Archive for ‘Theatre’

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June 5, 2009

On Beckett

Perhaps we’ll all burst forth Samuel Becketts one day:

En attendant, Beckett writes self-­admittedly “pestilential” letters about waiting. In Dublin, he records the “fruitless retreat from Monday to Friday and then the degrading cotton wool interpolation of the weekend” and acknowledges that he’s “more than ever frightened by the prospect of effort, initiative & even the little self-assertion of getting about from one place to another.” In London, he sleeps “more and more — 10 hours at a stretch. I wish it were 20.” In Paris, he is “paralyzed in listlessness” and has “done nothing.”

Certainly describes my year.

Also this:

Laid upon this bare outline, in the course of the letters, is a palimpsest of all the other things that Beckett could have done, or sought to do, but never did. He put in for lectureships at Cape Town and Milan, though with little expectation, or even hope, of success. “Now that I have assembled testimonials,” he wrote of the South African plan, in 1937, “I am in a position to abstain from applying.”

Posted in Books, People, Theatre, Writing | Leave a Comment »

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October 15, 2008

Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale

Hi everyone!  If you are not on my email list, you may be unaware that on Monday, October 27 at 9:30p.m., I’m performing a brief, funny one-woman show at Manhattan Theatre Source!  Here are the details – if you’re in the NYC area, come check it out!!

Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale

Written and performed by Elizabeth Urello

Directed by Joe Beuerlein

A scandalous love affair between a 19th-century teenage agoraphobic poet, and a 21st-century Hollywood film star…an affair conducted entirely through letters and ending in heartbreak…but whose? Elizabeth Barrett Loves Christian Bale will bring back memories of all the times you loved and lost, back before you were brave enough to leave your childhood bedroom.

Presented as part of Manhattan Theatre Source’s EstroGenius 2008 Festival, in the Sola Voce showcase of solo shows. One performance only — Monday, October 27th, 9:30 p.m. at Manhattan Theatre Source!

Click here to buy your tickets now!

Posted in Humor, New York City, Theatre, Writing | 5 Comments »

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September 29, 2008

Fliers and Change: Two Things I Wish Would Go Away

I never take fliers.  It is very annoying to be walking down a sidewalk and be abruptly clotheslined by somebody shoving a piece of paper into your face.  Who the hell on this green, revolving Earth ever wants a flier?  For anything?  Who ever has followed up on whatever was being advertised on said flier?  Nobody.  When somebody hands somebody else a flier, they are either handing them litter, or a piece of trash to be carried until the receiver finds a trashcan.  Everybody else should do as I do, and decline to take them, so that whatever stupid freaking business owners are still fliering will freaking stop it already.  I.  Hate.  Fliers.

Along the same lines, postcards for shows are a giant waste of money and a thoroughly ineffective marketing tool.  Nobody ever, ever, ever goes to a show they weren’t already planning on going to (because they have a friend involved with it) because of a damn postcard.  Best-case scenario here is that one or even two lonely old people in from out of town might possibly, conceivably go to some show just because they saw a postcard for it, but even if you get three such audience members (which is an improbably high estimate), their admission is not enough to recoup whatever you spent on the postcards.  I hate being handed postcards more than fliers, because I actually have to take the postcards and act interested, and then I have to carry them around until it’s ok to throw them away.  Even if I actually plan on going to the show, I’m going to look in my email inbox (where undoubtedly there are at least fourteen different messages about whatever show it is) to remind myself of the time and place, not paw through my various handbags looking for some torn-up flier I was handed at a party three weeks earlier.

In marketing, it’s like…somebody starts doing something, and everybody just does it forever, whether it’s worth a damn or not.  These measures are not effective, and they are annoying, and they result in a huge build-up of worthless clutter in my purse.  Everybody, just stop it.

Another thing nobody agrees with me about – and I know with the economy in the shitter this is hugely optomistic of me – but can we just be done with change already?  It’s heavy and it’s dirty and it gets everywhere and it makes whatever else is in your purse smell like coins, and I amass pounds of it, and then when I try to actually use it up by counting out exact change when I buy something, it massively pisses off the cashier and everybody behind me.  The only thing you can really do with it is give it to homeless people, but then you have to juggle your bag and root around in it and shake it back in forth, all in a moving subway car, while you totter back and forth, and the homeless person politely waits and also totters back and forth, and everybody in the car stares at you and then you look like a real stingy asshole for not just giving the homeless person a dollar, especially after they stood there while you rooted through your purse for five minutes, and anyway, everybody (including the homeless person) knows you’re just trying to offload your obnoxious coins.  I hate small change, and I can see no good reason for it, and with the way prices are these days, why can’t things just be rounded up or down to the next stupid dollar?  At the very least, get rid of everything but quarters.

So, and but this is pretty funny.  It explains how to shut up a music geek at a party.  I used to kind of do this (make up a fake band) on occasion when some snobby guy at a party asked me what bands I like, but now I just never go to parties where I’m likely to run into any guys like that.  Or maybe it’s just that everyone suddenly realized it’s rude to grill strangers about their musical taste.

Posted in Advertising, Rants, Theatre | 10 Comments »

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July 24, 2008

Flicks and Lit For Boys and Girls

Bitch Ph.D. explains The Bechdel Rule:

The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.

. . . Few movies pass the Bechdel test–most of the dialogue happens between men, or between men and one woman. Most movies who have extended conversations between women tend to be under the umbrella of “chick flicks,” or the newly-minted term, “RomComs.” But even those movies don’t pass the Bechdel test; not only are the conversations about men, the movies are driven by what men do or don’t do, what they want or don’t want, even when all the principal characters are women.

Movies, yes, and television, and this rule should also really be applied to plays. I mean, it is just incredible how few women are in anything, and how little they do when they’re there. What they mostly do is (a) be all about the men in the thing, and (b) be the one to blame for everything that goes wrong. Women are almost always the “out” for why there’s a problem – it’s the mom’s fault because she tries to smother everyone because she’s timid, controlling and Puritanical. Or, it’s the girlfriend’s fault because she tries to smother her boyfriend because she’s controlling, domineering, bitchy and usually whorish. Or whatever. When the question is, what’s wrong with this swell male protagonist’s life, the answer is almost always a hysterical, shrewish, controlling woman.

The amazing thing is, you can point this out to men who write or do comedy, and they’ll agree with you and talk about how they are very careful not to do that, and really enjoy writing strong, sympathetic female characters, and then you read their stuff…and the women are all hysterical, shrewish, controlling bitches (I’m sure that the writers of Everybody Loves Raymond fully believe that the characters of Deborah and Marie are sympathetic, whereas to me, that show is a perfect example, among many, of women being horrid, unreasonable, humorless nags for no reason).

Obviously, until women start writing everything, we’re going to be stuck playing unreasonable, stupid, evil bitches on the one hand, or boring, sweet, ever-affectionate straight-men on the other.

I’ve been watching DVDs of ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ lately (which is hilarious), and I just watched a special features short where the cast was talking about casting Kaitlin Olson as Sweet D, and what they mostly talk about is how these three guys had written this show, and all the one female character did in it was be like, ‘You guys!’ all the time. And they didn’t like that, and Olson wouldn’t take the part if it was like that. It took them awhile to convince her to take the job. On her final audition, she read a hilarious scene and decided to do it, because she had so much fun at that audition. Except, she found out at the bar later that the scene was actually between two of the male characters – they were all like, ‘oh, well, yeah, we didn’t have anything interesting written for Sweet D to audition you with, so we had you read a guy part. But you won’t be doing that in the actual show.’

Eventually, however, they did make an effort to write that part in a more comedic way – in large part, I’m sure, because it’s obvious Olson is not at all afraid to say what she thinks about things, and she seems to flat out refuse to be pushed into a boring, supporting role, which is awesome. She’s one of my heroes now.

Women are used to being interested in movies, books, plays and so forth that are by men, starring men and all about men. I love all kinds of culture that’s aimed at men and meant to appeal to them. All women can get into dude-flicks or dude-lit (oops, there’s no equivalent condescending term to use), and even patiently overlook the blatant misogyny it almost always contains. But just hint to a guy that he try watching, reading or enjoying anything at all that is written by, staring and/or primarily about women (whether it’s truly silly and superficial on its own merits, or merely automatically dismissed as silly just because it’s concerned with women), and he’ll immediately dismiss it on all levels and call you a fool for liking it yourself.

Because women are niche. Even though we constitute the majority of the population.

–

Oh, and while I’m on this subject Estelle Getty has died.  Here’s Feministe on Golden Girls:

Where else have you seen a popular sitcom (or any show) that revolves around women who actually kind of look like average women, who aren’t young and fabulous and beautiful, who have interests other than finding male companionship, who put their female friendships first, and who have sex after menopause? More to the point, where can you find a TV show or movie that revolves around women like that, and those women aren’t the butt of the joke?

It’s certainly a rarity, and Golden Girls remains a bright spot in TV history. Estelle Getty was a class act.

Posted in Books, Feminism, Humor, Movies, Rants, Television, Theatre | 3 Comments »

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July 12, 2008

I’ve Been Watching: Say Anything, Ordinary People, Wet Hot American Summer and Indochine

Last Saturday night, my roommate and I (at our usual level of Saturday-night hedonism) decided to try out the ‘instant watch’ option I’d recently discovered on Netflix. At first, my roommate thought she could hook her laptop up to the television, but the cord turned out to be for her camera only. Then, we thought we could at least watch on her laptop (which is faster than mine). But she has a Mac, and this Netflix option is not available on Macs. Then, we finally decided to just use my laptop, propped up on a stack of old TimeOut New Yorks on the coffee table. After perusing the selection (which is hit-or-miss), we finally decided on Ordinary People. My roommate’s friend really loves this movie, and neither of us had ever seen it. So, we clicked on it!

. . . Only to be told we needed to download some software. Slowly. We went for cake. We came back. The software finally loaded, we shut down, we booted up, we installed, we shut down again, we booted up again…and we pressed play!

. . . And got a message that, due to our internet connection, the movie would take nearly two hours to load.

“You know,” I said at this point. “I’ve never seen Say Anything.”

“Really?” said my roommate. “I have Say Anything!”

“I know!”

So, now I can knock that one off the list.

My mother once said to me that she didn’t understand why all movies and books and plays had to be about terrible things happening to people. I replied that I couldn’t think of a way to tell a story about everything going swimmingly.

I stand corrected. Say Anything is a story about everything going swimmingly. Two hot, nice, well-liked young people meet, go nuts for each other, and everything goes well for them about it. Oh, sure, the girl has the momentary “I’m going to London, we should break up preemptively,” panic, but then she’s all, “Or, why don’t you come with me?!” And there’s the whole thing with the dad, but seriously, what movie watcher is really all that upset about a dad going to jail for white-collar crime when there is hot teen sex to be had? Nobody cares about John Mahoney’s hypocrisy when John Cusack is standing in the rain with a boombox over his head. Especially since the fall-out with dad has no hugely negative effects in the heroine’s life – sure, she’s disillusioned with him (although I must say here that the thin reasoning behind how he rationalized his crime is super belabored – you can practically hear the writers’ gears grinding as they try to find a way to inject some sort of plot-necessary conflict into this movie that won’t put even a slight shadow over all the good-feelingness), but he still loves her and is there ready to resume their relationship whenever she can reconcile herself to his shortcomings, and too – she has a full, merit-based scholarship! So, conveniently, she need not even sweat over whether or not to use Daddy’s ill-gotten gains to fund her already planned-for dreams. She’s her own woman now, with a bonus Cusack along for the ride.

Which is not to say that I didn’t like Say Anything. I did like it – how could you not like it, is my point?

At some point during our Say Anything viewing, Ordinary People finally downloaded, so we started to watch that on my laptop. Ordinary People . . . was very brown. Everything in it was brown, which is typical for movies made during the time period – it was a very brown country around 1980. There was a lot of snow. There was swimming, and a suicidal boy, and Robin Williams was a kind, but no-nonsense therapist, and everything was pretty much Sally Field’s fault, because she was such a cold, self-absorbed bitch for no real reason. And Christina Ricci’s boyfriend got electrocuted, and there was a giant robot bunny that issued proclamations having something to do with string theory, and everybody got new sneakers.

Or something like that. I don’t know. The main thing I know about Ordinary People is that it took us about seven hours to watch it, due to the Netflix “instant” watch feature being (a) a piece of crap and (b) about as “instant” as osso bucco (you like that one? I worked hard on it). Every fifteen minutes, the movie informed us that it would need to spend 30-45 minutes re-downloading itself, to avoid viewing difficulties (by which I can only assume it meant cause viewing difficulties). But we watched it all the way through anyway, because we are ladies who finish what we start. It was the most gruelling Saturday night I’ve had in months.

This past week, I went with some friends to the free showing of Wet Hot American Summer at the McCarren Park Pool. The Pool is a couple blocks from my apartment – it used to be an actual pool, but now it’s a drained pool that’s used for summer concerts and movies, at which times it gets terrifyingly packed with hipsters. This movie was the first one this summer, and I unintentionally went in costume. I had never seen the movie and didn’t know anything about it, but I have in my wardrobe two pairs of shorts: one is a knee-lenth pair of cutoffs, and the other is a pair of red cotton short-shorts with white trim, which I now know are the exact same pair that the gay guy in WHAS wears throughout the movie. It turns out coming in costume to these outdoor movies is encouraged, so I ended up displaying far more enthusiasm than I’m normally comfortable with, completely by accident.

At any rate, movies at McCarren Park Pool are really fun, especially if you get there early enough to put down a blanket and enforce a small zone of personal space around it (which we did). You’re not supposed to bring your own food and beer, but everybody does, so next time, I’m bringing a 40. The other thing I will do differently next time (other than not dress up like a character) is wait afterward until the crowd bottlenecking through the narrow entry gates has disbursed. The crowd inside is not too bothersome, what with the open sky and all, but the rush through the gates was terrifying, and required bodily contact with many strangers dressed for (and all asweat with) the hot summer night. It was a wet hot American stampede (you like that one? I worked hard on it).

At some point in the past week, I also watched Indochine. For the first 2/3 of this movie, all I had to say about it was: ‘a bunch of French people act like assholes in Vietnam. The especially good-looking French people show some small compunction about their bad behavior.’ But then (around the time the daughter shot the guy) the movie got much, much better, and by the end, I’d decided it was a great movie. This had something to do with the perspective of the movie broadening out from being entirely through the perspective of the French, and becoming more objectively about Vietnam itself and the colonization conflict overall.

But, boy, if I’d been the daughter, I’d have totally gone for the revolutionary, enlightened childhood sweetheart who’s all “you and I don’t matter – join the resistance” over the “I’m sort of useless and intermittently cruel and racist, plus I slept with your mother, but man, look at these eyes” French soldier.

On a sidenote, I always take note when theatre people are portrayed as the political underground in movies or plays. This happens a lot, because people who write and do theatre and films really want to write their ilk as hugely politically significant, and while I know that in some situations playwrights are quite influential and active (Prague Spring, early-19th c. Russia), I think that, especially during the red scare, playwrights got way too much credit for their influence on public opinion. Was anybody really ever inclined toward Communism just because Brecht’s plays were oh so thrillingly entertaining? Please. Charlie Chaplin, maybe. Brecht, no. And as for more active forms of subversion, theater people are the most feckless, inactive, self-absorbed people on Earth (I can say it – I kind of am one, albeit in a reluctant, half-assed sort of way). Performers might kick up a stink if they’re censored, but they’re highly unlikely to go around assassinating officials and circulating broadsheets. Because those activities require discretion, and the only thing that theater people want out of life is to be widely and constantly observed. “Underground” is the last place a performer wants to go.

Posted in Brooklyn, Humor, Movies, Theatre | Leave a Comment »

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July 6, 2008

I’ve Been Exploring: Providence and the New Haven Ikea

Last weekend, my improv team drove up to Providence, Rhode Island to perform in the annual improv festival there. Being New Yorkers, we’re all a bit rusty on driving, but, after briefly (and oh, so gently) tapping an elderly Polish pedestrian with our car (for some reason, the old man threw a little fit about this), we made it out of Brooklyn and into Queens.

We were in Queens for a long time. Queens is confusing, even with the GPS device that was our Lord and Master for the duration of the trip. I’ve never worked with a GPS device before. This one was pretty handy, but at the same time, confusing. And the smooth, female British voice that we selected could sound anywhere from condescending to downright exasperated depending on how often she was forced to repeat herself. This was her advice: ‘Turn right now. Turn right n— …Recalculating. Make a Uuuu-Turn. Make a Uuuu-Turn. …Recalculating. Turn left, then turn right. Turn left now. Left. Left now! (Sigh.) …Recalculating. Make a Uuuu-Turn.’

In this way, we eventually emerged from the Bronx and into Connecticut…to sit in a stop-and-start traffic jam all the way through New Haven. But we did make it to Providence in time for our show, and even our most tardy car-full of players burst into the greenroom fifteen minutes before curtain.

Providence is charming; it reminded me of a New England version of Charleston. Unfortunately, I have no photos, because I was too lazy to ever take my camera out of the trunk. We spent Saturday wandering up and down Thayer Street, the commercial district surrounding the Brown University campus in Providence’s East Side neighborhood. Thayer Street is lined with colorfully painted, old two-story houses made into cafes, antique shops, hippie-clothing stores catering to students and so forth. There were a lot of young people milling around, and everybody seemed to know each other. The main drag gave onto wide, tree-lined blocks of Victorian mansions with wrap-around porches. As is always the case when New Yorkers venture out of the city, my friends and I were delightfully amazed by the low prices and general friendliness we were met with all through the city.

Around 4:00 p.m., we piled back into the car, switched on the GPS device and headed back to New York. But on the way, we stopped at the Ikea in New Haven.

Now, since I do live in the world, I’d heard all about the Ikea thing – from back when Ikea was the most totally awesome thing ever to now, when mention of Ikea is generally accompanied by an apologetic eye-roll. But until last weekend, I had yet to actually go to one myself.

Here’s my interior monologue, which best describes how I experienced my very first Ikea visit:

–

“Wow, this place is huge! This stuff all looks pretty cool. Okay, I’m ready to eat now.

…Oh. We’re shopping. I guess we’re going to be shopping for awhile.

Oh, this place is really huge.

Oh, we’re really shopping.

Oh, I’m going to be here for a very long time.

…Damn it.

Well. These apartment set-ups all look really great. Maybe I should buy something. What would I buy? What would look good in my apartment? What does my apartment look like?

I can’t remember.

I just know it doesn’t look like these apartments. My apartment looks like shit.* How do you make something like my apartment look like these apartments look?

I’m not equal to this challenge.

The people who live in these apartments are probably really happy.

These apartments are cheap and cute, and probably what most people would consider good starter-apartment solutions until they get their careers going, and make enough money to have a real, nice house. Whereas for me, these Ikea apartments are like the long-term-goal apartments. If, by retirement, I am living in an Ikea apartment, I will have exceeded my own expectations.

I’m not at all where I should be at 27. I still sleep in a twin bed, have a shower curtain on my window, and nothing on my walls except for a hideous poster of Native Americans that I found in the trash! I should get a couch. And a career. And a car. And a dog. And friends. And a Relationship.

Or maybe just some meatballs. Yes, meatballs will improve matters. And then, we will leave.

Whoa, there’s another floor! A whole other floor! Oh, I want all matching dishes! I want all matching dishes to eat breakfast on in the sun in a pretty dress with the whole day ahead of me and appointments and a book to write them all down in that matches my handbag, and colorful cocktails after with good-looking people at a rooftop bar where all the drinks cost $14!!!! I want everything about my life to be entirely different, and I want it all to occur in a color-coordinated, cunningly planned setting!!!! I want to design every, single inch of my life, so it’s an appropriate backdrop for the huge, personal successes that will surely follow!!!!!

Or not.

Hell, I can at least buy some new sheets. This way, I don’t have to wash my old ones.”

–

And that is what I did – I got red and pink sheets, and I’m very happy with them. And I also got an ice-cube tray that makes ice cubes shaped like tiny liquor bottles. It’s not much, but it’s a start. And it all cost less than $20 which is the main reason Ikea is so very awesome. I might go again someday, if I ever feel I have things together enough to justify putting some effort into decorating my environment. But frankly, I’m still probably several years (and possibly several cities) away from that point.

And yes, I realize I had more to say about the Ikea than about Providence. What can I say? They’ve got a great business concept going.

__
*Roommates, if you read this, our apartment does not really look like shit. It only looks like shit when it’s standing next to a precious, little Ikea model, and those models only exist to make ordinary apartments feel bad about themselves anyway.

Posted in Advertising, Humor, Theatre, Travel | 3 Comments »

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July 1, 2008

More People I Don’t Like

Tibetans are getting stale on the Dalai Lama’s insistence on nonviolence.  This article says that nonviolence worked for Gandhi and others, and ends with this uplifting quote:

This week’s talks are unlikely to yield much, if any, progress, and could push more Tibetans to the boiling point. But listen to Gandhi again: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.”

Hmmm.  Do you agree with Gandhi’s assertion?  Discuss.

–

You don’t see many critics around these days.  Is it because there are no longer non-participatory enthusiasts of the arts?  Or is that a good thing?

Trying to maintain critical distance today is thus a practice in self-alienation. The distance might as well be infinite. The proclamations might as well be made in outer space. So we need another metaphor. If criticism isn’t about distance anymore, maybe it can be about closeness. I’ll tell you what makes sense about closeness right away. In today’s cultural world, a bird’s eye view of the situation doesn’t get you very much. There is nothing to sort out from up there because there is simply too much culture in too much variety. The distance, the desire to categorize and judge, is overwhelmed by the very pluralism it seeks to understand. The only solution is to get down into the mix and participate. You need to grab works of art and hold onto them tightly. Stepping away from them even a little bit is to risk losing touch altogether.

Well, I don’t know.  I can say that the New York theater scene, at any rate, is in desperate need of more objective gatekeepers, and I think a large part of the problem is that anybody who goes to theater here is trying to do theatre here.  I would say more, but I don’t want to burn any bridges.

–

Now, here is some criticism I can get behind:

Gladwell dresses up all of his “realizations” in fancy clothes and too much make-up. He gives himself powers that he doesn’t have. He pretends to have sorted things out that he hasn’t sorted out. He imagines a possible control, and pretends that he has achieved that control. All the while telling people, whispering into their ears, precisely the kinds of things they would like to believe. And then (it must, I’m sorry, be said) he goes on wildly lucrative corporate speaking engagements spinning out the same titillating stories combined with his shoddy conclusions. I even kind of hate, I must confess, the way he looks. His hair all scruffed up just so. His cute little suits. It makes the skin crawl.

–

Also in popular things that I have an irrational hatred of, Facebook has done away with the singular “they”:

Confronting complaints of ungrammaticality from speakers of English and untranslatability from speakers of other languages, Facebook will now be more in-your-face about choosing a gender identity. If you haven’t filled the information out on your Facebook profile, you’ll now get a prompt asking if you want to be referred to as him or her. But they’re not getting too insistent on sexual dimorphism, since users can still opt out of the gender choice, in response to what Gleit calls “pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting.”

Folks, I’ve finally joined Facebook.  After adamantly refusing to join, and telling everybody who brought it up to me (repeatedly) that I would never, ever join, and that was final, I’ve gone back on my resolution and set up a profile.  I resent the hell out of it, but I got sick of inviting people to things (my party, an upcoming show), and them being like, ‘Oh, well, I’d love to come – are the details on your Facebook page?’

Fuck all of you, and your stupid social networks.  There damn well better not be yet another must-join new one a month from now, or I’ll…resentfully set up a profile on that one, too.

–

The perils of replace-all:

Apparently, if you are bothered by gay people, you like calling them homosexuals, which is clinical and gross sounding, as opposed to “gay” which sounds happy and fun-loving. An impressionable child would surely have much less interest in becoming a “homosexual” (snooze) than a “gay” (woohoo!). So, right-wing news site OneNewsNow.com does a quick replace all on stories from the AP. Guess what, though, sometimes the word “gay” appears in a non-sexual context. Like, say, Tyson Homosexual (née Gay), who just qualified for the Olympics in the 100 meters, or Memphis Grizzlies’ forward Rudy Homosexual (née Gay), who often gets great penetration in the paint.

–

The rise of the nerds:

From the late 19th century onward, it was more or less accepted that the ideal purpose of American education and parenting was to produce athletic, popular young men and women, the sort who end up in business, law, or politics. But sometime during the 1980s it began to be a lot harder to dismiss the awkward kids with thick glasses, obsessive interests, and no social skills.  . . . As computers began to play a larger role in business, education, and life in general, the former class presidents were learning that the former class geeks held everyone’s future in their hands. Soon one nerd (Alan Greenspan) was running the economy, another nerd (Al Gore) was running for president, and two unbelievably rich nerds (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) were changing the ways a lot of us lived and worked.

(via 3QD)

The article focuses heavily on male nerds.  I don’t always get on well with male nerds, as I often find them to be immediately dismissive and condescending toward attractive women.  We were all unpopular in high school, but there are more constructive ways of dealing with it than being a triumphant asshole to anyone who reminds you of those who once rejected you.

Speaking of, when scientists attempt to study humor:

Blindfolded subjects are tickled by experimenters who they are told are machines. The sexual banter in an all-night diner in upstate New York is surreptitiously observed. People study cartoons with pens stuck in their mouths (to contract the facial muscles associated with smiling). An experimenter “accidentally” spills hot tea on herself when a jack-in-the-box erupts nearby. One Boston psychologist, the co-author of a paper entitled “A Threshold Theory of the Humor Response”, published in The Behavior Analyst last spring, understandably felt obliged to state in a footnote that her surname really is “Joker”.

(via A&LD)

Posted in Art, Humor, Misanthropy, People, Science, Technology, Theatre | 2 Comments »

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June 26, 2008

Lady News

A week ago, the U.N. recognized rape as a tactic of war:

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander, told the meeting: “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.” Speakers identified former Yugoslavia, Sudan’s Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as conflict regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale. U.N. officials have said the problem is currently worst in eastern Congo. But a recent survey of 2,000 women and girls in Liberia showed 75 percent had been raped during the West African country’s civil war.

(via Feminste)

How fantastic.  I’m sure this problem will get much better, now that the U.N. has passed a resolution – that is, if its peacekeepers can stop raping girls long enough to read it.

Malaysia’s pretty sick of its rape problem as well, so from here on out, women will be fined for going around in lipstick and/or heels:

So not only are women supposed to prevent their own rapes by not wearing high heels or lipstick – which are apparently irresistible invitations to assault, or something – they’re fined if they don’t buy into it. If the Kota Bura Municipal Council is actually interested in preventing rape, perhaps they should focus on the rapists.

Well, really, women wouldn’t keep getting raped if they weren’t so insistent on walking around with breasts and things.

Related, here’s a truly horrifying roundup of everything to do with Islam, virginity fetishism, hymen repair surgeries, etc. (jumping-off point = an annulment in a French court):

I dislike virginity fetishism, but people make their own arrangements and their own marital choices. Fine. But part of living in a country with a secular legal system is abiding by that system; as I discussed in the previous post, maintaining your individual religious beliefs is great, but expecting a secular society to re-shape itself to fit you is not.

…I sure as hell reserve the right to blame the jackasses who peddle virginity as a virtue of utmost importance, and who pin a woman’s personhood and value on her sexual status – and that certainly includes the abstinence-only crowd in the U.S.

Speaking of, Time Magazine has a cover story on that stupid pregnancy pact thing, and I couldn’t agree more with this:

This story is getting a lot of play, and I can’t help but think that it’s in the category of rainbow parties and Satanic cults at daycare centers – that is, it’s a bullshit story published to scare the fuck out of parents.  Did a bunch of teenagers at this one high school actually have a “pregnancy pact”? Sure, maybe. But… why does this merit a story in Time Magazine?

Well, any excuse for America to focus on the sex lives of teenage girls, in such a way that can be dressed up as concern for girls’ welfare, rather than mere prurient obsession, is absolutely guaranteed to saturate the media for awhile.

Moving on from vaginas, I’ve been meaning to link to this post about shared parenting and housework:

Interestingly, the messiness of the house actually bothers me, now, a little less than it does him–at least when it comes to inviting friends in. I’ve decided that fuck it, the mess is my Feminist Statement that keeping a beautiful house is Not My Damn Job, so I invite people in (with a little tummy-tightening and a warning that we do not keep a clean house) and let them deal with it.

This is not entirely on topic with the rest of the above-quoted post, but it’s interesting to me:  it’s difficult to discuss the arbitrariness of household standards, because there are still so many stay-at-home moms who view their life’s work as essential to the health and happiness of their family.  Nobody wants to involuntarily dismiss a woman whose priorities include keeping a nice home for her family (or devalue the lives of their mothers, grandmothers and so forth, who often were stay-at-home moms).  But the very relaxing of standards in itself is sometimes taken as an insult to women who dedicated their lives to upholding the old, ridiculously high ones.

Speaking of women in the ’50s, on Ethel Rosenberg:

Her emotionless mask in public made her seem more unnatural, more evil even than Julius. “There is a saying that in the animal kingdom, the female is the deadlier of the species. It could be applied to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wrote the World-Telegram and Sun. The Journal-American told its readers that Julius’s “deceptively lumpish” wife had been “even more immersed in communism and its requirements for regimentation” than her husband.

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What patriotism looks like in the American Indian community:

In this, America’s season of intense patriotic display, those of us who are not Indians may be able to learn a few things about patriotism from the Little Bighorn celebration. The first is that American patriotism is not something that you simply have or do not. What that flag means to you will depend heavily on how you regard the history behind it.

(via Bitch Ph.D.)

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Finally, is Godot a member of the Resistance?

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June 6, 2008

I’m A Sucker For Arts

Oh, don’t give me those big eyes. I know, I know, you’re just as original and innovative as you can be, aren’t you? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!

I just love art, but I sponsor too much as it is. Harold has forbidden me from going to theatres and gallery openings and benefits, because he says I’m just too big a softy. But I can’t help it – I wish that I could take all the art in the world home with me. I wish I had a big farm in the country, and I could collect all the art in the world and let them all live there – I’d have a big stable full of theatrical productions, and a huge barn full of musicians, and I’d just let the painters and the writers run free. I’d love nothing better.

Oooh, don’t give me that look. Don’t you move me. You stop that being groundbreaking right now – you’re just too, too relevant. I could fund your little face off, yes I could! Oh, yes I could!

Look, I just don’t have the money or the time. We have one family art, and frankly, that’s all we can manage. The kids begged me and Harold for it: “please, please, Mama, can’t we have an art? We’ll watch it all the time!” But of course, after they’d had it a month, they got sick of it. Back to the television. I’m the only one that ever watches that art now.

Are you trying to involve me? Are you? You’re a precocious little art, aren’t you? Yes, you are.

Now, my sister – she has a whole house full of art. She spends all her time caring for art, watching art, loving art. No such thing for her as too much. But, you know, she never married and she has no kids, and I think art for her is a replacement for other things. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: somebody has to love all the art in the world, and I think that art and the more solitary among us really have something to offer each other. She has the energy for it, you know, and the time.

Aw, no, now stop being so outstanding. You stop that. You know I want to fund you, and you’re taking advantage. No, no, don’t touch me. No. NO. I don’t want to be touched right now – I’m on my way to meet with clients.

Alright, I have to run along. Thank you for showing the art to me; it really is darling, and I’m just a sucker for good art. I really am sorry I couldn’t take it all home.

Posted in Art, Humor, Theatre | 5 Comments »

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June 4, 2008

We Have a Nominee!!!

Great article about Jackson Katz, who educates men about “gender issues” that, he argues, should not be considered as such:

“As a culture, Americans first must take the step in acknowledging that violence against women is not a women’s issue, but a men’s issue,” Katz said.

. . . Katz points out a pattern that has evolved regarding how the media uses passive voice and sentences when reporting gender violence. Using a board in the front of the room, Katz helped make his point by providing the audience with a concrete exercise to illustrate the power of passive voice (see below).

John beat Mary. (active)

Mary was beaten by John. (passive)

Mary was beaten. (passive)

Mary was battered. (passive)

Mary is a battered woman. (active)

“John has left the conversation long ago, while Mary evolves into the active victim,” Katz said. “This evolution of victim-blaming is very pervasive in our society, because this is how our whole power structure is set up. We start asking why Mary put herself into a position to be beaten by John.” “If we really want to work on prevention, we need to start asking questions about John, not Mary,” Katz said. “We won’t get anything done until we start treating these issues as men’s issues and shift the paradigm at the cultural level.”

(via Feministing)

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On the other hand, sometimes blaming the victim is hilarious and satisfying (a NYC man was acquitted for physically confronting a grunter in his Equinox spinning class):

“I don’t know if there’s going to be an uprising, but the short-term message is sometimes you can get away with assaulting somebody who’s annoying,” he said.

Indeed, some of the annoyed sat on the jury.

(via tmn)

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How to win the New Yorker’s caption contest:

You are not trying to submit the funniest caption; you are trying to win The New Yorker’s caption contest.

Funny side note – not long ago, I actually met a New Yorker cartoonist (friend of a friend, who came to one of our improv shows), and what were the first words out of my mouth upon discovering his occupation?

“No kidding! I enter that caption contest every week!”

As soon as I said it, I realized: boy howdy, I bet actual cartoonists freaking hate that contest. And sure enough: “Well, that’s great,” he said. “I mean, I freaking hate that contest, but good luck to you.” (He didn’t say it in a jerky way.)

I really should have known better, because one of my pet peeves is that, when what you primarily do in life (or what you aspire to do) is creative, people who find it out will rush to explain to you how they actually do that thing, too. If you’re an actor, everybody who ever asks you what you do will be anxious to explain to you how they’re really an actor, too. If you’re a writer, you’ll be forever hearing about how your partner in conversation is really a writer, too. And I imagine that interior designers and chefs are constantly hearing about how everybody they meet is just brilliant at rearranging the furniture and cooking.

Now granted, most CPAs who declare, upon meeting an aspiring actor, that they used to act themselves in college are really every bit as much actors as whatever perpetually-not-cast “actor” they’re talking to, but my fascination with this conversational faux pas has more to do with why the CPA thinks the “actor” they’re talking to will somehow be gratified to hear that the CPA can do everything the “actor” they’ve just met can do and more, but has moved beyond it now and makes money instead. THIS IS NOT POLITE, PEOPLE!

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Also, everyone’s fat and stupid.

Posted in Art, Feminism, Health, Humor, New York City, People, Theatre | 2 Comments »

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May 29, 2008

Birth, Death, Oppression

Newly discovered fossil shows live birth and egg-laying evolved together:

Dubbed “mother fish” by the scientists who discovered her in northwestern Australia, Materpiscis attenboroughi is not only an entirely new genus and species, but pushes back the first known case of live birth in the animal kingdom by some 200 million years.

(via tmn)

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Photos of well-known prisons and other high-security buildings:

To question the pervasiveness of intimidating, “disgusting” architecture, the images in Ross’ book are both striking and inviting. Ross intentionally makes the photos of oppressive structures look seductive. “You can convince people a lot easier by whispering in their ear rather than hitting them over the head,” says Ross.

On a lighter note, a photo of a light fixture made of cereal. And fake libraries, for those who have no time to assemble picturesque collections of books.

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On women:

In Iraq:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British soldier in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

Among the Roma:

[A girl's] value, as a virgin, is ascertained not by the young groom on the wedding night but, according to archaic folk custom, by the probing finger of a tribal crone: Eberstadt’s partially renegade Gypsy friend Linda explains, “For Gypsies, it’s a nasty old woman who is paid to penetrate the girl, like a gynecologist but with dirty hands, in front of all the husband’s family. It’s terrifying, it’s inhuman.” Landric sums up: “People talk about preserving Gypsy culture. But what am I as an educator supposed to do when the comportment of my students is frankly pathological?”

And again, back to the U.S. political situation, Feministing responds to the study saying we don’t have more women political leaders because women aren’t that ambitious (and does such a great job of it that I’m going to quote nearly all of it):

Most of these things, in my mind, just go back to the fact that we have a fundamentally unfeminist society. Women are saddled with more family obligations, and we have a government that has been unwilling to step in and lighten the load. Girls are bombarded with the message, from a young age, that they should aspire to be pretty, not powerful. (Or that pretty is powerful.) So is it any wonder that grown women doubt their qualifications? Also, saying that women are less likely than men to “be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign” fails to note that, compared to white men, the campaign trail is a helluva lot more rigorous for women. No wonder they’re less likely than men to “perceive a fair political environment.”

But to me, none of that speaks to ambition. Within the social constraints that are placed on women by a sexist society, how can you expect them to sign up for elections in droves? The two parties are basically boys’ clubs, the media is completely misogynist, there is virtually no government support for working mothers, and women get the message from a very young age that they have to work twice as hard and be twice as good to expect half as much. It’s hard to separate out all this junk and figure out how many women really do harbor higher career ambitions. And how many said they don’t because of these very unfeminist realities about our society. “Women may now think about running for office, but they probably think about it while they are making the bed,” as Beloit College political scientist Georgia Duerst-Lahti put it. For example, would it really be fair to call a single mom with three kids and two jobs “not ambitious” because she doesn’t realistically think she can run for political office?  Please.

These are big-picture problems — ones that feminists are working to solve, of course — but huge and pervasive problems nevertheless. Do these things keep women out of politics? Undoubtedly. But are they a problem of ambition? No. I’d wager a guess that if you reform the media, create better support systems for working mothers, and if the two parties actually made an effort to recruit women candidates, we’d see a huge spike in “ambition.”

Until that grand day, of course, we need a backup plan. So I refer you to the She Should Run campaign, which encourages people to push women to run for office, even in this imperfect world. The good news is when you actually ask women to run, they say yes at rates similar to men. I guess they suddenly discover they had ambitions, after all.

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This man is living my exact same life (except he’s doing it successfully):

Of working in the theatre, he said: “It gets you out of the house, and then you start to hate the people. And then you can go back and sit in a room and write.” . . .Kureishi also said that when he goes to his desk each morning to commence writing, he thinks to himself: “Why am I doing this? Shall I commit suicide?”

I wonder if he’s single…

Also, Umberto Eco is awesome.

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May 22, 2008

Plug – Upcoming Performances

Just a quick mention:  if you know me and/or are in the New York City area, check out the recent updates on my performance calendar page!!  I’ve got some fun stuff coming up…

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May 22, 2008

Culture, Culture, Culture

So, Iceland (my knowledge about which begins and ends with Bjork) is tops on the UNDP’s Human Development Index ranking. Which is pretty cool, except you would have to live in Iceland (this is also the problem with Sweden…suicide, anyone?). But hey, check out this awesomeness: nine months of paid maternity leave to be split between the mom and dad as they choose. YES! Standing O, Iceland!! (Although, granted, it might not be the most workable thing to give Americans nine paid months off every time they successfully knock each other up.)

Another great deal along these lines: Zappos offers its new employees $1,000 to quit on their first day!

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According to James Frey, he never reads what he writes. Explains a lot. Hey, speaking of fad books, can someone tell me why everybody in NYC is currently reading Middlesex? Is this just an amazing example of the collective groupmind at work, or did some cultural icon recently recommend it on a talk show? (Not that anyone listens to me, but if you’re currently working on it, I would suggest you spare yourself and put it down now – especially if it’s the only book you’ll be reading this year.)

Speaking of doing just as others do, let’s all talk about SITC: here, an impressionable young girl first becomes a ho like Samantha, and then a Mormon like her (the girl’s) husband. Hey, whatever’s in front of you…

Related, are civilization and culture in opposition to each other?

The problem is that civilisation needs culture even if it feels superior to it. Its own political authority will not operate unless it can bed itself down in a specific way of life. Men and women do not easily submit to a power that does not weave itself into the texture of their daily existence – one reason why culture remains so politically vital. Civilisation cannot get on with culture, and it cannot get on without it.

(via 3 Quarks Daily)

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Eric Alterman responds to Brink Lindsey’s commentary (which I quoted yesterday):

I feel that libertarianism, as I understand it, is overly concerned with theoretical liberty at the expense of its actual practice. The freedom to starve, to see one’s labor unfairly exploited, to drink polluted water or breath polluted air, are not freedoms I strongly value. And to battle these and others like them, society requires collective institutional action and in many cases, government (or labor union) protection. I’m no fan of “big government” per se–and neither was Dewey. It’s merely that powerful forces like global corporations require powerful forces to balance them.

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Lately, everyone seems to be saying that, while Clinton’s candidacy may have revealed a huge undercurrent of misogyny in our society, it did not actually suffer from this misogyny. That’s as it may be; however, speaking for myself at least, that revealed misogyny is exactly what has surprised and upset me throughout the primaries. I’m very disappointed by all of the openly hostile and condescendingly dismissive talk about Clinton’s campaign, both by men in the media and by guys I know in my own, personal life. I can say the same thing for racism laid bare by Obama’s campaign. Before this primary season, I naively thought that people (in my set, at any rate) had overcome at least the more overt racist and sexist thinking. Turns out, everyone has continued holding all the same racist and sexist opinions all this time – they’ve just learned to mostly keep their mouths shut about it.

Also, according to one of McCain’s advisers, calling Clinton a bitch isn’t misogynist, because, you see, Clinton really is a bitch.

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Negotiating this week:  Israel and Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah…and Pakistan and the Taliban:

Pakistan will pull its troops out of the Swat valley in its Northwest Frontier Province according to an agreement signed today by government negotiators and local Taliban leaders. Local authorities also agreed to enforce Sharia law so long as girls are allowed to attend school and militants do not carry weapons in public.

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Finally, last night I saw Eric Bogosian do a benefit reading for Labyrinth Theater Company of some of his less frequently performed monologues. Eric Bogosian is one of my theatre heroes (I love all monologists, since my dream career involves me talking endlessly to myself, while crowds of people I never have to interact with face-to-face applaud thunderously somewhere out beyond the blaring lights), but I’ve never seen him perform – I’ve just watched whatever DVDs of his solo shows are available, and I’ve read all his stuff. In fact, just recently, I was randomly reading The Essential Bogosian, which includes several of the pieces he performed last night. This is one reason why living in NYC is actually cool – you can actually go see the people you like do the things you like (if you can rip yourself away from your laptop long enough).

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April 22, 2008

Pro-League Networking

Hi, oh, thank you! Thank you! I really enjoyed playing for everyone, I was so glad to be asked. You’re…Gisele? Nice to meet, you, I’m Joni. Yeah. That’s sweet of you to say – a little while, actually. I’ve been playing for like…I don’t want to age myself! Well, I enjoy it. Yeah, it’s great, it’s great, I’ve had a lot of success with it, been really lucky, but it’s tough, you know. And sometimes, I need to step away- I recently, this is exciting – I’ve been doing some modeling for, um, Gap? Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve seen – yeah, that’s me, that’s me! Thanks! Well, I’m not like a real model, I would never…I think they just think I’m interesting-looking, you know. Oh, are you really? Are you really – isn’t that a coincidence! Well, I have to tell you, I have been surprised at…I mean, it is hard work, isn’t it? People think it’s just, right, standing around-but it is work! And it takes a lot of…I really don’t know how to express this, but it takes a lot of courage, doesn’t it? Like emotional courage? Somehow it, it takes a lot out of you. Oh, totally. So, I really respect what you do – I mean, you would know better than I, it’s not like, I mean, I really don’t even. Wow. It’s creative, too, modeling, and I think that’s why I so — I really like to mix it up. I find it so refreshing to switch mediums, every so often, you know? Like, you just have to, or you start to just, blah. Exactly, why limit what you– like okay, I’m a musician, but you know, I also write, I design, uh, I’m also a painter. Yeah, I’ve exhibited…I paint kind of like, I don’t know, Van Gogh-ish sort of self-portrait thingys, and I really feel like it all relates, you know? My mind is in the music, the music’s in the paintings, they all inform each other, and then all of it…braugh, right out there for the camera! I don’t hide it away, you know, Gisele – it’s there on a bus, for all the world to see, so. That’s just me.

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Sheesh. How about this party, huh? I’m Joan. Nice to meet you, Bernadette. So, what do you do? Oh, really – that’s interesting, I’m also in the theatre. Well, just recently making my foray, really. I mean, I’m a writer, but I’ve just recently dramatized one of my memoirs. Yes, it’s running on Broadway now. And I was just so stoked, because I said to the producer – he was begging me for like a year, he was a huge fan of the memoir, he was like, you have to put this up as a show, and I’m like, I don’t know, I don’t know – because it was about some very personal events in my life, you know? Like, I’ve just had a lot of shit go down recently, it’s just been…anyway. So, it’s so hard, isn’t it? We have to be so revealing and sometimes you just think, enough! There’s only so much I can give. But then, you think, I’m a writer, I’m an artist, I can’t just, you know, squinch all up in my boudoir and hide from the world, right? We have to create, we must create, that’s what we do. So, anyway, I said I’ll do it, if…and this is a big if…Vanessa Redgrave has to do the part. Because I just…she is me, you know? I have always thought that she really just, we have this connection. So, he was like, Joan, I’ll get her. I will get her. And he did, I’m happy to say. Soooo…anywhooo…the whole process has just been so therapeutic and wonderful for me. It’s like, I have this whole new appreciation for you actors and you theatre people and what you do and who you are – it’s amazing, isn’t it? It’s just this huge, brilliant, courageous, sparkling service you do for us all, really, isn’t it, Bernadette? I mean, you sacrifice yourselves, you really do! Because the world is so- and pain- and we’re all- and the human cost- and suffering and joy— and whoosh- and laliday, too-too, I mean, really, bravo! Can I just applaud you right here?

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Hello, I’m Barack. Barack. Baa like a sheep says, rock as in stone. Oh, no, don’t worry about it. No problem, I’m like totally Kenyan, everybody’s like…who? And you are… Iranka? Like Sri Lank– Oh, Ivanka! Great to meet you. I’ve met such great people tonight. And you’re an… Oh, so many fascinating people here tonight. No, I’m not an actor. I’ve thought about it, but… I mean, I used to act in college. I’m a Senator now, though. Yeah, it’s great, really satisfying. I mean, I really feel like it’s such a rewarding…thing. And it’s really super exciting right now, because I’m running for President. Yeah. I mean, it’s just in the primaries right now, so I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t want to jinx it, but we’ll see. I really think…I shouldn’t say this, but I really have a good feeling about it, you know? Which is just so amazing, I’m so lucky, I mean, this is my first time out of the chute, and it’s just been, whoa. I never expected to get this far my first time out, but I’ve got great people. It’s all about the people, I can’t even tell you. And I’ve learned so much, really. Just so much. It’s been such a rewarding experience, I really, no matter what happens, I feel that. I’m so blessed to have had this opportunity. Have you ever thought about running? Oh, you should do it! You totally should do it! No, I can’t even tell you – you would be so happy you did. Do you – I’ll put you in touch with my guy. Seriously, are you – I don’t mean to get all schmoozy on you – but are you registered? Yeah, awesome! Yeah, I’d totally appreciate your vote. I mean, yeah, I’m really trying to get people to- oh, I hear you, it’s obnoxious, but you have to do it. I know, I know. I mean, we’re all trying to – here, take this postcard: it’s got all the info on it, my website’s on there, everything. Wait, are you on MySpace?

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April 18, 2008

How To Thrive In Artistic Circles

If you would be successful in any area of the arts, here are some concepts that you would do well to keep in mind:

  • Any dislike is really baseless prejudice. Discerning patrons of the arts approve of everything and everybody.
  • If it sounds like common sense, it’s probably offensive.
  • To fail to stand and cheer is as rude as is to boo.
  • Everyone is frighteningly talented, and all people are effortless geniuses.
  • In praising an artist or work, make up with emphasis and repetition what you lack in sincerity or actual interest.
  • Don’t piss on others’ parades with your quiet disapproval.
  • Every given thing is exactly equivalent to every other given thing, and all things are utterly divorced from context.
  • If being photographed, appear alongside the fat. If being produced, appear alongside the dull and inarticulate.
  • Be controversial in acceptable ways.
  • Any successful venture is 1% product and 99% promotion. Don’t waste too much time on content.
  • If something seems half-assed, that’s exactly the point it’s trying to make. If something seems pointless, it’s because the audience isn’t working hard enough at interpreting it.
  • Life is art. We’re all making it all the time. And we all deserve attention for it.

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