Category: Culture

A play flyer for a “bold” play:

Uh huh. Bold, maybe even paradigm breaking. You know what would be bold? If cancer was the good guy. That would be different from every other empowering little piece of literature out there.

I still wouldn’t go see it.

The Milwaukee Rep is going to stage all three parts of The Norman Conquests simultaneously. (Story.) Man, I wish I was in Milwaukee to see them; I love the plays.

How do I know about them?

This is not the first time the company has staged “The Norman Conquests.” The Rep did the trilogy in the smaller Stiemke Theater 13 years ago.

I saw all three of them my senior year in college. Better yet, in the high point of my girl-chasing career, I took three different women to see them.

Unfortunately, a scheduling error made it so that I scheduled two of them to see “Table Manners”, so I saw that one twice and had to take one of them to see a second play. Also unfortunately, they all wanted to be “just friends.”

This month’s Business 2.0 (read it here if you have Adobe Flash Player) has a big story about Burning Man, the annual Woodstock for Generation X-Y. Page 16 has The Big Idea, a quote from Tom Price, the environmental manager for Burning Man, on why companies are eager to promote their wares at Burning Man:

Here’s the value proposition: 40,000 of the smartest most socially networked content-generationg people on the planet, whose tolerance for B.S. is negative point-five, all checking out your product.

Yeah, hyping your “hype-free” consumers, among whom the rest of us expect to already find the most smarmy and self-absorbed of the sweet demographic.

However, I don’t have to mock it. Actual attendees and devotees of the highly-hyped festival are on it:

I for one am still in shock. To say I feel betrayed would be more accurate. The one thing that’s drilled into your head from day one is that there is no branding, no marketing, no commercialism, no money at Burning Man. The image of the Man with a suit on is in poor taste, in my opinion. I can’t believe the writer (rightly so) describes us as a “tangible business asset.” I guess I have until now, refused to admit that the CEO of Burning Man would ever think of me as just a consumer worth only $250. I attend Burning Man for the people, the creativity and the fact that the life on the playa, for me, is far divorced from my daily routine. When I’m there, I feel like I am part of something big. The people I meet and the enthusiasm I throw into the event is what brings me back year after year. But to hear that my efforts, opinions, and education simply makes me a member of some marketing department’s dream demographic is disappointing. This new development saddens me.

Sometimes you just have to throw a little water on effigies when they turn into pinatas. Or something.

Another art exhibit exalts itself in making the hoi polloi uncomfortable. Just like the last untold number of “art” exhibits:

A risqué, homoerotic art exhibit will open this weekend on a stretch of street in St. Louis best known as a haven for antique-seekers.

Gallery owner Philip Hitchcock expects the “Body/Building” display to unnerve a few people, but he hopes to accomplish more by challenging the status quo.

“If people are uncomfortable with those images, and they ask themselves, ‘Why? What chord does that strike in me?’ If they go that far, then as an artist and a curator, I have done my job,” Hitchcock said.

I doubt I’d be uncomfortable with those images; instead, the whole concept strikes a chord of “Why bother?” in me.

I prefer art to be evocative and uplifting. That sort of thing takes insight into the human condition and talent. Shocking me only requires the artistic equivalent of a Taser. And guess which sort of thing I buy.

Lileks today takes issue with urban designers:

What really caught my eye was an interview with a University of Minnesota professor named Thomas Fisher, the dean of the U’s new School of Design. It was a conversation about the new Design Economy, a term I hadn’t heard before. America will compete and thrive because we design good things, like the iPod. You might wonder how a nation of 300 million can be sustained by design, but rest assured the term has broader definitions. The interview, called “Intelligent Design,” focused on cities. As you might expect they are in dire need of Design, and I suspect this design will be administrated by experts. (As Dr. Johnson once said: A man who has tired of criticizing London is tired of tenure.) In order to compete, our cities need better design. No argument here – until we look at the specifics.

Wouldn’t it be neat if we could get all of these government planners together and buy them copies of SimCity and let them go at that for their tax-money squandering fun as they tried to one-up each other?

No, probably not, because design and aesthetics and micromanaging Cits is only one component of their self-aggodizement. The other is enriching themselves and their unelected Elect.

The top 100 pop culture dogs.

Kavik’s attorneys are descending upon retroCRUSH headquarters to demand recounts until he is on the list. Buck’s legal team, including several specialists from London, are watching Kavik’s story to see if it has a case as well.

(Link seen on Althouse.)

Ben Affleck demonstrates the relative worth of Jennifer Garner vs Jennifer Lopez:

Affleck bought Garner a $500,000, 4.5-carat Harry Winston engagement ring — as compared to the 6.1-carat pink diamond ring from Winston which Affleck got for his former fiancée Jennifer Lopez.

Nothing says “I love you” like giving the second Jennifer a ring that’s 73% of the one given to Jennifer I.

Headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Tony Twist wins $15 million verdict. The story goes like this:

Tony Twist, the former rock ’em-sock ’em Blues hockey player, was awarded $15 million Friday by a jury that concluded comic book artist Todd McFarlane had profited by using Twist’s name without his permission.

McFarlane, formerly the principal artist and writer of Spiderman comics, gave the name Tony Twist to a violent New York mob boss in McFarlane’s Spawn comics in the early 1990s.

In a case that could have broad meaning for artistic freedom, McFarlane insisted the name had literary value and his use of it was protected under the First Amendment, but Twist contended McFarlane had exceeded free speech rights.

It was the second time for Twist’s claims to go to trial. A St. Louis Circuit Court jury ruled in Twist’s favor in 2000 and awarded him $24.5 million, but the trial judge overruled the verdict and the state appeals court later ruled in McFarlane’s favor citing his free speech rights. The Missouri Supreme Court, however, last year ordered a new trial after concluding that McFarlane’s use of Twist’s name was driven more by moneymaking than by “artistic value.”

“They made Tony into a Mafia boss,” said James Holloran, an attorney for Twist. “He was involved in murders and kidnappings and rapes.”

Reporters have a constitutional right to write freely about Twist as a hockey player, even calling him a “goon” or “enforcer” for his rough play on the hockey rink, but that First Amendment freedom does not extend to using his name for commercial advantage, Holloran said.

McFarlane’s attorneys argued that his use of the name was protected and that no reasonable person would confuse the fictional character with the real person.

McFarlane did not name the mobster Tony Twist. Tony Twist in the Spawn comic book was a nickname given to a mobster whose real fictional name was Antonio “Tony Twist” Twistelli (more detailed Sports Illustrated article). So a tough guy enforcer thug with a name of Antonio Twistelli was given the nickname Tony Twist, an allusion to the hockey player made his living espousing those qualities. Not a rapist nor a murder, but the nature of metaphor is that it’s not an exact photograph, merely an outline and comparison.

I get it. I don’t mistake an inked mobster with the former Blues favorite. But then, I am capable of cognitive thought, and am not of the great abstract masses purportedly unable to tell the difference.

The use of the Twister’s name (hey, will he sue the producers of that movie for stealing his nickname?) represents realistic idiom. When people talk, make slang, and assign nicknames, they often use allusions to contemporary events, celebrities, and sub-celebrities in the public eye. Writers often make idiomatic use of a famous person’s name to describe something about their characters and the story. However, this ruling sets the precedent that if the idiomatic use is not flattering, the sensitive celebrity whose name is getting used in a less-than-flattering light (often because the celebrity has done something mockworthy or less than flattering) can sue for millions of dollars, no matter how little the celebrity’s actual worth is impacted. Woe to the writers in America, since these little casual asides now must be vetted for legal exposure and liability.

Coming soon, Monica Lewinsky’s action against Law & Order and countless other stupid lawsuits. The government, by encouraging (and make no mistake, the precedent will encourage) these worthless lawsuits indirectly prohibits another small measure of free speech in America.

The personal of the day from the Chicago Sun-Times for April 30, 2003. His profile name is Anubis78. Doesn’t that scream, meet me on the Internet? Remember from your Egyptian mythology that Anubis is the jackal-headed god of transit to the cities of the dead. “Anubis” is Egyptian for “Charon Who Barks.” Who wouldn’t want to meet a guy who bills himself as the being in charge of ferrying you to the afterlife, preferably somewhere dark and secluded where you two can be alone? Anubis is not the god of death, after all, he’s just a guide; you have nothing to fear from him. No, it would be Mr. Happyshiningblade, that you should fear. Is that a banana in his pocket, or is he happy to finally meet you after all those e-mails? Advice to someone who’s met a hottie on the Internet: don’t make your user name more creepy than you really are. Fortunately, stlbrianj is not as creepy as I am in real life.