Git up, a-git git down, the Bowl Championship Series is a joke in your town

After a topsy-turvy season, with many crazy upsets, and many surprise contenders, this year’s college football bowl games have been announced. And I couldn’t be more disappointed. Ohio State versus LSU? For real? Was the cabal that decides who gets to play intentionally trying to go for the least original, least interesting match-up possible? In the past five years, each of those teams has won a national championship, and Ohio State was the runner-up once as well. I don’t wish to rain on the parade of those of my friends who support these universities’ football teams, but this is so anticlimactic.

The star chamber that runs the Bowl Championship Series is inscrutable and opaque in their deliberations. Ohio State gets to play for a national championship despite the fact that they lost to the unranked Fighting Illini. This could have been so much more interesting. There were so many teams that made surprise appearances in the top 25 (like U-Conn, Cincinnati, South Florida, Rutgers), to say nothing of all the surprise teams that were in the top 5. If you had told me in August that the universities of Kansas, Missouri, Oregon would make appearances in the top two spots, I would have called you a lying scumbag.

Granted, LSU and Ohio State did stay atop the various polls for large portions of the season. But that doesn’t really mean anything to me since I place so little faith in the legitimacy of all those polls. This whole system merely makes it all the more clear what a hypocritical farce college football has become. Who gets to play in the national championship should be determined by young men on the field. Instead, those same young men have to sit around a room watching a large television screen waiting to see which teams a group of mostly middle-aged, mostly male sportswriters and whatnot have decided they think are the best. It is a slap in the face to the notions of competition and sport.

There has to be a playoff. It is the only fair, reasonable way to pick a champion. Every argument that has been put forward explaining why that’s not possible is unconvincing. The NCAA does it for Division III and the erstwhile Division I-AA. What’s so different about D-I football that they can’t do it with those teams? I can answer that question: it’s all about the benjamins. The Bowl Championship Series is nothing more than a scam to ensure that the schools that are already on top stay on top. A few conferences shut out everyone else, so they can get the bowl money and continue to sink it into their football programs, thus ensuring their continued dominance. The University of Hawai’i is the only undefeated team in Division I, but they don’t get to contend because they happen to play in a "secondary" conference. Without playoffs, you can expect to see the same five or six teams in the championship game every year. I don’t have any attachment to any of the big D-I teams, and thus I’ve never been that into college football. But with the attachment of corporate sponsors to bowl games, the absurd methods of selecting a champion, and the overall divorce of college football from actual colleges, I find myself increasingly disgusted by the whole spectacle. What a joke.

St. Bernard Parish, Day Four

The siding on the house we’ve been working on is almost complete. The house looks so much better than it did at the beginning of the week. Doors were delivered, and perhaps we’ll be able to hang those tomorrow. This was our third day at the same sight, with the same crew, so there is some bonding going on, the shier among us are starting to loosen up, and we’re getting huge amounts of work done. Last night, someone told me that if all of the siding is nailed into all of the studs, it will be able to withstand 140 mile per hour winds. (And I’m willing to treat her statement with credulity, as she is one of the long-term Habitat volunteers who has been here for a while.)

This leads me to today’s topic, which is the environmental aspect. Today I spoke to a volunteer who told me that when he was considering this trip, part of him wondered if there was really a point in building houses if another hurricane, or another flood, is going to come along. And there will be another hurricane. This is something that a lot of people don’t really want to talk about. Understandably.

One thing you will hear repeatedly from the locals is this: "this was a manmade disaster." The other day, someone who works for the parish government echoed that statement more specifically: "The river didn’t flood. The canals are what flooded." In St. Bernard Parish, the flooding came from the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal (MR-GO), a navigation channel that was built to shorten the route from New Orleans’ harbor to the Gulf of Mexico. The 25 foot storm surge that swamped the parish came when the levees on the sides of the MR-GO were overwhelmed.

There are two aspects to this "man-made disaster." The first relates to engineering and the environment. It has been argued that the wetlands of southern Louisiana, in their natural state, could absorb a storm surge, or a flood, without most of that excess water making it on to land. But of course those wetlands haven’t been in their natural state for a long time. People have been building channels, draining marshes, and diverting water around here for centuries. And when you build a canal, and line it with levees, the water doesn’t flow the way it does naturally. It flows through the channels that have been constructed, and it can overwhelm them if it’s more water than they are designed for. All the construction of levees and canals throughout the Mississippi Delta has greatly increased the erosion of coastal vegetation, as much as 34 square miles a year by some estimates. The more it declines, the closer the ocean gets to New Orleans. Hurricanes get weaker when they make landfall, and they lose power rapidly as they move inland. The closer New Orleans is to the ocean, the stronger the hurricanes will be when they arrive.

The second aspect is political. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long and colorful history of corruption. Think Huey Long and Leander Perez. Many of the levees and the canals were not constructed the way they were supposed to be. Why spend all the money necessary to build something the right way, when it’s cheaper to bribe a public official to look the other way while you cut corners? I’ll use an example from another country to illustrate how tragic the results can be from this sort of collusion. Jesus Gil y Gil was a shady Spanish businessman who later became mayor of Marbella and president of the Atletico Madrid Football Club. Gil initially made his money in construction. In 1967, an apartment building his company had constructed collapsed during an earthquake. 58 people died. Had he built the apartment building according to safety codes, this probably wouldn’t have happened. But he didn’t, because it was cheaper to pay off public officials. His greed was more important than people’s safety. He was sent to jail at the time, but he was only there for a few months before Generalissimo Francisco Franco gave him a pardon and he was released (allegedly after yet another payoff). Corrupt politicians and shady businessmen get rich, and when the shit hits the fan, people die because of their malfeasance.

We can’t prevent another monster hurricane from coming through, so we try to build structures that can withstand them. But I haven’t even mentioned global warming yet. The ocean might be getting closer to New Orleans due to a loss of coastal wetland vegetation, but rising sea levels will bring it even closer together. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon one of America’s great cities, and its equally fascinating environs, to the vagaries of fate. I can’t answer the question of whether all this rebuilding is ultimately worth it, if we’re just going to keep doing it again and again. But I’m an optimist. If my family had lived someplace for hundreds of years, if I had a deep, spiritual connection to the land and the water and the culture I grew up with it, I’d keep rebuilding my house every time it got knocked down. I wouldn’t leave until there really was no other choice. I wouldn’t leave until it was completely underwater for good.

The Difference Between Being Bossy & Being The Boss

Supposedly, the written exam portion of the foreign service exam is really difficult. Approximately 17% of the people who take it pass. If you do pass it, you move on to the oral exam section, which takes the better part of a day (scheduled at a distant date in the future at the pleasure of the State Department’s employees), and which really is difficult. The most difficult part of the oral examination is a group exercise, in which the successful applicant will display leadership and initiative whilst simultaneously not forcing her opinion on everyone else, and, at least as far as appearances go, work with the other members of the group to form a consensus. As they are asking the prospective candidate to do two things which are just about contradictory, it’s pretty damned hard. Both of the times I’ve taken the "oral assessment" this is the section I’ve had the most trouble with.

Last week, before my departure for New Orleans, my mother told me that my experience here could provide excellent practice in that area. And she’s right. Because when a bunch of volunteers are building a house, nobody really knows what they’re doing, and no one is really in charge. Some people will take charge because they’re natural leaders, and some people will take charge because they’re anxious and feel the need to tell everyone what to do.

When I was little kid, I saw a movie called Space Camp at the Springfield Mall. Had this movie not made such an impression, I might not have ended up going to Space Camp myself. (Unlike the characters in the film, I was not accidentally launched into space by a friendly robot.) One of the things I remember about the film, besides the fact that Lea Thompson and Kelly Preston, especially, looked totally foxy, is the following quote: "there’s a difference between being the boss and being bossy." Word. When you’re bossy, people might do what you say, and if they do, it’s because they don’t feel that strongly, or perhaps because they’re non-confrontational, or perhaps they agree with your course of action but don’t much care for your delivery, but are willing to let that slide. (Or maybe when it’s a volunteer thing, and all of us gave up our time and money to travel to Louisiana and help others, so it’s petty to argue with someone because they want to be in charge.) But when you’re the boss, ideally, people will do what you say because you have the best ideas, or perhaps because you have the best oratorical skills and you can form a consensus, and you can convince everyone that you have the best vision and then unite all of them in support of executing that vision. This is an important thing to remember the next time you’re at an event where no one is really in charge.

St. Bernard Parish, Day Two

Today I learned how to put up siding. In fact, I spent the better part of the day putting up siding. This was in addition to learning how to use a tool that contains a string covered in red chalk which twangs against a wall indicating where the studs are. Our foreman was a mysterious individual who goes by the unlikely sobriquet of Bob-Rob. Bob-Rob cultivates an air of mystery about him. He doesn’t like having his picture taken, and when asked questions about himself or his background, he gives vague answers. But he is amusing. And he appears to know what he is doing.

My theme for today’s blog is the history of St. Bernard Parish. (Full disclosure: much of this information is gleaned from Wikipedia, so if you are one of those cats who doubt the veracity of Wikipedia, I warned you.) It’s named after the saintly namesake of Bernardo de Galvez y Madrid, Conde de Galvez, who was the governor of Spanish Louisiana during the American Revolution. Galvez himself is the namesake of Galvez, Louisiana, which is located ten miles southeast of Baton Rouge. The area was largely settled (by white people, anyway) by Canary Islanders in the 1780s when Louisiana was a Spanish possession. You’ll see a lot of Spanish surnames around here. Today is election day, and the parish clerk of the court, Lena Torres, was reelected, while parish president Henry "Junior" Rodriguez, Jr. is headed for a run-off. Among the less-successful candidates were Randy Nunez and Troy Saavedra. The Canary Islanders are referred to as Isleños, and there is an Isleños Museum here as well as an Isleños Fiesta every march.

Maybe the Spanish influence explains the funky accent people have here. The locals couldn't be friendlier, and they can be so appreciative it's almost embarrasing. Even though New Orleans is less than 20 miles from here, the local accent is distinct. Hard would come out more like "hahd" in New Orleans, but in "Da Parish" it's more like "haud." And if here in New Orleans is "hyah," in St. Bernard it sounds like "heeyuh." If I knew more about linguistics I could explain this in terms of schwas and elongated dipthongs and whatnot, but then almost nobody would understand would I was talking about.

One of the most famous local Isleños is the late Leander Perez, Sr. This dude was a real son-of-a-bitch. During the first half of the 20th century, he was the local boss of the political machine that ran St. Bernard and neighboring Plaquemines Parish as well. He was the sort of cat who defined the corrupt political machine. Voters were physically intimidated, all sorts of fake names were included on voter rolls, and Perez’s candidates routinely one more than 90% of the vote. Then he decided to become a militant segregationist. "Don’t wait for your daughters to be raped by these Congolese" is a typical example of his vile rhetoric. To give you an idea of the depth of his corruption, after his death the parish government sued his heirs for $82 million dollars. One of the main roads in St. Bernard Parish is named Judge Perez Drive. The locals realized that this is not really the sort of person you want associated with your community, and today the road is named after a local judge named Melvyn Perez. Still, when people around here refer to "Judge Perez," the person, rather than the street, they are usually talking about Leander Perez, Sr.
Camp Hope, the spot where I’m staying, is housed in a once and future middle school named after P.G.T. Beauregard, the greatest of the Deep South generals. Beauregard was actually born on a plantation here in St. Bernard Parish. People in the South love naming stuff after Confederate figures. In my hometown there’s a street named after Jefferson Davis. Despite the fact that many people think my hometown is not terribly Southern (which of course is not really a town at all, but America’s smallest county), it’s named after Robert E. Lee’s house. You know, the one the Yankees turned into a graveyard purely out of spite. One of the main thoroughfares in Arlington is Lee Highway. In neighboring Fairfax County, you’ll find the Lee-Jackson Memorial Highway and J.E.B. Stuart High School. There are also a lot of spots named after the Confederate officer most associated with Northern Virginia, Colonel John Singleton Mosby. For those of you who object to naming stuff after Confederate officers, I’d like to point out that he graduated from West Point without a single demerit. While you can blame him for picking the wrong side, you can't call into question either his honor or his character.

St. Bernard Parish, Day One

I’ll start this post with a little bit of background on St. Bernard Parish, where I am staying this week. In the wake of the catastrophes caused by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding, New Orleans got most of the press. This is perfectly understandable, given its position as one of America’s iconic cities. But communities like Meraux and Violet, Louisiana (where I’m staying) or Ocean Springs, Missisippi, were harder hit. The entire parish was covered in between 2 and 28 feet of water. There are a grand total, at most, of three structures in the entire parish that were not flooded. The eye of the hurricane passed over the eastern part of the parish, but meanwhile a black wall of clouds was pushing a 25 foot storm surge in which broke the parish levees. The water rose quickly. Some witnesses said it was less than fifteen minutes. Over two years later, much has been rebuilt, but there are still whole strip malls sitting there empty, the windows boarded up and the parking lots choked with weeds.

Habitat for Humanity’s weekly programs in St. Bernard Parish run Tuesday to Saturday, so on Mondays the volunteers here at Camp Hope do projects for the parish government. Today, I ended up at the spot that is going to be transformed into a park and playing fields. About 15 of us removed dead trees, whacked some weeds, and cleaned up a lot of garbage. The school itself was an odd sight. One whole wing had all of it’s walls gone. Inside, the seats were gone from the auditorium, so there was merely a stage with an incline in front of it. The windows were boarded up, or gone completely. There was graffiti on the walls, but much of it was along the lines of "I [heart] St. B," or "Archbishop Hannon was one of the best times of my life." The thing I found most unsettling was on the second floor. Whole rooms were strewn with the detritus of choir and band practice, but what got me was the proofs from yearbook photos strewn on the floor. These really conveyed the sense that the school had been abandoned suddenly, and the students had yet to return. Where are they now? Some have moved, no doubt, some managed to graduate from some other high school and have matriculated. Once this space was filled with the vibrant sounds of young people, chatting with their friends, discussing plans and crushes. Today it is cold and empty. The Diocese of New Orleans plans to reopen Archbishop Hannon High School elsewhere. But this spot, which is now owned by the parish government, will one day be a park.

We got to spend some time today with Roy and Perry, two employees of the parish government. Talk to the locals here, and you might hear some seriously f’ed up stories. During the flooding in 2005, people said that if you found a corpse, you should tie it to a post or a tree. Some people didn’t use a long enough rope, so when the waters receded, and the residents returned, they were confronted with the site of dead bodies hanging there. One of the bodies was only recognizable because he was still wearing his parish government uniform. Houses, beautiful houses, with lots of insulation were lifted clean off their foundations and came back down hundreds of feet away.

As depressing and macabre as all of that might be, there is definitely plenty of optimism here. Two years after the deluge, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done. But I understand it looks considerably better than it did last year. Local businesses have "now hiring" signs in front. Even if we didn’t do that much in tangible terms, merely showing up to help lets the locals know that they haven’t been forgotten. That just because it’s not in the news anymore, people in the rest of the country, in the rest of the world, still care about them. Today a woman at a grocery store hugged six of us. "Stay positive," I said to Roy as we departed. "You got to," he replied, "otherwise you’ll go crazy."

NFL Week 9 - Mixed Results

There were three games this week the outcome of which interested me. Two of them did not come out the way I would have liked. Happily, the game I was most interested in did get the desired result. That would be the Redskins taking on the Jets, or as ESPN.com columnist and possible anti-semite Greg Easterbrook likes to call them, Jersey B and the Potomac River Basin Indigenous Peoples. The ‘Skins, of course, just barely won. Against a shitty team, they trailed for much of the game and only managed to squeeze out a victory by a mere three points. And that was in overtime. Considering the decimation of their starting O-line and their apparent inability to form anything remotely resembling a killer instinct, I should probably be happy that the Redskins are even above .500. I didn’t see any of that game, as I was on a plane during most of it, but it’s probably a good thing. It must have been nerve-wracking.

Let’s move on to the second game of interest this Sunday. That would be the Chargers against the Vikings. I spent the morning in Minneapolis, only a few blocks from the Metrodome, and as I walked past some tailgaters, one of whom appeared to be spraying purple stuff on her hair, I neglected to tell them that I wished to see the Vikings lose. My interest in this game was purely personal, and fiscal as well. I had picked San Diego this week for my survival football pool, or as I prefer to call it, my football tontine. Granted, the Chargers have been rather disappointing this season, but it’s not like the Vikings are a great team. Damnit! I have been eliminated from the tontine. I felt pretty good about that pick. Part of the charm of this sort of tontine, though, is the unpredictably of professional football. Ah, well.

This brings us to the third game I cared about this week, which would be the brutal contest between the NFL’s two best teams, the Patriots & the Colts. And I really wanted to see the Pats lose. After what they did to the Redskins last week, I wanted to see them go down. Those dudes are getting arrogant. Really arrogant. And that pisses people off. It makes them dislike you. At least in America, anyway. We like underdogs. Matt Stone, co-creator of one of the greatest TV shows ever, once remarked that when South Park was just starting to blow up, everything written about him and Trey Parker seemed almost glowing and reverential. Whereas once they had created an enormous hit, and Comedy Central was throwing shitloads of ducats at them, the tone changed completely.

The main focus for my ire in New England is Bill Belichek. Not only is he the Sith Lord of the NFL, he’s a cheat. Everyone knows he’s a cheat. I hate when cheaters win. It sets a bad example. I would much prefer to see someone like Tony Dungy triumph, someone humble, upright and understanding. And I am rather fond of the Colts, and of Peyton Manning in particular. All season people have been talking about how great the Pats are, how they might go undefeated (they won’t) and not giving enough credit to the Colts. Peyton is endearing because despite being a complete bad-ass on the field, he appears to be a total doofus. He clearly doesn’t take himself very seriously, or else he wouldn’t appear in commercials wearing ridiculous wigs. Men want to dislike star quarterbacks. This is due to envy, obviously. But Peyton’s goofiness brings him back down to the level of the rest of us (except for his being a superstar and incredibly rich, of course). Tom Brady, on the other hand, is easy to dislike. At least if you’re a man. In addition to being a complete bad-ass on the field, he is also really good-looking and well-dressed (even though that newsboy cap he sported during last Sunday’s press conference was a definite sartorial misstep). I’m not quite ready to give him credit for his wardrobe. He might employ a stylist; I wouldn’t put it past him. Most dispiriting of all though, is the fact that Brady has (demonstrably) had sex with Bridget Moynihan and Gisele Bunchen. Whereas I have not.

Movie Review: "3:10 To Yuma"

Damn, that Christian Bale is a really really good actor. He is one of those cats who reviewers say "disappear" into roles. He is every bit as convincing as a 19th century Arizona rancher as he is as the privileged scion of Gotham City’s wealthy Waynes or as a deranged killer yuppie. And in 3:10 To Yuma he is on screen for almost the entire film, working with another great actor as his foil. Yes, Russell Crowe is a really really good actor too. It’s easy to forget this when he makes such a habit of getting in fights because he’s insecure. Few actors working today can do bad-ass like Russell Crowe. Or more to the point, likeable bad-ass. Crowe’s character Ben Wade (that’s a great Western name), may be the leader of a trigger-happy, bloodthirsty gang of deadly outlaws, but you’re not really supposed to dislike him. (His bad-assness is established at the end of the film’s first action piece when he calmly dispatches one of his own men as punishment for screwing up a stage robbery.) The real villain of the piece is Charley Prince, Wade’s sycophantic, psychopathic lieutenant. Speaking of good actors, Ben Foster plays Charley Prince and many people wouldn’t even realize it’s the same dude who played Russell, Claire Fisher’s whiny loser boyfriend on Six Feet Under. The two roles are polar opposites.

Christian Bale plays Dan Evans, a down-trodden rancher who gets no respect from anyone. Predictably, someone wants his land to sell to the railroad and is trying to drive him off. Dan Evans is so desperate for ducats that for $200 he agrees to escort the recently-captured Ben Wade to the town of Contention, and put him on the train of the title. And that’s when things get interesting. With Wade’s deadly gang in hot pursuit, his captors go down one by one in a series of excellent fights and action sequences.

Meanwhile, the outlaw and the rancher engage in some good old-fashioned male bonding. In most stories, there is one relationship that is the most important to the narrative. In this film, obviously, it’s between Ben Wade and Dan Evans. One of the main themes of the story is redemption, and both men use the other as the instrument of their redemption. The rancher, tired of feeling like a coward and a failure, insists to the bitter end on doing the honorable thing and finishing the job. Wade, a stone killer who describes himself as "rotten as hell," decides to do the decent thing and help out a decent man. It’s almost like the relationship you’d see between the cop and the mobster in a John Woo movie.

The film is more than capably helmed by James Mangold, who appears to be what you could call an "actors’ director." Looking at his resume, he clearly likes to mix it up genre-wise, but he elicits great performances from actors whether it’s in a biopic (Walk The Line), a time-bending rom-com (Kate & Leopold), a gimmicky thriller (Identity), or a heavy-on-the-emotion drama (Heavy). In CopLand, he reminded a lot of people that Sylvester Stallone can hold his own around heavyweights with names like Keitel and DeNiro. Crowe and Bale have a good chemistry in 3:10 To Yuma, and of course the film wouldn’t work as well as it does if they didn’t. Crowe, as the likeable bad-ass, gets most of the best lines, but Christian Bale gets several juicy scenes where he really gets to show off his skills. He is extremely compelling in these scenes. They are the emotional high points of the film. I don’t often have the experience of watching an actor who is so good that I can’t look away. Especially memorable and affecting is an interlude right before the climax when he talks to his son and insists the kid take off before the shit hits the fan.

There are some people who might complain that there isn’t really anything terribly original in this film. That is actually pretty accurate, but it’s also largely irrelevant. Most of this stuff you’ve already seen in another Western. (In fact, you might have seen it in the original 3:10 To Yuma, a 1957 film with Glenn Ford as Ben Wade and Van Heflin as Dan Evans.) There are Western stock shots, like swinging saloon doors, peppered throughout. Many of the characters are from Western central casting: there’s an amoral local magnate trying to run the protagonist’s family off their land, an overdressed, prissy railroad agent, a bespectacled doctor, and a grizzled old lawman. But so what? It’s a genre picture, and it’s a really good genre picture. (The Western is perhaps the most American of film genres, so it’s a little weird that the leads are played by an Australian and an Englishman.) It’s got great action sequences, great acting, and plenty of genuine emotion. So what if it’s not terribly original? It works!

Yet again, someone has pissed me off.

I like to think of myself as the picture of imperturbability; a model of calm whose placid demeanor is rarely ruffled by the vagaries and minor annoyances of daily life. But this is not wholly accurate. If I am to be honest with myself, I must admit that at some times and in certain contexts I have a pretty short fuse. To wit: men who jog with their shirts off, bicyclists wearing skintight clothing, and dudes wearing T-shirts emblazoned with images of Che Guevara routinely piss me off pretty much anytime I see them. But in their defense, these individuals are not intentionally trying to anger me. It’s not as if they woke up in the morning, and thought, “hmm, what I can do today to piss off Dalton?” They are just being dumb-asses.

But the cat who pissed me off last night cannot claim that defense. He was intentionally being an ass. Allow me to elucidate: last night I was at a rock and/or roll concert, and I was standing next to my friend Cheryl sharing an amusing anecdote about the time my homey Doug had a “moment” with Dave Matthews backstage at a Trey Anastasio show. But before I could finish the story, this dude tapped me on the shoulder and told me I was speaking too loudly and interfering with his ability to hear the band. Are you f’ing kidding me? This is a rock show. The volume is up so loud that many people are wearing earplugs. And this sucka is actually suggesting that my voice is loud enough that it is overwhelming the sound of many large amps? Seriously?

Generally, people draw on established social conventions to determine their behavior. If you are at the ballet or the opera, everyone tacitly accepts that everyone should remain quiet during the performance. People even suppress coughs until the end of a movement. But as far as I know, this is not the established social convention concerning rock concerts. (Please let me know if you believe otherwise.) In fact, I have been to scores, and perhaps hundreds, of rock concerts, and last night was the first and only time anyone has suggested that audience members should remain quiet during the performance.

I would like to draw a distinction between unintentionally rude behavior and intentionally rude behavior. Despite the fact that I think this dude’s request was patently absurd, I will concede that my behavior, at least in his mind, was negatively affecting his enjoyment of the show. However, this was completely unintentional on my part. Never did it occur to me than someone at a rock and/or roll show would have a problem with people talking during the performance. But the cat who spoke to me was being intentionally rude. He prefaced his request for me to be silent with “I don’t mean to be a dick.” Invariably, if you feel obliged to preface a statement with that phrase, you are almost certainly being a dick. The best response is the one I employed last night: “well you may not mean to be a dick, but you are being a dick.” Not only was he being a dick, but he was being whiny as well. And I hate whiners. I went on to tell him that I always try to be considerate and polite, so I would refrain from speaking unnecessarily for the rest of the show. But I did want to make clear that I thought his request was unreasonable and stupid. His friend then chimed in that he did not pay for a ticket to hear me speak. It occurred to me to tell him that it would be well worth it to pay to listen to me speak, since I am a gifted public speaker with the ability to be both insightful and amusing. Instead I simply informed the wanker that I had not solicited his opinion nor did I find it especially interesting. With that, I turned my back to them so that we could all get back to the show. Later, I looked about for them halfheartedly to see if they would be interested in having their asses beat. (True story: I was once arrested for carrying concealed weapons when I had my hands in my pockets.) I couldn’t really spot them, though. All those dudes with ironic Girl Scout T-shirts and black frame glasses look alike to me. Wankers.

Why I Hate Will Smith

Several times in the past few weeks, I’ve encountered metrobuses emblazoned with the phrase “Will Smith is going. Are you?” I don’t know what sort of event or activity these advertisements are advertising, and I don’t much care. In fact, Will Smith’s attendance or inclusion to just about anything would make me avoid it. I can’t stand Will Smith. I don’t care if he’s a huge box office draw (despite his limited range), the “most powerful actor on the planet,” or good-looking in a non-threatening way, or whatever. I can’t stand him.

I have no objections to the whole clean-cut and wholesome thing. There is nothing wrong with being either clean-cut or wholesome. I appear rather clean-cut myself. And I feel that modern American culture could probably use a little more wholesomeness. What causes me to detest Will Smith is his smugness about being clean-cut and wholesome. It’s great that his grandma told him not to cuss and to respect women. But dude, don’t brag about the fact that you don’t cuss in raps, as if that makes you better than other MCs. That’s obnoxious. In the words of the bard of Detroit, Mr. Marshall Mathers: “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss to sell raps, well I do, so f**k him, and f**k you too.”

The other thing I dislike about him is his constant pursuit of the lowest common denominator, whether musically or on film. His desire to be as well-liked as possible by as many people as possible causes him to shy away from anything remotely controversial, and thus, artistically challenging. Musically, this trend became most apparent when he parted ways with DJ Jazzy Jeff, who really was keeping him real (with the exception of the unfortunate “Boom! Shake The Room!”). This is also about the same time he contributed to the unfortunate trend of rappers using their real name, rather than creating a witty sobriquet. (I only approve of rappers using their real names if they are going to repeatedly use a screwed & chopped sample of themselves saying their name throughout their songs. Mike Jones!) And speaking of the lowest common denominator, what sort of rapper puts out a love song to his son? How sentimental and maudlin can you possibly get? Gag me with a shovel. He insists upon using samples from well-known songs by Stevie Wonder, Chic or The Clash, rather than actually working with producers who will come up with something interesting and new.

The main reason this is such a shame is that the erstwhile Fresh Prince is actually a really good rapper. The dude can flow. “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” are deservedly ensconced in the pantheon of hip-hop classics. And “Summertime,” perhaps the duo’s greatest concoction, is one of the great jams of all time.

He has his defenders who will insist that he is a good actor. But that pursuit of the lowest common denominator is equally apparent when you examine his choice of movies. Let’s not forget that he has appeared in some truly God-awful films. He may have made Ali and Six Degrees of Separation, but he also made two Bad Boys movies. The first one was just piss-poor, but the second was so ludicrous and nonsensical that it actually crossed the line into camp. The only thing that saved these films was the comedic brilliance of the underrated Martin Lawrence. (Oh, and Gabrielle Union in the sequel. She’s got it going on.) Will Smith also appeared in Wild Wild West, which found two really talented actors (Kevin Kline & Kenneth Brannagh) slumming for a paycheck. He also was one of the leads in one of the worst blockbusters of all-time, Independence Day. In Enemy of the State his silly presence (combined with a bad script) created a mess that even Gene Hackman and Hollywood’s most underrated director couldn’t salvage. And the less said about “A Shark’s Tale” the better.

So, to sum up: I hate Will Smith.

It's a well-known fact that people named Dalton are awesome.

Yes, it's true, I am not the only person named Dalton who kicks ass. Obviously, there's the main character from Patrick Swayze's seminal film Road House, a Dalton who knows martial arts, has a degree in philosophy from NYU, and is considered by some to be the greatest "cooler" of all time. Also, apparently there was a "scholarly, bespectacled" vampire named Dalton on that Buffy TV show.

But today we're going to extol Dalton Carriker, the 12 year-old Georgian (the South seems to produce a disproportionate share of Daltons) whose 8th inning home run recently led the United States to victory over the Empire of Japan in the 2007 Little League World Series. This was actually the third year in a row the United States has won the L.L.W.S., which we damn sure should considering we invented the game. (This is in marked contrast to the U.S. National Baseball Team, which didn't even qualify for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Disgraceful.) Way to go, Dalton! You rock. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

The Miracle (Yes, That’s Right, I Said Miracle) of Air Travel

Quite often today you will hear cats voicing their grievances with the litany of hassles that have infected the process of air travel of late. Many of these objections are perfectly valid. True, the lines can be long. The forced removal of the footgear is annoying, but it is certainly not catastrophic. And the bagging of the gels and liquids is just one more nuisance that conspires to make the entire endeavor an enormous pain in the ass. These things are easy to focus on.

However, I prefer to focus on the sunnier side of the coin. And that merely requires remembering that air travel is a miracle. Yes, a miracle. Like all technologies, it quickly becomes so commonplace that we all-too-easily forget how amazing it truly is. This past Memorial Day, I winged my way across half of the continental United States to attend my brother’s nuptial festivities in Nebraska. I woke up in Washington, and went to sleep in Omaha, more than a thousand miles away. Distances that once took weeks or months to cover are now reduced to a few hours of travel time. A visit from New York to Richmond in the eighteenth century would have required weeks of time to be set aside, thus precluding the voyage for all but a handful.

Not only is this mind-bogglingly awesome technology available to us, but it is remarkably cheap as well. Not only can I go visit someone who lives a thousand miles away for the weekend, but I can do it for less than $200. Wow. Many of my friends, who could not be considered wealthy by the standards of an industrialized democracy, are fantastically well-traveled. Indonesia, Croatia, South Africa, Belize, Chile and dozens of other nations are a few hundred dollars and a few hours of time away. The world is open before us. And most of the time we take this for granted. We assume it has always been thus.

I cannot minimize the really unfortunate things involved in air travel, such as the enormous amount of gas burned by planes, or worse still, the efforts of intolerant old men to persuade impressionable young men that airplanes are an appropriate setting for indiscriminate mayhem. The many small irritants that collectively cause such trouble are real and irritating. But the next time you have to pay too much for long-term parking, or a flight gets delayed, or you have to get up at 6 AM to go stand in line for an hour before you even get to hear the whir of a jet engine, try and perk yourself up. You are utilizing an astonishing invention indeed. The fact that it is so prosaic that we forget this only makes it that much more miraculous.

Michael Vick may be a scumbag, but there's a larger issue that no one's discussing.

Everybody wants to talk about Michael Vick. Well, actually, they want to talk about Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref who betted on games, and perhaps affected the outcome of games he refereed in order to cover spreads and whatnot. Then they want to talk about Michael Vick and his dog fighting ring. Then they want to talk about Barry Bonds’ imminent overtake of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s home run record. Then perhaps they’ll throw in a word about how Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL, is looking pretty good compared to some of his peers right now. Then, if they get around to it, because it’s professional cycling, and it’s not like anyone in this country cares, especially now that Lance Armstrong has retired, they want to talk about the apparently rampant doping and widespread malfeasance going down at the Tour de France.

Being a sports fan can be a bit of a drag during the late summer doldrums. Football doesn’t start until September (yeah, the preseason is in August, but whatever, it’s not like those games matter), the NBA finished up a month ago, and the European soccer season is over. MLS is going strong, so that keeps one occupied, assuming you are among the minority of American sports fans that are into soccer. Baseball is fun, of course, but the season is sooooo long that I really have a hard time caring until pennant races start in earnest towards the end of August. (This is especially true since my hometown team is God-awful, largely thanks to the shady bastards at MLB headquarters.) So in a way it’s a good thing that all this shit has hit the proverbial fan in several different sports all at once. This gives sports fans something to read about and subsequently discuss. It also provides mad material for the juvenile meatheads who expend the airtime of AM radio mouthing off on “sports talk” shows.

I’d like to talk about Michael Vick, who may turn out to be just as much of a scumbag as his younger brother. I don’t think he’s stupid, but he does seem to have spectacularly poor judgment. He should have known better than to employ an absurd alias whilst getting tested at a VD clinic, for example, or flipping the bird to his own fans during a game in the ATL. The NFL, as America’s number one sports league, zealously guards its public image. Furthermore, I suspect that Roger Goodell, in his first full season as commissioner, feels particularly obliged to make sure that people respect his authoritay. This is why he’s suspended Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Titans (who I don’t believe has actually been convicted of a crime) and Chris Henry of the Bengals for the 2007 season. We don’t yet know what the outcome of the dog fighting imbroglio will be, but even in the unlikely event that Michael Vick is completely exonerated, I imagine the commish is going to make a big example of him.

There is a larger issue here, and it’s one that no one in the NFL is going to touch. If you play football, and you’re really good at it, it is made clear to you, in no uncertain terms, that the rules do not apply to you. Cats with Vick-level talent stand out in youth leagues, and they really stand out once they get into high school. This is the point at which they are implicitly informed that they are held to a different standard. They can skip class. They can get other people to take their tests for them. They can start fights and bully other students with impunity. Here is a perfect example: Brian “The Boz” Bosworth was at the University of Oklahoma back in the late eighties, it was arguably the dirtiest D-1 football program in America. In his scintillating biography, The Boz, he details what happened when he was pulled over for speeding (which apparently happened a lot): once the officer got up to the car and saw who was driving, he would simply wish the Boz luck on his upcoming game and send him on his way. On the rare occasions when he actually received a ticket, he simply called a booster at the traffic court clerk’s office, and the ticket would simply go away. (I use this example despite the fact that the Boz spends a large portion of the book insisting he’s never used steroids, an assertion so fanciful that it calls into question the veracity of the rest of the book.) If you want some other examples of what I’m talking about, watch Dazed & Confused or read Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger’s superb chronicle of Texas high school football.

This double standard is most likely especially pronounced in smaller towns in places like Florida and Texas, where high school football occupies a near-mythical role in the local consciousness. And this double standard is not cool. But it’s also not cool to inform young men throughout their adolescence that the rules don’t apply to them, and then all of sudden hold them to a higher standard than everyone else. Which is precisely what is going on. If I was arrested several times, but wasn’t convicted of anything, I certainly wouldn’t be suspended from my job. I’m not saying that Pacman Jones isn’t a thug, or that Michael Vick isn’t a scumbag. But there is a larger problem beyond the NFL brass’ concern that their players come off as a bunch of hooligans. Until that larger problem is addressed, rather than ignored, high-profile college and professional athletes will continue to act as if the rules don’t apply to them. Because most of the time, they don’t.

"The Toenails On The Other Hand" - "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead" at the Studio Theatre

What’s this play about? Hmmm. Well, that’s kind of a hard question. I’d say it’s an existentialist play. It’s about free will vs. determinism. If I had to describe it in faux-movie pitch terms, I’d say it’s Hamlet meets Waiting For Godot. It is also really, really funny, provided you’re an egghead. (Fortunately, I’m a bit of an egghead, and I saw the play with the two eggheads who raised me.) But if you must have a synopsis, here goes: Tom Stoppard’s premise is to take the events of Hamlet as interpreted by two minor characters and use that as a foundation for the exploration of themes of determinism vs. free will, epistemology, and literary structuralism. Our two protagonists hang about the castle of Elsinore, trying to figure out what is going on based solely on the information gleaned from the sparse scenes of Hamlet in which they appear.

I have a friend who used to work at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and she is of the opinion that this is an extremely difficult play to perform correctly. While I’ve read the play, and seen the 1990 movie that introduced Tim Roth & Gary Oldman to America (and was filmed in Yugoslavia for some reason), this was the first time I’d actually seen it on stage. So while I don’t actually have any other productions to compare it to, I still concluded that my friend was totally right in her opinion. All plays are about language, obviously. But this one is having so much fun playing around with language, and it has such high-minded and abstract concepts at its core, that it is very hard to follow unless the spectator stays very focused throughout the performance. This is complicated further because there is so much dialogue crammed into the play, and it is coming at you so fast.

Fortunately, the two excellent actors who played the leads made it easy to stay focused. Despite the play’s running joke that no one, including the lead duo themselves, can remember which is Guildenstern and which is Rosencrantz, Raymond Bokhour (as Rosencrantz - I think) and Liam Craig (as Guildenstern?) create two distinct characters who complement each other by their differences. Bokhour’s Rosencrantz (or is it Guildenstern?) is ingenuous and curious, ready to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone who can help him figure out what’s going on. Meanwhile, Liam Craig, as Guildenstern (or perhaps Rosencrantz) is cynical, suspicious, and more than a bit angry at finding himself in such a bizarre and nonsensical spot. Both become increasingly visibly frustrated as the play continues and the answers they so seek fail to materialize. The pair is on stage for pretty much the whole time, so they’d better be sympathetic and interesting. Otherwise, time will crawl along like a slug in molasses. The acting, as usual for the Studio Theater, is consistently good. Drew Edelsheim also deserves praise as the Player King, who appears often, seems to know more than he lets on, and gets to deliver one of the plays choicest lines: “We’re actors. We’re the opposite of people.” (He doubly deserves praise since he had the unenviable task of replacing Floyd King, a true pillar of Washington, D.C.’s underappreciated theater community.)

I dug the set design. I’ve heard that not everyone did. I thought it was innovative, and more importantly, worked within the context of the play. When putting on a play that mainly involves two cats standing around having involved conversations about what’s going on, I think it makes perfect sense to have them in a setting which appears fairly bland and generic. Adding lots of trapdoors, hidden panels, and moving walls allows the actors to move about in unorthodox ways and also means the set can be opened up when necessary. (One thing that I particularly like about the Studio Theatre’s main space is that the seats sort of curve around the stage, which projects slightly into the center of the seats in the middle. This encourages more direct interaction between the actors and the audience.) There are very few props, and with the exception of a couple of chairs, no furniture appears on the set either. This puts extra emphasis on the actors, which is a good thing for a play as high-minded and focused on language as this one.

The lighting designer did a great job, too. Perhaps a lot of people don’t consciously notice the lighting at a theatre, but good lighting design can add to the effectiveness of the production by heightening emotion or adding nuance to a particular scene. Also, the lighting syncs up very well with the set in this production, which is not always the case.

I was not as thrilled by the costume design. A minimalist set will ad extra attention to the actors, and to their clothing. The costume design wasn’t bad. Most of the individual outfits work for the individuals wearing them. But they lack an overall thematic coherence. For the most part, they go very well with the actors wearing them, but not that well with each other.

The Studio Theatre billed this as a “40th anniversary” production, as the play premiered at the Old Vic in 1967 (when Tom Stoppard was not yet thirty). Despite that, it’s not dated at all, and it’s easy to see why it’s performed so often. It’s also easy to see how hard it is to do right. Apparently, I’m not the only person who enjoyed it. Bob Mondelo, of NPR and WETA’s Out And About, said this is the first production he's seen that equals the one he saw on Broadway in 1967. The reviewer for Washingtonian magazine gave it four stars. Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal’s theater critic said it was “the best Rosencrantz & Guildenstern [he’s] seen on stage.” Wow.

I can’t make that claim, as it’s also the only “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern” I’ve seen on stage. But I can say this: it reminded me why I love live theatre. There’s a magic moment right at the beginning, when the lights go down, and you know you’re going to see something unique. No two performances are ever exactly the same. But even if you catch this particular production on an off-night, I bet you’re still going to love it.

Theatre Review: "Dead Man's Cell Phone" at Wooly Mammoth

Last week I had the pleasure of enjoying an evening at the theatre. This was my first time at the Wooly Mammoth’s new spot on D Street in the burgeoning East End, which people have unfortunately taken to calling “Penn Quarter,” despite the fact that “The East End” is a much cooler name for a neighborhood. In case you’re not familiar with the Wooly Mammoth theatre company, it is “Washington’s most daring theatre company,” according to the New York Times. In d.c., if you like plays, and you want to check out the classics (Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw) you’d probably head for the Washington Shakespeare Company’s Lansburgh Theatre (which is less than a block from Wooly Mammoth’s space) or their old digs at the Folger Theatre on Capitol Hill. If you want something a little more left-field and wackier, you’d be best served strolling on over to the Wooly Mammoth, or perhaps the Studio Theatre.

Currently playing at the Mammoth is “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” which has been extended twice. The play is a world premiere by a playwright named Sarah Ruhl. In addition to being really young to be a successful professional playwright (she’s 33), Ms. Ruhl is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, so apparently she’s bad-ass. What I found particularly impressive is that she is great at writing funny. I cannot remember the last time I cracked up this much whilst watching a play. Writing something that is going to make people laugh out loud is exceedingly difficult, so those who are capable of it deserve mad props. (I suspect that writing funny plays may be slightly easier than writing funny novels, as the collaborative nature of the theatre might provide the playwright with talented actors to phrase the funny parts the right way.)

While the play was indeed most amusing, I didn’t feel it was quite as successful at getting across its point. (And I’m not entirely sure what that point was – and I should at least have a germ of an idea of what the point was.) It seemed like there was supposed to be some subtext about technology driving people apart rather than bringing them closer together. But if the playwright was trying to impress that upon the audience, she failed to impress it upon me. In fact, technology, in this case the cell phone of the title, brings the main character into people’s lives. She doesn’t exactly behave the best way once she’s there, but the phone itself serves as her entrée.

The set design was sparse and minimalist (one can imagine that those two adjectives would go hand in hand), which I can totally dig, especially if it is also really creative, as it was here. The acting was uniformly excellent. The main character, Jean, is rather mousy and meek, but Polly Noonan injects the character with enough dynamism to make her compelling and likeable. Sarah Marshall gets many of the best lines as the eponymous dead man’s mother, and she spews them out with angry enthusiasm but never crosses the line into caricature. But there is one thespian that particularly stands out. That would be Rick Foucheaux as Gordon Gottlieb, the cadaver of the title. He’s not on stage that much, yet his character guides everyone else’s actions. And in addition to the emotional climax of the play, he gets to take center stage alone for what I felt was the best part of the whole thing. The second act opens with a monologue/diatribe/oration by Gordon that goes on for several minutes. Rick Foucheaux barely moves; he’s sitting down the whole time. The writing, of course is very strong, but in this scene the actor radiates such magnetism and charisma that you sit there, transfixed, just watching some dude talk for five minutes. And it’s probably the best part of the whole play.

Movie Review: "Transformers"

My expectations for this film were low, and they were met. Actually, Transformers exceeded my expectations, such as they were. The action sequences were bad-ass. I expected that. There were lots of really cool explosions. The CGI was awesome, so the robots looked really good, as the film did generally. I was expecting that. I also expected some silly imagery in the visual scheme of the film. Stuff like pilots running in slow-motion towards waiting jets with a hazy sky and a setting sun in the background, followed by close-ups shot from below of the jets swooping in between two office buildings. This is usually interspersed with a besieged authority figure (in this case, an underwhelming Jon Voigt as the secretary of defense) declaiming inspirationally. Mitchell Amundsen, the director of photography, worked on The Island, MI:III, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon and Bad Boys II, so he knows exactly what this sort of movie is supposed to look like.

Another thing I was expecting was a really weak script, one that was derivative, devoid of inspiration or innovation, and shot through with bad dialogue and cliches. Check. This was established with an implausible conversation among some soldiers right at the start of the movie. Some of the stuff in here is really absurd: "the NSA’s recruiting right out of high school now," someone remarks before we first meet a "signals analyst" who happens to not only be blonde and hot but also has a thick Tasmanian accent for some reason. What? (Observant D.C. residents will notice that after she leaves the Pentagon she then hails a cab at M Street & Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, which takes her to a house that is clearly in Southern California.) The Men in Black are here rendered as "Sector 7," a super-secret government organization (sure) founded by Herbert Hoover (uh-huh) that guards ancient alien technology (why not?) hidden far beneath the bowels of the Hoover Dam (yeah, right) using it to reverse-engineer the microchip and airplanes (as if). Of course, rather than having all of this revealed a little bit at a time, it spews forth in a blast of exposition two-thirds of the way into the film. It takes a while to get going. And it's too long.

Seriously, I do not understand how screenplays this poor get made into movies! It is not that hard to write an action movie with soul, one that combines believable characters with white-knuckled excitement. It is not so difficult to craft an adrenaline-pumping thrill ride that has sincere, affecting emotion, rather than pseudo-macho posturing and love stories as shallow as a kiddie pool. We need not sacrifice all substance for style.

That said, they did get some pretty good actors for this film. Josh Duhamel acquits himself capably as an army captain, and Megan Fox is not only a serious vixen, she makes the love interest three-dimensional and likeable. Anthony Anderson is underused, and makes the most of the poor lines that stereotype his character as a nerd, a coward and a glutton. That character is also a Redskins fan, which is pretty cool. He wears a Portis jersey throughout the film, so at least they got that right.

It’s kind of weird, when you first think about it, that Shia LaBeouf (best know for the Disney tween sitcom Even Stevens) is cast as the lead in a movie that cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars. But someone asked me yesterday if it was appopriate for children, and I replied, "well, it was made for adolescent boys." When you consider it from that aspect it totally makes sense to have an 11th grade protagonist. And Shia "Ou est" LaBeouf is pretty much perfect for the role. He’s not one of the cool kids, but neither is he a complete dork. He’s endearing and confident. The teenage boys who come to see this film will find it very easy to identify with and cheer for him. And, admittedly, he does get some pretty choice lines. To be fair, the script does have some funny parts to it. But perhaps not quite as many as there are parts that are unintentionally funny.

Transformers reminded me, more than anything else, of Team America. This is not surprising, considering the homies from South Park were parodying the whole ouevre of Messrs. Bay and Bruckheimer (who was not involved with this movie, although apparently Steven Spielberg was - if so, he didn’t exert nearly enough artistic guidance). This is especially true in a scene where fancy fighter planes blow the living crap out of a villlage located in "Qatar - The Middle East" with little regard for the locals or the American soldiers hanging about. Aside from the robots, anything you see in Transformers you probably saw in Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock, or Bad Boys. Perhaps I’m judging this film and those who made it too harshly. Movies like this are like twinkies, they’re filling but there’s no nutritional value, and that’s sort of the point. They’re called "popcorn movies" for a reason. Sometimes all you want is some slick photography, some hot babes, and some ass-kicking action sequences. I’m sorry if I sound like a crank. But this is the kind of action movie that gives action movies a bad name. There are filmmakers out there (James Cameron and Tony Scott come to mind) who prove it’s possible to make awesome action movies that have a heart. So I don’t really see the point in making one like this when you could make one like that.

Just Reading Some Early 20th Century German Expressionist Plays

Recently I’ve been reading some of the oeuvre of Carl Sternheim, a German playwright of the early 19th century. It’s pretty good stuff, but you have to know a bit about Expressionism to really get the plays. I’m referring specifically to Expressionism in a literary sense. And what is Expressionism? If we define it as an intentional distortion or magnification of reality, then Sternheim’s dialogue can be approached from the right perspective.

Because in marked contrast to the realism of his contemporary Henrik Ibsen, Sternheim makes no effort whatsoever to write realistic dialogue. (I’ll go ahead and add here that I am an enormous fan of Ibsen and I think his greatest gift as a playwright was his ability to write dialogue that actually sounds like something someone would actually say. Quentin Tarantino is also quite good at this.) In fact, the unrealistic nature of the speech in his plays is kind of the point. Much like Raven-Symoné’s execrable sitcom, the characters in Sternheim’s plays converse in words and phrases that could not sound less like real speech. Which is, of course, his intent. By using unrealistic and distorted speech, he can exaggerate the negative traits of his characters and thus call more attention to them. Since his best plays are satires of German middle-class social mores, exaggeration and Expressionist dialogue was probably the best call in that context.

However, there is one big problem with Sternheim’s approach. In the introduction to the collection of plays I’ve been reading, the translator laments that the plays are not performed more often. But there’s a reason these plays aren’t performed very often: they’re not terribly accessible. According to the online Literary Encyclopedia: “the stylized language in which he wrote made considerable demands on his audience.” No shit. The inaccessibility I refer to manifests itself in two ways: first, if you’re not familiar with Expressionist writing, you might say to yourself, “What the hell is going on here? Nobody actually talks like that.” Secondly, and perhaps more significant, is the subjects he chose for his plays. Sternheim’s best work is satirical, but more specifically he is satirizing the developing bourgeoisie in early 20th century Germany. If you don’t know anything about the social history of pre-war Wilhelmine Germany, then the whole point of his plays is going to go totally over your head. His tales are so closely tied to a specific time and place that it becomes very difficult to fully appreciate them outside of that context.

Let me offer William Shakespeare as a counterpoint. Shakespeare’s work was undoubtedly influenced by the political and social atmosphere of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Knowledge of that atmosphere will absolutely aid in the appreciation of his work. But it’s certainly not necessary. This is because Shakespeare concerned himself with themes and subjects that are resonant in any culture at any time. There is a reason his plays are performed as often as they are and in so many different languages (including the original Klingon). While countless high school students may bemoan the density of his language, it’s important to remember that Shakespeare’s plays are about things like love, honor, duty, and the bounds of friendship and loyalty. That’s considerably more timeless than tales of the German middle class of the early 20th century.

All artists, and writers especially I believe, have to ask themselves how accessible they want their work to be. If you want to write a 1,200 page book that meticulously details Lyndon Johnson’s 10-year senatorial career, it's not realistic to expect it to be a bestseller. Likewise, if you want to focus your themes on a really specific time and place, perhaps you shouldn’t expect your work to age too well. I don’t mean to take anything away from Carl Sternheim. I think he was an excellent playwright and I think his plays accurately and effectively convey the messages he was trying to get across. But ultimately, I think these plays might work better as historical documents than they do as pure stories.

They All Matter

The D.C. public school system has been in the news more often of late due to Mayor Adrian Fenty’s recent “takeover” and ousting of Superintendent Clifford Janey. While I certainly am no fan of Mayor Fenty, I can’t predict whether or not his efforts will improve the quality of education received by children in the District. I might, however, ask those optimistic about the mayor’s plans to name a single urban school district in America that provides a quality education. Why is this? Why can’t America’s cities provide such a basic need to its youngest citizens?

According to a series of articles in the Washington Post last week, Philadelphia provides a quality education. Or at least, the quality has improved markedly over the last several years. (Click here for the full article.) One thing you will learn from reading the whole thing (and it is pretty long) is that this cost a lot of money. And that many of the gains accomplished by Philadelphia’s visionary superintendent are in danger of being wiped away because politicians won’t pony up more ducats. In a way, it is not surprising that education is such a low spending priority for governments: the people the money is spent on can’t vote. You can cut teacher’s salaries, cut arts & music programs, and it’s not like the children whose schools are damaged are going to vote you out of office. But try to cut medicare or social security, and you’ll have so many pissed-off voters that the AARP will be all up in your grill before you can say “Jiminy Christmas.”

But there is actually another point here that I’d like to make. I tutor at an elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia. More than half of the students there receive subsidized lunches, this despite the fact that in most cases both of their parents have at least one job. I was recently there for a “volunteer appreciation lunch.” It was nice, but it wasn’t really necessary; anyone who engages in that sort of thing to get recognition needs to reconsider his motives.

This spring I’ve been working with a fourth-grader and helping him with his reading skills. At the lunch, I got to talk to his teacher, who told me that the kid’s reading comprehension and speed has improved noticeably since he started working with me. It was immensely rewarding to hear this. The thing about tutoring is that it’s pretty much impossible to measure a quantifiable result. If you volunteer for Habitat For Humanity, at the end of the day you can say, “hey, there’s a house.” If you remove non-native plants from a nature preserve, you can say, “I bet those damn Japanese maples will think twice before they set up shop around here again.” You’ll have a tangible, material result. In reference to my tutee, the teacher also added “I know he can be a handful sometimes.” Yes, he can, and those kids are the ones who need help most. Because they are the easiest ones to give up on. It’s hard to give up on people who make it easy for you to help them. If you are one of those difficult kids, then the more people there are that give up on you, the easier it is to believe that you’re not valuable. If people keep treating you that way, eventually you’ll start to believe them.

The article in the Post details a senior named Reggie Mays. He grew up in an unstable family environment in an ugly, violent neighborhood. He got suspended several times as a freshman. But now he’s gone from a D student to a B student, and he’s planning on going to college and law school. What happened? He received “lots of academic and personal support” and “prominent Philadelphia lawyers mentored him.” In other words, people told him he was important. People told him he matters. That his feelings, and his goals, and his dreams, are just as valid as some kid who grew up in the suburbs and had his life handed to him on a silver platter. Reggie himself added that without the guidance, “I’d be locked up or doing something illegal…I wouldn’t have anything to strive for to keep me going.”

Fun Facts About the Isle of Man

Sometimes when people ask me about my ethnic background, just to mess with them I’ll say, “I’m one-sixteenth Manx.” My great-great-grandfather Robert Garrett left the Isle sometime in the 19th century and immigrated to Florida. The main reason I say this is to be willfully obscure. Most people have never heard of the Isle of Man and have no idea that people or things from there are called Manx.

In case you didn’t know, the Isle of Man is a small island located in the Irish Sea. It is nearly equidistant from Ireland, Scotland and Great Britain. It is approximately 35 miles long and between 8 and 15 miles wide. Here are some more fun facts about the Isle:

• The Isle of Man has the oldest parliament in continuous existence in the world. It is called the Tynwald and it has been meeting regularly since 979. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union, nor is it part of the Commonwealth. Legally, the island is a crown dependency, as are the Channel Islands. The head of state of the Isle of Man is HM Queen Elizabeth II, represented by a lieutenant-governor. The UK takes care of defense and represents the Isle in international forums, but the Tynwald has almost total control over domestic matters. Nonetheless, the Manx are British citizens.
• The eldest three of the Brothers Gibb (Barry and twins Robin and Maurice) were born on the Isle of Man. Andy Gibb was born in Manchester shortly before the family immigrated to Australia. (I might as well take this opportunity to point out once again that the BeeGees totally don’t get the respect they deserve. They had top ten hits in the UK and the US in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. Who does that? Pop music is so fickle that anyone who can pull that off deserves some cred. They also basically introduced disco to a mass audience more or less by themselves. Some people might not necessarily think that’s a good thing, but those people are wrong.)
• There are two varieties of the famous Manx cat: the “rumpy,” which has no tail at all, and the “stumpy,” which has a small vestigial tail.
• The Manx Gaelic language is a Goidelic Celtic language, grouped with Irish and Scottish Gaelic, as opposed to the Brythonic Celtic languages, such as Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Together the Brythonic & Goidelic language families comprise the Insular Celtic Languages. Ned Maddrell, the last native Manx speaker, died in 1974. Since then, however, there has been an upsurge in interest and many bilingual primary schools exist on the island. Manx Gaelic is recognized as an autochthonous regional language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
• The symbol of the Isle is the triskelion, which consists of three bent human legs. In the case of the Isle of Man, the legs are armored, and the triskelion can be found on the Manx flag as well as the coat of arms depicted above. The Manx flag used to fly in front of “The Crackhouse” on 13th Street North in Arlington. The Isle’s Latin motto references the triskelion: Quocunque Jeceris Stabit, which translates as “whichever way you throw it, it will stand.”

What's Dalton reading this week?

Well, last week I finished Manhunt for my book club. The name of our book club is B.I.B.L.E. Study, which stands for Brotherhood of Intense Book-Loving Enthusiasts. One neat thing about being in a book club is you get to read books that you wouldn’t have decided to read on your own initiative. Like Manhunt. I enjoyed this book, but it’s not the kind of thing I think I would have read otherwise. It’s too much information about too small a topic. It covers a period of just 12 days in a very small geographic location. I now have way more information than I could ever possibly need concerning the chase for John Wilkes Booth following Lincoln’s assassination.

Generally, I like to alternate fiction and non-fiction (I totally don’t get those people who say they don’t like reading fiction). And after 400 pages about the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination, I wanted a quick, easy read. So I started up Le Mort de Napoleon by Simon Leys. It’s only about 120 pages and I finished it in about 24 hours. So it definitely qualified as a quick, easy read.

Then I switched back to non-fiction, and now I’m about halfway through Soccer In Sun & Shadow (originally El Futbol A Sol Y Sombra) by Eduardo Galeano. The author is a well-known Uruguayan intellectual. And for some reason, I love it when intellectuals write about sports. (Except perhaps when George Will writes about baseball; there’s far too much of that excessively nostalgic golden-days-of-summer-type crap.) It annoys me intensely when intellectuals denigrate sports and act as if it's beneath them. Interestingly, Galeano actually addresses this early on in the book. Conservative intellectuals, he argues, think of sport as something appropriate for the masses, but not worthy of those who have an ability (and the time, and the money) for the genteel pursuits of the mind. And left-wing intellectuals, he posits, feel that sport “saps revolutionary fervor,” or something like that. “Bread and circuses,” sans bread. It’s true that dictators frequently turn the patriotic spirit aroused by sporting events to their own devices. Antonio Salazar even had some term for this, like “patria e futebol” or something. Unlike most tyrants, he actually admitted he was using nationalism and sport to keep the masses distracted.