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Just in time for the fifth anniversary of the War on Terror... after a sold-out run in Austin... the GET YOUR WAR ON play is going on tour.
The Rude Mechs Theatre Company are hitting the road with their critically acclaimed adaptation of GET YOUR WAR ON!
The following are some requests from David Rees himself, in which we heartily concur:
- Please, PLEASE, if you have friends or family in these towns, let them know about the play!
- If you have a myspace page that is frequented by Defense Department officials, let them know about the play!
- If you have William F. Buckley's pager number, hit him up and let him know about the play!
- The more people who see it, the better chance there is of a larger tour later.
*** THE RUDE MECHS PRESENT: GET YOUR WAR ON***
PHILADELPHIA, PA
September 13 - 16
Live Arts Festival
HOUSTON, TX
September 21 - 30
DiverseWorks Theatre
WASHINGTON, DC
October 5 - 14
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
MARFA, TX
October 20 - 21
Ballroom Marfa
Here's a quick web animation to GET YOU PUMPED:
Isn't it time you treated yourself to an evening of theatre?
Thanks for your interest,
David Rees
This is a drum we ain't gonna stop banging:
Standeart on the HuffPo on Johnnie-come-latelies who've noticed that the Left Behind books could be, oh, you know, about "about killing people for their lack of faith in Jesus." Of course, it took the conversion of the books to the video game format for anyone to actually realize this...
And Michael again, on the find UK website, The Nth Position:
So how does the 'Christian' publishing industry get away with misrepresenting not only their message of hope for the future, but also the figure of 'Christ' as perhaps as equally destructive as his polar opposite, the Antichrist? I would argue that there has been little outrage about the books from Christians, at least on a very public level, mainly because the books do serve a purpose for Protestant evangelical Christianity
Today, I should take the time to look in the mirror and take note of my flaws. I should observe each one carefully, and think about it for a minute or two. After an hour of cataloging my defects, I will be able to greet the day honestly, without any illusions that I am attractive. —Daily Negations, John S. Hall
Nasrin Alavi on what's really going on on the Tehran "street.":
Iranians are routinely portrayed as frenzied masses that chant "Death to America!" after Friday prayers. Yet according to surveys by Iran's own ministry of culture and guidance, fewer than 1.4% of the population actually bothers to attend Friday prayers. Angry images of Iranians are used as a fitting backdrop to news items speculating about Iran's nuclear activities; most recently, to coverage of an attack by a crowd of about 400 demonstrators against the Danish embassy in Tehran.
Among the protesters was the Iranian Basij member and blogger Saleh Meftah. The following day he wrote in his blog about the thrill and the fun-filled atmosphere of the attack, posting smug photos of himself taken inside the embassy compound.
On the streets of Tehran, only the brave or the foolhardy would dare to confront a member of the Basij; in this cyber-sanctuary, however, within a period of only two days hundreds of angry comments had been left on Saleh's page. The following is just a tiny sample:
I cannot hide my hatred of you and your actions. It's your bestial breed that gives westerners cause to insult our dear prophet and faith.
You've written here that, as you read the comments, 'I am proud that the enemies of the revolution are attacking me.' Listen, you godless fool ... what enemies!! They are ordinary people who are telling you how they feel ... your fellow countrymen!
You Basij just don't learn. No matter how many of you fill up our universities like flies through [government] quotas, you still don't seem to get wise to that fact you are being played. You talk of bringing the true face of the revolution to the westernised, northern [affluent] suburbs of Tehran by setting fire to that embassy. My brother! While there, you should have opened your eyes. For your mentors and this nation's tormentors ... live behind those neighbouring grand high walls. But I also want to say that I commend you for not deleting the messages here and for upholding the democratic principle of free speech.
Ordinary Iranian Muslims may well be dismayed by xenophobic images of their prophet dressed as a terrorist, his turban a bomb with a lit fuse. But most did not take part in such a protest. Yet news coverage had us to believe that this 400-strong, officially backed mob, in a city populated by 12 million people, represented the mood of the Iranian street; just as a cartoon exhibition attended by 50 people - predominately journalists - on its busy opening night confirms Iran's anti-semitism...
A truly remarkable interview with CAConrad, this excerpt does not do it justice...
Tom Beckett: What do you think poetry does? What do you want a poem to do?
CAConrad: A poem should help you rob a bank. What kind of fucking poem wouldn't help you rob a bank? A bad poem wouldn't be able to drive the getaway car. You better be certain you've got the right poem behind the fucking wheel, things are tight these days on the streets, they'll kick your ass unless the poem behind the wheel is the right poem.
But I really do LOVE when a poem strips down, gets on its back and holds me in the air with its delicious feet, and lets me feel naked flight. A child should come out, a new one, a wonder, the poem makes everything that new to the sudden brand of alternate realness it makes. There are poets whose poems do this to me (with me) (for me) nearly every time.
It goes way back, this Great Love. Photograph of a camera in the front room. Then four or five more photographs of cameras in the hall. There's a large cabinet and our wild guess of eight, maybe nine hundred snapshots of cameras in the drawers. Sometimes it's different angles of the same camera. And you might stand in the room with me wondering about the camera that took the pictures of the cameras. Or, was it more than one camera? Or, are some of the cameras in the photographs the cameras used to photograph the other cameras? We spend a good half hour looking everywhere but there are no cameras, just the photographs of cameras. In the end there's a box of cherry tea. Have you ever had cherry tea? Me neither, let's have a cup.
A very expensive, very old vase was accidentally broken in the British museum recently. The BBC cameras got as close to the flower and branch design as they could so that our eyes could SEE the repair. See, look, do you see the epoxy? Yes, that's it. The reporter helped us see. See? Yes. And many hours and much money was spent in the reparation of this vase. Yet British and American troops are responsible for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's being brutally killed or injured. Museums and libraries burned to the ground. Tax dollars and patronage to fix a vase. Tax dollars and private interests to wage war, and then to have the NERVE to "give" "aid" to "rebuild." Just like, just days ago, on the news the reporter said that America was expediting bombs to Israel, and a semicolon later said that America was THE FIRST to arrive in Lebanon with "aid." Bombs and bandages. It was SO SHOCKING! You send bombs to Israel, NOT JUST send bombs, but EXPEDITE them because they're not getting there quick enough. And almost at the same time send medical supplies to Lebanon to "help" with the injuries caused by the bombs, GEESH! Were the bombs and the bandages in different planes I hope? Good old American cost effectiveness could very well send everything in one load. We can all relax now though that the vase has been repaired in the British museum. The camera zoomed in to let us see WHAT AN AMAZING JOB was done. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for saving the vase!
Sometimes on the news the cameras show us a car crash. They zoom in, and flames, blood, spraying water, it's all there. Recently on the news the camera gave us details of a very still pile of hair poking up from behind a seat. It's just like a movie, the news. Wow, super duper, it's like it's not even real. Is this what we've been working toward? I have a notion to go to the car wrecks on Philadelphia's highways with my giant bags of potting soil and tomato plants and make a little garden on the charred hoods and roofs of the wrecked cars. And glue poems to the windows. This protest will be called HOW LOVE IS WHAT THE POEM IS GOING TO DO TO YOU! EAT A TOMATO FUCKER!
...CAConrad's Deviant Propulsion, all in one day. Ron Silliman. Joe Massey. Bill Knott.
...is Ed Champion and The Return of the Reluctant. I imagine if you're here, you probably already know him, if you don't, check him out. Not always in the best of taste, but since when did taste really ever have anything to do with anything.
Even though I usually don’t know what I want, I often find that I am very disappointed. Even when I don’t have goals or direction, I can tell when I’m going the wrong way and I can get very nervous and upset. I don’t have to have a plan in order to feel completely thwarted.
A truly beautiful review of Delia Falconer's The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, from Powells.com
As I read The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, I was struck by the notion of how much work must have gone into each sentence. There isn't a wasted moment anywhere, and I imagine there are legions of writers who would give their right arm to be able to express in a page what Falconer manages to do in a single phrase or turn of expression. Early in the book, she writes: "His mind also wanders. His life a set of dark rooms which he moves through. Some things he remembers, others he seems to have imagined." The economy of Falconer's prose is breathtaking, introducing us succinctly to the subjective memory of our protagonist. Stripped of superfluous flourish, yet vigorously evocative, Falconer delivers motifs and messages with tactical precision. Near the end of the book, Falconer writes:He wanted to write the lost thoughts of soldiers.
Not the grand heavy story, he has never known his life that way, but the seams and spaces in between. This is history too, he thinks, the weight of gathered thoughts, the cumulus of idle moments.
In the real world, Custer went out in what was perceived as a blaze of glory, while Benteen faded away, slowly destroying his career and his health through chronic alcoholism. In The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers, he manages to rescue not only his humanity, but the memories of his fallen comrades from the dustbin of history, something best accomplished in fiction.
Should this, or anythign motivate you to click through to the Soft Skull buy page, click on the buy from Powell's button, to show them some love
Last night, I did not go hungry. Today, too, I will probably have whatever I need. If I am miserable, it is because I am greedy. But greed is inevitable—the more I have, the more I want. That is what life is all about. That is why I am greedy and miserable: because I will never have enough.—From Daily Negations, by John S. Hall
Once a week, when I'm too lame to come up with original content for this blog, I will post a daily reflection by John S. Hall, of the bands King Missile and King Missile III, author of the Soft Skull book Jesus Was Way Cool, and of the forthcoming Daily Negations. It is from this latter work that I will draw that day's reflection. This will continue, periodically, until the book's publication in early November...
For Mark Swartz's H20, a Flash trailer...
But what's the book about?
I leave it to Donna Seaman, Associate Editor of Booklist—a great critic and a genius of the summary review—to tell you:
Swartz portrayed a dangerously alienated loner brooding in Chicago's central library in Instant Karma (2002). Here he zaps forward in time to depict Chicago as a chaotic city-state with a burgeoning homeless population and a failing infrastructure. Tap water is but a cherished memory, so toxic is Lake Michigan. In fact, the earth's entire freshwater supply is imperiled, which is good for the mega corporation Drixa, which is gearing up to produce synthetic water. Or is the fake water fake? Hayden Shivers, a hapless filter and drain engineer who discovered the water-making properties of a rare fungus off the coast of Malta, can't figure out if he is about to be promoted, fired, or worse. Is the African mail-order maid who destroyed his marriage actually an undercover operative? What's up with the beautiful environmental rights protestor, Aqua Bella? Swartz's shrewd, jittery, and noirishly atmospheric speculative tale about a bumbling antihero and dire environmental trauma brings an irreverent and parrying voice to ecofiction and casts a fractured light on follies petty and catastrophic.
It's Jackie Sheeler. Story ran in yesterday's New York Times. She edited Off the Cuffs: Poetry By and About the Police.
Also, this constitutes a new strategy for keeping this blog fresh. Shorter entries, and more of them. Not as many as the blog run by Frank Wilson, books ed at the Philly Inquirer, but more than I've managed recently! We'll see how it goes...