9:31 PM
9:31 PM
Longenbaugh on Theatre: Off the Chain (Seattle Weekly):
When I first met Mike Daisey in 1998, he gave me a lap dance. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
I'm pretty sure he didn't realize I was a reviewer, there to critique his first solo show in Seattle, Wasting Your Breath; he was just picking some poor sucker in the audience to writhe his considerable frame against as he recalled an unfortunate moment during the cross-country road trip that took him from a pregnant girlfriend on the East Coast to a new life in Seattle.
But I don't think it would have slowed him down even if he had known. Daisey's outstanding quality as a performer is his fearlessness, as demonstrated by Stories From the Atlantic Night Cafe, which he's bringing to Seattle for one night only at the Capitol Hill Arts Center on Sunday, Feb. 4. It takes guts to do a solo show. But it takes a deep foolhardiness to draw up an outline for a story only an hour before curtain, then use that as the guideline for an evening of extemporaneous entertainment.
9:29 PM
10:50 AM
10:48 AM
tiny nibbles - violet blue:
I am friends with many pornographers and porn stars; they often want me to blog about their newest movies, etc. Late last year I said, sure, I like the video, can I have some still images for a blog post? They sent them in a FedEx pack of disks. Included was the 2257 CD -- and on it were scans and photos of each performer's state ID (or passport), Social Security cards (often held in a photo next to their faces), and forms including their real names and real addresses. I became the proud owner of everything someone would ever need to steal their identities, stalk and harass, blackmail, whatever. It freaked me the fuck out to even have that in my house. And the performers have no idea I have that -- they probably have no idea how many people have access to their personal information under this bizarrely executed law. But hey -- think the DoJ cares about what happens to porn stars? Most vulnerable, of course are female performers -- when 2257 went into effect, performer Kami Andrews got a pile of fan mail at her home and a few lurkers in her driveway. Can't they come up with a better way of "protecting the children"?
10:46 AM
10:43 AM
8:46 AM
8:18 AM
8:14 AM
4:46 PM
The Believer - Interview with Todd Solondz:
TS: Yes, but that’s different from liking comedies. All I mean is, I’m not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it’s not very loud. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the movie. On the other hand, when it comes to violence, I can be a bit too audible. When I was making Storytelling, I couldn’t watch while the violent sex scene between the student and the professor was being shot. It was too intense.
SN: Well, we here in America didn’t get to watch it either, of course, because it was blocked by that famous red rectangle. But in the end you weren’t entirely displeased with that, right?
TS: Well, needless to say, I would have preferred the scene to be shown untouched. But I was not entirely displeased with the block for a very specific reason. In the contract, I had stated that I would not cut anything or change any lines in order to get an R rating. I would agree only to boxes and bleeps. As a result, what the audience sees in my movie is a pure example of censorship. Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they’re watching isn’t the original. Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that—and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.
Notice, by the way, how nobody uses the word censorship. Instead, everyone talks about “the rating system.” But most Americans have no idea how abridged the work they end up seeing on screen really is, how different from what the director originally intended. With Storytelling, at least, it’s explicit: this is what the censors say American citizens, no matter what age, are not permitted to see, even though it can be seen by other people all over the world. I suppose you could call it a political statement.
4:45 PM
1:25 AM
12:37 AM
11:51 PM
China censorship damaged us, Google founders admit | Business | Guardian Unlimited Business:
Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.
Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.
1:41 PM
12:43 PM
12:39 PM
9:42 AM
Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith -- New York Magazine:
People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness—they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge. Thirteen years, three books, and dozens of papers into his profession, Barry Farber, a professor at Columbia Teachers College and trained psychotherapist, realized he was feeling this way. Unfortunately, he was well acquainted with the symptoms. He was a burnout researcher himself.
Being burned out on burnout—now that was rich. Madame Curie died of radiation poisoning; Joseph Mitchell famously developed a 32-year-long case of writer’s block after writing a two-part New Yorker series about a blocked writer; now Farber was suffering the same self-referential fate. He jokes about it today (who wouldn’t?) but hardly felt sanguine as it was happening (who would?). Colleagues tried to persuade him to stick it out. “But for the most part, I’ve resisted coming back,” says Farber. “I’ve never been able to find that same sense of satisfaction.”
9:42 AM
9:42 AM
1:08 AM
From my sketch comedy youth in Seattle, doing local television:
The days of wine and roses!
12:35 AM
2:55 PM
2:00 PM
Cheney Shoots You In The Face :
EVERYWHERE, Jan. 25, 2007--For the second time in one year, Vice President Dick Cheney was involved in a gun-related incident once again after shooting you in the face with a shotgun earlier today.
Reportedly enraged with the media and public reaction to President Bush's recent State of the Union address, which was described as "imbecilic", "insulting" and "full of tainted meat" by its nine viewers, Cheney embarked on an ambitious project to shoot every American in the face, including you.
1:59 PM
1:59 PM
Say Hello To Alpha Kitty:
"What I want to do is gather my tribe"—yes, Rubenstein actually says things like this—"the ones reading Seventeen, and the ones who were, and grew out of it." This tribe is 13 to 30, female, thoroughly digital, and, in Rubenstein's view, lacking an "alpha kitty" addressing their concerns and sensibility. What she brings is her big-sister, geek-gone-glam persona. She honed this act editing Seventeen and teen title CosmoGIRL, and now shows it in full plumage in her MySpace blog entries, which are a riot of excessive capitalization and estrogenic display. The ultimate shape of Atoosa Inc. is inchoate, but Rubenstein is certain of one thing. "The next Oprah will not be born on TV," she says. "I left to launch my brand."
These days Rubenstein's parent company is her own Big Momma Productions, which explains the enormous ring that emblazons "big momma" across three fingers, (a gift from her husband, she explains). In a meeting, she says about her audience, without apparent irony: "They are unborn to me, but they're mine." Still, her sense of ownership and her furiously fashionista exterior is often punctured by glimpses of the homespun and deeply idiosyncratic. At a meeting with potential investors she skips PowerPoint in favor of construction paper decorated, grade school project-style, with a crazy-quilt of colored pencil notations. Her first offering may be what she terms her "art project," Psychic Kitty, a series of psychedelicized videos on her MySpace page. They will star her cat Thurston spouting, in Rubenstein's electronically processed voice, brief inspirational tidbits. Rubenstein calls Psychic Kitty "the cat in the family," and she's mum on a debut date: "You know how it is with cats."
11:30 AM
11:24 AM
11:23 AM
Mike Daisey’s life before wartime:
Mike Daisey has a gigantic head. In his new one-man show at the Public Theater, his expressive face, glowing baby pink or flamingo red, mirrors his explosion of ideas on everything from the sensation of his wife in his arms to the “ecstatic dirtiness” of the New York City subway system. Playing this week as part of the Under the Radar festival of new theater, “Invincible Summer” is ostensibly about Daisey’s life during the summer before September 11, 2001, but it also includes digressions about the dreams of cities, Polish wedding toasts, and the history of the MTA to create a story that is bigger, messier, and far more rewarding than mere autobiography.
Half the fun of Mike Daisey is watching him spin out a tangle of ideas and wondering how he’ll lasso them into a coherent story. He works from an outline, not a script, and he free-forms the words in each performance, a method that gives him the loose spontaneity of great standup and the kinetic force to fill a room as large as the Public Theater.
11:20 AM
11:19 AM
Invincible Summer: nytheatre.com:
Armed with only a table and a chair, a glass of water, and a few sheets of paper, monologist/solo performer Mike Daisey takes the audience on a funny and profound journey in his extraordinary new show, Invincible Summer. The title refers to an Albert Camus quote about discovering the invincible summer in oneself, but just as easily applies to the rich tapestry of events that occur one particular summer and shake the author to his core.
11:18 AM
2:06 PM
Mr. Excitement News: Panel Report-Out: Changing Mindsets:
Richard Nelson, whose missive on "the damage this culture of 'development' has done and continues to do to my profession" ignited a dialogue that continues to reverberate throughout the blogosphere, called playwriting “a glorious and wonderful profession” that “supported myself and my family”. Over his 30-year career, Nelson said he’s seen the profession “come under siege” and the role of the playwright questioned in “unfortunate” ways. Development “implies that something outside of ourselves is going to tell us what to do.” Nelson railed against “this terrible word called ‘text’”, which is employed, he said, to “push the playwright aside.” In fact, he said, “Words are only an indication of the play that I have written.”
Morgan Jenness, the dramaturg on the panel, agreed with Nelson’s assessment of the situation. “I totally agree”, she said, offering that “the way the institutions are structured” was to blame. Something has happened “across the board” in the regional theaters, she said. Previously (Jenness worked for Joe Papp at the Public), there was a “core attitude that everyone in the institution was responsive to the work”, but “now it really feels like the institutions are these factories”, lacking “real dialogue with the audience”. Also, “Institutional artists are not honest with themselves about their prejudices or desires.”
Following the money trail is one way to assess what’s happened, Nelson said. Over the course of his career, he’s seen the new play move from the mainstage to the second stage and now into non-production situations. 13P and SPF are the way to go, he said. “Pure production for young emerging writers. It is the answer.”
1:29 PM
1:24 PM
1:16 PM
A piece I did for WIRED Magazine on Peter Weller is up on the web:
RoboCop, PhD:
THE CELEBRITY SECOND ACT HAS BECOME a staple of pop culture. The press releases almost write themselves: Comedian becomes reality TV host, reality TV host becomes actor, actor releases mediocre rap album. But those second acts don’t always sink to the level of cliché. Take Peter Weller. He’s had a long, meandering Act I. After a vibrant movie career in the 1980s that included playing the lead in cult hits like RoboCop, he fell into the far less glamorous world of direct-to-video and straight-to-cable. Then last year, he came back big, in a riveting turn as a bad guy on 24.
In the interim, though, Weller started getting into character for Act II. He spent much of the past two decades in Italy and, on a lark, enrolled in classes at the Syracuse University program in Florence. He soon discovered he had a thing for the aqueducts of long-dead civilizations, and now he’s working toward a PhD in Italian Renaissance art history from UCLA. This is no vanity degree; Weller teaches courses, writes papers, and is doggedly climbing the academic ladder. Buckaroo Banzai, the polymath who was arguably Weller’s most famous character — acclaimed neurosurgeon, race car driver, particle physicist, and, of course, rock star — would be proud. “I’ve always followed my passions,” Weller says, “even when it didn’t seem to make much sense.”
12:48 PM
Final chances to catch INVINCIBLE SUMMER--when it's gone, it's gone.
Read the feature here, and order tickets here.
5:59 PM
5:41 PM
Bog Face: Cathedral:
When I was in Moscow this summer my sister-in-law was eating what I would refer to as a honeydew melon for dinner and when I asked her what it was called she said "dyinya" - which just means melon. There's nothing for the honey dew part. This ended up causing some tension between us because the "y" in that first syllable represents a horrible vowel called a "Yery" and after all these years of trying I still can't fucking make this sound correctly - even though it's all over the Russian language. So she kept saying "dyinya" and I kept saying "dyinya" and she kept saying NO! NO! DYINYA! and so on. And then I wore black to her wedding. The yery is a "close, central unrounded vowel" which means you pretend like your throat is closing up after a deadly allergic reaction to say a bee sting, and then, with your throat in that position, you try to make the sound "ee." Even though I'm an actor, it takes me a really long time to imagine the bee sting part and by then everyone has moved on they don't care about me anymore.
What's weird about the "close, central unrounded vowel" is that it's rare in Indo-European languages - mainly it's used in Polish, Russian, and Romanian - but it's used in almost all the indigenous languages of the Americas. They even think the Aztecs used it. So I guess that walking over ice thing or whatever is true.
Goodness I'm digressing.
5:40 PM
7:29 AM
6:02 AM
Boing Boing: LACMA's Magritte exhibit: This is not fair use:
Inside, they've hung many of Magritte's famous works, and, accompanying these works, they've placed dozens of contemporary sculptures and paintings that riff off of Magritte, making fun of him or paying homage to him or commenting on him. These are canonical fair uses -- an artist who takes from another artist and uses his work to make new work. In these other works, from the likes of Warhol and Antin, there are instances of Magritte's work being duplicated in photos and paint.
So far so good -- there's a clear message from the paintings in the exhibit: culture is well-served by liberal rules that let one person remix another's creation.
But that message is undermined by the exhibition policy on photos: no photos are allowed in the exhibit. If you take out your camera, one of the bowler-hatted guards will come up to you and shout at you (literally shout at you!): "No photos allowed!" They won't even let you take out a phone or PDA and make notes with it, in case you're sneakily taking photos on the premises.
This is a riddle: does the Magritte exhibition celebrate fair use, or deny it? Does it want to inspire us to remix Magritte, or warn us off the idea of reproduction without permission?
5:27 AM
5:26 AM
Schneier on Security: "Clear" Registered Traveller Program:
The truth is that whenever you create two paths through security -- a high-security path and a low-security path -- you have to assume that the bad guys will find a way to exploit the low-security path. It may be counterintuitive, but we are all safer if the people chosen for more thorough screening are truly random and not based on an error-filled database or a cursory background check.
I think of Clear as a $100 service that tells terrorists if the F.B.I. is on to them or not. Why in the world would we provide terrorists with this ability?
We don’t have to. Clear cardholders are not scrutinized less when they go through checkpoints, they’re scrutinized more efficiently. So why not get rid of the background checks altogether? We should all be able to walk into the airport, pay $10, and use the Clear lanes when it’s worth it to us.
5:26 AM
5:26 AM
Slashdot | US Attorney General Questions Habeas Corpus:
"In yet another attempt to create legitimacy for the Bush Administration's many questionable legal practices, US attorney General Alberto Gonzales actually had the audacity to argue before a Congressional committee that the US Constitution doesn't explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights on US citizens. In his view it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the rights are granted. The Attorney General was being questioned by Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18. THe MSM are not covering this story but Colbert is (click on the fourth video down, 'Exact Words')."
From the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel commentary:
"While Gonzales's statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear (such as free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble peacefully) also don't exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative. It boggles the mind the lengths this administration will go to to systematically erode the rights and privileges we have all counted on and held up as the granite pillars of our society since our nation was founded."
11:39 PM
11:39 PM
NOT FOR TOURISTS - Mike Daisey:
Google “monologuist” and appropriately the fifth entry that pops up is a mention of the late (and great) Spalding Gray. Well, look for a new name to be inching it’s way up the Google hierarchy very soon—Mike Daisey. To see what the buzz is about, go catch his new monologue Invincible Summer at the Public Theater as part of the Under the Radar Festival. I saw the show opening night and it was hilarious. And touching. And disturbing. His honest stories never revert to sappiness, and he keeps the pace brisk by jumping back and forth between various plotlines. He talks about some of the best things in life (Brooklyn, the subway, joyous weddings) to some of the worst (9/11, family betrayal, Paris Hilton).
11:21 PM
11:21 PM
Invincible Summer: review on TheaterMania.com:
He has a knack for detailed descriptions and keen observations that provoke laughter of recognition amongst his audience. His stories are often raucously funny, but the solo performer also probes more intense and painful subjects in a compelling manner. He captures the complex and contradictory feelings that many Americans had after 9/11 and isn't afraid of expressing some of his own less-than-politically-correct emotions.
2:35 PM
2:34 PM
KadmusArts - where culture speaks » Blog Archive » Interview: Mike Daisey:
In this interview, Mike talks about the genesis of this latest work, how he develops the converging story lines, and what’s on the sheets of paper he brings on stage.
2:30 PM
2:30 PM
Sundance opens with call to speak out against war | US News | Reuters.com:
Redford, whose Sundance Institute for independent film backs the annual festival, said in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks he, like many others, showed a "spirit of unity" with President George W. Bush and others who backed the war on terrorism and led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We put all our concerns on hold to let the leaders lead," Redford told a packed audience for the opening night documentary film, "Chicago 10."
"I think we're owed a big, massive apology," he added.
3:33 AM
There's a feature in Sunday's New York Times about my work, the monologues and Jean-Michele and my collaboration.
Click on the above to read it full-size.
Tickets are still available for Saturday and Monday's performances of INVINCIBLE SUMMER--you can find all the show details here.
2:28 PM
10:59 AM
A rather extensive interview is up at Gothamist about my work and INVINCIBLE SUMMER. You can read it here.
12:16 AM
12:14 AM
CitySpecific: Invincible Summer:
I haven't seen a whole lot of monologues performed live, but Daisey's proved to me it can have all the drama of an ensemble piece. His narrative embraces weddings, Seattle, subways, the New York summer, one horribly memorable New York summer day, the Jersey shore, his parents' divorce, New York's obsession with itself (which prompts a very funny bit about Paris Hilton), and general existential dread (hence the Camus reference in the title). The work is paced like a great memoir should be.
12:13 AM
12:12 AM
olamina: don't go to bed angry...stay up and fight. OR this week's cultural event #1:
I'd seen Mike do a short monologue in the summer of 2005 at The Harlem Shakes' really great Pianos residency, but it was a rowdy night in a hot and sweaty nightclub. Not the right place to get into a riveting monologue. SO I was really glad to get the chance to see him again.
12:11 AM
12:11 AM
Hello, APAP Conference Attendees and Under The Radar Symposium Participants!
Here are some quick links to INVINCIBLE SUMMER to make it easier for you to get around:
INVINCIBLE SUMMER performance times, description and ticket information.
An interview on Public Radio International's FAIR GAME about INVINCIBLE SUMMER.
A short biography about me and my work.
A comprehensive list of the monologues I perform, including reviews, features, excerpts and more.
The Public Theater is located at 425 Lafayette Street, and full directions may be found here.
I'll be coming out to the bar in the lobby after performances, and will be around the symposium on Thursday, the speed dating event on Friday, and all over the Public through the weekend--if you have trouble reaching me for any reason, simply send me an email.
Be seeing you,
md
1:36 AM
4:09 PM
He speaks the truth softly, at a show called Talkingstick:
Known by his friends as William Lee, this tall, long-haired Chinese-American has been a fixture in the Village for 20 years. He started doing street shows in Washington Square Park when he was in college, first as a juggler, then as a kung-fu comic incorporating jokes, fire tricks, and martial arts. Thousands of NYU students, drug dealers, tourists, and neighborhood grifters undoubtedly remember his immortal words: “Ladies and gentlemen! I, Master Lee, will break this board” (dramatic pause) “with my HEAD. But first!”
For five years he did standup in comedy clubs, garnering spots on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Showtime at the Apollo, but returned to street shows because they gave him a visceral jolt he couldn’t find anywhere else. Eventually Master Lee and Washington Square Park outgrew each other: he wanted to evolve artistically, and the Giuliani administration wanted to ban open flames from the park.
He immersed himself in the alternative comedy scene on the Lower East Side, especially Faceboy’s Open Mic and Reverend Jen’s Anti-Slam. In these free-for-all art spaces, he took creative risks that were impossible in street shows or comedy clubs. He experimented with playwrighting and created new performance characters, the boldest and strangest being a uber-surrealist Salvador Dali who pulled fish out of his pants and played kickball with squid (to the delight of alt-comedy audiences and the horror of his girlfriend).
Then he turned 40, and had a mid-life crisis in reverse: instead of buying a sports car and escaping into a macho fantasy world, he retired his hyper-masculine, over-the-top stage characters and started performing as himself, William Lee, with no props and no jokes — just true stories about his life.
4:08 PM
2:55 PM
Scrubs - TV - New York Times:
Most amazing to the composers was the speed at which the production came together. “It took us five years to write ‘Avenue Q,’ ” Mr. Marx said. “There were a million readings and previews and staged readings. With this thing, we wrote the songs in a week. They rehearsed for a week. They filmed it in a week, and it was done. It was liberating, and a collaborative effort that created a much more feel-good way of working.”
NBC gave its approval for the episode, Mr. Lawrence said, and Touchstone Television and its parent, Disney, spent nearly twice the normal amount to produce the episode, including hiring a 50-piece orchestra to punch up the musical numbers.
Mr. Marx was so enamored of the process, in fact, that he has decided to move to Los Angeles. During a telephone interview last week, he said he was packing his things, giving up his New York rental apartment and dreaming of more television song-and-dance numbers.
He is nothing if not confident. “I got a one-way ticket,” he added.
2:55 PM
2:28 PM
12:08 PM
Reason Magazine - Illuminated Manuscripts:
The novelist, satirist, journalist, and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson passed away last Thursday, just a week shy of his 75th birthday. When he was alive he sometimes complained -- or maybe it was a boast -- that his books were never reviewed in The New York Times. The paper of record did pay its respects when he died, though, with a brief piece about his life and work. It wasn't entirely accurate, but the author of Illuminatus! would have enjoyed that. When a rumor of his death spread on the Net in the early '90s, complete with a fake Los Angeles Times obituary that got several details of his life wrong, Wilson wrote that he "admired the artistic verisimilitude of the Gremlin who forged that obit....Little touches of incompetence and ignorance like that helped create the impression of a real, honest-to-Jesus LA Times article."
9:32 AM
9:01 AM
Weekly - Played out:
After 30+ years of personally subsidizing this art form through low-wages, we need to get these cheap labor liberals off of our Boards of Trustees. These board members well know what it costs to obtain quality civilian workers (I'm talking department heads, here) at their not-for-profits. But they continually, year after year after year after year exploit and take advantage of the artists.
Case in point: This summer TAG posted a notice of employment for a new head of marketing and development. The starting salary was $35,000 annually plus benefits and vacation. A first-hire staff member at the moribund TAG makes more than I do at the Intiman - a larger theatre - after 30 years and 42 productions. And nobody pays a dime to see a theatre staffer onstage. I make less than $30K a year. I rent. At 53, I make so little, I quality for and am on the waiting list for subsidized housing in Seattle. And frankly, it's not like I'm a wannabe; I'm in the top 15% of work weeks in AEA and have been for a quarter century. Even with those stats, my annual pension at retirement is still under $20,000.
Ben Moore at the Rep makes a six-figure salary; the head of development at the same institution receives upwards of $80,000. I'm clearly working on the wrong side of the footlights.
In 1991 the top salary at the Seattle Rep was between $800 - $900 dollars weekly - GOOD pay at the time. In 2007, the top salary at the Rep is between $800 - $900 a week. Do you think any staffers at the Rep, or the Rep's Board members in their respective civilian jobs went for a decade and half without a pay raise? Doubtful.
Actors have no effective advocacy within the present system. There is no meritocracy. No home. We are migrant artists. Hired to prepare and pick an eight week crop of performances and then move on. Good actors have been so cheaply obtained for so long that our boards of trustees have forgotten us. These people create the budgets we labor under. And they know damned well that the pay they scrape up for the ACTORS is a sum they themselves couldn't or wouldn't accept.
Truly, only the young can afford to be in American not-for-profit theatre.
9:00 AM
8:42 AM
8:41 AM
Ironic Sans: Have your own millionaire Picasso experience:
The anonymous buyer who purchased Le Reve sold it to casino magnate Steve Wynn in 2001. He in turn sold it to hedge fund mogul Steven Cohen for $139 million, setting a new record for the most money spent on a painting. All the formalities of the deal were finished, but the handover of the painting had yet to take place when a terrible event occurred. Just a few months ago, before turning the painting over, Wynn had several famous friends over to show it off. Among the guests were Barbara Walters, Nicholas Pileggi, and Nora Ephron, who described on Ariana Huffington’s blog what happened next:
The Ganz collection went up for auction in 1997, Wynn was saying — he was standing in front of the painting at this point, facing us. He raised his hand to show us something about the painting — and at that moment, his elbow crashed backwards right through the canvas.
There was a terrible noise.
Wynn stepped away from the painting, and there, smack in the middle of Marie-Therese Walter’s plump and allegedly-erotic forearm, was a black hole the size of a silver dollar - or, to be more exactly, the size of the tip of Steve Wynn’s elbow — with two three-inch long rips coming off it in either direction. Steve Wynn has retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that damages peripheral vision, but he could see quite clearly what had happened.
“Oh shit,” he said.
8:40 AM
What's in My Journal
Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
William Stafford
2:28 AM
2:26 AM
the gallivanting monkey, or, tina's blog: nobody call me between 6 & 11 pm:
No, I'm talking about the Golden Globes and the Oscars. And the Golden Globes are great because they've got such a quorum of famous people. They're rockin' it movie-style AND tv-style. Plus all the celebrities are drunk and wander around from table to table schmoozing. (I far prefer watching people schmooze, even fleetingly from a great distance, to schmoozing myself which I find a holy terror. I wish I could watch a whole show of actors schmoozing, skillfully and unskillfully. I wouln't be able to take my eyes off of it. It fascinates me because I find it so difficult.)
2:11 AM
1:59 AM
1:59 AM
1:58 AM
1:57 AM
1:57 AM
1:29 AM
I was on FAIR GAME, Public Radio International's news program, yesterday with an interview about and excerpt from INVINCIBLE SUMMER--feel free to listen to it:
FAIR GAME interview and INVINCIBLE SUMMER excerpt
2:32 PM
12:29 PM
12:27 PM
12:25 PM
Gadgets as Tyrants - New York Times:
THE 40th annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week was packed, as usual, with cool new technology. New devices included ultra-thin/ultrawide TV displays, networked entertainment systems and innumerable gadgets that bring music, movies and television to our hands and homes in new ways.
But many of these new products limit our freedom to use and share the music, movies and other content they are intended for.
It wasn’t always like this. Decades ago, audiocassette and videocassette recorders gave consumers the power to copy audiotapes and videotapes — a power previously reserved for a locked world of retailers and distributors.
The 1984 Betamax case, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that technology companies aren’t liable for copyright infringement when people misuse their products, encouraged still more innovation. There was a flood of gadgets that enabled us to copy things, including personal computers, CD burners and TiVo.
Since then, the entertainment industry has put pressure on electronics manufacturers to limit the consumer’s ability to make copies. And as a result, many of the tens of thousands of products displayed last week on the Vegas expo floor, as attractive and innovative as they are, are designed to restrict our use.
11:04 AM
11:04 AM
11:02 AM
The Twilight Years of Cap'n Crunch - WSJ.com:
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Underneath a highway bisecting this Silicon Valley town, home to Google Inc. and other tech giants, John Draper crammed his bulky frame through the door of a friend's home: a battered 1978 Chevy diesel bus.
Radio parts, a wrench set, arthritis medication and a book on robotics cluttered the dashboard. A padded bench for sleeping and a greasy stove filled the back.
"What do you want for lunch?" asked Dave Bengel, a self-taught engineer.
"Salmon," responded Mr. Draper, 63, who has few teeth and wears the same clothes for days. He is better known in Silicon Valley as "Cap'n Crunch," a legendary figure who 25 years ago epitomized the freewheeling, prank-filled culture that gave birth to high tech.
"Salmon, all right!" cried Mr. Bengel. He set about preparing the meal -- obtained free from a Whole Foods worker who leaves outdated products near a dumpster at a prearranged time.
In the decades since Mr. Draper gained fame for his hacking skills as a "phone phreak" -- he once claimed to have gotten then-President Nixon on the phone -- Silicon Valley has aged and matured. Pioneers that Mr. Draper worked with, such as Apple's Steve Jobs, have gone on to become wealthy members of the business establishment.
10:38 AM
12:16 AM
Quantifying the Pointlessness of the Golden Globes - New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer:
As well publicized as the mechanics of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are, every year someone is shocked to hear that the second-most-fussed-about award in Hollywood is being handed out by a cagey club with membership in double digits. So, in honor of tonight's event, we present Daily Intel's quick tutorial on the HFPA, lovingly garnered from CNN, Luke Ford, and other sources including our acquaintance on the inside (voting member Serge Rakhlin).
Members: 89
Estimated number of actual full-time journalists: About two dozen
Entry rules: Nearly impossible to crack — any applicant can be vetoed by any one member
Trademark privilege: Allowed to be photographed with the stars after the junket (originally, to prove to the overseas editor that the interview took place)
Other perks: Two paid trips to any film festival each year
Status among U.S. film critics: Extremely low (colleagues, from David Denby to Richard Schickel, describe HFPA members as "fawning," gift-addicted flacks)
Arguable low point: 1982, naming Pia Zadora "New Star of the Year" weeks after enjoying a weekend in Vegas courtesy of her wealthy husband
Arguable high point: 2006, awarding Best Drama to Brokeback Mountain; 2007, reluctantly renouncing $62,000 goody bags
12:16 AM
12:07 AM
I Blew It on Microsoft:
I was one of those reluctant regulators. As the evidence of Microsoft's practices became clear, I remember well thinking, "Of course the government needs to do something." And I remember very well the universal impatience with the notion that the market would solve the problem. How could it, when any other company was likely to behave just as Microsoft did?
We pro-regulators were making an assumption that history has shown to be completely false: That something as complex as an OS has to be built by a commercial entity. Only crazies imagined that volunteers outside the control of a corporation could successfully create a system over which no one had exclusive command. We knew those crazies. They worked on something called Linux.
I wanted to believe that Linux would prevail. But I'm a lawyer, and lawyers aren't programmed to see how profitable innovation might happen without commercial control. I didn't like the idea of regulation; I just didn't see any alternative. The suits would always beat the rebels. Isn't that why they were so rich?
9:34 PM
4:35 PM
2:16 PM
Slashdot | Submitting Federal Proposals Requires Windows:
"The US federal government is requiring that proposals for grants etc be submitted using a common system at http://grants.gov/. That's a good idea, except that effectively, you must use Windows and Explorer. See To operate PureEdge Viewer, your computer must meet the following system requirements: Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... PureEdge on Grants.gov will not run within the Firefox browser. They do have a Citrix substitute for non-Windows users. However the site goes on to say "Note that a limited amount of users can access the Citrix Server at any one time... Finally, you will find the best time to work and submit an application via Citrix is during off-peak hours, usually between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., EST. Finally, if your organization has more than 10 non-Windows users, they want you to add a dedicated Windows box to handle the traffic. For National Science Foundation clients, this is a big step backwards. NSF has had an excellent online system, http://fastlane.nsf.gov/ for years. Fastlane has no bias towards MS. However, by federal edict, NSF people must also use grants.gov."
2:09 PM
2:06 PM
Respectful Insolence: Stomping free speech flat in Europe:
I realize that Europe has a different history and that many European nations place different values than we Americans do on the right to free speech compared to the desire to restrict incitement, but these sorts of lawas are scary stuff to me. One big problem with the proposed law is that it seems to criminalize all Holocaust denial but says that it won't be "prosecuted" if it doesn't result in incitement. Who decides what is and isn't "incitement" in Holocaust denial? I have to wonder: What if someone simply says that the Holocaust never happened? Would that be legal, as long as he didn't say the Holocaust was some sort of Jewish conspiracy? Another problem with the description of the laws that are being proposed is that they seem frighteningly vague on defining what constitutes "incitement to racial hatred." Let's say someone starts ranting about how "Jews control the world" and that whites must "resist Jewish domination," adding, for example, some canards from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion or the Blood Libel to spice things up. In the U.S., as disgusting as this sort of speech is, in the U.S. it is protected under the First Amendment, as long as it doesn't include speech that a reasonable person would consider to be likely to incite imminent lawless action or harm to another person. Under the "harmonization" of incitement laws, it sounds as though these vague sorts of expressions would be illegal.
2:06 PM
9:37 AM
9:36 AM
Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: The Conscience of Rod Dreher:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool. In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government's conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.
I turn 40 next month - middle aged at last - a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully. I did not expect Vietnam. As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long drive home.
9:35 AM
4:22 AM
Big Brother could slow British motorcycles down, track routes - Engadget:
Most would argue that the UK certainly doesn't need one more piece of surveillance equipment watching its citizens, but regardless of the naysayers, it just might be getting another anyway. The latest implementation of Big Brother in our everyday lives comes courtesy of the Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA), which are devices (presumably GPS-based) that will purportedly track motorcyclists' speeds and throttle things down if they attempt to break the posted speed limit(s). Moreover, the ISA could even be used to track bikers' journeys, and if things "prove successful," could eventually find its way into cars and other vehicles (like Segways beefed-up wheelchairs) in a reported attempt to "drastically cut the death toll on the country's roads."
4:20 AM
4:17 AM
24-Hour Newspaper People - New York Times:
Independent bloggers can laugh all they want about the imperious posture of the mainstream media, but I and others at The Times have never been more in touch with readers’ every robustly communicated whim than we are today. Not only do I hear what people are saying, but I also care.
Sometimes I wonder whether I care to the point that I neglect other things, like, oh, my job. Tweaking the blog is seductive in a way that a print deadline never is. By the time I am done posting entries, moderating comments and making links, my, has the time flown. I probably should have made some phone calls about next week’s column, but maybe I’ll write about, ah, blogging instead.
“We are living through the largest expansion of expressive capability in the history of the human race,” said Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the graduate interactive telecommunications program at New York University. “And it wouldn’t be a revolution if there were no losers. The speed of conversation is a part of what is good about it, but then some of the reflectiveness, the ability for careful summation and expression, is lost.”
Even as Mr. Shirky is saying this, I peek at the comments section of my blog, and he goes on, “There is an obsessive, dollhouse pleasure in configuring and looking at it, a constant measure of social capital.”
4:17 AM
3:55 AM
Military Expands Intelligence Role in U.S. - New York Times:
The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.
The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.
Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.
The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.
But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.
3:50 AM
6:29 PM
Frank Castorf - Volksbühne - Theater - New York Times:
Mr. Castorf got the job, and the following year he opened at the Volksbühne, or People’s Theater, with a series of brash productions. Under his direction, actors ignored huge portions of the classical texts they performed, stripped naked, screamed their lines for the duration of five-hour productions, got drunk onstage, dropped out of character, conducted private fights, tossed paint at their public, saw a third of the audience walk out as they spoke two lines at an excruciatingly slow pace, may or may not have induced a theatergoer to drink urine, threw potato salad, immersed themselves in water, recited newspaper reports of Hitler’s last peacetime birthday party, told bad jokes, called the audience East German sellouts and appeared to but did not kill a mouse. After their first season the prestigious magazine Theaterheute (Theater Today) named the Volksbühne Theater of the Year.
Mr. Castorf and his troupe were famous.
1:47 PM
1:37 PM
1:35 PM
Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs - New York Times:
IN the long view, Mr. Goldberg said he believes that today’s copy-protection battles will prove short-lived. Eventually, perhaps in 5 or 10 years, he predicts, all portable players will have wireless broadband capability and will provide direct access, anytime, anywhere, to every song ever released for a low monthly subscription fee.
It’s a prediction that has a high probability of realization because such a system is already found in South Korea, where three million subscribers enjoy direct, wireless access to a virtually limitless music catalog for only $5 a month. He noted, however, that music companies in South Korea did not agree to such a radically different business model until sales of physical CDs had collapsed.
Pointing to South Korea, where copy protection has disappeared, Mr. Goldberg invoked the pithy aphorism attributed to the author William Gibson: “The future is here; it’s just not widely distributed yet.”
1:35 PM
1:35 PM
SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids:
Comet McNaught is now visible in broad daylight. "It's fantastic," reports Wayne Winch of Bishop, California. "I put the sun behind a neighbor's house to block the glare and the comet popped right into view. You can even see the tail."
This trick is best performed around local noon: Go outside and stand in the shadow of a building. Face south. The comet lies 5 degrees to the left of the sun. (Five degrees is the width of your fist held at arm's length.)
12:07 PM
1:37 AM
1:18 AM
Get Your War On: review on TheaterMania.com:
While the laughs come fast and furious, the pace also slows down for more serious reflections. For example, reacting to the firing of linguists specializing in Arabic for being homosexual, a cast member reads out an open letter to the Pentagon from one of Rees' cartoons that asks how you would say "I can't believe we're paying you one billion dollars a day to piss on the grave of Mark Bingham -- I feel safer already, you sick motherfuckers" in Arabic. The entire company then turns to face upstage and silently stares at projected text which identifies Bingham -- who happened to be gay -- as one of the heroes on the September 11 United 93 flight. The moment is quietly effective.
7:42 PM
7:42 PM
6:53 PM
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . What's in a Name? | PBS:
The iPhone is this amazing connectivity quad-mode device that can probably make use of as much bandwidth as it can get, so making it suck through the little straw that is EDGE makes no sense from a user perspective. But remember that the parties involved here are Apple and Cingular, neither of which is 100 percent allied with user interests. Cingular has a 3G network called BroadbandConnect or "MediaNet" if you buy Cingular's associated Cingular Video service.
And there's the problem -- Cingular Video, which is based on RealVideo, NOT QuickTime or H.264.
Apple wants the iPhone to get its content primarily through iTunes, ideally by syncing with a Mac or Windows PC. Apple doesn't like Cingular Video and doesn't want its customers to know it exists, much less use it. But it would be very hard to introduce a true 3G iPhone, have Cingular promote it strongly, only to say that it can't be used to view the mobile carrier's own video content. So instead Apple falls back to the slower EDGE network, which can support email and widgets and surfing, but which also forces iPhone users to get most of their higher-resolution video through iTunes, where Apple makes money and Cingular doesn't.
It comes down to an accommodation. Cingular wants an iPhone exclusive and is probably paying Apple money for that privilege. Apple doesn't want Cingular Video. So the only elegant way around that problem is to make the iPhone incapable of operating on the 3G network. If you watch his Macworld keynote you'll notice Jobs says that Apple may eventually make 3G iPhone models. Yeah, right: I'm 100 percent convinced that all it would take to turn an EDGE iPhone into a 3G iPhone is a firmware upgrade, if that.
6:52 PM
6:52 PM
Warren Etheredge's Blog:
Forget Grunge. Embrace Munge, Seattle’s punk rock movie-making revolution.
Like the undeniable musical riot, Seattle’s re-awakening of independent cinema reveals a similar streak: sentimentally anarchic. Munge is an odd mix, DIY shooting juiced by urban angst and gritty artfulness. Though not christened by Robert Redford, the Sundance Film Festival has taken the Munge Plunge, as it were, championing the fledgling counter-genre for the past eight years. This de facto endorsement culminated in 2006 with Seattle films winning the top prizes at both Sundance and Slamdance.
6:43 PM
6:43 PM
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work—the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside—the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within—that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick—the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
"The Crack-Up"
6:40 PM
2:56 PM
TPMmuckraker January 11, 2007 01:26 PM:
Nearly a month ago, we reported that the Defense Department was refusing a routine request from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to declassify statistics on enemy attacks in Iraq. As long as GAO has produced periodic reports on the war for members of Congress -- GAO's boss -- the Pentagon had provided those numbers. But despite repeated requests, DoD wouldn't budge on making public the figures for September, October and November 2006.
They still won't. On Tuesday the GAO released a new report on Iraq, but its data on attacks is incomplete. Why? The Pentagon has continued to keep the attack numbers an official secret, GAO official Joseph A. Christoff told me. "They did not officially declassify the information," he said.
2:55 PM
putative.com: FedEx refuses shipment of made-up stuff, empty cans:
FedEx guy: Nope. You can't ship these either.
Me: But... they're empty! It's just air. And... nitrogen? It's, like, almost 80% of the atmosphere. There's nothing dangerous about nitrogen, even if it were pure.
FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials.
Me [going into dumbfounded mode]: Bomb... Neon? What? Is there anything here I can legally ship? How about this bottle of tap water?
I hand him a bottle of Certainty (tagline, "For when it's preferable to think you know more"), which looks like this:
FedEx guy: Nope. It still looks too suspicious, too much like bomb-making materials.
Me: But it's "Certainty." That's not even a thing. I just made that up. [That's not strictly true. It's a scientific term/idea, and we sell it alongside bottles of "Uncertainty." But it's like having a bottle labeled "Friendship."]
FedEx guy: It's just too suspicious.
[long pause]
Me [going into post-9/11, TSA-style super-dumbfounded mode]: So what you're saying is you can't ship any sort of containers, even if they're empty? You know that we originally ordered these empty cans and jars from a company, and *they* shipped them to *us*.
FedEx guy: They must have used a different vendor ["vendor"? I can't remember, some word like that, like a "service"].
Which I imagine he said because he couldn't bring himself to say, "It's the *wor
