bspencero

bspencero’s stare touches her visitors with peace, silence and awkwardness. Amazing transformations happen, and many find new power, vitality and a zest for dinosaur erotica resulting from their experience. bspencero does not teach, talk or diagnose to give treatments—she simply stares in unsettling silence and offers her gift to visitors—independent from religion, ideology, race, color and common sense.

It has recently come to our attention that somebody created a bspencero Facebook Page, pretending to be bspencero herself and contacted people. Please know that bspencero never personally contacts people or communicates with people directly as she is too busy sitting on her ass and staring. She does not give any interviews and she does not speak in public. It’s a pretty sweet gig. 

Not bspencero

Please note for ALL GAZING EVENTS: Must be 18 years of age or over to attend and men with enlarged prostates are not allowed to attend  due to the intensity of the experience for some. People with illnesses are advised to follow the recommendation of their doctor before and after attending a staring session because that makes it sound as if  this experience is something more than some loon staring loonily at you.

Subtle Campaign Tactics In History

Something I learned while reading Bruce Allen Murphy’s new Scalia bio: Hubert Humphrey’s main campaign song in the 1960 primaries was “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” Whatever could have motivated that choice…

“Raise Your Hand If I Should Care About Your Opinion About Iraq. No, Put Your Hand Down Right Now, Senator McCain.”

The people who promised us democracy! whiskey! sexy! protection from Saddam’s balsa wood drones of nuclear terror! cheap! from the Iraq War should never be listened to again:

But there are few people who understand Iraq less than the Republican politicians and pundits who are being sought out for their comments on the current situation.

As you watch the debate on this issue, you should remind yourself that the most prominent voices being heard are the very ones who brought us the Iraq War in the first place, who promised that everything was simple and the only question was whether we’d be “strong” and “decisive” enough — the same thing they’re saying today. They’re the ones who swore that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda, that he had a terrifying arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, that the war would be quick, easy and cheap, that since Iraq was a largely secular country we wouldn’t have to worry about sectarian conflict, and that democracy would spread throughout the region in short order, bringing peace and prosperity along with it.

We can start with the man on every TV producer and print reporter’s speed dial, John McCain. McCain does provide something important to journalists: whatever the issue of the moment is, he can be counted on to offer angry, bitter criticism of the Obama administration, giving the “balance” every story needs. The fact that he has never demonstrated the slightest bit of understanding of Iraq is no bar at all to being the most quoted person on the topic.

For context, here’s a nice roundup of some of the things McCain said when he was pushing to invade Iraq in the first place. When asked if Iraqis were going to greet us as liberators, he answered, “Absolutely.” He said, “Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq is going to be paid for by the Iraqis” with their oil wealth (the war ended up costing the American taxpayer upwards of $2 trillion). And my favorite: “There is not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias, so I think they can probably get along.”

In a world with properly functioning public discourse, these people would be too ashamed to show their faces in public; instead, they remain Respected Leaders.

Fortunately, warbloggers seem far less influential, but remain hilarious.  The man who gave us the internet’s equivalent of the Mission Accomplished speech is, for some reason, still saying things about Iraq:

OH, YEAH: Obama Talked About Iraq Today. We’ll do something, as soon as we decide what to do, but whatever it is it won’t be anything decisive. And this is all the Iraqis’ fault, and probably Bush’s.

Well, what do you know — through the use of sarcasm Reynolds has inadvertently said something true about Iraq, or at least attributed a true statement to Obama. Meanwhile, Reynolds’s ongoing preference for action that is “decisive” (with implicitly only killing people counting as “decisive”) to action that is wise shows that he, like most hack Iraq warmongers, has learned less than nothing. (Note: this post is even funnier when you remember Reynolds’s belief that people are skeptical about American claims about WMDs because of Barack Obama. I’ll never forgive him for giving that farcical speech to the UN in 2003!)

Game 5

At this point, this classic deserves an open thread.  If there’s a World Cup game remotely as exciting as this one, I promise to spend 3 hours watching Marty St. Louis’s Game 6 double OT winner in the 2004 finals on a constant loop for 24 hours.  (Note: I am the exclusive judge of this competition.)

Far be it from me to disagree with the wisdom of FIFA, the IOC, and Gary Bettman as applied to the regular season, but I’m going to continue to claim that it would not be better if this game was suddenly ended to have a penalty shot contest to determine the winner.

…congrats to the Kings; great team.  (What odds could you have gotten on them when they were down 3-0 against San Jose?) Is Darryl Sutter a HOF coach?  He’s certainly close.

Katie Surrence: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

We’re pleased to offer this post from longtime friend of LGM Katie Surrence. I have been impressed by her views of the legitimate thee-yater since she saw through the ludicrously overrated Spring Awakening, and she writes interestingly about many other topics as well. Give her a a nice LGM welcome and hopefully we will see her work again! –SL

Hello all!

I’d like to introduce myself: I’m a friend of Scott L.’s from past blogging-related program activities. He reads my informal Facebook accounts of the plays I see in NYC, where I live, and he invited me to write some guest posts for LGM about theater, and possibly other things that occur to me (I work in psychology/neuroscience and might be tempted to cover that beat). I was both flattered and nervous—I don’t have the kind of formal education that would qualify me to write about theater the way SEK does for film and television. But I was also excited about the opportunity to explore my values about what makes good theater, and when I see a show I love, to be able to have a small part in promoting it. Some warnings: I obviously can’t cover theater around the country! But even if you don’t live in NYC, I hope it might be interesting to read about shows that might have touring productions or what you might want to see if you visit. I’m going to have a strong bias toward musicals, because that’s what I best love to go see. I won’t be able to be opening-night timely; I’m a time- and cash-poor student/researcher and sometimes don’t see shows till far into their run.

I at least have a news hook for my first review! Hedwig and the Angry Inch just won a bunch of Tonys, and Neil Patrick Harris took home Best Actor in a Musical. I never saw the original Hedwig on stage, but I’m a fan of the movie, and in many ways it was hard to avoid having a good time. I saw a 10 pm Saturday show, dressed up in a very short poofy pink dress and very tall pink heels and mouthed all the words with a crowd that also eating it up just as much. Someone—I guess John Cameron Mitchell? He has the only credit for the book—wrote updated patter for Hedwig that in my abundant goodwill for the show I laughed at even as I recognized how cheap it was (Hedwig is playing at the Belasco Theater after the close of the ill-fated run of Hurt Locker: The Musical). I wished many times that we were at a concert instead of a theater performance so I could move around, dance, even sometimes sing along.

But the fact that I would really rather have been dancing around and interacting more with the people around me rather than watching the show very closely is also a sign of what was wrong with the show. I’m a dissenter on the merits of Neil Patrick Harris’s performance. John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig shows you how she’s suffered. He plays depressed convincingly, sympathetically, and charismatically even while singing an uptempo rock song like “Wig in a Box”. And he gives her intelligence and irony, warmth and creative spark that she wouldn’t let be trapped behind the wall of sadness—you can see it breaking out over the course of the song. NPH’s Hedwig doesn’t let you see that she’s suffered at all. It’s a common remark about the Hedwig revival that it was originally a cabaret show, and it’s better designed for small venues, but I don’t think that was the only problem. A great stage performer should be able to make a huge theater into an intimate space. But NPH doesn’t give the audience pain or soul. His Hedwig is cold underneath a heavy mask of makeup. She’s funny and campy, but she never seems vulnerable. Hedwig abuses her bandmate and husband, Yitzhak (played in the revival by Lena Hall), and in the absence of a sense of her vulnerability, she just comes off as a bully. JCM is sexy as Hedwig, partly as a result of that intelligence and vulnerability, partly physical grace, and partly delicate oddball beauty. NPH didn’t have any real heat; his glam femme was a little stiff and awkward. I wondered if that was a deliberate choice, but if so I don’t think I liked it. I like Hedwig as brilliant in her role. He even looked wrong. He’s too cut to play Hedwig, who was presumably was not spending hours in the gym during her supermarket checkout/rocker-in-training years. That let him climb and leap impressively about the stage, but it was also yet another way he couldn’t bring vulnerability to the character. Lena Hall was a bright spot in the show, and in spite of having 10% of NPH’s time in the spotlight, she had more charisma and feeling. I did get a little piece of feeling from him at the very end, when he strips to his underwear, sheds his wig, and walks downstage, no longer stomping about, now supple in his movements, bending his body like a reed, singing, “You’re shining/Like the brightest star/A transmission/On the midnight radio.” But it wasn’t one of those shows that sneaks up on you at the end. It wasn’t enough for me to make her a character I cared about.

This video of NPH performing “Sugar Daddy” at the Tonys illustrates all the problems I saw. Of course this particular example is a little unfair: “Sugar Daddy” is supposed to be a big, silly, sexy number, but it’s what there is in video, and I still think it’s telling that even with the intimacy of close-ups, NPH is basically expressionless, athletic but awkward, pushing himself a little robotically through a routine: I must give lapdance … to Sting! The casting of Andrew Rannells has just been announced for the extended run. Maybe he’ll bring some heart back to the role.