Chris Knight tonight at Club Passim: It ain't easy being me

I'm pretty sure Chris Knight will be the next Ryan Bingham. Ryan just won an Oscar for The Weary Kind the theme song for Crazy Heart. Bingham and Knight are the real deal. Real country singers who don't do the Nashville thing, corporate country, or any of that prefabricated pop crap in a cowboy hat that LiveNation passes off for country. (Think Sugarland.)

Anyway, Chris Knight will be at Club Passim tonight, and if there are any tickets left you should grab one because Knight doesn't often tour very far from his home in Kentucky.

Welcome stranger, to the humble neighborhood: Joe Strummer: Bhindi Bhagee

In one of my crazier moments I actually contemplated using the lyrics to this song for a monologue. Not sure if the theater community is ready for something like that.




Well, I was walking down the High Road
And this guy stops me
He'd just got in from New Zealand
And he was looking for mushy peas
I said, no, we hadn't really got 'em round here
I said, but we do got

Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal and I'm walking down the road
We got rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without - with it or without
Bagels soft or simply harder
Exotic avocado or toxic empenada
We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy
I'm sure back home you know what tikka's all about - what tikka's all about

Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods
You can get inspiration along the highroad

Hommus, cous cous in the jus of octopus
Pastrami and salami and lasagne on the go
Welcome stranger, there's no danger
Welcome to this humble neighborhood

There's Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal and I'm walking down the road
Rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without

So anyway, I told him I was in a band
He said, "Oh yeah, oh yeah - what's your music like?"
I said, "It's um, um, well, it's kinda like
You know, it's got a bit of, um, you know."

Ragga, Bhangra, two-step Tanga
Mini-cab radio, music on the go
Um, surfbeat, backbeat, frontbeat, backseat
There's a bunch of players and they're really letting go
We got, Brit pop, hip hop, rockabilly, Lindy hop
Gaelic heavy metal fans fighting in the road
Ah, Sunday boozers for chewing gum users
They got a crazy D.J. and she's really letting go

Oh, welcome stranger
Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods

Well, I say, there's plenty of places to eat round here
He say, "Oh yeah, I'm pretty choosy."

You got
Balti, Bhindi, strictly Hindi
Dall, Halal, walking down the road
Rocksoul, okra, bombay duck-ra
Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without
Let's check it out

Welcome stranger to the humble neighborhoods, neighborhoods
Check out all that

Por-da-sol, por-da-sol
Walking down the highroad

Joe Biden drops the F-bomb: Big effing deal

Joe Biden gave new meaning to the phrase, vice president. Get it?--vice president?

it's all over the Internet now, and good luck finding a copy of the video now of Vice President Joe Biden telling President Barack Obama that passing the Health Care Bill is a big effing deal. Now it's bleeped out on most sites. But right now it's the most sought after thing on the Internet, and it's so hard to hear that it's like listening for "Paul is dead" on Abbey Road.

And I'm not sure what the big effing deal is. I talk like that everyday. I guess we're expecting our elected officials to be saints. We don't want them to cuss, do drugs, or sleep around, yet all that is pretty much what the hoi polloi do.

Yep, it's so bizarre: we vote for people who we claim are like us--we want people in the White House and in Congress who represent us, who we actually are--and then when we do we blow it all out of proportion.

Anyway, it took me awhile to find one, but here for your listening pleasure is your vice president saying the word that we all say every day.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Obsolete Occupations: Jobs that are now obsolete...

The economy has taken away so many jobs. And of course, let's not forget the "new paradigm" with all of its "new market forces", i.e. sending jobs overseas to countries were the cost of labor is significantly lower, which in essence scuttles the middle class.

But before there was the economy, computers and machines took over so many jobs once done by humans. I found this story on the NPR site of jobs that are now obsolete, entire professions that are now obsolete.

Jobs like a pinsetter in a bowling alley. Elevator operator. Switchboard operator. Ice man. Milkman, although I know in some small towns and suburbs this occupation is offered, but more out of nostalgia than anything else.

But in this terrible economy, I wonder about more jobs that are slowly dying. When will checkout clerks be extinct, thanks to self-check lines? At the grocery store, I already use a hand-held scanner to scan everything that goes into my cart, then I simply download it at the checkout. It not only makes checking out faster, but it also lets me know exactly how much I'm spending, and if an item is marked wrong.

Wiill smart cards finally make toll-takers on highways go the way of the do-do? (Or better yet, how about toll roads going the way of the dodo.)

See and read the whole story here.

Renting vs. owning a home: Renting comes out on top

It's an absolutely stunning day after about four days of rain of biblical proportions. Roads flooded. Basements filled with water. The MWRA let millions of gallons of raw sewage spill into Quincy Bay, otherwise the sewage treatment plant would have backed up. I walked to tech rehearsal on Sunday in the South End and from the car to the theater it was liking walking through a car wash. I had an umbrella, but I was soaked after only getting a quarter of the way there. It never seemed as if it would ever stop.

This, like so many times, is the reason I like renting. I don't want to own a house. I don't want to worry about my roof flying off in a windstorm. I don't want to worry about the roof leaking. I don't want to have to pump out a basement and clean up the mess. I don't want to be...responsible. And I don't want to pay for all those roofs flying off and all the stuff you need to clean up after a flood. I've been watching the statuses on Facebook, I remember those days of constant bailing out your basement. The backbreaking work. The worry. The mess.

I know it's not the norm in these United States. Renting is so declasse. It's so ghetto. You're not a grownup unless you own your own home. It's the American Dream to own your own little half-acre. But I like renting. A lot.

We don't have a lot of responsibilities. If it's a gorgeous day we're not tied to our house, cutting the grass. Pruning bushes. We're off on our bikes or on a trip into the city.

If something goes wrong, we call our landlord. He's a great guy. And he lives right downstairs. He's not like my old landlord who also lived right downstairs, but if he actually did fix something, it was always weeks after I told him about it and he always did a Mickey Mouse job. I mean, my toilet ran the entire six or seven years I lived there. Cooking in my oven was like cooking in a nuclear reactor. It had one setting: hot. He promised me a new stove, but I never saw one. And I hated to push the point because he was the kind of guy (wealthy who knew the cost of everything but the value of nothing--like a good tenant) who would have raised my rent to compensate himself for the cheap-ass stove he would have bought.

My old landlord, too, had this attitude that although you were paying him a boatload of money to live in kind of a fire-trap shit hole, he still looked at it as you had to live around him and his family. It really wasn't your home; it was his and he was landlording over you.

Steve, our landlord has already said Sue and I are family. We look in on his mom (who's 90 and also lives downstairs.) This is our home.

Last fall Sue bought over 100 bulbs and we planted them around the yard. Today I was out there--like I've worked in so many of my own yards--raking and cleaning up. The bulbs are coming up. We have a mulch pile where I've raked all the leaves and we put in all the compost from the kitchen--everything from coffee grinds to orange peels and egg shells. It's not the big production I once had, when I had a flock of about 25 chickens, a garden a big yard, lots of tools. But it's nice to get out there. We're going to put in an herb garden. And, Rose, our landlord's mom, wants me to plant some tomatoes for her.

It's small, but it's pleasant and doesn't take up a lot of time.

We're painting the entire apartment to our liking. It's your home, Steve has said. Do what you want.

Most Americans think renting is temporary. What if they sell the house from under you? It's not permanent. It's not yours.

Well, a lot can go wrong with a house, too. Nothing is permanent. And we like the fact that it's us who can just pick up and leave at a moment's notice too. If we want to relocate--for a job or even to another part of the city just for a change in our lives--we can. We probably won't though. Because more and more each day, this apartment is our home in every sense of the word. We're storing up memories and good times. And we're making our mark on it in the way we decorate and live in it.

The way we look at it, we have the best of both worlds. We have the freedom, and a home. Something a house doesn't let you have. It's just one of the many things I think a lot of Americans are going to wrap their heads around with this new economy. The old American model of owning your own home isn't the way to go. It may take some getting used to for some people--and some may never be able to make the change--but I am one person who is glad he did

Another Country Productions produces March Meisner SLAMBoston, Diverse Voices in Theatre in Boston

Tonight is the first of three nights of BostonSLAMs. These SLAMs are special, because all participants--the directors and the actors--have received some level of Meisner training. And what's so special about that, you might ask? It makes a big difference when all the directors and actors are working from the same page, and it's becoming more of a difference as the number of Meisner actors grows in the Boston fringe theater.

First, imagine working in any kind of group where the participants have all been trained differently, who have been taught different processes, and methodologies. It happens all the time. In business, it's rare to find people who are all working on the same page. We've all experienced this, where people are constantly sniping at each other and no one gets along. It's not that they're bad people. It's just that their values aren't aligned.

But then you come across a business where there is a specific, strong culture, where people all do everything the same way, and suddenly you get a very vibrant organization made up of people all pulling in the same direction toward the same goal.

The same is true in acting. I've been on casts where there were every combination of actor, plus some who weren't trained in anything at all--the remember your lines and don't bump into the furniture types. And sure, you get a production, but it's spotty at best. We've all seen them. One or two of the actors really shines, and then there's another doing something that is just completely out of sync with the rest of the cast. And then the rest are all doing their best to keep up with the others.

But with Meisner, and particularly the Meisner students in Boston, you have one of those groups where everyone is doing the same methodology and pulling toward the same goal. That goal is the connection, and right now I've heard every non-Meisner trained actor groan, and then bellow that's what we all do. Well, yes and no. Everyone goes for the connection, but they all don't go at it the same way, and Meisner actually gives you the tools to go for it.

Most casts are script-based. They memorize their lines, and when the actors work together one of the basic exercises they do is simply run their lines back and forth. That's what you do on stage, right?--you run your lines back and forth in a believable way. And when there are problems on stage, the director will reconvene the cast in the middle of the week for a "pick up", which usually means a speed-through of the script, or simply going over the lines.

With Meisner, of course you still have to know your lines, and yes you do speed throughs and recite your lines back and forth with each other, but you also do extra work establishing the connections, the relationship with the other characters. The exercises you do are meant to break down the social barriers we all have to protect our pure, raw emotions. And the delivery of the lines comes out of that connection. Big difference.

The next three nights of SLAMs are produced by Another Country Productions, headed up by Lyralen Kaye, ACP's artistic director. Full disclosure here: Lyralen is my Meisner teacher, and has been for a few years. I started taking Meisner classes from Lyralen when I felt my own acting was growing stale. I would find myself falling back on all my tried and true "tricks" to grow a character, and I was finding it difficult to prepare for characters in more modern plays.

Another thing I saw--or rather didn't see--was so many of my fellow actors not growing. I'd sit in an audience and say to myself, I saw you do that very same thing five years ago on a different stage. And I didn't want to do that. Meisner has made me a more organic actor, one who lives in that moment on stage.

The beauty of 12-bar blues improvisation

Saturday morning and the living room turned music room is once again strewn with guitars, amps, cables, guitar cases, and music stands. There's an old dog lying next to his favorite person in the whole world. No, it ain't me: He's turned into such a mama's boy in his old age. She moved in and we started changing the sheets on the bed (sometimes twice a week!) and he started drinking out of a bowl next to his kibble and not out of the toilet. She--the prettiest, funniest, little thing in the world--has certainly turned Bob's and my world on its head.

Went to a play last night and by all intents I should have been riveted. It was about adultery and cancer and marriage--all my favorite topics and combos. There were some good actors up there, too, knocking themselves out. But it's not a good sign when you find your mind drifting to memorizing 1-4-5 chord patterns and you can't wait to get home and play them.

I started an American ensemble course with my old teacher, Lloyd Thayer at Club Passim. (He's not old; I've just studied with him before--that's what I meant.) Americana, to him and co-teacher, Eric, means playing the sound track to the Little Rascals, as Sue says. And to start improvising, we played a 12-bar blues improvisation--I,I,I,I,IV,IV,I,I,V,IV,I,V. Ok, people who know what that means will think it's pretty basic, but to me it opened up a whole 'nuther world. And it's something that I've needed for a long time, at least through these long dark winter months. Work continues to be a disappointment, though I learned a long time ago not to expect self-fulfillment with business majors who bow before the Great God Excel. For someone like me you can contribute to an environment like that only so much; they just won't allow it. Any semblance of the truth is off-brand. It's through the arts--theater, music, writing--where you'll just breeze along.

So that's where we stand on this dreary, cold, overcast, rainy Saturday. Glad you asked?

deCastellane Gallery opens in Brooklyn with photographs by Rowland Scherman

Hans deCastellane is getting his dream of opening his gallery and his first exhibit will be "the amazing, timeless, pop-culture photography of Rowland Scherman."

You know Roland Scherman. Yes, you do, you just don't know you do right now. But if you're any kind of music lover you know the cover from the seventies of Bob Dylan's greatest hits. Yeah, that one. The blue one with Dylan silhouetted against a spot liht and his frizzy hair looking like a halo. Roland Scherman took that. And he shot images of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and Janis Joplin and the Fab Four and...well, you get the picture. He shot pictures of everyone.

Then he dropped off the map for a good thirty years, finally resurfacing on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

It's an amazing story and his images are even more amazing.

If you're in the NYC area, you have to check this out.

And then below that is an article I wrote on Rowland a few years back.

The de Castellane Gallery is inviting and unpretentious. Its space lends itself nicely to a division of three adjacent spaces. Experience the front gallery–an evolving exhibition of both emerging and established artists. Discover the middle gallery–a more permanent display of featured works from the gallery's roster of talent, with views out to the Atlantic Gardens. Wander to the back studio–a live viewing of Hans’ latest vision and works-in-progress, as he paints under a 15 foot wide skylight.

A photographer presses a shutter release and a person is immortalized. But who immortalizes the photographer?

From Woodstock to the funerals of the Apollo astronauts, and The Beatles to Bobby Kennedy, photojournalist Rowland Scherman chronicled the times, places, and people that had a bearing on today’s world. Then he slipped into obscurity for almost thirty years before resurfacing again, his work eventually shown in an empty storefront in Orleans on Cape Cod.

“Rowland is not a self-promoter,” explained Bob Korn, a master printer in Orleans whose clients include photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Jim Dow. So, when Scherman walked into his business one day with a slide of Bob Dylan, Korn realized Scherman was a “somebody.” But who?

To answer that question, one simply has to look at his body of work composed of images of virtually every person or event that made history in the sixties. But what makes his work so important is that it’s not just a photographic record. Scherman viewed and interpreted the world with a heightened sense of emotion and intelligence and sensibility that enabled him to record the essence of what he was seeing. HIs is an artistic rendering that comes from a personal involvement with the subject, even if the subject is totally unaware of Scherman. So whether it’s Bobby Kennedy in a sea of delegates, or Sammy Davis, Jr. looking into the camera, what the viewer gets is a visceral experience of what was happening at that precise moment when Scherman chose to release the shutter.

Scherman was never a stranger to artistic photography and journalism. His father was promotions director for Sports Illustrated and Newsweek. His uncle, Life photographer and editor, David E. Scherman, got his nephew a job as a summer intern in Life’s darkroom when he was a student at Oberlin.

After college, Scherman followed JFK’s idealistic call to arms and was the first photographer hired by the Peace. Corps. As a freelancer for Life, Scherman received a steady stream of weekly assignments that put him in the middle of the times.

He grabbed a shot of Bob Dylan arriving at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival with a bullwhip slung over his shoulder. He then slipped onstage with his wide-angle lens for an intimate view of these soon-to-be iconic figures.

From the audience he got classic shots of The Beatles. He was as close as from here to there for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech, and he was on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign plane in ‘68.

A classic story of Scherman’s charmed career was how he pushed past backstage security at a Dylan concert to fire off a few frames of Bob Dylan, then marched into an art director’s office at Columbia Records the next day who declared, “That’s the next cover of his album.” That’s the first image Korn saw of Scherman’s—Bob Dylan haloed in a spotlight used on his Greatest Hits album and that won a Grammy in 1967.

A few years later, in 1971, Scherman dropped off the national radar screen, embarking on an odyssey that seemed the perfect example a person of privilege who doesn’t know the value of what’s been given him. Divorced and disillusioned with the United States, he turned down offers to cover the Vietnam War and work for Playboy and instead went to England where he ended up herding sheep in Wales.

He did return once, in the early ‘80s, to the Life offices, but everything had changed. “They wanted to see my work,” he said, “and I told them all my work was in their magazine. But that didn’t matter.” He hadn’t done the one thing that he’d been doing for so many other people. He hadn’t promoted himself. “I thought I had left a bigger footprint,” he said about the rejection.

So Scherman moved to Birmingham, Alabama, shot products for catalogs, and worked on two photo projects: One documenting Highway 11 and the other photographing Elvis Presley fans. And he opened a bar. When a long-term relationship ended and remembering stories of his parents vacationing on Cape Cod, Scherman headed here in 2000.

Scherman says that the one thing he desires is the recognition of his peers. And he may just get it, with the help of Korn and Meri and Dave Hartford, owners of Artworks Framing Gallery in Orleans. They’ve established The Rowland Scherman Project to promote Scherman’s work to galleries and museums. Korn met with the curators for four museums associated with the Smithsonian and, in his words, they were blown away by the imagery. “They wanted to know, ‘Who is this guy?’”, Korn relates. “They were amazed that his work has gone unnoticed for all these years.”

Scherman laughs that the work he used to do with a camera and natural light is now done with five assistants and a truckload of lights. So, now he’s shooting portraits on the Cape. “In retrospect, portraits are what I’ve always done. They’re what I can do. It’s second nature to me.”

And he’s talking to groups about his work and his life. People see my work and start crying. They say, ‘This is the story of my life,’”, he says. “Maybe the sixties are becoming…”—and here he reaches for the word—and finally settles on “fashionable.”

Jiggling breasts and SEO and long hot showers

It's been over a month since I last posted to Action Bob. And I do see that people have been checking in. I've been concentrating more of my writing time--what little there is--over at Gather.com.

Yes, I've said it over and over: I'm a word whore. I'll write anything for money. And Gather.com hired me as a Social Writer, which is just a fancy term for someone they've identified who can drive traffic to their site, adding value to it, and are willing to pay me pittance to do it. (Too bad a certain client of mine doesn't have the same confidence that I can drive traffic, and so we'll soon be parting ways.) Anyway, over the course of a thirty year career as a copywriter I've stated my job description as someone who makes wealthy men wealthier. And that's what I do. I know how to get people to part with their money through words, and just as a reminder, Bob Markle is the name of a character I've written who works in an ad agency. Yes, the belly of the beast, the engine that fueled this economic downturn we're living through now, encouraging people to buy, buy, buy even though they can't afford, afford, afford it.

But this little spot in the digital world is so comforting to me, because here I don't have to worry about Google Trends or SEO or Google-identified keywords. Writing on the Web is more about timing and trends and content is a long third, and it's something I can do only for so long. I mean, check this out:

A posting about one of the latest Facebook memes attracted 24,788 views. (Is a certain local college marcom group taking note of this?)

But a post on the unemployment figures for older Americans garnered a paltry 38. And we wonder why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

I can write about Facebook and the latest celebrity public embarrassments only so long, and then I just want to take a long hot shower with lye soap--you know what I mean?

For those of you who have been checking in, thank you for taking the time. I know I've been remiss in keeping my promise of keeping this site interesting. And for those pervs who stumble on this site because you've searched for "jiggling breast" here ya go. From May 14, 2008. I know it's not exactly what you were looking for, but life is filled with disappointments.

To be an actor, in the words of Zooey Glass

From a book that had an incredible impact on me and my thoughts and values. So when I look mad or intense or I simply don't want to talk to you in the Green Room or at rehearsal or even when I don't want to go out for drinks, or for God's sake, Karaoke, understand this is where I'm coming from.


"Oh, what the hell's the difference where I am? Pierre, South Dakota, for God's sake. Listen to me, Franny--I'm sorry, don't get riled. But listen to me. I have just one or two very small things more, and then I'll quit, I promise you that. But did you know, just by the way, that Buddy and I drove up to see you in stock last summer? Did you know we saw you in 'Playboy of the Western World' one night? One god-awful hot night, I can tell you that. But did you know we were there?"

An answer seemed to be called for. Franny stood up, then immediately sat down. She placed the ashtray slightly away from her, as if it were very much in her way. "No, I didn't," she said. "Nobody said one single--No, I didn't."

"Well, we were. We were. And I'll tell you, buddy. You were good. And when I say good, I mean good. You held that goddam mess up. Even all those sunburned lobsters in the audience knew it. And now I hear you're finished with the theatre forever--I hear things, I hear things. And I remember the spiel you came back with when the season was over. Oh, you irritate me, Franny! I'm sorry, you do. You've made the great startling goddam discovery that the acting profession's loaded with mercenaries and butchers. As I remember, you even looked like somebody who'd just been shattered because all the ushers hadn't been geniuses. What's the master with you, buddy? Where are your brains? If you've had a freakish education, at least use it, use it. You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line--in one damn incarnation or another, if you like--you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to-- be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to --there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world." There was another, slighter pause. "I used to worry about that. I don't worry about it very much any more. At least I'm still in love with Yorick's skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick's skull. I want an honorable goddam skull when I'm dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddam skull like Yorick's. And so do you, Franny Glass. So do you, so do you. . . . Ah, God, what's the use of talking? You had the exact same goddam freakish upbringing I did, and if you don't know by this time what kind of skull you want when you're dead, and what you have to do to earn it--I mean if you don't at least know by this time that if you're an actress you're supposed to act, then what's the use of talking?"

Franny was now sitting with the flat of her free hand pressed against the side of her face, like someone with an excruciating toothache.

"One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right--God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?"

R.I.P. Holden Caulfield

J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zoeey, Nine Stories, and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters died today.I think that's pretty much the extent of his work. But what a great collection. Definitely quality over quantity.

Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of Catcher is every teen's alter-ego. I know that's going out of a limb saying that. Holden was the image of white, preppy America and I wonder if Black America would agree with my statement. But I'm willing to wiggle out on that limb because even me as a working class teen identified with Holden and his angst over dysfunctional America.

So how's this for dysfunctional: As a teen I pretended that Holden and the entire Glass family were my family. They were smart and urbane--everything my Midwestern family wasn't--and their intelligence put them outside the norm of that society for which we all aspired but still felt kind of creepy about wanting. There was Seymour, the mystic who committed suicide, Buddy the older brother/writer, Zooey the actor, and strong, fragile, beautiful Franny--I wanted so much to for them to be my brothers and sisters. And Bessie, dear Bessie, their crazy New York mother who carried packs of cigarettes and lighters and wrenches in her apron pocket.

Zooey, though, was my favorite. He was a talented actor, and his intelligence though made him angry and slightly depressed. That was the thing about all of the Glass children, how their intelligence was as much a curse as a blessing, and how they wore their depression so well. No wonder I admired him so much. In Franny and Zooey, Zooey soaks in the bathtub and rereads a long letter Buddy wrote to him. The next scene, Bessie barges in on him, and he recites that hysterical line, I see me dead in the rain. After reading that I took to reading in the bathtub, carefully turning the damp pages of a book as carefully as I would a cherished letter from my brother.

My sophomore year in high school I chose Catcher to read and report on for my AP English class. AP stands for Advanced Placement. Brainiac English students. And the teacher was...skeptical...about the book. I later dropped out of AP English and went back to the hoi polloi of science fiction (Dune) and creative writing.

The best part I liked about Salinger's work is that every bit of it was just stellar, each story was as good as the other, and of course him insisting on being a recluse from society will always score major points in my book. He offered up his work, then turned his back. I guess he felt like he didn't owe society anything, and didn't want anything from society either, so remarkable in this era of vapid egotism in search of empty fame.

Save the Midldle Class...Ride a Train

President Barack Obama tonight will deliver his State of the Union message, and it's said that he's listened to the people, taking note of the drumming the Democrats got in Massachusetts, losing Ted Kennedy's senatorial seat to virtual unknown, Scott Brown. And to all you Teabaggers out there, yes it was Kennedy's seat, and your crowing about it being the People's Seat is just a bunch of empty blathering that people in need of slogans pass off for intelligent conversation, so give it up. JSYK, it IS now Scott Brown's seat, it doesn't belong to any of you people who voted for him, and he's responsible for everything that happens there now, just like Kennedy was. And if don't believe me, go try sitting in it. You won't get passed security. (This is what you get from a bunch of people who name their political party after a gay sex act.)

But President Obama is listening, he says. Jobs are the priority. Saving the middle class is the priority. Whoa. Nothing like taking a year to figure out what a lot of us have known for oh, say TEN YEARS!! Man, is it that obvious? We need jobs? With unemployment running close to 20%? (I use the unofficial number that would include the unemployed, the underemployed, and those who plain old gave up looking for work.) Is it that obvious that the middle class has been hung out to dry after holding up this country since WWII? Who says Washington is out of touch?

And he's going to start by investing $8 billion in a stimulus package to build a couple of high speed train links. Eight billion. Wow. Of course, compared to the $182.5 billion used to bailout just AIG, just one of the many financial companies our tax dollars saved, $8 billion doesn't look like a lot. BECAUSE IT ISN'T! Eight billion dollars is barely a drop in the bucket.

All right. Phew. Take a breath, Action Bob, and let's set the record straight.

The middle class was left hanging by the government, but guess what, the middle class stuck its own head in the noose as the government held it. But the middle class, more than AIG, more than GM, more than Lehmann Brothers, needs bailing out, because quite simply, without the middle class there will be no more United States. The rich will just go somewhere offshore, though not where their factories are because those countries are inhabited by poor brown people and rich, white people who inhabit Wall Street and the upper echelons of the financial world don't like being around poor brown people.

The middle class actually cut its own throat starting back in the 1980s and of course, greed was at the bottom of it. Reagan and Clinton (just to show I'm not partisan or a liberal) both deregulated the banking industry, that allowed the megainstitutions we have today like CitiGroup come to be. Banks, stock brokers, insurance companies, mortgage companies all came under one roof, and that's a lot of foxes watching a lot of chicken coops. Add a dose of greed and you've got the makings of some delicious disasters.

Corporations began manufacturing and selling offshore, negating the need for the middle class that, since WWII, bought all the crap that American industry was manufacturing with built-in obsolescence.

But here's where the middle class cut its own throat. It bought in to all this because the stock market and the housing market were doing tremendous, and that's where the middle class put all its money. So, even though prices for everything from gas to a college education were going through the roof, it seems the middle class was more focused on their retirement rather than today, and retirement looked pretty good for them. Or so they thought. Now we know that the middle class retirement years were all smoke, and that's where they all went, as in up in smoke.

Eight billion dollars for a couple of high speed train spurs isn't going to cut it to make enough jobs to save the middle class. I'll blog about this again, but it's what I was afraid of: Obama just wasn't the visionary that we needed for this country. And neither was McCain, so all of you Teabaggers just shut up. We're in this together, and the one thing I agree on is it's the people who are going to get us out of this mess. Maybe. Right now, it looks pretty grim, though, doesn't it?

Susan Cattaneo at Sally O'Brien's

Isn't it great when you hear a new musician--well, new to you--and you can't wait to share? Hey, you gotta check this out.

That's what happened to me today when I got this email from someone named Dino C giving me a link to the No Depression site.

Susan Cattaneo is local, as in local to Boston. She teaches songwriting at Berklee, but we won't hold that against her. She doesn't have any videos or other rich media I could steal, so you have to go to her MySpace site to get a good dose of her.

Check out Love Takes What It Takes which starts with a real hard country rock opening and eases into a nice country melody with some pretty standard passages, which all sounds kind of negative the way I just wrote that but her voice and lyrics are sweet and nice and all together it's got the makings of a pop hit. Wrecking Ball is hard and mean and beat up just like the title. Get Back The Longing features Mark Erelli, another local musician who someday, someday, will really get his due. If he's on the disc, it's worth a listen.

She'll be playing at Sally O'Brien's for the next every other Tuesday starting tonight.

Her Band:
Mike Barry: Guitar, vocals
Milt Reder: Guitar
Mark Hickox: Bass
Dave Mattacks: Drums

Her album is Brave and Wild and you can get it here.

On the record:
Lorne Entress: Drums
Duke Levine: Guitar
Kevin Barry: Guitar
Richard Gates: Bass
Dave Limina: Piano and organ
Dave Sholl: Saxophone
Mark Erelli: Lead and background vocals, mandolin on "Get Back The Longing"

Why should I press 1 for English?

On the Red Line this morning, three Asians sat apart from each other but still talked loudly amongst themselves in their native language. I can pretty much read or think over the usual background noise on the train, but their language and their voices—not pretty to my Western ears—seemed designed to cut like a buzz saw through anything: the clanging and rumbling of the old train, my thoughts.

Changing to the D Line at Park, I actually got a seat. Sigh, peace and quiet, I thought, as I pulled out my book. But right across from me, standing in the handicap area, were two young black girls, singing together to a smart phone set to speaker, their voices as persistent as a monk chanting, or a leaky water faucet.

Both times my initial reaction was to shout, Shut the f**k up, would you? Do you see anyone else shouting across the aisle to each other over the course of five stops? Or, What makes you think that just because you think your sappy little song is so deep that everyone else does?

Of course I didn’t shout them down. I took a deep breath because violence and anger don’t accomplish anything, thought to myself that I live in a society and it’s not always about me (as these five other people seemed to think about themselves), and wondered just what was going on here.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard Asians talk noisily among themselves like the black high school students who ride at the back of T coming home on the D line. Just a couple of weeks ago an Asian woman and I had a good laugh because she was sitting next to me but talking to her friends across the aisle and two and three seats down. She was literally shouting in my ear. As with so many disagreements we can find ourselves in when navigating our multinational society, I have a sneaky feeling this was more a rub between cultures than a breach of manners.

And who hasn’t experienced a young person of any race self-absorbed in their music? I mean, it pretty much defines the age group, doesn’t it?—I am going to go out on a limb and say that young people of color will be less inhibited and more inclined to sing out loud on the T than their stiff-necked, uptight, white, Indian, Japanese, just to name a few, counterparts.

Our country is changing so fast, and if it hasn’t happened yet, in the next couple of years people of color—that’s non-Caucasians, you know—are going to outnumber Caucasians. I think that’s one point that the Conservative, predominantly white media keeps forgetting when they crow about their grassroots Teabag movement or when they ask, why should I press 1 for English, or push their Christian values on others. Or even when someone thinks, this ain’t China, this is the Red Line, so act like everyone else.

People keep having babies. Non-Americans keep flying in, settling down, and eventually raising their hand to take the oath to be Americans. (And through studying for their citizenship eventually know more about American history and politics than your average American who can’t find Montana on a map.) Their values and cultural behavior will change the landscape. In liberal California, it was the Latino vote that appeared to kill the gay marriage bill, which to me was not a good thing. Where I live, you can go away for a week, and when you’re getting off the T from your trip from Logan see new businesses have sprouted with signs written in kanji. Is that good or bad? It depends how long you’ve lived in Wollaston.

Hang on to your values, don’t forget your roots, while realizing the one constant in this world—and this country for probably the next twenty years—is change. And there will be those who will want to press their values on others, and there will be those who believe that learning Spanish or any language is a good thing, because learning anything new is a good thing, no different than learning how to cook or play the harmonica or ride a horse.

Biking against the wind: Hope for this country

It's Sunday morning, traditionally a time I would plop down on the couch with a cup of coffee, put on some high-brow concert music (in lieu of church) and read the papers. At least three of 'em.

The news of late--and by "of late" I mean in the past five or six years has been pretty bad. Depressing. Abysmal. Enough to make one desire to run far, far away. Leave the country. My fight or flight reaction is really kicking in and my gut feeling is leave the country to the bohunks who seem to be gathering steam in this country (remember the vitriol from Hillary Clinton's campaign? or the rabid dogs one hears on talk radio and in the conservative press?) Just turn your back on the whole thing.

Can you feel the anger and bile rising in my voice?

Because our country seems to be lacking in some real intelligent discourse. I'm not knocking the current conservative movement. I think it's great that finally, the middle class is rising up and finally taking a real, active part in the political process. What I have a problem with is how they're being led along like sheep. And their anger, their fury seems to come from their desire to preserve the old way, as much as anything. When they rail about the tax and spend Democrats, it seems to me, it comes more from their desire to keep their tax dollars for themselves so they can continue to have their big homes and big cars and big TVs and their swimming pools. It's not from a real altruistic feeling of wanting to make the world a better place. The world is changing, the world has changed, and it seems that the conservative movement in this country is fueled by fear and the desire to go back in time, not forward.

And there are a lot of people in this world right now who cause me to just grind my teeth, because I don't see them as really thinking for themselves. When they talk their politics they just repeat verbatim what they hear Jay Severin mouth on his radio show. I know this because I've listened to him--not so much anymore because I rarely spend time driving anymore, but when I did I would listen to his show. I like to hear all points of view. And, as I said, I would hear people simply parroting exactly what he would say. And people would just repeat his words and somehow they think those words are theirs and they think they're smart, when they're simply walking, talking tape recorders on playback.

But...

There's an actor/filmmaker friend of mine who I met this past fall while performing in a play, and we'd talk. His name is Mark Vashro and he's young and smart and curious-exactly what all people should be. These qualities make it almost impossible for a human being to be angry. And he's been questioning his place in the world and everything that's been going on. So he's decided to ride a bike across the United States. To find out for himself what is going on. Not be spoonfed the answers but question and learn for himself. Yeah, it's a real hippie thing to do. But to me, it's a real American thing to do. Being independent and moving and discovering and being an individual and thinking for yourself. Those are ideals, but when I think of the United States, that's how I think of it. Not angry. Not vindictive. But smart and curious and bold.

People like Mark restore my faith and hope for this country. Because this country was founded for the rights of the individual. And individuals, right now, are few and far between.

Stone Soup: January 26 at Club Oberon

Brought to you by those two lovely ladies from New Exhibition Room. Stone Soup is their fundraising event. This is the second one they had--the first's proceeds went to producing Shh!! and presenting it for free, as in you don't have to pay you just walk in and maybe give a donation but if you're too broke or too cheap you don't have to.

Tuesday's Stone Soup is to raise money for their next production, Candyland, and to take Shh!! to the New York Fringe Festival.

It's a great night out. Put on your coolest, hippest clothes and get over to Club Oberon.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
8:00pm - 11:00pm
Club Oberon
2 Arrow Street
Cambridge, MA

Banish those January blues with a hearty dose of our annual potluck feast of the imagination - Stone Soup. Our midwinter theatrical brings together a sampling of local artists creating a healthy helping of musical and theatrical wonders to warm your generous spirits.

What’s in our soup? We’ve brought together the drunken song stylings of The Steamy Bohemians, a pinch of The Movement Workshop Groups’ rock n’ roll meets flamenco piece Wanderlust. Then we’re gonna turn up the heat with the Macabre Cabaret 47 Ways To Die from Aimee Rose Ranger and Veroncia Barron. Then we’re gonna introduce you to The Prions – featuring Chuong Pham, Molly Schreiber and Alex Simoes, and of course we’re gonna spice it nice with UnAmerika’s Sweetheart Karin Webb. And you know who’s stirin’ our pot? The one and only Mary Dolan! Soup’s on people, come and get it!

After the performance stay for dancing! All proceeds from this performance will support our next free original production, Candyland, and the entry of our first show, Shh! into the New York Fringe Festival.

Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
Get tix here.

In Development--Sunday for writers, actors and directors

If you find yourself in, or can get yourself to Yarmouth on Cape Cod tomorrow and are into the whole creative process of writing and putting the product on film, you might want to check out In Development.

I got the word from Jenn Pierce who now lives in Sandwich but a few years back directed me in To Kill a Mockingbird out with the Wellesley Players. Jenn is a spirited, thoughtful, creative individual--here's her blog--and the second day of the workshop is open to the public, so it might be worth checking out what Jenn and her merry band of film making pranksters come up with.

Performance artist/filmmaker/painter--is there more?--Micheal Ornstein is part of this creative endeavor, and while I've never met him--hopefully some day I'd like to write about him--I get the sense that whatever he puts his mind and hand to comes out worth noting.

Here's the info from In Development's FaceBook page:

In celebration of Cape Cod's vibrant film, writing and acting scene, a group of writers, actors and directors have come together to form In Development! The group's inaugural workshop will feature actors working closely with directors on first-time readings of original film scripts by Cape-based writers. The workshop's second day is open to anyone interested in a glimpse behind the scenes, into the guts of how writers, directors and actors come together to develop projects. The audience will be encouraged to ask questions and participate in various ways. Refreshments will be served. The event is free with a $5 suggested donation for the Sunday matinee to help defray expenses.

Anyone interested in participating should contact Guy Taylor at A.S Films International, a sponsor of the event, at (508) 776-3283 or email director.asfilms@gmail.com

Brown's victory is a wake up call for a lot of other people besides Democrats

Sometimes the old dog just gets up, scratches a flea or two, and starts snapping at whatever is within his reach. That’s how I felt about myself in the recent special election here in Massachusetts that saw unknown Republican Scott Brown beat established Democrat Martha Coakley 52% to 48%, give or take a tenth of a percentage point or two, for the seat left vacant by Ted Kennedy’s death.

In a previous post I described Brown as “relatively” unknown, but you’ll notice that in the above paragraph I simply referred to him as unknown. What a different a day makes. Compared to his infamy now across the country, he wasn’t just an unknown, he was a nobody.

I used to follow politics the way some people follow sports. And I’d write about politics, on occasion, in freelance columns for the MetroWest Daily News. To call me a political reporter though, would be a mistake akin to calling Brown a political heavyweight. I wasn’t, though in the field of political commentary I probably could hold my weight better than Pretty Boy Brown can in his respective weight class.

I actually remember Brown getting first elected and thinking to myself, What the…? What a lump he presented after his predecessor. Kind of the situation he’s in now, though obviously over the course of those years he’s worked on his presentation skills. He took Democrat Cheryl Jacques seat after she had decided not to run. Now there was a spitfire. Senator Jacques would always return calls, the people she had working for her were sharp, and she always had her facts and opinions straight. I can’t imagine Senator Jacques ever posing nude, or employing some stupid gimmick to get votes like driving around in an old truck when everyone darn well knows you can afford a new one. She was a thinking voters’ politician, and a politician that writers liked. Substance over image. She’s gone on to be a mover and a shaker as a GLBT Civil Rights advocate. Kind of a female Harvey Milk, and that doesn’t surprise me. She was too good for the Massachusetts Legislature.

Thank or curse Brown for this, but he’s renewed my interest in politics. A few other people who I know who I’ve been talking to privately. His win was not only a wake up call for the Democrats, but for a lot of other people, too.

Oaxaca

Hope the insomniac in Allentown is happy...

So, who are you, and what are you looking for?

Action Bob...

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Arcade Fire--Haiti

Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we lie hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm