Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Howling Good
An oldie but goodie from The Onion:
Activists on both sides of the gay marriage debate were shocked this November, when a typographical error in California's Proposition 8 changed the state constitution to restrict marriage to a union between "one man and one wolfman," instantly nullifying every marriage except those comprised of an adult male and his lycanthrope partner.
Louis CK Gets it Right, Again
I had read some good reviews of the new Louis CK show on FX. After seeing this clip, I will make a point of watching it. Andrew Sullivan says of this scene:
A brilliant little scene about gay men, straight men and words - from one of the most brilliant comics around, Louis CK. In all this, there is a lovely American sanity - not too much defensiveness, a whole lot of candor, and a deep well of friendship.
BP = Satan?
NPR on BPs continued support of the arts in Britain:
The controversy has divided Britain's art community. Those pushing for a boycott of BP sponsorships argue Britain's arts and cultural institutions are demeaning themselves by lending a little of their cache to the embattled oil giant.
The opposing argument was most pungently summed up by Jonathan Jones, art critic for the liberal guardian newspaper. If, in these perilous times, Britain's museums and galleries can get money from Satan, himself, he wrote, they should take it.
Michael Steel as Muppet
Jon Stewart's take on the latest Michael Steele debacle:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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An Anti-Climactic Death Scene on Capitol Hill
Matt Taibbi's short take on the theatrical possibilities of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Hearing on Wednesday:
I turned around and saw that sitting behind me was Joe Cassano, the patient zero of the financial crisis — the former AIG executive who nearly blew up the universe by issuing half a trillion dollars worth of credit default swaps without having any money to back it up. Nobody has really seen Cassano since AIG imploded in 2008; he's been in semi-hiding in London, as far as anyone knows, keeping clear of any wayward pitchforks I suppose. Being that he's been transformed into sort of a mythical creature in the financial crisis story it was surreal seeing him sit there in the flesh, like turning around in a diner and seeing the Headless Horseman eating a tuna melt.
...Cassano's testimony turned out to be brilliant comedy — it turns out, according to him, that he did a pretty good job and his risk management skills were top-notch! I kept waiting for some sort of cosmic Hand of Justice to reach into the hearing room (a la the climactic death scene in Mozart's Don Giovanni), snatch Cassano up in the middle of one of his mumbling self-congratulatory responses, and then pull him kicking and screaming straight through the floor into the furnace of hell — but it never happened. In fact he barely even took much heat from the panel. In that sense, a very disappointing afternoon.
Actor as Citizen of the World
From the Christian Science Monitor:
Only a secure citizen would do what Garry Davis did 62 years ago. A onetime Broadway actor (he understudied Danny Kaye) and B-17 pilot, Mr. Davis showed up in Paris in 1948, renounced his US citizenship, and declared himself “World Citizen No. 1.”
Those were heady times. Revulsion with war was widespread. Davis himself had been horrified to learn that his plane’s bombs fell on civilians in Brandenburg, Germany, during one run. Then there was the A-bomb. If ever there was a one-world moment, the late 1940s would have been it.
Sympathizers smuggled Davis into a United Nations session in Paris where the onetime actor broke up the proceedings by declaring: “I interrupt in the name of the people of Earth not represented here.”
That night, he led a rally of 20,000 displaced persons in Paris. The UN Declaration on Human Rights was enacted the next day.
The bombs he unleashed turned him against nationalism, he says. The acting led him to the role of a lifetime: World Citizen No. 1.
Intellectuals and Hapless Nazis
From The Huffington Post: Written and directed by David Jette for The Brimmer Street Theatre Company and staged at The Bootleg Theater, "Leiris/Picasso" is iconic and iconoclastic, intriguing and indulging. Its clever premise riffs on an historical event - a 1944 table reading of a Picasso play staged by intellectuals of the French resistance.
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