Magazine Preview - Can Animals be Gay? - NYTimes.com

Magazine Preview - Can Animals be Gay? - NYTimes.com

So...being gay is unnatural? Hmmm...think again.

Parking Inside a Bus...

Let me Illustrate the difference between other locales and Boston. 


Boston: 
Walking out of a coffee-shop in Somerville, I encounter a man about to ticket girlfriend's car for being parked too long at the meter. "Hey, uh, that's my car, I'm just about to leave! Could you please not write me a ticket?" "Sorry, I have to write you a ticket."


Other Place: 
Walking out of a coffee-shop in Greensboro, I encounter a man about to ticket friend's car. "Hey, are you about to write us a ticket?" "Yeah, but you look like nice people, I won't ticket you as long as you move your car..." "Thanks so much, we'll go ahead and do that!" 

YouTube - Flight of the Conchords Ep 8 'A Kiss is Not a Contract'

YouTube
- Flight of the Conchords Ep 8 'A Kiss is Not a Contract'

Not so funny.

Funny.

I wish I had a Diagram to Describe Glenn Beck...

If you've read my blog at all, you probably know that I believe in the use of delicious food to change the social environment. I alternately write about my experiences with said food and my standard complaints and stresses in graduate school. Well, it may be time to expand the breadth of my writings to include some of my other core beliefs. I have tried, intentionally, to keep political and religious rhetoric to a minimum here. The point of the this blog was, after all, to increase the use and function of pleasure and leisure in our rat-race society. What could be more of a downer than a discussion of religion and politics in relation to such a goal?

However, there are such times that it is important to reflect and expose my own personal biases in relation to writing about various topics, and if there was ever such a time, I believe it is now. What spurs me to do this now, you might ask? Well, I came across this article in the Huffington Post that I found particularly compelling. I urge you to read it before I continue. The article is a response from Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, a respected journal/organization centered around liberal Christian activism, to his negative portrayal by Glenn Beck, the conservative mouthpiece on the Fox network.

While Beck may be liberally lampooned (figuratively and literally) as a cartoon by most thinking persons, his rhetoric has whipped many on the right into a furor of fear and paranoia that used to be the sole purview of George Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney. Beck's rhetoric, in my mind, is not important because of the factuality of what he says (which, as Wallis rightly points out, he mostly makes up) but because of who is listening and believing. If, as I have asserted with less-serious matters (e.g. Gaga), popular culture is important and worth listening and responding to, then the challenges and accusations of Glenn Beck certainly warrant discussion and personal response in the hope of countering its impact. Beck has challenged Christians to leave their churches if the word 'social-justice' is even mentioned in their context and said that 'social-justice' is the root-proper of totalitarian government (e.g. Nazism). These challenges and accusations strike at the heart of what I believe to be true about my faith. Wallis puts it all most elegantly, but I would like to have my say as well.

I am a Quaker, a member of an organization known as the Religious Society of Friends. For myself and the Quakers I know, testimonies of peace and peaceful activism are intrinsically bound up with faith practices. The notion of totalitarian government is entirely foreign to our faith, my faith, which is based on pure democratic consensus and reflective listening. Quakers all over the world help the poor privately, and an arm of the Quaker church participates in lobbying for policies designed to bring peace to the world, succor to the poor, and better lives for all. Quakers have been involved in civil rights activism since the early days of the Underground Railroad, and their outreach on other social matters has been great. Quakers emphasize simplicity and inclusion, not fear-mongering and violent revolution. In fact, nearly everything about the Quakers I know and love represents a direct contradiction in terms to what Glenn Beck has said about social-activism, and the awful things it is supposed to represent for the Christian faith.

Furthermore, I would seek to remind Christians everywhere of Jesus's predicament upon this Earth, whatever you may or may not believe about the Bible. Jesus was nothing if not revolutionary, bringing to bear the power of inclusive love to the poor and the destitute whoever they might be, in the face of a great Roman empire seeking to crush that love beneath its thumb. As Wallis notes, few are the preachers and religious leaders who can ignore so completely the admonishments of the Bible to serve the poor in all ways possible, as Beck does. It is as if, as Wallis again notes, that those parts of the biblical narrative have been wholly lost to this man.

Luke notes, for example, that, "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." The power of love, the power of peace, humbles the powerful and brings comfort to the lowest of us. Social-justice, in this way, seeks to re-model the structures that produce the poor, the destitute, the war-torn, and the sick, not just to treat the symptom over and over and over again. To really make things better, we must cure the disease. Part of that is shifting public policy, not towards totalitarianism but towards democratic inclusion, not towards communism but towards equitable opportunity. Part of that process is also shutting down the type of divisive rhetoric that Beck spouts, and which is now shifting us, so unnecessarily, towards violent pedagogy and an unwillingness to listen to each other, a thing we MUST do if we can effect change in any direction at all. If we cannot come to the table to talk with each other, then we are truly lost.

Which is why I do, and write about, theatre. I do not do it because I hold historiography upon a pedestal, or because of any certain personal egotism about being involved in academia. I do not do it to make myself better than others in my field (though I do strive to be good at what I do), and I do not do it (certainly) because it is popular or attention-getting. All of these reasons are petty to me in the end, though I do find myself getting caught up in them as a function of the discipline. I do theatre because it brings people together, in a common spot, to a place that provides a visceral connection to something vital and human and community-oriented. I do theatre because it inspires people, at its best, to talk to each other about the injustices in their lives and in other's lives. I do it because it can begin a process of discussion and reconciliation, of revolution (yes, that dirty word) and positive social change. If we need calm, concerted, and open discussion, then theatre can be the table around which that discussion can be centered. Not all theatre does this or can do this, but it is the theatre of social change that interests me.

So, instead of attacking Glenn Beck, or Christians, or social activists, or our churches, let us stand together in all of our difference and start to discuss how we can make things better for each other. Suspicion, paranoia, and fear are the culprits that lead to violence, not a devotion to social justice! Beck's rhetoric should not be attacked, it should be deconstructed for what it is, a move to centralize power within the ranks of one cloistered voice in this country, in the face of millions of other voices struggling to be heard and recognized. This can be a flash-point that brings us together in faith with other faiths, or it can be the dividing line that breaks the impulse to dialogue for many years to come.

As a Christian, a Quaker, a Social-Activist, and a Theatre Practitioner/Scholar,

I bid you peace.

I'm back in Greensboro for a so-called break in the semester. I say so-called because what it really means is that I get to take three days to not think about working, which means that I will probably spend three days trying unsuccessfully not to be writing the paper in my head that is due right after break, or a thesis chapter, or designing the bizarre arts and crafts project for my seminar (Seriously?). These are the times that I am exposed for the work obsessed, compulsive, and unhealthy individual that school has made me.

Just sitting here, waiting for laundry to dry, I am still compulsively writing pointless e-mails about things that no-one-but-me will care about until after the break is over. It's enough to make me hyperventilate. I'm even WRITING about work, even though it is a balmy 75 degrees in Greensboro, and sunny, and I have plenty of time to do the things that I need to do. I wish someone was here to slap my face and tell me: "Shut the fuck up, Paul! You have tons of time and you need to calm down, you ass!" Which, like the endless cycle of work I'm caught up in, simply deepens my guilt because I'm the one who has to do it! Nice.

Now, the good parts are these: 1) I'll be in a cabin with some friends for the weekend, 2) said cabin has a hot tub (hopefully without a time machine), 3) I'll have an entirely new field of restaurants to tell you about after its over, which makes both of us happy! and 4) I'm bringing my favorite local beer. All of this is great, and may serve to take my mind off of things for a little while. Here's hoping.

Graduate Colloquium...

On April 8th, on the Tufts Medford Campus, we will have the annual Tufts Graduate Colloquium on Theatre Scholarship. You should go. First of all, it will be a really interesting conversation with some of the foremost practitioner-scholars working in the Boston area, but there will also be free food. We all know that Graduate students cannot resist free food.

So be there, or feel my holy wrath (a little too much Dante's Inferno?) upon you.

It's Raining in Boston...

Did you catch my thinly veiled reference to a nearly-ancient Counting Crows song that only three people like? Yeah, you did. You know why you did? 'Cause you're one of those three people who read this thing. As Clay might say, It's because you're 'amazeballs.'

So here's the thing, folks. I'm about to do something that no one has done yet (to my knowledge), and that is the attempted organization of the first-ever interdisciplinary conference on Lady Gaga. Since I've announced the possibility, I've received overwhelming support from my (albeit limited) academic community in Boston. I'm not going to attempt to justify this right now. Frankly, I'm sick of doing it. If you can't see the creative and subversive ways Lady Gaga is changing the discourse on popular culture in this country, then I don't need to try to convince you. As some popular icon whose-name-I-don't-remember might say: "you're either in or out, what's it gonna be?"

Also, I've been challenged to turn 'disco-stick' into an accepted academic phrase. I don't think I even need to. Isn't this all that Freud and Lacan are really talking about, this phallus as metaphor for the popular psyche? Isn't this what Deleuze is railing against? Isn't the disco-stick of popular culture really the reigning paternal, hegemonic, normative impulse of our society? Isn't it ironic that Lady Gaga wants to ride on it? There. I've done it. It's history...and I know that there's another series of academic jokes there that I don't have time for.

Really, this mad rant is all about my thesis-time blues. I've been staring the beautiful visage of post-humanism in the face, and it's got like...two eyes and three noses now. That's how long I've worked on this this weekend. It's time to take a break.

I'm going to EVOO tonight for restaurant week. I promise to post faster than I did before about this place so you can make your decision about a reservation. You are taking advantage of restaurant week, right? Like I told you to? Good. I'm going to take a moment, breathe, and then head back out into the Apocalyptic rainstorm outside with a smile on my face...

I'm building an Ark. Only the people I like are going to be able to get on it.

A Morsel...Until Tonight

Bistro 5 and Other News...

I went to Bistro 5 for my birthday, and I can't believe or understand how busy I've been that I haven't posted anything about the experience yet. I have some trouble remembering now what I ate, but suffice it to say that it was fabulous, and we had excellent service. Actually, it won't even matter at this point what dishes I got, because the whole menu has changed by now. My advice is that you go. Go right now. What you'll get is delicious and seasonal Northern Italian food, and a varied wine list full of rarities. Who would have thought that you could find decent food in West Medford?

In other news, this past weekend I attended the Mid-America Theatre Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. Snooze, right? Cleveland...what a downer. What do I do in cities where there's nothing to do? I eat and drink copiously! My suggestion is that you hit Michael Symon's restaurant (of Iron Chef America fame) Lolita. This bistro-esque place has a nicely put-together (if somewhat limited) wine list, good food, and is less pricey than its big sister Lola. This place has the panache of an excellent restaurant, but still feels like it belongs in the neghborhood. I had roasted shrimp, roasted dates with bacon, and roasted beets (small appetizer plates we all shared). This was followed by a delectable (and appropriately cooked) pork-chop with mascarpone polenta. Simple, unpretentious, and tasty. A little loud, but I forgive them for the Friday night crowd.

Now, I've been asked several times what is so frugal about eating at these nice restaurants? Now is the time to give you a few tips.

First of all, most nice restaurants will allow you to do what's called a 'chef's tasting,' which usually involves a fixed price for three-four courses of the chef's choosing. Not only is this a great way to get to know a chef's food, but it is an affordable venture, more so than simply ordering off the menu. Also, you have the added benefit of being surprised by the food that comes out. If you're not picky, this is the way to go.

Another thing you can do is to check if the restaurant has a regular fixed price menu. Many restaurants do, if only for a certain time at night. Sometimes restaurants will run specials during certain seasons. In Boston, restaurant week approaches (March 14-19, 21-26). During these dates, a very affordable fixed price menu is available at many restaurants in the metro area. This is a great time to have culinary experiences that you may not otherwise be able to afford.

Also, bring your own wine. I rarely ever (unless I'm feeling extravagant) buy wine at the restaurant. Restaurants make much of their money from the alcohol they sell, and they do this with markups from 30-50% or even higher. I know that I can choose a better bottle of wine for less money, pay the corking fee at the restaurant (usually $5-$10), and still come out far ahead of the restaurant's wine list. If you're worried about your wine going with your food, don't be. Instead, go online and look at the menu. Many of the best restaurants showcase their food online, so you can get a sense of what you'll be eating. If you're having a tasting, many restaurants will give you a 4-5 oz pour with each course for a few bucks more. Or don't worry about it. After all, in three-four courses, the wine you chose will probably go with something!

Now, choosing the wine at the wine shop can be a little daunting if you don't know your way around. Thankfully, I've already written a brief primer on tasting and buying wine. I include some concise directions about grabbing that great bottle...

In other VERY important news, Lady Gaga's new video Telephone will be coming out tomorrow, and I am very excited. I'd like to talk more about her soon, but you have plenty to think about now, and I have a lot of eating to do!

The Way Things Are...