David Mamet is a teabagger

*** This post contains spoilers about RACE by David Mamet ***

I can't believe that nobody except me and a right-winger picked up on the similarity between the straw-woman character Susan in RACE with her crazed college thesis, and the vicious, out-of-context misrepresentation of Michelle Obama's college thesis that was trumpeted by the right-wing smear machine.

To quote one of the emails that went around during the 2008 election and reprinted on the web sites of many teabaggers:

Michele Obama clearly has a chip on her shoulder.

Not only does she see separate black and white societies in America, but also she elevates black over white in her world.
...

Michelle Obama does not look into a crowd of Obama supporters and see Americans. She sees black people and white people eternally conflicted with one another.

The last sentence is an EXACT description of Susan's thesis.

Fox News' Sean Hannity also promoted the smear.

The urban legend web site snopes.org explains:

Much scrutiny and discussion has been focused on a single phrase contained within the thesis, the statement that "blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor." This phrase has repeatedly been quoted out of context and presented as if it reflected Michelle Obama's own philosophy, but in its full context it is clearly her speculation about what she thought some of the respondents she surveyed for her thesis (i.e., students who had attended Princeton in earlier years) might have been feeling:

As discussed earlier, most respondents were attending Princeton during the 70's, at a time when the Black Power Movement was still influencing the attitudes of many Blacks.

It is possible that Black individuals either chose to or felt pressure to come together with other Blacks on campus because of the belief that Blacks must join in solidarity to combat a White oppressor. As the few blacks in a white environment it is understandable that respondents might have felt a need to look out for one another.

The Tea Party as such was not around during the 2008 election, but this incident is strikingly similar to the recent Shirley Sherrod case - a black woman smeared as a racist when her words were taken out of context - and this time they did some real damage.

Here is a piece of "satire" recently written by Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams:

Dear Mr. Lincoln

We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!

In fact we held a big meeting and took a vote in Kansas City this week. We voted to condemn a political revival of that old abolitionist spirit called the 'tea party movement'.

The tea party position to "end the bailouts" for example is just silly. Bailouts are just big money welfare and isn't that what we want all Coloreds to strive for? What kind of racist would want to end big money welfare? What they need to do is start handing the bail outs directly to us coloreds! Of course, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the only responsible party that should be granted the right to disperse the funds.

And the ridiculous idea of "reduce[ing] the size and intrusiveness of government." What kind of massa would ever not want to control my life? As Coloreds we must have somebody care for us otherwise we would be on our own, have to think for ourselves and make decisions!

The racist tea parties also demand that the government "stop the out of control spending." Again, they directly target coloreds. That means we Coloreds would have to compete for jobs like everybody else and that is just not right.

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we coloreds ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

Mr. Lincoln, you were the greatest racist ever. We had a great gig. Three squares, room and board, all our decisions made by the massa in the house. Please repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments and let us get back to where we belong.

Sincerely

Precious Ben Jealous, Tom's Nephew
NAACP Head Colored Person

As blogger Lindsay Beyerstein notes:

Last week, the NAACP passed a resolution at its annual convention asking Tea Party leaders to condemn the racists in their ranks. The NAACP was right on the money. Regardless of whether you think the average Tea Party supporter is racist, overt racists regularly show up and make headlines at their events. Tea Party leaders would have you believe that they're a fringe element that is absolutely not representative of the core values of the Tea Party. So, the leaders should be only too eager to publicly distance themselves from the ugly fringe, right?

Wrong. Instead, one major Tea Party group doubled down, accusing the NAACP of racism.

The large and influential Tea Party Express withdrew from the National Tea Party Federation rather than rebuke TPE executive director Mark Williams for a satirical blog post in the voice of "Precious Benjamin Jealous", "Tom’s Nephew National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Head Colored Person"[sic]. (The current president of the NAACP is named Benjamin Todd Jealous.)

...

Williams later tried to defend himself by saying that the piece was satirical, that he was using the absurd to illustrate the absurd. Satire to underscore an offensive point is still offensive. The point Williams was trying to drive home with all the juicy stereotypes about "coloreds" and their "wide screen TVs" is that anyone who thinks the Tea Party is racist is the real racist for wanting to perpetuate slavery.

This is the kind of bizarro hall-of-mirrors logic that typifies the Tea Party rhetoric around race. Their favorite language game is "Who's the Real Racist"? Whenever anyone accuses the Tea Party of racism, they accuse the accuser of racism.

This game of Who's the Real Racist is a game that David Mamet likes to play too. In an essay he wrote for the NYTimes right before RACE opened he quotes Chris Rock:

Chris Rock, in his last tour, addressed the subject of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and asked, rhetorically and on behalf of the whites in the audience: Is it possible that a 70-year-old black man hates the whites? Let me enlighten you. You cannot find a 70-year-old black man who does not hate the whites.

This made sense to me. (I apologize to the esteemed Mr. Rock for what I am sure is a clunky paraphrase.)

Presumably because Chris Rock is black and therefore in Mamet's mind an authority on the racial views of 70-year-old black men, it's OK for Mamet to agree with this incredibly racist statement. Imagine for a moment if Michelle Obama said: "you cannot find a 70-year-old white man who does not hate the blacks."

Mamet then goes on to his very favorite tactic, false equivalence:

There has always been, at the very least, a little bit of hate between blacks and whites in this country, with each side, in its turn, taking advantage of its political strength (as who does not?). But that relationship is also perhaps like a marriage. Both sides at different times are bitching, and both at different times are bailing, but we’re all in the same boat.

You see it's a level playing field. Blacks taking advantage of political strength is the equivalent of hundreds of years during which whites held blacks in slavery, plus another hundred years of terrorism, bigotry, vote supression etc. etc.

RACE is full of the constant drumbeat of blacks hate whites, whites hate blacks over and over again, in between the incessant lawyer jokes. Mamet's message is clearly along the lines of, hey, let's not argue about who is the victim - we ALL are because we are ALL racists and liars.

The rightwing loves false equivalence as Media Matters for America documents.

And as in OLEANNA, Mamet completely stacks the deck. Even though it seems like he's saying we are all equal in our racial hatred, the villain of the piece is Susan (all the other characters get last names) who is basically inhuman and possesses a Terminator-like obsession to get whitey.

I am quite serious. The character has nothing to say about anything except race. She doesn't appear to have any friends, or relatives, or hobbies, or even very much to do in the law office where the entire play is set. She is presented as a bright woman with an Ivy-league law degree, she has talent the white lawyer guy says. But she throws it all away in order to set up her law firm, make them take a case and then make sure they lose the case. She destroys her own career, which presumably she worked very hard for. So that she can hurt a colleague who is fond of her.

And the final proof given for her insane obsessive hatred for whitey is when a portion of her thesis is read aloud during the play. (I will get down the the Dramatists Book Store soon and copy it down and post it here.)

Susan is a straw-woman like Carol from OLEANNA, but she is an even more fearsome invention than Carol. Carol is clearly a pawn of The Group, as I wrote about in my essay about OLEANNA History is Written by the Winners, and can only work her dastardly will on John through the amazing influence and reach of The Group, with its daring scheme to censor heroic John's work through a trumped up rape charge.

But Susan - wow, she is amazing! She seems to have no need for the corrupting influences of a Group, she soaked up the evil all on her own, from the very reverse-racist atmosphere of Academia itself. And she executes her scheme to destroy poor white lawyer guy - making sure that they take the case, making witnesses change their testimony all by her lonesome. But maybe she doesn't care that she completely destroyed her legal career - with those powers she could get a gig as a Super Villain in any comic book universe.

I mentioned one right-winger got it, Harry Stein writing in the City Journal:

Late in David Mamet’s recently premiered Race, something happens that, for those accustomed to the pro forma left-liberalism of typical Broadway fare, is little short of stunning. The play deals with a black-white legal team defending a prominent white client accused of raping a powerless, young black woman. They’ve just learned that the centerpiece of their ingenious strategy to prove his innocence was leaked to the prosecution—the culprit being their stylish, newly minted female black associate, the protégé of the white, liberal attorney (James Spader). The black attorney (David Allen Grier) is irate. He’d warned his partner not to hire her, knowing from the start that she’d be trouble, that she’d put race loyalty above the firm’s interests and even the truth. How could he have known all that, wonders his chastened colleague? Grier stalks over to a file, pulls out the young woman’s college thesis, and begins reading aloud. It's full of the inchoate, anti-white rage characteristic of such efforts - indeed, it recalls Michelle Obama's at Princeton. You think you know this woman, Greer tells Spader; you think she likes you, but she's an affirmative-action babe, a perpetual victim. That's how she sees herself, and this is her revenge.

Talk about an electric theatrical moment! The play may be otherwise seriously flawed, but here is vintage Mamet — in fact, a new, even more daring Mamet. It's the Mamet conservative theater fans have been waiting for since he took on the issue of sexual harassment in Oleanna back in 1992; and even more so since he came out as a quasi-conservative early last year in a Village Voice essay entitled, "Why I Am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal"

Note he thinks the rest of the play may be flawed, but that moment there was just right. Because Harry Stein actually believes this creature exists, this "affirmative-action babe, a perpetual victim." And in fact, he thinks she is Michelle Obama.

Nobody has clued Harry Stein into the fact that the smear against Michelle Obama has been debunked - but unfortunately not only conservatives like Harry Stein are slow on the uptake - there are still liberals who let David Mamet slide because he's a Great Man of the Arts. Sarah Seltzer writes:

The nightmare that "Oleanna" predicted never happened. I hope that if Mamet took on the issue today, the results would be a bit different.

Mamet did not predict the nightmare that is OLEANNA - he believes the nightmare exists. Every bit as much as he believes that Susan exists - maybe he, like fellow conservative Harry Stein, even believes Michelle Obama is just like Susan.

Is he a card-carrying (or teabag carrying) member of the Tea Party? Probably not. But he would be perfectly comfortable hanging out with Tea Partiers, most of whom are, like Mamet a White, Republican, Older Male with Money

Now I admit I am a little surprised by the non-reaction to RACE. Whereas misogyny is perfectly acceptable from a Great Man of the Arts, and will not hurt a man's career in the least, as David Mamet demonstrates, I would have thought that more people would have called him out on RACE - but then again a good number of liberal arts-types defended admitted child-rapist Roman Polanski on the grounds that he's a Great Man of the Arts and shouldn't be held to the standards of mortals, so I guess they have no problem at all giving Mamet a pass for his paranoid reverse-racism obsession.

I'll leave the final word to a member of the demographic Mamet hates and fears the most - a female college student in the clutches of the corrupting liberal forces of Academia:

Last year, Mamet came to UT to conduct a writing seminar for several graduate and undergraduate playwrights and screenwriters. During the seminar, Mamet called Muslims terrorists and Arabs pedophiles. He also, unsurprisingly, spewed misogynist rhetoric in addition to his racist diatribe. Several students were shocked and appalled and took Mamet to task for his bigoted remarks. He countered with, "Why shouldn't we pick on Arabs? They blew up New York City."

My dinner with Linda

I did see RACE Wednesday night with my actor pal Linda and then we had dinner afterwards and trashed the play thoroughly. I'm too tired thanks to that nice big glass of wine to go into details now sports fans. But soon...

Eddie Izzard explains his executive transvestism

With any luck today I will see Eddie Izzard perform in "Race" - I'm not a big Mamet fan - but I am a big Izzard fan.

Eddie Izzard could NOT be any cooler - here he discusses feminism.

More J&B clips

Alas these clips are not the best in cinematography - but at least I have something to review for future reference...

Buddy has an unexpected response to a flickering light...

Buddy was once a beautiful butterfly - or a Greek god.

J&B - last six minutes of the 7/18/2010 performance

After dealing with you I should be a therapist.

Meta-city - Daniel playing Buddy playing Hamlet

The world has to be maintained.

JULIA & BUDDY wrap-up

Well the JULIA & BUDDY run is over all ready and that's probably a good thing - I don't know how much more schlepping around all the props & costumes I could stand.

I learned much about what needs to be tweaked in this play and discovered that several people thought there should be another act to the play - the audience wanting more is always a good thing. I also got feedback that the play seemed very short for 45 minutes - also a good thing.

The video quality of this clip is not professional even though the performances are - I had to record from the booth. But at least there is some record of the performances. More to come...

Mediocrities uber alles

Krugman demonstrates once again that most people are idiots - including - or especially - high-status alleged experts.

In short, it’s hard to think of a case less suited to tell us anything at all about fiscal stimulus under the conditions we now face. And the fact that a prominent commentator on current events apparently doesn’t know that, after a year and a half of debating this issue — well, as I said, I’m feeling fairly despairing.

The problem that Krugman now faces is unpopularity among decision-makers - pointing out the mistakes of mediocrities NEVER causes the mediocrities to rethink their own actions - it only makes them join up with other mediocrities to try to punish the Krugmans of the world, those who are clearly smarter and better than them - resentment pushes out self-reflection every. single. time.

You can see the coalition of the mediocrities in action - David Brooks, a true mediocrity if ever there was one - led the charge as I blogged on July 8. One of the weapons of the mediocrities is to ignore the fact that the Krugmans are right and focus on their view that the Krugmans are immodest.

This doesn't only happen in economics, of course. Rather, it's a standard group dynamic and a huge reason why human society is as screwed up as it is. Mediocrities always rule through sheer force of numbers.

oh Krugman...

I know you're right but you're soooo depressing!

Of course, flirting with crisis is arguably part of the plan. There has always been a sense in which voodoo economics was a cover story for the real doctrine, which was “starve the beast”: slash revenue with tax cuts, then demand spending cuts to close the resulting budget gap. The point is that starve the beast basically amounts to deliberately creating a fiscal crisis, in the belief that the crisis can be used to push through unpopular policies, like dismantling Social Security.

more on evil Republican schemes at the NYTimes...

*sigh* I need something less depressing to think about... I know!

Daniel Genalo in the forthcoming Marie Claire "Broadway" edition:



Please note that he is wearing the hanging-down suspenders that I admired not so long ago on the Steampunk Cutie here on this blog. Daniel claims it was his own idea to go with the suspenders like this - I sure hope this catches on!

This man has the most amazing abs - it's worth the price of admission to see JULIA & BUDDY just to get to look at his abs through the semi-transparent white tank top. His abs are like a third character in the play.

Oliver's Army

Nothing better than early Elvis



Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I put the world to right

Call careers information
Have you got yourself an occupation

Oliver's army is here to stay
Oliver's army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
But here today

There was a checkpoint Charlie
He didn't crack a smile
But it's no laughing party
When you've been on the murder mile

Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger

(Chorus)

Hong Kong is up for grabs
London is full of Arabs
We could be in Palestine
Overrun by a Chinese line
With the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne

But there's no danger
It's a professional career
Though it could be arranged
With just a word in Mr. Churchill's ear

If you're out of luck or out of work
We could send you to Johannesburg

The men of Mergatroyd Productions

	Daniel Genalo as "Buddy" in JULIA & BUDDY
	Nick Fondulis as "Angry Jesus" in PERSONAL JESUS
	Nat Cassidy as "St. John Rivers" in JANE EYRE
	Nick Lowe as "Tam Lin" in TAM LIN
	Mike Giorgio as "Oliver" in SODOM & GOMORRAH: THE ONE-MAN SHOW
	Greg Oliver Bodine as "Rochester" in JANE EYRE

One thing that Mergatroyd Productions does especially well is glorify masculine pulchritude. And that's because I am a big fan of masculine pulchritude and I call the shots for Mergatroyd. If a straight man was calling the shots things would be very different.

I know this from hard experience. If my play is directed by a man I invariably will have to fight with him to ensure that the actor cast in a role of a man who is supposed to be attractive (especially to female characters) actually is attractive. Now I have fairly wide-ranging taste as can be seen in the images above of men who have had roles in Mergatroyd Productions shows - and charisma counts for alot - but he has to have something going on that women will find attractive.

Two examples to illustrate: Edward Einhorn, the world's biggest asshole, tried to cast an obviously effeminate man in the role of TAM LIN in the 2004 production. The effeminate man was OK looking but he would be read immediately as gay by any woman - and not just as himself - his Tam Lin read as gay too. I insisted on the beautiful Nick Lowe who had already played TL in the 2003 production.

The only director whose direction of a play of mine I've really liked is Oliver Butler - he directed my BLESSINGS OF THE SUN GOD in 2003. But even he failed on the masculine pulchritude front - he cast a very average-looking guy in a role which the script clearly describes as beautiful - the character was based on my gorgeous friend Earl Rich. But since I wasn't producing, I didn't make an issue out of it.

Straight men are resistant to casting attractive men for two reasons - homophobia - sometimes unacknowledged homophobia - and resentment of masculine beauty. Some men will go so far as to claim that they don't know what a good-looking guy looks like - you know, because they are soooo extreeeeemly heterosexual. They do know. But it is not in their ego's interest to promote a man whom women will be clearly sexually attracted to.

There's also the fact that since men have been running the world for the past several millenia and have had things their own way, our culture will naturally tend to favor the straight male view of beauty - famously known as "the male gaze" - over straight female or gay male views.

And because men are still running everything - especially in the arts - the straight male gaze still dominates. You need look no further than the recently-released movie "Cyrus" to see that I'm right. The double-standard is alive and well because NO woman as unattractive as John C. Riley would ever be cast in a romantic lead role in a movie. We won't have equality until the beauty double-standard is gone.

Straight women need to see sexy men on stage every bit as much as straight men need to see sexy women. All that crap about women not being as visual as men is strictly evolutionary psychology propaganda.

But there's more to it than just casting an attractive man - you have to play up his attractiveness. You have to make sure his costume is flattering and if he has a nice body, let him flaunt it. His hair has to look nice and he should wear at least some make-up.

And finally there's the role itself - it has to let the sexy man strut his stuff. You have to be able to understand why the female character wants him so much, and not just because the script says so.

jolly good show!

Well JULIA & BUDDY came off tonight virtually without a hitch! Which was a miracle because I was doing the sound & lights with completely unfamiliar equipment.

But also - Kat and Daniel just completely wowed the audience. And many people felt like there should be more to the story of JULIA & BUDDY - which I plan to do.

the J&B program

Sexytime

Well I knew my play was pretty sexy, but wow, Daniel and Kat took the sexiness to another level entirely!

J&B opens today!

I'm talking pedicure on our toes toes

There's something about this video clip that really gets to me - the symbolism of soldiers on patrol suddenly busting out into a dance routine, and to this, of all songs. The lyrics:

Wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy
(Hey, what up girl?)
Put my glasses on, I’m out the door - I’m gonna hit this city (Let’s go)
Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack
Cause when I leave for the night, I ain’t coming back
I’m talking - pedicure on our toes, toes
Trying on all our clothes, clothes
Boys blowing up our phones, phones
Drop-toping, playing our favorite cds
Pulling up to the parties
Trying to get a little bit tipsy

[CHORUS]
Don’t stop, make it pop
DJ, blow my speakers up
Tonight, I’mma fight
‘Til we see the sunlight
Tick tock, on the clock
But the party don’t stop no
Woah-oh oh oh
Woah-oh oh oh

[Chorus]
Ain’t got a care in world, but got plenty of beer
Ain’t got no money in my pocket, but I’m already here
Now, the dudes are lining up cause they hear we got swagger
But we kick ‘em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger
I’m talking about - everybody getting crunk, crunk
Boys trying to touch my junk, junk
Gonna smack him if he getting too drunk, drunk
Now, now - we goin’ til they kick us out, out
Or the police shut us down, down
Police shut us down, down
Po-po shut us -
Don’t stop, make it pop
DJ, blow my speakers up
Tonight, I’mma fight
‘Til we see the sunlight
Tick tock, on the clock
But the party don’t stop no
Woah-oh oh oh
Woah-oh oh oh

Wikipedia entry about this video

Mark Twain speaks

The NYTimes has another story on the forthcoming unexpurgated edition of Mark Twain's autobiography. There are some excerpts from the University of California Press. One bit in particular from one of the excerpts I found especially interesting since it touches on issues I deal with in my upcoming play CELIA:

...I was taken from school at once, upon my father's death, and placed in the office of the Hannibal Courier, as printer’s apprentice, and Mr. Ament, the editor and proprietor of the paper, allowed me the usual emolument of the office of apprentice - that is to say board and clothes, but no money. The clothes consisted of two suits a year, but one of the suits always failed to materialize and the other suit was not purchased so long as Mr. Ament’s old clothes held out. I was only about half as big as Ament, consequently his shirts gave me the uncomfortable sense of living in a circus-tent, and I had to turn up his pants to my ears to make them short enough.

There were two other apprentices. One was Wales McCormick, seventeen or eighteen years old and a giant. When he was in Ament's clothes they fitted him as the candle-mould fits the candle—thus he was generally in a suffocated condition, particularly in the summertime. He was a reckless, hilarious, admirable creature; he had no principles, and was delightful company. At first we three apprentices had to feed in the kitchen with the old slave cook and her very handsome and bright and well-behaved young mulatto daughter. For his own amusement - for he was not generally laboring for other people's amusement - Wales was constantly and persistently and loudly and elaborately making love to that mulatto girl and distressing the life out of her and worrying the old mother to death. She would say "Now Marse Wales, Marse Wales, can't you behave yourself?" With encouragement like that, Wales would naturally renew his attentions and emphasize them. It was killingly funny to Ralph and me. And, to speak truly, the old mother's distress about it was merely a pretense. She quite well understood that by the customs of slave-holding communities it was Wales's right to make love to that girl if he wanted to. But the girl's distress was very real. She had a refined nature, and she took all Wales’s extravagant love-making in resentful earnest.

The book isn't all about threats of rape of course. This Wales was quite a character and luckily Twain was there so he could later immortalize his hijinks:

(Alexander Campbell) preached a sermon on one of these occasions which he had written especially for that occasion. All the Campbellites wanted it printed, so that they could save it and read it over and over again, and get it by heart. So they drummed up sixteen dollars, which was a large sum then, and for this great sum Mr. Ament contracted to print five hundred copies of that sermon and put them in yellow paper covers. it was a sixteen-page duodecimo pamphlet, and it was a great event in our office. As we regarded it, it was a book, and it promoted us to the dignity of book printers. Moreover, no such mass of actual money as sixteen dollars, in one bunch, had ever entered that office on any previous occasion. People didn’t pay for their paper and for their advertising in money, they paid in dry-goods, sugar, coffee, hickory wood, oak wood, turnips, pumpkins, onions, watermelons—and it was very seldom indeed that a man paid in money, and when that happened we thought there was something the matter with him.

We set up the great book in pages - eight pages to a form—and by help of a printer's manual we managed to get the pages in their apparently crazy but really sane places on the imposing - stone. We printed that form on a Thursday. Then we set up the remaining eight pages, locked them into a form and struck a proof. Wales read the proof, and presently was aghast, for he had struck a snag. And it was a bad time to strike a snag, because it was Saturday; it was approaching noon; Saturday afternoon was our holiday, and we wanted to get away and go fishing. At such a time as this, Wales struck that snag and showed us what had happened. He had left out a couple of words in a thin-spaced page of solid matter and there wasn’t another break - line for two or three pages ahead. What in the world was to be done? overrun all those pages in order to get in the two missing words? Apparently there was no other way. it would take an hour to do it. Then a revise must be sent to the great minister; we must wait for him to read the revise; if he encountered any errors we must correct them. It looked as if we might lose half the afternoon before we could get away. Then Wales had one of his brilliant ideas. in the line in which the “out” had been made occurred the name Jesus Christ. Wales reduced that to J. C.

It made room for the missing words, but it took 99 per cent of the solemnity out of a particularly solemn sentence. We sent off the revise and waited. We were not intending to wait long. In the circumstances we meant to get out and go fishing before that revise should get back, but we were not speedy enough. Presently that great Alexander Campbell appeared at the far end of that sixty - foot room, and his countenance cast a gloom over the whole place. He strode down to our end and what he said was brief but it was very stern, and it was to the point. He read Wales a lecture. He said "So long as you live, don't you ever diminish the Savior's name again. Put it all in." He repeated this admonition a couple of times to emphasize it, then he went away.

In that day the common swearers of the region had a way of their own of emphasizing the Savior's name when they were using it profanely, and this fact intruded itself into Wales’s incorrigible mind. It offered him an opportunity for a momentary entertainment which seemed to him to be more precious and more valuable than even fishing and swimming could afford. So he imposed upon himself the long and weary and dreary task of overrunning all those three pages in order to improve upon his former work and incidentally and thoughtfully improve upon the great preacher's admonition. He enlarged the offending J. C. into Jesus H. Christ. Wales knew that that would make prodigious trouble, and it did. But it was not in him to resist it. He had to succumb to the law of his make. I don’t remember what his punishment was, but he was not the person to care for that. He had already collected his dividend.

Good times in Missouri.

B or not B

Patrick Stewart on Sesame Street



I've never directed Shakespeare's work, but just the little bit of Shakespeare I've inserted into JULIA & BUDDY has been fun to work on. I really need to tackle AS YOU LIKE IT - that's the play that really turned me onto Shakespeare when I was a teenager and saw the BBC's version on television. Remember television?

Newflash: men have a much higher opinion of their own intelligence than women

This story is over a year old but I doubt anything has changed:

"We found a consistent difference in how intelligent men and women believe themselves to be; with men giving themselves significantly higher levels of intelligence in all 12 counties. Not only did men award themselves high scores in traditional male abilities like spatial and logical reasoning, they also gave themselves higher ratings in verbal ability...

.."These results do not reflect any actual differences between men and women's levels of intelligence," added Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. "Rather, our study shows that men like to have a high opinion of themselves and are prone to over-estimate their level of intelligence while women are more modest, and even under-estimate their own intelligence.

Krugman vs. Brooks - talk about an uneven matchup.

Oh David Brooks, why must you fight a battle of wits unarmed???

---

Brooks: These Demand Siders have very high I.Q.’s, but they seem to be strangers to doubt and modesty. They have total faith in their models. But all schools of economic thought have taken their lumps over the past few years. Are you really willing to risk national insolvency on the basis of a model? Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong? The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years. There is no way to know for sure how well the last stimulus worked because we don’t know what would have happened without it. But it is certainly true that the fiscal spigots have been wide open. The U.S. and most other countries have run up huge, historic deficits. And while this has helped save public-sector jobs, we certainly haven’t seen much private-sector job growth. It could be that government spending is a weak lever to counter economic cycles. Maybe monetary policy is the only strong tool we have.

The Mighty Krugman A quick note on David Brooks’s column today. I have no idea what he’s talking about when he says, The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn’t nearly big enough. And as I’ve been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world. But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense: Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong? Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence. I’ve looked hard at the arguments the Pain Caucus is making, the evidence that supposedly supports their case — and there’s no there there. And you just have to wonder how it’s possible to have lived through the last ten years and still imagine that because a lot of Serious People believe something, you should believe it too. Iraq? Housing bubble? Inflation? (It’s worth remembering that Trichet actually raised rates in June 2008, because he believed that inflation — not the financial crisis — was the big threat facing Europe.) The moral I’ve taken from recent years isn’t Be Humble — it’s Question Authority. And you should too.

Steampunk cutie

If only this kind of look would become the fashion for men - long hair, waistcoat and stuff hanging from the belt - and unless I'm seeing things, dude is wearing suspenders, but they are hanging down from his pants instead of around his shoulders, hidden by the vest. Nice use of a utilitarian devise for pure decorative effect!

Julia & Buddy video clips

I AM a maintenance man!

more clips here

Julia & Buddy pix

Daniel Genalo performs very briefly as Hamlet in this show. However, he's never performed as Hamlet in the actual play HAMLET - but maybe he should, he looks damn good in Hamlet gear.

more Julia & Buddy pix.

Julia & Buddy song

Julia & Buddy theme song take 2 - I really like the intro - the guitar line seems so formless, until the bass line comes in and anchors it to a beat and then the drums pull it all together. Fun!

on the curriculum part 2

Another college, the University of Alabama links to my cultural-materialism.org web site.

The Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes

That Schopenhauer - he usually has something astute to say about everything :

...sexual love is compatible even with the extremest hate toward its object: therefore Plato has compared it to the love of the wolf for the sheep. This case appears when a passionate lover, in spite of all efforts and entreaties, cannot obtain a favorable hearing on any condition:-

"I love her and hate her."
- SHAKESPEARE, Cymbeline, iii. 5.

...Not one but many a Petrarch has there been who was compelled to drag through life the unsatisfied ardor of love, like a fetter, an iron weight at his foot, and breathe his sighs in lonely woods; but only in the one Petrarch dwelt also the gift of poetry; so that Goethe's beautiful lines hold good of him:-

"And when in misery the man was dumb
A god gave me the power to tell my sorrow."

Petrarchan sonnet at Wikipedia


Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems by Petrarch

SONNET CXLV.

Amor mi sprona in un tempo ed affrena.

HE HEARS THE VOICE OF REASON, BUT CANNOT OBEY.

Love in one instant spurs me and restrains,
Assures and frightens, freezes me and burns,
Smiles now and scowls, now summons me and spurns,
In hope now holds me, plunges now in pains:
Now high, now low, my weary heart he hurls,
Until fond passion loses quite the path,
And highest pleasure seems to stir but wrath—
My harass'd mind on such strange errors feeds!
A friendly thought there points the proper track,
Not of such grief as from the full eye breaks,
To go where soon it hopes to be at ease,
But, as if greater power thence turn'd it back,
Despite itself, another way it takes,
And to its own slow death and mine agrees.

*****

SONNET CXXVIII.

O passi sparsi, o pensier vaghi e pronti.

EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF HIS PASSION IS A TORMENT TO HIM.

O scatter'd steps! O vague and busy thoughts!
O firm-set memory! O fierce desire!
O passion powerful! O failing heart!
O eyes of mine, not eyes, but fountains now!
O leaf, which honourest illustrious brows,
Sole sign of double valour, and best crown!
O painful life, O error oft and sweet!
That make me search the lone plains and hard hills.
O beauteous face! where Love together placed
The spurs and curb, to strive with which is vain,
They prick and turn me so at his sole will.
O gentle amorous souls, if such there be!
And you, O naked spirits of mere dust,
Tarry and see how great my suffering is!

*****

SONNET CXLII.

Quando mi vene innanzi il tempo e 'l loco.

RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LOVE.

The time and scene where I a slave became
When I remember, and the knot so dear
Which Love's own hand so firmly fasten'd here,
Which made my bitter sweet, my grief a game;
My heart, with fuel stored, is, as a flame
Of those soft sighs familiar to mine ear,
So lit within, its very sufferings cheer;
On these I live, and other aid disclaim.
That sun, alone which beameth for my sight,
With his strong rays my ruin'd bosom burns
Now in the eve of life as in its prime,
And from afar so gives me warmth and light,
Fresh and entire, at every hour, returns
On memory the knot, the scene, the time.

Bond vigilantes and confidence fairies

Krugman makes a good case for the proposition that magical thinking is not limited to children or the religious:

So the next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you’ll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good. And real-world policy — policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families — is being built on that foundation.

more...

Mrs. Rosenfield Speaks

Another monologue from the NYCPlaywrights Worldwide Monologue Project complete. I said I'd get this one done in June and I did - with 30 minutes to spare!

This was the first time I tried a montage - it was fun. The Betty Boop clip is public domain - and there's plenty more available at online archives.

Only one more monologue left.

Ireland demonstrates the paradox of thrift

Krugman often talks about the paradox of thrift. Ireland is living it:

Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations.

“When our public finance situation blew wide open, the dominant consideration was ensuring that there was international investor confidence in Ireland so we could continue to borrow,” said Alan Barrett, chief economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute of Ireland. “A lot of the argument was, ‘Let’s get this over with quickly.’ ”

Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession.

Joblessness in this country of 4.5 million is above 13 percent, and the ranks of the long-term unemployed — those out of work for a year or more — have more than doubled, to 5.3 percent.

more at the NYTimes

ok Krugman, I sure hope you are wrong this time - for once!

The Third Depression

siiiiighhhhh...

H/C trope

It occurs to me that JULIA & BUDDY is basically a Hurt/Comfort story.

Hurt/Comfort has been around since the dawn of fiction, as the too-restrictively named Television Tropes endless matrix demonstrates, but it really takes the world of fan fiction to come up with snappy terms like Hurt/Comfort.

H/C is also big in the fan-fiction subcategory of "slash" fiction, which I've blogged about several times - and I wrote a one-act play called THE SLASH inspired by slash fiction. I even used the cargo cult trope before I realized there was one.

The reason H/C is so popular in slash is because it's a good excuse to get two same-sex (usually male) characters together in a state of vulnerability.

The J&B plot is a H/C switch-off. At first Julia is hurting thanks to her panic attack and Buddy keeps her company, then Julia becomes interested in Buddy's resentful-maintenance man schtick and by the end of the play discovers his hurt and then comforts him.

Rehearals begin today.

Up Against It

I had no idea that Joe Orton's screenplay "Up Against It" which he wrote with the Beatles in mind, had been produced for the stage until today - there's a review in the NYTimes from 1989. Says the review:

Following the screenplay, the story chronicles the misadventures of three prodigal friends (Orton had eliminated the George Harrison role after the Beatles turned down the script) who are victimized in a flagrant battle between the sexes. They become involved in a plot to assassinate the first female Prime Minister of Britain. Wherever McTurk turns, on land or at sea, he encounters the entire cast.

The book is spotted with rude Orton remarks about Church, State and sex. In response to a statement that a priest has been wrestling with his conscience all afternoon, McTurk asks, ''Who won?'' Such moments are far outweighed by the alterations in the script and by the interruption of Mr. Rundgren's score. The show, which is set in the 1960's, also reaches far afield for anachronistic jokes. (In her acceptance speech, the Prime Minister gushes, ''You like me, you really like me.'') Mistakes are exacerbated in Mr. Elliott's comic strip-style production. Best known for his direction of plays by Charles Busch, he approaches Orton in a similar vein, turning absurdist farce into camp caricature and overplaying the war of genders to the point of misogyny.

One of the pivotal decisions was whether to attempt to imitate the Beatles. The show's response is self-contradictory. The three characters speak in insecure Liverpool accents. Two have Beatle hairdos and mannerisms, while the third, Mr. Casnoff, acts less like a Beatle than like a Rolling Stone. Roger Bart, in the guise of Ringo Starr, is the closest to having a Beatle-mien, but, in common with his colleagues, he is undercut by the circumstances.

As Joe Orton wrote in his diary:

"I hadn't the heart to tell (Beatles film producer Walter Shenson) that the Beatles in my script have been caught in-flagrante, become involved in dubious political activity, dressed as women, committed murder, been put in prison and committed adultery. And the script isn't finished yet." 11th February 1967

Joe Orton was played by Gary Oldman in "Prick Up Your Ears." He talks about the Beatles script in this clip.



A friend of Orton's discusses his murder.

Actor Bruce Barton performs in a current production of Orton's "Loot".

another very good article by Katha Pollitt

As Kansas City teacher and social worker Mustafaa El Scari tells the down-and-out deadbeat dads in his fathering class, "All you are is a paycheck, and now you ain't even that. And if you try to exercise your authority, she'll call 911." Excuse me, exercise your authority? Are men really so brittle that they can't imagine a more fluid, flexible, loving, egalitarian way of relating to women and children than "because I said so"? Can they really not take advantage of the expansion of female-dominated working-class jobs like nursing and food preparation? (Actually, aren't most restaurant cooks already men? And if nursing sounds too girly, how about physician's assistant, EMS tech, phlebotomist?) Why should it be that women can change but men cannot?

Perhaps boys just haven't had enough incentive. The old ways worked so well for so long, so much of life was rigged in men's favor: all they had to do was show up. It can take a few generations for the new reality to sink in. Unfortunately, society at large isn't doing much to help. American males are bathed from birth in pop culture that reveres the most childish, most retrograde, most narcissistic male fantasies, from misogynistic rap to moronic action movies. Where would they get the idea that they should put away the video game and do their homework? That social work or schoolteaching is a good life for a man? Girls get a ton of sexist messages, too. But even if they grow up hating their bodies and dressing like prostitutes, they know that if they don't want to end up waitressing, they've got to hit the books and make a plan.

Hit the books. Make a plan. Boys can do that.

at The Nation

who is the scientist?

Maybe I was too ready to assign the fault of gender idiocy to males based on age. I blogged here on June 2: "...And the few roles they write for women are extremely crappy - just wife or daughter or hot chick roles. Because in their minds, males are the default gender, so why would you write a play with, for example, a female doctor? Males can be doctors so there's no point in having a female doctor unless there's a reason for the doctor to be female, like she's also a hot chick..."

But it turns out that male is the default gender to 21st century kids too, when it comes to imagining what a scientist looks like... although girls, at least, are influenced by reality, while boys are not. As it says at Restructure:

* Among girls (14 in total), 36% portrayed a female scientist in the “before” drawing, and 57% portrayed a female scientist in the “after” drawing.

* Among boys (17 in total), 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “before” drawing, and 100% portrayed a male scientist in the “after” drawing.

It looks like a visit to Fermilab has no impact on boys’ gender stereotypes about scientists, but it has a strong impact on challenging girls’ gender stereotypes about scientists. For girls, there was a 58% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings; for boys, there was a 0% increase in female scientist representation in their drawings.

Of course people like Steven Pinker would have you believe that everything is a nice level playing field now, and discrimination against women in the sciences does not exist - and virtually every problem women have in science careers is due to innate mental inferiority. Or as Pinker's evolutionary psychology disciple Lawrence Summers put it, in his infamous speech to a group of women scientists:

in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic (lesser female) aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.

The Julia and Buddy theme song

This was fun - I haven't created a song that had a higher percentage of original work since the JANE EYRE waltz two and a half years ago. The only thing in this clip that isn't me playing is the percussion.

Summer Solstice 2010 - henge fest

Apparently you are allowed inside the fenced in area of Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice...



National Geographic piece about Stonehenge



Carhenge

JB casting

JB is ready to go - we found our Julia - Kat Chua.

Toy Story 3 - Awesome

I knew Toy Story 3 was going to be good - it is great! The bits with Ken and Barbie are awesome - and they aren't even the best part. The audience I saw it with applauded twice during the end credits.

Who are the crazies in your neighborhood?

So far my apartment building has been fairly satisfactory. There's an in-house laundry room, which is convenient, and for the most part things are quiet and efficient. Every now and then my neighbors across the hall do some serious blazing and my apartment smells like skunkweed during those times, but at least it's not cheap incense.

But I guess any large multi-apartment complex is going to have at least some crazies.

There's a wizened 60-something woman who told me, not long after I moved in, that she lived in this apartment building her entire life. That's difficult for someone like me - who has averaged one move every two years since I was 18 - to imagine. She seemed a little odd then, but I didn't officially classify her as crazy in my mind.

Until today. I'm coming home from work and I'm waiting for the elevator. Wizened lady gets out. I enter elevator. I turn around to press the button for my floor and I notice wizened lady is holding the elevator door open. I stared at her for a moment wondering what the hell she was doing - she glared at me.

Me: What?

WL: What do you mean "what?" How about a thank you?

Me: For what?

WL: For holding the elevator open for you!

She finally let go of the elevator door after I told her to.

But the best crazy is the crazy teabagger on the first floor. I only know about this one because I sometimes take the stairs instead of the elevator in the morning and the teabagger's door is facing the stairway exit. There is an ever-changing exhibition of crazy on the teabagger's door. It's easier to show a picture than describe it:



Click here to see a larger image for all the teabaggy goodness.

J&B performance dates

Finally got the JULIA & BUDDY performance dates.

Performance #1 - Tuesday, July 13th, 6:00p
Performance #2 - Saturday, July 17th, 7:00p
Performance #3 - Sunday, July 18th, 2:30p

The lovely and talented Daniel Genalo has agreed to reprise the role of Buddy, which he performed at NYCPlaywrights last month, but Claire Warden, the fabulous Brit can't do it - she has to go off and get married and honeymoon in Paris this summer. At least she expressed how very bummed out she is about not doing it - she really loved playing Julia - that's so gratifying for a playwright.

Time to schedule auditions.

Isn't that nice?

Renee Cole, one of the actor members of NYCPlaywrights, baked this cake for our last meeting of the year before summer hiatus. How about that? It was delicious too.

Nobody gets down on NYCPlaywrights harder than me, with my rants about old men, etc. But I really have created something - I'm not always sure exactly WHAT - but these meetings do have an impact on people's lives. And I read somewhere that even belonging to a group that meets once a month increases a person's quality of life. And we usually meet once a week. This past year people have begun bringing snacks to meetings, including wine. We've sometimes had three bottles of wine contributed to a single meeting - I usually bring cheese and crackers to go with the wine. And while snacks aren't necessary to a group that meets to read plays, it's a very nice thing - especially for hungry actors.

And not EVERY meeting features me freaking out at some clueless sexist old man. Why some meetings come and go without me making a single scene!

Cultural materialism & me

I have done a terrible job of maintaining my Cultural Materialism web site, especially since that site probably gets more hits than all my other sites combined. Every now and then I'll get an email from somebody concerning the site. And somebody did me the dubious honor of helping himself to all the Marvin Harris videos from my site and posting them on his youtube channel without giving me any credit. I had to go through alot to convert those videos from VHS to digital format too. I have to do something about this.

UPDATE: dayam - my cultural materialism web site is on the curriculum at the University of Manitoba.

Dumbarton Oaks first movement - video

Since I first mentioned Dumbarton Oaks on this blog Youtube has come a long way and you can get virtually anything from it - including this performance of the first movement of Dumbarton Oaks.

My post was Love and Art and Dumbarton Oaks which was the inspiration, along with Shakespeare's sonnet #151 for my sonnets.

Looking back at the archives from March - April 2008 I am really amazed at how chipper and postive I sound, since I was in the most incredible anguish during that period. I don't know how I managed to get myself out of bed every day back then.

qu'est-ce que c'est?

That's just what you are

Lookit how young Jon Stewart is!

McAllistrum's March

Ah the elusive McAllistrum's March. The Chieftains do the definitive version along with the Belfast Harp Orchestra - a short, lo-fi clip of the into can be heard here. This video is only one guy, not a whole harp orchestra, but the audio is much better.

Ja!

That does it - I'm moving to Sweden:

In this land of Viking lore, men are at the heart of the gender-equality debate. The ponytailed center-right finance minister calls himself a feminist, ads for cleaning products rarely feature women as homemakers, and preschools vet books for gender stereotypes in animal characters. For nearly four decades, governments of all political hues have legislated to give women equal rights at work — and men equal rights at home.

more at the NYTimes


I better learn the national anthem:

Du gamla, du fria, du fjällhöga Nord,
du tysta, du glädjerika sköna!
Jag hälsar dig, vänaste land uppå jord,
din sol, din himmel, dina ängder gröna,
din sol, din himmel, dina ängder gröna.

Du tronar på minnen från fornstora dar,
då ärat ditt namn flög över jorden.
Jag vet, att du är och du blir vad du var.
Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden!
Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden!

Rudimentary web site

Already online for Julia and Buddy - go me.

Julia & Buddy - first production

World premiere at the Midtown International Theater Festival.

The movie Agora - quite good!

The clip above is from Agora - the movie was made in English, with mainly British actors, judging by the accents, even though it was made by a Spanish company. The clip above is in English with Italian subtitles - I couldn't find any other non-trailer type clips.

In this clip we see Rachel Weisz as Hypatia and Oscar Isaac as Orestes, once Hypatia's pupil and now her friend. He's now Roman prefect of Alexandria, and a Christian convert, although probably only because it was politically expedient.

Hypatia is conducting a simple and elegant physics experiment involving gravity and motion. One of the most impressive aspects of this movie was the way it gave a coherent account of Hypatia's discoveries concerning celestial physics, culminating in her work on the elliptical nature of the Earth's orbit around the sun.

The movie isn't exactly a laugh riot, but what humor there is, is usually supplied by Orestes, as in this scene. It's not hysterically funny, but it got a laugh - she explains her reaction to the experiment and he says "What does that mean?"

It was the timing and the way he said it - and like I said, this movie isn't exactly a big comedy, especially since Hypatia is murdered at the end.

It's not a perfect movie - there should have been at least one other female who got a speaking role. The movie definitely does not pass the Bechdel test. I mean, they didn't even give Hypatia any female slaves in this movie to wait on her when she was taking a bath - she had two male slaves attending her. This seems very unlikely. Since they took the trouble to invent the character of Davos, Hypatia's slave who loves her, they certainly could have given her a female friend or relative or servant to speak to.

Really Hypatia hardly has any personal life at all, something which the character actually comments on. But they could have given her a little more time as a person and less as an icon. They didn't need quite so many shots of conflict as they used.

Speaking of conflict though, one of the very surprising and admirable aspects of this movie is the way it faithfully represents the savagery and power politics of the early Christians, and the conflicts between Christianity and paganism, Christianity and Judaism, and even Christian vs. Christian. The prefect Orestes is almost murdered by a mob of Christians for not being Christian enough for their liking. Very realistic!

Hypatia becomes a sort of atheist martyr, one of the only hold-outs against Christianity which is being forced on all the pagans - the Christians didn't try to convert the Jews, they just drove them out of Alexandria.

I was surprised at how affecting her martyrdom scene was - I cried. And although it was partly sadness at seeing a good person killed, it was more than that. In this movie, Hypatia represents the human quest for knowledge - she's sort of the living embodiment of the Library at Alexandria, the fabled repository of the wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans. And once the Christians destroyed the Library, getting rid of Hypatia was the next step. So the tears were also about witnessing the triumph of ignorance, misogyny and mob-rule over intellectual curiosity. Something that routinely happens in schools and workplaces, in my experience.

The movie also looked great - great zoom in and out shots from the cosmos to the Earth and back. Alexandria looked great and historically convincing, and the costumes were great. And Rupert Evans is absolutely smokin' as Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene. He's a beautiful man, and with long hair he's like the patron saint of lust. See next post for more details.

Hotty McHotstein

So thanks to the movie Agora I discovered the actor Rupert Evans.

And then I discovered he was in a Victorian-era movie - oh sweet baby Jesus, he could not be any hotter.



This picture comes from something called "Fingersmith" which appears to be mainly about a lesbian relationship. But how could any woman be a lesbian within ten miles of this man? Just look at him!



He's so beautiful it blows my mind.

WATCH THIS INFORMATIONAL VIDEO

I suspect that quite a few people who visit this blog are secret "pot" blowers. They should WATCH and LEARN.

The Menaissance Festival!

Sady at Tiger Beatdown has outdone herself this time:

The chicks today, they get to do so many things! Why, they can vote, and attend colleges, and even drink and smoke in public! These chicks: An alarming number of them have jobs! And, like, financial autonomy, from the jobs, and hence a socially assured position of power from which to negotiate the terms of their relationships and lives, thereby making them not entirely dependent on the funding and/or goodwill of men for their continued survival and status, and so they're all able to make decisions and expect fair treatment and… dude, it's a mess, I tell you. Because it turns out, after like fifty-some years of this business, none of these chicks is impressed enough by your penis!

"Excuse me, madam, I happen to have a penis," you say. (Because you do. A trans variety of gentleman has no place within the Menaissance!) "Would you, perchance, like to hear about all of my thoughts and feelings as they relate to this penis, and also how important it makes me, and furthermore how it qualifies me to boss you around?" And the chicks today, they don't particularly care to listen! They used to listen. They used to have to. It was, like, their job.

Hence, the Menaissance: From "Men," meaning dudes, and "aissance," meaning "making asses out of themselves." What happens, apparently, is that a dude watches a few too many episodes of Mad Men and reads one too many Raymond Carver stories and takes at least one beer commercial just a bit too seriously, and then he decides to engage in some HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENTING, buying books with titles like The Retrosexual Manual: How to Be A Real Man, and playing dress-up in his special Don Draper costume that he got at Banana Republic, and getting his hair did at special man-focused man-salons which ensure their manliness by putting Elvis memorabilia all over the place (because women HATED Elvis, duh), and also probably pretending that he likes how scotch tastes and that cigars don’t make him want to barf his rare steaks back up onto his pseudo-vintage-trouser-encased lap, and in all other ways attempting to embody some wacky vision of pre-feminist manhood that, unless he is actually ninety-seven years old, he has only ever seen on TV.

now I see what I was doing wrong...

Who writes these eHow articles? They have one for How to Write a Sonnet which contains this list in a call-out box:

Things You'll Need:

* Godiva or Whitman Chocolates
* Dictionaries
* Thesauri
* Roses
* Boxes Of Chocolates
* Pencils
* Erasers
* Notebook Papers
* Pencils
* Pens
* Spiral Notebooks
* Word Processors
* Pencils
* Pens

Well now I know what I forgot - the boxes of chocolates and the roses. And I did not have enough pencils.

a movie about Hypatia? wow

Why didn't I hear about the movie they made - Agora about Hypatia of Alexandria??? Turns out it opened in a limited release in the U.S. on May 28, 2010 but it was made in Spain in 2009.

Of course the Catholic Church is mad about it - because the movie truthfully reports that Hypatia was murdered by a mob of Christians.

The Spanish Catholic Observatorio Antidifamacion Religiosa (Religious Anti-Defamation Observatory) protested against the film for "promoting hatred of Christians and reinforcing false clichés about the Catholic Church."

Two views of Hypatia:

Socrates Scholasticus

THERE WAS a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time.

And John, Bishop of Nikiu

AND IN THOSE DAYS there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles.

It reminds me of this scene from the 2005 movie Cassanova - Bishop Pucci, played by Jeremy Irons, and his flunky arrive to see a balloon in flight (minute 4:47 in the clip below):

PUCCI

(making sign of the cross)

Witchcraft!

FLUNKY

Actually, Your Reverence, I believe it's because hot air rises, overcoming the gravitational force of -

(catches a look from Pucci)

Witchcraft.



Looks like AGORA is playing this weekend in NYC - whoohoo!

WTF to do with all these old men???

NYCPlaywrights has been plagued by an infestation of old men. And I have to do something about it.

I don't dislike them simply for being old, but the older men are, the more they remember a time when men had total dominance, even in the West, over women and nobody complained about it. It was simply accepted as the natural state of things.

But it isn't nostalgia - they aren't nostalgic because in their MINDS nothing has changed. They write plays in allegedly contemporary settings that seem straight out of 1950s sit-coms. And the few roles they write for women are extremely crappy - just wife or daughter or hot chick roles. Because in their minds, males are the default gender, so why would you write a play with, for example, a female doctor? Males can be doctors so there's no point in having a female doctor unless there's a reason for the doctor to be female, like she's also a hot chick.

And none of them can write for shit - I don't just mean the content - I'm talking about the form. They just have people sitting around yammering at each other, about old guy stuff.

My theory is that they consider NYCPlaywrights to be a really cheap hobby. Most of them have plenty of money, but they are also incredibly cheap. And NYCPlaywrights will take anybody who can pay the membership fee, pretty much.

I think what I need to do is have a higher membership rate for all men over 60. It's already bad enough that we have way more young female actors than young male actors (and young male actors, if they are any good, get ALL the good roles) and way more male playwrights than female playwrights. I must fix this.

I blame my dad

My poor father died six years ago today. He was 71, which isn't especially young, but I'm sure he would have had at least another ten years if he didn't get lung cancer. It was no surprise that he did get lung cancer, he smoked constantly throughout his life from the age of 12. He tried to taper off by the time he retired, but the damage was already done. Ever since I was a kid I fully expected him to die of lung cancer.

My dad was a great guy. He never made alot of money - at least not a lot considering he had six kids to raise, and sent all of us to tuition-charging Catholic school. But he sure worked for his money. I cannot remember a single day he ever took off from work - he had a rock solid routine of going to work, working, and coming home.

But even more importantly, he really liked being a dad. In nice weather he would come home from work and play in the backyard with us kids - whiffle ball and volley ball - things like that. And all the kids in the neighborhood would come over and play too - my dad was like the neighborhood recreation captain. And he was completely fair - he never gave his own kids an advantage on scoring or strikes - he was a perfect umpire.

Only years later, after we were all too old to play whiffle ball in the backyard did it occur to me that my brothers and sisters and I never played games with any of the other kids' dads. Not a single one of them.

And not spending quality time was the least of it for some of the other kids' dads. Some dads were actively harmful: the girls in the house behind us were sexually molested by their father. My best friend's father was an alcoholic, and while he was nice enough, in spite of the drinking binges, he really didn't have any interest in speaking to children - not even his own children, let alone neighborhood kids. Plenty of people I know had such bad relationships with their dads - my sister-in-law's father hasn't spoken to her in ten years, my ex-husband's father barely ever spoke to him, an ex-boyfriend's father used to savagely beat him.

The older I get the more I realize how incredibly lucky my siblings and I were to have such a good dad.

But in addition to being kind and fair to kids he respected women. He was fairly conservative, and a devout Catholic, so he wasn't exactly a feminist. But even so, he saw women as human beings, and as individuals. He didn't treat me and my sisters any differently than my brothers - everybody was welcome to play whiffle ball. And he expressed pride and admiration in our accomplishments.

Again, growing up I didn't realize how rare this was. Only as an adult did I discover how much utter contempt so many men have for women. I never saw my dad leering at a woman - not in front of my mother or any other time. He never made lewd comments about women. He would never dream of having a girlie magazine in the house. Some might attribute this to his religiosity, but I don't think so. I've known plenty of men who were religious and yet didn't respect women.

And most men seem to feel that the role of any woman in his life is to express admiration for him and his accomplishments. Her accomplishments aren't worth mentioning - that's not her job, to be admirable, her job is strictly to admire. That is why I'm a complete sucker for any man who freely expresses admiration for any woman's accomplishments.

My dad was also very honest, to a fault. He didn't go out of his way to insult or criticize anybody, but he was not a bullshitter. You knew where you stood with him, and so did everybody else.

So that was my dad - he respected women and admired their accomplishments, liked kids, had dignity, was honest, and except for cigarettes, had self-control. I grew up expecting men to be like that, and so few of them are. So many men, it seems to me, are sniveling, whiny, lecherous misogynist creeps - especially all those middle-aged men who play with their expensive toys and get lap-dances and try to hook up with 20-something women - and then whine that women are gold-diggers.

I expect something different - I blame my dad.

my only blog post about SEX AND THE CITY

Based on this review, SATC seems to really polarize people. Most of the commenters agreed with the hostile review, but a percentage of the commenters were hostile to the reviewer.

I watched about 15 minutes of the show once and that was enough for me - the incessant voice-over was just too annoying. And from everything I'd heard, the show spent an insane amount of time on shoes. I certainly never considered it a feminist show since it was about a bunch of rich shallow fashion-obsessed dummies.

And yet... it is rather suspicious how much hostility is displayed towards the show and the movies. As several of the review commenters pointed out, the silly male fantasies of the James Bond franchise never seemed to inspire this much vitriol from anybody. Some even claim James Bond is cool.

Here's the thing - the feminist pioneers were a smart, fearless group of women, not afraid to speak out, risking hell and hostility to break down barriers.

But not all women are like that. There are plenty of timid, not-too-bright women (and there probably an equal number of men who are the same way) who don't think very hard about anything at all. They like pretty clothes and they like sex - because everybody likes sex.

But here's the thing - traditionally women were not supposed to like sex. Or if they did, they better keep quiet about it. Their job was to be the object of desire, either for a husband or a john. They didn't get to have their own desires - female desires were inconvenient in a world where women were traded between men.

I don't think some of these know-it-all critics of the SATC franchise realize what a big deal it is for lots of women to admit that they like sex and seek it out for pure pleasure. Yeah, feminists broke those barriers down 50 years ago, pushing for jobs and birth control. That got a LOT of press. But it takes decades for the rest of the world to catch up with pioneers.

So this is the first step for the slow women - admitting they like sex. For the dim women, buying a lavish wardrobe is all they require for a sense of empowerment.

So SATC is an easy target. But the most hostile critics of the show almost always tip over into expressions of misogyny, often while claiming to be feminists. Lindy West does it several times, especially in her hostility to the oldest of the four women, Samantha:

What is the lubrication level of Samantha Jones's 52-year-old vagina? Has the change of life dulled its sparkle? Do its aged and withered depths finally chafe from the endless pounding, pounding, pounding—cruel phallic penance demanded by the emotionally barren sexual compulsive from which it hangs? If I do not receive an update on the deep, gray caverns of Jones, I shall surely die!

Now menopause is a serious subject and impacts virtually all women. West whines about how shallow the movie is, yet references to menopause make her spit bile. And what makes her angriest, apparently, is that the movie takes a note of reassurance - Samantha is still having lots of great sex. No doubt this is a comfort to the movie's target audience. And it's certainly no more of a fantasy than so many Hollywood movies in which saggy middle-aged men are paired up with beautiful 20-something women.

West really tips her internalized-misogyny hand here:

This will not stand. Samantha, being the prostitute sexual revolutionary that she is...

If the Samantha character is having lots of great, unapologetic sex at 52, that does in fact make her a sexual revolutionary to many women from more backwards areas of the US or the world. But West suggests she's a "prostitute" (and the strike-out indicates that this is what she really thinks but is just going along with the movie's conceit that Samantha is a sexual revolutionary.) Calling the character a prostitute makes no sense - she does not charge for sex. What West really meant was a slut. Slut-shaming is a favorite hobby of sexists everywhere - usually the same ones who adore James Bond for his tom-catting ways.

That West calls Samantha a prostitute indicates either that West doesn't bother differentiating between a woman who has sex for money and a woman who has sex for pleasure because all women having non-marital sex are the same, or more likely, she wanted to call Samantha a slut, but she dimly realizes that "slut" is out-of-bounds these days - although more for prudery than double-standards sexism.

The review concludes:

At sexism's funeral (which takes place in a mysterious, incense-shrouded chamber of international sisterhood), the women of Abu Dhabi remove their black robes and veils to reveal—this is not a joke—the same hideous, disposable, criminally expensive shreds of cloth and feathers that hang from Carrie et al.'s emaciated goblin shoulders. Muslim women: Under those craaaaaaay-zy robes, they're just as vapid and obsessed with physical beauty and meaningless material concerns as us! Feminism! Fuck yeah!

But as several commenters pointed out, in fact many Muslim women do wear couture under their burkas. Because within the horrible hard-core patriarchal societies in which they are trapped, it's the best they can do.

And there is definitely a connection here - while the Muslim women are literally constrained by their burkas, the fans of SATC are mentally constrained by their own lack of imagination and ambition - to them, any woman who admits to liking sex and who spends lots of money on her wardrobe is a raging hard-core feminist.

So I would have to say that SATC is feminist - it's feminism for stupid people. And that doesn't excuse the subtle or not-so-subtle misogyny from the SATC critics.

UPDATE: just today the NYTimes ran an article about the virtual female slavery of forced marriages in Afghanistan. And this kind of thing happens in plenty of other places all over the world. And for that reason SATC is revolutionary to so many people - women exercising agency over their own sexual desires - neither being forced to sell themselves to a "good provider" in exchange for sexual services, as in traditional Western marriage - or being sold to someone for a life of sexual slavery by your parents when you are a teenager - or younger.

Steampunkpalooza!

The first USB flash drive that is piston-powered with a smoke stack.

the Steampunks Great Exhibiton!

Looks like I just missed the Steampunk World's Fair in Piscataway.

Here's the Steampunk Empire

The movie Time After Time has to be one of the best Steampunk movies ever.

Hardcore Steampunk guy

haiku

Some people inspire sonnets, others inspire haiku.

Your big announcement:
ANOTHER PLAY ON THE WAY!!!
Thrilled I mentioned you.

Pantsless on the Net
The biggest douchebag ever.
Even DIL looks skeeved.

No visits Newmark?
Hard times for part-time actors.
You do love tacos.

Notes: the plural of haiku is haiku

how the Japanese pronounce haiku

Wow, I am now fashionable

Well eventually everything is in style, or back in style. And now, according to the NYTimes, I am:

“There is definitely a movement to a very lengthy look, especially among the young,” said Nevena Borissova, a partner in Curve, a progressive retailer with stores in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Ms. Borissova favors radically stretched-out skirts and dresses that “drag on the floor, with raw edges, and worn with combat boots,” she said.

Bonus - the article begins with a reference to the Jane Eyre prequel "Wide Sargasso Sea."

I've been wearing this look for the past five years or so, and the first time I saw it was back in art school, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where big boots and long skirts were all the rage.