New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Thirteen, "Sutton Foster"

Just a brief entry, as a formal review (or as formal as my "reviews" get) is not required for such an informal evening.

Sutton Foster, Broadway star of "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "Little Women," "Young Frankenstein" and the upcoming "Shrek: The Musical" is recording her first album in a couple of weeks. So, in order to gauge which songs are working best with audiences, she booked herself for a late night Monday gig at Joe's Pub. There, in front of a crowd of 150 or so (including her brother, fellow Broadway star Hunter Foster and fellow "YF" cast member Andrea Martin), Sutton stepped up to the mic for an hour or so of songmaking with a three-piece band behind her.

In addition to some lovely ballads (most of which I had never heard), Sutton did a great version of "Oklahoma!" (presumably for Martin, who played Ado Annie in the most recent Broadway revival) and a very funny song about being out on a hot summer night and willing to go home with any man as long as he has air conditioning.

Though her voice was tentative on a couple of occasions, Sutton has an easy stage presence and a very relaxed manner with an audience that makes for a wonderful evening.

One other thing: if you plan on seeing anything at Joe's Pub, plan to have a snack there. Making a table reservation makes it much easier to get a seat close to the action.

NOTE: for some reason, this never posted the day I had intended it to.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Twelve, "Passing Strange" and "Good Boys and True"

"Slaves have options. Escape. Revolt. Death. Cowards have only consequences."

Hearing those words, Youth, the character at the center of "Passing Strange" makes the decision to leave his relatively comfortable middle-class African-American lifestyle and head to Europe to seek a different culture, a place where the boundaries American culture places on black people will have less effect on him. Youth is the younger alter ego of Stew, the musician who created "Passing Strange" to tell his unique (and compelling) story.

Throughout his adolescence, Stew/Youth was an outsider in virtually every aspect of his life, possessing not merely the ordinary teenage outsider angst, but also being black but not "ghetto," smart but living in a milieu that doesn't appreciate his sort of intellect, and musically-gifted but unappreciated. So, in search of a community where he can invent a new life for himself, Stew heads to Amsterdam and Berlin, where he falls in with various groups seeking enlightenment through drugs, sex, rock and roll and art. Especially art. As one character says to him, "when we are in the presence of art, we are taking the cure."

As many of the ads for today's pharmaceutical cures say, "Passing Strange" is "not for everyone." But you don't need to ask your doctor if "Passing Strange" is right for you -- just send me a message and I'll let you know if the show will cure any of your specific ills.

Personally, I loved it. There are many very funny scenes, especially the dialogues between Youth and his Mother (she speaks in a standard, Midwestern sort of way most of the time, but dips into a black dialect when she wants to reprimand or cajole him), and the art performances Stew sees/participates in in Berlin. The wall of colored light that appears when the scene shifts to Amsterdam is bold and adds a needed boost of visual energy.

More of a rock opera than a musical, "Passing Strange" actually tells its story through songs, rather than using songs to embellish moments within a story. It's loud and colorful and smart and entertaining and performed with passion and vigor by Stew and his excellent cast. Most important, it has a real soul at its core, a singular vision being expressed -- something Broadway too often lacks.

"Good Boys and True," by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is currently in early previews at the Second Stage Theatre. Perhaps once the cast has had a chance to become more familiar with their roles and to become more comfortable with their fellow performers and coalesce into an ensemble, the power that I think is there in the text will come through. The story, which takes place at an exclusive, Catholic, boys-only school, is simple: a video tape has been discovered, showing what looks like the captain of the football team having violent sex with an unknown teenage girl. (The story takes place in 1989, pre-YouTube.) Is it, in fact, the handsome, charismatic team captain, son of two doctors, one of whom was a legendary leader and athletic star when he attended the same school? Will the football coach find some way to keep the story under wraps, to deal with it quietly?

There is a lot to like about "Good Boys and True." The set is beautiful -- row upon row of glittering sports trophies, calling to mind the tradition (and priorities) of the school, and allows for almost seamless changes between scenes. The story is interesting and has plenty to draw us in.

Unfortunately, there are still too many wrinkles still to be ironed out of this preview production. The actors, I think, can grow into their roles. The author may find ways of reforming his text to build in a bit more drama. The question is, will they? I'm guessing no.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Eleven, "South Pacific"

As one enters the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for the sparkling new production of "South Pacific" (the first-ever Broadway revival of the show), there is a scrim spread across the stage, upon which are projected the first few sentences of James Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific," the book upon which the show was based:

"I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting."

Likewise, I wish I could tell you about this production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's amazing show. The way it actually was. The stunning sets. The amazing voice of Paolo Szot. The 30-piece orchestra filling every corner of the space with tone and tune. I wish I could tell you about the sweetness of both Kelli O'Hara's voice and her interpretation of cockeyed optimist Ens. Nellie Forbush, and the power of the male chorus as they belt "There is Nothing Like a Dame," unamplified but still potent enough to press you back in your seat.

But I can't, really. You're going to have to go to New York and experience it for yourself. If you are coming to New York and have even one night free, this is the show to fill those evening hours. Sure, "Spring Awakening" breaks new ground for the Broadway musical, and "Jersey Boys" takes the story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and puts it on stage like a living, breathing, singing graphic novel, but no show is as worthy of your attention as this "South Pacific."

First, this is one of the best -- if not THE best -- Broadway musical ever written. Every song is great. Every one. Of course, some are greater than others, but there are no off numbers, none that just don't fit. On top of that, the book has true drama. Something important takes place on stage. In fact, several important things: two love stories and an adventure story that also throws obstacles in the path of love. Add to all that the political undertones of "South Pacific," the way it lays bare the foolishness of prejudice at the same time it reveals the importance of duty and the glory of sacrifice for a worthy cause.

Part of me wants to go on and talk about how this nearly 60-year old show has such resonance with our current situation, how it touches on deeper aspects of humanity (Bali Ha'i as a metaphor for the mystery of existence that compels us all to seek meaning in the midst of mystery), how it touches on aspects of humanity that are universal -- both light and dark. But I would run the risk of boring you, something "South Pacific" never does. Even as it ran past the three-hour mark, I wanted it to go on and on and on, like that timeless, repetitive waiting to which Michener refers.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Ten, "Betrayed"

On walking out of "Betrayed," the new play being presented by the Culture Project, a theater group headquartered in SoHo, my companions for the evening asked what I thought. I said it was "interesting, but in the way a New Yorker article is interesting." This makes sense, because -- as I found out when I looked at the program for the first time this morning -- the playwright, George Packer, is a New Yorker writer.

The story is a very simple one: three Iraqis go to work as translators for the US during the early stages of the war, then find themselves cut adrift when the insurgency begins and they are labeled as traitors to their country -- or various factions within it. Packer's script gives an insider's view of what takes place inside the homes (and minds) of some Iraqis, as Packer has visited the country six times since the start of the war.

Intisar, Laith and Adnan have dreams like everyone else -- they want a peaceful place to live, they want to spend time with their families, they want to chance to use their talents to make a better world. As you can probably imagine (and you don't have to see "Betrayed" to find this out, simply watch CNN), none of these dreams come to fruition.

The problem with "Betrayed" is that it lacks a sense of real drama. The verisimilitude is there -- Packer's on-ground experience guarantees that. The facts are in place, but the fire is missing. Part of this is likely due to Pippin Parker's flaccid direction and staging. There's not a lot of imagination at work here, so what we get is a set and staging that feels like something you'd see from the local community college theater department: workmanlike, but not transforming. The actors do their best (except for the gentleman playing the US ambassador, who was embarrassingly bad), and the peek into the everyday lives of Iraqis is enlightening, but overall, "Betrayed" left me "unsatisfied."

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Nine, "The New Century"

I'm under attack. I'm not sure of my adversary's name or nature, all I know is he has gained a strategic foothold in my sinuses. It's a lovely spring in New York, flowers and trees everywhere are in bloom, and one or more of them has my number. My eyes are red and swollen and my nose is packed tighter than Times Square on New Year's Eve.

That said, I'm still not missing anything. I just have a little less energy to devote to reporting on what I see.

Last night's festivities included dinner at Cafe des Artistes (a lovely room, if you like that style, but such overrated food -- still, few options near Lincoln Center), followed by a performance of Paul Rudnick's evening of four short plays, "The New Century." All four deal with -- on one level or another -- the challenges of being gay (or related to someone who is) in a "post-gay" world where one's sexuality isn't supposed to matter (at least to civilized people) and yet somehow still does.

"Pride and Joy" is the first offering, and consists entirely of Linda Lavin speaking at a P.L.G.B.T.Q.C.C.C.&O. meeting. (That's Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals,Transgendered, Questioning, Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others.) Lavin is a stereotypical Jewish mother (all the characters in this show are stereotypes), who has three children who cross pretty much every sexual boundary possible. Yet, she still loves them. Just like she LOVED "Will & Grace." "They're so cute -- like if Pottery Barn made people!"

"Mr. Charles, Currently of Palm Beach" trots out the biggest stereotype of the evening, a WAY over the top nelly queen who claims to be the gayest man on Earth. So gay he can turn someone homosexual with just a glance. So gay, in fact, that he has been banished from New York for being too gay and embarrassing the straight-acting gays who are trying to assimilate back into the broader culture. Mr. Charles hosts a public access show in Palm Beach, Florida. His co-host is boy toy Shane, who wants a show of his very own. Mr. Charles zings one biting comment after the other, including one of the biggest laugh lines of the night when he explains how to tell if the man next to you at the theater is gay: "He's saving his Playbill. And he's awake." He also gives an amazing encapsulation of the history of gay theater in 60 seconds.

In the second half, things start to drift. The stupendous Jayne Houdyshell portrays Barbara Ellen Diggs in "Crafty." Diggs never met a pair of pinking shears or a bolt of rickrack or an embroidery frame she didn't like. She keeps busy with crafts partly to dull the pain of having lost her son to HIV 20 years earlier. Houdyshell is wonderful as usual, but this is the weakest of the four pieces.

The closing bit, "The New Century" finds all four characters back together -- this time in a Manhattan maternity ward. A few more funny lines hit their targets -- but the allergens are hitting their targets inside my sinuses, so it's off to bed for me.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Eight, "The Four of Us" and "Boeing Boeing"

Another day, another Van Morrison song. Yesterday, "Adding Machine" put me in mind of "Precious Time." Today's matinee, "The Four of Us" put Van's "Professional Jealousy" in my head. Despite its title, "The Four of Us" is a two-hander, concerning two twenty-something writers, Benjamin and David. On holiday in Prague, David writes a play and Benjamin works on a novel. They enter into an agreement -- when David has a play produced, or Ben's novel is published, the other will buy lunch. Both end up picking up a check, but the equality ends there, for David's play is produced by a small theater in the Midwest, while Ben's novel provides him with a $2 million advance (including movie rights).

While this is ripe territory for drama, most of the juicy bits get left on the table. The green monster never rises to his full height, never breathes the fire of envy. He merely sticks a nostril above the surface, flashes one shiny fang, then slips back into the deep. Ben and David argue, but never with any real teeth. The jealousy David might feel comes out in an angry outburst during a Q&A session following a reading of his play, but Ben's not really a part of it.

In all, a rather bland, unsatisfying afternoon.

"Boeing Boeing" on the other hand, has nothing but satisfaction on its mind. A classic French farce (which has been filmed twice, once in French in 1960 and once in English -- with Jerry Lewis -- in 1965), "Boeing Boeing" is filled with slamming doors, missed connections and broad physical comedy.

The story concerns Bernard (Bradley Whitford, of "West Wing" fame), a successful architect living in Paris who is managing to juggle three women who all think they are the only one. Each is a stewardess for a different international airline, each on a different schedule. Bernard's old school chum, Robert, shows up on the same day that a new jet goes into service, throwing off Bernard's timetable perfection in scheduling the exit of one fiancee with the entrance of the other.

Christine Baranski is miscast as Berthe, Bernard's long-suffering maid, but Whitford is terrific, and Mark Rylance is hysterical as Robert. Robert is from Wisconsin, and his slow-talking, simple ways stand in perfect contrast to Bernard's playboy smoothness. Rylance (in photo above) originated the role in the London production of the show, and I'm so glad he crossed the pond to reprise it at the Longacre.

I have a feeling "Boeing Boeing" may not strike a chord with New York's critics, but audiences are going to devour this tasty concoction of retro-humor from the dawn of the sexual revolution.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Seven, "Adding Machine"

Although the music in the new operetta at the Minetta Lane, "Adding Machine" sounds nothing like what Van Morrison would write, a line from one of his songs comes to mind: "Precious time is slipping away -- you know you're only king for a day. Doesn't matter to which god you pray -- precious time is slipping away."

For Mr. Zero, the beaten-down anti-hero of this brilliant new work from composer Joshua Schmidt (with lyrical assistance from Jason Loewith), his precious time has already run out. He just doesn't know it yet.

Zero hates women. At least his shrill wife, Mrs. Zero. He does seem to have a soft spot for Daisy, the younger woman who assists him at work. Daisy and Zero are a team of calculators: she reads the figures from sales slips, he writes them down and adds them up in his ledger book with a fountain pen. But who needs human calculators when the brand new adding machine (the work is based on a 1923 play by Elmer Rice) is there to do the work faster, more accurately and at a far lower cost?

The story is highly melodramatic, but told in a highly expressionistic style. I don't want to give away much about the story itself, because I hope you'll have the chance to see it yourself. Though I'm not generally a giant fan of recitative, or the talk-singing that often links songs within an opera or operetta, this production seems to have found a way to make the recitative both more musical and more dramatic. Then, when a more conventional tune pops up, like the delightful, romantic "I'd Rather Watch You," it seems to glisten even brighter.

I loved almost everything about "Adding Machine." Every scene, every sequence seems to have its own visual signature, its own way of building the story from the inside out. The lighting (kudos to lighting designer Keith Parham) is bold, elegant and edgy, the sets (Takeshi Kata) are simple but effective, and the video projections (Peter Flaherty) add dimension to scenes without calling attention to themselves.

The performers are top-rank, with big voices and a sure presence on stage. All are terrific, but Amy Warren (as Daisy) deserves special mention for treating us to her big, sweet voice. When she opens her mouth, you know she truly feels what she's singing.

Director David Cromer also deserves praise for his powerful and efficient storytelling. The opening scene, with Mr. and Mrs. Zero in bed -- with the set designed in such a way that we in the audience feel we are looking down at them from above -- quickly establishes the claustrophobia and limited options in Mr. Zero's life. Then we are immediately thrown into Zero's work life, with a brilliant, rhythmic fugue of boredom as three calculating teams call out the numbers that fill their days, AND the dreams that fill their minds.

"Adding Machine" never lets you really get comfortable. There is always some new way of expressing an emotion or calling attention to lost opportunities. Yet it's an entirely pleasurable evening. I found myself smiling over and over at the cleverness of a lyric, or the way attention was called to a character's emotional state, or how a tune will swell on a completely unexpected, as it did on "and then came the leg of lamb!" The story -- like most operatic works -- is a tragic one. I don't think I'll spoil the show for you by saying that Mr. Zero does not end up in a happier place. But you will, if you make your way to the Minetta Lane Theatre for "Adding Machine." Best show of the trip so far.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Six, "Time is the Mercy of Eternity: A Meditation in Four Acts"

OK, so you're smarter than I am. You have the power of discernment, and could see well ahead of time that a play with the magniloquent title "Time is the Mercy of Eternity: A Meditation in Four Acts" would be pretentious and overblown.

I, however, optimist that I am, decided to take a chance on this off-off-Broadway concoction (playing the Upper West Side at the West End Theater on 86th), in the hope of finding something magical. Ha!, you say. Ha! - you deserve what you get, like a pioneer who decides to settle in Death Valley, hoping the name is just another example of the exception proving the rule, like Iceland being green and Greenland being icy.

So, here I am, reporting that while Greenland is indeed a barren waste, "Time is the Mercy of Eternity: A Meditation in Four Acts" is a pretentious piece of...well, not crap exactly, but a waste of 90 intermission-less minutes. I will say this is through no fault of the actors. At least, through no fault of their acting talent. They can, however, be blamed for THEIR powers of discernment. They consented to be part of this agglomeration of pseudo-intellectual piffle disguised as theater. Tony-nominated Lisa Kron (a very talented writer-performer whose "Well" made it to Broadway and whose "2.5 Minute Ride" has played around the world) really ought to know better. Still, she gave it her best and helped make the evening somewhat bearable. Curzon Dobell was also excellent, a real presence on stage.

Call me old-fashioned, call me square, but I want theater to tell me a story. It doesn't always have to be linear. It doesn't always even have to be happy. But I would like it to take me someplace new, not just someplace strange.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Five, "The Little Flower of East Orange" and "Top Girls"

A theme seems to be developing for this trip: Another Wounded Family. After "The American Dream" and "The Sandbox" took the very real problem of dealing with aging parents to absurd dimensions, there was a brief sojourn into HappyEndingLand with "Cry-Baby," before another descent into dysfunction with "From Up Here," the story of a family dealing with a profoundly disturbed adolescent and his profoundly disconnected mother. Sunday the theme continued with two more plunges through the guardrail into the abyss of family insanity.

"The Little Flower of East Orange" might have been the most challenging play of the trip for me, simply because it takes place in the same Catholic milieu of my childhood. However, even though my mother has a few phrases in common with Therese, the mother at the center of this drama, I could NEVER imagine speaking to her in the way her son Danny does. Danny claims this story is his, but he is clearly deluded -- this one is all about Mom. Therese is both mother and martyr, Mary and Christ in the same body.

At the top of the show, Therese has gone missing. We know she is a Jane Doe, lying in a hospital unconscious while her two children (the aforementioned Danny -- who had just abandoned rehab in Arizona -- and somewhat more dutiful daughter Justina) search the city for her. When she finally regains consciousness, however, she refuses to give her name. (On reflection, if my mother did something like that, I think I might be motivated to speak a bit sharply to her.)

However, it's hard to blame Therese entirely for her inaction; she does, after all come from Another Wounded Family. She lives in the shadow of a towering patriarch, a violent mute alcoholic who vented his rage at the injustice of his life on the weakest of those around him. But like the martyr Therese is, no blame is delivered to the long-gone father, and she sublimates all her rage into herself in order (she believes) to protect her children. Unfortunately, children are more intuitive than that, and since Mom won't take on the pain and face the real work of healing this wounded family, they must attempt to carry a load beyond their capacity.

This sense of burden, of carrying a weight exceeding one's capacity is felt throughout the play. Every member of the family has his or her own passion to suffer through. Each carries a cross to Golgotha -- but none do it with the grace of the non-family members in the cast, specifically the two nurses who care for Therese in the hospital. Espinoza, a male nurse from Mexico and Magnolia, a black woman have very different approaches to caregiving, but both are passionate and committed to the work they do. They carry their own crosses as well as those of their patients. Espinoza provides much of the comic relief with his no-nonsense patter, and his presence on stage is always welcome.

Michael Shannon broods and rages brilliantly once again, here playing Danny, the dissolute son with a wasted talent. He was Tony-worthy in "Bug," but I'm wondering if he ever plays a hinged character. Ellen Burstyn is quiet and focused as Therese, but she didn't overly impress. Acting is hard, but I think it's even harder when you have to play the role entirely on your back in a hospital bed.

"The Little Flower of East Orange" is directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and he does an excellent job of keeping all the levels of the rich characters created by Stephen Adly Guirgis in play. Nothing lags, and nothing is lost, but he allows enough inconsistency of tone to come through and weaken the overall effort.

"Top Girls" is a revival of a Caryl Churchill play from 1982, focusing on feminist issues. The play itself raises interesting issues and offers several insights (at least from a male perspective) on the challenges facing women in a patriarchy. The cast is excellent, including one of my favorites, Martha Plimpton, but the theater is unfortunately much too large for such an intimate play. On top of this, the sound is awful. Combine this with the fact that many of the characters (at least in act one) speak in accents, and "Top Girls" is almost incomprehensible -- but not for the usual reasons.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Four, "From Up Here"

I have a hard time imagining myself ever getting enough of Julie White. After her Tony-winning turn in "The Little Dog Laughed" and her guest spot as a highly-neurotic Hollywood producer in Alan Ball's HBO series "Six Feet Under," I'm ready to RSVP to any party she wants to invite me to. Even "From Up Here," the new, rather strident play at Manhattan Theater Club.

Briefly, "From Up Here" is the story of several very wounded people trying to figure out how to heal each other. It's just that some of the character's approach to healing (especially the aforementioned Miss White's character, Grace) has all the delicacy of a medieval barber bleeding his patients to let the ill humours escape.

Grace is the mother of Kenny, the most wounded (though in some ways the most sane) of this bunch. Through a series of clues dropped during the first 20 minutes or so, we learn that Kenny had threatened Columbine-like violence at his high school, and is now being mainstreamed back into the school. (A plot point that stretches credibility nearly to the breaking point for me.) We first meet Kenny on his first morning heading back to school.

Along the way, Kenny's little sister Lauren learns she has a suitor, a senior with a deep crush on her, which he expresses through a non-stop verbosity that he interrupts only to sing the twisted but sincere songs he has written for her. Grace's sister, Caroline turns up at the family home unannounced, returning from trekking in Nepal.

The show has some serious problems, but I found it oddly compelling, not least because of Julie White. No one's really happy, but no one wants to give up on the hope of one day being happy, either. So they all struggle and stumble their way toward some stable place from which to build a life. As the play opens, Aunt Caroline is at the end of her rope -- literally, hanging from a harness while on a Himalayan climb. By the time curtain falls, she's traveling once again, but at least this time we see her with her feet planted firmly on the ground. I'm not sure Grace or Kenny can say the same.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Three, "Cry-Baby"

Here's what's right about "Cry-Baby," the new musical opening at the Marquis next week:

- The orchestra. This band swings. Incredibly tight, big, boisterous -- everything you want a party band to be. The rhythm section keeps things rolling, and the horns are always ready to stand up and be counted. Plus they start the evening off right with a fun, creative way of doing the "silence your cell phone, unwrap your candies" announcement.

- The dancing. I guess when a band swings like the "Cry-Baby" orchestra does, it's hard not to move in time. But these kids are some of the most talented, energetic, precise dancers I've seen anywhere. It's just fun watching them strut and shimmy.

- The staging. It's big, it puts you right where you need to be, it supports the story and it moves swiftly and seamlessly from one scene to another. Truly top-notch.

- The performers. Start with Harriet Harris, who absolutely seizes the stage as Mrs. Vernon-Williams, the squarest of the square, queen of the uptight. Finish with the rest of the cast, who are uniformly strong. Add special kudos to Chester Gregory II, for his preening (at least vocally) portrayal of Dupree.

- Many of the songs. "Misery, Agony, Helplessness, Hopelessness, Heartache and Woe," "Girl, Can I Kiss You...? (the sentence is completed "with tongue"), "Screw Loose," "I'm Infected" and "I Did Something Wrong Once" are all fun, if slightly forgettable. And the wonderfully, hopelessly optimistic closer "Nothing Bad's Ever Gonna Happen Again," brings the proceedings to a wonderfully ironic close.

Now, what's wrong with "Cry-Baby"? From a critical standpoint, I'm not sure anything's really wrong, per se -- the show seems to rocket along, telling a simple story that's about as old as stories get: it's "Romeo & Juliet" without the tragic elements: rich girl falls for boy from the wrong side of...well, the wrong side of just about everything: the tracks, the law, fashion... There are plenty of laughs, and as I previously said, the performers are terrific and the music and dancing stellar.

So what's my qualm? Well, since "Cry-Baby" is designed as a mainstream entertainment in the vein of John Waters's previous Broadway hit re-make of a quirky movie of his, "Hairspray," I think it needs (and I so very rarely say this sort of thing) to be a little more mainstream. As in "Hairspray," the basic story follows a clash of cultures. As in "Hairspray," there is an uptight mama who wants to protect her daughter from a boy whom Mama sees as wrong. And there are a group of kids from the wrong side of the tracks who teach the elite (or at least some of them) how to loosen up and go with the flow. But in "Hairspray," the bad kids are "bad" merely because of surface differences. Inside, they're good kids.

In "Cry-Baby," the "Drapes", the outcasts who run with Cry-Baby Walker are actually delinquents. They are thieves who settle things with switchblades. Pepper is a pregnant 16-year old who's not sure who the father of her baby is, and proudly smokes and drinks, even while she is being rolled into the delivery room on a gurney. (The show is set in 1954, but the attitude Pepper takes is that she seems to know all this is bad for her baby but does it anyway because it's the rebel thing to do.) Mona, who has a deep scar running from above her left eye and across the nose and down her right cheek, is called "Hatchet-Face," but proudly claims "I'm ugly inside, too!" Even at the end of the show, after some court-ordered reconstructive surgery, she gleefully insists "But I'm still ugly inside!"

Maybe deep down inside I'm really a square, but I think a mainstream audience might have a hard time accepting this motley collection of refugees from juvie as heroes. Yes, they are wrongly jailed and Cry-Baby's birth stain (his parents were pacifists, framed for a fatal arson fire and executed on hearsay) is cleansed by the time the curtain falls, and the Squares learn the Drapes have something valuable to offer -- even if it's just a hot beat and Cry-Baby's undying love for Allison. But I just have this gut feeling that the characters are going to be a little too alternative to appeal to the bridge and tunnel crowd (and the muggles from middle America) that are required to keep a show this expensive on the boards long enough to make back its investment.

New York, Spring 2008 -- Day Two, "The American Dream" and "The Sandbox"

What is the point of theater that is significantly incomprehensible?

I don't mean that in a bad way. A little incomprehensibility can be a good thing, if it's done well. I'm actually honestly curious: what itchy part of our brain does it scratch when we are compelled by a performance -- as I was earlier this evening by two of Edward Albee's early one-acts, "The American Dream" and "The Sandbox" (and recently with "The Maids" in San Francisco)-- but still feel somewhat lost at the end of it?

Clearly, most theatergoers think there is little point to the abstruse. At least when it comes to parting with the better part (if not more) of a hundred-dollar bill. There's a reason "Phantom" is still running after all these years, and part of it is that almost no one leaves the theater saying "OK, explain that to me."

But as I have previously said, art is there to help us look at reality in such a way that we can better get our minds around it. A full-scale map is useless. It has value only when geography is scaled down to the point that our gaze can more effectively encompass it. Art is life to scale. Art enables us to see aspects of existence in ways we couldn't if artists weren't there to reveal them to us.

I'm not saying "The American Dream" and "The Sandbox" are great art. I'm still trying to figure them out. They concern "Mommy" and "Daddy," "Grandma" and "Mrs. Baxter" and "The Young Man." Their motives and actions are obscure or absurd or horrific in turns, though the basic plot of both concerns Mommy and Daddy deciding what to do with Grandma -- or perhaps Grandma deciding how to leave Mommy and Daddy. Each play comes to a different solution. I won't attempt to explain much more that that.

What I will say is I was bored only once, and then only briefly. Mostly I was in thrall to Albee's imagination and point-of-view -- and an especially delectable performance from Judith Ivey.

Early in the evening, Mommy complains that it's hard to get satisfaction. After these two scratchy works, I can say the itchy part of my brain is completely sated.

New York, Spring 2008

Welcome to the first of multiple posts to come over the next two weeks, as I blog live from Manhattan on my semi-annual (for now) "fill the well" trips.

Arrived in New York after a fabulous flight on American. (Yes, they still fly, contrary to last week.) Used miles and ended up in first class with the fully-reclining seats and individual digital video recorders with multiple music, movie and game options. Makes the trip cross-country go SO much faster. Though as I looked down at the landscape slipping past beneath us, I thought about how we do in five hours what took my ancestors months.

Though I do have plans for plenty of shows (mostly off-Broadway), I'm hoping to hit a few more museums this trip.

Looking forward to having you along for the ride!

"Elite" is still a good thing, right?

In all the furor over Barack Obama's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser about disenfranchised Americans "clinging" to guns, God and xenophobia, the candidate was accused of being "elitist" by a wide swath of the media.

Jon Stewart's take on the kerfuffle was, as usual, pretty much perfect: "I know 'elite' is a bad word in politics and you want to go bowling and throw back a few beers. But the job you're applying for? If you get it, and it goes well -- they might carve your head into a mountain! If you don't actually think you're better than us, then what the fuck are you doing? In fact, not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me."

"The Maids" at SF Playhouse

It's an interesting time to be talking about power. The political machines are currently in full force, and the chasm between the rich and the rest of us seems to grow wider every day.

That's why this is a perfect moment for Theatre Release to stage Jean Genet's "The Maids" at SF Playhouse. "The Maids" is, to be sure, a strange work. Absurd at times, almost relentlessly cruel, but also filled with fascinating language and characters. Claire and Solange are sisters in the service of Madame, whom they loathe. The two take turns playing Madame during their role play scenarios, in which they can actually speak the words they'd like to say to her.

I almost backed out of going when I heard the play was to be presented without an intermission. It's not that it's a long work, only 100 minutes, but without an interval, what was I going to do if it was as awful as I anticipated it might be?

My worries were abated when I saw the set. It's clear that Theatre Release (like virtually all small theatre companies) operates on a very tight budget. But they know how to make their staging investment go far. The single room depicted is enclosed by walls filled with graffiti and collages girdling the space. (Constriction and control are key themes of the play, and the set design reinforces this.) The floors are strewn with detritus, including several dozen latex gloves. From the moment you sit, you have the sense that something chaotic and uncontrollable is going on.

Yet the textual veneer is that of control, submission and servitude. Claire and Solange (both played by men, just as the role of Madame is) are almost always in physical contact with each other. Lewis Heathcote, Scott Nordquist and Daegan Palermo bring tremendous focus, intensity and physical power to the stage. I often feel that Bay Area actors bring a sense of "watch me" to their roles that creates emotional distance between the audience and the character. Their desire to be seen means the actor oftens gets in the way of the character, making it difficult for an audience to truly connect with the work. These three work with an amazing sense of commitment. I know they are acting -- I can hear it in their voices, in the phrasing of Genet's archly-romantic language. But the craft never gets in the way of the story the characters are sharing with us. I think that's a hard thing to do, and the cast is to be congratulated for it.

Also deserving of kudos is director Tom Bentley, who helms this piece with a sure hand. The pacing is lively, the movement is compelling, the staging and physical business all serves to illuminate the story and the characters who inhabit it.

"The Maids" isn't an easy show to watch. It's creepy and claustrophobic and it's not always easy to figure out who's being who at any given moment. But none of that is a reason not to go.

Here's the main reason to hit Goldstar Events and buy your tickets: you won't see a company more committed to their work than the artists behind the Theatre Release production of "The Maids." So support them. Buy a ticket.

I know I'm lining up to see the next thing Theatre Release puts on the boards, whatever it is.

The Only Real Christians?

I started watching a documentary last night -- "Into Great Silence." It's the story of life in a Carthusian monastery in the French Alps. Filmed with virtually no crew and only available light, the movie is the result of director Philip Groning's six-month stay with the brothers of Grand Chartreuse.

The order is one of the most ascetic to be found anywhere. The brothers spend almost every hour in silence (on certain feast days they go for a walk, during which they are allowed conversation). They pray almost continuously (silently), except when they are working or chanting. They wear simple habits (that are sewn in the monastery) and live in cells with no modern conveniences.

I say "started watching" because at two hours and 40 minutes, with no narration, no music and only a few hundred spoken words, it's an anti-ADD movie. It moves incredibly slowly.

But there was one bit of title graphics that got me. It was a quote from the New Testament, along the lines of "unless a person gives up all they have, they cannot be my disciple." Perhaps these men, therefore, are the only true Christians out there.

Wear this...

...to the next Promise Keepers convention. (Even if they thought it said "goddess," you'd be in trouble.) Available here from Etsy.

Talk To The Hand

This time, literally. A ring that is also a microphone. Cable included. Another winner from my favorite shopping site, etsy.com.

One For Your Queue

Add this to your Netflix queue. "Blood Sunday" is a dramatization of the shootings that took place in Derry, Ireland in 1972 that many point to as a trigger event for an increase in sectarian fighting in Northern Ireland during the period known as The Troubles.

What works about the film is how even-handed it is. Though it seems clear the British overreacted, and a platoon of soldiers lost their sense of scale and got caught up in the heat of the fight, shooting many unarmed Catholic citizens of Derry, the film also establishes a context for this overreaction, and hints at the history that could lead to a massacre. The language the British military use to describe the protesters (primarily "yabbos" and "hooligans") makes it easier to "turn the enemy from a 'thou' to an 'it'" (paraphrasing Joseph Campbell). The truth was, some of the Catholics were hooligans. But not all. The British go past the roadblocks (the Catholics were interned within their neighborhood in Derry -- which the British called Londonderry) ostensibly to arrest the troublemakers, but end up committing horrific crimes of war. (Four of the 14 dead were shot in the back.)

It's a fascinating look at an amazing event, told with great precision and clarity. Highly recommended.

"Fully Flared" Opens!

"Fully Flared," the ultra-cool skate movie I linked to earlier this year will be screened tomorrow in San Francisco. You can find more information here. If I weren't already going to see k.d. lang tomorrow, I'd be there.

First the bees...

...now it's the bats. Apparently, something is killing bats and scientists haven't yet figured out what. And you know how I feel about bats.

Spare Change?

From The Onion. A rather different spin on Obama's core message.

Watch for the Headline "Mr. Mom"

I guarantee you this story of a woman who gender-identified as a man and underwent sex reassignment therapy (taking hormones and having her breasts removed and her chest restructured), but maintained female sexual organs despite being legally re-classified as male and is now having a baby...is going to get some serious media coverage. After the female-to-male transition, he married. They wanted children, but his wife had had a hysterectomy years ago, so he was the only one who could get pregnant. He stopped taking male hormones and the female aspect of the anatomy took over. At that point, all they needed was a donor.

Their little girl is due in July.

The PC Pendulum Swings the Other Way

Here's an interesting comment from Daniel Larison at The American Conservative.

"...reveals the degree to which what George Will called the “exquisite” sensitivity we have all been conditioned to possess has completely consumed the modern conservative movement to the point where many mainstream conservatives are, if anything, more preciously p.c. than university speech code enforcers. In an expression of “turnabout is fair play,” rather than denounce these anti-racism witch hunts in principle as ludicrous thought policing, many conservatives have decided that it is fine to play this game so long as a Democratic ox is being gored."

A Message of Unity

I was slow to warm to Barack Obama, but my support seems to rise with each day, building toward a fervor. Every day the attacks come and every day he is prepared with a reasonable, thoughtful response. A response that displays a fierce intelligence combined with compassion and common sense.

Read the speech he gave today on race. All of it. Not only is it brilliantly written, he shows his tremendous ability to invite all Americans to hope for something better than the divisive politics of Karl Rove and Hillary Clinton.

Here it is, in its entirety:

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children. But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

On Hiatus

For the first time in many years, I'm heading for an "off the grid" vacation. Not only will voice and data networks be either unavailable or prohibitively expensive where I'm going, my computer will be in the shop to have some necessary maintenance performed.

Expect a return of the Feast around St. Patrick's Day.

The Rebranding of America

One of my primary reasons for supporting Barack Obama is that I believe his election would do more to heal the wounds in America's global image than anything else we ca do right now. To show that world that even after the clear folly of re-electing W (the world might have forgiven us for voting for him once, but twice?), we finally have learned our lesson. If we can elect a mixed race man named Barack Hussein Obama, we go a long way toward showing the world that we can be a true global citizen and use our immense power for leadership, not for bullying.

An article in Salon says something similar. Money quote: "In Europe, and in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well, the perception is that an Obama presidency represents the potential for catharsis after nearly a decade of frustration with the U.S. "Our brand has been hammered recently, but beneath the anger, there's this underlying hope among people around the world that we can do better," says Patricia Martin. "And we can. We reinvent ourselves. It's what we're known for: We've had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. I think that's why you have people in every country eating up every little turn in this election's story. This election, the whole world is watching."

Justices, are you watching?

On Tuesday, the Justices of the California Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case that will determine if denying same-sex couples equal civil marriage rights violates the equal protection clause of the state constitution.

When faced with a similar case, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled there had to be equality in terms of unions, but left it up to the legislature to decide whether it would be called "marriage" or something else. Given the current political climate, what do you suppose they chose? Right. Only in Massachusetts, where the Supreme Court there mandated that only marriage would do, has a state instituted full marriage rights for same-sex couples. Things seem to be going fine in the Bay State. Thousands have been performed and locusts, floods or other plagues have yet to befall the commonwealth.

Things are not quite the same in New Jersey. It seems trying to create a separate but equal institution is turning out less well than many had hoped. Apparently, the word "marriage" has a lot more heft behind it than the legislators thought it might.

Last year in this space I posted a bit stating that the California Supreme Court was asking the lawyers in the same-sex marriage case here to chime in on just how important the word "marriage" is to equality.

From the New Jersey experience, the answer seems clear: very. At least if we want equality now. If the state wants to wait a while longer before truly delivering equal protection under the law, though (and to give themselves some political cover), they might weasel out here, too.

Let's hope for the best.

Sleeping with Frank

You may not get to lay down your head in Fallingwater, but if you've ever dreamed of living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house, here is your chance.

The Hubris of Huckabee and His Ilk

As Mike Huckabee slips further out of touch (but a little deeper into the hearts of Christianists around the country), I got to thinking about the source of his appeal -- by which I mean the rhetoric upon which he calls in an attempt to persuade of his calling. His pitch, in other words, not his likeability -- which, I have to say, seems pretty solid.

The problem with Huck and his followers is their insistence that they have found an Eternal Truth. Transformative and unchanging. While I say bully for them if they feel this way, but please keep your nose out of my opinion of what constitutes Eternal Truth.

Just because you choose to believe something is true doesn't make it true. Just because a lot of other people are convinced something is true doesn't make it true. The Muslims have no tangible evidence of Allah's existence, nor do the Jews have any proof that Yahweh really is G*d. Christians have the exact same amount of evidence for God's existence as the folks who offer the Flying Spaghetti Monster as the One and True God.

You are welcome to convince yourself God exists. You are welcome to try and convince others. But when it comes to how we live in the United States as a civil society, let's keep our discourse backed up by things which virtually all of us can agree on. Simple stuff like the speed of light, the effects of gravity or what happens when you mix vinegar and baking soda. It's something everyone can see.

But when hard-core Christianists get to the end of their rational arguments, and find them lacking, they call in an invisible magical being as their ace in the hole. As the Church Lady used to say, "how conveeeeenient."

The trouble really begins when another group (say, just for giggles, Al Qaeda) calls on their invisible magical being to backup THEIR argument when rational thought and scientific facts don't support whatever point they are trying to make.

The absolute hubris of it -- to think that what YOU believe is an Eternal Truth. Worse, to then try to use the power you have obtained by duping others into believing an opinion is hard fact.

Rrazz Room Opens

I still hate the name, but San Francisco's newest night club/cabaret is off to a good start. After delaying opening for many weeks, the scene that used to be at The Empire Plush Room at the York Hotel has moved downtown to the Nikko Hotel, with the swank level raised considerably.

I really loved the Plush Room, in part because it has a history (it used to be a speakeasy during Prohibition), and in part because it was a little over a block from the first place I lived in San Francisco. But I could get used to the Rrazz Room -- though probably not to its name.

The two Rs of Rrazz -- Robert and Rory -- have done an excellent job building a new cabaret. It's not stunning or especially noteworthy in a design sense, but it's elegant without being gaudy, unobtrusive without being bland. The sightlines seem good, and the sound was likewise -- but I would think they ought to install some permanent speakers. The loudspeakers they had floor-mounted put quite a few seats out of commission. The back wall is a wall of glass, sort of like Jazz at Lincoln Center, the venue in the Time-Warner Building in New York where Ellen does her show from time to time. If only the Rrazz Room looked out on Central Park and midtown Manhattan instead of the rather pedestrian Hilton Hotel across the street. Then we'd really have something.

Tonight's show was Paula West. I'd never heard her sing. She can. (And so can her backup singers, three sweet-voiced black women who really light up stage left. Best backup trio I've heard in a LONG time.) Paula interprets a range of songs, including great versions of "Something Good" from the movie of "The Sound of Music," "Jambalaya" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

It's a great show -- though someone ought to tell the band there is a reason "bass solo" is the punchline of a joke. (The setup for which is about explorers and jungle drums going on too long.) Paula's four-piece combo does a number prior to Paula coming onstage, and it runs on a tad. I enjoyed hearing them, but the top of the show is not the place for extensive soloing. Give the pianist and the guitarist a few bars to play with -- but save any bass and drum soloing for a little later in the show (if at all), after we've warmed up to you.

All in all, though, a great show in a great room. Visit soon.

A Prince Among Soldiers

Following a news leak, the apparently secret deployment of Britain's Prince Harry (it had been kept under wraps by the UK media, but Matt Drudge broke the embargo) is now out in the public eye. The prince (whose family nickname is "Ginger," by the way -- but for his red hair and freckled complexion, not due to any resemblance to Tina Louise) has been serving as a tactical air controller, but also goes out on foot patrols.

My question is, if the Brits can send their royal sons into harm's way, why aren't the Bush girls serving? Why doesn't Chelsea Clinton at least hook up with the Peace Corps? Why don't a few of Mitt Romney's boys enlist? (Romney's previous excuse that they were "serving the country" by helping him get elected President is now moot since he's bowed out of the race.)

Rationally thinking...

...I should probably be doing something else right now. Instead, I'm post this link to a book review in the current New Yorker about a new tome by a couple of economists discussing how people don't always make decisions in their best interest, even if the math is pretty clear. This was no surprise to. After all, it was the heartland that elected (and re-elected!) George W. Bush, and he has certainly never had their best interests in mind.

For Your Dolls*

*as in "Valley of the..."

Another wild find on etsy.com. Looks like something Keith Richards or Amy Winehouse might carry: a pillbox inlaid with moss green stingray leather. I dig it so much I almost want to develop an addiction, too.

Freeheld

It won the Oscar last night. Now it just needs to be released on DVD. Like "Sicko," another documentary that makes me mad. It is amazing to me how much injustice we put up with in this country.

Anybody home?

I know, I've been away, possums. It's been almost a week since you've had anything new from me and I just couldn't let you wait any longer.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything terribly interesting to say. (You cynics can keep your "so what else is new?" to yourselves, thanks very much.) However, in keeping with the masthead which promises comments on "politics, theater, culture, golf," I'll give you a short something on all four.

Politics: I could care less if John McCain played around with a lobbyist. People who aspire to be the most powerful person in the world have a lot on their shoulders. If they need a bit on the side, I say fine. That's their business. I don't want him as president (but mainly because of what it would mean for the Supreme Court), but what he does for giggles is his business. As long as it helps him lead better.

Theater: Last show I saw was "Mormon American Princess." A one-man show by Steven Fales, who previously did "Confessions of a Mormon Boy. That was interesting. This, on the other hand, was awful, on so many levels. Unimaginative, repetitive, self-absorbed (you're supposed to care about the AUDIENCE, Steven, not yourself -- that's what makes a true performer, they GIVE of themselves) and emotionally hollow.

That opening number was exceptionally bad. All he did was plug the word "Mormon" into 40 different Broadway tunes: "Oh What a Beautiful Mormon," "Everything's Coming Up Mormon," "Some Enchanted Mormon." It was mind-numbingly awful. And that "rap" number he attempted was pathetic. And a capella, no less. He could at least have tried a drum machine or played a tape of a rhythm track.

The show needs MAJOR help. First, he needs a writer. Then a director. And they better both be REALLY good if they want to salvage anything from this mess.

Culture: Have you used the new soap dispensers in public restrooms that deliver pre-suds soap? I hate them. I like the sense of satisfaction that comes from working up a lather. Our culture is simply trying to do too much for us.

Golf: Tiger. Who else? I wanted to watch the Accenture Match Play Championship, but I've been outrageously busy the past few days (and will be over the weekend) so I couldn't/can't -- but from what I read, he's been his usual amazing self.

Make this last. Can't say when I'll be back.

Can We Be Rational?

Click here to read an interesting review in Salon of a new work by Susan Jacoby, "The American Age of Unreason." The book examines how and why Americans have fallen prey to irrationality -- citing, for instance, the fact that a majority of Americans believe creationism should be given equal weight in education as evolution as a means of explaining how life came to be.

Money quote from the review: "The chief manifestations of this newly virulent irrationality are the rise of fundamentalist religion and the flourishing of junk science and other forms of what Jacoby calls "junk thought." The mentally enfeebled American public can now be easily manipulated by flimsy symbolism, whether it's George W. Bush's bumbling, accented speaking style (labeling him as a "regular guy" despite his highly privileged background) or the successful campaign by right-wing ideologues to smear liberals as snooty "elites." Unable to grasp even the basic principles of statistics or the scientific method, Americans gullibly buy into a cornucopia of bogus notions, from recovered memory syndrome to intelligent design to the anti-vaccination movement."

What Abu Gharaib Hath Wrought

You may have seen the video. You may have heard the story.

If you haven't, the brief story is that sheriff's officers at a Florida county jail wanted to search a man confined to a wheelchair and didn't believe he could stand on his own. Not believing the man was actually confined to his chair, the deputy unceremoniously dumped the man onto the floor.

Setting aside for a moment that the victim is described as a "quadriplegic" even though he can use his arms and is seen in the video moving his legs -- there are other conditions that can confine someone to a wheelchair that don't involve complete paralysis, it seems to me this is a further symptom of the poisonous effects of torture being approved at the highest levels of our government. If it's OK to torture a terrorist, why isn't it OK to torture a rapist? And if a rapist, why not a thief?

This is how you get to a sheriff's deputy abusing a man accused of a traffic violation.

2000 Redux

OK, here's what's keeping me awake at night. Obama continues his momentum, and wins a majority of delegates, but not enough to avoid a brokered convention, so the super delegates come into play. (As you may or may not know, "super delegates" are political insiders. Wikipedia defines them as "Superdelegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention include all Democratic members of the United States Congress, Democratic governors, various additional elected officials, members of the Democratic National Committee, as well as "all former Democratic Presidents, all former Democratic Vice Presidents, all former Democratic Leaders of the U.S. Senate, all former Democratic Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives and Democratic Minority Leaders, as applicable, and all former Chairs of the Democratic National Committee."

This year they will compose about 20% of the delegate total, so they can make a big difference. They can also vote, exactly how they want, regardless of what the popular vote said. Given their insider status, they could easily go for Hillary and give her the nomination, even if a majority of Democrats want Obama to be the candidate.

Power brokers -- not the people -- chose the president in 2000. Will they do it to us again in 2008? If so, where does that leave American democracy?

Gotta Love the Middle East

Arrested in Dubai for possession of marijuana. How much? A speck, invisible to the naked eye. Found on the bottom of his shoe. But, he was a Rastafarian, so he got searched a little more carefully than most, I would imagine.

Sorry -- can I have that again?

John McCain's in the address to his supporters, moments ago:

"I am, as is often reported, a little superstitious. So I don't want to make any exaggerated predictions -- and there's still a long road ahead -- however, I think it's fair to say that we might have come a little bit closer to the day when mothers in Arizona MIGHT be able to tell their children that someday they could grow up to be President of the United States!"

Going out on a limb there, are ya, John? What do you suppose is stopping them from being able to do that today?

Keep Watching Huckabee

I'm telling you, Mike Huckabee has traction. And it scares me. He won't win the nomination, but they might make him VP candidate. And McCain could win. And he's 71. He could be taken out by some radical Christianist to put a true evangelical into the Oval Office.

Can you imagine the Supreme Court appointments President Huckabee would make?