February 2006 Archives

GILLY! CONGRESS!

That's sort of what I'm thinking today--and actually, it's also a revised version of Ben "Cooter" Jones' best bumper sticker in his unsuccessful run for the House a few years back.

But my old pal Gilly (né John Michael Macknee) is apparently fed up and ready to do something about it: he's planning to run for U.S. Congress in North Carolina's fifth district. He's unhappy with the current representative, Virginia Foxx, and by gum he's going to do something about it.

As he put it to me in his last mailing:

"I'll run on a platform of Love and Poverty...

"Congresspersons make $162,100 a year. Holy crap. I don't need anywhere near that much money! So, my first year in office I'll donate $50,000 of my salary back to my district. It will go to charities and organizations that help the poor. The second year I'll use that money to pay off my mortgage and still be rolling in dough from my point of view. I guess I really am poor. Everyone I know is pretty poor. Even the one's making fairly good money. That's why I'll focus my energy on issues that help the poor in my district...

"The challenge: I'll do it, but I really am poor. The filing fee is one percent of the salary or $1,600 or so. I don't have it. If I'm supposed to do this, one of you, or someone you know, will put up the money to call my bluff. Last chance to file is February 28th at noon. That's next Tuesday.

"I'm Gilly, I'm running for Congress and I double dog dare you to vote for me."

That's the attitude I think our government needs. Besides, Gilly is on the very, very short list of people I would call at 3:30 in the morning if I needed someone to post my bail--I'd trust him with that, and I'd damn sure trust him with the 5th District. He's a brilliant guy, quick-witted, hard-working, and open-minded. He's also a man whose sense of humor is powerful enough to withstand the influence of any number of Abramoff-worshipping egomaniacs. Finally, he's got the perfect iconography: a loving wife, three beautiful kids, his own farm, and a pair of cows that he milks every morning. How can we afford not to have him in Congress?

I just wish he lived in my district.

Want to help him with that filing fee? Drop me a line here at cashwell@petercashwell.com and I'll pass the word along.

GILLY! CONGRESS!

12:44 AM

LBJs

*Who the hell told it to snow? I woke up this morning, opened the bathroom blinds, and saw at least an inch on the ground. And weather.com was stil saying "partly cloudy."

*A belated happy birthday to the best little brother a guy could want. This is the one week per year where Dave gets to be only one year younger than I am, so please be sure to compliment him on his mature appearance.

*The more I listen to Aimee Mann's soundtrack to Magnolia, the better it gets. I can't believe it took me six years to buy it. Worse, I didn't even buy it for myself--I bought it for Kelly. At least she let me rip it onto my work computer...

*FYI, if the only film version of Bye Bye Birdie you've ever seen is the Dick Van Dyke/Janet Leigh/Ann-Margret version, which cuts a bunch of songs and plays merry hell with the script of the play, let me recommend a look at the 1995 TV remake, now available on DVD. It stars Jason Alexander, who does a surprisingly effective job. As Flaine pointed out, he's almost always told to "play heavy," when he's actually quite light on his feet; he's just built like a fireplug. In motion, he reminds me of John Belushi. Vanessa Williams plays Rosie, and is a darn sight more convincing as a Hispanic secretary than Janet Leigh was, but Chynna Phillips is too old to be a convincing Kim. Her voice is less Mermanesque than Ann-Margret's, though, so she gets some points. George Wendt is basically wasted as Kim's dad, and he's not a patch on Paul Lynde's gloriously psychotic portrayal, but that's the one place where the original is better. One big plus: the enormous white hole in the original film, teen idol Bobby Rydell in the role of Hugo, has been replaced by a considerably better performer, Jason Gaffney, who has a hilarious sequence in which he glumly attempts to play "Honestly Sincere" on his out-of-tune acoustic guitar. It's perfect--of course Hugo is jealous of Birdie, but it's not because he's going to kiss Kim, it's because Hugo's a frustrated rocker!

*Dammit, it's still snowing. What the hell?

3:01 PM

It's always tough to negotiate the no-man's-land between parental pride and objective criticism, but luckily I can avoid the problem entirely by reporting what other people have been telling me, which is that Dixon, a/k/a Thing Two, stole the show in this past weekend's production of Bye Bye Birdie. Playing the role of little brother Randolph MacAfee, Dixon swiped several scenes using improvised reactions to his onstage father, and cemented his hold on the play with his reprise of "Kids," which was moved to the curtain call in Woodberry's production. He's now completely hooked on the idea of doing every musical the school puts on, and I suppose that may make him more inclined to attend WFS down the road. Ian seems quite happy with his decision to attend Orange County High School, where he's enjoying both the Blue Ridge Virtual Governor's School and Hornet Tech programs, but I'm not sure what Dixon's choice will be when he faces that decision in another year or so.

I understand how influential the drama experience can be, though. After the first play I worked on at CHHS--that would be Blithe Spirit in the fall of 1978, starring Jack Campbell, Laura Sumner, Terry Little and a scene-stealing Leslie Heartinger--I too felt the bug. I was a sophomore, back in the days when high school didn't include 9th grade, and my Technical Theater class lasted only through the first semester, but I dutifully worked on the set and ran sound for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the winter, and I even did a litte set painting for Guys and Dolls that spring. I stayed away from the Cultural Arts Center during the final show of the year, Plaza Suite, and I was working as a camp counselor during the summer school production of Oliver!, but I was persuaded to do a bit of work on Annie Get Your Gun--I drew the reproductions of the posters for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

It was during my junior year that drama completely lassoed me. For one thing, I had decided to give acting a try, and I enjoyed my first role (the Constable in Fiddler on the Roof) enough to keep auditioning. Moreover, I was surrounded by ridiculously talented people, which made the whole experience a delight. I played against actors like Clark Gregg, Peter Spruyt, Jerry Sipp, and Celia Schaefer, and built sets with technicians like Mike Beard and Ross Kolman--and all of them have made their livings in film, theater, and/or music. The whole crowd of us worked on Auntie Mame that winter, and then we turned our attention to director Mark Nielsen's original musical comedy about the Black Death, Oh, Rats! I'm proud to say I matched Clark in auditions, leaving Mark uncertain which of us to cast as the scheming rogue Harry and which as the overdramatic poet Adrian Bennet. Since Clark was a senior, he was given his choice of roles, and I ended up as Adrian. Much as I would have loved playing opposite my buddy Gilly Macknee, who was perfectly cast as Harry's semi-ept sidekick Ben Banks, I had a blast overmodulating my voice and tossing off pompous iambic pentameter.

That year I decided to give summer stock a try, and I ended up playing millionaire Percival Brown in The Boy Friend. This was stressful. For one thing, though the play is cute and full of entertaining songs, the plot is enormously stupid; Mark let us know in no uncertain terms that we'd be called upon to ham it up outrageously: "Anyone caught being subtle will be shot." Another stress-inducing issue was my summer school course; in order to take both Advanced Acting and Stage Band as a senior, I'd had to agree to take a history course at UNC. Dad had even demanded that I get an A. Luckily, the professor was Dr. LeMar Cecil, whose droll style made even the dustiest accounts of the War of the Spanish Succession come to life, but I was still putting in a lot of reading in addition to rehearsal time.

And then my girlfriend came to visit.

Missi, who lived in Bryson City, had come to Chapel Hill for production week, and while she was around I got NO reading done. And since she was staying in our house, she was always around. And no, we didn't get a lot of sleep, either... but on Sunday, she went back home, the show closed, and I was left with slightly less than 40 hours to read the 700 pages I had to cover before my History 12 exam Tuesday morning.

I got an A-minus.

Dad said it was good enough, so I enrolled in the Advanced Acting class and immediately starting doing plays like nobody's business. I got my first (and only) leading role in The Desk Set that fall, playing Spencer Tracy's part, and I played smaller parts in Hello, Dolly! and The Wiz (for which I was also the assistant director.) What still amazes me is that I worked on, if I'm counting correctly, no fewer than six one-act plays that year, too. Each member of the A.A. class had to direct a one-act, and of course that meant we were all playing roles in each other's shows. We didn't put them all on at once, thank god, but to this day I can't quite remember which ones we performed at what time--they're all jumbled up. I know I ended up playing the menacing voice on tape in Celia's one-woman show, The Tape Recorder, and I was the cartoonishly dim husband in Allison Heartinger's version of Dorothy Parker's Here We Are. (I'm still not sure if Dorothy really wanted the couple to be that cartoonish or dim.)

For my own play, I selected Woody Allen's "Death Knocks," which I'd liked ever since I read it in my copy of Getting Even. I cast Jerry Sipp opposite me and we began learning lines and blocking, but before long Mark called us aside and told us that there were no performance rights for the play--apparently it was never intended as a real production. With very little time before we had to put the show on, I leaned hard on best buddy Celia, who filled out the cast of my new selection, Mark Medoff's Doing a Good One for the Red Man. Despite the hasty preparation, I had cleverly monopolized the two best actors in the class, so the show came off pretty darned well, if I say so myself.

My triumph on stage, though, was Jerry's one-act. He had made me promise to play opposite him by appealing to unimpeachable logic: "My character's named Jerry, and the other guy's Peter." I couldn't argue. The play, of course, was Edward Albee's The Zoo Story, and Jerry was simply dazzling. By that time in my career I was starting to realize my own limitations, and you might expect that Jerry would have made me stay carefully within them, but in fact, the opposite was true. Jerry was so good I felt like I had to extend myself; when I screamed at him, I think for the first time--and maybe the last--I was actually screaming, lost in the character, rather than just playing him. Jerry himself was in another zone entirely--I don't know how he even had the energy to bow at the end--but I do know that I never again felt like that onstage. Mark Nielsen took us aside to tell us "Zoo Story was wonderful," and he was right, but I give Jerry the credit--he wasn't going to let anything other than wonderful happen.

I did a couple more shows--that summer's Brigadoon at CHHS, and a freshman-year lark in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw at the ArtsCenter--but for the most part I had already gotten everything I'd ever hoped to get from theater: a chance to fit in with the other nerds, to work with the most creative people I could, and to feel, however briefly, the white heat of a great performance coming from within.

Dixon's already warming up. I envy him the chance to reach incandescence.

7:54 PM

In today's entry, the dialogue form is used to promote greater understanding of the human condition and its myriad facets, and the participants in said dialogue are among those most worthy to comment on said condition. The participants include:
*myself, your humble scribe
*Charles Darwin, pigeon-fancier, naturalist, co-framer of the theory of natural selection, and author of On the Origin of Species
*Dante Alighieri, hero of Italy, poet, politician, and author of The Divine Comedy
*James Madison, president, political scientist, framer of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and co-author of The Federalist
*and R. Fiore, curmudgeon, Comics Journal columnist, and critic extraordinaire, from whom I swiped this idea in the first place.

We join our intrepid quintet as they debate the issues of the day:

MADISON: I thought they looked tired. Did you think they looked tired?

DANTE: They are in their sixties. One cannot stay young forever...

MADISON: I didn't say they looked old--I said they looked tired.

DARWIN: Well, they did look old.

MADISON: I didn't say they didn't!

DARWIN: And that new song they played after "Start Me Up"? I was unimpressed.

DANTE: I thought that one was pleasant enough. But that version of "Satisfaction" went on forever. I feared they might play through the second-half kickoff...

PC: Jeez, Bob, how do you get all these brains to shut up and get on task?

FIORE: It takes a certain force of personality. Also, you've got to establish who's in charge.

PC: Right, then. Gentlemen, we're here to consider a fundamental question of the day: Whatever happened to moderation?

DANTE: Oooo, good one. Do you mean moderation as a lifestyle choice? I'm a firm believer in eliminating incontinence in all things, you know.

PC: In a manner of speaking, Dan, but I--

DANTE: Don't call me Dan.

FIORE: Jeez, Pete. The guy's a legend. Show some class.

PC: My apologies, Signor Alighieri. But I mean the question seriously, particularly in the political sphere. Recent news from overseas concerns demonstrations in which consulates are being burned and protesters are being shot.

MADISON: And this is news how?

PC: The protesters are in places like Indonesia, Iran, and Afghanistan (where two were shot by police).

MADISON: Like I said...

PC: They're protesting the contents of newspapers in Denmark and Paris...

DARWIN: Ah, the globe is indeed shrinking.

PC: ...specifically the cartoons.

(Pause)

DANTE: Ah. Yes, that is a tad unexpected.

PC: Back in September, a Danish newspaper published cartoons in which the figure of Muhammad appeared; it had asked cartoonists to express their concerns about Islam and its relationship with journalism. At the time the uproar was minimal, but since many Muslims oppose the depiction of the Prophet in any artwork, let alone a satirical sketch, their protests have been growing steadily louder. The cartoons have since been reprinted in New Zealand and France, and this last seems to have set off a powder keg. In Lebanon, the building holding the Danish consulate was burned, and the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were torched as well. Iran has cut off trade with Denmark because the government hasn't punished the cartoonists or the publishers. The headquarters of the Paris magazine that reprinted the cartoons had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat.

FIORE: Nicely summarized.

PC: Thanks. The point though is this: how does one reconcile the right to free speech--which is non-negotiable in my book--

MADISON: That's my boy!

PC: --with the need to show proper respect for deeply held beliefs?

DANTE: Good save, Pietro.

DARWIN: I say, old man, I'd have thought you'd be in favor of insulting the Mohammadans at every turn.

DANTE: Oh, they're Musselmen? Turks? I wasn't listening. My mistake, then. Go ahead and insult them.

PC: See, this is what I'm talking about. Signor, you were so certain of your political and religious views that you populated your literary hell with those who didn't share them. These guys are so certain of their views about literature that they'll send real people to hell. Even the ones who agree with them! This unbreakable certainty in one's own righteousness is all too common today, from the White House to the streets of Tehran to the classrooms of Kansas. And I would argue that acting on this certainty is the surest way to widespread disaster. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

DANTE: Hey, that's nice.

PC: Uh, it's not mine.

FIORE: Do you write anything yourself?

PC: Look, I'm giving you credit, what do you want?

FIORE: Cash?

PC: My point, though, is that it's one thing for Dante here to use his beliefs about real people to create a work of art. I don't for a minute believe a just God would set up a place like his Inferno--

DANTE: Hey!

PC: --but his belief in such a God doesn't do me any harm.

DANTE: Your disbelief will do you harm when you're boiling in pitch!

MADISON: Wasn't that the punishment for grafters? I should think he'd be more likely to be--

PC: Look, guys, the point is that his belief doesn't harm me; his version of God certainly has the power to harm me when I check out, but Dante's belief in itself is harmless.

DARWIN: Then why do you say "unbreakable certainty" is such an awful thing?

PC: I respect his right to hold his beliefs with all the faith he can muster; what I do not respect is his certainty that EVERYONE must hold those beliefs.

DANTE: But those who do not hold them will be boiled in pitch!

PC: If you believe God is just and all-knowing, Dante, you must let Him decide who'll be boiled. That's not a task for anyone on earth.

MADISON: Why is he so fixated on this pitch business?

DANTE: "Judge not, lest ye be judged"? Is that what you claim?

PC: I was going to go with Genesis 18:25, actually.

DARWIN: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"

FIORE: Great. Now Chuck's swiping stuff...

PC: But that's a great segue, actually. The Washington Post Magazine ran a story on Sunday about the recent "intelligent design" controversy. It was a fairly solid essay, I thought, with some good observations from a variety of sources, but I was really irritated by the presentation.

FIORE: How so?

PC: The cover was a version of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam," with an apelike hand reaching down to touch the hand of Adam. And above it in gigantic letters were the words "Darwin vs. God."

DARWIN: Oh, that's just... I mean... I say, that's... sensationalism!

PC: I know, I know.

DARWIN: It's ludicrous to set me against God! I'm buried in bloody Westminster Abbey!

PC: I stood on your grave once. Accidentally, I mean.

MADISON: But weren't you an atheist?

DARWIN: No! I was raised C of E, and C of E I remained. Granted, I had some doubts about the nature of God toward the end of my life, but those were because of my daughter's death. Natural selection says absolutely nothing about the existence or non-existence of God!

PC: And the article pointed that out--eventually. But the first two subjects discussed were a biology professor who's teaching "intelligent design" to her community college classes and Richard Dawkins, who explicitly claims that belief in evolution requires disbelief in God. Rather than pointing out the obvious fact that science, by definition, can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a supernatural being, the Post boiled the whole thing down to two opposing certainties: either you believe in evolution or you believe in God. No moderate position exists.

DANTE: But this is true--you can't believe in some of God.

MADISON: But of course you can! Churches are constantly splintering over certain aspects of God--some believe He has certain attributes, others believe His qualities are quite different. If I may be so bold--

PC: You may.

MADISON: --this is the very reason why we have the First Amendment. One church may claim that evolution and God are incompatible, but another may see no difficulty in accepting both. And a man who belongs to neither may find merit in the idea of evolution, but not in the idea of an omnipotent creator.

DANTE: But only one can be correct!

MADISON: Perhaps so. But which one?

DANTE: The one who believes in the teachings of Mother Rome, of course.

PC: So--the one who accepts both God and evolution, then.

DANTE: Yes. No! What are you saying?

PC: I'm saying the Catholic Church's official position is that natural selection occurs.

DARWIN: I say, that's a bit of good news.

PC: In short, the belief in the evolution of the body is based on good science. The Church of course asserts that God is in charge of filling that body with a soul, but it has no objection to the idea that modern species, including Homo sapiens, are descended from very different species over millions of years.

DANTE: But what about the Six Days of Creation?

PC: You of all people ought to appreciate the power of a symbol, Signor. But a symbol can only exist if the absence of certainty.

FIORE: I think you'll need to explain that further.

PC: Certainty requires a literal treatment of everything--the thing is what it is, period. Symbolism requires interpretation--looking at things in more than one way. And if there's more than way to view something, it's possible that there's more than one true way. There are moral and developmental truths in Genesis, sure, but that doesn't mean they must be literal truths. To treat them as such destroys their figurative power, just as pointing out all the historical errors in the Inferno would wreck its poetry.

MADISON: So what would you recommend?

PC: Moderation, of course! Quit being so damned sure that everything you say is God's Own Truth, and everything your opponents say is the Work Of The Evil One. Consider that there might be more than one side to the question, and that other people might have a right to their side, too. Think about what G.K. Chesterton said--

FIORE: Here we go again...

PC: --"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."

DANTE: And you think that will solve the world's problems?

DARWIN: I must say, it's a reasonable idea, but...

MADISON: --But if one has no means of implementing it, it's not a very satisfactory solution.

PC: Well, I could be wrong.

3:08 AM

College basketball's best rivalry gets underway again tonight, and I'm feeling cheerful. UNC vs. Duke is the most intense, most entertaining rivalry in sports, to my mind, and it's partially because so many rivalries involve teams that represent essentially the same thing. Not Carolina-Duke, though. Carolina is a state school, Duke is private. Carolina is large and inexpensive, Duke small and extremely pricy. Carolina is over two hundred years old, Duke (in its current incarnation, at least) less than a century. Carolina is southern in population and nature, Duke largely northern (despite its location). Carolina is located in a small college town, Duke in a city based originally on tobacco processing. Carolina's campus is funky and democratic, with various architectural styles accreting over the years, while Duke's has a strict pseudo-Gothic style imposed from the top down. And of course, UNC built a great big building for its basketball team so that more people could see the games, while Duke carefully keeps its team playing in a crowded, overheated, and extremely exclusive gym.

In short, it's a battle of plebeian vs. patrician, democracy vs. autocracy, south vs. north, suburban vs. urban, authenticity vs. artifice. It's class warfare, regional warfare, political warfare, you name it. It cooks, it rocks, it kicks ass.

What's too bad is that such a great rivalry is so often undermined by the quality of the announcers chosen to describe it. I'm looking at tonight's game with no small amount of dread, because I fear that my least favorite announcers will be working it. (I do take some small comfort in the knowledge that my least favorite football announder, Joe Theismann, will not be working tonight's contest, but that's grasping at straws.) I fear we will be subjected, once again, to Dick Vitale.

Vitale's enthusiasm is, I suppose, commendable, but his style, which once was a somewhat refreshing change from the dry, low-key commentary of the traditional ex-jock color man, has become a parody of itself. And it's no longer welcome.

By way of analogy, if you're my age, you may recall the original appearance of Doritos corn chips. They came in two flavors, Plain and Taco. The Taco chips had a brownish powder on them and tasted a bit hotter, a bit saltier than the regulars, but they weren't all that exciting. But then, in the early 70s, some genius at Frito-Lay came up with Nacho Cheese Doritos, and a new and rapturous era in snack foods opened up. Tangy, satisfying, covered in an attractive orange powder that lured you back into the bag again and again, Nacho Cheese Doritos were nothing short of revelatory. That's what Vitale was like in the early days.

And we've been eating the same damn chips for twenty years now. Somebody, buy us a new bag!

I also worry that Vitale might be paired with Mike Patrick, who's gone from a competent play-by-play man to a complete doofus; in the last game I saw him work on ESPN, he not only couldn't properly identify the players called for fouls--he must have missed that four or five times--but he couldn't even be bothered to pay attention to the referees' signals. When a guy got called for traveling, Mike called it a foul, despite the whirling arms of the official; later he claimed a turnover had taken place when one team had called timeout. All in all, I worry that tonight's game will be a broadcast debacle.

If only the two of them would quit fawning over UNC and (especially) Duke and get excited about mid-major conferences...

MIKE PATRICK: Dick, the Akron Zips look like they really came to play tonight.
DICK VITALE: Oh, Hi-O, baby! The Buckeye State is buckin' for a trip to the Final Four! And what I love about this team is that they do it right! They play good, solid, fundamental basketball, they move their feet on defense, and they keep the ball moving on offense! Wherefore art thou, Romeo Travis? He says, I'm right here, averaging just over 14 points a game and dominating the paint against Wright State and Denison!
PATRICK: And it looks like the crowd is waving Ziploc Bags tonight.
VITALE: That's their trademark, baby! You don't mess with the Mid-Atlantic Conference! You don't mess with the MAC! Not tonight, when Bowling Green is rolling into town! It's a classic matchup, two of the storied college programs, programs that do it right! Ohio pride, baby! It's the birthplace of aviation pioneers, and tonight they'll be aviating above the rim!
PATRICK: And you know, Dick, I had no idea that Ohio was a whole state. I'd been under the impression that it was a city.
VITALE: It's all about pride, baby! It's about passion! It's about babbling into the microphone so hard and so fast nobody notices there's a game on! Diaper dandies jumping off the bench to bury the trifecta during prime time! You got your PTPs, your Prime Time Players! You got your Akron Krazies loose in the gym! And I'm telling you, Mike, you wouldn't believe how much I'm getting paid to scream all this! This is what it's all about! Apple I-MACs! MAC daddies! MAC Donald's! I'm lovin' it!

2:55 PM