the gay Regency

Oh my yes - hot gay men in Regency period clothing - two hotties for the price of one - there's a publishing house Ava March devoted to it.

Let there be drums

Gene Krupa - "Sing Sing Sing"



Joe Morello - "Take Five"




Keith Moon - "Happy Jack"

Did He Like It?

Your simple guide to the most powerful reviewer on the planet.

Julia & Buddy

the first 10 pages.

Of course panic attacks are only amusing if you're not having one...

tiny tiny showbiz world

So it turns out that Daniel Genalo, the guy I cast as Alex in my upcoming production of NEW RULES was on the very same episode of 30 Rock that NYCPlaywrights member and Mergatroyd Productions' fave actor Nick Fondulis was - in fact, Daniel's character got the job that Nick's character, Jayden Michael Tyler did not get because, well, Jayden was crazy.

And Daniel was the robot guy because he does amazing dance work - watch his other amazing moves in his dance reel on Vimeo. Pretty fly for a straight white guy!

Speaking of Nick, it looks like he got a Hanes commercial.

New Rules web site

A very good rehearsal today. And the web site is mostly done. Yay.

They all applaud Alex, and each other

WORDSMITHS - another work inspired by people who did me wrong - because I'm such a badass I will get you back by writing a play about you. Move over, Russian mafia.

rehearsal-palooza

Rehearsals all weekend - for the NYCPlaywrights Fundraiser and NEW RULES - I have to do the web site ASAP!

Plus, of course this always happens - inspiration has struck and I have the entire plot of my play JULIA AND BUDDY worked out - and no time to write it down for the next 48 hours.

Regency a-go-go

Wow you have to hand it to the Oregon Regency Society, they are hardcore Regency-period-philiacs. They even manage to get men into it, and recently they provided this handy outfitting the Regency man post as a guide. It really makes me want to produce my JANE EYRE again, and damn the expenses, just to get some guys into Regency period clothing again - virtually every man looks better in the clothing of that period.

As Ralph Fiennes demonstrates.

Although really, he even looks good as a Nazi.

Sing it Jon Stewart!

I really didn't think Jon Stewart could top the "Union Appreciation Month" bit - and less than 2 weeks later he proves me wrong! The last 60 seconds of this clip is the most wondrous thing I've ever seen on TV.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bernie Goldberg Fires Back
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Krugman and Maddow - yay!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The next PlayLab show - NEW RULES May 8 & 9

the script

GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE production videos

It's funny, the responses I've gotten from this play - it seems that everybody has had experiences with mean girls, and this play reminds them how much bodily harm they'd like to do to mean girls.

more clips from the April 17 & 18 shows here

Me, Claudius

There's a great program available on youtube - I, Claudius A Television Epic which gives behind the scenes interviews - many years after I, Claudius was made - about that incredible classic series. It's hard to believe it was produced in the 1970s.

There is so much good stuff in the series, but all the bits with Derek Jacobi as Claudius and John Hurt as Caligula are absolute genius - as the clip below demonstrates.



More from genius John Hurt - including Caligula's wacky transvestite dance!

kiss off English Patient hatahs

On the one hand, I relate to Charles Isherwood's gripe about feeling like odd-man-out - I feel like that about 90% of all theater I see (with the necessary gender switch) - on the other hand I hate the obligatory "The English Patient" bashing because one character on Seinfeld didn't like the movie and felt left out. The wonder to me has always been not that one character on Seinfeld didn't like that movie - the wonder is that any of them DID like the movie. "The English Patient" is the opposite of Seinfeld - it's compassionate, deep, sincere, internationalist, tragic, sensual and very sexy - especially Ralph Fiennes - and fully deserved its accolades.

Sexist Art History from The Sexist

Every day I thank Athena for The Sexist - I have to put it on my blogroll soon.

In this not very recent post (I was reviewing their archives) Amanda Hess had some interesting things to say about the cluelessness of art historians - not getting that "The Proposition" is about some overly-facial-haired guy trying to get some embroderer to turn hoe for him. Ah yes - that takes me back to my days in art school.

But the best part of the post was one comment:

Can’t a guy buy some needlepoint in a dingy pub anymore?

It's funniest if you read the whole post and other comments first.

Rachel and Jon - together again

I think these two are the soul of American democracy

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Production pix

GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE production pix online...

Happy Dance of Evil

This is the song that the two "Good Women", Debbie-Lisa and Lisa-Jean dance to at the end of GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE. I created it with GarageBand - it's mostly loops but I did the guitar line from scratch. A# is a bitch of a key.

Sonnet Roundup ~ year 2

Another year has gone by - that makes two years now since I wrote my first sonnet. My sonnets were mainly written as a form of therapy, and so most don't stand up very well as works of art, but a few of them do hold up pretty well, I believe.

First, the stats:

Total sonnets year 1
(2008-2009) - 50
Total sonnets year 2
(2009-2010) - 45
Grand total: 95

The Sonnet for Poetry Month #7 starts by referencing Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry" - and I remember I was feeling horribly wretched when I wrote this - but I tried to be philosophical by reminding myself of the absolute horrors that some people endure in their lives - like poor Harry Eastlack who had a bone disease - I describe some of his symptoms in my sonnet. The best part of the sonnet is the last line, which I think holds up quite well as an aphorism:

"Pain comes from love, as death from being born."

Communication Sonnet #4 probably is my most accessible poem because I name-dropped Emily Dickinson - well, her first name, but poetry lovers can guess who I'm talking about:

Are you thinking of me on this spring morn,
In Emily's neck of the woods? By trees
And meadows that she loved, where she was born,
Where she spent much time thinking about bees,
Apparently, and eccentricity
While decked out in white...

Dickinson wrote about 20 or 30 poems that mention bees. And I noticed that Dickinson really loved that ee sound in her poetry. So the last two lines of CS#4 end with that sound. I also alluded to Dickinson's poem XCVII, which reads in its entirety:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

I allude to it in the "it takes" bit - my poem ends:

Communication takes more than just me,
Such work needs two, in close proximity.

The very next sonnet, Communication Sonnet #5 I rather like too. It describes a dream I had, and gets at the tricky nature of love that you don't want. It takes me years to forget any guy I ever care about - I am the queen of the unwilling torch-carriers. I can sometimes will myself to stop consciously thinking about a guy I loved, but invariably, as soon as I succeed in doing that my unconscious gets back at me by making me have sexy, romantic dreams about the guy. Then I wake up full of anguish, regret and longing. The damn well least I can do is get a poem out of it.

Another fairly accessible poem I wrote is Dream Sonnet 2 - another literary allusion, this time Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights."

more Sonnet Roundup here

This may just be my favorite Daily Show segment...

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Virginia's Confederate History Month & Griffin Mascot
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PRICELESS MOMENTS:

It would be be hypocritical of me to complain about Virginia's Confederate holiday when our part of the country, the North, is marking "Union Victory" or "United States Victory Appreciation Month" celebrating our rich heritage of kicking the Confederacy's ass.

By the way, you can join in on the pride at home with our limited edition Beautiful Union Victory Appreciation Month chess set. So much detail, you can almost hear the asses being kicked!

Pick up our Union Appreciation Month collector's edition Money - commemorating the currency that Northerners gave black people for jobs that they did.

My personal favorite piece of Union Appreciation Month memorabilia, the "Murdered by a Union Soldier Slaveowner Lawn Jockey."

Sold on unionvictoryappreciationmonth.com/getoverityoulost145yearsago

Confederacy Tourism

I was just blogging the other day about how some people in the South romanticize the Confederacy, and two days later the Governor of Virginia illustrates my point nicely by declaring April "Confederate History Month."

NYTimes' Gail Collins wrote a very good column about it today:

Virginia has been making big leaps lately in the category of general craziness. We all remember the Legislature’s heroic work in passing a bill to protect Virginia citizens from having microchips planted in their bodies against their will. And that the sponsor said he was concerned the chips could be a “mark of the beast” that would be used by the Antichrist at the end of days.

Confederate History Month was promoted by former Gov. George Allen, who was fond of Confederate flag-décor and suffered from a sense of history so imperfect that he did not discover his mother was half-Jewish until he was 54. Allen’s proclamation celebrated the Civil War as “a four-year struggle for independence, sovereign rights and local government control,” with such cheer that you would really think the fight was all about zoning.

And I also enjoyed some of the readers' comments:

Don't worry, Southern deniers. We Northerners will take care of remembering the slavery. The only part of Confederate history you people need to remember is the unconditional surrender.

I don't care if the South keeps rising again, as long as it keeps losing.

The media and the South have tried to turn their justified loss into something heroic. It wasn't. It was the wealthy elite trying to preserve their slave-built privileges by misleading the common citizens and sending them to their death. Yes, those in the South who fought had courage. When we honor the Confederacy, however, we do not honor them. That's a deceit the South is now trying to peddle. Actually, we are tricked into honoring the foul stench of the of the slave-owning South and all its accompanying brutality, barbarity and inhumanity.

Although the Confederacy lost the war, it's always perplexed me as to why US military bases throughout the region are named after CSA generals, who were essentially traitors to their country. I guess that doesn't register with certain "patriots." Imagine their reaction if our post-WWII bases in Germany were called Fort Rommel or Fort Guderian...

When I lived in Virginia (and later, in North Carolina), it never failed to amaze me that people still flew Confederate battle flags on their porches and in their yards. They seemed at best to be celebrating the fact that they're losers, but at worst, they were giving a defiant finger to the rest of us who have moved on. The flag wavers are not classy folks, but down and outers resentful of their station in life and jealous of people whom they consider more fortunate. Their low self-esteem prints itself out as insolence, ignorance and blantant disregard for their fellow citizens.

I always thought that the real confederate flag was the white one that every southerner was waving at the end of the civil war.

Fighting to preserve slavery was morally equivalent to fighting to preserve pedophilia. (Which slavery often was.) Just because you choose to fight and die for a wicked cause doesn't glorify that cause. It simply points out the stupidity or moral corruption of the fighter. Just because great-great-granddaddy did it doesn't make it right.

As bad as it is to "forget" slavery, or gloss over it, the real objection to "celebrating" the Civil War is forgetting it was a civil war...the South declared war on the United States of America! Some patriots! Thousands of Americans, from the North and South, were killed as a result, including, sadly, President Abraham Lincoln. What is there to celebrate?

You can always count on a Libertarian to defend something on economic grounds:

Of course, in today's consciousness none can defend the institution of slavery, yet uncompensated emancipation of all slaves would have amounted to financial suicide for the southern economy and individual owners who had invested the equivalent of $200,000 per individual.

But for a true representation of the Confederacy lovers there's this cretin from South Carolina:

Notwithstanding the injustices of American slavery, it is hard to get your head around the idea that the best thing that ever happened to current day Afro-Americans was for their relatives to have been slaves in this country.

Or even better, how about Huey Gunner from Leichtfield KS

Your ancestors were rabid slavery abolitionists who assaulted the civilian population of The South for decades until The South became fed up and left The Union.

There is NOTHING that displays the through-the-looking-glass insanity of these freaks better than that.

The Catholic Church is truly an evil organization

I'm so glad I wised up and got out when I was 14 and started thinking for myself.

Katha Pollitt sums up the absolutely evil misogynist nature of this cannibalistic cult:

The moral authority granted the Catholic Church in the secular world is for me the most repellent aspect of the current crisis. In the succinct words of Jodi Jacobson, editor of RHRealityCheck.org, "Why is a pedophilia-ridden, pedophilia-hiding, child-abusing Church allowed to write laws controlling women's rights?" To which one might add: what gives a church in which celibacy is equated with holiness, in which males have almost all the power, the right to a place at the table where laws are made about women's bodies? The same institution that has dealt so indulgently with its ordained pedophiles had no problem excommunicating a Brazilian mother who sought an abortion for her 9-year-old daughter, raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, or pushing for laws in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Chile banning abortion even to save the woman's life.

Anybody who is still a member of this loathsome organization is helping to promote evil. End of story.

Another monologue done

Another NYCPlaywrights Worldwide Monologue video complete - but I'm way behind schedule and have 3 more to do. Oy.

The Giant Tire Lady of South Jersey

When I was a driving instructor somewhere in the swamps of Jersey - South Jersey, to be exact - I used to drive by the Giant Tire Lady - the female counterpart to all the giant tire lumberjacks that can frequently be seen in front of tire stores.

I saw her again on Sunday after all those years. Although since I saw her last she's had a snazzy new paint job - dig that groovy star-pattern skirt!

Tom Sawyer, abolitionist

I have to admit, Tom Sawyer has been on my conscience for the past few years. I mean, I do stand behind what I said about him in my essay, which I wrote for a production of my play HUCK FINN - he was a jerk, and his appearance in Huck's story drove it right off the rails.

But Clemens loved him, and believed that the public loved Tom, which is why he put him in HUCK's story. But since Clemens' time, Tom's popularity has decreased while Huck's has increased. This web page makes a very good case for the decline in the popularity of Tom:

In the century since, Tom Sawyer has been the most frequently filmed of MT's books. It was filmed three times before Huck Finn was filmed at all, and Tom himself was the star of the second movie version of Huck's story (see below). The next century might tell a different story. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is still widely read, in part because it is so frequently taught in high schools, but based on my students' experience, most Americans born since 1975 mainly know Tom through Huck's novel, and know the plot of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer only through the Disney film that ends the list below. In another generation it might be time for Tom to say, "You don't know about me except you have read a book by the name of 'Huckleberry Finn.'"

And I saw the results myself - when I went to see Mark Twain's study - a glorified gazebo his sister-in-law had built for him in Elmira NY, there was one sign from the 1950s which announced that the study was where Mark Twain wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." But a much newer sign, posted closer to the study, said that it was where Twain wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"!

So I feel a little bad for Tom for his being eclipsed by Huck.

Now it looks like I'm going to rehabilitate him. I already turned Huck into an abolitionist in my play HUCK FINN - although Huck was already an abolitionist at heart, I just made it more explicit: I have been working on a play about a slave women in 1850s Missouri and she has a white boyfriend. At first his name was Robert, but he gradually developed a cocky, romantic, trickster personality and I realized he was basically Tom Sawyer, all grown up and in love with a beautiful slave. I changed my character's name to Tom Turner - I don't want to have him literally be Tom Sawyer, but I wanted to acknowledge the connection, and it is fun to think of my play, CELIA as a sequel to the Tom/Huck stories. Clemens himself wrote Tom sequels - Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective and both are very bad. Clemens really needed money at the time, but the world has wisely forgotten about those books.

My play was inspired by a court case Slave State of Missouri v. Celia a horrendous true story of a slave girl who was hanged for killing her master in self-defense when he attempted to rape her. It was determined that as property, she did not even have the right to self-defense.

I dealt with the horrors of slave rape, a little, in my HUCK FINN play. This was something that Clemens avoided completely in any of his books set in the antebellum South. Even in Puddinghead Wilson, he doesn't go into details about how Roxana - whom I borrowed for my HUCK play - came to be so light-skinned and how her child came to look so white that he could pass for white his entire life. In my play, Roxana's master, Jack Turner - whom I substituted for Tom Sawyer's kindly old uncle Silas from the Huck story - is clearly using her. Although she takes some pride in it because it does give her some advantages, to be a favorite of the master, it's clear how brutal the arrangement is.

In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, after the King and the Duke sell Jim out, Huck goes to search for him, and just happens to be taken in by Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle (he doesn't know who they are at first) who think he is Tom Sawyer, come for a pre-arranged visit. The aunt and uncle are slave holders, but kindly if ineffectual people, easily fooled by Tom and Huck. One of the slaves is a "yellow gal" - a light skinned slave, who is called a "hussy" by Aunt Sally. Clemens doesn't address this issue, but how did Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas come to have a light-skinned slave? Maybe Uncle Silas wasn't so innocent after all.

At the time the Tom and Huck stories were published, the Civil War was very recent history and many people who might buy the novels were once slave-owners. Clemens knew better than to portray slavery in all its brutality, especially the sexual concubinage of slave women - his audience would not have stood for it and his speaking tours would have been very poorly attended - except perhaps by an angry mob.

And there are people in the United States of America in the early twenty-first century who still romanticize and feel nostalgia for the antebellum South.

I think Roy Edroso of Alicublog described this kind of thing best in his remark about the right-wing blogger Confederate Yankee: "someone whose cognomen proudly celebrates treason in defense of slavery"

Good Women on stage - April 17 & 18

It was during my 2008 JANE EYRE production that I realized that I had stepped into a big nest of vipers.

And events that have occurred in the past two years have only confirmed my initial assessment of this group of people - or rather, the past two years have shown they are even worse shameless hypocrites, saboteurs, and vicious defamers than I initially realized, and on top of that, as I discovered in the past few weeks, misogynists.

I got two things out of the experience: a greater sense of caution born of a new and definite understanding of the incredible lack of personal integrity that exists across great swaths of the off-off Broadway community, and a batch of literary/theatrical works.

The work includes sonnets, a story, and several plays. The plays are HAPPILY MARRIED, YULE COUNTY, BUDDY & JULIA (a full-length that's only about 30% complete), WORDSMITHS and GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE. GOOD WOMEN is the next one up for production.

But even though I think JANE was a beautiful production in spite of everything, and many people loved it, and I like my post-viper plays and some of the sonnets, I'd gladly turn back the clock and not do any of it at all if it meant I could go the rest of my life in blissful ignorance of the nest of vipers.

Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week - April 2, 2010 edition

Another portrait of a hot Regency man by Ingres.

stupid sexist New Yorker

I've been a New Yorker subscriber for fifteen years now, ever since I discovered it was a weekly periodical with some really good writing in it. The New Yorker is a bastion of the liberal and the literary. Women are also liberal and literary - more so than men are, even, according to various studies.

So you'd think the New Yorker wouldn't be sexist at all. But it is sexist. The first way it is sexist is its persistently lopsided male:female contributor ratio. Now this ratio is not uncommon - all prestige fields are dominated by men. In fact, some have argued and provided evidence for the possibility that any field that women come to dominate is automatically demoted, prestige-wise because it is felt to have become too polluted by girl cooties.

But the New Yorker, being the most liberal and literary publication around should be better than that.

The indispensible blog The Sexist has been having an awesome Man Madness tournament to determine which organizations in the D.C. area are most male-dominated. They don't include The New Yorker, so I did my own review.

I don't look at the New Yorker's org chart the way The Sexist does, but rather the contributor roster. Let's just look at a selection from 2010 at random - because I don't have all day - also I'm not counting the cartoonists as contributors although the gender ratio for cartoonists is probably even more skewed in the XY direction. Also not counted, "web only" content:

January 4, 2010
Contributors: 18
Female contributors: 3

January 18, 2010
Contributors: 19
Female contributors: 7

February 1, 2010
Contributors: 24
Female contributors: 9

February 8, 2010
Contributors: 21
Female contributors: 3

March 22, 2010
Contributors: 24
Female contributors: 3

April 5, 2010
Contributors: 22
Female contributors: 6

Note that not only did no issue have more female than male contributors, most of these issues didn't even come close to 50% female contributors.

To return to the cartoonists - not only are there more male cartoonists, but the New Yorker's legacy of sexism is even more obvious in its cartoons. Not just the obvious belief on the part of most of its cartoonists that male is the default gender (and of course our entire society runs on that belief) but every now and then you get the most crass regressive olde tyme bullshit - like the cartoon in this week's New Yorker:



The gal-pal sister blog of The Sexist, called Tiger Beatdown, examines the pernicious effects of that Mars-Venus propaganda in her review of (500) Days of Summer:

And that is where shit gets REAL complex. Because, like: I have been in the situation of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in this film. It’s a common situation. It’s not a fun situation, necessarily. It’s also not a situation which mandates going on a rant about “whores” in one’s place of work, but whatever. The thing is, I think I find it easier to maintain my high-mindedness and cool in those situations than another person might. Specifically, a person who is a dude. Despite the much-vaunted crazy clingy psycho bitchiness of my gender, I think it’s easier for me to be gracious in those situations precisely because I am a girl.

Because girls frankly expect this behavior from guys. We are told, continually and throughout our lives and in every major media outlet and dating guide, that Guys Are Just Like That. Or the vast majority of them, anyway. Guys want physical contact, girls want emotional contact, we’re told; therefore, if we make physical contact with a guy, we should not expect emotional contact to follow. Granted, to hope is not to expect, and the entire courting structure is basically designed to allow us to perform a semi-realistic risk analysis, but girls are still basically informed that this entire deal, this sex and/or dating deal, is a game of poker and you shouldn’t play unless you can afford to lose something, and you should be cautious with your bets.

Dudes, on the other hand, are apparently entirely unprepared for this. Girls want emotional contact, they’re told, and guys want physical contact; therefore, if they make emotional contact with a girl, they can reasonably expect it to be reciprocated. And when it’s not, it’s like gravity suddenly stopped working. This just isn’t how things go; it’s an outrage; she’s cold, evil, a monster. Or at least this is what I can uncover from the dudely works of Nathan Rabin and (500) Days of Summer. They’re playing the same game of poker as the rest of us, these guys, but they think it’s play money. Which means that when it’s time to pay up, that sucks extra-hard.

So, yes: (500) Days of Summer is a movie about a boy who acts like a girl and a girl who acts like a boy. But here’s why I’m not thrilled about this: If Zooey Deschanel were actually a boy, and in this situation, most people would not perceive her as the problem. She wouldn’t be a monster, a whore, a freak; she’d just be a dude. And she’d get to complain about the clingy psycho bitch she fucked who’s now, like, putting all this pressure on, that bitch is fucking CRAZY, she just hooked up with the girl, she didn’t buy her an engagement ring, etc. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, were he an actual girl, would be getting some sympathy from his lady friends, true, but he would also be getting well-meaning lectures about how Dudes Are Like That, and what did he expect, and he needs to be more cautious about these things and not put out so easily, and has he ever read a book called “He’s Just Not That Into You?” He should read that book. He would be told, to be blunt, that he was the real problem in this situation.

So the verdict, in case you were wondering, is that if girls fall for boys, and those boys don’t fall for them, they are clingy bitches. And if girls don’t fall for boys, and those boys DO fall for them, they are heartless bitches. No matter how this situation goes, if there turns out to be an inequality of desire, you’re getting called a bitch.

my favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote

It's also my favorite observation about The Beatles:

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.

That's what I aspire to - using art to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.




Considering how much they were together, it's surprising how hard it is to find an extended Lennon & McCartney together clip like this.

LUCY...

The real Deal

It took me years to realize how important to the Pixies' sound was Kim Deal. And she wrote at least two masterpieces - the Pixies' "Gigantic" and the Breeders "Divine Hammer."

Who isn't looking for one divine hammer? I'd bang it all day too.

Of course we cannot forget the mind-blowing guitar of Joey Santiago - although the camera almost never shows him in this concert! Nobody wanna look at Black Francis all that much - even before he tanked out.

DIVINE HAMMER


Wacky Flying Nun video version of Divine Hammer




GIGANTIC

hot Rochester

I am definitely looking forward to the hot Rochester, Michael Fassbender in the upcoming new movie adaptation of Jane Eyre.


Interview at with Fassbender on youtube about another movie

Regency England is no Spartan Greece, so I doubt they'll show as much of him as they did in The 300 - but oh my!

Excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

During his Cherry Lane Master Class, Amiri Baraka recommended that everybody in the room read Frederick Douglass's autobiography. I had planned on it anyway, but during this Master Class I got an idea for a new play - and since the play is set on a plantation in the antebellum South, I pretty much had to read this important primary source for the life of a slave right away.

It's full of the horrors and outrageousness of slavery of course. Although it's important to know about, it's also incredibly depressing that this "institution" existed for hundreds of years, in a democracy. So I confess that my favorite part of the bio is the non-depression section, where Douglass recounts what life was like for him after he got free and began living in New Bedford, MA. The excerpt I posted below also explains where Douglass got his last name and how he came to become involved with the abolitionist periodical "Liberator."

We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning after our arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the question arose as to what name I should be called by. The name given me by my mother was, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey." I, however, had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so that I was generally known by the name of "Frederick Bailey." I started from Baltimore bearing the name of "Stanley." When I got to New York, I again changed my name to "Frederick Johnson," and thought that would be the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it necessary again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of "Frederick." I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and at once suggested that my name be "Douglass." From that time until now I have been called "Frederick Douglass;" and as I am more widely known by that name than by either of the others, I shall continue to use it as my own.

I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly erroneous. I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew ~they~ were exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north, I expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated population, living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New Bedford may very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my mistake.

In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order, and of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by granite warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost capacity with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this, almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard no deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which betokened the deep interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well as a sense of his own dignity as a man. To me this looked exceedingly strange. From the wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding Maryland.

Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and bare-footed women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael's, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as the most interesting thing to me was the condition of the colored people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,--than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper, at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Business of importance!" The betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows: "~Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young men just take him outside the door, and kill him!~" With this, a number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence.

I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work for myself and newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new existence. When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I could get no employment. [I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford--a result of anti-slavery effort. did for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I became known to the anti-slavery world.] Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no work too hard--none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal, carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,--all of which I did.

In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the "Liberator." I told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds--its scathing denunciations of slaveholders--its faithful exposures of slavery--and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution--sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before!

I had not long been a reader of the "Liberator," before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren--with what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labors to decide.

Sid & Nancy

The entire movie is available for free online.

Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week - March 26, 2010

Ioan Gruffudd, known to fanboys as Mr. Fantastic (Four), looks mighty fine in Regency period clothing as can be seen here. I confess that although I was interested in William Wilberforce's fight against the slave trade, I was 50% compelled to see the movie because of Gruffudd's hotness in the movie trailers as can be seen below. Although he spent entirely too much time wearing a pre-Regency wig for my taste.

You had me at 'predatory lending'

Great article about Elizabeth Warren in the NYTimes

"I learned early on what debt means, how vulnerable it makes people, what the security of owning a home means," Ms. Warren said, her eyes welling. Even today, Ms. Warren's daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi said, her mother is so frugal that she eats shriveled grapes out of the fruit bowl.

Six years ago, Ms. Warren was one of the few guests at a Harvard Law School faculty reception for Barack Obama, an alum then running for a United States Senate seat in Illinois. He greeted her with two words: “predatory lending,” signaling he knew her work. He began to talk about dicey mortgages and abusive credit products and their shattering effect on families, Ms. Warren recalled. Finally, she cut him off.

“You had me at ‘predatory lending,’ ” she said. A few years later, Mr. Obama was promoting her idea for a consumer agency on the presidential campaign trail.

Meanwhile, in October 2008, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, called out of the blue and asked Ms. Warren to head Congressional oversight of the bank bailout. It was a vague job, sketched out in a hurry, but she interpreted her mandate aggressively. Instead of issuing standard monthly reports, she turned them into independent research projects, bulletins and videos asking pointed questions about Treasury’s treatment of the banks.

and then later in the article...

"This is America's middle class," she recently said on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." "We've hacked at it and pulled at it and chipped at it for 30 years now and now there's no more to do. We fix this problem going forward, or the game really is over."

“When you say it like that and you look at me like that, I know your husband is backstage, I still want to make out with you,” Mr. Stewart responded.

Oh yes, Jon Stewart really did say that:

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Recap - Week of 1/25/10
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Good women return

It looks like I'm finally going to produce my play GOOD WOMEN OF MORNINGSIDE at the Playlab. I did a reading of it back in November and the actors insisted on reading this bit of stage direction:

(Debbie-Lisa and Lisa-Jean each possess a pellet of super-concentrated black hole anti-matter in the core of her being. The pellet is deeply offended by such a display of innocent, unself-conscious affection. Debbie-Lisa and Lisa-Jean look at each other, thinking the same thing: Courtney must be made to suffer.)

I was really pleased the actors liked this - I liked it. It gets at the ultimate inscrutability of mean girls - they seem to be basically sadists, inflicting pain on those less mean than themselves and just because they can. They seem to me to be a real source of evil in the world.

Little punk staffer

Thus spake the Krugman:

Menzie Chinn wonders what constitutes a punk staffer, after John Boehner told bankers, “Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves”.

What Menzie doesn’t understand is that this is how bankers think of anyone who stands in the way of their God-given right to have whatever they want. Consider this memorable passage from William Cohan’s House of Cards, recounting Jimmy Cayne’s reaction to Tim Geithner’s reluctance to bail out Bear Stearns:

“The audacity of that [punk] in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan,” he said. “Like he was the determining factor, and it’s like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge …, saying, ‘Raise the bridge.’ This guy thinks he’s … He’s got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I’m not a good enemy. I’m a very bad enemy. But certain things really—that bothered me plenty. It’s just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they’re a good credit? Who … asked you? You’re not an elected officer. You’re a clerk. Believe me, you’re a clerk. I want to open up on this …, that’s all I can tell you.”

D40

HEALTH CARE!!!

Krugman:

Must-See TV

Oh, wow. I was watching John Boehner doing his Glenn Beck imitation, demanding a one-by-one vote to delay reform by an hour or two, and considering bailing out — but then … a standing ovation as Nancy Pelosi walks in.

History as we watch.

Her speech started off a little awkward — but it’s getting more and more passionate. Anyway, the world will little note nor long remember what they say tonight. What matters is what they do tonight.

We’ve seen this stone get rolled up the hill, then slide back down, so many times. I almost expect lightning to hit the Capitol.

But it’s really happening.

NYTimes source

MORE FROM KRUGMAN

And let’s be clear: the campaign of fear hasn’t been carried out by a radical fringe, unconnected to the Republican establishment. On the contrary, that establishment has been involved and approving all the way. Politicians like Sarah Palin — who was, let us remember, the G.O.P.’s vice-presidential candidate — eagerly spread the death panel lie, and supposedly reasonable, moderate politicians like Senator Chuck Grassley refused to say that it was untrue. On the eve of the big vote, Republican members of Congress warned that “freedom dies a little bit today” and accused Democrats of “totalitarian tactics,” which I believe means the process known as “voting.”

Without question, the campaign of fear was effective: health reform went from being highly popular to wide disapproval, although the numbers have been improving lately. But the question was, would it actually be enough to block reform?

And the answer is no. The Democrats have done it. The House has passed the Senate version of health reform, and an improved version will be achieved through reconciliation.

This is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out.

YESSS!!!!!

Sunday Sermonette: suburbanites of the soul and the substrate of evil

The short of it: I suffered emotional trauma a couple of years ago, and one of the ways I've worked through it is by writing poetry about it.

Was the trauma sufficient to warrant writing poetry? Is there justification for writing poetry about it for two years?

Yes.

Why? Because I say so. It's my trauma, it's my working-through, so I'll say how long it takes me to work through it. You can call it an obsession if you want, but unless you were my personal therapist, you would not be in a position to make that call.

But suburbanites of the soul, as I like to call them, are crass busybodies who police the tangled hedges and overgrown lawns of other people's emotional lives - even or perhaps especially - the emotional lives of people they've never met, or met once, briefly.

The person I have in mind sent "poetry" about me to Andrew Bellware. Bellware has a grudge against me over my blogging about his casting call being included in the blog "Nudity Required, No Pay."

My poetry has nothing to do with Bellware, but that doesn't matter. The issue of whether or not Bellware exploits actors doesn't concern her. Her motive is to attack me, for any reason. This just gave her an opening.

I don't know this woman. But mocking me on behalf of other people seems to be what she loves to do. Although her poetry on Bellware's site is published anonymously, I recognize her style - she's mocked me through poetry before. Here's one of the recent ones - this and the others are available on Bellware's site.

DIL the dale of love
To show the hilarity
Of obsession keen

Here's the prior poem she published (under her own Facebook identity) to mock me, back in June:

____ is beyond the pale
Our love tale the great white whale
Of unrequited.

You can see the similarity of style. Web statistics also indicate that it was she who sent these poems.

The blank line of the second example is for somebody's name - she wrote his name in the original, but I won't here. I assume the unnamed person knows about all of this, and it doesn't bother him - maybe he thinks it's hilarious too. The fact that so many of his friends are vicious soulless thugs (as I gradually discovered) leads me to believe that he is one too, in spite of every atom of my being refusing to believe it. But really, the case in favor of vicious soulless thuggery has become overwhelming, atoms be damned.

I should mention that my emotional trauma was much more complex than simply unrequited love - but vicious soulless thugs don't really get complexity.

In any case, I fell in unrequited love with this person before I was clued into the thuggery. But love can be a goddamn tenacious, illogical emotion, injecting you with endorphins while it sucks the life out of you. It can co-exist even with hatred. So in desperation I wrote about it, about my conflicted feelings for him.

This is certainly not any new discovery on my part. People have been working through emotional trauma through poetry since there was poetry. Shakespeare's sonnets about the "dark lady" clearly indicate that that relationship was rough weather all the way - if it's good enough for big bad Bill, it's good enough for me.

My poems are on my blog, and I mostly put them on separate pages so you have to make an effort to see them by clicking a link to them - you are not suddenly accosted by them out of the blue.

So nobody has to read my poetry, and it's not hurting anybody - certainly not the man in question. So why does this woman feel the need to mock me and my poetry, on at least two separate occasions?

I think that partly it's a group-bonding thing - apparently the group she is part of thinks it is a huge laughable deal that I write poetry out of a search for solace.

It so happens that I know that one of the members of this group was left at the altar and wrote songs about it. Although I might possibly dislike him and some of his work I would never in a million years laugh at him for writing about his emotional trauma in a song. In fact, I empathize with him over his songs, knowing he went through rejection too, and dealt with it in a similar way.

In any case, there are some things you don't attack, even about your enemies.

Not everybody believes this, obviously.

Hannah Arendt is famous for the phrase "the banality of evil" and it's so well-known because she's onto something. She was talking about the humdrum everyday evil of the millions of "good" people who participated in Nazi atrocities as part of their daily routine. But the Nazis didn't create the banal evil - they merely tapped into something that I believe exists in all human societies. A kind of molten substrate of evil, that is mostly dormant, but sends up little reminder plumes of ash every so often.

Unrequited love is common - probably the most common form of romantic love. Surely this woman has experienced it herself and knows how bad it can make you feel. This woman is also involved in the arts as a theater director - the arts are about emotions, especially deep emotions. Things like unrequited love. Why would she think it was such an objectionable, mock-able thing for me to express my deep feelings through an artistic outlet?

But that's the key to the whole thing - a lack of empathy. Lacking empathy does not help you be a good artist. But it does make you the perfect good soldier, taking instructions from others on whom to hate and whom to hurt.

She does not need to know me, does not need to know anything about me other than this - her friends hate me and they see my expressing my feelings in a public (if fairly obscure) way as a vulnerability, and a way to hurt me. And she will happily comply if it means that her group will approve of it. It's something they can all have a good laugh over and that joins them together and makes them feel less alone in the universe.

But it isn't only about being in a group - the most important part of the substrate of evil isn't the desire to be approved of by your group - it's the need to exclude others from the group and to identify them as the outsider - and if conditions are right as the enemy - and if conditions are really extreme, the enemy on whom all bad things can be blamed. Like the Jews. It's the scapegoat syndrome, basically.

Not that I think this group is going to try to cart me off to a concentration camp. So far they've been content to try to hurt me where they think I am most vulnerable.

But they don't know enough about me to identify my true vulnerabilities - I don't care who knows that I was in unrequited love, and I don't care who knows the identity of the man, and I don't care if they think it's funny I've written poetry about him.

And to a certain extent, I confess I find it rather flattering that my poetry matters so much to them. Any poet likes an audience and god knows poets have a harder time finding an audience than virtually any other artists. And my type of poetry, sonnets, is currently very unfashionable - I've been told as much by several other poets. The real in-thing these days seems to be to write in prose but then just format it in a poet-y looking way. Katha Pollitt, the feminist writer whose prose I adore writes poetry that way. I don't adore her poetry.

Ultimately though, I think maybe the suburbanite poetess lacks empathy because she could never do what I've done, couldn't even imagine it - express emotional vulnerabilities through art. What if somebody laughs? As she and her group have demonstrated, they sometimes will. What if somebody uses it against her - and they sometimes will try. But if you feel something strongly enough that you have to get it out, you will find a way. Ideally you will, to use the Freudian term, sublimate the feeling by expressing it through art. But if you don't, it might come out in other ways, more violent ways, ways that actually cause physical damage. If more people wrote poetry, perhaps there would be fewer stories along the lines of man shoots wife, children, self.

So it's better to express it through art. But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily be praised for it, and it's certainly no guarantee that people will like your art. But you have to try. Otherwise you'll be just one more suburbanite of the soul, too busy taking up the cause of other peoples' emotions to deal with your own. You do that and you'll become a tool for evil, Satan's very own Swiss Army Knife.

You have to mind your own business - including your own emotional business. Being a full human being is a dirty, difficult, thankless job sometimes. But go for it - even if somebody calls you a narcissist - you can be a narcissist, and you can be self-absorbed about your own emotional life. It IS your life, not some insignificant or inconvenient appendix of your life.

Just remember the immortal words of Patty Smith: "I am an American artist and I have no guilt."

I addressed the sublimation thing in a poem, and I don't think anybody but my one loyal reader, the only person who has read every single one of my poems, has ever seen this one, so I'll repost it here - if you've read this far, you might as well read it, too.

Why this inability to hate you?
I've said so before, but astonishes
Still - you are not worthy, you are not due
Any fond-feelings, any well-wishes.
You cannot comprehend deep emotion,
Can't imagine the point of soul-searching,
Cannot give nor receive true devotion.
And your pestilent clique keeps besmirching
All the poor weak shreds of integrity
You have ever had. Onto this blank slate
Have I written down all my poetry
Extracting love from well-justified hate.
Senamensing wrung from my heart of hearts,
Oh there's value yet in the liberal arts.

The philosophizing of the twitterers

A twittering friend of E.D. proclaims "just being angry doesn't make you a feminist."

But being angry over sexism usually does.

But yeah, feminists can get angry over other stuff, like personal attacks. Not everything is about feminism.

What really separates the sexists from the non-sexists is this: those who dismiss women as "just angry women" if they display anger, over anything, are in the sexist camp.

And working with exploiters and creeps who send messages of sexual assault definitely puts your feminist cred into question.

When will you get a clue?

You have to be a total badass to be a woman and a poet in Saudi Arabia

From Friday's NYTimes:

A Saudi woman received a death threat last week after she appeared on "Poet of Millions," Abu Dhabi's version of the game show "American Idol" - which features aspiring poets instead of singers — and recited a poem attacking clerics for "terrorizing people and preying on everyone seeking peace."

This week she returned to perform a similar poem and was rewarded by the judges who made her the first female contestant to reach the show’s final round.

As the newspaper The National reports from Abu Dhabi, the woman, Hissa Hilal, "sparked controversy in Saudi Arabia, especially on Internet forums."

"According to reports, many viewers praised her for her courage, but others attacked her for criticizing clerics and reciting her poems in public," the newspaper wrote. "One website called for her death."

I only have to deal with assholes who mock me for writing poetry - that some women get death threats for their poetry really helps keep things in perspective.

Yes, I will say it again: Jon Stewart is a genius

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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What Bill O'Reilly is to Stephen Colbert, Glenn Beck is to Jon Stewart - the perfect nemesis.

Hot Man in Regency Period Clothing of the Week - March 19, 2010

Whoah, I have not seen the movie "Immortal Beloved" - I just didn't feel compelled to see a half made-up movie about Beethoven, but seeing pix of Gary Oldman as LvB has convinced me to see it ASAP!



And BONUS - the guy who plays the lead in Europa, Europa is also in this - I've never seen him in any other movie. That is a great movie!

off off Broadway - adventures with creeps

Pointing out to creeps that they are acting like creeps will not cause them to stop acting like creeps. It will only make them act creepier.

I discovered that in a truly disturbing way. I gave a shout-out to somebody who had been googling all kinds of odd things about me. I mentioned him by initials since I didn't think everybody in the world had to know who I was talking to - just this odd googler. Well I shouldn't have bothered, since Andrew Bellware revealed his identity for me on his blog.

Since I monetized my blogs, I like to keep track of what's what with web statistics - if you posted a link to playbill.com, for example, you like to see if it causes lots of people to visit your site. So I check the stats pretty frequently. And when your name keeps popping up over and over in search strings, you tend to take notice - especially when it's your name and some odd stuff, like "love letters."

Now people have googled some odd things about me before in the past - my name + "debt" was one of the creepiest - but I never felt the need to make an issue out of it, except that this odd googler was visiting my site pretty much daily, sometimes several times a day. Now I had only met this person once, and had nothing against him. So I thought it was a bit obsessive - even if he was doing it on behalf of Andrew Bellware's grudge against me.

When the googler responded to my message by googling a bunch of bizarre things with my name in the mix, I was not surprised. And when he apparently got a bunch of his friends into the game (judging by the mix of IP addresses) I was not surprised - lots of people can't stand alone, they have to have backup from their group.

What did surprise me, because I am apparently not nearly as cynical as I thought I was, was the creepy sexual turn the google searches took. These people knew I could read their search strings, and several of them wrote descriptions of sexual assault against me.

I really should NOT have been surprised. This kind of behavior has happened plenty on the Internet. One of the most famous cases was the attacks against game blogger Kathy Sierra. Her case was more extreme than mine, but it is truly creepy the way these men feel the need to make the issue sexual. I mean, it's already pretty ridiculous that they feel the need to gang up against me, considering I've done nothing against them - but that's groupthink dynamics for you. But there's no reason why it has to turn into a sexual thing other than pure misogyny.

As the author of the article A Chilling Effect says:

I know that I am far from alone. Any woman journalist who speaks out steadfastly and strongly against war, violence, imperialism, militarism, nationalism, capitalism, pornography, prostitution, who writes as a feminist or as a human rights advocate, can expect to be harassed and attacked online and offline. In general, she will be attacked not only for her specific views and perspective, but in ways that are distinctly sexist. Her appearance will be mocked or denigrated, she will be described as a man-hater, her writings, activism and life's work will be dismissed and trivialized, she will be called shrill and strident, or she will be threatened in ways that are sexual.

As I said, my case is not this extreme - but it's clearly along the same lines of sexualized violence.

Bellware did not like the fact that I, along with the anonymous blogger of "Nudity Required, No Pay" (and many other female actors I've heard from) consider him an exploiter for offering no pay for acting work, particularly that involving nudity. And so he considers anything fair to use against me.

But none of that is nearly as creepy as these google strings. I don't think that the google strings are illegal, and lots of Internet stuff is too new to have been considered in court. In any case, I have the records and more importantly, Sitemeter has the records in its data archives, should they need to be reviewed. Those who typed the hardcore google strings are not always immediately identifiable, but it's not that hard to figure out identities, sooner or later.

Susan Brownmiller, the author of "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" is a Facebook friend of mine and we've chatted a bit. I am going to run this incident by her and see what she thinks.

Doggy origins

Don't eat my baby!

---

Interesting article in the NYTime about the origins of dogs.

Humans lived as roaming hunters and gatherers for most of their existence. Dr. Wayne believes that wolves began following hunter-gatherer bands to feed on the wounded prey, carcasses or other refuse. At some stage a group of wolves, who happened to be smaller and less threatening than most, developed a dependency on human groups, and may in return have provided a warning system.

I know why people started hanging around with dogs - look at the cute faces on those dingoes!

I always find it annoying the way people are divided into dog people and cat people. Why can't you like both? I love my two cats but I also loved my dog Cookie when I was a kid. My parents were going to give her away at one point for barking too much after we moved to a smaller house in NJ and I ran away from home with her for a day in protest. We had adventures, including putting out a forest fire. But when it started to get dark and Cookie was getting hungry (I forgot to take money with me) we had to go home. My parents changed their mind and we kept her after all.

Apartment life is not easy on dogs though, so I have cats. My ex-boyfriend loves cats too but growing up his dog Emily was his best friend. I wrote a monologue about that relationship - Nick Fondulis performs it on youtube here.

Anyway, dogs and cats are not that different. Especially Siamese cats, which are very dog-like - my Siamese cat Mr. Fuzz (his real name is Spike but I never call him that) follows me around the house and he has to play fetch with his mousies every day. Unfortunately, after we fetch he has to roll the (real fur) mousie in his bowl of cat food and then eat the fur off the plastic shape that it's glued onto. I worry alot about his digestive system, but he's been doing this for years now with no apparent ill effects - except on my wallet - those real fur mousies are not cheap.

Always after me lucky charms

Yes it's Saint Patrick's Day. Yes I'm Irish (mostly.) No, I don't care about ethnic celebrations and it's embarrassing the way St. Patrick's Day is celebrated by getting drunk - because the Irish really do have an alcohol problem. I used to think the drinking stereotype was just an anti-Irish thing, but then I worked for an Irish company and saw drinking was an integral part of the work environment. For example, if you failed to follow the proper software development processes, you had to buy the development team a round of drinks.

As a result, the Irish employees could always outdrink the American employees - but the Russian employees could out-drink even the Irish.

more women in theater news...

Theatres 'risk ignoring talented female playwrights' says Sir David Hare

Sir David, 62, an associate director of the National Theatre, said the theatre lagged behind other creative art forms, such as the novel, when it came to equality of expression. Theatres should realise that women's writing for the theatre had reached a "tipping point", he said. "I don't think the repertory of most theatres at the moment is reflecting what seems to be happening in terms of the most interesting new theatre," he said."We would hope to see management of theatres reflecting where we think the creativity in playwriting is coming from."

And my meetup group Works by Women is offering a great deal on tickets to see MISS LULU BETT. Although I am curious about this play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1921 - the first time a woman won the Drama Pulitzer, you can get a pretty good idea why the play isn't done much nowadays by this wikipedia synopsis:

The story concerns a woman, Lulu, who lives with her sister's family, essentially acting as a servant. She does not complain about her position, but is not happy. When her brother-in-law's brother, Ninian, comes to visit, there is a certain attraction between them. While joking around one evening they find themselves accidentally married, due to the laws of the state requiring little more than wedding vows to be recited while a magistrate is in the room for a marriage to count as legal. On learning this, Ninian and Lulu decide they actually like the idea of being married, and choose to stick with it. However, within a month, Lulu is back home, having discovered that Ninian was already legally married: 16 years prior he had wed a girl who left him after 2 days, and he had actually forgotten about the whole thing. Lulu considers this a reasonable story, but her brother-in-law, Dwight, insists that it would be a humiliation to the family to reveal such a thing, and insists that she tell everyone instead that Ninian grew bored with her and left her. Lulu is unable to see why this should be a less humiliating story, and begins to complain about her circumstances for the first time. She also notices that her teenage niece, Di, is unhappy, and also seems to be trying to use marriage as a way to escape her circumstance. Lulu eventually has to prevent Di from eloping, and is finally inspired to move out of her sister's home and live on her own.

Oops! We are accidentally married! Oohh kay.

This week's New Yorker has a profile of Oskar Eustis, and I found especially interesting the part about his collaboration with Tony Kushner, and how much he was involved in the development of ANGELS IN AMERICA.

Now I think that Tony Kushner is the greatest living playwright, as I told Jason Zinoman the other day, but ye gods he sure got SO MUCH help and encouragement for ANGELS from Eustis. According to the article

Although (Kushner's first play A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY) received mixed reviews, Eustis was eager for Kushner to write more... the play... was six years in the making. Throughout the process Kushner and Eustis talked frequently..."

Eustis directed a couple of versions of the play, but then Kushner got George Wolfe to direct it for Broadway and that caused a rift between then.

Needless to say, Eustis has never directed anything by me... but my play THE SLASH was directed for Looking Glass by someone who made money by babysitting Eustis's two kids. I don't know how she did as a babysitter but I was not impressed by her directorial work and the experience is what clinched for me the idea that I must direct all my own plays. That, and being sued by another director.

sigh...

Greetings Pharyngulites

I don't know why, according to sitemeter, somebody linked to my blog from the Pharyngula post comment thread "I Get Email" - and I have no intention of visiting Pharyngula to find out. I don't have time to defend my honor on a comment thread.

Although I'm sure the majority of people who post comments at Pharyngula are nice folks, there is a core group who hangs out there all the time - seemingly 24/7 some of them - who constitute a ruling party, and who attack anybody found not to adhere closely enough to the party line.

That is why I found myself the target of fantastically nasty personal attacks when I dared to suggest that it was pointless, at best, to make an issue out of the fact that some scientists hold religious beliefs. You can read more on my thoughts on that in the January 2010 archives of this blog.

Although since Richard Dawkins is mentioned in the "I Get Email" post, perhaps it's about my argument with Dawkins last autumn over his support for evolutionary psychology. I had to bail out of that early, unfortunately, since I had a deadline to meet and had to learn PHP quickly - on top of my day job. I don't get paid to opine, like Dawkins.

I am certainly not alone in my disparagement of evolutionary psychology - plenty of scientists find it sorely lacking as a research strategy (to use a term coined by anthropologist Marvin Harris) - and the refutation of EP goes back to Stephen Jay Gould at least. The EP crowd often claims that Gould should be ignored on the subject because he had left-wing politics. But nobody could claim that Gould was anti-science. Perhaps this is why Dawkins felt the need to share a story with Pharyngulites (it's in the Pharyngula archives) about how Gould snubbed somebody - the only witnesses to this snub being, apparently, Dawkins' informant and dead defenseless Stephen Jay Gould.

So unlike many of the Pharyngula commentariat, I don't hero-worship Dawkins - his support of the work of the biggest EP ninnies Helena Cronin and David Buss I find especially galling. Combine that with my "accomodationist" tendencies, and well, I just don't see the point in enduring so much hostility from a bunch of semi-anonymous strangers.

If you're curious about me, or have questions, feel free to email me at nancy at mergatroyd dot org.

Dargis, Joplin & Jones

Great article in Monday's NYTimes by the ever-cooler Manohla Dargis:

Even before the nominations were announced on Feb. 2, as she picked up one award after another, including from her peers at the Directors Guild, people who don’t usually talk about women and the movies were talking about this woman and the movies. Uncharacteristically, the issue of female directors working — though all too often not working — was being discussed in print and online, and without the usual accusations of political correctness, a phrase that’s routinely deployed to silence those with legitimate complaints. I don’t think I’ve read the words women and film and feminism in the same sentence as much in the last few months since “Thelma & Louise” rocked the culture nearly two decades ago.

And now for something completely different - Janis Joplin sings a duet with... Tom Jones?!?