Parabasis

SPF: Definitely Not Dead

Just got an e-mail from someone who actually works for SPF letting me know that they are not dead, and are currently accepting submissions for their 2008 season. Read all the latest news at their site.

Lame Wad

Tagging for a meme brings me out of my silence again (damn you, Freeman!) I actually find this one hard to do, because I think I'm pretty open about most embarassing thing about myself. And I've admitted most of the things I would use (I cry at musicals, I've never seen Gone WIth The Wind) for previous memes. Hm...

List 5 things that certain people (who are not deserving of being your friend anyway) may consider to be "totally lame," but you are, despite the possible stigma, totally proud of. Own it. Tag 5 others.

(1) There was a period in my life where I could recite the entirety of The Muppet Movie while it was playing.

(2) I once liked a book so much that I looked up the author's phone number via information and called them to tell them I liked it. At like 11:00PM at night.

(3) I like performing impromptu slo-motion action scenes with people.

(4) Frequently, I will break into song for no apparent reason. Often I catch myself doing this before I do it, but I like singing so sometimes I can't help myself.

(5) I will get up in people's business if they are (a) loudly using language that offends me (racist, homophobic etc.) (b) smacking their kids or (c) endangering themselves or others in public. I will do this even if these are being done in casual ways. Yep, I'm that imposing liberal guy your mom warned you about.

Five People To Tag... Mark, Alison (PS: Alison, have you read either of Jeanette Winterson's forays into genre fiction yet?), Ming-Zhu, Sir Cote and Sir Jacobs

Breaking My Silence X2

This might just be one of the best blog posts I've ever read. It's formally elegant, and uses the specific medium of the internet in a way that works to its advantage. Oh, also, it's a big fuck you to GWB, which is always a good thing...

Breaking My Silence

Yes, I'm breaking my own rules, sorry gang, but I just read an opinion piece that I find so outrageous... I just... Well, I have to post a link to it and a quote (this is via Magikthise):

"All the damaging consequences of all the blunders the President has committed to date in Iraq are reversible in 48- to 72-hours - the time it will take to destroy Iran's fragile nuclear supply chain from the air. And since the job gets done using mostly stand-off weapons and stealth bombers, not one American soldier, sailor or airman need suffer as much as a bruised foot."

[...]

"[The Iranians] would stand before mankind with their pants around their ankles, dazed, bleeding, crying, reduced to bloviating from mosques in Teheran and pounding their fists on desks at the UN. . . .

"Miracles would be seen here at home. Democratic politicians are dumbstruck, silent for a week. With one swing of his mighty bat, the President has hit a dramatic walk-off homerun. He goes from goat to national hero overnight. The elections in November are a formality. Republicans keep the White House and recapture both houses of Congress.Hillary is elected president - of the Chappaqua PTA.

[...]

Am I dreaming? I don't think so. Being too sensible is probably more like it"

I don't even have the words to describe how disgusting and crazy this is.

After These Messages

I have come down with an upper resperatory affliction, I'm in the midst of tech week, I have guest teaching duties and all sorts of other stuff going on. I'm taking my shingle down for a week. Please visit any of the excellent blogs on my blogroll. I'll be back Monday, October 1st. See you then.

Read Some Krech

Nice post from Lucas on the meaning of community w/r/t theatre here.

Racist Ass Bullshit

Josh James does us all proud by talking about Falafel O'Reilly here in a post called O’Reilly Surprised Black People Act Just Like Other People . . .

Saturday Night Mooozeeeek

Health Care

Matt Yglesias makes the case here for incrementalism in health care policy. The idea goes something like this:

I would much rather see people trying to build support, directly, over the long run for single-payer health care and the marginalization of private sector insurance.

Incremental interim measures should be genuine increments -- steps in the right direction -- not efforts to square the interests sound health care policy with the financial interests of major insurance companies. John Kerry's 2004 plan, which involved having the government step in to cope with super-catastrophic medical expenses, was good in this regard -- a quite small measure that might have passed, but which created the sort of thing that could have been scaled up

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, Matt is right in that: (1) Single Payer health care needs to be the eventual goal of any health care strategy. (2) Once we have government mandated and subsidized private insurance, all the air in the single payer balloon will go out and (3) as Sicko makes fairly clear, if you didn't realize it already, private medical insurance sucks because fundamnetally mixing the profit motive with people's health is a superbad idea.

On the other hand, under Matt Yglesias' strategy, the 50 million uninsured people in this country would get bubkis for a really long time. It is unlikely that incrimental steps would be taken at a faster pace than, say, once very four years (because you'd promise the next incriment in the next election cycle, and it's only with a victory that you'd have a clear mandate to make them). And it would be even longer before the 250 million people on private health insurance would be able to be covered by the government.

Look, at the end of the day, the health insurance industry is incredibly powerful and is not going to go quietly into that good night. Any plan that assumes eventually we'd be able to get rid of them (instead of heavily regulating them) seems naive to me.

So... Fundraising.

When does creative fundraising cross a line into shady dealing in theatre? It's a grey area to be sure.

I ask this because someone recently sent me an e-mail that they got from a company offering to teach a class. The class is in how to run an off-off-broadway company. It features unnamed potential guest speakers ("artistic directors", "grant writers" etc.). The class costs $300.

This is the thing... the company that's advertising this has (by their own admission) only been around 5 years. They've gotten a lot of press and whatnot, and done a few shows, but still.

The reason why I find this a bit shady is that, frankly, I think it's questionable for an off-off company to make money off of other aspiring off-off companies. In a scene that has little money and is supposed to* work on the principles of all of us being in it together and community and what not to have as your fundraising scheme getting other off-off companies to pay you money for a questionable** service is counter to everything I like about the spirit of off-off theatre.

(This ties in to my problems with the Fringe's royalties take)

---
* (in my mind anyway, and in the minds of most of the people I work with and know... the person who sent me the e-mail called it "offensive")

** (Questionable because you have no idea going into it who the special guests are and thus whether or not it's worth your time... questionable because the whole thing is aimed at people who are just starting out at this and therefore don't know any better)