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.