hey j yo j

what's with the punching bag? where did it come from?

insquirming minds want to know?

trepanation

POW

In America
In Chicago
On Lincoln Avenue
In the rain
Right this moment

There is a completely normal looking middle aged man walking down the street, swinging his folded up umbrella like a baseball bat across his body over and over as he yells "Pow!... Pow!.... Pow!" in a desperate, gutteral tone that sounds so much like "Help!"

I am watching him through my window. I do not get up from desk, even before I realize that the "Pow!" is not actually "Help!" and even after I realize that his "Pow!" is so much more a cry for help.

This is the kind of violence that knocks the air out of me: my own ineptness at basic human reflexes. And everyone else's. Everyone stares, no one stops. Sometimes I think I'd rather just be punched, regularly. At least then I'd feel the pain and know where it came from.

through early morning fog i see...

by Devon Beggs

i chose to title this entry "through early morning fog i see" because i was trying to reference M*A*S*H in some way because that is what the painter is doing. Nurses. Death. Killing. Healing....

so i just typed the first words to the theme song to M*A*S*H "Suicide Is Painless" and as I typed it I was struck by the similarity between

"through early morning fog i see"

and

"oh say can you see by the dawn's early light"

and have to believe that it was intentional... that there is satire at play there...

SO... wouldn't it be cool if somewhere in Random Acts there was a full on college marching band that enters the roxy theatre playing Suicide Is Painless. Full on. With drum majors and baton twirlers and trumpets and xylophones and the full on big hats embroiderd uniforms... booyahhh



it WOULD be cool
you know

Sarah's response

Sarah's my GMCC Arts & Cultural Management placement student doing her practicum with nextfest.

I gave her the task of creating material from which to create blurbs and such. My task to her was to write to a friend far away describing the shows I had her read. This was her response...

"Random Acts of Violence in America"
You would love this play. It's awesome. It begins with a great title and gets better from there. I love that she uses the word violence. Not offence, irritation, ugly etc, but violence. this is a play about the effects of being assaulted. Developing a higher pain threshold from being innundated. The stakes are so much higher with that word. I love this play for the same reason I liked Grumplestock's I think. It says something useful, complicated and applicable without ever being pedantic, heavy handed or obvious. The play is engaging, the message even more so. Makes you feel clever for getting it. I like feeling clever. And I like clever discussions of the shit we're surrounded by. Despite the fact that it doesn't appear to have made any kind o f sizeable dent, anti-coporate-anti-complacency-stop-drinking-starbucks-you-overwieght-asshole politcially aware art has, to me at least, become mostly clicheed. I think this is mainly because it's done so often, but rarely presented in a format articulate, original or artistic like the character in this play, wandering through her life, the only one who retains enough of her reflexes to be aware of its absurdity and disgustingness. And it moves. It's like a march. Gasp. It's like a parade! From beginning to end it builds and the band gets louder and the floats get bigger and then there's the biggest, ugliest, loudest float of all. I really like this show.

In the beginning there was...

ME.
I AM NUMBER ONE
me. one.

then you and you and you and you and