Send in the Clown

When Lorenzo Pisoni isn’t moonlighting as the buff DA in Pine Valley with the odd face-off with Erica Kane, you can catch him onstage clowning around. From age two, Pisoni spend 20 years in the family business, The Pickle Family Circus, and he has turned that experience into the Obie Award winning show “Humor Abuse” which is opens this week at The Philadelphia Theater Company.   

Pisoni talked about life in circus, the soaps, not to mention his Shakespearean roles in a phone interview last week. “I’m doing my part to clean up Pine Valley.” He deadpanned.  “Those writers have to create so much content, it’s incredible to me. Their skill is to keep things in ACT IV all of the time.”

By now, he has run away from the circus, and his clown past is almost a footnote in Pisoni’s stage career, starring as Jay Gatsby at The Seattle Rep to Shakespearean leads at The Public Theater.  But his physicality, is part of his regular repertoire.

“It can help build the character so much.” he said. Pisoni said that Pickle Circus was a “precursor” to Cirque du Soleil because “We didn’t have animals. And were very environmentally aware and raised money for community causes. My parents hired very smart people who knew the world outside the circus also, so it was not so closed off. For a kid, it‘s great seeing it all the time, but it wasn‘t always fun and games.“

He later performed with Cirque as a juggler, aerialist, acrobat and ringmaster.  All skills he incorporates in his sleights of body onstage in Humor Abuse.

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So the rich, old, corrupt, white men who run the mafia of corporate hospitals, pharmacuticals and insurance companies get their way again by twisting the balls of the Senate with payoffs, lies and intimidation.  Fuck them.  Fuck them.

potd by Jan Carroll

"Have some"

Wordswordswords

William Safire has died at 79.    

Such a master linguist he revealed rules of English usage as a human necessity and reveled in the joy of language.  He was a stylist he wrote believable speeches for Richard Nixon.  As a political analyst he could penetrate with facts, but obliterate with subtext. His credo was  “Avoid cliches like the plague.”    In this case impossible to appropriate.

metroscape

Stymied by an article, I was gay saute’ing with orange/garlic glazed chicken/mushrooms & spinach, eating  on the stoop with my towel still flung over my shoulder.  Cued up  was “Autumn Leaves”  in different versions by Nat Cole, Billie Holiday,  Adderly & Davis, Bill Evans, etc. on YouTube that was floating out my window.   The cold front sliced through Rittenhouse at 5:17 with clouds that looked like they were painted in by Edward Gorey and a man strolling down the street with his hand shoved in his pockets and a soaked cigarette still in his mouth.   Just then Edith Piaf came on with  “Les feiuilles Mortes”

….The sunburned hands I used to hold/ Since you went away The days grow long/

And soon

potm by Jan Carroll

"blooming still"

Bill 2

Bill Clinton had more to say on  “Meet the Press” getting right to the right point about there still being a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ hellbent on bringing down Obama, the way they went after him.  

“You bet. Sure it is. It’s not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically. But it’s as virulent as it was.” 

I couldn’t agree more.

LOTD 2

“They are totally divorced from reality.”

International political analyst Fareed Zakaria reacting to  right ring  jackhammers accusing President Obama compromising US clout in his speech to the UN General Assembly this week.   Obama succeeding in key talks with China and Russia with broadstroke volleys into a chance for a new era of diplomatic relations.  Course that is not good enough for neocons who think that the earth is still flat around them.

LOTD

“I do.”

President Bill Clinton answering Anderson Cooper about whether gays should be allowed to get married.  But getting to those two words continues to be a Democratic political tapdance.  

DOMA (defense of marriage act) was a Clinton policy and a direct betrayal of what gay America would expect from a champion of civil liberties, so that political pink elephant was still roaming around the room with Anderson and Bill.

Anderson: You said you recently changed your mind on same-sex marriage. I’m wondering what you mean by that. Do you now believe that gay people should have full rights to civil marriage nationwide?  

BC: I do. I think that, well let me get back to the last point, the last word. I believe historically, for two hundred and something years, marriage has been a question left to the states and the religious institutions. I still think that’s where it belongs.

BC: That is, I was against the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage nationwide  …

(I guess DOMA was his administration’s love letter to gay America!)

….. and I still think that the American should be able to play this side in debates. 

But me, Bill Clinton personally, I changed my position. I am no longer opposed to that. I think if people want to make commitments that last a lifetime, they ought to be able to do it.  

Sounds like a life sentence rather than a flesh and blood relationship between two people in love.  

"splotch, again"