4 Short Christmas Plays

Looks like I am doing four of my 10-minute plays as part of a night together with a play called "Swordfight Christmas." We run December 16 - 20 at the Producer's Club (ugh).

My plays:

YULE COUNTY- a two-person play about a college freshman who is considering suicide on Christmas morning. I did this as a reading in my 10 min playfest in 2008. This will be the first time it will be on its feet.

MISTRESS ILSA'S CHRISTMAS - a completely new sequel to MISTRESS ILSA - Mistress Ilsa is whipping willing subjects for an audience at Christmas time.

THE VERY DARK ROOM - a completely new play I've been wanting to do for several years -  a woman in despair at Christmas argues with her brain as Death eagerly awaits the woman's suicide.

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS - I did produce this in 2009 but I am looking forward to doing this again - it's my first play to mention Ayn Rand.

I've been trying to think of a name for the collection - so far I've only thought of "Christmas Fun."

More details to come.

Go-Bama!

Our president is a brilliant speaker - but his superb comedic stylings are not appreciated enough, in my view. This video represents Obama at his best. Unfortunately it's not available on Youtube yet, so those without Facebook access can't see it. As soon as it is available I will embed it in this blog. In the meantime it's here.

Since when has Rupert Murdoch needed ANY fact checkers?

From the Washington Post

The National Geographic Society of Washington will lay off about 180 of its 2,000 employees in a cost-cutting move that follows the sale of its famous magazine and other assets to a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch. 

The reduction, the largest in the organization’s 127-year history, appears to affect almost every department of the nonprofit organization, including the magazine, which the society has published since just after its founding in 1888. The reduction also will affect people who work for the National Geographic Channel, the most profitable part of the organization. Several people in the channel’s fact-checking department, for example, were terminated on Tuesday, employees said.

Mr. Rogers earns 20 million dollars with his mouth

At first I thought Senator Pastore was pretty snippy with Fred Rogers - but apparently it was the snippiness of respect.

Forbes wrote a piece about this hearing: How Emotional Intelligence Landed Mr. Rogers $20 Million

On the 1st of May in 1969, Mr. Rogers addressed the Senate to argue that $20 million in funding for PBS should not be cut. John Pastore, the Senator from Rhode Island who led the hearing, had never seen nor hear of Mr. Rogers’ television show. It took Mr. Rogers just six minutes to convince the gruff and impatient Senator from Rhode Island that the $20 million was well worth it.

This video about 35 Facts about Mr. Rogers is great too, especially the anecdote about the limo driver.

Happy Blogger-versary!

Wow, here it is, 10 years since my first blog post on November 2, 2005. 

Since that date:

My former partner and I won against Edward Einhorn and his copyright scheme ~ I wrote an article for the Dramatists Guild here. I got to know playwright David Ives a little since he was editing the Guild magazine at time. And I got an anecdote about David Ives and the bullwhip out of that one.

I did lots of self-productions which can be seen at my Mergatroyd site. One of them, Jane Eyre, nearly drove me into bankruptcy. And I became an award-winning playwright.

I turned NYCPlaywrights into a money-making venture instead of a money-losing venture. Of course it is not a lot of money. But it's still better than losing money.

I wrote sonnets because I was in unrequited love with a complete mediocrity. You're never too old to be a fool for love. But I did enjoy writing the sonnets. And some of them are not bad.

I got my first booty call, and from the son of a movie star yet. I did not take him up on it.

Obama became president Oh, yeah, that. Kind of a big deal. I was very excited when it happened, although I had been rooting for Hillary during the primaries. But I liked Obama too, and I think he's proven to be an unusually effective president, in spite of the hideousness of the Republican party.

I often expressed my love for Jon Stewart. And Paul Krugman. And my contempt for Ayn Rand, New Atheists and Social Justice Warriors.

I lived through unemployment and cancer, as well as being personally lied about and smeared by identitarian bully Mikki Kendall and famously bad movie director/producer Andrew Bellware.

I have received responses to this blog from the dread Daphne Merkin and from the cool yet somewhat out-there Cindy Gallop, as well as Santa Claus.

My proudest moment for this blog was when I contributed to preventing the greater mainstreaming of professional bio-racist Razib Khan.


Some blog statistics from blogger - unfortunately they only go back to 2010 so they're not entirely accurate over the last 10 years.

My 10 most popular posts of all time. #4, about Schopenhauer, is pretty surprising.

Damn my accursed principles!!!! Jun 3, 2008	3395
Stupid shit that Social Justice Warriors say, Flav... Mar 4, 2014, 2 comments	2080
Intact Gallery Aug 28, 2010	1994
Six Questions for Arthur Schopenhauer Nov 13, 2011	1773
Razib Khan and his continuing successful quest for... Jan 9, 2013, 6 comments	1476
Social Justice Warrior smear campaign: Sarah Kendz... Jun 12, 2014, 8 comments	1376
Don't Let Me Down Oct 18, 2011	1175
On being smeared by the Mad Gastronomer and Karny... Jun 30, 2012, 4 comments	957
miffed at the New Yorker, Steven Pinker calls for ... Nov 30, 2011, 15 comments	858
more confirmation that Richard Dawkins is a gigant... Jul 6, 2011, 2 comments	818

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Surprising that a French-speaking country is ahead of the UK.

Number of blog posts per year according to my archives. Clearly 2011 was my big blogging year so far. And since 2008 I have been averaging over one blog post per day.

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Scenes from the NYC Marathon

Hi-five guy   Look, it's Ethan Hawke!

One section of the NYC Marathon route is down the street from my daughter's apartment so it's fun to go over there and check out the action. The NYTimes had an interesting article about the running speeds of marathoners throughout the Marathon's history, as well as interesting items about the runners in this marathon. The article mentions Ethan Hawke ran, which I can verify because I got it on video, as you can see in the bottom video. My daughter was tracking him via the Marathon's app so we knew about when he would show up. In the video he is wearing a black hat, white t-shirt with black trim and running next to a woman (presumably his wife) who is wearing a blue t-shirt. They disappear behind the guy's face right at the end of the video. Hawke ran the 26+ miles in 4 hours and 25 minutes, which is better than Alanis Morissette who ran it in 4:28, but not as good as P. Diddy, who ran it in 4:14. The winner ran it in 2 hours and 10 minutes which doesn't seem humanly possible.

Jonathan Reynolds: still a right-wing asshole

I have been reading the Dramatists Guild's latest issue which includes The Count, a review of the lack of production opportunities for women and non-white men, and they included responses to The Count, including one from the contemptible right-winger Jonathan Reynolds. Not surprisingly Reynolds is against The Count. After all, Reynolds has had a very comfortable life getting white/male privilege and naturally he isn't in any hurry to end that comfort.

Reynolds isn't only an asshole because he's a rightwinger, he's an asshole because that's his essential personality. As I noted five years ago:

First as to the douchebag part - he admits he is one on his very own blog, in so many words: 

Now, what does this have to do with GIRLS IN TROUBLE, my play currently in rehearsal at The Flea which consumes about 23 1/2 of my 24-hour day? Just this: we have a vegan in the cast, and I am trying to persuade her of the error of her ways. I've instructed her to stand upside down and then told her she could only have meat and dairy products for a week with the occasional snack of fish just to show her the borderline fascistic rigors of the flip side. She's thinking about it. I didn't have the spirit to bring her the slow-roasted pork, fearing charges of unfair competition: surely she would buckle at the knees and succmb, because there is no denying the pork shoulder. Besides, we need her in the first and third acts, not as a giddy, overfed pig convert too pleasured to make her entrance.

First I presume that as a good conservative he would never try to convert someone who refused to eat pig for religious reasons. Because there is political correctness for conservatives too - it just isn't called that.
Putting aside the hyperbole about standing in the corner, I don't doubt that he is trying to persuade her of the errors of being a vegan, since, according to several reviews of the play he makes it clear that he holds vegans in contempt. 
And she told him she's thinking about it. Well what the fuck else would she say? She's one of the very very few actors in this town who has a paying gig of some prestige. And as the playwright of the production she's doing, as well as a grand old man of the arts and a former NYTimes writer from back in the days when that actually meant something, Reynolds pretty much has total power over her career. If he decided to have her removed from the play he could do it - the Dramatists Guild is very clear about the right of playwrights to influence casting decisions. So unless she's a moron zombie, I'm sure what she'd prefer to say was "get the fuck out of my face you disgusting right-wing asshole" but the only thing she COULD say was that she'd think about it. 

Reading what Reynolds wrote about the vegan still pisses me off - what a smug, self-righteous bully. But then, that's what right-wingers are. So now he's worried about the political correctness of pointing out that although men and women make up roughly equal numbers of humanity, women's plays are only produced 20% of the time. In the Dramatist Reynolds writes:

The moment an art form takes into consideration any criteria for artistry other than merit - such as the race, gender, sexual leaning, ethnicity or age of the artist - it signifies the starter's pistol for the devaluation of that form from art into the data-drive, quantifiable, and much less inspired arenas of politics and sociology.

Naturally the notion that white males have been favored doesn't cross Reynold's mind - since in his mind white males are the default human beings and how could they possibly be getting advantages of gender or ethnicity? In his understanding of the world only women have gender. Only non-whites have ethnicity.

Also in the Dramatist, Lisa Kron and Madeleine George write:

unless we believe that white men are inherently better playwrights than everyone else, we have to accept that the numbers are the result of an implicit, systemic bias on the part of producing organizations...

I think that "white men are inherently better playwrights" is EXACTLY what Jonathan Reynolds believes. He's just too coy to come right out and admit it. And anybody who believes otherwise, in his view, is simply being "politically correct."

You also have to laugh at his pretend concern about "politics and sociology" over pure art since he is obsessed in his work with "political correctness." 

Add transparent hypocrite to bully, douchebag, etc.

My Life on the Road

I'm looking forward to getting Gloria Steinem's new memoir My Life on the Road. The reviews are mostly very positive: complaints that Steinem doesn't share enough personal gossip are the biggest criticism. But it's full of lots of good stuff, like what an asshole Gay Talese was and possibly still is:

One day, trying to cover Bobby Kennedy, she found herself in a taxicab between Saul Bellow and Gay Talese. Talese leaned over and said to Bellow, "You know how every year, there's a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year's pretty girl." Steinem didn't object at the time; she was too embarrassed and reluctant to express anger. Decades later, in the telling of the anecdote, she metes out a justified revenge.

Reliably, Terry Gross interviewed her about the book. The New York Times also interviewed her. The New Yorker has a piece about her.

Steinem looks amazing for her age, so much so that I have a hard time believing she hasn't had some work done. But even more so, she's actually a couple of years older than my mother and the women in my mother's home for seniors and yet she seems so much younger in her engagement with the world. That, I think, comes from living independently and doing your own thinking your entire life.

One thing I find curious in the Fresh Air interview, Steinem suggests that women no longer have an obligation to do gender after age 50, and she doesn't come right out and say it but she seems to be suggesting that this includes being sexual. Gross played a recording of a 1992 interview she did with Steinem, when Steinem was approaching 60. But clearly that wasn't true for Steinem - she got married for the first time at age 66 to David Bale (father of actor Christian Bale.) You have to be pretty serious about having sex with someone to go so far as to get married to them.

The scoop on Mr. Rogers

I've always been a fan of Fred Rogers, although I hadn't read up on his life much. But I learned more about him this weekend because I stayed at a house in Winter Park Florida. Apparently Winter Park was a favorite locale for Fred Rogers. In part because he attended Rollins College there. I always associated Rogers with Pittsburgh and a middle-class lifestyle, but apparently Fred Rogers' family was stinking rich.

According to his American National Biography entry:

As the recipient of a substantial family inheritance, Rogers was independently wealthy and was able to forgo income from his television productions.

To get a real sense of just how wealthy Rogers' family was, when my mother took a boat trip in Winter Park (which is built in the middle of the central Florida wetlands) this weekend, the tour guide informed the group that Fred Rogers was not able to have a piano at his Rollins school lodgings so his family built a house for him nearby where he could play his own piano there. 

I'm not saying that non-wealthy people can't be pleasant and upbeat, but it gives an important perspective on how Fred Rogers was able to maintain a childlike, almost surreal belief in the innate goodness of people and the world - he didn't have to hold a job if he didn't want to, and the job he held was as a pioneer in public broadcasting for children. Not exactly a challenging career path. It's on the job that most people are forced up against each others' competitiveness and pettiness and bullying and even violence, and Fred Rogers just didn't have to deal with it. If he needed anything, his family provided it. It was always a beautiful day in the neighborhood because Rogers lived in the most beautiful neighborhoods money could buy.

Of course plenty of the stinking rich are horrible people with excessive vices, and Rogers was a decent human being with moderate habits. So good for him. But make no mistake, he had advantages that the vast majority of humanity do not get. It's easier to be pleasant when your life is pleasant.

No Roshambo for us

My daughter-out-law Patty also played - the mini-golf  theme was aliens

I've always thought rock-paper-scissors (aka Roshambo) was a nifty alternative to flipping a coin. Unfortunately it's not so useful when two minds are in sync. While trying to decide the playing order in mini-golf in Orlando,  my daughter and I  threw the same shape five times in a row, so I just gave up and let her go before me. I won mini-golf anyway mwah-hah-hah! And then they flew back to New York, and like an idiot I took the train again - 22 hours in coach with crackheads and sick people and jerks. I think Amtrak pretty much cured my fear of flying.

Yes please, no more Poet Voice

I'm glad somebody finally said this: Stop Using Poet Voice:

The chief injustice of Poet Voice is that the tone too accurately projects the kind of self-serious and highfalutin vibe that puts off potential audiences for poetry and gives fodder to writers who want to claim that poetry is dead, dying or has been dead a long time. (For the record, poetry is UNdead, motherfuckers. Do a page search of this article for “green face powder” or “Captain Eliot” and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) In its willowy whisperings, Poet Voice screams, I am The Oracle and you are a hotdog cramping up in a plastic folding chair. It’s condescending and it makes me want to expose the man behind the curtain. 

I suggest poets look to the theatre for direction. If you’re a poet writing poems that have a speaker—no matter how reliable or fragmentary—do what actors do. You are on stage, aren’t you? Pick a character that makes sense with the poems, square your shoulders to the audience, and project to the back of the room. You’re not trying to talk down a bear; you’re trying to be the bear. Deciding on reading styles that suit or productively play with the content of your poems will add meaningful layers to the poems, which will make for a richer performance experience for everyone involved. 

Another thing poets can do is just say no. Don’t read. These days, poets are expected to be very good not only at writing poems but at promoting those poems, performing those poems, sending those poems out for publication, networking and organizing tours. It’s a rare bear who can operate gracefully in all of those arenas, but not everyone can or has to be that bear. If someone’s not good at performing on stage, they can even get someone else to perform their poems for them or use one of the many social media outlets to promote the poems instead. Put it on Instagram! More people will see that than will go to a reading.

I do wonder if the author Rich Smith is giving the poets who use the Voice too much credit for modesty though. He seems to think that when they adopt the "Poet Voice" they are inadvertently coming off as The Oracle. I would suggest that they sound condescending because they actually do think very highly of themselves. They do consider themselves The Oracle. 

Being a successful poet gives you very little material rewards nor, in most circles, an elevated social status. So when you do find a small group of people willing to sit and listen to you recite your work, you are going to milk that tiny sliver of ego-boosting acclaim for all it's worth - and that's when you get to play The Oracle. I've seen it happen with off-off Broadway actors with very little accomplishments - if you do treat them with respect some of them become entitled, arrogant egomaniacs. 

Many people in the arts are assholes - so it is no surprise to me that some poets are too.