Bugs

There are so very many insects here in South Carolina. I can barely step outside without getting the screaming heeby-jeebies.

Sounds of nature. Mmm. Cicadas, birds, Boeings, crickets, roller-coasters...


Everything is So Big. The appliances. The rooms. The spaces between things.

Everything is so Straight. The walls. The roads. The sense of decisive order.

Everything is so New. The houses. The cars. The silly young religions.


I'm here for a week. Then I return home to little, to wonky, to ancient.

Y'know what's cool? Compasses.

I've been doodling a bit while waiting for my work visa application to process so I can apply for a National Insurance number so I can apply for a job. (I've also been reading and listening to many books, and cleaning my house, and when it's not raining, just wandering around.) I've always enjoyed rose windows, so it didn't come as a shock to discover that I also enjoy crop circles and take delight in figuring out how they're made. I'm not a maths whiz by any stretch of the imagination, but I do fancy a good pattern.

Also, this is my 350th posting on this blog. (I have 45 on my other blog but they're not nearly so angry or full of bile as this one.) Woo! It only took me 4 and half years.

Oh Mr. Darcy!

I've been reading a lot lately (see previous post about work visa application) and, because they're free and readily available, I've found myself nose-deep more than my fair share of 19th century British novels. In the past few weeks I've read Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Sense & Sensibility, and a few Sherlock Holmes short adventures. I think Middlemarch will be my next undertaking, though I'm a bit daunted by the first page.

With the exception of the Holmes stories and Alice, my text choices have been largely...similar. Strikingly so. Without meaning to, I wonder if I haven't chosen the three most similar narratives ever written. Perhaps this similarity would not be quite so pronounced to me if I hadn't chosen to read all of them in sequence, but while I've enjoyed all three to a similar extent, the same difficulties have dampened my enjoyment to the same extent in all. I'd like to document these themes here--of plot and language most particularly--for my own future reference. As a reader, you may find this dull, as this is a posting wherein you may find my thoughts, not my fury.

Similar Plot Points and Characters in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility

-All three involve at least one young woman being bedridden and on the verge of death because of illness, but no men. Jane Eyre, Marian Halcombe, and Marianne Dashwood catch some form of stress/hanging out in the rain-related disease.

Likewise, clearly-doomed girls (the excessively-innocent ultra-pious who talk about how lovely death would be) Helen Burns (Eyre) and Anne Catherick (White) spend some time bedridden before kicking it.

-All 3 protagonists are between age 17 and 20, and all marry men between age 35 and 40. Each marriage must be for love, because though the women are all of high birth (Jane Eyre unknowingly) the men they marry are handicapped in some way. Edward Ferrars (Sense) has lost the bulk of his inheritance, Edward Rochester (Eyre) has been blinded and lost a hand in the destruction of his manor house, and Walter Hartright (White) is sickeningly middle-class, and Laura lost her fortune when her (deceased) first husband declared her dead and stole it. While everybody is still fairly wealthy at the end, they all lose a significant investment or holding.

-All three are caught up in inheritance issues equalling or exceeding £20,000.

-All three involve a nasty elderly woman who screws things up royally for the protagonist with her selfishness. (Mrs. Reed, the Countess, Mrs. Ferrars)

-All three involve one major female character being pressured by a guy that she doesn't like to marry him. (St. John Rivers, Colonel Brandon, Sir Percival Glyde) Only Brandon's pressure ends in something resembling love and financial stability.

-All three involve at least one pair of close, affectionate, inseparable sisters, and it is generally understood that there's a prudent one and a pretty one. (Marian and Laura, Elinor and Marianne, Diana and Mary Rivers) At least one of the sisters has a Mary-based name.


Similar Thematic Elements in the aforementioned text group

-The female protagonist through who's eyes much of the story is told is invariably well-educated, exceedingly honest and forthright, and never makes a statement or decision that is not perfectly well-justified both to her religion and her caste. She likewise spends a lot of paper justifying her decisions and statements to the audience, imploring us to realize that they're being utterly selfless in all things and are only seeking to do what is best for everyone involved.

-People who start high end in the middle. People who start in the middle end with a compromised version of high.

-Women who have choices they can make are just as likely to make ones that cause them harm as good, because they must consider what is righteous regardless of their best interests. Jane Eyre nearly goes to India, where she's sure to die within days of arrival of disease or heat-stroke, because she knows that God would want her to be a missionary. The only thing that stops her is she also knows that God would not want her and St. John to marry without loving each other. Likewise, Laura Fairlie marries Sir Percival, despite the fact she doesn't like him, because she agreed to the engagement to please her father on his death-bed, and it would be shameful to break it. Elinor Dashwood, meanwhile, keep's Lucy's secrets, despite how badly they hurt her and despite how useful it would be to disclose them, because she promised she would. Virtue always wins over self-interest and intelligence.


Similar Endings in the aforementioned

-Everybody gets married.

-Everybody has babies, or there's hints of babies.

-All the women fall into their roles as subservient wives, though they had the capacity to be powerful and respectable women in their own right.


Similar Things That Piss Me Off in the aforementioned

The ladies always have the option of doing something deemed vaguely improper but better for everyone--and always decline. The authors, rather than congratulating their heroines for their good deeds, make things kinda suck for them as a consequence, but they nevertheless feel better in their hearts for having done what was socially accepted, in spite of the fact that no sensible person around them would have done the same.

Jane Eyre clearly acknowledges that Bertha Mason is not really Mr. Rochester's wife, as she's not only batshit but hell-bent on Mr. Rochester's immolation, but rather than see what is an unfortunate circumstance and run off to the south of France as his beloved mistress (while maintaining Bertha's safe upkeep), which would ensure everyone's estates and safety, she runs off to develop pneumonia and endure abuse under St. John, and lets Bertha burn the house down and severely handicap Rochester. Her virtue screwed her over and left her with half an estate and half a man. Jane grins and bears it, and Brontë seems to think she got off no better than she should have.

Laura Fairlie will be coming into possession of £20,000 in under the space of a year, and her guardian is a douchebag. But rather than refuse to marry Sir Percival until her finances are hers to control, she does what the men around her want, because that's 'right,' and loses everything. Had she said "hey buddy, let's wait 6 months" the story probably wouldn't have happened, but she would not have wound up with the line in her will that gave him everything upon her death (she probably would not have wound up married to him at all) so Marian probably wouldn't have gotten typhus, she wouldn't have wound up in an asylum, and neither the Count or Sir Percival would have wound up dead. Had she taken this one step in her best interest everyone, even the jerks, would have been better off.

Had Mrs. Dashwood stood up for herself against her stepson after her husband's last wishes were for him to provide for her and her daughters, they could have moved somewhere besides the little cottage their income afforded them. They really don't meet anyone that great or helpful on account of it, Marianne wouldn't have had to endure the BS that was Willoughby, Elinor could have been in money enough for Mrs. Ferrars to approve of her relationship with Edward, and Lucy probably would have wound up with Robert anyway but with less money to taunt Elinor with. But no, Mrs. Dashwood doesn't seem to think it's proper to say "look, buddy, I know you're a sucker and your wife's a bitch, but you're not weaseling out of your obligation to your family." so Marianne wound up with a "putrid fever." Bleh.

26

I am now past the Wednesday of my 20's.

I also have a head cold that is gradually getting worse. Bleurgh.

I'm working on a couple of small shows as part of the Creative Producers Collective with the Camden Council. I'm working very hard to clear my sinuses so I can think and be productive, but so far I haven't been very successful. I commented at a production meeting this afternoon, after spending ten minutes trying to read the lips of my nearby collaborators, "it's funny how this theatre has such dampened acoustics, seeing as it's not particularly well-insulated." They all just looked at me until I realized it wasn't the space, it was me.

I've tested a few more colours on the dining room walls and we may have found one we like. Still need to give it a good stare and (brain-functional) consideration before I splash out on the whole room. It's a saturated orange-coral shade.

Anyway. That's all I can manage with my snarfly brain. I just knocked over a glass, my lip balm, and a roll of tape. My hands are like the front axle of a 1978 Chevy Silverado with 30-plus years of mountain driving on its steering column. And a cup of coffee. Damn. I need a bib.

Lessons from Childhood

I never liked The Giving Tree as a kid. I thought it taught a pretty horrible lesson: take joy in being exploited by some ungrateful douche--after he's taken you for all you're worth, he may come back and expect you to support him in old age. Great. Thanks.

That's not to suggest I dislike Shel Silverstein. I'm quite fond of much of his poetry--Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book is a personal favourite. But I've always been baffled as to why Giving Tree deserves so many honours and accolades for being such a good book for children. I never felt sorry for the tree. Perhaps I was supposed to, I don't know, but I always saw it bad taste in men coupled with a masochistic streak. The female does everything she can for the male in the hopes that he'll recognise her effort and love her for it, but he always just takes what she offers as a given and raises his expectations. And then he goes off with another woman. And she is happy.

The lesson I gained from this story is, "don't give people anything. They won't appreciate it, they'll come to expect you to provide for them, and they will offer you nothing in return." I mean hell, the tree probably got a few greenfly infestations over the years that her sweet little boy could have sprayed for. What if she'd caught a nasty rootworm? There are plenty of ways to give back to a tree, but her darling child didn't even come around to prune that itchy dead branch. But no, "the tree was happy." Being taken for a sucker. Even when the boy was young he used her selfishly, eating her apples (how can you build a house out of apple boughs?) glorifying himself with her leaves, expecting her to make everything safe and comfortable for him. While many parents of course are happy to provide for children and only want love in return, there's a damn limit.

The Boy screws up. He makes some really bad decisions--from what I can infer from his desire for "a boat that will take me far away from here." he is not welcome in his community any longer. He has ruined his relationship with his wife and children. Maybe he made some dodgy investments or was caught cheating. So he comes back to the mother-figure to bail him out. "Hi Ma, I know we haven't spoken in a while, I'm not doin so good. I need you to give me some money so I can get outta dodge. I'm gonna have to lie low for a while, if the cops come to the door, you never saw me. Love ya." He's a fifty year old man! What the hell is he doing? Who does he think he is?

If the Tree had some self-respect she'd say no. No, you're an adult. If you want me to secure a loan for you you better be prepared with some collateral, 'cos I'm not risking my credit just so you can go on another bender with no consequences. I am not an accessory to your destruction, and I happened to like your wife and what you did to her and your kids was rotten. In fact, no, I will not secure a loan for you, you're too likely to default.

I assume that's the metaphor.

And then he high-tails it to St. Somewhere, fishes the pilings and drinks his green label each day for another twenty years. And we're supposed to in some way identify with him when he discovers the cost of repatriation of remains and decides to get to the burial plot he purchased with his ex-wife when they were planning for retirement before he dies? He gets back and lo and behold, his mother or ex-wife is still there, in her nineties but holding onto her own home with a combination of social security (which he hasn't paid into since he opened that offshore account that would eventually cause him to flee the country) and her own small IRA. And he moves back into her house and continues to mooch off of her, and via her the state to which he owes thirty years of back taxes!

What a Terrible Story.

I think this book should be read to women considering IVF treatments, perhaps with a discussion session afterwards. Are you Sure you want a kid this badly? I mean, they're shitheads.

Child-rearing requires a selflessness that I will never understand. While I'm grateful to my parents for raising me, sending me to school, feeding me, and doting on me as appropriate, I don't have it in me to do the same for anyone else. I mean, what's in it for parents? After twenty years, congratulations, you've made another taxpayer.

When you get a cat, you know from the outset that they're a species of selfish little bastards, they'll always be selfish little bastards, and they don't give a hoot about you. They let you pet them if they associate that with being fed. They'll sit in your lap, not because they like you, but because it's warm. You know this, but you get one anyway because they're fluffy and cute. You don't expect them to eventually come to appreciate you, or take care of you. But with kids it seems to be different. You give them everything you can, they take it without question, and after a while they leave you with nothing but debt so they can go do the same for their own brats, so they can too find themselves giving their all for no reward. And for some reason, that's what you Want them to do. Silly genetic imperative.

This book does not provide any helpful insights or suggestions for improvement that may one day help a child or grown-up. It is simply a reflection on how assholes take advantage of others, and how other people convince themselves they deserve to be taken advantage of. It's a very common and very shit relationship that serves as the cornerstone of the modern psychotherapeutic industry.

It wasn't Meditative

it was boring. You may attempt to reconcile these two very different emotions in an attempt to not appear a philistine, but I work in theatre and hold education and experience in this field and can confidently and helpfully state that Peter Brook's "11&12" at the Barbican was two of the most boring hours of my life. (and do you know how many hours I've spent in departure lounges?)

Helpfully? (you ask, eyebrow slightly raised) Yes, I'm helping you. I can think deep thoughts. Abysmally so. As a postgraduate I spend all day every day studying and developing ridiculously heavy theories, then rescinding them in recognition of their post-colonial viewpoints or Utopian ideologies. I have long-winded and delightfully deconstructivist discussions with my professors on a regular basis--debates which leave me red-cheeked and wild-eyed and feeling vaguely as though I've torn out a page of my practical knowledge and replaced it with excitingly useless philosophical nonsense. (a degree in philosophy and 75p can buy you a tiger loaf at Tesco. mmm) To the point--it's my job right now to think about, analyze, engage critically with, and discuss the ethics of everything that goes into theatrical production.

And I say it's boring. Therefore, you too can admit that you found it boring, and let that off your chest. There was nothing deeper for you to get, nothing you should be embarrassed for missing or not appreciating. It was dull, and even the woman across the aisle with the opera glass and the pensive frown thought so.

Its this insistence upon not admitting to oneself (I wasn't bored, I was entranced by the tone and smooth line delivery. no no, I must be smarter and more worldly than you because I was distinctly Not bored.) and one's friends that one was bored of his or her skull by a piece of theatre that allows bad theatre to continue to be made. I'm not suggesting we need every show to have explosions or song-and-dance numbers, but there is no excuse for boring theatre. Theatre, by definition, exists primarily (and in most cases, solely) to Entertain. If it is dull, it is not entertaining. Therefore it fails.

At my school we produce heaps of boring theatre. We justify making it by calling our pieces "artistic explorations" or "studies of the performer's inner struggle." but on the inside we all know (well, maybe not the performers themselves, who continue to insist upon doing these sorts of things) that it's just pointless navel-gazing that leads even the most pretentious audience member to crave the solitaire app on his phone. Performance is narcissism--if you are dating an actor you may want to keep that in mind next time you find yourself feeling small. While all humans have to some extent a "look at me!" need, most of us don't need 500 people 6 nights a week to do so to satiate it. (oof, sorry, bit of a tangent there.)

The biggest problem with making boring theatre, though, is that it is offensive. (jigga-wha?) It is not hugely difficult to make interesting theatre, but it is really, really easy to make it boring. If the eyelids of half the audience are drooping it shows you didn't put an ounce of effort into your piece--not just into writing it, but staging it so that it is visually and aurally engaging. This is doubly true for ethnically sensitive pieces, where you're making a show about a culture you aren't a member of and you're fairly confident your audience won't be. Making a show about the Other that is painfully dull tells the audience that you don't quite give enough of a shit about them to make your piece watchable. Which is a dual shame--one because it makes you look like just another arrogant Westerner, and two because you've just passed up an opportunity to give your audience some culture.

Yep--I wish to redefine the "cultural experience" right here, if you don't mind. If a night of culture is so dull, incomprehensible, or simply unwatchable that most of the audience exit the gallery thinking only "damn I want my money back" they have not had a cultural experience. They didn't get your point or moral and they didn't pay attention to your history lesson or showcase. They did not leave with more information, tolerance, social awareness, or interest than when they came in. You have not cultured them in any way.

So. I may appear a bit jaded, but honestly, this is my area of study--audience impact. I want my audience to want to be there to see my piece. I want them to take something away from it that isn't just boredom or a new appreciation for the glowing hands on their watches. I want the show to not need big-name actors in order to draw a crowd and I want theatre to go back to its roots--its real roots. Entertainment. Fun. Contrary to Dryden's views, I do not believe theatre's first obligation is to educate. No one who makes theatre is qualified to teach, and any attempt to do so by a theatre practitioner is a misguided effort at best, a dangerous and unethical display at worst. Most theatre types don't know if what they're presenting is ethnically or historically accurate, and really don't care either way. Theatre's first obligation is to entertain, but if someone is likely to learn something from it (Because it's interesting to watch) what you present needs to be right.

When I sat down to watch "11&12" the first thing I saw was a sparsely-decorated stage, yellow streaks under a big red blanket and a collection of carved tree trunks on dollies. Not a good start. While the play does take place in Mali, recreating a desert wasteland--even an abstract one--is not a good idea. The stage was eventually shown to be covered in sand. Most people in Mali do not live in the Sahara, and the piece takes place in the south-central Mopti region, which has a decent agricultural base. (e.g. your average villager does not desperately seek shade under petrified trees as the wind whips sand into his weathered face.) Yes the nation is poor, but presenting this barren landscape sets me as an audience member up for a story of people clinging to life in spite of everything--not a babbling, meandering discourse on religion. At one point a character is shown riding a boat down a river...in the desert. Right. As it is, the sparse, monochrome set does nothing to liven up the staging used--mostly people sitting around--and the unchanging amber wash likewise encourages the eyes to look elsewhere--but there's nothing else to see.

Most audience members chose to either look at the inside of their eyelids or at each other (one particularly meditative audience member to my left was so entranced by the play that he began to snore lightly) but not in a judgmental, "oh look at the world I live in, I should feel grateful that I do not face persecution for my religious beliefs." way, but in more of a "honey, that haircut really doesn't fit your face" manner. I've studied pieces which intentionally toy with audience attention and practical applications of boredom and I can confidently say this was not one of them.

The one active scene in the show is a depiction of violence. Now, in a show about French colonialism and interference in Islam and the wave of massacres linked to this instance you'd assume they'd have plenty to work with of oppression and torture, but the one display is, you guessed it, villager infighting. Great. Way to encourage the audience to empathize with the underdog. Colonial and modern France give you so much fodder--religious intolerance comes to mind--and yet in your piece they come out smelling like a bed of roses. Sheez--the French aren't even in the audience to defend themselves! You could say Anything! But no, instead we're treated to a view of anger within an oppressed community, just like the BBC chose to show the day after Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, reinforcing the subtle notion the West likes to tell itself--these people need us to come and save them, even from themselves.

Nanny-stating aside, scenographic probing aside, the staging was dull, the accents were all over the map, the costuming could have been less beige but I honestly haven't studied early 20th century Malian fashion so I can't reasonably comment, the music was interesting and well performed but had nothing to do with the time, place, or people, and the colourblind casting was nice but honestly why did you give the only line including the phrase "us black people" to the only white guy on stage? Come on. That's tacky.

Actually, that really about sums up my whole experience. I've been to worse theatre, certainly, but rarely by people as well-esteemed. Many of my classmates attempted to justify the piece's choices by quoting this and that theory about how by being dull and ethically dubious it provoked thought, research and argument, but I'd argue against that--most audience members don't watch theatre like theatre workers. They take it for what they see, and what they saw was dull.

I think the most profound difference between scientists and religious followers is that scientists are looking out at and trying to figure out the baffling vastness of it all, while the religious believe the vastness has it all figured out and is looking in.

Freeways, Runways, and the Interconnectedness of All Things

I love the design of the interstate highway—the road gradually curving and blending and expanding, giving the impression that it is fluidly sliding away below your tires and you are actually sitting still. I love the effortless branching—whether or not you can actually merge safely through the onslaught of confused and angry motorists when the time comes, there is an understated beauty in the natural divergence of one lane into two. The continuation of this into bridges and multi-level overpasses, while again frustrating (in the case of I-80's Maze east of the Bay Bridge I never got it right) turns the simple beauty of an onramp into a symphony of delicate navigational transitions. Bear left, under the bridge, quick right, follow the cloverleaf, merge in from the left, get your speed up to join the fast lane. . . after two continents of this it feels less like you're consciously moving and more like you're floating along effortlessly down a vehicular river.

I like to have window seats when I fly--partly to have something to rest my head on, but mostly so I can peek down occasionally and watch the ground slip away in the high-altitude equivalent of slow motion. If I close the shade it's hard to believe the plane is moving. (And when we fly through dense, contour-less clouds it's hard to believe we're in reality.) I noticed on my most recent venture into the skies that from the air freeways look a little. . . stagnant. The fluid curves and river-like visual movement to them seem pointless when you're not on them, particularly when they're empty. The feeling I get when I observe an empty freeway juncture from above, all its voluptuous contours reduced to a tiny, burnt-gray concrete knot—it's like taking off my roller skates. An empty freeway is the first few frustrating moments of friction after your internal inertia has acclimated to gliding.

Just like city driving. Stop. GoStop. GoStop. erk. erk. erk. ugh.

Tonight I managed to drive five miles along a light-studded section of a Charlotte boulevard without so much as slowing—it's amazing how well well-engineered traffic systems work if you just stick religiously to the speed limit. It's amazing how frustrating driving can be when cities erect traffic lights at random.

pout, grin, laugh, scream

I was tootling around in the local organic home store, Blue House, today, and came across numerous things that I want but, sadly, even if I could afford them, would be completely useless to me. The Taney is a wonderful home for what it is, but it has its limitations.

Namely, I don't have a stove. Therefore all the nifty tea kettles and cookware they have is completely useless to me. I'm also strictly forbidden from using my electric kettle on the ship, so I can't even use their nifty teabag teapots that i find so adorable. seriously, i live in a place that is highly opposed to the idea of me feeding myself--and for good reason. the wiring around here is historic. anything that draws enough electricity to boil water in three minutes or less is probably a hazard.

Something else I come up short on is windows. I have a 9" porthole, and though it is a very nice porthole, I don't believe the curator of the museum would be very happy with me if i installed a window box below it. Which means, sadly, that all the seeds, planters, and biodegradable flowerpots they sell are not intended for people like me.

I'm also a bit shortchanged when it comes to tables, dressers, and other furniture that appreciate decorative accents. No matter how many doilies you put on them, gunmetal gray cabinets will never look cozy. And vases? recall what I mentioned about portholes and imagine how happy fresh flowers would be in my floating cellar. (And while I suppose filling them with dried flowers is always an option, I really don't have enough cobwebs in my room to pull off the full Miss Havisham look.)

----

I had a delightful epiphany today--I have decided that my sister's as-yet-unscheduled wedding must be officiated by a woman with a delightful Scottish lilt--something in the vein of NPR's Fiona Ritchie.

----

I happened across this album cover in the record store and nearly did a spit-take. I've never heard of this performer or his music, but sheez. (please note, incidental readers--this is not a joke or an insult directed toward the cover's subject, but is rather a reference to the musician's eerie resemblance to a friend. Eerie.) Sarah, you must see this.

----

Another shortcoming of living in a museum is the frequent reminders of which tourist demographic is most likely to visit them--families with young children. A note of advice, parents of toddlers: Children Have No Need to Tour Historic Ships, Watch Movies or Plays, Visit Theme Parks, or Experience Fine Dining Until They Are At Least Ten (10) Years Of Age. Prior to that, you're just wasting your money. And pissing people off. Of Course she's throwing a tantrum. She's 3--its dark, cramped, smelly, confusing, and boring in here! Don't make your child bear with it--learn from it. They don't cry when they're happy.

sniffle

I enjoy the Wombats. particularly the backing vocals. I think everyone should.

I recently bought my first set of Grundens foul weather gear. they are mighty.

I have a bad head cold. the first thing that goes when I get stuffy is my balance. then everything gets funny. then starts the coughing. now i've hit the slap-happy-headache stage. I think its Grayhounditis. When in doubt, blame public transit.

Since I moved to Baltimore, New York City has become less of a hated, feared, nasty place and more of a haven for fun drunken weekends and culture. NYC, I don't hate you anymore!

I still panic in crowds though.

Humans on Wheels and Pre-K Minimalism

There's nothing quite like walking down by the Aquarium on a clear, bright weekend. The tourists come out in force--all shapes, sizes, and hues of humanity jostle for position in line to watch sharks and dolphins swim around in circles as they while away the monotony of their wait for death. People pack into the square and the surrounding attractions--historic ships, historic buildings, historic ice cream shops--all determined to be rewarded for enduring the endless lines, their own families, and the incessant nagging of beggars with a day of fanciful fun. All sadly forced to bring the Baby or Aunt Ruth along, complete with their appropriate wheeled accessories, filling everyone with good karma and the barely-suppressed dread of hauling them through minimum-handicapped-accessibility-requirements-met attractions for the rest of the day.

I'm not a big fan of the Disneyworld approach toward fun. Queuing for an hour for a two-minute ride is hardly a just payoff. Being herded through turnstiles and crammed into the sweaty armpit of a furious father of three screaming toddlers for the better part of a morning just to find that the attraction has broken and closed while you were in line leads to a ticket price's worth of frustration. The mass-market appeal of vacation getaways leads to the mass market amassing on once-secluded islands, dumped off of city-sized cruise liners, bringing along all the BS they were trying t leave at home--lines, beggars, and street entertainers willing to turn tricks for you and your children for a measly $20.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the one form of panhandling I find even more annoying than the toothless junkies rattling their change is the middle-aged pedophiles who squeak out disturbingly phallic balloon animals and cram them on your children's heads. You've seen them--anywhere there's a historic monument, youth attraction, or family-oriented exhibit, these obnoxious failed clowns are sure to settle upon the ticket plaza like flies on carrion. What makes them? I don't know. I can't know what level of derangement leads to Balloon Animal Guys without becoming one, and even I'm too stable for that.

These chain-smoking, child-molesting, pancake made up promenade performers take all kinds--some unicycle, some juggle, some just stand at the center of an interesting bricklaying pattern and shout--but their product is consistent: brightly-colored sausage links twisted into shapes that vaguely resemble household items, particularly with the addition of sharpie-drawn cartoon eyes. I'm sure countless books and instructional videos have circulated over the years to lead the plastic-snapping novice out of his mother's basement and into creepy, tourist-tormenting obscurity, but I doubt that many of them discuss the deeper and far more valuable function of this dumpster-doomed venture--youth exposure to post-modernist art.

Yes, friends and strangers, much as I hate them, balloon animals do clearly fit the criteria for minimalist sculpture--they strip away all the frill and detail of a composition to reveal its essence, its purest form. The muscle, hair, and slobber of a heeling golden retriever are reduced to a yellow dog-like contraption, complete with floppy ears and a distinctly Disney-knockoff feel. Still-life portraits of fruit can be implied by tying red, yellow, and purple tubes to your triplets' heads to resemble an apple, a banana, and a bunch of grapes. Even the subtle humor of ancient dramatists can be evoked with a few tight bends attached to a man's belt. Okay, maybe not so subtle, and maybe not outside the Aquarium. But at Fantasy Fest or something. Fact is, what brings momentary delight to your child's eyes at the completion of a balloon objet is not the air-filled tubes or the creepy guy blowing on them--its the rest of the composition that their minds have filled in for them. To you it's some clear plastic, the static off of which is gradually making your preschooler's hair stand on end. To the child its a kitten, exactly as it's meant to be. The child sees the negative space, the kitten that the lines left out, fluffy and pink and perfect.

This does not, by the way, excuse balloon animal hawkers pounding the pavement outside my house. If I want to visit the drugstore on a Saturday afternoon I should not have to fight my way through the swarm of plastic pirates with inflated parrots to get there. I sympathize with the parents who hadn't planned ahead for their child to covet the glistening gems in the artist's pouch, counting the money they're going to wind up blowing on whimsical nonsense that their brat will pop, lose, or dislike within minutes, watching the balloser pick his target and home in. My parents had the strength to say no at the time and I hated them for it...briefly. Then I got to see the turtles and it was all okay.

random musing

why do playwrights and screenwriters have such a tendency to churn out stories about or including out of work actors? every time you turn around there's another piece about the young starlet who's trying to get ahead or the dancer who's shoes are beaten to putty from practicing and still can't get into Swan Lake. I don't appreciate it. Fact is, there are a lot of out-of-work actors and dancers and theatre folk out there, and hiring actors to play in stories about them is flat-out mockery. "ha-ha, i got a job playing one of my peers who's been unemployed for years."

Typically the plight of the out of work actor is not so dire as that of the family under the bridge, but it is very frustrating to see your friends and old classmates getting gigs on Broadway or with Cirque, or even seeing a show you built go to Broadway and get rave reviews, and know that you're even getting passed up for summer stock. When all your education comes to nowt, and your experience and skill and charming personality and good contacts boil down to so much manure, the last thing you want to see is the little go-getter who just couldn't make it the first two tries finally get her big break when the hard-nosed audition coordinator sees her true potential. It doesn't work like that, it never has. With the economy in a rut and interest in live theater at its lowest since the Restoration, nobody is willing to take risks like that.

In any case, out of work actors keep the restaurant and hospitality industry running. If it weren't for them people would starve. So i don't feel too bad for them, as a cornerstone of our society. We should envy the cunning artificers who charm customers into over tipping, and they should thank their 200-level acting coaches who got them that far. In the meantime, i'm going to steer clear of any movie who's blurb begins "two out-of-work actors take a vacation" or any similar masturbatory premise. Where's the challenge in playing yourself?

psychic

So I turn on a little NPR today and what do i hear but This, a brand-new story on who else but Joni Mitchell's recent artistic activism. Yep. New protest songs. I think I must have had a premonition yesterday.

wire and dance

We gave my dad a light fixture in the shape of an airplane for his birthday. I installed it in the bathroom ceiling downstairs. its cute, and goes with the décor on that floor. (if you look around the room you'll see airplanes, cars, airplanes, airships, airplanes, spaceships, airplanes, and a desk) Photo will follow if i remember.

The song "Nice Weather for Ducks" by Lemon Jelly makes me happy. its just the sound. i don't know if this version is a series of samples of other pieces, as the vocal refrain obviously is, but the whole composition makes me dance around and smile in a vague, stupid way until an outside force reminds me not to. You can listen to it Here, though the trippy flash animation that goes along with it tends to distract me from the piece itself. For some reason "Sticks and Stones" by The Divine Comedy has a similar effect on me. maybe its the key signature.

I should go to bed

I wonder what it says about me that i realized tonight that my favorite Beatles track is, hands down, "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)" from the second Anthology album.

I'm nearly 23 years old and i still subscribe to MAD magazine.

Thor's Back Yard

Today i went to Garden of the Gods, a truly beautiful rock formation near Colorado Springs. It was most tranquil. And to think, until i was invited, I'd never heard of the place. Next time i'll come with climbing gear.

"Balanced" rock. Looks crazy precarious, right?
Until you notice that some poor park manager has to come out on a regular basis and maintain its natural majesty (and keep it from rolling away) with a bit of concrete as erosion tries to take its course. Several large rocks were also supported with brick columns where people tended to walk. I felt cheated.
Some big rocks, some clouds. you know how it is.

We made a friend on the drive down along a dirt ridge road through a national forest. Click to enlarge.

Some more crazy geological balancing acts--though these ones looked genuine.
A small shrub-growing sunflower. It was posing for me.

rope, styrofoam, and a touch of love

100 Delicate Chocolates: Ingredients: 1 10"x 10"x 1 1/4" block of blue foam, 1 tub sculpt-or-coat, brown, black, red, white, yellow, and purple paints, and 2 artificial flowers.
Serves 0

Cute oversized lollipops: yep, they're cotton rope.

"wickering" an aluminium table. note the unpainted yarn.

Before: yes, the clorox was necessary to kill some of the mold that had been growning in this chair for the past few years. Each of the little buttons had to be individually prised off. the red material behind them was some horrible version of pleather.


And After: the Prince's vanity chair for Cendrillon. The director hasn't picked out the edging yet (no, it will not go into performance with exposed staples.)

Just a taste of what i've been working on lately.

yesterday on I-70...

(click to enlarge)

. . . While listening to Pearl Jam. Rock the Rockies.

its just too pretty out here

In other news, i swore at my boss today after he knocked an artificial tree onto my head and, in lieu of apologising, said "well i warned you." (he didn't.) i may have upped the already teeth-grinding tension in my shop. the social friction in there is so intense the lights flicker. i have a bruise now.

welcome to Central City

Believe it or not, people really do opera out here.