First "Dice" Review

The premiere of "Dice" was a huge success by anyone's measure last night. The venue was standing-room only, even after the building was scoured for portable seating surfaces. If you're planning on coming tonight (shows at 7:30 and 10:30), or tomorrow (7:00) - get there early for front and center seating.

The play consists of 6 thematically-connected one-act plays, an approach that allows for entertainingly diverse approaches to the impact of Albert Einstein and his work on contemporary society. The authors deserve credit for presenting challenging, yet utterly non-didactic, work centered on theories such as relativity and gravity.

The first presentation, "Gravity" (by Chris Plante), was probably the most challenging for the audience. Two men in bathrobes (Tyson Brody and Jesse Smith) have waited all night in the eaves of a chapel to creatively disrupt the wedding of one's ex-wife. Their fear of falling is elaborated by one's fear that the "ground will rise up" and impact them. As the play ends, they face the prospect of harm rising up from below.

This segment was challenging not only because of the elaborate set-up which required an attentive audience to pick up on, but also because the acoustics of the space enhanced the difficulty of understanding the characters' accents. A more acoustically-friendly space would have allowed the audience to better appreciate the great work of the actors, and to better understand the well-written material.

The second presentation, "Matter" (by Sam Ryan) was the only one to deal directly with the atomic legacy of Einstein. In it, two Princeton students (Tielor McBride and Ryan Walker) are planning to vandalize the home of one of their professors, in an attempt to be heard in protest against her pro-nuclear-bombing views. Upon pondering the irony that the home is also the historical residence of Albert Einstein, however, on of them backs away from the project, while the other seems freshly emboldened. The struggle of technology and human action takes place on the sparse yet functional set (designed by Tielor McBride and made by Chris Plante), calling to mind Yeats' observation, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

The first of two monologues followed. In "Relativity" (by Chris Plante), Sam Ryan plays a precocious victim of child abuse. Plante's brilliant writing manages to get the audience laughing out loud while he chokes us up with the heart-breaking sadness of a boy's lonely struggle to cope with his father's abuse and his mother's absence. This is strong stuff, and it perfectly fits the one-act format, where the combination of humor and horror can be poured on in full measure without drowning the audience. (As an aside, sitting in a jam-packed room, watching your son talk about being horribly abused by his father, is a unique Oedipal experience.)

"Infinity" (by Sam Ryan) was probably the most accessible of the one-acts - a classic break-up scene, with shades of Hemingway's wonderful short story, "The End of Something". The problem of infinity, which presents the impossibility of crossing a distance which can be infinitely halved and therefore never bridged, provides the context for a young man (Tielor McBride) to see that he cannot bridge the distant between himself and his soon-to-be-ex girlfriend (Lizzy Suenram). Well-acted and sincere, the play presents the inability to truly connect with another human being.

"Time" (by Chris Plante) was a fresh look at the tired genre of monkey and trainer relationships. Eliza Hornig did a superb job of portraying an exasperated but loving mother-figure. Had her presentation been any less compelling, though, she would have been blown off the stage by Jesse Smith's talking monkey. This play gave the audience laugh-out-loud lines while presenting the problem of a parent watching her "child" grow up and leave her. The final line, "You are my man in the yellow hat," is a poignant stab in the heart of any proud parent watching a child move onward. (Or is that projection?)

A janitor (Ryan Walker) in Weston, Missouri, delivers a monologue in "Uncertainty" (by Sam Ryan). The audience hung on every word of this enthralling meditation based on the fact that Einstein's brain was kept for many years in the cabinet of a doctor in Weston. It was a compelling and beautiful piece, presenting a complex character dealing with a deep sadness.

Is it possible for an author's father to review his work fairly? Of course not. But my enjoyment of the evening was mirrored by the enthusiastic reception of the overflow crowd. As a father, the pride and joy I felt at watching Sam's pride and joy was an experience I'll treasure for a long, long time.

Go see it if you can.

"Dice" in the Star - See it this Weekend!

I opened this morning's Star to see Dice profiled first as "one of the more interesting-sounding theatrical events."

■ “Dice” by Chris Plante and Sam Ryan. Plante, who grew up in Lee’s Summit, and Ryan, who comes from the Brookside area, are second-year students in New York University’s dramatic writing program. The show is a collection of six world-premiere 10-minute plays written specifically for KC Fringe. Four are two-person plays, and two are monologues.

“In the process of brainstorming the plays we ran across an article that this was the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s miracle year,” Ryan said. He referred to 1905. In an explosion of intellectual energy, Einstein that year published his theory of relativity, proved the existence of atoms and paved the way for quantum physics.

“So we decided each of our plays would be based on one of the concepts from his work.”

Ryan said staging the show was an opportunity to put together original work on a shoestring.

“It’s an interesting proposition to just put on a play with the people you know and the resources you have,” he said.

“Dice” will be performed at 9 p.m. Friday; 7:30 and 10 p.m. Saturday; and 7 p.m. Sunday at Arts Incubator, 115 W. 18th St. The show is for mature audiences only.

I'll admit that I'm excited about the production. I have heard the rehearsals (staged in my living room) for two of the six acts, and I'm excited to see them staged. The attention and intelligence that the actors in these two segments (Tyson Brody, Jesse Smith and Eliza Hornig) bring to the table are incredible. They aren't doing this for money or for school attention or any reason other than to help bring an interesting production to life. Listening to them as I worked at the computer, I was struck by their intensity, and also by the obvious joy they were taking in their work. I was also struck by fatherly pride to hear Sam offer insightful director's comments.

Sam will also perform a monologue written by Chris, which I haven't heard, and am eager to see. I also haven't the three one-acts that Sam wrote. I'm planning to attend the Friday night and Sunday evening shows - please consider coming out to the Arts Incubator . . .

Republican Judge Stands Up for America - Bad Day for Bush and Ressam - Two People who Seek to Destroy the American Way

In sentencing Ahmed Ressam, the millenium bomber, Reagan-appointed Judge John Coughenor voiced his thoughts (.pdf file) about how the case was handled:

The message I would hope to convey in today's sentencing is twofold:

First, that we have the resolve in this country to deal with the subject of terrorism and people who engage in it should be prepared to sacrifice a major portion of their life in confinement.

Secondly, though, I would like to convey the message that our system works. We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, or detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant, or deny him the right to counsel, or invoke any proceedings beyond those guaranteed by or contrary to the United States Constitution.

I would suggest that the message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart. We can deal with the threats to our national security without denying the accused fundamental constitutional protections.

Despite the fact that Mr. Ressam is not an American citizen and despite the fact that he entered this country intent upon killing American citizens, he received an effective, vigorous defense, and the opportunity to have his guilt or innocence determined by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens.

Most importantly, all of this occurred in the sunlight of a public trial. There were no secret proceedings, no indefinite detention, no denial of counsel.

The tragedy of September 11th shook our sense of security and made us realize that we, too, are vulnerable to acts of terrorism.

Unfortunately, some believe that this threat renders our Constitution obsolete. This is a Constitution for which men and women have died and continue to die and which has made us a model among nations. If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won.

It is my sworn duty, and as long as there is breath in my body I'll perform it, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We will be in recess.

John McKay, the Bush-appointed US Attorney (and, oddly enough, an old acquaintance of mine from younger days, and one of the most sincerely and radically conservative people I have ever met), "said he agreed with the judge's comments that U.S. courts are equipped to handle terrorism cases."

Culinary Notes from the Old Northeast

Buried in a Kansas City Star article about a park inspector whose job is to track down illegal dumpers is this story within a story:

“I’ve seen a lot of crazy things,” Jones says:

■ A recreational vehicle crammed full of limbs and brush was abandoned in Spring Valley Park, 27th Street and Woodland Avenue.

■ Someone was so bent on attacking a tree in Indiana Park, 25th Street and Indiana Avenue, that a barricade had to be erected to protect it.

■ Cat and dog carcasses are frequently found dumped in the old Northeast, and, mysteriously, many times they appear to have been stripped of their meat.

WHAT?!?!?!

Great Blog to Visit

Occasional commenter here, Brian Stayton, is an old friend with an outrageous sense of humor. The year after he broke his neck sliding into home, his Christmas card showed the x-ray of the plate they had to insert.

He's also a thoughtful observer of the political scene. His sharp wit doesn't carry him away from intellectually thorough and defensible analysis.

He has finally started posting some of his thoughts on his blog, Stayton Thoughts. While I'd much rather hear them delivered in person, preferably over too much booze at an ABA-YLD conference, I'm adding his blog to my must-visit list, and encouraging all of you to read and comment.

Better than I can explain

The Bush administration is working hard to prevent Americans from seeing photos it holds showing "American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys." Over at the indispensable Daily Kos, in response to suggestions that those trying to gain access to the photos are playing partisan politics, comes this shard of clarity:

To be honest, I don't even care if this effort looks partisan anymore. If being anti-child-sodomy is now considered the partisan position, then I'm going to be the biggest f---ing partisan on the planet, and to Hell with anyone who isn't.

I'm tired of all of it. Just tired. I'm tired because the rest of the world has known this for a year, and we refuse to discuss it in this country. And in truth, we can't discuss it in this country without the (heavily censored) pictures, because without the pictures, the horrible, horrible actual pictures, the loathsome, brick-stupid f---ing news media doesn't see a story. And without the pictures, every bloated, pill-popping, corpse-like Rush Limbaugh clone in America will continue to claim it's all lies, all exaggerated, all phony.

Because, God f---ing knows, we would never even abuse even an inanimate Koran, and God help you if you report such a thing without the very pictures to see it happening before your eyes.

So here are the pictures. See it happening. So defend it, Rush. Go ahead and f---ing try. Maybe at some point, in this country -- maybe not now, maybe only after the most partisan, dishonest sacks of crap among us find themselves rotting deep under the ground, their much-sought Rapture having wholly abandoned them -- we will again be able to find some small shared moral base, some small point of humanity on which we can all agree, before God and country, this thing was wrong.

I won't hold my breath.

Word.

Laugh at the Right

Several months ago, I pointed out what a useless twit one of the local conservative radio hosts is. Since then, in a surprising (even to me) demonstration of just how intellectually empty most conservatives are, he has actually gained control of the afternoon drive-time slot. It's a shame that KMBZ, which once was a respected news station, has suffered such awful ratings that it is resorting to clowns to get a little attention.

More importantly, Kansas City conservatives are going to die from intellectual malnutrition - not that they've ever had much of an intellectualy appetite. The other day, I flipped on the station and Agar was arguing that schools are hypocritical for teaching books which include profanity, yet disciplining a coach for cursing at his team. By that logic, we should all feel free to wander down to the local church on Sunday and rape, murder, and steal, since such topics are all covered in the Bible.

While I have little appreciation for Agar - I've met him, and he's a vulgar, repulsive little creep - I do thank him for hooking me up with the websit of ClassKC, where I get can find nice capsule summaries of some great books. For instance, they take Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison, and summarize it as follows: fucking small children, convicts, boys, sheep, dogs, goats, liver, each other, and even certain species of plants; fuck, fucking, motherfucker, drive that knife smack in your cunt, cocksucker, smacking my lips over another man’s dick.

Let's face it, you don't have to be a total goofball to be a conservative in Kansas City, but it sure helps . . .

Municipal Golf

This morning, I played a round of golf at Minor Park. It was an opportunity to go out with a friend from my MPA program and a friend I've known for a little over a decade, and the old friend's son. This was the son's first round of golf. He's twelve years old, and he shot a 118. I'm 45, and I shot a 102. The others shot in the 80s.

A simple thing, really - a round of golf on an okay course. But there is so much to write about . . .

1) This was Nick's first round of golf. We made him keep the score card. Chances are, he'll have memories of this round for the rest of his life. After Ken, Alex and I are all gone from this world, Nick is going to remember parts of what happened today.

2) Municipal golf courses are an odd thing. Lots of public land, laid out for the use of people who have the time and money to take up a silly hobby like golf. Ken had heard a rumor, false as far as I know, that Minor Park is going to be sold so it can become a subdivision. Economically, that makes a ton of sense, but I don't believe it to be true. Kansas Citians will wind up making an economic sacrifice so that I can go play a round of golf for $22. It's a form of welfare, of course, but I bet the average golfer would deny that s/he gets any real benefit from the taxes we pay.

3) While I was out on the course, Robin was home reading about 4 brave men who broke the color barrier at Swope Memorial, one of the nicest courses in the nation, in my ever-so-humble opinion. It's refreshing to see that golf at the public courses in Kansas City is a multi-ethnic experience now.

4) I suck at golf. My last 3 rounds at Minor Park have been 111, 89, and 102. Maybe I need to work on my consistency.

5) Four hours, outdoors, on a hot day. I was exhausted after the round, but it was splendid to spend that time on a pretty plot of ground, focusing on golf. I think the common thread of hobbies is that they involve complete concentration on something that is ultimately meaningless and apart from your real world. Fishing, stamp collecting, water-color painting, etc. - all my hobbies are absorbing escapes.

6) The Santa Fe trail passed through Minor Park. Wrap your mind around that. Think of the people who passed over that parcel of land, and what became of them.

7) There is something inherently beautiful about golf. There is something I can't explain that happens as you walk up a fairway. It's intense, but calm. I can remember so many such experiences in my relatively short golf career. The best time I can recall with my now-gone friend Bob Blesch was a round at the old Blue River course, and the memory is something I treasure. Better ways undoubtably exist to spend four hours on a weekend, but I'm glad I invested four hours today to be out in the sun with two friends and a young man learning golf.

Self-absorbed Googling

From the referrer listings, I see that someone found my page by searching for "I'm a bad person." By a quick google search, I see that my site comes up fourth for those that search for such honesty on the internet.

On a more positive note, I come up second if you search for political honesty. That's a nice ranking, but it rankles me that "Blogs for Bush", a group blog run by a mentally challenged third grader outranks me on that one - especially since I'm pretty confident they first learned the phrase, and the concept, from me.

Also on a positive note, the ONLY sites that come up if you search "our christlike president" are this site and its predecessor. I expect the right wing to correct this oversight any day, though.

I'm number one for "Good things about Missouri". That seems right, although, in all modesty, I think that the Cardinals should rank higher than I do for those looking for good things about Missouri. Of course, if you search "I bleed Cardinals red", I'm at the top of the list.

RSS Feed

If you scroll down the page, there is a link now for RSS Feed. Don't ask me how I added this feature - I got my son to do it. He only charged me $100 - that seems like a fair price for sophisticated programming, doesn't it?

Blunt Backs Traitor??

Roy Blunt, the alleged father of our governor ("alleged" because I believe that Matt may be the spawn of Satan), has read the news reports about Karl Rove violating the law and all standards of human decency, and he has a response. His response is to elevate partisan politics over the safety of our country. Roy Blunt tops the list at GOP.com of Republican Congressman who have stepped forward to defend Karl Rove. Here's how they quote him:

House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO): “I Think We See Too Many Efforts Now Where People Quickly Rush To Judgment, Rush To Call For The Most Bizarre Solutions To Problems That Are Problems That Are Often Just Created In Their Own Minds.” (Rep. Roy Blunt, Floor Statement, U.S. House Of Representatives, 7/13/05)

Blunt: “Karl Rove Has Fully Cooperated In Any Investigation, And For More Than A Year Now Has Permitted Investigators To Talk To Him.” (Rep. Roy Blunt, Floor Statement, U.S. House Of Representatives, 7/13/05)

To be fair, it appears that, at least on the first quotation, he was laboring under some kind of psychotropic medicine that rendered him incoherent . . .

Whiny Wanker of the Week

I know, I know, I should just ignore him, but John Stossel gets on my nerves horribly. He is a self-righteous, self-important half-wit, who thinks he's at least a three-quarter wit. All of which would be unremarkable, if not for the fact that other fraction-wits, mostly in the one-quarter to one-third wit range, think he is worthy of attention. For example, a lawyer in Columbia, who probably had some minor degree of intellectual horsepower until he drank the koolaid of Ayn Rand, forwarded this internally inconsistent piece of junk to a listserve of fellow attorneys.

In it, John Stossel tried to argue that liberals don't value a diversity of opinion because he hasn't received enough free publicity for his book from "liberal" media. First off, his book (which won't get a link here, because of the probably unjustified fear that someone who reads this site would actually, God-forbid, buy the work of this slimy cheat), includes a sub-title of "How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...".

Look, Stossel, you are nobody's scourge. To be a scourge, you have to be important. You're like some Republican idiot who puts a yellow ribbon on his car and thinks he's the scourge of the Taliban. Get over yourself.

Regardless, though, this "ignored" "scourge" wound up appearing on Air America's "Morning Sedition". And on Al Franken's show. And on Alan Colmes' show. And on Larry King's show ("but not on the weekend," he snivels). And Robert Redford flew him out to Sundance. That's a lot of free publicity for a guy who has been caught time and time again lying and twisting his way for a little attention. And he admits all this undeserved attention in the very column where he's whining that the left doesn't pay enough attention to him.

Oh, by the way, this posting makes me the scourge of bogus pseudo-journalists who mislead their audience. If I'm not instantly in the national spotlight, it will be proof that the conservative media are afraid of me.

Let's Roll - Dice

A little more than a month ago, I promised that I would present details about Sam's (my son's) play that he is producing for the KC Fringe Festival.

Let the media blitz begin. First off, I was wrong about the title - his play is called Dice, not Einstein's Dice, though the title is a reference to an Einstein quotation. Here, I'll let Sam explain, as drawn from the website for the play:

Hi, I'm Sam Ryan, one of the authors of Dice. Here's a little information about the show.

Chris Plante and I both grew up in Kansas City, where we've been involved in theatre throughout the community and in our high schools. We'd never met, however, until we both went into the dramatic writing program at New York University in the fall of last year.

When the summer rolled around, we realized that we'd both be in Kansas City and that we really wished that we could get a project together. That was the genesis of Dice. We got together with the people who are running the Kansas City Fringe Festival, who have been all too helpful through this whole thing with promotions and getting a venue together, and started brainstorming ideas for what we could possibly do.

The concept which we came up with was doing work based around Albert Einstein's life and theories. When we were doing our research, we stumbled on an old Einstein quote: "God doesn't play dice with the universe." From that, we had our title, and our format - six short plays, and each of us would write three and direct the other's three.

What we did with that concept was far from, well, what a physicist might have expected. Our six short plays run the gamut from a monologue about working in the doctor's office in Weston, Missouri where Einstein's brain was kept for several years, to a scene involving a space monkey and the woman who loves him.

Stay tuned to this blog for more information about the show. If you have any questions, please email us at dice@thestereo.org. Thanks, and we hope that you make it out to it and enjoy it as much as we're enjoying putting it together.

Sam has told me that if they actually make a profit on the play, he's going to use his portion of the proceeds to get a tattoo . . .

Senator Roberts Prefers Gitmo to Kansas

Pat Roberts has always struck me as one of those relatively rare conservatives who is capable of actually speaking the truth, if the stars and planets are aligned correctly. Thus, it came as not a huge surprise that, after a visit to Gitmo, Senator Roberts acknowledged that Gitmo is a better place to be than Kansas.

It does sound like a utopian place for the right-wing. "We strictly observe with reverence all of the prayer calls, five times a day, 20 minutes. And in regards to the health care, my word, they have better health care than many of my small communities in Kansas."

In Kansas, you're surrounded by a bunch of zealots forcing their religion on you multiple times a day, but at Gitmo, you get the same thing, but better health care, and tropical breezes! Such a deal . . .

London Bombing

Within minutes, before the debris settled, spin merchants on all sides were defining the issues, phrasing the talking points, assessing the blame, drawing lessons, and watching carefully for opposing voices to say something, anything, that could be drawn out of context and held up as an example of how black-hearted and wrong that opposing voice is.

Instead of that, take a minute and try to imagine what it must have been like to be sitting there, reading the paper, minding your own business, and having death flash into your life. Immediately, you wouldn't know if it was some kind of mechanical catastrophe, or a bomb, or the end of the world. You wouldn't know, and it wouldn't matter to you in the least. All that would matter would be the shock, and the flash, and the smoke, and the noise, and the screaming, and the pain. And that's all.

For a few moments, you wouldn't care whether Blair should have led your nation into war, you wouldn't care about fly-paper, you wouldn't care about fundamentalism in any of its forms. You would only care about staying alive.

There is plenty of time to point fingers, accuse, assess, argue, and blame. And that's all fine and good - perhaps even necessary for us to move forward.

But, for a few moments, I didn't want to hear it, or think about it, and I certainly haven't wanted to write about it. Part of me was with those people in the Tube, and the darkness, smoke, and panic felt nearby. And I knew freshly, as I have always known at various levels of urgency, that we are all just humans in fragile bodies. And hate, or stupidity, or accidents, can slam into your life and change it all.

Worse yet, it can happen to those you love. I think of my friend and college room-mate, Dave Kaplan, bleeding out in his apartment building, because some scared and stupid person was angry at someone else. I think of Steve Mayhew getting shot at a party I skipped. I think of Aunt Jen, someone I never knew, but whose loss haunted my father for the rest of his life, being crushed in an accident with a drunk driver.

The homepage of NYU has a notice today that nobody from there is reported to have been wounded - good news, yes, but also a silent acknowledgement that random violence could have touched Sam's community as easily as it did others. Meanwhile, Tulane's homepage has information about monitoring Hurricane Dennis - underscoring the fact that Ali will soon be exposed to fresh, new dangers.

Those people in the Tube, and those people who love them, had the bell toll for them this week. And it tolled for thee.

Would You Pay Money to Learn Law from this Bozo?

Kris Kobach, darling of the Kansas right-wingers and Congressional loser in a district heavily slanted his way, is a professor at UMKC School of Law. What kind of credibility will he have left, now that the Kansas Court of Appeals has tossed him out of court for a reason a first-year law student would have foreseen, and perhaps prevented?

In a nutshell, Kobach and assorted other anti-immigrant nutcases filed a lawsuit challenging a duly-passed law allowing qualified alien students to receive in-state tuition rates in Kansas schools. The students must be "undocumented immigrants who attend Kansas high schools for three years and obtain either high school diplomas or state-issued GEDs. The students must sign affidavits saying they plan to apply or are applying for U.S. citizenship." Kobach sued on behalf of some out-of-state students who felt that they should also be entitled to in-state rates.

The Kansas Court of Appeals told Kobach and his clients to quit whining, because they could show no harm that they suffered. As first-year law students know, the Courts aren't there to give you a forum to bitch and moan about stuff that doesn't really matter to you. You have to show that you have "standing" - that the law impacts you.

What must have Kobach really red-faced, and his employers at UMKC wondering "Who hired this bonehead?", is the fact that he wasted so much time and effort on a lawsuit even his worst student could have told him was a bunch of nonsense. His supposedly conservative supporters should be criticizing him for wasting tax dollars incurred in defending this frivolous suit, as well.

(In a sidenote, though, the funniest quotation arising out of this whole debacle was from Dan Stein, the numbnuts who heads the organization that actually sponsored this waste of time. "Dan Stein, federation president, called the judge’s decision an 'appalling exercise in judicial activism, taking a blatantly illegal state law and using various procedural obstacles to keep these young people from having their day in court.'" Judicial activism?? I know that's a favorite phrase of the right wing, but, here, your complaint is that the court refused to engage in judicial activism. Are you stupid or dishonest? You're clearly one or the other.)

Senator Bartle - "Hard to Celebrate" Union Victory

Matt Bartle, in a column (.pdf file) intended to dress himself in the flag of patriotism, writes:

On July 4, 1863, America was in the midst of the Civil War. The day before, on July 3rd the Union had won a decisive battle near the sleepy town of Gettysburg; followed the next day by a victory at Vicksburg. Yet it was hard to celebrate a victory that came at such a cost.

I guess he's right - in an era when the governor of the state of Missouri flies the Confederate flag, it's hard to celebrate a Union victory.

Torture Rove?

It's now looking like Karl Rove is going to be identified as the source of the leak that "outed" a CIA operative. In the words of George HW Bush, this makes him the Most Insidious of Traitors. Indeed, for this act of treason, he could be considered an enemy combatant, and shunted off to Gitmo (or maybe he could just be subject to "extraordinary rendition", whereby he could have a visit to one of the countries that really knows torture).

Personally, I remain opposed to torture. But, if it has to happen, I suppose it is my duty as a patriotic American to let the armed forces do what they must . . .