AWG:Chicago

Friday Roundup: A Boxing Glove With the Definition of "Socialism" On It

2012-01-27T05:06:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, That Guy Needs a Punch in the Fucking Gob

I realized a long time ago that there are only a few Liberals and Lefties that really like a dustup with the obnoxious, revisionist assholes on the Extreme Right. I realized that most of my Liberal friends will immediately disavow me if I get loud and aggressive with the Right when I think they're Wrong. I watched the Democratic Establishment throw Howard Dean under the bus because he got angry and yelled at a rally.

But sometimes the Left needs to bloody a few knuckles. Sometimes, when people like Newt or Ron or Sean or Rush or any of these douchebags decides to openly revise history to fit their skewed narrative of the world, those of us on the other side of the fence need to stand up and aggressively defend Truth.

Sometimes, I wanna get a boxing glove with the definition of "Socialism" on it and smack the shit out of idiots who claim President Obama is one.

Man up, Lefties.

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This is...I Don't Know...Horrifying? Beautiful?

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Tomorrow...

At 3:00PM, you can see me read as a part of The Paper Machete.

At 10:00PM, you can see me as Udo in The Mammals' production of Devils Don't Forget.

At 3:00AM, you can see me sawing logs in bed. But don't wake me up. I got stuff to do in morning.

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Quote of the Week

I am perhaps less interested in popularity or community than ever before. I doubt that any sacrifices I might have to make to be popular or clubbable, whether it’s within a small circle or a large public arena, would justify the returns, quite small as I can imagine them in the larger scheme of things. I can see no justifiable or significant recompense to the exertion to be popular, or at least more widely read. - George Hunka

Amen, brother.

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HERE'S THE TRUTH --

The GOP Version of John Kerry

2012-01-26T05:12:00.000-06:00

I *almost* feel bad for Mitt.

The GOP base (at least the rabid ones who vote in the primaries) have expressed their overwhelming desire to have any fucking crackpot be their nominee instead of Mitt - Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Santorum, Paul, now Gingrich. Christ, Mitt looks like a completely sane (if not misguided and bland) guy on the stage.

I also understand that the wingnuts and TeaBillies are looking for a presidential candidate that is so anti-compromise that he literally foams at the mouth when confronted with anything that resembles having the government come to the aid of the (other) people and Mitt just ain't that guy.

Obama does not represent ALL of my liberal values (he's even too centrist for me) but the guy is on MY side and I dig his long game so I'm on board with that. What do the potential candidates for president on the GOP represent?

People who:

dislike anyone from Mexico or the Middle East.
believe that any regulation on the Free Market, corporations, or any assistance to unions, schools, or the poor (which translates to 'people in the cities') as SOCIALISM.
hate homosexuals
think women should shut the fuck up about rights to their bodies or getting paid fairly

Sure - there are other issues that this bunch of clowns disagree about but they ALL pretty much fall in line with those four core values.

And the reason Romney isn't their favorite?

Because when he spouts off about Obama being socialist or immigrants being illegal or gays being ostracized - THEY DON'T BELIEVE HIM. Because I don't think he believes these things himself.

The biggest flaw to Mitt is that he'll say ANYTHING to get elected.

He's like the GOP version of John Kerry.

I Believe...

2012-01-25T05:01:00.000-06:00

...that a day off should involve not showering, meandering from napping to watching movies to napping some more, repeat. A day off is an opportunity to recharge the battery, not fill the day with "other" stuff...

...that, with South Carolina Republicans picking Newt Gingrich as their candidate for President, South Carolina has proven that Reconstruction did abso-fucking-lutely nothing for South Carolina. If S.C. and Oklahoma bordered each other, we could call it Dipshit Alley.

...that I am not at all surprised to find out that Apple (and Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo) all manufacture their products in China instead of the U.S. in part because they couldn't find enough qualified engineers here in the States. And I'm happy to hear that at least President Obama read the article, too.

...that having an eight-inch snow storm on Friday followed by a thunderstorm on Sunday in January in Chicago makes me definitively think that the Climate Scientists are completely full of shit. This is weather like any other meth head's nightmares.

...that there is nothing that can compare to producing an event that gathers Chicagoans of all ethnicities, ages, genders, and economic class together to celebrate Hip Hop culture. The vibe is incredible; the kids are excited and involved. And every minute of the amounts of preparation, and the daunting task of putting it all together on the day of the event is worth it when three 15 year old B-Boys come up and thank you for letting them be in on it.

There are days when I truly LOVE my job. Saturday was one of them.

Watching Hollywood Become Broadway

2012-01-24T05:12:00.000-06:00

In the recent dustup about the (now) defunct SOPA and PIPA legislation, it occurred to me that Hollywood (the primary motivation behind the bills) is doing what all anachronistic industries do in the wake of technology - fight it. In the guise of fighting for intellectual property rights and copyright autonomy (but really just scrambling to hold on to as much profit as they have become accustomed to), the Film and Television Industries are, instead of innovating their distribution models in ways that favor the ~~democracy~~ anarchy of the internet, trying to find ways to criminalize even more of the users of their products.

If they continue this course, the next few steps will involve raising prices. That's what theater did.

Theater, prior to the new technologies of film, radio and eventually television, was KING. It was the Toast of Entertainment (just behind the unbeatable sports and live music). And, when assailed by the whirlwind forces of technology, over the course of decades, made itself almost irrelevant to the vast majority of human beings on the planet. Sure, those of us who practice theater and the tiny slice of the world's population that love it will argue that it is alive and well. That's true, but so few in the country could give a shit that it ranks lower than Star Trek fandom and cigar lovers. Maybe even lower than cigar-loving Trekkies.

Now, contrary to what Hollywood is doing now, the theater world simply raised prices and sold its talents to Hollywood. Writers, directors and actors all moved to L.A. and set up in bungalows working on scripts for CBS Playhouse and MGM. And the producers on Broadway decided - probably not consciously or as a matter of conspiracy - that theater was for people who were willing to pay top dollar for it and pretty much no one else.

Why is SOPA and PIPA a waste of time?

A) I put together a slideshow for a friend's 70th birthday recently and scored it with a Natalie Merchant song. One I had purchased legally through iTunes. And YouTuber (owned by Google) detected the song upon upload and disabled the audio because it was a copyright violation. I wasn't selling it, I was uploading it as a private video - didn't matter. The intellectual property was protected from a non-hacker (but not computer illiterate) guy like me.

B) The guys that ARE hackers can find their way around almost any legislation Hollywood can throw at them. It's like gun laws - the ones that REALLY want guns (or drugs or prostitutes or human organs) will get them. Always. Ever heard of the Mafia? Grew out of being told that we couldn't have booze. That simple act of legislation - preventing people access to something they REALLY want - gave birth to the largest organized crime syndicate in American history.

Soon, movie theaters will feel the pinch of Hollywood's inability to curb it's inability to continue to chug along as if it were the end all, be all and will raise ticket prices and continue to shill $0.20 of popcorn for $8.75 and less and less of us will pay the fee. Eventually, like most institutional theater, only people with extensive expendable income will be able to afford a night out at the movies.

I'm not bothered by that because people will find a way to be entertained. And the kind of theater I truck in doesn't cost an arm and a leg (although charging someone $20.00 to sit in a cold black box for 90 minutes seems a bit ridiculous.

Taking Offense

2012-01-23T05:09:00.000-06:00

"I think offense is taken, not given. If you don't let yourself be offended, you're not offended." - Ricky Gervais

Shit White Girls Say
Shit Black Girls Say
Shit Latinas Say
Shit White Girls Say (in response to what Black Girls Think White Girls Say)

Give it a rest, OK?

What about "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me"?

I understand that there is a quantifiable but flawed argument that words CAN hurt. Some words are steeped in hate and evil traditions. That said, it is not the word that hurts but the reaction to the word that hurts. In effect, taking offense is a self inflicted wound.

At some point in our culture, the act of speaking certain thoughts became unacceptable. The offense was taken and the outrage doled out. And no context for changing the words' meanings was even attempted.

This is the problem with offense taken - it obliterates common sense and thrusts out to the world a sense of entitlement that is often unearned.

But let's back it up for a second (just a second because this is blog-time and you're only reading this while your boss is peeing...)

Offense is a completely subjective thing. It's like "funny." If I hear a joke that I think is stupid, but someone else laughs his ass off at it, is it a "funny" joke? I'd say, in the context of the example, yes. Does that mean that it is universally funny? No. Does it mean that my disdain for the joke means it simply shouldn't be told or that it is my job to eradicate that joke from ever being told? No fucking way - who the hell do I think I am?

In the broohaha over Eddie Brill being fired for saying women just aren't funny, Tina Fey has been quoted (from her book Bossypants): "It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove it doesn't exist."

Taking her logic further, I'd say that it is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something it has no truth or value to it. Just because something offends you doesn't automatically make that thing categorically "offensive" any more than something I laugh at categorically "funny."

Let's say I find your use of the term "dick" offensive. I have a dick, I use my dick, my dick is a central part of who I am. Your use of the term in a derogatory manner is offensive to me. I certainly have the right to be offended but that decision (to be offended) is both a decision rather than an undeniable reality for all people and a gives me no moral authority to prevent you from using the term. Now, if you CARE what I think, then you will most likely take my distaste for the word into consideration and not use it around me.

And that is the context to consider. I don't CARE what the strident language moralists think of me so their offense is meaningless. The folks that write and perform Two and a Half Men don't CARE what I think, so my view of that show as a shiny, glistening, unfunny TURD means nothing to them. When things get out of hand is when someone is offended, the "offender" doesn't care what he/she thinks, and the offended one decides that society should MAKE them care.

Let's take the word "retarded." I've used that term as a pejorative for most of my life. I find almost any deviation from the norm to be pretty funny and, because no one whose opinion mattered to me found the use of the word to connotate "stupid" or "slow" patently unacceptable, I had no persuasive reason to NOT use the word.

In fact, one of my favorite moments in college was when I was playing in a pep band for the Special Olympics. The kids were running 100 yard dashes and, in one particular race, the kid in front (who seemed to have some serious problems) was surging ahead of the others in, what most spectators seemed to see as, heroic. And then he tripped. And the crowd gasped. And as the second place runner came jogging by him, our heroic runner reached out and grabbed his leg and jerked him to the ground.

And I laughed my ass off. Not because they were mentally retarded kids in a scuffle but because I had bought into the stereotype of the challenged but angelic individual mythology and this kid had single-handedly destroyed that myth. That people, regardless of the challenges life hands them, are people - heroic AND selfish, generous AND shitty.

Much later I found myself in a relationship with a woman whose sister is disabled and I suddenly had someone in my life whose opinion MATTERED. To me. And I now don't use the word "retarded" in a negative of humorous way.

CONTEXT.

So, I think Gervais is DEAD ON. Offense is taken. If you choose to NOT be offended, you aren't. Pretty simple solution, huh?

Am I offended that Rick Santorum hates gays? Nope. I don't give a flying fuck what Rick Santorum thinks about ANYTHING. Same goes for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sean Penn, Matt Damon, any reality TV stars, the guy down the block or a random stranger on the bus. These people simply don't get to offend me because being offended takes far too much time and energy away from the things that are important.

Very few people on the planet give a shit what I think of them. So my disdain at their behavior means relatively nothing.

And very few people on the planet give a shit what YOU think of them. So your disdain is a waste of energy.

Why Doesn't PETA Just Beat These People Into Next Week?

2012-01-21T05:38:00.000-06:00

I eat meat.

I like eating meat.

Yes. I have seen Food, Inc. and I still eat meat.

Rather than shame people for eating meat, my suggestion for PETA activists and vegans is to attack those in the meat supply industry for the categorically horrifying treatment of animals in pursuit of profit. Attacking meat eaters for eating meat is like attacking people who go see Tyler Perry movies or watch Three and a Half Men instead of the people who create this shit. Go to the source and get active rather than wasting your breath, you know.

If you really want a target for the complete WASTE of animal provided product, however, why not go attack Real Housewives of New York's Cindy Barshop. First, she's on one of the most mentally defective television shows in the history of entertainment. Second, she came up with this:

"the Foxy Bikini, in which the bikini line is waxed bare and replaced with a pubic wig made from real fox fur." It costs $225, comes in multiple artificial neon hues, and looks like nightmare porno from the id of Dr. Seuss. I hereby move to name this monstrous device a "furkin."

SOURCE

Where do I start?

The merkin - a PUBIC WIG - has got to be the fucking DUMBEST thing I have ever heard of. Shave your labia and replace the hair with a toupee? Who came up with this?

I'm pretty certain most animals aren't thrilled about being eaten but at least there's a semblance of dignity in providing another creature nourishment - you know, in a Circle of Life sort of way. There is, however, no dignity in being killed so your fur can delicately cover a Brazilian Waxed coochie.

Finally, anyone who pays $225.00 for one these things needs to be taken out and fed to a cabal of ravenous weasels or the goddamn honey badger.

Jeesh - humans are fucking weird...

Newt Was Appalled

2012-01-20T13:17:00.000-06:00

"Appalled?" Really, Newt?

According to history, it was Republicans who were the most despicable "Dirty Tricksters" in politics from the Nixon Administration on. According to history, it was Newt Gingrich who actively promoted the idea of impeaching a sitting president for getting his cocked polished.

Chickens coming home to roost, you hypocritical fuckface.

Further, in a GOP Presidential Debate - a party that claims to uphold "Family Values," and is against the desecration of the heterosexual defining of the institution of marriage - I'd say that the question is overwhelmingly appropriate for the setting.

Friday Roundup: Is It Me You're Looking For?

2012-01-20T05:04:00.000-06:00

If You Keep Voting for Them, They Will Take You for a Ride...

Well, glory be, somebody out in Kansas ran the numbers: Families making under $25,000 a year will see their taxes rise $156 a year, while families making ten times that much will see their tax burden drop more than $5200 per annum. Who ever would have guessed? The gob, it is smacked.

This, by the way, is the kind of "tax reform" being pushed by almost every Republican everywhere.

SOURCE

It stills mystifies me that conscious adults actually vote for these assholes. It's the most egregious form of voting against personal interest (but not in a altruistic way - more like a Cut Off My Nose to Spite My Face way) I've ever seen. My only theory is that the country, as a whole, is getting older. The Baby Boomers are now Senior Citizens and old people, as a rule, are generally more conservative. Add to the fact that these particular Baby Boomers grew up distrusting the government, it kind of makes sense that they would be so blinded by these GOP hackjobs.

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Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

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Biting Off More Than I Can Chew and Then Chewing...

Last week, I opened The Mammals' Devils Don't Forget. It's getting spectacular press. Come see it. I also hosted The Moth. Tomorrow, I produce The 4th Annual Winter Block Party for Chicago's Hip Hop Arts for WBEZ. It's at the Metro - FREE during the day, $15.00 for the evening Breakdancing Competition. Swing by. I'll be effing tired but probably smiling. Then on Saturday, January 28th, I perform at The Paper Machete.

Then I turn 46.

Those old Baby Boomers can eat my dust.

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WTF? Moment of Your Day

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Quote(s) of the Week

I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

And never was, unless what you’re pining for is segregation and lack of rights for women. Which, for some, is what they’re pining for, though most are just indulging in Leave It To Beaver fantasies.

SOURCE

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I Love When Geeks Get Artsy

See more here...

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REBOUND

2012-01-19T05:07:00.000-06:00

To spring or bounce back after hitting or colliding with something.

After colliding with a failure.

After colliding with a broken promise.

A confidence broken.

A job revoked.

A missed basket.

The Japanese say "Fall down 7 times, stand up 8"

Edmund Vance Cooke asks "It isn't the fact you're licked that counts, but how did you fight and why?"

There are those who bounce back after small inconveniences that seem monumental and those whose lives are saved from bouncing from ROCK BOTTOM, the elasticity of their souls propelling them up and up and up to a triumph. But mark my words, the world is filled with things we hit or collide into - immoveable, unbending, unresolvable things.

Scars mean you lived through it.

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Charles Bukowski wrote "pain is a flower that is blooming all the time."

Cryptic, yes. But truth often is. What works for me in the imagery is that a flower is both natural and beautiful. It tells me that Bukowski understood that the only true success and joy in this tiny life is spawned from failure and heartache. The only achievements worth crowing about are those hard-won.

No pain, no gain, right?

I didn't want to limit the theme to rebounding from failed relationships, especially my own, because anyone within the sound of my voice and blog have heard all they need to know about my failed relationships. But I am inspired by another rebound, so let me share that, OK?

His name was Freddy. He was the Goober Guy who was crazy for my girlfriend in college. Dee and I were the "Band Couple." She was a quiet clarinetist; I was the loud, obnoxious trumpet section leader. We were an odd couple but it seemed to work. At every function, though, there was Freddy. Always getting her drinks, always asking her if she was cold - doing all the things I was doing - you know - as the boyfriend. Freddy was an od bird; he was gawky and funny in a Crispin Glover sort of way. And he LOVED my girlfriend.

After she and I got married and moved to Chicago, he'd call our house and I'd answer. "Is Dee there?"

"Hey, Freddy. Wassup?"

"Just calling to talk to Dee."

"OK."

He'd call about once a month.

After the calls, Dee and I would laugh about him. He was so completely in to my wife and was such a goofy, slobbering dork, we just kind of felt sorry for him. After a few years, though, the splinters in our marriage began to show and his phone calls became a sounding board for her.

Then he got cancer. Bad cancer. Losing All His Hair, Gaining 250 pounds, Having his Leg Amputated Cancer. He wasn't such a joke anymore. But he still called.

"Is Dee there?"

"Hey, Freddy. How are you doing, man?"

"I've been better. Just calling to talk to Dee."

"OK."

And the phone calls became a sounding board for him.

And after 12 years together, Dee and I got divorced. Sex was a problem, money was a problem, compatibility was a problem so we sort of just...gave up. After doing our best to fit a square peg in a round hole, we ended "us."

And a year later, Dee and Freddy were married. And a year after that, Dee buried him.

To this day, I don't know if he wore her down, if she married him out of some sort of altruism, or if, in his Rock Bottom state in life, he found that he was just charming as fuck. I like to believe the latter one, though. That, in his decimated, one-legged, wheelchair bound world, he found an inner "cool" that made him irresistible to the one woman that got away.

Dee rebounded, too. I suppose marrying Freddy was a sort of rebound from our failure to muscle through a bad marriage but after he died, my mousy, quiet, shy first ex-wife decided to become a competive ballroom dancer, got married a third time and now has two beautiful kids. A life written by John Irving.

My rebound was punctuated by crippling self doubt, a couple of months in a Scotch bottle, thoughts of ending it all, and getting really fat. But I suppose some flowers take longer to bloom. I suppose if Dee had married a hot, wealthy stud I wouldn't be so generous of spirit but how can I be anything but generous to these two who endured far more than I did and came out on top?

Painful and beautiful, right?

I Believe...

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-06:00

...that, when someone on the Beltway says something outrageous to get media attention and CNN goes on to cover the statement nationally, well...c'mon guys...

...that a couple of recent films I think you should get off yer ass and see include: Moneyball, Warrior, and A Beautiful Boy.

...that you know you've made it as an actor in Chicago when your "looks" are compared to Moe Howard.

...that $362,000 is a HUGE amount of money to almost everyone in the freaking planet except for the wealthiest few.

...that the hypocritical harping on Apple for using Foxconn (notorious for it's horrifying worker conditions) need to step back and acknowledge that their Amazon Kindles, Playstation 3s, Wiis, and X-Boxes are also manufactured at Foxconn.

Honestly, anyone who uses a piece of modern electronic equipment has blood on his/her hands. It's convenient to place the Lion's Share of Blame on Apple but get over yourselves. Apple is one of many commercial entities that uses Chinese labor to manufacture products that we ALL buy so focus on the problem - we want cheap shit and are fine with the consequences as long as our shit is cheap. That is that set of "American Values" everybody likes to talk about but not really investigate much. We're Americans - we kill and piss on our enemies, we plunder everyone else's natural resources to have lattes and fresh bread and videogames and Twitter, we point fingers at the human rights violations of other countries but torture and imprison untried citizens and let our police act like military. This isn't about Apple. It's about America.

Is College No Longer Pragmatic?

2012-01-17T05:09:00.000-06:00

I'm happy I went to college.

When I initially went, my goal was to...go. Nothing more than simply doing what almost no one (except my Aeronautical Engineer Genius uncle - whom I was named after) in my family had done. Attend. Get a degree in...something. Maybe drink some. Participate in the Porky's sort of hi-jinx. Extend my youth.

I went to get a performance degree.

At the start, I was a Trumpet Performance Major with two minors - Jazz History and Opera Performance. When I moved from the Kansas Quaker College to the Arkansas State School (which garnered me a full tuition scholarship because I would be a Marching Razorback) I shifted to straight up Trumpet Performance.

My trumpet teacher and primary advisor convinced me that college was supposed to be a bid on my future. That, in order to actually be pragmatic about the money, time and energy put into the thing, I should get a degree in something that would at least open up the opportunity for gainful employment.

I switched to a Music Education degree program.

In the meantime, I drank. A lot. To blackout proportions. I participated in a variety of Porky's-esque escapades. Lot many college students I was an arrogant, thoughtless asshole hellbent on having fun regardless of who might get in the way of my good time. I worked at a videostore and spent more time watching porn on the coupla TVs in the place (easily switched over to more family-friendly fare when the once-in-a-great-while customer might show up). I worked in a Campus Bookstore and can say I fucked around more at that job than any other job I've had since - I'm amazed I got paid anything for working there.

Most of my living expense was paid for via VISA.

Once I graduated, the degree saved my ass. I came to Chicago in a truck with all my possessions, knew no one in town, had no job, no money, busked with my trumpet to survive. If I hadn't had that teaching degree, I'd have been completely directionless.

So, in general, I'm in favor of college.

But NOW?

Here's the deal - if colleges want to be able to justify the expense, there needs to be a pragmatic near-guarantee of employment following the gig. Otherwise, the sum total of the experience boils down to paying thousands of dollars to party and be steeped in sexist mores and belligerent hazing.

Is there value in going just to learn? Of course. In a culture where access to information is available to any fucking boob with an internet connection, that value has diminished considerably. Knowing things has less value that being able to DO things and doing things requires experience, not contemplation.

All Else is Grandiose Romanticism or Politics

2012-01-16T05:09:00.000-06:00

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. - Charles Bukowski

Watching the coverage of the GOP Primaries in tandem with the online news of the economy and the current Congress and the waining information on the Occupy Movement is leaving my optimism a bit wet and grungy.

One thing about working for a news organization is that, day in and day out, it's about the next thing. Everyone has a cause but there are so many goddamn causes that it overwhelms and beats back the enthusiasm to try and make a difference in a BIG way. That shit is hard for Americans. We want to effect the world with immediate results and when the world won't slow the fuck down and give us the breathing room to make that difference, it can sap the will to anything but the thing we need immediately - food, bills, the minute to minute minutiae of our daily grind that leaves us drained and unable to dig down and actually do the work that matters.

I read about my friend who has just had a baby and is saddled with - for her - huge debt confronting her own role as both a new mother AND the child of a seriously ill parent.

I hear from another that he is rocked to the core by witnessing an older man buy a homeless man a pair of glasses.

I listen in the car to Saturday's This American Life about a field trip exercise at the Ronald Reagan Presidential library that puts ten-year olds in a position to invade Granada and that one kid "gets it all wrong" by not doing anything Reagan did and told he is incorrect for deciding to not invade another country. I find myself crying on the road.

And I think back on the WBEZ coverage of the state of our public schools and the trials of parents who have severely disabled children and I think of my brilliant, spectacular mother who organizes Food Banks in the heart of Red State, KS and, in my search for a suitable text for my birthday tattoo, I run across Bukowski and his simple phrase galvanizes.

And today is a national holiday celebrating the life of a true hero.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

I am, by nature and nurture, both Grandiose and Romantic.

But to make a difference in the world and, more specifically, in the lives of the people who populate it, those two qualities need to be shoved aside. Small contributions seem to matter more and not in a Now I Feel Fucking Good About Myself and Less Guilty That I Can Afford to Have Regular Food, Shelter, Freedom From Overt Discrimination, Freedom From Oppression, Medical Insurance That I Don't Really Use. Small contributions that matter to others. Gifts given without expectation of a pat on the back or a reward of gratitude.

A Facebook Wall post that tells of a brother who stands up for his little brother to buy a "girlie" videogame in the face of his macho dad.

The hundreds of people who organize tiny non-profits designed to help those in need that I hear about on Worldview and meet at WBEZ's Global Activism Expo.

The guy who preaches - every day - in front of the Old Navy on State. I don't agree with his perspective but that motherfucker is out there every DAY trying to make some sort of difference in the world.

The pioneering philosopher and psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the ‘hierarchy of needs’ model in the 1960's that has become very influential in modern psychology. This pictures human behavior as subject to a set of fundamental drives. It explains human behavior as driven by a set of needs which influence our behavior in hierarchical fashion as shown.

In essence, once you are fed and clothed, the selfish impulse to survive being met, you seek something beyond those basics and look for higher self actualization. I hear and read a lot of arguments in favor of a lot of solutions to our collective global (and local) problems but perhaps the best way to start is ONE. PERSON. AT. A. TIME.

Peeing on the Dead

2012-01-14T06:29:00.000-06:00

So the Marines took a piss on the dead bodies of some Afghan soldiers.

What's the big deal?

Metaphorically, we took a big piss on their entire country so you'd think by now we'd be used to the idea. But there is a hefty amount of outrage being flung around as well as the quick, military "We will investigate those responsible" exchange. The video image of American soldiers urinating on dead bodies of an enemy we employed them to kill? That's just over the line. It's obscene. It's in poor taste. It's outrageous!

Wait, though.

Is pissing on the dead bodies of men that the US Military said "Go kill these guys" really more obscene than the actual killing of them? I mean, they're dead. The bodies are no longer anything but fodder for nature to do a little recycling, right? Maybe the time to stop short of unacceptable behavior would be at the trigger pull?

Here's Sophie's Choice for you:

A soldier from another country comes in, weapons hot and gives you a choice - shoot you in the head and snuffing out your tiny life OR taking a pee on your face. Which one is the worse in that scenario?

Yeah - I know. The Afghans harbored Al Queda who flew planes into our buildings. And we expect our soldiers to fight and kill but do it politely. Or at least not digitally record their impolite actions after killing someone. Although, it isn't like the people of the world are immune to gleefully watching people get shot in the head - you ever play a fucking videogame or watch an action picture? "Yeah - I love watching Stallone mow down some good ol' boys but if he then pees on them? That's gross..."

I guess the real issue is that only bullies do things like that. And Americans don't like to see themselves as bullies. Even when we are. That whole "insult after injury" sort of thing makes us feel bad about ourselves. Like if an American Marine shot an Afghan in the leg and then recorded himself giving the guy a wedgie or took his hand and played "Why You Hitting Yourself?" I mean, the Marine is definitely the better equipped soldier - millions of dollars of equipment at his disposal. The Afghani is likely creating roadside bombs out of wire and duct tape. So the imagery is just slightly similar to a cop pepper spraying defenseless protesters.

You know, if the cop killed the protester and then pee'd on him. And if the protester was trying to kill the cop just before.

OK. Maybe the analogy is weak.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, expressed her dismay. Clinton said the behaviour was 'absolutely inconsistent with American values' and that anyone found to be involved in the incident 'must be held fully accountable' But that's not really honest, is it? I'd suggest that pissing on the dead corpse of an enemy is EXACTLY consistent with American values. That's what we do to our enemies. Even with the "just and righteous" wars, we tend to beat them and then piss on their dead.
I guess the point is that we can't hold our soldiers to be more accountable than our government and the corporations hell bent on getting the oil in the region and the image of a Fat, Wealthy Country brutalizing a Skinny, Poor country. Our soldiers are an extension of our Power and our Attitudes toward the rest of the world.

We aren't supposed to be bullies.

But we are, aren't we?

Friday Roundup: "Excuse Me While I Eat My Sandroid."

2012-01-13T05:09:00.000-06:00

And Here's an Even Better Answer to Tom Laughlin...

George Lucas was on the Daily Show to promote his new flick Red Tails. It is, if you believe Lucas, the first action picture with no major roles for white men in it in history. He detailed how he's been working on the film for twenty-three years and been working with the Tuskegee Airman who lived the story. He said he started with 40 of them collaborating and now there are only seven of them still living. The reason it has taken him this long?

Because movies are primarily for white people.

WRONG.

Because the studios didn't think there was an audience for a WWII, patriotic combat film ABOUT black heroes. Because the very people who gatekeep the dollars required to finance and distribute such a film decided that there wasn't an audience for it.

Chew on that, Tom.

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When She Said "No, Thanks" He Tasered Her...

A self-proclaimed “ugly, bald” cop is embroiled in what may be one of the greatest pick-up fails in recent history. Stickney, Illinois cop Chris Collins, who should receive a lifetime ban from access to romantic comedies, ticketed a woman $132 for speeding, and then preceded to ask her out two days later—via a handwritten note on her car windshield outside her apartment

SOURCE

Sure - I've used access to shows as a "favor" magnet but I'm pretty sure this is an absolute no win situation in the dating pool. Even John C. Reilly didn't write up Melora Walters in Magnolia...

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This Guy Reads Like a Fictional GOP Bad Guy - Almost Like Sorkin Wrote Him His Script...

The year long John Doe investigation into GOP Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s aides comes closer to the big fish with the latest charges and the DA says more charges are a comin’. As all of this looms around the embattled governor, he also faces an imminent recall. With two weeks left to go, the recall campaign against Walker has reached the minimum amount of signatures needed to recall him.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Facing criminal charges of embezzlement from a veterans charity and theft from two conservative campaigns, Tim Russell wasn’t just the person Walker appointed to be in charge of the money for a veteran’s charity, but it turns out he was one of “Walker’s top lieutenants as he moved in and out of campaign jobs, posts in Walker’s county office, other county jobs and his own real estate business.” He is described as part of Walker’s close inner circle and one of his most trusted confidants.

SOURCE

Russell is charged with:

* criminal embezzlement charges for stealing money from a charity for veterans families
* stole money from two conservative campaigns
* luring a 17-year-old Waukesha boy to send cellphone pictures of the boy’s genitals in 2010

I mean - this guy has done ALL the GOP Talking Points - stolen from veterans, stolen campaign dough, AND tries to fuck boys. Maybe e should replace the elephant symbol...

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Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

h/t to J. McCloud and A. Johnson

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Someone Explain This to Me...

OK. Someone that you know well enough to have as a Facebook "Friend" commits suicide. Is it just me or is it just fucking weird to write that person a note on his/her Facebook wall? I mean, who's the note for? Or is there an assumption that Facebook transcends death?

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Creating Our Own Reality

2012-01-12T05:03:00.000-06:00

According to my grandma, she just bought my mom a car, takes no medicine, and hasn't had dinner but isn't hungry.

My grandma lives in a care facility (in the parlance of a less cautious age, an "old folks home") and lives on her Social Security, Medicare, and the charity of the Catholic Church. She did NOT buy my mom a car. She takes a full cocktail of medications three times a day. And she just had dinner but can't remember eating it.

She's happy and has constructed a reality that suits her fine. She can watch the same movie several times but not remember the plot; she loves to watch Court TV and can detail the specifics of each celebrity trial with alacrity.

It's kind of sad but also kind of amazing. Stuck in a prison that is a body beaten down by time and self abuse and a mind that slips the cogs once in a while, grandma has effectively restructured her view of the world to paint it in colors that soothe her and give her a sense of control.

The easy conclusion is to assign that tactic to an old woman and shake our heads, smile, and say "If it doesn't harm her, why not?" It's a bit more challenging to realize that we ALL do this, to some degree or another, every day.

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"Turn green. Come on! Turn GREEN, motherfucker!"

The car was fine until just before the Express Lane ended, driving into the Loop. Then, all of a sudden the temperature guage shot up and steam started floating from the edges of the hood. "Wha - ? Why? Christ, why now! Stupid fucking car!"

In a split second, the car, the traffic, the traffic lights, the clock - all of these things that are completely oblivious to the fact that I exist (because as objects, these things have no consciousness because, well, these things are not living) are aligned to thwart me. They are now against me. I exhort these things as if my pleading and cursing will somehow affect these things' decisions to keep me from moving forward.

If I make it to the Pier, it is somehow due to my unbending desire for it to be so rather than simple random circumstance. If I do not make it, it is attributed to bad luck or my failings as a driver.

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The hurricane was an act of nature. The nationally known pastor claims that it hit this particular city because of sin. That his god was punishing the residents because of their lax attitude toward sin and the allowing of things this pastor has decided are immoral.

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A working stiff in Dallas lives in a neighborhood with only white people surrounding him. He went to high school and there was one black kid in his class and a Pakastani girl that was a foreign exchange student. In fact, his only exposure to people NOT white is pop culture.

He sees Mexicans as drug dealers, Middle Easterners as terrorists, black males as criminals and murderers, women as either objects of frustratingly unattainable lust or ball busting man-haters, and white males as cops or military or as "The Hero" fighting against the Arab/Mexican/Black/Asian bad guys against all odds.

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Perhaps it has always been this way and, in grandma's case, it certainly does no harm. After all, she's in no position to ruin anyone's life but the nurses in the home. Perhaps it is part of the human arrogance that has been ingrained in our psyches that posits that we are the end-all, be-all of Life in the Universe. That, if evolution is something you see as viable, after billions of years, it all lead to us and will go no further. Or, if you are a religious type, that an omniscient being created us as the Center of His Kingdom.

Maybe it's just a desire to be the leading character in our own little independent film.

In movies, the radiator in the car overheats so that the hero can meet the girl or get the job or discover the secret and go on a quest. In movies, the hurricane occurs to teach us all some sort of lesson. In movies, anyone not white is probably up to no good.

Reality is a malleable thing but in the World of Actuality, the car overheats because the Jiffy Lube guy didn't screw the cap on tight enough and the traffic light is on a timer; hurricanes happen as an act of nature not retribution; and the color of your skin has almost nothing to do with the quality of your character.

But that's no fun, is it? That means none of us is the hero of our own little movie.

Except for my grandma. And she doesn't really care if you're watching.

I Believe...

2012-01-11T05:02:00.000-06:00

...that the worst part of a fucking head cold is not the aches, nor the sore throat but the constant itchy nose and snot running out of your melon head the whole time. Ugh.

...that reliance on a Other Worldly Creature (be it a god or an alien or a Big Spiritual Aura) to solve your earthly problems is like hoping that your REALLY STRONG DESIRE to lose weight won't do the trick - you gotta get on that track and start running with your own legs.

...that some things are just too dumb to get riled up about. Like getting pissy about Kwanzaa being a "real" holiday or not. Most people don't care much - to each his own, right? But that Kwanzaa question REALLY pisses off the bigots.

...that Rick Santorum is either hopelessly stupid ("I said BLAH people not BLACK people") or he believes that most conservative voters are. I vote for both.

...that regardless of their particular stripe of conservative thought, every single Republican candidate is simply spouting a neo-classic Free Market ideology in the face of the Free Market, Trickle Down Theory, The Rich are the Job Creators horseshit FAILURE over the past 80 years in this country.

There is one and only one reason to continue blowing this smoke in our direction - they're all Wealthy and they want to stay that way. It is a very obscure way of simply wearing a t-shirt that says "I Made My Money and the Rest of You Can Go Fuck Yourselves." Which is fine for them but who wants those people in charge of the country's economy? Or military? Or courts?

Art is for Everybody...

2012-01-10T05:22:00.000-06:00

...Industry is a Different Matter Entirely

According to a queasy Tom Laughlin from Buffalo, Theater is really only for White People.

Given all the demographics we know about theatre in the US and westernized countries today, I think it’s safe to make the following conclusion: Theatre is primarily for white people, as both audience members and practitioners.

If you have an hour or so, read the post. It's a Grand Example of taking a preconceived notion, grabbing some very limited set of statistics, and drawing a completely moronic and irrelevant conclusion.

Let's try:

Given all the demographics we know about Chinese Food (based upon patron surveys in the Greater New York Area), I think it's safe to make the following conclusion: Chinese food is primarily for White Jewish people.

Given all the demographics we know about Hip Hop Music (based upon industry numbers for sales of said music), I think it's safe to make the following conclusion: Hip Hop is primarily for White Suburban Kids.

Given all the demographics we know about poverty (based upon the Census), I think it's safe to make the following conclusion: Only White People are Poor.

What a load, Tom.

The thing that kind of surprises me is how many people in the theater communities around the country suddenly took that conclusion seriously. There has been the typical (and expected) outrage. There has been thoughtful refutation. There has been little agreement (some from The Prof but it is transparently an attempt to meld the idea of "Black People Just Don't LIKE Theater" with the argument that "Theater is Centralized in Urban Areas" that it lands like a lead fart).

See, the statistics Tom uses really indicate one thing conclusively: There are more White People in the Country than Any Other Demographic. Oh. And that Broadway Theater is predominantly for People with enough A) expendable income to vacation in New Yawk and B) drop hundreds of dollars on spectacle theater.

This is like looking at sales figures for the purchase and installation of in ground swimming pools in the country and concluding that only White People like to swim.

And still, people feel compelled to point out all the black people and brown people who swim. See? There is a history of African Americans going to swimming pools to get their swim fetish on! Why waste the effort? It's a ridiculous statement.

And the biggest lie to the conclusion is the idea that Commerce = Interest. That the best indicator of public interest in an art form is how much money people spend on it. Tom? Here's a thought: Art is for everybody, with no regard to skin color. Industry and Commerce is for people with Money.

The Real Reason [BLANK] People Don't Like Theater

2012-01-09T13:12:00.000-06:00

It hurts because it's true...

Revisiting Udo

2012-01-09T05:07:00.000-06:00

This coming Saturday, I get to reprise a character in a play I was in May a couple of years ago in Bob Fisher's Devils Don't Forget. The character is Udo, an unrepentant and irredeemable torturer who works for a double-voiced and double-bodied monster simply called The Father. Udo's partner in crime is the hulking, simple-minded Dum-Dum.

Fisher has created a body of work that blends genres in ways that most wouldn't approach - The Spaghetti Western with the Dystopian Worldview, the 1950's Hollywood style with the Weird Alien Sci-Fi - and in DDF he has mixed up the Film Noir Hardboiled Film Style with a David Lynchian Sensibility to bake one of the coolest, strangest shows I've ever been a part of (including when he cast me as a woman who dies to become a cactus).

2009 Udo

Ron Kroll originated the role of Udo in the first production. He was excellent and extremely noir. Two years ago, as I took on the character, I tried to change things up a bit and inject some Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet) and Stansfield (Gary Oldman in The Professional). It was a gas and the fun of getting to chew scenery in a tiny black box show was just as fun as it could be. Working with Dennis Frymire (The Hero) and Gabe Garza (Dum-Dum) was among my favorite ensemble experiences on record. Bob and I tend to butt heads - he likes to control most aspects of the performances as he is the writer, the producer, the director and oftentimes the costumer, lighting tech, stage manager, production photographer and janitor. As an actor, I like a LOT of room to play and interpret and sometimes he and I have come to pretty strong words in rehearsals - whaddya gonna do - two Alpha Dogs fighting over the Artistic Bone, right?

The joke is that during every show he and I do together, we both swear we'll never work together again and yet we keep coming back to the collaboration. Must be kismet.

Now, revisiting Udo and DDF has been interesting on a number of levels.

First, I'm at a place theatrically where I'm looking very carefully at my options. I have the best day job on the planet and I'm getting older so the idea of devoting three and four nights a week to rehearse in a (basically) unheated basement theater has lost some of its romance and now I gotta REALLY want to do the show to, you know, do the show. I've spent an awful lot of my theatrical life working to create forums for other people to stretch artistically and now that I produce events for a living, producing theater has taken a backseat to directing and performing.

Second, like Bob, I didn't want to merely repeat the same performance. I wanted to stretch Udo out, compress him in, turn him around and see what he looks like after the contortion. Bob was excellent getting Frymire, Gabe and I (the only actors reprising their roles) to break out of the automatic reflex of mailing in the same performances and I can say for both Dennis and Gabe that their performances have more nuance. more layers of complexity, than two years ago and it bears out that Bob's strategy of re-producing certain plays of his is a great idea. As for me, Udo is even more "out there" and he sings and dances a little while still relishing the torture (you'll need to see the show to understand, I think.)

Third, Udo, while an objectionable, misogynistic, homoerotic villain, is fun to play. There's something juicy about playing an evil character. As an actor, it invites excess in emotional response and the odder the reactions to the world, the creepier it is. I also get to:

Punch Sara in the face and tell her "No one is speaking, unless they're talking poetry."
Make Dennis sing with a switchblade to his throat.
Stab another Sara in the calves with the same switchblade and ask her "How many more pokes you got in you?"

I also can add to my resume that I have played Erin Orr's father (Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue), her mother (Seven Snakes), and now her torturing employee.

Finally, it seems with this production, the dogfights have ceased. Bob and I have been mutually supportive, his direction has been spot-on, the rehearsals have been incredible and he and I have nary a head butt throughout. Hell, I might even do another show with him...

Friday Roundup: See All the Asshats in Iowa?

2012-01-06T05:06:00.000-06:00

A Nice Way of Saying "Go Fuck Yourself, Mitch..."

I nominated Richard for this job last summer. And yet, for almost half a year, Republicans in the Senate have blocked his confirmation. They’ve refused to even give Richard and up-or-down vote. It’s not because he’s unqualified. There is no question that Richard is the right person for this job. He’s got support from Democrats and Republicans. A majority of Attorneys General from both parties across the country have called for Richard to be confirmed. Your local Members of Congress who are here today – they support him. He has the support of a majority in the Senate. Everyone agrees that he’s more than qualified.

The only reason Republicans in the Senate have blocked Richard is because they don’t agree with the law setting up the consumer watchdog. They want to weaken it. Well that makes no sense at all. Does anyone think the reason we got in such a financial mess was because of too much oversight? Of course not. We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability. We should be strengthening it – especially when it comes to looking out for families like yours. Financial firms have armies of lobbyists in Washington looking out for their interests. It’s time someone fought for you, too. -- President Barack Obama

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The Iowa Caucus

Four years ago, the GOP winner in Iowa was Mike Huckabee.

Need I say anything beyond that to dispute any relevancy attributed to this nonsense?

Yeah? Really?

OK. In my lifetime, I have NEVER seen such a collection of complete pandering, full of shit clowns all legitimately vying for public office. NEVER. From the philandering demigogue that is Newt to the populist guy that once was a racist fucker, still IS a misogynist fucker but because he was against the War on Terr, kids take him seriously Ron P. You have Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry, neither who could spell the word "Constitution" let alone defend it. And then there's Mitt. Jesus - this guy would deny the sun was shining if he thought it would get him elected.

Worse still, none of them have any fucking ideas on how to solve any of our country's problems. To a man (and one crazy-eyed broad) they want one thing and one thing only - defeat Obama. That's it.

If one of these asshats wins the 2012 election, we deserve what we get because this is a joke.

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Definition of BIGOT

: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

Definition of RACISM

: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race

Just in case you were wondering.

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Hooray for the iCloud

I travelled a lot over the holidays. Wednesday, my iPhone 4S began acting up a bit - doing the "Invalid SIM Card" thing and requiring hard reboots during the day. I visited a few online communities about the issue and got a variety of fixes and one explanation as why it might be happening. I called the Apple Store - the cat told me to restore the phone and reboot from a recent backup. Said that that would likely solve the problem but if it didn't, I could bring in the phone the next day and get a brand new one. Cost free.

At first I screwed the backup/restore up and it seemed I had lost all my stuff - calendars, contacts, emails, all of it. Then I went to "Back up from iCloud" and it came back like magic.

And the SIM Card issue is gone.

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Resolved to Shut Up and Do It Already

2012-01-05T05:08:00.000-06:00

Admit it.

You already flaked on your resolutions, didn't you?

You were well intentioned in making your resolves -

"I will lose ten pounds."
"I will quit smoking."
"I will spend more time with my close friends."
"I will strive to be a better person this year..."

You ate too many calories and blew off an opportunity to workout. I smoked the last two cigarettes in the last pack and then broke down, walked to the CVS and grabbed another "last" pack. You overbooked yourself in the first six weeks of the year and left no time to hang out with those friends. You blew past a homeless person, rationalizing that you couldn't give him a buck because he smelled, was drunk and you can't give out dollars to fucking everyone, right?

I'm here to tell you it's OK.

You didn't really mean to keep them anyway.

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, I learned a pretty valuable lesson when it comes to the average bar fight. That guy spouting off about how he's gonna kick your ass, beat your face in, knock your dick in the dirt? He isn't likely to because 9 out of 10 cats spewing that line of crap are just saying it to boost themselves rather than stating actual intent. That tenth guy, the one sitting quietly? He's not going to tell you about the rain of pain he will soon inflict upon you - he's just going to do it. He's the one you take seriously.

That's because he understands (in some gut level, intuitive, snake-brained sort of way in the dense fogginess of beer induced instinct) that talk, my friends, is easy. In a 21st Century filled with assholes on the internet (yours truly takes a long bow to the slow clap that point makes) who routinely scream insult at them they disagree with

Liberal filth is whoring up Lady Liberty!

MarKKKos MouGAYsas and his Holy Trinity of Satanic Liberalism (Barry HUSSEIN 0bama, Nancy Peelosi, and Harry Balls Reid) are sending this great nation UNDER GOD into the evil asshole of Satan. The radical homo agenda must be stopped at all costs, and the REAL Americans voted on the side of GOD in 2010 and will do the same in 2012 when Ameica gets the White House Back from the Great Whore of Babylon, 0bomba.

You libs make me SICK. This great country was founded on what the Founders believed in: one conservative, holy nation UNDER GOD. They thought nothing of dick-lovers like you, you fag MARKOS! Jesus said that God supports those who work hard, ie The RICH. Why would you tax them? They give us jobs!!!

Or do you cellar-dwelling, free-loading, REgressive, homo, dick loving, fag liberalss not UNDERSTAND what this country was founded on: GOD. Nothing about welfare or homos! It's the damn LIBERAL INDOCTRINATION that the unionized socialist TEACHERS "teaching" our youth about a literally perverted, dick-loving commie false liberal paradise, or AmeriKKKa.

Go suck 0bama's big, black penis, you fag. I'm sure Michelle would like your fucking tongue workout on his cock while his liberal cum trickles down your face. Way to ruin this country, KKKos..

SOURCE

the guy who sits and silently decides and then gets up off his ass and commits to action is the guy to watch out for.

(SIDENOTE: I included the rantings of the anti-Kos moron to simply demonstrate for folks what genuine stupid rage reads like. Christ, compared to this fuck, I read like a Rhodes scholar with a potty mouth...)

It's the difference between a dude who says things like "lazy niggers," and "freeloading spics," and "dick-loving commie" and the dude who doesn't say hateful, racist, sexist shit but simply acts upon the dark, angry impulse to harm and continue the cycles of disenfranchisement without taking out an ad to that effect. It's the difference between a cat that puffs up and talks about "supporting the military" and the guy who joins it and does his job even if he thinks the war is a bowl of twice-baked dogshit. The difference between someone who talks about volunteerism and helping the needy and someone who is out there getting it done in soup kitchens.

For good or ill, the impulse for most of us is to talk it up - rationalize it, justify it, chat it up - anything but actually get off of said ass cheek and motorvate.

So.

No resolutions, OK? No declarations of self improvement. No talk of what you'll do to be a better citizen of the human race.

A) Determine what you want to improve.
B) Figure out what tiny thing you can do TODAY that gets you one tiny step closer to that.
C) Do it. The tiny thing. The "hardly a moment of effort involved" thing.
D) Do some more of that tomorrow.

A) You're fat. Don't wanna be fat.
B) Don't drink that Coke.
C) Pour the Coke in the sink.
D) Repeat tomorrow.

A) You're broke. Need some savings. Need a workable budget.
B) Save a buck.
C) Take a dollar bill and put it in a tin box (or envelope or piggy bank - you get the picture).
D) Do it tomorrow.

BUT DO NOT talk about it. Just do it. Don't look for the world to applaud your decision to do something good for yourself. Wait until you've actually accomplished something and then boast your ass off for the achievement rather than the intent.

Rock on.

I Believe...

2012-01-04T05:28:00.000-06:00

...that the act of making a leap of faith - in yourself, in someone else, in the concepts of luck or divine providence - doesn't in and of itself earn you any sort of congratulatory backslap. No more than trumpeting the fact that a baby bird finally leaps from it's mother's nest and learns to fly. You grew up. Stop being proud of that natural conclusion.

...that taking a day off or two in a foreign city is a boon to your well-being.

...that the biggest danger in creating laws bound by a War on a Practice or Idea is that a War on an Idea is never over - there is no victory over the Idea of Terrorism, so the laws enacted are perpetual and forever.

...that mannequins should not look so much like young, fit and hot human beings - it makes shopping at Sears like going to a strange Robert Palmer Strip Club.

...that if you're worried about what to do with your life if the world is ending in May, then you're not living your life the right way.

Ways to USE the Internet Instead of RUN from It

2012-01-03T07:05:00.000-06:00

Samuel French ePlays are here.

Now you can instantly download and read many of the acting editions in our catalogue through your eReader or mobile device. Are you as excited as we are?

The iBookstore

Get those iPads®, iPhones® and iPod Touches® ready to download our ePlays on Apple®´s iBookstore. Be sure to check back often, because new ePlays are going to be added constantly, and we expect to have over 1,000 titles available for download by the end of the year.

Theater has been in a battle with new technology pretty much since the play became a high art devoted to those with money to pay for it. Granted, there has always been and will always be small, independent theater performances that eschew the traditional business model of the institutions, and it is likely that most of the innovation when it comes to making new technology work FOR the theater will come from them.

Above is an example of a Dinosaur putting on his Nike Running Shoes and joining the club, though. I happen to think this is a truly universal good for live theater practictioners - the ability to read scripts on mobile devices makes it that much easier to do and when technology improves ease of use, it has been used well. Hopefully, the next step for Sam French will be to include newer plays by unheard of playwrights (given that publishing an e-book has virtually no overhead cost) which widens access for everyone.

Here's a bit of spitballing for other possibilities:

1. Use Facebook to post additional content rather than SPAM your connections with event listings.

Face it. The days when FB was effective as a listing service is long gone. It has been overused to a point that no one reads any of the 30-40 event invitations they receive daily anymore. New content, however, posted to your personal page's wall is a better use of the technology. Not bullshit "Meet the Cast" kind of stuff but actual content - about the process, about the ideas behind your next play, about the scuttlebut involved in dealing with a landlord. The Inside Skinny.

2. Offer discounted seats in the back of the house for Twitterers. Give them a dedicated hashtag and allow them the space and invitation to live tweet your performance. The discount is there because they are actively promoting your work's outside of the theater awareness and the back of the house prevents the inevitable distraction to other audience members.

3. Livestream or record and distribute the talkback sessions.

After the show talkbacks can either be a deadly bore or give some insight as to how the piece was received. Mostly, though, if viewed independently from the performance, they can be substantive teasers for the performance itself. I went to the Steppenwolf Garage's performance of Want and the talkback was run pretty efficiently, give and take was moderated well, good questions asked and explored and I thought at the time that the talkback made me want to see the play again. No reason to think this can't be used as additional content for potential audience members to respond to.

What else?

The Tyrant is Us

2012-01-02T07:07:00.000-06:00

The three-year old child figures out early on that, if he wants something - a juice, a toy, some attention - that all he needs to do is cry or throw a tantrum and most times, in an effort to appease him and regain a sense of quiet, the adults will willingly provide him the source of his immediate desire.

Life has a way, most times, of undoing the damage done to the child by providing harsh lessons in entitlement. "It isn't wrong to want things," Life instructs the child. "It is wrong to think that the best way to get them is to throw a fit. Sometimes, instead of grease, the squeaky wheel gets his ass handed to him." And, hopefully, in the best cases, Life Lessons take hold.

For many, however, the lessons fall on deaf ears. Years of screaming, crying, whining, and throwing fits being rewarded with results tend to create entitled, angry, petulant adults. As if the mere idea of a person's discomfort and desire for satisfaction earns him the right to have everyone around him leap to appease the screamer if only to have a moment of peace. But that peace comes at a price. Once the tantrum thrower gains from the tantrum, it is twice as hard to dissuade him from employing the self same tactic for everything.

We see this in day-to-day customer service situations (and anyone who has worked behind the Customer Satisfaction Counter or Phone Line anywhere recognizes these people); we see it in our negotiations with people in public spaces (I am offended by _____ therefore everyone around me should cease to _____ ); we see it in our modern political debates.

These people are dictators by our own making. We empower them by capitulating to their demands. The angry man demanding his latte be made in a set amount of time is seeking a reaction - deny him one and it is easier the next time he decides to demand something. The activist that demands that abortion be outlawed or that gas-fueled cars be banned will eventually run out of steam if ignored. The media encouraged the TeaBillies by bending to their every whine, every gripe, every poorly attended rally as if giving them some credence would mollify them - as with all petulant, angry children, the attention simply fueled the fire. On the other side of the Ideological Fence, the media tried ignoring the relatively peaceful protests of the Occupiers to no avail. Because the Occupiers aren't throwing a tantrum - they are making a stand. For the TeaBillies, it is a War Against Anyone Unlike Themselves; the Occupiers align themselves with everyone (TeaBillies included) against a tiny but incredibly powerful minority.

And this incredibly powerful minority rules not because they are white, or mostly male, or hate America but because their only agenda is making more money for themselves at the expense of everyone else (TeaBillies included).

They are in that position because, like the tantrum throwing three-year old, we let them get there. Who among the 99% will do away with the convenience of inserting the bank card in the machine and having money come out? Who among the 99% will do away with heat for their homes, electricity for their computers and forego their vehicles for walking or riding a bike? The response the minority of Ridiculous Wealth requires is for us to buy the things they sell - convenience, access, ease. And we reward their selling us out on gambling and cheap overseas labor by purchasing their products.

Life has taught these people that we will do exactly what they want as long as we are distracted by distractions - race issues, educational issues, Dancing with the Stars, and the next, cool gadget - and we will quickly forget about their tantrums because we become the whiny, bitchy three-year old children in the equation and they are more than happy to oblige us our worst natures.

So, who exactly is the tyrant here?

We made them; they made us. We fuel their control by continuing to finance them with each purchase or oil-guzzling trip; they fuel our desire by creating and relentlessly advertising all the new, shiny, shit they have to sell.

Bob turned me on to the concept of the Ouroboros:

The Ouroboros (or Uroborus) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The name originates from within Greek language; οὐρά (oura) meaning "tail" and βόρος (boros) meaning "eating", thus "he who eats the tail"

and I think the image of self cannibalism applies to the relationship we have with our tyrants and they to us. It signals a state where we are ALL responsible for the state of things and the easy blaming of one group, ideology, race, or religious cult is a vast oversimplification that cannot sustain itself under scrutiny.

I believe the best way to start 2012 is to simply acknowledge that none of us is exempt from blame in this circumstance. That before we point the dirty finger at THEM (which can be defined as anyone who looks, acts, or lives differently than the pointer), stop, figure out how we enable the three-year old his power and take it away.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T08:10:00.000-06:00

When I Was 45...

2011-12-30T06:48:00.000-06:00

2011 in Retrospect

In the Ervin Drake song, made famous by the one and only Frank Sinatra, pretty much anything beyond 35 was considered "...the autumn of the year..." but this is the day and age of a perpetually arrested development, 80-year olds working out in gyms and popping Viagra to get it on, and a 49-year old Tom Cruise hanging 130 stories up in the fourth (and best, IMO) Mission Impossible flick, so Ervin can go shove it up his ass with his talk of shorter days and fine, older kegs. At 45, I'm still working on a life of longer days and the fine, bubbly feel of beer brewed in a microbrewery in Sawyer, MI.

In no particular order (because who am I to rank the goods and bads of the year - I'm just gonna cherry-pick things as they occur to me) here is my perspective on the year Arthur C. Clarke didn't get around to - 2011.

Steve Jobs died. And was deified. And then vilified. And then deified, again.

Yup. I'm an Apple fanboy. I'm typing this blog right now in Glendale, CA on an iPad with references researched on my iPhone 4S. And, though we discovered that Jobs was a visionary more than an inventor and a bit of a douchey tyrant more than a glowing example of universal love, nothing can take away the fact that the man made his ding in the universe (or at least in the fastest growing sector of American and Global life and next year there will be fucking Apple TVs!).

The Tea Party's influence held strong for most of the year until they overplayed their uncompromising, destroy the government and Obama campaign and are now looking exactly like the fucking kooks most of us saw all along.

The debt ceiling hostage situation forever exposed the sad, uncovered ass-crack of the Good Old Boys in the Tea Billies and a larger portion of the world realized that these people are just shy of Shitting in Their Pants and Raving About the End of the World Crazy. 20011 also gave rise to Occupy Movement which, while undefined and poorly branded (you know, because pigeonholing yourselves and finding a good PR person is exactly what Thomas Paine did), represents a significant cry from the people, albeit the people on the Left Side of the equation, and I have hopes that the Occupiers will continue to sway the national conversation to eliminate the erroneous buzzwords of the Extreme Right. The 2012 elections will certainly be a shitstorm so we will see who controls the debate by then.

The Kardashians and Rebecca Black continued the trend of completely talent-free human beings somehow managing to be compelling enough that we make them famous and well-fed. Seriously, though, when an average American knows more about the sex life of a vapid idiot like Kim Kardashian but can't name five of the nine Supreme Court Justices, it does NOT bode well for our educational system nor for our crumbling belief in democracy.

Speaking of a decaying version of democracy, the obstructionist GOP Congress single-mindedly demonstrated exactly how representative democracy is NOT supposed to be - more filibustering than in any Congress in history and over such petty bullshit as judicial appointments and the approval of the chairs of newly created agencies. On the flip side, the Dems proved exactly how a party being battered relentlessly by bullies should NOT respond - once you give them your lunch money and permission to "dance wif yo dates" you’re over, wimp-ass.

In the world(s) of theater and film, the highlights were few but significant. Steppenwolf's production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the Mammals' bizarre Dream Journal of Dr. Jekyll, and Coya Paz’ The Americans were standouts for theater; for film, the only two brilliant films were Terence Malick's Tree of Life and Scorcese's Hugo - Spielberg's Adventures of Tintin and War Horse were both pretty fantastic and for sheer fun, I loved Captain America:The First Avenger and, although a box office failure, likewise loved Cowboys & Aliens.

The stinkers were BIG ones, though and inexplicably bad, in spite of pedigree or production value. A Twist of Water kind of sucked and Clybourne Park just didn't gel in the second act - mind you, these were not the worst plays I saw in 2011, just most over-rated. Red State was a real piece of shit and Green Lantern, while kind of fun, was a green, glowing power ring made of overheated feces.

We learned that when you see a college coach raping a ten-year old boy, you call the fucking cops, not report him to his boss. That we'll put up with our government wiretapping our email accounts and listening in to our phone conversations and collecting our data from credit card companies and libraries but draw the line when Rupert Murdoch does it to celebrities and kids. That we can actually take Rick Perry and Herman Cain seriously as candidates for the highest office in the land but throw Anthony Weiner under the bus because we can handle only a certain kind of *almost* inoffensive stupidity but the Twittering Pics of Your Cock Stupid is a stupid too far.

Professionally, things chugged along at the public radio station - events were successful across the board and life at Navy Pier was just fine. I did a few shows (including a remount of Postmortem) and a LOT of storytelling which lead to my gig as the host of The Moth over at the Haymarket on every third monday night.

Personally, I moved in with my girlfriend in Portage Park, I bought a motorcycle, continued to keep the weight off, and I'm in that Prioritizing the Pieces of the Daily Walk sort of place - I didn't see or do as much theater as I wanted, I didn't create as much new stuff as I wanted, my time got co-opted by other priorities and the shuffle is on, you know? I'd like to get off my ass and publish an AWG book (even an e-book), put together a one-man show, complete the Home Theater Project in a flourish-y, what-the-hell-were-they-thinking? sort of way. While the next year will likely be a huge clusterfuck politically, the weeks are filled with Big Days and Small Ones and I'd like there to be a few more Big Ones in 2012.

When you hit 45 you think less about what lies ahead and more about what you'll leave behind. Ervin didn't really get into that in the song but, perhaps, with the world ending in May of 2012 and all, it might be high time to toss that around some, huh?

Have a great New Year's Eve, don't get hammered and think you're a capable driver, and I'll catch you on the flip.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

2011-12-29T09:02:00.001-06:00

One of the strange but true controversies in the theater world that surfaced in 2011 was the issue of smartphones in the dedicated, austere performance halls of the Lady Theater. It is a pretty divisive issue and the dividing point seems to be whether one actively engages in social media and has a smartphone capable of use or one disdains the technology and prefers to have a phone simply be a phone and a theater performance be fully in control of the theater-going experience.

I, for one, am in favor of the Tweet during the Play.

A few tips for tweeting during a performance are pretty straightforward:

1. Turn the screen brightness down. Not hard to do and lessens the glare considerably.

2. Turn your phone to silent (not vibrate but silent).

3. Tweet about the play not the fucking Kardashians.

Number three is the Big Issue, I think. If you've dropped your dough to spend a couple of hours in the dark room of theater but aren't interested enough in the play, either you shouldn't go to the theater (because it obviously ain't your cup of tea) or the play isn't interesting enough to capture your fragile attention (which indicates you should just split).

As 2012 rolls around, the issue is NOT going to go away and texting isn't like cigarrete smoke so banning it is going to be a non-solution for cash-strapped theater companies that need as many people tweeting about their work as possible.

I Believe...

2011-12-28T05:24:00.000-06:00

...that, at the end of 2011, it pays to recognize both the truly excellent things (the end of the Iraq War) and the truly ugly things (the execution of an innocent man in Georgia) to find a verdict on the year.

...that flying in the 21st Century is best done with careful preparation - slip on shoes, as little luggage as possible, and a Scottevest jacket that eliminates the need for a carry-on. That and a huge dose of good humor and patience.

...that instead of simply stating that he wrote racist articles fifteen years ago and was wrong at the time and has since changed his views on the subject, Ron Paul plays the same bullshit game and lies about his involvement in his own newsletter. I'd more readily accept the first than put up with the second.

...that any corporation that compares its product to an animal in the jungle has lost sight how brutally we humans treat those animals.

...that "holidays" and "vacations" are two completely different beasts.

Home Is Where Your Story Begins

2011-12-26T05:19:00.000-06:00

"You can take the boy out of Kansas but you can't take the Kansas out of the boy."

In the ongoing debate about which determines the essential Who, while Nature is powerful - the ethnicity of the gene pool you are born with, the genetic tendencies toward cancer or obesity or addiction, the basic look of one's physique and face - every Christmas I am reminded that Nurture is the more powerful determiner of our behavior, our outlook on life, our manner in relationships, our very essential beings.

And the beginning of both Nature and Nurture is Home.

Yes, Home is where the heart is and all that crap, but Home truly begins with where you were formed and whom you were formed by and with. Family. And whether your family was a traditional type (Mom, Dad, Siblings, a house or apartment) or non-traditional (a Single Parent, Two Parents with Joint Custody, a Foster Home, the Streets), the hardwired training your brain and personality undergoes in those first, say, twelve years of life tend to determine who you will be in the following decades.

My story starts with my mother and my sister in the heart of - what is now - the reddest state in the Union. Add my dad (my stepfather in specific terms but the man I most identify as my father in the most proper sense) and, over the years my two nephews and my spectacular niece. This is my family. These are the people who know me, all my early stories. They love me and support me in spite of knowing my days when I was a prude, in spite of my bringing two wives into their lives only to have them leave me (and them), in spite of seeing through my arrogance (sometimes) and negligence (sometimes) and loud, obnoxious nature (all the time).

Many people see their family as like their tiny hometown - a place to grow out of and leave behind. And each Christmas, more than any other time of year, I find a strong sense of pity for those who do because I love the once a year immersion in a house full of people like me. Loud, everyone talking over each other, argumentative, gross (lots of talk of balls and buttholes and the nephews jagging off in the tub), all shepherded by my overachiever, overenthusiastic, Clark W. Griswold of a matriarch of the clan.

I find that I osmosize a little bit of each of them in the short visit - bits and pieces that I carry with me throughout the year like the Elven Bread that lasts far longer than one would think possible eaten by Frodo and Samwise in Mordor. Each bit bolsters me in some way and I wouldn't trade them for anything on the planet.

From Sean (the 15 year old nephew) I get to remember what it was like to be 15 and with nothing but the oyster of the world in front of me. His sense of honesty and decency is balanced by his unshakeable confidence and I bottle that combination up and access it whenever I start to feel old or insecure.

From Ryan (the 11 year old cut up) I shave off a bit of his anarchic sense of humor and play - if you know me and think I don't take life seriously enough, I have Ryan to thank for it.

Jackie Rose (the Glee-loving, trumpet playing, headband wearing brain of the group) gives me a battery boost to my artistic side and reminds me that the best artists are the ones who genuinely love the art.

My sister, Vicki, one who has been through even more heartache than this whiny asshole by a longshot, becomes like a a Spirit Animal or Native American totem - spending a moment with my badass, never-say-die, tenacious to a point of ridiculous baby sister. If scars mean you've survived, my sister has survived intact and with style.

My dad (we all call him "V") is the touchstone I need to remind me what a real man is like - solid, honest, no bullshit, hard working, funny, and even still always trying to improve himself and the lives of those he loves.

And then there is the beginning. Granted, not many people I know have as close a relationship with their mother as I do but for the young mothers who read this blog, I hope you can have this with your kids when they're 45 (and they will be, one day). My mother instills a sense of doing, of moving forward, of appreciating those closest to you. She teaches by example, doing good for others, fighting the dragons of society in ways than often get her written up in the local paper, and responding to an ungenerous world with a generosity of spirit that comes not from an outward faith but an ingrained life experience.

These people, no matter where I go in life, are my home and they are where my story began. They are Chapter One. And every subsequent chapter has references back to these people. When I visit them, I revisit stories of ME, of who I was, of what I've done, and as I progress, so do they. It's kind of amazing and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't experience this conjoining of family at least once a year.

Christmas means different things to different people but to me Christmas means Coming Home and Being Reminded That My Story Started With Them.

Merry Christmas, America!

2011-12-24T06:25:00.000-06:00

Friday Roundup: Go Out and Find It

2011-12-23T05:13:00.000-06:00

It's About Time...

A man from Birmingham, Alabama is filing a lawsuit in the Jefferson County Circuit Court to keep Barack Hussein Obama off of the Alabama ballot, citing problems with Obama’s birth certificate.

According to the affidavit, Albert E. Hendershot, Jr is requesting that there be an “evidentiary hearing and production of the original long form birth certificate and microfiche copy of such original birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama to be presented at the hearing.”

SOURCE

You know...because that meme hasn't beaten to death...

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It's Extraordinary That A Species So Incredibly Stupid Is at the Top of the Food Chain...

h/t to Pancho Duke
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Tonight...If You Wonder What I Do on Thursday Nights...

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I Am Currently...

Doing the Christmas Family Thing. Spending a coupla days with my family in Marion, KS. Then off to AK's family in LA. Then some alone time with the lady on the West Coast for New Year's Eve. Blogging over the holidays will be spotty at best.

Have a freaking spectacular end to 2011. Find something fun and relaxing to do. Love someone hard. Eat something delicious. Sleep soundly. Catch up on some reading. Exercise a bit. Laugh a LOT. And get prepped for 2012 - it's gonna be a shitstorm, baby!

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Thank God There's "No Heating"!

The Dangers of Too Much Choice

2011-12-22T05:22:00.000-06:00

We either put out 6 different flavors of jam or 24 different flavors of jam and we looked at 2 things.

First, in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam? The first thing we looked at, in what case were people more likely to be attracted to the jar or jam, so in which case are people more likely to stop when they saw the display of jams and what we found was that more people stopped when there were 24 jams.

About 60% of the people stopped when we had 24 jams on display and then at the times when we had 6 different flavors of jam out on display only 40% of the people actually stopped, so more people were clearly attracted to the larger varieties of options, but then when it came down to buying, so the second thing we looked at is in what case were people more likely to buy a jar of jam.

What we found was that of the people who stopped when there were 24 different flavors of jam out on display only 3% of them actually bought a jar of jam whereas of the people who stopped when there were 6 different flavors of jam 30% of them actually bought a jar of jam. So, if you do the math, people were actually 6 times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had encountered 6 than if they encountered 24, so what we learned from this study was that while people were more attracted to having more options, that’s what sort of got them in the door or got them to think about jam, when it came to choosing time they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.

And that really ended up starting an entire area of research where we began to look at "Why is that?" And a large part of that has to do with the fact that when people have a lot of options to choose from they don’t know how to tell them apart. They don’t know how to keep track of them. They start asking themselves "Well which one is the best? Which one would be good for me?" And all those questions are much easier to ask if you’re choosing from six than when you’re choosing from 24 and if you look at the marketplace today most often we have a lot more than 24 of things to choose from.

SOURCE

As I look through the nearly limitless number of entertainment options available to me, this quick study comes to mind.

On any given day in the City of Chicago, I can choose from among hundreds of live events - concerts, staged readings, poetry slams, storytelling nights, improv shows, sketch shows, dance performances, plays, musicals, performance art, stand up comedy, movies - it's kind of fucking ridiculous.

I became fed up with the soul crushing need to find out new ways to market shows and new ideas on how to make social media work to peddle my particular brand of fuckity-fuck-fuck that I went the other direction. We already know that institutions pay far more money for Marketing Administrators than any collection of actors; we already know that those Marketing Directors are, like Economists and Line Cooks, making that shit up as they go along.

Advertising is destroying every good thing in the world, folks. We are lied to so often - by the companies that manufacture stuff, by the news media trying to boost ratings, by the partisan politicians trying to win office, by the OK Cupid pickup artists, by the "fake" porn Twitter followers - that invading someone's thing with your pitch is becoming just one more god-awful obstacle toward finding some peace, you know?

As for social media, the push to make these innocuous, narcissistic time wasters a way to market your show has turned something kind of fun and interesting on a personal level into a fucking whorehouse of "friends" begging you for a dollar bill for a handjob.

Turn it off. Stop it, already.

You wanna do well with your shows? DARE TO BE DIFFERENT FROM EVERYONE ELSE.

Your improv show is EXACTLY like every other improv show in town. Your political incorrect sketch show about relationships in the Facebook Age - been done a thousand times. That cutting edge play by that well-known playwright about fucking anything has been done to DEATH. And there are too many choices for any patron to effectively make up his mind so he listens to the people with the money to buy ads on the sides of buses and on signs on the top of taxis.

DO SOMETHING UNIQUE.

It's really not that hard. Look around. If you see 15 listings of productions of The Seagull or Arcadia - DON'T DO THAT.

It's better to be one of six Pecha Kucha nights than one of 24 plays by Sam Shepherd or Edward Albee.

I Believe...

2011-12-21T05:15:00.000-06:00

...that, whatever you think of the Obama Administration and myriad compromises made with a political party hellbent on its demise, only a complete and utter ideologue with no regard for a sense of giving credit where credit is due refuses to see that two of Obama's promises were kept - the end to Osama bin Laden and the War in Iraq.

...that celebrating Christmas with family is only stressful if you decide it will be. If, on the other hand, you decide to embrace the opportunity to be with people who love you and whom you love, it can be a perfect marker to end a calendar year and a catalyst for the beginning of a new one.

...that 97% of the time it isn't what you're saying but how you're saying it that splits the difference between
persuasion and repulsion.

...that with the ever present fascination with the celebrity FAIL and the celebrity nip-slip on Twitter and the celebrity Who's Fucking Who and Who Had a Pre-nup? it becomes increasingly easy to simply state that very few of us ever evolve beyond the social confines of a high school student.

...that no government can be effectively managed by people unwilling to budge from an ideological position - Far Extreme Right or Far Extreme Left - strong convictions do not mean an unwillingness to bend and flex in the face of progress.

Imagine trying to organize and move forward with anything if given the current environment in our various federal and state capitols. Zealots are fun and interesting but rarely ever get anything fucking done. Once an ideologue draws a line in the sand, that person's effectiveness in accomplishing fuckall has become null. This is not to say that the country doesn't need a few crackpots to stir shit up and make the rest of the country aware of things on the Fringe, but keep them out of the kitchen, you know?

If I Were a Middle Class White Accountant...

2011-12-20T05:09:00.000-06:00

“I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.”

SOURCE

I believe a great many things. Any regular reader of this non-stop stream of opinion called a blog is familiar with the weekly statements every Wednesday. A truly dedicated reader will notice the trend that as I state these beliefs, over time, some of them contradict one another while others are changed as my life experience ripens.

I don't think for a second that the good Mr. Marks is a racist or even racially insensitive for that matter. I do believe, however, that the primary flaw in his well meant advice to the Poor Black Kids of America is founded in an easily disproven faith in an America that, while mirroring the rhetoric of the most generous of our Founders, has never been more than a hopeful illusion that we in the comforting embrace of the Majority Color feel a strong need to believe in, often in contrast to reality.

“I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.”

Still.

As if the crushing realities of belonging to any minority class are in tandem with the pace of the privileges of belonging to the majority class. As if the chances of succeeding in a European, Anglo Saxon, predominantly Christian, English language country are the same chances for those that do not fit the dominant profile. As if the scales of opportunity are equal (or even close) for all.

Is Marks wrong? No. Not when the difficulties of being Poor, or Black, or a Kid (let alone the unfortunate summation of all three) are boiled down to the ideals of Hard Work and Determination being the Qualities that matter in life. In that sort of hopeful and simplistic view of the world, his advice is dead-on. He tells the Poor Black Kids of the World (all whom are highly likely to be reading the Op Ed column in Forbes) that they should focus on getting good grades regardless of the state of their particular educational institutions, become expert in technology, and that success, while harder for the colored kids, is not impossible. But 'not impossible’ isn't the same as ’probable,’ or even ’likely.’

Given that these same Poor Black Kids are just as likely to be reading this blog as they are to be cozying up with their online copy of Forbes, allow me the self same conceit as Marks.

If I Were a Poor Black Kid...

I'd be kind of pissed off. So pissed off and slightly confused and frustrated that I'd want to knock the living shit out of any middle class white guy who thought he might have found the key to my potential with the simple admonition to Go and Study Harder Because if Barack, and LL Cool J and Michael Jordan can make it, it should be just a matter of hunkering down and Working Harder. You know, because I'd be living the life if I weren't so lazy and complacent and uninspired by a society that emphasizes my laziness and complacency with the constancy of the playing of fucking Jingle Bells in Walgreens beginning on November 1 every year.

I'd be discouraged by a media that presents me as a thug (by the Right) or a victim (by the Left) without really acknowledging that, while I look a lot like every other Poor Black Kid, I'm not defined by any of those three qualifiers. That being Poor isn't accidental but neither is it a result of anything I have or have not done - being Poor has far more to do with who I know and where I live than how hard I study. That being Black only defines me by those who see nothing more than the cover of the book and seek to define me as a thing - a race, a pawn, a criminal, an icon - rather than a flesh and blood human being, prone to both excellent and heinous behavior that I get to be responsible for without excuse. And guess what? The Kid part goes away in just a paltry few years.

BUT…

I'm not a Poor Black Kid. And neither is Mr. Marks. For that matter, neither are most of the people sounding off in either defense of his Forbes essay or in condemnation of it. Neither those on the Conservative "bootstrap pulling" stripe nor those on the Progressive "oppression excuses all behavior" type are Poor Black Kids. Maybe some of them used to be, but "used to be" isn't the same as 'is.'

Our job, our duty, as Americans is to fulfill the Promise. You know - that crazy, almost ridiculously difficult promise of equality to every citizen, equal opportunity to every American without regard to race, creed, religion, sexual preference, gender or economic status. That Promise - made by Wealthy, White Land (and Slave) owners - was, perhaps, a bit pie in the sky, a bit PollyAnna in its commitment. People, all of us, are just mammals and incredibly flawed ones at that. People kind of suck at least 50% of the time. Getting them to rise above the tendency to lump each other into classifications (thug or victim) is nearly impossible. But 'nearly impossible' is not the same as impossible, is it?

So...

If I Were a Middle Class White Accountant...

I'd start with this:

My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011.

...and more thoroughly examine that short series of thoughts before I offered any advice to any of those kids born two miles away. I'd examine why it is the case that the "world is not fair to those kids" and perhaps challenge the world rather than the kids with advice on change and hardship and why those two miles make any difference at all. What is different, not between my own kids and them, about those two miles. No one has good solutions. No one. I'd maybe focus my advice giving tendency on those solutions because telling the recipient of unfairness to buck up and bravely push forward through the unfairness is, simply put, bullshit advice.

Why I'm Voting for Barack Obama (Again)

2011-12-19T13:22:00.000-06:00

REASONS # 9, 17, 44, and 65

As weary of the non-stop bloviating by those on the Extreme Right who hate our President with a fervor usually reserved for despots and a neighbor who cut a tree down on YOUR GODDAMN PROPERTY LINE!! - I'm equally worn out by those on the Extreme (and even not so Extreme) Left bitching and moaning about how completely ineffective and disappointing Obama has been.

So, as a part of my weekly grind, I'm going to access the PCTC Blog and remind my readers that, while it might have been flashy to get a bit more audacity, we still have plenty of hope.

He implemented an auto industry rescue plan, and saved as many as 1 million jobs. http://bit.ly/ibhpxr Many are of the opinion that he saved the entire auto industry, and even the economy of the entire Midwest. http://bit.ly/gj7mt5

He provided a $20 billion increase for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps).http://nyti.ms/gfLqyM

He ordered the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It was Republicans (and a smattering of Democrats) who prevented him from following through. http://bit.ly/eW6CVF

He eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He also provided increased federal support for biomedical and stem cell research. http://bit.ly/h36SSO http://ti.me/edezge

Simplifying the Ridiculously Complex

2011-12-19T05:11:00.000-06:00

Human beings are a simpleminded lot. In order to make the world a bit more comprehensible, we tend to take HUGE, COMPLEX issues and simplify them in ways that "boil it all down" and appeal to our "common sense."

Early man simplified the world by creating "gods" that watched over us and responded to ritualistic behavior by bending nature to favor the pious - providing timely rain for crops or plentiful game to kill and eat. These early dudes explained the complexity of the potential solar system by arrogantly assuming the earth was flat (because they had no genuinely informed frame of reference) and that it was the center of all things.

The above graphic does the same. Trying to take an issue as needlessly complex as the United States Budget and "boil it all down" to resemble a family budget is well-meant but completely and utterly meaningless. I'm certainly no economist but have spent enough time filling my limited brain matter with economic theory and prognostication that I at least understand that the budget is far too complicated to boil it down. It is, however, fun in a "Fox News Does It, Why Not Me" sort of way.

So, in the spirit of Simplifying the Ridiculously Complex, let's continue down this road for a moment, yeah?

The CEOs of Mega-Corporations Explained in Simple English

Mr. Potter: [to George Bailey]

Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me a warped, frustrated, old man! What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help. No securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin' but a miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy.

[Potter chuckles]

You're worth more dead than alive! Why don't you go to the riffraff you love so much and ask them to let you have $8,000? You know why? Because they'd run you out of town on a rail. Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do for you, George. Since the state examiner is still here, as a stockholder of the Building and Loan, I'm going to swear out a warrant for your arrest. Misappropriation of funds, manipulation, malfeasance...

[sees George runs off]

All right, George, go ahead, George! You can't hide in a little town like this!

Hedge Fund Managers on Wall Street Explained in Simple English

Ricky Roma: All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time. When you die you're going to regret the things you don't do. You think you're queer? I'm going to tell you something: we're all queer. You think you're a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You cheat on your wife? You did it, live with it. You fuck little girls, so be it. There's an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won't live in it. That's me.
[pause]
Ricky Roma: You ever take a dump made you feel like you'd just slept for twelve hours?

The Tea Party Explained in Simple English

Gary Johnston: We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

Isms Explained in Simple English

Loki: No, "Through the Looking Glass". That poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter," that's an indictment of organized religion. The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or, or with his tusks, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions. Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions. Now in the poem, what do they do? What do they do? They, they dupe all these oysters into following them and then proceed to shuck and devour the helpless creatures en masse. I don't know what that says to you, but to me it says that following these faiths based on mythological figures ensures the destruction of one's inner being. Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions, by inhibiting our decisions out of, out of fear of some, some intangible parent figure who, who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says, and says, "Do it... do it and I'll fuckin' spank you."

Economic Theorists Explained in Simple English

“I'm freestylin just on the microphone
On the BBC, on the BBC
I'm just freestylin on the BBC
Um British Broadcasting Company
i'm just basically making this shit up as I go along
Basically just free
Just basically from the top of my dome
Sometimes it's not so good
My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment
I made all the lady listeners pregnant”
― Flight of the Conchords

Transmorphing :This Much is True

2011-12-17T06:05:00.000-06:00

I performed "Transmorphing" at This Much is True this week. It was packed out and the stories were just all very good. Great evening.

Someone asked me why I did this piece again (did it at the Acorn SKALD and then at The Moth) and I think it's for the same reason I like my tattoos ("DADA IST WIE DADA," "ARS GRATIAS ARTIS," "The Road is Life," and "Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride") - it reminds me of what is truly important to me in a world of constant distraction.

Enjoy!

Friday Roundup: Super Humans Receive No Compassion

2011-12-16T05:09:00.000-06:00

A Thought for Those Losing Some Weight...

It never stops. It is, as they say, a Change in Lifestyle. It is a reframing of the role of food in your life and the maintenance of your body as a tool and vessel. Food is NOT salve for your emotional wounds or strictly a sensuous pleasure. Food is fuel (most of the time). Yup - sometimes you gotta hunker down and overindulge (just like you gotta have a binge drink every once in a while or stay up for two days just to see if you can) but, if you manage to drop the weight, baby...you are always on that train.

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Another Kettle Calling the Pot Black

Conservative new media mogul Andrew Breitbart is pushing back at Glenn Beck after Beck implied tea party activists who support Newt Gingrich’s campaign for president are racist.

Appearing on Stephen K. Bannon’s radio show Sunday night, Breitbart called Beck a “coward” and a “snake” — and accused him of playing “the race card.”

“I don’t care what he does, because he is dead to me,” Breitbart added.

SOURCE

Coward. Snake. Pretty much describes most Conservative Media types, huh?

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A Lego Version of Yours Truly...

This was a gift from a colleague over at the University of Chicago following one of our events. I feel like a movie star now. Soon - LEGO Don in a Gold Bikini...

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Fun With Statistics

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Quote of the Week

To steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or view the act differently. One way is to remove “Someone” from the equation. You’re not stealing from a person. Big companies do a lot to help people view them as less than human. I heard a speech by Noam Chomsky who said that corporations are like super humans. They cannot be hurt like a human can and they never die. They are not susceptible to scrutiny or accountability. This makes them more profitable. If companies want to enjoy these benefits to some degree they have to live with what else comes with being not human. You miss out on compassion, forgiveness, camaraderie, empathy, trust all kinds of shit. -- Louis CK

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This Just Makes Me Happier...

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Old White Guys Without a Clue

2011-12-15T05:09:00.000-06:00

I'm at the YMCA. I have a membership so I can use the gym.

On weekends, at the Irving Park Y, there are frequently a lot of older guys (at this point in my life, an older guy is defined as someone in his sixties) working out, chatting it up and standing around the locker room area stark naked without a hint of care. (NOTE TO OLDER GUYS: Jesus! Put a towel around that thing! What happens to guys when they hit that age when standing with their wrinkled balls and wiry junk just right there? I mean, there are few things in life that will ruin a post-workout breakfast than a prolonged shot of four or five saggy old guy asses...)

OLD GUY:
"...I think it was that British film guy - Branagh? His wife was skiing and fell down and hit her head. She said she was fine and then she just died..."

OTHER OLD GUY:
"What was that? Emma Thompson died? From skiing?"

OLD GUY:
"Yeah. Emma Thompson."

"REALLY OLD GUY:
"No. It wasn't her. It was...uhm...somebody else I think."

OLD GUY:
"No. It was Emma Thompson."

REALLY OLD GUY:
"No. You're wrong."

OLD GUY:
(Getting a bit cranky now...)
"No, I'm not WRONG. It's my story, Hal. I say it was Emma Thompson. She died from a skiing accident. What do you know?"

REALLY OLD GUY:
"I KNOW it wasn't Emma Thompson who died from skiing. That's what I know. It was Colin...uhm...Colin Quin's wife"

OTHER OLD GUY:
"I think Hal's right. I don't think it was her. I think it was that Colin guy's wife."

OLD GUY:
"Fuck both of youse. It was Emma goddamn Thompson. I can't even talk to you two anymore!"

For the record, boys, it was Liam Neeson and his wife, Natasha Richardson, died from a skiing accident.

I stood there, post-workout, sweating and putting on my coat to go, and stayed silent. The whole back and forth reminded me of something but I couldn't put my finger on it.

And then it hit me.

This was like listening to the Republican debates. No one in that contest really knew what they were talking about and nothing would change their minds that each one KNEW - absolutely KNEW he had the bead on the facts. (Also, since Cain dropped out to get a gig on Fox and Bachmann has become irrelevant, it was a group of old, white guys arguing...)

I also feel confident that if I had piped up and offered them the correct information, I would have been greeted with the same "No. You're wrong" and the resentful looks of people who were completely convinced of their facts interrupted by someone not in their group correcting them.

Sure, when it's an argument about a piece of pop culture tragedy by three old guys with no power to influence millions of lives, who gives a shit, right? But if it's an argument about the economy by three old guys who still believe that Free Market Economics is a valid theory and may have the power to put that horseshit into law, it's a whole different ballgame, isn't it?

I Believe...

2011-12-14T05:11:00.000-06:00

...that the term "redistribution of wealth" was invented by the wealthy and thus is immediately suspect.

...that anyone in public office that is vehemently against an agency called the "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau" has declared their open fealty to the Fabulously Wealthy Cabal of Fuck Everybody Else, I Have Six Cars, a Yacht, A Pool, and A Coke Habit to Pay For.

...that I know I'm officially older when I'm bitchy in a rehearsal because it's fucking colder than shit...I remember putting up posters at 2AM in 20 degree below zero weather and thinking I was badass. Now, a unheated room justs makes me all whiny...

...that anyone who thinks that "God" is paying attention to and helping out with a football player's performance while ignoring the hungry and the ill, has envisioned a fat, 35 year old NFL fan as "God". And, if that's "God," you can have him.

...that the constant carrion-picking on the bones of Lindsey Lohan's career smacks of misogyny and a hatefulness I've only seen when focused on women in Hollywood. The message being sent is that she's a cracked up whore so she somehow deserves to be followed around and derided.

I recall that when Anna Nicole Smith completely imploded and died a miserable death following a reality show that watched her slowly decay from inside, so many of those responsible for the Traffic Accident Gazing then made some more dime by crying about the fucking tragedy of it all. As they now parade Lohan in front of every TMZ and snarky celeb-watch website, the goddamn train is being boarded again and soon - very soon - Lohan will self destruct and either commit suicide or overdose or just wear out and die and her father and mother and sister and every tabloid fuckwad profiting on the gosiip of her sad, sad life will profit from her death. And that sucks and says more about the consumers of that tawdry bullshit than I think Americans care to believe about themselves.

Deathgrip on My iPhone

2011-12-13T05:12:00.000-06:00

I just read about a cat on a college campus with a gun robbing people of their iPhones. We know from the story that it is exclusively iPhones because two Blackberry users were held up, offered their Blackberries when pressed to "Give me your phone" and the robber disgustedly returned them, saying "I don't want that. I want iPhones."

The only reason it was sticky to my brain was that the other afternoon, I was *almost* mugged (is that what you call it when you get the assault part but they don't get any of your shit in the crime?) as a kid tried to jack my iPhone out of my hand on a busy downtown Chicago street, packed with holiday shoppers and after work commuters.

The Set Up:

I went to lunch at a downtown bar & grill with my buddy, Bob and, after springing for the grub, promptly left my debit card at the bar. Went back to work and discovered the fuck-up. So I called the bar, they had the card and I told them I'd swing by after work to grab it.

After work, I head over, double park in a loading zone, flashers on, and get my card back. I'm now walking to my car - I'm, maybe, fifteen feet away, iPhone in the left hand, keys in the right hand coat pocket.

The Moment of Truth:

*THUMP*

I feel a massive punch* to the back of my head. At that very moment, I didn't know what had hit me but that it was fast and almost knocked me off my feet. Suddenly, this teenage, scruffy white kid with a black hoodie is trying wrestle my phone out of my hand. And, I guess in the "Fight or Flight" response to this sort of thing, my instinctual, gut reaction is neither fight nor flight but "Hold on to iPhone With a Deathgrip". He couldn't immediately get the fucking thing out of my grip giving me enough time to shake off his Base of My Skull Thumping and ball up my right fist and give the side of his head a clumsy swat.

I hit him and, without looking me in the face, he instantly drops his quest for my Apple product, turns and runs.

I realize in an instant that I am surrounded by people and yet no one even noticed this exchange. A woman walks up and asks "Are you alright?" I think for second, assessing if, indeed, I am alright. "Yeah." She quickly walks on as if she doesn't want any of the Mugging Pheromone to rub off on her.

The Aftermath:

What strikes me as bizarre is that the moment came and fled inside of 25 seconds or so and that not a word was spoken. No "Hey Motherfucker's" or "Ouch, you fucking douche's!" or anything. Dead silence. Him all about his work in wresting the gorilla glass and stainless steel prize from my grip; me in standing my ground until the brief storm passes.

Of course, once I got in the car, the adrenaline kicked in high gear and I realized "That motherfucker was on foot; I'm in a CAR!" and my fantasy of chasing him down in a vehicle flashed like a malignant virus through my suddenly elevated brain soaking of chemical courage. And then I chilled. I still had my phone, my head only hurt a little, and I had shit to do.

What's the takeaway?

I dunno. Unlike the common perception, it was a white kid. That's notable. Unlike the common perception it was not in a dark alley but in the middle of the afternoon in a crowded area. I suppose, the most important thing is to start carrying around a Blackberry or plastic Android phone just so no one tries to steal it. Nobody wants those things.

__________

* Let's be honest. It probably wasn't a "massive punch" - it was, like a slap in the face, more startling than painful and, hell, I'm Irish. My skull is filled with concrete and mule stubborn meat.

Why Voting Matters...

2011-12-12T13:17:00.000-06:00

REASON #42

...because people in power can do things like this...

Although North Carolina officially apologized in 2002 and legislators have pressed to compensate victims before, a task force appointed by Gov. Bev Perdue is again wrestling with the state’s obligation to the estimated 7,600 victims of its eugenics program.

The board operated from 1933 to 1977 as an experiment in genetic engineering once considered a legitimate way to keep welfare rolls small, stop poverty and improve the gene pool.

Thirty-one other states had eugenics programs. Virginia and California each sterilized more people than North Carolina. But no program was more aggressive.

SOURCE

THIRTY ONE STATES!!!

Sure - the cabals of Monetary Influence control most aspects of our lives and the Wealthiest among us have virtually no consequence when they break the laws of the land, but these fuckers sterilizing poor people were NOT among the Robber Barons.

Voting Matters.

...jeebus...

Parenting Tips from a Wholly Unqualified Expert

2011-12-12T05:05:00.000-06:00

That Shit Is Horror Movie Scary

"I'm getting the belt!"

I was spanked as a child. In school, I was paddled.

In truth, I almost always deserved it. Also, in truth, it usually didn't hurt that much (even when it did) and, while I grew up into a college student who occasionally found myself in a drunken bar fight, I wouldn't classify myself as either A) traumatized or B) physically violent as a result.

Once I was too big to spank or paddle (a ratio determined by puberty more than anything else), punishment for my various misdeeds (and there were many) became more...psychological. Removal of things I felt were absolute needs - television watching time during my favorite shows, the keys to my car, basic privileges that involved luxury items I could certainly survive without but, as a kid, thought were essentials like air and food.

As a former middle school teacher and a 45 year old man, philosophies about how to create consequences for what kids do naturally - test the rules, act in self destructive ways, rebel against common sense - have devolved into a meaningless, feel-good mantra of non-parenting options.

By the time I was a teacher, paddling a kid was verboten. In fact, any punishment of any sort was frowned upon. A kid has to stand in the corner? Corporal punishment. A kid has to stay afterschool? Inconvenient for the parents. Detention from recess? Denying the child essential play time.

So I had to be creative.

I used a lot of tape. I yelled. I had offenders clean desks. I created a hot room.

But the best punishment I ever came up with required a fundamental understanding of the young mind. I would have them sit and. Do. Nothing. I literally would BORE them as a consequence for punching another kid or vandalizing a hallway or terrorizing another teacher. These kids were DYING to be sent to the office. They wanted nothing more than to be suspended.

I have no children. Neither of my two wives wanted them (at least not from me - the first wife now has two kids from her third husband). But I have close friends with kids. So I'm offering to them (and to anyone reading this who might have tiny humans in their charge) a few tips from a marginally qualified perspective.

1. Understand that children are smaller, more evil versions of us. They get away with their sociopathic natures because we are drawn to the cuteness of little things that look like us. The same things that deter we adults deter children. What deters you from breaking the law? If society rewarded you as positive reinforcement when you showed up to work on time but refused to dole out punishment when you rammed your car into the guy who cut you off in traffic, then we'd all be living the life of a hedge fund manager and that won't fly.

What deters you? Unpleasant consequences.

2. Yes, you see your child as the most beautiful, precious creature ever created but he/she is not. Hell, you might even have an ugly kid with a crap personality (you know it if you do) but your natural parenting instincts tell you that you can't acknowledge it. The law of averages says that most of the children on the planet are...average. That's why it's the law of averages. For the most part, a bit of punishment and a bit of reward in tandem, isn't going to bruise your child beyond repair and, trust me, a life of nothing but rewards and no punishment completely screws your kid up - he or she will NEVER be prepared to deal with the actual world.

3. Never punish your child when you are actually angry. Trust me. Wait until the steam has passed, your perspective is better and you have the opportunity to be creative. Which leads to my favorite tip:

4. BE CREATIVE. The parent who becomes known for maniacally creative punishments is the one most feared and admired when it comes to deterring the undesirable behavior.

5. As much as it pains you, every wrongdoing is a teachable moment. Your job as a parent is NOT to control your kids, it is to teach your kids how survive in the world. Praising every burp, poop, and C- on the report card does not prepare your child for the soul-killing job he/she will be working at some point in life in the same way that constantly criticizing him/her only squashes any sense of self esteem. Life is a LOT more like a constant stream of brutal punishments so teaching a few coping mechanisms is key.

Now - go multiply and for fuck's sake, don't reward the kid with food. Kids are too freaking fat nowadays anyway and that won't bode well when the insects grow to human size and your 200 lb third grader needs to run from them.

I Am a LIBERAL

2011-12-10T06:02:00.000-06:00

I'm a Liberal.

I'm not a Progressive. I'm not a Left Wing Activist. I'm not a Hippie.

There isn't anything wrong with being a Liberal. I am pro-choice across the board, believe that the death penalty should be abolished, am in favor of strict gun control laws, legalized drugs, equal protection of the civil rights of all citizens. I'm in favor of social welfare programs that assist our country's most needy get on their feet, Universal healthcare, and equal parts taxation and representation of every citizen of the Republic.

I'm generally anti-war, believe strongly in civil disobedience, and do not believe that Corporations have rights as citizens (like Freedom of Speech).

For most of my adult life the Conservative Side of the Great Societal Debate has chipped away at the notion of Liberalism, slowly transforming the very idea of Liberal into a term synonymous with anti-American, lazy, politically weak.

And we Liberals started to believe it.

“The right wing has spent decades refining definitions and controlling the language of politics, keeping the left constantly on the defensive. Conservative politicians ever since the 1950s have twisted the word "liberal" to give it sinister connotations it never had. John Lukas noted that "the history of politics – more, the history of human thinking – is the history of words", and examined what happened to the term "liberal", so leeched of its real meaning as the right increasingly used it as an insult to define their opponents. James G. Watt, Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior, said, "I never use the words Republican and Democrats. It’s liberals and Americans."

Look at NPR - hardly a bastion of strictly liberal politics as the non-profit and its many affiliates strive for a genuine balance of coverage of the day’s news - as they scramble and fire key people and do anything/everything to avoid being seen as "Liberal" media. Look at the presidency of Bill Clinton as he moved closer to the center of things after his bid for a healthcare overhaul tanked. Look at our current President, who now espouses a similar economic stance as the one of...Ronald Reagan? and publicly avoids any reference to connections with 1960's Freedom Fighter Bill Ayers.

Our liberal political representatives have dwindled down to a handful (including Kucinich, Sanders and soon retired Frank) while most of the Democratic party has shifted reluctantly from Left to slightly Left of Center as if identification with Liberal Ideals and Policies is the Kiss of Political Death.

The bizarro world this has resulted in is one where standing up for the rights of those less privileged and advocating the welfare of everyone in the citizenry is considered "unAmerican". It has spawned a splintering of Left of Center tribes: Liberals, Liberal Democrats, Progressives, Leftist Activists, Racial Activists, Feminist Activists, Gay Rights Advocates. All on the same side of ideological fence but driven to avoid overall inclusion under the now denigrated umbrella "Liberal".

[---------------*-------------0---------------------------]

I am *here.

And I'm a Liberal.

And I no longer will give the Wingnuts, TeaBillies, Libertarians, or GOP the power to control the debate. Mr. Potter doesn't get to determine the fate of Bedford Falls, Scrooge is undone by the Ghosts of Christmas and America was fucking FOUNDED by Liberal Men who would not accept the rule of the Wealthy Overlords.

Grow a fucking spine, Lefties.

Friday Roundup: State of the Art Spy Gear for 3rd Graders

2011-12-09T05:13:00.000-06:00

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.

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Obama in Kansas

I've read some commentary about the President's speech that amounts to "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is" in the vein of continuing to paint this president as ineffectual.

Fair enough.

On the other hand:

Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

SOURCE (Read this NOW)

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That Steve sure is crazy...

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A Quick Recommendation...

If you are one of us who grew up watching the anarchy of The Muppet Show, you will LOVE the new Muppet movie. It made me laugh and I bawled like a baby at the end.

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A Complex Issue Gets Worse on Color Lines

While we focus energy on the income disparity between the wealthiest 0.01% and everyone else in the country, the latest census brings light to the fact that income disparity between blacks and whites is the widest it has been since the 1990's:

The typical white person last year earned income roughly 1.7 times higher than that of blacks, the widest ratio since the 1990s. Census figures released Thursday show that cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Milwaukee in particular saw increases in inequality, hurt by an exodus of middle-class minorities while lower-skilled blacks stayed in the cities.

Low-income blacks also slipped further behind. The share of black households ranking among the poorest poor - those earning less than $15,000 - climbed from 20 percent to 26 percent over the past decade; other race and ethnic groups posted smaller increases. At the same time, African-Americans making $200,000 or more a year were unchanged from 2000 at about 1.1 percent, even after a deep recession.

SOURCE

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BTW - Fuck You and Your 15 Second Ad Before the 30 Second YouTube I Want To Watch

I'm hitting a tipping point, folks. The relentless hawking of bullshit that infects my every waking moment is starting to spoil my naturally rosy disposition. I'm getting to the point that whenever someone tries to sell me something I nearly fly into an unreasoning Hulk-like rage and want nothing more than to round up any marketers or advertising people and hose them down with a high pressure hose screaming "BUY THIS BULLSHIT!? SHADDUP!"

Everyone agrees we consume too much crap that we don't need and use up far too many of the Planet's bounty to create more and more for us to consume. And with so much stuff, we have to advertise to people that it exists. But, for chrissakes, give it a rest. There needs to be at least one place we can be entertained or diverted in some way without having to sit through a fucking commercial for goddamn All-State, right?

Oh. Wait. There's always live theater....

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When Citizens Wage War

2011-12-08T05:02:00.000-06:00

...America's police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It's just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven't generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform.

Police militarization is now an ingrained part of American culture. SWAT teams are featured in countless cop reality shows, and wrong-door raids are the subject of "The Simpsons" bits and search engine commercials. Tough-on-crime sheriffs now sport tanks and hardware more equipped for battle in a war zone than policing city streets. Seemingly benign agencies such as state alcohol control boards and the federal Department of Education can now enforce laws and regulations not with fines and clipboards, but with volatile raids by paramilitary police teams.

SOURCE

The trouble with waging wars on ideas or things rather than a singular definable enemy is that, once unleashed, the indiscriminate ramping up of fear and speculation begets increased methods to "control" the ground war - win the battles. But the battles in the War on Drugs and the War on Terror both get very slippery as police forces across the United States first begin to see the "enemy" everywhere and in the faces of ordinary citizens and second continue to use the budgets given to purchase more weaponry, battering rams, protective gear, etc. If you show up ready to "fuck shit up" and there's no shit to fuck up, sometimes that attitude gets played out on relatively innocent citizens.

Among the victims of increasingly aggressive and militaristic police tactics: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., whose dogs were killed when Prince George's County police mistakenly raided his home; 92-year-old Katherine Johnston, who was gunned down by narcotics cops in Atlanta in 2006; 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by Modesto, Calif., police during a drug raid in September 2000; 80-year-old Isaac Singletary, who was shot by undercover narcotics police in 2007 who were attempting to sell drugs from his yard; Jonathan Ayers, a Georgia pastor shot as he tried to flee a gang of narcotics cops who jumped him at a gas station in 2009; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old college student killed during a marijuana raid in Ohio in 2002; and Alberta Spruill, who died of a heart attack after police deployed a flash grenade during a mistaken raid on her Harlem apartment in 2003. Most recently, voting rights activist Barbara Arnwine was raided by a SWAT team in Prince George's County, Md., on Nov. 21. The police appear to have raided the wrong house.

The deal is, the cops are going to make mistakes. It's gonna happen. The bullshit that accompanies their mistakes (flash grenades, accidental shootings, death, destruction and virtually no consequence for these mistakes) makes the situation in this country un-fucking-tenable.

The solution to this isn't brain surgery, either. END THE WARS ON IDEAS. A war on drugs is not a war on an enemy. It is a war on a practice. Legalize the practice and the war goes away. A war on terror is a war on an amorphous and non-identifiable ideology. End it.

In the meantime, we continue to watch this shit parade across YouTube daily and do nothing about it so when the police accidentally bust into your home and shoot your kids in the face, you can only smile in mourning and tell yourself that you KNEW it was coming.

I Believe...

2011-12-07T05:15:00.000-06:00

...that very CONCEPT of a Newt Gingrich Presidency is enough to make my balls shrink up and hide in my stomach.

...that, if you are one of those in the world who has made over $100,000 a year for a while, you are ill-equipped to actually have a valid opinion on how one should survive on $20,000 a year. The arrogance that allows you to think your savings account and investments and significant salary somehow entitle you to an opinion worth listening to is simply posturing without validity to back it up.

...that, if you look closely at those who live to be really old - in their nineties or post-100, you find that most lived lives of hard work, pushing themselves to the limits of their abilities, and then knowing when to fully relax. A life of leisure and half-assing isn't a long one.

...that, in the GOP redefining of words - Liberal = Evil, Socialism = Evil, Welfare = Gravy for Lazy People, Unions = Evil - we on the Left will always have douchebag, shitstain, fuckwad, and deliriously stupid asshat to combat them.

...that FOX News accusing The Muppets of brainwashing children against Capitalism, Big Oil, and Corporate Rule of the World is one of the ridiculous examples of the pot calling the kettle black ever recorded in history. Watch:

Fox News is easily the most skewed propaganda on the airwaves and cable. And, if indoctrination and brainwashing are the issue, I'd wager that the Christian Church and Corporate Advertising has "Liberal Hollywood" beat by a fucking mile. They simply don't get it - THEY ARE THE BAD GUYS in this story. They are the Evil Overlords. They are the Domineering, Abusive Fathers. They are the White Slave Owners. They are the Nazis. They are the room full of Warmongering Morons brilliantly depicted by Kubrick, the Insane Bureaucrats portrayed by Gilliam, the Eaters of Irish Babies written about by Swift.

Candidates with Baggage

2011-12-06T13:08:00.000-06:00

What happened to Herman Cain is what the Democrats intend to do to whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. They know they can’t win a debate on the economy or on President Obama’s record, so they will do everything they can to distract the voters’ attention from those matters, which should be decisive, and instead turn the focus to the GOP candidate and his or her alleged foibles. If Republican voters allow that to happen by nominating a candidate with baggage that permits the Democrats to turn him into the next Herman Cain, it is all too likely that President Obama will be re-elected, with consequences that can hardly be overestimated.

SOURCE

I find it interesting (and by "interesting" I mean gobsmacked, incredulous, mystified, and ready to punch this guy in the nuts) that anyone associated with the Conservative Right in ANY way has the myopia to A) criticize ANYONE for bringing out the private sex acts of a potential candidate as fodder for the debate (anyone remember the mid- to late 1990's? An impeachment of a sitting president because of a blowjob and a cooter cigar?) and B) consider for even a second that Cain's downfall had more to do with his "evil ways" than the fact that he was WOEFULLY UNQUALIFIED to lead any country. And not just unqualified but recklessly stupid - no one who has such a slim grasp on basic foreign policy and domestic issues should be taken seriously by any self respecting, literate human being interested in electing a World Leader.

As for winning the debate on the economy?

It has been won:

As Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.” In fact, “if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.” The GOP, as Upton displays, simply has no explanation for these facts.

In a Bloomberg op-ed, wealthy investor Nick Hanauer also blew a hole in the GOP’s line of thinking, writing, “I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate. That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs.” The GOP would do well to take note.

Working Backwards

2011-12-06T05:08:00.000-06:00

"Most people do not have any reason for living. They just find themselves alive and they go through the motions. They find nothing to be really important, so important that they would put their own lives on the line. They are not willing to die for anything, so they are not willing to live for anything. You want to know the meaning of life? Figure out what you are willing to die for, and then reason your way back from there." - H. Rap Brown

In its own way, this statement reminds me of the Second Habit of Highly Successful People (Stephen Covey) - "Begin with the End in Mind".

Which then puts to mind my own philosophy of producing theater - Start with the Strike and Work Your Way Backward.

It all points to the idea that there is, indeed, an end to things. That, with every project, there will be a punctuation that signals that the sentence is complete. That a job is only a job if it has an endpoint. That, whether we want it to or not, Life has its very own "Finis" at the end of the pages. And the idea is to start with a fictional (only so because it is a prediction of the circumstances of that end rather than the actuality) ending and create a backward timeline to the very moment of NOW.

When I produce a show, I like to start with the fictional audience member's walk-through. Good sight lines, bathrooms, sound levels? Backwards. Parking, ease of directions? Backwards. How to buy a ticket, how'd they hear about it, what was compelling about the info they got?

I go all the way back and try to plan benchmarks to meet along the way. There are always unexpected bumps and unforeseen stumbles along the forward path but this approach gives me the ability to almost predict my success or failure in steps - at least in terms of logistical structure, right?

In looking at the Covey Habit, the idea is to take that concept and apply it to your life. Imagine a funeral - yours - complete with eulogies. What do you want the people to remember you for? Generosity? Sexual Prowess? Overwhelming ideological stupidity? Then you start, right now, being more generous, learning the positions of the Kama Sutra, and join the TeaBillies.

I used to have my eighth grade students do the Covey exercise. It's a tad morbid, thinking about your own funeral as a 13-year old, but the kids I taught were surrounded by gang violence and uncles who had died at the ripe old age of 22, so it wasn't that much of a stretch.

Which brings me to H. Rap Brown.

What am I willing to die for?

At this point, I'm sorting out the things I would NOT die for - money, material things, loyalty to the existing dogmas that permeate every aspect of the status quo, a life of mindless, pointless consumption, the "right" to be unoffended. I'm not quite at the place where I have found that thing I'd be willing to pull the Ultimate Sacrifice for beyond the very selfish desire to protect those I love.

But I'm working on it.

Gone Fishing...

2011-12-05T05:09:00.000-06:00

...after this weekend, I'm hibernating...

Unrealistic Expectations...

2011-12-03T04:51:00.000-06:00

...And The Overly Entitled Response to Disappointment

The Progressive Far Left is disappointed in President Obama's track record. He tends to play the long game rather than push for immediate gains, he tends to seek more compromise with unreasonable fuckwads, he hasn't accomplished ALL of his campaign promises.

Look at his record. He lowered taxes for the lower half of the herd, he managed to pass a healthcare bill that's a shitload closer to Universal than has ever been passed in fucking history, he oversaw the just assassination of Osama bin Laden, we're pulling out of Iraq, all while dealing like an adult with Birthers and Tenthers and a host of morons the like only Kubrick could have imagined.

Who We WANTED

The hurdle these Far Lefties are unable to leap over is unrealistic expectation. When we voted for the man, we were looking for the Yin to the Yang of the Fuck You, I'm Doing What I Want administration of Georgie Porgie Puddin’ and Pie. We wanted a Progressive cat to come in and tell Congress "Go Fuck Yourselves - I Have a Supermajority and Will Ram My Progressive Agenda Down Your Throats the Way Cheney Shot His Friend in the Face!". We expected too much.

It's not a particularly unusual phenomenon.

A guy - ordinary, not completely inept at home improvement but not a contractor - heads to Home Depot. He's looking for some plaster, paint, brushes to repair a hole in the basement wall that was created by his brother-in-law at a slightly drunken family gathering. And Home Depot is fucking BIG. Vast, really. The guy gets a little lost as he winds through aisle after aisle, searching past the plumbing rings and Christmas tree shit and carpeting squares. And he gets pissed. He gets frustrated and angry at...someone. At anyone. At the motherfucker who designed the layout of this giant goddamn store. Why? Because he went in with the expectation that it should be much simpler to find the basic items he seeks.

A woman orders a chicken salad sandwich at a diner but, because she hates celery, orders it without celery. She asks if she can get it that way; the waiter quickly says that it'll be no problem.

The sandwich arrives and, sure enough, there are bits of chopped celery in the chicken salad and she begins to quietly rage at the insult of the celery. She impatiently waves the waiter over and explains that she ordered it without celery but SEE? Celery! And she determines that, not only will she not tip the insolent, stupid waiter, but she will treat him like a mentally defective eight year old child.

Why? It's only celery, right? But she came in expecting that the customer is ALWAYS right that if she ordered the sandwich sans celery then there should be NO FUCKING CELERY IN HER CHICKEN SALAD!!

Our expectations bleed into a coalesced scab of entitlement that, in a planet with seven billion people scurrying around its surface, cannot possibly be met 99% of the time.

We expect and feel entitled to be free of offensive smells, language or images.

We expect and feel entitled to be treated with respect defined by our own limited perceptions of what respect is rather than a common understanding of respect.

We expect and feel entitled to be heard, to be listened to, to be noticed, in a world with far too many of us to fathom and lives that are snuffed out in a blink of an eye or the slip of a brick falling from fifty stories.

Unrealistic expectation begets unearned entitlement which spawns unreasonable frustration and outrage in a vacuum of anyone else really giving two shits because they are each dealing with their own expectations, entitlements and outrage.

So, how do I deal with my parade of unrealistic expectations that assail my good sense all day long? How do I avoid setting myself up for inevitable disappointment with our President, the layout of Home Depot or that fucking celery laden chicken salad?

Each moment we encounter that entitled petulance, we, as sentient beings, get to choose how to respond to our disillusionment. We can be better than our own determinations to be given what we think we deserve. We can elevate ourselves higher than the base reaction that I'm Not Getting What I Am Entitled To Have. This is not about accepting less or giving in to realistic failures of one another. This is about reacting with space in between the moment of rage and the moment of action.

Friday Roundup: A Liberal Use of the "F" Bomb

2011-12-02T05:06:00.000-06:00

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Merry Fucking Christmas, Lowly Laborer

I understand that companies sometimes have to fire someone. I understand that often there is a legitimate cause for said termination. I'm not a naive happy-crappy Rosebud - I have lived in the World of Men and know how tough decisions have to be made sometimes.

That said, I believe there is a special Circle of Hell reserved for anyone who decides to fire someone a month before Christmas. And it involves burning genitalia and a morbidly obese guy in red suit taking a shit three feet from them FOR ETERNITY.

Sidenote: No. I didn't get fired. It just chaps my ass...

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Clips from a One Second Film Festival

Seconds Of Beauty - 1st round compilation from The Beauty Of A Second on Vimeo.

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"Why Do You Love to Be Hated?"

Talked this week to a Loyola University Theater Management class. The parameters were set as pretty much anything I wanted to talk about but that their instructor wanted me to shake things up a bit, to challenge their views on the industry they were studying to be involved in.

Highlights included:

Comparing the Chase Community Giving Program to a Gang Bang Competition - one winner gets $8K for fucking 117 guys in five hours, second place gets NOTHING for fucking 97 guys.
Declaring that anyone who claimed to know how to most effectively market theater is completely full of shit.
A quick history of how conservative and corporate even the little theaters have become in the past 20 years.

At one point, a young lady spoke up and asked me "Why do you love to be hated?" She explained that she found my attitude to be repulsive and that I was an asshole (I did not disagree). It was awesome.

"I find joy in provocation. We've societally bought into the Purelle of Polite Discourse and effectively sanitized the passion involved in the arts with bubblegum platitudes and sanctimonious calls for community. I believe we are all - myself included - a bunch of fucking hypocrites and I just use some of my time pointing that out."

"But isn't there a place for kindness and constructive behavior?"

"Absolutely. I love that. If everyone was a caustic provocateur asshole, I wouldn't be special…"

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Quote of the Week

From a comment on Balloon Juice by JD Rhoades in response to an article stating how rude the teenager who tweeted a snotty remark about the Boob brownback:

After Willie Horton ads, Swiftboating, GOP convention-goers waving purple band-aids to mock a veteran’s war wounds, birtherism, Ann Coulter saying the “only choice was whether to impeach or assassinate” President Clinton, Coulter claiming 9/11 widows were “enjoying their husband’s deaths,” Rush Limbaugh mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease, ads falsely claiming Barack Obama favored “comprehensive sex education for Kindergartners,” Rand Paul supporters trying to stomp the head of a protester, ads claiming Kay Hagen was “godless,” Michelle Bachmann calling for an investigation of ‘un-American views” among the Congress, “If ballots don’t work, maybe bullets will,” “Obama hates white people,” ‘GET OFF MY PHONE YOU LITTLE PINHEAD!” “YOU LIE!”, wingnuts at FreeRepublic calling 11-year old Sasha Obama a “street whore” for wearing a peace sign on her t-shirt, outright lies about “death panels,” “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy,” cheering for executions, booing soldiers in war zones for being gay, comparing poor people to stray animals you shouldn’t feed, “’we’ve got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion,” supposed “Christians” suggesting that people pray for the President using Psalm 109:8 (“May his days be few; may another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow”) as a text, Limbaugh calling the First Lady “uppity,” and on and on and on, all without a single peep from the Right…They can take their whiny-ass bullshit about liberal “rudeness” and peddle it somewhere else. We ain’t buyin’ it here.

SOURCE

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Just a Quick Reality Check

I agree that the Wall Street fuckwads and banking CEOs need to be prosecuted for screwing up the economy. I believe that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld should be prosecuted for war crimes.

That said, the new tendency to excuse anyone else who breaks an obvious law and gets punished for it by screeching "But the Bankers Got Off Scot Free!" is a bottle of shaken up owl shit. A burglar gets 15 years and someone cries out "Great! A BURGLAR goes to prison and bankers don't." Missing. The. Point.

In the case of the #OWS cats - no laws are being broken (except for arbitrary curfews which I believe should be trumped by the First Amendment) so chill that one out. In cases of stupid people breaking laws they could have easily avoided breaking and we all would basically agree are reasonable laws - the comparison is false and merely an excuse for stupidity.

It simply makes the case against the One Percent look petulant.

The A la Carte Audience

2011-12-01T05:14:00.000-06:00

According to the Theatre Communications Group, the subscription ticket to nonprofit theaters are going the way of the album and the newspaper - no longer the dominant method of consumption but still available to the aged and traditional.

*According to Theatre Facts 2010, the annual research snapshot released by the TCG lobbying and support organization, subscription income is dropping at American theaters at an alarming rate.

Between 2006 and 2010, the report (released Monday) says, national subscription income dropped by an eye-catching 15.1%. Some 14% fewer subscripion tickets were sold and the closely watched subscriber base dropped by 15%.

Overall attendance also fell, slightly. The decline was 3.6%, although the study notes that attendance went up for workshops, skeletal productions and the like. Theaters, the study notes, have cut costs by an average of 2.6%, no doubt in response to these numbers and also to the decline in philanthropic giving (contributed income fell during the period of the study by 5.2 percent).

Interestingly, single-ticket income rose modestly during each of the years in the study. And between 2006 and 2010, the number of single-ticket buyers rose by 3%. Most theaters report a positive change in unrestricted net assets, growth that the study attributes to the rising price of a single ticket.*

SOURCE

Questions arise. Why has the subscription ticket taken such a nose dive and what does that mean for the theater industry? And who gives a shit?

As for the third, the only people who this really affects are the institutional theaters that have, for decades, relied on the model. For the small (and when I say small, I'm not talking about theaters with a $250,000 budget, I'm referring to theaters with far less than that to go from show to show) it means relatively nothing. Show to show is how we do business in the first place. Brand loyalty and Community Audience is not the accepted (or realistic) challenge of the grassroots, show to show theater company so the slow failure of the model that requires a Seasonal Buy-in from a Loyal Subscription of Followers is as remote a problem as Where to Store The $75,000 Set Pieces or We Need Another $5,000 in the Wig Budget.

The first two questions are the Meat and Potatoes of those who actually make money in theater - the Administrators. The Publicists. The Marketing Directors. The firms hired to examine the marketplace and make predictions based on the simple subjectivity of an audience that chooses which and what entertainment to purchase on the whim of happenstance and Word of Mouth.

With each new and increasingly accessible way to entertain oneself comes the crash of an economic model based upon a lack of accessibility. The record album (which permutated through the cycles of physical technology via cassette tape and CD) was finally laid to rest with the coming of the MP3 file of individual songs (like 45's of old without the shitty B-side) and ended the requirement that a consumer had to buy all of those other songs just to own a copy of that one he really liked. Each song was its own sales point and patrons could order them a la carte.

The subscription model of season tickets relies on a brand loyalty to a specific theater company and effectively locks in the choice some eight months in advance. As choices have become more numerous the idea of locking in oneself to an eight-month commitment, it looks like a chunk of theater goers are balking at that as a choice, instead choosing to see shows A la carte.

The economy, the state of constant retreads of the same plays year after year, the extreme expense of theater tickets in the first place, the rise of individualized entertainment via smartphone and tablet - all are contributing factors to the trend.

What does it mean for the industry? First, accept that the audience is splintering from brand loyalists to show to show consumers and phase out the subscription model altogether. The amount of effort and time spent trying to drum up the bidness will soon completely eclipse any financial benefit of the practice. Second, like quality restaurants, theaters need to innovate. Dare to be unique. Stop remounting Pinter or Albee and focus on contemporary writers dealing with contemporary issues that are relevant to the local audience. For Chrissakes, create work that can only be seen by your company and give it some aesthetic heft rather than another two-dimensional crock of warmed over EZ Cheez.

I Believe...

2011-11-30T05:08:00.000-06:00

Which Seems More Threatening to You?

...that, in a society where ordinary people will mob and beat each other for cheap electronic appliances, the root problem is NOT that the people are stupid savages but something endemic in the system of commerce and advertising that promotes that sense of wanton materialism.

...that, when things seem like they are moving so fast that you suddenly feel overwhelmed by the ferocity of it, the best thing to do is NOTHING. Stop. Breathe. Calm the fuck down and realize the speed is usually a low grade panic you've manufactured in your head.

...that anyone who had a seizure during a viewing of that latest "Twilight" movie is just demonstrating a very visceral and physical sort of citizen criticism of shitty movies.

...that the Real Challenge to the Occupy Movement by the Oligarchy is if they figure out a way to get the former middle class a bit more than their poverty stricken neighbors while continuing to rape the planet and control things from on high. Then the steam will be let out of the fight.

...that it says more about our willingness to be treated like fucking idiots that the police will enforce laws preventing hippies camping in parks but have no interest in policing protesters who show up at rallies with loaded weapons and cowboy hats.

Honestly, there is no other sign that makes it more obvious which side of the Ideological Idiot Fence the media and government actually sits on than this distinct difference. TeaBillies with guns at public rallies and town hall meetings are treated as serious voices of a Populist Movement but the Occupiers are treated like a bunch of assholes squatting in parks? What a steaming load of donkey shit...

Why So Compliant?

2011-11-29T05:11:00.000-06:00

This past weekend, a friend's nephew was caught smoking pot and she wanted me to be the male voice of...I don't know...reason or something. The kid's got a pretty solid head on his fifteen year old shoulders - as much as any fifteen year old male of the species can, I suppose - and I figured he was smart enough to see through the standard "Just Say No!" schtick that shames so many into obedience.

My advice ran a bit counter to the Law Abiding Adult response as well. I told him that, first, I believed that there was nothing wrong with smoking weed, that I believed it should be made legal, but that it is, in fact, NOT legal. It is SO not legal that there are people serving five to ten years in prison for selling the stuff (and sometimes only for possessing it). I told him that he needs to weigh the potential consequences of getting caught and turned in to the authorities because, once in the system, you never fully get out.

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On "Criminal Minds" the other night, an obvious bad guy is told to put up his hands and get on the ground. His response? "Shoot me or arrest me but I won't lay on the ground like a dog."

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In Topeka, KS, a senior in high school tweeted disparaging remarks about the BatShit Crazy, Anti-Union, Pro-Life Sam Brownback and was disciplined by her school for it. She was required to write this RightWing Fuckface a letter of apology. She has since declared she will NOT be writing said apology letter. Fucking A says I.

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We're already oversaturated by the asshole with a pepper spray cannister at UC San Diego. He wasn't even a real cop. He was, on the other hand, a real Marine.

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What happened to us that made us so goddamned compliant with unreasonable but legally sanctioned demands on our behavior? I understand this isn't the Wild West where the Guy with the Best Aim Reigns the Town but this sheepish obedience of authority is a smack in the face to everything we know to be American. This is not to say that a blanket "Authority is Bad" TeaBillie approach works any better. Authority is only as bad as we allow it to be.

I'm not necessarily a big fan of the approach that advocates armed revolt (even if the idea of storming Congress and bitch-slapping some Representatives and Senators in their filthy rich, shit-eating mugs gives me a bit of a thrill to imagine) nor am I a full-blown Pacifist (the idea that Letting Them Beat on Us Until They Wear Themselves Out just doesn't sit well with my Southern roots, I suppose). I AM, however, a believer in a system whereby unreasonable laws are disobeyed because they are UNREASONABLE and rejected as a matter of course.

I generally respect those who decide to follow a career in law enforcement. I believe that, for the vast majority, this is a job entered into as a service to society rather than merely a chance to carry a gun and bust heads. I believe, on the flipside, that police officers and military personnel are just as human as I am and that sometimes a little authority makes the snake brain go hogwild and the abuse of power becomes routine. Give that snake brain the immunity to spray pepper spray directly in the face of a compliant protester without fear of serious reprisal and the recipe has been set for tiny moments of totalitarian fascism.

Read Animal Farm. Watch The Postman. Study the history of English colonialism in India. Human beings, when given the authority to control (which is decidedly different than protect and serve) will go to great lengths and cast aside basic human decency in order to exert that control. Add to that a host of psychological problems (from issues with authority themselves to built-in and learned prejudices about race and gender and ideology to self esteem and sleep disorders) and it becomes clearer that the difference between a woman beating another woman to lay claim to a $2.00 waffle iron is only slightly different than the cop beating a kid with a baton in the street. Give that same woman a baton and the authority to disperse the crowd and she's probably gonna beat someone down.

With that in mind, noncompliance with authority means taking a risk. It means facing a possible beating, pepper spraying, incarceration, torture, and loss of life. The question is simply "Is the thing you're doing - that thing that is against the edicts and demands of authority - worth those consequences?" In the case of #OWS and the nationwide protest, I think it is. In the case of a momentary high for a privileged kid with enough resource to own new gym shoes and a smartphone? Not so sure about that.

What is worth the risk? What cause, what circumstance, what unreasonable demand is worth the very real possibility of a face full of pepper spray, the loss of a license, the loss of physical freedom? Is it one of money, convenience, or IDEAS?

Because, in the disinfecting light of day, that's the rub. Ideas. Rarely will anyone take the risk to confront and disobey someone with a uniform and weapons and the societal authority to destroy lives by slapping on the bracelets and pummeling he or she into the System (the broken, corrupt, at times downright evil penal system) for the right to get stoned or buy cool stuff for cheap. No one is going to risk the possibility of pepper spray in their eyes and nose and mouth for cheaper college loans. No one is going to risk a baton in the face or a flash grenade to the skull for the right to camp in a park.

But they will risk all of that for the Right Ideas. And THAT scares the shit out of the oligarchs, the autocrats, and the officious among those paid to protect and serve the public.

What are YOU willing to risk that for? What idea would make you stare down a cop and simply say "No. I will not comply with that order."?

Why Are You Looking Off and Smirking?

2011-11-28T13:15:00.000-06:00

I tend to overbook and, like this morning's post, find ways to get out of my comfort zone as often as possible just to shake the moss off.

BUT

I have a bit of a temper. It can get the best of me when things go awry or get too stress-y. I become a major DICK and get bitchy (Hey! Two gender insults for the price of one!).

A trick I recently discovered that keeps me in a great mood while continuing to truck along and get it all done is to pretend I'm the subject of a John Hughes movie. When things get particularly hairy or I feel the "WTF? Are you SERIOUS?" mindtrack kick in, I spill something, accidentally trip, or "look" at the "camera" and give a sarcastic look.

I know it sounds fucking nuts but it really works.

Who's directing the movie of your day?

Uncomfort Zone

2011-11-28T05:06:00.000-06:00

The idea of comfort and staying within the boundaries of what makes each one of us feel secure and safe is freaking seductive. The very idea of simply not having to feel that jittery, caffeine-induced anxiety of the unknown sounds so much better than the embracing of constant change and motion.

Comfort, however, should be the respite rather than the constant. Comfort should be the rests between the notes rather than the natural state of things because chaos IS the natural state of things. Comfort is the reward not the status quo.

I look around and see a generation of people grown fat and complacent, eating constantly and with only one agenda in mind - comfort. No human body actually NEEDS that many calories to survive or even thrive but we complain about how hungry we are and have created the expectation that avoidance of a little hunger is better than a perpetual state of fullness.

I look around and see people who have taken root so aggressively in their own racial identity, cultural heritage, political ideology, or tribal view that they cannot see past the comforts of being included. Political change as a GAP ad rather than a genuine struggle. Group identification because it is easier to identify and conform to an empowering set of cultural guidelines and fashion statements rather than stretch beyond the boundaries of one's "own kind."

I look around and see Americans, who no matter where one stands in the economic pie chart - 1%, 45%, 99% - are more comfortable than most of the population of the planet - consume more resource, use more energy, eat more food, scramble and riot in Wal Marts for $2.00 waffle irons, watch more cable TV in their air conditioned homes, demand less humanity in the pursuit of their own comfort than any people in the history of Western Civilization.

What is the long term consequence of this entitled attitude toward comfort?
What is the long term consequence of the never-ending propaganda that enough is never enough?

Discomfort is not, in the end, a goal to be cherished but stepping away from one's comfort zone and challenging oneself in the walk down the road has a way of refining the soul, forcing perspective and evolving the individual past the bottom layers of Maslow's pyramid. Wandering into the Uncomfort Zone helps hone the blade, strengthen the steel and make us better than the insistence on comfort over anything and everything else. If the energy infrastructure goes the way of the Hollywood apocalypse movie, it will NOT be the fat, comfortable middle and upper class that survive - it will be those who have had to struggle and make ends meet with tiny moments of well-earned comfort, people who care less about ideology and more about working communally, people whose hands are worn and dirty rather than adept at data entry. When the world ends, it will be the plumbers and construction workers that survive as the more comfortable class die off from the sense that they deserve more.

Discomfort also has the remarkable benefit of refocusing our appreciation of the things that make our lives more comfortable.

Here's a few tips to get you started:

Take a hard look at what you take for granted as things you are entitled to - public transit, perhaps. Then eliminate it from your routine for one week. Get up two hours early and walk to work then walk home from work.
Cook your own meals from non-processed foods for a week. No microwaving allowed.
Turn your heat off for a couple of nights and make do with blankets.
Spend a week and place yourself on a budget of $20 - do not spend one cent more.
Spend a week watching no television or using the internet.
Count your calories and limit yourself to 1,000 calories a day for a week.
Go to a party where you know no one and strike up as many conversations (without trying to get laid) as possible.
Go panhandle for a day - an eight hour shift of begging for change.
Go be the only white/black/hispanic/atheist/christian/progressive/conservative person at a social gathering.

Two things will happen. First, you will begin to see the simple comforts in things you now feel are your birthright. Second, in experiencing uncomfortable situations, you will expand your own comfort zone beyond the tiny ME Island you currently live on. Comfort should be a reward, not an expectation.

Friday Roundup: Scruff is not dead

2011-11-25T05:13:00.000-06:00

Why Is Such an Uncool Cologne Spawning Such Awesome Advertising?

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Those Who Watch FOX News Know LESS Than Those Who Watched a Pot Boil

I'm not sure how I'd react to this if I were an anchor or a reporter for FOX. It turns out - not a big surprise to me, of course - that people who simply do not consume the news AT ALL know more about the world than those who watch Fox News.

Seriously.

In real world terms, Fox does more damage to the highly partisan, dysfunctional government than if they simply didn't exist. It's like a reverse "It's a Wonderful Life" when George Bailey suddenly realizes that Bedford Falls would be much better off had he never lived at all.

If I worked for such an organization the first defense by Fox reporters, researchers, on-air personalities and editors, producers, and even janitors at Fox is denial. No way people who watched gasoline change color in the moonlight on the asphalt of a truck stop could possibly be MORE informed that those that watch Fox. But denial is part of the problem isn't it? Reality is that no other news network can make this claim - not MSNBC, not NPR, not no other media outlet. When does the wheat of the Fox News Network separate itself from the chaffe of intentionally misleading propaganda?

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Looks Like Coffee Is Back to Being Pretty Good for You...

Butter was good for you, then it was bad for you, now it's good for you again.

Same with coffee.

You ever get the feeling that scientists are simply spitballing on a regular basis and come up with this stuff on the fly? Honestly, I'd drink my requisite pot and half of coffee per day even if they said it would guarantee I'd grow a third eyeball and my nuts would become hard and crunchy like road apples. But it's nice to be on the right side of science today.

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What is This "Thankful For..." Baloney?

2011-11-24T05:11:00.000-06:00

I am thankful for many things on this day we set aside to gorge and reflect.

Family, friends, the lovely AK, my health, my art, my job.

Mostly, I'm thankful that I am the diner rather than the meal.

Oh. And I'm also thankful I don't live in Arizona or Alabama without documentation...

The Americans...

2011-11-23T05:09:00.000-06:00

...celebrate holidays that encourage conspicuous over consumption while arguing with each other over whether pizza is a vegetable...

...manage to find ways to be more humane to animals (although they have a long ways to go on that front) and more ways to be inhumane to people...

...only disdain becoming older because they treat older people like shit...

...elected these fucking assholes, so quit bitching and elect better assholes!

...spend billions of dollars a year trying to find quick, easy ways to lose weight, get healthy, look younger and generally trying to control aging and the Inevitable End. Why not spend it on the living?

It's becoming a fascination/obsession with me lately - we choose to exert so much energy in this country trying to defy Death (which is pointless to the extreme) and, in that pursuit, ignore people around us who we could be helping live. We spend a HUGE amount of money on weight loss products which is fucking OBSCENE in the wake of American children (let alone the millions of non-American children) starving to death or subsisting solely on the fat-laden, hormonally infused offerings of fast food restaurants. We spend billions on talk therapy so we can feel better about ourselves when it is pretty much fact that helping people is a definitive road to feeling better about yourself. Depressed? Volunteer at a fucking Soup Kitchen or build a goddamn house for someone. Conflicted with your relationship with your mother? Go become a Big Brother or Big Sister and actively do something for someone other than your self-indulgent self!

And instead of all that dough you laid down on rhinoplasty and hair extensions and fake tits and wrinkle cream - donate that cash to a cause more worthy than your freaking vanity.

INFLUENCE: Killer Bees

2011-11-22T05:08:00.000-06:00

I have it on definitive authority that the following facts are incontrovertible:

If your city is the site of a nuclear attack, sticking your head under your desk will save your life.
If you feel sad, taking drugs that mask the feelings is a great solution.
Duct tape on your windows are a superior method in thwarting a terrorist attack
That if you have a great car, it will get you laid by a supermodel who does NOT have an eating disorder or fake tits
Taking off your belt, shoes and avoiding bringing toothpaste with you at the airport keeps us all safer.
If you have zits or uncool jeans, no one will ever have sex with you.

In high school, I was terrified of Killer Bees. At the time, there was no Google or even a substantial gateway to the burgeoning Internet and all of our information came from that crazy thing called NETWORK TV. Now I had access to better news because my dad had purchased a giant satellite (seriously, it was as big as a 1975 Volkswagon Bus) and CNN had just debuted. And, for about a month in the Fall of my freshman year in high school, the top story was the migration of KILLER MOTHERFUCKING BEES from Africa.

I was transfixed. I watched the same reports three and four times to glean all the possible permutations of the incoming apocalypse by BEE. I listened carefully as the anchors told me how to protect myself and I went to school in heavy jeans, heavy boots, a scarf and a ballcap that I had stapled a fishing net to the brim. I walked around school for a week like that, fully prepared for the carnage and death that would accompany the migration of the KILLER AFRICAN BEES who swarmed in a giant clouds of angry, violent BEE rage and stung anything in the swarm's path to DEATH!

But there were no killer bees. At least not in Kansas. In fact, there isn't a single death attributed to the Killer Bees on record.

It was my first real lesson in FEAR and the manufacture of fear. It was the first time I could see clearly how Advertising and News are, perhaps not the exact same thing, brothers that use the same pitch to sell us their wares. And the question occurred to me at the time and has now become a fascination of mine - why are we so susceptible to fear? Why is it so easy for normal, rational human beings to be influenced to see all Muslims as terrorists, Gay Marriage as a threat, or a sitting President as the Anti-Christ?

Big Picture Moment: Everyone reading this is going to die. There's nothing you can do about it. NOTHING. Someone reading this is going to have a heart attack in the next year. Someone next to him will be killed in a car accident. Someone else will die from food poisoning or cancer or HIV or walking in front of a bus or tripping on a crack in the sidewalk. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO PREVENT IT.

Like wrinkles and hair growing out of your ears, it happens to every living creature on the planet. Get a grip on that, reconcile your need for control with that fact, and fear suddenly seems slightly pointless. Some have the hope that there is something after we cease to be and if that makes you feel better about the inevitability of death, far out. If not, far out. But all of the stuff we do to prevent the inevitable end is just shoving our heads underneath a school desk in hopes that the nuclear blast won't burn our bodies to a crisp.

So get your head out of your...desks and live. Fear keeps us stupid and malleable by those who would control us. Fear keeps us hidden from embracing the few pleasures that life has to offer. Go skateboard naked; go do mushrooms; go have unprotected sex; go LIVE.

In the meantime, I realize that I only know ONE incontrovertible fact from high school: you will never get laid by wearing a ballcap with fishing net stapled to it.

Don't Bother, They're Here

2011-11-21T13:22:00.000-06:00

SOURCE

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

If You're Selling "Boobs" Don't Get Political About It

2011-11-21T05:06:00.000-06:00

I'm not a raving fan of Tony Adler. I found that as soon as Bill Williams left the Reader, the theater criticism dept. of that vaunted paper went down the tubes. Adler isn't much of a fan of mine, either so it all works out in the wash, I suppose.

So, it may seem odd for me to rush to his defense.

Recently, Tony reviewed a burlesque show over at Gorilla Tango Theatre.

Where's the sleaze? Sure, cast members strip in this Geek Girls Burlesque parody of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but they're so good-humored, goofy, and, yes, geeky, about it that it doesn't always register as sexy, let alone dirty. There's little to make a man want to slip in unnoticed and scrunch down low in his seat. Still, fun compensates for the lack of depravity. Though the stripping routines can get repetitive (turn away, unbuckle bra, turn back with breasts coyly covered), they're always energetic—even dancerly. All of the leads have great stage presence and some acting chops. And "Sadie Hotkins" is an unmitigated knockout as Indiana Jones. Which is a problem, when you think about it. As much as I appreciated Hotkins's looks, I couldn't help but notice that she occupies the top rung of an anatomical hierarchy where traditional beauty equals virtue. And on the bottom rung? Well, the comic villain is played by a fat girl. —Tony Adler

SOURCE

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In fact, in spite of the fact that he doesn't find the show sexy, he found it and energetic. Far out. He even makes what I read as a highly evolved point about equating the traditionally gorgeous woman with the hero and the "fat girl" as the comic villain - that in the re-imagining of burlesque as celebrating all body types, the show inadvertently supports the very stereotypes that feminists rail against.

The fun of online reviewing is that you get comments from your audience. I like that. It encourages discussion of art, theater, food - democratizes the very issues that Kaiser is so afraid of - and opens up the floodgates to unseat the self importance of cultural gatekeepers. Adler gets some comments about his tiny review:

(excerpted)

I think you misunderstood the point of burlesque. Irregardless of your feelings and opinion toward the play or the plot which you are entitled to your cracks about the women are misguided. Burlesque is about body positivity, comedy and being sexy no matter your size or your looks. Gypsy Rose Lee wasn't a stunner, but she's one of the most famous burlesque dancers of all time. It is disappointing to read a review by someone who clearly has no idea of what they are reviewing and didn't even try and do research. Ever hear of Dirty Martini? Do your research “journalist”. You didn't go to a strip club, you went to a burlesque show. I'd like to see you show half the strength, talent and beauty these women show.

This review reads like you went looking for sleaze (not sure why, if you knew you were going to a burlesque show?) and are faulting the peformers for not living up to your self-imposed expectations?

I've never seen a burlesque show that attempting to present "sleaze." Maybe as a one-off bit or a gimmick-- but it's certainly not what Burlesque is about.

I think a piece of performance should be judged against the current state of that particular genre. I think that Mr. Adler's want for sleaze does represent a lack of research or understanding of the current state of theater based burlesque in the city of Chicago.

Yup. Strictly About "Body Positivity"

My understanding of a show that features women (or men, for that matter) who "tease" the audience by stripping off various pieces of clothing in seductive ways is, in every way imaginable, about sex. And sleaze. And bawdiness. I mean, you can couch it however you want but the inherent marketing and creation of a show that has "boobs" in the title and promises partial nudity for fun sells because of the boobs and partial nudity, not the emphasis on "body positivity." It's awesome that the performers want to exhibit themselves as a sort of self esteem building exercise - I applaud them for it - but few people are going to come to see a dance class version of group therapy.

I went ahead and looked up the online listings about Neo-Burlesque and the mentioned Dirty Martini and in no way does any of it mention "body positivity". In fact, all it mentions is the dancing and strip-tease and "exotic" nature of the form. Which is fine.

But you don't get to play both sides of the fence.

You can't claim that a burlesque show called out for being unsexy/unsleazy/unteasy is about the fun and self help perspective AND market the show as a way to see some titillating dance. My guess is that the commenters saw the term "fat girl" and went spiraling into Moral Outrage.

And as Tony responds:

Wow. Self-righteous, humorless, dogmatic, angry burlesque lovers. I wouldn't have thought it possible.

A Society of the Invisible

2011-11-19T06:05:00.000-06:00

Maybe it's due to the fact that I am a fairly obnoxious person that I have a naturally developed sense of tolerance. It takes a LOT to offend me. I have a dark, mean sense of humor, I talk loudly, I'm vulgar, I smoke, and, in general, take up a lot of room in a room.

As a result, I often run into folks who simply are too sensitive to handle the stronger parts of ME.

I understand the need to be respectful of others but it seems increasingly that "being respectful of others" equates to conforming to the least tolerant in the room.

How can we avoid offending the people we work with? It seems as if it should be blatently obvious. But if it were I wouldn't even be writing this article. Let's take a look now at actions that may offend your co-workers (in no particular order).
Having loud telephone conversations
Not cleaning up after yourself in the staff kitchen
Showing up late for meetings
Looking at a co-worker's computer screen over his or her shoulder
Taking supplies from a co-worker's desk
Neglecting to say please and thank you
Wearing too much perfume
Chewing gum loudly
Taking the last of something without replacing it
Talking behind someone's back
Asking someone to lie for you
Blaming someone else when you are at fault
Taking credit for someone else's work
Asking a subordinate to do something unrelated to work, i.e. run errands
Trying to convert others to your political or religious beliefs
Opening someone else's mail
Sending unwanted email
Telling offensive jokes
Smoking in common areas
Not pulling your own weight
Complaining about the company, boss, and co-workers
Having a condescending attitude toward others

SOURCE

Sure, a few of these make sense. Blaming someone else when you are at fault or opening someone else's email is crossing an ethical line that transcends the concept of "being respectful" and enters into "showing blatant disdain".

Sending unwanted email? Chewing gum loudly? Neglecting to say please and thank you? Are you fucking serious?

Accommodation is a two-way street and being adverse to loud phonecalls or strong perfume isn't like being in a wheelchair or brace. The question is this: If I avoid being condescending and stop taking the last bagel from the complimentary bagel box on Fridays, what are you gonna do for your 50% of the Accommodation Train? See, there is some weird entitlement issue that tells us that if we are offended or made uncomfortable in any way, we have a right for that behavior to stop. But given that the term "offensive" is completely subjective, Fry is correct - it means nothing.

Further, if the whiners have their way, the only acceptable behavior is that which makes everyone slightly invisible, slightly conformed to the least possibly offensive and bland mode. As if the only true way to be is unseen and unheard, exhibiting the exact same behavior as everyone else around them and, if one stands out in any way, they begin to squawk self righteously about being offended.

It's just a bunch of self important whining. If you need to go live in a hermetically sealed bubble, do so. I support your right to separate yourself from the unsavory elements of humanity. Hell, I'll help you move your stuff into your bomb shelter! But stuff your offense in your tightly puckered hole.

Friday Roundup: I Like Hipster Foodies

2011-11-18T05:12:00.000-06:00

h/t to Poncho Duke

I think Nick Fury has a point. And you can substitute the kid with the gun with the banker with the hedge fund or the cop with the baton. Blame yourself rather than everyone else. It's a good starting point.

I also think that Sam J. is just the spookiest, scariest cat in Hollywood but he's scarier with the crazy hair he had in Pulp Fiction than the tough bald look. But I blame Quentin Tarantino for that...

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Quote of the Week

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

SOURCE

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News from Marion, KS

A new type of Christmas market was introduced Saturday in Marion with visitors giving more than $4,700 to one or more charitable groups, according to Jackie Volbrecht, coordinator of the Alternative Gift Market.

In addition, $500 was raised from the food court with proceeds going to the Marion County Food Bank, she said.

Volbrecht said the Alternative Gift Market began in a Wichita Sunday school class in 1989 when a teacher suggested contributing to a charity rather than spending money on gifts for themselves.

From that small beginning, Volbrecht said, some 300 markets across the country are now raising millions of dollars for charitable organizations.

“It’s a fabulous thing,” she said.

SOURCE

That organizer? Jackie Volbrecht?

That's my freaking MOM!

Yeah. She's a do-gooder badass.

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Another Quote of the Week

I suspect that the hipster, foodie, neo-arts-and-crafts movement alternative - bringing employment back to local produce, services and skills - may turn out to be the right one. But anyone not currently aware of the contradictions of capitalism is asleep. The innovations and globalization of capitalism may well be accelerating unemployment in the West (while transforming much of the rest of the world), and the only way to get back to full employment here may be by accepting a new and relative poverty, in which we recover the skills that cannot be out-sourced, the needs that require personal contact, the skills that require long and difficult practice: nursing, car repair, baking, restaurants, carpentry, construction, teaching, to name a few off the top of my head.

SOURCE

I'll admit - I kinda like the "hipster, foodie, neo-arts-and-crafts movement alternative" - I like their jeans-and-tee shirt aesthetic, I like the ideals behind growing your own food and barter, and I like the fact that when the oceans finally belch up the goo of a hundred years of non-stop pollution and turn the world into that post-apocalyptic wasteland we saw in Mad Max, it will be them who save our asses rather than a carefully coifed Mel Gibson.

I think I'm gonna learn a skill other than yapping my jaw off, typing with one finger, or performing. Maybe building cabinets??

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The Company You Keep...

2011-11-17T05:09:00.000-06:00

...Dictates the Way You Respond to the World

This week I had a number of conversations about the direction of the United States.

I had a conversation with a friend who fully believes the country is headed for further fragmentation that will inevitably lead to a Second Civil War. I had a conversation with another friend who believes that it no longer matters who you vote for because all career politicians are bought and paid for. Another friend believes that anyone that hails from the South should be deported (centered mostly on the "personhood" debate).

I went to a public discussion about the the inevitable commercialization of the ability to host websites and access to the Internet - a threat to the free flow of information and radical ideas.

A random conversation with a stranger on the Pier revealed his deep concern for the continued marginalization of black people in America due to the fact that the Hispanics are having more babies than blacks and will soon become a majority racial stakeholder in the population.

And as I ruminate about all these conversations a couple of things occur.

How do I find all this fucking time to talk to people?
It's interesting how WHO you know in your daily life has an awful lot to do with your point of view. If I was living back in Kansas, the likelihood would be that most of the people I would have conversations with would be more Right leaning - how would THAT flow of conversation change my own perspective?
And, although it was staring me right in the face all along, the Left uses the same FEAR tactics as the Right.

"Be afraid!" both sides of Ideology Avenue scream in my face. "If A Happens then B will destroy the World as We Know It!"

And people who are afraid make stupid decisions. People who live in fear - of loss of life, of loss of privilege, of loss of status, of loss of property - support Nazis, incarcerate their Japanese neighbors, shoot tear gas at protesters, build fences on the borders, occupy parks, drop atomic bombs, burn churches, turn a blind eye to torture, allow capital punishment, ignore the homeless, buy lots of guns with armor piercing bullets, and get together with pitchforks and torches to kill the monsters.

But the monsters are usually just ourselves.

Fear is a shitty (but incredibly effective) strategy. Effective because it motivates us. Shitty because we're likely to betray every principle we live by because of it.

And if the company you keep is afraid, they will want you to be afraid, too. Misery LOVES company. Fear begets fear.

Wake up.
Stop being afraid.
Calm the fuck down.
Become a part of the solutions that matter rather than part of the reactions to fear-based stimuli.

The Americans...

2011-11-16T05:05:00.000-06:00

...celebrate diversity but have a few problems with the marijuana people, the gays, the blacks, and the Palestinians...

...protest in the form of occupying public spaces and profit from that protest by selling each other tents and Coleman lanterns. Jay-Z will sell them a t-shirt celebrating protest but keep the money because that's the American Way.

...watch the Oscars, the NFL, and the World Series by the billions but can't name all of the Supreme Court Justices or the branches of Congress...

...think that "peaceful protest" means showing up when the authorities say it's OK in an area the authorities tell us is available and moving when authorities tell us to. That's not protest, it's tourism.

...buy toys that, by their existence, promote the ideas of sexism (Barbie and BRATS), war (Call of Duty), materialism (Crayola Model Magic Jewelry Studio), and the rampant consumption of fossil fuels (Street Troopers Mobilized Attack Vehicle PT-808) and then wonder why their kids turn out to be sexist, warmongering, materialistic, HumVee drivers...

Parents - you wanna clue? The values you demonstrate to your kids are the values they will adopt. The values espoused by the shows you watch and the things you prize will infuse into the soft, spongy tissue of your children. If you over value your cable TV, your car, your air conditioning, your manicured lawn and the money you scramble for to get those things, then shut the fuck up about how screwed up it is when your kids can't pull themselves away from video games and get pissy when the birthday present you give them isn't good enough. You created that greedy, entitled, whiny shithead.

You want better kids? Be less selfish. Be less focused on stuff. Be generous to those in need. Don't do it because you want eternal salvation (that's like being nice to your brother so you'll get a cookie). Do it because you don't want your kids to be assholes.

More Willing and Enthusiastic Greenwashing

2011-11-15T04:08:00.000-06:00

It's back.

The constant and annoying shilling for J.P. Morgan Chase Bank in efforts to win some money for the small non-profits has peeked its morally ambiguous head over the fence of Facebook again.

I suppose a coupla years ago, it was easier to rationalize a campaign that greenwashes a huge, corporate entity that has its metaphorical (and SCOTUS approved) hands covered in the ashes of our economy because it wasn't then quite so fucking OBVIOUS how corrupt and needlessly greedy Chase Bank has been. I find it sad and a little sickening watching those same companies that alienated so many with the race for dollars last time try to continue their justifications for doing it again in light of recent history.

Believe me, I get it. Theaters need money. They need money because they haven't yet realized that the same old business of doing theater "the way it has always been" is a bankrupt model. In spite of spending the last 45 years bitching endlessly at how actors don't get paid and playwrights get the shaft and the non-stop drumbeat of Audience Development and Marketing Techniques that simply ape what everybody who claims to be an expert on These Things puts out there, theaters still need money to fund their failing model of business.

Funny thing is, of all the theater companies that managed to grasp that tiny brass ringlet tossed out by Chase a few years back, only Angie McMahon actually did anything that resulted in a Something to Show for It way (this is an opinion won through very little investigation aside from asking around so I could be completely wrong on this point). Chemically Imbalanced Comedy annoyed the fucking shit out of everyone within Facebook and email range, won some dough and BUILT A LOBBY AND A BAR in their space. Everyone else sucked the Green Money Spewing Cock and blew it on the Next Big Show (Which Didn't Do as Well as Was Expected). Everyone else bought the advertising on the milk bottle; Angie bought a cow.

At some point, however, instead of churning out shows and scrambling for the scraps of the wealthy and justifying the poverty of ideas by claiming to be following in the path of least invention, those involved in the passionate pursuit of art as a way of life and living need to stop participating in the practices of a decayed model and reinvent themselves. Sometimes it is necessary to reinvent the wheel (especially if the wheel isn't getting you where your going but instead travels in a circle).

In the meantime, I'm advocating that anyone of you who read this blog daily abstain from giving one of your 20 votes (I think it's 20 votes...) to just your favorite theaters but reserve those votes for companies who pledge publicly that the money the receive from JPM Chase will be used exclusively to pay actors and playwrights.

On Occupation

2011-11-14T05:06:00.000-06:00

Or Why I Haven't Occupied Anything but My Own House

I'll admit that I'm conflicted about the Occupy Movement.

On the one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled that people have decided to step up and make a stand against the Robber Barons of our New Gilded Age. Confronting the almost cartoonish inequities in our country's financial pie and our government's blind eye approach to the fuckwads who swindled so many and tanked our economy out of nothing more than an epically grotesque greed is long overdue.

On the other, less generous hand, with the "People's Mic" approach to the occupation, with a lack of some, eventual coherent goals, the movement itself is becoming occupied with those whose interests and advocacies are less egalitarian and more stratifying. With no spokesperson to lay claim to the movement, with no ground plan, calls of eliminating the student loan debts of white, middle class college students clash with the calls for more financial equity in neighborhoods of black, poverty class kids which, in turn clashes with the plight of the undocumented youth which spins into the anger at the banking class and on and on and fucking ON.

I've heard death row exoneries declare that we should "occupy" the offices of a corrupt states attorney; I've heard a guy that lobbies regularly for the legalization of marijuana advocate that people "occupy" the police stations; I read an article of an artist/activist using the idea of "Occupy Museums" in order to criticize the monetization of art. The term "Occupy" has now become an advertising slogan for protest for any cause and it steals the power of the movement.

The power of the Occupy Movement is a sustaining power to organize people of all walks of the 80% or so of Americans who have been left out of the very concept of an American Dream. The possibilities are endless when a large number of people express their wholesale dissatisfaction with the shape and direction their government is taking their democracy. That power becomes no different than the standard Progressive Coalition of Disparate Ideals when the splinters of need become manifest into separate goals and needs. As soon as the movement becomes about race or sexual preference or gender issues, it loses it's greatest strength - the argument of class struggle which is bigger and more important than all of the other grievances that crop up.

Is there racial inequity in our democracy? You're goddamned right there is. Is there gender inequality and a Religious Rightwing push to limit the power of women? No question. Is there a rabid, xenophobic streak running across the South and West that threatens to destroy the immigrant promise of the country's founding principles? Yup.

But the strength of the Right is unity of purpose. It's why the Republican minority (prior to the 2010 electoral cycle) could hold the Democratic Supermajority from accomplishing what Obama had promised to do when elected. Occupy has an implied strength but only so long as it has numbers. As soon as it splinters off into subsets of need and righteous causes, it becomes no different than the disjointed and ultimately ineffective Progressive Caucus.

This is not to say that those many splinters of Eco-warriors, freedom fighters, racial activists, feminist samurai, and the like are not right in their charges. They are. But let the Occupy Movement be exclusively about economic injustice or risk it all simply becoming a foot note that petered out after a cold winter.

THOUGHTS ON: Clybourne Park

2011-11-12T06:06:00.000-06:00

Clybourne Park
Written by Bruce Norris
Directed by Amy Morton
Presented by Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Disclosure: No comps on this one. Full price for closing week.
_____

Years ago, I saw a Second City sketch that, for me, summed up an awful lot of the confusion and acrimony when it comes to Chicagoans dealing with race.

It was a touring company show and I recall Ron West, Craig Cuckowski and others in the sketch. The set up was that the group was performing a scene that involved an actor coming out as a broad caricature of a black woman (supposedly played by a black woman thus making the portrayal acceptable) and the one black actor decides she will not play the character because it is racist.

An argument ensues and finally a white guy (Italian) decides to come out and play the entrance as a stereotypical wop. He does and the cast explodes. So an Asian actor is coerced into playing the entrance as a stereotype of Asian women. This continues throughout until the cast begins to square off, arguing fiercely with one another, black on white, Latino on Asian, until they all stop on a dime, turn to the audience and ask "What the fuck are you looking at?"

It encapsulated the off-color humor of playing racial stereotypes for laughs, it dealt with the acceptance or rejection of those stereotypes by the very racial types being pigeonholed, it was angry and confused and pointed. And it attacked the audience for our complicity in the game.

Nothing has even come close to making me laugh, making me uncomfortable and making me think about race more than that scene (and it obviously worked because I'm still thinking about it almost twenty years later).

I had hoped Clybourne Park had the same hot sauce in it to offend me, make me laugh, teach me something, make me argue, make me think for another twenty years. But it didn't.

Don't get me wrong. The first act is worthy of the play's lauded position (Pulitzer Prize Winner, homage and connection to the classic A Raisin in the Sun, multiple productions nationwide) as it is razor sharp in the writing and Morton's cast is on point. Set in 1959, in the home that the Youngers (the family in A Raisin in the Sun) eventually buy, and centered on Russ and Bev, a typical 1950's couple who have lost their son to a suicide following the Korean War.

Russ (as sensitively and boldly played by John Judd) still doesn't know what to do with himself as the couple prepare to move from their home. Bev (the on-fire Kirsten Fitzgerald) is Edith to Russ's Archie as she franticly tries to give possessions away to her black maid, Francine (rock solid performance by Karen Aldridge) and deal with her slowly deteriorated husband.

There are great tiny moments that incorporate what the audience gets to see as characters come in and out of the home, first to try to snap Russ out of his funk and then with the entrance of Karl Lindner (the only direct connection to Raisin... in that he is the villain of the earlier play). Cliff Chamberlain plays Karl to the absolute hilt and never tips him over into caricature - a blindly angry man (but always desperately polite) with serious questions about the allowing of a black family to move into Russ's soon to be vacated home. The only dead spark in this act comes from Stephanie Childers portrayal of Karl's Deaf Swedish Pregnant Wife, which is so broad and over-the-top it seems like a character from "In Living Color" rather than the Norman Lear-like gravity of the rest of the cast.

The first act is excellent and sets the stage for a genuinely hardcore potential second act.

And then...

And then Norris jumps us up fifty years, same house, now the neighborhood is predominantly black and affluent (they have a Whole Foods) and a white couple are buying the house with the decision to tear it down and build from scratch on the plot. This time, however, the black neighborhood alliance has filed a petition granting the building landmark status in an attempt to block the construction. The actors are double cast in these roles but the roles are no longer as nuanced. Instead of allowing for the same tiny moments of development the first act contained, the entire cast is onstage yelling at each other for the whole act.

The result is that none of the second act characters have anything to say. They're all very two dimensional and the tension is non-existent. If Act One was Norman Lear, Act Two was like ZOOM meets a bad SNL sketch. Each character is assigned a position and then shrilly pontificates it throughout. There are virtually no class distinctions (everyone in Act Two is affluent upper middle class) and the issue of race is forced. Further, one of the games in this act is a volley of competing racial jokes (might've worked if any of them had been genuinely funny because then the indictment travels to those in the audience laughing at them - but they weren't funny, just blunt).

With the first act so smart and pointed, the second act deficiencies make the play feel a bit like a squandered opportunity. Sure, the message that "The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same" is fine but we know that already. It doesn't dig any deeper or mine the conflicting double standards of racial intolerance and the complicated dance of the flawed ideas of Communities based on skin color. Norris had all the right ideas but blew it by forcing a series of stereotypes into his second half and then, as a tag on that simply isn't earned or connects with the narrative, creates an epilogue where we get to see the final moments of the suicidal son as he writes a letter we never get to hear.

It is worth noting, however, that in a society that so desperately wants to either ignore the issues of race in America or simplify them as an Us vs Them debate, a piece of theater that at least forces the discussion has enormous value. So the hat comes off in deference to a play that makes the attempt to tackle the subject matter head on - the fact that pretty much every character in the second act is an asshole speaks an awful lot about Norris's view of contemporary discussions about race, class and gentrification.

That said, I really wanted to be blown away - so many of my friends and colleagues were. Unfortunately, it just felt like a brilliant start and a tepid finish. In my opinion, a much better second act would have been A Raisin in the Sun.

Friday Roundup: Bombard 'em with More Regulations

2011-11-11T05:13:00.000-06:00

Producing Advice

Taking a quick page from Mr. Thurman, here's a bone on the Producing of Live Events:

Blame goes up; credit goes down.

If an event (or show) is a failure, the producer should step up and own the failure. Throw no one under the bus and make no excuses as to why the failure was someone else's to eat. If, however, the event is a success, give credit to everyone BUT the producer - all the way down to the freaking janitor.
I've worked with far too many that get that reversed and I don't generally work with them on future endeavors.

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It gets harder every day to be even-handed with these douchebags.

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Rick Perry for President...of Numbnuts

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Psychic Wear

I'm finding myself censoring what I say a LOT lately. Lots of eggshells I seem to be walking on and it takes a huge effort for someone with my temperament to do that - preserve the peace, play the politics, keep things floating on an even keel.

I once went to a wedding. It was the wedding of the man she fell in love with during our marriage. I (kinda) knew the score, but didn't really want to accept it. So I kept my mouth shut all weekend and tried to muscle my way through it. While nothing like that is going on, it feels a lot like that. I'm not good at office politics and I'm no fan of interpersonal horseshit. I prefer to speak my mind (often at a cost to feelings and bridges I'd rather not burn) but just lately the thing I feel like saying about half the time is not prudent.

Takes a lot of toll. I suppose that's why there's so much cursing in the blog...

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Some More of Those Pesky "Facts"

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems,

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Subprime lending offered high-cost loans to the weakest borrowers during the housing boom that lasted from 2001 to 2007. Subprime lending was at its height from 2004 to 2006.
Federal Reserve Board data show that:
More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html?storylink=MI_emailed#ixzz1dJAHsjwY

I understand that those who desperately want the financial crisis to be the fault of governmental agencies giving houses out to poor black families won't be swayed by "facts and figures" that prove a different narrative of events, but it's just a bit more fuel in combating the non-stop misinformation campaigns, so it's important to know.

I mean, it isn't gonna change Joe Walsh's mind because he's pissed:

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What You See is What You Judge

2011-11-10T05:12:00.000-06:00

For the most part, I don't care much what people think of me personally.

I say "for the most part" because I'm human and I'm not a sociopath. But mostly I'm here to do my thing the way I know how to do it and am pretty content with my swim through ocean with the various other fish.

Once in a while, though, I catch a whiff of judgment, of preconceived, pre-judged attitude, that just rubs me the wrong way.

- I walk into a room of well heeled business-types. I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt with the sleeves pulled up to my elbows. A young, Republican looking kid in a $2,000 suit smiles at me and then notices my tattoos. His smile flickers out and I can see him suddenly raise his chin slightly and look at me from an angle that just catches me wrong.

- I come into a south side space. I'm one of three Caucasians in the room of fifty or so. And one cat, obviously very hip, gives me the once over, questioning my right to be in the room with his posture and his glare. And feel a bit exposed. And unwelcome.

- I walk into a grocery store in the middle of Nowhere, KS. No one gives me a second look until I ask where the cigarettes are and, from my lack of accent, I receive a hard stare from a teenage boy in a white muscle shirt.

As soon as as I start dwelling on these odd moments where I, someone I consider to be pretty ordinary looking, feel pre-judged for my appearance or existence or presence or whatever substitutes for the quick avatar of instant recognition, I turn the gaze inward. I do this, too.

- In the park, a heavy-set dude with two sweater dogs, wearing a Bears jersey, decides to engage me in conversation. He has the demeanor of a standard Chicago stereotype. He wants to talk about the fact the the dog sweaters at Marshall's are cheaper than Pet Smart and there is a better selection. He wants to talk about the weather. He's (maybe) just a friendly guy but my mind asks me if he is mentally challenged or just lonely.

- On the street in Rogers Park. A black dude, probably in his 40's, approaches me. Before a word comes out of his mouth, I wave my hand and mutter, "I don't have anything for you." I have no idea if he is going to ask me for change or a spare cigarette, but I've been approached enough times in this neighborhood that his look and attitude and similarity to the last six guys who have approached me, have me automatically cut him off before he can say word fucking one.

- A Latino cat on the bus, talking on the phone. He says "Motherfucker, I ain't gots no fucking monies for you!" and his lack of grammatical acumen immediately puts him in a category in my mind that I feel my chin tilt up and I find myself looking down my stubby nose at him.

We all do this. Human beings have to make snap judgments when they live in such a polarized world. It does seem that the constant drumbeat of Be Afraid of Strangers and Look for Offense at Every Corner exacerbates the condition. The sense of Personal Entitlement that reacts with immediate frustration and rude anger when one does not get what he or she wants - coffee at a Starbucks inside a minute, technology that functions perfectly every time, a sidewalk unimpeded by slower walking people - amps up the focus for Knee Jerk Judgment.

The realization that everyone does this a thousand times a day reminds me to A) try harder to be less knee jerk in my judgments of others and B) understand that because everyone does this, it's completely irrational to take any of it personally. To take it on the chin every single time you feel judged is to become completely and overwhelmingly paranoid and to live in a glass house with an ever increasing web of cracks always threatening to shatter. That's just no way to live.

The Americans...

2011-11-09T05:07:00.000-06:00

...are fascinated by the wealthiest of themselves - buying magazines, reading tweets, watching them dance on network TV - but savor the schadenfreude when one of them implodes.

...think sex is dirty and to be hidden away from polite society but buy magazines with 18-year olds dressed in rubber bands and carefully hiding their nipples in Wal Marts and 7-Elevens.

...eat 17.3 billion quarts of popped popcorn per year and an average of 350 slices of pizza per second.

...spend app. 45 hours per week at office jobs but only spend app. 9 of those hours doing any work.

...love to watch hardcore sports competitions that result in definite winners and losers but want their kids to all get awards for things like "Best Attendance" and "Best Citizen" because competition will, apparently, destroy their fragile self esteems...

I'm not one to encourage a Dog Eat Dog sort of World - we get plenty of that with our unchecked Capitalism Run Amok. Nor am I one to suggest that we classify each other as winners and losers based on some fucked up arbitrary criteria. I AM, however, pretty much against rewarding every child some sort of award for simply existing. Awards are for Closers and giving out awards for genuine achievement encourages others to genuinely achieve. When any asshole can get on a Reality TV show, get married to another asshole, and garner millions of dollars for nothing other than being famous and selling rights to the pictures of her sham wedding, something is rotten in the State of Denmark, you know?

The consistent message becomes Be Famous and You Will Be Important rather than Do Something Worthy of Award and You Will Be Awarded. Which is a load of crap. Because that kid that got hit in the balls by his brother on YouTube is NOT important and deserves no award for having been watched 4 million times.

The Lazy Poor?

2011-11-08T05:06:00.000-06:00

Stripping aside all the differences between the Conservative and Liberal sensibilities and viewpoints of things like religion, ethnicity, education and even economic status, and you find one primary difference of opinion.

Conservatives see poverty and assign responsibility to the poor. Their belief is that, in America, one needs only to work hard, be accountable for one's actions, save money, make smart business decisions, and the American Dream is there for the taking. Conservatives tend to see those with wealth as being deserving of that wealth due to diligence and tenacity. The poor have been lazier than they should be, less responsible with their monetary choices, and essentially deserve their fate.

Liberals, on the other hand, see poverty as the end result of denied opportunity. Inequities of educational opportunity, lack of resources in key areas of development, a system that intentionally discriminates against women and minorities, all create an unfair playing field. They see those with wealth as having been born into privilege and as lucky rather than necessarily hard working. They see the poor as victims of a system skewed against them.

Cutting through the incessant preening of ideological bent, I can clearly see both sides of the divide. Pretty much anyone living as an American citizen is living FAR above the poverty levels of other places on the Globe. The reality is that our bottom 1% (economically speaking) has it better than most of the world's bottom 70%. So, it is not a stretch to see a family of four, living on one income in a slum neighborhood, on some sort of welfare to supplement the family income, who have an X-Box, a television set, and cell phones. It is also not a stretch to see that there is a built-in injustice in the idea that that family's children go to schools that are morbidly underfunded and that the opportunities for that family to rise up the food chain and pursue the American Dream of upward mobility are curtailed for no other reason than that they don't look or sound or dress like the White, Anglo-Saxon Establishment.

Anecdotally, my experience is that very few people living on food stamps or public housing are lazy. In fact, quite the opposite, my experience is that these folks are embarrassed and are doing everything they can to be off the government teat. Flipside, I don't know, personally that is, one person who actively discriminates against minorities. Not one. But my experiences are limited to...well...my experiences.

So, the key is look into the matter and try to parse out the Fully Painted Picture. The Elephant and the Five Blind Men. The 360 Panorama Photo.

Let's start simple - are the poor just lazy black people?

Myth #1: The typical welfare recipient is a black inner city single mother.The Census Bureau's most recent annual poverty report found that urban black mothers constitute less than one out of six of all poor households. Rural white families account for more--one out of five. White surburban families account for even more--one out of four.

Myth #2: The poor are lazy.Forty percent of poor adults work, although many cannot find full time jobs. Indeed, even when they do they may still be in poverty. Some 11 million jobs in 1991 paid less than $11,500, $2,000 under the official poverty level for a family of four. Of those poor adults who don't work, 90 percent fall into the following categories: 22 percent are disabled, 17 percent are in school, 21 percent are elderly retirees, 31 percent have family responsibilities.

SOURCE

Given our current economic failures, I think it is safe to assume that these numbers are worse now. So, those who are among the country's poor either work (and given the jobs available to the poor, my guess is that they're probably working pretty long hours for shit pay) or are disabled, in school, are retired, or have familiy responsibilities that prevent them from working full-time (I looked that term up and it seems to indicate familial caretaking of disabled or mentally ill family members).

How about racial makeup?

With regard to AFDC the figures are:

White 38.8%
Black 39.8
Hispanic 15.7
Asian 2.4
other 3.3

SOURCE

Given that blacks only constitute 14-17% of the American population, the fact that almost 40% of welfare recipients are black shows an abnormally large representation - over double, in fact. Keeping that in mind, however, it is at least something to think about to consider that there are almost as many whites on welfare as blacks. So why is that the common perception is that "welfare mothers" (traditionally seen as urban black mothers and who only represent one sixth of recipients) and almost exclusively black folks are identified as welfare recipients?

The question Gilens poses is how do we account for these perceptions of welfare recipients as undeserving and the racial attitudes, in particular the attitude of blacks as lazy. To
understand how the poor have been portrayed in the media, Gilens traces the media representation of the poor over the past forty-five years in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report as well as television news coverage for three historical periods, 1968, 1982-83 and 1988-1992. From 1950 through 1964, the poor people portrayed were predominantly white, but from 1967 through 1992, blacks averaged 57 percent of the poor portrayed, almost double the proportion of blacks among the poor in the U.S. In addition to an increase in the portrayal of blacks in pictures of poverty, during the period of 1972-1973, when there was general widespread public opinion of problems with welfare, African Americans were represented in 70 percent of the stories indexed under poverty and in 75 percent of the stories indexed under welfare (p. 123)

SOURCE

Hmmmm. It seems that the perception comes primarily from the media, doesn't it? And given that most of our "personal experience" with other people comes from the media, that seems weird. I mean, if I'm living in Nebraska and only know five people who aren't exactly like me, my only experience with Black people is what I see on TV and read in the papers, right? And if 75% of Welfare Stories feature blacks, well then, I guess I'd be completely hoodwinked into thinking that the overwhelming majority of of poor people are black. BUT IT ISN'T AN ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF THE FACTS.

Why would those in control of programming want to portray welfare as a Black Problem? Why would the media WANT to intentionally misrepresent the simple realities? I mean, this isn't accidental.

The takeaway? Looks like those Americans who are poor and rely on the government for a hand are 1) not lazy and 2) almost equally white and black. Given our population dispersion, though, it looks like the Conservative viewpoint of hard work being the key to financial success takes a bit of a dent and the Liberal viewpoint that there is something systematic that denies opportunities to minorities has some merit.

I like this myth-busting thing.

Herman Cain is NOT the next Clarence Thomas

2011-11-07T13:10:00.000-06:00

Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment and his supporters have compared the allegations to the "high tech lynching" of Clarence Thomas.

I'm not so sure that comparisons to the most corrupt Supreme Court Justice in modern history is a great move.

But, further on, the fact that Cain was a skeevy boss and was inappropriate to his female employees to the point that they felt more comfortable leaving their jobs rather than be subjected to his "humor" is FAR less important than the fact that the guy has NO IDEA what he's doing. Once again, the GOP found a completely under qualified but highly charismatic candidate to throw in front of their base.

A better comparison is Sarah Palin - dense but so overconfident in the ability to fling provocative bullshit that the GOP base can't seem to see how completely wrong for public office these folks are.