The New #2

The Prisoner Reboots the Panopticon for 21st Century | The Underwire from Wired.com: 

"'We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy.
'We all live in a little Village,' McGoohan concluded in the same interview. 'Your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners.'"

There is a new Prisoner mini-series coming up.  I love the original, but will give the new one a chance.  A Prisoner for today could be great.

yeah, about that...

I demand
consistency
from others
that I do not
myself deliver.
I demand
devotion
that I myself
don't show.

how are you?

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Witkiewicz's plays, unappreciated and largely misunderstood before World War II, were rediscovered in Poland in the 1960s and 70s. Largely characterized by a tone of parody, Witkacy reveals his derisive abilities in them with great force. All the literary references in the plays seem to reflect these abilities. What we have here is both mockery of the rhetoric of the Romantic and Young Poland movements, as well as a parody of motifs drawn from Ibsen and Strindberg, Shakespeare and Wyspianski, Rittner and Conrad. In Witkacy's works, humor almost always becomes macabre, a burlesque tone - an invariable ingredient of Witkiewicz's plays - combines with fantasy. Bitter irony and sarcasm strongly color the represented world, in which seriousness and "elevated" philosophical discourse are mixed perfectly with, and complement, the comedic tone. Konstanty Puzyna, in his classic introduction to the first full edition of Witkiewicz's plays, classified the writer as an exponent of the avant-garde current in European playwriting. Puzyna highlighted certain similarities with Expressionism, wrote about the parallels between Witkacy's plays and Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI, referred to the writer's poetic as Surrealist.

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Polish culture: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy)

Witkacy wrote of drama that it should be akin to "the brain of a madman presented on stage."

and who can disagree with that?

Cool Scientist Alert

Why Did Western Drs. Promote Tobacco While the Nazis Fought Cancer?
| Health & Medicine
| DISCOVER Magazine: 

"It seems you have endless curiosity.

I’m amazed by people who don’t ask questions constantly. I was raised to think that the good life is asking questions and then always realizing that there are infinitely many more questions and that basically what we know is an infinitesimal part of what we might know. I’m interested in human suffering. I’m interested in the big, unanswered questions—in the massive infinity of ignorance that we swim in."

Hollywood and Fine - Marshall Fine Blog � Blog Archive � I hate myself for loving ‘24′

Hollywood and Fine - Marshall Fine Blog � Blog Archive � I hate myself for loving ‘24′: 

"Man, I love me some “24.”


I love the headlong pace. I love how much action, how many moments of confrontation, life-or-death decisions, jeopardy and fight-to-the-finish situations they pack into each 42-minute episode."

yup.  easily the most ideologically dangerous show I enjoy...

The Stooges mattered to me at a time when bands REALLY mattered to me. I still read Rolling Stone and SPIN regularly. I still sought out new music. I got Raw Power in high school. CBS nice price cassette. It was good. better than bowie. then freshman year of college I discovered the first album. Self-titled. That was the stuff. That wah guitar. There are, in my mind, two ways to use a wah pedal - like Jimi Hendrix or like Ron Asheton. Then, Oh My GOD, Funhouse. Calling from the funhouse, with my song... The best album ever made by white people. These records, this band, brought me to Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Sugar Shack, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and damned near everything that meant anything to me from the time I was 16 till, well, forever... There was a reunion tour recently and I didn't make enough of an effort to go. The reunion album - well, it just made me kinda sad - the new mudhoney album sounded to me like what i wanted a new stooges record to be... but I saw the dvd - and they rocked live - the old stuff still worked - and they were having fun... God I hope I have people like that in my life to have fun with years down the road... Some people say you can tell a lot about a person by asking, "The Beatles or The Stones?" I'd rather ask, "The Stooges or The Velvet Underground?" and for me, the answer is always, "The Stooges." ugh. I wanna be yr dog.

Marginal Revolution: Department of No

Marginal Revolution: Department of No:

"Of course they want a bailout but this is for me not a priority.� Given the new distribution of wealth, arguably we need more culture for lower-income people and less culture for the rich.� I don't think the old distribution of wealth is coming back anytime soon.

It's something to watch when the egalitarian and elitist tendencies of modern liberalism clash so strongly.� When it comes to high culture it's like this:� 'I don't think they should have so much money, but I sure like what they spend their money on.'� Yet if deflationary pressures are going to benefit lower class individuals with jobs, something has to give and that is, in part, the discretionary arts spending of the wealthy."

Interesting discussion in the comments...
some things for those of us in the arts to think about...
I hope to make theatre around the fire in the tent cities of the future - but I'm an optimist.

Jonathan Tasini: Conspiracy of Silence: Wage Collapse Caused Crisis

Jonathan Tasini: Conspiracy of Silence: Wage Collapse Caused Crisis:

"Basically, the basic bargain was roughly this--if you worked hard and became more productive, you would see that sweat of the brow in your wages. And from the post-war era until the 1970s, that deal basically held--as you can see from the lines that are basically close together until the 1970s.

Then, the lines diverge--dramatically. You can see it yourself. If the lines had continued to track closely together as they did prior to the 1970s, the MINIMUM WAGE would be more than $19 an hour. THE MINIMUM WAGE!!!"

Class War - the only war worth fighting - every other war is just them using us to fight each other...

I think things are going to get worse before they get better and the purposeful misunderstanding and misrespresenting of our current crisis is not helping.
The folks at the top of the pyramid are still concentrating on sucking any excess from those at the bottom.

I nearly got into a fight with some rich dude at Notsuoh on Jim's birthday. When I said that no C.E.O. works 800 times harder than I do he treated it like a personal affront. The idea that maybe the system is rigged and the elites exploit the middle and punish the lower he took as some kind of personal attack on his worth. maybe it was. if it wasn't at first, well, then, after he responded like a dick, it certainly became one... it took a cute 22 year old and a passed j. to diffuse the situation...

Spreading the wealth is the only way you richies are gonna get to keep even a portion of yrs... keep demanding it all and eventually we will rise up and take our share.

No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

No Machine Can Do My Job As Resentfully As I Can | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

"A machine can only contain wires, diodes, and gears, not the living, breathing sum of life's screw-ups, heartbreaks, and regrets."

Hullabaloo

Hullabaloo:

"Kurds who support circumcising girls say the practice has two goals: It controls a woman's sexual desires, and it makes her spiritually clean so that others can eat the meals she prepares."

Women are dirty and their urges have to be controlled because they're always tempting men to do things they shouldn't do. Same as it ever was.

"Devil woman you're evil like the dark coral reef
Like the winds that bring high tides you bring sorrow and grief
You made me ashamed to face Mary I barely had the strength to tell
Skies're not so black Mary took me back Mary has broken your spell

Oh devil woman devil woman let go of me..."

- Marty Robbins

what a weekend

had two gigs this weekend -
notsuoh saturday night went great - nice turnout (not any of my friends, except the one or two who just happened to be at the bar already...and the guys I played with Sunday at AG) and the performance went great - very different than playing these pieces in the practice room, but we could hear everything and I feel like we did a good job presenting the work... everybody's elses set was great too...
about 12:30, after the last set, a group of old friends, including bart and elizabeth show up, and well that is when the real trouble starts - I am in a great mood, so I start buying drinks for folks - no idea how much i spent or how much i drank - it was a long, but good night...
and oh yeah, the band got an offer to score a film, and I think Michelle's dad offered to make us costumes...

Sunday at AG was a little different - thomas helton and his crew were playing upstairs - I was playing with robert pearson and carl smith - they decided the show was a bust before we even played - low turnout (mostly some people from the saturday night show at rudz) - but when we finally played it sounded pretty good - just when I was really warmed up and listening good we were done... outta there by 9:30 - off to tapatia with laura for a quick snack and then home to bed...

overall a good weekend - two good and very different gigs - while I won't be playing with carl again for a while (he's from austin) I think the Michelle Yom ensemble is going to become a standing group - hope you can make it out to see us next time...

Valerie Tarico: Ancient Mythic Origins of the Christmas Story

Valerie Tarico: Ancient Mythic Origins of the Christmas Story

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: "a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child." The Hebrew word in Isaiah is "almah," which means simply "young woman." But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as "virgin." Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

That's a lot of added complications. If the rest of the New Testament doesn't refer to these stories or need them, then how did we end up with them? Where do they come from?

One part of the answer comes from Hellenistic culture. (It is no accident all New Testament books written in Greek.) In this tradition, when a man did something extraordinary there was the assumption that he did this because he was different, either divine or semi-divine. They would make up a story about how he came to be divine. Almost all Greek heroes were said to be born of a human woman and a god--even Alexander the Great, Augustus and Pythagoras.
The father typically was Zeus or Apollo. The god would come and sleep with the woman, pretending to be the husband or as a bolt of lightning, or some such. Greek mythology also shows up in the book of Genesis: the gods lusting after the women and coming down and mating with them.