clarkblog

CRAZY AMERICANS

Now rotating through my headspace:

No Man Knows My History:
The Life of Joseph Smith
by Fawn M. Brodie

Americana
by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

Marjoe
by Sarah Kernochan and Howard Smith
(watch here)

THANKS FOR THE FUTURE

Steve Jobs, Rest in Peace.

I first sat down at a Macintosh in 1986. Prior to that, I'd worked on early PCs and Commodore machines. The Mac blew me away. It still does.

Here's a pic of the first Mac I could actually afford. I've owned several since the venerable Mac Classic, but this one holds a special place in my heart because it's the first one that actually lived with me and became part of my personal space. The way my other Macs do. And the iPod. And iPhone. And iPad. And AppleTV.

NINE YEARS ON

Nine years ago today, I was in a state of panic and fear and the Twin Towers hadn't even been attacked yet.

I had just quit a safe and secure full-time job to return to graduate school to see if I could be a writer. I've always made my living as a writer, but often the work was anything but creative. I'd lost touch with the spark that had driven me as a child to write stories and draw comics and pass them around to my friends. Maybe I was simply meant to be a journalist, an ad man or a technical writer -- and there's nothing wrong with any of those jobs. But storytelling had once been my passion. I'd lost that and I wanted to find it again.

Less than two weeks into an esteemed writing program at the nation's oldest drama school, I found the pace, workload and creative demands so intense and challenging that my failure seemed all but inevitable. I wasn't hacking it. My hardest efforts resulted in work so poor I felt certain I was going to be kicked out of the program.

So reading was not just a big part of my curriculum, but a thankful solace. Whenever I couldn't sleep, I had a shelf of new theater texts to reach for. The assignment for September 11, 2001, was Aeschylus' incredible play The Persians, written circa 472 BC. And this is what we were discussing in a History of Drama seminar at the exact moment the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil took place.

The play is told from the point of view of the Persians, whom the Greeks had defeated years earlier. I believe this to be the only surviving Greek play based on an actual historical event. It's remarkable because it asks the audience to feel pity for the invading army seeking to topple the Greek empire.

The play asks: Why did the Persians lose the war? They were a great army led by Xerxes, a powerful leader, and they believed the gods were on their side. They fell, we learn, because of their unmitigated pride. Hubris. This is a play about wars and the fools who lose them. Aeschylus served up this tragic and chilling cautionary tale to an audience that would've felt freshly the wounds of this conflict.

When this play was first performed, it wasn't long after the Greeks had defeated the invading Persian army, maybe just a generation or less. As my wonderful professor Brian Johnson pointed out, the audience was probably filled with war veterans, some of them horribly scarred and maimed, as well as families mourning lost loved ones. In fact, there's a very good chance the audience was still sitting amidst blood-stained rubble, their very own Ground Zero.

Aeschylus sought to dramatize this defeat from the Persian perspective, but he didn't want his fellow countrymen to gloat or revel in superiority. He believed such things were fatal flaws. So he portrayed the Persians as being defeated not so much by the might and valor of the Greek army, but by their own corrupt values.

The play's theme -- warning against hubris, against the foolishness of believing one's nation is invincible and divined by supernatural higher powers -- has, sadly, become more relevant with each passing year.

Whenever anyone invokes a higher power in the name of war, you have reason to be very afraid, no matter what their religion.

When my classmates and I emerged from class that morning, we instantly knew something was wrong with the world. People everywhere on campus were hugging each other and crying in disbelief. As we learned of the attacks, each of us began to wonder: what the hell good is freakin' theater on a planet where something this catastrophic can happen? Like everyone in the days following the attacks, my fellow storytellers-in-training (actors, directors, designers, etc.) questioned the paths our lives had chosen. We wondered if we were wasting valuable time.

It took me a while but I finally realized that, when catastrophe reared its ugly head, I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing. The poetry and vision of The Persians informed and validated that feeling like nothing else. Even today, whenever I need motivation to write (or even just to get out of bed each morning), I think of Aeschylus and how his words speak to us across the centuries. This is why I write. To speak. To communicate. To  let others in the world know that we share the same dreams and blessings and curses, no matter who -- or when -- we are.

Storytelling binds us as a species. It is one of the most hopeful things we have. Sometimes I dwell on the thousands of Greek plays that are forever lost to us and it's enough to drive me to tears. All those writers and the stories they hoped to pass down to us -- gone. Just gone. We are incredibly fortunate that this particular play has survived the ravages of time. It is a warning, an admonition, a plea for peace and humility in the face of violence. I hope that one day we will truly hear its message.

(Above: bust of Aeschylus; photos from production of "The Persians" mounted in 2006 by the National Greek Theater; bottom photo from 2005 production by Washington, DC's Scena Theatre)

SWEET MADNESS

Explore the cultural and political influences that help shape TV's best show: The Footnotes of Mad Men.

OUTRAGEOUS

EIGHT YEARS ON

Eight years ago today, I was in a state of panic and fear and the sun hadn't even risen yet.

I had just quit a safe and secure full-time job to return to graduate school. Less than two weeks into this esteemed writing program, I found the pace and workload and creative demands so intense and challenging that failure seemed all but inevitable.

Reading was not just an assignment, but a solace. Whenever I couldn't sleep, I had a shelf of new theater texts to reach for. That day's assignment was Aeschylus' incredible play The Persians, written circa 472 BC. And this is what we were discussing later that morning in a History of Drama seminar at the exact moment the worst terrorist attacks on U.S. soil took place.

The play is told from the point of view of the Persians, whom the Greeks had defeated years earlier. I believe this to be the only surviving Greek play based on an actual historical event. It's remarkable because it asks the audience to feel pity for the invading army seeking to topple the Greek empire.

The play asks: Why did the Persians lose the war? They were a great army led by Xerxes, a powerful leader, and they believed the gods were on their side. They fell, we learn, because of their unmitigated pride. Hubris. This is a play about wars and the fools who lose them. Aeschylus served up this tragic and chilling cautionary tale to an audience that would've felt freshly the wounds of this conflict.

When this play was first performed, it wasn't long after the Greeks had defeated the invading Persian army, maybe just a generation or less. As my wonderful professor Brian Johnson pointed out, the audience was probably filled with war veterans, some of them horribly scarred and maimed, as well as families mourning lost loved ones. In fact, there's a very good chance the audience was still sitting amidst blood-stained rubble, their very own Ground Zero.

Aeschylus sought to dramatize this defeat from the Persian perspective, but he didn't want his fellow countrymen to gloat or revel in superiority. He believed such things were fatal flaws. So he portrayed the Persians as being defeated not so much by the might and valor of the Greek army, but by their own corrupt values.

The play's theme -- warning against hubris, against the foolishness of believing one's nation is invincible and divined by supernatural higher powers -- has, sadly, become more relevant with each passing year.

Whenever anyone invokes a higher power in the name of war, you have reason to be very afraid.

When my classmates and I emerged from class that morning, we instantly knew something was wrong with the world. People everywhere on campus were hugging each other and crying in disbelief. As we learned of the attacks, each of us began to wonder: what the hell good is freakin' drama on a planet where this can happen? Like everyone in the days following the attacks, we questioned the paths our lives had chosen and wondered if we were wasting valuable time.

It took me a while but I finally realized that, when catastrophe reared its ugly head, I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing. The poetry and vision of The Persians informed and validated that feeling like nothing else. Even today, whenever I need motivation to write (or even just to get out of bed each morning), I think of Aeschylus and how his words speak to us across the centuries. This is why I write. To speak. To communicate. To  let others in the world know that we share the same dreams and blessings and curses, no matter who -- or when -- we are.

We are incredibly fortunate that this play has survived the ravages of time. I hope that one day we will truly hear its message.

(Above: bust of Aeschylus; photos from production of "The Persians" mounted in 2006 by the National Greek Theater; bottom photo from 2005 production by Washington, DC's Scena Theatre)

PROMISE IN THE SKY

This week -- July 20th, 2009 to be exact -- marks the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. There are many wonderful online resources to commemorate this historic event. Here's NASA's official site. And I'm fascinated with this one from the BBC presenting UK coverage of the mission.

Below is something I wrote in 2005. It's about Apollo 11, and being a boy in Alabama, and someone who changed my life. Out of almost 1,000 posts at clarkblog, this one means the most to me.

* * *

Today is the thirty-sixth anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Thirty-six years ago in Alabama, I was enrolled in a summer kindergarten class taught by Mrs. Peggy McDowell. She had remodeled the large basement of her house to serve as a classroom for a dozen or so children from my neighborhood.

We learned about numbers and letters there. We drew and painted and made things from clay. We played games in her yard. After afternoon milk and cookies, we pulled out cots and took naps.

When we graduated from Mrs. McDowell’s kindergarten, it was an actual graduation. With our parents watching, we donned caps and gowns and walked across the patio to proudly accept rolled diplomas from our teacher. She played Elgar’s traditional “Pomp and Circumstance” on a portable record player, and today I can’t hear that song without getting misty-eyed at the memory. I remember feeling for the first time in my life that I was marking an important milestone, even if I couldn’t have put it in those words at that age.

Thirty-six years ago today, my fellow kindergarteners and I followed Mrs. McDowell up the stairs to the house where she lived with her family. These stairs were usually forbidden, and even though we had permission to climb them, we were quiet as mice. Once upstairs, we sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor of her den. And on a large black-and-white TV set, we watched in wonder as a man in a spacesuit bounced across the surface of the moon.

That night after dinner I looked up at the moon from my backyard. I thought about the men bouncing around up there, and wondered what they had for dinner. It was a warm, humid night in Alabama. Were they cold up there? Crickets chirped all around me. What did it sound like on the moon? I wondered what we looked like to the astronauts. I wondered about the universe and my place in it as I never had before.

Not counting my parents, Mrs. McDowell was my first teacher. In many ways, she was the most important one I ever had.

In Alabama, a state that has never put education high on its list of priorities, she devoted 22 years of her life to nurturing hundreds, maybe thousands of children. With love and imagination, she made sure they got off to a good start.

Peggy Bailey McDowell died this week, and her family laid her to rest in the small town where I was born.

Today we commemorate the moon landing, as we should. But in my heart and every action I take, I'm honoring an amazing and generous teacher named Mrs. McDowell. She showed young children that they could dream of the moon on a summer day. And she gave us the tools and encouragement to live in the wonderful world that spins below it.

Thank you, Mrs. McDowell. I'll never stop looking up. Promise.

RECENT TAKES

Theater: FARRAGUT NORTH
Geffen Playhouse
Beau Willimon's script is strictly West Wing lite, but Chris Pine (Star Trek's new Captain Kirk) commands with a solid stage presence. Girls (and hey, some guys) go for Pine's early underwear scene but stick around for his manic exploration of a sordid and soulless political machinator.

Movie: MOON
Direced by Duncan Jones
Sturdy little sci-fi movie starring Sam Rockwell. No explosions or ray guns or bug-eyed aliens, just a quiet study of human isolation in the vein of 70s films like Silent Running. In an age of increasingly desperate special effects and hyperkinetic editing, Moon is like a little breath of fresh air in an airless void.

Book: COLUMBINE
by Dave Cullen
Do you remember Columbine? If you're like me, you think you do -- and you're deeply mistaken. Almost everything we were told about this school massacre was wrong. This is hands-down the most disturbing book I've read in years. It's a work of true crime that rises above the generally sordid genre to stand alongisde works of art as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song.

Music: 25 O'CLOCK & PSONIC PSUNSPOT
The Dukes of Stratosphear
In the mid-1980s, members of Brit-pop band XTC found themselves between projects so they ducked into the studio and pretended to be the Dukes, a long-lost psychedelic-rock band from the 1960s. Aided by legendary producer John Leckie (Pink Floyd, Stone Roses), what began as a lark eventually produced some incredibly fun and authentic music. It's sometimes laden with irony and cynicism (this is XTC, after all) but underneath it all is a heartfelt enthusiasm for the trippier side of The Beatles, Beach Boys, Animals, and many other 60s musical legends. These two albums have been freshly remastered with extras such as demo tracks, extensive liner notes & video clips. I'll be blasting this catchy LSD-tinged goodness all summer long.

Movie: THE HURT LOCKER
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
A tense and well-crafted movie about a bomb squad in Iraq and the daily dangers they face, with stunning breakout performances from actors Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie. Despite its Baghdad setting, I wouldn't call this a war film. Mark Boal has written a taut thriller showing us the dangerous if admirable soul of a man who is psychologically addicted to the risks that could one day kill him. Director Bigelow proves (once again) her fierce action chops.

You can watch the opening 8-minute sequence here on Hulu.

FRANTIC ANTICS

Sometimes brash acts of idiocy inspire great works of art.

Zina Saunders

The Searcher

FACEPALM

More classic pix from last month's Tea Party here.

Our forefathers would slap the holy living shit out of these idiots.