STREETCAR Opening Night 1946

The Brilliant ordinariness of the play's locale, the plainness of all the characters, the modesty of their wants, the recognizable colloquialisms in their speech, combined to make thrilling surprises, when, highlighted by the poetic gifts of playwright, Tennessee Williams, Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway in 1946. The play ran on Broadway for two years, and a road company, of course, toured America with Uta Hagen as Blanche, and Anthony Quinn as Stanley.

The world had never before seen a play about working class people that reached such poetic heights. The play damatized that our true life is our spiritual life, not our working life or our particular station or circumstances. Never had such an adult, cockeyed love story been so powerfully portrayed onstage. Stanley may have been a beast, but he truly loved, and proved it to Stella by begging her to remember the "colored lights" of their love making. He was cruel to Blanche, but he saw it as his duty to defend his territory. And, Blanche was wrong to attempt to alienate her sister from her husband. Of Course, Vivian Leigh gave the performance of her career in the magnificent, eloquent role of Blanche.

The audience that night had a feast of great acting. Brando at one fell swoop forever altered how we view acting. Vivian Leigh, only seven years after her movie Gone With The Wind  demonstrated the depth and variety of her skills.

Director Elia Kazan later published a book about the rehearsals of that play. He and Williams, and the actors, collaborated during reheasals to get the best results. It was a group effort. Brando had been on B'way before, even as a teenager, in 'I Remember Mama.' Movie star John Garfield was there that night and later swore that the moment Brando came onstage he knew that the acting profession had been changed forever. 

It's no acident, therefore, that later collaborations between Kazan and Brando, 'Waterfront' and 'Zapata' more than fulfilled the promise of 'Streetcar.' 

Barry  

 

 

 

 

Random Oscar Thoughts

Following the talk about the Oscars is almost as interesting to me as the movies and the awards themselves.  Perhaps it's the sociology of it all that grabs me the most. Why didn't Garbo get an Oscar for Grand Hotel? Some weird kind of social myopia most likely. She was a foreigner? Could that have been it?  This year, as it happens, I'm in the enviable postion of having seen none of the Nominees, with the exception of The Passion (three Nominations) which I have seen several times and own the DVD.  A plot point in this pictures seems to have stuck in the craw of voters: who killed Jesus? The Catholic Church years ago, in the 1960's as I remember, declared that the Roman soldiers killed Jesus. At the time that was announced I was playing chess in the 42nd Street coffee house in Manhattan where many of the players, some Grandmasters, were Jewish from all over the world. It was a subject of much merriment and ribaldry that the Pope should make his theatrical pronouncement.

Here, by the way, is Journals Editor John M Scalzi's predictions, given I imagine, so we can have some fun with his selections, and talk it up to create some anticipation for Sunday's formal announcements.

>Best Picture: Million Dollar Baby
Best Director: Martin Scorsese (The Aviator)
Best Actress: Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby)
Best Actor: Jamie Foxx (Ray)
Best Supporting Actress: Virginia Madsen (Sideways)
Best Supporting Actor: Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby)

>We'll see what happens this Sunday.

>Your thoughts?          (Picks by John M Scalzi)

Plot points make little difference to which pictures I'd vote for. For example, there is a plot point in Million Dollar Baby something along the lines of a character choosing death, or inflicting a death, rather than life as a cripple. Since the picture isn't advocating that as a universally recommended position I fail to see what on earth it has to do with the merit of the drama, the theatrical presentation? In America, so help me, we are still 'country' about theater and the arts. We insist, for example, on mingling religion with the arts. Bad art as good religion should be more offensive than good art as bad religion. The Greek play Medea has the heroine murder five or more people in revenge and escape in a magic chariot to a place where she will find shelter.  Bad religion! Great art! Great play deserving of performance anywhere, any time. The New York Post published an editorial review of Million Dollar Baby by Maggie Gallagher titled, "At The Movies Killing is Love." For the grownup, even if this charge is true, this plot point should be held irrelevant when voting for Best Picture. We'll see. I have a hunch it will win anyway. So, on that I agree with John M.

Scorcese is a loser Director. Gangs Of New York was embarrassing. It infuriated New Yorkers. (I live in LA, used to live in NYC.) Gossip has it that he's always over budget. His Las Vegas pix was was comic book. When he tries to be comic book, as in Raging Bull he gets lucky and makes a good one. But neither Scorcese nor DiCapprio will win. Both are cardboard men. Eastwood is an odd duck but I'd give an arm to work for him.  Don't you get that he's a good man? Good men often make good pix. Good man, a man of the theater who declared "I'm a chauvinist Jew" said, also, "The Catholic Church is good theater." Lee Strasberg surrendered his life to the theater. Perhaps it was from him that I got the courage to judge art on its artistic merit, not on its conformity to any one religion. How else could Lee Strasberg receive an Oscar Nomination for playing a Jewish, murderous, disloyal, Mafia thug so convincingly if he didn't completely divorce theater from narrow notions of religion? (The Godfather movies, as Mario Puzo explained, were about how the Mafia began and flourished by correcting wrongs the establishement inflicted upon immigrants.)

The Academy tends to vote, these days, for down and dirty characterizations so I anticipate Swank will best Warren Beatty's wife, again. Annette Benning is a professional actress, but an amateur movie star. Might be the cost she's had to pay for being Warren Beatty's wife. Also, she signals that it'll be alright with her if the other actress wins. Good sportsmanship doesn't win in that pit of devious endeavors, H'wood. Also, playing the character of an actress seems an odd choice for any actor. I can't think of any such characterization that won an Oscar. Mind you, I'm nuts about Annette Benning. People vote for what's 'real,' and an actor character is never seen as 'real.'

 Again, I agree with John M. Scalzi.  Jamie Foxx will win Best Actor. I've seen clips. All I have to see is clips. The Black male in America has been enormously helped by the scores of admirable men in Basketball: the NBA, College, and HS. I can't explain this, but clips of Jamie Foxx as 'Ray' teach me to appreciate Ray Charles more.

That's all folks!

Barry

 

 

 

 

Land Animal Swims

Humans can learn to swim amazingly well by imitating the movements of other animals who left the land and became Dolphins, porpoises and whales. Fast swimming by humans is not much more than eighty years old. Present day Butterfly stroking was initially called the 'dolphin' and even today the butterfly kick is called the dolphin kick. You might remember in the Athens Olympics a Japanese swimmer got into trouble with the judges when, in a breaststroke event he pushed off the far wall and underwater executed an illegal 'Dolphin kick' to get more propulsion before he broke the surface. Underwater cameras showed for all the world to see what he had done, probably in the excitement of the moment. In subsequent heats he didn't do that. Dolphins and porpoises swim with astonishing speed, and yet they are animals, not fish. Sharks vanish when there are much faster, more intelligent porpoises around.

Human swimmers copy the undulations of the porpoise. In the freestyle the trajectory of the hand through the water duplicates the slicing action of porpoise and dolphin fin and body movements. In physics the human hand and arm's movement in the freestyle resembles  the action of a screw, the propeller of a boat, not the pulling backwards of the awkward paddlewheel steamer.  Having had no time to evolve for swimming, the human leg is a pretty poor fin, but even there the freestle kick can have undulations which reduce drag. This can be practiced by not breaking the surface too much, and by not bending the knees too much. Some swimmers practice with rubber fins on their feet. I doubt serious competitive swimmers use fins in training. The world record for swimming with fins, very long fins underwater for 50 meters is eleven seconds. French, I think.

Humans are nudged just a little toward evolving into better swimmers by diving for pearls. Japanese women pearl divers can stay underwater without air for somewhere between five and seven minutes. But only after years of practice.  See, this is a hint at how evolution can begin: an imperative, and much painful practice.

More on swimming, and the luxurious, sensuous pleasure available in swimming faster, in another, future journal entry.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

Depression

Depressed?

Stop telling lies.

Do what you said you'd do.

Pay your bills.

Stop bad mouthing people.

Make a difference.

Stop medicating yourself.

Spend joyful time alone doing nothing: study relaxation.

Stop blaming.

Contemplate a tree, a star, a principle of Physics.

Get off your position.

 

Barry

 

Child Nurture

There is no more hot button subject than child nurture. We've all been children so have opinions. All our lives we observe the children of others. Novels and movies and Sesame Street and Mr Rogers deal with children and childhood. It is a sacred subject; better be careful what you say. Our adult lives may, or may not, be ruled by what happened to us in childhood.

There is a plethora of books about childhood, learned tomes and academic papers. Anthropologists have plotted how cultures are formed by what happens in childhood within each culture, including the influence of breast feeding methods. My city's newspaper only a few days ago reported scientists restating that longer breast feeding is salubrious. To repeat, everyone has an opinion.

In spite of my caution in approaching the subject I'm gonna be reckless and write down a few of my beliefs about the nurture of children.

1. Children learn by copying what their parents do: yes, the good and the bad. They want to be like you.

2. To an amazing degree children are fascinated by what they look like, what they are wearing, and whether it is like, or dissimilar to what their caregivers are wearing. My two year old is stuck at the moment with long pants which have no pockets similar to the pockets in my pants, so he comes by and puts his little trucks and trinkets in the pockets of my pants.

3. One of the biggest lies in American culture is the statement, "Children are color blind." From curiosity, not from judgment, children very early are keenly aware of racial differences. Where things go wrong about race is not the child's observations of the differences, which so fascinate them, but the attitudes of their parents about race. Children want to be like their parents.

4. Children dote on approval. In this matter the best role model I know of for parents is Mr Rogers.

5. Our culture, regrettably, has decided, overall, that Sigmund Freud is a bad man. Rats! Childhood sexuality begins at birth. You'd have to be tremendously uptight not to observe children's fascination with nudity and sex. Crippling, I believe, is for children to get the notion that their fascination is somehow bad or shameful. Light hearted humor and gentle turning away of their precocious quests is what works the best.

Singing, dancing, running, swimming, climbing, should obviously be encouraged. But, oh, the safety imperatives! Too often children are told to be quiet. I have a hunch that adults with gorgeous voices, either singing or speaking or both, were never silenced or quieted in childhood.

The single most important thing that can happen in childhood is for the child to learn that he or she is loved by both parents, and loved beyond measure.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is a beloved figure around the world. You'd be tarred and feathered for a murmur against him. Michael would probably go for the feathers, but be puzzled why you were suddenly all black.

A young, white, US Military officer just returned from overseas in a time of war bringing with him a young boy suffering from multiple sclerosis.  Those are the only details I know. My head full of images from the media, images having to do with Michael Jackson facing the very real possibility of prison for a very long time, I couldn't get it out of my head that the young white war hero might be a pedophile.

Main Entry: pe·do·phil·ia
Pronunciation: "pE-d&-'fi-lE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin
Date: 1906
: sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object                    

How come I would twist a wonderful news story of individual benevolence by a US Military officer, showing  individual initiative, into a ghastly crime? The only answer I could come up with was that I'd been brain washed by the media blitz about Michael Jackson. 

That did it. I'm up to here with Michael Jackson walking backwards. Enough! Lock him up. Never in the history of the world was criminal selfishness so glamorized. The man is mad.  In carving up his own face in order to look white, and have it done so badly, apparently over and over, is dementia plain and simple, and the greatest stupidity is in ignoring how he insults one of the most beautiful races on Earth.

Dropping babies from balconies. Madness. He wants us to know he regrets having had a baby. His violent gesture was a strike at the baby's mother. Lock him up. Lock him up for a very long time. I'm glad he's broke; now he can't afford Johnny Cochran.

Barry 

Pet attack Weekend Assignment rejected.

Scalzi's site refused my submission announcement.

REJECTED SUBMISSION
I find it hard to believe this tidbit is more than
2000 characters, but so be it. On another occasion I tried to
shorten but aol's computer program would have none of it. It will accept,
apparently only newly written attempts to stay in bounds.

Barry


The only pet I ever loved, Tyson, a Bull Terrier, was named and originally owned by me to serve as a guard dog. At the time, I lived on Playa Zicatella a bit south of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. The land had been taken by Indians decades earlier by "An Act of Possession." I rented property that quite literally occupied land that nobody really, truly knew who it belonged to: for sure it didn't belong to any Gringo.

In photos Tyson now looks incredibly sweet and cuddly when only a small puppy.  Who knew he'd grow up to be so formidable looking, with a huge head, and black as midnight all over except for a white 'heart' on his chest?  I doubt I could have picked him up. I have no doubt, however, no doubt whatsoever that he'd have allowed me to try to pick him up without his even the slightest hint of a growl. The size of his huge head, in proportion to overall size, biologists insist, indicates his large intelligence. About every eight or nine days when he was fully grown he'd place his head, on his initiative, on my lap where I was sitting, writing, in the patio under five coconut palms. I'd stroke his head and talk to him about what a good dog he was and he'd blink, then finally remember he had other business and would wander off. He was touching base.

If a stranger came to the locked gate Tyson would stand stock still, staring. He never barked at humans, but humans quickly got that if they had mischief in mind they had come to the wrong house. He stood majestic. However, other dogs he absolutely would not tolerate for a millisecond. His mission was to wipe out all dogs. Dogs were his bete noir. In fact, says the encyclopedia, he'd been bred for dog fighting in England: bull dog crossed with terrier, white all over with odd looking eyes, a breed now almost extinct.

Of course, when I took him for a long walk on the three mile long beach, Zicatella, he was always on a short chain. How he pulled me along! How I loved it! One day in winter when nobody was on the beach, or so I thought, I let him run, unchained. How could I deny him? Oh, but he found adog, big, loose, and cocky. In seconds Tyson had him by the throat and would not let go. I wrestled with them trying with all my strength to free the hapless victim. If the dog died I'd be liable, and worse, hated for the foreign gringo that I was. I had to free the poor beast before he died. I whipped Tyson with the chain, but nothing, nothing worked. Finally, in despair, and scared, really scared, I dragged both dogs into the surf where I felt much more at home than either of the dogs. I'd been in the surf since I was a very small 'puppy.' The white, foaming salt water didn't bother Tyson, so I held them both underwater, feeling, frankly, like a murderer. That did it. Only near drowning made Tyson give it up. The wet wounded dog raced off yelping to the level of screaming.

I sincerely pray this story of pet-owner shame has not disturbed you.

Barry

The est Training

The est Training began in San Francisco in 1971 the invention of Werner Erhardt. It's most stunning, easy-to- point-to achievement, was the creation of The Hunger Project, a way to measure starvation by linking it to the number of infant deaths, a measure which was adopted by the United Nations. The hunger Project Source Document made the leap from the 19th century pessimistic assumption that there wasn't enough food, to pinpointing that there was a lack of intention to end hunger. For example, there is absolutely zero reason for there to be any starvation in the United States, yet it is eleventh, way down the list, of countries which have successfully handled starvation. Back when I did the Training the most number of infant deaths was in Afghanistan. Maybe still true. The Lowest number of infant deaths was in Australasia.

I've mentioned The est Training quite a few times on AOL message boards over the years, beginning in 1996, and not once, not one single time has anyone spoken up to say they too have done it. Yet, the stats on how many have done it worldwide are staggering, and even include people in Soviet Russia, India, Australia, England, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere, included every major city in USA.

The Training no longer exists. Werner Erhard & Assocs was sold to The trainer body who renamed their version The Forum. I know less about The Forum, run by Landmark Education, although I did 'assist' twice, once at the long weekend session, when my wife did the program, something I was allowed to do because I had completed the Guest Seminar Leader Program after completing the est Training, and The Six Day, plus several seminars available after having done the Training.

There exists a book about the est Training. It is called The Transformation of a Man, written by William Warren Bartley III, a classmate of mine at Harvard. Another classmate listed Bill as WWB3 (meaning cubed, ha!). (The near coincidence of names means nothing.) The book is sympathetic. Bill, now dead, taught Philosophy at UC Davis.

The quickest, and most accurate way to describe it is that it re-examines language, which is the primary reason I continue to be fascinated by it. There is no dogma, nothing to believe. I can never forget my hang dog reluctance to even consider doing the program. To me, then, it seemed quite senseless. So, it's about language, and it is experiential. I believe one can come out of it astonished that every single human being is a very big deal. For what it's worth the United States Post Office has its employees do the Communication Workshop, an est seminar. Have you noticed how the Postoffice is thriving? how pleasant it is to go to the window at the postoffice? Well, that's been my experience. At nearly every other 'window' one visits I'm treated, it seems to me, as though I'm an obstacle that has to be endured, rather than as an opportunity for a breakthrough. 

My wife and I will probably do the Forum, together, again, or a relationship seminar spread over several weeks, just as a way to have a holiday from day to day stuff. We definitely attribute our success as a couple, married in 1992, to being able to communicate fully, with nothing in the way.

Bonne chance.

Barry

 

 

 

 

Online Exchanges

Friendships Online, friendships that began online and continue through writing without the natural support of voice and actual, live, physical presence are possible, I suppose, but in my experience, rare. I've been online beginning in 1996, but I lived in Mexico from 1997 to 2001. Recently, when I was offline for two weeks I received a phone call from someone I'd known, and admired Online, but when I heard his voice I felt much more certain that we could be friends. (He wanted to know what happened to me, ha!)

Online we can't give out too much information about ourselves. I give out much more, I believe, than is sensible, but I won't stop.

Many months ago a poster I've hated for years posted a photo of herself. Instantly I felt I had a bead on who she was, where she was psychologically.  A bit later she let on that her glitzy eyeglasses were two prescriptions ago, from which it wasn't hard to deduce she was now actually much older. Only now, after one more clue, has it dawned on me that she is confined to a wheelchair. I looked again at the photo. Her head is at an angle to the camera, an angle I'm familiar with from photos of others wheelchair-bound. Stephen Hawking, for example.

So in the case of people one can't get along with online there very often must be some missing piece of information that might change the whole relationship. One of my oldest and dearest friends, who I frquently visited, Laurel Nisbet, was confined to an iron lung for 37 years until she died in August, 1985. My own mother died in an iron lung when I was 14.  A close friend I never met except on line, Jeannie, SN Sissug, died after a long illness compounded by an irregular heart beat.  Most of the time in her posts she was as merry as a singing canary. I loved her. Never met her. Never spoke on the phone. We were simply sympatico.

It's wise, I suppose, to be cautious making friends with those too needy. Some extreme neediness is masked by extraordinary hostility. One would have to be a psychiatrist to understand such 'shooting from ambush.' In some cases it might be associated with adult autism, or Kleinfelter's syndrome, both of which are marked by asocial behaviour.

Friends. Real friends, as Polonius advised his son,

    "The friends thou hast, their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel"

This is a beautiful day: enjoy it!

Barry

 

 

Reading and Writing

Pleasure in reading a certain book need not come directly from what the book is about. Similarly, writing need not actually be about what it purports to be about. I have friends who push books on me seeming to believe the subject is just what I need and want. They are nearly always wrong. Recommending books is about as hopeless an enterprise as fixing someone up with a date.  

I stumbled upon this truth after having observed myself reading the same books over and over. There is the book, and then there's the shadow book, the book we invent as we read.  I'm more likely to reread non-fiction, than I am fiction. I'm now reading 'Bobby Fischer Goes to War' for the fourth time. I will reread 'Great Expectations' and 'Bleak House' for the rest of my life. All three books are about a young man having a bad time getting along in life.

Writing: Here's the secret to writing fiction. Swann's Way, a section of  Remembrance of Things Past, reads as if it were an intimate memoir but is in fact fiction.   The gulf between the invented reality, and concrete reality is a sleight of hand pulled off by the author, Marcel Proust. Still-living author of Goodbye Columbus, Philip Roth wrote a book titled 'The Facts' in which he set out to angrily insist that none of the plots of his fiction reflected his actual lived life. Gee, he could have saved himself the trouble.

So, the reader invents what the reader wants a book to be about, and the writer writes the book to be about what he wants it to be about. Given those truths it's amazing that writing exists at all.  Notice that in the larger scheme of things writing is a very new human skill.

Barry

 

 

The Colored Museum

A benefit of taking a few weeks away from being online I found the time and the will to attend the theater: you know, live action? I admit it's been a long time since I went to the theater. I saw a revival of a 20 year old play titled The Colored Museum with an all Black cast at a little theater in LA called Company of Angels. The play is an exuberant comedy with a ton of laughs, and a serious subtext: African Americans can profitably expand their freedom by living in the 'now' and not as if they were imprisoned in a cultural "Museum." I assume the playwright is well-known, and Black, and allowed to give such a lecture. As an old White guy I thought the play admirable in every respect.

Attending live theater, as opposed to say watching TV or even going out to a movie, has the distinction of making one a part of the event. We feel forms of embarrassment we don't feel when it is not 'live.' We wonder, 'Do the actors know I'm laughing?' or, 'Crying or hollering or remaining silent?'  Is it me they are looking at during the curtain call? What does a nearly all black audience think when an old white guy let's out a whoop of pleasure at the performance? Is it appreciated or resented? At the performance I watched in a little theater in LA on Feb 5, 2005, the audience seemed older than any audience for a movie. Better educated too, is my guess. When one gets older I think it might be common to enjoy live drama rather than movies. In any case they make movies, for the most part, for children. 

I think I'll be going to the theater again more often. Maybe I'll write a play, as well as a novel.

Barry

P.S. (Later) Google half says the play premiered at the Joe Papp Public Theater in NY. (Long before there was a Public Theater I worked for Joe Papp and his NY Central Park Shakespeare company, Shakespeare In The Park.)