Parabasis

worst rest area name ever?

I am currently in a rest area off the garden state parkway. Its name? CHEESEQUAKE

FUCK YOU, DRACULA!

This made me laugh a lot.

Idea of the Day

The shaky science behind forensics.

Overdue Dark Confessions (Lets' Try This Again)

The post-- for the clicking-inhibited-- is about Matt's recent experience submitting a play and having it rejected after fairly obviously not being read or considered. It culminates in this passage:

We all know this happens. But we pretend it doesn't. We all do this sort of dance of denial. They say that it takes 1-3 months to get back to you. They don't mean that each submission gets its own personal meeting. They mean the stack of paper is very high and getting higher. Don't expect a phone call in the next week, just because you finished a play.

It's just that words like 'careful consideration' should have meaning. And if they don't, they should carry the illusion of meaning. All I ask (this is where my standards are) is that I am allowed to pretend that my submissions are not an empty exercise. I ask literary departments to support my illusion. When I got that e-mail, my first instinct was laughter. Were they serious? Did they really just say "after careful consideration?"

So... now I shall tell you about my experience on other side of the envelope.  For six months, I was a script reader for Unnamed New Play Theater.  UNPT had an open submission policy. Anyone could submit a full length play(not an excerpt). The end result of this policy was a wire shelving unit filled with plays.  Plays were spilling onto the floor, and sticking out at weird angles, wagging off the shelves like tongues chastising you for your inadequate commitment to your job, playwrights and the American Theatre.

UNPT has volunteer script readers. They were mostly (like myself) unpaid recent college graduates.  I had heard from someone that being a script reader was a good was to worm yourself in to a theater, so I had eagerly awaited my task. My first day reporting to duty, I was told that my job was this: Your job is to read each unsolicited script and give me enough information in a two-page report that I can write a rejection letter that makes me seem as if I've read it.

And so I did. I read scripts looking for the reasons why they shouldn't be done instead of why they should.  If a script was bad, it was bad. If it was good it was the wrong kind of play for the theater.

Now, in my and the theater's defense.... almost all of the plays I read were awful.  And the good ones really werethe wrong kinds of shows for UNPT. But still, there was a game being played here-- UNPT was deluding itself into thinking it was an egalitarian place where anyone, regardless of presence in the industry, agent status etc. would have their work considered.  The playwrights were deluding themselves into thinking they had a real shot at something. Everyone felt better about themselves.  Sort of.

A year later, UNPT got rid of their open submission policy. Ultimately, I think it's a good thing, an admission that the play's weren't really being considered anyway.  And I think about the theaters that still have open submission policies, many of which discuss in loud and self-congratulatory terms about it. And then I wonder-- when was the last time you found a play through an open submission?  My guess is a decade, if ever.

Matt's post has also got me thinking about what other delusion we cling to, what other things we all collectively say "Let's Just Pretend".

I can think of one from a recent conversation with a director... That getting a good Times review will boost your career as a director, and that it can lead rather specifically to getting an agent. (In fact, I think a lot of career advice peddled to directors is pretty outdated).  My friend was told over and over again-- get a great review in the Times, send it to agents, they'll come see your work. From multiple sources.  And then came the good reviews, including a near-rave in the Times. And the sending of said reviews to agents. And... nothing. I've heard that story from a few different peers now.  

What else are we clinging to?

Goddamnit!

We interrupt this blog of wildly misinterpreting geico commercials to bring you this personal message...

Okay, something is seriously wrong with me today, not only did I spill coffee all over my stove and somehow fuck up my pilot light in the process, but I wrote a whole post, clicked "publish" and it published a blank post. WTFF? (That's what-the-fucking-fuck, in case you were wondering).

I'll be retyping that post in just a moment, but I just needed a second to vent my frustration. GAAAARRRRRRAAARRRAGGH!

phew. okay. feeling better.

by the way, have i mentioned that Stumptown Coffee (particularly their Ethiopian varieties) is the shit? This is how good Stumptown is... you know those really pretentious descriptions where people talk about the flavors and notes of coffee and discuss it like wine? Stumptown's really pretentious descriptions (and they are super-duper pretentious, don't get me wrong) are also accurate. When they say a cup of coffee has hints or notes of lemon zest and strawberries, it actually does kinda taste like lemon zest and strawberries.

I hope I don't find out that they use slave labor or something. Why does Portland have everything awesome except jobs? Grr.

Not Ready For Post- (Part II)

Thinking about these issues some more, it seems the age that we've entered isn't post-racial, or post-homophobic or post-sexist. It is, rather, post-PC where we get a little thrill out of saying things that are somewhat transgressive and that is in its own way, humorous.

Which leads me to cavemen.  Specifically, the Geico Cavemen. Because if you stop and think about it for a moment, what, exactly is the joke of the Geico Cavemen?

The joke is that they're offended by something.  We laugh at them for being offended due to insulting advertising. It's an opportunity for all of us, no matter who we are or our background, to laugh at people for taking offense to something that is clearly insulting them.  It gives viewers a chance to enter the anti-PC majoritarian perspective regardless of their actual social status.  The Geico Cavemen are on some level a giant middle finger aimed at people who would dare be offended by representational issues in television.

This has reached a peak with the latest of the Geico Cavemen ads, where they go bowling to the horrible Three Doors Down song "Let Me Be Myself":

We're meant to laugh at this person being in pain for being insulted. We're meant to be the gloating majority lording it over the oppressed few, and to feel good about that.  The ad is, essentially, giving us the pleasure of being a bully. You'll note in this ad that there is no punchline.  In fact, if it was filmed exactly the same way, shot for shot, but with black people and it said at the end "So Easy a Black Man Could Do It" the ad could be a PSA against intolerance.  But it's not. It's about cavemen.   

I personally think this ad is a disaster on a lot of levels. Beyond being painfully, deeply unfunny, I think it backfires.  I think most people on some level will actually have negative associations with Geico by the end of it, because in the ad Geico is simply cruel and ruining some people's good times. it's an odd way to curry favor with the public.

But beyond that, this ad is a crystalization of anti-PC backlash that has now gone so mainstream we can sell insurance with it.

Of course, the problem is that there's a great deal of scientific evidence that people worried about representations of minorities in TV and Film (those who got branded as PC in the first play) were right and had an intuitive understanding of how our brains work. Our brains work through networks of associations. As things become more regularly associated together, our brains essentially "dial up" those associations faster.  This is why the Republicans have consciously turned "liberal" into a dirty word, they want you to think of "liberal" as a prescriptive term instead of a descriptive term, to associate it with phrases like "tax and spend" or "soft on crime" or "weak on national security".

There's quite a bit of evidence out there that seeing negative images of various groups can "prime" you to think more negatively about that group. And that being exposed to repeat negative experiences/language/representations can lead your brain to more readily activate negative networks. In other words, those of us who were worried about the constant representations of blacks as criminals on TV were worried with good reason, such representations can actually alter the unconscious ways that we think about African Americans.

Of course, telling ad men this ruins their good fun. So why not do a multi-year ad campaign about how people who are offended by their advertising are losers?

Things I Agree With

Michele Obama edition:

Later at the White House, Mrs. Obama addressed guests that included executives from Google, Target and the Bravo TVnetwork, among many others, lunching on White House china from the Bush, Truman and Eisenhower administrations. She returned to an oft-stated theme: Kids need more than just a good education, they need exposure to the arts — and early.

"An educational foundation is only part of the equation," the first lady said. "In order for creativity to flourish and imagination to take hold, we also need to expose our children to the arts from a very young age."

She said Albert Einstein had it right when he said imagination is more important than knowledge. "We need to ensure that our children have both — knowledge and imagination. I know I want that for my girls. They deserve to have access to a good education and access to ideas and images that will spark their creativity."

Read more:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/24/national/w122858D08.DTL&type=news#ixzz0Ml1ceMQK

Not Ready For Post-

I think the Right's extreme (and openly racist) reactions to Obama's Presidency and Sotomayor's nomination for the Court have put to bed a lot of the "post-racial" talk going on in American Politics. And thank goodness for that.  It's certainly a sign of positive change that a black man can get elected President in America; the idea that it somehow moved us beyond race was ridiculous on its face.  The story of race in America is the story of America. And many chapters of American history that seem non-racial have race lurking just below the surface, waiting to be discovered.

This was driven home to me again recently when I was listening to an NPR story on the Bonus Army.  The Bonus Army was a group of WWI veterans who set up a camp in Washington, D.C. in spring/summer of 1932.  They were owed bonuses for fighting (and surviving) WWI. They were not scheduled to get the bonuses until the mid-1940s, but figuring that since (a) the war ended in 1918 and (b) many of them could be dead by then, they set up camp where the National Gallery of Art is today in DC to lobby Congress.  They were eventually dispersed violently by General MacArthur. It was one of many things that lead to FDR's triumph on Election Day.

The authors of a recent book on the Bonus Army spent some time trying to solve the riddle of why the bonuses weren't scheduled to be paid out until the mid-1940s.  After some digging, they finally found out the answer: many of the veterans were black, and the Government was worried that paying out bonuses to black veterans would catapult some black southerners into the Middle Class ahead of poor whites and that the ensuing race riots would destroy the country.  (Another hidden racial angle was that the Bonus Army's camp was integrated and peaceful, something never mentioned in the white press, but a hot topic of conversation in the black press. There is some evidence that the push towards integration-- particularly in the armed forces-- has some of its roots planted firmly in the Bonus Army's tents).

Anyway... this post isn't about the Bonus Army. It's not even about politics.  It's about the idea of "Post-", which I think is a lot more complex an issue than we like to discuss.  Specifically, the idea of "Post-" in comedy.  Long before we'll be ready for a post-whatever political reality, it seems, we're ready to laugh at post-whatever jokes.  The comedian Sarah Silverman, for example, has made a career out of post-racial humor, in which she says racist things and we are meant to laugh at her as opposed to with her for saying them. For the most part her work is a successful lampoon of vapid racism, even if her act gets incredibly boring after about forty-five seconds.  Once you realize what the joke is, you realize it's the same joke over and over again and the actual words in it don't matter.  Insert outrageous statement. Insert you laughing at it. Until it dries up.

That Silverman's act also relies on you laughing with her at another ethnic stereotype-- that of the Jewish American Princess-- is rarely discussed.  But we seem to have entered an age in which Jews are accepted enough in society that we can openly mock them, as long as they're mocking themselves at the same time.  When Eric Cartman speaks of the Jews and their conspiracies and exterminating them, we laugh for two reasons.  One of them is that it's patently ridiculous and reflects badly on him as a character. But the thing that gives us permission to laugh is that one of South Park's co-creators is Jewish.

Recently, I've noticed a wide-spread resurgence of homophobic language at the multi-plex and amongst my peers.  "That's so gay" has made an ironic comeback, as has the occasional use of the word "faggot". One gay friend of mine pointed out that he was unable to enjoy The Hangover because of the movie's constant homophobia.  He mentioned the "paging doctor faggot" scene. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's a scene in which Ed Helms' ("castrating bitch" of a) girlfriend is complaining about his friends' immaturity while Helms is arguing that she just doesn't know them well enough.  Perfectly on cue, Bradley Cooper shows up in his car, honks the horn and shouts "PAGING DOCTOR FAGGOT" as Helms looks sheepishly at his girlfriend.

The comedy of the moment (for me) comes from Helms' pathetic attempts at justifying his friends to his girlfriend and being immediately shown up for it.  But I have to wonder (along with my gay friend) how much of the laughter in the multiplex comes simply from the fact that Bradley Cooper called his clearly emasculated friend a faggot.

And so I also wonder at my friends-- and to be honest, occasionally myself-- who are vocal advocates for gay rights, who have gay friends and bandy about phrases like that "that's so gay".  The quotation marks are heavy, it's meant to reflect back on the speaker as a joke at our own immaturity.  But at the same time, we have also used a phrase that ten years ago we would've been deeply offended by. And most of the people I know who deploy such post-homophobic language, don't do it around their gay friends.  

Which gets me to thinking.... If a non-Jewish friend said (jokingly) "don't Jew me" when we were sorting out the change at a restaurant, I'd be offended by it.  Furthermore, legal discrimination against gays still exists in a way that it doesn't towards Jews. Gays are openly and explicitly discriminated against by their own government. They are pretty much the only group in our society for whom that is currently true (legal discrimination against other groups tends to be covert, which makes it no less real, just different).

As I begin working on a play that-- for all its Ridiculous trappings-- is about the pain and terror of growing up gay in America, and as I look at our nation and how far we've come on these issues and how far we have yet to go, it seems ridiculous to me that we would use language like faggot and that's so gay and whatnot and think it was okay.  You can still fire someone for being gay in this country.   Who do we think we are to be saying shit like that?  

Idea of the Day

The neuroscience of junk food:

While the McGriddle is a tasty creation, the most pleasurable thing about the sandwich isn't the pancake or the bacon: it's the calories. According to a recent paper in Neuron, the brain also receives rewarding input from metabolic processes that have nothing to do with the tongue. When you eat at McDonald's, a big part of the pleasure comes from the fact that the food is sustenance, fuel, energy. Even mediocre food is a little rewarding.

The scientists at Duke came up with a clever paradigm for isolating this more indirect rewarding pathway: they studied mice without a functional TRPM5 channel, which is essential for detecting sweetness. As a result, these mutant mice showed no immediate preference for sugar water.
But here comes the cool part of the experiment. The scientists then allowed the mice to spend some time with the sugar water and normal water. After a few hours, it became clear that the mutant mice greatly preferred the sugar water, even though they couldn't taste the sugar. (A control experiment with sucralose, an artificial sweetener, demonstrated that the rats were responding to the caloric intake, not the sweet taste.)

Finally, the scientists measured dopamine levels (via in vivo microdialysis) in the nucleus accumbens (a brain area that processes rewards) in the mutant mice and normal mice.* While normal mice exhibited an increase in dopamine in response to both fake sugar and real sugar - the reward was the sweet taste - the mutant mice only demonstrated a dopaminergic spike when consuming genuine sugar water. What they enjoyed were the calories.

RTWT here.

What Would You Recommend?

If you could only recommend one piece of theatre to see this weekend, what would it be?