MetroScape

yuk, can’t abide all of that nastiness. Makes one feel unclean. Time for a stroll and Rittenhouse Sq. at midnight with glittering stars overhead and inches of snow drifted on the tree branches and a cobalt silhouette of the glacial city skyline . This is a snow and ice winter garden ala Doctor Zhivago.  The Barnacles were in a snowball fight and the lovers were wrapped around each other. Total silence except for the occasional gleeful laugh. Sometimes there is real stillness, occasionally there is unexamined life and here there is evidence of things not seen as Ned R would say. Maybe even hope of reasoning.

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Sarah   drag and small

The reason why the charismatic Sarah will win in politics is because she is a master at playing both ends against the middle. That and the fact that she is expert at character assassination while painting herself as a victim.

Lasted 5 minutes into the Sarah Palin speech to the Tea Party Convention and just wanted to puke. Her crowing about talking to ‘real Americans’ and her warning that left wing liberals are running scared. Let me assure Palin, this left wing gay liberal will never be running away from your divisive rhetoric that is antieveryone who doesn’t look and think they way you do. I’m fed up with your myopic sanctimony. Do you have any ideas past your own ego? Do you know anything about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights? Just because the camera is turned you your way..you..you…oh never mind.

I did tune in again after watching the sanity of a John Waters movie while Palin was proclaiming that the Tea Party is the future of American politics. After some run on sentences about nukular energy and  ‘the people, the people, the people’ (note to self, watch Sybil for references), she spun into a cyclone of Palinspeak that whipped the crowd into a frenzy calling for her election as President.

That divine intervention is a right- wing incantation that politicans should put forth. And that elitists, her term for anyone who studies or embraces intellectualism, should loose. That  ‘fresh’ people should be leaders of our country. 

So the Palin is for unqualified people to be in charge because they are imbued by God. So it is Spoken, So it shall be.

DanceMetros

Since it had been ten years since Elizabeth Streb’s dancers have performed their daring feats here, a blizzard last night was not going to stop xxxtreme action dance fans from attending her new work DARE on the Annenberg stage. It was just all part of the funsies.

By intermission parents were helpless in getting their kids to stop trying to mimic Streb dancers. As fearless as the troupe is jumping off what she lovingly calls ‘Ivory Towers’ of modern dance.  “I actually think of this as a variety show.“ and to take dance in new directions “The spirit of modern dance from Martha to Isadora trying to enrich movement, leaving ballet and that is what we are trying to do. Naturally, I have a deep respect for acrobats, this isn’t just tricks, it’s a new syntax with dance.”

Within an hour of arriving in Philly this week Streb was orchestrating the  assemblage of 14 tons of set apparatus used for the premiere. In performance the obvious favorite was the Whizzing Gizmo, a two story wheel pendulum that they propel with their bodies and partner like a whirling jungle gym.

Streb’s company has collaborated with Cirque du Soliel and recently performed in Vancouver at the Winter Olympic trials. She keeps upping the ante for her audiences and is writing “longer sentences’ choreographically in her singular genre that welds dance and acrobat vocabulary as art and as a spectator sport.. Her troupe eight performers “couldn’t be more fearless” she said in an interview this week.

So unique that there are no apprentices or stand – ins “if someone is down for the count, there is no way safe way to replace them without ongoing rehearsals.” Streb said.  “We have developed accoutrements and apparatus that take dance in different directions.”

Death knell for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

Or Powell right to the kisser!  to John McCain and the Republican cabal that wants to keep DADT in place. Gen. Colin Powell reversed his previous position and has come out in support of ending DADT in the US military. 

 Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese said. “His powerful voice for ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is a tipping point in favor of the brave men and women who are serving our nation in silence.”

 Solmonese went after the clammy arguments put forth by McCain–“I want to ask the senators and members who are speaking out against this repeal: What do you know about military effectiveness that General Powell, Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen and the commander in chief don’t know?”

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In anti-gay agenda news, the military brass wants to spend a year looking in to repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policies. …………………………………………

are they fucking kidding.

Every day DADT is in action is a day of injustice. Bill Clinton’s 1993 ‘compromise’ has been used as a weapon in ways he has stated he never intended. Millions of dollars have been spent to kick out, harrass and ruin soldiers who just wanted to serve their country. And for what? To keep in place morbid, hate-filled attitutes about gay soldiers. 

The President wants it to be a legislative change, but hundreds of soldiers have been kicked out since he has been President and he needs to halt this stop loss immediately. The fact that Army reservist Daniel Choi, who is leading the groundswell for the repeal, who has had two honorable tours in Iraq, is an Arabic linquist and is being discharged is grotesque. An example of what has been happening in recent years. DADT is an apparatus of intimidation and military politics. Meanwhile hundreds of qualified skilled soldiers, many career soldier, have been kicked under the policy have been replaced by ex-cons with low skill sets.

  Tony Perkins of “the Family Research Council” is apparently the voice of opposition from the right who has been dispatched to spew those old chestnuts about unit cohesion, social experimenting and showering together.  His new aria to malign us is claiming that having gays serve openly threatens national security.

Don Lemon on CNN pressed him on the point asking him how gays serving openly would threaten anyone’s safety and he said that most people didn’t know the special circumstances that soldiers had to live under.  I guess the wounded and dead gay soldiers from previous wars didn’t understand those special circumstances he’s talking about.

Anyway Lemon told him that ‘Admiral Mullen is for the repeal ” are you saying he doesn’t know.”   Perfect, but lost on psycho II.

Meanwhile, across the pond, the POPE Benedict didn’t have time to sell one of his bobbles to feed the starving Haiti, but he did have time to officially oppose gay anti-discrimination laws in England. I guess those imbued with the ‘intrinsic evil’ of homosexuality don’t deserve equal opportunity.

Gay protests in England include a film festival of documentaries investigating infamous sexual, psychological and physical abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy and covered up by the church. Don’t fuck with British queens fellas!

Speaking of Britian, they already allow gays to serve openly, as do most NATO nations, with none of those shower problems. Sorry Tony, you’ll have to rent a Hitchcock flick.

booksbooksbooks

Game Change is the inside account of how nasty the 2008 Presidential election got by political correspondents John Heilemann (New York Magazine) and Mark Halperin (Time). The week it was published, the media pounced on the book’s All About Eve scenarios of a combustible Hillary, rat packy Bill, sleazy Edwards, schizoid Elizabeth and cocky Barack. The other prime suspect gets her own chapter titled ’Sarahcuda.’

With seething lines like “How many fucking times do I have to go to fucking New York this week?” from John McCain, this is hard-boiled political reporting.

But the authors are obviously going for more than a revenge expose, even though they cast these rabid politicos as driven as zombies in a George Romero movie.

The real headline from this book is that it is a j’accuse to the political apparatus operating our democracy. This is a cautionary tale of out of control, slash and gore, scorched earth politics with everybody backing out of rooms bleeding.

“How many fucking times do I have to go to fucking New York this week?” John McCain

Skepticism about the hearsay evidence of the candidates nastiest words, thoughts and deeds is a concern. But the authors lay out their need to protect their inside sources, so there are plenty of anonymous quotes. Without checkable source notes, questionable, certainly, in any purportedly factual history of this landmark election.

Indeed, H & H are quick to site media biases, even if they give themselves a pass by only abiding by the investigative journalism method of separate confirmations of key points ala Woodward| Bernstein.

But, no matter, you get the feeling that this would stand up to journalistic scrutiny, and, not insignificantly, no one so far has challenged the book’s most explosive reportage. One even wonders what they left out. There is little doubt that H & H are seasoned political writers and smart enough not to screw themselves.

Game Change is a radioactive page-turner and H & H are otherwise kinetic writers employ witty cliff hangers ala All My Children to tell the tale of titanic proportions.

The authors’ skill at condensed analytical history, their politico lingo and analysis may have changed the game for dusty post administration exposes that disappear in overstocks bins. The hubris makes Game Change the burning bush in the petrified forest of political fairy tales.