I’ll be reprising my (very tiny) role in “The Producers” tonight at 8 at Workshop Theatre. I urge you to come see it — if you can get a ticket. I’ve heard that they’re pretty scarce.
But if you can’t get in tonight (which is my last performance), the good news is that the show’s been held over. And I promise, it’s almost just as good without me.
Just some scattered thoughts as I listen to the GOP debate last night via the Web. Can’t call it “live-blogging,” but it’s kind of like that, so I’ll call it “dead-blogging,” which sort of reflects my level of enthusiasm about the candidates so far, a few minutes into it. Some random observations:
OK, I’ve got to stop watching now… lunch appointment. More later, if I get time…
Wow, I am really humbled by the nice things some of y’all said about me running for office back on this post (am I sounding like a candidate yet? they’re supposed to say stuff like that, about being humbled, etc.).
But again, what office? The context was that we were talking about Congress. But as Karen suggested, maybe I’m better suited for state office. State issues are the ones I’m most knowledgeable about and passionate about.
Not that I don’t know as much as (or more than) the other declared candidates for Congress about national and international issues. I’m pretty confident that I do — or at least that I can hold my own, and I can certainly approach those issues in a fresh way that would break the partisan, shouting-back-and-forth pattern that I, for one, am sick of.
But what if I were elected to Congress? I would just feel pretty weird going off to Washington and watching another lame governor take office back here. And you know what? My own mother called me up the other day and said I should run for governor. So that’s one vote I could count on, I guess. (Right, Mom?)
You know what I need at this point? I need Peter Boyle to come see me and make a pitch. You ever see “The Candidate?” Excellent movie. Peter Boyle plays a political consultant type who talks Robert Redford — son of a prominent politician — into running for the U.S. Senate. Redford is a nonprofit activist who is uninterested in the compromises one must make to run for office. Boyle promises him he can stand up for everything he believes in, and points out that this is a great opportunity to give those things he believes in greater exposure. Redford asks something like How does that work? or What’s the catch? and Boyle hands him a matchbook on which he has written two words: “You lose.” On that basis, Redford agrees to run.
But as the campaign proceeds, the itch to win — or at least not lose by an embarrassing margin — starts to get to him….
Anyway, to run for office what I need is a Peter Boyle moment — somebody to say, we’ll take care of the mechanics of the campaign, you just be the candidate. Because I’m an issues guy, not a mechanics guy. Renting an office and getting phone lines set up would be the overwhelming part for me. Seriously.
This, of course, is why most people run under the auspices of parties. Each of the parties has loads of people like Peter Boyle who can say, here’s your infrastructure, you just concentrate on running for office (and raising money).
What I need is an UnParty Peter Boyle. I guess that would be a party stalwart who has become disillusioned. Or who sees greater opportunity in breaking away from the two-party dichotomy.
It’s interesting to contemplate where such a person would come from. On an earlier post, I speculated that if I were to give in and run under the banner of one of the parties next year for pragmatic reasons (see the above discourse on Peter Boyle), especially for Congress, it would probably have to be the Democratic Party. Why? Well, not because I’m a Democrat, but because I don’t see a Republican having a good-enough shot against an incumbent of that party. Too much of an uphill climb.
But it occurs to me that if I run as an independent, my theoretical Peter Boyle would be more likely to come from the Republican Party. It’s the party in trouble. It’s the party that’s falling apart, rather pathetically clinging to tired slogans and petty resentments that have not served it well of late (whereas the Democrats have been doing OK, for the moment, with their tired slogans and petty resentments). It seems more likely that a smart Republican would calculate that an UnParty bid would be advisable than that a smart Democrat would do the same. Democrats are smelling opportunity now, and are unlikely to jump ship.
Then again, there could be a smart Democrat who would rather see me elected than Joe Wilson, and who also sees as I do that Rob Miller is not the best candidate to take advantage of this moment, and yet he’s the Democrat with the money, and has a leg up toward the nomination. Going with me might be the way to step around that problem. I don’t know. That’s the kind of hard-eyed political calculation that I’m depending on this Peter Boyle person to make — I’m the candidate, not the backroom strategist.
Anyway, now would be a good time for my Peter Boyle to step forward. I’ve got a job interview later this week, and possibly another soon after. This window won’t be open for long (I certainly hope.)
The kindness of friends is one thing, and I truly appreciate the supportive things y’all have said here. But at this point I need a nudge from a hard-eyed professional who truly believes this can be done. You might say I should go out and find that person. But I’m thinking that if I truly have a chance, that pragmatic person will see it and come to me. If I don’t — if it’s just me indulging myself and some friends egging me on — then there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Does that make sense? It does to me… Call it the first test of my viability…
We don’t normally do celebrity news at bradwarthen.com (with rare exceptions), but I happened to run across this item via Twitter:
Although more and more brands, movie stars, sports figures, and other celebrities are moving to Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook as a way of interacting and sharing with fans, many of Hollywood’s A-List stars are still avoiding social networks.
George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — he’s handsome, congenial, and talented — and also Facebook-page free.
People.com reports that when asked about Facebook at the Toronto International Film Festival last Saturday, Clooney responded:
“I would rather have a prostate exam on live television by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page.”
… and it inspired the above headline.
Of course, the message we are to take away is that George Clooney is such a big star that he doesn’t have to promote himself. Which is true. But he doesn’t have to be so snobby about it. I mean, it’s one thing for me to turn my nose up at celebrities, but they’re not supposed to do it right back at me…
I don’t know about y’all but I didn’t see this until just now. Mildly amusing, although certainly no Tina Fey as Sarah Palin. And of course, it’s yet another needless embarrassment for South Carolina. I share it for what it’s worth.
Well, I did my little cameo appearance last night in the Workshop Theatre production of “The Producers.” It went fine. Although I’ve got to tell you that by the time my cue came early in the second act, I was much more anxious not to mess up than I had been before the curtain went up.
That’s because the show was so good. Everybody was turning in such an impressive, high-energy performance that if there had been ANYthing wrong with my part, short as it was, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. The stakes had been raised. I was sitting there thinking that I was out in right field. You know that feeling? It’s the one where you stand there and stand there and stand there, and the ball never comes to you, and you get used to the ball not coming to you, and you never get warmed up, and then when the ball finally does come to you, the stakes, the consequences of screwing up seem so huge and overwhelming that… well, you screw up. (For that reason, I always infinitely preferred playing pitcher or catcher, where you’re involved with every pitch, to playing the outfield.)
By the time my bit was approaching, everybody on stage was SO warmed up — Matt DeGuire, as Max Bialystock, had worked up a visible sweat before the second scene — that I felt like I’d never be able to come off the bench and jump into something moving at this pace. I felt like the whole show would trip over me or something. But I guess it went OK, because no one threw rotten tomatoes.
After that, I was able to enjoy the rest of the show without that feeling of dread hanging over me. And I really enjoyed it.
Which, I can admit now, surprised me.
Not that I didn’t think the folks at Workshop would do a good job. I assumed they would. My problem was with the show itself. I tried to watch the movie version with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and I got sick of it by the end of the first scene. I’m a huge Ferris Bueller fan (who isn’t?), but I found Broderick’s trying-too-hard impersonation of Gene Wilder really off-putting. And frankly, as I thought about that, I realized I hadn’t been crazy about the Wilder-Mostel version either.
For me, “Young Frankenstein” was Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, and “Blazing Saddles” had its amusing parts, but it trails off after that. And the movie versions of “The Producers” fell somewhere below “Spaceballs” in my estimation.
So I was startled to see that something that didn’t work for me on the movie screen was so entertaining in a live show. But it was. And it was more than the fact that “over-the-top” fits the live stage better than the wide screen, which prefers subtlety. It was the wonderful performances of these individual local actors — particularly DeGuire as Max, Kevin Bush as Leopold Bloom, Mandy Nix as Ulla, Kyle Collins as Franz and on and on (there are no weak performances) — and the chemistry of how it all came together.
This was the best thing I’ve seen on a stage in Columbia (except, of course, for the shows that my children were in…)
You should definitely go see it. Even though I won’t be in it anymore. Or perhaps, especially since I won’t be in it anymore…
You have to understand that to me, Elvis Costello is The Latest Thing. He came along late in my life — after I was married and had kids already — so it’s actually a testament to his considerable talent that I became a big fan of his. He was the last popular musician to enter the ranks of my favorites along with the Beatles and others from my youth.
So normally, I would not have gotten the joke when Stan Dubinsky over at USC sent this link with the message, “Kanye West insults the USC website.” I’m still not entirely sure I get it, but at least I know who Kanye West is — sort of. That’s because my 23-year-old daughter went to “The Producers” with me last night, and since I had gone early to check in with the stage manager, we had time to chat before the show, and we started talking about current events, and she mentioned this West guy.
All day long, I’d been seeing references to him on Twitter, but I didn’t know what it was about. My daughter explained it. OK, so now I see why some people were referring to him and Joe Wilson in the same breath. Then she said something about Serena Williams, and I knew who she was, but didn’t know what she had done to cause the world to buzz. I don’t follow sports, either. (FYI, I just learned that USC will have a home football game on Saturday, which means I will stay over on my side of the river all day to avoid the craziness. I appreciate the warning, and thought you might appreciate my passing it on.)
Good thing we had that chat, because now all this stuff has entered the print universe — some of it was the subject of a column in The Wall Street Journal this morning — and I’m glad I knew about it going in.
But I still can’t tell you of anything Kanye West has ever sung.
You may recall that, back here, I told you of my invitation to do a cameo role in Workshop Theatre’s production of “The Producers.”
I agreed. And my appearance will be tonight. Other local non-actors are playing the same part on different nights. Judge Joe Anderson is on tomorrow night, for instance. Sheriff Leon Lott will do it next Friday night (the 25th), followed by Sheriff Jimmy Metts the next night.
It’s a small part. A very, very small part, and very silly. And now that the night is upon me, I’m suffering from pre-performance jitters to the extent that I really sort of hope no one is there to see me — but, since the idea behind inviting me and the sheriffs and the others to do this was that we might have a certain following that might come out and buy tickets, well, I… I urge you to come on out, and watch me make a perfect ass of myself.
Here’s the part I’ll be doing, from the movie version. Not exactly like this — the director gave each of us the freedom to change the character as we chose, and my version, while still silly, is silly in a very different way from the guy in the movie. (No doubt I could make if sillier if I had a government grant to develop it.)
So come on out. But don’t blink when I step out onto the stage, because you might miss me. Fortunately, for the enjoyment of paying customers, my part is very short. But I said that already.
I tell you, the things we unemployed people will do to keep ourselves out there in the public eye…
Just noticed that I had passed a milestone this morning — 300 “followers” on Twitter.
Here’s hoping my 300 fare better than the famous Spartans — although I’m sure they’re just as tough, brave, fierce, etc., else they would not be following me…
OK, not really. But if the UnParty did release a video, I hope it would be as fresh, and original, and cool as this one — in that nerdy way that only Elvis Costello can be cool. In fact, it occurs to me that in the ads that the GOP is imitating back here, Microsoft should have hired Elvis to punch the message that maybe geeks use PCs, but geeks can be cool.
Last night, YouTube brought this one to my attention, based upon my past viewing preferences, and I really liked it, so I offer it as a kind of sorbet, to cleanse the palate after the GOP video…
Last night, before I had heard what Joe Wilson had done (I had heard the hubbub, but neither made out “You lie!” not identified the shouter), I was already complaining about the far more civil, formal, GOP response.
The thing is, I always hate listening to those things. I hated them when Bush was president, and Clinton before him. Always just a pointless, nonconstructive exercise in perpetual partisan polarization. Does your party want to be heard during presidential addresses? Well then win the next presidential election.
Rather than having the opposition statement, the networks should just run the Groucho Marx clip, which says the same thing more honestly and more entertainingly: “I don’t know what they have to say; it makes no difference anyway: Whatever it is, I’m against it!” In fact, let’s go ahead and reproduce the lyrics in full:
[Groucho]
I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.I’m opposed to it,
On general principle, I’m opposed to it.[chorus] He’s opposed to it.
In fact, indeed, that he’s opposed to it![Groucho]
For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And I’ve kept yelling since I first commenced it,
I’m against it!
It’s even, of all things, more gentlemanly than what we see from Washington these days. Who would have dreamed, ere now, that Groucho Marx, the master insult artist, could give civility lessons to South Carolina congressmen?
Seriously, if the opposition party — whichever one it happens to be at the moment — would simply surrender its response time and let the TV folk run this clip instead, I would think much more of that party than I do now.
When Kathryn corrected me on the title of the TV show “Mad Men” (and she was right; it was two words), I went to the official site to check — and ran into a thing where you can build your own Mad Men avatar.
So, being unemployed, I did. Well, there’s more to it than that. Being unemployed, and having recently taken a couple of mild forays into consulting in the advertising field (in fact, I’m sitting in the offices of an ad agency as I type this), I thought I’d see how I looked in that milieu.
Not so great, as it turned out. But I did manage to get myself into a scene with Joan Holloway, if only in caricature…
Not being a guy who watches much TV — I tend to watch shows after they’re canceled, on DVD — I was very pleased when I started watching “Mad Men” (which hasn’t been canceled yet, but with me watching it it’s only a matter of time) and saw 
“Joan Holloway.” And pleased for reasons other than the obvious.
This was the only time I had ever seen her other than her two appearances on the tragically short-lived “Firefly,” as “Our Mrs. Reynolds” — a.k.a. Saffron, a.k.a. Bridget, a.k.a. Yolanda — and “Trash.”
So my reaction on seeing her in the current series was to think, “Where’s she been?” Turns out she was on TV all the time.
Her specialty is playing a “bad girl” with a certain amount of wit. For instance, she’s the only actress I can think of offhand who can pull off a line like “But I’m really hot!” (spoken to Capt. Mal Reynolds) in a way that makes you laugh and agree with her at the same time (and yell at the TV, “Look out, Mal!”). Anyway, I’m glad to see she’s working…
Hmmm… After taking up the cudgels for John O’Connor and others in the media whom my friend Peter Hamby says the governor “lashed out” at and “blasted” today, I saw the video clip above.
What I saw, and what you will probably see as well, is the usual, casual, lollygaggin’ Mark Sangfroid delivery, delivered complete with little chuckles thrown in — not exactly a foaming rant. (Which means that, while I hear the guy really has a temper, I still have never really seen it fully on display.) More of a passive-aggressive sort of delivery.
Missing is what in text seems like the worst part of the session, which is what really set me off (everyone knows I have a temper), and which Peter describes thusly:
Sanford singled out John O’Connor — a political reporter for South Carolina’s largest newspaper, The State — and accused the newspaper of covering the political back-and-forth over the travel controversy while skimming over Sanford’s arguments defending himself.
Sanford took one question, but refused several others. But when O’Connor asked a question about private flights that Sanford failed to report on public disclosures, the governor became irritable.
“John, we’re not going to play your game,” he said, jabbing his finger in the reporter’s direction. “I don’t work for you.”
Wish that part was on the video.
Now, I just think Sanford was taking unfair advantage of his bully pulpit to make the press the issue rather than his own misconduct. But he did it without the ill grace of a Spiro Agnew. He was affable about it. Which means he still has his equanimity. Which you can see as good or bad. Personally, I’d like to see a guy who was feeling that pressure and moving a little closer to changing his mind about himself. But I don’t see that, either.
What do y’all think?
Today, our governor, increasingly detached from reality, lashed out at the media. At least, he did according to CNN’s Peter Hamby:
(CNN) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford lashed out at the media on Friday, admonishing reporters at a press conference for their coverage of the multiple investigations into his travel expenses.
“One of the frankly disappointing things I’ve seen in several instances here over the last 60 days of my life since I’ve been through this thing is that in some cases it’s not been about objective journalism, its been about advocacy journalism with an agenda,” he said.
Sanford was in the town of Conway revealing his plans to waive confidentiality in a state Ethics Commission investigation into his use of state airplanes and taxpayer-funded travel, a move that will allow to the public to view the results of the probe.
But the governor, who has adopted an increasingly combative tone in recent days, also blasted members of the state legislature for being hypocritical, accusing them of spending state money on travel as well. He called on members of Senate and House to make their travel documents public.
Then he turned his sights on the South Carolina press corps, with whom he had a largely cordial relationship before he turned the state’s political world upside down in June by copping to an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman. He chided the media for its coverage of his travel record and said he has been an excellent steward of taxpayer money, unlike previous administrations…
… and I trust Peter’s account. He’s young, but steady.
The nerve of this guy Mark Sanford. With all of this insanity that he’s dragged us through because of his own narcissistic little drama, and which he keeps dragging us through, he has the unmitigated gall to lash out at the hard-working people who are merely reporting it to the people of South Carolina. Every day, he amazes me a little more.
I call your attention in particular to this passage:
Sanford singled out John O’Connor — a political reporter for South Carolina’s largest newspaper, The State — and accused the newspaper of covering the political back-and-forth over the travel controversy while skimming over Sanford’s arguments defending himself.
Sanford took one question, but refused several others. But when O’Connor asked a question about private flights that Sanford failed to report on public disclosures, the governor became irritable.
“John, we’re not going to play your game,” he said, jabbing his finger in the reporter’s direction. “I don’t work for you.”
Ah, but see, governor, that’s the thing — you do work for John. And you also work for the other four million-plus people of this state, which includes Andre Bauer, and most emphatically includes the many, many of us who believe your one great remaining chance to perform a service for this state is to take Andre up on his offer and resign. If you do that, we no longer have to be subjected to this farce of having you as governor, and will be spared the risk of having Andre elected in 2010.
But as each day goes by, with each outburst from you that we witness or hear of, our hope that you will come to your senses and do the right thing fades.
We deserve better than this.
Well, Rolling Stone certainly got my attention when I saw this cover headline in the checkout line at Earth Fare yesterday:
So I immediately resolved to look up the piece and read it when I got to my laptop.
But I couldn’t, because they didn’t post the actual article. Oh, they posted all sorts of teasers and promotional material, such as the 
“story behind the story,” and gallery after gallery of fab pics of the lads back in the day.
But not the actual story.
We can debate from now until the last newspaper closes the relative wisdom of posting one’s precious content online for free. Maybe Rolling Stone’s got it going on teasing us to distraction this way. But I wonder: Which approach sells more magazines — this, or the Vogue approach? No, I didn’t go out and buy a copy of the Vogue with the Jenny Sanford piece; I was satisfied with what I found online. But I’ll bet the fact that bloggers were able to read, and then tout, the contents did lead to at least some people who are more in Vogue‘s demographic to go out and buy the slick dead-tree version.
I don’t know. But I know I’m not shelling out $4.99 to read the piece about the fall of The Beatles. Hey, I lived through the time, and I know why The Beatles broke up — because the ’60s ended. Duh.
Now there was a time when I would have shelled out the money. But not anymore. I guess that shows how old I am. And that the ’60s really are over…
I saw something interesting for the first time at that reception Wednesday night — Bud Light in dark red, or perhaps I should say garnet, cans. That was a new one on me and the ad folks I spoke to that night. I asked the guy working the bar what was up with the cans, and he didn’t know; it was the first time he’d seen them, too.
Someone speculated that it was a school-colors thing. That someone was right, as the WSJ reported Friday morning:
Dozens of colleges are up in arms over a new Anheuser-Busch marketing campaign that features Bud Light beer cans emblazoned with local schools’ team colors.
Many college administrators contend that the promotions near college campuses will contribute to underage and binge drinking and give the impression that the colleges are endorsing the brew. Though some schools aren’t interfering with the promotion, others are demanding that the sales be stopped. With students returning to campuses and the fall football season approaching, the “Fan Cans” are also renewing the debate over the role of beer makers in encouraging college drinking.
Anheuser-Busch responds that the campaign is aimed only at fans who can drink legally and that it has long supported efforts to fight alcohol abuse. It notes that the cans don’t bear any school’s name or logo. And it says it will drop the campaign near any college that makes a formal complaint…
Then WIS did a story on them last night.
Actually, I thought the cans I saw — which were technically muted red and cream, not garnet and black — looked pretty good, aesthetically speaking (way, WAY better than those tacky LSU cans). Picture it away from the blue carton, which kind of takes away from the effect (I shot this pics on my phone at Food Lion).
But then, I didn’t see them and think “Gamecocks.” If I had, I would have been less enchanted. As y’all know, I take a dim view of anything that encourages kids to drink — something I know that not all of y’all agree with me on.
Maybe this suggests a new standard for legal drinking: How about if we pass a law that if you’re impressionable enough to buy a beer because it has your school colors on it, you should be banned from drinking forever?
Anyway, what do y’all think?
I’m not usually one for the whole “news of the weird” shtick, and I leave “Dumb Crook News” to John Boy and Billy. But this is wild enough to pass on, for what it’s worth:
They apparently thought they could hide their identities by spray-painting their faces gold, Richland County sheriff’s deputies said.
But one of two men who targeted the Sprint PCS store on Sparkleberry Lane last month died a short time after the armed robbery — possibly from the paint fumes, deputies said Friday.
Deputies identified the dead robber as Thomas James, 23. His last known address was in Columbia, court records show.
“It’s the damnedest one I’ve ever had in 34 years,” Sheriff Leon Lott told The State on Friday. “We’ve had robbers paint their faces before, but we’ve never had one die as a result of that.”
Didn’t these guys ever see “Goldfinger?” Did they not learn anything? And no, we’re not talking “skin suffocation” here, but still one should have gotten the message, Not a good idea.
The sheriff isn’t sure whether the paint job was intentionally, or incidental as a result of a “huffing” session. I wonder whether the victim of this insanity knew himself which it was. What a waste of life; what insanity.
Not really.
That’s just the punch line that my old buddy Michael Feldman is using on current promo spots for his show on public radio.
I pass it on because it provides a measurement of just how much of an automatic laughingstock we have become in South Carolina, thanks to the tireless exertions of our governor. You don’t even have to say “Mark Sanford.” You can just refer to him indirectly, at a step or two remove (in this case, the only connection is that he was until recently a fellow member of the same group to which ex-Gov. Palin still belongs, which I suppose we could describe as “marginal people whom the national media have inexplicably decided to regard as serious contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination”), and still get a laugh.
So this is what we’ve come to.
Most of the reactions to my blog’s new look have been positive — so thanks to all for that (and I’m still working on it, so I hope you’ll like it even more as we go forward).
But the new look has caused a number of you to question the tagline that I’ve used for the last few years (you can still see it here on my old blog): “You’re either on the blog or you’re off the blog.” It was, of course, a paraphrase of what Ken Kesey told the Merry Pranksters: “You’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.” More specifically, here’s the full quote from when he spelled out the policy — which was a reference to state of mind as well as physical location:
There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you’re off the bus in the first place — then it won’t make a damn.
Anyway, for years, I’ve thought about whether to stick with that, or go with the one you see up there now: “All the News that Gives You Fits.” This is a play on the Rolling Stone slogan (“All the News That Fits“), which is in turn a play on The New York Times‘ “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
It’s also the official motto of The Status Quo, the fictional newspaper featured in a comic strip that Robert Ariail and I planned, but never fully executed, back in the 90s. The strip was set in the capital of a small Southern state, and it also featured:
Anyway, you get the idea. A mix of political satire and Mayberry-style downhome gags. Sometimes the strip would consist merely of dialogue among boarding house residents settin’ on the porch shelling peas for Auntie Bellum, a la Andy and Barney. Other story lines were less down-to-earth — such as a recurring thing where Sugarboy gets taken up into the spaceship by aliens who take the form of two-headed Elvis impersonators. Anyway, the whole thing was too Southern for the folks in New York who Robert tried to sell it to. So we set the project aside.
I’m sufficiently fond of some of the characters and situations that, since the strip didn’t fly, I now and then think of writing a novel based on the characters — less cartoony, of course, more serious, but some of the same characters and situations. Now that I’m unemployed, I’m thinking more and more about that novel…
All of which makes me happy to turn to The Status Quo for my new catchphrase, which — knowing the backstory as I do — at least makes me smile…
