PeaceBang

Alien Madonna!

Alien Madonna!
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

How has this not made the headlines in every celebrity trash mag in America, and even in the world?

It’s evidence that the Scientologists are right! Thetans are among us!

Dear Out magazine,
Worst. cover. Ever.

Dear Madonna,
I refuse to believe that you are a snaggle-toothed alien with a flat Farrah ‘do and scaly white skin and diamonds on your eyelashes. I know this was a Thetan pod person sitting in for you. Come back soon.

"Bill W. And Dr. Bob" At the New Rep

I attended the theatre tonight at the New Rep in Watertown, MA, with high hopes for the show “Bill W. and Dr. Bob” a dramatization of the early relationship between the two founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

My hopes were dashed early on.

This show is a triple threat: badly written, badly directed and badly acted.

First of all, it’s just a stinker of a script, featuring groanably bad 1930’s dialogue and a schmaltzy jazz piano (pronounced pie-anna) soundtrack provided by an actual guy playing the actual pie-anna through the entire actual show. I have a a feeling this eye-rollingly corny concept came with the script, not with the director, but I could be wrong. The co-playwrights never met a cliche they didn’t like. Bill W.’s long-suffering wife, played by a thoroughly unwinsome Rachel Harker in two bad wigs, actually has seven or eight scenes where she is either reading aloud her diary entries or letters written to or from her husband.

Co-authors Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey have all kinds of admirable medical credentials between them, but none so impressive that kept them from writing lines like, “When there’s a silence like that in the evening, mother used to say that angels are flying by” and “Bill, ya big galoot.”

In my opinion, only Patrick Husted and Kathleen Doyle as Dr. and Mrs. Bob Smith managed to get some real pathos out of their roles. Marc Carver mugs terribly in a series of small roles and Deanna Dunmeyr is right there with him in Mugsville, using cute dialects, wigs and hats to create a series of forgettable cameos. Here’s a story about true human suffering, but all the humans on stage are caricatures. You just don’t care if they get sober or stay sober or if they all fall under a train.
The moments of real acting are few and far between, and director Rick Lombardo seems to have little or no affection for the story he’s telling. With that script, who can blame him? But Rick, it wouldn’t have hurt to bring in a real, live alcoholic to advise on the drunk stuff. Take it from a girl who’s lived with a drunk : it’s way more than gripping the gut, groaning and bumping into set pieces.

Robert Krakovski has a thankless job, if you ask me. In an interesting actorly choice, he decides not to even try to swim against the tide of the thoroughly obnoxious, one-dimensional characterization provided by Bergman and Surrey and allows Bill W. to come across as an egotistical fanatic from the very first scene, eyes glinting and all. Here’s the character you’re supposed to be totally rooting for, but by the end of the show I absolutely hated the guy and couldn’t even appreciate his pioneering efforts on behalf of serenity and sobriety the world over. I wanted to crack him over the head with a bottle of Thunderbird.

By the time the whole melodrama wrapped up at three+ hours we all sorely needed a drink.

If you want to encounter the spirit of Bill W., I’d just recommend that you go to an AA meeting. The audience was full of 12-steppers tonight and I had more fun watching them emotionally engage with the story than keeping track of what was going on onstage.

(1) This is the book I most want right now: http:…

(1) This is the book I most want right now:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/books/everythingthatrises.reviews.html

(2) I just about plotzed a bissle when I read a letter to Martha in Martha Stewart Living magazine asking how to make the Passover seder more appealing for children.
What, are you completely meshugenah? That shikse doesn’t know from Pesach! Better you should ask your rabbi! Oy gevalt!

(3) Why did NPR name one of its shows “Open Source?” Every time I hear it, I wince because it sounds like “open sores.” Ick. Get a Band-Aid and some Merthiolate already.

Americans And the Tragic Sense

I was listening to NPR tonight and heard the host of “On Point” make reference to 9/11 and to Ground Zero with the implication that the destruction of the Twin Towers was the sum and total of that day’s horrors.
I murmured to myself, “There were THREE Ground Zeroes.”

Which reminded me of my growing awareness that talk of Hurricane Katrina is almost entirely limited to grieving the loss of New Orleans. When was the last time you saw a special about the Gulf Coast of Texas, or about Biloxi? This concerns me. Hurricane Katrina did a lot more than just smack the bejeezus out of New Orleans levees.

Americans don’t have a sense of the tragic and therefore can’t contain the tragic. They like tragedy to be something they can see and undrerstand and limit, preferably with a logo and a theme song. It is this limitation, I think, that makes Americans diminish enormous tragedies by re-membering them as occuring in one location which can be reduced to one iconic image. This is exactly what we’ve done with 9.11 and with Katrina. Twin Towers falling, ash everywhere. People being taken off a roof by a helicopter. Boom, we’re done.
If we can pinpoint the one place It happened, we can tell when It’s all better and fixed.

That’s all I can say now, although I wish I could flesh this thought out more. Perhaps you’d like to do so for me in the comments?

"Kinsey"

I saw “Kinsey” last night, a 2004 flick by Bill Condon starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. I was hating it for the first fifteen minutes and then it kicked into high gear, and I wound up enjoying it immensely, even if the filmmaker makes the character of Al Kinsey much too saintly.

I listened to some of the director’s commentary and heard something about how opponents of Kinsey tried to block the making of the film, and that “Dr.” Laura Schlesinger was among them. Something about Kinsey being a pedophile?
A bit of Googling this morning turned up some very dishy critiques of Kinsey, his methods, and the film. For example, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40931

Interesting stuff, and I must agree with the conservative Christians who mope about yet another unnuanced Hollywood treatment of traditional religious mores and another jeavily caricatured Preacher Man role (in this case played by John Lithgow. Didn’t he do this routine in already in “Footloose?” Papa, don’t preach.)

I thought that Laura Linney was particularly good as Mac Kinsey, “Prok’s” steadfast life mate. I liked Liam Neeson very much, too, but I thought the strength and beauty of the film was in the subjects Kinsey interviewed for his sexual histories. There were several cameos — Lynn Redgrave’s chief among them — that hit the heart pretty hard. Even if occasionally a bit too actorly, I found that these scenes brought vividly to mind the millions of real people whose own sexual histories are every bit as harrowing and hysterical and astonishing and tender and atrocious as those depicted in the film.

Watch for the scene with sexual omnivore and pervert Rex King. Very disturbing and riveting acting.

Best Possible Care?

I just heard a report on NPR that some people are wondering whether or not Slobodan Milosevic got “the best possible care” while he was in prison awaiting the verdict on his war crimes trial.

I have to wonder why you deserve “the best possible care” when you’re a marauding savage. I should think that being fed and sheltered and kept safe from the people who want to chop you into tiny pieces and make you into shark chum would be an acceptable level of care.

I’m sorry, but learning that an 8-hour autopsy determined that Milosevic had an unexplained antibiotic in his system doesn’t exactly alarm me. If he had an unexplained ice pick in his back, well, that might be a little bit interesting.

"Really Rosie"

reallyrosie
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I was doing a mic check yesterday in church and singing “There Once Was a Boy Named Pierre” so that the choir could respond at the appropriate time, (”Who only could say, I DON’T CARE”). To my shock and horror, none of my peeps knew “Really Rosie!”
Not even the usher that morning who has a six year old daughter knows “Really Rosie!”
I thought this was most terrible and determined to tell everyone about the wonderful album that is “Really Rosie,” which was produced in 1975, way before Girl Power was a big deal. It features the songs of Carole King and a lead character named Rosie who’s a real diva and wears a feather boa.

I’m really Rosie/And I’m Rosie real.

You better believe me/I’m a great big deal/Believe me (Beleeeeeeive me).

I’m a star from afar off the golden coast

Beat that drum, make that toast to Rosie the most!

Believe me (Belieeeeeeeeeeeve me).

I can sing tea for two, and two for tea.

I can act ‘to be or not to be.’

I can tap across the Tapanzee

Hey can’t ya see? I’m terrific at everything.

No star shines as bright as me! Rosie!

(belieeeeeeve me!)”

The songs are tuneful and funny and easily memorized, and really great stuff to go belting around the house with your elementary school age kids.

I can’t recommend highly enough that you throw the Yanni in the trash as fast as possible and hook up with some Rosie.

Things Making Us Laugh

fourlittlepuppies
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

For some reason, this is making Sister of PeaceBang and PeaceBang very happy and making us laugh very hard. It’s not like we don’t know how terrible it is to stuff those puppies into those little outfits, it’s just that it’s still very funny. I cannot wait to see the rest of the book.

Please don’t protest; it was done decades and decades ago, like way back in the “Little Rascals” era.

We are also pretty ecstatic that one of S.O.P.B’s favorite weird movies, “Grey Gardens,” has been made into a Broadway show. I see a trip to NYC in my future.

I saw a Dixieland Jazz band tonight and was so happy dancing around that I am determined to follow through on my fantasy of many years to learn to play the BANJO!!

My summer goal is to learn to play the BANJO. You can help by calling me BANJO, as in “Hey Banjo, what are your summer plans?” Me: “Nothin’ much, just learning to play the BANJO!”

Friday Nephew Blogging

My eldest nephew, about 27 months old, has become an absolutely terrific little boy. He’s friendly and enthusiastic and extra adorable with a kind of casino greeter swaggering quality that draws people to him. He already has an excellent sense of humor and a keen ear for mimicry. He sings and dances. He has eyes like chocolate chips, a sweet smile, and he’s a good phone date. The other day I was on the phone with his father, my little brother, and my brother asked him to sing his ABC’s to me.
I loved that there was no hesitation or coy shyness, he just took the phone and belted out a really on-tune, excellent rendition of his ABC’s.
My favorite part of the ABC’s is the inevitable train wreck around the “LMNOP” section, and Nicholas did not disappoint, especially since he can’t pronounce his L’s yet. But there he went on without hesitation, absolutely good-natured, right through to the end. What a trooper.

I hope we never let him forget that one of his first phrases was “I love you,” but pronounced “I yee yoo!”

I am going to see them in two weeks and just can’t wait to get them both in my lap. They are so worth a five hour train ride and it kills me that I haven’t seen them since September.

Okay, sorry for making you barf. As you were.

Mr. Movie

My gravel-voiced stepfather, who never stays up past 10 p.m. unless he’s out on the town at some cabaret or show, walks into the kitchen the morning after the Oscars. “How were the Academy Awards, babe?” he asks my mother.
She says, “They were pretty good, but we were really disappointed that Crash won for Best Picture.”

He pours himself a cup of coffee.
“Oh, Crash. Was that that picture about Johnny Crash?”