Another interesting passage from A Sense of Direction

From time to time there might arise what might be called a battle between the director and an actor. What do you do? The director always surrenders. That is the law. The reason for this is practical. If you win a battle with an actor, you lose. There's no such thing as a director winning a battle with an actor. So, if the beginning of a battle occurs, you yield immediately. It doesn't make any difference what the issue is. "I absolutely refuse to wear these boots." "Well, let's find something else for you to wear. Would that be better?" As soon as you accept a supportive position, the next step is creative.

If the director has an ego problem, it may be impossible for him to lose a battle with an actor. Then he must go back to grade one and be a stage manager until he has learned that his ego must be subservient to the art and that he must be graceful in relation to the actor. As we've said before, the director needs the actor as an ally, and we defeat our purpose completely if we make the actor an adversary. In battles, the director always loses.

You can get it at Amazon.com

Laboring in the vineyard

Meanwhile other producers have been calling Mr. Byrd, who, unlike Mr. Binder or Mr. Sanders, is black. They’re curious about his future projects, he said.

“Where were you when I was laboring in the vineyard?” Mr. Byrd asked. “The heavy lifting has been done.”

I totally underestand where Byrd is coming from - you struggle to get work up and seen, and nobody cares until you have a bona fide hit.

More at the NYTimes about the black-audience hit CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF.

Yes, Obama is a good speech writer

It takes more than speeches to be a good president.

Senator Clinton, I think you owe Obama Girl and the people of this nation an enormous Obama-pology

What Sarah Ruhl said is so true...

"I will also say that there's a kind of aura around young male writers, say age 26, the hot male writer thing that never surrounds women playwrights. And there's a tremendous irony there, because the playwrights most interesting to read and see now, the ones who are really pushing the work forward aesthetically, are almost all women."
more here

You see this all. the. time. from every damn theatre group. They're all hoping to discover the next manly David Mamet while he's still in his 20s. And women can go to hell as far as the theatre establishment is concerned.

Roy on Mamet

As usual, Roy at Alicublog has something pithy to say, this time in response to David Mament's rightward "conversion" - Mamet wrote in the Village Voice:

I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years.

To which Roy responds:

I'll say. He wrote American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, Homicide, and House of Cards before figuring out that people are not basically good at heart? That's a pretty amazing job of compartmentalization.

Dar Williams - The Blessings

If you're gonna get your heart broke, you better do it just right,
It's gotta be raining, and you gotta move your stuff that night,
And the only friend you can reach isn't a good friend at all,
And you know when he says "Now who dumped who?" that you never should have made that call.

I had the blessings, there's nobody there, there's nobody home,
Yeah, the blessings, at the moment I was most alone
And aimless as a fulltime fool, the joke was on me,
I got all those birds flying off of that tree, and that's a blessing.

And the blessings were like poets that we never find time to know,
But when time stopped I found the place where the poets go.
And they said, "Here have some coffee, it's straight, black and very old,"
And they gave me sticks and rocks and stars and all that I could hold,

I had the blessings, a moment of peace even when the night ends,
Yeah, the blessings, can we meet? Can we meet again,
At the crossroads of disaster and the imperfect smile,
With the angel in the streetlamp that blinks on as I walk on amile, the blessings.

And the best ones were the ones I got to keep as I grew strong,
And the days that opened up until my whole life could belong,
And now I'm getting the answers, when I don't need them anymore,
I'm finding the pictures, and I finally know what I kept them for,
I remember, I can see them, see them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.

I was fast asleep at three in the morning when I got the payphone call,
And she said, "Did I wake you up," I said, "Hey, no, not at all."
And she said, "I got this suitcase and I don't know what to pack,"
And I said, "You can take anything you want, just wait and see,
It's not a release, not a reward, it's the blessings,
Its the gift of what you notice more,"
And I walked out and I watched her kick the big pile of the night,
And we sat down and we waited for that strange and empty light.
Yeah the blessings...

See them smiling, see them stuck,
See them try, I wish them luck and all the blessings.

Music from JANE EYRE

Actor Nat Cassidy and I put most of the music for the recent production of my play JANE EYRE together using sound loops from GarageBand, but I did compose one original piece the "Jane Eyre Waltz" from scratch, which I'm pretty proud of. The most complete piece of music before that which I created was Cinco de Mayo, which, although I wrote the melody line, is mostly loops.

Check out music from JANE EYRE here.

here's a little something for all you David Mamet-lovers in the theatre world

He's no longer hinting at his right-wing attitudes via plays like OLEANNA anymore - now Mamet has OFFICIALLY come out of the closet as an asshole.

This is so satisfying - I was just arguing with a bunch of actors a few weeks ago that Mamet is ultimately a reactionary. So nice to be proven right so quickly.

Best part of Mamet's VOICE essay: Kennedy = Bush

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Wow. Mamet, a late-middle-aged, wealthy white guy has turned to the right. Who would EVER have seen that coming???

Chet Scoville delivers a righteous smack-down at Shakespeare's Sister

More from "A Sense of Direction" by William Ball

The intuitive brain is like an oversized retarded child playing with a bauble and mumbling incoherent phrases. It acts like a baby, it wants its own way in everything, it requires perpetual attention, it is unreliable and completely unreasonable. But within that moronic child lives the brilliant composer of dreams. Dreams are arrangements of poetically perfect, preciously interlocking, self-referential symbols.
There is a quality of perfect creation in a dream. That perfect poetic creativity is the work of the little genius, or the "little professor," sitting in the intuitive brain. In other words, the intuitive brain is the home of an amorphic moron who is selfish, moody and irresponsible but who, on certain occasions, is inspired with flashes of brilliant and unassailably right thought, flawlessly appropriate action, and sublime clarity of vision. Intuition is capable of inspiring one with instant truth, with absolute and perfect clarity. It is ironic that intuition, the source of inspiration and genius, should spend most of its time behaving "like a slob."

Lessons learned from off-off Broadway

Coming soon: the very poor quality of off-off Broadway critics...

Eliot Spitzer believes

Christians may not believe in Karma...

...but Eliot Spitzer sure does...

Eliot Spitzer resigns

Why do people like that always think they will never be caught???? Arrogance? Stupidity? Undefeatable self-absorption?

May all philanderers come to this kind of humiliation. I feel sorry for the poor spouses and children though...

unequal relationships suck

I met the partner of an actor acquaintance recently, and the partner said to me that when he heard that the actor was an actor, he was uninterested in pursuing a relationship, but that when he realized the actor was "realistic" about all actorly aspirations, he changed his mind and they hooked up.

What sorts of aspirations does the actor's partner, this mighty paragon of practicality have? you may wonder. Equities investments? Real estate? No, this advocate of all things real spends much of his time drawing.

welcome to the club Katha

I believe Gloria Steinem said the exact same thing a couple of months ago

A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can't imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. "Asians Really Do Just Copy." "No Wonder Africa's Such a Mess: It's Full of Black People!" Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation's clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media. I can just picture the edit meeting: This time, let's get a woman to say women are dumb and silly! If readers raise too big a ruckus, Outlook editor John Pomfret can say it was all "tongue in cheek." Women are dingbats! Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.

more at the Washington Post

The funniest twist on Family Circus ever!

oh Eliot

You gigantic hypocrite. How could you?


Spitzer is linked to a prostitution ring

Belief in the general beauty

William Ball's "A Sense of Direction - Some Observations on the Art of Directing" has many interesting and valuable things to say, especially this:

The general beauty of a work is the way in which we talk about its worthiness to be seen. The general beauty contains the theme. The general beauty is the reason we feel passionately that an audience should see it. The general beauty is what excites the director and what makes him feel that other people should be excited. A director has to be a missionary. He must feel strongly about the theme of a play - to the extent that he feels it is important for other people to share or to witness that theme...

...the director must believe. We are makers of belief... he has to believe that he could stand on the corner and sell it, that he could market it, that he could convince people of the beauty, that he could stop passersby and say, "Did you ever wonder about the possibility of this? Isn't this beautiful? Doesn't this strike you as something important and marvelous and amazing and peculiar and wonderful?...

...When a director chooses the general beauty he is making a choice on behalf of the audience. The director agrees to represent the public. The identity of the director goes like this: "I am an audience, I am everyman, I am all, I am judge, I am servant, I am listener, I am moderator, I am synthesizer, I am seeker, I am helper, I am child, I am believer, I am maker of belief."

One of the things that made me so happy about the recent production of a play of mine is that I think we did achieve the general beauty.

In my ongoing struggle with the anguish of a friendship destroyed thanks to this production, I have to stop for a moment and acknowledge that the actor who hurt me so much did succeed in the mission, even beyond my expectations. There is one moment of his performance that I will always remember. The actor is playing a man who is very much in love with his fiancee, a woman who is younger and less experienced in the world than he. She informs him that she knows that a man's love is fleeting because she has read all about it in books written by men. And when she says this, it usually got a laugh, but more importantly it always caused the actor to smile in such a tender, indulgent, appreciative way as if to say "isn't my darling girl the most wonderous creature on earth with her skeptical view of the world based only on what she has read in books? And how wrong she is to doubt my devotion." It's alot to be said in a brief smile, but he did it, every single performance.

But the most amazing part is this - now that I've come to know this actor, I truly believe that he has never felt anything close to such feelings, himself, in his entire life. I believe that what he did was channel those feelings directly from the collective human unconscious through his body.

I suppose he isn't the only actor capable of such a thing - it may even be routine - but it's still a bit shocking to realize this is what you are witnessing, rather than an expression of feelings that the actor himself understands. It's almost mystical, and a little scary, the way you feel when you try to wrap your head around the idea that serial killers have no sense of empathy.

George of the Jungle

One of the hottest videos around is found in the "Family" section, thanks to the amazing Brendan Fraser in George of the Jungle.

Watch this great clip on youtube

AND Naked fight between Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser. whoohooo!

Wow, this helps me make sense of recent events in my life...

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

People who are overly narcissistic commonly feel rejected, humiliated and threatened when criticised. To protect themselves from these dangers, they often react with disdain, rage, and/or defiance to any slight criticism, real or imagined. To avoid such situations, some narcissistic people withdraw socially and may feign modesty or humility.

Though individuals with NPD are often ambitious and capable, the inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional achievements. With narcissistic personality disorder, the person's perceived fantastic grandiosity, often coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically not commensurate with his or her real accomplishments.

The exploitativeness, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, disregard for others, and constant need for attention inherent in NPD, adversely affects interpersonal relationships.

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special people
4. requires excessive admiration
5. strong sense of entitlement
6. takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her
9. arrogant affect.

Kissing Hank's ass

The sublime religious parody now in video format!

Also - Hankisms

Sample Hankisms

Atheism - Hank doesn't have an ass to kiss.

Christian Fundamentalism - Kiss Hank's ass and he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town. If you don't, he's going to kick the shit out of you. Read Karl's list, it's important. Only eat wieners on buns, without condiments.

Protestantism - It's OK, you don't have to kiss Hank's ass— but you'll want to, if you trust him. If you don't trust him, he's going to kick the shit out of you when you leave town. If you do trust him, he'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.

Jehovah's Witnesses - Everybody in town should kiss Hank's ass, but only 144 are going to get a million dollars after Hank burns the town down, which we think will be Real Soon Now. Then he'll kick the shit out of anyone who didn't kiss his ass, and send the rest to a nicer, newer town. Here, have a pamphlet; it describes what we think we mean. We'll be back tomorrow to tell you why everyone else is kissing Hank's ass wrong.

Exodus Ministries - We love you, and we want to help you heal yourself of this terrible sickness of eating wieners The Wrong Way. Let us teach you to enjoy wieners only in buns, without condiments. Then, and only then, will you be allowed to kiss Hank's ass and collect your million dollars when you leave town.

Shi'A Islam - A long time ago, Karl died. Then his father-in-law tried to make his own list, but we know Karl's wife hid the real list and gave it to her son. Listen to Karl's wife's son, or we'll kick the shit out of you.

Sunni Islam - Baloney. You know Karl's father-in-law's list is the real one, and if you don't admit that, we'll kick the shit out of you.

Heaven's Gate - Kiss Karl's ass, and -- oh, wait, Karl just saw Hank's limo drive by. We're leaving town NOW to catch it.

truly a play after my own heart!!!

...you’ll find something in Push Productions’ hilarious Actors are F*@#ing Stupid that addresses humanity’s universal obsession with attention, praise and, most importantly, seeing the other guy fail. Don’t bother to look for characters connecting on any genuine level. As in life, so it goes in the vicious acting community - it's every narcissistic moron for themselves.

more at off-off-online.com

I'm really proud of my daughter. She's a thorn in the side of the patriarchy

My daughter took me out for my birthday, and we discussed the theatre trouble I've had recently. She believes that sexism plays a large part in the disrespect, disdain, or even contempt that I'm given on occasion, whether in the role of playwright, director or producer.

I'm inclined to agree with her, although I don't think that the theatre scene is more sexist then the rest of society. But people in the theatre scene like to think of themselves as enlightened, progressive and (ugh) "cutting edge" and so it's just a bit more hypocritical when they mindlessly reflect sexist attitudes.

Eddie Izzard is a proud atheist

I caught his show in the Village last night and the best part was his riffs on religion and atheism.

Eddie Izzard clip at ex-christian.net

Meanwhile, not far away at the Reformed Church in America, they still believe in "election" which means basically, that some people are "saved" and the rest are damned, purely through a random act of God.

Lest you have a problem with this, the RCA is ready to get all up in your face:

Article 18: The Proper Attitude toward Election and Reprobation

To those who complain about this grace of an undeserved election and about the severity of a just reprobation, we reply with the words of the Apostle, "Who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God?" 14 and with the words of our Savior, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?" 15 We, however, with reverent adoration of these secret things, cry out with the Apostle: "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." 16

Translation: God said so, so suck it.

No wonder people who believe in this crap are so incredibly superior and insufferable and convinced they are blameless, no matter what rotten things they do.

Here's the whole deal:

Article 7: Election

Election is God's unchangeable purpose by which God did the following:

Before the foundation of the world, by sheer grace, according to the free good pleasure of God's will, God chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people out of the entire human race, which had fallen by its own fault from its original innocence into sin and ruin. Those chosen were neither better nor more deserving than the others, but lay with them in the common misery. God did this in Christ, whom God also appointed from eternity to be the mediator, the head of all those chosen, and the foundation of their salvation.

And so God decreed to give to Christ those chosen for salvation, and to call and draw them effectively into Christ's fellowship through the Word and Spirit, that is to grant them true faith, to justify them, to sanctify them, and finally, after powerfully preserving them in the fellowship of God's Son, to glorify them. God did all this in order to demonstrate God's mercy, to the praise of the riches of God's glorious grace.

More on the RCA web site

Do Christians believe in Karma?

Most Christian denominations seem to say that if you do wrong, you need merely ask for Jesus's forgiveness, and everything's OK. This is a much easier way to go than the popular belief in Karma which is that bad things you do will turn into energy that will come back to get you later. There doesn't seem to be any way to escape Karma.

Although the original Karma is about being reborn, on a higher or lower plane, this people's Karma seems to have much greater currency. And so even Christians believe in it, much like many Christians also believe in Astrology although I would think that would be tantamount to heresy.

The Christian churches seem to be getting really lax on matters of dogma.

I hugged David Hyde Pierce

David Hyde Pierce has a reputation as a really cool down-to-earth guy, so I was not entirely surprised that he responded to my invitation to stop by and visit my JANE EYRE production by actually stopping by - but I was still thrilled.

We closed today and I was helping load up a truck with set pieces and props. Somebody came up to me and said "David Hyde Pierce is looking for you."

I went back into the theatre, there he was, and I just hugged him - I couldn't stop myself somehow. He's just very huggable. Or maybe because I'm so familiar with his work it feels like I know him.

I then introduced him to some of the actors from JANE EYRE who were also helping with the load out.

And then he was gone. *siiiigh*

But still, it was great, he's great and you should go see his show Curtains because I've heard that it is great.

gender equality = better sex

Which is what feminists have been saying all along...

"In 75% of the cases the men report always having an orgasm. With women only 26% say they always have one, although 45% of men believe their partners always have an orgasm."

However, where the two sexes experienced greater equality - essentially in western countries - 60 to 80% of subjects said they had good sex.

Couples in Austria topped the good sex league with 80% of men and 63% of women saying they were enjoying extremely or very satisfying sex.

In second place came Spain, where 73% of men and 68% of women reported high satisfaction rates, the study suggested.

But in "male-centred sexual regimes" like the Middle East, Brazil, Italy and parts of Asia the study suggested satisfaction rates fell to the 40-50% range.

More at the BBC.

It's a mystery

HENSLOWE
Mr. Fennyman, let me explain about the
theatre business.
(they stop)
The natural condition is one of
insurmountable obstacles on the road
to imminent disaster. Believe me, to
be closed by the plague is a bagatelle
in the ups and downs of owning a
theatre.

FENNYMAN
So what do we do?

HENSLOWE
Nothing. Strangely enough , it all
turns out well.

FENNYMAN
How?

HENSLOWE
I don't know. It's a mystery.

From Shakespeare in Love

a-HAH - I always suspected this!

Whether girlie or girlist, girls, because they’re allowed more latitude in their identities, can still be girls: Boys, on the other hand, must be boys — unless no one is watching. In another study of younger children, Cherney and London found that if ushered alone into a room and told they could play with anything, nearly half the boys chose “feminine” toys as often as “masculine” ones, provided they believed nobody, especially their fathers, would find out. That made me question whether any more expansive vision of girlhood can survive without a similar overhaul of boyhood, which, apparently, is not in the offing. Learning to “create an amazing dance routine” (as suggested by “Everything”) is still far more Dangerous for boys than, as their own volume suggests, learning to juggle.

NYTimes Magazine

That's what is known as The Patriarchy at Work.

Kristof on the "Goldberg Paradigm"

And one more reason why female writers might want to consider taking male-sounding pen names ...

In one common experiment, the "Goldberg paradigm," people are asked to evaluate a particular article or speech, supposedly by a man. Others are asked to evaluate the identical presentation, but from a woman. Typically, in countries all over the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man.

More at the NYTimes

From now on I will let Gawker do all my blogging

I briefly considered writing yet another post about the clueless Judith Warner and her loathesome husband Max, having foolishly peeked at her NYTimes column yet again (my inner masochist clearly feeling the strain of my new year's resolution to avoid all Daphne Merkin issuances), but then I found this entry at Gawker and knew I was off the hook - they've pretty much got Judith Warner covered. My favorite comment by a true genius called "country wench"

As anyone who has known Judith since her days as an adolescent can attest, the root driver of Judith's "yenta" politics and literary voice is quite simple.
Judith is obsessed with her ass.
Since the age of 15, she has plagued all who know her with daily questions about the appearance of her ass. As in
"Is my ass too big?"
"Do I have a fat ass?"
"Does my ass look good in these jeans?" etc. etc.
Somehow, Judith's obsession with her own ass evolved by her late teens into an obsession with how other human beings (particularly men) feel about her ass, which turned into some form of anger about why the world wasn't sufficiently interested in her ass, or was more intrigued by women with different asses, or why in general her ass was perhaps not rated very highly in the ass-scheme of things, or why her ass never became the center of human kind's ass-focused attention.
This, in turn, became an obsession with criticizing other people's asses, as well as how they care for their asses, or jealousy about why other people are blessed with nicer asses, or more attractive asses, or why government should offer remedial care for those not blessed with asses worthy of attention, or how society was discriminating against certain asses, etc. etc.
A person so obsessed with their own ass rapidly thinks that all the sh*t in their own lives is worth writing about. Hence the uncensored blather of her column.

Now I think that ass is a metaphor. But I'm not 100% sure...

Eyre, Jane Eyre

My adaptation of Bronte's "Jane Eyre" goes up on February 14 - tickets are $18
except for you - Mergatroyd Productions is offering tickets for $10 to everybody who reads this blog - use discount code NBLOG at Theatremania.com

Unless you're Ann Bartow or Gregg Currie - then you get in for free.

:)

The JANE EYRE web site

JANE EYRE tickets at Theatremania.com tickets or call 212-352-3101 or 1-866-811-4111

Androphiles of the world unite!

I try to use the word "androphile" whenever appropriate, in place of "straight women and gay men." It's more efficient, and includes bisexuals too. Unfortunately since I'm one of the few people who uses the term, it isn't that efficient after all, since I always have to explain what it means. Even to presumably well-educated, cultured people. I would have thought the meaning was obvious.

An androphile is someone who is sexually attracted to men. A gynophile is someone who is attracted to women.

The world is a more hospitable place for gynophiles, after centuries of patriarchy, especially modern, homophobic patriarchy. The ancient Greeks were totally patriarchal, but they certainly were not homophobic.

In fact, the Greeks had boy beauty contests and a popular theme of Greek vases was a painting of a nude or semi-nude young man with the inscription "Kalos" on the vase, usually along with the boy's name, which meant "[boy's name] is beautiful."

But patriarchy AND homophobia are a deadly combination for androphiles. Thanks to homophobia, gay men are constrained from expressing their admiration for the erotic charms of men, and thanks to patriarchy, women are only permitted to be the objects of desire, not the desiring subject. Evolutionary psychologists even try to claim that women are not "visually oriented" - in typical evolutionary psychology fashion they turn the causal arrows around: it isn't that the Patriarchy is hostile to female desire it's that females aren't interested in male beauty.

This "women are not visually oriented" meme is so strong that it trumps even homophobia. Images of sexually attractive men are almost always designated "homoerotic" and even usually hipper Sue Johanson pushes the concept.

steely dan my old school

Arguably the best pop song ever written.

In yo face, "natural family planning" advocates!

LONDON (AP) -- Women on the birth control pill are protected from ovarian cancer, even decades after they stop taking it, scientists said.

British researchers found that women taking the pill for 15 years halved their chances of developing ovarian cancer, and that the risk remained low more than 30 years later, though protection weakened over time. The findings were published Friday in The Lancet.

''Not only does the pill prevent pregnancy, but in the long term, you actually get less cancer as well,'' said Valerie Beral, the study's lead author and director of the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University. ''It's a nice bonus.'' The study was paid for by Cancer Research UK and Britain's Medical Research Council.

More at the NYTimes

One of the things the Catholic anti-abortion protestors used to harp about, back when I did clinic defense, was the dangers of "artificial" birth control.

Shakespeare Slash

This will blow your mind

More about this thing called "Slash"

Summertime

Janis Joplin... just because...

Once again Bob Herbert misses the point

UPDATE - the idiots who run Google banned this post, probably because they are now using AI to do their moderating. I was responding to an editorial published in the NYTimes. It was OK for the NYTimes but not OK for Blogger's AI.

I will be migrating this blog to a different platform at my earliest convenience. I assume that's what Google wants, since they have decided to make the least effort to moderate Blogger content by using AI. What losers. 

Herbert's column "Politics and Misogyny" misses the point because of his obsession with prostitution. This time it's the unpleasant working conditions of prostitutes in Nevada.

It just so happens that the Democratic presidential candidates are campaigning this week in the misogyny capital of America: Nevada. It’s a perfect place to bring up the way women are viewed and treated in this society, but don’t hold your breath. Presidential wannabes are hardly in the habit of insulting the locals.

Prostitution is legal in much of Nevada and heavily promoted even where it’s not. In Las Vegas, where prostitution is illegal but flourishes nevertheless, Mayor Oscar Goodman has said that creating a series of legal, “magnificent” brothels would be a great development tool for his city.

The fundamental problem in all of this is that women and girls are dehumanized, opening the floodgates to every kind of mistreatment. “Once you dehumanize somebody, everything else is possible,” said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of the women’s advocacy group Equality Now.

A grotesque exercise in the dehumanization of women is carried out routinely at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel about an hour’s ride outside of Vegas. There the women have to respond like Pavlov’s dog to an electronic bell that might ring at any hour of the day or night. At the sound of the bell, the prostitutes have five minutes to get to an assembly area where they line up, virtually naked, and submit to a humiliating inspection by any prospective customer who has happened to drop by.

What does Bob Herbert think of Hooters, I wonder. I don't like Hooters myself, especially after seeing its Employees Handbook at The Smoking Gun. But I sure as hell wouldn't compare the misogyny of a Hooters with women being raped and murdered, the way Herbert compares - really conflates - rape and murder with prostitution and pornography.

And here's a question that the anti-legal-prostitution people always REFUSE to answer: if going to a prostitute is a man's expression of misogyny, what does it mean when a man goes to a male prostitute? Misandrony? Self-hate?

Or do they just want to have sex and can't find a willing volunteer?

I love me some Carl Forsman

He is saying exactly what I've been saying for years. People like Forsman are the true radicals in a theatre culture of mindless zombie Mamet imitators and admirers who insist that theatre must be brutal, violent and cruel.

And for him beauty is more than just pleasantry. "I've thought for a while now that maybe true theatrical rebellion isn't saying, 'And then a guy raped a 4-year-old and shot his mom,'" he said. "That’s not radical anymore because we're so desensitized. Now I think true rebellion is saying anything optimistic or positive about humanity. Hope is radical."

Mr. Forsman said his attitude has been met with skepticism. "I was at a fund-raising cocktail party once," he said, "and a man said to me, 'You're a Pollyanna.' And I said, 'I'm a Pollyanna because I'm championing these virtues?’ It doesn’t seem Pollyanna-ish to believe in compassion. It's only Pollyanna if you believe the reverse isn't also possible."

He continued: "There's no question that the cynical viewpoint is viewed as more sophisticated. There's a real fear, especially among the intelligentsia, of generosity and compassion because they look like the acts of someone who’s naïve."

I would hasten to add - they fear they look like someone who's not manly enough. We live in a culture where telling someone they "have balls" is the highest compliment. And the equation of bravery with masculinity is done without any self-consciousness whatsoever. And yet there's still so many idiots who won't STFU with their endless whining about "political correctness."

I believe I will go and subscribe to the Keen Company.

More at the NYTimes

Misogynist of the year - Pat Oliphant

Over at Pandagon, Amanda and friends got into an uproar over Gloria Steinem's recent NYTimes column (I blogged about it recently) about how gender discrimination is worse than racial discrimination.

To realize how right Steinem is, just consider if Oliphant had published an editorial cartoon which was as racist as this cartoon is sexist. There would be a media shitstorm over it, and Oliphant would probably lose his job.

And somebody should tell Oliphant that at Senator Clinton's age, PMS is probably not an issue. What a fucking moron.

Quick! Take the Dowd Antidote!

You simply cannot live in a world where a grade A fancy ninny like Maureen Dowd is considered an important pundit without taking a regular antidote.

My antidote of choice is Bob Somerby of the DAILY HOWLER. I couldn't resist quoting his entire January 9 howl of anguish over her mind-boggling Dowd-osity.

ASTOUNDING: Obviously, there is nothing left to say about Maureen Dowd. On December 30, the nation’s most visible public crackpot wrote a deeply strange year-end column about having a faith healer come to her home to “clear” it of karmic disorder. (And no, she didn’t seem to be joking—click here.) This morning, she gives us a look at the giants among whom she works. Incredibly, her extra-long piece is headlined thus: “Can Hillary Cry Her Way to the White House?” Even we were startled:

DOWD (1/9/08): When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.

A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the ''humanized'' Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. ''We are at war,'' he said. ''Is this how she'll talk to Kim Jong-il?''

Another reporter joked: ''That crying really seemed genuine. I'll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.'' He added dryly: ''Crying doesn't usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.''

Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.


There you see them, swapping quips in their small, cramped part of the palace.

Jesus, what a gang of losers! Clinton was “doing the Muskie,” Dowd says. Of course, as we recently noted, David Broder acknowledged, long ago, that Muskie quite likely didn’t “do the Muskie” himself (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/28/07), but people like Dowd never drop preferred stories. Indeed, she may be showing professional courtesy; “the Muskie” is one of the few confections about Major Hopefuls of the last half-century which she herself didn’t invent. (Al Gore said he inspired Love Story! And: George H. W. Bush asked for a splash of coffee! And: John Kerry said, Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR! The crackpot helped dream them all up.)

Beyond that, note the portrait Dowd provides of the people around whom she works. (It’s odd to think that she goes to an office to write about her ghost-busting.) A security expert thinks the next president will be chatting it up with Kim Jong-Il. Others offer hackneyed quips about the way Clinton was faking—although she obviously wasn’t. (If you don’t know that, you don’t understand why acting schools exist.) But the dopes who write our big newspapers instinctively rush to such speculations. (They did the same with Romney in the past few weeks.) Maybe the faith healer has a good friend who can freshen the air inside heads?

Dowd’s whole column today is appalling, even by her own bizarre standards. (Clearly, the Times has gone way past the point of embarrassment.) Her remarks about LBJ are utterly stupid. (“Living Democrats” know that Johnson was a giant of the civil rights movement, despite the tragedy of Vietnam. Dr. King also knew that.) She offers the standard non-analysis analysis of the Kyl-Lieberman vote. (Do you think she has any idea what the measure may have entailed?) She says Bill Clinton put Bush in the White House through his affair with Miss Lewinsky, who must appear in all such columns. (We agree with Dowd’s assessment. But did she herself put Bush in the White House when she invented the Love Story blather, months before we’d heard of Monica? When she wrote, from the soul of her spreading illness, that Candidate Gore “is so feminized...he’s practically lactating?”) And then too, inevitably, there’s feigned non-comprehension:


DOWD: [I]n the end, she had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press. Hillary has barely talked to the press throughout her race even though the Clintons this week whined mightily that the press prefers Obama.

Should Clinton engage the press more? It’s hard to say. But duh! Targeted pols avoid the press because they know they’re targets. To state the blindingly obvious, that’s why Gore had to stop talking to reporters after Dowd invented the Love Story claptrap—after it became abundantly clear that every trivial, accurate comment would now be used against him. Often, we liberals still don’t seem to understand these dynamics; we echo complaints like this by Dowd—and we haven’t yet come to understand that we have to defend all our leaders, even those whom we might not prefer. Of course, life-forms like Dowd will always pretend they don’t understand this game either.

There’s very little left to say about this gruesome figure. But we liberals still haven’t publicly defined Dowd’s cohort, whom we mock among ourselves as “the Villagers.” Average people still haven’t heard about their culture—this average person, for example:


LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (1/3/08): I have been a daily Times reader for nearly 40 years, beginning with my first subscription at my New England preparatory school in the 1960s.

The opinion section has always drawn me into thoughtful discussion, with distinguished columnists from William Safire to Maureen Dowd, and from Paul Krugman to David Brooks (about whom I still have doubts).

But surely something has gone wrong when The Times embraces William Kristol, one of the neocon architects of the Bush administration's failed first-strike Iraq strategy, and an unapologetic hawk on similar aggression against Iran.


Good God. This reader still thinks Dowd is a “distinguished columnist” offering “thoughtful discussions.” Liberals should flesh out our ideas about “the Village”—and make sure that such voters have heard them.

For decades, people like this have been told that the Dowds are driven by a vile “liberal bias.” They’ve heard it over and over again; indeed, they still seem to think that the press is “too liberal” when it covers elections (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/20/07). We mock Village morés—among ourselves. We need to do what conservatives did—we need to find ways to tell the public, not just ourselves, about this broken-souled clan.

Go Gloria!

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects "only" the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more "masculine" for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren't too many of them); and because there is still no "right" way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

More from Gloria Steinem in the NYTimes

And the assholes rush to prove her right: Protesters Ask Clinton to Iron Shirts
Calling them "protestors" gives them far too much respect.

Righteous smackdown of moronic 'men are from mars women are from venus' play

This is what you get once you start letting women review plays

The outdated assumption of Matt Morillo’s two-character play at Theater for the New City is that girls just want to get married...

...Mr. Morillo, who also wrote and directed “Angry Young Women in Low-Rise Jeans With High-Class Issues,” seems to be reaching for some up-to-the-minute social observation. What he has done instead is channel some ghosts from lame old comedies.

No wonder the male-dominated NYTimes and the male-dominated NY theatre world have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the scary 21st century, where female voices are heard more often than 5 - 7% of the time!

What am I, gay?

The top ten search words that lead to this blog, according to my Site Meter are:

1. guys gone wild
2. gay
3. ladyboys
4. gay men
5. gay dude
6. girls gone wild
7. smurfette
8. gays
9. gay guys
10. ladyboy

Eight out of ten are directly about The Gay. Although I'm hetero I'm certainly not against the gay. But I only have like one post each about ladyboys and guys gone wild. Just goes to show you how popular it is to search for those things. And now this post will increase my gay traffic by 100% most likely.

Quite a few of these gay searches come from Iran. Oh, wait, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (here is his official web site) said there are no homosexuals in Iran. Must be some kind of scholarly research.

Snagglepuss - Live and Lion

Heavens to Mergatroyd - it's Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle.

Snagglepuss becomes a vegetarian it seems. And he teaches Yakky how to exit, stage left.

wow, what a concept for a radio show

On BBC Radio 4 Advice to the Living: "People who only have a short time left to live give advice to the rest of us about what matters and what doesn't, and about enjoying every moment."

I'd listen but I'm afraid I'll either end up depressed, or I'll be exhorted to live each moment to the fullest - which sounds great in theory, but on a practical level must be exhausting.

Big Bad Republicans

This blog post at Cogitamus is genius

Republicans match Buffy universe bad guys.


The Mayor
They're both clever and generically slick politicians, programmed to appeal to middle America. I can't watch Mitt without thinking of the Demon Mayor of Sunnydale, and that's what inspired this whole list.

Alton Brown and Delicious

Well I started the new year with yet another dream about Alton Brown. Although this dream was not nearly as erotic as the first one, there was definitely an undercurrent of desire.

Alton Brown is the host of the Food Network show "Good Eats and is the They Might Be Giants of cooking*. Or as the Village Voice called him, Dorkus Majorkus.

But it isn't just the science nerd aspect of Brown that I find attractive, it's his wacky sense of humor. And his charisma. (See the video posted below.)

And although he is totally masculine - he's got a square jaw and nice solid build - the Village Voice, in another article notes:

On his popular series Good Eats - an eccentric cooking show riddled with sketch comedy and scientific explanations - Brown flaunts his wimpiness like a badge of honor. In one running gag, his PTA-president sister orders him to make dozens of doughnuts for a bake sale; Brown meekly complies with her ever changing wishes, even when she insists he buy all the leftover doughnuts himself.

Not to mention uttering his trademark Winnie-the-Pooism "oh bother." No wonder he drives me wild with desire!

Another favorite phrase of his is "golden brown and delicious" which he inevitably abbreviates to GBD.

And I'm not the only one who notices Brown's alluring je ne sais quoi:Alton Brown is too sexy


===================
They Might Be Giants recorded a song called "Why Does the Sun Shine" that begins:
"The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace.
Where hydrogen is built into helium at temperature of millions of degrees."

Good Eats S3E6P1: Three Chips For Sister Marsha

How many other cooking show hosts would throw out a phrase like "another socio-culinary quagmire"?

Oh their prophetic soul...

Back in January 2001, The Onion predicted the future under the guise of "humor."

WASHINGTON, DC – Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street. "

How did I miss this weeks ago?

It turns out that the Nobel-winning geneticist who was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” is inherently 16 percent African, or an amount of “someone who had a great-grandparent who was African,” according to a scientist who made the discovery.

more at the NYTimes

I wonder what those racist freaks at GNXP have to say about that? I'll go over there eventually... when I haven't just eaten...

Well I went over there - big surprise - they somehow failed to mention it throughout the entire month of December. Although you do get to see how much they love Lawrence Summers and hate Jared Diamond. Another big surprise.

GNXP - your source for "scientific" racism on the web.

Watch The Trailer for Michael Moore's 'SiCKO'

If you haven't seen SiCKO yet, SEE IT!!!! You'll develop the deep and abiding hatred for the American health care system that is step 1 in changing it.

If you don't tear up in the last half hour of this film, when they are in Cuba, you are made of stone.

step 2: don't vote for a Republican under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!

their beloved Invisible Hand

Roy at Alicublog is often brilliant, but never more so than recently, when he said:

That, comrades, is capitalism. Ad agencies don't get their strategies from Satan or the Democratic Party -- they get them from market data, laboriously collected and analyzed. And they employ them because they bring in money.

Conservatives often seem to miss, when raging about the stuff on their teevees, that it's really their beloved Invisible Hand that's slapping them in the face. They would rather believe it was Betty Friedan. If they stopped to consider how much of the damage they perceive to their "culture" is actually done by the free market, it would drive them mad.

Ben Brantley reminds us the theatre world is still completely male-dominated

Especially when it comes to "serious" plays. Not one of his top ten favorite plays this year is written by a woman. But Brantley loves him those manly man playwrights. The more brutal and manly the better.

Almost every aspect of human endeavor is less male-dominated than theatre. How fucked up is that.

Mary Poppins

Votes for Women - step in time!

This is why Mary Poppins is a very good movie.

Krugman & I

We are on the same wavelength!

“Fed shrugged as subprime crisis spread,” was the headline on a New York Times report on the failure of regulators to regulate. This may have been a discreet dig at Mr. Greenspan’s history as a disciple of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism known for her novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

In a 1963 essay for Ms. Rand’s newsletter, Mr. Greenspan dismissed as a “collectivist” myth the idea that businessmen, left to their own devices, “would attempt to sell unsafe food and drugs, fraudulent securities, and shoddy buildings.” On the contrary, he declared, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.”

When I read that headline I thought exactly the same thing - a reference to Ayn Rand!

Is there a Pulitzer for Best Headline?

HELP HELP I'M BEING REPRESSED

"I mean if I went round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"

Dar Williams -

"The Christians and the Pagans"
This should be a holiday standard.

I confess this song has choked me up a few times.


The lyrics

Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay"
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three
He told his niece, "It's Christmas eve, I know our life is not your style"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
And where does magic come from, I think magic's in the learning
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning

When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother"
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here"
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve saying
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave"

So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold

A handy list of Yule Rituals for all you pagans

Family Yule Ritual

Solitary Yule Ritual

She-Wolf Yule Ritual

Winter Solstice Ritual

Yule at Wikipedia

Coven Yule Ritual

Mr. McFuzz is a star

Watch his Quicktime reel

Mr. McFuzz is his stage name. His actual name is Spike.

He has also appeared in kittenwars.com

My other cat, Willow, refuses to perform or pose for the camera.

Nudity Required, No Pay

Nudity Required, No Pay is an excellent blog for actors, especially female actors, all about the exploitation of actors in the theatre world.

You can get a sense of the attitude towards actors by some theatre producers here - this email was written by the director who took a copy of my script, slapped his stage directions on it, then sued me for violating HIS copyright when I went to produce my play. He doesn't have any respect for playwrights either.

I'm thinking of moving to Minnesota

Yay for Al Franken!