Month: June 2013

The Anoinette Perry Awards 2013

In the past several seasons, by commercial necessity, a lot of product on Broadway is based on familiar concepts, just as film and TV tend to be.

The Tony Awards, championing Broadway’s finest, are on Sunday on CBS-TV. My wife and I and about 927 other people not involved in the theater will watch them – it’s traditionally a low-rated program – despite the fact that, of all the award shows, the entertainment value is the greatest.

We also watch them because, when a Broadway show goes on tour – in our case, to Proctors Theatre in Schenectady – we will be more familiar with the offerings.

Back in March, Proctors gave a preview of what it would be offering this coming season. While Phantom of the Opera has been a perennial favorite, and Book of Mormon was a big hit, the production I’m most excited to see in 2013-2014 may be War Horse. These horses are operated by three guys, who you can see (think the staging of Lion King). Yet you still get a sense of the horses’ motions and sounds as this trio of actors brings these creatures to life. It was OMG awesome. I wouldn’t have been familiar with this – except as a Spielberg film, a whole different animal, so to speak – if I hadn’t seen it highlighted on the Tonys a few seasons ago. Nor would we have been familiar with Memphis or The Drowsy Chaperone, which we’ve since gotten to see.

In the past several seasons, by commercial necessity, a lot of product on Broadway is based on familiar concepts, just as film and TV tend to be. Once (2012 winner for Best Musical), Catch Me If You Can (2011 nominee), Sister Act (2011 nominee, which we will see in the fall), and Billy Elliot (2009 winner, which we’re seeing this week) came from films.

It’s always advantageous to the Tonys, TV audience-wise when the familiar is nominated. I suspect that’s one of the reasons why they always have Best Revival of a Play (Golden Boy, Orphans, The Trip to Bountiful, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and Best Revival of a Musical (Annie, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Pippin, Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella). The host once again is Neil Patrick Harris, currently of the TV show How I Met Your Mother.

More names you might recognize, nominated this year:

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre
Hands on a Hardbody – Music: Trey Anastasio, of Phish (with Amanda Green, who also wrote the lyrics)
Kinky Boots – Music & Lyrics: Cyndi Lauper (I suspect she will win)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play
Tom Hanks – Lucky Guy
Nathan Lane – The Nance
David Hyde Pierce (of Frasier) – Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play
Laurie Metcalf (of Roseanne) – The Other Place
Holland Taylor (of Two and a Half Men) – Ann; this is about the late Texas governor Ann Richards; thanks to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s book club, I’ve actually read the script, written by Holland
Cicely Tyson – The Trip to Bountiful

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play
Richard Kind (of Mad about You) – The Big Knife
Tony Shalhoub (of Monk) – Golden Boy
Courtney B. Vance – Lucky Guy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play
Judith Light (of Who’s The Boss?) – The Assembled Parties

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical
Andrea Martin (of SCTV) – Pippin

Motown the Musical was also nominated for some awards.

We’ll be watching.
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Who is Tony?

From Evanier: “The Theatermania website picks out some of their favorite acceptance speeches at the Tony Awards. Make sure you don’t miss Michael Jeter’s for Grand Hotel. But my favorites are still Mark Rylance’s. Here’s what he said on the two occasions when he won…”

U is for what?

X in a circle is the Greek letter theta.

The Daughter knows that an R or a TM in a circle on a package means that somehow the design of the packaging has some intellectual property protection. Specifically, they mean trademarked or registered, respectively; in the United States, that’s handled by the US Patents and Trademark Office. And a C in a circle suggests copyright protection; in the US that’s a function of the Copyright Office.

But she asked me: what does that U in a circle mean on her bottle of ketchup, something I barely remembered even seeing? I did not know, but, of course, I looked it up.

Now, if I tell you right away, then the post will be done. So here are some other letters in a circle:

A in a circle is the symbol of anarchism.
i in a circle means information.
X in a circle is the Greek letter theta.

A couple more intellectual property symbols:
M in a circle is copyright on mask work, which has SOMETHING to do with integrated circuit boards.
P in a circle represents the copyright on a sound recording (originally a phonograph record).

OK, now. According to the Heinz people: “Commonly known as ‘Circle U,’ the circle graphically represents the letter O for ‘Orthodox,’ and the U inside stands for ‘Union.'” Specifically, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (OU) in Manhattan, New York City has certified the product to be kosher, i.e., acceptable, according to Jewish dietary laws. If you see any of the symbols that are represented, which also includes a K in a circle, it means “the food has been inspected by one of the many kosher certifying agencies in the United States. Each agency identifies itself by its own unique symbol.”
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The New York Times makes a nonkosher mistake

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

For the Bible tells me so

If Jesus had any bias, it was in favor of the poor, the downtrodden.

No, these are NOT my positions. Or His.

So this is what happens on a regular basis in the past decade or so. The particulars are almost unimportant, though I’ll give you an example anyway.

1. Someone will say something I think is outrageous, and justify their position by citing Jesus, God, and/or the Bible. Current example: Rep. Stephen Fincher’s defense of Congress slashing $4.1 billion + from food stamps over the next 10 years was from the New Testament, specifically 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” As the article notes, “Because many of the members of this sect believed that Jesus’ return was imminent, they stopped working. They figured why work when Jesus would be back at any moment to sweep us all into heaven?” Interesting that the people of first-century Thessaloniki sound like certain current Christians – though not all of them – who believe polluting the earth is OK, even good because the Lord will come back soon to fix it.

2. Other folks will sneer, “See how Christians are!” This is inevitably followed by calls to ban religions because if we did that, it’d all be SO much better. Usually, the “liberal church” will be called to task for not repudiating the original offending comment.

Rinse, repeat.

I have said again and again (and again and again and…): beliefs like those of Fincher do not reflect all of the Christian church or all the Christian people. In fact, if Jesus had any bias, it was in favor of the poor, the downtrodden.

May I make it clear, please: next time some yahoo proclaims the word of God as a tool of oppression (and/or stupidity), just assume I oppose it. I may not mention it all the time, because that’s what I would be writing about ALL THE TIME. I’m not interested in doing that; it would be boring for me, and quite possibly for you.

I stole this from some Facebook friend of my sister’s: “Some people think they are Christian evangelists, but instead they’re being self-appointed ‘Bullies for God.’ (I just made up that term.) Remember, ‘the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God’ – James 1:20. It’s the GOODNESS of God that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4) not anger, badgering, hostility, and contempt.”

TV: controversy over a Cheerios ad?

She was adamantly against mixed-race marriage. “What about the children?” she proclaimed. They’ll never fit in, they’ll be scorned by both blacks and whites, and be outcasts in society.

My fascination over a cereal ad – no, actually, THE Cheerios ad featuring an interracial couple and their child – is that all the hate it has engendered doesn’t surprise me at all. The argument from opponents – besides the scatological responses so bad that General Mills had shut off the comments on the YouTube video – is that “they are throwing” miscegenation “in our faces”, whereas the cereal producer’s claim is that they’re showing the diversity of the population. There has been a clear uptick in the number of mixed-race marriages in the US this century.

Of course, you KNOW what the real problem is for some people with that ad? It suggests that black people and white people were – hold onto your hats – having SEX! When you first see the ad, one could assume that the girl might be adopted, but seeing the dad pretty much eliminates that option. The long-standing taboo about interracial sex in the United States is still very strong, from white male slave masters and black female slaves to the young black Emmett Till getting killed for looking at a white woman too long.

This reminds me of a situation about 35 years when my girlfriend at the time, who was white, went apartment hunting for us, and she found a nice place. But the surprised look on the landlord’s face when I showed up to sign the lease was priceless. Rather like the look on the faces of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy when Katharine Houghton brought home Sidney Poitier in the movie Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner.

About 25 years ago, I was having some general philosophical conversation about marriage with this secretary in an office in which I was working as an intern. Very nice woman, and particularly to me. But she was adamantly against mixed-race marriage. “What about the children?” she proclaimed. They’ll never fit in, they’ll be scorned by both blacks and whites, and be outcasts in society.

Obviously, I have a vested interest in trying to make sure the Daughter lives in a better world than that. Her preschool was ethnically diverse; her elementary school is somewhat less so, but we hope for the best. Our church is predominantly white, but with increased diversity, including, most recently, an influx of Asian Indians.

You just keep trying to make a decent world for your child, which is pretty much irrespective of race.

BTW, Chuck Miller knows the woman in the Cheerios ad.
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Of course, I remember Jean Stapleton in All in the Family, who died recently. THE most disturbing episode of that series is referenced here.

That equality thing

I told Arthur, who is “New Zealand’s foremost gay American-born podcaster, blogger and such like,” that he ought to write a book about the parallels and divergences in equality issues in the United States and New Zealand.

It’s happening so quickly that I’m having a difficult time keeping track, but marriage equality has moved forward quite a lot in the past year since President Obama had given his support for same-sex marriage. Whether people support it, or not, there seems to be almost a sense of inevitability that it will happen nationwide, sooner or later, regardless of what happens in the Supreme Court this month. (Though if SCOTUS DOESN’T strike down DOMA, it will rather suck for a lot of people right NOW.)

National Basketball Association player Jason Collins comes out as gay this spring, and other than a lot of support, from the President to other sports figures, on down, the reaction mostly seems to be, “Hey, no big deal.”

All of this worries me. It seems that a level of complacency could easily set in. Moreover, when certain social progress takes place – lesbian couple on the cover of the New Yorker magazine – there is, most likely, a certain level of backlash.

I was listening to one of the podcasts of Arthur@AmeriNZ perhaps a year ago, maybe longer, and he, or Jason of 2political, was wondering whether the whole gay pride parade might be no longer necessary in certain places, such as in New York City. I would submit that because marriage equality came to New York State in 2011, it is MORE important to do so. It’s especially the case in the wake of incidents such as eight apparent NY Knicks fans wanted in an attack on a gay couple in the city not long ago, part of a wave of anti-LGBTQ crime which I’m convinced is in response to increased rights for gays.

Regardless, for me, it’s important to have such events in places such as Albany, NY. At my previous church, back in the 1990s, I asked Lillian Johnson, who was a pillar of the church before she died about a decade ago, what activities of support for gay rights we ought to be engaged in. This was not a single conversation, but something I brought up several times. Her answer was always the same. “We did something about that; we had a speaker here in 1975.” That was, BTW, well before I had attended the church, in 1982, or joined, in 1984. I thought that having another speaker, or several, might be in order.

Whereas my current church has participated in the city’s gay pride parade for many years, has a rainbow flag hanging from the bell tower every June, and in the church assembly hall the rest of the year. The Gay Men’s Chorus sings in lieu of the usual choir the first Sunday in June. The church has an active More Light Committee. There is no ambiguity in the church’s values or position, and I appreciate that.

This article suggests that people who now come out in support of marriage equality are not heroic, because there are so many other issues that LGBTQ people have to deal with, and that is true. But if the marriage issue has become “low-hanging fruit” easy to pick, then I say, “harvest away.”

I told Arthur, who is “New Zealand’s foremost gay American-born podcaster, blogger and such like,” that he ought to write a book about the parallels and divergences in equality issues in the United States and New Zealand. New Zealand passed marriage equality in 2013, which he wrote about extensively. BTW, he responds to a comment of mine in the first four minutes of his most recent podcast.

We were having this discussion in our adult education class at church, and it was suggested that the mainline Protestants are PERCEIVED to be less vocal about justice issues quite possibly because it is less hierarchical than the Roman Catholic church (with its cardinals) and less bombastic than the megachurch folks. Noted because I LOVE this: The Rev. Kathryn Johnson’s pointed memo…to the United Methodist Church is in response to charges being brought against the Rev. Dr. Thomas Ogletree. “He is facing charges in a possible United Methodist Church trial because he performed a same-sex wedding in New York City, where such marriages are fully legal. The wedding was his son’s.”

Great tweet by Evanier this month: “Donald Rumsfeld comes out against gay marriage; says if we stop it, we’ll be greeted as liberators.”
Amy’s poem, Queer
VIDEO: Same Love – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, featuring Mary Lambert
Cheri’s essay
Watch these straight people answer a question gay people have been asked for years

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