marty smith

BRIAN BEDFORD-ANOTHER TONY NOMINATION

2011-05-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Brian Bedford: Tony nominated -- as Lady Bracknell -- for the fifth time in five Broadway appearances over the last eighteen years He'd already won for Jumpers in 1974, School for Wives, 1971, and The Misanthrope, 1968 -- the last two having opened in Ann Arbor with the APA (Phoenix) Company before New York. He's also won several Drama Desk awards for other performances. Because of his frequent visits to this town in the sixties and seventies with APA, and our proximity to his Stratford (Ontario) base, we've seen him on stage more than any other great actor.

His comic appearances, in Moliere plays, as Dogberry in Much Ado, as Elyot in Private Lives (ones I've seen) make him one of the best comic stage actors of our time. His understated approach magnifies his gifts; he has an almost supernatural ability to use long silences to brilliant effect and uproarious laughter. In The Moliere Comedies at Stratford he took his curtain call in full period costume and bowed with a great arcing swipe of his feathered hat then stood straight and stared unsmiling at the full house for an almost unbearable time, eventually provoking giggles, and then, just when you could stand it no longer, he raised an eyebrow and brought down the house.

He'll be back at Stratford this summer in The Misanthrope.

Thanks, Brian Bedford. I hope to see you again soon.

AN AMATEUR CYNIC ASKS, "WHITHER CHARLIE SHEEN?"

2011-04-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

In a story today about an attempt to bring back “Two and a Half Men” without Charlie Sheen The Times said, “Eliminating Mr. Sheen from the series carries risks because “Two and a Half Men has been built around his character. He played a somewhat fictionalized version of himself, a bachelor with a taste for women and alcohol.” This is worth considering because for anyone in show business to give up a hugely profitable enterprise on moral grounds is at least suspect.

Saying Charlie Sheen has a taste for women and alcohol is like saying Hitler was annoyed by Jews. And heterosexual men generally have a taste for women and alcohol. Even my late father, the tame married accountant, made comments in Yiddish about women along the lines of “I wouldn’t throw her out of my bed,” and enjoyed a beer or a shot of Canadian Club. If only he’d lived long enough to know “MILF.” And my mother would say of a sexy actor, “he could leave his slippers under my bed any time.” As to gay men, they have a taste for men and alcohol and an easier time of it because they don’t need a woman’s permission to have sex.

But civilized men have ways of channeling their atavistic impulses. Add a bargain on a steak dinner to the mix of women and booze and you have the bizarro-named “gentleman’s club” where men pay for the freedom to not behave like gentlemen. And as Artie said on the great HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show,” These are the six stages of divorce: “anger, denial, bargaining, booze, erections, acceptance.”

No, Charlie Sheen is in a rarer class, Hugh Hefner with ADHD. If Lord Acton had lived long enough he might have added to his famous dictum, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," to include, “Look at Charlie Sheen.” He has conceded defeat to his pugnacious id. He makes Mel Gibson look like Santa Claus.

And Mr. Sheen may yet be taken back on the show, after a suitable hegira of apology and repentance and maybe a damage settlement, because in show business, or *business, money talks, bullshit walks, and morals are a bargaining chip. And don’t forget: his father was the best President of the United States since FDR.

KRUGMAN'S COLUMN TODAY ON BOND RATING AGENCIES

2010-04-26T11:01:00.001-07:00

Click here to read column.

An old joke: an accountant is asked, “how much do one and one make?” He answers, “how much do you want them to be?” Such was the attitude of big accounting firms, suborned by huge consulting contracts, that abetted Enron and other frauds a decade ago and has informed the more recent behavior of bond rating agencies suborned by lucrative commissions.

They knew prospective buyers, unaware that the agencies had been bought off by sellers, would rely on evaluations biased in favor of their deep-pocket customers.

Of the securities acts, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, mail and wire fraud statutes, and state fraud laws surely some will apply. This isn’t much different than real estate appraisers who abet mortgage frauds by over-valuing properties in order to keep sellers’ business. Eliot Spitzer would have been at the courthouse by now.

New regulations aren’t enough because Wall Street can find a way around any rule by creating new frauds. That’s why, along with better regulations, frauds must be prosecuted to take the profit out of them. This is what President Obama must do if he truly wants to show he isn’t in Wall Street’s pocket.

If the Federal government won’t act, attorney General Cuomo should ask, “what would Eliot do?” Yes, the crooks in Brooks Brothers can hire expensive lawyers, but the State of New York has much to gain and will surely find good lawyers to fight for the people.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS AT PERFORMANCE NETWORK - DON'T MISS THIS!

2010-04-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

Little Shop of Horrors at the Network is an absolute delight with great singing and acting, direction that is crisp, fluid, and precise but not rushed, and a great set that sets the tone and changes quickly. The mood of the show is comic at first yet the actors take the characters seriously which heightens both the drama and the comedy. This is probably a joint choice by director Carla Milarch and her actors and it works perfectly

Courtney Myer's first song "Somewhere That's Green" was an anthem of joy and wistful, dreaming, hopefulness. She told her story of faint hope with her lovely voice and her eyes. Naz Edwards looked like a plant and sang like a black man, an operatic soul singer, sort of Porgy and bitch. Her voice carried her anger and meanness to the last row and beyond. Jason Richards, who seems perfect for every character he plays, morphed into Seymour. His singing is excellent as always and nailed his character.

B.J. Love was a funny and bouncily youthful old man, a cross between Phil Silvers and Phil Foster.

Little Shop is a morality tale with some Don Giovanni, some Sweeney Todd, and some Mad Comics. I found myself laughing a lot and very loudly yet rising and falling with the fortunes of Audrey and Seymour. I hoped for them although I knew it was hopeless.

The staging of the plant’s carnivorous excess was genius. It happened quickly and believably.

Altogether, and much to my surprise, Little Shop was one of the best evenings I’ve had in theater for a long time.

Miss this and be very, very, sorry.

SEC SUES FINANCIER FOR IGNORING SIGNS OF MADOFF FRAUD

2009-12-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

Click here to read story.

The Times reports that the SEC filed a civil suit in June against the operator of a “feeder fund” to Bernie Madoff and the Justice Department is investigating the same setup for possible criminal violations. The basis asserted by the SEC and, presumably, the Justice Department, is that he “ . . . steered clients’ money to Mr. Madoff — and collected hundreds of millions of dollars in management fees — ‘despite having clear indications that Madoff was conducting a fraud.’ ”

It is tempting to put the last quotation in screaming purple italics. Is the SEC not the same organization that for over a decade ignored complaints about Mr. Madoff’s operations from knowledgable sources “. . . despite having clear indications that Madoff was conducting a fraud?” This gives us a new definition of chutzpah: in place of the old one, a child who murders his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan, we have a government watchdog suing an individual for not acting on evidence that the watchdog itself ignored the whole time

Surely the defendant will try to point this out to the jury, but the SEC’s lawyer, or the prosecutor, will object on the ground that following the example of a government agency is not a defense. Everyone involved in the SEC’s show trial will take it with a straight face. But I won’t. I’m laughing already.

This Bizzaro standard of responsibility advocated by the SEC is as ridiculous as Jeffrey Dahmer complaining that his victim's corpse assaulted him with its final twitch. If there is justice in the world we’ll see the feeder fund operator let off the hook and the entire SEC marched off in chains in an internationally televised perp walk. Of course, that won’t happen, but I’m still laughing.

CHRISTMAS CAROL'D at the Performance Network

2009-11-28T22:51:00.000-08:00

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a stirring and beautiful story, about a bad guy who gratefully grabbed his last chance to reform and was redeemed. Dickens loved the secular aspects of Christmas and celebrated them in this story, but the master story teller knew it was the story that counted. Yet adaptations I’ve seen on the big and small screens and four on stage miss the mark in one way or another. Some are just treacly and play on the holiday season, and some are so bound-up in the text they turn this lovely tale into so many sticks of wood or get lost in details.

Tonight, I was treated to Joe Zettelmaier’s crack at the chestnut, “Christmas Carol’d” thoughtfully, even brilliantly, mounted at the Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, and had a very happy surprise. Joe Z obviously understands Mr. Dickens’ book and knows how to dramatize it. The words are preserved for the most part, but the dramatic scenes are neatly intertwined with the narration, done by four excellent and well-cast actors who also play all the roles but Scrooge (B. J. Love, Terry Heck, Chelsea Sadler and Kevin Young). David Wolber’s direction keeps the story flowing so the two complement each other as they gracefully flow back and forth. What emerges is not an adapted book, but a play.

This jewel of a show sits on a luxurious cushion of Christmas Carols, artfully selected and beautifully sung – a cappella – by the four non-Scrooge actors.

None of this would be quite as moving or as enjoyable without John Seibert’s touching depth and sparkling wit as Scrooge. He nailed that part.

Monika Essen’s lovely and cleverly serviceable set and Dan Walker’s lights work hand in hand with Wolber’s direction to facilitate the action. And Ms. Essen’s costumes are pitch perfect.

I was entertained and moved. What more can you expect from an evening of theater?

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

2009-05-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

[From The N. Y. Times Magazine, May 3, 2009].

CORRECTION: An article in The Green Issue on April 19 about the science of decision making and the difficulty of getting into a “green mind-set'' misspelled, in one instance, the surname of an elder statesman of the field. He is Baruch Fischhoff, not Fischoff.

CORRECTION: An article on April 19 about Shai Agassi, an Israeli-American entrepreneur who is developing electric-car batteries, misspelled the model of a car his brother drove around Tel Aviv while being interviewed. It was the RenaultMégane, not Megone. The article also referred incorrectly to a report by a consulting firm about the cost of getting electric cars on the road. The figures of $49 million for developing cars and batteries and $21 billion for building charging networks referred to the creation of 17 million electric and low-carbon-dioxide-emitting cars for Europe, not 1.5 million electric cars for the United States, Europe and Japan. And the article misstated the percentage of total cars in the United States that President Obama's stimulus plan would actually put on the road; 600,000 cars is about one-quarter of 1 percent of the 251 mi11ion cars in the United States, not 2 percent.

===================================================================================

MEMO

From: Ed Sloan, managing editor
To: Harv Bernbaum, controller
Re: extensive corrections in this week's issue
--------------------------------------------------------------

Harv, Can you provide me with figures on the cost of 5 ½ column-inches of magazine space and the savings on laying off the fact checkers and proof readers? I’m a bit concerned that it might have been false economy to use our readership to catch errors.

Thanks for your help.

Ed

===============================================================

MEMO

From: Harv Bernbaum, controller
To: Ed Sloan, managing editor
Re: Response to your recent memo
---------------------------------------------------------------

Ed, I’d like to help you here, but the accounting department is over-worked as it is, what with having laid off most of the staff.

===============================================================

MEMO

From: Ed Sloan, managing editor
To: Harv Bernbaum, controller
Re: Staff layoffs

Harv, I’m sympathetic to the problem, but we really can’t afford the errors that keep turning up in our stories. A few days ago we actually published an utterly unbelievable story from one of our top reporters claiming that Joe Biden had made some damn fool statement about staying out of the way of swine flu. On the Today show no less. Pretty soon we’re going to look pretty foolish.

Ed
===============================================================

MEMO

From: Melissa Craig, assistant controller
To: Ed Sloan, managing editor
Re: Response to your recent memo

---------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Sloan, I’m sorry to report that Mr. Bernbaum has been temporarily furloughed for an indefinite period as a cost-saving measure. I’m in charge now of the C.P.A. and the clerk who constitute what remains of the accounting department.

All the best,

Melissa Craig M.B.A., C.P.A.

================================================================

MEMO

From: Dell Model XPS 420 acting managing editor
To: Melissa Craig M.B.A., C.P.A.
Re: Staff layoffs
----------------------------------------------------------------

I have determined that this correspondence is economically counter-productive and will be terminated immediately.

LOL HAVE A NICE DAY! SEE YOU LATER ALLIGATOR!

FENCES AT THE PERFORMANCE NETWORK: A FIRST-CLASS PRODUCTION

2009-05-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

When Troy Maxson (the excellent Lynch Travis) began talking about his past in Performance Network’s first-rate production of August Wilson’s Fences he pulled me firmly into his narrative and never let go. Fences is really two plays: a lesson in the black history of America, and a moving family drama. Maxson has a lot of personal baggage, enough to make a pretty good play on its own, and a lot of racial baggage, so his load is heavier than, say, Jamie Tyrone’s or Jack Jerome’s.

He coped by building an armor to protect him from himself, a suppression of urges and feelings that keeps him distant from his loved ones but frees him to live his life against the odds as his principles required. He loves his wife, his children, and his long-time friend Bono (the excellent James Bowen) but keeps his distance by insisting rigidly on his notions of a proper life.

Maxson found discipline late in life. In prison as a young man, he emerged a stiff-necked moralist and behaved as if the smallest defection from discipline would lead him to ruin. He gave his entire paycheck to his wife, carefully limited his drinking to precisely one pint of gin that he shared with Bono every payday, and demanded absolute obedience from his sons. Ironically, a single small defection finally did him in.

Maxson is a lot like my late father, who tried hard to get close to his sons but couldn’t quite get there. He gave himself to his job and helping with housework. I cried his funeral because it meant I had lost the opportunity to know the man who raised me. That was the story of many twentieth century fathers and sons, but Wilson’s masterly script tells you that Troy Maxson did his best for the best reasons. And, by his own lights, succeeded. He kept his balance on the log when the currents threatened. That took every ounce of his will and energy, but Lynch Travis’s nuanced performance gives us the unspoken vulnerability and ambivalence as well.

In the last scene Maxson’s mentally ill brother, Gabe (Michael Joseph, a very convincing and appealing psychotic), does a crazy dance of frustration, as if struggling to let out all the terrors he had kept to himself. It seemed to be a physical rendering of the emotional struggle that never let Troy Maxson relax.

When a play is as well-acted (all the performances were very good) and gracefully and briskly staged as this Fences you know you are in the presence of superior direction for which we have Tim Edward Rhoze to thank.

The set deserves its own paragraph. When you take your seat at Fences you find yourself in an urban neighborhood of the mid-twentieth century: there is the back corner of an apartment house bounded by two alleys, one of which separates it from a small single-family home. Both lead to the larger world of Pittsburgh. This set bears a startling resemblance to the Brooklyn apartment house in which I was I was raised and its environs. This marvel created by Monika Essen gives you an immediate sense of time and place before the actors show up. It is a spectacular recreation of the ordinary.

In all, this is the most engaging and affecting play I've seen this year, and maybe many others.

Last election day I worked fourteen hours in a polling place in Detroit. I was an invited guest at the party. I bathed in the rampant joy of election workers and voters. I wonder what Troy Maxson would have said if he were there. If he could have stood to miss a day off from work.

LOVE SPRINGS LAUGHS AT THE PLANET ANT

2009-04-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Do yourselves a favor and catch the double bill at the Planet Ant in Hamtramck called “Love Springs Laughs.”

The Perfect Solution by Kim Carney is touching and sweet and funny, and One Man’s Truth by Joe Zettelmaier that ends the evening is down and dirty and funny, funny, funny. My friend and I laughed all through the show, through the obligatory post-performance actor-hugging, into the car, all the way to the Cass Café and until the drinks arrived. It’s the funniest show I’ve seen since The Odd Couple forty years ago and the first act of Albee’s The Goat (featuring sex-with-a-goat jokes by the carload). Zettelmaier's humor is a delightful mix of sophisticated and childish, as if the guy in your junior high who told everybody dirty jokes had suddenly taken up reading Updike, and Roth.

The actors (alphabetically Patrick O'Connor Cronin, Jaime Moyer, Beth Ann Thibault, Brian Thibault, and Jackie Strez) played their characters earnestly and honestly as befits comedy high and low; the direction (by Nancy Kammer and Shannon Ferrante) was crisp, clean, peppy, and imaginative, and the stage craft was perfectly suited to the shows and the space.

For fifteen bucks (and maybe a discount on Friday or Sunday) it’s a cheap and glorious high. The show continues through May 16.

Why "liberalism" is still a dirty word

2009-01-25T11:37:00.000-08:00

Two pieces serendipitously juxtaposed on the Op-Ed page today, Timothy Garton Ash’s restrained suggestion that liberals restore honor to their unjustly tarnished name, and Maureen Dowd’s mélange of ad-hominem attacks, irrelevant insults, and twisted logic that make her the Rush Limbaugh of the left, show why liberals have a hard time reclaiming their once-respected name.

Dowd, the superannuated sixties kid, ignores facts and shreds people she doesn’t like. Her trash can has equal room for the uncertain Patterson and the happily evil Blagojevich, as if there were no moral difference between Hamlet and Iago. It’s from the left, but hardly liberal. That’s one reason the right has been successful in trashing the name and why we dare not speak it.

This is the sneering, snarling, shouting-down legacy of the “new left” that not only doesn’t respect opposing points of view, but refuses to tolerate them. Until the left starts to act liberal again it doesn’t deserve the word.

Nine Parts of Desitre at Performance Network

2008-10-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times today suggests that we may be on the edge of an economic abyss, the kind that would produce chaos, ripping apart the lives of many Americans. Heather Raffo’s one-woman play, “Nine Parts of Desire,” directed with crisp precision and a careful eye to character by Ed Nahhat, now at the Performance Network, shows us how nine very different Iraqi women cope with the kind of political disorder that yanks out from under them the expectations of their accustomed lives. Sarab Kamoo’s passionate and carefully etched profiles of the women lets us see and feel their frustration, bravado, anger, hope, despair, and grudging acceptance, yet this production doesn’t tell us how to react. Kamoo’s nine characterizations are neither sentimental nor brutal, but brutally honest.

Monika Essen’s lovely and useful set puts you at once somewhere in the Middle East but has only one specific location: a flowing stream downstage right that has you hoping for a Middle Eastern Huck Finn to sit down and drop a line.

Raffo, an American of Iraqi heritage, wrote the play after ten years of interviews with Iraqi women. It could have been a polemic against war, but it’s about women living as best they can in their suddenly dangerous world.

A human life is very short in the grand sweep of history. The fortunate, born into comfort and privilege, come to consider as birthright the lives in which they were brought up. Some die never having known anything else. But history is relentless and those on the cusp of changing times are its victims, their expectations dashed, their lives filled with new and powerful dangers. We don’t have to reach back to the Holocaust for examples. In recent times, the abyss of ruined lives has appeared in Bosnia, Durfur, Iraq, New Orleans, and Manhattan, among others. Once civilized cities like Beirut and Baghdad have become horror zones. We are all on the edge of the cliff and maintain equilibrium only by refusing to look down.

Yet, people in disarray find ways to survive: religion, anger, work, whiskey. Since the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War we’ve lived in anticipation of continued plenty, our fortunes borne aloft by an economy supported mainly by expectation. Now we may be facing the abyss. How will we cope? Many will go on like Heather Raffo’s nine women. Does survival trump ethics? The comfortable have one answer, victims another. Listen to them before you decide.

In Praise of Joe Dumars

2008-06-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

William Rhoden, in his New York Times column today, (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/sports/basketball/29rhoden.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=slogin) praised Joe Dumars for going back to college. I replied.

Your column on Joe Dumars made be smile because I’ve been a huge fan ever since his first preseason when I saw him in a televised game. You knew immediately he would be a star. Later, after the Bad Boys had run their course, I saw Dumars facing down Karl Malone from courtside. At six feet the look is his eye was terrifying, the quiet determination of a movie hit man.

I say all this to disagree with the conclusions of your column. There is no chance that Joe Dumars’ college degree will improve his life in any way that would impress a young athlete on the make. His life is what he made it. He is the sort of man who would have succeeded if he had to drop out of kindergarten.

I guess my point is that we are what we are. Very few of us have the inner resources of a Joe Dumars. We’re the ones who needed degrees to come to something. Going back to college for his kids’ benefit is in Joe’s character. If Joe Dumars runs for Governor, I’ll be on his side. Call me, Joe: I’ll man the phones, walk the streets, buttonhole my friends, do what it takes. Whether or not you have a diploma.

"The Little Dog Laughed" at the Performance Network

2008-06-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

“The Little Dog Laughed” opened last night at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor. It earns six stars: four pitch-perfect performances by Barton Bund, Jacob Hodgson, Roxanne Wellington and Chelsea Sadler, the crisp and loving direction of Ray Schultz, and the evocative and perfectly suited set design by Monika Essen. It’s a sparkling entertainment, in depth somewhere between Hamlet and “Sex and the City.” The sophisticated, literate script and hair-trigger delivery provide a constant stream of clever laugh lines and a charming love story with a disarmingly realistic ending. All this comes wrapped in a puff pastry of happy cynicism.

The actors talk and move fast which challenges the lazy listener, but to brilliant effect. No one begs for a laugh but they come anyhow, because the comic timing of the actors and their utter ignorance that what they’re saying is funny hones the humor to a fine edge.

When the satirist Stan Freberg opened an advertising agency in 1957 he adapted the hypocritical MGM motto, “ars gratia artis” (“art for art’s sake”) to the more realistic “Ars gratia pecuniae” (art for money’s sake). This might well be the motto of “Little Dog Laughed,” yet only the hardest heart could fail to sympathize with these characters groping for land in a sea of selfishness

The nudity and the very limited boy-boy sex action will disappoint the raincoat crowd and should offend only those who come to be offended. Without them, the show would be childishly coy, unsuited to the stark hyper-realism of the script.

The show is mostly set in a movie star’s New York hotel room that could be a display in a trendy, high-end furniture boutique. The cold beauty of black, white, and gray suggests a modern take on a ‘40’s movie and is the perfect backdrop for the struggles between art and business and ambition and love that provide the action.

Black and white costumes of the protagonist add to the metaphor for starkly competing values. Other scenes take place, pointedly, on brightly colored pieces brought on stage ad hoc, presumably to represent life outside show business. The lighting enhanced this effect.

I don’t believe in “must see” shows, but this one comes damn close.

Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 -June 2, 2008)

2008-06-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Bo Diddley died yesterday. He was 79. For those of us who remember him, the obit in the New York Times provided some laughs, not at Bo’s expense, but at the gormlessness of the writer, Ben Ratliff.

The funniest, and most revealing, was an alleged quotation from the lyrics of Bo’s first hit, “Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring.” Anybody with a radio and an ear knew it was “Bo Diddley buy babe a diamond ring.” Ratliff’s version sounds like William F. Buckley talking about a gift for an infant.” And it doesn’t scan either. He must have downloaded the lyrics instead of listening to the recording. Of course, what can you expect from a writer who refers to “Mr. Diddley?”

Later on, Mr. Ratliff says his subject was a founder of rock n roll, along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Including Lewis in this list is like ranking the guy who fixes your lamp alongside Edison . Maybe he meant Huey Lewis. If you’re searching around for a white guy influential in early rock, try Bill Haley, who gradually turned country swing into rock with a southern white feel before Elvis Presley who later hocked his chops for a suite in Las Vegas (or sold his birthright for a mess).

Toward the end of his piece, Mr. Ratliff writes: “But soon a foreign market for his earlier music began to grow, thanks in large part to the Rolling Stones, a newly popular band that was regularly playing several of his songs in its concerts.” To broadly paraphrase Louis Armstrong, if you got to have the Rolling Stones explained, you ain’t never gonna get to the third page of that damn review!

Those of us who remember the crashing revelation of those strange guitar chords know the truth. We white kids had found something that kept our ears glued to the radio and also freaked out our parents. Paradise !

When I was fifteen, my mother and father agreed to buy me a guitar. We went to Sam Asch’s Music Store on Nostrand Avenue and I tried one, another, and another. When I got my hands on a Gibson L-48 I played the Bo Diddley chords and some kid said to his mother, “Mom, he’s playing Bo Diddley!” I knew I had my instrument. And I still have it, beat up and mostly unused, but always at hand.

In April, 1989, I finally saw the man in person at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor. He rocked the joint. I shook his hand like an awe-struck kid, not a fifty year old with a career. Only a few years ago, I saw him again at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. He had a different audience and a different show. In addition to his greatest hits he played jazz and did impressions. On that day, “Mr. Diddley” was a funny and versatile entertainer.

ehhh

Later on I kept on hearing Bo Diddley in the music of others. He was to rock n roll what Mozart was to classical music or Ty Cobb was to baseball: an innovator whose influence is everywhere.

APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE

2008-02-23T19:56:00.000-08:00

Last season, I took in a college baseball game. I sat close to the field in sunshine and the first inning was sublime. Michigan’s freshman catcher picked off a runner at first with a one-hop peg and nailed a base-stealer with a bullet to the shortstop’s glove. Even the clank of aluminum bats didn’t dull my pleasure, and I fell deep into the memory of Ebbets field, where, I’d watched Jackie, Gil, Duke, Pee Wee, and Roy mow down the national league.

But oh the incessant, polite applause. Applause is for ballerinas and sopranos; baseball demands yelling, cheering, booing. Yet, the crowd applauded such quotidian events as called strikes, routine fly-outs, and even a fielder’s choice, which may be the oddest, because, after all, it was an out for the home team. The fans clapped their hands several times each inning, sometimes in mid-batting turn.

When a Michigan player scored (which happened a lot in this 10-5 win) the bench emptied out to congratulate him even if he had only gotten on base with a walk, while the fellow whose mighty double brought him home waited on second base (This is not quite as silly as basketball players high-fiving and butt-patting a team-mate who just missed a free throw, but still …).

There seems to be a universal itch to congratulate that is scratched at the least excuse. Theater audiences no longer wait for the final curtain to burst forth; clapping has metastasized to the end of each act, even to scene changes. Often, the “turn off your cell phone” announcer gets an ovation as if he had just found a better way to deliver Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Why this need to demonstrate approval? Is it the search of the lonely for a connection, spectators yearning to be part of the action, or just another obnoxious fad, like the misuse of “beg the question” or emphasizing prepositions?

I don’t know. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to applaud a scene change or a called strike. If you’re sitting next to me at a game, you’ll have to put up with some old-fashioned yelling, when it’s called for — and silence when it’s not.

a few words from SHEKI MBEKI on UNDER-THONG FASHIONS

2007-08-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

I received an email that said, “Sheki, is your bikini line ready for spring break?” All “bikini line” brought to mind was pretty girls queued up to audition for a beer commercial, so I investigated and discovered the world of the shaved pubic area.

They even name the styles. There’s “the landing strip,” “the Brazilian,” and its Jewish varietal, “the Israelian,” which takes the shape of a menorah. But this smoothing frenzy renders obsolete the fine old nickname for cunnilingus, “carpet munching,” because if you shave you get the mug without the rug.

Thus, the search for substitutes. The floor-covering metaphor suggests “linoleum licker.” For those of a classical bent, how about “A Night On Bald Mountain?”

My research led me to another new procedure, anal bleaching. Americans actually open themselves up, so to speak, to hydroquinone, a carcinogen banned in such backward places as England and France, to make their anuses more attractive. I guess people are desperate to have admirers say, “there goes a good-looking asshole,” although I’m sure UPS isn’t thrilled to have its slogan-question, “what can brown do for you?” answered “not a thing, buddy.”

That people who wouldn’t touch a cigarette or eat fatty foods, who work out at expensive gyms, willingly expose themselves to cancer to make a marginal improvement in the appearance of a virtually hidden square inch of their bodies, is an American conundrum. And take note, President Bush, this is a medical service you can’t get in an emergency room. So far.

One day, perhaps, your lover will whisper, “I adore your blue eyes, red lips, plastic breasts, artfully shaved peri-labial area, and your pearl-white pooper.” A six-million dollar woman? Not quite, but too damn close.

Eventually, of course, some of the medically-whitened community may suffer regret and seek to have the procedure reversed. That would make the pro-brown folks at United Parcel happy because the name might be U.P your butt.

Anal bleaching may also have racial implications. After all, what would a black person do with a white asshole? And wouldn’t it look like a cross-section of a Little Debbie snack cake? On the other hand, some black person is sure to take a bath in hydroquinone and turn white. Probably Little Richard.

I’m sure that as I write this, scientists are looking for a way to make unscented flatulence.

-- Sheki Mbeki --

Christmas Dinner at La Merde

2007-08-26T18:32:00.001-07:00

I've posted a new one-page play for the Toledo one-page play festival to my home page. To read it, just click on the link below.
http://www.geocities.com/marty_839/LaMerde.html

Sheki Mbeki Says: Uncle George is Watching You!

2007-08-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, President Bush said he wanted the FISA law updated to take into account new technology. He explained he wasn’t comfortable having to violate an outdated statute. He preferred to ignore a more current law.

Now the “update” has been passed by a bi-partisan Congress (yes, the Vichy Democrats collaborated again) and it gives the President more than he asked for. Essentially, it legalizes all his warrantless snooping. All he needs is to claim that the communication is “reasonably believed to be overseas." No more annoying courts getting in the way.

Bush is going to have to be very diligent to violate this sweeping surrender to massive invasion of privacy. But I think he’s up to it. The only official outside the National Security Agency that will have to approve a proposal to spy on you is – are you ready for this? – The Attorney General. Do you feel safer knowing that our freedom from unreasonable searches is in the hands of that super-hero of integrity, Seedy Gonzalez?

So be careful what you say on email or on the phone. Uncle George and La Cucaracha make Big Brother look like a wuss.

SHEKI MBEKI on Drug Ads and Another Apology

2007-08-06T11:30:00.001-07:00

Drug advertising in wonderland. Restless legs syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by unpleasant sensations in the legs and an uncontrollable urge to move them for relief.

The newest drug therapy approved for this disorder is Myrapex, a drug that encourages dopamine production. The manufacturer’s website for this TV advertised drug reports these side-effects: pathological gambling, hypersexuality, compulsive eating (including binge eating), and falling asleep while engaged in activities of daily living, including the operation of motor vehicles which sometimes resulted in accidents.

Thank God. I was getting bored with the usual comic side effects of advertised drugs, like impotence and loose bowels.

All this to relieve some discomfort in the leg. Would we really be willing to risk falling asleep at the wheel while speeding to the nearest casino as we inhale a bucket of fried chicken and the dear girl we just picked up unzips our fly?

I’d be willing to give it a try if I could stay awake long enough to enjoy it. Maybe if I washed the chicken down with Red Bull.

Sub-prime mortgage securities update. The AP reported a week ago (July 31, 2007) that “Wall Street resumed its downward skid Tuesday, falling sharply as renewed concerns about soured home loans blew away what had looked like a solid recovery rally.” Since then, things have gotten even worse. Once again, Sheki Mbeki apologizes for pointing out that if you buy securities backed by drek, you’re actually buying drek, a point so subtle it eluded some of our best financial minds until Sheki pointed it out a week ago. Perhaps I’ll kill myself with Chinese toothpaste.

Sheki Mbeki Apologizes

2007-07-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

The day after I posted my humorous criticism of sub-prime mortgage backed securities, the stock market fell sharply. One reason, according to experts, is the failure of sub-prime mortgage backed securities.

I hope it wasn't my fault.

--Sheki Mbeki--

The Ballad of Sub-Prime Mortgage Securities

2007-07-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

A FEW WORDS FROM PHILOSOPHER AND STAND-UP COMIC, SHEKI MBEKI

Lend money to a dead-beat you lose your money. Lend money to a few dead-beats you go broke. But lend to thousands of dead-beats, people even Tony Soprano wouldn’t fund at 20 percent a week, you bundle-up these rotten (bad doesn’t seem quite pejorative enough) debts into securities (odd name, no? should be insecurities), persuade Standard and Poorhouse to give your bundle of joy a good credit rating (not the triple oy gevalt it deserves) and sell them to the schmeggegie investor community.

They buy the package because the wrapper was so pretty they didn’t bother to look inside. Due diligence becomes “doobie doobie do diligence,” emphasis on the doobie. Now it’s no longer your problem, it’s theirs.

So why shouldn’t an investment bank (say, Stern Bears & Co.-that’s the opposite of Lax Bulls) buy up bad commercial receivables for a penny or two on the dollar, bundle them up and peddle them as “securities?”

Then come bad debt futures. Derivative you say? Damn straight! If the package some schmuck paid a thousand dollars for goes down to, say, ten cents, a wise guy who sold short makes a killing.

And, isn’t it inevitable: a bad-debt futures index. Pool the risk. If one goes down ninety-nine per cent, maybe another will go down only ninety-five per cent.

And who will police this mess? The SEC? Out to lunch. Eliot Spitzer? Sorry, he’s governor now.

Soon, the entire economy will be financed by a pyramid of moronic risks standing shakily on its point. But wait, isn’t that how it is already?

-- Sheki Mbeki--