MeyerBros

Eduardo Machado is a Cuban (/American) playwright with a lot to say. He gave a pretty gutsy talk a couple weeks ago that I find inspiring, challenging and moving. I am in the midst of finishing up plans for the next New World Arts season, and some of what he said hit me right in the gut.

He weaves together thoughts about immigration, the wall being built on the Mexico border, and his own experiences as a green card-carrying immigrant. His treatment as an “outsider” by a profession (theatre) that I believe should be on the cutting edge of acceptance is appalling. This flows into his thoughts about theatre, about not trying to make audiences happy, and about bravery. He rails against rampant entitlement issues, including the “entitlement” to be trained as a theatre artist - which really just plays into making theatre more corporate-minded.
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Today Charletta and I followed in Hannah and Jonny’s footsteps and went to check out Hadrian’s wall. Turns out its pretty much like Jonny described it, complete with latrines, infloor heating and gorgeous scenery. Since he’s pretty much described the construction and posted photos, I thought I’d digress along some related bunny trails.

Our guide for our trip today was Colin, Charletta’s colleague at Bridge Builders. He’s a local and enjoyed tearing along the local roads which he was quick to point out are distinctively Roman with their determination to go straight over any obstacle rather than around them as most other local roads do. We mused about the way this fit with the Roman ethos in general. I pointed out that roads in the American midwest also have this tendancy.

Along the same lines we speculated a bit about the impetous for building the wall. As Jonny explained, Hadrian claimed that the wall was to keep out Scottish barbarians. But that might not have been its only purpose. Colin pointed out that the wall was also probably a handy way to keep farmers from heading north to escape Roman taxation. Furthermore, upon reading many of the helpful plaques installed by English Heritage sites, we discovered that everyone passing through the gates in the wall were required to pay a poll or tax.

Does this sound familiar? Powerful imperial leader uses fear of violent attacks against citizens to justify clampdown on local citizens and building a really long wall?

how do people say these things?

“[God] is the chairman of this party.” (the story)
– Texas GOP leader Tina Benkiser, at state convention

Form that same article: “Lord, your words tell us there’s a sign that this nation is under a curse, when the alien who lives among us grows higher and higher and we grow lower and lower,”
– Rev. Dale Young, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Laredo

Anyone know the exact reference? Can we get a hermeneutic ruling on this one?

And one from Fox News for good measure:

“There’s no scientific proof that global warming even exists. To be honest, it’s a bogus consensus dreamed up by Greens because they hate industry. They hate advancement. They hate technology…Greens will lead us back to the stone ages.” (more on this)
– Fox News analyst Jonathan Hoenig

Halliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root gets $385 million “emergency detention centers” contract from the Dept of Homeland Security.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.

Republican leaders are also thinking about repealing or modifying Posse Comitatus (the law that prevents U.S. soldiers from doing domestic law enforcement), and the deployment of National Guard troops to the Mexico border has no end date.

Alright. So I haven’t been a very reliable blogger the last week or so. I repent and I’ll reform my ways, I promise. Starting now.

So, I put up some new mini-reviews of movies I’ve seen recently - The Red Violin, Pride & Prejudice, Mission Impossible 3, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Wag the Dog, some others. Some better, some worse.

Quality funny: the Yes Men strike again. Their MO is to build fake corporate websites, then get invited to conferences / media events as impostor representatives of a corporation. A couple years ago, the BBC interviewed them, believing them to be Dow Chemical reps, and on behalf of Dow they accepted responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, which killed 15,000 and injured up to 600,000. Their stunt forced Dow to remind the world that neither Union Carbide nor its new corporate parent, Dow, have ever accepted any responsibility or lifted a finger to help the survivors.

In their newest trick, they “represented” Halliburton at an insurance industry conference on “catastrophic loss”, where they demoed Halliburton R&D’s newest project - the Survivaball, an inflatable “one-man gated community” to preserve the lives of corporate managers during future floods and natural disasters caused by global warming. In response to a serious question from the audience: “what about terrorism?” they “had to explain that, well, you know, it’s mainly — it’s got a bit of defensive capabilities, some elementary RPGs and maybe some other, you know, torpedo launchers, but basically … mainly that’s used against affluent members of the community who are trying to destroy your — you know, of the neighboring community, because those are the only people who can afford at that point to travel. You know, terrorism from the Middle East or whatever, we’re just not — that’s out of the picture at this point.”

Hey NWA, you got good actors - could they stand up in a suit in front of a bunch of insurance execs and say that with a straight face? If so, volunteer to help out the Yes Men! It’s like the Action-Comedy Co-Lab, but real life and even funnier. Elementary RPGs!

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