some good news

Not so much for the Republican field, but for all of us down in the independent theater jungle.

Shame about Michigan.  Absolute scorched earth, border-to-border.  Hell of a way to treat your home state, but cyborgs ain't got no feelings, folks.

It's one of the things that makes them cyborgs.

Here's some happiness.

racial profiling

I try not to do it but sometimes it's just how the mind works.

I try to see everyone as an individual.  I try to listen to what they say and not instinctively judge them by their appearance.

But when I see four rich middle-aged or elderly white men in suits sitting on a stage in Arizona with the T.V. cameras pointing at them, well...

Something kicks in.  I guess it's a prejudice.  I'll cop to that.  What the hell, might as well be honest here.

I feel like I know these guys.  I feel like I've heard them talking all my life, sometimes in public when they were trying to sell a crowd something and sometimes in private, when they thought it was just me and them and they could relax a bit and talk straight.

The thing about rich, middle-aged American white guys (and here comes the absolute, unvarnished prejudice) is that they will argue night and day for the unquestioned virtue of self-sufficiency while  refusing to acknowledge their own outrageous privilege.  It's like they don't even recognize the advantages they were born into; it's like listening to lottery winners preach the gospel of thrift.

You can take any issue and see this play out.

Last night the subject lurched, for  a moment, to education.  All four of these prosperous, well-fed gentlemen nodded along with the plan of getting the federal government out of the business of educating our children, even moving the goal posts to the argument that states shouldn't be in the business either,  we should leave it to local communities.

O.K. 

Take my hometown of St. Louis, MO and apply this grand idea to the real world.  The "local communities" of Clayton and Ladue would probably do fine.  Clayton, MO ranks regularly on the list of highest per capita income of towns in America.  It's a nice place to live.  So the Clayton kids will have nice, warm, clean classrooms and up-to-date textbooks.

Now go into the city.  Go to the North Side of St. Louis.  That's where most of the darker denizens of Mound City live their lives.  You may be only a couple of miles from Clayton, but its a very different world.  If you leave education to the "local community" there, those kids are sitting in broken-down desks in a community center built in 1965 and the roof is caving in.

But our Great White Hopes will smirk and sneer and insinuate that the reason those kids find themselves in such a dire situation is that their parents are lazy or ignorant or worse, criminal for the most part, right?

Take immigration.  Every one of the Boys wants to personally build a fence tomorrow and wall those Mexicans out, like you'd keep deer out of your garden so they don't eat your beautiful flowers.  Leaving aside the objective fact that a fence, no matter how tall, will not secure a border (Hadrian's wall, anyone?) let's look at what not one of them will say:

Illegal immigration drops by 85% tomorrow if you can't get a job up here.  And if the employers were fined, say, ten thousand dollars for every illegal immigrant they hired and if that fine were actually enforced, there wouldn't be jobs for illegal immigrants.

Now, what does this reticence have to do with their ethnicity and personal background?  The employers I'm referencing up above are also rich, middle-aged white men.

And it's bad form to fuck with a brother's sweet deal.  It's just not done.

Take tax policy, take what little, laughable jobs programs these privileged, pandering plutocrats offer, throw a dart at whatever part of the platform you want and you'll see the same pattern.

I try to come to everyone clean and open.  I really do.

But I'm just going to say it.

You just can't trust those people.

come on down to Clinton Street

Read all about it.

HERE and PS 122 climbed aboard the train on Tuesday, welcome Kristin and Vallejo.

Big party/discussion/shindig at the Living Theater on Monday the 27th, should be some lively banter.

busy like bee

Well, now.

February is jumping this time around.
Last February I think I just slept from the 3rd to the 18th, can't really remember.

It's starting to look like a possible two man race between the Mittbot and the frothy mixture of lube and fecal-, sorry, Senator Santorum.


Of course, that's if you discount Newton "Neutron" Bomb, the man who's climbed so far out on a limb that he'd rather risk the fall than try to claw his way back.


And ignore Doctor Ron Paul, who stands in command of about twenty percent of the Republican base no matter what he does or doesn't say or do.

Other than those two, it's a two-man Caged Death Match, which is actually what they're thinking about doing at the convention this summer.  

Great for ratings and the winner gets to campaign on "I actually killed a guy last week."

Strong leader?  You bet.  


Then there's this.

And let's not forget about the Big Thing Coming Down the Pike:

ANNOUNCING THE LEAGUE OF INDEPENDENT THEATER FUND

For over sixty years, Off-Off Broadway (now known as Independent Theater) has provided a haven for New York City theater artists and served as a cauldron and cradle for new and innovative American theater.  This sector has grown beyond a “starting place” for many artists and now provides the artistic home for over 10,000 individuals and 300 companies.

But this civic treasure is threatened.  The economic realities of New York City have forced many artists and companies to leave New York.  Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines and many other cities are poised to replace New York as the center of new American theater.

We refuse to lose this historic, cultural and civic treasure.  

We are beginning an annual, reliable fund for the independent theater territory.

And it only costs a nickel.

Starting August 1, 2012, Horse Trade Theater Group, Clancy Productions, Present Company (producers of the New York International Fringe Festival), wreckio ensemble, Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company,  the Civilians, the Amoralists, Surf Reality, Mabou Mines, New Georges, Inverse Theatre, HERE,  Tectonic Theater Project, Peculiar Works, Flux Ensemble, Elephant Run District, Rabbit Hole Ensemble, Jewish Plays Project, Parallel Exit, Gorilla Rep, Sponsored by Nobody, Stolen Chair Theatre Company, Mind the Gap Theater, Art House Productions, ETdC Projects Lab, Angry Bubble Productions, ViolaCello Stageworks, La Lupa Italian Cultural Arts Festival, Small Pond Entertainment, Organs of State, Decades Out, WET Productions, undergroundzero festival, Gemini/Collisionworks, Untitled Theater Company #61, Theatre Askew, Agony Productions, John Montgomery Theatre Company, the Living Theater, New York Theatre Experience, Inc. and other companies will contribute five cents from every ticket sold this year as seed money for the Independent Theater Fund.   This list is growing every day. 

We call on all independent theater companies, artists and venues to join us in this effort.  As always, we recognize that we are strongest and most effective when we work together and while our individual bank accounts may be small, our collective resources are substantial.

Judith  Malina of the Living Theater says

“The League of Independent Theater represents a coming together of actual artistic and theatrical forces that may yet undo the difficulty of our times in maintaining the highest artistic standards in a period of economic crisis. Who can save us from the downhill trend of our economy except the vigor of our arts?  Theatre, music and education are our only hopes to lift our times beyond their despair and create a viable, prosperous culture.”

Elena Holy, Producing Artistic Director of FringeNYC says

"The Present Company is always proud to be a part of anything that involves indie theatre artists supporting each other. The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) was forged on our collective indie traditions of self-sufficiency, creativity, and working together. This new fund builds on that idea and puts it into action across our entire community - its potential impact is extraordinarily exciting."

 

This is the first phase of this funding initiative.

We call on the League of American Theaters and Producers to join the cause and help us to support, sustain and strengthen the independent theater community in New York City.

The Broadway League has a long history of supporting charitable efforts that benefit the theatrical community and with this initiative they will take the lead in addressing the exodus of young theater professionals and companies from New York City as well as recognizing the national cultural treasure that is the Off-Off Broadway territory.

With a five cent donation from each ticket sold to a Broadway show, (which is .057 of the average ticket price or about five hundredths of a percent) we can create an immediate, annual fund for small theater in New York. 

In 2010, Broadway attendance was 12,106,105.  If the Independent Theater Fund was in effect in 2010, the independent theater community would have just over $605,000.00 to maintain and upgrade venues, provide scholarships for promising writers, directors, designers and performers and mount a high-visibility city-wide marketing campaign for all of the independent theater productions in the city.

The initial allocation of funds has yet to be determined, but areas under discussion include:

Real Estate Fund – money for venue renovation and repair, equipment upgrade, etc.  Also, a Seed Money Fund will be created for real estate purchase.

Project Grants – money to create shows.

Individual Grants – money for independent theater artists and practitioners.

We call on all theaters and companies in New York to join the Fund.  

The League of Independent Theater is the advocacy organization for Off-Off Broadway.  We are dedicated to promoting and strengthening the artistic and economic interests of our members, organizing and protecting our members to ensure that independent theater is economically viable for all of its practitioners and to advocate on behalf of the decades-old tradition of Off-Off Broadway.

a simple revelation

I can see clearly now.

It’s like a whole new world.

I had this troubling dream last night where I was arguing with some old friends about politics, of course, and one of them, a guy I used to drink and carouse with back in high school and is now a bigwig Tea Partier back in St. Louis, old Wild Bill, finally shook his head and said,

“John.  John, just listen for a second.  You’ve got all this wooly, wishy-washy liberal thinking just clogged up in your brain, man.  It’s not your fault, that’s what they taught you.  Here. Just put these on and you will see.”

And he handed me these crazy old spectacles, like the kind Nicolas Cage finds in the first National Treasure, (the good one, not the sequel), this old pair of glasses that Ben Franklin invented with all of these different lenses and moving parts and I put them on and friends, I was transported.

The room disappeared and I was flying, with my old buddy Bill at my side, guiding me like some kind of right-wing angel.  Flying above this great land and then suddenly I was on a crowded street in Manhattan, midday, everyone hustling around me. 

And Bill said,

“Now, listen.  And you will hear the truth that Money Talks.”

And I opened my eyes and ears and looked around me.  And I saw a homeless woman and I somehow knew, magically, that she had one dollar and forty-eight cents in the front right pocket of her filthy jeans and though her mouth was moving as she stood there speaking to the flowing tide of New Yorkers, I couldn’t hear a word she was saying.

And I was so amazed that I stepped towards her and immediately collided with a large young man, dressed in a beautiful blue suit, lovely Italian leather shoes, clutching a briefcase that cost more than I made last year and he caught me before I fell, easily, I could feel the strength of this young Titan coursing through his grip and he muttered as he stode on,

“Watch where you’re going, pal.”

And I knew, again, magically, that this young man banked $338,755,021 last year, netted it and was on his way to a better year in 2012.  And even though he didn’t actually utter a word, I heard him.  He was silently shouting, bellowing as he bulled his way through the crowd:

“I AM STRONGER AND BETTER AND SMARTER THAN ALL OF YOU, YOU FACELESS MEMBERS OF THE THRONG.  MY WILL SHALL BE DONE AND MY DESIRES MET. I HAVE WHAT YOU DO NOT. I HAVE THE POWER.”

And not only did I hear this fine young moneyman, I believed him.  His speech rang true.

And so I saw the truth of the Citizens United decision.

Of course money is speech.  They are the exact same thing. Naturally.  They are identical. 

How could I have been so deaf and blind?

And we were flying again and Bill whispered in my ear,

“Wait, for there is more.”

And we were on the side of a highway, somewhere in the Midwest and we stood before a billboard proclaiming the good work and virtue of BP, an oil company that I had always thought of as an enormous multinational corporation, an entity concerned only with making money and paying dividends to its shareholders.  But Bill adjusted my magical glasses and I saw.

The billboard transformed and took human form.  And a very large, but perfectly recognizable person stood there in the cornfield and he looked down at me and I could see the pain in his eyes.  This poor person had made a terrible and regrettable mistake.  He had spilled a great deal of oil in the Gulf and almost destroyed an ecosystem while actually destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of his fellow citizens.  This poor person was only trying to earn an honest dollar to put food on his metaphorical table and provide a better life for his metaphorical kids.  And he felt so bad, his metaphorical conscience was keeping him up all night, he thrashed around in his metaphorical bed and his metaphorical wife tried to comfort him, saying,

“BP, darling. BP don’t torture yourself.  You’re a good corporation, errr, person.  You made a mistake, but you can make it right.  After all, dear, you’re only human.  Almost.  Not really, but, you’re a person, so, that almost qualifies you to be a human. In a way. Not really, I guess.  Ah, forget it, I‘m going back to bed.”

And I realized that of course corporations are people.  How could I have been so callous and judgmental toward my fellow corporate citizens? I apologized to this huge, huge guy, saying

“I’m sorry, BP.  I didn’t know.”

And he screamed back, trying to whisper, but he had so much money that he couldn’t physically keep his voice down below a hellish roar,

“WHAT’S A GUY TO DO?  I WAS JUST TRYING TO MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS LEGALLY POSSIBLE.”

Poor bastard, I thought as Bill touched my shoulder and we were aloft again.

And this time, I could tell we were flying not just through space but through time.  And the years brushed by my amazed face and we landed in 1971 and I saw a strange trio, a young black kid, couldn’t have been more than ten, walking down the street with an older white couple.  And I somehow knew that the old man and the old woman were this kid’s grandparents and it all clicked. 

White mother, black father, father probably out of the picture somehow, and here’s this skinny little black kid being taken care of by his white grandparents.

And my lips curled back a little bit in instinctive scorn.

Look at that little elitist.  

I thought to myself.

Thinks he’s better than me, than all the rest of us.  Just because he was born into a country defined by institutional racism, just because his skin is dark and he comes from a lower-middle class background, he thinks he naturally knows more than me, that he was born to rule.  I’ll bet he’s just going to waltz into Harvard University, like all the rest of his kind.  Hell, that’s why Harvard was set up back in 1636, expressly to offer shelter and training to poor black kids without a father, it’s in the original by-laws for god’s sake, these East Coast snobs. God. It’s just all so rigged in this kid’s favor. He’s got all the breaks.  Every single advantage.  I’ll bet he just plays golf all day long.   

And the dream dissolved and I woke and a peace and calm and clarity I didn’t know was possible possessed me and I knew that I was facing a brand new beautiful day.

I know now that climate change is an elaborate hoax by all of the world’s scientists so that they can secretly laugh at the ignorance and gullibility of the rest of us.

I know giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us automatically results in the creation of well-paying, secure jobs for the rest of us.

I know that all taxes should be abolished so that we, as private citizens, can build roads and schools and dams in a coordinated and frictionless way, just as every country has always done in the history of human society.

My eyes are open, friends.

Thank you, Bill.  Thank you Tea Party and all Republican thinkers and strategists and operatives everywhere.

God bless you. 

And may god continue to bless the United States of America.   

beautiful day

Interesting weekend.  Mittbot and the Giants both won and I think that's now my favorite fake band name.

Mittbot and the Giants, live at Wembley.  Best night of my life, man.

And then there's this:

ANNOUNCING THE LIT INDEPENDENT THEATER FUND

For over sixty years, Off-Off Broadway (now known as Independent Theater) has provided a haven for New York City theater artists and served as a cauldron and cradle for new and innovative American theater.  This sector has grown beyond a “starting place” for many artists and now provides the artistic home for over 10,000 individuals and 300 companies.

But this civic treasure is threatened.  The economic realities of New York City have forced many artists and companies to leave New York.  Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines and many other cities are poised to replace New York as the center of new American theater.

We refuse to cede the ground to these other cities.  

We are beginning an annual, reliable funding pool for the independent theater territory.

And it only costs a nickel.

Starting September 1, 2012, Horse Trade Theater Group, Clancy Productions, Present Company (producers of the New York International Fringe Festival), wreckio ensemble, Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, the Amoralists, Surf Reality, New Georges, Elephant Run District, Rabbit Hole Ensemble, Jewish Plays Project, Parallel Exit, Gorilla Rep, Sponsored by Nobody, Stolen Chair Theatre Company, Mind the Gap Theater, Art House Productions, Angry Bubble Productions, ViolaCello Stageworks, La Lupa Italian Cultural Arts Festival, Small Pond Entertainment, Organs of State, WET Productions, Theater Askew, ETdC Projects Lab, Gemini/Collisionworks, Decades Out, the Living Theater, New York Theatre Experience, Inc. and other companies will contribute five cents from every ticket sold this year as seed money for the Independent Theater Fund.   This list is growing every day.

We call on all independent theater companies, artists and venues to join us in this effort.  As always, we recognize that we are strongest and most effective when we work together and while our individual bank accounts may be small, our collective resources are substantial.

Elena Holy, Producing Artistic Director of FringeNYC says

"The Present Company is always proud to be a part of anything that involves indie theatre artists supporting each other. The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) was forged on our collective indie traditions of self-sufficiency, creativity, and working together. This new fund builds on that idea and puts it into action across our entire community - its potential impact is extraordinarily exciting."

 

This is the first phase of this funding initiative.

We call on the League of American Theaters and Producers to join the cause and help us to support, sustain and strengthen the independent theater community in New York City.

The Broadway League has a long history of supporting charitable efforts that benefit the theatrical community and with this initiative they will take the lead in addressing the exodus of young theater professionals and companies from New York City as well as recognizing the national cultural treasure that is the Off-Off Broadway territory.

With a five cent surcharge on each ticket sold to a Broadway show, (which is .0057 of the average ticket price or about five hundredths of a percent) we can create an immediate, annual fund for small theater in New York. 

In 2010, Broadway attendance was 12,106,105.  If the Independent Theater Fund was in effect in 2010, the independent theater community would have just over $605,000.00 to maintain and upgrade venues, provide scholarships for promising writers, directors, designers and performers and mount a high-visibility city-wide marketing campaign for all of the independent theater productions in the city.

The allocation of funds will be divided into three areas:

Real Estate Fund – money for venue renovation and repair, equipment upgrade, etc.  Also, a Seed Money Fund will be created for real estate purchase.

Project Grants – money to create shows.

Individual Grants – money for independent theater artists and practitioners.

We call on all theaters and companies in New York to join the Fund. 

the independent theater fund

ANNOUNCING THE LIT INDEPENDENT THEATER FUND

For over sixty years, Off-Off Broadway (now known as Independent Theater) has provided a haven for New York City theater artists and served as a cauldron and cradle for new and innovative American theater.  This sector has grown beyond a “starting place” for many artists and now provides the artistic home for over 10,000 individuals and 300 companies.

But this civic treasure is threatened.  The economic realities of New York City have forced many artists and companies to leave New York.  Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Des Moines and many other cities are poised to replace New York as the center of new American theater.

We refuse to cede the ground to these other cities.  New York has an historical and cultural claim as the birthplace of great American theater and the League of Independent Theater is committed to protecting that birthright. 

And it only costs a nickel.

Horse Trade Theater Group, Clancy Productions, Present Company (producers of the New York International Fringe Festival), wreckio ensemble, Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, the Amoralists, Surf Reality, Elephant Run District, Rabbit Hole Ensemble, Jewish Plays Project, Parallel Exit, Mind the Gap, Stolen Chair Theater Company, Gorilla Rep, Art House Productions, Sponsored by Nobody, Angry Bubble Productions, ViolaCello Stageworks, La Lupa Italian Cultural Arts Festival, WET Productions, Organs of State, Small Pond Entertainment, The New York Theater Experience, Inc., the Living Theater and other companies will contribute five cents from every ticket sold this year as seed money for the Independent Theater Fund.  This list is growing every day.

We call on all independent theater companies, artists and venues to join us in this effort.  As always, we recognize that we are strongest and most effective when we work together and while our individual bank accounts may be small, our collective resources are substantial.

Elena Holy, Producing Artistic Director of FringeNYC says

"The Present Company is always proud to be a part of anything that involves indie theatre artists supporting each other. The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC) was forged on our collective indie traditions of self-sufficiency, creativity, and working together. This new fund builds on that idea and puts it into action across our entire community - its potential impact is extraordinarily exciting." 

This is the first phase of this funding initiative.

We call on the League of American Theaters and Producers to join the cause and help us to support, sustain and strengthen the independent theater community in New York City.

The Broadway League has a long history of supporting charitable efforts that benefit the theatrical community and with this initiative they will take the lead in addressing the exodus of young theater professionals and companies from New York City as well as recognizing the national cultural treasure that is the Off-Off Broadway territory.

With a five cent donation from each ticket sold to a Broadway show, (which is .057 of the average ticket price or about five hundredths of a percent) we can create an immediate, annual fund for small theater in New York. 

In 2010, Broadway attendance was 12,106,105. If the Independent Theater Fund was in effect in 2010, the independent theater community would have just over $605,000.00 to maintain and upgrade venues, provide scholarships for promising writers, directors, designers and performers and mount a high-visibility city-wide marketing campaign for all of the independent theater productions in the city.

The allocation of funds will be divided into three areas:

Real Estate Fund – money for venue renovation and repair, equipment upgrade, etc.  Also, a Seed Money Fund will be created for real estate purchase.

Project Grants – money to create shows.

Individual Grants – money for independent theater artists and practitioners.

We call on all theaters and companies in New York to join the Fund.