Culture – Page 11 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

One Year Ago After Hell Froze Over We Opened The Lehman Trilogy

Shows come and go. Some create bonds that transcend the impermanence.

One year ago tonight we opened The Lehman Trilogy at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis. Openings come. Openings, and shows, go. This one has stuck with those of us who lived, worked, sweat, froze, caught COVID, and finally got the show in front of an audience. You can watch the trailer below.

My undying love and gratitude to the three gentlemen who played the Lehman brothers (and everyone else) in the show, Michael Gravois, Kevar Maffitt, and John Maness (pictured left to right below.)

Along the way they became my brothers as well. It was one of those shows that creates a bond that will never break, regardless of the adventures we each and all pursue in the future. Those are the rare shows. They are the rare talents I got to work and play with and always cherish.

Onwards.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Good reading and good writing is just a heartbeat away in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

What do Aristotle, Katherine Hepburn, Garth Hudson, beautiful minds, and ugly hearts have in common? They all make an appearance in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Or at least writers doing their thing and writing about them do.

Hearts can be ugly things, yet they draw our poets, songwriters, and story tellers like moths to a flame. NatashaMH flutters around the heat in The Beautiful Mind Of An Ugly Heart. Speaking of ugly hearts, quite a few of them are on appearing on shirt sleeves alongside all the chest thumping and Nazi salutes going on here in the U.S (and elsewhere). We’re only a week into the victory laps and lapses of humility, yet already writers are wearing out keyboards with words of resistance. Ian Dunt has penned How To Resist The Tech Overlords. In this new and hot category of writing, let’s hope none of this seems like fiction down the road. Another way to resist the tech overlords is to just say no when they overreach. Microsoft overstepped by raising everyone’s Office 365 subscription prices on the inclusion, wanted or not, of its Microsoft 366 Copilot AI features. There’s a way to avoid the price hike written up by Mark Hachman on PC World. You might want to check that out. For a good read on the entire Microsoft situation, Ed Bott chronicles the story of Microsoft’s latest AI unintelligent move in The Microsoft 365 Copilot Launch Was A Total Disaster. Meanwhile the Chinese might have found a way to fight the AI money grab and spend long before we reach the cash out stage. Zeyi Yang lays it out in How Chinese AI Startup DeepSeek Made A Model That Rivals OpenAI. The sexy stories about TikTok might be taking a back seat to this one. Alex Himelfarb tells us The Politics of “Common Sense” Is Making Us Meaner. He’s right. Joan Westenberg takes it all on in Clash: Power, Greed, And The Fight For a Fair Future. If you’re concerned about what the tech side of all of these moments of madness we’re living through might mean, remember it’s not the tech and it is. Check out Nina Metz’s review of the Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy flick Desk Set. As Ms. Metz puts it, This Movie With Katherine Hepburn And Spencer Tracy Anticipated Anxieties About The Internet And AI. Oh, also check out the flick. You won’t be sorry. There really is nothing new under the sun, including cribbing and cropping from the work of others. Massimo Pugliucci takes a look at Ayn Rand’s Objectivist theories and her claims to be influenced by Aristotle. As he puts it well, “one can hardly imagine what possible points of contact the two might have.” Take a look at On Ayn Rand and Aristotle. These are indeed challenging times and often they feel quite dark. Alexander Verbeek gives us the always needed reminder that When Darkness Returns, Art Exists. And on that note, and since we lost one of the greatest musical artists of my generation, Garth Hudson, this week, Check out Amanda Petrusich’s Remembering Garth Hudson, The Man Who Transformed The Band. Remember many of Hudson’s and The Band’s creations came in another turbulent era in our history. A beautiful musician and beautiful mind. 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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Perhaps Tim Cook’s Severance Trailer Explains More Than Anyone Wants To Believe

You Can’t Sever This Away

A few months ago the Severance trailer featuring Tim Cook might have been received as an average, yet cute, piece of fluff marketing. Today it feels almost like a possible explanation for how some things have changed.

The entire premise behind Severance, being able to separate your work life from your real life, is indeed a fun bit of sci-fi story telling that I increasingly imagine the storytellers are going to have a hard time wrapping up into a successful conclusion.

Tim Cook’s recent decision to donate to the Trump inauguration certainly feels like he’s severed a part of himself from the carefully crafted persona he’s built for himself, and the reputation he built for Apple. Even, unlike some of his other tech company CEO compatriots, he made the donation out of his personal account, the understandable transactional decision has bruised Apple more than I think we might realize in this chaotic moment.

I say “understandable” because we’re in that world now. These transactional business/government relationships are no different than paying protection money to the guy who runs the neighborhood in order to keep the fruit stand open. It’s tough to bend the knee if both are broken.

Perhaps severing one’s self might make real life decisions with real life consequences easier to swallow or hide from. Or make work life more palatable. But that’s where the science fiction part of the story trails off. This is real life, and these are real people making these choices in the bright light of day. I’d say the markets will eventually give us a hint of an answer, but that’s not real life anymore either.

Time will tell how much of a blight Tim Cook infected Apple’s carefully cultivated orchard with. While many are disappointed and upset and rail about it online and in podcasts, the real question, and perhaps the cover Cook calculated upon, is that with every other tech CEO bending the knee, where else do Apple customers have to turn? And don’t say Linux. It still needs chips and hardware to run the software on.

You can 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.

Bible Thumping, Baptisms, Softball and Preachers’s Daughters

Putting the pit in the pulpit.

These days religion ain’t old time and it’s a gimme that too much of it is departing from anything I’d call spiritual. Shutterstock 1765366676.

I wrote a bit on my thoughts and some of mh history walking down and away from church aisles that formed those thoughts in the publication Ellemeno on Medium. The piece is called Whatever Gets You Through The Night. Yes, you can thank John Lennon for the title, actually you can thank John Lennon’s inspiration for the title, the Reverend Ike as well. As I say in the piece:

The rules matter until they don’t. The stories matter until they don’t. The questions always matter. Especially the ones we can’t answer.

I hope you check out Whatever Gets You Through The Night. You can 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.

Where’s Wanda? Is Worth A Watch

Good laughs to be had in this screwball black comedy.

Where’s Wanda on Apple TV+ is certainly worth a watch but it also begs the question my wife asked after we concluded viewing the first season, “where was the advertising and marketing for this show?”

Perhaps we missed whatever short marketing window Apple opened for the series, but it escaped our radar, and we only recently stumbled on it at the tail end of our queue by accident. Regardless, as I said, it’s worth a watch, especially if you’re in the mood for some good laughter.

Where’s Wanda? is a German language streaming series written by British writer Oliver Lansley, and directed by German director Zoltan Spirandelli. It was and is marketed as a black comedy, but I think black screwball comedy is more appropriate. Yes, there are subtitles. They also have some fun with that throughout.

The Wanda of the title is a young teenage girl gone missing and the plot ends up involving not only her family but their entire small town in searching for her. While the family drives the story, they guide us through enough of the town to be charmed and amused by the folks we meet with both recognition and surprise, as the plot evolves and involves more and more of the town in its mysteries.

The cast is uniformly excellent and I especially thought Heike Makatsch as the mother was superb. The moments between the younger cast members were some of the most engaging, hilarious, and touching scenes about the awkward moments in young people’s lives I’ve seen in a while. Where’s Wanda? gets silly, it gets serious, and it gets under your skin because of excellent work all around by the team that put it together.

You can 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.

Add ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ To Your Streaming Cue

Worth a watch or a re-watch.

Last night after a rough, though totally not surprising day, I posted the following on social media:

Certainly it was how I felt and was indeed an homage to Mr. Murrow and what he stood for. I didn’t go immediately to bed after posting that “good night” message. Instead I re-watched the excellent film containing Murrow’s famous sign-off, “Good Night and Good Luck.”

As we all go through what we’re going to continue to go through (and who really knows what that is), I’d recommend watching or re-watching the film again. It’s on most streaming services so it’s easy to find.

There are and will be pressures all the way around and certainly a dramatization of any kind compresses events to create that drama. Given that we may never hear about any of the recent conflicts that I can only hope happened inside corporate media headquarters before they folded up their tents to march willingly in step with the new administration, the story of taking on McCarthy, while also relevant to our current moment, is really just the stage for the one behind the scenes that impacts what we see or don’t see on our screens of so many sizes.

This isn’t some moment of nostalgia for a time gone by. It is a recognition that where we are now is a place we’ve been before. This time around those that control the media and messaging have, for the moment, much more control than they did in Murrow’s day. Make no mistake, they had some control then, but now it’s more pervasive and the Murrow’s, Friendly’s and Paley’s are fewer in number.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

History has its layers and facts might be damned, but that’s what myths are made of.

Tick. Tock. Or is that TikTok? Regardless, it’s the last Sunday Morning Reading column before things take a drastic turn here in the United States. Plenty to be concerned about, but Sunday Morning Reading will sill keep chugging along until they turn out the lights. That said, quite a bit of today’s chugging focuses on that messy intersection of tech and politics, because, well, you know, that muddled mess of things is what attracts my attention. They are no small things.

Speaking of small things, David Todd McCarty suggests that when we get too overwhelmed perhaps it’s time to get small. Check out Let’s Get Small.

There’s A Reason Why It Feels Like The Internet Has Gone Bad is actually a short interview with Cory Doctorow by Allison Morrow about a term Doctorow coined that I think fits much (and not just on the Internet) of what we’re already living through and what we’re in for: enshittification.

George Dillard wonders why modern business tycoons are like their forbears in Nerds, Curdled.

Jared Yates Sexton has some thoughts on dealing with what’s coming in Back Into The Breach: Thoughts On The Second Trump Presidency. Good read.

The toadstools salivating to use government to dismantle government no longer grow in shadowy, dank places. Joan Westenberg takes on Silicon Valleys’s Secret Love Affair With The State.

John Gruber highlights and expands on an article by Kyle Wiggins at TechCrunch that hit amidst the growing chaos this week when Google announced that’s its ever declining search product would now require JavaScript in order to use Google Search. Check out Google Search, More Machine Now Than Man, Begins Requiring JavaScript.

Joseph Finder takes a look at The Russian Roots Of American Crime Fiction—And The O.G. It’s not that the characters created by Dostoevsky and Gogol were Russian. They were merely human.

We love stories, but we love our myths more. Neil Steinberg takes on The Myths of Telephone History. The lies we agree upon might just be the most pungent of them all.

To close things out, NatashaMH reminds us in Chestnut Roasting On An Open Fire that some say that “the strength of a superhero is determined by the strength of his villain—the greater the adversary, the mightier the hero.” We’re about to find out if that’s true or not.

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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

The Farce of Ritual

The ritual games cowards play.

We’re a bunch of cowards. Mostly. And we take cover behind rituals, ceremonies, and traditions.

I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve attended or participated in a wedding which you knew was doomed. Yet, when the officiant asked if you were willing to support this union you went along and agreed. I’m guessing you never spoke up when given the opportunity to do so either. You later danced with the bride or the groom, wished them well, went back to your beverage and whispered into the ear of your plus one that there was no way the marriage would last.

Their choice. Their life. Their bad.

Perhaps at some point you’ve participated in a meeting of the PTA, or some other local body, or a social organization with an elected structure. Or perhaps you’ve been both lucky or unlucky enough to perform public service in a government organization of some sort.

Regardless of the situation, the mission, or the efforts of those involved, if you’ve done any of the above or similar, you know just how much of a farce the rituals we hide behind in these circumstances don’t really offer much cover, because if those you’re working with don’t see through the thin veneer of the farce and the roles they play, eventually someone watching catches on.

Yet we perpetuate them. We don’t rock the boat out of some misguided quest for comity, community, or conviviality.

We’re doing that on a national and global scale these days as the U.S prepares to descend into a maelstrom that everyone sees coming, and like that moment in a wedding ceremony when the rolling waves make us a bit queasy, there’s no stomach for stopping the proceedings.

Certainly there are folks sounding the alarms about what’s to come politically, socially, and economically in the coming days. Those voices unfortunately are drowned out by a chorus of congratulations, traditions, and a fear of sticking necks out.

When a marriage ends in the failure you knew would happen and did nothing to try and stop it’s easy to take comfort in the knowledge you were right all along. Smug self-righteousness and reliance on traditions isn’t going to be worth much when this shotgun wedding comes to an end.

Watching the ritual confirmation hearings that accompany the change of administrations confirm my view that we prefer farce even when it presages a tragedy we can all see coming. Better to just surf along with the current and not make waves large enough to capsize the ship of state. Eventually those waves crash home and nature’s rituals wash away those we’ve built.

For the record, nobody ever says bad things in public about the deceased at a funeral either.

You can 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.

Name Games On The Internet And In Life

Real names matter. Why is that so unreal?

I wrote a little something for the publication Ellemeno on Medium about names and anonymity on the Internet. Take a look at What’s In a Name?

Prompted by a new display name policy adopted by the publication, this is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. I always publish my writing and anything I do on social media under my real name. It’s the same way I conduct my professional life as a theatre director, always using the moniker I was given.

Certainly there are reasons folks adopt other names, handles, and nom-de-plumes and I don’t judge anyone negatively for doing that in an increasingly dangerous world. That said, I’ve always believed the world would be a better place if we all had the courage to conduct ourselves under our real names. But that’s perhaps naive.

Obviously there’s a lot more to say in the piece. I hope you take a few moments and read it.

You can 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.

The Lack Of Intelligence In Adding AI To Pro Football And Other Sports Broadcasts

Not a smart move.

Joe Reddy for the Associated Press writes up a nice piece about Amazon’s AI on its Prime Video broadcasts of NFL Football games. While Reddy’s piece covers the what is, (that’s his job) it doesn’t talk about the what for.

Here’s the thing, the prevailing wisdom in sports coverage these days seems to be that the games themselves must not be enough to hold fans attentions long enough for them to watch the commercials, so we need to add distraction upon distraction before, during, and after the games to keep the fans interested. Certainly one can say that this season’s slate of NFL games wasn’t that terrific, at least the ones I watched. (I watched more than Chicago Bears games, because the Chicago Bears don’t play real football.)

Sports used to be a pastime. Watching a game was a luxury on TV or in person. And that was before the tremendous cost of attending a game in person went nuts. In many places, you could always catch the local games on TV, but that’s an age coming to an end sooner than we’d all like.

Certainly, these AI generated statistics do deliver an interesting factoid now and again. So this is not to say there’s not any value. It’s just not redeeming enough in my opinion.

Amazon isn’t alone, All of the networks are fumbling over each other to have the latest, greatest whiz bang graphics fill up our screens. They’re not mining data, they are mining dollars. The insertions of stat upon stat, mid-game interviews with coaches and players all come at a cost.

In my humble opinion it’s a cost that cheapens not enhances. But that’s the way we’re headed, because eventually we can tack even more sponsors and ad dollars on to each stat and distraction.I’m sure betting on what the AI will predict will soon follow.

You can 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.