Fleeing the Country (21 cents)

Back on November 5.  Blog will pick up then

Stop it, already!!!!

I have heard Republicans call Obama a socialist, a Marxist, a racist, a Moslem, a terrorist, a con man, a taxer, a spender, an appeaser.  Virtually everything but “boy”.

Stop it already!!

Posters from Puerto Rico at the Ripley Center

Sometimes, you just stumble on things.  And that is often the case with exhibits at the Ripley Center, the underground Smithsonian complex that ties together the Sackler and Freer galleries, houses the Discovery Theater, and provides office space and teaching space for the Smithsonian Resident Associates program.  This is because they have exhibits in the hallways and in one large exhibition space, and the exhibits are not always well publicized.  And you can be down in the Ripley bowels for other reasons and come upon an unexpected exhibit.

So it is with the exhibit of Puerto Rican posters, or more formally “Posters from the Division of Community Education of Puerto Rico”.

From 1949-1989, Divedco (as it is known) engaged artists to make socially relevant poster art for a number of social purposes, not unlike what was happening in Communist Cuba (from the late 1950s on) and the Soviet Union.  Posters providing health advice, promoting cultural events, promoting sporting events, getting out the vote.  The large collection on display represent a number of indiginous artists, for one of the goals of Divedco was to encourage the artistic talents of islanders.  For anyone who enjoys poster art generally, these posters from Puerto Rico will open your eyes to a new source and expand your vista.

Hip Hop Art

Here is an accurate review -

The exhibit was either at the National Portrait Gallery, or at the Museum of American Art.

It is either still there, or it is not.

It was called “Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture”.

And (and this is extraordinary), in the museum’s hallways, the exhibit praises graffiti!!!!!  Yes, the same grafitti that cities complain about, arrest people for, and spend millions of dollars to cover.  Tim Condon and Dave Hupp, the exhibit says, are graffiti artists from the street of Philadelphia and New York, experts in color and lettering techniques, and they are emcees and djs to boot.

Along with large photos and oils of such luminaries as Blackolicious, Pharcyde, and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, and paintings of contemporary hip hop artists in 17th through 19th century fashion clothing, and a weird three dimensional collage in a room where there is a Nikki Giovanni poem called “It’s Not a Just Situation”.

What a strange topic for an exhibit.  The art is OK, as art goes – I don’t think there is anything immortal on display.  The poem by Giovanni is very nice.

Henry IV Part 1, at the Folger (2 cents)

I wish I were more of a Shakespeare expert, so that I could have a basis for what I thought about the production of Henry IV, Part 1 at the Folger Theatre.  But I’m not, so there is little I can do about it.

For those of you who, like me, have a hard time remembering Shakespeare’s history plots, here is the quickie version:  Henry IV is king of England, having deposed and killed Richard II (that’s in another play).  His son is the future Henry V, but the current Prince Hal, who is a ne’er do well, who spends all his time carousing at the tavern (and in the woods) with his drunkard friend Sir John Falstaff and a bevy of other funloving Englishmen (and Englishwomen).

Henry IV has a lot of enemies, noblemen from England, Scotland and Wales.  Henry is jealous because they all seem to have warrior-sons, not playboy sons.  And they decide to gang up on Henry (expressing old and new grievances) and get rid of him.

What will Prince Hal do?  Will he stay only in the comedic scenes of the play, or will he transfer to the dramatic scenes, or will he be able to multi-task?  (No plot spoiler here, unfortunately; you’ll have to see the show or read the play)

OK, so how was the play?  Not bad, but not perfect, either.  First, the sets, the costumes, the lighting….all first rate.  The acting was mixed (never bad, never great).  Rick Foucheux played King Henry.  He is one of the city’s top actors.  I’m not sure what his Shakespearean background is.  He enunciated well, and looked the part, and I don’t want to be overly critical.  But he seemed like a nice guy (as he usually seems) and I would think that Henry himself would have been a little rougher around the edges, a little less rational in his mannerisms.  Similarly, Tom Story as Prince Hal seemed more comfortable in his role as a carouser than in the later part of the play when he was out to defend his father.  (oh, well, maybe this is a plot spoiler, and maybe there is something genetic in the Henry/Henry DNA that made them nice guys)

Falstaff is third lead character.  I didn’t think that Delaney Williams quite captured the role, although it would not surprise me if better critics than I would disagree with this.  I didn’t think he looked the part.  Yes, he looked fat, which is crucial to the script, but he looked a little too young, and his emotional highs were not high enough for me, and his lows not low enough.

OK, but back to the beginning.  I am not equipped to criticize.  I have not see enough of the histories to be able to compare.  This was clearly a good performance.  You could follow it, and you wanted to, even though it ran about 3 hours.  I guess I’d give it a B.  I wonder what the real critics will think.

The African Queen

For my review of this recently read book, go to www. facebook.com and look at my facebook page.

The Flat Tire Adventure (4 cents)

We had a beautiful day yesterday, driving to Middleburg for lunch and a stroll and going on to Sky Meadows State Park to hike up the Piedmont Trail.  Coming back on Interstate 66, at about 4 p.m., we thought it would be appropriate to make a coffee/tea stop.  We got off the highway in Manassas and then I got the idea to go to McKay’s bookstore, where I had not been for several years.  We drove to the shopping center where McKay’s should have been, and saw a vacant store (I later learned that McKay’s moved to larger quarters, and did not go out of business) instead.  Heading back to to the street, I must have turned too abruptly and rather than driving up a parking lot lane, I went over a curb, and then back down to the parking lot lane.

No problem, you’d think.  But the curb was rather steep, and as the car went back down to the road, I heard first a squeal, and then a whoosh.  I stopped the car, opened the door, got out and saw that the front driver’s tire was flat, flat, flat.

OK, I can deal with this, I thought, but then, the adventure started, as I saw the car start to drive away and realized that I had not gone into ‘park’ before getting out.  My wife was belted in and couldn’t reach across to step on the break, so I realized that I had to do it.

Jogging along side the car, I was trying to figure out the logistics of jumping while the car continued to move forward.  Do I hold the door, the steering wheel, the seat, some combination?  Do I jump off my right foot, or my left.  What happens if the car is moving faster than I think it should be?

These questions might have come to my mind (they should have), but frankly I don’t know if they did nor not.  All I remember is that I ran alongside the car, put my hands somewhere, jumped off the ground, was sitting in the driver’s seat, and put on the break.

Interestingly, all of this seemed rather routine.  At no point was I particularly worried, and I don’t think that my pulse increased at all.  No sweat, as they say.

Well, it could have been worse of course.  The car could have run into another car, or worse, into a pedestrian.  But the path was clear.

Luckily, there was a Shell station right next to the parking lot, and there was an extraordinarily nice young man working there, who brought his jack out to the parking lot, took the tire off and put on the spare, took the tire back to the station to test it to see if it could be repaired (which it couldn’t).  The station did not have the appropriate sized tire, so we drove back with the spare, which (although it can apparently drive for 3000 miles) I will soon replace.

Go To Cnn.com

The top news stories include:

Stocks Ready to Rally

Christians Under Attack in Iraq

Man Eats 45 Slices of Pizza in 10 Minutes

Politics and Theater (14 cents)

We just got back from the matinee of Caryl Churchill’s “Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?” at the Forum Theatre on H Street.  This is a one act, 45 minute, two character, one piece of furniture play that, for a company wanting to conserve financial resources, will not strain the coffers.  But, unfortunately, I don’t think that it is a play or production that will increase the reputation of, or attendance at, this first rate Washington non-profit theatre.

The topic is the international bullying of the United States, at the expense (both in terms of loss of life and economic loss) of the rest of the world.  The United States is personified in the person of “Sam” (naturally, from Uncle Sam), an aggressive and arrogant sort (who does not know he is either, and really is only looking for self protection, and for love); the other character (named “Guy”) is not identified as being of any nationality, but he has an English accent, Churchill is English, and the play was originally performed in London, in 2006, where “Guy” was apparently  named “Jack” (from the Union Jack, the British flag) and was believed to be representative of how the British were kow-towing to the United States (actually in love with the United States) even though Guy, or Jack, had increasing reservations about what was going on.  Sort of a love/hate relationship, and sort of an abusive love relationship.

Guy leaves his family to become the follower and accolyte of Sam, and the entire play is Sam talking about how he is bombing people, exploiting people, torturing people, etc., and while Guy is either saying “Yes, yes, I’m with you, this is so much fun”, or “Well, I don’t know, it doesn’t sound quite right, but, yes, yes, I am with you.”

Although the play has generally been well reviewed, to me, as one of the London reviewers said, this is a 45 minute play that is about 20 minutes too long.

For a playwright with the talent and experience that Churchill has, this play to me is extremely adolescent in every respect.  When she wrote the play, she was focusing on the continuing Tony Blair/George Bush relationship, apparently.  Now, with the collapse of the economy and the other problems facing the United States, it has more of a “chickens coming home to roost” quality about it.

But it is a someone tedious play, even if well acted, and not one that I think worthy of producing.

McCain and Palin: Playing With Fire

By repeating the accusation that there is something sinister about Barack Obama’s “palling around with terrorists” (an accusation about equal in veracity to the blood libel or the truths of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), McCain and Palin are playing with very, very hot fire.  Already, there have been shouts from the audiences at Republican rallies of “kill him”; I have seen more than one account of this.

What if someone actually tries to do it?  We live in a very crazy world, you know, and our country contains within it more than a small number of crazies who would do anything to ensure that a terrorist/presidential candidate does not get elected.

Shame, shame on McCain, on Palin, and on any advisor of theirs who is not condemning this horrific strain of their campaign.  Shame, shame, shame.