Painless Prediction: A Wave of Raves for Jerry Springer: The Opera

Michael Brandon as Jerry, image: nt-online.org

Guardian‘s Michael Billington’s got one that begins: “Reviewing an already acclaimed show is a bit like arriving sober at a party where everyone else is drunk.” Here’s a giddy Telegraph profile of Tom Morris, who put on the show at London’s Battersea Arts Centre. Comedian/bookwriter/director Stewart Lee’s site has dozens more.
As one who is writing an Animated Musical on a counterintuitive, quite contemporary subject, I, for one, hail our new operatic overlords.
JSTO opened tonight at the Lyttleton, National Theatre

Bloghdad.com/The_Police

[Boston Globe, via Travelers Diagram, et al]

”The President looks in the mirror and speaks
His shirts are clean but his country reeks
Unpaid bills
Afghanistan hills.”
These pointedly political lyrics to ”Bombs Away,” a song on The Police’s 1980 album ”Zenyatta Mondatta,” were penned by the New Wave band’s drummer Stewart Copeland, who knew exactly what he was talking about. Born in 1952 and raised in the Middle East, Stewart is the son of Miles Copeland, a notorious American CIA agent. According to a report on the Saddam Hussein-CIA connection issued earlier this month by United Press International, in the early 1960s Miles Copeland was frequently in contact with the future Iraqi president, who’d been smuggled into Cairo with CIA assistance after his failed assassination attempt on Iraq’s prime minister.

Read Richard Sale’s UPI story.
Read Miles Copeland’s 1974 “humintel classic,” Without Cloak or Dagger: The Truth About the New Espionage.
Decipher another line from “Bombs Away,” courtesy the Sting, etc. lyrics archive: “The general only wants to teach France to dance”
Buy the CD (In the off chance this wasn’t the first CD you bought when you started replacing your tape collection)

WTC Memorial: We’re All Designers Now

That could be the sub-title of this site, really. I made Souvenir (November 2001), in part, to ask what could New York be like in 80 years, after the generation of us who experienced the attacks are all gone. How would the as-yet unborn people then and there remember us here and now? I should clarify: us=those who experienced (ie, died, survived, rescued, ran, watched, etc.). And already, in less than two years, here and now is becoming then and there.
Now, (tens of? hundreds of?) thousands of designs for the WTC Memorial will start pouring in, invariably affected by the intervening events, mourning, healing, revenge, renewal, bitterness, anger, loss, politics, war, protest, obfuscation, certainties and uncertainties. Although Rules have been set, but not in stone: submitters should feel free to “go where their imaginations, where their mourning needs to take them.” On the LMDC’s registration information site, the only surprise is that they’re not accepting Paypal.
WWI itself changed the memorial game. For the first time, it was not just the generals and heros, but the average soldier–the individual, not an abstracted symbol–was to be memorialized and remembered. Metal dogtags were a standardized response to the sheer numbers of the Missing in WWI. Like the Thiepval Memorial, the object of two New Yorkers’ search in S(N01), the WTC Memorial will also serve as a grave-by-proxy for the hundreds whose remains were never identified.
Due in part to an overly individual-centric reading of the Viet Nam Memorial’s personal/collective experience, the focus of memorial designs in Oklahoma City and the Pentagon is almost wholly on the lost individual and “achieving closure.” And now, the individual is designing the memorial. Maybe if designing is such an effective way to meet our memorializing needs, we should just set up a perpetual workshop on the site. Of course, what would that look like to people 80 years from now?

Things you should see, if only it weren’t too late

Daisy Cutter, detail, John Powers, image:irobase.com

See Landscape Escape a group show at the Crosby street SlingShotProject. Of special note: John Powers’ headscratchingly beautiful sculpture, Daisy Cutter (above); Raphael Renaud’s paintings of Marseilles, Cairo, Sao Paulo (which reminded me a bit of RIchter’s late 60’s Townscapes); and John Cliett’s memorable (literally) photos of deMaria’s Lightning Field. Read an incredible interview at Cabinet about taking them. Unfortunately, the show closed Sunday.

Mommy, Robert Melee, image: artnet.com

See artist Robert Melee’s incredible performance, This is for you, starring a diverse troupe of dancers made up like the main subject of Melee’s video, photographs, and installation works, Mommy. Mommy is played (to frequently disturbing effect) by the artist’s mother. It’s at Judson Memorial Church on Wash. Sq., at 8pm. Tonight. So you missed that one, too. And the Costume Institute Ball’s over…
OK, here’s one you still have time for. Check out the addition to my Amazon lists, Books I’ve Read by Tycoons I’ve Known [with props to Monkey Disaster’s Lists-As-Entertainment program]

I Like Sites We Like

  • Daily Script is an excellent-looking archive of html/pdf screenplays. I’m reading the Three Kings shooting script.
  • I got Daily Script from the Guardian film section’s Sites We Like, an excellent mix of the entertaining and useful, the mainstream and obscure.
  • Marc Forster‘s first film, Everything Put Together, is on Sundance right now, but I can’t watch it right now. With a tremendous DV transfer, it looks great while it bleeds all hope for suburban humanity from your system. Monster’s Ball‘s a veritable The Sound of Music by comparison. Read a good Indiewire interview with Forster.

    • On The Real The Real Cancun

    The Only Real Cancun picture I could include, knowing my wife and mother read this site, image:therealcancun.com
    “Who wants to star in The Real Cancun 2?” image: therealcancun.com

    As a maker of documentary-looking films, I was a reluctant fan of New Line’s The Real Cancun once I figured out what it was. Now that I’ve read Joel Stein’s hi-larious review in New Line’s corporate sibling pub, Time, I’m now a fan of entertainment synergy, too. The real Real Cancun sounds even better than the film itself:

    …[the film’s 16 thrown-together non-actors] indirectly deliver the requisite moral lesson of a teen comedy: casual sex, even for loutish frat boys, is a pain. “In our house, the girls got all hurt if we brought another girl home,” says Matt, 20, an Arizona State student. “They acted like we were a big family, but we’d only known each other for a few days.”
    …
    “There were things that the producers told me I couldn’t do,” says Casey, 25, a Miami model. “There was one point where I hooked up with Trishelle from The Real World Las Vegas [who was there for MTV], and the producer said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with her because she’s under contract for other things.”
    And unlike documentarians, the producers, who have to work with MTV in their day jobs, felt it prudent to edit out the more controversial scenes, such as the one in which the twins have an angry, cursing fight with rapper Snoop Dogg in his post-concert trailer after, they say, he tried to get amorous with them…says twin Nicole, “Celebs like him are just average normal people. But he’s more of a slut than the average person”
    …
    “I’d rather be known for this instead of being smart or something,” says [other twin, Roxanne]. “There’s a million people who are smart. There’s only 16 of us who were in Cancun together.”

    Maybe this year, Roxanne. [Even Lawrence Van Der Gelder’s entirely point-missing NYT review is entertaining.]

    Bloghdad.com/Just_For_Kids

    Club Iguana is the Westin Puerto Rico's program for kids, age 4-12, image:westinriomar.com
    A new kid in town is competing with Club Iguana at
    The Westin Rio Mar Beach’s Club, image:westinriomar.com

    “At Club Iguana kids get to have all the fun! Every day, we welcome Westin’s young guests age 4 to 12 with activities planned especially for them.”
    Sensing that Westin missed a lucrative opportunity, Brown & Root, the operators of the 16-and over Camp Delta on Guantanamo, Cuba (just a short military flight from Rio Mar, PR!), have created Camp Iguana, specially designed for kids ages 13-15. While it’s admittedly no Westin, if the extreme loyalty of Camp Delta’s clientele is any gauge (read my October review), Camp Iguana’s operators, Brown and Root, are sure to have a sensation on their hands. When Camp Iguana’s normally tight-lipped staff talk about their program, they do so in metaphors that pay homage to Cuba’s two national sports, baseball and repression:

    [Camp Counselor] Richard Myers: “They may be juveniles, but they’re not on a little-league team anywhere, they’re on a major league team, and it’s a terrorist team. And they’re in Guantanamo for a very good reason — for our safety, for your safety.”
    [Camp Director] Donald Rumsfeld: “And this constant refrain of ‘the juveniles,’ as though there’s a hundred children in there — these are not children … There are plenty of people who have been killed by people who were still in their teens.”

    Like so many other Caribbean hideaways, Camp Iguana is almost unknown in the US, but Europeans are sure excited about it. So how can your juvenile get a spot? Well, it may sound unfair, but like so much in life, scoring a spot in Camp Iguana depends on attending the right madrassas. Call for reservations.

    *Ah-choo!* Sorry. Just got back from Toronto and I can’t seem to shake this cold

    I told this, the newest Worst Joke In The World, last night at dinner, which turned out to be an inadvertent prelude to a Night Of Canadian Hilarity.
    Talked about the AM script, which has several Canadian settings and elements, and is, obviously hilarious. Talked about South Park, too.
    Read this funny, slight Timothy Noah piece in Slate about “the novelty of seeing the words “danger” and “Toronto” in the same sentence.”
    Saw the kooky Mayor of Toronto on The Daily Show. He reminded me of Robert Novak doing a bad Ed Koch.
    But the surprise was a midnight screening of the first contemporary film to deal with the Torontonian Threat, a film I only recently learned was about the US staging a phony war against Canada, a film you might even call the 300-pound gorilla of Blame Canada Movies,Canadian Bacon.
    It was largely funny, intermittently hilarious, but it had some really slack moments, too. Like Orgazmo, Gangs of New York or The Cremaster Cycle, Canadian Bacon feels made by a supreme creator, someone who can’t/won’t take (or doesn’t get) any suggestions or advice. They’re all unconventional concepts coming from auteurs with unassailable-seeming points of view, which may inhibit people from giving suggestions. Maybe the auteurs, having convinced themselves that no one else could understand their vision, closed themselves off to outside perspectives. Whatever, in any case, all thesemovies had tremendous promise, moments of greatness and unnecessary flaws.
    Perhaps one IMDb user said it best: “Of course, only somebody like Roger Moore could make this movie.”

    Bloghdad.com/When_In_Rome

    It depends on how you count. If you group desks+chairs together with vases+cuneiform+manuscripts, we are now seeing the second wave of looting in Iraq. Still to come: US-imposed mass privatization of the Iraqi infrastructure/patrimony opening the Iraqi economy to foreign investment, but I digress. [And just sounded alarmingly like a lobster-puppet-wielding globalization protester for a minute, there. Just one of those fluctuations in The Matrix.]
    Anyway, the second wave: journalists and soldiers, or Our Troops, as they’re known on TV.

  • There’s the guy from Fox who had 12 undeclared paintings from Saddam’s palaces “embedded in his luggage.” He’s being charged with felonies, even though he planned to give “one to his employer.” Oh, and he got fired. See a tiny picture, or the Getty press conference photos. TSG has the complaint and a photo.
  • And Jules Crittenden declared (and had confiscated by Customs) another palace painting, but didn’t get charged with anything. A Customs official said the painting wasn’t worth enough to trigger any penalty. (The Fox dude should’ve flown back through Boston.)
  • And remember how the LA Times reported that 3rd Infantry found $656 million in a bunch of sheds last week? Well, at least six soldiers are under investigation for lifting/hiding either $12.3m, $13.1m, or $900k from the stash. FWIW, the LAT guy, David Zucchino, is owning this story, with a detailed tally of how and where the sealed aluminum boxes–each with $4mm in sealed $100k bricks of $100’s–and bricks went missing.

    US soldiers liberating the Benjamins in Baghdad. Rick Loomis for the LAT, image: latimes.com
    For the benefit of those whose last shock-and-awe came from applying buy-and-hold to dot-com-stocks, this US soldier is holding up a $100K brick. image: Rick Loomis, latimes.com

    [Rule #1 of Three Kings: There should only be three of you. Rule #2 of Three Kings: You can say “don’t tell anyone about Three Kings,” but, hell-o, every one of you and your bosses has seen it. WTF]

    • Speaking of Trains…

    The Amtrak I took from DC to NYC this afternoon hit a person on the tracks, just north of the North Philadelphia station. While it took them nearly half an hour to inform us, it was immediately apparent to those of us in the first car that the person had died. Nearly two hours later, another northbound train stopped alongside, and TV news helicopters hovered overhead as all 2-300 of us climbed aboard.
    Many people began trading our respective fragments of information. They’d seen a knot of policemen on the tracks, but had heard only there was “an obstruction” and a “mechanical problem”; while we’d been told immediately that the train had hit “a tresspasser,” later overheard to have been a “suicide,” but we never saw any sign of the accident. Finally, once the second train was underway, a conductor announced there had been “a fatality.”
    In awkward cell phone conversations, we all tried to explain our delay, conflicted over sounding either too callously selfish or too fascinated.
    [update: The Inquirer mentions the suicide in “Accident, derailment delay SEPTA riders.”]

    Bloghdad.com/Proclamations

    “Our armies,” [British Lt General Stanley Maude] declared [on 9 March, 1916], “do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators.” Within three years, 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers, who gassed and bombed the insurgents.
    — Seumas Milne in the Guardian
    Harper’s published The Proclamation of Baghdad (circa 1916) in the May 2003 issue, but, remarkably, I can’t find the complete text anywhere online. So I transcribed it and put it alongside GW Bush’s unsettlingly similar televised address to the Iraqi people from 10 April 2003. [Thanks, Roger & Harper’s for bibliographic information]
    Read the Proclamations of Baghdad here.
    And I hereby proclaim these proclamations to be the launch of greg.org Features.

    Introducing greg.org Features

    I swear, I wrote this on the train, before seeing Jason’s latest post. If only I’d waited till I got home, perhaps I’d just switch to Movable Type/TypePad and forget the whole thing:

    Sometimes, my posts get a bit long. (Usually, I notice this when a reader–invariably not from The New Yorker–asks if I’m auditioning for The New Yorker.)
    Sometimes, actual interviewing, research, reporting will yield far more information than will fit in a post.
    Sometimes, there may actually be a lot to tell.
    Sometimes, a topic or theme stretches across several posts, and it makes sense to group them together.
    Sometimes, I’ll start with a simple link, and before you or I realize it, I’ve got an 800-word…something.
    It used to bug me when such too-long posts would break up the flow of greg.org. Fortunately, this era of renaming your problems away offers the solution: now, on greg.org, a too-long post is not a bug, it’s a Feature.