To Supplement Yesterday's Post...
Thanks, ACLU.

My Addition to the War

Bonnie sent me this today. If you're one of the people who doesn't read the links I attach, then you're lame. And you're going to miss out, because this one is really good. It's Fuck Christmas, which is written by the same guy who wrote Fuck the South (neither a sentiment I wholly agree with, though oddly, I agree with everything he says in each...go figure...) and it basically addresses this whole myth about the liberal plot against Christmas.

There's a lot written out there about the plot against Christmas (which is as silly a thing to say as "the liberal plot against fluffy bunnies" or "the liberal plot against cute puppies" and is equally fictional) and I have little to add to it (though I'd like to point out that here Gibson cites "Santa dumped from Coke cans..." as one example of the way in which Christmas is being attacked and also mentions Christmas lights and Christmas trees, but fails to bring up one single example of Christ actually being devalued...but I digress), except this: read the subtitle of John Gibson's book. If your eyes aren't that good or you're just lazy, I'll help you. It says:

How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse than You Thought

That phrasing "the Sacred Christian Holiday".

I was raised Christian. Not by particularly fanatical parents, but my mom and dad did set out to make sure I had a good Christian education. That I had a good basis in the faith. My dad was active in the church until, one day, he was listening to something someone said and realized "Wow...I don't actually believe any of this." I had a similar moment at the age of thirteen. But thirteen years of Sunday school and Bible reading (admittedly somewhat light when you're Episcopalian) drills a certain knowledge of the faith into you, and let me tell you, Christmas is not the sacred Christian holiday. Not by a long shot. Christmas is not the most sacred holiday to anyone but the big corporations who glut on increased holiday sales.

The most sacred Christian holiday does not happen for another few months. I'm talking about Easter, of course, the real high holy day of the Christian church. The day when Christ died, was resurrected, and assumed his place on the throne of Heaven (assuming you're believe all this). That's the mystery of the Christian church. That's the miracle. That he was born--well, that's no great wonder. More or less everyone does that at some point in their lives.

People like Gibson focus so much energy on the renaming of Christmas trees to holiday tress, the absence of Santa Claus in the public sphere, etc. But these are all pagan elements that have been taken by Christians over the years and made into symbols of Christmas (hell, Gibson even points out in his little rant that these are parts of a Germanic pagan winter festival). When you get right down to it, they are secular elements of the holiday that have been added over the years and adopted by the public sphere, and they have nothing to do with Christ's birth.

If we're arguing that the Christmas trees and lights and Santa are all indivisible now from Christmas, then I'd counter that Christmas has been made, by the importance placed on distinctly non-Christian elements, into a secular holiday. But clearly, it isn't that. Jews don't celebrate it. Nor do Muslims. Nor, to my knowledge, do Hindus or Buddhists or any of the other 20 percent of the population that makes up the rest of this country. So what makes Christmas holy? I don't know...not precisely...but I'd argue that it has more to do with families who come together to be with each other and love each other, with people taking a timeout to share some good will with everyone they meet, with church congregations who come together as a group to celebrate the beginning of their miracle, and with a sort of private revelation, if you are a believer, that the king was born this night and with him, the hope for all mankind. If I'm right, which I think I am, then you'll see that nobody is really able to attack that. And you'll see that, though liberals might have had a hand in making Christmas at large a secular holiday, it is the people on the far right slinging slander who have made it something crass.

Our Christmas Present from the IRS

It's cold out. Very extremely cold out. The thing I love about standing outside in cold like this is how utterly silent everything is. I would think that in the cold, with all of the molecules of air tightening together, sound would travel excellently. It would be crisp and travel to our ears as through a steel tuning fork. But it doesn't. The air is crisp, but soundless on days like this. I like that.

Holiday celebrations are already well under way. The past two weekends have been full of holiday parties with eggnog and mulled wine and the ocassional snowball fight. I leave in three days for home, which I'm looking forward to. My gifts are all made (liqueurs for all, this year), some are given, etc.

The big news right now involves Tantalus. We received a notice from the IRS on Saturday and are officially a not-for-profit organization. This is excellent news, because now it means that on top of benefits to us, any donations made to us are tax-deductible. It's a good thing for Tantalus.

I'm taking an extended hiatus from the company after The Strange Dreams of Nobody in Particular goes up. Just a little time to work on projects of my own and reevaluate my life. After that, we'll see where we are. Recent developments and past issues have sort of come together over the past couple of weeks, and I've realized that I put far more work into Tantalus than I get out of it in terms of artistic fulfillment. That's a problem. Tantalus is very much a company of directors and idea men. As a writer, Tantalus doesn't really offer me much. As an actor, it's become clear that I'm not going to get the opportunity to grow and expand my skills. So it may be time to move on. It's not something I'd do lightly, but it may be time.

Grad school has finally begun to call me, too. It may just be a time for change, in general. New years aren't always that way, but they can be.

I...um...Wow..You What?

I found this through one of the absinthe forums I'm on. One of the members of the forum is creating an Egyptian-style mummy out of a chicken. I'm torn between horror and morbid fascination. Actually, I'm torn between morbid fascination and sarcasm, as I keep trying to find an appropriate mummy's curse joke and just can't seem to place my finger on it. I know there's one in there somewhere, but like the tomb of King Tut, it eludes me.

Quick, somebody, draw me a cartoon or something to express the appropriate joke!

Announcement...

I braved the bitter cold to go see my friend Molly perform as the featured poet at the Funky Buddha Lounge on Monday. I've mentioned Molly on this blog before. She's an exceptionally talented poet and gives a mean performance and I told her so. She asked me to plug this, so here you go:

I've joined a writing ensemble here in chicago. We
have a show put together about chicago, and it's
amazing. For now we're going as The No-Name
Ensemble, because we've been so busy with
everything else...that well, that got left behind.
We'll be the feature at The Green Mill on Sunday,
December 11th. The open mic starts at 7, feature
at 8, and slam at 9. It's $6 at the door. You can
see the sign from the Lawrence stop on the Red
line. It's going to be an amazing show!
We'll also start a monthly show at Martyr's starting
Jan 3rd.
I hope to see y'all there!

Incidentally, they're currently performing as the No-Name Ensemble. I don't want to talk for Molly but I bet anyone who could find them a name would get smooches or something for it. I suggested the Spoon River Ensemble. There were no smooches for me. But do go see them if you're in Chicago. They're really good, and this is coming from a guy who doesn't like slam poetry.

Collecting Anatomy

On Thursday during workshop, Glen told me about the Anatomy Collective's show, "Many Things are Destroying Me," and asked me if I might like to go see it. I said I would, so after my relatively failed writing session at the Pick Me Up, I trained home in a piss-poor mood to my home and then bused (bussed? bust?) out to Wicker Park for the show. By the first five or ten minutes, the bad mood was completely gone.

In essence, "Many Things are Destroying Me" is actually three shows: an interactive installation, a play, and an afterparty (if you can consider an afterparty a show...which I do). And the three parts were disparate enough that it's really difficult for me to review them as one item. The opening installation was a little like walking through a live-action version of Fly Guy. It invited the audience to wander through and a beautiful and surreal environment and interact with the miming characters within. A pair of women, bound in a wirework cage underneath a starscape of broken wine glasses sensually hand danced and made eyes at audience members. A mime in the middle of a circle of flowers played spin the bottle with himself (and anyone who wanted to sit with him) and tossed around an apple with a dancing girl in white and a persnickety writer who wandered the audience announcing himself with a horn. All of this was set to the music of an accordion player, who sat in the corner and whose face was so serious and intriguing that I was simultaneously enticed and terrified to walk up to her. In all, this was my favorite part of the evening, and not just because I'm a whore for artistic installations that invite me to play (although I am), but because of the balance struck between inviting play and giving the audience space. Which is to say that the Anatomy Collective provided ample opportunity for people like me to come and play, while not neglecting the beauty and visual elements necessary to rope in people who prefer to sit back and watch. It's a difficult balance to make--one that even some of the most accomplished spectacle companies often fail in, in my opinion--and the group pulled it off wonderfully.

The second part of the show consisted of five short absurd plays by Chicago playwright Taavo Smith. In them, a pair of men stand before the "Author" (played by Taavo, himself) and ask him questions fanboy-style, though all but his one knee is paralyzed. In another, a man and a woman talk around the presence and possibly rape of another woman (who may or may not even exist). Though they were well written, these really break no new ground. Instead, they tread over the same ground covered years before by Beckett, Ionescu (woot! spelled it right.), Pinter--essentially the canon of absurdist plays. In and of itself that might have left me unimpressed and cold, but they were acted with such commitment and skill that they really took on a life of their own outside of their genre. Thus a scene in which two men held an argument in gibberish, which in unskilled hands might have turned into just another knock-off of the French Dadaist movement, was performed so adeptly that it truly allowed the audience to divorce themselves from the meaning of words and experience the emotion of the argument. Sudden shifts in mood and style in the aforementioned man-and-woman scene helped lend gravity and a real sense of unease to a conversation that said nothing particularly unsettling or creepy.

At the party afterward, I got to speak with Taavo, as well as the Anatomy Collective's artistic director, Stephanie Acosta and company member, Alex Miles Younger. I found them very giving and unpretentious, and I really think that this aided in creating the inviting mood of the show. Because had they been pretentious or dismissive or uninviting, themselves, this would have bled into the performances of the actors. It's good to know, then, that there are people creating fun spectacle and interesting shows who are not so full of themselves.

In all, it was truly a delight to see this show. If you can, I recommend seeing it. It runs again tonight. If not, look for the Anatomy Collective's next performance, Prometheus. I have a feeling it will be very interesting.

Wherein the author’s own sense of irony comes back to bite him in the ass…

Possibly the worst experience I encounter with any regularity as a writer—even worse than sitting in front of a blank page and not having any idea what to write—is sitting in front of a page full of words, fully aware of where I’m going with a story, and completely unable to find the words to get me there with any grace. Because once I know where I’m going, figuring out how to get there seems like it’d be the easy part (I could MapQuest it or something…surely there’s a MapQuest function that maps out narratives for you…well, there should be.)

I’m sitting at the Pick Me Up right now, ostensibly putting work into my pig story, but really just listening to music and, once in a while, writing a couple of sentences that I quickly delete because they sound forced and absolutely worthless. And I’m listening to music, which I already said, but it’s worth noting because “Paperback Writer” just came on, because I added it to my writing mix, because I thought it would be really clever to listen to a song about a failing writer while I wrote.

I am not clever. I am a putz.

Back to writing. Or whatever it is you call this nonsense I’m doing.