August 23, 2010
I find children repulsive.
This will come as no shock to anybody, but I just want to remind you of that fact because it ought to put what I am about to do in some perspective.
My cousin has started a company called Child's Turn. It's an organization working to create an online community for parents and families of kids who have been diagnosed with disabilities; they've just launched a website at childsturn.com to offer, among other things, a list of service providers searchable by location and condition, a discussion forum, a well-written blog, and treacly pictures of smiling children.
My cousin pretends to be an asshole but secretly he's actually a really nice guy, so if you have or anybody you know has a child in the family with a physical, mental, or emotional disability, take a look at Child's Turn.
I mean, I'll loathe a child regardless of whether it's disabled or able, but I know that not everybody can be as forward-thinking as I. With luck my cousin and his cohorts will create a world in which all children have an equal opportunity to frighten me.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:12 AM
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August 04, 2010
When I was but a wee thing of seventeen, I fell in love—nay, plunged desperately in love—with one of the teachers at my high school, M.R., whom I knew of course as Mr. R. I never actually took any of Mr. R.'s classes, but he was also one of the drama coaches; it was in this capacity that I worked with him, in preparation for debate tournaments and for the senior play. Furthermore, I went to a pretty small school, so everybody knew everybody else, and since I had few friends my own age I ended up hanging out with the teachers more than most of the other kids.
But I digress. As I say, I was desperately in love with Mr. R., who by the way was GORGEOUS, and I spent approximately half my waking hours during senior year thinking about a) whether he was gay and b) whether, if he was, I could get him to love me.
But I graduated from high school without ever learning the truth about either of these questions. Mr. R. and I stayed in touch, however, and before long I understood that the answer to a), at least, was "yes." By this time I had moved away and plunged desperately in love with more boys than I could count, so my passion for Mr. R.—whom I could finally begin calling M.—had receded from the forefront of my mind, but my affection for him remained.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to see him for the first time in many years, when I was a visiting artist for a week and a half at the school where he teaches now. During the day I worked with the drama students; at night, M. and I revisited those halcyon days of yore, long gone, when we could both laugh in the teeth of wrinkles and fat; each of us remembered things the other had forgotten, so I found our conversations were deeply satisfying, in that they served the purpose not only of reconnecting with an old friend but also of enlarging my understanding of my own history.
He had forgotten, for example, the hair-product episode. At one point in the fall of 1990 I discovered that the guy who stood next to me in the choir I sang in was Mr. R.'s hairdresser. This fact filled me with a gleeful joy, because my friend Y. and I had been trying for months to get Mr. R. to tell us which product he used on his spectacular hair. Mr. R. had thus far resisted our efforts without breaking a sweat, but I made excellent use of my new connection and was able to surprise Mr. R. during fourth period with a bottle of Vavoom for his birthday.
He in turn reminded me, over dinner with a friend of his, of the Christmas episode, which had completely vanished from my memory. Shortly before Christmas vacation, school was canceled one day because of snow. (This was in Charleston, South Carolina, where it snows once a year, exactly one inch, and the city shuts down because nobody knows how to deal with it.) I wasn't about to let the snow stay me from the swift completion of my appointed round. So I walked to his apartment, which was a couple miles from my house, knocked on his door, and, when he opened it, handed him his Christmas present.
Which was a copy of Tales of the City.
I'd hoped, of course, that he would ask me in and ravish me or at the very least open his heart to me and let me open mine to him so that we would discover we were kindred spirits, but this did not happen. Instead, he stood in the doorway, thanked me politely for the gift, and shut the door, at which point I—lithe, nubile, seventeen-year-old, unmolested I—trudged home.
When M. had finished the story, his friend's only response was, "Gee, M., you really know how to not get arrested."
I for my part found myself wishing ever so slightly that I didn't have a boyfriend so that I might try again. But the Tales of the City had been over for years, and when one has lost opportunities they tend not to be found.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 01:32 PM
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July 02, 2010
My father, who is a somewhat well-known civil rights lawyer, happened to be in Washington, D.C., yesterday and attended the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings. During a break he ran into the hideous Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and said, "If it's any consolation, Senator, my friends and I all think she's too conservative."
He says that Senator Graham "chuckled ruefully."
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:05 AM
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June 26, 2010
E.S.: Did you hear that Taco Bell is going out of business?
FAUSTUS: NO! Oh, my God, that's so horrible! Why? How could such a thing happen?
E.S.: I don't know. They looked at their profits and—
FAUSTUS: Wait a minute. Taco Bell isn't going out of business, are they? You're just saying that.
E.S.: Guilty as charged.
FAUSTUS: You're so mean. You pass along vicious rumors just to make me feel bad.
E.S.: No, I make up vicious rumors just to make you feel bad.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:04 AM
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June 25, 2010
The other night, E.S. and I watched a television program called Merlin, which seems to be a sort of prequel to the story beloved by so many. It features Arthur as a strapping blond lad (if pressed one might admit to a small desire that he be just ever so slightly more strapping) and Merlin as his macrotous contemporary, along with Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Arthur's cruel, domineering father Uther. At one point during the show E.S. and I had the following conversation.
E.S.: Wait a minute. Which one's Arthur?
FAUSTUS: Him.
E.S.: But she just called the other guy Arthur.
FAUSTUS: No, she called him Uther.
E.S.: Who's that?
FAUSTUS (pausing the show): Are you serious? How can you not know basic mythology?
E.S.: How can you not know how to take out the garbage?
FAUSTUS: Uther was Arthur's father. He married Igraine, but not before—
(E.S. unpauses the show)
FAUSTUS: But you asked me to—! You wanted to know who—
E.S.: Yes, but I'm bored now.
FAUSTUS: Don't ever touch me again.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:36 AM
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June 01, 2010
(It is earlier this evening. E.S. and FAUSTUS are lying in bed lazily.)
E.S.: I need to get up.
FAUSTUS: Okay. I'm going to count down from three. On one, let's both get up.
E.S.: Okay.
FAUSTUS: Three.... Two.... One!
(FAUSTUS gets up. E.S. stays right where he is.)
FAUSTUS: You have a very idiosyncratic definition of "both."
E.S.: I've changed my mind. I'm just going to lie here and become a big lump.
FAUSTUS: Become?
(E.S. uses his foot to push FAUSTUS to the edge of the bed.)
FAUSTUS: Hey!
E.S.: Did you almost fall off the bed?
FAUSTUS: Yes.
E.S.: ...
FAUSTUS: ...
E.S.: Well, I would have said I was sorry.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:07 PM
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May 28, 2010
From washingtonpost.com, reproduced here in full because there you have to register to read the damn thing.
Republicans' new Web site not exactly what they hoped it would be
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Republicans want to take over the House in the fall, but there's a problem: They don't have an agenda.
So on Tuesday, they set out to resolve that shortcoming. They announced that they would solicit suggestions on the Internet, then have members of the public give the ideas a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Call it the "Dancing With the Stars" model of public policy.
Republicans were very pleased with their technological sophistication as they introduced the Web site, America Speaking Out a ceremony at the Newseum. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who created the program, said that to get software for the site, "I personally traveled to Washington state and discovered a Microsoft program that helped NASA map the moon."
Using lunar software is appropriate, because the early responses to the Republicans' request for ideas are pretty far out:
"End Child Labor Laws," suggests one helpful participant. "We coddle children too much. They need to spend their youth in the factories."
"How about if Congress actually do thier job and VET or Usurper in Chief, Obama is NOT a Natural Born Citizen in any way," recommends another. "That fake so called birth certificate is useless."
"A 'teacher' told my child in class that dolphins were mammals and not fish!" a third complains. "And the same thing about whales! We need TRADITIONAL VALUES in all areas of education. If it swims in the water, it is a FISH. Period! End of Story."
House Republicans, meet the World Wide Web.
GOP leaders seemed to have something else in mind as they rolled out their new site. "I would expect the ideas that come out of this Web site and the involvement of our members will lead to ideas that we can attempt to implement today," House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) proclaimed. "We want to continue to offer better solutions to address the problems that America is facing, and we see this as a giant step forward, directly engaging the American people in the development of those solutions."
Such as?
"Build a castle-style wall along the border, there is plenty of stone laying around about there." That was in the "national security" section of the new site.
"Legalize Marijuana, cause, like, alcohol is legal. Man. Also." That was in the "traditional values" section.
"I say, repeal all the amendments to the Constitution." ("American prosperity" section.)
"Don't let the illegals run out of Arizona and hide. . . . I think that we should do something to identify them in case they try to come back over. Like maybe tattoo a big scarlet 'I' on their chests -- for 'illegal'!!!" (Filed under "job creation.")
The Republican leaders attempting to demonstrate their technological savvy at the Newseum brought to mind former Alaska senator Ted Stevens's observation that the Internet is a "series of tubes."
The Web site not only "has cutting-edge technology," asserted Rep. Peter Roskam (Ill.), "but a winsome design that is easy for people to interact with."
Lest you think Republicans are just discovering the Internet, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) let it be known that "House Republicans have tweeted five times as many as the House Democrats. Leader Boehner has almost five times as many Facebook fans as Speaker Pelosi." Boehner grinned and gave a double thumbs-up.
Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.) contributed to the discussion by twice giving out the wrong address for the new site.
House Republicans had experimented with reality-show-style policymaking before. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) has been having Internet users vote on which government programs to cut, but that experiment was more tightly controlled.
This one, McCarthy said, would do nothing less than "change the course of history." The Web site filters out obscenity and the like, but it hasn't kept out hundreds of ideas: some serious, some offensive and some so wacky they surely must be Democratic sabotage.
"Let kids vote!" recommended one. "Let's make a 'Social Security Lotto,' " proposed another. "What dope came up with the idea of criminalizing a parent's right to administer corporal punishment?" a third demanded.
Some contributors demanded action to uncover conspiracies involving the 9/11 attacks and the "NEW WORLD ORDER." One forward thinker recommended that we "build the city of the future somewhere in a non-inhabit part of the United States, preferably the desert."
Some of the uglier forces of the Internet found their way to the House Republican site. "I oppose the Hispanicization of America," said one. "These are not patriotic people." Another contributor had parody in mind (we hope): "English is are official langauge. Anybody who ain't speak it the RIGHT way should kicked out."
But Republicans might want to take a hard look at the suggestion that "we need to reframe the discussion" about the BP oil spill to counteract the "environmental whackos" worried about wildlife. Republicans, this person proposed, should argue that "BP is creating a new race of faster dolphins. These fish are unable to compete against the fish of other countries, but now their increased lubrication will allow them to fly through the water. Faster fish = good."
Posted by Faustus, MD at 03:25 AM
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May 25, 2010
E.S. and I had a fight the other night, during which the following dialogue occurred.
E.S.: You're such an asshole.
FAUSTUS: You're the asshole.
E.S.: You're the fucking asshole.
FAUSTUS: You're the fucking asshole, asshole.
E.S.: ....
FAUSTUS: ....
E.S.: You're such an asshole.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 12:37 AM
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May 21, 2010
From the Top Model season finale viewing in my house.
KRISTA'S MOM: That's our family motto: pride, determination, and resilience.
FAUSTUS: Sweetheart, do we have a family motto?
E.S.: Sloth.
FAUSTUS: ...
E.S.: ...
FAUSTUS: That's it?
E.S.: We're too lazy to have more than one character trait in our family motto.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 04:52 PM
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May 07, 2010
Last night I watched this week's Law & Order: SVU. After it was finished, over the Wolf Films logo, Chris Meloni introduced the preview of next week's episode by saying, "There's a new SVU next week." I grinned, as a new SVU means above anything else another chance that Chris Meloni might appear en déshabillé. Then Chris Meloni said, "Wipe that smile off your face." I clapped my hand over my mouth in shock and did as ordered, though I couldn't prevent myself from getting a little hard.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 05:54 AM
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April 26, 2010
FAUSTUS: Oh, my God, honey, I'm watching this movie Orphan, it's like The Bad Seed times four!
E.S.: You're like The Bad Seed times four.
FAUSTUS: Oh, please. I would never be as sloppy as Rhoda Penmark.
E.S.: Depends on your definition of sloppy.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:55 AM
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April 23, 2010
I was standing on a very crowded bus yesterday when we came to a stop and a few people got on, including an old woman. It was obvious that she wanted to sit down, but there were no free seats and nobody got up to offer her one. Everyone had boarded the bus but it didn't move.
"Is somebody going to give this woman a seat?" the bus driver finally asked, pointedly, over the speaker. At this point somebody did indeed get up and offer her his seat, which she accepted. Once she was sitting comfortably, the bus got going again. "It's nice to be important," announced the bus driver, "but it's more important to be nice."
This left me with two questions:
1. How can I possibly not have heard this platitude before? Its symmetry and simplicity place it on par with "When you assume you make an ass out of u and me," a platitude I first heard (and found profound and revealing) at the age of nine. How can my ears not have lost their virginity to this one?
2. Why was I deeply moved? Have I gone over the edge? E.S. points out that I am particularly vulnerable to the pathos of old women in movies and on television; was this an extension of that vulnerability? Or have I jumped the shark?
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:27 AM
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April 20, 2010
A very nice (well, I actually have no idea, but she punctuates beautifully) doctoral candidate wrote me to ask whether I would post this call for study participants. Since I am a sucker for beautiful punctuation, I cannot refuse. I will note that I am posting it in spite of the fact that I am too old to participate, which makes it therefore one of an ever-increasing number of reminders that though I was at one point young and fresh I am now wrinkly and desiccated.
Engaged volunteers needed!
I am looking for volunteers for a study of attitudes towards marriage and parenthood among engaged couples (same-sex or opposite sex). The study consists of a 25-30 minute online survey. To qualify for the study, you must be 20-35 years old, live in the U.S., and plan to marry or have a commitment ceremony within the next 365 days. You and your romantic partner must not have children, and this must be the first marriage for both of you.
You can:
—Help a doctoral candidate;
—Increase the pool of scientific knowledge;
—Support research on marriage and families; and
—Spend some time thinking about your relationship!
I am working with Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. This study has been approved by the University of Virginia Institutional Review Board #2009025800.
If you and/or your romantic partner are interested in participating or want further information, please email me at survey.couples@gmail.com. I will send you a link that you can use to access the study.
Thanks!
Cristina Reitz-Krueger
Doctoral Student
University of Virginia
(434) 243-8558
survey.couples@gmail.com
Posted by Faustus, MD at 08:40 AM
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April 12, 2010
In late 2006 or early 2007, I read something about a forthcoming book that had stirred up a great deal of controversy in Jewish communities around the world, especially in Israel and Italy. The book, written in Italian by history professor Ariel Toaff (son of Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome) of Bar Ilan University in Israel, was called Passovers of Blood; according to his critics, Toaff argued, using close readings of Medieval records of Jews tortured and put on trial for murder, that in the Middle Ages the blood libel was true—that is, that Jews used to murder Christian children and use their blood as an ingredient in matzah, the unleavened bread at the center of the celebration of Passover and the commemoration of the Jews' escape from Egypt. In response, people called for Toaff to be fired and/or excommunicated. If I understand correctly, he was forbidden to attend his father's funeral. The book's publisher canceled the second printing.
I've tried and I've tried and I simply can't come up with a way to communicate to non-Jews the enormity of such an assertion. For literally thousands of years, the blood libel has led to the slaughter of Jews in pogroms (anti-Jewish riots) and government- and church-led murder trials. The closest thing I can think of is the idea of a black historian writing a book claiming that slaves in America really were beasts incapable of human thought. It's almost unthinkable. So I figured that Toaff's critics were distorting the text of the book to serve their own ends and that what he'd actually written, though perhaps incendiary in some way, couldn't possibly say what they claimed it said, especially since his previous published books had titles like To Eat Like a Hebrew: Jewish Cooking in Italy From the Renaissance to the Modern Age and Hebrew Monsters: The Jewish Imaginary From the Medieval Period to the Early Modern Period.
But I am a bloodthirsty man obsessed with murder, hate, and revenge, so the whole thing was making me really happy. Obviously I had to get a copy of the book. My Italian was extraordinarily rusty, but I figured that with a good dictionary I could get through enough to be satisfied. The publishers had printed only a thousand copies, though, so I had to act fast.
Well, I didn't act fast enough, as it happened. Because there was exactly one copy for sale in the world, offered by a used bookstore in Italy. And it cost $432.00.
I did not have $432.00, so I regretfully closed my browser and went on to other tasks, presumably involving looking at pictures of naked men.
But I couldn't stop thinking about Passovers of Blood, and finally, a few days later, I threw in the towel. "Fine," I thought to myself. "I'll spend $432.00 on a book I can't read. What else is plastic for?" So I went back to the bookstore's web site to find that the book now cost $817.00.
I gave up.
After several months passed, however, I got an e-mail from a friend in Italy, and in my response I begged him to check his local library for a copy of Passovers of Blood and, if they had the book, to photocopy it and send it to me.
The next day, he e-mailed me a PDF of the Italian text and the accompanying images (mostly Medieval woodcuts). "I'm sorry to say," he wrote, "that I got it off an Italian antisemitic revisionist web site. But such are the lengths I'll go to for my friends." I sent him something flirtatious in response, opened the PDF, and prepared to find out what Toaff had really said.
Oh, boy.
"Trials for ritual murder"—this is a rough translation, but not too rough—"make up a hard knot to untangle, where people who want to examine them go generally to research that confirms, more or less convincingly, the theories that they have already developed and in which they seem firmly to believe. Elements that don't fit the picture are often minimized in their significance, sometimes passed over in silence. Curiously, in this type of research, what needs to be proven is treated as a given. The perception is clear that a different attitude would present dangers and implications which one wants to avoid at all costs."
Uh-oh.
Later on: "We must decide therefore whether the confessions of infant crucifixions on Passover Eve, the testimony of the accused about the use of Christian blood in the feast document myths—that is, beliefs and ideologies going back for a long time—or rites—that is, actual events occurring in reality and celebrated in prescribed and consolidated forms, with their baggage, more or less fixed, of formulas and anathemas, accompanied by those magic and superstitious practices that were an integral part of the protagonists' mentality."
Oh, shit.
I couldn't get much further in Italian, but eventually I found a translation into English—done, alas, by antisemitic revisionists and hosted on an antisemitic revisionist web site—and in the end Toaff seemed to say that it was conceivable that a fundamentalist sect had occasionally kidnapped Christian babies to put their blood in matzah. The evidentiary link seemed pretty weak to me, but I'm not a historian and so I don't feel competent to judge his historiography.
What I don't get is: How on earth could anybody write such a thing and not expect to be—forgive me—crucified by the world Jewish community? I saw Toaff on some YouTube video and he seemed genuinely surprised at the vitriol he'd provoked. It was as if this were no different from writing about food or monsters.
If you want the Italian text you can download a PDF here.
If you want the images you can download a PDF here.
If you want to read the translation you can do so here; it's a revisionist web site, but as far as I've been able to discern it's a pretty accurate translation.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:35 AM
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April 08, 2010
You know you've sunk pretty low when even the KKK won't have anything to do with you. (Thanks to him for the image.)
Posted by Faustus, MD at 04:00 PM
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March 19, 2010
The problem with writing a show in which somebody dies of an illness that isn't the subject of the show (Rent, La Traviata) is that as a rule the only way to convey clearly that characters are sick, other than making them talk or sing about it explicitly, is to have them cough. And the instant somebody coughs onstage, the audience knows s/he's going to die before the end of the show, which makes it impossible for the event to have any suspense or surprise.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:00 AM
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March 08, 2010
So Podhoretz responded to our response, here:
Signs of Life Strife by John Podhoretz
A few days ago, I called attention to a quote from one of the creators of a new musical called Signs of Life, which is set in and around the Thereseinstadt concentration camp. (I compared it to The Producers, and specifically to "Springtime for Hitler," the musical-within-the-musical, described by its deranged creator as "a gay romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden.") The quote in question averred that the questions about Nazi era Germans and how they responded to their leaders had a great deal to teach us about America over the past decade—an observation of which the best that can be said is that it is a bit more tasteful than the very notion of a musical set at Thereseinstadt.
The writers and creators of Signs of Life, evidently thrilled that anybody is willing to write about them at all, have fired a broadside at me using the old "how can he criticize our show without seeing it" gambit:
[He quotes here our letter in full.]
Now, while I do place myself very much on the anti side on the admittedly complex aesthetic question of using the Holocaust as an artistic setting—and, not incidentally, on the anti side when it comes to the use of the musical form as a vehicle for the serious treatment of just about any topic, notwithstanding my deep love of musicals and the American songbook they created—that wasn't the reason I wrote the item. I wrote the item because of something the show's composer, Joel Derfner, said. Which was this: "The message of our show is not 'Killing Jews is bad.' It's: 'What do you do when you find out you've been lied to? What is telling the truth worth?' In the last 30 years this question has been vital to American life and especially so in the last nine years."
Now let's parse this. What happened 30 years ago in this country? Ronald Reagan's election. What happened nine years ago? George W. Bush's inauguration. Who's making repulsive and unwarranted associations now? The Signs of Life team is right that someone said something contemptible, but it wasn't I.
And thanks for the invitation, but I'll pass; I already did my time years ago when, courtesy of P.J. O'Rourke, who secured it from God-knows-where, I once read the entirety of the screenplay for the Jerry Lewis epic, The Day the Clown Cried.
Well, before we could stop ourselves, we wrote a response to his response to our response.
Another Open Letter to John Podhoretz:
Upon learning that you were pressured into reading the screenplay for The Day The Clown Cried, we are left with nothing but compassion. No one could emerge from such an experience unscathed, and we will be sure to pen an angry letter to P.J. O'Rourke.
We will simply point out:
We seem to have hit the exact intersection of your two beliefs that the Holocaust is unsuitable as a subject for art and that the musical is a form unsuited for serious subjects. Though we clearly disagree with both points (and look for support to pieces like Shostakovitch's Symphony No. 13, Anna Sokolow's dance piece Dreams, and Kander and Ebb's Cabaret on the first and Show Boat, West Side Story, and, well, Kander and Ebb's Cabaret on the second), we understand that your beliefs reflect the same goal we have—to do honor to the memory of the Shoah.
And to be clear: we believe that the Shoah transcends partisan politics, and we did not write Signs of Life to send a partisan message; the lessons to be found in it are moral ones. No single piece of art can hope to encompass the Shoah, and Signs of Life does not try: it deals with the specific perversities of Theresienstadt, and must therefore grapple with issues of truth and power, representation and reality. We explore what happens when leaders lie to their citizens. You and Joel undoubtedly have different ideas about which American leaders have done so over the course of the last few decades, but you also undoubtedly agree that these remain vital issues no matter who is in power.
In writing Signs of Life, we have tried to treat the material with honesty, and survivors of Theresienstadt, the only real judges, have consistently told us that they saw their own experiences mirrored accurately and without sentimentality onstage. We'd like to renew our invitation for you to see the show, perhaps with P.J. O'Rourke. We suspect you won't take us up on it, but we'd love to offer you the opportunity to base your criticism of Signs of Life on experience.
Yours truly,
Joel Derfner (composer)
Len Schiff (lyricist)
Peter Ullian (bookwriter)Posted by Faustus, MD at 03:44 PM | Comments (9)
March 05, 2010
A few days ago, an article in the New York Times mentioned my new show, Signs of Life, and quoted me talking about some of the resonances the piece has in society today. John Podhoretz, neoconservative columnist for the New York Post and editor of Commentary magazine, took exception to my words and wrote this:
SPRINGTIME FOR DUBYA? by John Podhoretz
I'm sure you're looking forward to the new off-Broadway musical, "Signs of Life," which offers what promises to be a wonderfully tuneful look at the Thereseinstadt concentration camp. But it turns out, according to tomorrow's New York Times, that the musical really isn't about the Holocaust after all, which is probably a wise thing, since The Producers got there first with its signature number, "Springtime for Hitler." No, it turns out, the Holocaust exists as a dramatic trope to teach us lessons about America in the age of Bush:
That show, which had its premiere on Thursday, centers on Lorelei, an artist who agrees to create pretty pictures of the camp for Nazi propaganda but who, with other prisoners, schemes to get her drawings of the real horrors to the outside world.
"The message of our show is not 'Killing Jews is bad,' " Mr. Derfner said. "It's: 'What do you do when you find out you've been lied to? What is telling the truth worth?' In the last 30 years this question has been vital to American life and especially so in the last nine years."
No, this is not, as they say, from The Onion.
My collaborators and I were taken aback by the post, and we would like to respond by posting the following open letter to Mr. Podhoretz.
Dear Mr. Podhoretz:
You are well-known as a protector of the memory of the Holocaust and as someone who, by his own admission, knows "the lyrics to every show tune ever written." We were therefore dismayed to read your post on Commentary about our new off-Broadway musical, Signs of Life. Your casually insulting aside about the "wonderfully tuneful" quality of the show—which as far as we can tell you have not seen—is irresponsible enough, but to make the ugly accusation that we believe "the Holocaust exists as a dramatic trope to teach us lessons about America in the age of Bush" is contemptible.
The characters in our show must participate in the Nazi propaganda machine in order to survive; when they realize the implications of their participation they face ethical choices that endanger their lives. But the obligation of citizens across the political spectrum to question our leaders and evaluate the truth of their answers did not end on V-Day.
The idea you seem to advocate—that if you put an event as vastly horrific as the Holocaust onstage you should do it as a museum piece, rather than exploring what we might learn from it about human nature—implies that today's society is no longer capable of a Holocaust, which is a position both false and dangerous.
We would like to invite you to see Signs of Life and to judge based on experience rather than distortion and mockery whether our show honors the memory of those slaughtered in the Holocaust. Please e-mail us and we'll arrange tickets for whatever date you'd like.
Yours truly,
Joel Derfner (composer)
Len Schiff (lyricist)
Peter Ullian (bookwriter)
Posted by Faustus, MD at 12:05 PM | Comments (7)
February 16, 2010
Harlan Ellison: Pay the writer. (I can't quite remember but I think he says "motherfucker," so if you work for, you know, the Daughters of the Confederacy you might want to wait until you get home to watch it.)
Posted by Faustus, MD at 03:36 PM | Comments (4)
February 02, 2010
My collaborators have written about the issue on their blogs, so I thought I might as well weigh in on singing Nazis.
Len points out that when characters sing they are often in a state of heightened emotion, a state in which, whether accurately or otherwise, they believe they're being honest with themselves. "Did we want to dignify," Len asks, "the honest reflections of SS officers?"
Peter notes that it was most definitely not his intention that the audience sympathize with the two Nazi characters in our show.
The question is equally tricky from a musical point of view.
There are three moments in our show when the Nazis sing. Two are performative (they lie, respectively, to the Jews of Prague and to the Red Cross inspector who comes to visit the ghetto), and the music sounds like the attitude they have assumed for the deception (respectively, reassuring and jolly), but the third is an honest moment, in which Heindel, the younger of the two, sings about his true belief in the Nazi aim.
And to the ones who cry compassion,
Preaching, 'Hate is not the answer,'
I say humans must hate Jews
The way the surgeon hates the cancer.I agree with Len that, in this moment, the character is being honest with himself, or as honest as he can be. And since the character feels—rightly or wrongly—that he is motivated by the noblest and most humanitarian of aims, the music has to feel noble and humanitarian.
But I also agree with Peter that we don't want anybody to sympathize with the Nazis in our show. So how can the music feel noble and humanitarian? We all—at least most of us—feel noble and humanitarian emotions at one time or another, and if such a song is not an attempt to make an evil character sympathetic, then what is it?
The answer, I believe, can be found (as can the answers to most things) in ancient Greek, in the sources of the words "sympathy" and "empathy." "Sympathy" derives from "pathe" (experience, suffering) and "syn" (with); "empathy" from "pathe" and "en" (in).
If you feel sympathy for someone, you're "with" him—you're on his side. You feel wounded when he feels wounded; you feel angry when he feels angry; you feel joyful when he feels joyful. If you feel empathy for someone, you're "in" him—you're in his shoes. You discern, however distantly, what he feels when he feels wounded, angry, joyful. You understand what it is to be him. Sympathy is a centripetal force, empathy a centrifugal one. Sympathy is about you. Empathy is about somebody else.
So unless our Nazi is a sociopath—which he's not, though of course many were—then the only honest way to portray him as a character is to try to empathize with him and to try write him so that the audience empathizes with him too.
Which means that the song, if I've succeeded (you can listen to it here to decide for yourself), is horrifying, because it allows the audience to glimpse something in themselves that, pushed far enough, might not look too different from this monster.
To order tickets to Signs of Life: A Tale of Terezin, click here.
To find out more about Signs of Life, click here.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 09:57 AM | Comments (7)
January 26, 2010
My first off-Broadway show (which with luck will not be my last) opens one month from today.
Signs of Life is the story of a young girl who comes of age in the Czech ghetto Terezin, rechristened Theresienstadt by the Nazis, who filled it with Jewish artists, musicians, and intellectuals and turned it into a propaganda tool. Once she and her friends and family realize what lies in store for them, they begin to discover that some truths might be worth dying for.
If you live in or around New York and are interested in seeing the show, go to https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/425 to buy tickets, which are $40-$55 unless you use the promotion code "AMAS," in which case they're $32-$47 ($8 off).
If you want to find out more about Signs of Life, you can go to terezinsings.org, a fundraising site the writers set up, and/or terezinmusical.com, a site the producers set up. If you want to hear some music from the show, go to joelderfner.com/music and check the sidebar on the right.
We've been in rehearsals for a week, and it's going to be fabulous, if I do say so myself.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:37 AM | Comments (10)
January 21, 2010
This is the thing I always forget:
Rehearsing a show is fun.
Because you get to fiddle with all the little stuff. In between presentations (of whatever sort—readings, workshops, etc.) you're spending your time trying to fix things that are genuine problems, like "The opening number feels disjointed and too long" or "We have three ballads in a row in the second half of act two, so we need to cut two of them or move them to elsewhere in the show."
But once you get into rehearsal (assuming you've fixed most of the genuine problems you've been worried about) you get to play with the fun stuff. Like, today we decided that (for now at least) two characters who used to not sleep together are going to sleep together. We're not sure it will work—there are later scenes that might be affected adversely by such a development—but we're hoping we can keep it, because, hey, more sex is always better.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2010
I'm sitting in the first day of rehearsal for my first off-Broadway show.
This is kind of fabulous.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:55 AM | Comments (6)
January 11, 2010
My boyfriend is an insane lunatic who belongs in an asylum.
At least this is my contention; he for his part thinks rather that I am avoidant and passive-aggressive, which as we all know is a ridiculous idea.
In order to help me prove to him that I am right and he is wrong, I would appreciate your answer to the following question.
If you and your boyfriend/girlfriend/lover/partner/husband/wife/whatever are having a fight—say one of average proportions—and it gets to be bedtime and you're sleepy but, even though you're past the first flushes of anger, you haven't resolved the issue(s) you're fighting about yet, do you
a) say goodnight and you'll talk about it more tomorrow and go to sleep, even though the fight isn't over, or
b) stay up and talk about what's going on until you've made up, even if it takes a few hours?
My boyfriend says that every relationship takes one option, or at least every healthy relationship; I contend that any couple choosing that option would very soon be imprisoned for attempted or actual murder.
Note, please, that to avoid protests on my boyfriend's part I have worded the question as evenly as I could, without indicating which answer I want you to give.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 01:20 AM | Comments (27)
January 07, 2010
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:18 PM | Comments (1)
January 06, 2010
The next story the student turns in does have dinosaurs in it, but it's a piece of fluff. Swanwick shakes his head. "It needed more sodomy," he says.
The student is flummoxed, and protests that he's just trying to put into practice what he'd been told. Swanwick explains, to him and to the rest of the students, that writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 02:50 AM | Comments (4)
January 04, 2010
From page 21 of The Lobotomist, a biography I've just started reading of Walter Freeman, the man who popularized the lobotomy in the United States:
His earliest memory was a dramatic and disturbing image: the point of a pickaxe breaking through the wall of his nursery when the neighboring residence was being demolished.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 01:53 PM | Comments (2)
January 02, 2010
This afternoon:
E.S.: Ooh, your hands are really cold.
FAUSTUS: Just like my heart.
E.S.: No, because the temperature of your hands can be measured in Fahrenheit and Celsius, not Kelvin.
FAUSTUS: ...
E.S.: ...
FAUSTUS: A little obvious, but well done.
E.S.: Hmph.Posted by Faustus, MD at 11:49 PM | Comments (1)
January 01, 2010
Then of course there's always "each one more _____ than the next," which is what "each one more _____ than the last" seems to be turning into.
"He saw before him a room full of nubile young men, each one handsomer than the next."
Which is to say that they get uglier and uglier as they go. Which isn't really what was intended to be conveyed. At least I hope not.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 10:15 PM | Comments (5)
December 31, 2009
Language changes.
The phrase "spitting image," for example, was a few centuries ago "spirit and image." In those days, however, "spirit" was pronounced "sprit," and since "and" is in pronunciation often reduced to the consonant "n," you had something that sounded like "sprit n image," which is but a hop, a skip, and a jump from "spitting image." At some point somebody heard it wrong (this is called misanalysis) and started saying it like that, and other people spoke in his or her, um, tonguesteps (this is called diffusion), until everybody knew what "spitting image" meant even though the expression makes no sense whatsoever. And now if you said that somebody was the spirit and image of Chris Meloni, nobody would have any idea what the fuck you were talking about, not just because Chris Meloni and only Chris Meloni is the spirit and image of Chris Meloni but also because it's not an English idiom. "Spitting image" has become the correct expression.
I need only look to my own childhood to see modern examples of the phenomenon. When I was ten or so, I wrote a play in which I distinguished one character, who was a Valley Girl, solely by her use of the word "like" a few times every sentence. I did this partially because it allowed me to avoid creating actual character traits but mostly because only those ridiculous Valley Girls said "like" and everybody else thought it was stupid. Now, though, I say "like" a few times every sentence, same as everybody else I know under the age of fifty. "Like" is now a particle common in less formal spoken English, and I embrace it.
Another change that doesn't bother me is the use of the word "implement" as a verb. When I was on the high school debate team, one year the resolution we had to discuss was, if memory serves, "Resolved: that the United States should implement a policy to increase political stability in Latin America." I found this deeply offensive, since "implement" was a noun and only a noun, referring usually to the tools with which one accomplished a particular task (silverware, pens and pencils, and so on). You might as well say, "Resolved: that the United Stated should fork a policy to increase political stability in Latin America." I would use the polluted version of the word when forced to do so in service of winning debate matches, but otherwise nothing was going to be implemented in anything I said or wrote. Now, of course, "implement" passes my lips as a verb with nary a bat of an eyelash.
So I accept and, in my capacity as a descriptivist, embrace such change.
As an arrogant, pretentious snob, however, I can't fucking stand it.
There are any number of expressions in flux that are driving me crazy. The one I'm thinking about at the moment is "forbid X to Y," which has in the last few years suddenly become "forbid X from Ying." "You're forbidden from seeing him" I remember hearing Bree say to Andrew on an episode of Desperate Housewives last season (my memory is a little vague, and in fact "seeing him" might be an invention of my own whimsy; perhaps it was "forbidden from hosting an orgy in my house" or "forbidden from staying up late to read Thomas Aquinas"). I hear people saying this everywhere. And it makes me want to defenestrate them.
Because it's WRONG.
Again: I know perfectly well that, in all likelihood, in fifty years "forbid X from Ying" will be proper English, and I am delighted that language has the flexibility to grow and change.
But in my nature reign all frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, and so while delighting I also grit my teeth and wish it would go away and leave me alone.
Happy New Year.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 12:45 PM | Comments (11)
December 08, 2009
I've been in auditions since last week for a show of mine that,
GodSatanFannie Lou Hamer willing, will open off-Broadway in February. This is the first set of auditions I've been to on this scale, and I've learned a lot of very interesting things during the process, but one thing has struck me with significantly more force than the others:The life of an actor has got to be a wretched, wretched thing.
Last Monday, I sat in a room with six or seven other people (the casting director, the artistic director of the theater, her assistant, the choreographer, the accompanist, and a few others) for seven hours while a seemingly endless stream of people ran into and out of the room. Actors would walk in, and this is more or less how it went after that:
ACTOR (brightly): Hi!
SOMEONE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE (SOTOSOTT): Hi. What are you going to sing for us?
ACTOR (brightly): I'll be singing [Name of Song].
SOTOSOTT: That's great.
ACTOR (to accompanist, sotto voce, pointing to the sheet music for [Name of Song]): We'll start here, and then after sixteen bars we'll cut to here. Then we'll take the key change and through the end.
ACCOMPANIST: Great.
ACTOR (brightly): Okay.(ACTOR sings truncated version of [Name of Song].)
SOTOSOTT: That was terrific. Thanks very much.
ACTOR (brightly): Thank you! Have a good day.
SOTOSOTT: You too.(ACTOR exits.)
This whole process took about three minutes. We saw over a hundred and fifty people that day, each of whom had to walk into the room, knowing absolutely nothing about what we were looking for, sing a song that might or might not show us what we wanted to see/hear, and leave, not knowing anything at all about how the song had actually been received, and pretend to feel chipper about the whole thing.
At first I smiled broadly at everybody who came in, because I wanted people to feel at least a little bit welcome, but by the afternoon my face muscles were too tired to manage it and I basically stared at people with a sickly half-grin that made me look like a deathly ill Colombian drug lord.
And actors have to deal with this, several times a day, basically forever.
I remember a television program in the early 2000s called, if memory serves, The It Factor. It followed four actors—three from New York and one from Los Angeles—as they went about their careers, or what they were hoping would eventually be their careers, or what they desperately wanted to be their careers. This one girl got audited by the IRS at some point during the season and she went to her friend who'd done her taxes with this big box with receipts and statements stuffed in it and falling out every which way. It made me want to peel my skin off.
But the thing I remember most about The It Factor is a piece of information given in the introduction to every week's show, which is that, at any given time, of all the professional actors in New York, exactly 1% are working.
One percent.
One.
There are a lot of terrible things about being a writer, let me tell you, but I don't think any of them can compare with the hideousnesses actors confront every day.
Hats off to you. For there is none of you so mean and base, that hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
Posted by Faustus, MD at 07:49 PM | Comments (7)
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