5:32 PM
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3:59 PM
Paramount Unaware ‘South Park’ Hated On Spielberg & Lucas & ‘Indy 4′:
I've learned Paramount's top execs missed last night's South Park episode viciously spoofing Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for "raping" Indiana Jones in this summer's fourquel. No, I mean really recreating those rape scenes from The Accused and Deliverance and scattering them throughout as the "B" story in "The China Probrem" episode about the racist "horror" of the post-Olympics Chinese taking over the world. My info is that Paramount will look into this on Friday with parent company Viacom which produces the savage adult toon.
I learned about the episode, watched it online, and thought OH MY GOD.
Remember how Tom Cruise was upset with Viacom for South Park's airing of the infamous "Trapped in the Closet" episode? I can't begin to imagine what Brad Grey and Rob Moore, and Spielberg and Lucas, will say to Viacom. After all, the DVD of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull comes out in just days. And Paramount confirmed to me this week that an Indiana Jones 5 is a very, very real possibility and Lucas has already begun development on it.
3:57 PM
1:50 PM
Mike Daisey: If You See Something Say Something @ Museum of Contemporary Art - Flavorpill Chicago:
Mike Daisey takes the stage looking like your schlubby, good-natured cousin and armed only with a glass of water and a scribbled outline — then he explodes into storyteller mode. His fervent, searingly funny unscripted monologues interweave personal anecdotes with obsessive investigations into our nation's secret histories. Our government's long-running fixation with homeland security is the performer's newest subject, and he goes as far back as the first atomic-bomb test 60 years ago. It's a journey through the dark heart of America, as Daisey puts it, but wry, pitch-perfect comedy is our means of transport — with some uneasy truths stowed in the hold.
11:26 AM
11:26 AM
Storefront Rebellion: How the MCA failed Chicago theater:
I found it to be a massively frustrating missed opportunity. Rather than theater people of all stripes having a real conversation about what institutional theater looks like from their own perspectives, we got a bunch of artistic directors and executive directors of major and mid-major theaters. And Jenny Magnus.
With folks like moderator Michael Halberstam and Kathryn Lipuma of Writers', Martha Lavey and David Hawkanson of Steppenwolf and Charlie Newell of Court dominating the conversation with talk of their executive philosophies, the panel began to sound like an institution-ese HR meeting, the kind of TCG "breakout session" Daisey pokes fun at in HTFA.
I really was wondering what Curious Theater Branch's Magnus was doing there—and when she finally spoke up, she admitted she was too. But after she laid out her case for alternative models like Curious, which stays out of the unions, chooses not to grow, and pays its actors ten percent off the top, it seemed to be acknowledged and then ignored.
The moment I came closest to raising my hand—though hand-raising had not been encouraged—was when James Bohnen of Remy Bumppo corrected something Halberstam had said to him and American Theater Company's PJ Paparelli, about their three companies being about the same size. Halberstam had mentioned that Writers' budget was about $3 million a year. "Actually we're only about a third of your size," Bohnen said. "Our budget is just over a million." Um, isn't using budget size as the prevailing measure of a theater's size a symptom of the problems Mike is talking about? What about other metrics, like number of shows produced per year? Number of performances? Number of years in existence? Number of actors paid a living wage?
11:23 AM
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11:18 AM
AP Exclusive: Documents say detainee near insanity - Forbes.com:
A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to The Associated Press.
The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.
The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.
"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."
11:16 AM
11:12 AM
The Dangerous Panic On The Far Right:
There was always going to be a point of revolt and panic for a core group of Americans who believe that Obama simply cannot be president - because he's black or liberal or young or relatively new. This is that point. As the polls suggest a strong victory, the Hannity-Limbaugh-Steyn-O'Reilly base are going into shock and extreme rage. McCain and Palin have decided to stoke this rage, to foment it, to encourage paranoid notions that somehow Obama is a "secret" terrorist or Islamist or foreigner. These are base emotions in both sense of the word.
But they are also very very dangerous. This is a moment of maximal physical danger for the young Democratic nominee. And McCain is playing with fire. If he really wants to put country first, he will attack Obama on his policies - not on these inflammatory, personal, creepy grounds. This is getting close to the atmosphere stoked by the Israeli far right before the assassination of Rabin.
For God's sake, McCain, stop it. For once in this campaign, put your country first.
11:12 AM
11:12 AM
Mike Daisey: If You See Something Say Something @ Museum of Contemporary Art - Flavorpill Chicago:
Mike Daisey takes the stage looking like your schlubby, good-natured cousin and armed only with a glass of water and a scribbled outline — then he explodes into storyteller mode. His fervent, searingly funny unscripted monologues interweave personal anecdotes with obsessive investigations into our nation's secret histories. Our government's long-running fixation with homeland security is the performer's newest subject, and he goes as far back as the first atomic-bomb test 60 years ago. It's a journey through the dark heart of America, as Daisey puts it, but wry, pitch-perfect comedy is our means of transport — with some uneasy truths stowed in the hold.
2:42 AM
10:32 PM
6:54 PM
12:54 PM
Make-Believe Maverick : Rolling Stone:
Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."
12:54 PM
12:48 PM
12:47 PM
Dishonorable Obama:
I actually think the cynics will be disappointed in Obama (although I think Kerry is damn right about Obama on free trade).
The staggering truth is that he's actually quite sincere and calm enough to avoid rank dishonor. He's still a pol, of course, and has cut a few corners in this campaign. But he's nowhere near as slimy as Clinton.
Power will corrupt him, I'm sure. Which is why I intend to go into fair but dogged conservative opposition if he wins this election. He needs a fierce press if he is to be kept on his toes.
4:59 PM
4:59 PM
“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
— Andy Warhol
4:44 PM
4:32 PM
What is my life going to be?: Performance art update volume one (or two, no one yeah one):
I also commend the Writer's Theatre for having a person from the office-y side of their business (I am not sure if she was their marketing director or their CFO or Development Head or what) come and speak to the artists. Because let's face it those are the people who live really comfortably and get paid a ton and are not artists (well most frequently are not artists). She spoke about why (well kind of about why) she and her like get paid more than actors. She spoke about how she doesn't even like to compare the two, and how it makes her uncomfortable to speak about it. She was uncomfortable opening herself up to questions from a roomful of artists, but she very bravely did it. Go her!
The only really exciting moment was when Mike Daisey talked about how part of the state of the liveliness of the art can be seen in the posters for local arts scene (galleries, bands, concerts, plays, etc) on the wall of local restaurants and cafes. He travels a lot and says that usually the theatre posters (in that whole wall) are the lamest. And I am inclined to agree with him. This was the only thing that ruffled the hackles of the artistic directors (yeah I mixed my metaphors whatever I do it). They all got kind of quiet and defensive. It was very interesting.
4:16 PM
4:13 PM
iragamerman: "I got more records than the KGB (so, no funny business).":
I went to this round-table discussion last night with Mike Daisey and a bunch of Chicago theatre illuminati about "How Theatre Failed America".
It wound up being a discussion about the difference between the Admin staff of a theatre vs. the artistic staff of a theatre.
It was a really interesting discussion because frankly, as a theatre artist, I've never really HEARD from Admin staff.
People like Martha Lavey from Steppenwolf talked. A bunch of folks from Writers Theatre.
And it was mostly all about money.
I had wanted a bit more than that. More about how regional theatres aren't appealing to young people. Etc.
But it was mostly about money. Which was still cool.
Because I found that A LOT of these theatres are operating on 1 million dollar a year budgets.
Which is about what my office makes.
And is actually jack shit when you factor in salaries, rent, etc.
Meaning NO ONE is getting much money.
Especially the artists.
So the purpose of this symposium was to sort of question the idea if that was ok.
And it got me thinking about MY OWN work and the realization that I don't have much expectation to get paid for my work.
Which is fucked up of me.
It got me thinking about a lot of things regarding theatre.
I can't really talk about them now because I have to go back to work.
But still.
Pretty cool.
4:13 PM
1:43 AM
Gone Are the Days of 27 Plays | Slog | The Stranger | Seattle's Only Newspaper:
Hey theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, Annex Theater produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, four of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (A kinda, sorta world premiere: It’s a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.)
What else happened in 1988? Nirvana started recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theater. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour.
The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your house.
1:41 AM
1:37 AM
Credit Default Swaps: $60 Trillion of Bullshit | Slog | The Stranger | Seattle's Only Newspaper:
Car insurance makes sense. If I drive or own a car, I better have some way to pay for repairs and healthcare if I fuck up.
And it makes sense that the insurance company better be tightly regulated—forced to keep enough liquid assets around to pay out claims. If the insurance company failed to pay up, it would be a nightmare for everyone.
Credit Default Swaps (CDS) started out as insurance for bonds. For a percent or two a year of the face value of the bond, you received a contract to pay the face value of a bond if the issuing company defaults. This is little different than life insurance, homeowners insurance or car insurance.
The trouble started in 2000, when the Commodity Futures Modernization Act explicitly banned the regulation of these sorts of contracts. Funny things started to happen; people took out CDS contracts on bonds they didn’t hold.
This would be like me insuring your car. Why on earth would I do that? It’s a bet. If you get in an accident, I get paid; I’m gambling on your failure.
I could be even more clever, and eliminate my risk entirely—at least on paper.
1:37 AM
1:37 AM
Time Out Chicago: The TOC Blog Five things to do today - Oct 7:
Monologuist Daisey, who’s performing this weekend at the MCA Theater (his first Chicago appearance), caused a stir earlier this year around the country—and particularly in the theatrical corners of the blogosphere—with his piece about perceived failures of the regional theater movement, namely that they’ve let big donors and big buildings become more important than art. In this roundtable, artistic directors of Chicago theaters from Steppenwolf to Curious Theatre Branch discuss Daisey’s ideas and the need to balance the institutional and the artistic. 6pm. Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave. (312-280-2660, mcachicago.org). El: Red to Chicago. Bus: 3, 10, 26, 66 (24hrs), 125, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151 (24hrs). FREE!
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For those who read the site via RSS, I'm headed to Chicago today—we have performances of IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING this Friday through Sunday at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Details and tickets available here.
Tonight I'll be participating in a roundtable on the state of American Theatre with Martha Lavey, Artistic Director of Steppenwolf, Michael Halberstam, Founder and Artistic Director of the Writers' Theatre, and the Court Theatre's Charles Newell. That's happening at 6pm at the museum this evening, and is free—full details may be found here.
If you have advice about things for us to do in Chicago, please feel free to drop me a line.
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Denver police union T-shirt: "We get up early to beat the crowds" - Boing Boing:
The Denver police union is selling T-shirts commemorating the good times they had last month. It costs just $10, which is quite a deal!
The back of the shirts reads, "We get up early to beat the crowds" and "2008 DNC," and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.
Detective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board, said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events.
Rogers said each Denver officer was given one of the shirts free and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices.
8:04 PM
To be clear, this is what McCain wants—it's about fixing the word TERRORIST next to Obama's name now.
7:46 PM
Manifesto:
Theater Oobleck has no Managing Director, no Artistic Director, no Technical Director, no Musical Director, no production directors. This is now second nature to us; second nature to a degree that we are surprised when people are surprised by it; second nature to a degree that the whole thing seems rather mundane to me and I must admit to having to strain a little in order to manufacture the BRASH EXCLAMATIVE TONE with which I proclaimed NO DIRECTOR! above and which I will try to maintain below. The fact is that the Director is a newcomer to the theater, and he/she (usually he) has served his purpose! He came in as the Outsider to reform the Theater. Now he pretends he has always been there! Here's a quote from an article someone gave me years ago... I forget the author's name:
"Putting the burden of innovation on the director is like putting the prime minister in charge of the revolution, for the director, insofar as he remains a director, cannot help but defend that kind of theater in which he has a place of importance, suppressing those ancient models of the theater which do not require his services."
7:21 PM
7:21 PM
Best in Show: October | Metromix New York:
Cutting through the white noise and BS, Mike Daisey is on hand at the Public Theater to describe not-so-simple truths about the American character. This extraordinary monologist is one of the most vital performers in New York City today. His latest work, "If You See Something Say Something," provides a history of American paranoia and propaganda by exhuming the mad science and madder strategy of the U.S. government during the Cold War.
7:06 PM
7:06 PM
Why Obama is getting criminal justice policy wrong:
When Sen. Barack Obama expressed concern early in the primary season that there are more young black men in prison than in college, he raised hope that he might be the first major-party candidate in a generation to adopt a more nuanced criminal policy than the typical "longer sentences, more prisons, more cops." As it turns out, Obama was wrong on the numbers. But the sentiment was right—one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is currently behind bars.
Obama has also heartened advocates for criminal justice reform by expressing reservations about mandatory minimum sentences, at least for nonviolent offenders. He said he would end federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they're legal. And he has expressed some welcome dismay about America's incarceration rate, which is the highest in the world.
But in the last month, Obama's line on criminal justice has been a lot less encouraging. His running mate selection of Joe Biden, long one of the Senate's most strident crime hawks and staunchest drug warriors, was telling. Since the vice-presidential pick, Obama and Biden have embraced criminal justice policies geared toward a larger federal presence in law enforcement, a trend that started in the Nixon administration and that has skewed local police priorities toward the slogan-based crime policies of Congress, like "more arrests" and "stop coddling criminals."
In particular, Biden and Obama have promised to beef up two federal grant programs critics say have exacerbated many of the very problems Obama expressed concern about earlier in the primaries. Obama and Biden's position shows an unwillingness to think critically about criminal justice. They are opting instead for the reflexive belief that more federal involvement is always preferable to less.
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Please Pick Mike Daisey | Newcity Stage:
Most famous for harshly accusing regional theater of betraying its local actors (in his typically blunt monologue “How Theater Failed America”), Mike Daisey is one of the most visible monologuists around—and one of the most provocative. The New York Times called him “one of the finest solo performers of his generation,” a sweet if vague tribute that speaks both to his appeal with intelligentsia and to the difficulty of defining exactly what his focus is. (Other monologues have covered monopoly, the cold war and great men of genius.)
4:36 PM
4:36 PM
If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less - TIME:
A new study looks at this problem in a wonderfully inventive way. In previous studies, academics have looked at variables like years of education and the effects of outside forces such as nondiscrimination policies. But gender was always the constant. What if it didn't have to be? What if you could construct an experiment in which a random sample of adults unexpectedly changes sexes before work one day? Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall, an economist at New York University, couldn't quite pull off that study. But they have come up with the first systematic analysis of the experiences of transgender people in the labor force. And what they found suggests that raw discrimination remains potent in U.S. companies.
Schilt and Wiswall found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more. The study was just published in the Berkeley Electronic Press' peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.
3:33 PM
3:11 PM
Dow plunges 800 points amid global sell-off: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance:
Wall Street suffered through another traumatic session Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials plunging as much as 800 points and setting a new record for a one-day point drop as investors despaired that the credit crisis would take a heavy toll around the world. The Dow also fell below 10,000 for the first time since 2004, and all the major indexes fell more than 7 percent.
The catalyst for the selling was the growing realization that the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue plan and steps taken by other governments won't work quickly to unfreeze the credit markets. Global banks, hobbled by wrong-way bets on mortgage securities, remain starved for cash as credit has dried up.
That sent stocks spiraling downward in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and drove investors to sink money into the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Fears about a global recession also caused oil to drop below $90 a barrel; and the benchmark index that gauges fear in the market jumped to the highest level in its 18-year history.
3:08 PM
2:26 PM
War and Sex: Who’s Afraid of Sarah Kane?:
Though it was the first work staged in Ms. Kane’s short career — she committed suicide in 1999 at age 28, leaving only five plays behind — “Blasted” immediately established her as an important voice in modern playwriting. But the things that make the play remarkable also make it challenging to produce.
On the most obvious level, it bursts with audacious violence. Drawing parallels between sexual assault and the cruelty of war, the plot follows an older man and a younger woman as they hide from combat inside an opulent hotel room. The war then literally and figuratively invades their space, subjecting them to Jacobean-style horror. One stage direction has eyeballs being sucked out and eaten, and another has a dead infant getting buried under the floor.
1:30 PM
1:14 PM
The Playgoer: Robert Wilson at USC:
On the evening before his production of Madama Butterfly returned to L.A. (at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), Robert Wilson addressed an assembly of students, faculty and a few invited guests at the Bing Theatre on the USC campus.
In rumpled black jacket and trousers and soft black shoes (over a white shirt), the designer-director walked onto the stage and stood still, and in silence, for about five minutes – eliciting a few awkward giggles, but mostly a kind of hypnosis.
When he eventually spoke, which he did for almost two hours, he sometimes stopped, mid-sentence, and froze, for longer than the standard attention span usually tolerates – either to gather his thoughts, or to make a point about the standard, diminishing attention span.
TV and even theater, he noted, contain a rhythm of stop-start-stop-start. Quick bursts and cessations of energy. “No no no no no no,” he squealed in a falsetto, chiding, as though speaking to children.
Because each movement of music, each motion of gesture is connected to the preceding movement or motion. Animals understand this. They remember through their muscles. For this reason, he, explained, beginning actors must first learn how to stand on a stage in silence, and then how to walk across a stage, like a cat.
1:10 PM
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11:07 AM
Transparency, Please:
Back in her time as a Christianist culture warrior in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin demanded total transparency from her moderate Republican opponent:
Within a few months, Palin was officially challenging Stein and exploiting the cultural shift masterfully. She welcomed a national anti-abortion group in to carpet bomb Wasilla with pink postcards affirming her pro-life bona fides. She orchestrated an NRA endorsement and a mailing from the group falsely proclaiming Stein, a lifelong hunter, "anti-gun." (Stein complained to the local newspaper that Palin was telling voters he wanted to "melt down" all the firearms in the state.) And, in a move practically out of Karl Rove's playbook, she dwelled on how Stein's wife used her maiden name, going so far as to demand a marriage certificate as proof of their nuptials. Palin's campaign literature proclaimed her "deeply devoted to conservative family values"--all in the context of an ostensibly nonpartisan election. (Stein himself was a moderate Republican.)
So it is part of Palin's record to demand the marriage license of a fellow Republican, but to ask for any medical confirmation of the mysterious birth of Trig earlier this year, any affidavit from the obstetrician, any objective evidence at all that Trig is indeed Sarah Palin's biological child is, well, in the words of John Podhoretz, "virtually unspeakable." Look: this is usually not hard at all. Births are recorded at the hospitals where they occur. And, as you might expect, there's a long list of babies born at Mat-Su Medical center, where we are told Trig was born on April 18 this year. But for some reason, Trig Palin's name is not among them.
Why would a hospital exhaustively record all births on their premises and leave out easily the most famous baby ever born there? There were only 24 births at Mat-Su in April of this year: it's not like they could have mislaid one. So why is there no formal record of Trig's birth? This is not an "unspeakable" question. It's a simple factual one. Presumably there's an explanation. Perhaps the Palins decided that it would be an invasion of Trig's privacy to have the birth actually recorded in the hospital where he was born. But at least they should be able to tell us that. Or perhaps the hospital decided for some reason not to record that one birth. I have no idea. I do know that if Sarah Palin were running against Sarah Palin, she would demand evidence, as she did with something just as accessible with respect to John Stein's marriage license.
11:05 AM
11:05 AM
Like J.P. Morgan, Warren E. Buffett Braves a Crisis - NYTimes.com:
He called the current crisis an economic Pearl Harbor, requiring immediate action. Its biggest single cause, he explained, was the real estate bubble. “Three hundred million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently,” he said. “Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things.”
As far back as 2003, Mr. Buffett had warned that the complex securities at the center of today’s troubles — once so profitable, but now toxic — were “financial weapons of mass destruction.” These securities were engineered by the math quants on Wall Street, and in the interview Mr. Buffett expressed his disdain: “Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”
12:34 AM
11:32 PM
The Bush/Palin World View:
Ron Suskind captures it best in this vignette from 2001 as one of Bush's top economic advisers actually said in a meeting in the president's presence that Bush's fiscal insouciance was bad policy:
According to senior administration officials who learned of the encounter soon after it happened, President Bush looked at the man. "I don't ever want to hear you use those words in my presence again," he said.
"What words, Mr. President?"
"Bad policy," President Bush said. "If I decide to do it, by definition it's good policy. I thought you got that."
The advisor was dismissed. The meeting was over.
Eight years later, we have a woman on the ticket whose record in Alaska is identical: utterly fixed, utterly immune to criticism, and, much of the time, utterly wrong.
11:29 PM
11:26 PM
Ready for the racism? This is from a member of the McCain/Palin campaign's Leadership Team in Virginia:
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Theatre Communications Group - American Theatre - October 2008:
Sheila Callaghan doesn’t finish sentences. She tumbles forward through a flood of images and ideas, sometimes pausing to recall how she arrived at this particular spot in the conversation. There’s a giddy energy about her, and she’s a magnet for people and discussion.
Callaghan’s writing, likewise, seems to filter in everything around her before spinning back onto the page. Though she’s often tagged with various nebulous labels (“downtown” and “language playwright” are two, and neither is totally unfounded), her plays defy categorization. They are sexy, punky, smart, sophisticated, literate, edgy, tightly woven, big, crass, witty, exquisite. They swell with moments of the unreal but never let go of a narrative thread. They expand and contract to underscore everyday grit and epic ache.
“She writes the kind of plays you can’t wait to crack open,” says director Kip Fagan, who began working with Callaghan more than a decade ago at Seattle’s Printer’s Devil Theater, which Callaghan calls her first professional-development home. “She works in a lot of different idioms, but whether the play is naturalistic, like Lascivious Something, or a totally dystopian, theatrical story, like We Are Not These Hands, there’s a buoyancy that can be missing in a lot of more formally adventurous writing. There’s nothing dry about her plays.”
8:18 PM
10:18 AM
An Angry White Guy in Chicago: The Cultural Bleed of the NEA:
Gioia did a lot for the NEA - he bolstered the budget, instituted lots of reading programs, pushed jazz as America's only indigenous art form - all after a fifteen year beating the agency took after the fallout from the NEA Four* and Congress's insistence that the NEA was not their responsibility.
So, if the former corporate executive-turned-poet did such a bang up job, what the fuck has happened in the past six years that leaves a bad taste in my mouth?
Simply put, instead of fighting the conservatives so offended by the work of individual artists or spending the money allocated on actual art, Gioia made the NEA the arts branch of the Department of Education.
10:17 AM
10:13 AM
Alaska vs. Hawaii:
Why is Alaska authentically American when Hawaii is not? At bottom, of course, it's a silly question. Both states, while disconnected geographically from the continental United States, are populated with people whose American-ness is beyond dispute. Every corner of each one of the 50 states is "authentically American." But Alaska leans Republican while Hawaii leans Democratic, and the GOP long ago intimidated the media into believing that only Republican strongholds represent the "real America." These Republican strongholds are usually sparsely populated, and I suppose the media's been sold on the idea that because the United States started out as an agrarian nation, rural areas are somehow more authentic than urban ones.
But if it's really true, as Palin said in the debate, that Americans are tired of "constantly looking backwards," then perhaps it's time we noticed that, as Rachael Larimore points out in Slate's "XX Factor" blog, 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in metropolitan areas. We city-dwellers make no claim to being more "authentically American" than Alaskans or the inhabitants of any of this country's many other big open spaces. But we are, by dispassionate numerical reckoning, more typical. And while most people probably don't think of Hawaii as an urban state, 70 percent of its 1.3 million inhabitants live in and around Honolulu, the state's biggest city. In Alaska, by contrast, only 42 percent of its 670,000 inhabitants live in and around Anchorage, that state's biggest city. So if either of the last two states admitted to the union has any claim to being more characteristic of the nation as a whole, it's Hawaii, not Alaska.
I'm not suggesting that Obama start prancing around obnoxiously declaring himself more authentically American than Sarah Palin. But I do wish the press would set aside its sepia-tinted glasses and consider this country as it is, and not as self-interestedly sentimental Republicans want us to think it is.
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8:07 AM
Name That Economy:
What should we call the economic model emerging from this crisis of capitalism? Despite the collectivization of losses and risk, it doesn't qualify as even reluctant socialism. Government ownership of private assets is being presented as a last-ditch expedient, not a policy goal. Yet it's inaccurate to describe our economy, either pre- or post-Paulson, as simply laissez faire. A system in which government must frequently intervene to protect the world from the results of private financial misjudgment is modified capitalism—part invisible hand, part helping hand. This leaves us with a pressing problem of both conceptualization and nomenclature.
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8:02 AM
FIVE THINGS TO LEARN ABOUT ... Mike Daisey | Chicago Tribune :
Because Spalding Gray is no longer alive, Daisey, 35, is probably America’s most prominent theatrical monologuist. Like Gray, he sits behind a desk and riffs on matters micro and macro, personal and political. But the two are very different in style and preoccupation. Gray deliberately created a claustrophobic universe and was predominantly interested in the boundaries and manifestations of neurosis. Daisey has expounded on subjects as broad and varied as the Department of Homeland Security (the subject of his show next weekend at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art), the fabulist/novelist James Frey, scientist Nikola Tesla, public transportation, Monopoly and the Cold War. “Spalding worked extemporaneously but would lock his shows over time,” Daisey says. “I always perform extemporaneously.”
1:48 AM
1:48 AM
Biden Palin Vice Presidential Debate 2008 Transcript:
If you really want to decide what these people believe about the issues I recommend you read some of this rather than watch the tapes.
9:01 AM
9:01 AM
The Choice: Comment: The New Yorker:
Perhaps nothing revealed McCain’s cynicism more than his choice of Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, who had been governor of that state for twenty-one months, as the Republican nominee for Vice-President. In the interviews she has given since her nomination, she has had difficulty uttering coherent unscripted responses about the most basic issues of the day. We are watching a candidate for Vice-President cram for her ongoing exam in elementary domestic and foreign policy. This is funny as a Tina Fey routine on “Saturday Night Live,” but as a vision of the political future it’s deeply unsettling. Palin has no business being the backup to a President of any age, much less to one who is seventy-two and in imperfect health. In choosing her, McCain committed an act of breathtaking heedlessness and irresponsibility. Obama’s choice, Joe Biden, is not without imperfections. His tongue sometimes runs in advance of his mind, providing his own fodder for late-night comedians, but there is no comparison with Palin. His deep experience in foreign affairs, the judiciary, and social policy makes him an assuring and complementary partner for Obama.
The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.
7:55 AM
11:55 PM
A statement that he made like that is downright dangerous because leaders like Ahmadinejad who would seek to acquire nuclear weapons and wipe off the face of the earth an ally like we have in Israel should not be met with without preconditions and diplomatic efforts being undertaken first.
—Sarah Palin
11:55 PM
11:47 PM
Nuculer Meltdown - The Stump:
Asked about the circumstances that might allow for the use of nuclear weapons, Palin seemed to panic and gave a comically hollow answer involving something to do about nukes as "the end all and be all" and how evil regimes must not have them.
Then Gwen Ifill allowed her to change the subject to Afghanistan, whereupon Palin implied that Barack Obama cast the conflict there as some kind of a war against innocent civilians. For good measure, she seemed to suggest that's it's not even true to say that US air strikes there have killed a lot of civiians, which of course is has been a major tragedy and strategic problem there.
I think Palin is giving a cosmetically strong performance so far, but on the substance it's a horrorshow.
11:34 PM
11:33 PM
Parents Give Up Youths Under Law Meant for Babies - NYTimes.com:
The biggest shock to public officials came last week, when a single father walked into an Omaha hospital and surrendered nine of his 10 children, ages 1 to 17, saying that his wife had died and he could no longer cope with the burden of raising them.
In total last month, 15 older children in Nebraska were dropped off by a beleaguered parent or custodial aunt or grandmother who said the children were unmanageable.
Officials have called the abandonments a misuse of a new law that was mainly intended to prevent so-called Dumpster babies — the abandonment of newborns by young, terrified mothers — but instead has been used to hand off out-of-control teenagers or, in the case of the father of 10, to escape financial and personal despair.
11:24 PM
11:23 PM
Live Blogging by Rick Klein: Working the Refs:
Just as clearly, this is silly and -- even in the age of anything-goes spin -- just not right. First, nobody knows what Ifill is going to write; Ifill herself says she hasn’t written the section on Obama yet, and the book will be about a whole generation of black leaders, not just Obama.
Second, no one seriously questions the journalistic credentials of the PBS veteran, who also did stints at NBC News and The New York Times.
Third, Ifill’s authorship of this book should have surprised precisely no one in political circles. Six weeks ago, the book merited a mention in Time magazine. Last month, The Washington Post wrote about it.
For this to suddenly become an “issue” right before the debate is a disservice to a talented journalist. It fits with the McCain campaign’s efforts to rail against the media -- but does Team McCain really think it will win an election because people think it win anger the MSM?
7:15 PM
7:15 PM
A lesson in the failures of "fair use" (Lessig Blog):
But this whole mess demonstrates clearly, in my view, the need for us to get beyond the "fair use" analysis. This is an amateur remix of popular culture. It should be completely exempt from copyright restrictions. When it gets used commercially (by, say, YouTube), then, in my view, YouTube should be responsible for the work it is profiting from -- through a flat, collective license, for example, either created by law, or negotiated by the parties. But only then should there be a "copyright event." Until it is used commercially in that sense, the creator should be free to (re)create without employing a lawyer to muddle through the mess of complexity fair use law is. The law has no useful function in this context. Or put differently, amateur remix needs to be deregulated.
Instead, of course, the law today has it exactly backwards. It is the creator of this work who is the alleged copyright infringer under current law. And YouTube who is immune from liability so long as it removes the work as soon as it can.
5:38 PM
5:38 PM
Jonathan Martin's Blog: McCain pulling out of Michigan - Politico.com:
John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.
McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.
5:37 PM
36 Hours of Alarm and Action as Crisis Spiraled - NYTimes.com:
The real problem was that a handful of hedge funds that used the firm’s London office to handle their trades had billions of dollars in balances frozen in the bankruptcy.
Diamondback Capital Management, for instance, a $3 billion hedge fund, told its investors that 14.9 percent of its assets were locked up in the Lehman bankruptcy — money it could not extract. A number of other hedge funds were in the same predicament. (When called for comment, Diamondback officials did not respond.)
As this news spread, every other hedge fund manager had to worry about whether the balances they had at other Wall Street firms might suffer a similar fate. And Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were the two biggest firms left that served this back-office role. That is why Mr. Ackman’s investors were calling him. And that is what caused hedge funds to pull money out of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, hedge their exposure by buying credit-default swaps that would cover losses if either firm couldn’t pay money they owed — or do both.
It was fear, not greed, that was driving everyone’s actions.
8:40 AM
8:40 AM
Best Bets, Oct. 2-Oct. 8 | burlingtonfreepress.com | The Burlington Free Press:
Mike Daisey brings his show “Great Men of Genius: Nikola Tesla” to the University of Vermont Lane Series at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 4 at the UVM Recital Hall. In a show that combines storytelling, personal narrative, monologue and electrical engineering, Daisey focuses on the life of Nikola Tesla, a scientist and visionary who sparred with Thomas Edison and died insane and penniless writing love sonnets to pigeons after bringing the world electricity as we know it.
8:18 AM
11:12 PM
We're off this AM on a short tour—first stop is MAINE, land of my forefathers and mis-spent youth, where we'll be performing at Colby College, an institution that was foolish enough to allow me to matriculate.
Show details are in the sidebar, but the long and the short is that there is one show only,
and it is this FRIDAY at 7:30pm at the theater.
7:08 AM
7:02 AM
6:59 AM
The Playgoer: The Civilians Play L.A.:
I write this by way of introducing the grand opening of UCLA Live's Seventh Annual International Theater Festival, and U.S. premier of adapter-director Barry Kosky's staging of Edward Allen Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” -- a one-man performance featuring Austrian actor Martin Niedermair. The show and festival are supposed to open tomorrow (Wednesday), but they won't, because Niedermair isn't coming.
He would like to come, but the Department of Homeland Security has denied his visa.
His visa is being denied because Actors Equity has determined that the role, being recited in English, could, conceivably be played by an American, and Homeland Security routinely checks in with the appropriate labor union in order to make its determination of whether to grant a work-related visa.
Explained Equity spokesperson Maria Somma, the organization subcontracted by UCLA Live to petition for artists' visas, Traffic Control Group, Ltd., submitted paperwork that said the performance was culturally unique. “We rejected that because we didn't find anything that was culturally unique about it.”
3:44 AM
3:44 AM
GigaOM White Paper: The Facts & Fiction of Bandwidth Caps - GigaOM:
Beginning on Wednesday, Comcast, the largest broadband service provider in the U.S., is going to start capping the total amount of data you can transfer using their broadband connection — to 250GB per month. With this move, the cable company will become the symbol of a new Internet era, one that is both monitored and metered. It is an era that threatens to limit innovation and to a large extent, the possibilities for new startups.
I have been very vocal about the short-sightedness of this decision being made by Comcast (and some other carriers), and along with my colleague Stacey Higginbotham, have been covering the story pretty closely. It is a clear and present danger to the way we use the Internet in this country.
2:57 AM
2:57 AM
Nearly three decades of Republican dominance may be coming to an end:
The central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan and maintained by his successors was that government was a common enemy. Middle-class social conservatives loathed the government for legalizing abortion, forbidding prayer in schools, and coddling minorities through welfare and affirmative action. Upper-class libertarian conservatives loathed the government for soaking the rich through the income tax and weakening businesses through burdensome regulation. The only useful function of the federal government was to provide for the common defense. This was a con for two reasons.
First, the middle and upper classes were both dependent on the federal government for a variety of benefits, including Social Security, trade protection, scientific research, and assorted localized spending (termed "pork barrel" by those who don't receive it and "economic development" by those who do).
Second, the distribution of this government largesse greatly favored the rich. In the April 1992 Atlantic, Neil Howe and Philip Longman, citing unpublished data from the Congressional Budget Office, reported that U.S. households with incomes above $100,000 received, on average, slightly more in federal cash and in-kind benefits ($5,690) than households with incomes below $10,000 ($5,560). This was four years before the Clinton administration eliminated Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the principal income-support program for the poor. When tax breaks were added to the tally, households with incomes above $100,000 received considerably more ($9,280) than households with incomes below $10,000 ($5,690). Clinton subsequently expanded tax subsidies to the poor through the Earned Income Tax Credit, but not enough to undo this disparity. "[I]f the federal government wanted to flatten the nation's income distribution," Howe and Longman concluded, "it would do better to mail all its checks to random addresses."
11:53 PM
7:22 PM
5:11 PM
4:21 PM
Feingold Bill Would Limit Searches of Travelers' Laptops - September 30, 2008 - The New York Sun:
Under a 29-page bill Mr. Feingold introduced on Friday, customs agents at airports and borders would need to document a "reasonable suspicion" before inspecting a computer or similar device carried by an American resident and could only hold on to the device for 24 hours before starting the process of seeking a warrant from a judge.
"Requiring citizens and other legal residents of the United States to submit to a government review and analysis of thousands of pages of their most personal information without any suspicion of wrongdoing is incompatible with the values of liberty and personal freedom on which the United States was founded," a preamble to the bill declares.
2:36 PM
11:50 AM
Financial crisis: Western world will become significantly less wealthy - Telegraph:
The free market can be very creative but it can also be immensely destructive. This is one of those points where the scale of destruction is potentially so great that it could set the economy back years.
This is why so many people – and not just the politicians putting the deal together – are warning that if the deal fails entirely we could be facing a second Great Depression.
The big mistake policymakers made in the 1930s was to allow too many banks to fail. This caused such a financial earthquake that it led to a decade of hardship.
The Troubled Asset Relief Program was not a perfect template for dealing with struggling banks. However, to dangle it in front of markets and then snatch it back again was an improbably unwise move.
11:14 AM
11:12 AM
Commentary: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer - CNN.com:
The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.
Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.
In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.
11:06 AM
2:03 AM
Please Keep Your Voice Down, My Poor Retarded Child Is Sleeping:
Shhhh!
Could you please stop tearing apart my record so loudly? I just put my special needs child down for a nap. You remember my poor, Down syndrome baby, don't you? The developmentally disabled child I carried to term despite knowing that he had special needs? The child who would be helpless without my constant care and attention? Well, he's just nodded off, and if you continue to provide such damning evidence of my inexperience in both foreign and domestic policy, you'll wake him.
You wouldn't want him to start crying, would you?
12:23 AM
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10:34 PM
10:05 PM
From a bathroom at Microsoft:
10:04 PM
Ross Douthat (September 29, 2008) - Three Scenarios (Politics):
The most likely scenario, as of 3 PM this afternoon: The stock market continues to drop. Some version of the bailout passes in the next week. The American economy staggers into a recession, but passes through the storm without 1930s-style suffering; the Republican Party is not so fortunate. Even though most Americans claim to oppose the bailout [update: not anymore], the House GOP's obstructionism is widely viewed as having worsened the economic situation; the fact that these are contradictory positions does not faze an electorate that wraps all of the country's current troubles up, ties them with a bow, and lays them at the feet of the Bush-led GOP. John McCain loses by a landslide in November. The Democratic Party regains years or even decades worth of ground among the white working class, consolidates the Hispanic vote, and locks up a large chunk of highly-educated voters who might otherwise lean conservative. The much-discussed liberal realignment happens. And a politician running on a Ron Paul-style economic platform does very, very well in the GOP primaries of 2012.
7:59 PM
6:31 PM
4:58 PM
Renting Makes More Financial Sense Than Homeownership - Yahoo! Real Estate:
I have something un-American to confess: I rent an apartment, despite having enough money to buy a house. I plan to keep renting for as long as I can. I'm not just holding out for better prices. Renting will make me richer.
I normally write about stocks for SmartMoney.com, but the boss asked me to explain to readers my reason for renting. Here goes: Businesses are great investments while houses are poor ones, so I'd rather rent the latter and own the former.
4:27 PM
4:27 PM
Actor wears 10 hats in play about gentrification in Williamsburg:
Danny Hoch - actor, playwright, Williamsburg resident and founder of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival - is giving a free performance of his one-man show, "Taking Over," in his own backyard - and at other spots around the city.
Hoch will give free performances in Queens and the Bronx, before the show's Nov. 7 opening at the Public Theater in Manhattan.
"To have the show be successful in the Public Theater, I know I have to get the support of people in the boroughs first," said Hoch, 37. "Tourists won't be my bread and butter, but [it's the] New Yorkers, who feel their stories are being told on stage."
4:18 PM
4:17 PM
The Paul Newman Scene I Can't Get Out of My Head:
But the scene I kept coming back to sets up the whole film. It's hardly noticeable. Newman is intent on bedding a fellow barfly played by Charlotte Rampling. He buys her dinner the night before voir dire, and for the first time in the film, we come up close to Newman's face. The deep-set mask of middle-aged failure softens. Watch Newman here, ye who would be actors; study him. Where does this come from? "See, the jury believes. The jury wants to believe." The lines are almost inconsequential. But Newman is giving us evidence that Galvin is still alive. "It is something to see. I have to go down there tomorrow and pick out 12 of them. All of them—all their lives—say, 'It's a sham, it's rigged, you can't fight city hall. But when they step into that jury box … you just barely see it in their eyes. Maybe, maybe …" Rampling leans imperceptibly forward. "Maybe what?" And Newman exhales—just a little—putting a lifetime of defeat into that exhale, and suddenly Frank Galvin is talking about himself. "Maybe I could do something right."
4:12 PM
4:10 PM
Steve Jobs and the Portal to the Invisible - Esquire:
The thing is, nobody should have been surprised. Steve Jobs has been saying that Steve Jobs is dying for years. From the
