REVISITING "ACTING TEACHER AS CULT LEADER"

I never know what's going to take off here or why. My recent post "ACTING TEACHER AS CULT LEADER" has generated a lot of traffic. Even though the main emphasis was about acting teachers and the psychological power they wield over their students, my references to the University of Delaware's graduate acting program and its involvement with Landmark Education's Forum seminar set off some kind of alarm device with anti-cult activists. Apparently, none of them realized what's been close to common knowledge in the world of institutional theater for years: Delaware kids go to the Forum.

Anyway, a couple of these anti-cult sites (here and here) linked to the post, which somehow led to a Church of the SubGenius site linking to me as well. I am absolutely honored, by the way, that the cult of Slack, the devotees of Bob, have recognized me in this way.

Also, backtracking those sites scored for me a very nice French with subtitles documentary on the Landmark Forum (here)--it's definitely worth watching.

I got many more hits from who knows where, but I do know they came into the site through that post. Some of them were from Delaware, which worried me a bit, you know, lawsuits and such. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of angry Werner Earhard followers? Right, the Shadow knows, but he's not real.

I got some comments, too:

Ron,

Very interesting that Sanford Robbins who you said is on Landmark Education's Board of Directors requires all of his acting students to attend the controversial Landmark Forum course.

Currently, Landmark Education is a defendant in a civil wrongful death lawsuit out of Oklahoma. Do an internet search for Been v Weed and Landmark Education. The suit is for forty million dollars in damages.

Landmark Education has also been investigated three times by the United States Federal Department of Labor, and twice by the French Labour department. After a documentary aired in France to 1.5 million people (search "Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus"), the French Labour department said Landmark Education had to treat its volunteer unpaid laborers in the "assisting program" like employees. Within weeks, Landmark Education shut down their operations in France.

I doubt that Sandford Robbins' acting students know much of this history before deciding to register for their required "course" The Landmark Forum.

Yours,
lgattruth


I'm an LSU alum as well...I find this disturbing.
LSU Alum


Hey Ron,
As a recovering thespian, I really enjoyed your blog on Katselas, Hubbard and Erhard. Born into a family of eccentric blowhards, I started in theatre at six in thrall with a woman who held sway over several generations of aspiring actors on the Monterey Peninsula in the 60s thru the 90s. I loved each of the subsequent, flamboyant Drama Mama's that nurtured my dream to be a Grrrreat AC-tor (must be enunciated like Jon Lovitz). Then in the middle of a production of "Our Town" at UCSD, it suddenly occurred to me that The Theatre (with capital Ts) was full of shit and so was I. It was like a visceral slap, so forceful that I thought that everyone else must surely be able to see me for the big fake I felt like. I almost quit school right then and there, but ended up changing my major to advertising (I know, out of the frying pan and into the reactor core). Many years later I realize that what made me easy prey for The Theatre is what made me easy prey for the likes of Landmark, Deepak Chopra and other magical thinking hoo-hah . . . emotional neediness. It took a long time to realize that, and I wish I could have stayed in the theatre (lower case) armed with that self-realization, but without that insatiable thirst for attention and self-importance, the drive to succeed on stage was lost. I still dearly love the theatre, just from the other side of the proscenium. Thanks again for your thoughtful blog.
Artoo45

Fortunately, this last guy, at least, was more interested in the main thrust of my tirade, acting teachers. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm always happy for the attention and the hits. However, like I said, I fear I've accidentally stepped into somebody else's turf war. I mean, I am opposed to cults generally, although I recognize their right to exist as entities, but some of these organizations, like Scientology, for sure, play hardball--fortunately, as far as I can tell, none of those nuts give a shit about me at all.

Thank god, who may or may not exist.

I think it's best to let my old actor pal Lex, who actually went through the Delaware acting program, have the last word, which I solicited from him via myspace comments:

Werner Earhardt also had sex with a minor and that is one of the real reasons why he ain't here. To be quite honest, stupid young college kids going into acting school all secretly just want to be famous...no matter what they may say about love and passion for the theatre. They deserve to have their minds and egos toyed with. That's what you get for thinking you're going to make a living by avoiding having to do any real work and calling yourself an "artist" instead, when all you really are is just fucking lazy. That's what I think....Ron, since you asked.

PTTP. I'm not sure how involved with The Forum they are anymore. It's 12 years later now. But whilst I was there an anti-cult charge was made against us that some of us volunteered to testify at. But they were claiming such alarmist things against us that just weren't true...we were all hating life and gagging about how hard we had to work all the time, but they weren't doing the things to us that these people who we'd never seen or talked to were saying they were doing to us. Don't worry, University of Delaware or The Forum are not going to come after you.

Okay maybe they WILL come after you. I said that before I had read in depth that you mentioned Sandy and and all. For this particular subject, you might have wanted to ask me 'bout it since I was there and all. There is a new movie documentary called Transformation featuring Sandy and it's all about Earhardt. Did you see the clip of it on my page? Anyway, having said that, please come stick your finger in my pussy and jiggle it around a little....then sniff it.

That Lex, always talking about pussy. The clip to which he refers is here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From AOL's Newsbloggers:

Lesson of the Day: Do Not Help people in Distress

The Palacioses, of Chicago, claim the woman approached their car, parked outside Manolo’s restaurant, leaned in to the passenger side where Rocio was sitting and asked Erasmo if he wanted oral sex for $20 or sex for $25.

The couple laughed, realizing this wasn’t a woman in distress after all.

But within seconds, Chicago police swarmed the family car, hauling Erasmo Palacios out in handcuffs. He was charged with solicitation of a prostitute ...

Click here for the rest.

And their kids were in the back seat. The Newsbloggers post goes on to point out that, even though charges were eventually dropped, they still had to pay four grand to get their car out of impound. Obviously, this sucks big time, and my bet is that this has something to do with the ethnicity of the family in the car. That is, they were busted for driving too near a prostitute while Hispanic.

In addition to the hyper-masculine, self-righteous, us-and-them aspects of the dangerous police culture about which I've written repeatedly here at Real Art, is racism. That is, cops usually want to bust people of color well before they consider busting white people. For whatever reasons, this is so embedded in cop culture that you find both black and Hispanic cops falling into it themselves.

We've really got to rethink the entire concept of policing.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

HERE COMES HUMBERTO
Baytown prepares for flooding, storm damage

From the Houston Chronicle Tropical Weather Blog:

As Tropical Storm Humberto approaches, Baytown officials have announced that they are taking precautions such as cleaning grates over storm drains and keeping city vehicle gas tanks full.

Once the storm hits, Baytown police officers will report any problems from storm water, downed trees, fallen power lines or other situations to the Public Works Department, according to a news release the city issued at about 3:45 p.m.

Click here for more.

It's looking like my old stomping grounds in Baytown are going to be spared a direct hit, but I'm betting that they'll get buttloads of rain, come what may. As all Houston area residents have known since Allison back in 2001, tropical storms are nothing to fuck around with.

I've trashed Baytown a lot these last few years here at Real Art, but it is impossible to spend six years working somewhere without developing some affection for it, no matter how fucked up it is. I still have many friends there, and don't tell anybody, but from time to time I miss the old shit hole.

So my agnostic prayers go out to a god who may or may not be there, asking him, her, or it to take it easy on the old Dirty Bay.



Stay dry, guys.

UPDATE: It's a category 1 hurricane now.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Ft. Bend teacher on leave over sex video claims

From the Houston Chronicle:

Fort Bend Independent School District officials have placed a Clements High School teacher on administrative leave after allegations surfaced that he took part in sexually-oriented videos.

And

The videos are displayed on a Web site depicting scantily clad and nude men wresting with each other.

Click here for the rest.

After a flurry of neo-puritan hits on individuals last year, I had hoped that this shit was dying down a bit. But no. They're back. This kind of shit is particularly insidious because rather than going after institutions or works of literature, these cases are about blackballing regular ordinary people. That is, in all these cases they're trying to destroy people's careers because of disapproval of how they live their personal lives.

It doesn't matter if a teacher dances nude in her spare time; it's her own life, and it has nothing to do with what she does on the job. If a cop's wife wants to post topless pictures of herself on the internet, it's just fine; it has nothing to do with her husband's work. It just doesn't matter if parents or "concerned citizens" are uncomfortable with it all. Too fucking bad.

For that matter, if I had children, I wouldn't want them having anything to do with Christians or Republicans, what with the way they're always pushing their warped views, but as long as they're doing their jobs, which means keeping their personal lives personal, I don't really have any complaint. Hell, they can even talk with students about these topics in the abstract, as long as they're balanced. It just doesn't matter. And it doesn't even matter if somebody goes snooping and figures out that, say, a teacher is a Scientologist, or attends Landmark Forum sessions. As long as it doesn't affect the job, no wrong has been done.

What's wrong is fucking over people with whom you disagree. Argue with them. Debate them. Persuade people that your point of view is correct.

But don't try to bury them.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FAREWELL JOE ZAWINUL

From Wikipedia:

Classically trained at the Vienna Conservatoire, Zawinul played in various broadcasting and studio bands before emigrating to the U.S. in 1959, where he played with Maynard Ferguson and Dinah Washington before joining the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1961.

During his nine-year stint on keyboards with Adderley, Zawinul wrote the hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." He also composed "Walk Tall" and "Country Preacher," the latter a tribute to U.S. Civil Rights Movement leader Rev. Jesse Jackson. In this title cut to the quintet's popular 1969 album release, Austrian-born Zawinul demonstrated a sophisticated and intimate understanding of the African/African-American concept of cool, of motion and interval. When "Country Preacher" debuted at a live recording session in Chicago at Jackson's Operation Breadbasket, it elicited enthusiastic cheers of immediate recognition from the mostly African-American audience.

In the late 1960s, Zawinul recorded with Miles Davis's studio band and helped create the sound of the new Jazz fusion. Among others he played on the album In a Silent Way, the title track of which he composed, and the landmark album Bitches Brew, for which he contributed the twenty-minute track, "Pharaoh's Dance", which occupied the whole of side one. Zawinul is known to have played live with Davis only once, on July 10, 1991, shortly before Davis' death.

Zawinul's biggest commercial success came from his composition "Birdland", a 6-minute opus featured on Weather Report's 1977 album Heavy Weather. "Birdland" is one of the most recognizable jazz pieces of the 1970s, covered by many prominent artists from The Manhattan Transfer to Maynard Ferguson. Even Weather Report's version received significant mainstream radio airplay — unusual for them — and served to convert many new fans to music which they may never have heard otherwise.

Zawinul was hospitalized in his native Vienna on August 7, 2007, only one week after concluding a six-week tour in Hungary. He died of cancer on September 11, 2007, aged 75.

Click here for the rest.

Zawinul first came to my attention my junior year in high school, back in 1984, when I bought Weather Report's album Heavy Weather. That was the first time I heard "Birdland" and it blew me away. Over the years I continued to encounter him and his influence. He was on Miles Davis' In a Silent Way album with Herbie Hancock and other greats. Brian Eno named a song "Zawinul Lava." He wrote one of the grooviest jazz tunes of the 60s for Cannonball Adderly, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy." And of course, I ended up buying lots of other Weather Report records.

He really was one of the greats, and more specifically to me, one of my greats, with me throughout all my years as a jazz fan. It's weird. Because Zawinul came on the US jazz scene decades after other legends like Ellington, Armstrong, Parker, and others, I always thought of him as one of the young guys. But he was 75.

I guess that means I'm no longer one of the young guys.

Here's a live performance of "Birdland" with Jaco Pastorius on bass.



Farewell Joe Zawinul.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Amid MTV debacle, harshest words are saved for Britney's bod

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The consensus is clear: Britney Spears performed like she was sloshing blindfolded through mud at MTV's Video Music Awards. No one disputes that the troubled pop princess royally mangled her much-heralded comeback.

But what about the nastiest comments of all — those about her body? "Lard and Clear," read Monday's headline in the New York Post. "The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot," wrote E! Online. And so on.

Was it fair? Did Spears, lest we forget a mother of two, deserve to be held up against the standard of her once fantastically toned abs, sculpted by sessions of 1,000 tummy crunches? Or was she asking for it by choosing that unforgiving black-sequined bikini?

More profoundly, in an age where skinny models and skeletal actresses are under scrutiny for the message they're sending young girls, what does it say that we're excoriating a young woman for a little thickness in her middle?

Click here for more.

Well, I'm no Britney fan, but she seems to be something of a lightning rod lately for people's opinions of what an American woman's supposed to be, so let's take a look at what all the fuss is about:



I don't give a fuck what anybody says: That's not fat.

Actually, as far as my own aesthetic is concerned, I've never seen Britney looking so hot. For years, I've stood in perplexed disgust as the whole skinny-as-concentration-camp look took hold in American pop culture. I mean, I have mixed feelings about the corporate media's treatment of women as sex objects in general--like most American men, I love looking at hot babes, but I also understand that the constant and endless stream of the sexually objectified female image dominates cultural attitudes; that is, the whole thing keeps women down. But this objectification has taken an extraordinarily dangerous turn, changing men's sexual tastes while urging young women to behave in a clearly unhealthy fashion, and driving into anxiety and depression those who resist.

It's sick. And I just don't understand why so many men have bought into the look. It's as though they're all turned on by Bruce Lee now. Anyway, to be fair to critics, Britney's performance at the MTV awards show, rather than her now-curvaceous body, was indeed a disaster. She looked like a deer in the headlights, frozen with stage fright: as a performer myself, I've been there, and I sympathize. I really feel sorry for her.

I'm sure she'll turn it around. Maybe some more therapy is in order.

But not a diet, and not more intense work outs. She's fucking hot, and the entertainment hags who bashed her can just eat me.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

9/11'S UPSIDE

So happy anniversary.

Yes, yes, of course 9/11 was horrible. What came after it, from GOP fear mongering and power grabbing, to the terrorist-creating invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was also horrible. A year or two ago it would have never occurred to me that the attacks of September 11th, 2001 would ever produce anything good.

I was wrong.

It probably would have happened eventually, but 9/11 so emboldened the forces of conservatism in this country that they shot their wad. That is, they went for it all, with weird economic ideology, barbaric and superstitious social policy, harsh and inflammatory over-the-top rhetoric, and just a whole lot of violent hatred. American conservatism, believing that 9/11 created their moment, revealed themselves for what they are: opposers of the American way. Now that they know, the American people won't have any of it.

So 9/11 was the beginning of the end of American conservatism. Or, at least, this late 20th century manifestation of it.

And that's 9/11's upside.




$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

ACTING TEACHER AS CULT LEADER

From the UK's Telegraph courtesy of AlterNet:

Friends, thetans, countrymen

Put the word on the street that you're writing about Milton Katselas, and every student he has ever had will want to tell you about the best acting teacher in the world, the man who took them from fresh-faced, straight-off-the-plane ingenues looking for work - commercials; God willing, someday a sitcom - to being real artists.

They'll tell you about how he saved them from the failings of the artist's personality, like narcissism and drug addiction, and set them aright. They were born with the talent, but he gave them careers.

But there are dissenters too. Students have left Katselas's school, the Beverly Hills Playhouse, because of the unspoken pressure they felt to join the Church of Scientology, the controversial religion founded by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Nobody ever told them to join, but they could not ignore how many of their classmates and teachers were Scientologists. Or the fact that Milton Katselas, the master himself, credits Hubbard for much of his success. And the assorted weirdness: one of Katselas's students has a day job at the Scientology Celebrity Centre, where Tom Cruise and John Travolta study, and one zealous television star left the Playhouse because she said she believed that Katselas wasn't committed enough to Scientology.

Click here for the rest.

I've been thinking about this subject as far back as high school. From time to time I would meet or see theater teachers from other schools at speech tournaments or one act play contests. Some of these people were simply amazing. And I don't mean their teaching ability, which I never really was able to experience. I mean the people themselves. Enormous personalities that entered the room sometimes minutes before their bodies. Extreme devotion from their fawning students. High priests who had secret knowledge of how to create great theater, and who possessed great influence in the high school drama world because others respected and/or wanted such knowledge for themselves. These education theater gods could and did fuck with people's heads.

It used to excite me. Now it just sickens me. Especially after teaching high school theater myself for six years and coming to understand that such behavior is at worst abusive, at best fucking stupid. And especially after realizing that nobody who teaches high school is that important.

But it's not surprising that such charades and charlatans continue to speckle the high school theater landscape in the Lone Star State. All these would-be shamans model themselves after the real deal. Yeah, that's right. You see the same kind of behavior from many acting teachers at both the university level and professionally. I suppose it all makes a kind of sense. The theater attracts enormous egos; the theater is self-important. Of course you're going to find numerous blowhards, both legitimate and illegitimate, coming into positions of power.

And teaching acting is a position of power. Acting, especially at its highest levels of complexity, is vague and esoteric. Everybody gets it when they see a riveting performance; everybody knows when acting is great. What's virtually impossible is to explain why it's great. That makes acting an extraordinarily difficult subject to learn--indeed, my time at LSU working on my master's degree was one of the biggest challenges of my life. I'm very lucky that my teachers were relatively meek and humane in working with me and my classmates--I mean, there were touches of what I'm talking about, but not much. And that's a great thing: acting teachers necessarily toy with their students' psyches. And, to be successful, students must willingly welcome this. It's very tempting to abuse such power.

It's also very easy to get away with mind-fucking acting students, too. If there are ever any complaints, any appeals to higher authority, they are easily dismissed by statements such as "Oh, well, you see, this is my art; it's necessary to do this for my art." Like I said, acting is esoteric, and it's easy to spew bullshit successfully.

Anyway, as good as this guy Katselas is, I'd venture to say that he's walking a fine line. He says he doesn't proselytize, but when you work with students as intimately as an acting teacher must, higher standards are needed. Simple suggestions, offhanded implications, examples, all these things become tantamount to commands in the high stakes autocratic environment of the acting studio. If people are saying there is pressure at Katselas' school to join the Scientologists, it's probably true, even if their master doesn't think so himself.

And this is extraordinarily bad because, you know, the Scientologists are insane hardcore assholes.

It's funny actually. The University of Delaware hosts the well respected Professional Theater Training Program: its Colonel Kurtz figure, renowned acting teacher Sanford Robbins (scroll down for bio here), requires all of his acting students to attend Landmark Education's "The Forum," a series of cult-like psychologically and physically grueling self-help sessions. Indeed, Robbins is apparently on LE's board of directors, which creates an obvious financial conflict of interest that seems to bother no one in Delaware. This situation has the same potential for abuse as the one with Katselas, but it's probably worse, because attending The Forum is a requirement, not a suggestion, and the Hollywood teacher, unlike Robbins, profits in no way from his students exploring Scientology.

Here's the funny part. Landmark Education is what was once called "est" in the 1970s. Est was created by a snake oil salesman named Werner Earhard who literally stole many of his ideas and "educational" practices from Scientology when he was a member in the late 60s. Scientology, of course, hates him, and has responded in typical fashion for some three decades now, suing and harassing him so much that he fled the country in the mid 90s, fearing assassins.

Well, that's what he gets. Now if we can only find somebody to run the Scientologists out.

At any rate, crap like this, along with lots of other crap, is why I'm very disenchanted with institutional theater right now. Bullshit is bullshit, and it doesn't matter that acting is so mysterious. Nobody is my or your superior. American theater really needs to get out of this mire of superstitious condescension.

Because, really, nobody else gives a shit.

UPDATE: Here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Book reveals Bush's bouts of crying, ghostly visions

From Canada's National Post courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe:

George W. Bush, the U.S. President, is prone to bouts of crying caused by the stress of his job and claims to have seen ghosts emerge from the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, according to a new book on his presidency.

In a series of remarkably candid admissions by a sitting president, Mr. Bush confides to author John Draper he has been "sustained by the discipline of the faithful experience" during the most difficult days of his presidency.

"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot," Mr. Bush says in Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, which was released to U.S. bookstores yesterday. "I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president. I'll shed some tomorrow."

Click here for the rest.

So I decided a few days ago that Bush believing in Saddam's non-existent WMDs as late as April of last year made him delusional. Turns out I was more right than I thought. The idiot thinks he's fucking seen ghosts. He thinks he's seen ghosts. And he cries a lot.

Ladies and gentlemen, our President isn't simply stupid: he's nuttier than a fruitcake. And he has access to nuclear weapons. We're lucky things aren't any worse than they actually are.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

PIRATE JENNY

Probably my favorite musical is the vaguely socialist, off kilter, utterly non-Broadway Brecht and Weill show The Three Penny Opera. Great characters, great story, great music. Indeed, some of the songs have become jazz standards, "Mack the Knife" being the most well known. I've even performed "Song of the Heavy Cannon" myself at a few open mike nights. It's all great.

A couple of days ago over at VideoSift I ran across a fantastic performance of one of the show's highlights "Pirate Jenny." In German. Sung by the only woman to every rival Marlene Dietrich's Teutonic coolness, Hildegard Knef.

Here, check it out:


via videosift.com

I'm particularly fond of the song because it's lyrics deal with the subject of working class rebellion: Jenny, a prostitute who scrubs floors, fantasizes about a pirate ship coming and laying her town to waste, elevating her to the superior status she deserves.

Here are the English lyrics:

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town, in this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"
I'll tell you.

There's a ship, the black freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in.

You gentlemen can say, "Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What's wrong with you! Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I'm counting your heads
as I'm making the beds
Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody! Nobody!
Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship, the black freighter
turns around in the harbor
shootin' guns from her bow

Now you gentlemen can wipe that smile off your face
'Cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frickin' place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?"
Yes, that's what you say.
"Why do they spare that one?"
All the night through, through the noise and to-do
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair.

And the ship, the black freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air

By noontime the dock is a-swarmin' with men
comin' out from the ghostly freighter
They move in the shadows where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people and they're bringin' em to me
askin' me, "Kill them NOW, or LATER?"
Askin' ME! "Kill them now, or later?"
Noon by the clock
and so still by the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
And in that quiet of death
I'll say, "Right now.
Right now!"
Then they'll pile up the bodies
And I'll say,
"That'll learn ya!"

And the ship, the black freighter
disappears out to sea
And on it is me.

God, I love this song! And man, hearing it sung in German is just too fucking cool.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Lester, Williams each score twice as LSU bulldozes Virginia Tech

From the AP via ESPN:

LSU didn't need any small-school sacrificial lambs on its early season schedule to post a couple of gaudy blowouts. The tenacious Tigers made Virginia Tech look like a pushover instead of the ninth-ranked team in the nation.

Keiland Williams ran for 126 yards and two touchdowns and quarterback Matt Flynn led LSU to scores on four of its first five possessions as the Tigers cruised to a 48-7 victory over the uncharacteristically hapless Hokies on Saturday night.

The performance was so overwhelming that head coach Les Miles spent his opening comments trying to dissuade people from saying things that might go to his players' heads.

"You can save the accolades. We've just won two games and we have a lot of football to play," Miles said. "Don't make too much of this. It's all about what we have to get done in the future."

Click here for the rest.

I made the mistake of turning on the radio too soon after the game: I think I was hearing the same motherfuckers who used to piss me off in Baton Rouge. Goddamned local sports-talk idiots were continuing to totally dis LSU's head coach, "Well the jury's still out on Les Miles, but the Tigers have a whole lotta talent, and that's what won tonight." What the fuck do these people want? The Hokies are a great team and we routed them. This doesn't have anything to do with actual analysis anymore. This can no longer be compared to Barry Switzer winning the Super Bowl with Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys. This is Miles' fourth season at LSU; it is no longer Nick Sabin's team.

And what a team it is! They looked like an NFL team out there tonight, and a good NFL team at that, totally dominant. I missed most of the first half because I was busy watching Texas get its shit together against TCU, but the second half was glorious. I bet the Tigers win the big one this year.

And I bet they win it outright, unlike the split one Sabin shared with USC. Geaux Tigers!


LSU running back Keiland Williams (5) runs past Virginia Tech's Victor Harris (1) on his way to a 67-yard touchdown in the first half of their college football game in Baton Rouge, La., Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(via ESPN)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
McCoy, Texas regain composure to handle TCU

From the AP via ESPN:

Colt McCoy passed for a touchdown, set up another with a long run, and a dominant performance by its defense carried No. 7 Texas to a 34-13 win Saturday night, turning TCU's hopes for an upset into a second-half disaster.

"We knew they would come in and try to make it their house," Texas linebacker Roddrick Muckelroy said. "We showed them it was our house."

McCoy, who threw two first-half interceptions, including one that was returned for a touchdown, cut a 10-0 TCU lead in the third quarter with a 33-yard strike to Nate Jones. His 23-yard scramble early in the fourth set up the go-ahead score before the Longhorns started piling it on.

"You didn't want to touch me in the second quarter, I had some bad luck there," McCoy said. "I had Bible study the other morning (and) you're going to get tested. You get tested, then you're blessed."

Click here for the rest.

Yeah whatever, Colt; God helped you win because he likes the Longhorns more than the Horned Frogs.

I think it's more likely that the offense got its shit together finally during halftime when they saw that TCU was there to play some football. It's about fucking time. The pollsters were very kind to Texas after their scare against Arkansas State last weekend, dropping them only three slots to seventh. During the first half of tonight's game, I was really thinking that my predictions about a shitty season for the Longhorns, which earned me all kinds of ire from my fellow Texas Ex Matt in Real Art comments, were becoming all too true. The second half made me feel a lot better.

We might even have a chance at beating the damnable Sooners this year, which is a damned good thing because Oklahoma's looking pretty great right now.

Okay, cool. Let's keep it together guys. Hook 'em 'Horns!


TCU quarterback Andy Dalton, right, is separated from the ball on a pass-attempt by Texas linebacker Jared Norton, left, during fourth quarter action in their college football game Saturday, Sept. 8, 2007, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)(via ESPN)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Minister arrested for child porn says it was research

From the Houston Chronicle:

A minister who was arrested on child pornography charges told authorities he was doing research to get some Web sites shut down, police said.

Henry Edgington, 63, of Chalk Bluff, was charged with seven counts of child pornography possession. He was released from the McLennan County Jail on $70,000 bond Thursday after he surrendered to police.

Click here for the rest.

Apparently, this minister is using the Pete Townshend defense, claiming he was doing "research." Unlike Townshend, however, who never actually downloaded any child pornography, and really was doing research, Edgington was found with shitloads of the stuff. He's probably going to prison for a long time.

As longtime Real Art readers know, I do a lot of thinking about Christianity and its meaning in contemporary American life. The fact that these "family values" leaders are falling like rain, coupled with the idea that most American Christians are religious more for social reasons than anything else, is steadily leading me to conclude that Christianity is now irrelevant as an actual moral force in our country. I mean, sure, it plays a role in politics, but that's more about power than doing what's good and right. And yeah, I'll be the first to admit that there are many individuals who do take Christian morality very seriously, my mother for instance. But the popular notion that this is a Christian nation? Well, that's just a sick and twisted joke.

In America today, Christianity is tribalism, plain and simple, good for nothing but keeping Americans at odds with each other. As the great President Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FRIDAY CAT BLOGGING

Sammy



Frankie



Be sure to check out Modulator's Friday Ark for more cat blogging!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Hugh Hefner Uncut

From Details via AlterNet:

Q: For many of us who grew up in the eighties, the seventies was the party we missed.
A: The “sexual revolution” came to a rather abrupt halt in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan and the Christian right. We live in a technologically remarkably sophisticated world, but we deal with it like superstitious savages.

Q: We live in a schizophrenic time.
A: Yes . . . We have an administration that is at least as conservative as Reagan’s. Remember that America was founded by Puritans who left England to escape religious persecution and promptly started persecuting people who didn’t agree with them. That schizophrenic attitude is as American as apple pie. That’s who we are. I’m a 10th-generation descendant of William Bradford, who came over on the Mayflower, one of the original puritanical forefathers. My parents were puritan, and the creation of Playboy and my life are a response to that repression.

Click here for the rest.

Well, there's more to the end of the sexual revolution than Hef is admitting. The coming of AIDS was the watershed event that gave secular credibility to the forces of neo-puritanism, and the Reagan administration used its vast governmental resources to help out the new Christian right wing, who faithfully showed up to vote for Republicans on election day. I also think that a new cynicism born of capitalist sexual exploitation soured many Americans to the concept of sexual freedom, capitalist exploitation that was greatly aided in its early years by Hef himself.

But the old man is essentially correct. America really is in the grips of superstitious savagery, which comes all the way down from some of North America's first European settlers.

It's a shame that Playboy is now really only just another men's magazine. At one point, it was something of an intellectual beacon for the cause of sexual freedom. Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" series of essays back in the 60s, of which I've only read a bit, was an extended, well reasoned critique of what we would today call "family values." Because the magazine was fairly mainstream at that point, many, many Americans were influenced by it in what I believe is a fairly sex-positive way. There is nothing coming even close to that now. Today's girlie magazines are all about arousal. There is simply no real philosophical counter to the forces of religious fundamentalism that is as widely known.

And that's a damned shame.



$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Jesus gets company on Slidell courthouse wall

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Confucius, Hammurabi and more than a dozen other historical figures have joined Jesus Christ on the wall at Slidell City Court in a move that officials believe will reassure visitors that it has always been the court's intent to showcase the people who helped to create the laws of civilized nations.

Officials mounted the additional portraits Friday, one week before a scheduled court hearing at which the Louisiana ACLU will ask a federal judge to remove the Jesus portrait.

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the court, the city of Slidell, St. Tammany Parish and Judge Jim Lamz, saying the portrait and lettering underneath that says, "To know peace, obey these laws," violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a mandate calling for the separation of church and state.

"The idea here is there never has been an ulterior motive, as is alleged by the ACLU," said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization that is representing the court. "They wanted to erect an artistic display to emphasize the importance of following the law to maintain a peaceful society. The expanded display conveys that same message in a way that is unmistakable."

Click here for the rest.

You know, Johnson's probably right with his no "ulterior motive" assertion. That is, for many of the faithful, especially down here in the deep South, Jesus is a towering cultural symbol, representing far more than than salvation, which means that, symbolically, there is very little difference between the law, morality, and Christianity. I get that. They didn't mean anything bad by putting up a picture of Jesus and only Jesus on government property. But that doesn't get them off the hook. Furthermore, this is a courthouse we're talking about, full of people with law degrees. They should know better.

It's actually pretty simple. The first amendment to the Constitution plainly says that the government will not establish a state religion. Numerous Supreme Court cases have made it clear that "establish" also means favoritism. No government entity can favor any one religion over another, or over secular points of view for that matter. That's why students can pray or not pray in school, but teachers and administrators cannot lead or require such prayer non-prayer. It's why depictions of Christian icons are only acceptable on government property when it is clear that they are not intended to favor Christianity, as with this new iconographic context at the Slidell Courthouse. Simple. Even a televangelist can understand.

So the ACLU's lawsuit continues, but they're going to have a tougher time winning, what with Jesus now being depicted among both secular lawgivers and those from other religions. But it's just as well. Apparently, America desperately needs the ACLU to keep these people honest. I'm sure the civil rights organization will keep firing away.

Just as I'm sure that god fearing Christians with no "ulterior motive" will keep pushing the envelope.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Bush ‘Still Believed Saddam Possessed WMD’ In April 2006

From Think Progress courtesy of Eschaton:

In Oct. 2004, President Bush finally admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction: “Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.”

Yet according to former White House chief of staff Andy Card, this statement was just rhetoric. In his new book on Bush, Robert Draper writes that the President continued to privately insist through April 2006 that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction...

More here.

Wow. That's really disturbing. I mean, on the one hand it tells us once and for all that Bush, at least, didn't actually lie about Saddam's supposed WMD--it's hard to know where Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others' minds were at the time, but we know that naive little Bush boy really believed all the hype. I wonder if he still believes in Santa Claus? And I'm only partially kidding with that: if the President continued to believe when it was obvious to everybody that the justification for the invasion was a sham, then he must be delusional.

And having a delusional man occupy the most powerful position on the planet is really fucking scary.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

HANOI JANE ON HILLARY:
"ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina"

From AlterNet, an essay by a centrist Dem who's sick of all the Hillary bashing:

Last June actress and inveterate antiwar activist Jane Fonda soared to the top of a club that boasts millions of charter members. It's the hate Hillary Clinton club. Fonda called Clinton a "ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina." The big, crude, tasteless dig at Hillary wallows in the name calling gutter. The most hardline, shrill bash-Hillary Christian fundamentalists haven't stooped that low in name calling. And they've said and continue to say some pretty nasty things about her.

Fonda's quote has been picked up and run with by a legion of conservative website yakkers and bloggers. They have virtually made Fonda a perverse kind of heroine. Her silly broadside loaded up their ammo bandolier and they are firing away at Clinton. The sudden Fonda conservative love fest has stood politics and personalities on its head because Fonda for decades has bordered on being a virtual anti-Christ to many ultra-right conservatives. But Fonda's quote (not her) was redeeming and again tells much about the near clinical Hillary Hatred that those that style themselves progressives and even liberal Democrats froth with.

And

Clinton's sins are A. She initially backed the Iraq war and has refused to apologize for it ala Edwards or claimed ala Obama that he was a closet anti-Bush, anti-war guy all along; B. She is a clubby good ole girl, deal-making, centrist, Democrat who doesn't shout loudly enough about feminism; C. Is anointed by the big money, Democratic Party shot callers; and D. Is married to womanizer, Bill.

Click here for the rest.

Strictly speaking, Fonda was quite correct to say that Hillary has a vagina and wears skirts, meaning she's a woman. I think the actual name-calling consisted of branding her "ventriloquist for the patriarchy." But the essay writer kind of blends that standard feminist criticism with the vagina reference and decides it's all very crude. Well maybe, if you think referring to sex organs is always crude, but I think this guy is smarting more over the patriarchy thing. Kind of hits a bit too close to home. That is, Hillary is a ventriloquist for the patriarchy, or at least for the most muscular arm of it, corporate America.

This guy has no understanding of why so many liberals and progressives are just grossed out by the former First Lady. The excerpted criticisms above of Mrs. Clinton are soft-pedaled and warped. It's not that she hasn't apologized for her Iraq war support: it's that she never really believed all that WMD shit to begin with and very calculatingly supported it anyway in order to shore up her security credentials; that is, she has no problem with lying for political reasons. It's not that she's a deal making centrist: it's that she's a conservative corporatist. It's not that she's anointed by big money: it's that she's a conservative corporatist. It's not that Bill's a womanizer: it's that he's a conservative corporatist. In short, Hillary comes out of that 90s Democratic strategy circle, the Democratic Leadership Council, that unilaterally decided that the best way to win office in the Republican era was to swerve to the right. To date, the only success they appear to have had with that plan is getting Bill elected, and I don't even think that had anything to do with trying to out Republican the Republicans; Bill Clinton is simply the most gifted American politician of the last fifty years, and that's what got him in and then kept him there. In other words, the DLC's ideas are bad, and they're ideologically turning the party away from its liberal roots.

It's right to hate Hillary because she's death to liberalism. Fuck her. Fonda really should have gone for it and simply called her a great big stinky vagina. She'd have been right about that, too.


Hanoi Jane frolics on an NVA anti-aircraft gun during the Vietnam War

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

When the Levees Broke

From Wikipedia:

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary film directed by Spike Lee about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana due to the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. The film runs for 4 hours, and premiered at the New Orleans Arena on August 16, 2006. The television premiere aired in two parts on August 21 and 22, 2006 on HBO. The film was shown in its entirety on August 29, 2006, the one-year anniversary of Katrina's landfall. It has been described by an HBO executive as "one of the most important films HBO has ever made."

The documentary was also screened at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31 and September 1, 2006. It won the Orizzonti Documentary Prize and one of two FIPRESCI awards. In addition it was shown at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival on September 15 and September 16, 2006. On July 19, 2007, it was nominated for five Emmys.

The title is a reference to the blues tune "When the Levee Breaks", by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie (later repopularized by Led Zeppelin) about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The film's original score is by Terence Blanchard, a New Orleans-born trumpeter who also appears in the film with his mother and grandmother as they return to their flooded home.

The documentary consists largely of news footage and still photos of Katrina and its aftermath interspersed with interviews. Interviewees throughout the film include politicians, journalists, historians, engineers, and many people from various parts of New Orleans and the surrounding areas who give first hand accounts of their experiences with the levee failures and the aftermath.

More here.

Okay, so I haven't seen this yet, mainly because I don't have HBO, but I plan on watching as much as I can tonight. I asked for it for Christmas, but my family's pretty right-wing which is probably why it didn't end up in my stocking. And yeah, I expect it to be very much to the left. After all, Spike Lee directed it, and he's never been one to shy away from political confrontation with the forces of racism or conservatism. I also expect it to be depressing.

I am sure, however, that it will be powerful and moving. You should watch it too:


From YouTube via VideoSift

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

GREAT SONGS REPUBLICANS NEED TO HEAR
Jeannie C. Riley: Harper Valley PTA

From YouTube courtesy of VideoSift:



This song is fucking great whatever your politics are. The slide guitar work here is just fantastic, and Riley's vocal is as good as she is beautiful--I've always been a sucker for the big 60s bouffant hairspray look, and she wears it well.

Here are the lyrics:

I wanna tell you all the story bout the Harper Valley widow wife
Who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High
Well her daughter came home one afternoon and didn't even stop to play
And she said mom I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA
Well the note said Mrs Johnson you're wearin' your dresses way too high
It's reported you've been drinkin' and a runnin' round with men and goin' wild
And we don't believe you oughta be a bringin' up your little girl this way
And it was signed by the secretary Harper Valley PTA
Well it happened that the PTA was gonna meet that very afternoon
And they were sure surprised when Mrs Johnson wore her miniskirt into the room
And as she walked up to the blackboard I can still recall the words she had to say
She said I'd like to address this meeting of the Harper Valley PTA
Well there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there and seven times he asked me for a date
And Mrs Taylor sure seems to use a lotta ice whenever he's away
And Mr Baker can you tell us why your secretary had to leave this town
And shouldn't widow Jones be told to keep
Her window shades all pulled completely down
Well Mr Harper couldn't be here cause he stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again
And if you smell Shirley Thompson's breath you'll find she's had a little nip of gin
And THEN you have the nerve to tell me you think that as a mother I'm not fit
Well this is just a little Peyton Place and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites
No I wouldn't put you on because it really did it happened just this way
The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA
The day my mama socked it to the Harper Valley PTA

Right on!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Legendary Beat Generation Bookseller and Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books on the 50th Anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road", Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and Poetry As Insurgent Art

From Democracy Now:

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Well, it all came out at once. And another case that if I had died shortly thereafter -- I wrote it when I was in my mid-thirties. That would probably be considered my best book, and it’s as I was saying before, the best poetry is written when one is fairly young. To me now, it seems that the mid-thirties as being -- is very young. But --

AMY GOODMAN: Why is it, then? I mean, you’ve got the wisdom of a lifetime now.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Well, you haven’t have time to be acclimated or acclimated in the worst ways by modern industrial corporate monoculture, for instance, or American consumer society, which the way American consumer society is worked out, it seems to me the suburbs of America are the great American death.

You know, I’d like to read one poem that I just wrote. I really want to get this out.

AMY GOODMAN: Read.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Especially since Khalil Gibran has been in the news lately, including yesterday or the day before on your program. “Pity the Nation,” after Khalil Gibran.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Click here to read, watch, or listen to the rest.


"...it seems to me the suburbs of America are the great American death."

That's probably the best quote I've heard in the last five years or so. As many Real Art readers know, I'm a product of the American suburbs myself, and have spent the last twenty years or so trying to eradicate their influence on the person I am. It's sad really: even though I explicitly reject the consumerist, materialistic, vacuous, and selfish values of neighborhoods like the one that produced me, I will probably never be able to shake off entirely the dark shadow they've cast over me. That is, even rejecting the suburbs means I have a relationship with them.

Anyway, no real commentary from me on the Ferlinghetti interview--I mean, the guy's all over the place, which would have me typing until Thursday. His words speak best for themselves, and it's worth it to me to steer Real Art readers in his direction because he so well articulates what I think about the artist's role in America.

Go check it out.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Is Miss Teen South Carolina the Perfect GOP Presidential Candidate?

From AlterNet:

By now you've probably seen the enormously popular footage of the 17-year-old Lauren Kaitlin Upton, a.k.a. Miss Teen South Carolina, horribly botching a response to a question about how to better improve American kids' geography skills. But Bill Maher does a great little bit here by juxtaposing her answer with Bush's slightly less infamous response to a question about the Native American tribal sovereignty. Maher argues that by GOP standards Miss Upton would make a terrific 2008 candidate for president.

Click here to see the video.

Bush has been elected twice by the American people. Even though one can argue about how legitimate those elections were, you can't deny that shitloads of citizens thought he was the man for the job. We're not talking about GOP presidential standards here; we're talking about American standards. And one of those standards is the whole "regular guy" meme, and by that measure, our President wins in spades. Of course the problem with that is that our educational system's indoctrinational mandate virtually always trumps wisdom and learning. In short, an American "regular guy" is woefully ignorant of politics, the Constitution, economics, culture, and of course, the world outside our borders--when it comes to understanding authority, which includes telling everybody else what to do, however, "regular guy" Americans are the best ever.

Really, this whole Maher gag is ultimately an indictment of our entire society.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Is violent crime taking a fast lane to Baytown?

From the Houston Chronicle:

Yet some residents are now distraught that these same transportation corridors may be responsible for a surge in violent crime in their east Harris County city. That's because the roadways are bringing an influx of people to visit and settle, putting a severe strain on the existing police force, authorities say.

Homicides and aggravated assaults that used to be a rarity have become much more frequent, police say. So far this year the city has recorded six homicides, compared with two in all of last year. Overall crime is up 2 percent, while surrounding unincorporated areas are reporting declines.

"Some Baytown residents are starting to look over their shoulders," said Police Capt. Roger Clifford. "They worry that something might happen to them when they go to Wal-Mart or the mall. I don't blame them."

Click here for more.

Well, at least they're not blaming it on poor black people from New Orleans. Oh, wait, maybe they are:

At the same time, Baytown absorbed about 4,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees, said Baytown Mayor Stephen DonCarlos, although he is uncertain how many became permanent residents. He estimates that since the Census 2000, the city's population has jumped by 7,000 to 73,000 people.

Oh well. At any rate, whether this crime spike is coming from new residents or is a more homegrown phenomenon, it's been in the works for quite a while. Longtime Real Art readers know that I worked in Baytown as a high school teacher for six years. During my time there the one big observation I made was that, even though the small city is definitely an urban space, with an ethnically diverse population, large pockets of poverty, gangs, drugs, high STD rates, and other urban ills, the loudest community voices, most of whom, as far as I could tell, were born and raised there, all seem to live in a sort of Ward and June Cleaver delusional fantasy-land, and their political priorities reflect that. That is, Baytown's elders have been in deep denial about the nature of their home town at least since I began my tenure there in 1998.

For instance, race is a big issue in Baytown, and both blacks and Hispanics, teens and adults alike, told me repeatedly about chronic discrimination there. Whites appear to be oblivious. Kids from Highland, the smaller and more rural low income community slightly north of Baytown, told me early on about Aryan Nation, the prison white supremacist gang mentioned in the article, activity and recruiting there. Drugs are cheap and plentiful, which includes lots of meth, but local talk is more in terms of finger-wagging and scolding than any understanding that addiction is rampant. Lots of gay people and lots of homophobia in Baytown, but virtually zero public discussion of the issue, excluding, of course, self-righteous religious condemnation of homosexuality. And on and on and on.

Of course, trying to figure out why crime rates rise and fall is always an extraordinarily difficult task, but it's pretty clear to me that if the city's head-in-the-sand mentality isn't a major cause, it's certainly not helping things, either. Hopefully, they're coming to their senses now.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

THE STAR TREK CALENDAR PICTURE OF THE MONTH IS...



Kirk and Scott!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

The Top Ten Reasons Marijuana Should Be Legal

From the venerable stoner magazine High Times via AlterNet:

10. Prohibition has failed to control the use and domestic production of marijuana. The government has tried to use criminal penalties to prevent marijuana use for over 75 years and yet: marijuana is now used by over 25 million people annually, cannabis is currently the largest cash crop in the United States, and marijuana is grown all over the planet. Claims that marijuana prohibition is a successful policy are ludicrous and unsupported by the facts, and the idea that marijuana will soon be eliminated from America and the rest of the world is a ridiculous fantasy.

9. Arrests for marijuana possession disproportionately affect blacks and Hispanics and reinforce the perception that law enforcement is biased and prejudiced against minorities. African-Americans account for approximately 13% of the population of the United States and about 13.5% of annual marijuana users, however, blacks also account for 26% of all marijuana arrests. Recent studies have demonstrated that blacks and Hispanics account for the majority of marijuana possession arrests in New York City, primarily for smoking marijuana in public view. Law enforcement has failed to demonstrate that marijuana laws can be enforced fairly without regard to race; far too often minorities are arrested for marijuana use while white/non-Hispanic Americans face a much lower risk of arrest.

And

3. Marijuana is too expensive for our justice system and should instead be taxed to support beneficial government programs. Law enforcement has more important responsibilities than arresting 750,000 individuals a year for marijuana possession, especially given the additional justice costs of disposing of each of these cases. Marijuana arrests make justice more expensive and less efficient in the United States, wasting jail space, clogging up court systems, and diverting time of police, attorneys, judges, and corrections officials away from violent crime, the sexual abuse of children, and terrorism. Furthermore, taxation of marijuana can provide needed and generous funding of many important criminal justice and social programs.

Click here for the rest.

Whether you're a dope smoker or not, marijuana prohibition is psychotic. I mean, come on. I think pretty much everybody knows in their heart of hearts that it doesn't hurt you or me one bit if the stoner next door fires up a joint every night. It probably doesn't really hurt him, either. But the whole anti-marijuana crusade has literally spawned a multi-billion dollar industry which now depends on the War on Drugs to keep the cash flowing. Insurance companies, private prison and security firms, DARE and other "educational" programs, weapons manufacturers, drug testing companies, even mainstream corporations that we don't realize have anything to do with pot are getting rich on its contraband status, and all these entities have high dollar lobbyists to make sure the gravy train keeps on rolling. Meanwhile, decades of moronic anti-pot propaganda have had a strange effect: no politician can speak sensibly about marijuana for fear of appearing to be soft on crime. It's fucking loony.

I'm sure there are nuttier situations out there, with even worse consequences. The Iraq occupation, for instance, is no doubt crazier than pot prohibition, and it definitely kills more people. But this one's easy. If we legalize marijuana, only good things will happen.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
Onside recovery helps Horns avoid stunning loss to visiting Indians

From the AP via ESPN:

It was ugly, ragged and a bit embarrassing. In the end, it was a win and the Texas Longhorns got to go to bed without the same sick feeling that must have hit the Michigan Wolverines.

Colt McCoy threw two first-quarter touchdown passes and the No. 4 Longhorns survived a sloppy 21-13 season-opening victory over Arkansas State on Saturday night, narrowly avoiding yet another huge upset on the day.

"It's not pretty and it's not the best," McCoy said. "But we're 1-0 and moving on."

Texas, which hopes to contend for the Big 12 and national titles, was an overwhelming favorite over the Indians, but found itself fighting to hold on in the final minute.

It was scary enough that the Longhorns were thankful not to be lumped into same category of shocking upset victim with No. 5 Michigan, which lost 34-32 at home to Appalachian State earlier in the day.

More here.

Here are a few season predictions. Texas won't win the national championship this year. Texas probably won't win the Big 12 this year. Texas probably won't even win the Big 12 South. Texas might not even beat the Aggies. As a wise football fan in Baytown once told me after a similarly disappointing Texas season opener several years back, "If you don't beat these piece of shit schools by forty or fifty points, you're just not going to win the national championship." True, very true.

I bet we beat Baylor, but that ain't sayin' much.


Texas wide receiver Limas Sweed crosses the goal line after taking a 35-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Colt McCoy during first quarter action in their college football game against Arkansas State, Saturday, Sept. 1, 2007, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)(via ESPN)

Geaux Tigers!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

IS RACIST/IS NOT RACIST

In mid July I posted on a disturbing billboard I've been driving past for years on I-10 just outside of Vidor, Texas. In the post, I casually mentioned that Vidor tolerates the KKK and has a longstanding reputation for racism. More recently, like over the last three or four days, this post ended up being linked to a discussion about that same billboard on an online forum page hosted by a television station in nearby Beaumont. A man from Vidor took exception to my characterization of his hometown as racist in Real Art comments.

A fascinating discussion ensued (my responses are in italics):

Ron! you need to get your facts right about Vidor before you start running off at the mouth! Your aspect of Vidor life is totally WRONG!! You stated "Vidor is a town where Klansmen have no shame running around in t-shirts with KKK insignias, and with similar bumper stickers on their pick-'em-up trucks; towns like that historically have crooked cops" How many times have YOU actually seen this?? This is whats wrong with the world today. People like Ron talk of rumors that have been passed down forever. But yet no one has actually seen any of this happening!! Get your story strait and repost it!

tim

Tim, I'm sure you're very proud of your hometown, and I'm also sure that there are a lot of good people in Vidor. However, and I offer this with the caveat that I've only stopped there once, I've seen these Klansmen with my own eyes. My fiance and I stopped for gas back in '98 on a trip from Houston to New Orleans at a station in Vidor across I-10 from a Burger King. We're alternative art weirdos and looked the part that day, which is, I think, why these two proud racists were staring us down. She needed to go to the bathroom but these guys were apparently trying to make us nervous, so I told her that we should go to the Burger King across the highway. I swear to you these guys followed us over there--I mean, it could have been just been a coincidence; maybe they just wanted to get some whoppers, but they were there like 90 seconds after we got there. So we found a bathroom in Orange, and I've never stopped in Vidor again, which is why I've only been there once.

I'm sure Vidor isn't the hotbed of racism it was in the 50s; everything changes, but according to this recent CNN story, racism does indeed persist in Vidor, as a part of its overall culture, to this very day. My facts are straight. I think you're just engaging in wishful thinking.

Here's a hint: instead of simply wishing things are better, admit the truth and work to actually make things better.

Ron

Ron, anywhere you going in the World racism exist. YES, we do have some bad apples in Vidor. But there isn’t a town in the United State that doesn’t. And about your story you spoke of, I am sorry. But the same goes for me if I walked into the 5th ward in Houston. Not everyone in every town are saints. But please don’t base you opinion of us on a FEW LOSER we call neighbors in our town. Thanks

tim

Yes, well, some places have more bad apples than others; some places are more tolerant of bad apples than others. You would NEVER see members of the KKK shamelessly walking around bedecked in their racist symbols in, well, MOST cities in the US. Indeed, the only time before my encounter in Vidor I had ever seen Klansmen who visibly identified themselves as such was at a rally on the Capitol steps in Austin. There was a contingent of hundreds of state troopers there to make sure that the angry mob, of which I was a part, didn't tear these vile racists limb from limb.

Where's the angry mob in Vidor?

There's not one, and that's my point.

Ron

You’re Rev. Al, Jesse Jackson and others are more raciest then pretty much every member of the KKK. Anything that happens to a colored man they have to point the blame. Example (Mike Vick)!! It’s not because he’s black that the media and the court systems want to throw the book at him. It’s because he an idiot and BROKE the law.

And explain this one to me. How do they get away with BET, African American college funds, Ebony, NAACP and the list goes on and on!! If WE set up a WHITE college fund for students the black race would be throwing the biggest fit. And don’t give me that your kind has been suppressed for some many years. I you can’t straiten stuff out in 80year you might as well give up.

I’m not mad at anyone. Just REALLY get tired of hearing outsiders who don’t know what’s going on run their mouths all the time.

Tim

Sharpton and Jackson aren't mine; they're bozo political opportunists, doing more to hurt the cause of anti-racism than to help it, and I do not support them in any way shape or form. But by what standard do you judge them to be racist? Stupidity does not a racist make.

And more racist than the KKK, which has a history of murder and lynchings? Surely you jest.

Either you're in your eighties, in which case I'll cut you some slack, or you're a racist yourself: the term "colored" when used to refer to African-Americans has been considered by mainstream Americans to be derogatory for many years now. How can you not know this?

Michael Vick is a scumbag. I've seen an essay or two by black writers alleging some racism with the media frenzy over the dog fighting scandal, but that's about it. One or two guys. Right wing radio, however, is going on and on about all these imaginary black people coming to Vick's defense. The whole thing has been made up by Rush and Hannity. They're turning a couple of essays into some huge non-existent thing.

Kind of like O'Reilly and his imaginary war on Christmas.

You know, we do have white college funds; they're called "college funds." We also have white magazines called "Time," and "Newsweek." Further, we have white history month: it's from March to January, and generally referred to simply as "history." When white culture is also mainstream culture, as it is here in the US, you don't really need to put the word "white" in front of things. It's simply assumed that's the case.

And you say "your kind"? You appear to be under the mistaken impression that I'm black. I'm not. I'm white, just like you. I'm from Texas, just like you. But I don't waste my time whining about African-Americans trying to overcome the white power structure's multi-century oppression of them. I mean, c'mon. Jim Crow only ended forty two years ago and you expect everything to be just dandy? That blacks start with nothing in 1965 and then must shut the hell up forty years later because you think they're no longer oppressed?

Finally, your whole "tired of hearing outsiders" comment sounds a LOT like what George Wallace might have said about the "outside agitators" coming down South to register black voters. Like I said, I'm a Texan, just like you, white, just like you. I've never lived in Vidor, but it doesn't matter. You don't get a pass just because you live in a different town. Racism is wrong everywhere.

Tim, I think the reason you believe that racism is a non-issue in your town is because you appear to be extraordinarily unversed in contemporary discussion on the matter. Of course you don't see racism in Vidor--you don't quite know what racism is.

Ron

The truth is that Vidor has a long history of racism which lingers to this very day. Indeed, back in the early 90s Texas Monthly did a big story on the town, in response to this incident, and wrote in big letters on the cover "The Most Hateful Town in Texas." This is recent history we're talking about. So I'm right; Tim is wrong.

Actually, the guy simply ends up making my point for me in his last post when he finally lets loose with his own David Duke styled tirade. I really thought about straight-up calling him a racist in my final post, but that's a word that drives white people nuts whether they're racist or not. I figured that if I wanted him to listen to me I'd be better off keeping the flame level at medium instead of bumping it up to high.

But make no mistake: this guy's a racist.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$