These are not "Best of 2008" lists (up with which I will not put) but rather just a nod toward what really got to me this year. This group is, thus, rather short, but I'm only putting down things that immediately come to mind, having stayed with me for some time. Not all of them are 2008, either.
THEATER
Passing Strange (Stew and Heidi Rodewald, dir. Annie Dorsen)
South Pacific (Rodgers and Hammerstein, dir. Bartlett Sher)
Come Back, Little Sheba (Inge, dir. Michael Pressman)
Architecting (The TEAM)
FILM
Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman)
Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) (dir. Arnaud Desplechin)
Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (dir. Julian Schnabel)
Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn)
Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)
BOOKS and PLAYS
Le théâtre et son double (The Theater and its Double) (Antonin Artaud)
The Age of American Unreason, Freethinkers (Susan Jacoby)
The Awakening (Kate Chopin)
Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana (Tennessee Williams)
MUSIC
Acid Tongue (Jenny Lewis)
All or Nothing at All (Billie Holiday)
Continuum (John Mayer)
Harold and Maude (Cat Stevens)
Rufus does Judy at Carnegie Hall (Rufus Wainwright)
The Biz (The Sea and Cake)
SPECIAL MENTIONS
FILM
Sarah Jessica Parker, actress (Sex and the City)
Deirdre O'Connell, actress (Synecdoche, New York)
Ashley Judd, actress (Bug)
Romain Duris, actor (Dans Paris)
Arnaud Desplechin, director (Un conte de Noël)
THEATER
Ted Sperling, conductor (South Pacific)
Tim Potter, actor and Tom Pye, designer (Happy Days)
Omar Metwally, actor (The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East)
Laura Benanti, actress (Gypsy)
MUSIC
"Little Person" from Synecdoche, New York (Jon Brion, perf. Deanne Storey)
"All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" from I Am...Sasha Fierce (Beyoncé)
"Stormy Weather" from Rufus does Judy at Carnegie Hall (Martha Wainwright)
FOR CONTINUED EXCELLENCE
Mathieu Amalric, actor
Rufus Wainwright, composer and singer
Audra McDonald, actress and singer
Catherine Deneuve, actress
Anjelica Huston, actress
Heidi Klum, model, host, and producer
David Fincher, director
Marius deVries, music producer
That's all, folks! I may think of more. But this is just lovely. Congratulations all you of 2008, for making it so far!
Friday, December 12, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
We can deal with the real
Music is the freight train in which God travels
Bang! It does its thang and then my soul unravels
Heals like holy water and it fights all my battles
Music is the freight train in which God travels
Just replace "music" with "theatre" or moreso with "art," and I think that's what I feel towards it. It fights all my battles.
(I mean, I do feel that way about music anyway, but you know what I mean.)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
One of the very few things...
...that I am going to miss, and miss intensely, this summer in New York:
Article from today's Times:
Really, I'm not kidding, I'm fucking pissed.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Passing Strange
Today paradise was the enemy
Today the real become routine
Today my edges dulled together
And there's no point left to dream
Marianna and Moroccan hash have got me stoned
And I can't find my way home
Mama!
She's serving every one of my desires on a platter
But it doesn't even matter anymore
Oh
Paradise is a bore
It doesn't even matter anymore
Monday, May 19, 2008
What I want to do onstage
I think I've finally put it into words.
I would like to rescue and revive plays, which have been either forgotten or deemed far-gone, by dramatizing their inherent stageworthiness and by exposing their absolute immediacy, of both structure and content. I want to accomplish this by imposing horridly on the author's perhaps "original" intent with all sorts of theatre magic that the play itself struggles to rise above, and emerges triumphantly as more contemporary and immediate than anything that I might throw at it.
In other words, I like to be an asshole to plays, because I love them. Like I do to people.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration and public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations. And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and John McCain lurk.
Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States." This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came during a May 13 interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo.
The question was phrased as follows: "If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?"
The president replied: "Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is, it's bigger than Iraq, it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."
Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?" They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.
Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? "This ideological struggle," Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.
It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else's, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect America" is a brand name.
But wait, there's more: You also said "Iraq is the place where al-Qaida and other extremists have made their stand and they will be defeated." They made no "stand" in Iraq, sir, you allowed them to assemble there!
As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of "they'll greet us as liberators." And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American viceroy, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir.
Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!
***
It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.
"Do you feel," asked an ordinary American, "that you were misled on Iraq?"
"I feel like — I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction," the president said. "You know, 'mislead' is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don't think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was."
Flawed.
You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.
You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, and fast.
You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."
You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.
And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense.
The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.
You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as well claim was built from "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
***
Of course if there is one overriding theme to this president's administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind. And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.
"And so you feel that you didn't have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?"
"No, no," replied the President. "I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction …"
People? What people? The insane informant "Curveball?" The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi? The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?
"I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
"And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes."
Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat. When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply resubmitted it, with phrases amounting to "See, I done proved it" virtually written in the margins in crayon.
You defied patriotic Americans to say "The Emperor Has No Clothes," only with the stakes — as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it — being a "mushroom cloud over an American city."
And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, sir, that for members of Congress "the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes" — while you greet the political heat and try to run and hide from your presidency, and your legacy — 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect — dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, "I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction."
***
Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.
"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"
"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history. "It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency? In your own words "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can do?
Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf! Golf. Not "Gulf" — golf.
And still it gets worse. Because it proves that the president's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a ball with a stick, was not even his own damned idea.
"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"
"I remember when [diplomat Sergio Vieira] de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf, I think I was in central Texas, and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."
Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself? The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?
If it's even true.
Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time — coincidence, no doubt — the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U.N. and interrupted your round of golf was on Aug. 19, 2003.
Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later.
Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.
The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:
When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at ...
When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …
When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.
This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!
Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States." This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came during a May 13 interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo.
The question was phrased as follows: "If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?"
The president replied: "Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is, it's bigger than Iraq, it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."
Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?" They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.
Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? "This ideological struggle," Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.
It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else's, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect America" is a brand name.
But wait, there's more: You also said "Iraq is the place where al-Qaida and other extremists have made their stand and they will be defeated." They made no "stand" in Iraq, sir, you allowed them to assemble there!
As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of "they'll greet us as liberators." And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American viceroy, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir.
Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!
***
It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.
"Do you feel," asked an ordinary American, "that you were misled on Iraq?"
"I feel like — I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction," the president said. "You know, 'mislead' is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don't think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was."
Flawed.
You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.
You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, and fast.
You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how "intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment."
You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn't agree it was really chicken salad.
And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country's policy in lieu of, say, common sense.
The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.
You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as well claim was built from "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
***
Of course if there is one overriding theme to this president's administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind. And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.
"And so you feel that you didn't have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?"
"No, no," replied the President. "I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction …"
People? What people? The insane informant "Curveball?" The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi? The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?
"I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
"And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes."
Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat. When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply resubmitted it, with phrases amounting to "See, I done proved it" virtually written in the margins in crayon.
You defied patriotic Americans to say "The Emperor Has No Clothes," only with the stakes — as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it — being a "mushroom cloud over an American city."
And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, sir, that for members of Congress "the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes" — while you greet the political heat and try to run and hide from your presidency, and your legacy — 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect — dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, "I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction."
***
Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.
"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"
"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history. "It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?
You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.
Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?
Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency? In your own words "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can do?
Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf! Golf. Not "Gulf" — golf.
And still it gets worse. Because it proves that the president's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a ball with a stick, was not even his own damned idea.
"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"
"I remember when [diplomat Sergio Vieira] de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf, I think I was in central Texas, and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."
Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself? The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?
If it's even true.
Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time — coincidence, no doubt — the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U.N. and interrupted your round of golf was on Aug. 19, 2003.
Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later.
Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.
The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.
It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:
When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at ...
When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …
When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.
This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Upcoming projects
Here's my to-do list currently:
(while in Lyon)
1) untitled Jacques-Yves Cousteau piece (in collaboration with Julie-Elise Olinde)
2) dérangement/ouragan (hurricane piece I let fall by the wayside)
(upon my return to the States)
3) Untitled Record Album No. 1 (music tbd -- Mark, I want to talk to you about this)
4) assistant director gigs pronto
(while in Lyon)
1) untitled Jacques-Yves Cousteau piece (in collaboration with Julie-Elise Olinde)
2) dérangement/ouragan (hurricane piece I let fall by the wayside)
(upon my return to the States)
3) Untitled Record Album No. 1 (music tbd -- Mark, I want to talk to you about this)
4) assistant director gigs pronto
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Fallout
After all, tomorrow is another day.
I now leave for Lyon in 4 and a half weeks, or 34 days. I will be gone June 2 through July 30. Wow. That's a long time. I haven't been that far "from home" for that long since I moved to NYC from Baton Rouge. I am so entirely excited.
In the meantime: fallout. That horrible sinking non-feeling state of uselessness and empty immediacy after the end of a major project, which strikes no later than two or three hours after the show. Literally, hours. A slow withdrawal from those around you. An incapacity to partake in celebration, save for your small internal celebration, which mainly is a stepping back to look at friends and events that are not, could not have been, and will not be, and finding oneself mildly content to have that knowledge, if not with the knowledge itself. And a thankfulness for that which actually is -- a thankfulness that that "is" is enough, that that "is" is all there is, and what a joy.
A deep and personal exhaustion lacking clean clothes and cash, and it raining all day.
Then a slow return. A slow, hard slog of self- and general acquittal that makes new work possible, then new day inevitable, and the new moment excruciating and beautiful and really, awfully new. Did I earn it? Does it matter? It doesn't stop. Time may stop for no man, but time does stop for art. But not for long.
This infuriates me: Dumb As We Wanna Be.
It isn't earned. It is deserved, but we continue to aspire toward earning.
I now leave for Lyon in 4 and a half weeks, or 34 days. I will be gone June 2 through July 30. Wow. That's a long time. I haven't been that far "from home" for that long since I moved to NYC from Baton Rouge. I am so entirely excited.
In the meantime: fallout. That horrible sinking non-feeling state of uselessness and empty immediacy after the end of a major project, which strikes no later than two or three hours after the show. Literally, hours. A slow withdrawal from those around you. An incapacity to partake in celebration, save for your small internal celebration, which mainly is a stepping back to look at friends and events that are not, could not have been, and will not be, and finding oneself mildly content to have that knowledge, if not with the knowledge itself. And a thankfulness for that which actually is -- a thankfulness that that "is" is enough, that that "is" is all there is, and what a joy.
A deep and personal exhaustion lacking clean clothes and cash, and it raining all day.
Then a slow return. A slow, hard slog of self- and general acquittal that makes new work possible, then new day inevitable, and the new moment excruciating and beautiful and really, awfully new. Did I earn it? Does it matter? It doesn't stop. Time may stop for no man, but time does stop for art. But not for long.
This infuriates me: Dumb As We Wanna Be.
It isn't earned. It is deserved, but we continue to aspire toward earning.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
just confused
I have so much going on in my life. I've been trying to sit back and sort of work some sort of life plan, or at least some sort of in-the-near-future-of-my-life plan. Things are lining up, just hopefully the dominoes will all fall into place. It's a lot to think about while being so crazy busy.
One forgets how exhausting and only mildly fulfilling food service can be. I don't like my new job but I think that's mostly because I don't like working in general. That sounds ridiculous.
I am so incredibly tired of this political "season." Is it a season? Should it be? If it's a season, like a TV season or a sports season, why is it about three times as long by now?
I am tired of everything being so expensive. I am tired of not being able to find a plane ticket to Paris for less than $1000. Used to be you could find an el cheapo one for at least $800. But with oil at $115 a barrel...
I can only wait in restless anticipation for what is promised to be a life-changing summer. And two whole months with my Jules. If only we could schedule a good two months to commit to one friend all the time, that would be lovely. When is my heart moving here?
I leave at the beginning of June. Maybe you'll see me again in the states, maybe not. Depends on who wins this election...
Please come see my play, and say real and true things about it to me.
The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritos:
"I've been writing for two years now
and I've composed only one idyll.
It's my single completed work.
I see, sadly, that the ladder
of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I'm standing on now
I'll never climb any higher."
Theocritos retorted: "Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it's a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing."
("The First Step," by C. P. Cavafy)
One forgets how exhausting and only mildly fulfilling food service can be. I don't like my new job but I think that's mostly because I don't like working in general. That sounds ridiculous.
I am so incredibly tired of this political "season." Is it a season? Should it be? If it's a season, like a TV season or a sports season, why is it about three times as long by now?
I am tired of everything being so expensive. I am tired of not being able to find a plane ticket to Paris for less than $1000. Used to be you could find an el cheapo one for at least $800. But with oil at $115 a barrel...
I can only wait in restless anticipation for what is promised to be a life-changing summer. And two whole months with my Jules. If only we could schedule a good two months to commit to one friend all the time, that would be lovely. When is my heart moving here?
I leave at the beginning of June. Maybe you'll see me again in the states, maybe not. Depends on who wins this election...
Please come see my play, and say real and true things about it to me.
The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritos:
"I've been writing for two years now
and I've composed only one idyll.
It's my single completed work.
I see, sadly, that the ladder
of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I'm standing on now
I'll never climb any higher."
Theocritos retorted: "Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it's a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing."
("The First Step," by C. P. Cavafy)
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Yay!
TO ONE AND TO ALL:
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO MY VERY FIRST PRODUCTION IN NYC!
This promises to be a truly unique event, and I and my collaborators really hope you can attend. Drinks will be prepared and served onstage -- so there's at least some entertainment value guaranteed!
I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!
Thanks and all best,
Gordon Walker
MacB@McK
a Macbeth event
after Shakespeare's Scottish play
with Alex Beck, Chris Cornwell, Justin Goodemoot,
Laura Harrison, Zach Harvey, Mark Jaynes,
Tom Kelly, Daniel LeBlanc, and Seth Miller
fights by Alex Sovronsky
directed by Gordon Walker
produced by Mia Katigbak
255 McKIBBIN STREET #202
BROOKLYN
Brooklyn-bound L to Montrose Ave
FRIDAY, APRIL 25 and SATURDAY, APRIL 26
8:00 PM (Drinks @ 7:30)
Drinks prepared and served ONSTAGE!
Party to follow!
Admission:
A bottle of something,
a six-pack of something,
or $5
(or all of the above)
For more info:
or (225) 571-9179
WE BETTER SEE YOU THERE!
Friday, March 28, 2008
Directing, or I feel like I don't know how to
Refer to title of post.
Also, in desperate need of some kind of stage manager. I can't deal with myriad scheduling issues all on my own, I'm already nuts.
Also, in desperate need of some kind of stage manager. I can't deal with myriad scheduling issues all on my own, I'm already nuts.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Back to New York
And thank God. I really enjoyed seeing great friends in/and good theatre, but Chi-town is not the town for me.
TONIGHT
commence rehearsals for Macbeth.
Starring:
Well, we're not entirely sure yet, are we? Stay posted.
But the important part is:
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, APRIL 25 AND 26
10:00 PM
255 McKIBBIN ST in BROOKLYN
Please come!
TONIGHT
commence rehearsals for Macbeth.
Starring:
Well, we're not entirely sure yet, are we? Stay posted.
But the important part is:
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, APRIL 25 AND 26
10:00 PM
255 McKIBBIN ST in BROOKLYN
Please come!
Friday, March 14, 2008
I don't know what this means, but fuck
25% of Hillary supporters would vote for McCain if Obama gets the nomination. Way to go, Hillary.
(Can't get the link to work, go here:)
http://www.americablog.com/2008/03/25-of-hillary-supporters-would-vote-for.html
excerpt:
A recent PEW poll shows that 10% of Democrats who support Obama would defect and vote for McCain should Hillary become the candidate. But, a whopping 25% of Democrats who support Hillary would defect and vote for McCain should Obama become the candidate.
(Can't get the link to work, go here:)
http://www.americablog.com/2008/03/25-of-hillary-supporters-would-vote-for.html
excerpt:
A recent PEW poll shows that 10% of Democrats who support Obama would defect and vote for McCain should Hillary become the candidate. But, a whopping 25% of Democrats who support Hillary would defect and vote for McCain should Obama become the candidate.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Just do it
Why is the default mechanism simply to resign?
Now Governor Spitzer is indeed under criminal investigation, so that's appropriate ultimately.
But Geraldine Ferraro? Because she made some ur-racist comments that "may" "inject" race into the Presidential campaign?
And even back to Don Imus, with his "slur" against the Rutgers (right?) women basketball players and Isaiah Washington's "faggot" blech on Grey's Anatomy.
Does it not occur to anyone that there are indeed people out there who feel hatefully toward others? What, precisely, does resigning accomplish?
This whole witch hunt mindset started with Clinton's stupendously, sublimely ridiculous almost-impeachment over a technicality surrounding an embarrassing discussion about Monica Lewinsky -- a highly private indiscretion that did not hamper his ability to govern (except to further enrage his opponents) but provided fodder for people to demand super-morals from their elected officials.
This is identity politics smearing and fear and loathing of non-Christian sexuality.
WHAT??
This is people (mostly) butting into to other people's business. Get the fuck out of my life, wiretapping and 24 hour cable news networks.
Ugh, none of that probably makes entire sense. Does anybody else feel me on this? Discuss. Maybe I'll articulate myself better in discussion.
Now Governor Spitzer is indeed under criminal investigation, so that's appropriate ultimately.
But Geraldine Ferraro? Because she made some ur-racist comments that "may" "inject" race into the Presidential campaign?
And even back to Don Imus, with his "slur" against the Rutgers (right?) women basketball players and Isaiah Washington's "faggot" blech on Grey's Anatomy.
Does it not occur to anyone that there are indeed people out there who feel hatefully toward others? What, precisely, does resigning accomplish?
This whole witch hunt mindset started with Clinton's stupendously, sublimely ridiculous almost-impeachment over a technicality surrounding an embarrassing discussion about Monica Lewinsky -- a highly private indiscretion that did not hamper his ability to govern (except to further enrage his opponents) but provided fodder for people to demand super-morals from their elected officials.
This is identity politics smearing and fear and loathing of non-Christian sexuality.
WHAT??
This is people (mostly) butting into to other people's business. Get the fuck out of my life, wiretapping and 24 hour cable news networks.
Ugh, none of that probably makes entire sense. Does anybody else feel me on this? Discuss. Maybe I'll articulate myself better in discussion.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Things I find interesting today
This: Fake Memoirs via Parabasis (a very enjoyable blog)
Are fake memoirs the literary equivalent of reality TV? Why are we upset to find a memoir has been fictionalized, to whatever degree, while editing to create drama on otherwise "reality" shows is par for the course? Is it the more select, dare I say rarefied, circle of serious readers in this country? But people only seem to get upset when it's something huge and nasty a la Oprah + James Frey's Reese pieces. I mean, A Thousand Little Pieces. Of crap.
This: Florida's "Theory of..." via the New York Times
Are we seriously still having this "debate?"
"...last year when a committee appointed by the State Department of Education drafted a new set of science standards that, for the first time, actually used the word evolution and called it a fundamental concept underlying all of biology." How does one begin to teach biology without evolution? How does one teach how things are interrelated? If everything on this earth were equally and separately (and "intelligently") "designed", then what is the study of biology? Just looking at shit? That'd be like teaching numbers in math class but never getting around to actual algebra. Or teaching nouns without verbs. Jesus H. Christ. This is why all of Western Europe and most of the rest of the First World laugh at us. Out loud.
Ugh, I searched for a while for this perceptive letter written to the Times a few months ago about Western Europe felt toward the U.S., but I can't find it. The gist was...well, you probably get the gist.
I am so proud sometimes to speak English. English is the language of perhaps the greatest poet in post-classical history, Mr. Shakespeare. However, English has also given us "nucular." There's a large part of me that longs for a space that utilizes language not only correctly but with a certain verve and confidence that only a deep love for one's native speech allows. And, for the most part, we don't have that here in America. At least, it seems to me.
In French, when you refer to your "native language," the phrase is actually langue maternelle. Ie: your mother language. That's beautiful.
Are fake memoirs the literary equivalent of reality TV? Why are we upset to find a memoir has been fictionalized, to whatever degree, while editing to create drama on otherwise "reality" shows is par for the course? Is it the more select, dare I say rarefied, circle of serious readers in this country? But people only seem to get upset when it's something huge and nasty a la Oprah + James Frey's Reese pieces. I mean, A Thousand Little Pieces. Of crap.
This: Florida's "Theory of..." via the New York Times
Are we seriously still having this "debate?"
"...last year when a committee appointed by the State Department of Education drafted a new set of science standards that, for the first time, actually used the word evolution and called it a fundamental concept underlying all of biology." How does one begin to teach biology without evolution? How does one teach how things are interrelated? If everything on this earth were equally and separately (and "intelligently") "designed", then what is the study of biology? Just looking at shit? That'd be like teaching numbers in math class but never getting around to actual algebra. Or teaching nouns without verbs. Jesus H. Christ. This is why all of Western Europe and most of the rest of the First World laugh at us. Out loud.
Ugh, I searched for a while for this perceptive letter written to the Times a few months ago about Western Europe felt toward the U.S., but I can't find it. The gist was...well, you probably get the gist.
I am so proud sometimes to speak English. English is the language of perhaps the greatest poet in post-classical history, Mr. Shakespeare. However, English has also given us "nucular." There's a large part of me that longs for a space that utilizes language not only correctly but with a certain verve and confidence that only a deep love for one's native speech allows. And, for the most part, we don't have that here in America. At least, it seems to me.
In French, when you refer to your "native language," the phrase is actually langue maternelle. Ie: your mother language. That's beautiful.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Today has been fun/but they don't want you to have any real fun, bitches!
I have been enjoying myself today at the Public. I feel helpful. I am the only person so far who has reported on Macbeth (the Goold). I kind of hate being that person; it feels like, Who am I to deliver such an aria about this acclaimed production? I'm 23 and an asshole. (And I'm directing the play right now anyway.)
Boy, is Hillary a comeback kid? Or pathetic? I'm all for her, but I can't decide. Frankly, the only truly, undeniably good thing to come out of yesterday's victories for her was the continuation of this excruciatingly prolonged decision process for the Democratic nominee to allow even more voters a say in said process. It's nice for the Dems at least to stay involved and have opinions on one or the other, versus the Reps who are now stuck with McCain, whether they like it or not. I am secretly hoping that James Dobson et al in Colorado attempt to run a third party ticket for the evangelical freak show. And you know, the only reason they have made such a goddamn fuss half time is that they actually bought the whole sham that they are the base of the Republican party, and the brass at the top actually care. They don't. The evangelicals running a third party candidate has nothing to do with the supposed deficiencies of John McCain (in their eyes) so much as it is a pathetic attempt to assert a central role in the sociopolitical life of this country, which they believe they occupy. They don't, not entirely; the American people as a whole, I believe (and desperately hope), have too much common sense, compassion, and frank suspicion to endure any too-prolonged wrath. Plus the evangelicals ban a lot of the shit that we love so much: booze, porn, a lot of music, dancing, gays, pot, porn, sex of any kind really (they're obsessed with regulating your orgasm), and booze. And if there's anything I need in my life, it's a pair of fingernail clippers.
(Forgive the complete non sequitur nature of this post.)
Boy, is Hillary a comeback kid? Or pathetic? I'm all for her, but I can't decide. Frankly, the only truly, undeniably good thing to come out of yesterday's victories for her was the continuation of this excruciatingly prolonged decision process for the Democratic nominee to allow even more voters a say in said process. It's nice for the Dems at least to stay involved and have opinions on one or the other, versus the Reps who are now stuck with McCain, whether they like it or not. I am secretly hoping that James Dobson et al in Colorado attempt to run a third party ticket for the evangelical freak show. And you know, the only reason they have made such a goddamn fuss half time is that they actually bought the whole sham that they are the base of the Republican party, and the brass at the top actually care. They don't. The evangelicals running a third party candidate has nothing to do with the supposed deficiencies of John McCain (in their eyes) so much as it is a pathetic attempt to assert a central role in the sociopolitical life of this country, which they believe they occupy. They don't, not entirely; the American people as a whole, I believe (and desperately hope), have too much common sense, compassion, and frank suspicion to endure any too-prolonged wrath. Plus the evangelicals ban a lot of the shit that we love so much: booze, porn, a lot of music, dancing, gays, pot, porn, sex of any kind really (they're obsessed with regulating your orgasm), and booze. And if there's anything I need in my life, it's a pair of fingernail clippers.
(Forgive the complete non sequitur nature of this post.)
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Passing Strange and Feeling Stupid
Salut tout le monde.
Thursday night I was able to attend the opening night of Passing Strange on Broadway. I also got to bring Katie East and Zach Harvey (cue freak-out).
It was, in its way, practically a religious experience. And I don't have those all too often. It is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
-----
Monday night I attended a screening at Joe's Pub at the Public of a new documentary film called Theater of War about Brecht and the Public's production of Mother Courage and Her Children in 2006, translated by Tony Kushner and with new songs by Jeanine Tesori. And Meryl, of course.
Now, one complaint: Meryl wasn't there. And she was supposed to be.
But, the film was very interesting, very compelling. The archival material and research that this filmmaker accomplished was astonishing.
Which leads me to...
Feeling Stupid
More and more often these days, I feel stupid. Uninformed. Uneducated. Uninterested?
I feel like I have a thin little layer of knowledge over a large breadth of the world, but hardly any depth.
All these discussions in the film of Brecht and Marx and whomever else, and I "only" "just" "kind of" know.
The fault lies mainly with me, but does anyone else feel fairly disabused by our education system? I feel failed.
But, of course, why here in the states would we need to know about Marx? It's not necessary in our paradise.
I feel more and more everyday that we live in a police state.
(Watching Dr. Strangelove doesn't help these sorts of feelings...)
I feel more and more everyday that we live in a police state, so I'm off to apply for my passport. Lyon 08! I think from then I will purchase a bicycle and start riding, and see y'all later.
-----
But before then, an exciting production of Macbeth.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Macbeth
So I'm trying to respond to Rupert Goold's Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart. I write that very purposefully, because I think in part some disappointment comes from the fact that it was Rupert Goold's Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart. When I think we were expecting (and had been told as much by the press and by BAM) Patrick Stewart's Macbeth directed by Rupert Goold. This production could have starred anyone. What's puzzling to me is why Mr. Goold chose Patrick Stewart to play Macbeth, and why Mr. Stewart accepted.
A lot has been said about Mr. Goold's "concepts." I, for one, don't mind concepts, director's theatre, what have you. The antipathy against it in this country is baffling to me. But my entire desire to direct is to avoid the stage -- I don't have to do it, only the actors do. In that vein, concepts are fine -- as long as they excite and engage the actor, because that has to happen before the actors can do as much for the audience.
In this case, I felt that some of the conceptual flourishes didn't exactly work (ie: the now-it's-here, now-it-isn't cabaret; the quasi-Eastern/Eurasian anthem). But I think overall the concept was, if not entirely novel or fulfilling, tremendously exciting. And I think, at a certain point, the actors were excited by it as well. But at some point, the air got let out of the bag.
All through the first act, I felt engaged -- but by potential, not by the real. By the second act, it was clear that potential was not to be realized that evening. Almost all of the cast, from Mr. Stewart down (as is often the danger of being "led" by a star) seemed exhausted.
But to whom can we attribute the "bloodless, lifeless, listless" nature (per Mia) of the performance? A clever director? A puzzled cast? A bad director? A bad cast? Did something suffer in the transfer from Britain, just in the lag of time?
To me there were three major issues that crippled this Macbeth, none of which can be easily parsed out to actor, director, designer, playwright (ha!), whomever:
1) Length and pacing
Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest, and probably fastest, play. No one ever needs a three hour Macbeth -- at least not a relatively traditional presentation of the script. Cut that motherfucker up.
I didn't mind some of the re-arranging. I didn't mind some of the little cuts here and there, except when they seemed made to "clarify" -- ie: the king Duncan says, "From hence to Inverness, and bind us further to you" before he accompanies Macbeth back to his home. In this production, Duncan says, "From hence to Glamis, and bind us further to you." Perhaps this underlines that Mackers is the thane of Glamis for the dim ones out there who didn't pick up on it.
But it doesn't work -- Macbeth has only been thane of Glamis for a few short hours, or days (since a comrade's death in battle) -- "By Sinel's [the previous thane of Glamis] death I know I am thane of Glamis/but how of Cawdor?" he asks the witches. He would not reside in Glamis either ever or at least not so soon after having such an honor conferred.
Don't underestimate your audience. But don't bore them either. Illuminate. Accomplish that and "clarification" won't be necessary.
The pacing of the second half was especially deadly -- and not in a good way. You could have commandeered the fucking Titanic through some of their pauses. Granted the last scene of the fourth act (Malcolm and Macduff) all the way through the end of the play is not easy to pace, especially those last battle scenes constantly cutting between the good guys and the bad guysssssssssss -- no, it should be guy. Only Mackers, we need to see his isolation. Even Seyton shouldn't be thrilled about this turn of events, but once Lady M is dead, needs to try and get the fuck out of there. But this Seyton, who also urinated (literally) all over the excruciating and excruciatingly unnecessary Porter scene, seemed straight from hell and more bent on victory than our tragic hero himself.
All told, the life was sucked out by strange (sometimes deliberately so) pacing and by complete allegiance to the mostly complete text. I don't know if it's the American in me, but I don't need (or want) all of it. Let's hit the highlights in the here and now, and parse out the text in class, thank you.
2) The concept as concept
I have no problems with concepts. To me, a concept is merely an attitude taken toward the play, extended however much one pleases. Talk of concepts/styles/whatever as "getting in the way of the play" infuriates me, as does talk of how a play works on its own, let it come from the script, etc. That's all well and good, but that's STILL a concept. Not to mention, for the overwhelming majority of plays, it leads to sucky theatre. Not sucky plays, but sucky fuck-ass theatre. The two are quite different.
In Macbeth, however, there seemed to be the idea of the concept...as concept. What was it particularly about Stalinist Russia and slasher films? I do hate hate hate moving things to different time periods and trying to draw complete and useless parallels; that to me is not particularly interesting, or "relevant." Whatever relevance occurs to an audience member happens because there are human beings onstage. I go much more for the expressionist, stripped down, essentials look -- in that kind of BAM Harvey Theater situation. In our current Mackers, it's about exploiting the space. I didn't feel their set exploited the space.
In this case, the Russian re-orientation was an interesting starting point that wasn't well-articulated. I thought it was going to sort of decorate an ultimately stripped-down point of view, but no universality shown through. To me the video was an obstacle, using photo and film footage to dictate absolutely the re-setting, instead of letting what was already onstage spin out into our imaginations.
I don't know if the actors didn't "get" the concept, if they didn't like it, if the director didn't communicate it well enough, but it seemed to me there was a real disconnect between the actors and their performances with the physicalized concept of the production. That disconnect was not interesting (as it can sometimes be). At any rate, the concept failed to engage the cast first, and if they're not engaged fully, we won't be. In this case, the concept was the "concept" -- it didn't mask the text, per se, but it led to this jarring discord between the actors, the text, the production, etc., that didn't coalesce into any sort of fulfilling event. It neither disappointed nor surprised my expectations: it underwhelmed.
3) Wrack
There was a lack of wrack in this production.
Blow, wind! Come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back!
There was no invitation to the sheer destructive force of specified theatre. There was no sense of "bring it on, motherfuckers!" There was no recognition of the insurmountability of the text, and the great disturbed heart at its center.
This Macbeth was accomplishable, scaleable, doable, and only marginally exciting. As Mia pointed out, Mr. Stewart was playing the ending from the beginning. There was no thrust, no jump off the cliff, no "we're all in this together, so 'come, wrack'!"
Mia: "The Emperor's New Clothes...I mean Macbeth, is moving to Broadway. So six weeks worth of Lyceum audiences can congratulate themselves for being so cultured." Exactly. The production lacked danger; did not strike; refused the audacity that the play itself offers to its cast and crew to ask its audience some inscrutable, nasty questions. It was one of the more scrutable, explainable, and polite Macbeths I've known.
And in the chance circumstances where one couldn't explain -- after the second time P-Stew crumpled a cigarette, the man behind me threw up his hands and said, rather loudly, "Well, I don't know what that's supposed to symbolize!" -- one really didn't care, because nothing offended or arrested you deeply enough to question it. And if there's any one play to question, it's the play that points a finger at the audience and says, watch what one man can do -- and for two hours (preferably), you are unable to stop him.
------
For an extraordinary giving and fulfilling alternative, please see Passing Strange at the Belasco Theater (believe it or not) on West 44 Street at 6 Avenue. And tell everyone you know to do so as well.
When I think of more, I'll try to re-phrase more clearly. All best --
A lot has been said about Mr. Goold's "concepts." I, for one, don't mind concepts, director's theatre, what have you. The antipathy against it in this country is baffling to me. But my entire desire to direct is to avoid the stage -- I don't have to do it, only the actors do. In that vein, concepts are fine -- as long as they excite and engage the actor, because that has to happen before the actors can do as much for the audience.
In this case, I felt that some of the conceptual flourishes didn't exactly work (ie: the now-it's-here, now-it-isn't cabaret; the quasi-Eastern/Eurasian anthem). But I think overall the concept was, if not entirely novel or fulfilling, tremendously exciting. And I think, at a certain point, the actors were excited by it as well. But at some point, the air got let out of the bag.
All through the first act, I felt engaged -- but by potential, not by the real. By the second act, it was clear that potential was not to be realized that evening. Almost all of the cast, from Mr. Stewart down (as is often the danger of being "led" by a star) seemed exhausted.
But to whom can we attribute the "bloodless, lifeless, listless" nature (per Mia) of the performance? A clever director? A puzzled cast? A bad director? A bad cast? Did something suffer in the transfer from Britain, just in the lag of time?
To me there were three major issues that crippled this Macbeth, none of which can be easily parsed out to actor, director, designer, playwright (ha!), whomever:
1) Length and pacing
Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest, and probably fastest, play. No one ever needs a three hour Macbeth -- at least not a relatively traditional presentation of the script. Cut that motherfucker up.
I didn't mind some of the re-arranging. I didn't mind some of the little cuts here and there, except when they seemed made to "clarify" -- ie: the king Duncan says, "From hence to Inverness, and bind us further to you" before he accompanies Macbeth back to his home. In this production, Duncan says, "From hence to Glamis, and bind us further to you." Perhaps this underlines that Mackers is the thane of Glamis for the dim ones out there who didn't pick up on it.
But it doesn't work -- Macbeth has only been thane of Glamis for a few short hours, or days (since a comrade's death in battle) -- "By Sinel's [the previous thane of Glamis] death I know I am thane of Glamis/but how of Cawdor?" he asks the witches. He would not reside in Glamis either ever or at least not so soon after having such an honor conferred.
Don't underestimate your audience. But don't bore them either. Illuminate. Accomplish that and "clarification" won't be necessary.
The pacing of the second half was especially deadly -- and not in a good way. You could have commandeered the fucking Titanic through some of their pauses. Granted the last scene of the fourth act (Malcolm and Macduff) all the way through the end of the play is not easy to pace, especially those last battle scenes constantly cutting between the good guys and the bad guysssssssssss -- no, it should be guy. Only Mackers, we need to see his isolation. Even Seyton shouldn't be thrilled about this turn of events, but once Lady M is dead, needs to try and get the fuck out of there. But this Seyton, who also urinated (literally) all over the excruciating and excruciatingly unnecessary Porter scene, seemed straight from hell and more bent on victory than our tragic hero himself.
All told, the life was sucked out by strange (sometimes deliberately so) pacing and by complete allegiance to the mostly complete text. I don't know if it's the American in me, but I don't need (or want) all of it. Let's hit the highlights in the here and now, and parse out the text in class, thank you.
2) The concept as concept
I have no problems with concepts. To me, a concept is merely an attitude taken toward the play, extended however much one pleases. Talk of concepts/styles/whatever as "getting in the way of the play" infuriates me, as does talk of how a play works on its own, let it come from the script, etc. That's all well and good, but that's STILL a concept. Not to mention, for the overwhelming majority of plays, it leads to sucky theatre. Not sucky plays, but sucky fuck-ass theatre. The two are quite different.
In Macbeth, however, there seemed to be the idea of the concept...as concept. What was it particularly about Stalinist Russia and slasher films? I do hate hate hate moving things to different time periods and trying to draw complete and useless parallels; that to me is not particularly interesting, or "relevant." Whatever relevance occurs to an audience member happens because there are human beings onstage. I go much more for the expressionist, stripped down, essentials look -- in that kind of BAM Harvey Theater situation. In our current Mackers, it's about exploiting the space. I didn't feel their set exploited the space.
In this case, the Russian re-orientation was an interesting starting point that wasn't well-articulated. I thought it was going to sort of decorate an ultimately stripped-down point of view, but no universality shown through. To me the video was an obstacle, using photo and film footage to dictate absolutely the re-setting, instead of letting what was already onstage spin out into our imaginations.
I don't know if the actors didn't "get" the concept, if they didn't like it, if the director didn't communicate it well enough, but it seemed to me there was a real disconnect between the actors and their performances with the physicalized concept of the production. That disconnect was not interesting (as it can sometimes be). At any rate, the concept failed to engage the cast first, and if they're not engaged fully, we won't be. In this case, the concept was the "concept" -- it didn't mask the text, per se, but it led to this jarring discord between the actors, the text, the production, etc., that didn't coalesce into any sort of fulfilling event. It neither disappointed nor surprised my expectations: it underwhelmed.
3) Wrack
There was a lack of wrack in this production.
Blow, wind! Come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back!
There was no invitation to the sheer destructive force of specified theatre. There was no sense of "bring it on, motherfuckers!" There was no recognition of the insurmountability of the text, and the great disturbed heart at its center.
This Macbeth was accomplishable, scaleable, doable, and only marginally exciting. As Mia pointed out, Mr. Stewart was playing the ending from the beginning. There was no thrust, no jump off the cliff, no "we're all in this together, so 'come, wrack'!"
Mia: "The Emperor's New Clothes...I mean Macbeth, is moving to Broadway. So six weeks worth of Lyceum audiences can congratulate themselves for being so cultured." Exactly. The production lacked danger; did not strike; refused the audacity that the play itself offers to its cast and crew to ask its audience some inscrutable, nasty questions. It was one of the more scrutable, explainable, and polite Macbeths I've known.
And in the chance circumstances where one couldn't explain -- after the second time P-Stew crumpled a cigarette, the man behind me threw up his hands and said, rather loudly, "Well, I don't know what that's supposed to symbolize!" -- one really didn't care, because nothing offended or arrested you deeply enough to question it. And if there's any one play to question, it's the play that points a finger at the audience and says, watch what one man can do -- and for two hours (preferably), you are unable to stop him.
------
For an extraordinary giving and fulfilling alternative, please see Passing Strange at the Belasco Theater (believe it or not) on West 44 Street at 6 Avenue. And tell everyone you know to do so as well.
When I think of more, I'll try to re-phrase more clearly. All best --
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
..., or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bard
For everyone's benefit, from our producer Mia:
"The Emperor's New Clothes"...
...I mean Macbeth, is moving to Broadway. So six weeks worth of Lyceum audiences can congratulate themselves for being so cultured.
"The Emperor's New Clothes"...
...I mean Macbeth, is moving to Broadway. So six weeks worth of Lyceum audiences can congratulate themselves for being so cultured.
For all of Goold's referencing Stalin and horror movies, this was bloodless, lifeless, listless. Unfortunate in a play that is about high passion, a play usually associated with the destructive seductiveness of ambition and power. They had an opportunity for a plausible new take. An older Macbeth, whose ambition could be said to be in a state of constant languish because of: 1) an inability to put himself on the line, politically; 2) a resistance to intellectual strategy - he does better with strategic warfare; 3) provinciality; 4) lack of imagination; 5) childlessness - no heirs to bequeath a kingddom to and he's too old to make babies; 6) he's too old. Then Lady M has reasons: 1) she's bored; 2) many opportunities for greatness, all passed up, and she's not gonna let another one go to waste; 3) something's not adding up: hubby is heralded warrior, great in bed, but flaccid when it comes to self-advancement/self-improvement. OR he's a great warrior, a poor lover, and her saying he is manly in bed is just stroking -- she'll crown whichever of his heads she can; 4) she really cares for him and wants the best for him and she'll get it for him because he can't do it for himself because he's too old; 5) she can't cope with the age thing and she's off her meds.
I do think Stewart was having an off night, but man, this was how I was taught NOT to do Shakespeare. So internal with hyper-articulated, sung speech. Shakespeare's characters are smart, think fast on their feet, and have a facility with language. Even the not so smart ones are at least witty or funny in their slowness. All those elongated syllables made me think they didn't know what to say next. When every single word is special, none of them are. Key words, key words, key words, puh-leeeeze!
I couldn't decipher anything resembling the messy things that make human beings so interesting (especially as rendered so expertly by Shakespeare): conflict (internal and external, but always active), a range of emotion, contradiction, fallibility (moral and physical), to name a few.
Stewart played "I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,/To one of woman born" from the get-go. So nowhere to go. Anyway, he seemed to have just phoned it in.
So, all this rant (believe me, it is but a small percentage of my real rant and I'm not subjecting the rest of the Mackers who didn't see the show to it) because of the upcoming work on MacB@McK. The basement, that elevator, the projections, the scene with the intercom, the train, the torture scene -- all became just so many effects and gimmicks, finally tiresome at best and infuriating at worst, because no compelling, grounded thing held them together. Gordon, it's what I meant when I talked about having a really beautiful, but sturdy container for your ideas. The integrity of that container is key, because until you know what it is, you won't know what to put in it.
Over and out. For now.
Mia
---------------------------------------------
I'm still not sure how I feel about P-Stew. The main thing was, it was never mine. It was always theirs.
What's most upsetting is that, in ENgland, everyone goes, of even if I didn't love it, we'll have another major production probably next year, or the next. Whereas here there's always the drive to make things definitive. That's deadly. I don't want our Macbeth to be definitive. I want it to be specific. I want simultaneously for ours to stick with you, but always allow for room for any and other Macbeth ever you may ever see.
The actors weren't all behind Mr. Goold (the director). They let the air out of a lot of it, starting with Mr. Stewart. I don't know if that's anyone's fault. My theory is, here's my idea, but if it doesn't work for you the actor, let's find something that does. It has to be the actor's, ultimately, or it will never get to the audience.
I don't feel entirely as Mia did, but I'm still working that out. Will get back to y'all.
---------------------------------------------
I'm still not sure how I feel about P-Stew. The main thing was, it was never mine. It was always theirs.
What's most upsetting is that, in ENgland, everyone goes, of even if I didn't love it, we'll have another major production probably next year, or the next. Whereas here there's always the drive to make things definitive. That's deadly. I don't want our Macbeth to be definitive. I want it to be specific. I want simultaneously for ours to stick with you, but always allow for room for any and other Macbeth ever you may ever see.
The actors weren't all behind Mr. Goold (the director). They let the air out of a lot of it, starting with Mr. Stewart. I don't know if that's anyone's fault. My theory is, here's my idea, but if it doesn't work for you the actor, let's find something that does. It has to be the actor's, ultimately, or it will never get to the audience.
I don't feel entirely as Mia did, but I'm still working that out. Will get back to y'all.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Rupert Goold's MACBETH starring Patrick Stewart TONIGHT at BAM!!!
I conjure you, by that which you profess,
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me:
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me
To what I ask you.
Speak.
Demand.
We'll answer --
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me:
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me
To what I ask you.
Speak.
Demand.
We'll answer --
Monday, February 25, 2008
It's quittin' time!
It's quittin' time!
(Was that offensive?)
I'm quitting at Marsh, the world's largest insurance brokerage (Find the Upside in Risk!). I'm quitting to intern at the Public three days a week instead of two, and there's no point in me staying at Marsh for two days.
Off to Poor City, to find a new job ASAP please!!
Those Oscars....
Good for Marion Cotillard (I guess? I haven't seen the movie)
My fave outfits:
1) Marion Cotillard -- her hair was especially great:
2) Julie Christie -- I know, I know, those gloves, and those grandma Easter shoes, but her look was ultimately smart and chic and different, not trying to compete with all those other bitches out there. She's tops.
3) Tilda Swinton -- don't hurt me everyone. I loved her getup. She's a crazy bitch and she totally owned it. The fact that she won only makes the get-up hotter.
Yay pour les Oscars! I couldn't care too much less. I didn't even see most of them -- I was watching Justin Bond at PS 122, who probably has the best wardrobe of all these ladies:
(Was that offensive?)
I'm quitting at Marsh, the world's largest insurance brokerage (Find the Upside in Risk!). I'm quitting to intern at the Public three days a week instead of two, and there's no point in me staying at Marsh for two days.
Off to Poor City, to find a new job ASAP please!!
Those Oscars....
Good for Marion Cotillard (I guess? I haven't seen the movie)
My fave outfits:
1) Marion Cotillard -- her hair was especially great:
2) Julie Christie -- I know, I know, those gloves, and those grandma Easter shoes, but her look was ultimately smart and chic and different, not trying to compete with all those other bitches out there. She's tops.
3) Tilda Swinton -- don't hurt me everyone. I loved her getup. She's a crazy bitch and she totally owned it. The fact that she won only makes the get-up hotter.
Yay pour les Oscars! I couldn't care too much less. I didn't even see most of them -- I was watching Justin Bond at PS 122, who probably has the best wardrobe of all these ladies:
Thursday, February 21, 2008
New plays, an new movie, and an old movie that feels newer than the aforementioned new plays and new movie
New plays (mostly) suck:
Mon night -- reading of a new play at NYU. A "Southern gothic" in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor. It was not a play, it was maybe a movie. It felt like a movie of the week, but I think you could make a reasonably compelling film out of it; if the actors played it totally straight and committed, which they really didn't at this reading. They played so broadly you would have thought you were in the Hippodrome circa 1910.
Tues night -- the Strawberry Festival, with a piece starring our friends Zach Harvey and Laura Harrison. Theirs was by far the most entertaining and least cringeworthy. The first was "Saturday with the Bushes," when George W. and Laura invite George H. W. and Barbara to their weekend place in Kennebunkport, Maine. First problem there -- Kennebunkport is H.W.'s place; W. ain't doin' none of the invitin'. Lord. It just worse -- much, much worse -- from there. Really horrible, unfunny impressions of these people, plus some truly politically offensive, reductive, unfair, and mean dialogue. Physically I could not clap. Next up, something about two guys robbing these priests. They sit around and talk for 25 minutes about whether or not they should kill them; they confess to the priests, as they believe under the law a confession is immune to any case trying to convict them. They don't shoot the priests, they leave, turns out the priests were also robbers dressed in priest get-ups. Just stood there and talked for 40 minutes (but same thing with "Saturday with the Bushes," and that was almost an hour -- it felt like). Third up was a confusing, coy, but not-so-cute reinterpretation of "Jack and the Beanstalk," which featured real acting from the woman playing Jack's mother. And while she went a little over-crazy amongst the other rather smug not-so-compelling actors, I appreciated some actual commitment to her audience.
Finally, "What Cheer, Iowa," with ours friends Zach and Laura. (There was a fifth show, but I could not stay. Sorry.) "What Cheer, Iowa," follows four unfortunate souls waiting to see if their cars have passed inspection. Bad Speech and Debate sketch, but not as bad as the prior three. Zach and Laura were at least entertaining to watch.
WHO CHOSE THESE GODDAMN PLAYS? WHY ARE THEY SO BAD? WHY ARE THEY SO POORLY PERFORMED AND DIRECTED?
The asswipe who produces it is quite full of himself, from the program, which I couldn't bear to bring home with me even. But note to asswipe producers: even if your show is bad, you're doing NO ONE favors by having the show start 45 minutes late. Especially when showtime is (or was) 9:30 pm at night. Jesus Christ!
Wed night -- Paradise Park at Signature Theatre, the last production in their Charles Mee season. I saw Chuck after the show, and he was lovely and we had a nice little conversation. Like Queens Boulevard before it, Paradise Park was poorly directed. With a collage piece (which this was entirely, no real through-line whatsoever), I think you need a director who essentially will be a co-author to the onstage play. This guy just seemed to put up what Chuck wrote, which to me is a beginning, not an end, not a finished product by any means, but a jumping off point. They didn't jump. Really poorly paced; I actually liked a lot of the second half, but it was a tough haul through the first one, which leaves the second half a bit deflated. It was NO FUN at all -- it was like they said, OK, y'all get the Paradise idea, now we're going to show you the dark underside. And of course that's there, and supposed to be, but that's not all the play is. The mood was almost overwhelmingly oppressive, even as the actors (rightly) tried to fight it. I liked the script, I liked most of the cast, and I really appreciated their effort. But they weren't having fun, they were drowning in weird stage business (even as they dealt with the text fairly well, I thought). The design was confusing, ineffective, weird, and not particularly attractive. I got the point of the design when I walked in the theater an hour and fifteen minutes before the show began.
Ugh. Poor Mr. Mee. His shows require a really, really strong director, with a really strong opinion about the piece, even if it doesn't totally work, or it turns people off. I loved Iphigenia 2.0, and I really loved a lot of Tina Landau's very strong direction. Other people did not. But the general consensus was that whether or not you liked the direction the piece took, it was a stronger production and a better representation of what Chuck and his work are about then the watered-down mess that is Paradise Park or the limp Queens Boulevard.
At any rate, I spoke to him for a few minutes afterwards. He had recognized me walking into the theater, which was cool, and we spoke about his show, and I said what a pleasure it was to see so much of his work spread out across a season, and what a thrill that must be for him, etc, etc. And then he asked me what I was doing. And I told him about Mackers, etc. That was really cool and very kind of him. He's a super person in my book.
----------
FILM:
The Savages -- almost precisely what you expect and leaves you none the more pleased about it. Philip Bosco, who plays the demented ill father, is excellent and entirely sympathetic and selfless. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman do their thing. Who cares?
Blow-up -- my first Antonioni film. Totally cool. Totally hot. Fantastic. Loved it, would watch it again immediately. Totally not what you expect at all, and leaves you all the more disturbed and satisfied by it. Why can't we make movies anymore (in America) that trust their audiences?? And deal with real sexiness, the kind that comes from intelligence and personal thrust. I felt like the movie was waiting for me to watch it, not telling me I should. That felt good.
Mon night -- reading of a new play at NYU. A "Southern gothic" in the tradition of Flannery O'Connor. It was not a play, it was maybe a movie. It felt like a movie of the week, but I think you could make a reasonably compelling film out of it; if the actors played it totally straight and committed, which they really didn't at this reading. They played so broadly you would have thought you were in the Hippodrome circa 1910.
Tues night -- the Strawberry Festival, with a piece starring our friends Zach Harvey and Laura Harrison. Theirs was by far the most entertaining and least cringeworthy. The first was "Saturday with the Bushes," when George W. and Laura invite George H. W. and Barbara to their weekend place in Kennebunkport, Maine. First problem there -- Kennebunkport is H.W.'s place; W. ain't doin' none of the invitin'. Lord. It just worse -- much, much worse -- from there. Really horrible, unfunny impressions of these people, plus some truly politically offensive, reductive, unfair, and mean dialogue. Physically I could not clap. Next up, something about two guys robbing these priests. They sit around and talk for 25 minutes about whether or not they should kill them; they confess to the priests, as they believe under the law a confession is immune to any case trying to convict them. They don't shoot the priests, they leave, turns out the priests were also robbers dressed in priest get-ups. Just stood there and talked for 40 minutes (but same thing with "Saturday with the Bushes," and that was almost an hour -- it felt like). Third up was a confusing, coy, but not-so-cute reinterpretation of "Jack and the Beanstalk," which featured real acting from the woman playing Jack's mother. And while she went a little over-crazy amongst the other rather smug not-so-compelling actors, I appreciated some actual commitment to her audience.
Finally, "What Cheer, Iowa," with ours friends Zach and Laura. (There was a fifth show, but I could not stay. Sorry.) "What Cheer, Iowa," follows four unfortunate souls waiting to see if their cars have passed inspection. Bad Speech and Debate sketch, but not as bad as the prior three. Zach and Laura were at least entertaining to watch.
WHO CHOSE THESE GODDAMN PLAYS? WHY ARE THEY SO BAD? WHY ARE THEY SO POORLY PERFORMED AND DIRECTED?
The asswipe who produces it is quite full of himself, from the program, which I couldn't bear to bring home with me even. But note to asswipe producers: even if your show is bad, you're doing NO ONE favors by having the show start 45 minutes late. Especially when showtime is (or was) 9:30 pm at night. Jesus Christ!
Wed night -- Paradise Park at Signature Theatre, the last production in their Charles Mee season. I saw Chuck after the show, and he was lovely and we had a nice little conversation. Like Queens Boulevard before it, Paradise Park was poorly directed. With a collage piece (which this was entirely, no real through-line whatsoever), I think you need a director who essentially will be a co-author to the onstage play. This guy just seemed to put up what Chuck wrote, which to me is a beginning, not an end, not a finished product by any means, but a jumping off point. They didn't jump. Really poorly paced; I actually liked a lot of the second half, but it was a tough haul through the first one, which leaves the second half a bit deflated. It was NO FUN at all -- it was like they said, OK, y'all get the Paradise idea, now we're going to show you the dark underside. And of course that's there, and supposed to be, but that's not all the play is. The mood was almost overwhelmingly oppressive, even as the actors (rightly) tried to fight it. I liked the script, I liked most of the cast, and I really appreciated their effort. But they weren't having fun, they were drowning in weird stage business (even as they dealt with the text fairly well, I thought). The design was confusing, ineffective, weird, and not particularly attractive. I got the point of the design when I walked in the theater an hour and fifteen minutes before the show began.
Ugh. Poor Mr. Mee. His shows require a really, really strong director, with a really strong opinion about the piece, even if it doesn't totally work, or it turns people off. I loved Iphigenia 2.0, and I really loved a lot of Tina Landau's very strong direction. Other people did not. But the general consensus was that whether or not you liked the direction the piece took, it was a stronger production and a better representation of what Chuck and his work are about then the watered-down mess that is Paradise Park or the limp Queens Boulevard.
At any rate, I spoke to him for a few minutes afterwards. He had recognized me walking into the theater, which was cool, and we spoke about his show, and I said what a pleasure it was to see so much of his work spread out across a season, and what a thrill that must be for him, etc, etc. And then he asked me what I was doing. And I told him about Mackers, etc. That was really cool and very kind of him. He's a super person in my book.
----------
FILM:
The Savages -- almost precisely what you expect and leaves you none the more pleased about it. Philip Bosco, who plays the demented ill father, is excellent and entirely sympathetic and selfless. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman do their thing. Who cares?
Blow-up -- my first Antonioni film. Totally cool. Totally hot. Fantastic. Loved it, would watch it again immediately. Totally not what you expect at all, and leaves you all the more disturbed and satisfied by it. Why can't we make movies anymore (in America) that trust their audiences?? And deal with real sexiness, the kind that comes from intelligence and personal thrust. I felt like the movie was waiting for me to watch it, not telling me I should. That felt good.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Let's sing a song of cheer again
Lohan -- yay or nay? Nyay. Real boobs, though.
Shaved hoohas -- yay or nay? Nay.
I am seeing Patrick Stewart in Macbeth at BAM next week. Excited -- yay or nay? YAY.
Lohan: Why should a woman who is healthy and strong blubber like a baby when her man goes away?
(Making no sense, and no I'm not Marshmellowin' -- I'm Publickin' today!)
Shaved hoohas -- yay or nay? Nay.
I am seeing Patrick Stewart in Macbeth at BAM next week. Excited -- yay or nay? YAY.
Lohan: Why should a woman who is healthy and strong blubber like a baby when her man goes away?
(Making no sense, and no I'm not Marshmellowin' -- I'm Publickin' today!)
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Depressed much?
WOW
Sorry for that last post/sorry for my horrible weekend. No more pot for a while, hmm?
Macbeth
April 25 and 26
"Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. "
--------------
This interests me. I feel it, even as I've been all for my Hill-dog.
This interests me: Anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters. She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map. (Not mine -- part of nytimes article. Why don't my links light up or something?)
Sorry for that last post/sorry for my horrible weekend. No more pot for a while, hmm?
Macbeth
April 25 and 26
"Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before. "
--------------
This interests me. I feel it, even as I've been all for my Hill-dog.
This interests me: Anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters. She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map. (Not mine -- part of nytimes article. Why don't my links light up or something?)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
My life
So, my grandmother died, and it was sad. And I'm still sad. I'm sadder now than I was at home at the funeral, at any rate. Which feels weirds. Watched Old Yeller on TV on Saturday and that was kind of upsetting.
I have to get a new job. Even at three days a week at my temp job, I'm done, I'm really done, and I'm also afraid to be found out and fired, as I have no real idea what I've been doing the past 7 months, nor do I care. And I don't do any of the work, really, that I should be doing. But I'm scared of waiting tables. I'm scared to drop something and break a plate.
I haven't directed a show in almost a year and half. I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out. I am so scared of this show, where it's going or not going, how do I control it or not control it. How do I direct it? When so much of this directing feels like it's happening outside of the room? As I've said before, it's the hardest and the easiest thing I will ever do. I'm really, really scared of it this time, and I'm feeling a little bit like my life is falling apart. Not over the show, totally, but I can't seem to get myself in order. I think, really really, I need to get out of this job ASAP.
Public news: Passing Strange is amazing. Also: I don't get to go to the opening night of Passing Strange. That is also really upsetting. What am I doing? Why does it always feel like when someone asks me that question, or when I ask myself that question, that I don't have an affirmative answer? That the answer is always in the negative: Well I don't really do anything. There isn't much for me to do. Instead of, I am doing, there is all this stuff to do, etc. Why does that feel like my life?
I miss my friends:
I would the friends we miss were safe arrived. (Malcolm, who kind of sucks)
Life is a mistake only art can correct. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall
have my music for nothing.
I have to get a new job. Even at three days a week at my temp job, I'm done, I'm really done, and I'm also afraid to be found out and fired, as I have no real idea what I've been doing the past 7 months, nor do I care. And I don't do any of the work, really, that I should be doing. But I'm scared of waiting tables. I'm scared to drop something and break a plate.
I haven't directed a show in almost a year and half. I'm freaking out. I'm freaking out. I am so scared of this show, where it's going or not going, how do I control it or not control it. How do I direct it? When so much of this directing feels like it's happening outside of the room? As I've said before, it's the hardest and the easiest thing I will ever do. I'm really, really scared of it this time, and I'm feeling a little bit like my life is falling apart. Not over the show, totally, but I can't seem to get myself in order. I think, really really, I need to get out of this job ASAP.
Public news: Passing Strange is amazing. Also: I don't get to go to the opening night of Passing Strange. That is also really upsetting. What am I doing? Why does it always feel like when someone asks me that question, or when I ask myself that question, that I don't have an affirmative answer? That the answer is always in the negative: Well I don't really do anything. There isn't much for me to do. Instead of, I am doing, there is all this stuff to do, etc. Why does that feel like my life?
I miss my friends:
I would the friends we miss were safe arrived. (Malcolm, who kind of sucks)
Life is a mistake only art can correct. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall
have my music for nothing.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Told you so, part two
CIA director: Waterboarding necessary, but probably illegal
That's all folks.
Let's pretend we only did it to three people. (Bull)
Let's also pretend it was either a teenager or two two guys they arrested today in Pakistan for Benazir Bhutto's assassination that were them that actually did it, y'all! (And not, hmm, our puppet prince/president Musharraf -- which, said drunkenly I've discovered, sounds like you're ordering Moo Shoo Pork)
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Told you so
Too cute:
We Tortured and We'd Do It Again
President Bush would authorize waterboarding future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said this morning, one day after the director of the CIA for the first time publicly acknowledged his agency's use of the tactic, which generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning.
I want to offer up some slightly tweaked song lyrics for that lovely tune Do It Again:
You really shouldn't have done it,
You hadn't any right.
I really shouldn't have let you [strap people down and slowly drown them].
And although it was wrong,
I never was strong.
So as long as you've begun it,
And you know you shouldn't have done it,
Oh, do it again.
I may cry no, no, no, no, no, but do it again.
My lips just ache to have you take
The [drenched, dripping cloth] that's [completely acceptable] for you.
You know if you do, you won't regret it.
Come and get it.
Oh, no one is near,
I may cry oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, but no one can hear.
Mama may scold me cause she told me
It was naughty but then, please, do it again.
Yes do it again, and again and again and again and again.
Turn out the light.
And [tie] me [down on the board] in your arms
All through the night.
I know tomorrow morning
You [might, if I'm lucky] say goodbye and amen.
[Please stop, but because I can't speak, you'll just think:]
But until then, please do it again.
We Tortured and We'd Do It Again
President Bush would authorize waterboarding future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said this morning, one day after the director of the CIA for the first time publicly acknowledged his agency's use of the tactic, which generally involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face or mouth with a cloth, and pouring water over his face to create the sensation of drowning.
Olivier Knox writes for AFP: "The United States may use waterboarding to question terrorism suspects in the future, the White House said Wednesday, rejecting the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture.
"'It will depend upon circumstances,' spokesman Tony Fratto said, adding 'the belief that an attack might be imminent, that could be a circumstance that you would definitely want to consider.I want to offer up some slightly tweaked song lyrics for that lovely tune Do It Again:
You really shouldn't have done it,
You hadn't any right.
I really shouldn't have let you [strap people down and slowly drown them].
And although it was wrong,
I never was strong.
So as long as you've begun it,
And you know you shouldn't have done it,
Oh, do it again.
I may cry no, no, no, no, no, but do it again.
My lips just ache to have you take
The [drenched, dripping cloth] that's [completely acceptable] for you.
You know if you do, you won't regret it.
Come and get it.
Oh, no one is near,
I may cry oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, but no one can hear.
Mama may scold me cause she told me
It was naughty but then, please, do it again.
Yes do it again, and again and again and again and again.
Turn out the light.
And [tie] me [down on the board] in your arms
All through the night.
I know tomorrow morning
You [might, if I'm lucky] say goodbye and amen.
[Please stop, but because I can't speak, you'll just think:]
But until then, please do it again.
Act it out!
O nation miserable,
With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptr'd
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?
Macbeth 5.9.08
Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits.
With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptr'd
When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?
Macbeth 5.9.08
Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
This is what we're missin'
Thanks to all who came out in the horrible weather for the Mardi Gras bash. That's what it's about, people. What a celebration! Hands down, the best.
Take a look at photos from The Advocate (BR, not the gays!) of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. For me it has always been the most fun, most celebratory, most inclusive, most wonderful of all the Mardi Gras parades (though it's Saturday, not Tuesday). Wish I had still been living there when it happened in 06!
Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade
Sorry I've been out of the loop. Mississippi, grandmother's funeral, etc. Will get back ASAP to movie reviews! Right now I'm watching La Dolce Vita. Marcello Mastroianni is the sexiest man who ever lived. That movie only makes you want to flee to Rome and smoke unfiltered cigarettes and have passionate, romantic, indescribable sex with sad, beautiful people, and run around all evening in fountains, and find life disappointing and unbearable and fantastic all at once -- and do all of these simultaneously!
Take a look at photos from The Advocate (BR, not the gays!) of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade in downtown Baton Rouge. For me it has always been the most fun, most celebratory, most inclusive, most wonderful of all the Mardi Gras parades (though it's Saturday, not Tuesday). Wish I had still been living there when it happened in 06!
Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade
Sorry I've been out of the loop. Mississippi, grandmother's funeral, etc. Will get back ASAP to movie reviews! Right now I'm watching La Dolce Vita. Marcello Mastroianni is the sexiest man who ever lived. That movie only makes you want to flee to Rome and smoke unfiltered cigarettes and have passionate, romantic, indescribable sex with sad, beautiful people, and run around all evening in fountains, and find life disappointing and unbearable and fantastic all at once -- and do all of these simultaneously!
Friday, January 25, 2008
Still grappling, but...
Still grappling with how to deal with I'm Not There and Dogville. I'm for sure completely in love with Dogville. And not head over heels, but a feeling of I know this film is in my life now, and I couldn't imagine that any other way.
I need to see I'm Not There again, but hopefully not by myself. It is a long film... (let's not even talk Dogville on that account)
BUT...I have to...I must correct my previous statements about my best movies of the year. Now I still haven't seen There Will Be Blood -- it's the last big one on my list, and I also have yet to see the evidently delightful Enchanted and the evidently rapturous Once (coming via Netflix tomorrow!).
Seriously, everyone, the best film of the year is Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), directed by Julian Schnabel from the memoir by Jean-Dominique "Jean-Do" Bauby, which was adapted into an English screeplay by Ronald Harwood from the English translation of the book, then re-translated into a French screenplay by Ronald Harwood. Therefore, I feel it only appropriate to refer to it fully as Le scaphandre et le papillon.
Now, as some may know, I have a grandmother who is dying slowly, and that of course had an effect on me watching a terminally ill, incapacitated person on screen for two hours. Still...
It is so very rare that you see any work of art that actually transforms physically how you perceive the world around you. It changes how your eyes work, before any crap you might say about how your heart works, etc., even as you could, and probably will. The world doesn't look different to me now, I see it differently. I see it perhaps more as it is, but I also see a more beautiful and worthwhile world than we give it credit for. And I see how little influence, control, and power we have over our existence. That knowledge -- not even knowledge, but an awareness -- is disarming. However, unlike many disarming films or other artworks, this continues to disarm you afterwards. Days afterwards. This film is in my life now, and I cannot imagine my life without it. At the same time, in a strange way, one cannot imagine this film without one's life -- without one's participation in it. It requests your participation in its two hour running time to reinvigorate your participation in your own running time outside the theater.
I cannot stress the value of viewing this film. It's not important. It's not beautiful. (It is, but I mean): It just is, and it wants you to know it. And I want all of you to know it. To meet it.
The French word "to know," as in to be familiar with someone, is connaître. In my weird, indirect understanding of the language, this has certain parallels with their words for appear/disappear (apparaître/disapparaître) and to be (être). And then there is also the beautiful addition to the word that becomes reconnaître -- to re-meet, to re-know, to re-turn to one, to re-appear with one another. In this film, due to the illness the man is suffering (he's "locked-in" -- paralyzed except for his left eye, which he blinks in order to communicate) -- he has to re-meet the world, his family, himself in an entire new way. He has to cause himself to re-appear, to re-be, to be re-birthed. I felt similarly to the cold air outside Lincoln Plaza cinema, and walked blocks and blocks to take a different subway -- one I had not taken before. I could not go home the way I do every single day. And I couldn't go home to -- everything?
Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) -- if only one film to see, you should see the film you desperately want to see; but this film wants desperately for you to see -- it, and, everything.
I need to see I'm Not There again, but hopefully not by myself. It is a long film... (let's not even talk Dogville on that account)
BUT...I have to...I must correct my previous statements about my best movies of the year. Now I still haven't seen There Will Be Blood -- it's the last big one on my list, and I also have yet to see the evidently delightful Enchanted and the evidently rapturous Once (coming via Netflix tomorrow!).
Seriously, everyone, the best film of the year is Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), directed by Julian Schnabel from the memoir by Jean-Dominique "Jean-Do" Bauby, which was adapted into an English screeplay by Ronald Harwood from the English translation of the book, then re-translated into a French screenplay by Ronald Harwood. Therefore, I feel it only appropriate to refer to it fully as Le scaphandre et le papillon.
Now, as some may know, I have a grandmother who is dying slowly, and that of course had an effect on me watching a terminally ill, incapacitated person on screen for two hours. Still...
It is so very rare that you see any work of art that actually transforms physically how you perceive the world around you. It changes how your eyes work, before any crap you might say about how your heart works, etc., even as you could, and probably will. The world doesn't look different to me now, I see it differently. I see it perhaps more as it is, but I also see a more beautiful and worthwhile world than we give it credit for. And I see how little influence, control, and power we have over our existence. That knowledge -- not even knowledge, but an awareness -- is disarming. However, unlike many disarming films or other artworks, this continues to disarm you afterwards. Days afterwards. This film is in my life now, and I cannot imagine my life without it. At the same time, in a strange way, one cannot imagine this film without one's life -- without one's participation in it. It requests your participation in its two hour running time to reinvigorate your participation in your own running time outside the theater.
I cannot stress the value of viewing this film. It's not important. It's not beautiful. (It is, but I mean): It just is, and it wants you to know it. And I want all of you to know it. To meet it.
The French word "to know," as in to be familiar with someone, is connaître. In my weird, indirect understanding of the language, this has certain parallels with their words for appear/disappear (apparaître/disapparaître) and to be (être). And then there is also the beautiful addition to the word that becomes reconnaître -- to re-meet, to re-know, to re-turn to one, to re-appear with one another. In this film, due to the illness the man is suffering (he's "locked-in" -- paralyzed except for his left eye, which he blinks in order to communicate) -- he has to re-meet the world, his family, himself in an entire new way. He has to cause himself to re-appear, to re-be, to be re-birthed. I felt similarly to the cold air outside Lincoln Plaza cinema, and walked blocks and blocks to take a different subway -- one I had not taken before. I could not go home the way I do every single day. And I couldn't go home to -- everything?
Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) -- if only one film to see, you should see the film you desperately want to see; but this film wants desperately for you to see -- it, and, everything.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
My MLK weekend of moviegoing
This past weekend I did not leave my apartment from Friday night to Monday afternoon, for a myriad of reasons. I thus watched lots of movies. I'll mention a few:
(on TV):
Bring It On: Still far more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Interesting to think about contextually, though. One of very few movies that are about females, and maybe the only successful female sports movie.
Bridget Jones’ Diary: What happened to Renee Zellweger’s career? Aside from a lot of coke? The trifecta of Bridget Jones’ Diary, Chicago (a continually surprising/enterprising perf), and Down with Love died for me after her atrocious perf in Cold Mountain. She was the worst part of an irritating and often unwatchable film. But Bridget Jones? Too much fun.
Now, to the big three. (I’m not yet done with Jules et Jim.) I started Netflixin’ to watch “important” movies, so we’ll see how this goes.
(Netflixin'):
Caché (2005, dir. Michael Haneke)
Caché (Hidden) begins with a long, still shot of a ordinary house on an ordinary street in Paris. The shot is so long it becomes unnerving, then suddenly it is re-wound -- it's actually a shot on a videotape, one of several being delivered to the people who live in that house, to let them know they are being surveilled by someone. These tapes are accompanied by very violent, childlike drawings of people and animals being killed. Daniel Auteil and Juliette Binoche play the terrorized/terrified couple, who maybe are being revenged upon by someone in Auteil's past.
The word to describe Caché is unnerving. It is sometimes scary, and in one scene horrifyingly, suddenly violent, but mostly it is just unnerving, disarming, creepy. Haneke shows how that tension, that unknowing and suspicion, really tears up and lays bare the neat family life that this couple and their son have set up for themselves. Auteil's character refuses, most of the time, to discuss his past with his wife, as he is ashamed that his actions perhaps were the catalyst to their present fears. During his childhood, his family almost adopted an Arab orphan from Algiers, but Auteil's character (as a child) lied about the boy and prevented the adoption. When directions on one of the videotapes leads Auteil to this boy, now a grown older man, he claims to know nothing about them. Maybe he's lying? Maybe it's his grown son terrorizing the family?
Eventually the situation seems to have resolved itself, but the last shot suddenly occurs to you as a surveillance shot of Auteil and Binoche's son's school. It's almost unfair, and definitely perverse (but that's Haneke for you).
Haneke is also trying to say something about France's relationship with Arab immigrants and the Algiers/North African population that, once liberated, have moved to France instead (and into other European countries, especially Britain). He takes xenophobia and class struggle between Auteil and his Arab potential terrorist from the personal to the political sphere, magnifying Auteil's past crimes to a present revenge that encompasses and destabilizes his entire life. There's nothing he, or we, can do about it, at any rate.
Dogville (2004, dir. Lars von Trier)
I had seen about half of Dogville when I started to watch it again on Saturday.
Urgh......can't keep thinking about this today.
New update to include:
My yes to Dogville. It's a modern day expressionist play, and I love it.
(At Film Forum):
I’m Not There: Yes. I think. I need to see it again before speaking more clearly about it. It is similar for me to Across the Universe, but not superficially as "musicals," whatever. The experience was similar. The experience was troubling and insightful, and took a lot of complication to arrive at something very simple. Was it worth it? For my money I think they're the two best films I've seen from 2007. (Although there's plenty I haven't seen it, most especially Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and There Will Be Blood. Now that I've read Atonement I have very little desire to see it, as much as I like Keira Knightley).
More to come!
(on TV):
Bring It On: Still far more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Interesting to think about contextually, though. One of very few movies that are about females, and maybe the only successful female sports movie.
Bridget Jones’ Diary: What happened to Renee Zellweger’s career? Aside from a lot of coke? The trifecta of Bridget Jones’ Diary, Chicago (a continually surprising/enterprising perf), and Down with Love died for me after her atrocious perf in Cold Mountain. She was the worst part of an irritating and often unwatchable film. But Bridget Jones? Too much fun.
Now, to the big three. (I’m not yet done with Jules et Jim.) I started Netflixin’ to watch “important” movies, so we’ll see how this goes.
(Netflixin'):
Caché (2005, dir. Michael Haneke)
Caché (Hidden) begins with a long, still shot of a ordinary house on an ordinary street in Paris. The shot is so long it becomes unnerving, then suddenly it is re-wound -- it's actually a shot on a videotape, one of several being delivered to the people who live in that house, to let them know they are being surveilled by someone. These tapes are accompanied by very violent, childlike drawings of people and animals being killed. Daniel Auteil and Juliette Binoche play the terrorized/terrified couple, who maybe are being revenged upon by someone in Auteil's past.
The word to describe Caché is unnerving. It is sometimes scary, and in one scene horrifyingly, suddenly violent, but mostly it is just unnerving, disarming, creepy. Haneke shows how that tension, that unknowing and suspicion, really tears up and lays bare the neat family life that this couple and their son have set up for themselves. Auteil's character refuses, most of the time, to discuss his past with his wife, as he is ashamed that his actions perhaps were the catalyst to their present fears. During his childhood, his family almost adopted an Arab orphan from Algiers, but Auteil's character (as a child) lied about the boy and prevented the adoption. When directions on one of the videotapes leads Auteil to this boy, now a grown older man, he claims to know nothing about them. Maybe he's lying? Maybe it's his grown son terrorizing the family?
Eventually the situation seems to have resolved itself, but the last shot suddenly occurs to you as a surveillance shot of Auteil and Binoche's son's school. It's almost unfair, and definitely perverse (but that's Haneke for you).
Haneke is also trying to say something about France's relationship with Arab immigrants and the Algiers/North African population that, once liberated, have moved to France instead (and into other European countries, especially Britain). He takes xenophobia and class struggle between Auteil and his Arab potential terrorist from the personal to the political sphere, magnifying Auteil's past crimes to a present revenge that encompasses and destabilizes his entire life. There's nothing he, or we, can do about it, at any rate.
Dogville (2004, dir. Lars von Trier)
I had seen about half of Dogville when I started to watch it again on Saturday.
Urgh......can't keep thinking about this today.
New update to include:
My yes to Dogville. It's a modern day expressionist play, and I love it.
(At Film Forum):
I’m Not There: Yes. I think. I need to see it again before speaking more clearly about it. It is similar for me to Across the Universe, but not superficially as "musicals," whatever. The experience was similar. The experience was troubling and insightful, and took a lot of complication to arrive at something very simple. Was it worth it? For my money I think they're the two best films I've seen from 2007. (Although there's plenty I haven't seen it, most especially Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and There Will Be Blood. Now that I've read Atonement I have very little desire to see it, as much as I like Keira Knightley).
More to come!
Monday, January 14, 2008
McB@McK.com
So within a whirlwind 12 hours of drunkenness with the lovely Mia Katigbak, a plan was hatched to produced McB@McK.com, a producation of Macbeth at Mark et al's apartment in Brooklyn. The following are her (McKatigbak the producer's) restrictions on the production:
1. The piece cannot be more than 90 minutes. Preferably, shorter.
2. It will be an all-male cast, with no more than 6 actors.
3. It is pre-cast with the gentlemen copied on this email as your company. Other than the role of Lady M being undertaken by Mr. Jaynes, you are free to double/triple cast as you fit, although I would strongly suggest you work as collaboratively as possible with your company.
4. You must include the following musical instruments in your c-c-c-c-concept: horn(s); drums.
5. The song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon (rendered by any artist of your choice) must be in the performance.
6. Please also incorporate some form of sign language.
7. Include one bicycle (or more) in your set. It (they) can be used. Or ridden.
In short, I accepted her request for a director. One last restriction I have placed upon the show is a requirement to use the entire text (here) within those <90 minutes.
1. The piece cannot be more than 90 minutes. Preferably, shorter.
2. It will be an all-male cast, with no more than 6 actors.
3. It is pre-cast with the gentlemen copied on this email as your company. Other than the role of Lady M being undertaken by Mr. Jaynes, you are free to double/triple cast as you fit, although I would strongly suggest you work as collaboratively as possible with your company.
4. You must include the following musical instruments in your c-c-c-c-concept: horn(s); drums.
5. The song “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon (rendered by any artist of your choice) must be in the performance.
6. Please also incorporate some form of sign language.
7. Include one bicycle (or more) in your set. It (they) can be used. Or ridden.
In short, I accepted her request for a director. One last restriction I have placed upon the show is a requirement to use the entire text (here) within those <90 minutes.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Gonna blog all day long? Have to put a stop at some point, thanks for reading if you get all the way through this mess (Gordon says to nobody)
UPDATED 2:09 pm:
This article expresses a lot of what I think I've been feeling (as well):
Emotion Without Thought in New Hampshire
(Judith Warner/Domestic Disturbances on NYTimes website)
-----
I really have no knowledge or understanding of economics, so I won't pretend to. I will say, though, that I don't make a lot of money and don't necessarily need to. Frankly, I would appreciate my tax rate to be less than it is, but only slightly. Right now my take-home pay is about 75%-77% of my actual gross pay. It would be really excellent if that were more like 85%. Why do they need my money? Just that 10% more could get me a little nicer, a little closer living space in Manhattan.
The other thing is living paycheck to paycheck, which almost everyone I know does. The money I make now does not allow me to save much, if any at all (without living like an absolute ascetic). Really and truly the only reason that concerns me is because I am uninsured, and couldn't even get private health insurance if I tried. No one will currently insure me! And I can't get it through a temp agency work situation. My biggest fear in NYC is if I fell down and hurt myself and was unable to receive the care I need because I don't have the cash and/or I am uninsured.
So what does this mean, that we might be falling into a recession?
Could it possibly mean bursting the real estate bubble in NYC? So that poor folk like me could maybe possibly re-afford places I easily could have inhabited just ten years ago that now are only privy to the mega-rich and to Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Diane von Furstenburg boutiques?
If so that would so incredibly excellent.
-----
In other news, Does this Media Hate Hillary? asks AMERICAblog.
They offer up How Bashing Hillary Backfired from Salon.
I just feel bad for Hillary, and I feel like she's due, in a way (?). I know what it's like to work really hard, to be the really smart one in the room, and then to always be passed over as difficult/controlling/bitchy or just "too much" for the kid that everyone likes, who does an OK job, who's "nice enough" (as Obama called the Hill), and who knows it. Obama, I think, knows deep down that Hill's more on top of certain issues -- and he exploits her (frankly) inability to discuss them complexly by offering up his "inspiring" oratorical solutions. He's the Golden Child of this campaign, and that's why I can't get behind him: because everyone else is, or would be were they not "nice enough" folk who are honestly backing the Hill, not for who she is (a la Obama supporters) but for what she honestly wants and what she'll honestly try to give.
-----
Re-reading Hamlet at work. It's so much more exciting than it ever was in school.
-----
Birthday Plans
Definite: Happy Days at BAM on Tues (my actual bday), dir. Deborah Warner and starring Aunt Petunia herself, Fiona Shaw
Maybes: Anything fun that any of my friends my care to think up. Ugh, it is such work coming up with your own goddamn birthday plans!
-----
Final note: Loving the Public.
This article expresses a lot of what I think I've been feeling (as well):
Emotion Without Thought in New Hampshire
(Judith Warner/Domestic Disturbances on NYTimes website)
-----
I really have no knowledge or understanding of economics, so I won't pretend to. I will say, though, that I don't make a lot of money and don't necessarily need to. Frankly, I would appreciate my tax rate to be less than it is, but only slightly. Right now my take-home pay is about 75%-77% of my actual gross pay. It would be really excellent if that were more like 85%. Why do they need my money? Just that 10% more could get me a little nicer, a little closer living space in Manhattan.
The other thing is living paycheck to paycheck, which almost everyone I know does. The money I make now does not allow me to save much, if any at all (without living like an absolute ascetic). Really and truly the only reason that concerns me is because I am uninsured, and couldn't even get private health insurance if I tried. No one will currently insure me! And I can't get it through a temp agency work situation. My biggest fear in NYC is if I fell down and hurt myself and was unable to receive the care I need because I don't have the cash and/or I am uninsured.
So what does this mean, that we might be falling into a recession?
Could it possibly mean bursting the real estate bubble in NYC? So that poor folk like me could maybe possibly re-afford places I easily could have inhabited just ten years ago that now are only privy to the mega-rich and to Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, and Diane von Furstenburg boutiques?
If so that would so incredibly excellent.
-----
In other news, Does this Media Hate Hillary? asks AMERICAblog.
They offer up How Bashing Hillary Backfired from Salon.
I just feel bad for Hillary, and I feel like she's due, in a way (?). I know what it's like to work really hard, to be the really smart one in the room, and then to always be passed over as difficult/controlling/bitchy or just "too much" for the kid that everyone likes, who does an OK job, who's "nice enough" (as Obama called the Hill), and who knows it. Obama, I think, knows deep down that Hill's more on top of certain issues -- and he exploits her (frankly) inability to discuss them complexly by offering up his "inspiring" oratorical solutions. He's the Golden Child of this campaign, and that's why I can't get behind him: because everyone else is, or would be were they not "nice enough" folk who are honestly backing the Hill, not for who she is (a la Obama supporters) but for what she honestly wants and what she'll honestly try to give.
-----
Re-reading Hamlet at work. It's so much more exciting than it ever was in school.
-----
Birthday Plans
Definite: Happy Days at BAM on Tues (my actual bday), dir. Deborah Warner and starring Aunt Petunia herself, Fiona Shaw
Maybes: Anything fun that any of my friends my care to think up. Ugh, it is such work coming up with your own goddamn birthday plans!
-----
Final note: Loving the Public.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Jesus is Magic, or is Barack? (Jesus? or Magic?)
Tomorrow at 10 am sharp I start my internship at the Public. I'm nervous.
Some interesting things today:
"Obama and Magic" from TAPPED blog
"Barack, You're Nice Enough" from the Huff Post
I just don't know what to make of Barack Obama.
I also don't know...what to do for my birthday on January 15!
I do need to see the following plays: August: Osage County, The Homecoming, and Happy Days. I need to see the following films: I'm Not There (or I'm Not Sure How I Still Haven't Seen 'I'm Not There'), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood, Atonement, Juno, Enchanted, and the digital Sweeney Todd at the Ziegfeld. On DVD I need to see Once. Maybe one of these will provide the night's entertainment. And dinner at Sea (?)
Rewatched The Piano the other night w/ the roomies. Excellent film. Other selections from the evening were Hard Candy (w/ Juno star Ellen Page and the delish Patrick Wilson) and Diggers (w/ everyone you would expect in a cast headed by Paul Rudd and Maura Tierney and directed by the folks from Wet Hot American Summer). Both sizzucked.
Some interesting things today:
"Obama and Magic" from TAPPED blog
"Barack, You're Nice Enough" from the Huff Post
I just don't know what to make of Barack Obama.
I also don't know...what to do for my birthday on January 15!
I do need to see the following plays: August: Osage County, The Homecoming, and Happy Days. I need to see the following films: I'm Not There (or I'm Not Sure How I Still Haven't Seen 'I'm Not There'), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood, Atonement, Juno, Enchanted, and the digital Sweeney Todd at the Ziegfeld. On DVD I need to see Once. Maybe one of these will provide the night's entertainment. And dinner at Sea (?)
Rewatched The Piano the other night w/ the roomies. Excellent film. Other selections from the evening were Hard Candy (w/ Juno star Ellen Page and the delish Patrick Wilson) and Diggers (w/ everyone you would expect in a cast headed by Paul Rudd and Maura Tierney and directed by the folks from Wet Hot American Summer). Both sizzucked.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Can you imagine?
Thank you, George McGovern: Why I Believe Bush Must Go. (from Washington Post)
----------------
From me, not George McGovern:
Obama is looking all-the-sudden unstoppable. It occurred to me this morning reading something that it doesn't really matter who I want out of Obama/Clinton/Edwards/Richardson/whoever else, because I am not going to get an opportunity to make that choice before a nominee is called. That's fine. I don't have major problems with any of them, and would love to see any and all of them in office.
That was my biggest problem watching the debate on Saturday night. There is so much in-fighting and self-promotion on the littlest whim. It's like a high school debate club. As soon as someone hands you a a highlighted word or a talking point, just run with it until you're out of juice.
Do they not understand that fully sixty-some-odd percent of the population wants one of them as President? I know they're debating "for" New Hampshire, but if you're going to televise, if you're going to make it a national debate, then let's really debate. And not debate about each other and our differences, but about the actual issues. Not what I will or won't do v. what you will or won't do, but what isn't being done v. what needs to be. And what each of your four can bring to it.
My biggest problem with Obama are his ideas on health care and taxation. I'm such a sucker for John Edwards' populist appeal -- but then, who shouldn't be? Unless you're uber-rich. Pur the two of them together, you've got quite a dream team.
I feel badly for Hillary sometimes, because even as "she says just what she thinks will get her votes," as a friend of mine put it, I do think she's a remarkable and intelligent person who is trying to solve problems. I do think sometimes she tries to take care of everybody and every concern, which gives off a sense of just saying what's necessary to get elected. She kind of flipped out during the debate, and I don't blame her. If I were all the sudden losing to Sen. Obama, who makes it look so effortless, I would be confused and pissed too; especially with the short shrift and, frankly, caddishness he was giving her and the rest of them on Saturday night.
I want this election year to stay exciting for the Dems without turning ugly. Real interest, not intrigue. Really and truly, between these three candidates (and against Bush plus the GOP candidates), we've got this one in the bag. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot, getting greedy amongst ourselves.
I sat back and imagined this morning, in a year, a new President at his or her inauguration. (And regardless of whether or not you think it matters, it does: can you imagine the reaction of the world to a black President Obama or female President Clinton?). I sat back and imagined President Obama (let's be honest), and in my hopeful mind his first words to the world as President:
Today I want to apologize. The United States of America has acted wrongly and grievously against the nations of the world and against its own citizens in the cowardly hands of a few, and in the face of enormous trust and good will that our friends and allies had placed in us. We know we have lost that trust, from many around the world and, indeed, from many of our own American people. We have murdered and pillaged indiscriminately, we have detained and tortured without cause, we have cast a shadow of suspicion, doubt, and mistrust across our land and others'. And we have asked the rest of the world to bear the brunt of our mistakes and our crimes.
There are many Americans who have previously felt helpless to reverse this course, who felt their government had been hijacked by people they had elected in good faith and trust. But today Americans stand up and with me pledge to end these wrongful actions and to begin to restore peace and justice and trust amongst the nations of the world, all our friends and allies, and our native citizens and immigrants. And as one we ask forgiveness of every human person on this earth. With good faith and honest apology, I implore my fellow Americans to re-dedicate our America today to peace, liberty, justice, freedom, and goodness for all mankind.
Seriously, someone should pay me to crank these out!
Just the idea of saying "President" and following it with something other than "Bush" makes me tingle! Although if, God forbid, one of the Dems loses, Montreal here I come.
----------------
From me, not George McGovern:
Obama is looking all-the-sudden unstoppable. It occurred to me this morning reading something that it doesn't really matter who I want out of Obama/Clinton/Edwards/Richardson/whoever else, because I am not going to get an opportunity to make that choice before a nominee is called. That's fine. I don't have major problems with any of them, and would love to see any and all of them in office.
That was my biggest problem watching the debate on Saturday night. There is so much in-fighting and self-promotion on the littlest whim. It's like a high school debate club. As soon as someone hands you a a highlighted word or a talking point, just run with it until you're out of juice.
Do they not understand that fully sixty-some-odd percent of the population wants one of them as President? I know they're debating "for" New Hampshire, but if you're going to televise, if you're going to make it a national debate, then let's really debate. And not debate about each other and our differences, but about the actual issues. Not what I will or won't do v. what you will or won't do, but what isn't being done v. what needs to be. And what each of your four can bring to it.
My biggest problem with Obama are his ideas on health care and taxation. I'm such a sucker for John Edwards' populist appeal -- but then, who shouldn't be? Unless you're uber-rich. Pur the two of them together, you've got quite a dream team.
I feel badly for Hillary sometimes, because even as "she says just what she thinks will get her votes," as a friend of mine put it, I do think she's a remarkable and intelligent person who is trying to solve problems. I do think sometimes she tries to take care of everybody and every concern, which gives off a sense of just saying what's necessary to get elected. She kind of flipped out during the debate, and I don't blame her. If I were all the sudden losing to Sen. Obama, who makes it look so effortless, I would be confused and pissed too; especially with the short shrift and, frankly, caddishness he was giving her and the rest of them on Saturday night.
I want this election year to stay exciting for the Dems without turning ugly. Real interest, not intrigue. Really and truly, between these three candidates (and against Bush plus the GOP candidates), we've got this one in the bag. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot, getting greedy amongst ourselves.
I sat back and imagined this morning, in a year, a new President at his or her inauguration. (And regardless of whether or not you think it matters, it does: can you imagine the reaction of the world to a black President Obama or female President Clinton?). I sat back and imagined President Obama (let's be honest), and in my hopeful mind his first words to the world as President:
Today I want to apologize. The United States of America has acted wrongly and grievously against the nations of the world and against its own citizens in the cowardly hands of a few, and in the face of enormous trust and good will that our friends and allies had placed in us. We know we have lost that trust, from many around the world and, indeed, from many of our own American people. We have murdered and pillaged indiscriminately, we have detained and tortured without cause, we have cast a shadow of suspicion, doubt, and mistrust across our land and others'. And we have asked the rest of the world to bear the brunt of our mistakes and our crimes.
There are many Americans who have previously felt helpless to reverse this course, who felt their government had been hijacked by people they had elected in good faith and trust. But today Americans stand up and with me pledge to end these wrongful actions and to begin to restore peace and justice and trust amongst the nations of the world, all our friends and allies, and our native citizens and immigrants. And as one we ask forgiveness of every human person on this earth. With good faith and honest apology, I implore my fellow Americans to re-dedicate our America today to peace, liberty, justice, freedom, and goodness for all mankind.
Seriously, someone should pay me to crank these out!
Just the idea of saying "President" and following it with something other than "Bush" makes me tingle! Although if, God forbid, one of the Dems loses, Montreal here I come.
Friday, January 4, 2008
A new beginning!
I am going to attempt to post more often. Whether or not anyone reads it.
I am still working at Marsh three days a week but starting next week I will be at the Public on Wednesdays and Thursdays!
I am still working at Marsh three days a week but starting next week I will be at the Public on Wednesdays and Thursdays!
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