Sarah Vowell is always such a pleasure to read

Does it sound bitter of me to suggest that she got a boost in her literary career by having a surname that is one twin consonant short of a phonetic term? Probably.

Read and enjoy:

On Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, Caroline Kennedy introduced a tribute to her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, by pointing out, "If your child is getting an early boost in life through Head Start or attending a better school or can go to college because a Pell Grant has made it more affordable, Teddy is your senator, too."

To my surprise, I started to cry. Started to cry like I was watching the last 10 minutes of "Brokeback Mountain" instead of C-SPAN. This was whimpering brought on by simple, spontaneous gratitude.

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

more here.

I see that Frank Rich agrees with me...

I said almost exactly the same thing the other day (McCain is an idiot):

The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

More at the NYTimes here

Art fun today!

A day of culture in NYC featuring the Met, the Cloisters and HAMLET in the park. A full report to follow...

Helpful answer hotline...

I have to write a love SONNET for english help???
i must write a sonnet that rhymes with ababcdcdefef format it is for english class. i was never a poet i tried to do this sonnet thing for 2 days now i cant do it 10 syllables 14 lines. could any1 help me to write a love sonnet? - chris a

Dear Chris A,

I find that nothing quite makes one feel the urge to write a love sonnet like having your heart drop-kicked, stomped and broken into a thousand tiny pieces.

Either that, or tell a hot guy to reproduce (see Shakespeare's sonnets 1 through 17)

Yrs

NG McClernan

McCain is an idiot

And he just lost the election for believing the hype. The "women who will vote for McCain out of spite" group was made into a much bigger deal by the media than it actually was.

And virtually NO woman who wanted Hillary for president will want a pro-gun, pro "intelligent design", anti-abortion evangelical like Sarah Palin for vice president.

And the right wing of the Republican party sure ain't gonna vote for no wimmen for VP.

I'm so looking forward to this election. I expect it to be a landslide.

the Krug-Man's latest column is smokin'!

My first reaction to Bill Clinton's convention speech was sheer professional jealousy: nobody, but nobody, has his ability to translate economic wonkery into plain, forceful English. In effect, Mr. Clinton provided an executive summary of the new Census report on income, poverty and health insurance — but he did it so eloquently, so seamlessly, that there was no sense that he was giving his audience a lecture.

My second reaction was that in Mr. Clinton’s speech — as in the speeches by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (this column was filed before Barack Obama spoke on Thursday night) — one heard the fundamental difference between the two parties. Democrats say and, as far as I can tell, really believe that working Americans are getting a raw deal; Republicans, despite occasional attempts to sound sympathetic, basically believe that people have nothing to complain about.

Read the rest here

Barak has been officially nominated!

I preferred Hillary for the nominee but nevertheless - this is a great day for this country.

And I want to point out that the USA owes so much to the Black community - from the earliest days of the country, when black people were kidnapped, packed into hellish vessels, shackled, beatened, starved, and raped. Then held in captivity, and again, horribly abused, and even when finally freed, lynched and terrorized and denied the right to vote. To this very day - the Black community is still given the least respect, resources and credit.

Not to mention how much the cultural life of the US owes to the talents and hard work of Black people. Only when I left the US and went to Ireland did I realize how much we owe our concept of coolness to Black people.

I do believe that this is FINALLY A TURNING POINT for this country, and Obama must become president!

Many people at the convention cried at the moment of nomination - I admit I teared up too.

Also - I'm as heterosexual as they come, but I think Donna Brazile is kinda hot.

Bruce in the NYTIMES

My friend actor Bruce Barton got a nice shout out in the NYTimes

"Bruce Barton, as Guildenstern, suggested vaudevillian dimensions without overstatement."

I love these guys

Tattooed Bikers, a dog's best friend

As the men reached the Major Deegan Expressway, Des took a call about strays found on 141st Street in Manhattan, writing the details in neat script on his pad. Soft-spoken and gray-haired, Des held a gym bag on his lap. When the call ended, he looked over his notes, then unzipped the bag to produce a tiny kitten, which had been sleeping on a newspaper.

“What the——!” said Batso. “He’s got a cat back here! Why you got a cat with you, Desi?”

The kitten clambered over Des’s leather wristband and gnawed at his spiked silver ring. With one finger, Des stroked the pale underside of its neck. He had been carrying the cat everywhere for a week and a half.

“This little guy has to eat every few hours,” he said, “He’s a he, but I keep calling him a she.”

Speeding across the Triborough Bridge into Queens, the S.U.V. pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst. There, Big Ant, also known as Anthony Missano, was waiting, reclining on his Harley, along with Mike Tattoo on a 1959 Honda.

Big Ant, “a little guy,” as the others describe him, is a little more than 6 feet tall and around 320 pounds. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and sunglasses with small orange lenses. The tattoo of a red lightning bolt sliced down his enormous arm.

Other members of the squad arrived, among them Johnny O (John Orlandini), a former bodyguard who once waded waist deep into a pond near a sewage pipe to rescue a duck; and Biagi, who is to dogs what Des is to cats: a psychic force.

More about Rescue Ink

charging by the word?

I suddenly discovered I must have a copy of The Letters of Charlotte Bronte only to learn that it is a 3-volume set (Charlotte was very prolific) and that volume 3 alone costs $220! Holy guacamole! I guess I'll have to suck it up... one of these days... and buy. Then again, there's the public library... and luckily my daughter is my own personal genuine professional librarian. Makes those parent-student loans all worthwhile.

Some very interesting commentary in a review of the books by Lyndall Gordon

The most famous letters in this volume are the four Charlotte wrote in French in 1844-45 to her beloved teacher in Brussels, M. Heger. The fact that Madame Heger pieced three of these letters together from torn fragments she found in her husband's bin suggests that Madame did not consider this tie negligible. There has been much speculation whether these surviving letters were adulterous or innocent. This is a misunderstanding of Charlotte's capacity for an indefinable form of love that thrived on Monsieur's recognition of her potential as a writer, his capacity to know her as she perceived herself to be. If we think of these letters in view of the great novels to come, they may be seen as the source of a new model of manhood: a hero who will engage with a hidden "other" in a woman; who does not exclude it as alien. This future fictional enlargement on M. Heger gains its imaginative licence from distance - the correspondent's invisibility as reader. In this sense, what Charlotte undertook was not quite a real correspondence which reflects the correspondent; it was more an invented correspondence, close to an imaginative act and supplemented, probably, by many letters which Charlotte composed (in her mind or even on paper) but did not send.

I hear that.

Somebody sure got themselves a good [publicity agent]

A guide to the obscure references in [title of show] - a nice big advertorial in the Times.

***sigh***

A guy who looks a little like Prince emails me about my online profile:

Just one word: adorable

Alas, he lives in Florida.

***sigh***

Classic post

Every now and then I like to post something from the Heavens to Mergatroyd archives.

Here is one I originally posted in June 2006, a video clip of my friend Bob having fun with the anti-choice protestors, back when we were helping out with clinic security. I shot the video.



Click to watch the video

good ole HUCK

Wow, great reading of my HUCK FINN at NYCPlaywrights last night - and I got some great feedback! One person told me he liked my ending of Huck's story much better than the original novel, and another person, new to the group, called it a "brilliant adaptation." My head is swollen like a zeppelin.

I'll be posting video clips from the reading here soon.

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly; unsought
The old delight is with us but to find
That all recurring joy is pain refined,
Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you can never know
How crushed I am with having you at rest
Heavy upon my life. I love you so
You bind my freedom from its rightful quest.
In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

-- Amy Lowell

more poems by Lowell

HUCK FINN on 35th Street

NYCPlaywrights will be introducing members and others to the new space at the Penny Templeton Studio this Friday August 22. We'll be doing a staged reading of my HUCK FINN, an adaptation of the Mark Twain classic. Cast: Nick Fondulis, Lorenzo Scott, Ann Farthing, Reagan Wilson, Mike Selkirk, Mike Jalbert, Charles Major and Reggie Buckingham. Come and check it out at 261 W. 35th Street, Suite 304 at 7PM.

Tomorrow night I'm going to see Nick perform in his Fringe show The Boy in the Basement - he borrowed one of my whips leftover from the Metropolitan Playhouse production of HUCK as a prop - so it should be interesting. He's been getting great reviews too.

Rock me sexy Jesus

The second thing I did with the new Penny Templeton Studio was record my PERSONAL JESUS for my friend Bob's radio show (the first was rehearsing the upcoming reading of HUCK FINN.) Now I'm editing the audio and it's so much fun, especially with the killer Mac app GarageBand. I have a first rough draft, and should have the refined version completed by tomorrow.

It's really neat to hear Bruce Barton portray two different versions of Jesus, talking to each other. I edited the voices so that at points he overlaps with himself which is really funny.

Go here to listen to a clip where Bruce argues and then gets into a fist fight with himself, before Trixie the diner waitress breaks it up.

I just love the Engrish

See more, complete with wise-assed commentary

Jobs program

That is what we are going to need before the subprime financial crisis is over - a jobs program. Just like during the Depression.

As Nouriel Roubini says in today's NYTimes:

But most important, in Roubini’s opinion, is to realize that the problem is deeper than the housing crisis. “Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis,” he told me. “But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts.” All of these forms of debt, he argues, suffer from some or all of the same traits that first surfaced in the housing market: shoddy underwriting, securitization, negligence on the part of the credit-rating agencies and lax government oversight. “We have a subprime financial system,” he said, “not a subprime mortgage market.”

Annoying web dating email of the day

47-year-old writes me:

You know what?
i'd love to hear your voice baby girl...K

No dice, daddy-o, I don't think I'm hip enough for yah.

The NYTimes finally notices Jon Stewart in a major way

Is Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America?

Last paragraph:

In fact, Mr. Stewart regards comedy as a kind of catharsis machine, a therapeutic filter for grappling with upsetting issues. "What's nice to us about the relentlessness of the show," he said, "is you know you're going to get that release no matter what, every night, Monday through Thursday. Like pizza, it may not be the best pizza you've ever had, but it's still pizza, man, and you get to have it every night. It's a wonderful feeling to have this toxin in your body in the morning, that little cup of sadness, and feel by 7 or 7:30 that night, you've released it in sweat equity and can move on to the next day."

one more demotivator

audition time is here

Now that I'm renting the Penny Templeton Actors studio for Mergatroyd Productions I have plenty of time available to audition actors for the 2009 installment of JANE EYRE - and I intend to use it. Last year I served up roles to actors on fine china platters, to my everlasting regret. Thanks to my kind consideration, half the cast came to believe that they were doing me a big favor by agreeing to be in the show, and they gave me heaping helpings of contempt and ingratitude. One of the most blatant examples - I always fed the actors during rehearsals. The last weekend of the show, one of the actors invited all the other actors out for brunch - but not me. That's the kind of loathsome creeps I'm talking about.

This time I am going to be much more deliberative when it comes to casting.

First up - I will be auditioning Janes and Rochesters soon. If anybody out there knows anybody they think might be a good fit for the roles, have them send me their headshots, etc. to nancy at mergatroyd dot org. And unlike almost any other Equity Showcase production in NYC, this is a paid gig.

free-floating misogyny

One thing you really notice on dating sites like Plenty of Fish is the free-floating misogyny throughout. It puts me in mind of something that Germain Greer said: "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them." Thanks to Plenty of Fish, and its related forums, we do now.

My most recent run-in with a misogynist was a dude who states on his profile that women are materialistic and shallow. So, dude, if that's how you feel about women, and yet you still feel like you want a live female body to engage in sexual congress with - WHY DON'T YOU GET A HO?

I didn't say that in my response to his email though - I was far too nice.

But maybe the Universe rewarded me for my restraint - directly after my exchange with that dude, I got an email from a bright, cute 25-year-old, who thinks I'm awesome - he said I have a "Mira Sorviono/Laura Linney thing going on."

Thank you Universe.

New look for NYCPlaywrights

The new NYCPlaywrights web site

if it's good enough for Dorothy Parker...

I decided to record one of my sonnets. Listen to Sonnet 1 here.

One Perfect Rose

Dorothy Parker's poems are generally in quite a different mood from Dickinson's...

One Perfect Rose

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet --
One perfect rose.


I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.


You can actually hear Dorothy Parker read this aloud here.

More readings from Dorothy Parker at the
Dorothy Parker Society.

To Lose Thee

To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
'Tis true the drought is destitute
But, then, I had the dew!
The Caspian has its realms of sand,
Its other realm of sea.
Without this sterile perquisite
No Caspian could be.

- Emily Dickinson

More from the Belle of Amherst

the model was definitely not a man

I guess if I want to have a male model I'll have to look on Craig's List.

more despair

source here including helpful gift-giving guide:

Perfect for:

- Survivor types
- Dorks who quote Nietzsche
- Disaffected college students

(note - every single one is deemed perfect for disaffected college students)

the Krug-Man - feel his scathing awesomeness, wingers!

Let’s also not forget that for years President Bush was the center of a cult of personality that lionized him as a real-world Forrest Gump, a simple man who prevails through his gut instincts and moral superiority. “Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man,” declared Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2004. “He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.”

It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina — when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness — that the cult began to fade.

What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.

Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly — that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.

more at the NYTimes

tossers

Going to see the new Broadway musical [title of show]. They have a blog, called [blog] (what else?) where they refer to their readers as "tossers."

I got the tickets for free! Yay! Running NYCPlaywrights does have some benefits.

Speaking of which, I finally signed the deal - Mergatroyd Productions & NYCPlaywrights now has a new home at the Penny Templeton Actors Studio Fridays through Sundays every damn week of the year. If this doesn't turn me into a playwriting supernova, nothing will!

Plays planned at the moment:

SCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THIS GUY
STRESS AND THE CITY (collection of short plays)
EARLY ONE MORNING
THE GOOD DEPUTY (if I can get over my "issues")
BAGGER OF THE YEAR (rewritten, finally)

Lots of work to do!

The great thing about hooking up with PTAS is that I'll have access to so many new actors.

Words to live by

More at despair.com

memories...

Here's my daughter chilling with two of the Ladyboys of Bangkok. As you can see, they can be ladies or boys - just like my daughter!

Hah hah just kidding Nome. She's still sore because I said she looked like a 12-year-old boy, from a distance, for a split-second.

We saw TLBOB at last summer's Edinburgh Fringe festival (siiiigh - back in the days when I could afford a European vacation - thanks Jane Eyre) - they had this huge big top tent for the audience - much better-attended than most of the stuff we saw. And they are so popular - this blog, Heavens to Mergatroyd, gets soooo many hits on some variation of search word "ladyboys" - and I guess even more NOW that I posted this.

Hello ladyboy fans!

Many of their fans are from countries like Saudi Arabia and yes - Iran.

the afterlife is much kinkier than I realized...

I got into a debate with a devout religious guy who informed me:

I know that you will not be going to hell and you are not going to suffer eternal torment. I'm not saying you might not get a smack on the behind, but the terrible things that has imprisoned your mind and spirit such as eternal torment is certainly not what God has install for you in the next life.

The nuns never told us about the afterlife spankings!

New look for JANE EYRE

I've begun redesigning the JANE EYRE web site in preparation for the new production. The show doesn't open until February, but you can never start planning too soon.

Purveyor of Praise

more from Willam Ball's "A Sense of Direction"

It is important for a director to practice praising. Begin the rehearsal with praise. "It is an honor to work with such fine artists." "This is one of the most beautiful plays ever written." "Look at the beautiful sunshine." "Aren't these words exciting. Let's begin." Your praise evokes enthusiasm, and the actor thinks, "Maybe he will praise me some day." He works in hope of being praised. Praise is the musculature of directing. All the theories and concepts can be thrown out the window; they are a dime a dozen. Any director who has a long career is a good praiser. You can practically measure a director's career by his enthusiasm for what he witnesses.

Peter L. Bernstein and I are in agreement

He is saying in today's NYTimes pretty much what I said a few weeks ago, except that he doesn't offer a solution to this intolerable unemployment situation. But if it isn't some kind of federal jobs program, I don't know what it could be.

ASSISTANCE to individuals and institutions in trouble always raises concerns about the moral hazards of bailouts, especially when a case can be made that people underrated risks or were blindsided in their decision-making. But we have no choice here. The economy teeters on the edge of not just a recession, but also a more profound decline where trouble in any single sector can spread breakdowns throughout the system, driving unemployment to intolerable levels. To sit back and let nature take its course is to risk the end of a civil society.

Until we move more decisively in this direction, other efforts are likely to be frustrating at best and counterproductive at worst. The household is the key to the puzzle.

Peter L. Bernstein, a financial consultant and economic historian, is the editor of the Economics & Portfolio Strategy newsletter.

another great movie quote

Moonstruck:

"...love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!

once again, not a young male model

Another attractive young female. Much easier to find than attractive young males, apparently.

favorite movie moments...

Back to the Future, Part 3


Marty and Doc, wearing bandannas over their faces, board a locomotive and point guns at the engineer:

Doc: Reach!

Engineer: Is this a holdup?

(Doc and Marty look at each other)

Doc: It's a science experiment!

Anais Nin, Erotica, etc.

UPDATE - APPARENTLY YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DISCUSS EROTICA ON BLOGGER ANYMORE BECAUSE THE DECISION-MAKERS AT GOOGLE ARE IDIOTS.

I recently got a copy of Anais Nin's (her first name is pronounced An-EYE-as, her last name rhymes with "pin" ) collection of essays "In Favor of the Sensitive Man." It has some good stuff in it. Nin had always been ahead of her time, but by the time she was in her 60s "second-wave" feminism came along and the times caught up with her. As you can see here:

The new type of young man I have met is exceptionally fitted for a new woman, but she is not yet totally appreciative of his tenderness, his growing proximity to woman, his attitude of twinship rather than differentiation. People who once lived under a dictatorship often are at a loss to govern themselves. This loss is a transitional one: It may mean the beginning of a totally new life and freedom. The man is there. He is an equal. He treats you like an equal. In moments of uncertainty you can still discuss problems with him you could not have talked about twenty years ago.

Nin funfact - "In 1947, at the age of 44, she met and began living with Rupert Pole (1919-2006), sixteen years her junior." Pole by all accounts was quite the hottie. You go, Anais!

Nin was also known as the author of erotica. From Wikipedia:

Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin and (Henry) Miller began in the 1940s to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke. Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

Nothing more satisfying than writing erotica for money. That is some easy money. I haven't been paid for mine since I wrote Wildwood Summer for a gay men's magazine. I'm currently turning that story into a play. I think I'm going to change the title to "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy."

I've written erotic sonnets as well as another short story, called "Victorian Boots" which is heterosexual but a bit kinky. It was accepted by Literotica.com - but no pay involved, alas. That's one bad thing about the Internet - it's made the dissemination of erotica - not to mention pornography - extremely easy, and so there's lots more of it and so it's not as valuable. Contemporary Nins and Millers are getting bupkis for their erotic narratives. I did find writing "Victorian Boots" therapeutic - I turned a very negative series of events I endured, through the magic of sexual desire, into something pleasurable. Basically that is what kink is all about - turning pain into pleasure.

Lightcastle sure has alot of friends

Ever since I got a shout out from Lightcastle on his/her LiveJournal blog my sitemeter has gone through the roof with all the new traffic. Thanks for those kind words, Lightcastle - I'm glad you like my theatre essays.

well played, Madonna

Normally I wouldn't read an article about Madonna, because really, I don't care. And it would have been my loss, this time around.

I was in the hair salon and the reading pickings were slim, so I read the article "…Beckoned, by Madonna, Over the Borderline" by Adam Sternberg in New York Magazine, and I have to say, it's a great little essay, a perfect synergy between subject and style. You should read the entire thing by following the link, but I'll give you a little preview:

Yet her ability to surprise us continues to surprise us. A-Rod and Madonna—now, who saw that coming? And yet, of course it’s Madonna. Because this is what Madonna does. Just when an album flops, or a movie tanks, or the upcoming tour’s sales falter—basically, just when you’ve started to forget about her, even a little bit—there she is, reminding you that as long as there is a breath in her chest, by God, you will not forget about her.

Well played, Adam, well played.

"Jane Eyre" by Edward Fairfax Rochester

My mind is well and truly blown - a blog that is a chapter-by-chapter rewrite of "Jane Eyre" from Edward Rochester's point of view:
Edward Fairfax Rochester's Love for Jane Eyre CHAPTER 1: I Must Away to Thornfield, written by A True Janian Reply.

The Great Happiness Space

There is an amazing documentary, The Great Happiness Space, showing on the Sundance Channel - they have the best stuff - they also showed "Slings and Arrows" - about a club where women go to pay to hang out with attractive, attentive men. They may or may not have sex. Which is understandable, because most of the women who go to this club are prostitutes, who spend all day jerking off salary men. It's striking how often these prostitutes say that they come to the "host club" to get "healed." These men act as super-great boyfriends, always interested in talking to them and listening to their problems.

But men should take notice of these clubs - these are men whom the women who are paid for sex, will in turn pay to be with. They are in their 20s, all have lots of hair - most of it streaked blond, are slim, boyishly male, not rugged or super-butch, and wear nice clothes and boots. Makes me miss my Korean ex-boyfriend.

Although this phenomenon of male prostitution for women (they DO have sex with them sometimes although that fact is played down in both the documentary and in reviews) seems to be confined so far to Japan only, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it spread throughout the world - wherever women earn their own money.

More about host and hostess clubs in Japan here.

more from William Ball

QUESTIONS FROM ACTORS

We've said it before - but it's so important it bears repeating - a question from an actor is not a question. A question from an actor is an innocent bid to draw the director's attention to something unresolved. When the actor asks a question, a wise director doesn't answer the question. The answer to the question is not in the director, the answer to the question is in the actor. Answer the question by asking another question. Allow the actor to resolve the difficulty. He already has the best answer in mind before he asks the question. Here is an example:

ACTOR: Shall I wear this hat?
DIRECTOR: What would be best?
ACTOR: Well, it's too small. It gets in the way. I don't know where to put it, and if I do put it down, I have no way of getting it off the stage when I leave.
DIRECTOR: Let's leave the hat out.

Another example:

ACTOR: How should I do it, on the right or the left?
DIRECTOR: Which way is best?
ACTOR: If I do it on the right, I can arrive on time. If I do it on the left, I'll be late.
DIRECTOR: Well, then do it on the right.

The answer to the question is in the question. The actor's answer will be organic, and by using his solution, the director will avoid imposing anything. Another example:

ACTOR: Are we going to skip this scene today?
DIRECTOR: Is there something about that scene that we should give our attention to?
ACTOR: Well, I did alot of work on that scene last night and I have some new ideas I'd like to show you.
DIRECTOR: In that case, let's be sure to work that scene in.

The question "Are we going to skip this scene?" may be answered "Yes, it's not scheduled!" or "Yes, we're moving on to the last act." But, "Are we going to skip this scene?" is an invitation to draw attention to something. The director does not know what it is; he has to find out. A question from the actor is merely an invitation. The actor is drawing attention to something unresolved.

Impeachment "Hamlets"?

I got an email from my computer sensei Stan Pokras (he introduced me to my first Macintosh in 1986), discussing the possibility of impeaching G. W. Bush. The idea of impeaching Bush is nothing new - what caught my eye was the designation of those unsure of impeachment as "Impeachment Hamlets."

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Hamlet was NOT indecisive - at least no more so than ANYBODY would be after he's seen a ghost tell him that his uncle killed his father and he should do something about it. And by doing something about it he means basically that Hamlet has to take on the entire Danish government. I think any sane person would be a LITTLE indecisive about what to do there.

And YES, Hamlet IS SANE. If nobody else saw the ghost of his father, you could make a case that he was bonkers. But Shakespeare very clearly sets up a situation where there are multiple witnesses who see ghostly old Hamlet Sr. - Horiatio, Francisco and Bernardo - in addition to Hamlet. So unless they are ALL crazy, Hamlet is not crazy.

Really, the junk that gets piled on Hamlet, you have to wonder how the play survives at all.

on Belief

more from William Ball's "A Sense of Direction"

A painter builds with color and line; a musician with tone and rhythm. A sculptor builds with shape. But the actor builds his profession on patterns of belief. An actor is working with the same tool that causes all events. That is belief. Belief is the power that causes things to happen, and actors are exercising their belief power all the time. If one says to an actor "Will you please believe this?" he will do so readily. It is difficult for him to resist the tendency to become whatever is suggested. The actor rises to the occasion automatically. He quickly enters into almost any situation and believes in almost any suggestion just as a child does. That belief power has tremendous force. We say that in the theatre we "make believe," just as children make believe. What belief do we "make"? The actor makes himself believe. Then he makes the audience believe. The actor believes in himself, in his character, and in his work. The audience believes in the characters, in the story, and in the players.

There is a great deal of belief going on around a theatre during a performance. Belief power is pervasive in a theatre, and belief power is tremendously compelling. This is one of the reasons that audiences will sit in the darkness giving their undivided attention to individuals who believe themselves to be other than who they are. The belief on the stage is so compelling that the audience starts to believe these individuals are who they say they are. When an audience believes and the actors believe, we have a tremendous concentration of energy. It is spellbinding. The more the audience believes what the actor is doing, the more the actor believes what he is doing, the more the audience will believe. It's a self-hypnosis of belief. It's a rapture of belief. It's an orgy of belief.

When the play is over, we return to our customary identities. The broker has been believing himself to be in real trouble; believing himself to be wrapped in love; believing himself to be in danger; believing himself to be in triumph, and on and on. When the final curtain falls, he returns to the belief that he is a husband, a golfer, Republican, a father. He has come to the theatre to "exercise" his systems of belief. The more exercise or stimulation his belief systems get, the more exhilaration and pleasure he receives. When he leaves the theatre, he may say, "That was a wonderful show! That was a great play! That was really absorbing!" The reason his spirit is so renewed and enthusiastic is that his belief systems have been awakened and exhilarated. During the course of the performance he contributed so much of his belief that new aspects of his identity have been awakened.

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnet 29

I think of thee! - my thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there's nought to see
Except the straggling green which hides the wood.
Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood
I will not have my thoughts instead of thee
Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly
Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should,
Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare,
And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee,
Drop heavily down, - burst, shattered everywhere!
Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee
And breathe within thy shadow a new air,
I do not think of thee - I am too near thee.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

All the Sonnets from the Portuguese here.

I think it's time to find myself a good therapist. Sonnets are not fire extinguishers after all - rather they seem to be rich veins of coal for my own personal Centralia.

the current primitive state of stage lighting

One of the bigger expenses of my 2008 production of JANE EYRE was the lighting. It was expensive, time consuming, and a pain in the ass. The lights did look good - but not one single damn critic mentioned the lights.

And that's because really, who cares? As long as the stage is reasonably well-lit, nobody cares about the lights. And at the off-off Broadway level, nobody should expect a light show.

One of the reasons why lighting is so damn time-consuming is because the state of stage lighting is still extremely primitive. The lights are set up by people climbing up and down on ladders to change the positions of the lights and to secure colored films in front of the lights. This is absurd in an age when even city buses have LED displays. It adds a whole day to the technical aspect of producing theatre - which means another day of theatre rental, which is incredibly expensive in Manhattan.

And L.E.D. is the answer. There's an article in the NYTImes about L.E.D. technology.

The article ends this way:

“The way an incandescent bulb plays on the face on a Broadway makeup mirror,” he said, “you can never duplicate that.”

To which I say fine - incandescents in the dressing room. But the stage could be lit by L.E.D.s that don't need to be moved, and could be controlled entirely by computer - color, placement AND motion. No more of this ladder crap.

And of course it won't happen for most NYC theatres for a long time, since it would be expensive and they're all used to the old system. But it will change. And I am currently looking for a modern theatre with L.E.D.s in Manhattan for my next production of JANE EYRE.

The legacy of the G. W. Bush administration

And in another case cited by the inspector general, Ms. Goodling blocked the hiring of an experienced prosecutor for a senior counter-terrorism position because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The candidate was regarded as “head and shoulders above the other candidates” in the view of officials in the executive office of United States attorneys, but they were forced to take a candidate with much less experience because he was deemed acceptable to Ms. Goodling.

Back in June 2001, I remember sending an email to some media outlet, predicting that G. W. Bush would go down in history as one of worst presidents. And that his administration would be a complete disgrace.

I wish I had been wrong, for the sake of the people killed in the 9-11 attacks, for the sake of our economy, for the sake of global warming, etc. etc. etc.

But clearly I was not wrong.

More at the NYTimes

once again, the model was not a young man

I felt bad for this model - she seemed really uncomfortable half the time, and the other half she was almost falling asleep.

Life modeling is hard on older people. I did life modeling when I was in my 20s and I remember that it was usually not a pleasant experience - it's tough sitting there naked in public, holding perfectly still for 20 minutes at a time even when you're young. With these older models, it feels like they're being crucified. Makes it hard to concentrate on pure art out of empathy.

The Full Monty - is that it?

I caught "The Fully Monty" again. It's a good movie, and not just because it's about full frontal male nudity. Although that's definitely a good thing.

I didn't notice the first time I saw the movie, but do they just do the one number? "You can leave your hat on"? That means the show they charged good money for was all of five minutes. I mean, maybe they did other numbers, but that doesn't seem likely since showing the full monty would surely be saved for the grand finale.

A quick google around the internets shows that there sure have been lots of productions of the Broadway musical of the movie:

The tattooed lady?

Some guy who saw my photo online said: "no tattoo pictures??? u seem like someone who would have many tattoos ..."

I do?????

I have no idea why he would say that, I am so not tattooed.

There's a pretty interesting web site devoted to bad tattoos here.

You rock those tattoos gal!

I spoke too soon - Nutrisystems really does hate women, except Tame Women

The first time I blogged about Nutrisystems and its hatred of women was over a year ago when they ran a commercial implying that while women had all the time in the world to do boring tedious chores connected to losing weight, men's time was more valuable: "what guy has time for that?" This question was asked by a man - some former sports hero, I think.

So just this past month, I changed my tune because they had a spokeswoman ask "WHO has time for that" - making the time thing no longer an issue of male privilege. I really should have held off on praising Nutrisystems, since the spokeswoman is some Malibu Barbie bimbo wearing a hot pink silk lingerie top along with jeans. This woman, apparently some kind of personality, seems to feel she is an honorary guy. This should have been a red (or hot pink) flag: someone off-camera gently tosses her a football. She catches it and asks "how many women could do that?"

Uh - women who aren't paralyzed in both arms?

So really I gave Nutrisystems too much credit for changing the gender in the "time" line.

And it was confirmed for me today. They have a commercial out now which features the schlubby old guy from the first commercial I mentioned AND the Malibu Barbie bimbo. And Malibu Barbie, like any tame woman, does the dirty work FOR the men this time. This time SHE asks "what guy has time for that?"

Malibu Barbie is the spokesmodel for male privilege because they pay her well, but also because she thinks she's an honorary male because she can catch a football and doesn't have time to do things slowly and laboriously the way those stupid women do.

Nutrisystems is not a pioneer in the Tame Woman movement though. This has been going on forever, among right-wing women. But it's no longer considered a backlash, right-wing tactic, now that women are seeping into bastions of liberal male privilege like the NYTimes. The Times used to have only one woman, Maureen Dowd, among its eight regular editorial columnists. Dowd is an outstandingly tame woman. She totally buys into the men-are-from-Mars-women-are-from-Venus dichotomy, and she despises Venusians. The worst possible insult she can dream up for a man is to call him a woman. This is absolute standard operating practice of the Patriarchy, both to keep women in line, and to keep men from being openly gay. She is a loathsome piece of work. Bob Somerby explains why at great length here.

So when the Times finally got another female columnist (not exactly parity, since females compose at least half of all human beings on THIS planet) that could only be good, right? Except it was Gail Collins, who had already displayed her Tame Woman cred by claiming that the reason females aren't given opinion columns as often as males is because women just don't have what it takes, and aren't interested anyway, in batting out opinions on a regular basis. It certainly is NOT because old men are making all the hiring decisions - what a distasteful, un-Tame way to think!

So she was the perfect choice for the Times - a Tame Woman who could be relied on to support the Patriarchy every step of the way - and to blame any problems women might have in getting ahead on women themselves. Gail Collins wishes to be considered an honorary male, just like Dowd and Malibu Barbie bimbo.

Nutrisystems is just borrowing a strategy from the "liberal" New York Times.

Sweet! I just discovered a blog by the supercool Pessimistic Redhead who has the same gripe! Awesome. And I found her post by googling "Nutrisystems Barbie."


"Why yes, I am another Tame Woman, shilling for the masters of the Patriarchy"

good ole Kurt Vonnegut

I was just thinking about good ole Kurt Vonnegut. He was so great because he would say stuff like this:

I find uncritical respect for most works by great thinkers of long ago unpleasant, because they almost all accepted as natural and ordinary the belief that females and minority races and the poor were on earth to be uncomplaining, hardworking, respectful, and loyal servants of white males, who did the important thinking and exercised leadership.

Here's a web site devoted to Kurt Vonnegut

Here's a drawing by Kurt Vonnegut:

my oh my

Man/Beauty - a photoblog

They are not kidding - there are some mind-bogglingly beautiful photos at this site. And even men with long hair, for a change. oh la la!



No beautiful guys in Elizabethan or Regency costumes though. Guess that's asking for too much.

Matthew Arnold is just jealous

The UK publication The Guardian provides a thumbnail guide to Charlotte Bronte which includes this bit:

Matthew Arnold and Virginia Woolf caught on the violent aspects of Brontë's work when the former complained that her mind "contained nothing but hunger, rebellion, and rage"

And yet people still read Jane Eyre - lots of people - AND it's considered a classic of English literature. Who reads Matthew Arnold's poems? And he was born into the upper class - no need to worry about hunger there.

But Arnold surely did know how to rock the sideburns.

PERSONAL JESUS and The Reverend Bookburn

My friend Bob, AKA The Reverend Bookburn wants to broadcast a radio play format version of my short play PERSONAL JESUS on his Sunday evening show. Cool! I'm putting my cast and sound effects together now!