"The Little Dog Laughed" at the Performance Network

“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)

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

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

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

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!

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

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.