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6 Feb
faces
ON A VIEWING OF FACES BY JOHN CASSAVETES
AT THE NUART THEATRE IN SANTA MONICA
It was a strange and wonderful experience to see this now old classic which I had seen as a young man when the idea of cinema was more important than the cinema itself, because here in this now forgotten American classic is the sorry story of the our times, lost amidst the drifts, like the cocktails of yesteryear, or lost asteroids, and the splendid isolations of the now past.
In memory we lose ourselves especially in the memories of youth and what comes to mind are the unfulfilled expectations of a future that never was.
Its shot in 16mmArriflex and as Seymour Cassells one of the few remaining members of the John Cassavetes crowd pointed out it was created in an atmosphere of merrymaking and playing ball after an all night of shooting. And playing tricks on the actors.
There is always laughter in the movies of Cassavetes, guffawing galleons of it, where everyone laughs at, and with each other sometimes it seems for hours on end ,and always inevitably ends up crying afraid and lonely and wondering what the fuss was all about.
Faces, in the current crisis of post sexual revolutionary distaff and near paralysis is refreshingly naïve and charmingly unafraid of anything.
It’s about men and women and the search for intimacy, the intimacy to seek and not to find. But mostly it is about passage and loss and Death, which awaits all of us after all the punch lines have been delivered and the search for laughter, for a good time, for connection is always present. Cassavetes was in his 20’s when he made this little flawed masterpiece of sorrowful merriment, of jeering tears. It was a different time, in America, years before the yuppification and consequent abandonment of the tenured, manicured and security guarded homes of America.
It was a different time when people still had time to fuck and husbands were horny satyrs of need and want pursuing wives who were tired of getting pregnant and were just starting to look for the balkanizing sexual shot that would signal the war between men and women.
It was a time when Playboy magazine was still a stiff decked adolescent in razor-sharp trousers, before Dylan and the Rolling Stones even, before the great hyena cry shattered the street and vales of the United States of America.
These characters are still within earshot of the more recent memories of a War that was supposed to end all wars. And peace was upon the land and the lion and the lamb shared their beds together. A time for little boxes and the double standard that was fixed in coin.
At the end of Faces, the seemingly abandoned wife tries to kill herself after she makes love with the beach boy ably played by the very young baby-faced S.Cassels. And then her husband, played mesmerizingly by John Marley returns after an all nighter with a call girl he has fallen in love with, the luminescent Gina Rowlands, whose eyes could search light the darkest night of the soul.
It’s the dark night of the soul Cassavetes examines in spite of the ditties and the singing and the laughter and the corpsing down with laughter, the twilight of the American nightmare.
Everyone is lonely beyond comprehension. In the films of J/john Cassavetes even God is a lonely middle-aged guy, a stranger on a bus somewhere trying to find his way home and as the song goes, with no one to talk to on the phone (except the Pope maybe in Rome). But maybe even the Pope is unavailable to God in these films.
An American Bergman in a weird way, an immigrant Greek American but American through and through like Jack Kerouac. Gregory Corso, and the New York “Pull my Daisy” crowd. In Cassavetes it feels like a disaster at all times but without the threat and menace, the threat here is that someone might burst into tears at any minute. Or hysterical laughter.
This is not an angry man we are witness to, a la John Osborne or a distaff alien like Pinter, all ostracized even if they are from the soil that produced them.
Rowlands in particular carries a crazy sorrow in her eyes. And great beauty and they carry the burden of this beauty these Cassavetes women, like the goat-like men carry scarred acned faces that reveal hidden wounds and wars.
Their blood boils with need, and the clear suspicion that even though they will forever be attracted to beautiful women like moths to fire the clear knowledge that at the most in the society of women they are little boys who will never enter the feminine mystery.
When John Cassavetes made this movie the American woman had not yet divested herself of her clothes. Playboy was only a few years old and America was packed with lonely married men working the corporate dance and pretending to get along. In the films of Cassavetes, in spite of the great supposed male bonding that’s all around and within them…there is a spiritual aloneness that is almost palpable-the guffawing and the trickster tactics of his characters covers up a black void and for this reason it is almost painful to watch and rarely is there release.
There are luminescent close-ups that hold you, freeze the viewer in his tracks and the great empty gulfs between men and women open up in abeyance. It is the women in Cassavetes that carry the spiritually incisive seed of yearning and loss. The men are clowns perpetually stuck in a post adolescent frenzy of knee slapping and with the exception of the young huckster, surfer god, Seymour Casells who shows a deep-seated sense of humanity and openness all the men are frozen clowns terrified of death and of each other- those few moments in which they longingly reach out for love are trapdoored shut when they feel they have been rejected.
We feel their awkwardness and frozen violence, the spoiled remains of a competitive children, now manifesting as grownup, responsible business men who really only want to get laid and be touched by the higher muse of the feminine.
It’s sad and it’s tragic at root and very Greek and Cassavetes in the ancient spirit of his predecessors, the great Greek dramatists senses the underlying tenor of unfulfilled destinies. At the end of FACES the husband returns after an all night carousing with the vacuous and beautiful Gina Rowlands and returns skipping and jumping only to turn into the irate husband again once he realizes that his wife has done the same.
He plays the part of the cuckolded husband, swinging his fury with no awareness of his part in the drama. It is strictly doublestandardized and the film reflects the oppressive weight of marriage to the American male of that time in what now feels like ancient America in which cockmanship and success in business went hand in hand, when two fisted drinking and whoring was the sign of the true and portent male.
What is so sad in the film but not tragic, since tragedy is what occurs when man encounters his limits-is the dawning realization that there is no escape from this box of frozen coupledom.
Like HUSBANDS in which we witness the escapades of 3 grown men who try to recapture their youth and their freedom by running away for the weekend to London, FACES presents the male-female dilemma in a razor edge confluence of sudden nasty encounters followed by emotional pitfalls.
We can find no answer in this film and even though the Sexual Revolution occurred shortly after John Cassavetes made this film and perhaps was part of its disturbance, there is no real solution to the dilemma, because the dilemmas presented here are part of a greater picture that we have yet to grasp.
Nick Mancuso
May 3/06
Los Angeles, Calif.
3 Jan
On a viewing of Tony Nardi’s “3 letters” in Toronto, Canada
IL GRIDO DEL SILENZIO AND THE CHARACTER WALKABOUT
A Critical Essay on the Actors Art in an Unreasonable Age
By Nick Mancuso
(THE SILENT SCREAM)
On a viewing of “letter one” by Tony Nardi
“Truth is a Lie”
Pablo Picasso
In respect of Character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness, is inappropriate. Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described. The fourth point is consistency: for though the subject of the imitation, who suggested the type, be inconsistent, still he must be consistently inconsistent.”
Aristotle-The Poetics
Last night I attended Letter One of Dora, Gemini, Genie Award winning, Tony Nardi’s ‘three letters’, a filmed presentation of the first of his extraordinary “3 letters “ theatre opus, which this actor has now performed for small audiences in variegating venues in Toronto and Montreal. It was quite an experience to be found on the edge of time, for this was theatre in its proper form, as originally intended. But beyond all that it was a “walkabout” of the “post-masonic distress disorder” of our current age, “l’etat des choses” in Canada. And elsewhere, in all the elsewhere’s of a planet steeped in numbness and terror. It was and remains in my mind as an event, the pure distilled waters of the essence of the actor’s art.
What I witnessed was an astounding and dizzyingly disturbing work of theatrical art, perhaps the single most important statement on the nature of acting and the theatre I have ever witnessed. Mr. Nardi presents the hateful truth, the truth as a lie, but it is the truth.
I have now seen this work almost 40 times, over a 2-year period, perhaps more. It has been a tortured and painful process. And it’s been worth it. Like a caustic purgative for the soul. For it is an alchemical and transformative “dissolutio”, only the transformation here is not lead to gold but lead-to-lead. And Letter One, made me feel in spite of my age and many years of experience in the theatre and film, like that middle aged French woman who upon hearing and witnessing the premiere of Ravel’s Bolero in Paris, at the turn of the last century, screamed out at the end of this now legendary piece “My God! This man is mad!” At the premier of the orchestral piece with its endlessly building repetition fully half the audience walked out. In spite of the opportunity to bolt, I could not bolt and every opportunity I had to see it, I went.
“3 Letters” is theatrical truth, disguised as a lie, disguised as the truth. And it is perfect witness to an original Canadian artform, meaning that it remains unwitnessed, reviled, forgotten before it is remembered, and perfect as gold.
At Mr. Nardi’s “opening” 5 people came to the “Instituto Culturale”, in Toronto, Canada, where the “walkout walkabout” had already occurred. Nonetheless as a brilliant unrecognized modern “tragedy.” of the Canadian variety, which is to say that it is tragedy, disguised as a comedy, disguised as commedia, disguised as reality TV disguised as news commentary, disguised as a stock report, disguised as a Mac Pro Book, which sits in front of Mr. Nardi like a technological talking Cyclops, disguised as performance art, it is “no theatre”, no set, no costume, no dialogue, no plot, no action. It is a play that is self-referential and curves into itself, like a snake eating its own tail. It is theatre of the “bone”, an actor all-alone. And it is perfectly unending, on a feedback loop. And perfect autopoetic expressions of the ethos of the Canadian experience, sitting on a pre-Cambrian shield of mossy laughter, like an ingrown toenail. Universal and utterly solipsistic.
After the laughs occur in the show, there is silence, the silence that follows an emptied screen, the silence that follows a gulping void, and there are so many silent laughs that one wonders why one has not left already, anticipating the end. This work of theatrical creativity is in effect a silent scream, a black and white rendition of the art of “character” in vacuo.
“… Character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety, as here described.”
Aristotle
The mind shuts down here assuming a fetal position, or else enters a mental bomb shelter, in order not to see through the smoke and haze, through the fires of perdition and the aftermath of an attack on the psyche. No wonder it is hated by some, and loved by others because this opus clearly separates the theatrical sheep from the critical goats. And there are too many sheep and far too many goats.
And for such “goats”, it must appear as a vivid green of embarrassment, put up on a screen, inducing shame and silence, like a Charlie Chaplin film played by Nosferatu- “ a silent scream” on a bridge to perdition, for ears yet unborn and audiences yet to come. For the anorexic theatrical sheep there is plenty to graze on, though the critics assume not. It’s a joke for the taking, where the set up is the punch-line.
It’s not a pretty picture, anymore than Picasso’s “Les Demoiselle D’Avignon” is a pretty picture. And it rankles.
In fact it is an ugly picture. It is an ugly picture of an ugly age. How can it not be? Guernica is around the corner. The news is not good.. Not for the actors who have been “pogromed” into becoming sacrificial character lambs on the altar of Canadian national identity, immigration, and pretend multi- culturalism in what is a lobotomized, bi-cultural pretend state of the mind. Not for the audiences who pretend to be awake.
Mr. Nardi however pretends at nothing, and therefore swims against the current. For this he is punished in the papers, both English and French for he holds a moral gun to the collective unconscious. And For this he is called “hateful.”
In respect of Character there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good.
Aristotle
Tony Nardi asks one simple question. What is the nature of acting in Canada and why has the cult of mediocrity become the passport for entrance unto the stage? He also asks that those who are taking passports to Canadian national theatre and culture to bring out their identity papers and point of origin. It’s a tough moral stance to take for a nation that still defines itself in terms of mock British accents on the official stages of Stratford and the Shaw Festival. Or for that matter almost any of the regional and city theatres of Canada.
And, while offering warm gloves and soup he demands they become aware that they click their heels when they walk. Some Canadian critics are insulted, others mesmerized, still other fill up with contempt. For he points out that if you are in a parking lot at night in front of a firing squad of pretend bullets, as in the Quebec film, Michel Brault’s, “les ordres” it is your duty to at least acknowledge the reality regardless of how unhopeful as that reality might be. And that the power to shut down a theatre movement can occur before the box office opens. Some critics whose job it is to take offence at such shenanigans are offended. Most prefer children’s theatre of the most “cheerful “ variety. Modern Campanella’s of Calabrian born origins seem not to be tolerated. Clearly.
Canadian critics, as a whole, seem to think that their job is to “act” as gatekeepers of the unagreed collective unconscious. To tell the sheep what the goats want. And to enforce the dicta of the shut-down, and the shut up walk-out. Mr. Nardi refuses to shut up or leave or obey. There is a moral purpose in operation. And he makes his case well. But the critics accuse him of that greatest of Canadian crime, -excellence.
“Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good.”
Aristotle
THE POSTCARD THEATRE
The “3 letters” experience is funny and twisted, earnest and mind –provoking, tragic and clown-like, and engages the imagination of the audience. And as it does this, it runs itself into a powerful gauntlet of collective resistance. From everyone it seems except the audience who watches and listens, the people attending are rapt. And what is the nature of this resistance?
And, while it seems obvious that it should have been packed by every actor/playwright/artist of the nation, it wasn’t.
In fact, in my viewings of the work, it seemed like every actor, stayed away in droves, thereby ensuring that the sealed lead coffin that Mr. Nardi uses as central metaphor for the deadly theatre of the country, remains sealed and its central metaphor of the theatre as postcard culture- true.
Critical resistance jumps in quickly and enthusiastically begins to pound nails into the door of the non existent “green room” prepared for Mr. Nardi, only to discover that like a sleight of hand done by a master magician, the assistant handing the nails is the dramatist himself. And if any of this had any real significance in the country of Canada Mr. Nardi’s performance would be a kooky outrage. But critical resistance labels Mr. Nardi, identifies and fingerprints him as “hateful” and ignores its mastery.
Jean Genet the great French dramatist and novelist and prisoner once wrote; “You are telling me he truth, are you not, ma cherie? After all, -If your not real thief, then I’m not a real judge..”Genet was liberated from his prison by the great existentialist writer and thinker Jean Paul Satre. Who will liberate Mr. Nardi when there is not even an acknowledgment that what he writes about is true? Since there is no dialectic or “template” against which to compare this work, how can the Academics and Critics argue for or against? This is raw uninvited theatre at its best. And it points out what everyone in the nation refuses to acknowledge-the Canadian theatre establishment is an extension of the unspoken, and the unfelt. And it is a “lie.”
But “the 3 letters” are more than just “moral” in the Aristotelian sense, more than just “postcard theatre” since the material used for the creation of this utterly original work, is made from fissionable and toxic stuff. It is in a sense “object trouve”, found art. But it also a traffic signal, a semiotic sign, a symbol of our times. Mr.Nardi tells us that the Gulag is already here. Canadian” cultural officers” don’t like this sort of thing because they do not think of themselves as officers, anymore than the critics think of themselves as critics.
Mr. Nardi does not believe that the Corpo- Stalinist lie is true. And if it is not after all” cheery cherry pie” then what exactly is it? I am reminded of the old joke about a man who steps on shit. If it is smells, feels and tastes like shit it many very well be shit.
This rule is relative to each class.
Aristotle
“Ethics are not about good intensions..”
John Ralston Saul
“On Equilibrium”
Canadians are a classless society and like the Soviet Union free of prejudice. All Canadians are equal, with some being a little more equal than others. It’s a free society where free speech and the artists right to express himself is a given. There is no censorship and no prejudice or racism, spoken and unspoken. It is Utopia and all is well. The minorities and their point of views are given free reign, are they not? The theatre is free of restrictions. And it is funded by Canadians.
And Canada is known worldwide for its Inuit Art and Stephen Leacock and Glen Gould. And for its many Hollywood actors, screenwriters, directors, producers. People like James Cameron, Keanu Reeves, Sam Goldwyn, Mary Pickford, Jim Carrey, so many…
“3 Letters” had its inception when Tony Nardi was blackmailed by a well-known Toronto casting director into auditioning for a role, a Canadian Italian he found demeaning in its portrayal. The casting director threatened the agency that represented him; stating that, if Mr. Nardi would not come in he would “blacklist” the agency, with its many clients. The head of the agency pleaded with Mr. Nardi to take the meeting, rather than charge the insane casting director. Mr.Nardi refused to go in and left the agency. The agency was taken off the hook, freed of the threat. Mr. Nardi began 3 letters few years later.
When prisoners of the Stalinist horror, were presented for inspection to the great writer Gogol, who were not allowed to speak to him, held their newspapers upside down as a warning and a signaling that things were not what they appeared to be in the “new paradise” of the Soviet Union.
And that we are to read our newspapers, right side up, at our own risk.
Mr. Nardi paints what may well be the perfect portrait of The life of the Postcard Theatre in The Age of Canadian Culture- Governmentalism, Anno Domini 2010,in the years of the usurping Beaurocrat,the official as “artist”, in this the time of the “post-Masonic distress disorder” in which the label creative is now the domain of banker and insurance broker.Creativity has been usurped by the new bankers of fame and by the children of the rich and powerful and the corporate logo-ethos.Disorder and Chaos, in the cultural DNA of the nation.
The truth has become a lie and more importantly the lie is now the new truth. What is Tony Nardi’s crime?
One wonders what kind of official theatre was created in the concentration camp. And images of the grave, premature burial, and the Gulag are the metaphors used.
Why should anyone in Canada care about any of it really, when there can’t be a genuine authenticity by definition? Culture does not fill the belly. Or create a sense of personal identity. Why fill the belly with words, images, thoughts, aspirations? We already have Hollywood. Culture in Canada exists as an afterthought.
In Canada the Postcard Theatre of Death& Numbness, has been created, bought by tax dollars and the Theatre of Cruelty, and Criticism, referred to by the prophetic luminary of the stage Antonin Artaud. It has been tortured and buried alive.
Perhaps Mr. Artaud was perhaps thinking of Toronto, Canada 2010 from his loft in Montparnasse in the Paris of the late 20’s. And the reasons for this are as clear as dark daylight as outlined by the furious tap-dancing and drumming by Mr. Nardi.He dances to and drums upon, the skein and thin skins of our collective unconsciousness, emotional –less valences, uselessness…and the hidden and unhidden influences of threat and violence to our artists, to our children, aboriginals and immigrants. Why should we feel anything or create? Why is indifference not the ultimate form of censorship? And why should the artist, any artist be indifferent to that truth or fail to recognize it?
And why should the truth not be a lie? After all Paris Hilton is now an actress and Donald Trump a leading man. And “The Soprano’s” are the perfect expression of Italic culture in North America and the world. To say nothing of the rest of the Reality TV detritus that passes for “entertainment.” Where is the moral purpose and valor in all this? And if “catharsis” were to truly occur on the stages of the nation what would be purged and brought forth?
“Ethics on its own is a justification for almost anything…truth is whatever serves your cause..” J.R.Saul
On Equilibrium
Letter One tells a story that those in power have much power and no one to answer to and that the collective unconscious remains unfazed and untouched.
Since a nation by definition is its culture and it memory, if it has none, then it is insane and the only logical response is the creation of a “3 Letters”- a sane vision of an insane and immoral truth
. The “3 letters” is an attempt at memory revealed. It points out that the cultural policies in place in Canada are “iatrogenic” a diseased condition created by the very medicines they are supposed to cure. Almost half of all admissions to Emergency in modern hospitals are caused by the very medications that are given for treatment. Here is then the absurdist and cubist notion of looking for the essence of things, not what they are- but what they could be-here is “Les Demoiselles” all dressed up with no where to go.
Artists, in Canada like reservation Indians, traditionally, (and history bears this out), are gummed and starved to death and relegated to the stockades by wannabees and a system of arrogance, stupidity, venal cheerfulness and enthusiasm, with a farted whiff of criminal intent. Only the beaurocracy of art survives here, like the fossilized imprint of a long gone creature of myth; not the artist, the idea, the word, not the man. Not the creator. The frame, not the painting. The image of the image, of the artist – not the artist. The critic, and not the creator.
“What does it mean once a battle starts? Suddenly all overriding structure disappears. If he (the general, also the artist) has only these qualities-the qualities of professionalism- he will be thrown into a reactive mode…it is from imagining the whole that (he) must decide and act. This action is not rational. It is beyond common sense, free of memory”
John Ralston Saul
On Equilibrium
What Mr. Saul writes about in relation to warfare is equally applicable to the warfare of theatre and the actor’s art. And while professionalism is the operative word in the Canadian theatre, and its companies more concerned with the actors tardiness than the full reality of performance-there is an unspoken agreement, that the actor has never been asked to agree to. It is understood that he is to obey orders from above. It is presented to him as a treaty, a duty, an obligation on his part and no reciprocity on the part of the director and the producing entity. Any action, which moves away from this central unspoken stance, is to be regarded as a betrayal, an act of treason. The actor is not free to act.
No treaty with the Indian nations of Canada has ever been honored to its core. And no Canadian artist has ever been genuinely appreciated and encouraged and nourished by the system, except ex-tempora and ex-loco. The artist cannot create.
In “Letter One “ of “the letters” Mr. Nardi performs a skillful autopsy on the corpse of the Canadian actor and then is accused of having murdered the actor, for doing so. He sits sketching the outlines of a massacre and is then tried for the treason of having it sketched it at all, albeit well and accurately.
Criticism in Canada is a, a socially engineered nightmare created for the careless, a childcare of old-age nursery homes of verbal misery and despair, and it is cynical, ignorant, uncaring, harsh, menacing, and beaurocratic to the letter of the law. And mediocre. It sits on the drooping shoulders of Academia and oligarchic Governmentally .It holds no dialectic either with itself or the artists, especially the living artists. It sees neither figure nor ground and seems proud of its one-eyed blindness. It examines the line and not the painting. The form and not the purpose. Limits, not intuition. And it will not tolerate criticism of its criticism. It holds no value to the Aristotelian ideals of good intention and purpose, moral purpose, consistency or “manly valor.” In short it behaves like an out of control drunk on the streets of Toronto.
“ Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good.”
Aristotle
The Poetics
A LETTER BY TONY NARDI
“If my stating that Kelly Nestruck listing The Sopranos among his favourite TV shows on his Facebook page is dishonest on my part and weakens my argument (due to where I obtained the information and its ‘irrelevance’ to Nestruck’s critical view of Letter Three) I will accept responsibility for failing to elaborate on the point.
First: My citing open-to-the-public information from Nestruck’s Facebook page is not quoting personal information he had intended to keep private. One posts viewable information on Facebook to publicly state one’s views, likes and dislikes. It’s there for all to see, otherwise only his Facebook friends would have access to the information.
Secondly: The Sopranos’ reference is very relevant to Nestruck’s limited “review” of Letter Three and any notion that he stayed within professional (critical analysis) boundaries. Nestruck reported untruths in English Canada’s national newspaper. The Sopranos ‘revelation’ uncovers one of his untruths: his apparent problem with the “bile, profanity and violence” in Letter Three and theatrical (dramatic) works in general.
Third point: Nestruck crossed the line a few times, mainly framing his piece within a cultural (tribal) context, implying that the Calabrian-born Nardi cannot possibly speak for the cheery-thirsty English-Canadian theatregoers and theatre practitioners, that dwindling ‘majority’ that presumably (and too often) sets the cultural standard for all the other ‘secondary’ tribes. He attempted to draw the lines for English-Canada’s theatre, defining what it should be and who qualifies to represent it and speak on its behalf.
TONY NARDI
THE ACTOR AS DIS-LOCATION
Law and Art normally don’t mix but in Canada they are forced to become bedfellows. When the audiences are told, by imprisoned performer/slaves on how to behave and what they are supposed to be like in order to be an audience-and not be like-and the actor-artists of the nation don’t stand a prayer or a chance for an expressive liberation of truth, then the audiences” are forced to “act.”. Standing ovations for the mediocre and the more mediocre, the better. And when Mr. Nardi points this out in his writings, the critics are outraged, or addled, or contemptuously dismissive. And worse.
And the audiences play along with the charade, in a stilted British accent. All 240 nations, all 3000 tribes this is the throne speech theme of “the letters.” In the words and mouth of the dislocated actor/immigrant to whom Mr. Nardi has given voice to. They are written not to the imaginary “Sarah” but to all the real Sarahs within us, all the lost Sarahs who have lost their languages, their cultures, their memories and their history and who speak in private, broken tongues, whose voices can not be heard, whose muffled and strangled cries are forever silenced. This is the celebration of the Canadian theatre. Of the Bacchantes of our Time.
FROM THE GLOBE&MAIL, NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF CANADA
By Kelly Nestruck
Tony Nardi, a Dora- and Genie-winning actor born in Calabria and raised in Montreal, wants to blow up English-Canadian theatre as well. Also presented as part of the FTA, … And Counting (Letter Three) is his suicide bombing of “the amateur theatre we call professional” that “patronizes patrons.” In it, Nardi compares the health of Canadian culture in general to a person who has been buried alive and is eating parts of himself while awaiting a rescue that might never come.
Nardi has previously espoused a similarly cheery outlook in two previous Letters, the first of which he wrote after being offered an insulting Italian-Canadian role on a TV series, the second being a rant against a commedia dell’arte production he loathed and two Toronto critics (including one from The Globe and Mail) who praised it.
… And Counting (Letter Three) is a post-mortem of sorts, inspired by his frustration trying to get funding for the first two letters. In a rant full of literary allusions and profanity that he reads off a laptop in a volcanic, near-violent performance, the gifted actor asks many provocative questions. Is it better to be an artist in Canada or to work for an arts council? Are the most successful artists in Canada really the most successful grant writers? Are the skills required to write a good grant application actually the opposite of what you need to be a good artist?
Nardi raises important points, then buries them in bile. Everyone he encounters in the “letter” – journalists, bureaucrats, artists who work within the system, community leaders, audience members – are painted as ignorant, self-serving, mealy-mouthed or some combination thereof. He, on the other hand, is the only intelligent guy in this world, the only true artist.
… And Counting (Letter Three) is also often inaccurate and frequently contradictory. For example, at one point, he berates this newspaper for not covering the Genies (not true), while at the same suggesting that there is nothing at the Genies worth covering (so why should we?).
Is Nardi playing an exaggeration of himself in this rambling rant?
In a Q&A afterward, he seemed calmer, more interested in discussion. If his intention is to provoke, it works – I had to restrain myself from heckling or walking out.
Ultimately, for me, this non-play completely backfired. And I doubt I’m the only one who thought, well, if the arts councils refused funding to Nardi’s self-righteous, hateful two-and-half-hour diatribe then maybe they’re not so screwed up after all. “
Kelly Nestruck
Canadian Critic
“ … And Counting (Letter Three) is a post-mortem of sorts, inspired by his frustration trying to get funding…”
For anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear its quite clear to anyone who has all 3 letters that they clearly are not inspired by Mr Nardi’s frustration to get grants for his works, which he financed himself. The fact that he has not received a dime from Government sources and has found only one “angel”- Mr. Rocco Galati, one of Canada’s top constitutional lawyers, and this on the basis of the thematic artistry of his works should say something about the work and Mr.Nardi’s uncanny determination over an almost 4 year period to write, perform and film it.
But for those who have eyes to hear and ears to see it perplexes, frustrates and creates the volcanic rant which Mr. Nestruck and other critics of his ilk reported. Like many other small minded and guilty Claudius’s they too began to scream out “Lights, Lights” And its an old pattern in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, especially with Globe&Mail, the bastion of Anglo Culture in a now multi-cultural nation. Is this racism? Is the pope Catholic? There is hardly one statement in the G&B review that is accurate. There is hardly one sentence in the co-called review which addresses the reality and artistry of the 3 letters. Not for naught that for over a 35 year period in a bizarre twist of onomatopeiac casuistry the papers has hired critics with names like Base, Mallet, Ne-struck, Whit-aker-as though unconsciously or perhaps consciously assaulting the artists of the nation and needing hatchet men to perform the task. How dare you speak Mr. Nardi? How dare you? Be quiet!!!
“If not central to our daily life, ethics is nothing..”
JRS- ON EQUILIBRIUM
But Mr. Nardi, will not remain quiet and dares and more
And it is precisely this light that Mr. Nardi is trying to shed on this shameful situation. The Actor/Artist in Canada is screwed. He has been silenced and his scream is silent.
END PART ONE
13 Oct
nick mancuso’s “hotel praha” a psychologue
HOTEL PRAHA
(Saw Dust Dreams in an Ole’ Commie Hotel)
A PSYCHOLOGUE
By Nick Mancuso,
De Mammola.
First performed at Theatre Passe Muraille. Toronto Canada,
Spring,1999, directed and produced by Hrant Allianak.
INTRO
PRAGUE 1994,
LATE SUMMER
I’m here shooting two small pictures back to back,and staying at the “Hotel Praha” on the outskirts of the old city.The hotel is a monstrous techno-glass and steel compound specifically built for the old soviet politburo 4,5 years before the Velvet Revolution and the
downfall of Communism, before the ascent of Havel.Suffering from jetlag and insomnia and the crazy hours of modern co-production filmmaking.to say nothing of the fatty food and endless cups of dense bohemian espresso I begin to write a kind of lyrical -nightmarish piece reacting to the dark energies of the golden soot- covered city that spawned Kafka, the Golem,Smetana,the Bohemian Spirit of the20th century. It is a city of bridges and castles of alleyways and huge squares teeming with people, at every corner there is life. Gigantic autro-hungarian theatres built by Florentine architects, a creme de la creme of architectural delight, a jewel in the heart of Europe over which, a spell had been cast. I am here when the spell is begin lifted and the Princess awakes, bones breaking and with a bad case of halitosis.
Everything since the Big Change has gone American only the worst elements, a ferocious consumerism, country and western musak, its like a weird mid-European tex-arkana redneckism combined with the residues of 40 years of soviet oppression. The dense packed, paranoid kgbism that was there 5 years before ¶e has been replaced by a bizarre combination of the worst of American kitch and fraudulent raw consumerist need. There are signs on the freeway pointing the way to supermarkets,macdonalds and k mart can be found. No more lineups, no more weighing the chicken bits. Businesses pay as much as 30 percent for protection from the virulent local mafias. Cabdrivers rip off tourists with ferocious intent and yell at you if you argue. Sex-clubs are everywhere, Playboybunny shoots in the lobby of the Hotel with buckbaked naked Czech girls re-enacting the Christmas Cover of
Playboys circa 1965, all run by the former head of the K.G.B.I
Its like watching a speeded up version of the 50’s and the 60’s, the 70’s-circa 1972 now. The lobby of the hotel is filled from tourists from all over Europe, getting a bargain vacation.
The Arabs, ygolslavs, Russian, roumanians, communist Chinese are gone. English-speaking theatres are springing up everywhere ø, the city holds as many as 20,000 kids from all over, re-enacting the Bohemian life getting drunk, getting laid, writing, painting, the clubs are packed to the roof, a kind of 1920’s Paris in the 1990’s. There is a fin de siecle feel here, a repeat of the beginning at the end. It starts to feel feverish, almost insane.At the airport 2 and one half pounds of uranium are discovered in a suitcase en-route to the mid-east sold to the smugglers by the janitor of one of the soviet bloc
Nuclear reactors. There are over fifty-thousand unemployed, highly
skilled technicians from the various nuclear plants, 7000 of whom are capable of building a nuclear device on their own. Back in
America there is only talk of O.J.
Every night watching from the balcony of my suite which had
at one time housed the likes of Breznev and his staff I sit hour after hour watching the distant famous black castle that overlooks
the city. The Tesla tube radio in the corner plays classical music
barely audible. The hotel sleeps.
Voices and Visions assail me from the dark fog all around
and seemingly from the castle itself. Strange dark angels float above me, circle around me, asking me, compelling me to record. Riding the elevator one bleary eyed morning two thuggish looking Russians in ill fitting pinstripe suits are standing next to me, talking in insistent low-voices. Are they gangsters, thugs, businessmen, pimps? As they leave I hear one of them mutter to the other in mid-conversation-”Spolenska”
I go back thru the unlit hallways to my room and write.
Hotel Praha was first produced at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto Canada. It was directed and produced by Hrant Alianak, written and starred Nick Mancuso. 7 performances were given.
HOTEL PRAHA
“SPOLENSKA,, SAWDUST DREAMS IN AN OLE COMMIE HOTEL”
“more sausages, more pigs than i ever seen anywhere”
Spolenska
“How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr Death?”
e.e. cummings
…Sleepless/forsaken/, the town at night/, yes
The twinkling
Lights/ in the foggy distance/, barely visible/the castle
Is heavy/is weary….
& I am exhausted from film and jetlag/
jackbooted
By headaches and a bad stomach/a flu
And times out of joint/
&the frozen headed chatter
of youth
,and jealous older age
i wonder with what detail
of loss i must go to this funeral(,oh spolenski is lost in the fog/gone back to the
steppes/the trancaucaucus/back to old india
she is lost perched above the door of memory
a carrion bird of desire a harpie,a fury,a tornado
of black choking smoke…spolenska is gone
gone back to Brno and beyond.
She was a funeral of lost causes & spent desire
deliquent airs/
a process, a beaurocracy of despair
she told me that the ghost of communism still
hovers here/
at hotel praha,like a toxic fart
she tells me this now sitting/
in the lobby with the low
flat spaceage ceiling ribbed in brass and cut glass
moser crystal,drips drips drips in this elegant
technocratic castle
“in our history we have gone/
from castle to
castle to castle..”she tells me this legs crossed
dressed to the 9s/
a sex bimbo,, neo- ˚technocratic
in this beautiful day of spring
she is trained
trained for sex,a sex
/ robot,r.u.r.urready
. When Spolenska smiles
her lips curl up
thin and beautiful I tell her
shes a pole and not a czech
shes not from here,shes not a
. czch,vowless,dry,like insects mating
czech what kinda word is that
in the dry darkish air
her eyes are blue large her hair
honey blonde,whatkinda word is
that she says “skuu..”
“Shy?” I ask her” What are you saying? “Are you saying
sky?” sometimes when shes tired she
breaks down and gets pissed
at this english she is forced to
translate how do you translate blood
“How do you translate,blood,bones, breath?”
when i ask her “why is that?”
she zens me with a dry stare replies
“they dont care.”
there are no rivers here
only vlatava,die moldau
Spolenska has known all about this/
about river and plains
about mountains with no name
,she was beaten herself/
half to death by manic cool chainsmoking/
russian mafia cab drivers
once/
one of them took an uzi
out of the trunk of his car and waved it/
in to he air as she ran,
breaking her heel on the black
cobblestoned street
he laughing,choking
, tho he did not fire.
at her
here in Prague
tho the slant-eyed computor salesmen have
have arrived
i cough all the time
living on boiled lard and beets,thick black
bread and espresso, i swallow the mucous
in my mouth unable to find a white a napkin,
covered paper they call it/
(i had never seen a woman as beautiful
as her)
when the commisars of commission arrive
(spolenski says i complain too much, i know nothing
about lying under a bed as the bullets rip thru the
dirty kitchy wall paper..)
they arrive in chinese droves,driving thu the clean
marble lobby ,past the swinging chandeliers,
briefcased
and svelte
into cheap suits,
i choke on smoke
and vomit,while they march
into the narrow tomb of
elevators to variagated floors
. of busted light
while the c&w band
plays in czech-accented english
and the spanish cartoon
tourists complain about this
about that until the desk clerks tells them in no uncertain term s
that they should know english
and not spanish,
english is the language of business
these tourists
at least the italians come for
textiles and whores..
. …….spolenska thinks/
that they are fools/all/all/alles
its 3.am a quivering high voice sings
softly from
the tesla radio,a high voice
small tinny in the corner
of the room;in the shadows,
the dark city sleeps against me
rubbing against my shoulders
leans and snores like a drunk,passed out,
everyone
sleeps the praha
sleeps,
the thick brothy sleep of ages
the dead
in the old jewish cemetery sleep,kafka
and his
mother asleep in
each others arms….
folded,like covered paper
Oh spolenska, listen to me
here in rat hotel
where the ensemble cherubic angels
covered in glitter play
136. in the hallsways,next to the sleeping all
night
waitors in frowsy tuxedos
leaning against the wall
the chair off its front
legs asleep.
the bed sleeps but i do not,
i float above the city looking
for you spolenska,champion lover
of the prevailing
dream-winds,
ther e
below the black sooted moon…
but i do not find you
insomniac,jetlagged,poisoned
by the food
this place
serves no-one,but everyone sleeps
,over this half world
beneath the poisoned clouds and
the tall bricked
shunts, the stacks, the chimney,
spewing
spewing into the terrible
black night air folded with bright red
sparks inside
burning moths,
ah spolenska
why wont you let me sleep
i have such need,in all the rooms
the families of spanish
tourists, the israelis,are sleeping,the dutch
couples,
the mainland chinese businessmen,the russian
gangsters
the old winos on st.charles bridge
,all of europe is
sleeping, spolenska,
and here i am in the cold
mercury heart of this black night
and am awake
it is not insominia but a deep confusion
of the senses
a playing around of the eternal
bio-rht hyms, even the dogs,mangy
and curled are asleep
and more than all
the soot black castle sleeps.
is it you that keeps me awake?
last night to st.stephens in despair i came
for help not to hug the golden statues
the gold- crowned madonnas
holding porcelain babies
but
to you i came for help
i came and i said
that needed someone to hold
“I can not hold you just now “
you said you were
lost to some distant seas,swimming
in oceans that
have no name,antipodal
and forlorn
as i was i can not hold you
now the current is too strong
it seems foul and enweakened,unable to raise
one arm aganst
the other i dropped
listlessly and slid along
the old walls and
you disappeared winked/ vanished
like a feather/
into the night
where have you gone now?
ill formed,at night to stephens church
in despair
i came for help you said i need
. someone
. to hold,weeping,drenched in rain
. i can not hold you now
. lost
to some distant seas,stirring
in oceans
which are nameless,
the current is far too strong
the fog too thick in the shrouded
wood
that lets you out beyond
the gulf,towards
the icefloes
You belong to the gulf and
not to to the land,
no to to me or anyone
not to the black-shrouded castle
at breakfast I sit
unable to wake you ask
“why are pulling at me?”
nightvoices are whispering
tossing and turning unable
to sleep or to awake
worring about the time-
why worry about the time?
and the clock
all night long (he worked)
“and a voice woke you and said
clear as the bells of st.stephens
“why are pulling at me?”
she taunts me with teutonic
barbs,half-witch half angel
“i didnt recognize you,not here
in Prague,you have so many
different faces,but this face i like
the more
that man followed me
again last night
while shopping for a winter
coat at the k mart
“what is it you want?”
i asked
“you” he replied
and made a horrible sucking
sound with toothless
gums
She strips before me
her ghost is as
awkward as little bo beep
she calls to things
in the darknesss
small animals with glittering eyes
lost things listen to her and she takes them
in one by one finding them a home
but for me there
is no home
in her
cavernous heart…oh..i sleep
Music Up
(refrain)
“And When it finally Becomes Clear
That the Commission is Too Dear
Then Heads of States and Charlatans
Will Make all Intentions Clear”
New Mornings
Here at Hotel Praha. when i lie down
,cough and swallow the poliburo, I think. must have
swallowed sawdust with the mucous vapourous
love of the common man
the ghost of Stalin hovers here still
at the top of the stairs
and in the bowling alleys
“these
ideals of mispent american youth!”
,(she tells me
that I complain too much,) makes me unattractive
make me rude,undignified,graceless,
at my age
She told me this last night next to the spinning
chandeliers
while the fat proprietor
looked on and did not pretend
to look away she had tears in her
eyes, saltless ones,
in that clean marble stare of hers
. her legs moulded from moravian crystal,svelte
and briefcased I finding the elevator door
down.to hell……a bronze statue of Victory!
And when that golden opportunity comes,
Yes,when it comes
when that nightmare arrives
dragging behind,the black Horses of
Loss,oh when it arrives
,dragging silver pears in palm
riding the high Horses of Hope,entering thru the
lobby,dragging sacfuls of lost causes & spent wasted
wasted,wasted, ideals O Europa mother Europa,Pan
Europa! thy days are numbered and accounted for
New Voices
I spent two days in anger
over a silly detail of
Her makeup,futzing
like an old queen unable to
find my face in the mirrored halls,the waitors
must
have thought me mad,but
i was un able to find
my face, touched as i was by
ghostly anorexic fingers brushing me
like long haired reeds…
it was all love lack she
said ,simple- love lack-
a feeding emptiness
of depairfrom which the darkness feeds
i got so angry i kicked
over the breakfast tray sending silver spoons and caviar flying in
slow-mo,a feeding emptness
from whatever her sickness fields
THE GHOST MONK APPEARS
slackjawed now,a black robed figure
hovers above my bed,in the radioactive night
i am brightly awake/ and sad beyond the size of mountains
in a full-clouded moon above/,the thick thumbed
Vescoval giants curse a benediction
i feel sunburst thru this night!
come missile-skies, is coming
wending thru
marshamalow skies
pleased as punch
with direction- directionless
metal phalluses hurled by crones
crouching in despair towards the evil
Star above the city of Prague,” a false paradise
it was all a false paradise/ of power!”
in/
the morning
the sun migranous,malevolent
winks thru spires and fog riding above Bohemia…
“Oh life was safe then
when the blue comets flew
oh, life, it was safe then, now ignorance
and tomfooleries
abound!”,the skin of the sun
nauseates me
from the day before
oh life was safe then,
transfixed to death,entranced
the skin
of the -sun- hanging-loose- as- old skin
is-loose,dry-hacked ,redolent,
with evil-witch intent!
its 3.a.m.
the night before while i slept
an old drunk rummaged through my pockets
double identities abound
& there can be no sound………..
NEW DAY
“When Spolenska smiles
her lips curl up
thin and beautiful I tell her
shes a pole and not a czech
shes not from here,shes not a
“czech!” what kinda word is that
“czch!”,vowless,dry,like Insects mating
her eyes are blue large her hair
honey blonde,whatkinda word is
that she says “skuu..”
“Shy?” I ask her “Are you saying
Sky? What are you saying”
sometimes when shes tired she
breaks down and gets pissed
at this “english” she is forced to
translate how do you translate blood
“How do you translate,blood,bones, br eath?”
. in the black skoda driving
. at 160 kilometers per hr.,the endless transformers
. flicking by in full broad daylight
flicking by electric T.shaped wires
in the hills around the city where
the the prehistoric metereorite hit, on the lip of
the volcano long spent,voiceless, now
“I want to go to Mala Strana for tea and service”
she says,looking out the window suddenly cheerful
manic
tranformers flicking
by on a field of
green stubbled grass snapped
like a fresh
deck of alchemical cards
past the postcard industry
the coal chocked towns,the tall 1940’s
bricked stacks,the electric wires,wires,wires,
“Are you willing” she asks.
“ I want to go..to go..
“I want to go to Mala Strana, on my broom!”
MUSIC UP
We pull over near the river
no vowels to this landscape
no vowels to your life oh she
is fresh grass at morn ing
tide st soon she’ll go to
seed like those moslem wives
layered in fat and cloth
soon she’ll sprout
smellling of jasmine and sweat
like those covered moslem wives,
at the Holiday Inn
in Vienna a face in each one
yes i say lets go to Malastrana
to Ujezdi st.,near St.Stephens
………………………
HE SINGS
“there are bubbles
in the state of her big fat heart
she serves goulash
morning noon and night
and gawd her feet smell
awful strong”
MUSIC UP,RADIO AMERICA
we listen to the river high
on the enbankment, where the
black cobblestones are transfixed
one, two, three, into the other like a black
oily sheen,
”there are more pigs
here than i seen anywhere,
more
sausage and dumplings”
in America i tell her we slaughter
pigs by the millions and not
a one complains -she laughs
like
a dark violin
shes been to America she says and she hates it,she knows all about
America
she said it was all a lie
that she had been to newyork and miami
and to the upstate to the Hudson and Calabassas and the meandering indian towns with names like Wannawannabee!
and Panawanatosh,and Irvington,knew about
Hayawatha and the Iriqiuos and the
peaceful legends, before the coming
of the whites,knew it was all a lie!
that there she was just an immigrant
in a land of immigrants
that she undone by Greyhound
and the burnt out centres of cities
and she knew about the awful violence
of its people,
details lack
hands do not move,
glasscracks,toothache abound,hair
falls out in handfuls
in America as well as here
but the raw of her i am not alone
she came back after
Colorado and the Grandcanyon
when the tourist sound of her own language
brought her back
HER STORY
shes been sent by the agency to translate
the first day
at breakfast we sit awkward, as children
she said “we go now pliss” go where? i asked
she seemed confused so i repeated “where?
is -there- to-go? just to confuse her all the
more what is your name? how are you?
and i realized that she thought the question was real
when i asked how are you that I meant it
literally because she stopped and made a face
ashen
as if to reply to an impossible demand
“why are you asking?
what is it about me that you see that you should
ask such a question?what is to you?!”
PART TWO
Spolenska sits alone today
,sips coke alone, in the lobby
of Hotel Praha,today
she has long red crackling-cranberry
hair,tonight she will be a witch
“everyone wonders at
how good everyone else is..”
she says
sipping
brackish liquid thru a rainbow -coloured
straw
like a barbers pole
“its not important
how good
or how bad..” her face is reddened by flames winds
as light as dreams
lap her,brush aside her darkness
in sillouttted lighted
she appears and dissappears
she looks perched to fly
made all of bronze
in one hand a sprig of laurel
in the other headless Samothrace
“why do you act this way?” shes ask
“americans are a surprised people”
she replies and i act surprised
“they were born yesterday and think only
of tomorrows but tomorrow is always
tomorrow and never now…”
“its not all disneyland you know!”
the old heater rattles, crackles like a train
in full flight,tomorrow i must shop
for shoes at the k-mart on narodni
for butter and bread, for a sweater
a microscope, a bottle opener,
. she will not date the city men she finds them
weak,she prefers foreigners
i worry with desire &clutch myself
think about all the girls i learnt
to worry about
,the part of me that moves
about the future is
speechless with fright
i am unable to speak the common courtesy
of the land to ask for food
or directions for protection
. i rely on the air for pronuciation
as she relies on a language
of collapse,there are unknown sands
here,it hits me for the first time
but spolenska is naked at all times
covered in the skin of cloth, a soviet tank
about her innards i realize she has no need
. for supermen, they have come and gone
. she stands on stage alone, a pair
of golden shears in hand caught in the
left handed curtain of history
in a sea of troubles, in an ocean of raunchy
willingness what is it you want? why do you act so surprised?
tonight she will go to a screening of a new film
hosted by macdonalds
and tomorrow a playboy shoot
here in the lobby of the hotel
hosted by the former k.g.b.
PAUSES’HE DANCES.MUSIC
“why do you act so surprised?”
“when its bad news,its always
bad news disguised as the good,it was worse
then,when it was worse, now, its bad
when its bad now its better
why are you all such fools?
no,not…”
“do you know how many words there are
for no..in czeck?” and she hold up her hands
“many,gradations of no..”
. there as stood by the clock
on Old Time Square
where Jan Husek had been
. burned,the inventor of the
famous clock castrating himself
using his body to choke
the machinery,his own
. own blood clogging the mechanism
because he had been blinded
and betrayed by the council
. “why are there so many gradations
of no? why do you think?
as the bells started ringing and the tourists
gaped like retarded children
how can there be love in this
twisted prism of desire?
i tell spolenska everthing,that i’m terrified of deceivers
that the players frighten me, young girls scare me
i have always run away she laughs and takes a
drag on that awful chocking tobacco
always encircked in gold leaf,with a name like r ubiconred or newyorkerorjohhnydeds
and laughs crossing and uncrossing
the peeping shyness of her
the cross of flesh absorbs everything
even the tanks tread,it is selfishness
the drowners fight till i can no longer
bear her…
“You know nothing about the world,america
you suffer over cream,your center can not
hold the fraying edge of distance
of unravelling you dissolve like
ice in rainwater..”
i have become a river in her prayer
am i dreaming?
hair falls out,glass cracks,toochaches abound
the spinning wheels of flesh that move the lips
without a sound
and i think the world is round
after each lap of love i feel for her frail
girlishness,she stands next to me on a chair
her clothes off and says ‘….’
with the embarrassment of the cosmos
on her shoulders till i think she will
melt away to freckles”
i toiled in the vineyard for years
waiting for a harvest that never came
instead of wheat,sweetgrass &fallow game
came nettles,weeds and tears.
Confused by the body,spolenska whose name now i can
never remember,whose car will not start
has a face like Bottticellis venus,as isee it now
thru disturbed glass, a face like pottery
with small uneven teeth,yet she is beaautiful sometimes
the way old things are beautiful
the way flames are beautiful
drinking from her
i hear a tiny snap like a forest twig
within her room there is the smell of diesel
there are guarantees of nothing here.
in strange twittering tongues of birds her room
fills up with jumk from k mart
the smart german tourists took everything
years ago,all the fine austrohungarian
stuff anything that wasnt bolted down
yet i want to put her on a shelf
chimeral, pants wide open
obsessed with pullullating i want to scream
her out of here into the void
into a phone line that connects
drag her by the hair
“cant you see that i’m fine the way that i am?”
she asks giggling into the champagne and
the tin of caviar and onions we share
its night the trams on ujezdi street rattle
and stirs the door frame of her lair
“in the 1930’s this place was paradise
you could not imagine it
so beaut iful, like a lithe woman
all covered in gemstone leaning
back, before the compromise
of race before the promise was made
and not kept.”
“we were not invaded we asked them in!”
you learn after a while to let them in
when they come knocking at the door
in the middle of the night drunk as usual
those pigs…..
at the train station she stops for cigarettes
and pays in crowns instead of dollars
then becomes angry with me
for what reason? why are you angry with
me.spolenska?for all the lost reasons left
years ago in a flurry of harsh voices,because i
am childless and middleaged incapable
of loving you,i want to love but for
reasons other than the chant of tourist
love, a love complete and whole
as untasted bread,look Spolenska the
trees are soon to bud,the cha rcoal
grey skies will soon crack and spill
colour all over look! look!
on ujezdi st.
in a corridor of sound
from trams and delipitation
i go to a phonebooth to call to
her, i think there is an ancient
volcano here,here beneath this
blackcobblestone,beneath these
flattened and compressed
houses, a crater larger than
the city,that stretched its
crack deep into the earth
to limits unknown,once that
brought forth this fruit of black
rock,sputum of crystal
this was at the time of the blue comets when
they flew have i gone mad?
i remember the Time of Freezing
when the tribes came omindirectional
so many died in the shrouded woods
its why you have come to suffer
i dial the phone and this time it
eeks and dies you dont believe me do you
its why you have come to this city
why do you think for the weather
the churches,the architecture the sexclubs
the food what her hair is new blonde now
a wig? gold as honey and she wears about her
neck a brooch of green glittering stone
stellated by fiery red pinpoints emeralds
“ its moldavite” she says “found on the banks
of vlatava,the river moldau,fragments of
meteroties that flew millions of years
old,when the blue comets blue the pope
has one just like this a rosary a gift
from the people,from havel,do you
remember the time of the gathering
have you remembered yet who you are?Have you?”
“Do you remember making love last night
against the wall of st.stephens,in the alleyway
so passionate so rude?”
i call and call
until the phone congeals…
hair falls out,glass cracks
toothaches abound,the spinning wheels
move the lips without a sound
its rainining
the fog
congeals
becomes bitter
drops like tears
. horses cough
in the dampwet air
my hair curls
. and the phantasm of autumn
leaves it lair
and still no spolenska…
In malastrana
thru the alleyways at night
my spirit walks,hands deep in pockets
stillshivering unable
to stop knocking at church doors
knocking at decaying palaces
remnants of kingly things
. “my father appeared to me
. in a dream” she said,last night
and he had never seemed happier
. but i still hunger for this world
and all of its girls
and the dancing on a fence
. of a moon
i said to him
still spirit
“look,look,everyone jumps out
. of their skins” replaced by fog
in her sleep her voice
sounds like the wings of insects
mating drying rubbery hacking
a language of whispered alleyways
a language to be whispered not
spoken,many-spoken,she tells me
that she has a key to an apartment
. that she will give it to me
but that it was stolen by the k.g.b.
. who took everything of hers,her
family photos, her children,her identity
the buzzer on her door
has not worked since 1943
we sit together
in old monastary park
on the twilight
watching the apples drop
“you musnt touch those apples” says she
they belong to the state and the state
sells them back to us at exorbitant prices!”
SINGS
I toiled in the Vineyard for Years
Looking for a Cornucopia that never Came
Instead of Sweetgrass, Wheat and Fallow Game
Came Nettles, Weeds, and Tears
my house is broken my clothes are poor
the windows blown, the shattered door
its 5.a.m.
unable to wake she asks
“why are you pulling at me?”
the fog in the wood has made
mistakes before/difficult to correct
. easier to bear
spolenska sleeps and in her sleep
. she tosses and turns
. the comets whisp about her like
fireflies in a soft Moscow white night
then she awakes
then she is bright bright
consuming light
. like a sparkler burning
. she flays above the castle
above narodni and malastrana
above old town square
. zooms by wencelaus square
where she was there during
the velvet time,golem haunted,yes
and more,she moves towards the
black castle towards toucnik,beyond brno and
. past pilsen,spooky as a 40’s film beyond
warsaw and the hungarian plateau,the
highgrasslands and purple woods
towards the mountains and beyond……
away
away.
“i interpret the world
thru woods and by words
until there are no words”
“i
laugh at the americans when
i see how frail they really are,unable
to be late for appointments or
to skip them altogether…”
“here, we measure and
. weigh our food,not wanting
to have more than the other
conscious of the other,not
wanting to take away this need
or the fullfillment of this need
we are more concerned with
you than you are with us
because we are a we
and you are only a you”
near Zebrek,next to the brick
. factory,i spit sputum unto
the dusty ground watching
the steam from it,near the
ploughed fields,near the coop
farms sorrounded by louspeakers
playing martial music,here spolenska
tells me that she cant take it anymore
that shes going back to the steppes
past pilsen, and brno,
past india and beyond
back to lemuria,back to
the giant continent when Ceylon
touched the mainland
to sweet-scented Ceylon
the centre of the world,
i put on my wig and cape
wanting to follow like a brown-haired
child
,the fog in the woods has
made mistakes more difficult to correct,
cars appear and disappear, headlights
like strange lanterns,the
turrets of mystic passage
the bridges silent at night…
I can hear the black
river at night thru the filtered
woods,sound of woodthrush
and of owl and the mushroom pickers
,”the woods are correct” she says
spolenska sleeps,in her sleep she tosses and turns,dreaming that
she is awake,that it is brightbright sunlight,
then she floats
above malastrana ,by the black
tower….away,away…
IT’S raining,the fog congeals
drops bitter drops like tears
horses cough in the damp wet air
my soul curls and autumn
leaves grow from my long thin
hair
a siren calls,i am covered in silicate
dust,in petroleum products, in mercury
and chrome,the love of the engine
room and steelbeams,
hold my heart how shall i survive your loss,
the vacation you have decided
to take from the planet, that creaks
and murmers,she announces to me
one day that she a cancer of the bone after work she will have it checked out a short stay in hospital, an operation
some hungarian watered down morphine
they’ll replant the bones of her
with something better,teflon,the entire
skeleton bone by bone,and she will
made brand new
and stainless steel
and her smile will remain
spolenska will remain
quixotix this place is,chimeral,purple
violet,the sunsets burst like pipes
and are not repaired,it is not a question
of right or fair in this place or sleep
the ghost of stalin sits
at the top of the stairs
wearing a bankers hat and monocle
accompanied by virgins in diaphanous gowns
thru which their nipples show
and all thruout the hall of mirrors
a symphony plays a sad lament
while drop dead girls in buckskin tights
drink gold champagne in paper cups
“yulchka! yulchka! a baritone cries while the mad russian fiddler plays a tip top aria from the …
your girlish soul has been touched by fear
and calls are everywhere
and from these ceilinged walls eyes appear
and there is laughter from the bowling halls
the skin of the sun nauseates me
dry,redolent,loose hanging
the way old skin is loose,redolent with evil intent
roasted with worry and desire i feel sugar seep into my blood promeathean-bound spolenska rides now,mongolian like back to the planet of love
beating large harpy wings
her face is toasted
she is sphynx,talon blessed
she carves fissures on my skin
scars my liver and pancreas i have cut the rope to her thickness
i am used up
with no return to worry
while spolenska sleeps
in flight high above the smoggy
plains america crackles with
o.j.,with trials and vials
gales of constant canned laughter
blow the cities wide open teenaage girls and their mothers
talk of nothing
zero is opened for the nth
with constant mathematical
precision
the evil princess of eternal blonde happiness
rolls her eyes upwards in mock orgasm
rolls soft canned peas beneath the mattress of democracy, &a voracious spirit
lifts up,and fear rides an open wave
blonde and blue-eyed she perches
witnessing.
Rewritten Prague
Aug21/2006
Nick Mancuso
9 Oct
homage to stephen j. cannell
A HOMAGE TO STEPHEN J. CANNELL
By
Nick Mancuso
I first met Stephen J. Cannell in Burbank in 1976. I was a young actor, fresh out of the underground and classical theatre in Toronto Canada and had been optioned by ABC to act in a pilot.I knew nothing of the world of Hollywood. I didn’t even know what a pilot was. And he was the first Hollywood screenwriter I ever met.
It was a vital and hopeful time and Stephen was cordial and gentle and brimming with energy and creativity. And he welcomed my contributions, small as they were, without judgment. He treated me as an equal. And he accepted me and made me feel like a welcome guest, like family.
The A.B.C, network had flown me down to Los Angeles from Toronto Canada and had me introduced to Stephen and Aaron Spelling and several other producers to perform in a pilot project.
When my agent at the time, asked me who I had liked I immediately responded “I like Steve”.
And I did. I liked him then and I liked him even more as I got to know him over the years. After we shot the pilot we stayed in touch and years later he offered me a series- “Stingray”. And though Stingray was short lived we stayed in touch over the years having lunch at one of his eateries “The Bistro” in Burbank, every now and then.
I considered him to be one of my dearest friends; always open, always affable- telling me what he was writing and creating. Always enthused about the creative act and interested and curious. Never cynicisms or fatigue. And he was never bored or distant. In spite of living in two worlds, one filled with the many lives of his characters and creation- Stephen lived in the here and now and he listened- and cared. How rare! What a loss!
And his sudden and unfair passing at such a young age has left a giant crater and has been a shock and terrible blow not only to his family and friends, but to the entire world. An earthquake of loss and he will be missed –forever and a day.
He was and remains a true legend. And Hollywood and world of entertainment has lost one of the greats.
He made it all worthwhile.
He inspired and led and nourished his fellow artists and he was kind and humble, albeit a tough no nonsense man of action and thought. And so many in the business owe so much to him and to the many doors he opened. Hollywood has lost one of its founding fathers.
A creative prince has passed away.
He saw the truth of the art and as Stanislavski, the great Russian man of the theatre wrote, he “loved the art in himself and not the man in the art.”
He was one of the hardest creative workers I ever knew and he left a legacy unmatched by anyone in the last 40 years, in television and in publishing.
Stephen could write and tell a story, almost better than anyone. He made it effortless for the actor. He knew how to spin a tale for television that resonated with audiences around the world. He made it easy for us, a modern American populist Shakespeare.
He made us laugh and cry and be curious and amused, be frightened and relieved and grateful for the world we live in and underneath all the gauzes and filters of character and plot of action and music there was a strong pounding pulse, the true delightful heartbeat of the creative soul, a pulse that told us that in the end, the good guys always win and the sun will always shine- in spite of the darkest nights.
And it’s true!
Stephen’s sun will never set into darkness and despair and the ship of artistry that he launched into the great ocean of unknowing will never sink. His words and images have entered the fabric of America and of the world. And they will remain.
We can all remember the logo of Stephen typing furiously at his typewriter with two fingers, and launching the finished paper into the air, like a sudden bird in flight, as it morphed and became the symbol of his company.
He made us all feel free like that paper as he launched us all into space, and imagination, air, light, truth and beauty and yes justice. He told us the stories we all wanted to hear and believe in. And he told us that in spite of the “bad guys” and the obstacles of life, we, like the hero’s he invented, of which I had the honor of playing several-would in the end arrive to a safe and peaceful port.
Stephen has endured the final storms. His journey on this earth is over. And has come to his arrival, the point of destination from which we all embark and to which we shall all return. The final harbor.
And when we do return, as well we must, perhaps, he will be there compass in hand, awaiting our arrival, maps outstretched, waiting to take us on a new journey to tell us a new fantastic story, filled with thrills and action and, yes, new life.
I see him again as he was in at the old Burbank Studios, young and vital and electric with creative spark-fire, driving a car with a license plate that read “what if…” and I am re-inspired to continue to try to emulate his passion for the soul of art, which he manifested so perfectly, so selflessly. Stephen was never older.
Nor did he die old. He passed onwards as a solar warrior, lance and pen in hand, ready like the hero’s of his tales, to travel to new continents, explorers of the deep, energetic fighters of the darkness’s of this world.
And the flights of angels that have taken him to his rest will be surprised to discover that in heaven there too waiting, is an audience hungering for his stories, his fables, his artistry.
Waiting to tune in and see “what if” and “what next…”
Stephen I shall never forget you! Thanks for everything and God bless you and your family and friends.
Nick Mancuso
Actor
21 Jun
karlmarx, the 3 stooges and the new ice age
KARL MARX,THE 3 STOOGES AND THE COMING OF THE NEW ICE AGE OF DOOM,GLOOM, AND CHEESE
A discourse
By Nick Mancuso
HOW THE CLIMB UP THE CORPORATE LADDER OF CHEESE RESULTED IN THE CURRENT MESS
U.S. Markets Plunge, Then Stage a Rebound
By GRAHAM BOWLEY
A bad day in the stock market turned into one of the most terrifying moments in Wall Street history on Thursday with a brief 1,000-point plunge that recalled the panic of 2008.
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
With six minutes in the trading day left, visitors watched the screens on the floor of the Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan.
It lasted just 16 minutes but left Wall Street experts and ordinary investors alike struggling to come to grips with what had happened — and fearful of where the markets might go from here. Some speculators speculated that cheese stocks were the culprit. Others thought it might be work of One Big Rat.
So there’s a good reason why a lot of investors are feeling whipsawed –and maybe a little nauseous — right now. The VIX, a.k.a. “the fear index,” had jumped about 175% in the past month, while Treasuries, the dollar and gold have benefited from the “risk aversion” trade.
At least part of the sell-off appeared to be linked to trader error, perhaps an incorrect order routed through one of the nation’s exchanges. Many of those trades may be reversed so investors do not lose money on questionable transactions.
But the speed and scale of the plunge — the largest intraday decline on record — seemed to feed fears that the financial troubles gripping Europe were at last reaching across the Atlantic. Amid the rout, new signs of stress emerged in the credit markets. European banks seemed to be growing wary of lending to each other, suggesting the debt crisis was entering a more dangerous phase.
Traders and Washington policy makers struggled to keep up as the Downer Jones industrial average fell 1,000 points shortly after 2:30 p.m. and then mostly rebounded in a matter of minutes. For a moment, the sell-off seemed to overwhelm computer and human systems alike, and some traders began referring grimly to the day as “Black Cheese Day.”
But in the end, Thursday was not as black as it had seemed. After briefly sinking below 10,000, the Downer Jones ended down 347.80, or 3.2 percent, at 10,520.32. The Standard & Very Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 37.75 points, or 3.24 percent, to close at 1,128.15, and the Nasdick was down 82.65 points, or 3.44 percent, at 2,319.64.
But up and down Wall Street, and across the nation, many investors were dumbstruck. Experts groped for explanations as blue cheese-chip stocks like Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Accenture plunged. At one point, Accenture fell more than 90 percent to a penny. P.& G. plunged to $39.37 from more than $60 within minutes.
The crisis in Greece, high-speed computer program trading, the debate over regulatory reform in Washington, talk of errant trades — all were pointed to as possible catalysts. But most agreed the plunge would not have been as bad had the markets not already been on edge over the debt crisis in Europe.
“There is a recognition that the Greek crisis has morphed into not only a European crisis but is going global,” said . El-Morian Al-Akhim, chief executive of PimpsCo, the money manager.
On the trading floor of the New York Stock Ex-change, traders shouted insults or watched open-mouthed as the screens lighted up with plummeting prices and floating feathers and as phones rang off the hook. “It was almost like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ” said Moe Stooge of Aronson, Johnson & Ortits, a money management firm in Philadelphia.
Wall Street managers wandered their trading floors, trying to calm their people tickling them and trying to figure out what was going on. They began to notice wild movements in stocks like P.& G. and Philip Morris. Curly of Moe,Larry Shemp had a fit on the floor of the stockmarket, frothed at the mouth and rotated in small circles. Many traders said computer program trades accelerated the slide as market indexes fell through crucial levels and all pandemonium broke out.
In Washington, Treasury officials began combing market tapes for answers.Some of the combs revealed cooties. By the evening they still had not gotten to the bottom of it, but they discovered some aberrations — market blips on cheese crumbs — in trading coming out of Chicago.
The Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geisundheit, was returning to the Treasury about 2 p.m. from the Capitol when he saw geese on his BlackBerry and that the market was down 3 percent. Sneezing,he took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes furiously and broke into a cold sweat. He called the Treasury’s market room, which constantly monitors financial exchanges and women’s bathrooms; officials there theorized that the cause was Greece’s and Europe’s feta cheese woes. Others speculated not so.
One minute later in the Treasury hallway, Mr. Gesundheit, took off his glasses looked again at his BlackBerry and saw that the market was down nearly 9 percent.He couldn’t believe it and somehow managed to kick himself in the ass by projecting the heel of his backward into his ass. He told colleagues it had to be a mistake.The odds were 1 in 3 billion. Or so his mind told him.
Mr. Gesundheit sneezed repeated and immediately called the market room and then the Federal Reserve. He held a conference call with Fed officials an ,Mary L. Schnapps, the chairwoman of the InSecurities and Exchange Commission. About 3:15, Mr. Gesunheit walked to the Oval Office to brief President Obama. When questioned by President Obama about the cause of the recent Wall St fiasco, Mr Genundheit apparently performed an odd sliding backward dance on the green carpet of the Oval Office and slapped his own face several times and stated in a high-pitched whine “ Mr President, . cheese.. Mr President.. cheese.whoob whoob whoob whoop…!”
Next Mr. Gesundheit spoke with European central bankers. After the markets closed, at 4:15 and again at 5:45, he joined conference calls with the heads of the Fed, the New York Fed, the S.I.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; the calls were expected to continued into the evening.They continued into the evening and into the night. At 4 a.m. everyone ordered pizza. Mr Geundheit insisted on anchovies, plenty of cheese.Aftrwards everyone fell asleep, mouth open, drooling. It was quite disgusting, actually.
The Group of 7 industrial nations’ ministers and governors, including Mr. Gesunheiter, plan a conference call at 7:30 a.m. Friday Eastern time.During the conference call someone cut the cheese.
As of about 6 p.m., all the officials knew was that there had been what one called “a huge, anomalous, unexplained surge in selling cheese, it looks like in Chicago, at about 2:45.” The source remained unknown, but it had apparently set off algorithmic trading strategies,and strange fart noises, which in turn rippled across everything, pushing trading out of whack and feeding on itself — until it started to reverse.It was amazing, particularly to the unknown source.
Federal officials fielded rumors that the culprit was one single cheese stock,controlled by a Dr Moe Horowitz, a single institution or execution system, a $16 billion trade that should have been $16 million. But they did not know the truth. Or the difference.Between the two. Dried old pizza was then handed out to the press and everyone seemed happy.One trader danced by jumping up and down in place like a yo-yo.
What happens to the day’s market losers will depend on the nature of the cause and whether it can be identified. That is a question for the S.I.C. The Nasdick market said in the evening that it would cancel all trades in hundreds of stocks whose prices had swung wildly between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m.
As Wall Street reeled, anchors on CNBC, Bloomberg and the Foxy Business Network turned their attention to the Downer.
When the Downer was down more than 900 points and the CNBC anchor Erin Burnmecup observed that the P.& G. stock had dropped 25 percent Jim Kramer, the former hedges fund trader and the host of “Cheese Mad Money,” seemed to calm the conversation a bit by basically saying, “Buy, buy, buy Cheese.”
(“Mad Money” is essentially televised talk radio, replete with a screaming, self-involved host; CHEESY sound effects; and a call-in format that is not exactly visually engaging. Still, it is the top-rated program on CNBC.)
“If that stock is there, you just go and buy it,” he said of P.& G. “That is not a real price.None of it is real. Just go buy Procter & Gambling.” He was then reported to have said,”Will the lady with the lucky number come and get me my shoes please” Odd words from such a reliable source.Odder words were yet to come as the day progressed.
The day’s uncertainty pushed the euro to its lowest level against the dollar in 14 months. It slipped to $1.2529 at one point before closing at $1.2602. The dollar’s rise, and the mounting fear of a slowdown in global growth, sent commodities prices lower. Crude oil fell $2.86 to settle at $77.16 a barrel.Cheese maintained an even course. After the oil settled it hardened and became somewhat cheesy.
By the close, when calm was restored, the focus was on working out what had just happened. Larry was the first to recover and rubbed his head and ear, the one Mr. Moe had snatched him with.Mr. Curly made strange clucking sounds at the back of his throat just before he was slapped several times by Mr. Moe Horowitz of Zurich, Switzerland.His double. It was a one way mission.
“Look, you and me is from two different galaxies” Dr Moe said. A Chinese specialist was sent for before the French could get their grubby paws on it.It was starting to all make sense, dollars and cents. Nyuk, Nyuke, Nuke.
The S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were reviewing “unusual trading activity in cheese, fissionable cheese, the kind that explodes.” But already markets were turning attention back to European Cheese — whether German lawmakers would approve the Greek bailout on Friday, whether warning signals would flash brighter, whether the Euro Cheese Zone would stay together, or whether this was a precursor of more parmigiano to come is hard to say at this juncture.” How can I ignite the fire in my heart,when I’ve got your foot in my face?” Mr. Moe repeatedly repeated.
It was all starting to make sense….
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad…
The Greeks
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering, They had begun to consider the Government of the United Cheese as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
“They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“Moe Larry Cheese!”
Curly, of The 3 Stooges
Goldman Sachs Messages Show It Thrived as Economy Fell
In late 2007 as the mortgage crisis gained momentum and many
Banks were suffering losses, Goldman Sachs executives traded
E-mail messages saying that they were making “some serious
cheddar” betting against the housing markets.
Beserkshire had a gain of $1.4 billion on derivatives and cheese compared with a loss of $3.2 billion on the holdings in the year-earlier period.
Buffett, who built Beserkshire into a $190 billion company through acquisitions and more cheese during his more than 40 years as CEO, said he’s always looking for the next deal on gorgonzola.
“We are ready to act,” Buffett, who was sporting a white napkin said at the shareholders meeting. “If I get a call on Monday on a $10 billion cheese deal and I like it, I’ll say yes.I love cheese, it makes me happy!”
“All wealth is based on crime, great wealth on great red cheese”
Karl Marx
BEGIN-ECONOMIC HEBEPHRENIA AND THE WHOLE FRAUDULUNT SHELLCHEESE GAME
Say, you have a bushel of apples, good apples and then you have a bushel of bad apples, very bad apples. Say you mix the two bushels, you still have two bushels only this time you have no idea where the bad apples are.
Say you go to the agora, the market place as it where, were cheese is sold at great cost, good cheese, bad cheese, fine cheese,goat, sheep and cow, and you put up your bushel of apples, many bushels all mixed up and you sell them all, say for a fine rainy cheddar.
You run home with your cheese and the agora is stuck with a bunch of rotten apples.You run and you run pursued by Harpies and the ghosts of Marley,Morgan, &Frick.
Say you’ve bought one of the bushels but in order to see them you have to make sure that they are good apples. You go to the head honcho experts to whom you give some cheese and maybe some apples and he gives you triple AAA approval,knowing full well that some of the apples in fact many of them are rotten. You get drunk together order up a couple of Thai hookers. You have your way with them. Then you hand him a piece of hallucinated red cheese,hoping it wont explode eyeballs and all is well.
The agora is now in big trouble. Who do you trust? Who do you trust?The people of the Lie, and United States of Cheese, suddenly find themselves in crisis. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. Everyone is ….fondued…
The apples are sold for salt and there is no apple pie for anyone ,anymore on earth. People weep tears of blood.The economic engine grinds to a halt. People stare at walls. Nothing is revealed for the nth time.O’Jay Simpson goes on trial in a parallel universe. TheNazis win the war, as National Socialism returns like a gargoyle from hell. England flies the Swatika. New York is skewered. Cheese becomes worthless. It is the Apocalyse of St John of Patmos. The number of the Beast is revealed.It is 666.which is 9 which is 3’ 3’ees. We are reminded yet again-“the history of the world is the history of mass struggle” Mass fights mass. No one knows a thing. No-one sees the truth.The Kabahlla and the Golem play “Dead Mans Poker…” The Bible is ripped to shreds and is reconstituted magically as the Constitution of the United Cheese.Airplanes take off en masses and fly circles of light around the Cathedral at Chartre. Mont St Michel is dive bombed. Avebury is set fire to and Stonge Henge falls over like an old drunk on sterno.
Honest.
PT 2 MEN OF CHEESE
(from KarlMarx, the 3 Stooges and the New Ice Age of Doom Gloom and Cheese)
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries. To some that’s no big deal. But isn’t this the natural progression of a debt laden, global financial system? Just like a drug addict, the financial system needs bigger and bigger fixes.
Initially, Greece’s bailout was slated to be around $60 billion, then increased to a $145 billion package. But that wasn’t enough; a $1 trillion dollar package for most of Europe was next. Even Germany’s chancellor Merkel admits that their only buying time”.
Simon Maierhofer
Cheese Centralization and usury are the most destructive forces known to man, more destructive than the H-bomb. More destructive than the virus of ignorance. Of what the old Yogic master, Patanjali, caLled the root of all evil. Avidya. Ignorance.Cheese.
These cosmic twins ,brought about the Neptune/Us-Anus connection are the formative glacial sheets of the New Ice Age of Cheese, the cause and the root of all our problems here on planet earth. It is in my opinion cheese avarice that is underneath it all. And rats, human and otherwise, prefer it.If the world consisted of 100 rats, 6 rats would own 59 percent of the cheese and they would all be Americans. There just simply isn’t enough cheese.
“Usury, the lending of money at an exorbitant rate”
Here is what Martin Luther had to say about the practice of money lending, the basis of Wall St.all Banks,All Credit Card companies,all of Wall St.,all cheese companies, including City National Cheese etc and the recent cheese fiasco which has affected the lives of millions,nay billions, around the world. Usury in the oldest sense, unadorned and not in the least sexy. And it stinks to high heaven,like a fine Gorgonzola.
“The heathen were able, by the light of Reason to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honor, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. Whoever eats up, robs and steals the nourishment of another by eating his cheese, that man commits as great a murder as he who starves a man, or utterly undoes him..”
But then what did Father Luther know? He was a baldheaed coot and Superman’s arch-enemy.What the hell is a “double-dyed thief?”
A Man of Cheese
Canadian dollar tumbles on Cheese risk aversion, Goldman charges
TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canadian dollar tumbled more than a cent against the U.S. currency on Friday as global stocks plummeted on increased risk aversion of cheese, after regulators charged U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs with fraud.
They don’t have these problems with cheese protection on Alpha Centauri, or Smegam 4. Or the Moon. Blue or not. Or in the Middle Ages where the Divine Rights of Kings held sway. By whose divine rights are these new dog-kings ordained? By the Mob? By the Cheese Brigade?
“I will do things to her that will make the very denizens of hell shriek with agony…!”
Father Adam, Cheese Maker, horror/slasher film-“My Soul to Take”
Where things centralize whether in government, or Wall St. in the universe, in the fields of energy, on, in business, in art, in thought and deed and cheese, the end is nigh. A wall of ice has started to form as high as the phantom Twin towers and begins to trudge forward, a relentless tsunami of detritus and babble. What’s to be done about it? Marginalize, at all costs. Convert cheese to margarine and margarine to cheese. There is no danger of the two being confused one with the other since margarine is an oil product.Furthermore everyone knows margarine is good for the heart.Any fool knows that.Since it is good for the heart of an individual it is by definition good for the heart of a society. What is also good is centralization, labyrinthic obfuscation, invisibility, and of course more cheese.
“Please allow me to introduce myself/Am a man of Wealth and Cheese”
Mick Jigger of The Rolling Stones
“Ca va mal, ca va tres mal…” Pablo Picasso
A flood of mud cheese, New Orleans Style came crashing in and… The 3 Stooges, Moe, Larry and Curly who knew this simple truth and were born with an innate understanding had the only solution; More Cheese. A motto, now long forgotten- “Spread Out!!” And “Spread it on toast, only if its Velveeta!”
“Qui a coupe le fromage?” Ancient Gaulian Saying
U.S. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud in Mortgage Deal
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
In a civil suit filed Friday, the S.E.C. accused the investment bank of securities fraud over a deal in which Goldman profited from bets against products of cheese it sold to customers.
It. Cheese Wins Yet Again.(Dec. 24, 2009)
Theirs is a world that begins with Curly’s “Nyaaa Nyaaa Humph” and ends with “Nuke, nuke, nuke,” In between a universe of frozen salted Cheese. Mozzarella of course. And plenty of toxic mortgages,designed to fail, jumping around from stooge to stooge.
“Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves of cheese go flaunting in gold and silk… therefore on this earth no greater enemy of man, after the devil than a “gripe cheese-money” and usurer, for he wants to be God, over all men”
Martin Luther
“ A god over all men? He can’t be talking about AIG, Goldman Sachs, Enron, Fannie Mae, Union Carbide, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, could he? etc etc What about the internal internet bubble? What about Savings and Loans? How much cheese will it take before we wake up? The greatest addiction of our epoch isn’t to drugs and alcohol- its money.The hardest addict isnt to heroin or even cigarettes, its to loot.The greatest misers aren’t the poor its the very rich.There will never be enough.
It was shortly after midnight on April 15th, 1912 when the unsinkable did the unthinkable. Built and labeled as unsinkable, the Titanic was the most advanced and largest passenger steamship of its time.
Even though the Titanic’s crew was aware that the waters were iceberg-infested, the ship was heading full-steam for a destination it would never reach.
And then again
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries.”
Simon Maierhofer
Obviously something here stinks like a fineRoquefort.
Here is what one of these double dyed types had to say recently, double-dyed and double tongued. Thieves is meant of course only in the apocraphysic sense, after all is a Rat a thief for doing what it does best? A rat is a rat is a rat.A rat is not a dinosaur.A rat eats cheese, it is in his nature and there is not point pretending otherwise.The rat doesnt much care about the type of cheese it is eating, as long as its cheese.Given a choice between two types of cheese, it will choose both.
Lets all just now listen in, shall we?;
NOTES FROM A WALL ST BANKER
(circulated via email)
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas…
Here’s more:
“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position.We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”
A man of Cheese
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does your cheese.” You see it’s our job to make money. Thats not your job. Our. Job.
Harsh and interesting words, indeed. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. Vanity saith the preacher precedes the fall, but then so the fuck what?.
“Money, dirty filthy money/It was invented by men to kill men…”
Sophocles, Athenian Playwright & Cheesmaker, Soldier
449 B.C.
“Our money was your money.” The obvious correlate of that statement is “Your money is our money…” Is this what Lex Luther and The Penguin really meant?Obviously T Rex has nothing on these boys. But then Ole T didn’ get up at 5 A.M.And work till 10 P.M.And have two brains like Ole T Rex, one in his skull, one in his tail.And the dinosaurs lived on lard, not cheese. Furthermore lets not forget “it’s our job to make money…”Let us hasten to add, from Cheese.
WARNING SIGNS IGNORED-DANGER AHEAD!
It was well known that the financial sector was engaged in all these shenanigans and should have been a warning to borrowers, to the investors who bought the mortgages and to the regulators…
THE MORTGAGE SCAM
J.STIGLITZ
a fine cheese maker,in vitro
But is it in the just conclusion of all things that Act 3 must happen before, just before the fall of the final curtain and just before the Big Bang? This seems to be what happens right around the time the Fat Lady sings and just around the corner from the Big Buck. It seems to be in the nature of the yoyo parade that will lead to only one thing- a new world order of Cheese. It begins to beat at its drums and play its violins, blowing its trumpets and swinging its tasseled heads from side to side just as licorisced clarinet players starts a squealin and the big bass drum starts a’thumpin. Line up to the trough. Free cheese for everyone! Your fired baby!
“GREED”
by Julian Edney
Sign the tab in certain Midtown eateries and your neighbors eyes slide over.Is that a 48,ooo Michel Perchin pen?Whats on your wrist ,a 300,000 Breguet watch?In Palm Springs and Bel Air,100,000 twin-turbo Porches and 225,ooo Ferraris buzz the warm streets.In New York at an exclusive Morell&Company auction last May a single Magnum of Dom Perignon champagne was sold for 5,750.And there are the paintings of course- an evening at auction two Monets sold for 43 million.Hotel rooms anyone for 10,000 a night?”
THE POOR BABY.
moe’s commentary
“Listen Paderewski, were them funny noises comin’ outta you or the piano?”
Pow Pow Pow
Thump thump thump
And Harumph!!!
SPREAD OUT WILL YA!!!
“Every time he sees a mouse he goes crazy.” “Why?” “‘Cause his father was a rat.”
- Larry, Fred Kelsey & Moe (HORSES’ COLLARS, 1935)
THE GREAT AMERICAN BANK ROBBERY
By Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize –winning economist in his book “Free Fall”
“As the US government went about rescuing the banks, it should have thought about accountability. The bankers who got the country into this mess should have paid for their mistakes..”
Mr Stiglitz in spite of his high I.Q. and knowledge does not understand the nature of good hard Cheddar.
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.”
Cheese. “With 3out of 10 Americans facing poverty at some time in their lives and a quarter of low income residents not getting enough food to meet basic nutritional needs it clear that the pursuit of cheese in America has hit a major snag. But as Mr Edney points out “many Americans live in cold dank slums;many do not earn enough for shelter, many sleep outside.In American inner cities and at its lowest levels,under freeway bridges an din tubercular alleys,in stained and broken rooming houses and in torn apart schools…”
Let them eat macaroni and cheese.
In America there are now over 200 billionaires, and 5 percent of Americans are millionaires. Separation between rich and poor has not been greater since Imperial Rome.
CHEESE.
1. A food made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats and some other animals. It ranges in texture from hard to semi soft and in flavor from mildly acidic to sharp…
“It ranges in flavor from mildly acidic…”
If we examine the scenario we can clearly see that for years toxic loans have been made to people who had a zero chance of paying for them. Everyone involved in those transactions except for Moe, Larry and Curly knew that. So what’s the surprise in that?No money down, no job, no way to create wealth, and here’s a house, for you and your family and friends and please, you don’t have to work for it because, hey this is America and your an American and you’re lovin’ it and hey you deserve a break today cause baby you are the real thing…yes you do… and you don’t pay for 6 months to a year- cause lets face it –you are a cheese “star”. Your house will increase in value, forever, and hey you don’t have to work for a living.If things break down, you can always make cheese. Lots and lots of cheese, the sort of cheese the world wants to buy. American Cheddar for China and beyond from real good hormonized, pesticized, ammoniafied, dry hay fed, antibiotized, irradiated heads of heifer. Green cheese for everyone else. Blue Cheese for the aliens. The kind of product the world is yankering for. Along with fractals and string theory. And lots of talk on CNN and Fox and lots of experts talking 24/7 telling us that it works, it really works. Honey, where are my derivatives? Christ its 10pm!
“to sharp..”
“.. regrettably the Obama administration has followed the course of the Bush administration..”
“Unfortunately, economists have pushed their model of rationality beyond its appropriate domain.You learn what you like ,what gives you pleasure by repeated experiences. You try different kinds of icecream or different kinds of lettuce. But economists have tried to use that model to explain decisions over time, such as saving for retirement.It should be obvious:there is no way you can find out wether you should have saved more or less until its too late, at which point there is no way you can learn from experience.At the end of your life you might say,I wish I had saved more….”
“Leemings will follow each other over a cliff….of cheese”
J. Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
Obviously Pat Buchanan, veteran cheese maker par excellence has the answer. When in doubt eat more cheese, there is plenty for everyone.Providing you are an elite member of the cheese squad. Providing the most basic law of cheese no longer holds in this solar system.
wealth |welθ|
noun
an abundance of valuable possessions or money : he used his wealth to bribe officials or buy cheese.
• the state of being rich; material prosperity : some people buy boats and cars or cheese to display their wealth.
• plentiful supplies of a particular resource : the country’s mineral wealth or cheese.
• [in sing. ] a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing,such as cheese : the tables and maps contain a wealth of information on cheese.
• archaic well-being; prosperity.
ORIGIN Middle English welthe, from well 1 or weal 2 , on the pattern of health and whey.
“Government has an important role to play, it should not only prevent the exploitation of individual irrationalities but also help individuals make better decisions”
JS.
THE CHEESE BRIGADE
Say you have a cheese stand, no two cheese stands on a street somewhere in Cheeseville U.S.A.
The purpose and function of these two cheese stands is to sell cheese and they are located on a corner opposite each other.Cheese stand A and Cheese stand B and these two cheese stands are in competition for the same clientele. Competition, free enterprise, laissez faire cheeseconomics.
Now there is a certain demand for cheese. If on Tuesday, hereby ordained as cheese day, everyone in Cheeseville buys cheese, and half the people buy from Cheese Stand A and the other half from Cheese Stand B.
The prices for the Cheese are the same, say X.
Say on any given Tues. Cheese stand A cuts its prices, say To X-Y, then it follows that once the word gets out, the clientele of Cheese will start buying from Cheese Stand A,if the quality of the cheese is the same and the distance travelled isnt much greater. Providing all the independent variables are the same, which of course they never are, at least not in this dimension.
Cheese Stand B, cuts its prices as well since it is losing customers and profits are falling.
Say the cost to run the two cheese stands is commensurate. As the prices drop there will be less and less profit until a limit is reached, say L.
When L is reached it will no longer be worth selling Cheese and whoever reaches L first goes out of business.
Its clear that Cheese Stand A and B will d their best to prevent L from coming into existence.
Say that Cheese Stand A and B are owned by the same Cheesemaker, say, the Big Cheese.
The Big Cheesemaker decides, the hell with this and closes one of the Cheese Stands and opens up the New Cheese Emporium.
At first he keeps the prices the same or even lower. Then he decides, the hell with it and increases his prices.
People keep buying cheese from the Big Cheese unless there is another Cheese Emporium to go to. If the prices get too high the Cheesemaker is forced to drop them.As the demand for cheese increases, prices go up, as it decreases prices go down. The greater the demand, the bigger the price. Supply and demand.
Say the price of cheese is linked to the price of Milk. As the price of milk drops, the price of cheese drops.
Only it doesnt.It stays the same. Or maybe even increases.Its up to the Big Cheese. The formula for this is X-Y=L divided by 0.
THE LAP LIARS AND THEIR MINIONS
“Liar loans, so called because individuals were not required to prove their income, were among the most peculiar of the these new (banking) products.”
“Liar loans???”
What in the name of Moe Cheese are “liar loans?” And all the endless new terms for the economic sleight of hand which is now the rule rather than the exception of common business practice. “The fish” as the old adage states “stinks from the head.” Apparently according to the reports, the books, the experts, the newspapers and the Internet, there was a lot of lying and double dealing going on. Hanky panky. This didnt happen on its own. Or did it? And the hanky panky has not stoped.Nor can it, anymore than a brakeless car can be stopped on a slippery downhill incline by using one’s foot to brake.Unless of course you are a cheesemaker, par excellence..and running on wheels of hard fromage. And your foot is made of cast iron.
“Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the man who was supposed to be protecting the country from excessive risk taking, actually encouraged it.”
His motto; “Eat more cheese!”
J.Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
It was wonderful to watch Mr Greenspan be honored by Mr Layed and Mr Cheating of Enronica Corp, the people laying the oil pipeliness in Afghanistan, which according to Buckminister Fuller is the control centre for Spaceship Earth. Why? Oil, of course and its corollary- Cheese.The Cheese pipleline to the Indian Ocean. Perhaps this is what was meant by “manna from heaven” when the Israelites feeling the Pharaoh of Cheese fondued themselves lost in the desert for 40 years. What did they live on? Cheese of course.In the form of Manna. From heaven.Made from oil, the prehistoric remains of dinosaurs and unfathomable forests, lost and refound in the oil gushers of our time. The blood of planet earth. To run our dinky little toys. And save us all from hard work. And make life on this here planet-so much easier, so much more comfortable,and habitable. So much better thanks to better living through chemistry. Thank you Mr Ford and Mr Edison.Thank you G.E. and G.M. What would we have done without you?
Lets take a peek at some of the consequences of this greed is good mentality, shall we? As Ronald Reagan, another and perhaps the very best Cheesemaker par excellence, in our era, stated “ Its mourning in America..” Er, rather “ morning.” “Trickle down economics??” Excuse me “trickle.?” Perhaps what was meant was “trick-ler..” Mr Reagan understood the essentials of existence. Every cheesemaker par excellence does. President Nixon on other hand saw cheese confined behind a giant iron wall called Communism. He saw the communists as rats eating away at the chords of our survival. And he did everything in his power to stop the little critters from infesting our house. He was in a sense a giant Cheese Cat of a Man.And while our boys, boys barely out of their teens died in the muddy fields of Vietnam, he continued on his quest to destroy the stench of rotten Cheese that was starting to fill the air of democracy and freedom. He knew many things the others did not. He knew that Alger Hiss was a rotten Communist Cheese Spy just by the snake-like sound of his last name-Hissss. He knew that Khrushchev was a Communist by this Russian sounding name and the fact that the word Crush was in his cogonomen. He won the Presidency against a man who had the word “Harumph” in his name. And he passed legislation protecting the environment and minorities in America.
He cannot therefore be called a Man of Cheese. He was a cat and cats dont like Cheese. Cats like rats and mice.
Cats and Rats just dont get along all to well. It is the nature of things, or the Res Natura of it all.
These endless mornings of the political system and the rhetoric of hope and resurrection,of human dignity and “you’ve got your rights” of “ just say no” and “ just do it” have created a twilight of the human condition on this earth. And the trademark signatories of a double dealing system of lies and obfuscation, of selling the “sizzle” and not the “steak”, of the portrayal of corporate agenda, as an agenda of compassion and neighborly love, in effect the thievery of so-called religious and moral virtues as an agenda of the Madison Ave Lie make a fast approaching nightfall seemingly inevitable.Underneath it all is menace and fear, distrust and inbred hostility towards the other.Underneath it all the so called laws of the jungle which as portrayed by our best thinkers, so called are neither laws, or in any manner scientific.Underneath it all, hidden under the wrapped warp and woof are men who simply don’t give a rats ass. Since when did the sub-plot of life disappear?
Science shows us the Universe is a co-operative enterprise, in spite of the endlessness of destruction. That is to say it is balanced within the larger whole of destruction and creation. And it is a Mystery, as yet unresolved.
The virtues of competition in a level playing field, aren’t virtues.There are no level playing fields in the world of the real.So called Adam Smith economics as Joseph Stiglitz points out in “Free Fall” and which has been used by the so-called pundits to rationalize what is clear sociopathy is not the intellectual basis of the current approach, unless Adam Smith was himself as psychopath.The corporate sociopath, does not appear as “sick” or cowardly. And the appelate of cowardice, to describe the workings of sociopathy is a joke. The sociopath sees himself as God, divine creator of heaven and earth, as the mad emperors of ancient Rome did, from Caesar Augustus onwards to the end of the empire and yes, our modern times.
“I Caesar Augustus, A God- and Son of a God”
Inscription on the Statues of the 2nd Caesar-Augustus
In order for Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar to declare himself a God he had to ordain that his father, Julius was. This was done by the august fathers of the senate, with the help of few augurs and Sibelene prophecies and Augustus, no longer had need of the pageboy who holding the laurel over his head as he marched his triumphant chariot around the Appia Antica, and had the job of whispering in his ear –“you are not a god, you are not a god..”The man became jobless and moved to America, the land of opportunity.
LETS GO BACK TO THE CHEESE STAND SHALL WE?
Lets return to Cheese Stand A and B. As we know the two cheese stands have been bought up by Mr.Big Cheese, the biggest cheese in Cheeseville U.S.A. but not the only one.One day a strange looking jesterfellow comes strolling in to town, a sort of minstrel with bells and whistles. The minstrel is carrying a mandolin, a trumpet, a little keyboard and a small pocket computer with which he makes calculations. He tells the Big Cheese that there is a better way to make money on the selling of cheese and it doesn’t involve cheese, at least only peripherally. Sort of in the perihelion of things. He points out to the Big Cheese, that money doesnt really exist and is a construct of the mind of man.In Nature there is no such thing as money and deer dont exchange 100 dollar bills in the of forest. Neither do tigers or birds. They in fact have no economy, which make men, much superior to them and dolphins. Goes without saying, so there is no point in saying it.
“Around 20percent of American children are living in poverty.An estimated two million are homeless sometime during the year,including whole families who have full and part time jobs..”
Not pretty is it?
Julian Edney
“America is only as good as its cheese..!”
TV CHEESE COMMERCIAL
So where is the accountability in all this? Where is the truth and does it matter?
In a society where King Cheese rules the roost it follows.
“This is a flamboyantly optimistic and self congratulatory society and the puzzle is why it allows this suffering…the inequalities are stunning but a frequent attitude a shrug and so what..”
JE
The Jester points out to King Cheese that many people like his cheese and that many other people would like to get into the action and that they are willing to give him some money in exchange for a small cut of the cheese pie. “I dont make cheese pies..” the King rightfully replies. “No you dont.., thats true “ the Jester, whose face has a greenish tinge replies;”your right about all that but what is a cheese pie if not molecules and what are molecules if not energy, an abstraction, an idea…just like money?If in fact E =MC2, then it follows that one cheese pie could light up the planet earth..! Think about it”
“True” replies the Cheese King.
“Here’s what I suggest replies the Fool,also known as the Jester, the trickster, the clown, the actor..”Lets convert all your cheese to cheese stocks and lets just issue them on the New York Stock Exchange. Lovers of Cheese will buy biy biy and you will get rich rich rich..After all this is the United States of Cheese.”
“Indeed , I shall, replies the Big Cheese..” why..thats a brilliant idea.. but what about the real cheese..wont it go mouldy??!!”
“You let me handle that,beside who cares about “real” cheese” ?replies the Jester, whose face is now looking somewhat orange, like a fine aged cheddar…” and besides mould is good for cheese..look at blue cheese..or blue cheese dressing..aint it deelish?? What makes it deelish? Why mould of course”
So boys and girls, ladies and gentlemens as the old Rabbi,once said “If I am not for me-then WHO am I? And if not for you…WHAT am I”
But the answer is clear to anyone who hath eyes to hear and ears to see.
In a so-what and shrug world, there is at root a disconnect on the deepest ethical level. On the molecular level as it were, on the string theory level. Its only a question of time that scientists will discover that beneath the quarks, quirks, beauty, truth, positrons, epilsons of everything is an infinite ocean of bubbling boiling cheese. Enough for every pizza, that ever was, and ever will be.
Does anyone really care? If a black man gets beaten half to death in front of the world, resulting in the last Los Angeles riots and the cops are let off scott free with a jury in Simi Valley deciding that “excessive force” was not used, who you gonna believe? Your own sensibilities or he who cuts the cheese at the dinner table?
If another black man can be accused of murder and be declared innocent in the criminal trial and guilty in the civil isn’t something seriously askew in the nature of American Justice? What about the thief in Florida who tripped on a child’s toy while robbing a house and suing the family he was robbing? And winning. There seems to be a progressive “insanification of perception”, a total disconnect between people and the essential empathy that distinguishes a truly civilized society from a barbarous one.And the perceptions enhanced by media, in the form of endless tirades of screeching manic commercials and hebephrenically cheerful TV hosts and shows with endlessly and crazily happy hooting audiences tells the viewer not to trust his own feelings, his own experiences. As in imperial Rome, the games are the great distraction and the “bread and circuses” keep the people in a numbing and dumbed down darkness.
Darkness and Cheese.
Our experiences and lives have been co-opted by a fine melted cheddar. We have become in effect men of cheese.
PT 3-
HOW TO MAKE A FINE MORAL CHEESE
“Did you ever see anybody at a gambling table who cared desperately and who had to win? Did you ever see him win? Not in this universe. But this fellow who’s sitting there and he doesn’t care—if he got the money he’d take it out and throw it in a spittoon. And there that fellow sits with the dollars rolling in on him. And he’s getting a higher and higher stack of win. But then one day he gets married or something, he’s threatened to lose his job and he says, ‘I’ve always won at gambling. Now I think I’ll go back and play. I’ll make some money.’ He’s done. He goes back and he loses and loses and loses and loses and loses.
“Well, he was able to take a very grand view of all this at first. Then later on, when it became serious to him… You know, the way to get ahead in the world is work, hard and save your money and be respectful—respectful and polite and willing and very agreeable to your superiors. This is the old formula and yet it’s dismaying to go around and find the (quote) ‘captains of industry’ and find out that they’re a whole bunch of pirates and bums. They were never respectful to anybody. It’s just incredible, yet there they sit in command of large works and industries. They didn’t save their money. They don’t save their money. They are not cautious with their investments. They buy the doggonedest things. They get into the worst possible scrapes and trouble and seem to keep right on going and getting right out of them again.”
L.Ron Hubbard
So why shouldnt Alan Greenspan encourage risk taking especially when the monetocracy of America, his pals, were making so much money? Get the picture? Mr Hubbard is correct. These people “get themselves in the worst possible scrapes and keep on going and getting right out them again..”
Moe Larry and Curly worked for 25 cents an hour painting houses in Beachwood Canyon, right next to the Hollywoodland sign, in fact painting it.In order to paint this house Moe had to do a lot of slapping, Curly had a few epileptic fits and Larry had most of his hair pulled out.The house went into foreclosure when Chase Manhattan Cheese received 20 billion from the government and was sold under the feet of the owner. The owner who was told by the Cheesemakers there that all was well and that they would refinance and then stuck the now homeless ex owner with a mortgage of 125,000 dollars which he still had to pay for in spite of losing his property.
“With earning money the end all of life, there were no limits to acceptable behaviour.Like the many other banking crises that preceded this is each episode is marked by moral scruples that should make us blush,with a few egregious personalities marching off to jail (but often left with hundreds of millions of dollars left in their accounts…”
“Sometimes, the financial companies (and other corporations) say that it is not up to them to make the decisions about what is right and wrong. It is up to government..”
J.Steilglitz
And so it goes. Perhaps everything we have been taught is wrong.
When concepts of morality and ethical behaviour, which seems to in inbred in most of us, unless we are sociopaths, are dismissed as irrelevant and inapplicable there is a total disconnect between what we are taught in school and any standard concepts of religion and morality and the real world. When a demonic utilitarianism infects the breadth and length of a nation the end is nigh. Or is it?
When legalese is more important than a genuine and authentic sense of what is moral behaviour, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the clock to extinction has been turned on.And if not extinction then bloody revolution. History bears this out. Or does it? Revolutions seems to breed monsters.Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite gave the world Robespierre and Napoleon Buonaparte. The Communist Revolution gave the Russians Stalin. A slew of monsters. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So how do things change? How do things evolve?
Corporations and monopolies, centralized systems, whether the Roman Empire, or the Ottoman eventually collapse.Twas ever thus.Why should our current times be any different? Things change. Shit happens,as the Romans used to say “Caka, Cakorum est”.
“Economics, unintentionally provided sustenance to this lack of moral responsibility”
J. Stiglitz
MUSIC UP
“Money doesnt talk it swears/Obscenity. ..Who really cares?/Propaganda/ All is Phony!”
The 19 year old Bob Dylan
ASK YOUR DOCTOR (SIDE EFFECTS MIGHT INCLUDE DIZZINESS, SWEATING,BLURRED VISIION AND DEATH)
Why would these giant minds of economic integrity abuse themselves and the American public? If a nation at war is only producing bomb, tanks, missiles, soldiers, C.I.A. operatives, cops, prisons, guns and movies and TV reality shows and endless hot air why would the economy not collapse? The real question is- why did it take this long? Why doesn’t it just all grind to a halt?Does it take a degree in the so called “rocket sciences” to understand that all economies are based on selling and buying needed products for survival? If 3 percent of the population can provide almost 1000 percent of the food necessary for our basic survival and modern technology can and does accomplish the actually work of a nation-in the form of machinery from the robotic to the domestic, what in fact is the American economy and the economy of the world really based on? Mexican labor?
Rolex watches? (Knock offs)
Savology?
Cheese?
Las Vegas?
Cheese Stocks ?
Alcohol and Drug Consumption, illegal and prescribed?
Entertainment?
Prisons and Surveillance?
Facebook?
Or is it just oil? A bubble of crude, Texas Tea.
PLANET EARTH BURSTS A VEIN IN THE BRAIN OF MR B.P.
Right now as I write this the entire Gulf Coast is spilling massive amounts of the earths oil into the water.Billions of dollars of valuable oil, destroying millions of acres of wetland with a possibility of this toxic material being picked by the currents of the Gulf Stream and shooting it into the high Atlantic and the East Coast. So far 30 percent of the fishing fleets have been shut down.The American Media is outraged. The corporate British giant B.P. seems to be incapable of stemming it down.They don’t seem to care. Every day the news gets worse. The lake or ocean of oil that is spilling is located 10,000 feet below the sea bottom and 2000 feet of concrete will have to be poured in order to plug he leak. This is the nature of the times we live in. One leak somewhere can ruin the economy of a nation. One plane can bring down a tower of steel and concrete. One bomb inside the heel of a shoe can bring down a passenger plane. Or cause millions of passengers to have to take them off at airport security from then onwards, forever. A couple of boxcutters smuggled on board an airliner can bring down two of the largest steel and glass towers in the world, killing thousands and affecting the economy for millions. A mistaken zero on an internet stockmarket transaction can cause the entire market to drop 1000 points. One bottle of poisoned Tylenol resulted in a billion dollar industry in which every edible product is sealed and double sealed in plastic. One broken car on a highway can affect thousands or tens of thousands of commuters to have to gridlock, burning gasoline for hours. Buckminister Fuller calculated that in the city of Los Angeles, the “carceral city”, if everyone just stayed home and didn’t drive, the savings from fuel loss and consumption would be enough to pay every citizen of the Polis of Quartz , 75,000 dollars a year. For doing nothing. Fuller calculated that 2 percent of the world does 98 percent of the work, the real work-the rest shuffle paper and make phonecalls.
Oh Brave New World.
One prisoner costs the state over 75,000 a year. One charge of the use of an illegal substance can result in a life being ruined. 3 counts of a crime,almost any crime, can put a man in jail for the rest of his life. “Its crazy.” Argues Moe.Karry concurs but looks stupid. Curly rubs his face repeatedly.
The war on drugs is as insane as making war on the cellular structure of the nervous system. Just say no, to any addict, who is constitutionally and genetically different from his fellows is as ridiculous as making a man taller by his willing him to be so. The societies of the world at large are for the most part run by insane and deeply ignorant men and women, and all the good intentions that they can muster makes little difference .There is an utter disconnect beween word and deed. And yet it goes on and on. Can we understand the root causes?
Why haven’t drugs been de-criminalized when they are clearly a medical and psychological problem and why has no candidate run on that platform?That one legislative action alone could kick start the economy. An addict is an addict is an addict. Legislation that criminalizes an illness will not eliminate the illness. Why isn’t it clear yet to the public that democracy and homeland security has little to do with the wars currently raging in the Middlle East..Afghanistan..Iraq..Kuwait.. and that the cause of these battles is over control of the most important resource in the world-oil.
Its obvious to anyone with basic brain function that all these dysfunctions are based on mass hallucinations.And yet the pain and suffering is very real. And production of Cheese is very high. And the Land of Oz is in major trouble. Even the wizard and the wicked witch.
THE CHEESE INDEX OF OUR ERA
“The economy was out of kilter, two thirds to ¾ of the economy was housing and cheese related…”
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When Moe, Larry and Curly asked President George W Bush about the economy in 2008 President Bush replied; Everything is just fine, no problem. Cheese production is up, the GNCI is up, (Gross National Cheese Index), things are hopping. When 750 billion was set aside to rescue the banks, why were there no conditions applied? A simple condition such as this money must be earmarked for the people, to pay their mortgages, health insurance, children education and yes food. Why would it be given to the same foxes who ate the chickens in the first place? Any of this make sense? No sense but plenty of dollar and sense for the select few immured and protected by the same laws that protect a home invader.Cheese can only make cheese, it can’t make say…pretzels but the argument presented is that money can make cheese and the pretzels can always be fondued. Such is life in America in the year anno domini 2010. Whats wonderful and uncanny about this sick scenario is how high speed computers, corporatists agenda’s for profit all all costs, the tenure of terrorist agenda’s, war, declining health at the cost of the people, big pharma, bit agribusiness, everything in fact has been sucked into a vortex in which every single cent that can be sucked out anyone’s pocket, can be done,is being done all under the banner of “quality control.” Behind it all, fear and ignorance, both of these twisted offsprings have been corralled into an agenda that at its root is creating and has created a slavery, unseen since the Middle Ages. It is a slavery of the mind and body. As Goethe wrote the greatest slaves are those men and women who have no idea that they are in slavery. If money is the only agenda and all things are turned towards it, then there can be no peace, no gratitude, and no growth.
The next time a corporation records your call for quality control and training purposes tell the asshole running the system to train on their own time and dime and if they don’t already have quality they shouldn’t be in the business of dealing with the public. Since the quality and freshness you can see and taste tastes like shit and is obviously stale and unappetizing don’t just return the cashew nuts go back and find the manager of the establishment and beat him up and after you have beat him up find his boss and do it again.
All creativity and inventions comes from an atmosphere of joyous innocence and abundance.
In the annals of history we have seen countless empires rise and fall, and always the pattern was the same-the moment a society was stripped of its moral and ethical sense, its justice denied and filed, the clock to its extinction had begun. No justice, no peace. The centre will not hold.No Greece, No Rome, No Brits, and soon..No Cheese. Unless we change course. The question is this;how?
“No one was surprised when Bush sided with Wall St and gave in to its blackmail”
J.Steiglitz
Free Fall.
Blackmail? Here is the definition of blackmail.
“the act of forcing someone to pay money by threatening to reveal shameful or incriminating facts”
One wonders what these shameful and incriminating facts might be. And if in fact we are all being blackmailed on a regular basis.
If in fact Mr. Steiglitz is right then it follows that the United States of Cheese has been severely curtailed by Wall St, and if so then its government can not claim any right to representation. Of the people and by the people etc. And it also follows that in a democracy, where its leaders are supposedly trusted servants the entire equation has been skewed. What aids and abets this constant insanity is TVland, the great distraction.Is anything on the boob tube at anything less than 100 decibels? It is a landscape of banchee like TV commentators, who have earned the art of cutting off the other fellow, derisive chatter, constant meaningless banter,put down and bullying,emotional and mental bordering on abuse. There is no dialect, only mimicry and pretense.
Who represents who? And how is the will of the people in any way manifested by its elected representatives elected b y the people and for the people. By covering everything in a good layer of cheesy sauce such issues are irrelevant.
An economic pundit explained it to me in the following manner.Loans are made on loans which are in turn made on more non-existant loans.In the movement of these loans which are based on nothing,percentages are taken by the movers and shakers which can amount and do amount to billions of dollars which are salted away.Corporate takeovers have made it possible for companies like Enron to lend to themselves, inflate the books and present a false front to investors. But in order to do this they must hold at least 4 percent in “real” money. If the real money isnt real, they in turn have to borrow. This all happens at the speed of light due to computers. Vast quantities of monies are transferred into the accounts of already very wealthy individuals who of course see no wrong, since they are simply doing what they have always been doing-making money make money, even if its only an agreed upon hallucination. That’s the whole point isn’t it?
In order for this to occur there has to be concurrence and agreement that this what in fact is happening.
Curly is ecstatic. “The victimizers felt victimized” All was well.One of the great accomplishments of our era, the corporate bum, the lunatic tramp, could disguise himself as a homeless wreck in Armani bailing water in New Orleans and weeping from his 3d eye, with his President George Bush, flying over the devastations commenting like a cross-eyed eagle a version of Alfred E Newman’s and Caligula’s –“What me worry?“ “Gee…” He says” Looks and…gee..looks kinda bad down there…”(President Bush flying over New Orleans during the flooding)The corporate bum dressed in Versace and Dolce and Gabbana could pretend that ,with Jesus on his side,everything he does was and is A ok, knowing full well it wasn’t. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. And act concerned. Act well.
But then the greatest form of brainwashing is self-generated. And as Mr Goethe pointed out the greatest form of slavery is willing slavery, and denial of the truth.
The toxic loans got triple AAA approval, outside on the cheese farm and the world and all was well in the chicken house as the foxes gobbled them up with nary a swack, and plenty of feathered snacks and nests,cooked at the speed of internet into bank accounts all over the world and “them” with big smiles on their lean lips.Wasn’t lassiez faire Capitalism just grand?Especially with hard boiled eggs and nuts. Especially with the American Govt handing out billions and billions in taxpayers dollars cause hey, they were just too way too big to fail and fall and hey just too important, just like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and Paris Hilton. And while Fox and CNN and the rest crowed their grand growing successes and the Stocked Market at 14000, they like unwhiged aristocrats of pre-revolutionary France flew about indulging as the French did in the finest wines and he finest of cheese and “les plaisirs de Venus.” Aint life grand?
Its a Wonderful life in the Cheese factory. And Moe and Larry and Curly would approve. And do. From Alphaville to Potterville, from the Land of Oz to the Land of Cheese.
The hunger for money, for its own sake, is a terrible and insatiable hunger. An unappeasable hunger. It is a Biafra of the human soul.A Bhopal of the brain and senses and there is no cure for it, just like there is no cure for the virus of human ignorance and plain old fashioned stupidity and cupidity. Life marches on.
No shit.
“Bankers acted greedily because the had incentives to do so…”
JS
“Free Fall”
“I feel good about the economic indicators here in the United States”Why didnt he say “in these here United States?”.
President Bush
Oct 17, 2007
An economic indicator in action.
AVARICE TRIUMPHS OVER PRUDENCE
JS
FREEFALL
In the meantime, the real cheese bandits on Wall St are pilfering and monkeying around he clock, working real hard, selling short, selling long, betting on this and betting on that, moving the stuff, the financial crack, shooting derivative Velveeta into their veins and stirring it all around like a fine vegetable soup mixed in with dried monkey turds and chaos theory fraudulent curds and whey, fractals of loss, and Facebook romances, layering their transactions around in such a way that not even a Chinese abacus on speed, couldn’t follow it.A super genius cant follow it.How smart do you have to be in this world? And just how smart do you think you really are?
Its not the smartest guy who wins in a Casino.Someone always wins but 99 percent lose.How different is the Stock Market and why in Gods name would the economy of a nation be tied to its machinations? Make sense to you?
“No-one ever joined Gamblers Anonymous after a winning streak in Vegas”
It’s the equivalent of letting the drunk drive you home after the party. Go ahead and hand him the keys and ; Have fun! Enjoy the ride.
Einstein couldn’t figure it out or anyone else for that matter, but the central gamble worked. They bet on the fact that like a Colossus, they were too big to fail. And hey, they were right.
Talking endlessly on the phone and whipping cream into non-existent cash transactions around the planet in nano-seconds, at the speed of light.Creating cheese,making Real money. And creating the greatest disappearing act since Houdini.
Everyone knew it. Everyone knows it.Everyone was in on it.
“in the beginning there was fitness (ordinariness)
when fitness failed there came about enlightenment
when enlightenment failed
there came about wisdom
when wisdom failed there came about compassion
when compassion failed
there came about rules, laws and obligations
when rules, laws and obligations failed
out comes
the fist”
from the Tao of Lao Tsu
We now live in a world locked between the fist and the law.Where is compassion, let alone wisdom, let alone enlightenment, let alone “fitness.?”
“Govern a large country as you would fry a small fish”
Ronald Reagan, quoting from the Tao of Lao Tsu
What did he mean by that? Did he know? Did he understand the implication of extreme caution?If the oil is too hot the fish will fall apart.
In meeting after meeting in Davos Switzerland and for over 5 years Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist and author of “Globalization and its Discontents predicted the recent crash and burn. No-body listened.Why would you listen to a Nobel prize winning economist? We would much rather listen to Mr George Bush, who flunked high school algebra.
Except of course for the 3 stooges. But they weren’t invited to the White House. Except for Moe, who was invited to attend but was too busy painting houses and hitting his brothers over the head with a mallet and a ladder.
It seemed like the dance of cheese, it would go on forever and just about every economic pundit on CNN and Fox kept telling us and screaming at us that this would last forever, that the system was self-regulating, that Jesus wanted it that way, since he too had a Swiss bank account and that everything was not only fine but as it should be. A Perfect piece of financial cheese, with no end in sight.Is it a coincidence that Switzerland, the land of fine cheese, is also the Land of the Bank. Why have economic indicators not been attached to “fromage”? Am I only the only one to see the correlation?
On it goes.
Everyone knew everyone else was doing it everyone knew huge quantities of money was being made by those privileged individuals with Chicago school of economics diplomas hanging from their red gold and silk suspenders and the Armani ties and everyone was looking the otherway. All at the same time.Giant accounting firms played along with Enron.When Enron caused rolling blackouts in California everyone applauded. When the price of gasoline doubled,during a glut of oil production, thanks to Enrons handling and splitting into 20 parts the march to the comsumer, (love that word) and taking a cut at each intersection everyone applauded yet again. This was Capitalism at its finest.The beauty of the corporatist mindset is simple, no one is responsible, no one is accountable, especially the guys that get paid to be accountable.As long as the company makes profit. The recent uproar against the British oil giant B.P. over its oil spill, presented as it by the media as “unfeeling” makes for great humor. B.P.is the most successful oil company in the Universe. Whats an ink blot, a stain on the world map? Another hilarity, much better than the 3 Stooges. I hope you are laughing.
No one stirs the boat when the drug dealers in town.
These corporate giants were the new movie stars and throughout the 90’s the word “creative” started being used for what used to be a bunch of stuffy old bankers and myopic accountants. Number crunchers became the new sex symbols, because there is nothing sexier than power and money.- Overnight they gained the appellate-“creative”.You know like Picasso, and Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein. And while they accomplished this thanks to Mr. Reagan and the wonderful “trickle down economics” that began in the 80’ with deregulation and the non-enforcement of anti-trust laws, kept trickling, like the Colorado River,until it disappeared.
What is the answer? Ask Moe, he knows.
“Spread out!” is the answer to it folks.Make space. De-centralize. Really. A Zen koan loan sprayed in cheese on a street corner. The 3 stooges knew this. Why don’t we? Why cant we?
SPREAD OUT FELLAS!
De-centralize. Or else. The current economic mess is the simple cause and effect result 3 principal causes 1) thuggish takeovers and overbearing hostile buyouts in which the big cheese swallow up the little ones, like giant sperm whales flossing millions of tiny shrimp into their gigantic computerized Teflon-flossed teeth. 2) Density of heart, soul and mind in which the ratio of mass to velocity is in inverse proportion, i.e. the heavier things get the greater the inertia and 3) just gettin’ plain getting fat and dense and centralized and stupid and greedy. And not giving a shit about the other guy.
This is the Moe, Larry and Curly of it all. If three blind mice knew it, why don’t we?
The so-called Capitalist forces behind this move to perdition justify their actions on the basis of laissez faire economic growth. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The same rational used to exploit child labor in Dickensian England by the Capitalists of the era is being touted here. Meant to be this way, its how things work. kinda of like the Divine Right of Dinks. Did it work? Does it work?
Beaurocratization in all its forms style over content, sizzle over steak, quantity over quality, and routine over flexibility.
Quantity over quality. And as Mark Twain wrote; “There are liars, damn liars and statisticians” And the over-gross national index of growth.
“But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a world of delights; it lays open in the form of speculation, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment.. the capitalist gets rich (read speculator, read derivative trader) at the same rate as he squeezes out labor power from others…and compels the worker to renounce all the enjoyments of life”
Karl Marx, Das Capital
And while the unemployment rate continues to rise, and people lose their homes and their jobs, with fewer and fewer jobs of quality and the means of production control centralize and fall into fewer and fewer hands. 98 percent of the Wealth of America in now in the hands of 2 percent with half of that money in the hands of 5 men. Look it up, or ask Moe, he’s the brains of the group.
And, while gold lined pockets rise sharply year after year, with more billionaires than in the history of the planet the rest of us of throw epileptic fits and spin in circles. Everything folks, is getting scarcest-And as the population continues to rise at an almost exponential rate, the unfortunate Malthusian model, and food production at an arithmetic rate, unemployment, quality of jobs, health care, quality of food, traffic, noise, political unrest, pollution, environment etc.-increase.
Moe Larry and Curly who were real dyed in the wool, capitalists and men of enterprise and skill (witness their painting and furniture moving skills) never kept their hands in their pockets, or anyone else’s for that matter. They were always moving. They were too busy working. They needed their hands to slap each other around, and their feet to kick each other in the butt. Moe was the slapper. Curly was he-who-gets-slapped, or the slappee par excellence and Larry; he-whose-hair- was pulled got nailed for just being there and witnessing the whole thing. A perfect system.
In their interaction was a blueprint for our times. But Moe had the answer and it was better than Karl Marx’ or Sigmund Freud’s. Spread out, give us all a little breathing room a little “lebensraum” as Herr Hitler might have said whom as Neville Chamberlain assured us would bring “peace in our time..” It’s been peaceful ever since; as history has shown us, and the air to perdition is sweet to the senses and kind and gentle to the soul like wildflower springtime at the Lair of Eagles.
In order to move, to flow, to circulate it’s necessary to spread out. Spread the wealth folks. Or there wont be any left because like a dwarf star sucking up matter, the gravity/density ratio will soon be so high that the “black hole” dwarfism of mind and heart which has spread like an H1N1, Avian/Swine/SARS cocktail of venal self interest will chock us all, gills and all.
And great walls of Ice and Gloom and of course, Cheese, will enseal us forever in Na Na Land, for which there is way out.
Its basic Grade 3 math, math even the dumbest of the stooges can understand and its based on one basic mathematical truth-You cant print money forever,you cant spend forever, and you cant keep it forever and you cant take it with you.
If you are one of the 140 new billionaires being created at this point in time, every year you don’t know that and –here is what I suggest. I have a solution to your problems,which are multi-farious.
Take a billion or so of your money and pump it anonymously into 100,000 or so random bank accounts. Do it in such as way that no one knows where the money is coming from. Then lie back and watch the sparks fly as tens of thousands of people can suddenly pay their mortgages, their car payments, their children health bills, their food and rent, their car payments, their cell phones. Lie back and watch as the entire economic machine kicks and sputters into action like a drowning man getting resuscitation. Think of it as economic electroshock therapy or one of those cardiac arrest fibrillators you see in airports.It’ll be fun,a lot more fun than flying from capital city to capital city, staying in 10 star hotels and ordering up 10 hookers. Better than buying that 10’th testa rosa.
Make sure, Moe, Larry and Curly are told and get it first. Make sure they know-use passwords and wink if you have too. In fact after you’ve done it walk around the streets of New York or Moscow or Dubai and just wink at people. Offer them cheese, which you should always keep in your pant pockets, for emergencies.
Then give it all a name.
Call it the Lazarus Effect.
Tell the papers anonymously, and then watch as America and the rest of the world of suddenly springs into action and the Ice and Cheese starts to melt in a bubbling fondue of wonder and amazement.
But do it anonymously. Do it randomly. Just make sure Moe is informed, he’s the brains in the group. Don’t tell anyone else. Don’t bring attention to yourself. Read the papers, you’ll have a blast!
Be very careful, and keep some Roquefort on hand for yourself, in case you need it.
And then lie back and watch the TV and the Evening News. And while you’re at it buy a TV network or two and play the 3 Stooges 24/7, free of advertising. Buy a cheese factory or two as well.
If you want to have even more fun target an emerging nation like Romania or Belarus’ or an African nation. Anywhere there is need. The other thing you might consider and Moe asked me to tell you this is –is this. Buy a billion dollars worth of food, mostly cheese, refrigerators, stoves, TVs, Computers, cell phones, Playboy bunny magazines, DVD’s video camera’s, antibiotics, medicines, herbs, seed, water etc and more cheese and pepper spray the stuff all over the Middle East. Again night flights in formation at 45,000 feet. Do it every now and then, in an untoward fashion. Lie back and have fun!! And don’t forget the cheese!
And while you’re at it keep playing golf and lambasting the world with sports and entertainment and porno. We all know and are very grateful when the wall of the Iron Curtain collapsed, because without it those Russian strippers and brides to be would have been stuck over there marrying KGB agents. Now they have access to rich capitalist swine. Cheese Eaters. Plenty of cheese to go around and thank god for the Internet.
And right up there in Times Square right next to the electronic ticker machine which shows at blinding speed the cost of the various wars mounting in the trillions put up another electronic ticker board showing the population of the planet increasing at an exponential rate. Don’t forget the Cheese Index.
Put next to that cost it will cost feed, clothe, provide medical care to the 6 billion that will enter our sad earth in the next 30 years or less. More cheese for us.
And next to that in high bass relief, the faces of Moe, Curly and Larry in the Cathedral of the Stooges. It should of course be made entirely of Parmesan and Edam.
As people start buying stuff, mostly cheese, more stuff (mostly cheese) will have to be made, more and more stuff and loe and behold since you own the means of production you will end up making your money back and then some, with a huge margin of profit. It’ll be swell, and you’ll have to do it all over again. Cheese begets cheese. You might even become Cheese King of World, or the Queen of New York, or the Emperor of Berlin.
Don’t wait for governments to do it, with their endless beaurocracies do it yourself from your home computer, in the name of the Big Cheese. Do it. Just do it. And stop being so self-less, do what Ayn Rand suggest- do it for yourself!
Now if you have any questions just ask Dr Moe, the brains of the group. He’s the one who gave me the “idear” in the first place. He studied to be a rocket scientist but chose vaudeville instead.And finally opened up a cheddar cheese factory in Youngstown New York, which is unfortunately shut down.
2.
“The shame of want makes want a shame to bear”
Plutarch, Moralia
DEUX PARTES
From the book “Voltaire’s Bastards” by John Ralston Saul
“ Widespread confusion between the freedoms proper to a democracy and those proper to Capitalism further confirms that business leaders no longer understand their own ideology”
No kidding.
This is exactly what Moe told me; “Hey people it’s a Republic, look it up. It has nothing to do with democracy. In a Republic, everyone has protected rights-even the minority. And there is always a minority. Plato himself said it “the highest form of government is a benevolent tyranny, the 2nd highest a benevolent oligarchy (republic), then comes a democracy, dead last.” End quote.
This confusion of the freedoms proper to a man of of cheese in our Age was well understood by bowl blackhair cutted Prof Moe, the man with the constant smurf, the greasy nose, the iron sharp distrustful eyes. He told me himself how right he was.
Otherwise known as Moses Horwitz, Moe made it his life’s work to slap his two other brothers into senseless submission. It was his life’s mission and he did his duty diligently.
He was a wise guy, the leader of the troupe and without him nothing was ever done. No cheese was ever spread. His constant admonition to these two idiots was-Spread the wealth!!! Spread the gravy! Get movin!! Spread the cheese!Ya…morons!!! Did they listen, no way Hose..!
“…the worker does indeed expend labor-power, he does work..but his labor is no longer necessary..and he creates no value for himself..he creates surplus value which for the Capitalist has all the charms of something created out of nothing… “..a nation can be richer..when its products fall in value”
”
Karl Marx “Das Capital”
Wub bub bub bub…ah..dub..bub..bub Moe Larry Cheese!!
Money like, cheese and gravity, which presageth doom and gloom and a new Ice Age of the Human Heart, worships at the fiery brass feet of the Great Demon God, Moloch and compacts everything into tighter and smaller spaces until its sucks everything up into this terminal, into an “event horizon” of extinction. No cheese anywhere. The big wink out. The one we never get to see coming. The dinosaurs didn’t see it either but then they had two brains, one in their heads and one in their tails. When that fiery cheesball dropped from the night skies boy where they surprised, both brains.
Asteroid Cheese-Moloch is not a good guy. What was applied to Leviathan can be applied to Mr. Moe-lock.What was dished out to the Dinosaurs could be doled out to the Derivative traders and the ensuing winter of a 100 years could create glaciers of cheese as high as the Empire State Building, which isnt all that high anymore.In fact its number 37, on the global scale and might be a better indicator of America’s real wealth than all the other indices which seem to measure wealth only for the wealthy.
After all what they have to do with the pennies the rest of the World is counting? Does holding a deadly weapon make you rich? It does if its aimed in the right direction..
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook? Or snare his tongue with a line…? Well, can you? Remember the battle.. Never do it again…any hope of overcoming him is false…” So saith the Bible.
Book of Job
Nyuk. Nyuk. Nuke.
Money sucks, it always has. It always will. Period. What is so difficult to understand about that? War sucks, it always does. It always will. What is so difficult about that? Cheese is tasty, especially Camembert. Or cream cheese for that matter. Its all in the perspective, it all relative,its all just a speculation,and it all depends on which side your toxic toast s buttered on, so saith Levianthan, dweller of the deep. Devourer of men.
And feeding hysterical squawking chickens to the same foxes who ate em in the first place will not assuage the eternal hunger of Mr. Moloch and Co.Mr Moloch don’t give a rats ass. Neither does Leviathan. Neither does the president of Union Carbide or AIG or GoldmanSachs.Niether does Newt or Sarah or George or Ronnie or any one them. Honest. If you were covered in sores and dragging your carcass across the road, honest, they’d walk by you. Or tell you to get up and get a job.
Now if you don’t believe me, just look into Moe’s beady little eyes. Remind you of someone? He will tell you in no uncertain terms- the end is nigh. The curtains coming down. The Fat Lady is warming up her vocal chords. The cheese pots are boiling, fondue and all. The Huns are doing pushups and stretching calisthenically. Alaric and the boys. Genghis and his minions. The Spartans are humming. It will be a nightmare. Awake and Sing!!! Oh my joyous soul for end is night and you know what that means don’t cha?? Well dontcha?? It means more cheese for us. Moe, Larry Cheese! Moe Larry cheese!! Cheese it, the cops….
And measurements, economic and otherwise that measure only the increasing abundance of the Super Rich, leaving 99 percent of everyone else behind, coming from the blaring trumpet and drums of blasting bought and re-bought Media celebration and back-slapping aint gonna gonna turn the trick. Stop it, boys. Hey Moe!! Hey Larry! Hey Curly! Where you going with that cheese in your hands?? Nyaaaaa…angaahhhh..yaaaahhh. woob woob woob wooob…
In the interaction of those 3 saps there was always a hidden message. The world is nuts. We kids knew it, but were too busy laughing. Witness the maniac who flew his Cessna into an IRS office building in Texas, killing himself and a few innocents’ slave-workers. Witness the even greater maniacs running Wall Street and Washington. The 3 stooges were indeed right. Its time for cheese, lots of it. Roquefort, Edam, Cheddar but Make it blue. Blue is good. Blue guffaws,
The 3 stooges knew everything and tried to warn us. But no-body would listen. It was the 60’s after all, the Age of the Rocket, the Bomb, the Iron Curtain, the Moonwalk. We were just kids, growing our hair long.
After all who were these idiot-stooges?
Us.
Who were they to dictate to us? Instead we listened to the experts, the geniuses. The sophisticated “sophists.” The rocket scientists of financial wizadry, people like Bernie Mad-hoff and Kcheating. Mathematicians without any sense of math. Engineers building ghost bridges over non-existent rivers.
But then they weren’t derivatives traders (what would we do without Chaos Theory?) or IRS accountants, or acquisition lawyers with 3 degrees and had trouble with basic addition. But they were pretty darn good at slapping punching kicking and threatening each other, especially Moe that demented fun mirror grotesque version of Adolph Hitler, sans moustache. Sans intelligence. Sans knowledge, it seems. Wub, bub-bub!
It was in fact tough to determine who was who.and who did what.But we knew the why of it, pretty well. Put their photos side by side. Its the same guy I tells ya. Moonlighting.
After all they were brothers.
Who was charading whom? Moe was much better than Charlie Chaplin in the “The Great Dictator” and more “methody” Moe was Adolph, I tells yas. Pithier, yes but much closer to the essence of the man as the Brits might say.
The world as George Bernard Shaw pointed out rightly is a lunatic asylum and run by demons.
Moe the Man, it seems had a perpetual tooth ache, not unlike our derivatives traders, investment bankers, engineers of commerce and high finance broke brokers. A toothache akin to an infected wisdom tooth but lacking all wisdom and restraint. And a constant headache, like the constant headache of the closing and opening bells on Wall St and the drone of the endless business reports around the world 24/7 which report, after all- nothing. The rattle of a door opening and closing on infinity. Infinite money it seems is the only answer.
Yell at em and ask them if they know what they are reporting and what they are talking about and if they start frothing at the mouth and scream “Moe. Larry, Cheese!” know that the fix is in. Cause it is in and always has been in. Gong back to Sumerian times, when the Age of Money was born.
Just think of all the financial experts of yesteryear and their barrage of bullshit about how great the economy was doing. Were we buying it? As long as we could afford our houses, groceries, education and health care we were. And few of cared. At least Napoleon bought bread for the inhabitants of Paris.
In “Globalization and its Discontents” Prof Steiglitz, as one of the founders and architects of Free Trade and Globalization points it that it was and remains a huge mistake.A mistake. That globalization took the average worker wage on planet earth from dollars a day to 90 cents. That the economic meltdown of the current crisis and all future crises (and there will be many more) will continue unabated. He points out the same thing in his new book “Free Fall.”
America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy
“The current crisis has uncovered fundamental flaws in the capitalist system….it is not just a matter of flawed individuals or specific mistakes, nor is it a matter of fixing a few minor problems or tweaking a few policies.”
And.
“The only surprise about the economic crisis..is that is came a surprise…”
“Spread out and spread the wealth, why don’t ya!” Says Moe Lehman/Before Curly Goldman throws a shitfit. Its just a question of time he does and don’t let the recent lull of fool fools gold flitter fool you, the economy is not improving. Honest…Now before you go all squirrelly on this one, ask yourself this –“Are you better off than you were 10 years ago?” What about 100? What about 1000? Tell me the last car, radio, TV set,dining room set,mattress, soapdish,toybox and trumpet America built and mass produced?
Oh yeah? Says Curly Egg “ Prove it!”
What part of the word read my Lips don’t you get? Well, there you go again, licking the trickle from the bone of contention. No new taxes, and if I’m not mistaken Reagan had promised to balance the budget and left office with a 5fold increase of debt.
Well, did he raise taxes?
“What was this different about this crisis, from the multitude that had preceded it,during the past quarter century was that this crisis bore a “Made in the U.S.A. label.”
Joseph Stiglitz
So you see America is now exporting something besides soldiers,movies, and war to the world.
“And in those days Caesar Augustus decreed that all the subjects of the Empire should be counted (for tax purpose) and that they should register at the place they were born and Joseph and Mary etc etc..)
Spread out!!!
Does it take a degree in rocket science to get to the real picture of what’s going on? Or a Nobel Prize?
“The richest country in the world was living beyond its means…Americans..had in a sense been living in a dream..”
J. Stiglitz
The Big Bank, like the Big Buck, presageth wisdom and an Armageddon of doom and gloom. And Cheese. But of course no one wants to hear this because hey what can I do about it? It is a topic in the region of throwing ones hands up in despair. Or slapping ones own face repeatedly, frothing at the mouth and throwing a seizure consisting of going round and round in circles.Or wubb-bubbing Moe!
If only our collective dog bark of a conscience had an influence on the great powers that be, but it doesn’t. We must peep between the gargantuan legs of Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Corporatism, Nazism, Fascism but always an eternal Ism as i.e. knowing that the reign of Capital, which as Shakespeare, the unknown Stooge, said; bestrides the world like a Colossus and runs frantically around up and down stairs knocking things over with the leaping mortar of progress. We deserve and we want our “tsouris” otherwise it wouldn’t be happening. How can we have troubles when it only takes 2 percent of the population to fee over 1000 percent of the people. And doesn’t. And why not?
And the bullshit of Progress handed down like recyclable rubbish.Beleive me, Facebook and Twitter is not progress. There is no progress in the affairs of men.
And the Gods knowing this, laugh uproariously.
Twas ever thus and essentially nothing has changed in 5000 years.The 3 Stooges knew this and tried to tell us. But we would not listen and now scream out like Curly..”Moe, Larry.. Cheese!!”
Trying desperately not to let the bullshit get the better of us we let the bullcheese baiters,the flippers, the flappers, the daylighters,the gamblers, the speculators, get the better of us. We continue to pay the bills of Goods and the Bills of Ladling and the Bill of Loans and the bills of Credit debt.While the average American lives in Dickensian times, tabulating at the kitchen table the price of his daily cheese, the Wall Streeters and Big Goverment, along With the Big Boys living in Corp Inc. living on fractals and chaos theory. We have been handed by the “greed is gooders” a double bill for our living and our dying and we let it all, slip through our fingers. Passing on economic servitude forward into the wizened hands of Young Oliver Twists who have the gall to ask for more, such as a human standard of living, working and dying. Life,liberty and human happiness.
For Yes, indeed greed is good is for the greedy. For them. It works. It really truly does work. As it has worked, in the past for the lords and highpriests of the Middle and Dark ages.
For them, it is great and as the separation gap between the super super rich and the super super poor widens to Grand Canyon proportions we are asked to become Evil Knievel and rev our motorbikes and hurl ourselves into a chasm of debt and loss not seen greater since the Middle Ages. Hence the battle cry; “Moe, Larry.. Cheese! And make it Swiss!!”
Yes. It has already worked. It always has. As Power and Money corrption have always worked. Like War.
For Power that can’t exist without money is no power at all. cant exist without its closet cousin, Money.
And Money can’t exist without War. Money is everything. it is the Law of Gravity and Inertia all rolled up into one. Money is the great Centralizer and the Great Decider, and the great Provider of Loss, Sorrow and Suffering for 99.9999 percent of everyone on Planet Prison. There is a great French film called Largent that says it all; a hardworking Truck driver is knowingly slipped a counterfeit bill. Not knowing it is counterfeit he tried to use it to pay in a restaurant and is accused of forgery, spends 10 years in jail, comes out and murders the woman who had slipped him the money. In the meantime, while in prison he has lost everything, his reputation, his job, his wife and his family. He then proceeds on a murderous rampage.
“Money, dirty money,
It is the root of all evil, cause
Of all Shame, It was
Invented by Men/to kill Men”
Sophocles, 2450 years go
“Antigone”
“Moe Larry Cheese!!! Moe Larry Cheese!!
The 3 Stooges, American
1950’s 6o years ago
TV Playwright. Performers
“The 3 Stooges”
Much can happen in 60 years. Or 6000.
Why then is no one panicking? Why aren’t we all on the ground rotating in circles frothing at the mouth, screaming “Mole, Larry Cheese!!”
We are told it all works. This money thing. We are told we can escape slavery if we have enough of it; even Death can be bought off. That is the unspoken implication of great wealth. Immortality. And Cheese. And Gold. Perhaps even gold covered leaf.
Who does the covering up? Why The Media of course, the Sophist-Experts, Statisticians, the Movies. The Happy Ending always finishes with a big bank account. It is implied.
Like it or not. There is no happy ending in life or the moodies without money. With money, like is a constant round of jokes and laughter and without…a tragedy where disease, old age and death are implied.
Moe and Larry like the proper eternal moronic co-dependent in denial nod approval not having clue what is happening. He’s too busy getting what little hair he has pulled out by the roots.
Where centralization is in force, the centre cannot hold, not for long. Our common experience shows this to be true. All tyrannies are centralists and cannot hold for very long, whether in the tyranny of fascism or the corporatist control of markets and banks. And if indeed the Aquinian or Augustinian definition of God, is in fact a circle whose centre is no-where and its periphery Everywhere, or some such it follows that if something has a centre in this, its not God, which is precisely why we are told to trust him on the dollar bill.
We have been warned, dummy.
God is center less because there is no centre to his centers and no there, there, and there.
The world is very much centered in the ego. The I of our times rules and rocks. We are proud of our “I “as Moe is proud of his idiocy. Shall we say that he is in deep denial and “He-who-gets-slapped” i.e. Curly, who is bald and curless and takes the blow for his idiocy and determination to succeed is in fact much much much closer to the centre than Moe will ever be.
I wonder whatever happened to them..? The 3 stooges.
As a child I watched in gleeful anticipation of the horrors come. And Curly’s yell yelp and frustration made us kids in the neighborhood laugh out loud and frequently with the theme of 3 blind mice blasting in our ears, right after school, it acted as a perfect bromide to the indigestible that passed for an education.
The principles in a Democracy are based on probability mathematics. In the toss of coin. In all probability, a just conclusion will be reached if enough people come to jst conclusions and possess enough correct judgement together to vote in the right people. At least that is the dominant idea, you can fool some of the people some of the time but hey you cant fool them all of the time. I guess.
Why not? Take a look at the 3 stooges. There is great wisdom there. They got fooled all the time. And what great wisdom there is. If in the United States alone there are over 300 million cars and if each car represent an average of the power of 250 horses and if each horse is on the average 10 times stronger than an average man then the strength and force of energy from all these cars would 2500 times 300 million or the strength of 6 billion men and that in a population representing less than 15 percent of the worlds population.
And if all those abstract horses where to shit 10 to 20 lbs of manure every day there would enough horse manure to reach to the moon and back and it would produce enough methane gas to set permanent fire to planet earth. Say 10 Himalayan mountain ranges of horse shit.
And as Buckminster Fuller calculated because of the extraordinary inefficiency of the spontaneous combustion engine, if every one in the city of Los Angeles stopped using their cars, the savings on the wasted resource of gas would be enough to pay everyone a salary of 75,000 dollars a year. By doing nothing except saying spread out will ya.
Crazy, insane place, this planet earth Anno Domini 2010!
The 3 stooges are a metaphor for Democracy in its encounter with the forces of Tyranny. That’s what makes us laugh. In the slapping, kicking, biting, screaming, falling and endless confusion of their skits brought about by constant misunderstanding and stupidity, the dominant themes of our sick age, a kernel of reality is revealed.
Their common wisdom will increase the chances of a just conclusion. But is that the case? Look at history.
From the Pox Arcana Romana to the American New World order of right now, the just conclusion. Our machines are killing us and our medicines make us sick and our money makes us poor.
Thoughts come. Thoughts vanish. Ideas come to fruition. Civilizations fall like ripe fruit, fall and rot and are replaced. The 3 stooges rattle about my head, Moe-the brains, a moron if ever there was one, mop headed dour, an Adolph Hitler of comedy, the idiot brother Larry and then the real problem child of the family filled with manic obsessions and phobias of a million varieties Curly, a balded headed fatty as manic as a rabid dog- my hero. People are born and die. As I write millions are dying, millions being born, millions more. The hospitals are packed to the gills, flu’s, cancers, chronic ailments from diabetes to lyme disease, sars, west nile, h1 n1 on and on it goes and the pharmaceuticals increase exponentially as profits rise from disease and discontent. Not health. There is no money in health as there is no wealth in contentment and human happiness. All wealth is based on the discontent.
It’s not that funny. As write this reborn Christians prepare for the Armageddon and the coming of the Rapture. As there is no money to be made in health, happiness and peace. Only in destruction and war. Only in unhappiness does money grow like a rancid fungus on a rotten corpse.
Even the 3 stooges knew that. They did, we don’t. We in fact know too much-of nothing.
The population of the planet grows and grows filling it up, this piece of real estate shooting though space at 80,000 miles an hour piece of an even larger piece of real estate flying on a wheel of light at even greater speeds. And so it goes these wheels within wheels traveling for how long. Eternity? Infinity? Forever?
Words fail us as words always fail us. Hope springs eternal, like a lambasted run over jackrabbit. The speeches of our politicians filled with, filled with sharp purpose and resolve rust on the fields of human endeavor like old cars. Like frozen mummified saints. The icebergs in the new age of doom and gloom continue to grow, rise, mover, and crush-even as the greenhouse effect makes for interesting conversation.
The words of the great teachers, the great saints, fall like rainwater in the Sahara. The Messiahs of humanity dissolve and disappear, as they always do. Why doesn’t anything change? What remains to be said that hasn’t already be said? What new laws that haven’t bee around from the beginning of time?
As i write this a gigantic cloud of volcanic ass has spread over Iceland and the North Atlantic grounding almost all flights coming from Europe. The fine particles of dust and ash at 35,000 feet interfere with the working of a jet engine and can bring a plane down hurtling it into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Out of 27,000 daily flights on 5000 or so are moving. Everything is cancelled, passengers are stranded, many sleeping airports.
Its interesting and horrific that a little volcanic dust can bring down a jumbo jet. It is the nature of our times. A small shift in one company on a tiny ave in New York can tumble the world economy casuing 9 million americans to lose their homes and their jobs and almost 20 million in China. The action of one lunatic with a bomb in his show causes millions around the world at airports to have to remove theirs. One lunatic can affect the lives of millions, indeed billions.
Interesting times interesting system.
I recently visited the Richard M Nixon Library in Whittier California. Richard Nixon was president of the United States when I was a young man in the 60’s. ours and my generation despised him because of the war in Vietnam. Thousands of young people, families and chidren were dying because of the American presence in a tiny country half way around the world.
Nixon, a product of his era was doing what he thought was right. Protecting his people, America and indeed the world from the menace of Communism.
50 years later I stood in front of his tiny grave where he buried with his wife Pat, looking for the little gravesite of little Checkers, his dog. It wasn’t there. Across from the gravesite covered in roses and wildflowers the small house he was born in stood, charming, sweet, and a reminder of an America that no longer was. I said a prayer or two and thought of the grand irony that I would have looked back to that time, as an age of enlightened leadership, when a man from humble roots could rise and become President of the most powerful nation on earth.
The man who had said “ I am not a crook” was in fact not a crook. Misguided yes, but a decent man, a good man who was trying to do good. Mr Obama is a decent man, highly intelligent and from humble roots as well and he is black.And he too, like Nixon is in an untenable situation. Can he reverse this crisis. Only time will tell but it does not look likely unless as Mr Stigliz has argues major changes are made and implemented in the banking systems, the credit systems, the insurance sytems and on on Wall St.
At the time of Nixons inauguration America was torn in two between the black and the whites, the rich and the poor. Riots happened. Kent State happened. Vietnam. Manson. Insanity.
50 years later the insanity continues…when will it ever end?
26 May
men of cheese
PT 2 MEN OF CHEESE
(from KarlMarx, the 3 Stooges and the New Ice Age of Doom Gloom and Cheese)
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries. To some that’s no big deal. But isn’t this the natural progression of a debt laden, global financial system? Just like a drug addict, the financial system needs bigger and bigger fixes.
Initially, Greece’s bailout was slated to be around $60 billion, then increased to a $145 billion package. But that wasn’t enough; a $1 trillion dollar package for most of Europe was next. Even Germany’s chancellor Merkel admits that they’re only buying time”.
Simon Maierhofer
Cheese Centralization and usury are the most destructive forces known to man, more destructive than the H-bomb. More destructive than the virus of ignorance. Of what the old Yogic master, Patanjali, caLled the root of all evil. Avidya. Ignorance.Cheese.
These twins are the formative glacial sheets of the New Ice Age of Cheese, the cause and the root of all our problems here on planet earth. It is in my opinion cheese avarice that is underneath it all. And rats, human and otherwise, prefer it.If the world consisted of 100 rats, 6 rats would own 59 percent of the cheese and they would all be Americans.
“Usury, the lending of money at an exorbitant rate”
Here is what Martin Luther had to say about the practice of money lending, the basis of Wall St.all Banks,All Credit Card companies,all of Wall St.,all cheese companies, including City National Cheese etc and the recent cheese fiasco which has affected the lives of millions,nay billions, around the world. Usury in the oldest sense, unadorned and not in the least sexy. And it stinks to high heaven,like a fine Gorgonzola.
“The heathen were able, by the light of Reason to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honor, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. Whoever eats up, robs and steals the nourishment of another by eating his cheese, that man commits as great a murder as he who starves a man, or utterly undoes him..”
But then what did Father Luther know? He was a baldheaed coot and Superman’s arch-enemy.What the hell is a “double-dyed thief?”
A Man of Cheese
Canadian dollar tumbles on Cheese risk aversion, Goldman charges
TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canadian dollar tumbled more than a cent against the U.S. currency on Friday as global stocks plummeted on increased risk aversion of cheese, after regulators charged U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs with fraud.
They don’t have these problems with cheese protection on Alpha Centauri, or Smegam 4. Or the Moon. Blue or not. Or in the Middle Ages where the Divine Rights of Kings held sway. By whose divine rights are these new dog-kings ordained? By the Mob? By the Cheese Brigade?
“I will do things to her that will make the very denizens of hell shriek with agony…!”
Father Adam, Cheese Maker, horror/slasher film-“My Soul to Take”
Where things centralize whether in government, or Wall St. in the universe, in the fields of energy, on, in business, in art, in thought and deed and cheese, the end is nigh. A wall of ice has started to form as high as the phantom Twin towers and begins to trudge forward, a relentless tsunami of detritus and babble. What’s to be done about it?
“Please allow me to introduce myself/Am a man of Wealth and Cheese”
Mick Jigger of The Rolling Stones
“Ca va mal, ca va tres mal…” Pablo Picasso
A flood of mud cheese, New Orleans Style came crashing in and… The 3 Stooges, Moe, Larry and Curly who knew this simple truth and were born with an innate understanding had the only solution; More Cheese. A motto, now long forgotten- “Spread Out!!” And “Spread it on toast, only if its Velveeta!”
“Qui a coupe le fromage?” Ancient Gaulian Saying
U.S. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud in Mortgage Deal
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
In a civil suit filed Friday, the S.E.C. accused the investment bank of securities fraud over a deal in which Goldman profited from bets against products of cheese it sold to customers.
It. Cheese Wins Yet Again.(Dec. 24, 2009)
Theirs is a world that begins with Curly’s “Nyaaa Nyaaa Humph” and ends with “Nuke, nuke, nuke,” In between a universe of frozen salted Cheese. Mozzarella of course. And plenty of toxic mortgages,designed to fail, jumping around from stooge to stooge.
“Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves of cheese go flaunting in gold and silk… therefore on this earth no greater enemy of man, after the devil than a “gripe cheese-money” and usurer, for he wants to be God, over all men”
Martin Luther
“ A god over all men? He can’t be talking about AIG, Goldman Sachs, Enron, Fannie Mae, Union Carbide, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, could he? etc etc What about the internal internet bubble? What about Savings and Loans? How much cheese will it take before we wake up? The greatest addiction of our epoch isn’t to drugs and alcohol- its money.the hardest addict isnt to heroin or even cigarettes, its to loot.The greatest misers aren’t the poor its the very rich.There will never be enough.
It was shortly after midnight on April 15th, 1912 when the unsinkable did the unthinkable. Built and labeled as unsinkable, the Titanic was the most advanced and largest passenger steamship of its time.
Even though the Titanic’s crew was aware that the waters were iceberg-infested, the ship was heading full-steam for a destination it would never reach.
And then again
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries.”
Simon Maierhofer
Obviously something here stinks like a fineRoquefort.
Here is what one of these double dyed types had to say recently, double-dyed and double tongued. Thieves is meant of course only in the apocraphysic sense, after all is a Rat a thief for doing what it does best? A rat is a rat is a rat.A rat is not a dinosaur.A rat eats cheese, it is in his nature and there is not point pretending otherwise.The rat doesnt much care about the type of cheese it is eating, as long as its cheese.Given a choice between two types of cheese, it will choose both.
Lets all just now listen in, shall we?;
NOTES FROM A WALL ST BANKER
(circulated via email)
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas…
Here’s more:
“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position.We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does your cheese.” You see its our job to make money. Thats not your job. Our. Job.
Harsh and interesting words, indeed. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. Vanity saith the preacher precedes the fall, but then so the fuck what?.
“Money, dirty filthy money/It was invented by men to kill men…”
Sophocles, Athenian Playwright & Cheesmaker, Soldier
449 B.C.
“Our money was your money.” The obvious correlate of that statement is “Your money is our money…” Is this what Lex Luther and The Penguin really meant?Obviously T Rex has nothing on these boys. But then Ole T didn’ get up at 5 A.M.And work till 10 P.M.And have two brains like Ole T Rex, one in his skull, one in his tail.And the dinosaurs lived on lard, not cheese.
WARNING SIGNS IGNORED-DANGER AHEAD!
It was well known that the financial sector was engaged in all these shenanigans and should have been a warning to borrowers, to the investors who bought the mortgages and to the regulators…
THE MORTGAGE SCAM
J.STIGLITZ
a fine cheese maker,in vitro
But is it in the just conclusion of all things that Act 3 must happen before, just before the fall of the final curtain and just before the Big Bang? This seems to be what happens right around the time the Fat Lady sings and just around the corner from the Big Buck. It seems to be in the nature of the yoyo parade that will lead to only one thing- a new world order of Cheese. It begins to beat at its drums and play its violins, blowing its trumpets and swinging its tasseled heads from side to side just as licorisced clarinet players starts a squealin and the big bass drum starts a’thumpin. Line up to the trough. Free cheese for everyone! Your fired baby!
“GREED”
by Julian Edney
Sign the tab in certain Midtown eateries and your neighbors eyes slide over.Is that a 48,ooo Michel Perchin pen?Whats on your wrist ,a 300,000 Breguet watch?In Palm Springs and Bel Air,100,000 twin-turbo Porches and 225,ooo Ferraris buzz the warm streets.In New York at an exclusive Morell&Company auction last May a single Magnum of Dom Perignon champagne was sold for 5,750.And there are the paintings of course- an evening at auction two Monets sold for 43 million.Hotel rooms anyone for 10,000 a night?”
THE POOR BABY.
moe’s commentary
“Listen Paderewski, were them funny noises comin’ outta you or the piano?”
Pow Pow Pow
Thump thump thump
And Harumph!!!
SPREAD OUT WILL YA!!!
“Every time he sees a mouse he goes crazy.” “Why?” “‘Cause his father was a rat.”
- Larry, Fred Kelsey & Moe (HORSES’ COLLARS, 1935)
THE GREAT AMERICAN BANK ROBBERY
By Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize –winning economist in his book “Free Fall”
“As the US government went about rescuing the banks, it should have thought about accountability. The bankers who got the country into this mess should have paid for their mistakes..”
Mr Stiglitz in spite of his high I.Q. and knowledge does not understand the nature of good hard Cheddar.
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.”
Cheese. With 3out of 10 Americans facing poverty at some time in their lives and a quarter of low income residents not getting enough food to meet basic nutritional needs it clear that the pursuit of cheese in America has hit a major snag. But as Mr Edney points out “many Americans live in cold dank slums;many do not earn enough for shelter, many sleep outside.In American inner cities and at its lowest levels,under freeway bridges an din tubercular alleys,in stained and broken rooming houses and in torn apart schools…”
Let them eat macaroni and cheese.
In America there are now over 200 billionaires, and 5 percent of Americans are millionaires. Separation between rich and poor has not been greater since Imperial Rome.
CHEESE.
1. A food made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats and some other animals. It ranges in texture from hard to semi soft and in flavor from mildly acidic to sharp…
“It ranges in flavor from mildly acidic…”
If we examine the scenario we can clearly see that for years toxic loans have been made to people who had a zero chance of paying for them. Everyone involved in those transactions except for Moe, Larry and Curly knew that. So what’s the surprise in that?No money down, no job, no way to create wealth, and here’s a house, for you and your family and friends and please, you don’t have to work for it because, hey this is America and your an American and you’re lovin’ it and hey you deserve a break today cause baby you are the real thing…yes you do… and you don’t pay for 6 months to a year- cause lets face it –you are a cheese “star”. Your house will increase in value, forever, and hey you don’t have to work for a living.If things break down, you can always make cheese. Lots and lots of cheese, the sort of cheese the world wants to buy. American Cheddar for China and beyond from real good hormonized, pesticized, ammoniafied, dry hay fed, antibiotized, irradiated heads of heifer. Green cheese for everyone else. Blue Cheese for the aliens. The kind of product the world is yankering for. Along with fractals and string theory. And lots of talk on CNN and Fox and lots of experts talking 24/7 telling us that it works, it really works. Honey, where are my derivatives? Christ its 10pm!
“to sharp..”
“.. regrettably the Obama administration has followed the course of the Bush administration..”
J. Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
wealth |welθ|
noun
an abundance of valuable possessions or money : he used his wealth to bribe officials.
• the state of being rich; material prosperity : some people buy boats and cars to display their wealth.
• plentiful supplies of a particular resource : the country’s mineral wealth.
• [in sing. ] a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing : the tables and maps contain a wealth of information.
• archaic well-being; prosperity.
ORIGIN Middle English welthe, from well 1 or weal 2 , on the pattern of health.
“Liar loans, so called because individuals were not required to prove their income, were among the most peculiar of the these new (banking) products.”
“Liar loans???”
What in the name of Moe are “liar loans?” Apparently according to the reports, the books, the experts, the newspapers and the Internet, there was a lot of lying and double dealing going on. Hanky panky. This didnt happen on its own. Or did it?
“Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the man who was supposed to be protecting the country from excessive risk taking, actually encouraged it.”
J.Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
Lets take a peek at some of the consequences of this greed is good mentality, shall we?
“Around 20percent of American children are living in poverty.An estimated two million are homeless sometime during the year,including whole families who have full and part time jobs..”
Julian Edney
“America is only as good as its cheese..!”
TV CHEESE COMMERCIAL
So where is the accountability in all this? Where is the truth and does it matter?
“This is a flamboyantly optimistic and self congratulatory society and the puzzle is why it allows this suffering…the inequalities are stunning but a frequent attitude a shrug and so what..”
JE
Its a so-what shrug,and at root there is a disconnect on the deepest ethical values of human beings.
Does anyone really care? If a black man gets beaten half to death in front of the world, resulting in the last Los Angeles riots and the cops are let off scott free with a jury in Simi Valley deciding that “excessive force” was not used, who you gonna believe?
If another black man can be accused of murder and be declared innocent in the criminal trial and guilty in the civil isn’t something seriously askew in the nature of American Justice? What about the thief in Florida who tripped on a child’s toy while robbing a house and suing the family he was robbing? And winning. There seems to be a progessive “insanification of perception”, a total disconnect between people and the essential empathy that distinguishes a truly civilized society from a barbarous one.And the perceptions enhanced by media, in form of endless tirades of screeching manic commercials and hebephrenically cheerful TV hosts and shows with endlessly and crazily happy hooting audiences tells the viewer not to trust his own feelings, his own experiences. As in imperial Rome, the games are the great distraction and the “bread and circuses” keep the people in a numbing and dummed down darkness.
Darkness and Cheese.
Our experiences and lives have been co-opted by a fine melted cheddar. We have become in effect a men of cheese.
PT 2 MEN OF CHEESE
(from KarlMarx, the 3 Stooges and the New Ice Age of Doom Gloom and Cheese)
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries. To some that’s no big deal. But isn’t this the natural progression of a debt laden, global financial system? Just like a drug addict, the financial system needs bigger and bigger fixes.
Initially, Greece’s bailout was slated to be around $60 billion, then increased to a $145 billion package. But that wasn’t enough; a $1 trillion dollar package for most of Europe was next. Even Germany’s chancellor Merkel admits that their only buying time”.
Simon Maierhofer
Cheese Centralization and usury are the most destructive forces known to man, more destructive than the H-bomb. More destructive than the virus of ignorance. Of what the old Yogic master, Patanjali, caLled the root of all evil. Avidya. Ignorance.Cheese.
These twins are the formative glacial sheets of the New Ice Age of Cheese, the cause and the root of all our problems here on planet earth. It is in my opinion cheese avarice that is underneath it all. And rats, human and otherwise, prefer it.If the world consisted of 100 rats, 6 rats would own 59 percent of the cheese and they would all be Americans.
“Usury, the lending of money at an exorbitant rate”
Here is what Martin Luther had to say about the practice of money lending, the basis of Wall St.all Banks,All Credit Card companies,all of Wall St.,all cheese companies, including City National Cheese etc and the recent cheese fiasco which has affected the lives of millions,nay billions, around the world. Usury in the oldest sense, unadorned and not in the least sexy. And it stinks to high heaven,like a fine Gorgonzola.
“The heathen were able, by the light of Reason to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honor, that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money. Whoever eats up, robs and steals the nourishment of another by eating his cheese, that man commits as great a murder as he who starves a man, or utterly undoes him..”
But then what did Father Luther know? He was a baldheaed coot and Superman’s arch-enemy.What the hell is a “double-dyed thief?”
A Man of Cheese
Canadian dollar tumbles on Cheese risk aversion, Goldman charges
TORONTO (Reuters) – The Canadian dollar tumbled more than a cent against the U.S. currency on Friday as global stocks plummeted on increased risk aversion of cheese, after regulators charged U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs with fraud.
They don’t have these problems with cheese protection on Alpha Centauri, or Smegam 4. Or the Moon. Blue or not. Or in the Middle Ages where the Divine Rights of Kings held sway. By whose divine rights are these new dog-kings ordained? By the Mob? By the Cheese Brigade?
“I will do things to her that will make the very denizens of hell shriek with agony…!”
Father Adam, Cheese Maker, horror/slasher film-“My Soul to Take”
Where things centralize whether in government, or Wall St. in the universe, in the fields of energy, on, in business, in art, in thought and deed and cheese, the end is nigh. A wall of ice has started to form as high as the phantom Twin towers and begins to trudge forward, a relentless tsunami of detritus and babble. What’s to be done about it?
“Please allow me to introduce myself/Am a man of Wealth and Cheese”
Mick Jigger of The Rolling Stones
“Ca va mal, ca va tres mal…” Pablo Picasso
A flood of mud cheese, New Orleans Style came crashing in and… The 3 Stooges, Moe, Larry and Curly who knew this simple truth and were born with an innate understanding had the only solution; More Cheese. A motto, now long forgotten- “Spread Out!!” And “Spread it on toast, only if its Velveeta!”
“Qui a coupe le fromage?” Ancient Gaulian Saying
U.S. Accuses Goldman Sachs of Fraud in Mortgage Deal
By LOUISE STORY and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
In a civil suit filed Friday, the S.E.C. accused the investment bank of securities fraud over a deal in which Goldman profited from bets against products of cheese it sold to customers.
It. Cheese Wins Yet Again.(Dec. 24, 2009)
Theirs is a world that begins with Curly’s “Nyaaa Nyaaa Humph” and ends with “Nuke, nuke, nuke,” In between a universe of frozen salted Cheese. Mozzarella of course. And plenty of toxic mortgages,designed to fail, jumping around from stooge to stooge.
“Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves of cheese go flaunting in gold and silk… therefore on this earth no greater enemy of man, after the devil than a “gripe cheese-money” and usurer, for he wants to be God, over all men”
Martin Luther
“ A god over all men? He can’t be talking about AIG, Goldman Sachs, Enron, Fannie Mae, Union Carbide, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, could he? etc etc What about the internal internet bubble? What about Savings and Loans? How much cheese will it take before we wake up? The greatest addiction of our epoch isn’t to drugs and alcohol- its money.the hardest addict isnt to heroin or even cigarettes, its to loot.The greatest misers aren’t the poor its the very rich.There will never be enough.
It was shortly after midnight on April 15th, 1912 when the unsinkable did the unthinkable. Built and labeled as unsinkable, the Titanic was the most advanced and largest passenger steamship of its time.
Even though the Titanic’s crew was aware that the waters were iceberg-infested, the ship was heading full-steam for a destination it would never reach.
And then again
“World leaders have gone from bailing out corporations to bailing out entire countries.”
Simon Maierhofer
Obviously something here stinks like a fineRoquefort.
Here is what one of these double dyed types had to say recently, double-dyed and double tongued. Thieves is meant of course only in the apocraphysic sense, after all is a Rat a thief for doing what it does best? A rat is a rat is a rat.A rat is not a dinosaur.A rat eats cheese, it is in his nature and there is not point pretending otherwise.The rat doesnt much care about the type of cheese it is eating, as long as its cheese.Given a choice between two types of cheese, it will choose both.
Lets all just now listen in, shall we?;
NOTES FROM A WALL ST BANKER
(circulated via email)
“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas…
Here’s more:
“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position.We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive.”
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does your cheese.” You see its our job to make money. Thats not your job. Our. Job.
Harsh and interesting words, indeed. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad. Vanity saith the preacher precedes the fall, but then so the fuck what?.
“Money, dirty filthy money/It was invented by men to kill men…”
Sophocles, Athenian Playwright & Cheesmaker, Soldier
449 B.C.
“Our money was your money.” The obvious correlate of that statement is “Your money is our money…” Is this what Lex Luther and The Penguin really meant?Obviously T Rex has nothing on these boys. But then Ole T didn’ get up at 5 A.M.And work till 10 P.M.And have two brains like Ole T Rex, one in his skull, one in his tail.And the dinosaurs lived on lard, not cheese.
WARNING SIGNS IGNORED-DANGER AHEAD!
It was well known that the financial sector was engaged in all these shenanigans and should have been a warning to borrowers, to the investors who bought the mortgages and to the regulators…
THE MORTGAGE SCAM
J.STIGLITZ
a fine cheese maker,in vitro
But is it in the just conclusion of all things that Act 3 must happen before, just before the fall of the final curtain and just before the Big Bang? This seems to be what happens right around the time the Fat Lady sings and just around the corner from the Big Buck. It seems to be in the nature of the yoyo parade that will lead to only one thing- a new world order of Cheese. It begins to beat at its drums and play its violins, blowing its trumpets and swinging its tasseled heads from side to side just as licorisced clarinet players starts a squealin and the big bass drum starts a’thumpin. Line up to the trough. Free cheese for everyone! Your fired baby!
“GREED”
by Julian Edney
Sign the tab in certain Midtown eateries and your neighbors eyes slide over.Is that a 48,ooo Michel Perchin pen?Whats on your wrist ,a 300,000 Breguet watch?In Palm Springs and Bel Air,100,000 twin-turbo Porches and 225,ooo Ferraris buzz the warm streets.In New York at an exclusive Morell&Company auction last May a single Magnum of Dom Perignon champagne was sold for 5,750.And there are the paintings of course- an evening at auction two Monets sold for 43 million.Hotel rooms anyone for 10,000 a night?”
THE POOR BABY.
moe’s commentary
“Listen Paderewski, were them funny noises comin’ outta you or the piano?”
Pow Pow Pow
Thump thump thump
And Harumph!!!
SPREAD OUT WILL YA!!!
“Every time he sees a mouse he goes crazy.” “Why?” “‘Cause his father was a rat.”
- Larry, Fred Kelsey & Moe (HORSES’ COLLARS, 1935)
THE GREAT AMERICAN BANK ROBBERY
By Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize –winning economist in his book “Free Fall”
“As the US government went about rescuing the banks, it should have thought about accountability. The bankers who got the country into this mess should have paid for their mistakes..”
Mr Stiglitz in spite of his high I.Q. and knowledge does not understand the nature of good hard Cheddar.
“Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.”
Cheese. With 3out of 10 Americans facing poverty at some time in their lives and a quarter of low income residents not getting enough food to meet basic nutritional needs it clear that the pursuit of cheese in America has hit a major snag. But as Mr Edney points out “many Americans live in cold dank slums;many do not earn enough for shelter, many sleep outside.In American inner cities and at its lowest levels,under freeway bridges an din tubercular alleys,in stained and broken rooming houses and in torn apart schools…”
Let them eat macaroni and cheese.
In America there are now over 200 billionaires, and 5 percent of Americans are millionaires. Separation between rich and poor has not been greater since Imperial Rome.
CHEESE.
1. A food made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats and some other animals. It ranges in texture from hard to semi soft and in flavor from mildly acidic to sharp…
“It ranges in flavor from mildly acidic…”
If we examine the scenario we can clearly see that for years toxic loans have been made to people who had a zero chance of paying for them. Everyone involved in those transactions except for Moe, Larry and Curly knew that. So what’s the surprise in that?No money down, no job, no way to create wealth, and here’s a house, for you and your family and friends and please, you don’t have to work for it because, hey this is America and your an American and you’re lovin’ it and hey you deserve a break today cause baby you are the real thing…yes you do… and you don’t pay for 6 months to a year- cause lets face it –you are a cheese “star”. Your house will increase in value, forever, and hey you don’t have to work for a living.If things break down, you can always make cheese. Lots and lots of cheese, the sort of cheese the world wants to buy. American Cheddar for China and beyond from real good hormonized, pesticized, ammoniafied, dry hay fed, antibiotized, irradiated heads of heifer. Green cheese for everyone else. Blue Cheese for the aliens. The kind of product the world is yankering for. Along with fractals and string theory. And lots of talk on CNN and Fox and lots of experts talking 24/7 telling us that it works, it really works. Honey, where are my derivatives? Christ its 10pm!
“to sharp..”
“.. regrettably the Obama administration has followed the course of the Bush administration..”
J. Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
wealth |welθ|
noun
an abundance of valuable possessions or money : he used his wealth to bribe officials.
• the state of being rich; material prosperity : some people buy boats and cars to display their wealth.
• plentiful supplies of a particular resource : the country’s mineral wealth.
• [in sing. ] a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing : the tables and maps contain a wealth of information.
• archaic well-being; prosperity.
ORIGIN Middle English welthe, from well 1 or weal 2 , on the pattern of health.
“Liar loans, so called because individuals were not required to prove their income, were among the most peculiar of the these new (banking) products.”
“Liar loans???”
What in the name of Moe are “liar loans?” Apparently according to the reports, the books, the experts, the newspapers and the Internet, there was a lot of lying and double dealing going on. Hanky panky. This didnt happen on its own. Or did it?
“Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the man who was supposed to be protecting the country from excessive risk taking, actually encouraged it.”
J.Stiglitz
“Free Fall”
Lets take a peek at some of the consequences of this greed is good mentality, shall we?
“Around 20percent of American children are living in poverty.An estimated two million are homeless sometime during the year,including whole families who have full and part time jobs..”
Julian Edney
“America is only as good as its cheese..!”
TV CHEESE COMMERCIAL
So where is the accountability in all this? Where is the truth and does it matter?
“This is a flamboyantly optimistic and self congratulatory society and the puzzle is why it allows this suffering…the inequalities are stunning but a frequent attitude a shrug and so what..”
JE
Its a so-what shrug,and at root there is a disconnect on the deepest ethical values of human beings.
Does anyone really care? If a black man gets beaten half to death in front of the world, resulting in the last Los Angeles riots and the cops are let off scott free with a jury in Simi Valley deciding that “excessive force” was not used, who you gonna believe?
If another black man can be accused of murder and be declared innocent in the criminal trial and guilty in the civil isn’t something seriously askew in the nature of American Justice? What about the thief in Florida who tripped on a child’s toy while robbing a house and suing the family he was robbing? And winning. There seems to be a progessive “insanification of perception”, a total disconnect between people and the essential empathy that distinguishes a truly civilized society from a barbarous one.And the perceptions enhanced by media, in form of endless tirades of screeching manic commercials and hebephrenically cheerful TV hosts and shows with endlessly and crazily happy hooting audiences tells the viewer not to trust his own feelings, his own experiences. As in imperial Rome, the games are the great distraction and the “bread and circuses” keep the people in a numbing and dummed down darkness.
Darkness and Cheese.
Our experiences and lives have been co-opted by a fine melted cheddar. We have become in effect men of cheese.
24 May
god is a gangster, a play in one act
GOD IS A GANGSTER
A play, in one act
By
Nick Mancuso
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
(inspired by conversations with Freddie Kohl, 60’s rock star in Malibu, California)
Lights up to reveal in center stage an alleyway.Its Christmas eve. A homeless tramp (God) is rummaging though the garbage. He looks up towards us, the audience..
MUSIC UP.CHRISTMAS MUSIC.JINGLE BELLS TO I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS. TRAFFIC NOISE.
GOD
(coughing, smokers cough)
Hey..you..gotta smoke..Can I buy a smoke off ya?..yeah yeah I know I’m not supposed to smoke but what the fuck I’m God..I can do whatever I want…Cancer??I am cancer!! Who gives a shit…I’m freezing..
(He walks haltingly towards us, limping. A cat howls..)
Shut the fuck up..I said shut the fuck up..Cant stand cats..always trying to steal the show..to think the Egyptians worshipped them..I taught em a lesson or two..plague..boils..locusts..a few drownings..sent a few murderous angels to complete the job…but my people..the chosen people ..I didn’t touch..I has other things in store for them..but those nasty Egyptians insisted on worshiping cats..stupid dirty cats..with fleas and lices and god knows what else..I mean I know what else…I gotta lie down..I’m exhausted…People have no idea how much energy it takes to run the Universe..you have any idea?…Talk about calories..I don’t have ta worry about my weight..It never stops..galaxies..universes..time-space continuum,quarks,black holes, to say nothing of the billions and I mean billions of creatures wandering around needing food, shelter….love..family..children..house..money..food..to say nothing of keeping the clock ticking…u try it? Here!
HOLDS OUT OLD BROKEN CLOCK
Go ahead make it tick.
THE CLOCK STARTS TICKING.
A CAT MEOWS,COMES TO HIM
Come here pussy cat..do not fear what they fear… say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.”Well wont he?? You hungry? Here I happen to have an open tin of Canadian salmon, from the upper streams of the Fraser River where the giant sturgeon once upon a time floated by..yup..saved it just for you..go ahead eat it..its Canadian..salmon is going, the cod already gone, so thick Giovanni Caboto, or John Cabot to you anglos, couldn’t steer his ship through the shallows..i made so many..an abundance..and what did you guys do? Ate em all up. Yum! Yum!
SINGS
“fish heads, fish heads
greasy little fish heads
fish heads fish heads
eat em up yum…”
everything gone.I’m standing on stone. Christmas eve and its raining.No body gives a shit. Why should i? Global warming? Gimme a break.I’l show you warming.Look into the centre of the sun. You want hot? I’ll show you hot.
(PAUSES)
A SIREN, THEN A HUMAN SHOUT- A DRUNK RAILING OBSCENITIES)
Nice..real nice…sir ? sir? And the son of man hath not a rock to lay down his head…all around me men are freezing here in the land of abundance..and the son of man hath not a place to lay down his head…
HE PLACES IT ON THE GROUND.HE STROKES THE IMAGINARY CAT..
So do not fear, for I am with you; may ye not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.For the riches of the wicked are stored for the rightous…
TO PASSERBYES
Sir..sir..its Christmas Eve..Could ya help out an old altar boy..father..will work for food…and I aint even hungry..
TO CAT
You still hungry? Tough shit I aint got no more food food far ya!! Join the club cat….but hey I could make it come out of the sky if I wanted to just like that swami bupkuskananda in India only he aint God, he is a swami, swami, bologni…hows about a salami sandwich with pickles and mustard?
THE CAT SCRAMS
(He makes a face..)
Love…hate…love…would love a bologny sandwich meself with wonder bread and mustard of love.. and a good cold Molson’s..beer..to make thee fart..Anaconda lord of farts and disappointments..howd I end up up on the street me a former altar boy with so much promise..but promises aren’t enuff…
You see that’s your problem..always love me..love me..you don’t get it its not love me…take care of me..please me..its love you..take care of you..please you..please me..love you love me why don’t you love please don’t leave me I love you I love coffee I love the smell of napalm in the morning I love to..ah bullshit…I could use some real food..and a good hot cuppa java…Tim Hortons..only they wont let me in on accounta I stink..I need me some teeth..and the son of man hath not a place to…but the reptiles do…they do…
HE HUMS
THEN SINGS BURSTING INTO SONG
Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm
Hmmm hmmmm hmmm let the sun shine’the sun shine in
Klet the sun shine
Let the sun shine
The suuuun shine in…
MORE VERSES UNTIL HE IS DOING IT BROADWAY STYLE
Silent night..holy fucking night..the rain comes down..as the rain comes down..i began to realize that every single drop had a particular meaning..it was amessage..you ever notice that? Whats it doing raining in the middle of winter?each drop had a particular meaning..what happened??
(He halters..stares at someone in the audience,slobbers)
What are you looking at buddy?Or buddy asses.. You looking at me..I don’t see anybody else around here?? What are you looking at??What do you think you see? A bum, a homeless wreck of a human being?..a churk gangster is that what yu think ?..that..God is (wait for it) a ..gangster is that so..God is a gangster???yeah yeah I go to the movies too…love the gangster movies if I wasnt god the only other thing I wanted to be was a gangster…god as a gangster…funnneee…not
(pauses)
I get so pissed off these days..Maybe I got a blood sugar disorder..maybe hyperinsulinism..thyroid problems..who knows…but the reptiles…oh they..so smart…
HE GRABS HIS THROAT
.I mean I’m billions of years old..I mean old..I mean really old, I got a right to be sick,medical insurance..wheee, forget it stop payments and you got bupkus..and I don’t get the girls anymore ..they don’t give me a second look-no one does..im a bum in a world of abundance. Yeah…abundance millions of millionaires and while I starve in misery in this rat infested alley there are people hooting and hollerin and have great old time having parties and throwing away more food in one night that I get to eat in a week but hey who gives a fuck im god, No when I was young when I was young..forget about it..then I had that son of mine and bango its all over..He gets all the action..and I get bupkus..What night is this? Oh holy night?? Silent night??
CAR HORN SCREECHES AND LIGHTS PASS HIM BY..
Hey hey asshole..Whats the rush??Ahhhhh!!! Ahhhh!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!
“there was an ancient mariner/and he stoppeth one of three/by thy long beard and glittering eye/why stoppest thou me??”
My feet are killing meMy toenails are going black and falling off.Does he write? Does he call he call? I know he thinks of me,he’s thinking about me all the time but does he call, does he write??eh,invisible dreams eh..whats a postage stamp cost?? ..and then..that younger brother of his..holy ghost…holy mackarel..invisible dreams..doent even breath like he never existed..what a family..Now when I was..king..of the hill king of Sparta..and top of the world.. it was different..communication is the ketto everything..communicate guys!..Ineed a drink of aqua velva..no wonder I drink, you would too with kids like that..
HE TAKES BOTTLE OF AQUA VELVA FROM HIS POCKET AND GULPS IT DOWN,
AH HA!!! WHOOO! A little dab’ll do ya!!! It did me!!!
(He leans against a garbage and rubs his feet. To an imaginary passerby- a shadow)
Hey how ya doin?Have a blessed night.. Got thee some spare change for a meal?I could use a meal once in a while with a clean table cloth.Got thee any?Have a blessed night and oh Merry Christmas to youse and go fuck yourself!!..You think they give a fuck?..someone tonight auctions off a bottle of champagne 6000 bucks and gulps it down in his 10,000 dollar a night suite while a couple hookers suck his cock own on each ball,have a blessed night.unto thee and unto thee!!. one blonde, one oriental-it’s the perfect combo..but I aint complaining…its ok ..i aint hungry no more..have a blessed night…peace on earth..yeah..pieces of earth is what you are…
Freedom of choice is what you want
Freedom from choice is what yah get
“fish heads, fish heads-eat them up yum..
HE CONTINUES TO HUM. IT SNOWS.
Snow.snow.make up your mind. Or should I say
Make up mine…
SHADOWS WALK BY HIM,CRISSCROSSING,SHADOWS ON SHADOWS.
No no no..aint gonna go to rehab..no no no.I’m God I don’t need rehab, I found Jesus..hell I made him….I’ aint complaining..everything is perfect..my hands are perfectly freezing…that’s all..my hands and my feet are as cold as ice and at 10 below the cold moves right up to my knees,into the bones..its great..and I’m havin trouble breathin its great and at 20 below it gets real intresting
And at 40 ..fogget about it cause ya cant..fogget…about.. it
I’ll start a fire
HE PACKS SOME OF THE CRAP TOGETHER. AND TRIES TO LIGHT. GOES OUT. TRIES AGAIN. TAKES OUOUT SMALL CAN OF KEROSENE. IT LIGHTS. SQUIRTS SOME OF INTO HIS MOUTH…
Mmm mmmm delisccccccccc
HE FALLS OVER AND LIES THERE FOR ABOUT A MINUTE. THEN HE STIRS….
Fuck me on a small stick…head…ache…oh…
HE RETCHES. STOPS. STARTS.
HE STARTS A COUGHING FIT
..other than that I’m ok..gotta lot to be grateful for..thank you God for aftershave lotion…thank you Jesus… wanna lay down on a bed or roses but i lay me down on a bed of nails..i am born from the wind and my name is no-one…
HE GULPS THE REST OF IT
Hey you!!!
TO PASSERBYE
Come back here!!
I’m God asshole…have a blessed night ..I hope you get all yr Christmas shopping done..have a blessed night..
HE RETCHES. HE IS SICK, VERY SICK..
“Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of troubles. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive;(well he’s keeping me alive..) and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.”Assholer!!!I’m standing on stone!!!
HE PANTS FOR A FULL MINUTE. THEN.
HE THROWS THE BOTTLE OF AQUAVELVA
Assholers…
BLACKOUT
Scene 2
THUNDER
LIGHTS UP TO REVEAL HIM IN THE SAME POSITION..
Go ahead call the fuckin cops…
Ah fuck you! Fuck all of ya fuck yaz all and the horse ya rode in on, yer jags and yes Mercedes and yes private jets, livin behind walls and gates in your olivine suits and yr goose and duck soirees and yr yr fuckin orgies and ..wandering around in yer fancy olivine suits, Dolce e Gabbana, yr suit screwing everyone with your important business appointments,fer time is money yer broads, yer houses, yer tribes,yer bribes yer countries, yes important livesvanity vanity for all is vanity saith the preacher.. fuck you all- I got a mind to..ah forget about it…cause ya cant..forget about it cause ..ya..cant..what about me??Where are my gifts??Where’s my Christmas Eve gifts???fogge about it cause ya cant!! Its Christmas Eve where is my fucking Lear jet??Where??where’s my fuckin lear jet??I’m God don’t I deserve it all???Wheres my cute little bundles of joy???
BLACKOUT
THEN IN DARKNESS
WE HEAR
(sings)
“fish heads..fish heads..tiny …little..
“no aint gonna go to rehab..no no no..” Fogget about it…
LIGHTS UP. HE’S ON THE GROUND, HOLDING HIS HEAD..THE AQUA VELVA NEW RESTORED.HE LOOKS IN SHOCK.
How the fuck I do that?
“Give ear oh heavens that I may speak!!”
hear oh earth the words of my mouth!!
No I went in for that controlled drinkin’ thing the govt has got for us alkies and guess what it worked..I control every drink I want..now I’m gonna control some more..”
Works every time. Controlled frink number one.
HE SHOOTS IT BACK.
Controlled drink number 2
HE SHOOTS IT BACK
Controlled drink number 3
HE SHOOTS IT BACK
Controlled drink number 4
HE SHOOTS IT BACK
Controlled drinking 223345
(Pulls out another bottle of Screech..”Control this!!
HE TAKES A SWIG
Buncha anal assholers…
SCREECH!!!SCREECH!!!
Now you might be wanderin what God is doin drinkin and smoking!! So what??I’m a marborough man but I cant get em up here in the Northlands..just injun tabbakki..and it makes me cough..fogget about it…
Ya see that’s my problem. I don’t forget nothing..4235 B.C, July 4th 4.02 pm –right here..(points to his head)
In this noggin..I mean everything..everywhere that ever was that ever will be in every planet ..every universe..every godddam things down to the molecular level is right in here..And if I forget about it…poof gone…vanished..You think I wont remember this? This is..like a crystal..a cosmic computer..you cant even begin to imagine pr understand how could ya??..locked forever in my memory, forever..and none youse rich fucks will get away with anything cause I am Toth and Siva , Horus and Zoroaster,Ahura Mazda, and Mithras, the Buddah and if I forget abut poof –gone-like it never existed!! Like youse never existed!!
That’s a big responsibility right? You try it on for size..
Go ahead .. I dare ya…remember everything..forever and ever..now..cant do it can ya..i can..thats why im God and yur not..all inside of this here noggin
HE SLURPS A LONG WALLOP OF SWEET CHEAP WINE, COUGHS..AND HOOTS…HE RUMAGES THRU HIS KNACKSACK..
Heah it is..
IT’S A PHOTGRAPH OF THIS MAN WITH A WIFE AND DAUGHTER IN FRONT OF A HOME-SUMMER
This was me..10 years ago…HE POINTS,,that’s my lovely wive Sarah and that’s my little girl..She died..and Sarah ran away…and this man here..why..that used to be me..before I was God…
HE RUBS THE PHOTO AND THEN PUTS IT AWAY IN THE SACK
Theres a couple a things I wann get clear about..and don’t get me wrong..I appreciate the smoke..but Life aint fair..Get it through yr heads once and for all..Get that piece of relevant information at the beginning of the journey and you wont have any trouble at the end..
( He coughs)
what is this..? Natural tobacco. What the fuck is natural?
Its all natural..I made it ..its natural..Plastic??Its natural..Comes from trees don’t it?..anythin I make is natural atomic bombs, natural,garbage natural..recycling or not..natural..whats with the recycling?? Save the planet??..get it straight,cant ya ..its saves yourselves natural..organic..living..alive..tunas cans? Save yourselves..Natural..cardboard boxes? Natural..sodium hydrochloride..natural..formaldahyde? natural..everything is natural..i made it so its natural..prove to me its not..Save yourselves..
Go ahead .. I dare ya…
HE SIPS.
Theres a couple a things I wann get clear about..and don’t get me wrong.by the way.I appreciate the smoke..
( He coughs)
what is this..? Natural tobacco. What the fuck is natural?
Its all natural..I made it ..its natural..Plastic??Its natural..Comes from trees..anything..get it straight ..its natural. Didn’t I just say that?? What the fuck is wrong with me..didnt I just say it.organic..living..alive..you know why? Cause I made..Use a little of that God given logic…Did I just repeat myself..? I think I’m getting alzheimers..I’m turning into a senile old fart, a toxic whore of an ole fuck.Well that would make sense..im old I am the Ancient of Days…..what happened??What happened to me??
(pauses)
Ok..so you might wonder how I ended up here,I thought I told you shut up. Get thee behind me,Satan….I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!..in this alleyway..What difference would that make..I’m everywhere aint I?I’m here and I am everywhere..(voice)
“I am the eternal circle, whose circumference is everywhere and who centre is nowhere..i am..that I am..”Tell them…
I’m not prejudiced, youre all the same to me except for you jews..your chosen, your special… but.its all the same to me here there everywhere no where underwear,its all the same..the problem is its not all the same to you..is it?is it
Be honest.About it. To me its all the same , to yu its different.If I say unto you the sun shineth on the good and wicked alike, you tell me theres a special room in hell reserved for people like me,kind of an anthroposphcal point of you,anthrogenic know what I mean..only I aintpeople.I’m God.But you think I’m a bum and human being and I am..a bum and human..but I’m God
And god said to Moses; “see I have set before you today, life and good, death and evil- you shall not cross over this Jordan…!!
(CHANGES VOICE AND ACCENT, HISPANIC)
“let me splain sumin do you..sarah was jewish but I married her anyway..she was my childhood sweetheart and we were sweet on each other from the beginning..She had..HE STUTTERS..she hadda hadda..Abi..Abigale..Oh dear God in heaven..my darling little girl..where did yu go..To Heaven..dont you worry baby..pappas going to be there soon..sh sh sh don’t cry..oh dear god in heaven..and the Sarah her heart broke into a million pieces and they gave her the meds and she lost her mind and she ran away, just ran ran away..I’m God..G.O.D.god god god god help me god god am god..sarah…sarah..sarah..
AS HE WEEPS AND PRAYS HE IS TRANSFORMED AND HE RISES.
BLACK OUT
SCENE 3
LIGHTS UP
STARING HARD INTO AUDIENCE
YOU don’t believe do you??. You want a magic trick, a miracle of some kind don’t you like bending a spoon. Then you say it was a trick anyway. Or making a beautiful broad appear out of the thin air.
HE TAKES A FORK FROM HIS KNAPSACK AND BENDS IT WITH HIS HANDS..
See its bent. You figure it out how I did that…
A BEAUTIFUL BROAD APPEARS OUT OF THE THIN AIR.
Then you say its done with mirrors.
SHE DISAPPEARS..
There now do you believe me now??…no no not at all. I created this entire fucking universe and everything and everyone on it and I keep to creating it nanosecond by nano,in it, within it, without it and you act like its nothing out of the ordinary like its an everyday occurrence as a matter of fact.You create a universe why don’t you one with 11 sides…??
And you’s rather be somewhere else. Say Tijuanna, with a couple of the best lookin Mexican whores and bottle of tequila suckin on your Johnson….
You’d rather be somewhere elseright?..say the south pacific in your own ranchero with a bevy of dark hued beatiies bringing you pina colada and suckin on your johnsons..or the south of france with a couple of sexy mademoiselles you guessed it… or the south anything as long as its south and then when you get there you wanna north..which is it?you want north? I’’l give you north..
Its like the word creation..which is it? Creation is what?This? this aint creation?anyone know what this is I mean this..let me spain it to you..creation is what is..is ..what ..is- get it now?its this.this is this.om tat sam.i am that I am get it. But ya don’t.a don’t get it.do yas??
A SIREN CALLS AND LIGHTS FLASH
Hey you know what tonight is don’t ya? That’s right its Christmas eve-my sons birthday..Let me ask you something..don’t you get a little confused sometimes..Imean the crucifiction..concentration camps..terrorist bombings..all in my name..kinda weird aint it..my son shows up spreads the good news..love thy neighbor..love thine enemy..be nice to each other ..loveone another and then bango a few years later your killing each other in his name..my name..whats with that?
Deus vult
Will of god
Zing off wid yer head
You looking?To Fuck with me? Fuck with me?You wanna fuck with me??
I may be a homeless old tramp but what the fuck are you??I got a degree I went to the Universty of Fuck HI went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.
And the ravens brought me bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and I drank of the brook.I…I..
CONFUSED AND DAZED, STARING AS THOUGH LISTENING TO SOMETHING DISTANT..
A TRAIN HOOTS
I love trains..when I was a kid..I grew up near the tracks and I heard em hoot in the deep heart of the night warm in my fathers house…warm..what happened..lord? lord?
Why am I talking to myself..
BEAT, THEN..BLACKOUT
LIGHTS UP. THE TRAMP IS STANDING HE IS HOLDING A POINTER WHICH HE USES TO MAKES HIS POINT, JABBING AND PUNCHING IN ALL DIRECTIONS,
Take the current situation. 6 billions people.3 billion of ya making under 90 cents a day.you know 20 percent of the children right here in this city are living in poverty and going to bed hungry..You know there’s over 3 million people people..but youyou just keep worshipping me high and mighty… Now half of yas worship me using one name and the other half worshipme using some other cockamamie name and the other half.yeah I know ya cant half 3 halfs,why not..? worship me in a another guise and then the other half..you get my drift and the whole of the halfs don’t add up to nothing because none of yas and I mean no-one and I include mother Teresa and Gandhi and the Dalai Lama in the equation seem to know anything about anything when it comes to taking care of each other..love thy neighbor?ITS MORE LIKE FUCK THY NEIGHBOR..
What’s with that? Are you guys for real? You seriously think I don’t know wats going on? That excuse my French cant fucking see what the fuck is going on on planet earth nowadays..including the French..that im blind or something. That you can get away wiz it?You reptilian cocksuckers, hiding behind your walls and your desks, behind barbed wire, in your private jets and immured from the prying eyes of the world over 5 percent of you millionaires and the rest living a life of misery and slavery and war and drugs and alcohol, dying like flies.acting like flies..i’m tired..i can breath..
HE STARTS TO WHEEZE AND COUGH.
Yeah you think I’m a drunk and a homeless tramp but I am god…I was there when they chopped off your heads…
And that it twas every thus no matter what I said or did..turn you to pillars of salt..drown you engulf you in flames..earthquakes floods whatever..you come back..youre sorry you apologize to me..to my mother to my son..etc etc and then the next day do it over again..wats wiz that??
Unbeleivable..She throws me out.On the street. For the lips of a strange woman whose lips drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:
But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.
(He rises and dusts himself…looks around)
This place is a rat hole- You guys make more garbage than anyone else in the universe ..whats with the garbage?
YOU ALL STINK UP THE PLACE!!
The problem..with youse.. is that you like to sit around all day …sit around and make trouble for everybody- lets start with Adam and eve, your mommi and your poppi
Not so nice.Not nice people.And look at their kids. You think it was a coincidence one of them killed the other one. A random happening??Like Columbine??
I give them gardens, I put in pear trees, cherry trees flowers, rhodendrons, hippos, pussy cats, fluffly coulds- lets face it was beautiful- nice and warm so you don’t need to wear no clothers..no insects what can I tellya? –these I made later, no scorpions, later, no rattlesnakes, later, no man eating tigers later,spiders, coachraches, later-one snake,one lousy snake,- a small one and one apple tree for effect- and I think to myself- leave the apple tree- what do you think- apples grow on trees?? Well they do but you know what I mean??Leave the apple tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil-god and evil-leave it..
Eve.
Eve. Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.Yeah right..like that wife of mine running off with my kid and my boss..the two of them..not a word you coulda have knocked me over..
Eve, eve , eve-nice ass, perfect tits- let me tell you…like bunnies…lots of bunnies,the first playboy bunny that ever was..Beautiful, naked.Eve.OK so I made her from some ribs, so what, look at the results..forEven in laughter the heart is sorrowful.
CHANGES VOICE
Eat ye not of the tree of the knowledgeof good and evil.
In other words stay the fuck away. Stay. The fuck.Whats the big deal? Away.From the fucking tree and the fucking apples.Think of it as a window display..for effect..
Whats so difficult about that. Eat watermelon. Eat bananas eat pineapples, eat kiwi,eat figs..- no apples. Is it..that.. so hard? No tell me true= Was I asking too much?I wanna know..What was so hard about that? –Eat ye not of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Leave it alone. Mind your own business. Go about your day. But leave it alone..but noooooo that wasn’t good- you needed an extra admonition-leave it alone or I’ll knock er lights out.
And that’s what I did what I was forced to do…you never listen…
Let there be light. Let me shed a little light on the equation. Could we have the house lights please…
Yeah I know I know this is supposed to be a play but come on I’m God..
You sir were you from?
AUDIENCE MEMBERS STATES PLACE
Where the fuck is that?? Oye ah right. Oi gevalt im losing it…my memory..have you ever been betrayed??
Let me ask you sir was it too much to ask? No no tell me true…Was it ? One stinking apple??
Forget about it sit down…anybody else..ok turn off the lights…
BACK TO BEING A BUM
You know the rest of it. Decay death working in the steel mills, starvation, old age, a total fuckup.Over one stinking apple.But it was the principal of the thing. I give you free rent,free food, free fucks, even free booze and one simple request- eat ye not of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Notice I don’t say good vs evil, goodandevil, one word goodandevil, notice? Goodand devil..get it? And you got steelmilltowns and ethnic cleaning.Ok that’s it.dim the lights. Let there be dim..
HOUSE LIGHTS DIM DOWN
After a while ,,even I lose my patience and I start with the thunderbolts and the quakes and the floods..Are you starting to get it..let me tell something..im a nice guy.. but don’t piss me off-what is it with you people??I mean all of you..
HI NOISE OF A JET PLACE TAKING OFF
Now take Noah..there was a good guy..gets drunk fucks one of his daughter..Take David, handsome intelligent ..bright ..smart..falls for this broad .. gets her husband killed off so he can fuck her..Nice guy..Solomon…a million wives.. brilliant.. whats with the wives..harems..bordellos..you just cantt get enough.and he’snot the only one..the whole book is full of oldmen screwing young broads, fucking their maids their daughter, screwin around on their wives and then getting pissed off when god ie ME decides to send a few opillars of fire and sturm unt drung to burn em up and stop them from knocking in the doors of honest people in order to fuck their wives daughters, sons-so I send these H bomb and wipe em out like the scumbag vermin they are and they figure hey im an angry wrathful guy and then want to send me to anger management and rehab..whats wid dat..i gve them the rues plain and simple ten commandments and they act like its all news to them..like they were born yesterday in a manner of spacing…Maybe I made a mistake giving you that thing between your legs..it was an experiment..a joke and you took all so seriously. like chocolate..why did I ever invent chocolate..i had no idea..who knew??
I could use a drink.. ya see you drove mett to digits all your fault cause you don’t want the truth..you just wnanna party have lots of broads and all the money in the world and le and behold you think your happy and then you go and blow yet head off one way or another..I’m starting to think we have here is what you call a codedendent relationship especially you guys in the mideast.I’m not prejudiced. You all the same to me. I don’t care what you call me, honest- I don’t give a rats ass..a rose by another other name…
Whats with the there is no god but god. Think about it..there is no God? But God..You just said there is no god and then you tell me there is..which is it..God or no God..Come one the clocks ticking..I have precious to waste..I mean Im don’t..I’m busy…guy
(There is the sound of a garbage truck in the distance)
I hate those fucking things..so polluting fillup the air with garbage dust..what..cat ya figure out another way??of doing it..so come on ..there is no god…
But there is..i’m confused and whats with the million and one gods-ones not good enuff for ya? You gotta have the god of the door , the god of theunderwear, the god of the retail, the …its Christmas eve, him you remember me you don’t..what am I chopped liver. What about my birthday? What about Gods Birthday? You know god the father?
I know I know you think I’m some homeless old bum, out of mind on aftershave and mouthwash and shoeshine polish and cheap, cheap wine…I don’t give a fuck what you think…I am God..go ahead call the cops..Arrest me , throw me in jail, throw me in the looney bin…
Why do I waste my time with you people..??
TAKES OUT A WORN BIBLE
(takes a swig)
Here it all is- verbum deo..you didn’t know I could speak latin did you.I invented latin…think about it…by the way you know what night this is…?
Ok..here it is…”It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he enables me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great. You broaden the path beneath me, so that my ankles do not turn.”
God. Where is my son mentioned??
HE HOLDS OUT THE BIBLE
No Where that’s where..ok Isiah..but then he was I was Isiah.. hard to explain..not so hard..”before I was I was..Isiah..in the bible in black in white ..go ahead and lookk…
“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.”
Where is he mentioned?? Where??
“The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the LORD; I cried to my God for help. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears.”
So where he is mentioned??
So Where is my son in all this mishigash??
Its Christmas eve, the night you celebrate my only begotten sons birthday..did you get that my son..only begotten.. hes my son…hes not me…get it??im me and hes my son and he goes and he sits on the right hand, not the left hand..whats so complicate about that?
So whats all the hoopla?
Is the son the father? Does he get to steal my thunder?
Where is it written you should be praying to him and not me? Didn’t he tell you? He told you.. over and over but no you wanna make a rock star out of him..
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”Here it is. One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “the first is, ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Its in the bible in black and white
“are you the son of god?”
“you say so.”
You say so..get it..you not me..later he tells the thief..verily verily, that’s how they used to talk only arameic, not American.”.i say unto you..today you will be with me in heaven”..and who do you think he was talking to near the end there when he rolls his eyes…father, father eloim eloim..why have you abandoned me and then he says..it is finished..are you all half deaf?? Whose he talking to ..himself?? only by me will ye enter the kingdom..only by me means only by my teachings..by the word I bring you..why is that so hard to figure out?? Fucking brilliant..you people..rock stars…university profesors, theologians,rabbi, ministers, priests, popes and kings..you disgust me..
Ok I blame myself, I blame myself ..I should never let him do all that crucifiction strum unf drang, but he talked me into..
How else are we gonna get their attention he says to me..
Ok says I ..you want drama… you got drama ..2008 years of drama and tsouris…
(he scratches his leg)
I think I got fleas…why? Does that disgust you..nothing human disgusts me..so why should it disgust you..i stink? That’s your opinion to my self I smell like a bed of roses..
(he sniffs)
THE STAGE FILLS WITH THE SMELL OF ROSES
what a night..look at those stars…through those clouds..of garbage and smoke…look at those stars..you know I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid no really…
(he points to heaven)
See those stars..i made those stars..all 45 700 56780934 trillion zillion of them..all of them with meticulous detail and guess what kids..?
I made you! Every molecule..and I made the angels..the seraphim and I made HIM, the angel of light and called him up to me and put him on the right side of my throne and gave him the kind of smarts only god could dream up and what does he do?
He tries to muscle in on my territory.Like a bum. You know the principal difference between a dog and a creation of mine is don’t ya..between an angel of pure light and a mutt is that a mutt wont bite you for feeding him….for taking care of him..ok I didn’t say that ..mark twain said it but then I created mark twain…
What a character! What balls!to muscle in on my territory after I raised him up. All kind and nice like,ready to give him territories and what does he do BAM!! He tries to snatch it out my hands like a low life..I treated him like a son and what..ah..theres a reason for everyting but I not getting into besides its Christmas Eve..
I said to my real son I said. Son, I called him son. Don’t bother, they’ll crucify you..if you try to help them…they will fucking kill you..
They call you a bum, a gangster, a trouble maker- go ahead heal the sick, make the blind see, give legs to the lame and balm to the lepers-food to the hungry and free the prisoners and then you watch-what happens..walk on water why don’t you…
The first cosmic law is this- no good deed goes unpunished, got it? But he wouldn’t listen not to me not to pappi..not to his mother.. and then he rolls his eyes heavenward “eloim eloim..why have you abandoned ,me??”
What did he expect me to do, rend the heavens and reach down and take him off that cross and blow up the fucking place???
What did he expect would happen?
Theres no figuring out people…even I cant figure em out and I made em..like job, remember him? He’s in the first part of thebook infact he’sin the oldest part of the book, I mean the oldest, there’s a reason for that I’llsplain it to you all later..i’ll be holding private sessions for those that want em in my dressing room especially the blonde in the front row,for 500 bucks..just kidding no..i’m not,just kidding..no I’m not..just kidding..no I’m not..
..job’s a good guy a little boring but a good guy ,the only thing wrong with him is nothing, nothings wrong, nice family good sexywife lots of children she bears him, big healthy happy farm fa,ily, rosy cheeks and all,lots of food, even the baryard animals are happy, the sheep the goats, the swine the pigs are laughing..everything is going along swimmingly as those british pricks might say, I’ll get to the British pricks later, I got a bone to pick so one day Lucifer angel of light, better known as Satan, the liar the deceiver, the actor, remember the ACTOR sidles up to me really sweat like, big red blue eyes flaring and says to me boy that job, hes a real good guy, says his prayers by night, gives you the burnt offerings, honors the Sabbath, all 10 commandments, ALL TEN!!! Everything in order loves the lord god with all his heart and soul and his mind and might BANG!!
100 silver drachmas he turns against you once the going get rough
Bang youre on says I I cant resist a good bet..we’ll talk later..
don’t ask, it just spilled out the me, ok maybe I got a bit of a gambling problem, I love a good bet, expect the unexpected and because as I have often said time and time again I amno.. not RE-SPECTER of persons
BANG – YOUR ON!
And so it begins – I throw the book at him locusts, plagues, famines, earthquakes floods he loses it all wife Chidren house the full catastrophe THIS is before came up with concentration camps cover the poor bastard in sores I mean bleeding pus and fart sores loses his hair his teeth his friends no one I mean no one will give him a helping hand, all his fair-weather friends..a his we love you job as long as you got money and land and property and prestige they bolt like demented jackrabbits a few even snicker in his face..hey job..your getting what you deserve. why would god do this if you hadn’t done some thing wrong, good point..good point..you musta done something..no helping hand here just..must be you….its beautiful.. they avoid him like the plague, there in his hour of sorest need, tell you something and he keeps praying and praying and loving and loving and a fasting and a praying finally last straw he breaks down weeps and weeps and wails and on his broken blistering knees looks up to the heavens in my general direction
“why oh god ..why???” why why why??
Why? Why not asshole?Cause I’m God and yer not!!!
All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, get it. Geerout!!
And that’s when I let him have it full blasters
Why? Says I “cause I’m god and your not” Cause I feel like it ok? And then I hit him with the old Elizabethan rag, the great shakeasperan shhit shot..love that guy what a playwright but then he stole it all from me and my writings but we’ll get into that later and says I to a crumbled mess of a human being,King James style..
WHERE WERT THOU WHEN I CREATED THE UNIVERSE…were wert thou when I created the UNIVERSE??
(Pause)
and that shut him up tight a nuns cunt…and not another peep out of him, not even a tiny squeak of a fart, you could hear the boards creek and the wind in the distant hills blow like desert songs.. of emptied broken –hearted..shards..i like that word..empty…
Were.wert.thou.
When i.
Created
The universe…
And then bingo I gave it all back 10 fold-I restored the harvest the locusts had eaten…
And I made a hundren silver drachmas in the bargain
You could heard a pin drop….
THE BEETHOVEN MOONLIGHT SONATA PLAYS THROUGHOUT THIS…
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
I love Beethoven.Stole it from me. I dictated. He wrote. Then I made him deaf, just to prove a point!!!
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And I set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and I saw that it was good.
MUSIC ENDS
Beautiful shit!!! Beethoven..So John Houston dies and goes to heaven and he meets st peter at the pearly gates;
“John Houston, John Houston, gods got a picture he wants you to direct..guess who wrote it..Shakeaspeare!!Guess who gonna design it..Michaelangelo we gott!! And Beethoven Beethoven as agreed to do the music, can you believe it??..the only problem..Gods got this ..girlfriend!!…”Gods got this girlfriend!! Get it.. Funny!!!
And then I made youse guys!!!
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
And I saw every thing that I had made, and, behold, it was very good.Perfect. Should have been all over then no??
But ye can not well accompany the devil..Can ye??
SOUND OF WIND AND THUNDER.TAKES OUT SMALL RADIO FROM HIS POCKET AND FIDDLES. TAKES OUT AIR HARMONICA –“DAISY..DAISY..”
Love short wave..gives me this mystical feeling..
Looks like snow.Its warming.Or snow? Let me check the scores. Yup Yankees won. As I predicted. Stockmarket down. 112 points. Missed one.I just made 22 trillion..
HE PUTS OUT TO FEEL THE FIRST FLAKES.
Love snow. Just love it.Its a fine invention of mine.Soft and gentle on Christmas Eve, is there anyting more beautiful??
SILENT NIGHT HOLY NIGHT PLAYS IN THE DISTANCE
SLOW FADE TO BLACK
INTERMISSION
LIGHTS UP .THE TRAMP IS PACING, TRYING TO KEEP WARM.STAMPING HIS FEET.
This global fucking warming. Rain instead of snow. but its great I hate the winters, sleeping on a grate freezing my fucking ass off,so its fine with me.. but I find it all so humiliating sometimes..so embarassing.. all those feet in front of my face and sometimes I fall asleep and when I wake up I think I’m back home in my bed, my mothers house with the cute little ducks on the wall..and the peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch at school..
HE STARTS TO TEAR UP
I miss my mamma, especially since I never had one and am self created. Its tough being self created I tell ya. Its lonely at the top..believe me.forThere be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:
The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.Peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of warm chocolate milk…“Innumerable devils have compassed me about… Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me: O Lord, make haste to help me” Help me, Lord. Ok I will.
BLACKOUT
LIGHTS SLOW UP THEN A VOICE.MUSIC
“waiter..water..for my daughter..for my daughter..waiter..water…water ..water..water..water..water..water..water..she drowned.
BLACKOUT
INTERMISSION
PART 2.
LIGHTS SNAP OPEN.GOD IS RUMMAGING.HE FINDS AN OLD RIPPED UP UNDERWEAR.A CHILDS DOLL. A TIN CAN. A LIGHT BULB.
GOD
What??So I’m rummaging.So what? Whats it to ya? I’m hungry.Whose do you suppose this was?? What little girl??My little girl?My little girl?I’m supposed to be some kind of a fucking joke,s that what I’m supposed to be,??you drive by in your limos,on your way to your strip clubs and your swingers parties with tinted windows and you stare at me like yu are looking at a martian or something..im a human being folks, just like you.every morning come to and grab my crotch and inch by inch I go down the hill to this corner right inch by inch rags blowing in the freezing wind on the freeway where the cars cant stop or sometimes stops and I put up a sign – WILL WORK FOR FOOD..SIGNED GOD..you know what youse are?? You’re a bunch of arsholes!! You think you rich fucks are gonna get away with anything?? Your seriously misguided- go ahead with your banks and yur credit cards and you insurance companies- here insure this!!
IT THUNDERS AND LIGHTHNING FLASHES
Yeah yeah I know a coincidence. As you get into your Porches and your Mercedes and your Lear Jets and while you have your high and mighty end meetings o figure out how to screw your fellow man ponder if there is enough money in the world to insure that your assholes wont fall off!!End run that!!
And I said let there be LIGHT and there was light and so was the woild created, but no that wasn’t good enuff –you needed the light bulb, the moon and the stars weren’t enuff..
Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.Be ashamed if know the meaning of the word and yes REPENT FOR THE END IS NIGH!!
HE FINDS A BROKEN TV AND THEN A BUSTED COMPUTER
You..whats this..?YOU had to have entertainment. And computers.It wasn’t enough to have trees and fish and flowers!! Yu had to have TV!!YOU BUNCHA GANGSTERS!! Your legs weren’t good enuff you had to have cars and bikes and trains and if I had wanted you to fly wouldn’t I have given you wings?I gave you nature and a mind what the fuck do you need entertainments for?? To pass the time??You aint got time to waste.. For, behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
HE STARTS TO BUILD A CHRISTMAS TREE OUT OF GARBAGE
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.ANDThe people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. (He) has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope hath (he) removed like a tree… He counts me as one his of enemies” “He has fenced me in so I cannot pass, and he has set darkness in my paths” (19:8).
HE IS RIPPING UP THE CARDBOARD AND THE WOODEN CRATE TRYING TO BUILD A FIRE..
I’m freezing. I need a match NOW. I really need shelter NOW.Its 20 below, this is gonna kill me..me.. feet and legs are numb,I may not make it thru another night..I need help I need companionship.I need warmth.. Please God don’t let me die this way have no one to turn to for you have placed a feast before me in the presence of mine enemies!!.Please help me… Why am I going through this nightmare… O Lord God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry, for my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.”
You have no idea, who I am..was..and you don’t care..why should you..Youre all so busy running around like scared rats..keep running..just keep running and whatever yu do don’t look back cause something might gaining on you.your just rats…scared ugly rats..living in feces and garbage..me I live in paradise.. this is heaven..youve got it all backwards and I laugh at you and feel sorry for you (He) has destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and my hope hath (he) removed like a tree… He counts me as one his of enemies” “He has fenced me in so I cannot pass, and he has set darkness in my paths” (19:8).
.
HE CHUCKLES AND COUGHS…
Emphysema.
I had an important job on Bay St,over 200 grand a year,perkes bonuses expense account, a Seville 5 bathroom 5 bedroom house,cause you know I was so important and of such service to the company my boss loved me.true love..one day ..my boss he takes me aside and tells me im one of his best and for this reason they were gonna let me off easy no pension,,no green parachute, no nothing the com..no really..I got a law degree from Queens, and then..I don’t know what happened..the bottle, I guess..I pissed myself off??..I kept working longer and longer hours like they said, like they told me..trying to make a living for me for my wife and my child n, not knowing and I work harder and harder and longer and longer hours and I come home and then that day came and everything is goner, where my kid?s where is she??then I hear this animal moaning coming from my old basements gone, theyre gone,i cant find them and then..the moaning gets louder and louder..i call out to them and i go downstairs and she’s hiding and she tells me Sarah..Sarah..
WHERE IS SARAH?? WHERE IS SARAH??DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN WHERE IS SARAH????
1. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead.
2. Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.
3. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.
4. Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.
5. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.
6. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.
7. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.
8. Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
9. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.
10. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
11. Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12. A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
13. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
14. Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
15. A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
16. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.
Let me kiss thee for thy lips are better than wine…..
After the funeral she change,such a little coffin, like a dolls d and she had this look in her eyes like something inside of her had been broken..this look..in the hospital they gave her these meds and then she came back home and just sat staring into the walls, just staring and then she was gone..every thing gone.. the furniture, the bank accounts..everything..gone in an instant and I just …fell apart..just fell apart…Is it too much to ask dear lord?
“for the lord shall cut off flattering lips and the tongue that speaks them..let the lying lips be put to silence…
1: Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said,
2: How long wilt thou speak these things? and how long shall the words of thy mouth be like a strong wind?
3: Doth God pervert judgment? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?
4: If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression;
5: If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty;
6: If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.
9: (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow….I hit the bottle and the bottle hit me right back
Nothing made sense anymore. No life..not death..career..home..country..day and night..the stars, the moon, the sea.. nothing..
They put me in a mental ward.I ended up in the Clarke Inst..they put me on meds said I was clinically depressed..I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning ..they fed me intravenously. after a year of drugs and therapy they threw me out..I was healed..I went home. But .there was no home left there was nothing for me..the street, the alleyways..jails..night and cold and then..I realized that I was God..God..God…and when I got it I left everything and I flushed the meds down the toilet, those cocksuckers..no-one gave a shit about me..I would have killed them if I had a sword.. Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
If I had a sword aah you would all befucked and his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
For Thou tellest me in my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me. In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.”
HE PAUSES AND STARES INTO SPACE.
I think I pissed myself…
What part of “thou shalt not kill, don’t you get?” You need a degree in calculus to figure it out??..you need a degree in deconstructionist semiology? Heigerian existentialism? Yu steal all the money in the world guess what..your a killer..you let someone starve, a child an old person..you kill..what part of it aint you getting?..is it that complicated?..you have to win an Oscar, a Nobel prize to understand get a phd on your phd??What the fuck is wrong with everyone..oh Im not judging..actually I do judge..the living and the dead..
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;what part of that don’t you get???
You! that’s the problem with man kind you!! and I include women in this equation, nothing is ever good enuff, not trees or stars or moon or infinite space.its always got be something else.i give you apples you want oranges I give you oranges you want pineapples I give you pineapples and you want pineapple flavoured snap gum with xylitol.I give you tea you want coffee with extra creamy latte and sorbitol espresso double shot and soybean syrup.
Whats with ouy guys? Why is enuff never enuff and enuff never too much and too much never enuff. I don’t get youse anymore than I got noah.i mean whats with the daughters?
For that matter what was with adam and eve? And their dysfunctional kids.Whats wrong with youse people? And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
His leaf also shall not wither.
HE PAUSES AND WAITS FOR A TRUCK TO PASS BY.THE NOISE IS DEAFENING.
I hate trucks.Loud dirty noisy fucking trucks.I hate machinery..whats wrong with the arms I gave you? And the legs I gave you? Not good enough..yu had to be stronger, faster, smarter??
I send someone along to spread the good word. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, for the hour of judgement is at hand and you chop his head off and put it on a silver platter just to impress some broad.Granted she had great tits. I’m on stone.
I make it perfect and you fuck it up.
Let me suggest something if I may..cut it out..and cut it out right now, if you know whats good for you which you obviously don’t. OK, maybe it’s a little too complicated so I send Moses along and write in stone in a language even an idiot would understand. Which part of thou shalt not kill don’t you get?
THUNDER
Hear that? That’s me talking.Clearing my throat as it were. Going ahem aheam..may I be so bold..may I be so bold as to try to get it into your thick heads that the hour of judgement is nigh and I caint seem to get no satisfaction. By the way the Stones..they work for me, not the other Guy.Dylan ..me, the Beatles..me boy was it ever me..Celine Dion, the other Guy.Sinatra lets just say..its a toss up.Beethoven me..Listz me, Chopin me, Vivaldi me, big time..Mozart 100 percent me, Bach, I give you ears you gotta make radio. Eyes you gota have a TV, internet porn, dating services, nothing is good enough for you…
Now you may find it funny, or tragic or sad. But the world I made and the world as it is now..its two very different things.Theres this world here
HE GESTURES
And then there the world you guys made…but soldiers are dying everyday in this world, soldiers, civilians, men women children, old sick grandmothers, rich businessmen or sooo…men and women are strapping on bombs and blowing themselves to smithereens!! We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement?War. What part of thou shalt not kill don’t you get???War.
That’s whats going on on this planet I made…you can run but you cant hide and if I feel like turning all of youse into pillars of salt..hey guess what..I CAN!!! For the first part of the story is ..
HE SNAPS HIS FINGERS
Come on, come on think about it..
Think about it..in the beginning there was the void, I mean the word and the word was made flesh, meaning what ..meaning youse..youre the flesh I’m talking about and if you are the incarnation of the word, then youse all are incarnations of me..my word..which is law..
So go figure it out..first there was nothing, zero squilch, nada, empty space and then I speak and fill it up..and there you are and there I am and there you are ..and there I am..i am that..i am..im popeye the sailor man..SHUT UP,SHUT THE FUCKUP! Your wars!!! Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.You are all of you unclean, not I!!
HE POINTS TO THE AUDIENCE, A MEMBER THEREOF
When Im speaking to you shut the fuck up, for the Lord is my Shephard and I shall not wander..your God is a vengeful God, a wrathful God.. have you fucking repented your sins you fucking weasel..no? then shut the fuck up..What do you think this is a dress rehearsal? You do?well then who am I and who are you?Yu think I’m some homeless tramp with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than peruse the fucking want ads and the obituary?So who the fuck are you???I’m serious motherfucker!!For ye eat The bread of adversity, and drink the waters of affliction.
WELL, FUCK YOU!
(pauses, quiet)
And the horses you rode in on, all 4 of them. I’m glad you’ll be ok when I..ride out of here..I gotta find a bottle..I know I got one stashed right here
HE RUMMAGES THRU THE GARBAGE, TAKES OUT A BOTTLE OF SCREECH AND A SOGGY CIGARETTE…
Now I know some of youse out there, is thinking whats God doing smoking and drinkin-to these individuals I say
SO WHAT!so the fuck what..what business is it of yours what God does or doent do or if he dies on a cross in some godforsaken hole in a corner of the infinite galaxy, or sits under a tree gazing at his navel, or has a farm in the north country fair..remind me oh one oh one .. Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.
HE SINGS AND DRINKS
If your travellin in the north country fair
Where the winds blow heavy on the borderlines
Remind me o one, o one who lives there
For she once was a true love of mine…
For He was cut off out of the land of the living.
I know that by know your all thinking who is this asshole?
I’ll tell you who I am I’m god..and your not..i’m god and your not..get it..Job screaming at me for attention..why? why? Why?
Cause I feel like it asshole that’s why..cause im god and your not and “where wert thou when I created the universe, asshole..”
Were the fuck wert thou??When I was born…I love that!
It’s a mystery this God-life thing- some of you out there don’t believe in me well all I can say is—I don’t believe in you..you don’t believe in me and fuck you I don’t believe in you but hey..there are no atheists in a trenches..interesting huh? No atheist on the firing line and then its..
MUMBLING
MMMmmmtttt please help me..oh god…hhhhhnnnmmm oh my dear god..help me me help me..heeeeeelp me..dont let me die..dont let me die alone in this alleyway and I promise to be good..i promise…honest.. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.Oh God!!! Oh God!! Oh help me!!!!
BLACKOUT
LIGHTS UP
HE DRINKS.
Fuck ..after shave…I’m drinking aftershavelotion..oh the shame the shame..he humiliation…
SHADOW OF A POLICEMAN CUTS ACROSS THE ALLEYWAY
Oh oh..chesse it..the cops..why good evening officer.. taking a break from the evenings festivities at the goose and duck soire?. Am I drunk??Sure I’m drunk. Sir I can assure you occifer than nothing the purest of spring waters has passed thru these lips.move on?Oh Lucifer how thou art fallen.. Why certainly I would love to move on but where to?To earth? To heaven? Where is my home? For the son of man hath not a place to lay his head.And I need a shave honest..occifer..
VOICE
Move on.
And where should I move to?and once I get there I’ll still be god and still be everywhere at once so why push it
Down the street?I’ll still be there. All the same to me here or down the street…don’t you get it?ok ok forgive my importance occifer…forgive my self importance but let me explain something to you sometimes I can be the biggest shithead yo have ever know and in you worst nightmares-I can be a gangster like yu have never known so would be very careful to tread in my presence, capisce?and you can arrest me and put me in a prison and give me the opportunity to hang myself..
Cancer,disease, taxes, war, concentration camps are a picnic compared to what I am capable of doing.I created stars billons of them, for kicks and the cockroach just for laughs.So who are you? Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.Occifer.
VOICE
Move on!!!
MAN
Yes..yes..move on..
VOICE
Move on if ye know whats good for ya…
MAN
YES…yes..(as though listening to distant thunder) move on..
Tremble and fear me if you have any sense left in
That noggin of your because I can blow you back into the dark ages if I feel like it so don’t get me feeling that way-play nice-stay cool-all I ask is a little respect-a little bonhomie, a little admiration- be nice to me and I will be nice to you- cosmic law-don’t sweat the small stuff and its all small stuff-give us this day our daily bread and all that stuff-daily not yearly, not monthly –are yu getting it?And no outer darkness and gnashing of teeth for you- no trembling in awe and perdition- Are. You. Getting it???
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots:
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
Are you getting it?I don’t think so.I don’t think your getting it.You’ve never gotten it and I’ve been close then someone, the virgin mary, somewhen interecedes of your behalf”give em a 2nd chance, and a 3 and a 4th and a two hundred and 53 and I do –you can all thank m son for that one but ask yourselves this –how much fucking patience do you think I got????ass yourselves..how umuch?? Is there a number…is there a number? Is there a number I can call?A number I can come up with??
Do I get to call someone for advise? Is there someone for me to turn to?Why am I on the streets, in an alleyway scrounging for food? What kind of a God am I anyway?
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?
Maybe Im just a homeless wreck. Maybe I’m just a schizoid,off his meds, out of his rocker. Maybe that’s who God is….
PAUSES
SINGS UNDER BREATH
“what if god where one of us
just a slob like one of us
just a stranger on the bus
trying to find his way home
no one to talk to on the phone
excpt the pope mabe in rome
(from song –WHAT IF GOD WHERE ONE OF US by…..
A GIANT SHADOW CROSSES OVER HIM
BLACKOUT
HE IS STARING INTO THE NIGHT SKY.
What is that a UFO? Why am I scared all the time, if I’m made of love why do I shake and tremble and make the universe shake and tremble? Whats with that?I need a smoke but I’ve run out and a drink. I got the shakes bad this time (HE HOLDS HANDS OUT) look..look..look upon my works.. ye mighty and …despair..for I am a wrathful god, a jealous god, a vengeful god and.i’ll grind you bones to make..my daily bread..for where wert thous when I did created the world?
I didn’t ask for much…
SINGS
“god said to Abraham kill me a son
god said man you must be putting me on
god said nooo abe said what??god said you
can do what you want
but the next time you see me coming
you better run
Abe said where you want this killing done?
Take it on down to
Highway 61
Zoom
THE OLD TRAMP TAKES OUT HARMONICA.HE PLAYS, FRANTIC…
I used to play one of these in the 60’s I was part of a famous rock and roll band..groupies, millions, adoring screeming fans, wrecked hotels, swimming pools full of blondes..the whole 9 yards..i died a wreck a drug addict and alcoholic..died my heart stopped and when I came to in the hospital..i was me.. this guy..and theni discovered who I really was- God. I was god. Dog. D.O.G.
God! What? That spells dog? God is backwards?
I got a little ADHD?
I wasn’t happy.
I had fame , I had money..I wasn’t happy. I had babes.I had baubles. I had fancy cars. The money was stolen. The babes betrayed me.The cars were repossessed, the baubles disappeared like soap scum in wind. Everyone betrayed me.The houses, the travel, the vacations in Tahiti, the whores in Thailand, the audulaton, the awards- all bullshit. My wife throws me out, my business manager rips me off, everyone throws their backs to me and here I am an old bum in an alley way bumbing smokes and regaling you assholes with my tales..for I am Job.
TO WALKING SHADOW
“spare a nickel spare a dime spare a nickel spare adime”(superfast, and then over the speakers located on different parts of the stage, the garbage bin, the walls, the sidewalk, voices- spare a nickel spare a dime)
And then SHE broke my heart- who mary madalenes? Yeah mary magdelene, that fucking whore… The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
I lose everything, the very universe I created…weird aint it? I create it and then I destroy it weird aint it, destroy it create it, destroy it create it ho hum…. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.Its Christmas Eve.
HE SINGS AND DANCES “HAV A NAGILA” which turns into “HAVE A BAGEL, HAVE A NAVEL
He dances and DRINKS…
BLACKOUT
PART 3.
SOMETHING HAS CHANGED.
WHEN THE LIGHTS COME UP HE NO LONGER LONGER THERE, THEN UNDER THE GARBAGE SOMETHING STIRS. ITS HIM- GOD. HE NOISE OF THETRAFFIC IS GONE.SOUND OF THUNDER.HE IS NO LONGER TOOTHLESS.
Where the fuck am i???Where the fuck am I?I got such a head…
HE ROLLS AROUND THE GARBAGE.
Where the fuck is it? My pistol? Where is it? Mama? Mama I’m scared. I drempt I was a homeless wreck who thought he was God, and lived in an alleyway, forgotten, forlorn, forsaken and my friends and family had all abandoned me..I remember my room with the cute little teddy bears and peanut butter sandwiches and summers at the cottage under a full moon sky…and my first communion..and the prom..it was..how?
HE STARES INTO AUDIENCE
Who you lookin at?Are you lookin at me? I don’t exist.
I’m a figment of your imagination. You can use that brain of yours to prove I’m not real. What do you see?An old bum? A homeless wreck? Another accident of existence, chaotically put together?Chao will always come. ?but it will pass. Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning?
PAUSES
I’m staring into the ether and see nothing.God help me.
BLACKOUT
LIGHTSUP.ITS RAINING. THE HOMELESS WRECK IS COVERED IN GARBAGE A BOTTLE OF AQUA VELVA IN HIS FILTHY HANDS-BOTTLES STREWN EVERYWHERE. HE GROGGILY COMES TO.THUNDER.
I’m I’m in my mouth which doth cleave and my tongue..my tongue..I have been shipwrecked before ..3 times and scorned beated with the lash and the rod..39 times..starved and laughed at ..beaten tortured and imprisoned..for..what the fuck where am i..? The voice said, Cry. And I said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
HE SHIVERS.SOUND OF RAIN
HE SINGS
“waitor, water..for my daughter
for my daughter bring some water..
IT’S A WESTERN JAZZ TUNE CIRCA 1934
“water for my daughter..waiter..
oh king of satyrs..
whyever dost thou refuse
to grasp boldly the sword..and use
only fierce words for thy weapons of war..
of war! War! War! War!if a man takes
his knife for sharpening..thou graIndest
thy teeth..
And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
I SHOULD HAVE KILLED THE MOTHER FUCKER!
Taken a knife and sliced him open from stern to stem and her that rounded bitch from hell!!!!Walkin by me like that.Ignoring my very existence! Like I don’t exist, like I am so homeless wrech you all can ignore. I am on the street. You should all be ashamed!
“waitor..water..for my daughter..”
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
And when I cam into the office that morning Joe Edwards my boss, looks at me and says-“Looks like we’re gonna have to let you go Mike..”It’s a roundup..But Joe says I..ah joe I been working here for 30 years..I expected a gold watch not kick in the teeth for my hard years of labor..and he steals everything from me..that cocksucker..everything..
HE RISES
I get home. She’s gone, taken my daughter,my son, cleaned out my back bank account.The taxes..how could I pay the taxes..the taxes.. and a certain man from Galilee did come to him to Jesus saying “If you are the Messiah..then tell me why I am such a rich asshole..”And he could not answer him. He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him.
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.
Go thou ..today..I see to you verily I will see you in heaven..
SHOUTS
“Show me a token for good!!!; that they which hate me may see it, and be ashamed: because thou, Lord, hast helped me, and comforted me.”
SOUND OF A SIREN.THEN THE WIND. A DOG BARKS.
How many beatings can a man take?
As many as he can.And they hung him on a tree that his ribs might break and his lungs fill up and he suffocated and rolling his eyes before his death he said to the great green hoc age heaven-forgive them father for they know not what they ..doo doo..dooo waiter, water for my daughter..fr my daughter and me and while your at it a good long draft of Calvados..briocon unitas..
Lets eat…
“waitor, water..for my daughter
for my daughter bring some water..
oh daughters of Zion!!
OUT OF THE GARBAGE HE MAKES A TABLE AD CHAIR..
Ah better, much better lets see whats on the menu today..What no chautbriand? No surf and turf..?
HE RETCHES
Hoc Age! See to this!Hoc Age.
And a certain man had 3 servants and he said to them..”Look I’m going on a business trip..I want yuse guys to take care of my business i.e. the money..and he broke it up tres partes est and the to the first servant he gave the 3d part and to the 2nd the #d part and th the 3d the #d part and he left and the first servant whose name was Ivor ran to the a field and buried the treasure at night so that it might be safe and the second put it into mutual funds and the 3d went to Casinorama and gambles and the man came back..
“Well says he”Wheres my loot and the gambling fool said hey baby..I gambled and won big time and presented him with the money 20 fold and the 2nd whose name was noname said hey baby I put it mutual funds got out just before the crash and tripled your loot and the first kind and wise servant he says- I made sure you would NOT lose it man and HERE IT IS baby- and the man said to the first two”thou art wise and clever fellows sit ye on the right side of my fathers mansion and to the first servant who was only doing his job he said “Get thee gone wicked and rotten idiot, and cast him into outer darkness where there was great wailings and much gnashing of teeth,,,
ONE OF HIS TEETH FALLS OUT.HE STARES AT IT A LONG TIME THEN PUTS IT IN HIS POCKET..
I cant feel my feet. My legs are numb. Maybe I should see a doctor..or something..
SHADOWS AND HONKING OF HORNS
Hey baby..spare some change..for a homeless wreck..for God?
HIS HANDS REACH OUT AS IF CATCHING IMAGINARY FLIES..
Gotcha…(as RED SKELETON) why yes Mrs Mugilikatty..
I did bring home the bacon as you requested but forgot the bottle of milk. I was a little busy getting crucified..I know its an odd request but can I look at yur perky little titties??Prepare ye the way..Miss Miggilkatyy..II’M AH COMIN..I’M A COMIN..IM A COMIN..
BLACKOUT.LIGHTS UP.STAGE IS EMPTY.
THE ACTOR PLAYING THE HOMELESS WRECK IS GONE FROM THE STAGE. HE IS CLEANED UP AND WEARING A SUIT.SEATED IN THE FRONT ROW OF THE THEATRE. HE WALKS UP ON STAGE.
ACTOR
Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to apologize to you tonight for having dragged you out of your warm safe and comfortable homes to this dive.And to have to make you pay money for this drivel is an outrage and it insults even me.It insults the ancestors, it even insults the unborn. Above all it insults the Great Creator, he who made heaven and earth and the little flowers therein.
When I made the decision to dedicate myself to the act-king profession I followed the following course of logic. Since everything is this universe is matter , it follows that the movement of matter, how matter operates…uh..its equivalence…huh…it follows that..it follows ..where was hi? Hi?I’m signaling thru the flames.Like Noah I have decided to refund your money and add a ten percent tip for good measure for having wasted your time here tonight, you all went out tonight for an evening of entertainement and what do you get-bupkus –that’s why you all got off your comfy haunches and got in to your car??.And for what?didst thou not go out and pay for parking and walked thru the portals of this decrepit poor excuse of a synagogue, er theatre, and buy drinks an dpopcorn and eat of the fatted lamb andinstead of getting menlellsons number 3-you got bupkus, a phizzle as it were in the whispered part of nothingness-why?why?? why??? Oh lord help me, help us all for the lord thy god is a vebgeful and pissed off god and if yu think for a geeky minute…and what do I find here when I entered? Money lenders, prostitutes, a den of iniquity…
THERE IS A LOUD SIREN
Ahh the apocalyse..the end of days..and the2 nd coming..its time..and in those days…david was king of the jews..and what a cat he was..biggest pussy hound in the old testament..no couldn’t get enough of em..redheads blondes, brunettes, big tits, small tits, firm little asses with long waists, just like his dad..a chip off the old block..harems..concubines..this the ancestor of my son, jeshsua though the lineage of joseph and in those days..Solomon was king and was considered the wisest man in the world and apparently the horniest..kinda goes hand in hand don it?Shows to go ya. But king Solomon loved many strange women.
So leave paradise, leave the garden im throwing you out you and that whore.GET THE FUCK OUTTA MY HOUSE!!!!
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Go one beat it and don’t come back GO OUT THERE! Into outer darkness where there shall be the gnashing of teeth..for I your Lord God am a jealous God am a wrathful God am an envious God full of fire and brimstone and I make you look like a marshmaleow roast..you see..you see..I am the gangster of gangsters…
HE LIGHTS UP A BUTT
I gave you the arc of the covenant..I made a special deal wth youse..I said ok, you are chosen among all the peoples of the earth even the wallabies as beimg special and what do you do you crucify my son..you spit in my eye..and generally speaking treat me like shit..what is it that you lack???
Didn’t I give you the sun?
Didn’t I give you the moon and the stars?
Well didn’t I?THINK about it. What was the look of your face before your parents were born. Before you were born where were you. Why does the curtain of blackness fall that separates the living from the dead and memory stops. How far back can any of you remember?
Do you remember your first year on earth? Your first month? Week? Day? Hour? Minute ? second? Where were you before that and where will you go when your eyes close for the last time.
MUSIC AND SNOW
You worry about money. You worry about health. You worry about food. You worry about shelter. You spend your days and nights in fear and worry. And desire and need.you worry about everything. If you have money you worry it will be stolen and if you don’t you worry that you will never get it….
You just don’t get it do ya??When will you get it? When you die? When will you ever be happy? When your dead?
There was a man and his name was Abraham, spotless son of me and he lived a long time ago at the beginning of time and he gave birth to all you.And God made him father of his people and of the peoples of the earth.And he was their king and God spoke to him and said “Abraham, bring me your son and place him on the altar as a burnt offering to me, that I may be satisfied.”
HE COUGHS..
And Abraham, who put his trust and faith in me, the Lord of Hosts, Creator of Heaven and Earth did was he was told and an Angel of the Lord grabbed his might arm as he was about to kill his own son.
And the Lord rewarded him for his obedience and the Lord blessed him even unto 9 generations and blessed his children and his childrens children.
Of course he did fuck his maidservant. No-ones perfect.
Abraham was a wise man who knew.And me.. know nothing, see nothing, hearnothing…
Why don’t you know? What have you forgotten? Close your eyes and think.Bells and whistles, candle book and power..
HE CLOSES HIS EYES. AND CONCENTRATES.
I once has a home and a son and a wife and a throne.But no longer do.. I once had a job and a place and a car and a life and a mother and a father.They passed away And I had brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends and went to school and I went to university andI was successful in my career.And it all disappeared. And it was all taken away.Because everything must be taken away before you will listen to my still quiet voice. Because your brain has too much noise and traffic and roaring.Because the nations of the earth are at war and brother fights brother. Because some take everything and other nothing.
I once had a home and a wife and a son. And my son was crucificied on the cross of forgetfulness as a deliverance of your sins.And you were forgiven and washed in the blood of the lamb.And upon tis rock did I build my church.
Because I am the Lord thy God, creator of heaven and earth!!
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
May I know to refuse the evil and choose the good!
Behold.A child is born.A great light in the world and his name shall be….
MUSIC UP.ITGETS LOUDER AND LOUDER, SHATTERING AS DOES THE LIGHT THEN;
BLACKOUT.SIRENS.SOUND OF SNOWFALL.
LIGHTS UP TO REVEAL EERIE EARLY MORNING LIGHT.THER BUM IS DEAD WRAPPED UP IN RAGS AND CARDBOARDA NEWSPAPER BLOWS..CHRISTMAS MUSIC PLAYS.THE LIGHTS DIE OFF TO BLACKNESS.
22 Apr
partes doc for dogs, a critical essay on the state of theatre
Posted by Nick Mancuso in General thoughts and comments. Comments Off
SECONDA PARTE
A Continuation in the Study of Calabrian-born actor, Tony Nardi’s “3 letters”, commedia del arte deluxe, in the context of the Canadian Critical Mindset Distress Disorder.(CCMDD)
DOS DOGS PARTES SUM IN-BETWEEN-THE-CRACKS-BARK-THE-DOCS
“The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour..” Aristotle (the Greeks called it Arete, there is none of it now)
In the 1920’s the great theoretician of the Theatre of Cruelty, the French actor Antonin Artaud railed against the deadly theatre of the bourgeoisie of France, in a Age of real, coming, unpretended terrors, a cunning time that would soon call forth the atrocities of Nazism and Stalinism, to bear witness to something no civilization could have ever imagined;the concentration camp, the Gulag and virulent Corporatism.
In his book “The Theatre and its Double”, he wrote about the actor “signaling through the flames.” Mr. Artaud died penniless in a madhouse. The horrors were yet to come and the flames he spoke of became all too real, all too virulent, as the Century of Horror and War, of Dresden and Hiroshima began. Mr. Artaud’s theatre of cruelty and silent scream was not to be heard. His determination to shatter the falsehood of reality went unseen and unheard. His desire to conquer the tyranny of meaning and language, forgotten and ignored. Reality usurped it.
Surrealism and Futurism were replaced by The 3 Stooges, Hitler and Bugs Bunny, Stalingrad and Auswitzch. The “real” had drowned it all out. The “surreal” and the unimaginable had come all too real. All too imaginable. The surreal had become the real.
The invention of the technology of TV alone proved that. Internet and Cyber-space proves it to the nth degree everyday. Human proportions are no longer valid, reliable or important. The “actor” has been eclipsed.He has become in effect an “action doll” or as the Italian director of emptiness in the midst of meaning, Antonioni called him a“moveable space.”.But even “moveable space” is preferable to the reality of Reality TV and corporatist filmmaking and the current state of the Canadian theatre.
There is no need for theatre, not anymore. There is no need for Aristotelian valour, manly or otherwise. What is Bunel and Alfred Jarry compared to Facebook? What is cruelty? What is the “3 letters?”Why would Aristotle even bring it up? All actors are Johnny Fontanes.
And yet,this is the context for the delivery of Mr Nardi’s 3 letters. This is the new reality of an unreal world.And Mr Nardi has delivered it with great force, using only the Actors tools,signaling though the flames with the voice and the body.Mr Nardi is not Johhny Fontane, and the critics have a huge problem with that. If all actors are Johhny Fontanes and Mr Nardi is an actor, then Mr Nardi is a Johhny Fontance. But if he is not then what is he?
What does it matter if Facebook is the new theatre; the theatre of our Age?A man walking a lobster, on the street, means nothing.We now have lizards dressed as bankers and insurance brokers.The hidden measure of success is money and only money and everyone is now an actor for 15 minutes. Facebook is the new Cineplex Odeon. And pornography. The social currency is an extension of voyeuristic free enterprise based upon one’s societal stock and stack shored up by tons of currency.This is the only standard.This is the neo-cenosure,the gold standard,which is no longer a standard. But then neither is the American Buck. What is it then? Is it horror? Terror? Torture? Censorship? Prisons? Being a winner now means that you can say “duh, duh” countless times and not be gagged or even masked.What is the thermometer of complaint, the sonar scan of feeling, the magnetoscope of correct, manly action- i.e. valor as it was once referred to? What is the “3 letters?”
In this world everyone is now an actor,in the same manner that everyone is now a stockbroker and derivatives trader, and rockstar and fashion model and newscaster.Its all interchangeabl bleeps bops and scans with endless clip , and means nothing.The medium is the message. And the message is clear.Crtics are undertakers, bad ones.
Facebook and Lavalife,Youtube and Cyberspace have usurped human proportion and consciousness, Matrix-like.This then is the new creative currency of our times in an Age of Hiltoniana, an age of Trump, a “bushed” age. A slick and sickened age filled with Babel&Detritus Inc.The theatre has become a limited liability. The sheer level of idiocy on the part of the critical response proves it.In 1983, actor/director Andre Gregory announced it in his film “My Dinner with Andre”.In 2010 Tony Nardi rescuscitated the Artaudian corpse, asking the question; Why does it refuse to die? Why did it and why hasn’t it been buried?
“Chaque fois qu’on parle de l’acteur canadien anglais Tony Nardi, on souligne ses origines italiennes. Je me suis demandé quelques fois d’où vient cette insistance à souligner cette particularité culturelle, alors que Nardi est un vrai Torontois”
Why underline his orgins period? So why is Mr. Nardi doing staring into a MacPro and talking? Why bother? The Critics on one side, Dogg the Bounty Hunter and Celebrity Rehap on the other. A million bugs bunny “actors.” Acting all the time in the age of 24/7. Why is there in fact any theatre anymore?Telecommunication and CyberSpace have, as Marshal McLuen pointed out almost 50 years,transformed the entire audience of the planet into actors. Is there any audience left or has it evaporated into space? Why not become a Roman Orator, like Cicero? An apologist like Socrates? A Dialectician? A lecturer? A madman?A mathematician of words, using derivative thoughts and derivative action? Why create the “3 letters?”
In the Dog/Doc Age, these sorts of arguments present seeming irrelevant questions to irrelevant answers. There can be no relevant actors in irrelevant times.When the audience can no longer bear to hear or see then what is the true nature of the original theatre? What is an actor and what can he “act” other than cops, drugdealers, and mafia lawyer? What is theatre? What is a Tony Nardi?Why speak? Why rant? Why signal? What a piece of work is man! Why speak, Mr.Nardi?
CRITICAL REPORT,DATELINE; NUMBLAND
Tony Nardi is back again, with his Two Letters … And Counting! show, which is more or less a solo rant by a disgruntled actor who tears into the Canadian theatrical establishment with the dual war cries of “Mediocrity!” and “Inauthenticity!”. Theirs, not his, I’m assuming.
Yet Another Canadian Critic
The Critic assumes correctly. We know Mr. Tony Nardi is an actor” he is part of the Canadian Cultural landscape in definitio”. He has written directed produced acted in countless shows both in English in French and Calabrian, including the Quebecois classics “La Deroute, and La Sarrasin. Including his first hit play “Storia Del Immigrante, An Immigrants tale which he played to packed house at 21 in Montreal, so why isn’t he acting?Why is he concerned with the dual cry of mediocrity and inauthenticity when this time he is clearly in the wrong and inauthentic.So states the critic.And in one sentences dismisses the entire opus.
“Mr Nardi is back again..”, like a bad penny, the conscience of the king, like the ghost of Hamlet and why is he acting? One s”hould “souligne” his “orginis Italienne, even though he is “Torontois” and Calabrian born. Some thing wont give here with the logic, Boolean or otherwise.
“How can it be otherwise when mine uncle is king…?”states Hamlet,the first modern actor.
It seems that according to Aristotle, the first and greatest mind to have written on the subject of theatre in his “Poetics” that it has something to do with “valor” whatever that is, some clearly lacking in these critics.It also has something to do with “instruction for the mature mind.”
AN UPSTART CROW SPREADS HIS WHITE HARPY WINGS
There seems to be a problem here when according to the critical radical cache that the actor is only playing an exaggeration of himself, when all around actors are just playing themselves. All artists and perhaps all critics like to think of themselves as authentic,sincere, as different, as perhaps even “original”, that often misguided word.Every human ebing wishes to be admired, even loved, actors in particular.
Exaggeration and inauthenticity are headnumbing accusations and used as a label,carry and bear the brunt of a strong hard fist to the face. Not a slap which asks for a reply.During the performance we become aware of that invisible fist.An argument breaks out in our collective heads, a barfight.Something is not OK at the OK Coral.
But are these critical responses perhaps not an accurate portrayal of the “Critic” at his very finest inauthentic and exaggerated self? For the actor stands in front of the polished and untarnished mirror of a psychic X ray machine casting out demons and reveals ourselves to ourselves. Projects the hidden shadow, our sick “anima” as Dr Jung wrote and he holds it up to our awful, distorted and meaningless nature.Its no small wonder the Critic, doesn’t appreciate the message.
“NON VOGLIO PETTIGOLEZZE” Suicide note left by Italian Author Cesare Pavese (I want nothing to do with the mundane..with trifles..)
Picasso said it best when he told us “the truth is a lie…”
SECONDA PARTES DOG/DOS
ZOOM !ZOOM!
Car commercial
It says it all, speed, strength, fun! Two words from the mouth of a young boy watching a car speed by staring into Cameria. Ride the car, buy the car, be the car.
But then, what if one wishes otherwise? What if in fact one wants to be a human being and not a car?
“If you are an actor, cease immediately, all your INTENSITY and inspiration will be for naught. However the highest ASPIRATION of Mankind, is to ACT!”
Odd.
The Georgian Mystic Gurdjeiff,as reported by Ouspenski, the scientist/seeker.
In other words it is perhaps better to be the film-stock, rather than the film, the harddrive rather than the software. The Canadian critic does what most Canadian critics have always done best, they attack the man and not the argument.
In order to be an ad hominem Canadian critic, it seems, and write for the national papers,it is necessary, it seems, to have the following characteristics,
1. Hate or at the least be embarrassed by the homegrown theatre (why aren’t you on the sports desk?)
2. Hate or be embarrassed by Canadian Actors.(Unless recognized elsewhere, especially by Britain or the U.S.A.)
3. Have minimal experience or knowledge of either theatre or actors.(But pretend otherwise)
4. Love anything “other”, like sports, politics or financial news. (But present oneself as a man of culture and erudition)
5. Hate anything in time present and consider it inferior to another other, any other, and any other time and place, but certainly inferior to any past found elsewhere.(But pretend otherwise)
6. Know more about the art of acting than any actor out there.(And know that that knowledge is certain as the law of gravity)
7. Be conscious of the all elements of the above, and be above that.
8. And…
9. Forget all of the above
In order to be an actor of Mr Nardi’s caliber it is necessary to have the following responsive characteristics;
1.Be able to accept vitriol and caustically stupid barbs from ignorant men who get paid to be ignorant and caustically stupid.(And smile)
2.Not be paid for working diligently, suffering diligently,working diligently, and having a great deal of natural and God given talent and applying it with great effort and a great deal of blood sweat and tears.(And be grateful)
3 Accept mud-slinging as a way of life and be accused of slinging mud by the mud slingers. (And pretend not to know that)
4.Love the theatre,acting, people, history, knowledge, beauty and truth and strive towards these things knowing fully that the only thing that matters to the critic is money, power, prestige,delusional lies, and the sports desk.(And ignore it, in order to survive)
5.know more about the art of acting than any critic and also know that this knowledge is considered by the Critic to be in turn delusional and the actor, who after all is merely an actor must pretend otherwise relegating such knowledge to the director, the critic and elsewhere and still get on with the show.(But forget it)
6.Be conscious of all these elements and still get in front of an audience and “emote”with the full knowledge that this emoting will in all probability create enemies and most of the time just be a target for mud and slings and arrows.(And deny it)
7. Be expected to smile politely when the mudslinging stops and clean ones face with vinegar and walk away,like a good gibe.(And get drunk)
8Forget all of the above.(And get drunk)
Such is “a life in the theatre” in Canada, Anno Domini present day.Given that this kind of knowledge, would in any other line of work be considered a debit why would anyone, let alone Mr Nardi write, produce, star, and use up his savings to stage and film along with his producer? Make neither sense nor dollars and cents.Yet Mr Nardi is stone cold sober.
Is he, in the words of author publisher Antonio D’alfonso “Gambling With Failure?” Why does failure even enter into the equation? Since when is the strive and drive towards any artform a form of failure? Are Canadian theatre artists set up for failure?Are Canadian artists doomed?
Here is what Mr Nardi writes about in his analysis of the NTS the National Theatre School of Canada and its approach to the education of actors in Canada;
“It’s difficult in a climate and theatre community of largely half-hearted group hugs and the perennial obsession with the celebration of hurt feelings to exercise critical thinking.”
ON THE NATURE OF CRITICAL THINKING AND THE CELEBRATION OF HURT FEELINGS
There is an ancient syllogism in the realm of logic which states that if all actors are liars then it follows that if Mr Nardi is an actor then by definition Mr Nardi is a liar. But what if Mr Nardi is not a liar?What if he is not an actor.
Something clearly does not gibe here.Why would Mr Nardi who has won the Canadian Oscar twice, the Canadian Emmy and the Canadian Tony many times do this kind of thing?If Robert DeNiro had won two Oscars, two Tony’s and 3 Emmys and then written “3 letters” and performed it Off Broadway and been accused of ranting and being disgruntled and been referred to as mediocre and inauthentic, his not theirs, there might occur an armed uprising among the creative communities of New York, Hollywood America and the United Nations.Perhaps even Paris.There would be outrage. And probably a bullet or two. What if in fact Mr Nardi is telling the truth? What then? Mr Nardi is clearly not an actor and therefore must be playing an “exaggeration of himself..” So states the Critic.
Then why has he received the Best Actor award not once, but twice? Someone else must be doing the acting, an invisible influence as it were, pulling the strings by a sleigh of hand.In Canada the hidden assumption is that it is the director not the actor who wins the acting award.The actor is merely a puppet, a pagliaccio. What happens if the “actor” were to cut the strings?
In Canada there is a Hockey-like, quick kick to the stomach followed by a resounding indifference, above all from the creative community, and from the actors themselves. The Quebecois critic states that his crime is that he is from Toronto which makes perfectly insane Boolean sense, even though he is from Montreal ,while the English papers accuse him of ranting and being Calabrian born.The argument is sealed before it is opened. A perfect storm of stupidities, in which nothing is revealed other than what in fact is being revealed.Nothing.The truth is a lie, and valor in the arts is for harpies with large beating white wings.And valor is for donkeys.
But Mr Nardi in “3 letters” has accomplished the impossible, he has written Hamlet’s “The Mousetrap.” And he has trapped “the conscience of the King.”
Well done Signor Nardi! Che cazzo!
“Let us go then, you and I…”
T.S. Eliot
In the recent past, Artists and Jews, Gypsies, Actors, writers, painters, photographers, composers, musicians, were sent to the trenches, to the concentration camps, to the Gulag and to prison.
But Paradise Lost and Found and Lost again, was built in America and Canada. Immigration throughout the world had hurled the “emigrant” into an exponential arc, whose centre was nowhere, and its circumference- everywhere- and with it the entire art and culture of a nation.. The human condition of Dislocation has become the norm and not the exception in our time.Hence all men are now actors, performing for the “other.”
Calabrians, like Mr. Nardi were forced to move by dire necessity to all parts of the world. Concepts of exile, dislocation, elimination, separation non-inclusion alien-nation-ation, isolation, have been internalized, then denied existence.Their children paid the price.
In “3 letters” Mr Nardi chatters, talks, shrieks, and laughs about it. He does what the “commedia del’arte” actors have always done, make us laugh and cry about the hidden secrets of the societal lie, and he tries to wake us up. But he doesn’t tell us that is what he is doing. He remains mum.
Language and theatre have been forgotten and denied and buried. Forced into exile. Language is a lie. The theatre of cruelty and the poor theatre Mr. Artaud and Mr. Grotowski spoke of becomes the only sane response. Obfuscated and metaphysical theatre, a theatre invisible to itself. If language has been co-opted by tyranny, as Mr. Stuart Chase points out in his book “The Tyranny of Words”, then by co-opting tyranny Mr. Nardi is on the right path. He is pointing the way out, the exit.
In the Soviet Union and else where Artists were sent to Siberia, to prison, or else beaten and tortured. In America where they drank themselves to death or died with a needle in their arm, there was no need to shut them up. “Beetroot” Brecht left Santa Monica for East Germany.He’d had enough.He was freer on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He preferred it and founded the world-renouned Berliner Ensemble.. In the meantime Canada did what it has always done best- exile its raw resources and talent and crush the rest. Will the “3 letters” travel? Where is there to travel to? China? The Moon?Roumania? How does the language of “3 letters and counting” compare to the language of politicians and Wall St bankers and burgeoning billionaires? Of Bertolt Brecht or Eugene O’Neil? Of Ionesco and Dario Fo?In what sense is language even language anymore? Where is Canadian theatre and film?
“The Dog Dos Partes Torque vectoring All-Wheel Drive system is something to behold. It’s a model of modern engineering, and it has served Dog-Dos well in the past. So well, in fact, that it’s made Dog-Dos the stuff of legend. Urban legend.
So ends the tale of Dog-Dos, whose sure-footedness made it a legend. Until next time, Farewell.
Car Commercial
The great schism of the true horror that had stuck a knife deep into the belly of the Creative heart of Europe and the world manifested in WW1 when artists were put on the front lines and died like flies or were sucked up and driven mad and ineffectual became manifest many years ago as the Age of Schizophrenia and TV had begun.That was no mere coincidence.
The alienation of the worker from his product and the sweat of his brow led finally total alienation from his sweat and brow.And his body and his mind. Hence the Pataphysicists. Hence Mr. Artauds “Theatre of Cruelty” which would become realer than the real- his insane rants, clear a bell. In the future it all would become Reality TV or morning programming.This is what is being addressed by “3 letters”.And like a rape victim, Mr. Nardi has been given the signal to shut up and not tell anyone.Instead like any true theatre artist he screams his very loud scream on very deaf ears. Or at least ears already plugged with psychic and mental detritus.
Hence, “Il Grido Silenzioso” of Mr. Nardi’s “letters” as a modern day Savonarella, signaling though the flame but inside a muffled and an unheard cry of Tim Horton donuts.
“Tis an attempt, m’Lord, to speak the truth with the full awareness that it is at root all a sham, as language and theatre is a lie and a sham.“
Unwritten “Les Cenci”
And like Mr. Artaud, Mr. Nardi is not being heard and is being denied entrance into the bastion of the “furiosos” fairy tale of the Castle Loma Festival of Acceptable Canadiana, for failing to wear appropriate attire, it seems.For not having a tie on and the right school shield.
It is an old story in Canada, and “elsewhere”.
But unlike Jerzy Grotowski, the creator of the Polish Lab Theatre in the 60’s during the Age of the Iron Curtain, who revolutionized the very concept of theatre and returned it to its metaphysical pre-verbal origin, to essence, to audience-actor, Tony Nardi has no space, no theatre, no character to play and no, no Peter Brooke in England, or Richard Schechner in New York to pick up the slack thin threads, unveil the baton and trumpet the movement onto the international stage. He cannot eliminate the corpo-mentalistic lie. But he succeeds nonetheless.
Chaque fois qu’on parle de l’acteur canadien anglais Tony Nardi, on souligne ses origines italiennes. Je me suis demandé quelques fois d’où vient cette insistance à souligner cette particularité culturelle, alors que Nardi est un vrai Torontois, qui a vécu presque toute sa vie au Canada. Mais il est vrai qu’il n’a rien du flegme brittannique de certains de ses collègues canadiens-anglais. Chez lui, le geste et l’énergie sont d’une indéniable latinité, et sa colère gronde au rythme du tambour battant.
French Canadian Critic
Uh huh. Nardi est un vrai Torontois. Zut Alors!
He is after all a true Canadian and quadri-lingual, where, it now seems there can be no anarchic revolution of thought and spirit.So why is he Italian anyway? He is born of Calabrian parents, born in Calabria, migrates and is raised and educated in Montreal and is now it seems after all, a Torontonian, minus the hagus.His is the stuff of legend and it has served him well. He is after all, from Toronto the critic states, anathema to the Quebecois. He was born in Italy but was raised in Montreal and escaped to Toronto, therefore he is to be reviled not for being Calabrian-born but a Torontonian, by choice.He is to be therefore reviled for being from Toronto even though he is from Montreal. He is after all “un vrai Torontois.” Though “latin”, There is nothing of British phlegm in him. So the centre of the criticism in this case is that Mr Nardi, who is Calabrian born is from Toronto, even though he is from Montreal. And “latin.” And that his Calabrian “colere gronde au rythme du tambour battant.”
I see.
Anathema to all,and central to everyone is the idea that being who he is, is what the probleme is and that there to isolate and alienate, divide and divide again is quite ok, in the same way that its ok, in the game of hockey to stick someone. And conquer. Conquer by labeling.And therefore? But Mr Nardi is not “latin”, if anything he is a Sabine, or a “Brutium.”Its all very confusing, is it not? And it creates a great deal of phlegm to be washed down by a great deal of Brad’or.
And tambourine dancing.
So what is there after all to rebel against? Not a damn thing in Canada. Everything in the theatre here it seems is perfect, if indeed the theatre were a beaurocratic- to- be filled- out application form, it would be spotless cheese and cherry cloth. What is there to reveal if the central cry of the immigrant masses is gratitude for the life and job they possess.Why do we need artists of any kind?Especially a Calabrian-born Tony Nardi.
You’ll get used to it, the Critic states. Just don’t bother to write,or paint or act it out.Just shut up. And if you do any of the above, you must be, from Californi-ay and not a Calabrian. Or a Serb.
“Lets face it Mssr Nardi, you people(you Italians) make good shoes, do you not?”
Spoken to a Calabrian-born Filmaker by an Ottawa Government Cultural Film Official.
“You played Rockefeller Centre? Where is that?”
Spoken to a Canadian born Composer Musician by another Official Official.
As in Plato’s ideal “Republic” there is no need for art, only the lyre, the harp, the electric saw and the Children’s Theatre. For anyone to suggest otherwise is to invite scorn or at the very least confusion. Art is suspect, in Canada, especially since as everyone knows the artist feeds at the public trough. The artists of Canada are painted and treated with pity and contempt and are endured as one might endure a slightly retarded and over-loud relative. Spoiled children, one puts up with them, providing they are relatives.
ANOTHER MESSAGE FROM THE CASTING DIRECTOR
“Comments; Artists should approach their auditions with Standard American English; any speech elements that may identify a character as Canadian should be avoided.”
From A True and Real Canadian Casting Call Breakdown, instructing the “artists.”
The Dog Dos Partes Torque vectoring All-Wheel Drive system is something to behold.It has served the Dog Doc well, a triumph of the engineering of the human spirit.
Zoom zoom.
In spite of the creation in the last 30 years of a plethora of theatres particularly in Toronto and a host of extraordinary playwrights, Carol Bolt, (dead) George Walker, David French (dead) Michael Hollingsworth (unknown and forgotten, before he was remembered) Michel Tremblay (French-Canadian, and therefore ineffectual) Judith Thompson (in the vales of Academia), some of whom are world recognized –the signaling remains below the threshold of a public who still feeds at the Haymarket of American and British imports. And feels therefore less than important, unimportant indeed, certainly not American.Or British. Or French. And certainly no longer worthy of having any “value added.” Unless that import is “recycled” Canadian goods having been given the official stamp of Elsewhere. Odd dilemma.
The so called attempts by Government agencies to create and foist a living breathing theatre, falls upon itself, has failed and continues to fail, and will continue to fail in spite of billions of dollars pumped into the Canadian cultural agenda and 15 percent of the tax dollar earmarked for Canadian Culture. But the official reports will always be positive. In the past 35 years there has emerged no movement, no stellar example, within the communities who has been accepted as a “voice” of the soul of the nation. Let alone a Tony Nardi, who unlike others of powerful talent has not left the nation and emigrated Elsewhere. And Tony Nardi is marginalized as all artists in Canada are marginalized, if they attempt to point out that something clearly is askew with the Canadian Cultural Package. And that it is a dilemma and needs to be addressed. But by whom? Canadian artists? Officials? The Canadian People? Washington? Facebook?
Nor has there ever emerged an O’Neil, a Tennessee Williams, an Albee, a Brecht, Stoppard, Pinter, not even a Mamet-and not for lack of trying or essential talent-nor it seems anything approaching a Brando, a Mastroianni, a De Neuve and certainly no Dean, no Clift, no Magnani- but instead a perfect corporatist collection of Hollywood successes like Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves, Bill Shatners, and brilliant imitators and comedians. Which is to not say that these “talents” have not emerged within the confines of the nation. But where are they?
In Canada the commercial is king. And to capture its “conscience” is to become a Hamlet and to be subjected to a venomous poignard. And an outpouring of critical askance and spittle.
The presented argument that Canada is a small nation would hold water were it not for the fact that Canada has produced a plethora of successful artists recognized elsewhere, never at home. As exports. First to Europe, primarily England and France, now the U.S.A. What’s wrong with this picture? “3 letters” addresses this issue and does it with skill, verve, humor, intelligence, and theatricality. Why hasn’t that been noticed and addressed by the critics? Why instead is there an attack and an assault on the artist for daring to speak the truth? This is not of the imagination, this is photo-realism. And this is the sad and comic dilemma addressed to the imaginary “Sarah” within the letters. Why then is Mr. Nardi an “imitation of himself?” And who shall imitate the imaginary and not so imaginary Sarah, the Celtic/Jewish princess whose heart aches and longs for her song to emerge. What does that mean? It’s an absurd and malevolent statement of the part of the Critic.
Where then are the voices of the nation when the voices are suffocated before they speak?
When Mr. Nardi points out that some of the great actors of the post communist Central European group immigrated to Canada and disappeared into the world of menial labor, never to work in the theatre again, with some rare exceptions-again, there is no response, just quiet resigned indifference. Do Canadians care about their artists? What is a “collector lane?”Whats wrong with Mr.Nardi’s central metaphor of living burial? Is death an exaggeration of itself?
Grotowski who created his “meta-theatre” in the 60’s did so in order to avoid going to prison for speaking the truth of the Communist lie. He knew enough to know that his “poor theatre” would have to be reduced to motion and sound and written in a language that would avoid the threat and tread of the Soviet tank. He chose an encrypted language of signs, sounds, and movement. It would be incomprehensible, a secret signaling though the flames. He could not have imagined however a threat so great to the creative soul that it would operate in vitro, before conception, a kind of spiritual prophylactic that could prevent insemination or abort it. Even Communism could not accomplish that.
Grotowski succeeded however, for political reasons, both inside and outside of Communist controlled Poland to transmit essential and powerful truths. But then, Mr. Grotowski had something against which he could fight and he created his theatre in the midst of a narrow window of liberated thinking- world –wide, the petite Renaissance of the 60’s. In America this, soon to be shut down not by resistance, but by fashionable acceptance and absorption. By fashion and hip attitude. It would be eaten and digested. Not by the Politburo but by Madison Ave and Wall and Bay St.
Art in North America becomes Fashion, Vogue, Attitude, Twitter and Sound Bite and Commercial, or it exists not at all. It becomes Paris Hilton and Madonna and Britney Spears. The artist is not repressed he is absorbed and drowned in both fame and money or reduced to insignificance. Canada chooses the latter. It marginalizes and dismisses its artists forcing them not into Fashion but into Beaurocracy and form filling. Or into Advertising.
What is not admired and respected at root dies and withers on the vine. This is the issue. There is no dialect here that can hold veracity for too long, before the next phase comes in. Artists like the American Andy Warhol (of Czech origin) knew this in advance and went with the flow. He saw the dollar bill as an object trouve, an art-in-itself. He cut to the chase. In Canada we had artists like Charlie Pachter, painting the Queen riding a moose. Who knew of him? Photographs of the sizzle, not the steak. Paintings of the frame and not the canvas. The medium is the message is a massage. As Marshall McLuen the great Canadian founder of Media Studies pointed out – if the United States is “film”, then Canada is film stock, it is anti-thesis to the American thesis. Was he wrong?
In a free and democratic society it is absurd and shameful and painful to speak it, let alone think it. There can be no language of a non-language, which is yet to manifest. Nothing in effect can manifest. And critics with sharpened knives and poisoned tongues armed with ignorance, contempt, and “attitude” can accomplish what the jails and the beatings and the tortures in the Soviet Union could not, silence any and all original voice. But the real damage is done by a system in which at root defines artistic product as a form of “cultural welfarism” recognizing neither its artistic nor economic value. What would France be without the stolen masterpiece of the Mona Lisa? And what is the economic implication of that one painting? And why did Picasso emigrate there?
There is no divisive cultural politburo because in Canada there is no need to have one. And no revolution can happen because there is nothing to rebel against. And what does not happen through randomity, is eaten up by the Hollywood critters of Fame and Money.
What need of hell when Paradise has never been lost, not ever will it be? The “critic” is right. Why create the “3 letters” unless the author is an exaggeration of himself. No real Canadian (non French speaking of course) has ever been honored and accepted by the elemental Critic of the Nation. And this is the very issue, the nerve of the matter, the core of what Mr. Nardi has brought forth in this “venomous diatribe.” He has looked and peaked under the skirt of the Queen riding a moose hand out stretched in a royal salute. And he has found it fraudulent and inauthentic. He has dared to suggest that perhaps there might be more here than Queens on Moose’s riding to the sunset. Mr. Nardi is not a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police nor a player of Hockey. He is in fact “an artist.”