Subverse Aphrodesia

"Young aims to bring poetry back to a place of common discourse, which he admits could be a tall order in a society that technology — from the Internet to iPods — has atomized. The more isolated individuals become, the less they can see themselves in others, he believes...
This, Young said, is his role as poet laureate: to use the distilled purity of poetry to breach walls of isolation."

Poetry is the antidote, the dissipater of fog.

See Scott Martell's full article in the L.A. Times.

"So this summer, the President is reading Salt: A World History. That is, when he gets done with Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar. Or maybe he's first reading The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History," writes Kir Slevin in The 'Big Lie' on Bush's Nightstand.

Subject: Re: Account # 7847008O

it's accession a knutsen or caviar
it's dull or bern
a secret try frivolous
some mike try devastate,
faze some cargill on buff
but margarine in turnstone,
detoxify may drowse
continua it penchant
it retaliatory.

In American Mania: When More is Not Enough, psychiatrist Dr. Peter C. Whybrow's scientific and philosophical analyses suggest we’ve devolved into a nation of overindulging, overstimulated flakes addicted to easy access and instant gratification.

Shit! (no pun intended) -- Read Matthew Rothschild recent story in The Progressive's McCarthyism Watch tells how state troopers removed a couple of young women out of a Barnes & Noble "book signing & discussion" because they made a joke -- amongst themselves -- about getting Santorum to sign a copy of nemesis columnist Dan Savage's book. The women were threated with arrest and fine until one called her attorney father and had him speak to the cops -- who don't deny the story.

Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed by Katharine DeBrecht is recommended for children ages 4-8.

"This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland."

"Our biggest vending machine sellers are 'The Wok Cookbook' and a French-English dictionary," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres. Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal is also reported to be "very popular."

Garth Brooks has signed a contract providing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. exclusive rights to the sale of his CDs.

According to this story , "Brooks sang at Wal-Mart's annual shareholders meeting in June, wearing a blue smock like the ones worn by store employees."

For a split second (or five) I really thought one of them was going to hit me.

The two younger women who were dressed exactly alike appeared to have come to the movie together. They were disappointed in the ending. Me and You and Everyone We Know simply did not wrap up the way they had expected it to. It just stopped. There was no closure. The other woman just didn’t seem to get it. She didn’t like it.

Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped into their conversation, but I loved the film. I was exhilarated. And isn’t half the fun of a great production -- or hell even a bad one -- talking about it? I engaged them before I even knew I was speaking.

“That’s the different between art and Hollywood,” I pointed out. “Art doesn’t answer questions. It asks them.”

They glared at me like who the hell is this know-it-all to tell us what’s what. I didn’t mean to come off as snide or snobbish or anything. But I had clearly disturbed their bitch fest. I had not been invited to the party. I ran to my friends for protection and held my breath until the danger had passed.

About 70 Andy Warhol prints will be on display at the Allentown Art Museum from June to September 2006 in an exhibit titled simply ''Andy Warhol,'' Geoff Gehman revealed in The Morning Call this week.

"Robert Mattison, the exhibit's guest curator, intends to turn the museum into a facsimile of the Factory, Warhol's assembly-line workshop, film studio and counter-culture den in New York. He imagines silver-painted walls, helium balloons from Warhol's ''Silver Clouds'' installation and a recorded soundtrack by the Velvet Underground and Nico," Gehman wrote.

But wait there's more!
"Warhol viewers will be able to ponder ''Andy Mouse,'' a 1985 acrylic of a Warhol-haired Mickey Mouse by Kutztown native Keith Haring, a Warhol art partner and protege. The Haring print will be exhibited in ''Pop Goes the Press,'' a concurrent show of '60s-'80s prints by Warhol contemporaries, including Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, from the museum's collection," the article goes on to say.

On display at the museum only through this Sunday is "Linda McCartney's '60s — Portrait of an Era.'' The collection of images of rock 'icons had already attracted 34,000 visitors at the time of Gehman's story. The museum had only been expecting about14,000 visitors.

Terrence McNally's new play -- Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams -- might suck but this review of it by Larry Worth of the Hollywood Reporter is a most entertaining read.

Describing the work as an "endless parade of cliches that gets increasingly labored as it trudges on to a metaphor-heavy finale," Worth writes, "McNally's script would have fared better had it stayed even marginally focused. Instead, the writer tackles dysfunctional families, infidelity, aborted dreams, the transformative power of theater and the very meaning of life. And that's not mentioning his rants against coffee store franchises, Shakespeare being overrated and the girth of opera connoisseurs."

Ouch!

Too many aboard the 'burlesque bandwagon' @ Edinburgh Fringe this year? Beware of bad strip-tease -- there are worthy performances to be found. That's what Lyn Gardner suggests in The Guardian.

She quotes Ursula Martinez, a star of La Clique:
"Too many people have jumped on the bandwagon... A lot of what is being called burlesque lacks sophistication and is just straightforward titillation."

After two dizzy nights of intensely gutteral dreams, I've begun to wonder whether going to bed cold stone sober is really worth it. OK, so maybe I have been suffering from a serious deficency of real-time intimacy, but I'm perfectly happy to ignore it with my eyes wide open. The REM-instensified world that my neglected wishing self has insisted on isn't fading with the dawn. It's following me through the day. Invading the daydreams that I used to have comfortably under control. Catching me off-guard, leaving me haunted and breathless at vulnerable moments. My dreaming mind cannot be allowed to overpower my conscious mind. Demons of desire be gone.

In 1997, 175 feminist bookstores dotted the country, but today only about 35 are still in business. Read Rachel Corbett's "Women's Bookstores Dwindle to Stalwart Few."

She writes: "As bookstores disappear, so do the intellectual community centers they once provided for browsing and attending talks and readings.

Quoting Linda Bubon, owner of Women and Children First in Northside Chicago: "There is a struggle for public space, period. It is desperately needed in a democracy."

After having his The Writer's Almanac program removed from WUKY-FM in Lexington, Kentucky for what was deemed offensive content, Garrison Keillor had this to say about the station's general manager,Tom Godell.

"Mr.Godell apparently considers the word 'breast' to be raw language. I don't,"Keillor responded. "He's the manager of WUKY at the University of kentuckyand so he decides what is fit for Kentuckians to listen to and if he feelsit's his mission to protect them from the word 'breast' uttered on the radio,then that's his problem, not mine."

I don't have to read another word. Ben Brantley's review of Lennon -- "Then John Met Yoko, and the Rest Is a Musical" -- is enough to scare me away.

He contextualizes the show as "the latest in the bland crop of shows known as jukebox musicals that have been spreading over Broadway like kudzu.

Don Scardino's "drippy" attempt reportedly uses five actors to portray Lennon because the musician's life resonated on so many different levels for so many different people.
"Yet instead of making Lennon seem multifaceted and multiform," Brantley writes, "this device turns him into a one-size-fits-all alter ego to the world... The subtext, to borrow from a Dr. Pepper commercial of years ago, is something like "I'm a Lennon/ You're a Lennon/ He's a Lennon/ She's a Lennon/ Wouldn't you like to be a Lennon too?"

Maybe. But I sure don't want to watch a crappy show about it.

Thanks to Brother Enslin for linking me to the website that sells these chuckle-worthy magnets.

Loved this short, daydream-inspiring essay by by Jaime Jacques titled "Making out like a bandit: Main street alleys are ideal for risk-seeking exhibitionists" that recently appeared in the Torono publication Spacing.

Here's a blurb...
"Contrary to the suggestive selling of pseudo-sexy urban establishments, dating doesn’t need to cost much if you have an adventurous spirit and an open-minded partner. Romance is fertile ground for creativity, and where there is play there is power."

Is anyone reallysurprised Suzanne Somers's one-woman autobiographical show The Blonde in the Thunderbird has closed less than one week after opening night?

Maybe the show sucked but the critics came up with some great quotables:

Charles Isherwood in The Times said Blonde was "a drab and embarrassing display of emotional exhibitionism masquerading as entertainment," and noted that Somers's black tights-and-tunic costume was "cruelly clingy."

The Broadway.com critic called it "shoddily constructed" and "a grim, at times excruciating evening."

A critic at the Daily News suggested it was "more like a Vegas act or a brassy TV special than a piece of theatre."

TheatreMania.com declared Blonde to be "a People cover story with music." AND as if we needed further proof that people just can't take criticsm...
Somers responded to The New York Post saying the critics "are curmudgeons, and maybe I went too close to the bone for them. I was lying there naked, and they decided to kick me and step on me, just like these visions you see in Iraq."