Culture – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

The Kennedy Center Saga Continues

A glimpse of hope for the future

With so many things fundamentally broken during this second Trump administration there’s a momentary sigh of relief when it appears that something, anything might be put back together again.

This week U.S.District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump’s appointed Kennedy Center board exceeded its authority when they decided to slap Trump’s name on the building and remake the building in his imagined image. Taking a look at any photo of the remade Oval Office and the plans for his ballroom, his gigantic arch, and the wrestling ring he’s built for his birthday beat down, which he somehow likens to the Eiffel Tower, is enough to make anyone with any semblance of taste in their mouth spit in disgust.

The ruling essentially says stop and take the offensive name off of the building. The Kennedy Center administration has already ordered employees to remove the sign and also strip all references from other signage, brochures, the website and to remove email signatures and letterhead by June 12th. The move is being hailed as a victory.

Cathartic and symbolic as removing the name may be, it can’t possibly make up for the damage done to the revered national center for the arts. It’s a start, and it certainly kindles hopes and dreams of doing the same to much of the defacing and defecating this one man wrecking crew has visited on Washington DC and the rest of the country.

Take for example the story of the National Symphony Orchestra. After many acts and organizations cut ties with the Kennedy Center rather than being associated with the madness, Trump closed the Kennedy Center for a two-year period of renovations, leaving the NSO without a home. Ben Folds, previous artistic advisor, (previous only because he stepped down when Trump took over), has released a letter calling for an “outpouring of public support.” Saying without such a push the NSO may not survive. You can read the full letter at this Instagram link. That will be a hard task and I wish them success.

I’ve said ever since Donald Trump came on the political scene that given the grifter and sexual predator’s previous life as a real estate developer we needed to understand that in order to construct something new a developer in his/her heart needed to also love demolishing something first. He’s certainly more than demonstrated a penchant for demolition and desecrating.

Here’s hoping one day we all get a chance to enjoying demolishing the things he’s touched in this horrible age.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

Scott Pelley Fired. Time To Move On

Good night, and good luck.

Scott Pelley was fired by CBS. By most accounts, except those from CBS management, he was fired for daring to speak the truth about what is happening under their new ownership that’s far too fond of kissing the ass of the president.

A picture of fired CBS 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley

I have a couple of thoughts.

First, Pelley shouldn’t have been fired I don’t care how belligerent he may have gotten with his bosses. The world needs a little more righteous belligerence instead of the babble we get for show.

Second, the current management of CBS are idiots, which is easily proven by how ineptly they handled this entire episode. There’s not enough eggs to cover the faces of the feckless.

Third, while it’s right to be momentarily outraged at the numbskulls from CBS and those who play them like puppets, it’s time to move on.

For Pelley.

For most of us.

I’m not pointing specific fingers at Pelley when I say this, but he was part of a media establishment that largely has failed us since before the dawn of the Trump era and continues to do so daily. The 1st amendment put the press on a cherished and protected pedestal. The cringing cowardice and capitulation of those atop that pedestal these days has aided the current regime in knocking itself off it. The Fourth Estate is essentially a cliché that lost its meaning.

New horizons await. Hopefully with new voices and new approaches headed towards them. Time to open the floodgates and let the waters wash away a multitude of sins that helped bring us this ultimate sinner without par.

All around us venues like podcasts, YouTube, and TikTok are where many are getting their news and their entertainment. Given that there’s been so little courage and competence in the establishment media for so long, it’s no wonder kids on TikTok get higher ratings for reviewing school lunches in the cafeteria. Hell, YouTube is kicking the media’s butt from Hollywood to New York in ways that it’s almost hard to fathom, but increasingly easy to acknowledge. For anyone but the media.

Would I like to see some of the big names who’ve gotten the axe in this regime’s purges get second chances on different platforms? Sure. But only if they seek out these new approaches and find a little courage. Those new approaches might still come under fire from the cowardly bullies that cower and lash out at any criticism. But at least they won’t come under fire from capitulating corporate chieftains who bow and scrape to the bloviating bullshit artists, hoping they can survive until the chaos we’re surrounded by ends someday.

Like it or not, traditional media as an institution, revered as it is, and as holy as its acolytes hold themselves, shares a big part of the blame and is no different than anything else that’s been touched, tainted, and torched in this tumultuous decade plus. It took a while for what passes as journalism to dig its way out of the robber baron era of previous generations. You can argue that CBS was in the forefront of the leaders that helped wash off the tinge of yellow journalism. Those days are over.

What was is gone. Self-immolation. There’s no use pretending it can be rebuilt from any of the remaining ashes.

Kudos to Scott Pelley for standing up for what’s right. We need more like him. We’ve needed more like him for too long. I’m sorry what happened to him and so many others in the media, throughout government, and in other fields of endeavor. No one deserved what’s happening. But I have to ask each of them, what took you so long? Even the visually impaired among us clearly saw most of this coming. Certainly this second time around.

Mourn the losses.

Curse the bad guys.

Then move on and build something in the future that might have a hope of preventing these cascading catastrophes from happening to anyone else in the future.

Good night, and good luck.

Yikes! Chicago Bears Caleb Williams Will Be On The Cover of Madden NFL 27

Cursed or not?

Chicago Bears football fans are gasping with excitement and stocking up on antacid today after it was announced that the team’s quarterback, Caleb Williams, has been picked to grace the 2027 cover of the popular game Madden NFL.

Promotional cover art for the video game "Madden 27" features an action shot of Chicago Bears Quarterback Caleb Williams mid-air preparing to toss a pass against a deep blue sky.

It’s certainly great recognition for the quarterback who had some amazing moments on the field last year in a surprising Bears season. He’s an exciting, if sometimes erratic player who managed to pull out last minute victories with some spectacular plays more times than not. Of course the other side of that coin is that more consistent play by the quarterback and the team should theoretically lead to less of those hair raising/pulling moments. But a win is a win.

However, the cover recognition is also believed by quite a few to be a curse for the player chosen, presaging down seasons or possible injury. According to CBS Sports 14 or the 24 players chosen between 2001 and 2024 had less than spectacular seasons after being so anointed.

Whether or not it’s a curse, who knows. But it does just add another level of anxiety for Bears fans already on edge heading into a season where we should find out what this team is made of after a season that surprised most. With the upcoming season schedule rated as the toughest in the NFL and a number of players who led the way last year lost to free agency or retirement, it was already shaping up to be nerve wracking.

It’s not easy being a Chicago sports fan.

The Smartest Thing I’ve Read In A Long Time

We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World

I read a lot. It’s so ingrained in me it’s become part of my DNA. Good writers and writing are like magnets. I’m drawn to it. I live to read something that strikes me upside the head, or cuts deep in the heart. Om Malik’s piece, We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World, struck hard and cut deep. Go read it.

Jametlene reskp Q79XFGuTFfM unsplash. Om is a writer I’ve paid attention to for quite a while. What he thinks and writes is alway informative. Typically his topics are tech related. But in this piece he’s done what I often attempt to do, (not nearly as well as he), weaving together the common threads about tech and politics, or more importantly the people behind them both, that bind one to another into a whole with the precision of a finely tuned instrument. In this case, a pen. You have to read it.

Here’s an excerpt:

Most people remember Pinocchio as a story about lying. The nose grows. You get caught. Lesson learned. But that reading misses almost everything Collodi was actually doing. The book is a close study of a society where deception has gone ambient, woven into every institution, every transaction. Courts punish victims. Authority figures perform competence without exercising it. Experts are decorative. Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability. Into this environment, a naive creature is released, constitutionally unable to resist a good story about easy reward.

The nose is the least interesting lie in the book. The interesting lies are the ones that work.

You need to read Om’s piece to discover which are the lies that work. If you’re a fan of the story you can probably guess or recollect, but the writing here takes you there in wonderful ways. Either way, you’ll come away thinking that they are as plainly visible as the nose on your face. Yet somehow our gaze always seems focused to look past that.

Pinocchio is a favorite story of mine. I’ve directed a play version in the past. Perhaps Malik’s piece hit me so squarely because I spent time with the book during my preparation for that gig. It was a production for young audiences. The kids always loved it. Their parents or accompanying adults always seemed a little agitated after the performances. Thought of as the children’s story it was originally written as, it contains truth we adults conveniently forget or choose to ignore. Even in the much reduced stage version for young audiences the theme reveals its mark as squarely as it hits it.

As Malik puts it “Pinocchio is a story about a society organized around deception.”

He’s dissected the story, originally published in serial form, and reassembled and animated the core of its humanity in ways that not only meet our moment, but distill the chaos into a sublime simplicity. Much the way any skilled wood carver and maker of puppets would be envious of.

I won’t say any more. I’ll just say again, go read it.

(image from Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash)

Hot Dogging It

Fun times in the city

Yesterday I took a stroll through the neighborhood to once again visit the Windy City Hot Dog Fest. It’s an annual weekend event for hot dog lovers and street fair aficionados, blocking off Milwaukee Avenue for a few blocks in front of the under renovation Portage Theatre.

Of course visitors can order up a typical Chicago hot dog, but that’s not the point. There are also a few exotic creations available. I mean, you can get a typical Chicago hot dog any day of the year, but ordering up a rattlesnake and rabbit sausage is something else entirely. I did order up one of those, along with a snapper and alligator sausage as well. Both were excellent.

In addition to the hot dogs there’s a variety of beers available as well as the other street or county fair staples like funnel cakes and of course corn dogs.

There’s even choices for those not looking for hot dogs.

You can also find all of the usual civic and social organizations with booths and information, as well as a variety of merchants selling their non-edible wares.

What impressed me the most this year was the large number of families with small children enjoying the day, the food, and the fun. I’m sure they’ve been there in past years, but this year I was struck that so many chose to take a break from all of whatever we’re living through to enjoy fun, food and the day together on a few blocks in a very wonderfully diverse city.

More shots in the gallery below.

Sunday Morning Reading

Biker heroes, cheese thieves, and stupidity checklists

Sunday Morning Reading time with stories and good writing about crime, incompetence, technology, shifts and changes, and cheese. There’s also hope in and amongst the chaos. Add a slice of cheese to your morning repast and give a read.

A rustic indoor display features a wide variety of artisanal cheese wheels and blocks stacked tightly on wooden shelving. On the left, smooth, rectangular orange-brown blocks are piled horizontally. On the right and center, large round wheels of varying sizes are stacked vertically, displaying diverse rinds—ranging from textured dark brown and dusty gray to smooth ochre and patterned beige. Photo by Azzedine rouichi YW_5rJvAdKw unsplash.

Starting this week’s edition with a surprising feel good story that reminds us we shouldn’t judge books by covers. Marlon G. Baxter tells the tale of young hearing impaired child who was saved from being trafficked in a Walmart by what appeared to most as an unlikely hero. You need to read “Heroes Wear Leather Too”: How A Deaf Child And A Biker Stopped A Trafficking Plot.

UPDATE: This pisses me off. Apparently the feel good story linked above is fake. I and several others have looked into it and it’s not holding up. Pardon my swearing, but this is so goddamned frustrating. I’m leaving the link and my description in for two reasons. Pointing out that we can’t trust a damn thing on the Internet anymore. Secondly, that really sucks given we’re all in a posture of looking for hope whenever we can find it.

In the wake of what’s happening at the ICE Delaney Hall ~~detention center~~ internment camp in New Jersey, Josh Kovensky recounts the story of what happened in the courts after similar battles over humanity happened earlier in Chicago. Check out How The Broadview Six Fought The Trump DOJ—And Found Massive Wrongdoing In The Process. Tough to see hope in these horrible moments as they occur, and it’s hard to believe we have to rely on the incompetence of evil doers after the fact, but here we are.

Speaking of incompetence, there are stories and there are stories. Andrew Kersley’s The Body In The Wheelchair: How Did A Troubled Family Get Lost By the State? This a tough read to digest on a Sunday or any day, but definitely worth your time.

On the arts and politics front, a court has ruled Trump has to take his name off of the Kennedy Center and not close it down for renovations. Sounds like a victory. In the long term it may be, but Janay Kingsbury tells us that in the immediate future the damage may already have been done in Trump Hasn’t Left Much Kennedy Center To Stay Open. So much of what’s happening these days hurts my heart, but this misadventure hits me where I live.

Everything is changing, like it or not. Sonny Bunch thinks Hollywood is standing on the doorstep of yet another pivotal moment. Check out Hollywood’s About To Change (Again).

As far as pivotal moments go, there are quite a few happening all around us. Especially regarding searching the Internet. Google is reinventing itself and the Internet, leaving an opening for companies like DuckDuckGo and Kagi. Doc Searls writes How DuckDuckGo Can Be A Hero. Let’s hope these search companies seize the moment that’s before them.

And while we’re on the topic of tech, John Siracusa has published The EV Stupidity Checklist, suggesting ways the EV industry might get back on track. John could and should publish one of these for so many things in the tech sector. Perhaps also for so many other sectors of our lives.

I’m a cheese fan, and I’ve been known to nick a slice or two off of the hors d’oeuvres tray before the guests arrive. Olivia Potts tells us how organized crime fell in love with cheese in The Grate Cheese Robbery. Who knew cheese was the most stolen food in the world?

(Image from Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

The Emperor’s New Car Wreck

A recycled, decaying spectacle

Once upon a time there was a guy named Hans Christian Anderson who wrote a story about an emperor who was exposed (literally) by his own vanity. We’re living that now here in the U.S. I’m actually amazed that this administration hasn’t banned every copy of The Emperor’s New Clothes, but it’s possible it’s above most of their reading levels.

The emperors new clothes.BltLFigK_Z2aBtTL.

Nothing ever really changes, it just gets recycled. Anderson’s story was actually based on others from Aesop to Persian folktales. So even within the frame we used to think of as American exceptionalism, we can’t claim this farce as our own. It’s like a virus or a comet that comes along every now and then. Or watching a car wreck. Or a train. Perhaps a space ship explode on a launch platform.

Regardless, I do think we’ll probably be able to claim the worst version of the story when this one does come to an end.

It’s more than obvious that Trump and his sloppy lickspittle sycophants can’t run a country, a war, an economy, or apparently not even a big 250th celebration of America’s founding without making a fool of themselves while they dig deeper holes for the rest of us. Small hint: you just need lots of fireworks and a military band. As long as the members meet the height and weight requirements.

They’re good at grifting and making money. For themselves. Apparently there are still enough suckers out there willing to pony up. That’s the only surprising part of our version. Although some who’ve seen enough are looking for new digs in Argentina. I’m guessing the real estate market there will see boom times as others follow. As long as the data centers don’t get there first.

The sinking spectacle is so obvious that it feels like most have started to ignore the water rising around their ankles, hoping they develop webbing between their toes. Those still shocked seem to be adopting a wait it out attitude. That makes some sense. There’s nothing really to be done until he’s no longer on the planet. Although I do have my doubts that his courtiers will even announce that he’s gone once he passes, out of fear for their own lives. We might even get a new definition of what death is. We’ll all be living through a Death of Stalin moment. Which is a shame because that movie was actually a good one. And funny. Watch it and see that part of our future.

Or just read The Emperor’s New Clothes. Not for anything new. There’s no insight to be gleaned with your eyes shut or turned away from what we’re seeing. But it’s better than watching the literal decay displayed daily on some screen or the other.

One day there’s going to be a large cleanup on aisle six. It will probably be as messy as it is glorious.

Sunday Morning Reading

Wandering through the Internet, disregarding along the way

We live in interesting times. I’m spending a lot of my time being interested in watching my grandkids develop, and watching everything around how I thought they might grow up change. In my opinion, change not necessarily for the better. They won’t know what things changed from necessarily, unless they choose to look into it. That assumes they’ll be able to do so the way we can now. I have my doubts about that. Regardless, that’s tomorrow. Here are some links to share in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

A close-up photograph captures a bronze statue of a young boy sitting on a stone bench outdoors, absorbed in reading a book.

Terry Godier says the Internet is dying. I’m not sure if it’s dying, morphing, collapsing in on itself, or just in the midst of growing pains, but I take the point. Check out The Boring Internet. (That’s a link to the text version. There’s also an animated version here. Quite nicely done.

JA Westenberg believes Nobody Is Destined For Greatness. I happen to agree. Shakespeare gave his greatest comic villain, Malvolio, lines about being born great. I wish I could label our current day villains as comic. Perhaps one day.

Derek Sivers reminds us that Geography Is Four-Dimensional. How true. There’s a reason Shakespeare more often than not capitalized the word “Time.”

Stories about religion occasionally get shared here. Mostly they are stories about how it’s really not religion, but a cover for grift and abuse. This is one of those. He Remade The Southern Baptist Convention In His Image. Then Came The Abuse Allegations by Robert Downen chronicles yet another of those tales we seem to hear far too frequently these days.

For another take involving religion, check out Neil Steinberg’s Being Formed By Christians Does Not A Christian Make. He quotes Thomas Jefferson’s “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I’m not sure we can say either of those things any more.

There was a bit of a funny fracas after Google’s all in on AI announcements this week at its annual I/O conference. Apparently for a short time after Google announced big changes to Search, you could not Google the word “disregard” and expect the usual quick definition. Google quickly fixed that. The root of the problem? “Disregard” is an AI command that you have to put in a prompt to keep the AI demons from you know, making a mistake. Check out Russell Brandom’s quick story, You Can No Longer Google the Word ‘Disregard.’

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, the talk is all about agents. (Actually that’s been the talk for a while, the volume is just increasing.) Hayden Field thinks If Google Can’t Make AI Agents Useful, Maybe No One Can. FWIW, I think Hayden is spot on.

In an article The Economist credits as anonymous, someone thinks Vladimir Putin Is Losing His Grip On Russia. Perhaps that’s true. I don’t know about you, but I’m as tired of hearing about autocratic oligarchs losing their grip as I am about hearing all of the promises about generative AI and autonomous driving being just around the corner.

Sunday Morning Reading

Looking beyond and beneath the words on the page

Good writing is good writing. But underneath the surface or the subject matter of good writing, you find subtext, perhaps buried, that surprises beyond the words on the page, the summaries, and the top lines that often reduce more than broaden. That’s the case with this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Read on, dig beneath, and enjoy.

An over-the-shoulder view of a bronze statue depicting a young person with short hair sitting on a stone bench and reading a large open book. A small bronze bird is perched on the top right corner of the book's pages. The statue is situated outdoors in a paved park area with grass visible in the background.

First up, is a piece by film critic Sonny Bunch, discussing The Weird Right-Wing Freakout Over ‘They Odyssey’ Yes, it’s about casting and race and history and myths and all those things. On the surface a tired argument. Dig below the controversy, and you might find a morsel or two worth chewing on, but in reality only being upset about if you believe in exercising or conjuring demons through outrage. Maybe someday we’ll all eventually end up back where we started from. But like Odysseus, the homecoming might feel as hazardous as the journey we’re putting ourselves through to get there.

Things are certainly screwed up in U.S. Politics, but we’re not alone. In fact, we’ve got more than enough company. Great Britain is having its moment as well. Ian Dunt’s piece There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is one heckuva piece of writing that beneath the stormy surface of British politics, points to the problems far and wide and far below, regardless of what flag your ship might be flying when it sinks.

The trial between Elon Musk and Sam Altman over OpenAI and whatever the hell all of that means, sounds like a circus where the clowns won’t leave the center ring. M.G. Siegler takes a look at some of the shenanigans in Take Me Down To The “Amateur City.”

Rex Reed was, if nothing else, a show into and of himself as a film critic. I always found him both entertaining and I occasionally agreed with his acerbic criticism. For better or worse he set a standard that presaged much of what passes for criticism today. He passed away this week. Merin Curotto has written quite a remembrance piece that’s so much more than about the one man. The Rex Reed I Knew (1938-2026) is worth a read even if you weren’t a fan or don’t have any sense of who Rex Reed was.

Alessandra Ram explores what happens when you might be married to a man who is smitten with AI in Meet The Sad Wives Of AI. I think this could also apply across any way the genders choose to partner. I’m sure there’s a promise out there somewhere that AI will fix all of this. Right?

Chicago baseball is having a moment with both of its major league teams doing reasonably well and playing each other in the Crosstown Classic. There were and are great expectations for the Chicago Cubs, not so much for the Chicago White Sox, which is why the exciting level of play on the South Side is capturing some of the North Siders glow. In the midst of all of that, this week marked the passing of Sam Sianis, the legendary owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, who placed a curse on the Chicago Cubs back in 1945 when the owner wouldn’t let him bring his goat into the stadium. Paul Sullivan has a great write up on the history, the myths, and the lore. Check out Sam Sianis And The Curse Of The Billy Goat Remind Chicago Fans Why We Love Baseball And It’s Myths.

When you do look beneath the surface of a moment, a life, an obituary, or perhaps even the remains of what’s left, sometimes you find more than you might have imagined. Archaeologists Find Egyptian Mummy Buried With The ‘Iliad’ by Franz Lidz tells such a tale. Homer says, “the sort of words a man says is the sort he hears in return.”

I’ll add, the sort one reads to that as well.

(Photo by the author)

What Goes Around Is Always Coming Back Around

Life can be painful. Live theatre can be as well.

Now that we’re into rehearsals for the stage reading of Puta Wijaya’s play OH, it’s both gratifying and terrifying to discover that my initial thoughts about the piece being timely and universal are correct.

That of course what’s makes a good play, a good story. It also makes for a constant reminder of how little attention we pay to the stories we tell and repeat.

Wijaya’s work began as a short story that was originally published in 2003, and was then adapted by him in 2018 into what he calls a monodrama, meaning a one character monologue. It’s set in Indonesia. But the words spilling out his thoughts could easily have been written about the U.S lately.

Here’s an example:

I’m stepping into the struggle for justice in this impotent toothless tiger of a country which, instead of using what’s left of its strength to fight, lazes around enjoying itself. Oh! This is insanely embarrassing. It just doesn’t make sense. But this is reality. Our reality! The older generation slacks off, the younger generation jacks off. People are racing to dig their own graves.

And another:

Not like those other lawyers these days who are mostly about making deals, or those elites and intellectuals who shine when they are powerless, but who, from their new seats of power, become more…(Louder) violent, greedy, materialistic, merciless, and despicable once they get the opportunity to trample on justice and truth they once idolized.

Working with IVP is one of the gigs I return to eagerly. Working with plays from far away places and different cultures, always, in the end, proves over and over again that at the core, we’re all the same. Though our life experiences may differ, they really aren’t.

I used the word terrifying in the opening of this post because you’d never know that this play wasn’t written about what we in the U.S. are living through currently. I also say that because regardless of where we’re from, or the horrors we endure, we never seem to learn how the wheel always turns and comes round again.

Life can be painful. Live theatre can be as well.