve seen that really hit home how radical Islam works. There are these men who just need to be awful. And they are. Lying. Tribal. Filled with sick pride.
The critics have gushed over Angelina Jolie, as Mariane Pearl, remarking that she does all this stuff to find out what happened to her husband. But really, she just walks around her nice apartment in Karachi looking concerned. She does have the big emotional moment when she finds out that her husband has been beheaded. But it’s overdone. Ah.
The star of the movie is the Captain, played by Irrfan Khan. The actor is incredible. He plays it real, close, without gilding. Fine stuff. Very active.
The nature of this story reminds me of the war games of my youth. My brother often wanted to play Cops and Robbers, Roman Warriors, Cowboys and Indians, etc. I did not have much interest, though I did like fashioning fake knives by rubbing sticks against concrete until they were sanded into points. But really, so many kids were able to play these games of simplistic good and evil. I just didn’t get it. But watching this movie, I kind of got it. Maybe there is a place for black and white thinking---especially if you are dealing with people who take joyful vengeance in hacking up journalists.
Karachi looks like an awful, unpleasant zoo.
What a world.
A Mighty Heart
The critics have gushed over Angelina Jolie, as Mariane Pearl, remarking that she does all this stuff to find out what happened to her husband. But really, she just walks around her nice apartment in Karachi looking concerned. She does have the big emotional moment when she finds out that her husband has been beheaded. But it’s overdone. Ah.
The star of the movie is the Captain, played by Irrfan Khan. The actor is incredible. He plays it real, close, without gilding. Fine stuff. Very active.
The nature of this story reminds me of the war games of my youth. My brother often wanted to play Cops and Robbers, Roman Warriors, Cowboys and Indians, etc. I did not have much interest, though I did like fashioning fake knives by rubbing sticks against concrete until they were sanded into points. But really, so many kids were able to play these games of simplistic good and evil. I just didn’t get it. But watching this movie, I kind of got it. Maybe there is a place for black and white thinking---especially if you are dealing with people who take joyful vengeance in hacking up journalists.
Karachi looks like an awful, unpleasant zoo.
What a world.
A Mighty Heart
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Monday, July 09, 2007
The Glory Saga
Lately, I’ve been thinking if there is any truth to “souls choosing their birth parents” or some other such intergalactic voodoo---then if one has the fortune or misfortune of being born in The United States, then one has made the choice to forge forward, like an adventurer, and prospect for gold, within oneself and out in the marketplace. Being born here is probably more of a chance thing than a soul thing, and even with this, well, there you are in an individualist-go-get-‘em fantasy land—so with that, you practically have to pull on your pioneer boots, find the best that is in you and sell it across the land. Fight like a dog for as many greenbacks as you can chew into.
But is this really the most efficient use of your time?
Think about sales. All those 0% credit card offers in your mailbox. What a waste of paper. It staggers and saddens, no?
And after seeing Sicko this weekend, shouldn’t we all have basic human dignity? The guarantee that we will not die if we grow ill? Even if we are not rich or even a mild mannered office worker in Nebraska? It does make one want to move to France, the country with the best health care on earth...
As I was flying over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I had a clear view of Yosemite National Park. Half Dome. El Capitain. Amazing. Yet the mountains were brown, dead brown. I was sitting right over the plane engine and all I could think was, “I fly all the time. And these planes I’m in are just scorching the planet.” I was further scorching the Sierra Nevadas. All I do is scorch.
It makes one think that perhaps Americans need to tone it down a bit. There has to be a way for people to do all that they do without all this aggressive consumerism, this grotesque push for gain. Sure, you come out of that Yankee birth canal all gooey and ready to take the land by storm. And if you don’t, very few people will take you seriously as a sexual partner. People have to change their idea about what is a preferred sexual partner.
But is this really the most efficient use of your time?
Think about sales. All those 0% credit card offers in your mailbox. What a waste of paper. It staggers and saddens, no?
And after seeing Sicko this weekend, shouldn’t we all have basic human dignity? The guarantee that we will not die if we grow ill? Even if we are not rich or even a mild mannered office worker in Nebraska? It does make one want to move to France, the country with the best health care on earth...
As I was flying over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I had a clear view of Yosemite National Park. Half Dome. El Capitain. Amazing. Yet the mountains were brown, dead brown. I was sitting right over the plane engine and all I could think was, “I fly all the time. And these planes I’m in are just scorching the planet.” I was further scorching the Sierra Nevadas. All I do is scorch.
It makes one think that perhaps Americans need to tone it down a bit. There has to be a way for people to do all that they do without all this aggressive consumerism, this grotesque push for gain. Sure, you come out of that Yankee birth canal all gooey and ready to take the land by storm. And if you don’t, very few people will take you seriously as a sexual partner. People have to change their idea about what is a preferred sexual partner.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Nice Day for a Green Wedding
This blogger is off to Portland, Oregon for a wedding. One of the coolest, greenest cities in the country.
Have a great holiday week.
Go see Sicko.
Ignore GWB’s Libby-tarian actions. Contemplating it will only make you ill.
Stay Independent. Or figure out a way to become a citizen of Europe or Canada.
Portland, Oregon
Have a great holiday week.
Go see Sicko.
Ignore GWB’s Libby-tarian actions. Contemplating it will only make you ill.
Stay Independent. Or figure out a way to become a citizen of Europe or Canada.
Portland, Oregon
Monday, July 02, 2007
La Vie en Rose
No point in even talking about it. Just go see this movie. Marion Cotillard’s performance is out of control amazing.
La Vie en Rose
La Vie en Rose
Friday, June 29, 2007
The Coasts
After a delay of two hours, I flew back to Los Angeles. Lots of weather in New York City had backlogged take-offs. Once the plane got going, it seemed that I got to California very quickly.
New York is a great city. But the cliché about the weather in California is quite true. It’s just mountainously more comfortable here. However, the intense humidity of New York seems to make for happy sinuses.
New York and Los Angeles are sister cities. There’s a lighter strain of purpose out here in the West that makes interactions at the cash register much more enjoyable than the disappointing experience of facing the surly, angry poor in New York. The downtrodden at the mouth of the Hudson are quite something. The downtrodden in LA can simply go to the beach.
Whenever I show up for a week or longer in New York, my pea brain imagines that I have moved there for good. It’s like a whole new life. I get excited for a day, followed by a strange depression—like, have I moved here, really? What happened to my whole other life? Then, I realize I haven’t moved back to New York, and things even out. So just like in LA, I do some work, I spend time with friends. I go to bed at 4AM. It’s all the same.
Both cities are actually quite ugly. You have to make an effort to find the pleasing neighborhoods. My cab ride from midtown Manhattan to my apartment in Queens is mostly along Northern Boulevard. Nothing on earth is more hideous, yet, interestingly, many boulevards in Los Angeles are built with the same aesthetic in mind. None.
Primarily, people in both cities are working hard, going after what they want. In LA, you can flounder more with less judgment. In New York, you can get stuck in a groove...because change there seems more daunting. You can certainly indulge yourself with great food and entertainment in both places, things being cheaper in Los Angeles. On average, the accessible entertainment is better in New York, the accessible food is better in Los Angeles.
Glad both cities exist. Neither one is Paris.
New York is a great city. But the cliché about the weather in California is quite true. It’s just mountainously more comfortable here. However, the intense humidity of New York seems to make for happy sinuses.
New York and Los Angeles are sister cities. There’s a lighter strain of purpose out here in the West that makes interactions at the cash register much more enjoyable than the disappointing experience of facing the surly, angry poor in New York. The downtrodden at the mouth of the Hudson are quite something. The downtrodden in LA can simply go to the beach.
Whenever I show up for a week or longer in New York, my pea brain imagines that I have moved there for good. It’s like a whole new life. I get excited for a day, followed by a strange depression—like, have I moved here, really? What happened to my whole other life? Then, I realize I haven’t moved back to New York, and things even out. So just like in LA, I do some work, I spend time with friends. I go to bed at 4AM. It’s all the same.
Both cities are actually quite ugly. You have to make an effort to find the pleasing neighborhoods. My cab ride from midtown Manhattan to my apartment in Queens is mostly along Northern Boulevard. Nothing on earth is more hideous, yet, interestingly, many boulevards in Los Angeles are built with the same aesthetic in mind. None.
Primarily, people in both cities are working hard, going after what they want. In LA, you can flounder more with less judgment. In New York, you can get stuck in a groove...because change there seems more daunting. You can certainly indulge yourself with great food and entertainment in both places, things being cheaper in Los Angeles. On average, the accessible entertainment is better in New York, the accessible food is better in Los Angeles.
Glad both cities exist. Neither one is Paris.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Sylvia Plath's New York
For those of you, like me, who have read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar more than two times, you may recall how she describes New York City in the very early morning before anyone is out of bed. She writes that before the streets fill up with people and cars the smells of nature from New Jersey waft across the Hudson and fill up the concrete canyons. She describes it, obviously, in her words and to much greater effect.
I finished dinner at 10:30 with a very old friend of mine who lives on Broadway and 99th Street and I decided to walk a bit before getting in the humid hell tube of the 1 train. When I arrived at 89th Street, there was a serious stench of skunk. It actually smelled like a skunk had gotten loose and sprayed the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Was it from New Jersey? Or was it just the off-gassing smell of the brand new purple industrial carpet gleaming from the store front in front of me? No matter, it reeked of true skunk and I thought of Sylvia.
Natural experiences are so important. No matter what side of the river you live upon.
We experienced big thunder storms today. I remember as a child these storms used to clear the air and reduce the humidity. After these storms today the sticky mess still does not abate. Now, one no longer has to imagine what it must be like to live among the inner drippings of the sloughing uterus of a feverish ring-tailed monkey that lives at the equator.
I finished dinner at 10:30 with a very old friend of mine who lives on Broadway and 99th Street and I decided to walk a bit before getting in the humid hell tube of the 1 train. When I arrived at 89th Street, there was a serious stench of skunk. It actually smelled like a skunk had gotten loose and sprayed the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Was it from New Jersey? Or was it just the off-gassing smell of the brand new purple industrial carpet gleaming from the store front in front of me? No matter, it reeked of true skunk and I thought of Sylvia.
Natural experiences are so important. No matter what side of the river you live upon.
We experienced big thunder storms today. I remember as a child these storms used to clear the air and reduce the humidity. After these storms today the sticky mess still does not abate. Now, one no longer has to imagine what it must be like to live among the inner drippings of the sloughing uterus of a feverish ring-tailed monkey that lives at the equator.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The Coop Circus
What is it about groups of people in New York banding together in business that naturally leads to corruption? Lack of resources? Fear? Who knows!
Tonight was the yearly Coop (Ko Op) board meeting for my building out here in the wilds of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. For the unsuspecting, a Coop is a strange real estate entity that is set up for a group of people who live in a building to own the building together. So, no landlord. Ownership. But, you actually own shares in the corporation that owns the building depending on your square footage. And, as is the case in our building, the original person who owned the building (called the sponsor) can retain a certain amount of units, and thus, shares, but is supposed to relinquish them over time to paying customers (our dude has not done this and this makes him wrong.) Lastly, each year, as many people as possible who can attend, do attend the annual meeting for voting new members to be the head of the Coop board. Ours is structured so we vote for five members of the Coop board. The sponsor, who still owns 46% of the building, gets four members. So what hangs in the balance is voting for five members of a nine volunteer member panel that makes all the decisions that affect the well being, both physical and fiscal, of this building that takes up a complete city block.
Tonight, in a basement of a gray stone Methodist church in Jackson Heights, it was like Paris in 1798. Mad men screaming! – Mostly a Russian guy who seemed to be angry in general. “You are criminals! Criminals! Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth!”
A deaf guy who kept yelling, “I can’t hear you! Speak into the mike!”
Accents from all over the globe were furious! They came to this country to be free and to move up the ladder of opportunity. Instead, they were forced to keep quiet, paying medium sized maintenance fees for work that seems to never happen---painting, roofing, repairs. Finally, these people stood up tonight and said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Five new people were nominated for the five open positions. Three of the old board members were nominated, also --one of them was one of the scary Goombas who interviewed us when we first applied to join the Coop. His big gray curly head and tattoos bobbing above a huge belly that hung over his shorts, makes one think of a Santa Claus summering in New York because he’s just gone mad.
The new members standing up for the open spots are for big change, fiscal responsibility, communication, transparency. The old members of the Coop board always claimed to care about fiscal responsibility and making the building nice and getting the sponsor to relinquish apartments for sale. But, they may have fallen under the spell of the other four members who are from the Sponsor’s end. We’ll never know the real story.
The Coop board member who did appear the worst to me was this horrendous man, and former president of the board, perhaps a Columbian, who announced in his two minute campaign presentation, “What do you think? If you want to get things repaired it costs money. And where do you think the money comes from? It does not piss out of your pockets. You only have problems dropping out of your asshole.”
His tone and choice of diction guaranteed I would not vote for him. Besides, he was the president and didn’t even live on the premises and snagged a foreclosed apartment for his son. Insider animal.
Meanwhile, a luscious, black temptress in a wig and nine inch nails behind the desk, handing out ballots, couldn’t really do her job (my particular ballot was lost and she had to fashion me a new one from a ballot of someone who did not attend)—but she decided, for some reason, that I could possibly be her new boyfriend. I didn’t disagree, but I also didn’t pursue it.
I felt bad for the two Goombas who have been on the board for a while who were being publicly attacked. Is it really their fault that the Coop is allegedly corrupt? Maybe the four sponsor’s Coop board members are just awful thugs and they coerced them into doing their bidding, making contracts with workers that do not work but love money anyway.
Interestingly, one of the four sponsor’s Coop board members, though not present, had his name announced. Let's say Tony Sagliano. That’s the same name as someone I went to elementary school with in the wretched burg of Spring Valley, New York. My neighborhood was one of those 1960’s developments loaded with blue collar Italians and Orthodox Jews from the outer boroughs of New York in pursuit of sylvan happiness. I could not stomach either group and spent five years in isolation playing the guitar, reading my Charlie Brown books and nursing my black mollies that contracted Ick. Of my few forays into socializing, I did spend some time playing records down the street with Tony, “I’m your Venus, I’m your fire, a-your desire.” We listened to records together a couple of times on his portable record player. But he grew sick of me.
Tony was cute with a buster brown haircut, a perfect little body and face. He was an average, disruptive, popular student. The funky teachers of second and third grade couldn’t resist his attractive charm and let him get away with anything. He was a bit of a bully. Cocky. He acted the role of mini-Roman leader. He treated me okay. But one time in summer camp (one summer he went to the same cheap summer camp I went to)—he punched me in the face. I forget why. Maybe I was trying to be fun and cool and instead I was being obnoxious and strange. Anyway, he hit me pretty hard.
Tony Sagliano moved away in the fifth grade. His father got a job with a limousine company that was totally mob? At least that's what my mother said. We went to see their new house. It was quite something for a limo driver---what with the built-in pool in the backyard, the whole place filled with big, new furniture. His mother, Josie, wore blond Doris Day wigs, lots of make-up and smoked Parliaments. We only went to their shag palace one time. I never saw him after that.
I think he’s one of the sponsor Coop board members of my building.
But maybe not. Tony Sagliano is a common name in these parts.
After returning to my apartment, I went into the hallway to empty some trash when Ann from next door caught me mid-dump. She’s been in this country for many years, but still retains her Scottish accent. She reaffirmed her belief that she and many Coop owners maintain: that the current Coop board members are corrupt animals and need to be replaced. That all this work we paid for never got done. That the roof still has problems. And what happened to our three-hundred-thousand dollar reserve? She went on and on. I’ve noticed that Scottish people are very talkative. In Germany, we spent six hours speaking with Scottish folks while drinking gallons of beer at the Hof Brauhaus. They just didn’t shut up. Of course, Cummings is a Scottish name.
This Blog entry has been edited to protect the innocent.
Tonight was the yearly Coop (Ko Op) board meeting for my building out here in the wilds of Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. For the unsuspecting, a Coop is a strange real estate entity that is set up for a group of people who live in a building to own the building together. So, no landlord. Ownership. But, you actually own shares in the corporation that owns the building depending on your square footage. And, as is the case in our building, the original person who owned the building (called the sponsor) can retain a certain amount of units, and thus, shares, but is supposed to relinquish them over time to paying customers (our dude has not done this and this makes him wrong.) Lastly, each year, as many people as possible who can attend, do attend the annual meeting for voting new members to be the head of the Coop board. Ours is structured so we vote for five members of the Coop board. The sponsor, who still owns 46% of the building, gets four members. So what hangs in the balance is voting for five members of a nine volunteer member panel that makes all the decisions that affect the well being, both physical and fiscal, of this building that takes up a complete city block.
Tonight, in a basement of a gray stone Methodist church in Jackson Heights, it was like Paris in 1798. Mad men screaming! – Mostly a Russian guy who seemed to be angry in general. “You are criminals! Criminals! Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth!”
A deaf guy who kept yelling, “I can’t hear you! Speak into the mike!”
Accents from all over the globe were furious! They came to this country to be free and to move up the ladder of opportunity. Instead, they were forced to keep quiet, paying medium sized maintenance fees for work that seems to never happen---painting, roofing, repairs. Finally, these people stood up tonight and said, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Five new people were nominated for the five open positions. Three of the old board members were nominated, also --one of them was one of the scary Goombas who interviewed us when we first applied to join the Coop. His big gray curly head and tattoos bobbing above a huge belly that hung over his shorts, makes one think of a Santa Claus summering in New York because he’s just gone mad.
The new members standing up for the open spots are for big change, fiscal responsibility, communication, transparency. The old members of the Coop board always claimed to care about fiscal responsibility and making the building nice and getting the sponsor to relinquish apartments for sale. But, they may have fallen under the spell of the other four members who are from the Sponsor’s end. We’ll never know the real story.
The Coop board member who did appear the worst to me was this horrendous man, and former president of the board, perhaps a Columbian, who announced in his two minute campaign presentation, “What do you think? If you want to get things repaired it costs money. And where do you think the money comes from? It does not piss out of your pockets. You only have problems dropping out of your asshole.”
His tone and choice of diction guaranteed I would not vote for him. Besides, he was the president and didn’t even live on the premises and snagged a foreclosed apartment for his son. Insider animal.
Meanwhile, a luscious, black temptress in a wig and nine inch nails behind the desk, handing out ballots, couldn’t really do her job (my particular ballot was lost and she had to fashion me a new one from a ballot of someone who did not attend)—but she decided, for some reason, that I could possibly be her new boyfriend. I didn’t disagree, but I also didn’t pursue it.
I felt bad for the two Goombas who have been on the board for a while who were being publicly attacked. Is it really their fault that the Coop is allegedly corrupt? Maybe the four sponsor’s Coop board members are just awful thugs and they coerced them into doing their bidding, making contracts with workers that do not work but love money anyway.
Interestingly, one of the four sponsor’s Coop board members, though not present, had his name announced. Let's say Tony Sagliano. That’s the same name as someone I went to elementary school with in the wretched burg of Spring Valley, New York. My neighborhood was one of those 1960’s developments loaded with blue collar Italians and Orthodox Jews from the outer boroughs of New York in pursuit of sylvan happiness. I could not stomach either group and spent five years in isolation playing the guitar, reading my Charlie Brown books and nursing my black mollies that contracted Ick. Of my few forays into socializing, I did spend some time playing records down the street with Tony, “I’m your Venus, I’m your fire, a-your desire.” We listened to records together a couple of times on his portable record player. But he grew sick of me.
Tony was cute with a buster brown haircut, a perfect little body and face. He was an average, disruptive, popular student. The funky teachers of second and third grade couldn’t resist his attractive charm and let him get away with anything. He was a bit of a bully. Cocky. He acted the role of mini-Roman leader. He treated me okay. But one time in summer camp (one summer he went to the same cheap summer camp I went to)—he punched me in the face. I forget why. Maybe I was trying to be fun and cool and instead I was being obnoxious and strange. Anyway, he hit me pretty hard.
Tony Sagliano moved away in the fifth grade. His father got a job with a limousine company that was totally mob? At least that's what my mother said. We went to see their new house. It was quite something for a limo driver---what with the built-in pool in the backyard, the whole place filled with big, new furniture. His mother, Josie, wore blond Doris Day wigs, lots of make-up and smoked Parliaments. We only went to their shag palace one time. I never saw him after that.
I think he’s one of the sponsor Coop board members of my building.
But maybe not. Tony Sagliano is a common name in these parts.
After returning to my apartment, I went into the hallway to empty some trash when Ann from next door caught me mid-dump. She’s been in this country for many years, but still retains her Scottish accent. She reaffirmed her belief that she and many Coop owners maintain: that the current Coop board members are corrupt animals and need to be replaced. That all this work we paid for never got done. That the roof still has problems. And what happened to our three-hundred-thousand dollar reserve? She went on and on. I’ve noticed that Scottish people are very talkative. In Germany, we spent six hours speaking with Scottish folks while drinking gallons of beer at the Hof Brauhaus. They just didn’t shut up. Of course, Cummings is a Scottish name.
This Blog entry has been edited to protect the innocent.
Monday, June 25, 2007
North Adams
There is something about western Massachusetts. There are not many small towns in this country where you can visit or live where you will be surrounded by progressive, intelligent people. Berkshire County reminds me of another great area of this country for good living with sharp people: the few coastal counties north of San Francisco. Similar sensation going on.
Lucky for those of us who find it lucky that these places exist.
My best friend, Megan, bought a house the size of an elephant herd in North Adams. It has three floors with enough room for living and renting and a huge two story garage for an art studio. It’s a lot of house.
It was constructed during the Victorian rambling-up-the-hills era when North Adams was a prosperous mill town. Brilliant place.
Vermont is five minutes away.
New York City is three hours by car.
When speaking with the local people, they generally come off clear headed with very subtle, twinkling senses of humor. Frank responses to most inquiries are refreshing and fundamentally pleasing.
Of course, it’s also beautiful.
This is not news to many people. But to me it was affirming since one does not often find this when tooling around The United States.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Passing Strange
Goats and sheep surely must have been dancing together all over creation today as the news spread that I was up at 8:15 AM. I committed to going to an open Broadway chorus call for a revival of Guys & Dolls. Being a middle-aged tenor who can pass for mid-century gangster, I figured I was not too delusional attempting this. Part of me imagined I could get a job and stay here for a while, bringing in some okay greenbacks. Part of me was being romantic, keying into one of my childhood dreams. Part of me was being realistic about landing a gig as I have been singing publicly to decent effect lately. And part of me just wanted to see if I could commit to getting up with the local Queens farmers and stick to such an uncomfortable plan. The audition went off with no great consequence. I moved on.
Aperture, the gallery that is connected to the magazine, was having a show of Civil Rights era photographs by Bruce Davidson (commissioned) and others (who just did it at their whim). Fascinating photos. These black people were pissed. And wouldn’t you be? One-hundred years after the Civil War had ended and then what? Moving.
A quick jaunt back to Queens to just, I don’t know, sit.
Then, back out to a fabulous play called Passing Strange. Now, who on earth has heard of a guy named Stew? I mean, he’s from California and he’s really right there, not far from where I live. I was clueless. He’s this pretty cool cat who founded a pop rock group in LA called The Negro Problem. He’s bright as hell. Born and raised in moderate middle class comfort in Los Angeles, the play’s story focuses on how he discovers that he’s an “artist”, a musician, and heads off to Amsterdam and Berlin and apes the downtrodden black American—to much European support and awe. (Not unlike Tracey Chapman’s m.o. when I went to college with her in Boston.) There is a lot of irony here. I think what sums it up in the piece is when the young character is asked by an interviewer, “Do you consider that the entire source of your work comes from being black?”
His response is, “Yes and No, so Yo.”
It’s post James Baldwin with a tiny dash of In Living Color and a level of intelligence that will not dip down.
The show is ninety-five percent sung (yes, I calculated it) with a band of five (including Stew as the narrator) and a brilliant cast of six. The musicians and the actors were out of this world talented. The actors were particularly beautiful. I just sat there and thought, “These black people are the true Americans, the ones who have really been through the whole horrible thing. And they’re hot. Everyone should have one.”
The ensemble played multiple roles to great effect and no one was afraid to ironically flash the big black bug-eyes or overdone toothy grins of yes’m-year. Again, the performers had such a profound awareness of the exact pitch in all their characters, whether they were Berliner anarchists, toked-out Amersterdammies, or what have you. The music was upbeat, driving and right on, as far as this soft-hit white guy who likes a good driving musical was concerned. The end the play became a bit obvious with its family ties thing. But art isn’t easy and we all do things to unify our stories. Let’s face it---the human race has been powered by work and family (the best cultures are ones that have liberal philosophies with a populace that continues to work hard with an eye toward human connection—Me thinks.) So it is no surprise that the family thing rears its head in a big way in many stories. With this tilt, the irony faded which I found disagreeable. But American audiences usually cannot endure irony from stem to stern. They often find such things morally unmooring which quickly translates into box office poison. Too bad. But this did not spoil the first eighty-nine percent of brilly brill brilliance.
If you’re in New York, this is something worth experiencing. If it comes to a civic center near you, check it out.
Aperture, the gallery that is connected to the magazine, was having a show of Civil Rights era photographs by Bruce Davidson (commissioned) and others (who just did it at their whim). Fascinating photos. These black people were pissed. And wouldn’t you be? One-hundred years after the Civil War had ended and then what? Moving.
A quick jaunt back to Queens to just, I don’t know, sit.
Then, back out to a fabulous play called Passing Strange. Now, who on earth has heard of a guy named Stew? I mean, he’s from California and he’s really right there, not far from where I live. I was clueless. He’s this pretty cool cat who founded a pop rock group in LA called The Negro Problem. He’s bright as hell. Born and raised in moderate middle class comfort in Los Angeles, the play’s story focuses on how he discovers that he’s an “artist”, a musician, and heads off to Amsterdam and Berlin and apes the downtrodden black American—to much European support and awe. (Not unlike Tracey Chapman’s m.o. when I went to college with her in Boston.) There is a lot of irony here. I think what sums it up in the piece is when the young character is asked by an interviewer, “Do you consider that the entire source of your work comes from being black?”
His response is, “Yes and No, so Yo.”
It’s post James Baldwin with a tiny dash of In Living Color and a level of intelligence that will not dip down.
The show is ninety-five percent sung (yes, I calculated it) with a band of five (including Stew as the narrator) and a brilliant cast of six. The musicians and the actors were out of this world talented. The actors were particularly beautiful. I just sat there and thought, “These black people are the true Americans, the ones who have really been through the whole horrible thing. And they’re hot. Everyone should have one.”
The ensemble played multiple roles to great effect and no one was afraid to ironically flash the big black bug-eyes or overdone toothy grins of yes’m-year. Again, the performers had such a profound awareness of the exact pitch in all their characters, whether they were Berliner anarchists, toked-out Amersterdammies, or what have you. The music was upbeat, driving and right on, as far as this soft-hit white guy who likes a good driving musical was concerned. The end the play became a bit obvious with its family ties thing. But art isn’t easy and we all do things to unify our stories. Let’s face it---the human race has been powered by work and family (the best cultures are ones that have liberal philosophies with a populace that continues to work hard with an eye toward human connection—Me thinks.) So it is no surprise that the family thing rears its head in a big way in many stories. With this tilt, the irony faded which I found disagreeable. But American audiences usually cannot endure irony from stem to stern. They often find such things morally unmooring which quickly translates into box office poison. Too bad. But this did not spoil the first eighty-nine percent of brilly brill brilliance.
If you’re in New York, this is something worth experiencing. If it comes to a civic center near you, check it out.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The Year of Magical Thinking
It’s always great to have a great friend who can get you damn good seats at a show. Thanks Martha! Martha is the girlfriend of my best friend, Megan. They hooked up a couple of years ago. By pure coincidence (since Martha is from California and Megan and I are from New York), it turns out that Martha actually went to our high school for two years before she moved to California. They did not know this before they hooked up. I was friends with her brother.
So, Martha moved to California and then came back to New York, eventually. And I moved to California from New York and now I mostly live in California and spend about six or eight weeks each year in New York. And Megan lives in New York but would like to have a desert house in California. And The Year of Magical Thinking, starring Vanessa Redgrave, written by Joan Didion based on her book, is about a woman who sallies between New York and California as she deals with the death of her husband and her daughter.
Most of you have read the book or at least heard of it. Fabulous book. The play was the book, simply shared. It was hard for me to just experience the play as a play since I know the book so well. But Vanessa Redgrave was luminous, as always. And actually, the whole time she was up there I kept thinking, oddly, that she was, in fact, Joan Didion and I thought, “I hope when the play is over I get to meet her,” meaning Joan Didion. But what I really should have been thinking was Vanessa Redgrave, not Joan Didion. I was also stuffed with hot open turkey sandwich (Hi Todd).
Well, after the play was over, I did go backstage and sat at a little café table called “Café Didion”—a little resting area for Joan (the real one) to sit during rehearsals...maybe for Vanessa, too. In any event, I sat there while Martha was finishing up her work and as the small crew and cast of one were exiting, singing en masse something from West Side Story, they walked right by and Martha introduced me to Vanessa Redgrave. Quick, simple chat. But nice to have had it. Martha and I stood on the stage of the Booth Theatre looking out at the empty seats. It’s nice to stand on a Broadway stage. Ghost light. Has that promising, expansive feeling.
Martha and I went back to her place, (an amazing new apartment on the twenty-fourth floor of Manhattan Plaza with a river view practically out to Pennsylvania) and we drank white wine with ice and yakked.
So, Martha moved to California and then came back to New York, eventually. And I moved to California from New York and now I mostly live in California and spend about six or eight weeks each year in New York. And Megan lives in New York but would like to have a desert house in California. And The Year of Magical Thinking, starring Vanessa Redgrave, written by Joan Didion based on her book, is about a woman who sallies between New York and California as she deals with the death of her husband and her daughter.
Most of you have read the book or at least heard of it. Fabulous book. The play was the book, simply shared. It was hard for me to just experience the play as a play since I know the book so well. But Vanessa Redgrave was luminous, as always. And actually, the whole time she was up there I kept thinking, oddly, that she was, in fact, Joan Didion and I thought, “I hope when the play is over I get to meet her,” meaning Joan Didion. But what I really should have been thinking was Vanessa Redgrave, not Joan Didion. I was also stuffed with hot open turkey sandwich (Hi Todd).
Well, after the play was over, I did go backstage and sat at a little café table called “Café Didion”—a little resting area for Joan (the real one) to sit during rehearsals...maybe for Vanessa, too. In any event, I sat there while Martha was finishing up her work and as the small crew and cast of one were exiting, singing en masse something from West Side Story, they walked right by and Martha introduced me to Vanessa Redgrave. Quick, simple chat. But nice to have had it. Martha and I stood on the stage of the Booth Theatre looking out at the empty seats. It’s nice to stand on a Broadway stage. Ghost light. Has that promising, expansive feeling.
Martha and I went back to her place, (an amazing new apartment on the twenty-fourth floor of Manhattan Plaza with a river view practically out to Pennsylvania) and we drank white wine with ice and yakked.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
John From...
Saw John From Cincinnati. The first episode. And there he was—the gay guy referred to as the suicidal fruit.
We gay guys are still the freaks. Or the court jester, on a good day.
Perhaps the problem is the structure of drama, in general. If you have to have conflict, then often, it is best to have a stable of bad characters to cause that conflict. For the sake of expediency, it’s even better to have recognizable bad characters in that stable.
Milch was known for not holding back anything in Deadwood. Let him have at it with this surfer thing.
As a gay guy, I am a little nutty. And I have played the jester. But I grow weary.
There is truth to every stereotype. But how lazy to keep dragging them out. I mean, Milch can go for it. But I’m bored.
We gay guys are still the freaks. Or the court jester, on a good day.
Perhaps the problem is the structure of drama, in general. If you have to have conflict, then often, it is best to have a stable of bad characters to cause that conflict. For the sake of expediency, it’s even better to have recognizable bad characters in that stable.
Milch was known for not holding back anything in Deadwood. Let him have at it with this surfer thing.
As a gay guy, I am a little nutty. And I have played the jester. But I grow weary.
There is truth to every stereotype. But how lazy to keep dragging them out. I mean, Milch can go for it. But I’m bored.
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Dumb and The Sexist
Hillary...there’s time. She can do it.
The common complaint is that, “She’s so arrogant.”
Stupid people find smart people arrogant. Your basic American likes a simple president. Someone with a drawl, the kind of guy you can have a beer with. Maybe even a black tooth.
I find Hillary to be spirited. I don’t see the arrogance. She is assured.
I think this gun-toting, Super Bowl of a country is simply uncivilized and loathes the idea of a woman running it. Migrating to this country is a very pushy act. That’s how most of us got here. If the classic idea of female energy is hearth and home, then leaving your old country to start anew in America is more likely to be collectively experienced as a very male action. Our country’s social energy source is primarily unchecked, blatantly competitive male ID. Women, obviously, have pushed way to the front of many things, mostly using historically male tactics...And I say, “Thank Frigging Goddess!” for the gender balance. But still, this aggressive hell cauldron of a place has a long way to go with understanding what this all means. Women in power is still misunderstood, often misused and certainly threatening to your average citizen, male or female.
Someone is going to figure out how Hillary can pull this off. Hillary can figure out how to pull it off. That’s the challenge for her, personally. If she can find a way to move our dark ages, non-brilliant populace into a more enlightened century, and get enough people to vote for her to ultimate victory, the sociological advancement of these United States will benefit us all in ways we cannot yet even imagine. Hillary can do it. She’ll run it well.
The common complaint is that, “She’s so arrogant.”
Stupid people find smart people arrogant. Your basic American likes a simple president. Someone with a drawl, the kind of guy you can have a beer with. Maybe even a black tooth.
I find Hillary to be spirited. I don’t see the arrogance. She is assured.
I think this gun-toting, Super Bowl of a country is simply uncivilized and loathes the idea of a woman running it. Migrating to this country is a very pushy act. That’s how most of us got here. If the classic idea of female energy is hearth and home, then leaving your old country to start anew in America is more likely to be collectively experienced as a very male action. Our country’s social energy source is primarily unchecked, blatantly competitive male ID. Women, obviously, have pushed way to the front of many things, mostly using historically male tactics...And I say, “Thank Frigging Goddess!” for the gender balance. But still, this aggressive hell cauldron of a place has a long way to go with understanding what this all means. Women in power is still misunderstood, often misused and certainly threatening to your average citizen, male or female.
Someone is going to figure out how Hillary can pull this off. Hillary can figure out how to pull it off. That’s the challenge for her, personally. If she can find a way to move our dark ages, non-brilliant populace into a more enlightened century, and get enough people to vote for her to ultimate victory, the sociological advancement of these United States will benefit us all in ways we cannot yet even imagine. Hillary can do it. She’ll run it well.
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Eastern Solution
Say what you want about China, but at least they’re practical. After reaching a billion people, they put in a one child per family law.
Since all wars are fundamentally about perceived lack of resources, shouldn’t we all follow China’s lead in curbing population? For the sake of peace--
Since all wars are fundamentally about perceived lack of resources, shouldn’t we all follow China’s lead in curbing population? For the sake of peace--
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Stadium
Tonight, I went to a Dodgers/Mets game with a friend/baseball fan who is visiting from out of town. Young men and women in army fatigues were handing out small, free American flags at the entrance. For waving? To the television cameras? How could I not refuse the offer? I found the crowd at the game terrifying. I do not understand the choosing of sides, the release of aggression, the repetitive chant that “New York sucks” or the filthy masses gnashing on hotdogs, spilling beer and doing the “wave”. The wave is particularly troubling to me, with its group think choreography generated from the same neurological dark matter that gave rise to goose stepping--though admittedly executed in a lighter tone.
While looking at these trashy people, some drunk, one thin-angry man holding his three week old baby, Hispanic men chanting something about being Americano, I could only think of the Nazi Parade grounds outside of Nurnberg. This led me, naturally, to thinking of shards of words from the Sylvia Plath Nazi poems. I thought of the “Peanut-crunching crowd” from Lady Lazarus and the “Luftwaffe” from Daddy.
Being outside of the experience and finding it so unappealing, I felt like a small boy. Not unlike the small boy in the row in front of me who got his leg stuck between two of the hard plastic retractable seats, and unable to figure out how to dislodge his leg, he began to cry. His father, the thin-angry one holding the three week old baby, noticed his son crying after the mother pulled his leg out from its pinching entrapment. The mother asked her small son in reference to his leg, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
And the father quickly replied, dismissively, “He doesn’t say anything, he just cries.”
I looked at these people and thought, “If there was a tragedy in this stadium and I was the only one who knew how to get them out of there, would they listen to me? Or would they just swirl their uninformed thoughts in a prideful rage and remain paralyzed in non-action until they and their children died?”
Alienated, but not grim, and even light hearted with the recognition of my outsider status, I fell in love with what is fine on earth. I admired the diamond shaped mower markings in the outfield. The cement ground of the stands was truly covered with peanut shells. And like Sylvia, I wanted to rise up and eat men like air.
Daddy
Lady Lazarus
While looking at these trashy people, some drunk, one thin-angry man holding his three week old baby, Hispanic men chanting something about being Americano, I could only think of the Nazi Parade grounds outside of Nurnberg. This led me, naturally, to thinking of shards of words from the Sylvia Plath Nazi poems. I thought of the “Peanut-crunching crowd” from Lady Lazarus and the “Luftwaffe” from Daddy.
Being outside of the experience and finding it so unappealing, I felt like a small boy. Not unlike the small boy in the row in front of me who got his leg stuck between two of the hard plastic retractable seats, and unable to figure out how to dislodge his leg, he began to cry. His father, the thin-angry one holding the three week old baby, noticed his son crying after the mother pulled his leg out from its pinching entrapment. The mother asked her small son in reference to his leg, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
And the father quickly replied, dismissively, “He doesn’t say anything, he just cries.”
I looked at these people and thought, “If there was a tragedy in this stadium and I was the only one who knew how to get them out of there, would they listen to me? Or would they just swirl their uninformed thoughts in a prideful rage and remain paralyzed in non-action until they and their children died?”
Alienated, but not grim, and even light hearted with the recognition of my outsider status, I fell in love with what is fine on earth. I admired the diamond shaped mower markings in the outfield. The cement ground of the stands was truly covered with peanut shells. And like Sylvia, I wanted to rise up and eat men like air.
Daddy
Lady Lazarus
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
And Then What?
So say Roe V. Wade was repealed. Then what? There are going to be women who will still certainly have abortions. Some will be botched and end in death like in the good old days. Weren’t they great, those days?
And then, of course, thousands will be performed with no trouble at all. Will the police go around and find these women who have had illegal abortions and throw them in jail? Will they throw the doctors in jail?
As the overcrowded planet becomes even more uninhabitable with the endless millions of throbbing human beings, must we continue to prize wanton pregnancies?
If the statistics are true and one in five conceptions does in fact end in an abortion, well, that is pretty over the top. But how could you possible enforce a law that attempts to end abortion?
Are these religious people out of their minds?
And then, of course, thousands will be performed with no trouble at all. Will the police go around and find these women who have had illegal abortions and throw them in jail? Will they throw the doctors in jail?
As the overcrowded planet becomes even more uninhabitable with the endless millions of throbbing human beings, must we continue to prize wanton pregnancies?
If the statistics are true and one in five conceptions does in fact end in an abortion, well, that is pretty over the top. But how could you possible enforce a law that attempts to end abortion?
Are these religious people out of their minds?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Hillary for President
She is the only candidate pushing for universal health coverage.
Hillary, 2008. End of story.
Hillary, 2008. End of story.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Sopranos
That was it?
For years I imagined that could be the possible ending. Knowing there is talk of a movie, well, this series finale leaves things wide open for such a thing. But was it done for that reason only?
It was a commendable choice, of course. Modern. But so unsatisfying. Ah. No wonder writers return to Aristotle's Poetics for a boost in dramatic structure.
Mr. Chase, I just don't know. I'm gonna go eat some manicotti (monnygawt).
For years I imagined that could be the possible ending. Knowing there is talk of a movie, well, this series finale leaves things wide open for such a thing. But was it done for that reason only?
It was a commendable choice, of course. Modern. But so unsatisfying. Ah. No wonder writers return to Aristotle's Poetics for a boost in dramatic structure.
Mr. Chase, I just don't know. I'm gonna go eat some manicotti (monnygawt).
Friday, June 08, 2007
T G I F
Okay. I’ve been cranking it. I wrote a new thirty page play about the hypocrisy of art funding with disgusting sexual overtones. I produced and wrote and sang in a cabaret fundraiser thing a few weeks ago about the history of Silverlake and it’s happening again this coming Monday night. Another one of my full length plays, A Good Smoke, had a public reading a few days ago that came off very well. I finished, finally, writing my original television pilot, Money, for my new agency, after months of notes from them. I also finished writing my screenplay about gay zombies, Oh, The Horror!, with my friend. Sent that to the agency, too. It’s been an extremely productive time.
And now I understand why people beg for Friday. I just want to lie down and sleep for three days. Truly.
We're heading out to Palm Springs tomorrow night. But you know what I really can’t wait for more than anything else? The Sopranos finale.
And now I understand why people beg for Friday. I just want to lie down and sleep for three days. Truly.
We're heading out to Palm Springs tomorrow night. But you know what I really can’t wait for more than anything else? The Sopranos finale.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
He Could Have Had a G8
The Republicans in office are really businessmen representing a few very strong interest groups. They have no vision other than financial gain for a few old industries. After they are done skimming, they will pack it in and go home.
Karl Rove, who consistently lives by the polls, has admitted the Republican party is in the toilet. And he’s rather blithe. He had his time. Everyone in this administration did what they needed to do for their careers and for their bank accounts. And now it’s coming to a close. They really don’t care what happens when they are through. It was pure selfishness. Many fearful men followed them. Some grew very rich. Some did not get their religious agenda for an evolution-free America. Some went to jail.
The whole experiment was a huge failure. And the Neo-cons know it. But being ideologues, they are wryly distant about the whole thing, shrugging their shoulders. They are like little boys with chemistry sets who blew up the garage and then slink in the house with a “shucks” grin and hog down a comfy dinner.
While in Germany, Bush the lesser is doing nothing to come together with the other seven leaders. It’s more of the same. He talks a little about implementing a few things by 2008 or 2010, but he will be so out of office and cleaning brush fulltime that he is not really thinking about what he’s even saying. He just doesn’t care. Like a child in a fit of sloth, he sits tight. He loves his easy money. He is stasis in flesh.
Even if his actions are not motivated by plain selfishness, let's just say, why anyone would put the current short term economic goals over long term economic goals is beyond me. History will prove that being green at this point in time was the only feasible way to succeed. It will preserve the earth. It will obey the laws of physics. It will make for healthier human beings. It will spur innovation. Why someone would not get on board with this only proves his lunacy.
This president that we have suffered under for endless, painful years has no vision. He is the old man in the hardware store who just wants to stockpile cash in the last couple of years before he retires with the least amount of effort, stuck behind his pride that smacks of, “I’ve been doing it this way all these years. Who is anyone to tell me to change?” Rearranging the old hammers to the back of the store for the new hammers that are ergonomically superior is just too much trouble for him and even considering the movement aches his petty pride. Small, indolent men in positions of power are invidious traitors who hurt every soul they manage to control.
Oh, Bush: Resign. Go clear brush, you lazy slob. And let the world get on with it.
Karl Rove, who consistently lives by the polls, has admitted the Republican party is in the toilet. And he’s rather blithe. He had his time. Everyone in this administration did what they needed to do for their careers and for their bank accounts. And now it’s coming to a close. They really don’t care what happens when they are through. It was pure selfishness. Many fearful men followed them. Some grew very rich. Some did not get their religious agenda for an evolution-free America. Some went to jail.
The whole experiment was a huge failure. And the Neo-cons know it. But being ideologues, they are wryly distant about the whole thing, shrugging their shoulders. They are like little boys with chemistry sets who blew up the garage and then slink in the house with a “shucks” grin and hog down a comfy dinner.
While in Germany, Bush the lesser is doing nothing to come together with the other seven leaders. It’s more of the same. He talks a little about implementing a few things by 2008 or 2010, but he will be so out of office and cleaning brush fulltime that he is not really thinking about what he’s even saying. He just doesn’t care. Like a child in a fit of sloth, he sits tight. He loves his easy money. He is stasis in flesh.
Even if his actions are not motivated by plain selfishness, let's just say, why anyone would put the current short term economic goals over long term economic goals is beyond me. History will prove that being green at this point in time was the only feasible way to succeed. It will preserve the earth. It will obey the laws of physics. It will make for healthier human beings. It will spur innovation. Why someone would not get on board with this only proves his lunacy.
This president that we have suffered under for endless, painful years has no vision. He is the old man in the hardware store who just wants to stockpile cash in the last couple of years before he retires with the least amount of effort, stuck behind his pride that smacks of, “I’ve been doing it this way all these years. Who is anyone to tell me to change?” Rearranging the old hammers to the back of the store for the new hammers that are ergonomically superior is just too much trouble for him and even considering the movement aches his petty pride. Small, indolent men in positions of power are invidious traitors who hurt every soul they manage to control.
Oh, Bush: Resign. Go clear brush, you lazy slob. And let the world get on with it.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Relaxing with Illness
I have an idea
I need to write a book about what to do when you are waiting for your doctor’s appointment.
As things stand, it takes forever to get to see the doctor at a reduced price. You have to go to the certain place on the certain day when your certain doctor is actually there---
And even if we do move to a single payer plan, well, for sure, the Republicans will do everything they can to under fund such a thing to prove that it just doesn't work. Kind of like they did with the war (even though they actually wanted it to work). A cheap, sour people, these Republicans.
In either scenario, unless it is an emergency, one waits for the doctor.
So how about a book about what to do for yourself while you wait for days on end for your appointment? With chapter ideas like:
That Nasty Rash: A perfect reason for a three day soak in a bathtub of vinegar.
The Flu: Throw on the ice pack. Enjoy the hallucinations. By the time you get to the doctor, it’ll all be over.
Back Pain: Stop stressing and it’ll go away.
Abdominal Pain: It’s not your gallbladder but go ahead and do the olive oil/lemon juice cleanse anyway. It kills time.
Anxiety: Drink.
Overly Heavy Menstrual Flow: Sin and bear it. Rent Carrie.
Profound Migraine: You’ve all heard the wife’s tale about how to fix this one. Go for it.
Gash: Wrap it tight. Say goodnight.
Warts All Over: You’re probably a witch. Jump in a river and see if you sink or float. If you sink, you’ll drown. If you float, get out, dry off, have some eye of newt.
Generalized Doom: Walk a lot. Steal things.
Allergies: Change location. Steam. Wash your clothes and hair. Keep changing locations, steaming and washing. Eventually, you’ll end up in Iceland. It’s a better place.
Coated Tongue: Finally take your dentist’s advice and buy a tongue scraper. Scrape for three days. Rinse.
Numbness in the Extremities: Just a reaction to the Modern era. Rent old movies. Listen to Sixties, Seventies, even Eighties Pop.
Inexplicable Bad Breath: Throw away all your garlic, onions and socks (the latter is for fetishists only). No need for heavy salamis, either. Then, clean out the entire refrigerator followed by your whole filthy house. Suck on breath mints while working. Sugarfree.
Broken Toes: Think about what stupid thing you did that made this happen. Then think about all the other stupid things you do. Figure out why you do such stupid things. Is it for the attention? Are you just lazy? Or are you, actually, not so bright? Work on figuring out the answers.
So, perhaps there is a method to the madness of healthcare in this country. If it just takes too long to get an appointment, well, maybe you’ll just grin and bear it until the pain goes away and you'll cancel.
It wouldn’t make any sense to have a greater number of available doctors, now, would it? Because that would increase supply, so their fees would decrease. So we must keep the number of available doctors, like available barrels of oil, low.
In a single payer system, would it be better? Since the economic structure would change? So it would not be based on the lack of available physicians? Or am I just being naïve like a blind Canadian?
I need to write a book about what to do when you are waiting for your doctor’s appointment.
As things stand, it takes forever to get to see the doctor at a reduced price. You have to go to the certain place on the certain day when your certain doctor is actually there---
And even if we do move to a single payer plan, well, for sure, the Republicans will do everything they can to under fund such a thing to prove that it just doesn't work. Kind of like they did with the war (even though they actually wanted it to work). A cheap, sour people, these Republicans.
In either scenario, unless it is an emergency, one waits for the doctor.
So how about a book about what to do for yourself while you wait for days on end for your appointment? With chapter ideas like:
That Nasty Rash: A perfect reason for a three day soak in a bathtub of vinegar.
The Flu: Throw on the ice pack. Enjoy the hallucinations. By the time you get to the doctor, it’ll all be over.
Back Pain: Stop stressing and it’ll go away.
Abdominal Pain: It’s not your gallbladder but go ahead and do the olive oil/lemon juice cleanse anyway. It kills time.
Anxiety: Drink.
Overly Heavy Menstrual Flow: Sin and bear it. Rent Carrie.
Profound Migraine: You’ve all heard the wife’s tale about how to fix this one. Go for it.
Gash: Wrap it tight. Say goodnight.
Warts All Over: You’re probably a witch. Jump in a river and see if you sink or float. If you sink, you’ll drown. If you float, get out, dry off, have some eye of newt.
Generalized Doom: Walk a lot. Steal things.
Allergies: Change location. Steam. Wash your clothes and hair. Keep changing locations, steaming and washing. Eventually, you’ll end up in Iceland. It’s a better place.
Coated Tongue: Finally take your dentist’s advice and buy a tongue scraper. Scrape for three days. Rinse.
Numbness in the Extremities: Just a reaction to the Modern era. Rent old movies. Listen to Sixties, Seventies, even Eighties Pop.
Inexplicable Bad Breath: Throw away all your garlic, onions and socks (the latter is for fetishists only). No need for heavy salamis, either. Then, clean out the entire refrigerator followed by your whole filthy house. Suck on breath mints while working. Sugarfree.
Broken Toes: Think about what stupid thing you did that made this happen. Then think about all the other stupid things you do. Figure out why you do such stupid things. Is it for the attention? Are you just lazy? Or are you, actually, not so bright? Work on figuring out the answers.
So, perhaps there is a method to the madness of healthcare in this country. If it just takes too long to get an appointment, well, maybe you’ll just grin and bear it until the pain goes away and you'll cancel.
It wouldn’t make any sense to have a greater number of available doctors, now, would it? Because that would increase supply, so their fees would decrease. So we must keep the number of available doctors, like available barrels of oil, low.
In a single payer system, would it be better? Since the economic structure would change? So it would not be based on the lack of available physicians? Or am I just being naïve like a blind Canadian?
Monday, June 04, 2007
Advice to Writers
When listening to the feedback from critics, play developers and other interested parties:
Take their notes and eat them too.
Take their notes and eat them too.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Greed, Fear and Just Being Here
Isn’t it all just fear? This greed?
If this was truly a “Christian” nation—
Okay, scratch that---
If this was truly an evolved place, wouldn’t we just have it set up so people are safe
and their health care was in place?
The fear, the fear, the fear.
And the bullies, the bullies who use that fear to scramble and control most of the population. And people do it! Hey, nothing wrong with having an occupation. That’s lovely. But shouldn’t it be a little flexi? With all this technology on earth, couldn’t people work a little less, live a little more? Do what they want to do while still putting in their time, being responsible citizens? The truth is, the more people work, the more wealth there is. The more wealth, well, the more expensive things become. Hard to get ahead.
And then there’s all that fear...gluing people in.
I hear things like, “I want to do that but I never could. It’s too expensive.”
Or
“But what if something awful happens?”
Or
“I’m going to work real hard until I’m fifty-five, retire early, and then do what I want to do.”-- But honey, then you’ll be fifty-five.
Or
“I’m doing it for my children.”
Or
“I just hate those damn terrorists in Iraq and the Republicans are going to get rid of them for me, so I can sleep well at night.” ---The Republicans created them to scare you!
Fear, fear, more fear and fear some more.
Fear is a grabby gus. It grabs at you. It grabs at material goods. It just keeps grabbing and grabbing as it goes down kicking and screaming.
No more fear.
And the next time a quaking waif on a ski life wants me to acknowledge how sad and bad the world is and the bottomless goodness of Jesus Christ, I will. And then I’ll simply ask her, “Instead of loving Jesus so much, why don’t you just love me?” Or is that too scary?
If this was truly a “Christian” nation—
Okay, scratch that---
If this was truly an evolved place, wouldn’t we just have it set up so people are safe
and their health care was in place?
The fear, the fear, the fear.
And the bullies, the bullies who use that fear to scramble and control most of the population. And people do it! Hey, nothing wrong with having an occupation. That’s lovely. But shouldn’t it be a little flexi? With all this technology on earth, couldn’t people work a little less, live a little more? Do what they want to do while still putting in their time, being responsible citizens? The truth is, the more people work, the more wealth there is. The more wealth, well, the more expensive things become. Hard to get ahead.
And then there’s all that fear...gluing people in.
I hear things like, “I want to do that but I never could. It’s too expensive.”
Or
“But what if something awful happens?”
Or
“I’m going to work real hard until I’m fifty-five, retire early, and then do what I want to do.”-- But honey, then you’ll be fifty-five.
Or
“I’m doing it for my children.”
Or
“I just hate those damn terrorists in Iraq and the Republicans are going to get rid of them for me, so I can sleep well at night.” ---The Republicans created them to scare you!
Fear, fear, more fear and fear some more.
Fear is a grabby gus. It grabs at you. It grabs at material goods. It just keeps grabbing and grabbing as it goes down kicking and screaming.
No more fear.
And the next time a quaking waif on a ski life wants me to acknowledge how sad and bad the world is and the bottomless goodness of Jesus Christ, I will. And then I’ll simply ask her, “Instead of loving Jesus so much, why don’t you just love me?” Or is that too scary?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
John Lahr Tells it
KISS OF LIFE
Tennessee Williams on a romantic reawakening
BY JOHN LAHR
The New Yorker, May 28, 2007
On December 30, 1947, the thirty-six-year-old Tennessee Williams boarded a ship bound for France, sailing away from America and from the tumultuous success on Broadway, only a few weeks earlier, of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Almost immediately, he hit creative still water, finding it “Frightfully hard to discover a new vein of material.” When, in late 1948, his play “Summer and Smoke” failed on Broadway, William’s confidence dipped still further; he felt, he said, like a “discredited old conjurer.” To his champion Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic of the Times, he wrote in June, 1949, “The trouble is that you can’t make any real philosophical progress in a couple of years. The scope of understanding enlarges quite slowly, if it enlarges at all, and the scope of interest seems to wait upon understanding...All artists who work from the inside out, have all the same problem: they cannot make sudden, arbitrary changes of matter and treatment until the inner man is ripe for it.”
Tennessee Williams on a romantic reawakening
BY JOHN LAHR
The New Yorker, May 28, 2007
On December 30, 1947, the thirty-six-year-old Tennessee Williams boarded a ship bound for France, sailing away from America and from the tumultuous success on Broadway, only a few weeks earlier, of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Almost immediately, he hit creative still water, finding it “Frightfully hard to discover a new vein of material.” When, in late 1948, his play “Summer and Smoke” failed on Broadway, William’s confidence dipped still further; he felt, he said, like a “discredited old conjurer.” To his champion Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic of the Times, he wrote in June, 1949, “The trouble is that you can’t make any real philosophical progress in a couple of years. The scope of understanding enlarges quite slowly, if it enlarges at all, and the scope of interest seems to wait upon understanding...All artists who work from the inside out, have all the same problem: they cannot make sudden, arbitrary changes of matter and treatment until the inner man is ripe for it.”
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Cleaning Out
Memorial Day Weekend around here was not about barbecues or swimming. We cleaned out the garage.
It was such a great thing to do. In Los Angeles, you can take all your cans of old poison and electronics to the toxic waste station downtown...guys in gear take it out of your trunk and they sort it all and take care of it for you in an environmentally conscious fashion. Nice.
Then, of course, once you get to cleaning out the garage, you just want to clean out everything.
I got to looking around at my loose pieces of blog papers and here they are, thus, cleaning up my desk. To purge! To clean! To make way for the new and unusual!
Fourteen pieces of paper:
1) People used to be ignorant because they had too little information. Now they are ignorant because they have too much.
2) One cannot succeed in the United States in a whole way because the pressure is to be both rich and virtuous, simultaneously. This is impossible. It leads to neurotic see-saw behavior.
3) Republicans try to trick people into thinking how they think. They fool people into believing they can become wealthy.
4) People do not behave well because they are modeling bad behavior. At the end of the day, we are a monkey-see-monkey-do sort of species. People watch a lot of television. Actors on television are not quite human. They are distant and do not form real relationships in a show. Partly because it’s a show. Partly because television is fast. When working that fast, it’s hard to show natural human behavior. Because the actor is in a time crunch, stressful situation, the behavior is kind of pulled in and self centered. At least this calms the actors down. And people imitate this behavior. This hall of mirrors is making for some very strange behavior and relationships in the rank and file. I have always felt that the invention of the camera pretty much destroyed depth. Cameras do steal souls.
5) You can be nude in Brattleboro, Vermont whenever and wherever you feel like it. How civilized!
6) Hopefully, the rage instilled by bad parenting does not run out midway through an artistic career.
7) Modern civilization has always been a war between the sensualists and the ideologues.
8) Libertarianism sounds fun...until you imagine catching that bullet because you said, “Have a nice day,” to the wrong person.
9) Alpha males take care of much of the material world. Their payment is that they get to take as much of it as they want. And the lower humans in the pecking order allow it. Like chickens.
10) My drag queen name: Helena Hand Basket
11) My optimistic view of how this right/left conflict will end: Nature seeks peace, so liberals will win.
12) Less cars, better air. Let the jobless from Michigan come to Los Angeles to build the railways! Turn Michigan into a big nature preserve.
13) People do not naturally want others in their personal space so at dinner parties, we have to drug each other to get along.
14) At the end of the day, popularity does decide who lives and who dies.
It was such a great thing to do. In Los Angeles, you can take all your cans of old poison and electronics to the toxic waste station downtown...guys in gear take it out of your trunk and they sort it all and take care of it for you in an environmentally conscious fashion. Nice.
Then, of course, once you get to cleaning out the garage, you just want to clean out everything.
I got to looking around at my loose pieces of blog papers and here they are, thus, cleaning up my desk. To purge! To clean! To make way for the new and unusual!
Fourteen pieces of paper:
1) People used to be ignorant because they had too little information. Now they are ignorant because they have too much.
2) One cannot succeed in the United States in a whole way because the pressure is to be both rich and virtuous, simultaneously. This is impossible. It leads to neurotic see-saw behavior.
3) Republicans try to trick people into thinking how they think. They fool people into believing they can become wealthy.
4) People do not behave well because they are modeling bad behavior. At the end of the day, we are a monkey-see-monkey-do sort of species. People watch a lot of television. Actors on television are not quite human. They are distant and do not form real relationships in a show. Partly because it’s a show. Partly because television is fast. When working that fast, it’s hard to show natural human behavior. Because the actor is in a time crunch, stressful situation, the behavior is kind of pulled in and self centered. At least this calms the actors down. And people imitate this behavior. This hall of mirrors is making for some very strange behavior and relationships in the rank and file. I have always felt that the invention of the camera pretty much destroyed depth. Cameras do steal souls.
5) You can be nude in Brattleboro, Vermont whenever and wherever you feel like it. How civilized!
6) Hopefully, the rage instilled by bad parenting does not run out midway through an artistic career.
7) Modern civilization has always been a war between the sensualists and the ideologues.
8) Libertarianism sounds fun...until you imagine catching that bullet because you said, “Have a nice day,” to the wrong person.
9) Alpha males take care of much of the material world. Their payment is that they get to take as much of it as they want. And the lower humans in the pecking order allow it. Like chickens.
10) My drag queen name: Helena Hand Basket
11) My optimistic view of how this right/left conflict will end: Nature seeks peace, so liberals will win.
12) Less cars, better air. Let the jobless from Michigan come to Los Angeles to build the railways! Turn Michigan into a big nature preserve.
13) People do not naturally want others in their personal space so at dinner parties, we have to drug each other to get along.
14) At the end of the day, popularity does decide who lives and who dies.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
ONCE
I didn’t know anything about it, really. We saw ONCE.
I suggest you stop reading this blog entry right now. Come back and read the rest tomorrow after you see this movie tonight.
****************************************
Okay, have you seen the movie yet?
My experience and thoughts:
Cried through most of it. Okay, I’m half Irish....and there’s the sentiment. But the best kind of sentiment.
And it’s a musical.
A pop one. Kind of light U2. Kind of Cat Stevens. Really good music, if you like the soft modal thing building into the high, searching mourning thing. Suspended chords. Aching stuff. The lead actor, Glen Hansard, is the main guy in the Irish band The Frames. He’s pretty amazing with his acting, singing and hair. And the Czech girl, Marketa Irglova. Also, amazing. She’s so young.
ONCE was made for four cents (okay, $150,000. But in movie terms, that’s like four cents). The story is completely simple but surprising, nevertheless. The acting is spot on perfect. Directing and Shots---spot on, too.
Come on. Really. Go see it if you jumped the asterisks and read this blog entry before seeing the movie. Lyrical. Loving. And the best part is, well, how it all goes...I don’t want to oversell it. I went in knowing nothing. So go in knowing nothing and just enjoy yourself.
I wish I suffered from polydactyl disease so I could give this movie three thumbs up.
I suggest you stop reading this blog entry right now. Come back and read the rest tomorrow after you see this movie tonight.
****************************************
Okay, have you seen the movie yet?
My experience and thoughts:
Cried through most of it. Okay, I’m half Irish....and there’s the sentiment. But the best kind of sentiment.
And it’s a musical.
A pop one. Kind of light U2. Kind of Cat Stevens. Really good music, if you like the soft modal thing building into the high, searching mourning thing. Suspended chords. Aching stuff. The lead actor, Glen Hansard, is the main guy in the Irish band The Frames. He’s pretty amazing with his acting, singing and hair. And the Czech girl, Marketa Irglova. Also, amazing. She’s so young.
ONCE was made for four cents (okay, $150,000. But in movie terms, that’s like four cents). The story is completely simple but surprising, nevertheless. The acting is spot on perfect. Directing and Shots---spot on, too.
Come on. Really. Go see it if you jumped the asterisks and read this blog entry before seeing the movie. Lyrical. Loving. And the best part is, well, how it all goes...I don’t want to oversell it. I went in knowing nothing. So go in knowing nothing and just enjoy yourself.
I wish I suffered from polydactyl disease so I could give this movie three thumbs up.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
My Mutt
I got sucked into MMI Genomics.
For $79, you swab the inside of your dog's cheek and you send it in and you recieve a certificate of your dog's breed.
Louise, which I always assumed was a Maltese/Yorkie is definitely part Yorkshire Terrier. But even more than that, she is a Chihuahua. And Whippet. Whippet! MMI Genomics cannot test for Maltese, so I still guess she is part Maltese. Her face is just like a Maltese and so is her fur. Though I am not surprised about Chihuahua. She was an LA stray, after all. When we first got her and she was all mangy, she looked very much like a Chihuahua. I thought, "I have the ugliest little inner city dog, ever!"
But then her fur grew in with the obvious markings of a Yorkie and the ears and coat of a Maltese. I figured she was a mix. If she had been at least 50% one breed, that would have showed up as a primary category. But she isn't that. Louise is, get ready, a mutt.
A brown, black, silver and white mutt made of Chihuahua, Whippet, Yorksire Terrier and probably Maltese. I love her so much.
For $79, you swab the inside of your dog's cheek and you send it in and you recieve a certificate of your dog's breed.
Louise, which I always assumed was a Maltese/Yorkie is definitely part Yorkshire Terrier. But even more than that, she is a Chihuahua. And Whippet. Whippet! MMI Genomics cannot test for Maltese, so I still guess she is part Maltese. Her face is just like a Maltese and so is her fur. Though I am not surprised about Chihuahua. She was an LA stray, after all. When we first got her and she was all mangy, she looked very much like a Chihuahua. I thought, "I have the ugliest little inner city dog, ever!"
But then her fur grew in with the obvious markings of a Yorkie and the ears and coat of a Maltese. I figured she was a mix. If she had been at least 50% one breed, that would have showed up as a primary category. But she isn't that. Louise is, get ready, a mutt.
A brown, black, silver and white mutt made of Chihuahua, Whippet, Yorksire Terrier and probably Maltese. I love her so much.
Oy! The Virgins!
So there I was at the gym, doing the elliptical. Trying to keep down the tonnage...
And who’s up on the screen? Justin Timberlake. Some video. I have no idea which one. They all look the same to me. But then, I’m not a teenager who can distinguish the subtle differences between throbbing pop offerings.
But there it was, the video, in all its unoriginality. Justin, singing at a mike in some kind of bar, with his homies backing him up (obsequiously, naturally) and there, in the room, dozens of dancing women for him to choose from.
He chooses some. He dances with one in particular. But clearly, it’s all about him having the choice of many.
Is this fantasy any different than the Muslim one of forty virgins at death?
Seems to me, at the fundamental biological level, that men have a fantasy of having a load of women at their disposal. Is it distasteful? To some, sure. Is it wrong? No. It just is. Men are like that. If they weren’t like that, the species would not continue.
So, no need to put down the Islamic men who are waiting for their virgins in heaven. It’s not much different than the video fantasy that was in my face at the gym. It’s just that we’re a material culture so we actually make our fantasies come true, or at least play at them in front of the camera and sell it on television.
The longer I watch human beings collide, the more it seems to me that most behavior is just plain biological. It gets expressed differently in different cultures, but the root is the same.
In fact, the most ludicrous acts or the strangest customs, when deconstructed, end up about as prosaic as someone trying to pick someone up at the grocery store for sex. Or for food. Or for both.
And who’s up on the screen? Justin Timberlake. Some video. I have no idea which one. They all look the same to me. But then, I’m not a teenager who can distinguish the subtle differences between throbbing pop offerings.
But there it was, the video, in all its unoriginality. Justin, singing at a mike in some kind of bar, with his homies backing him up (obsequiously, naturally) and there, in the room, dozens of dancing women for him to choose from.
He chooses some. He dances with one in particular. But clearly, it’s all about him having the choice of many.
Is this fantasy any different than the Muslim one of forty virgins at death?
Seems to me, at the fundamental biological level, that men have a fantasy of having a load of women at their disposal. Is it distasteful? To some, sure. Is it wrong? No. It just is. Men are like that. If they weren’t like that, the species would not continue.
So, no need to put down the Islamic men who are waiting for their virgins in heaven. It’s not much different than the video fantasy that was in my face at the gym. It’s just that we’re a material culture so we actually make our fantasies come true, or at least play at them in front of the camera and sell it on television.
The longer I watch human beings collide, the more it seems to me that most behavior is just plain biological. It gets expressed differently in different cultures, but the root is the same.
In fact, the most ludicrous acts or the strangest customs, when deconstructed, end up about as prosaic as someone trying to pick someone up at the grocery store for sex. Or for food. Or for both.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Puritans
Tying health insurance to employers?
All that says is, “Work or Die.”
The United States of America is a work camp.
All that says is, “Work or Die.”
The United States of America is a work camp.
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Play's the Thing
The problem with plays that involve audience participation is the audience. A few meek men with small appeal become emboldened by their new found vocal power in public and they dominate the evening with their clever ravings. They do not take into consideration that they’ve had their turn. As the night wears on, their outbursts become increasingly more stupid at grand frequencies. The annoying honking deafens sensible theatre goers. The ignorant and greasy self appointed court jesters bleat their poor suggestions and odd non sequiturs to such great distraction, that one wishes for a bomb scare. These men lack wit. They darken the evening. They sadden the future.
By the end of the night, one does not remember the show. One only remembers the howling of the weirdos.
So, I promise myself, “Never Again!” And I start my life anew.
By the end of the night, one does not remember the show. One only remembers the howling of the weirdos.
So, I promise myself, “Never Again!” And I start my life anew.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Ultimately Failed
Regarding the Pope’s recent visit to Brazil and his admonishing the listeners for their pleasure-filled way of life, I came to realize Christianity is a failed philosophy-game.
Like Marxism, which did not take into account the ambition and initiative of the individual, Christianity, as preached, does not take into account the sensuality or the creative thinking of the human being.
If Christianity was truly success oriented, it would have had an inclusive policy. It did bend enough to enfold a couple of pagan things like Easter eggs and Christmas trees, but not enough. It turned a blind eye to most individual creativity. It continues to strive to convince and thus continues warring. It fails to conquer.
I believe being unsuccessful is choosing to be in eternal conflict. Relationships or careers that are unsuccessful have the sting of endless combativeness. Christianity has this same thrust.
Buddhism seems to encompass a wider scope of the human experience, but it does not take into account aggression. At least the Western sales force of Buddhism has not presented any kind of aggression as part of the package. Without facing aggression, Buddhism can only fail.
Judaism, one cannot say anything about it, unless one is to be accused of anti-Semitism, so I must leave the Jews alone to circumcision and the boiling of chickens. They are still bruised from their horrendous treatment during the twentieth century. Let them heal, deal, reinvent the wheel.
I do not know enough about the Hindu or Islamic faiths to make any sweeping remarks. But they just don’t feel that winning to me.
If someone wants to win this philosophy/faith contest, they are going to have to come up with a bigger tent, a grander scheme, a material acceptance and an acknowledgment of individual creativity and power. The only way to end all this conflict is to decide to win, absolutely. And the only way to win is to actually have something that works. It can be worldwide. It might be something very simple. Like salt. No one fights any longer over salt. See its ubiquity and how calmness surrounds it? The war about salt is over.
Like Marxism, which did not take into account the ambition and initiative of the individual, Christianity, as preached, does not take into account the sensuality or the creative thinking of the human being.
If Christianity was truly success oriented, it would have had an inclusive policy. It did bend enough to enfold a couple of pagan things like Easter eggs and Christmas trees, but not enough. It turned a blind eye to most individual creativity. It continues to strive to convince and thus continues warring. It fails to conquer.
I believe being unsuccessful is choosing to be in eternal conflict. Relationships or careers that are unsuccessful have the sting of endless combativeness. Christianity has this same thrust.
Buddhism seems to encompass a wider scope of the human experience, but it does not take into account aggression. At least the Western sales force of Buddhism has not presented any kind of aggression as part of the package. Without facing aggression, Buddhism can only fail.
Judaism, one cannot say anything about it, unless one is to be accused of anti-Semitism, so I must leave the Jews alone to circumcision and the boiling of chickens. They are still bruised from their horrendous treatment during the twentieth century. Let them heal, deal, reinvent the wheel.
I do not know enough about the Hindu or Islamic faiths to make any sweeping remarks. But they just don’t feel that winning to me.
If someone wants to win this philosophy/faith contest, they are going to have to come up with a bigger tent, a grander scheme, a material acceptance and an acknowledgment of individual creativity and power. The only way to end all this conflict is to decide to win, absolutely. And the only way to win is to actually have something that works. It can be worldwide. It might be something very simple. Like salt. No one fights any longer over salt. See its ubiquity and how calmness surrounds it? The war about salt is over.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Ralph Ellison
All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.
-1955 Paris Review interview
-1955 Paris Review interview
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Cabaret
Okay.
I think cabaret shows are where it’s at. First of all, you can drink. Secondly, you can write patter that is rated X and no one minds...and they may even laugh. Thirdly, everyone gets to drink, did I say that? And of course, the last thing is, you get to hear all these people sing.
The cool think about singing is people really do have unique voices. Of course, I’m a sound and language person more than a visual person...so I might be biased. But there’s something about how a person sounds that really appeals to me. Even if it’s in a low ceiling bar in Silverlake on a Monday night. Even if the bar is packed to capacity. Even if the bar smells like ass.
We raised 1700 bucks. It was worth it. And we all got to sing.
Fabulous.
I think cabaret shows are where it’s at. First of all, you can drink. Secondly, you can write patter that is rated X and no one minds...and they may even laugh. Thirdly, everyone gets to drink, did I say that? And of course, the last thing is, you get to hear all these people sing.
The cool think about singing is people really do have unique voices. Of course, I’m a sound and language person more than a visual person...so I might be biased. But there’s something about how a person sounds that really appeals to me. Even if it’s in a low ceiling bar in Silverlake on a Monday night. Even if the bar is packed to capacity. Even if the bar smells like ass.
We raised 1700 bucks. It was worth it. And we all got to sing.
Fabulous.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Medieval Germany
This building is from the Fourteen-hundreds? Yes. Except now it operates as a hotel. Where we stayed. Witches nearby. In the Hartz Mountains. I strongly recommend Goslar.
Nurnberg
Hitler's podium. Freaky. Wrong. Decaying. Oddly, the Germans like to rollerblad in this area. Simply, it's because there is so much asphalt. A practical people.
Rothenburg
Come on! This place is so middle ages charming, you could put your chatty wife in a bronze shame mask, complete with long, ugly metal tongue.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
MONDAY NIGHT BALL
Monday night. May 14. in Silverlake. 8PM. 2538 Hyperion Avenue
HOW SILVERLAKE WAS WON! A jukebox musical about, well, how Silverlake was settled. Written by me and others.
Sung by twenty people.
Hosted by a huge drag queen.
A fundraiser for West Coast Ensemble.
HOW SILVERLAKE WAS WON! A jukebox musical about, well, how Silverlake was settled. Written by me and others.
Sung by twenty people.
Hosted by a huge drag queen.
A fundraiser for West Coast Ensemble.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles
Off to Germany for two weeks.
Hamburg
Erfurt
Munich
Bavaria
Please do return May 10 !
Sincerely
Don.
With pretzels and beer.
Hamburg
Erfurt
Munich
Bavaria
Please do return May 10 !
Sincerely
Don.
With pretzels and beer.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
DELIVER US UNITER!
When is someone going to show up to be the Uniter?
Like Jesus, without all the donkeys?
If someone would just declare themselves "The Uniter"
Maybe all this violent bullshit would stop.
The Uniter has a very difficult job to do, but do it (s)he must.
The goal? To get four major religions together, plus the atheists---and call it a day.
What an amazing pan-community the earth will be! Living in harmony!
The Five groups (tribes), in combination, will make a grand post-post modern civilization. Joy will rule the land, sea and air. All important aspects of human endeavor and psychology will be taken care of.
The Uniter will ensure the new paradigm of the new world order by uniting these five groups, for good.
THE UNITER’S FIVE GROUP COMPOSITION:
The Atheists will bring the material clarity.
The Jews will bring the intellectual inquiry.
The Christians will bring the brotherly love.
The Buddhists will bring the peace of mind.
The Muslims will bring the hummus.
It is going to beautiful. Why, I’d even go to war for it, kill anyone who won’t join!
Like Jesus, without all the donkeys?
If someone would just declare themselves "The Uniter"
Maybe all this violent bullshit would stop.
The Uniter has a very difficult job to do, but do it (s)he must.
The goal? To get four major religions together, plus the atheists---and call it a day.
What an amazing pan-community the earth will be! Living in harmony!
The Five groups (tribes), in combination, will make a grand post-post modern civilization. Joy will rule the land, sea and air. All important aspects of human endeavor and psychology will be taken care of.
The Uniter will ensure the new paradigm of the new world order by uniting these five groups, for good.
THE UNITER’S FIVE GROUP COMPOSITION:
The Atheists will bring the material clarity.
The Jews will bring the intellectual inquiry.
The Christians will bring the brotherly love.
The Buddhists will bring the peace of mind.
The Muslims will bring the hummus.
It is going to beautiful. Why, I’d even go to war for it, kill anyone who won’t join!
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Darwin's Curse
Natural Selection: Among civilized nations, the United States possesses the citizenry that believes in it the least, yet experiences it the most.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Gratitude
I would like to take this blog entry to thank Kennedy, Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas for handing the next presidential election to the Democratic Party.
To trump the health rights of a full grown woman with that of a non-conscious (unwanted) fetus smaller than the size of a gerbil baby— this is an outrage.
Even though second trimester abortions are rare and cumbersome, a woman’s body is her body. Period. It is evident that this decision was made simply because of the reshuffling of Supreme Court personalities. It’s pure politics. And women will fight back.
Personally, if I was a pregnant and I was stressed, poor and carrying a fetus with quite inconvenient DNA—I’d rip out that burden faster than you can say, “If Men got pregnant, all abortions would be legal through kindergarten.”
How on earth can the state take charge of a woman’s right to choose? Are you mad?
How dare you?
And
Thank you.
The pendulum swings back. Always. It’s Physics. It’s going to be lovely.
To trump the health rights of a full grown woman with that of a non-conscious (unwanted) fetus smaller than the size of a gerbil baby— this is an outrage.
Even though second trimester abortions are rare and cumbersome, a woman’s body is her body. Period. It is evident that this decision was made simply because of the reshuffling of Supreme Court personalities. It’s pure politics. And women will fight back.
Personally, if I was a pregnant and I was stressed, poor and carrying a fetus with quite inconvenient DNA—I’d rip out that burden faster than you can say, “If Men got pregnant, all abortions would be legal through kindergarten.”
How on earth can the state take charge of a woman’s right to choose? Are you mad?
How dare you?
And
Thank you.
The pendulum swings back. Always. It’s Physics. It’s going to be lovely.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
The Future is GRAND!
I remain optimistic.
Even though human beings will become extinct, I still think carbon based life forms are pretty cool miracles. I think silicone based life forms would be cool, too...but carbon is easier to work with. Human primates being the lead species is just a lot of monkey business. Smart sponges might be cool. If you take a sponge and put it in a blender, its three layers of cells: endo, meso, ecto, will reform into a proper sponge. Not the same shape as the original, but the endo, meso and ecto will migrate to the right layer of the newly formed organism. Some kind of colony, that sponge is. Let one huge sponge take over.
Even though Georgie Bush the Second is an enormous, psychopathic, idiot bully, I am so happy that I am younger than he is and one day I will get to read the headline, “FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH WAS KILLED TODAY BY A PACK OF WILD JACKALS. EVEN HIS HELL DIDN’T WANT HIM.”
A man who hijacks a country, uses it for war profiteering and then smirks and kills people while doing it, well, I am so happy that I have such a great chance of outliving this beast.
Violence, Greed and adherence to fairy tale religion are some of the characteristics natural to Republicans. It is hilarious to watch them get into enormous binds because of these character traits that they name Strength, Industriousness and Faith. To see the mask peel away, to watch strength become violence, to watch industriousness turn into rapacious greed and to see perfectly good brains turn to mush from drinking all that God Kool-Aid...it’s such a show. Though it’s tragic, it’s also kind of funny. And a good laugh is a good laugh. One that should keep us entertained for a while.
As the coyotes fill my neighborhood and the winds blow from the high desert—which never happens after January—and we suffer the driest year on record while New York City receives its heaviest rain storm in three decades---well, you just have to smile and feel warm and cozy, knowing that Mother Earth will take care of herself to get back into balance. I love my Momma.
And though it is a tragedy that a bunch of kids were killed in Virginia---and I am in no way being glib here---you just have to wonder when Americans are going to give up their precious guns. That is going to be such a lovely day.
Just lovely.
Even though human beings will become extinct, I still think carbon based life forms are pretty cool miracles. I think silicone based life forms would be cool, too...but carbon is easier to work with. Human primates being the lead species is just a lot of monkey business. Smart sponges might be cool. If you take a sponge and put it in a blender, its three layers of cells: endo, meso, ecto, will reform into a proper sponge. Not the same shape as the original, but the endo, meso and ecto will migrate to the right layer of the newly formed organism. Some kind of colony, that sponge is. Let one huge sponge take over.
Even though Georgie Bush the Second is an enormous, psychopathic, idiot bully, I am so happy that I am younger than he is and one day I will get to read the headline, “FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH WAS KILLED TODAY BY A PACK OF WILD JACKALS. EVEN HIS HELL DIDN’T WANT HIM.”
A man who hijacks a country, uses it for war profiteering and then smirks and kills people while doing it, well, I am so happy that I have such a great chance of outliving this beast.
Violence, Greed and adherence to fairy tale religion are some of the characteristics natural to Republicans. It is hilarious to watch them get into enormous binds because of these character traits that they name Strength, Industriousness and Faith. To see the mask peel away, to watch strength become violence, to watch industriousness turn into rapacious greed and to see perfectly good brains turn to mush from drinking all that God Kool-Aid...it’s such a show. Though it’s tragic, it’s also kind of funny. And a good laugh is a good laugh. One that should keep us entertained for a while.
As the coyotes fill my neighborhood and the winds blow from the high desert—which never happens after January—and we suffer the driest year on record while New York City receives its heaviest rain storm in three decades---well, you just have to smile and feel warm and cozy, knowing that Mother Earth will take care of herself to get back into balance. I love my Momma.
And though it is a tragedy that a bunch of kids were killed in Virginia---and I am in no way being glib here---you just have to wonder when Americans are going to give up their precious guns. That is going to be such a lovely day.
Just lovely.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
April 18, 1974
We had a substitute. Man is she mean! Her last name is Mare, people call her nightmare, I call her a horror movie. I was holding a kid’s 30 cents and I lost it, so I owe him 20 cents cause I gave him 10 cents today. This girl Sonia likes me. I fooled around a lot with Wendeye and some little kids and Greg and John. Well Goodnight
I vaguely remember the bad sub. She was nasty. I wrote cents in the entry as a c with a line through it. I miss that. It used to be above one of the numbers on the typewriter. Sonia--if it's the only Sonia I remember from my hometown, her mother killed her father and then killed herself when we were seniors in high school. Wendy lived on the top floor of our two family house. Greg is my brother. John was our neighbor. This was Sixth grade.
I vaguely remember the bad sub. She was nasty. I wrote cents in the entry as a c with a line through it. I miss that. It used to be above one of the numbers on the typewriter. Sonia--if it's the only Sonia I remember from my hometown, her mother killed her father and then killed herself when we were seniors in high school. Wendy lived on the top floor of our two family house. Greg is my brother. John was our neighbor. This was Sixth grade.
Hungry Critters Looking for Snacks
While walking my dog tonight, I saw a cat quickly scamper up a driveway across the street. Nothing unusual. But I had an odd feeling it was something bigger than a cat. Then, it scampered back down, with another four legged beast.
It was two coyotes.
I’ve heard that we’ve had coyotes on our street. The paper has also mentioned that my neighborhood has become a bit of a coyote playground. It has to do with there being no water, less food, up in the hills. As the natural rainfall diminishes, the amount of edible life diminishes. The coyotes (they are DOGS after all) come down into the neighborhood to scavenge for trash, pussy cats, maybe Louise!
I picked up my pooch. The coyotes were not afraid of me. I clapped my hands for them to go away. They moved a bit. They behaved as if they were very comfortable on my street. I decided to cut the walk short. I didn’t want to have to face two coyotes springing on my pooch. Funny, they kept enough distance to stay away from big ol’ me and they did not even look at Louise, it seemed. But coyotes, like foxes, can be sly. And I wasn’t taking any chances.
Louise and I arrived home, safely. She finished her business in the back yard.
One day, we all may be like these Mansfield coyotes. Wandering around, looking for food. They did not seem unhappy, the coyotes. In fact, these wild beasts loping along the street, appeared very in synch with the world. Not tamed. So pleasing to watch wild things surviving. It might be interesting if we all become untamed, with a lope that is a part of nature’s workings.
Perhaps the job of conservative administrations is to try to return the human animal back to foraging and hunting for existence. They might just love the hunt. Or to be hunted. I’d hunt them.
It was two coyotes.
I’ve heard that we’ve had coyotes on our street. The paper has also mentioned that my neighborhood has become a bit of a coyote playground. It has to do with there being no water, less food, up in the hills. As the natural rainfall diminishes, the amount of edible life diminishes. The coyotes (they are DOGS after all) come down into the neighborhood to scavenge for trash, pussy cats, maybe Louise!
I picked up my pooch. The coyotes were not afraid of me. I clapped my hands for them to go away. They moved a bit. They behaved as if they were very comfortable on my street. I decided to cut the walk short. I didn’t want to have to face two coyotes springing on my pooch. Funny, they kept enough distance to stay away from big ol’ me and they did not even look at Louise, it seemed. But coyotes, like foxes, can be sly. And I wasn’t taking any chances.
Louise and I arrived home, safely. She finished her business in the back yard.
One day, we all may be like these Mansfield coyotes. Wandering around, looking for food. They did not seem unhappy, the coyotes. In fact, these wild beasts loping along the street, appeared very in synch with the world. Not tamed. So pleasing to watch wild things surviving. It might be interesting if we all become untamed, with a lope that is a part of nature’s workings.
Perhaps the job of conservative administrations is to try to return the human animal back to foraging and hunting for existence. They might just love the hunt. Or to be hunted. I’d hunt them.
Monday, April 16, 2007
And Furthermore...
Since we are animals with advanced abstract thinking, does it not seem plausible that the afterlife is nothing more than the will to live and the survival instinct rolled into an abstract construction?
Friday, April 13, 2007
Good and Green and a Warning
One thing you GOTTA go to:
This site:
Vertical Farm
It’s all about the planet, man! Keep it local. Clean the air. Reforest the planet.
One thing you need to AVOID:
The Movie HOAX. Boo. Though the acting is very good, the movie is tedious.
This site:
Vertical Farm
It’s all about the planet, man! Keep it local. Clean the air. Reforest the planet.
One thing you need to AVOID:
The Movie HOAX. Boo. Though the acting is very good, the movie is tedious.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
BananaObamaRama
Two very important things.
Bananas. Basically, guys, we have to stop eating all this food that gets shipped all over the frigging planet. Economies need diversification anyway! So, geneticists, this is where you come in. Make a frigging banana that’ll grow in California. Just do it.
And then, once those are perfected, make a frigging banana that’ll grow in Maine. You can do it. How hard can it be? People just need a nice tasting fruit that peels, loaded with potassium. Come on! You made that ridiculous round seedless watermelon. And apparently, corn is nothing like the original species. Get to it! Food’s gotta go local.
World’s gotta change.
I think Obama is going to be Hilary’s Vice. They’re being quite cordial with each other. I think they know it’s coming down. And if they are a team, I cannot imagine them losing. Of course, I could be completely wrong.
Bananas. Basically, guys, we have to stop eating all this food that gets shipped all over the frigging planet. Economies need diversification anyway! So, geneticists, this is where you come in. Make a frigging banana that’ll grow in California. Just do it.
And then, once those are perfected, make a frigging banana that’ll grow in Maine. You can do it. How hard can it be? People just need a nice tasting fruit that peels, loaded with potassium. Come on! You made that ridiculous round seedless watermelon. And apparently, corn is nothing like the original species. Get to it! Food’s gotta go local.
World’s gotta change.
I think Obama is going to be Hilary’s Vice. They’re being quite cordial with each other. I think they know it’s coming down. And if they are a team, I cannot imagine them losing. Of course, I could be completely wrong.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Grindhouse
No matter what you think, no matter what your resistance, no matter how clever and high brow you think you are. Get over it.
And Go See Grindhouse.
Sure, it’s a few hours at the theatre. Double Feature. Like in the old days. Chill your ass out and go to the movies. Make sure there are people there. You want to see this with screaming teenagers.
The first flick is all zombies and machine guns. The second one—Fucking car killing mayhem. And the bitches are so fucking strong---it makes you want to fucking kill someone with your bare fucking hands.
Go see Grindhouse. Don’t resist it. It’s hideous. It’s an homage. Complete with fake previews of awful crappy movies and an ugly restaurant commercial. The two directors are two of the greatest movie guys alive. It’s worth every minute of your bloody life. Gore. Filth. Survival. Evil. More gore. Death. Destruction. Hot, hard fucking bitches.
GRINDHOUSE
And Go See Grindhouse.
Sure, it’s a few hours at the theatre. Double Feature. Like in the old days. Chill your ass out and go to the movies. Make sure there are people there. You want to see this with screaming teenagers.
The first flick is all zombies and machine guns. The second one—Fucking car killing mayhem. And the bitches are so fucking strong---it makes you want to fucking kill someone with your bare fucking hands.
Go see Grindhouse. Don’t resist it. It’s hideous. It’s an homage. Complete with fake previews of awful crappy movies and an ugly restaurant commercial. The two directors are two of the greatest movie guys alive. It’s worth every minute of your bloody life. Gore. Filth. Survival. Evil. More gore. Death. Destruction. Hot, hard fucking bitches.
GRINDHOUSE
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
A BLOG IS BORN!
My best friend since the beginning of time (okay, since the Seventies) now has a blog. Enjoy it. The first post is a great sneak of the eary goodness. Beautiful and what else would you say? Tell me.
Birds and Art
Birds and Art
Monday, April 09, 2007
WELCOME TO THE WORLD!
August Ulysses Kaufman was born Easter afternoon. The proud parents, Leslie and Daniel, endured sixteen hours of labor. Okay, Leslie endured sixteen hours of labor while Dan took care of everything else.
August came into the world of air breathers at 8lbs 7oz (that's a plump bird) and 21 1/2 inches long. Dang beast is big enough for kindergarten!
I don't know how the women of today do it with these big babies. Don't you think pregnant mommas should go back to Martinis and Marlboros? Shrink these body snatchers a bit?
Congratulations! A big bouncing healthy baby! A citizen of Eagle Rock! A white child with rich grandparents! Enjoy the ride, kid.
August came into the world of air breathers at 8lbs 7oz (that's a plump bird) and 21 1/2 inches long. Dang beast is big enough for kindergarten!
I don't know how the women of today do it with these big babies. Don't you think pregnant mommas should go back to Martinis and Marlboros? Shrink these body snatchers a bit?
Congratulations! A big bouncing healthy baby! A citizen of Eagle Rock! A white child with rich grandparents! Enjoy the ride, kid.
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