Leon’s Weblog

So this is the first blog posting I’ve written on my iPhone. It is the old “classic” or “original” “non-3G” iPhone. The big change is that it’s now running the updated operating system that allows it to, amoung other things, run applications, like the one I’m using to write this. My iPhone is now more useful by several orders of magnitude. One of the main reasons for this is that even without GPS, the iPhone can figure out where I am, enableing applications to give me location specific info about movies, eateries, etc. It also gives me more ways to access various social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook… for better or worse.

Somehow, a bogus new posting message got sent out today as I was setting this up. Sorry. Can’t promise it won’t happen again, but I hope not.

In any case, expect more, perhaps shorter, posts from your humble blogger.

I’ve always had this conception about Manhattan that an important part of it’s dynamism, arises from basic design characteristics. On the most basic level, this comes down to, the compression of being an island, balanced by the big hole in the middle (Central Park). But moving one level closer, the most interesting characteristic to me is that the grid that forms most of the island is sliced diagonally on it’s long axis by the avenue known as Broadway. The places where the diagonal crosses other North - South avenues become complex intersections with a park (Washington Square) or a high concentration of activity (Times Square). Also given that the rough history of the city begins on the southern tip of the island and moves north, Broadway traces time as well as space.

I’ve always had this idea about making this observation experiential by walking the entire length of Manhattan island along Broadway. From Battery Park to the Harlem river. So yesterday, I did it.

It took five hours to cover the thirteen miles, with occasional stops. I stayed on the East side of Broadway the whole way.

I know that one of the reasons why I did this now is that I was just in Boulder Co. for five weeks and I did a lot of hiking there. The primary feature that I was hiking on and around in the Front Range of the Rockies outside of Boulder was the three big rock cathedrals known as “The Flatirons.” It didn’t hit me till I was right there, but at one point yesterday I looked up and started laughing. I was looking at the Flatiron Building.

Comparing hiking in Manhatten to hiking in the Front Range, one notes a sharp up tick in the number of restaurants and other commercial establishments. Not to mention people. For a good part of the walk, I was basically walking through a crowd. But the amazing thing is how in five hours I walked through a countless number of micro-cultures. It was like taking a core sample of, not just New York, but America. And if the universal is in the specific then it was like looking at the tree-rings of humanity. Something important in the patterns, revealing a different view of the universe itself. These are the things that pass through the mind.

One observation, that stunned me, was how obviously Manhattan is bisected on it’s short axis as well as it’s long. Manhattan below 120th street and Manhattan above it are TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS! I’ve always known this, but it was so clearly and unambiguously palpable. There is a good deal of variety of experience between Wall St, and Morningside Heights, but none of it is as drastic as the shift when you hit Harlem.

I want to try to go the other direction some time (and walk the West side of the street), but five hours pounding concrete has left me feeling like someone has been working me over with a ball-peen hammer.

I need some time to recover.

I took possetion of a 1992 Honda Accord on January 9th, 2004. It was purchased from Team Honda in Baton Rouge LA. Because of the color the car quickly came to be known as Kermit the car. It turns out that it wasn’t easy being green.

On May 5th 2008 at almost exactly 5 pm (5/5, 5:00), while driving at about 80 mph, shortly after entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed near the highest point on I80 East of the Mississippi in central PA, Kermit’s engine made a fairly disturbing sound, emitted a cloud of white smoke, and stopped running. I pulled over to the shoulder, and called the Better World Club (eco alternative to AAA). I was on day two of a two day drive from Boulder CO. I had about 4.5 hours ahead of me to get to NY. It took over two hours for a tow truck to arrive. When it did, the guy told me I was about as far from a town as I could possibly be. He towed me to the town of Clearfield. Explaining on the way that the garage would be closed but he would drop me at the Super 8 Motel and then drop the car at the garage. I should call in the morning and find out what the story was.

So I checked in (they had a 10% discount for people in my kind of plight), and went for a walk. The sunset was breathtaking, and it became clear that I had a choice; I could torture myself with the frustration of a thwarted trip, and anxiety over the fate of the car (I was having trouble thinking of anything trivial that would have caused the symptoms it was presenting). Or I could breath the mountain air, and allow the sunset to work it’s magic. I took the later.

In the morning I called the garage. I was hesitant because I couldn’t figure out a safe way to pronounce the name “Bob Boob’s Garage” but I think Mr. Boob is used to this. I told him the story, he said he would take a look at Kermit and get back to me. It seemed like 15 seconds, but it must have been 5 minutes later, he called to say “Yeah, your car is dead. DOA.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said “Your engine done blown up.” So I made preliminary funerary arrangements and went about trying to find a mode of transport for me and my stuff. After many investigations it turned out that the best bet was to take a “Silver Bullet Cab” company car to Du Bois (pronounced “Doo Bois” not “Doo Bwa” I learned) airport to get a one way rental from Hertz. This was enough of a distance that the cab fair was 75 dollars, but there was simply no other way to get there. The driver was a fantastic retired bottle plant worker with a severe stutter unless he was quoting someone. We had a great conversation the whole way. I got a car and went looking for Bob Boob garage inc.

Found it, and stripped everything I wanted off of Kermit, pulling out my stereo etc. And then I drove away. This is a picture of Kermit as I left it. Damage is visible on the front port side from the deer we killed last year.

I liked Kermit. It was a fun car and we put a lot of miles in together. 4 round trips between Baton Rouge and New York. New York to Arizona and back. Twice to Louisville. Chicago. Kalamazoo. It was stolen and recovered and had two stereo’s stolen out of it (once when the care was taken). And of course there was the deer in Michigan last year. However, I was thinking of getting rid of the car. Kermit’s death accelerated the process. Removing the band-aid quickly. In many ways I’m more relieved than anything. I was trying to use it to get to gigs as a way of reducing my carbon footprint. I just wish that Zip cars let you go between cities, but we’ll have to wait on that.

Anyone got a Segway they’re not using?

I am a big fan of TED. If you don’t know what TED is I’ll blog about it sometime soon. One of the things I like about TED is that I find a lot of cool stuff through TED. Recently a TED talk led me to WorldChanging.com. I would like to suggest it to all readers of this Blog. I cross-post here their Manifesto. I think it says it pretty clearly. I don’t work for them of derive any benefit except in as much as I have a vested interest in the world getting better. If you read nothing else of it, check out the last line… The rest of this post is cut and paste from WorldChanging.com

WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.

This is a conversation, not a sermon. We encourage not just feedback, but active participation, and, yes, challenge. Got a great idea for a resource we’ve missed? Let us know – better yet, write your own recommendation and send it to us. Think we’re off-base with a recommendation we’ve made? Let us know that, too, and what resource you think we should have covered instead. Changing the world is a team sport.

So another over-long lapse in Leon’s blogging.

You may have noticed that I’ve added a little “bookshelf” widget to the sidebar of the blog page. This is something being run through a book based social networking site called “Shelfari”. I don’t know a lot about them but I’m messing around with it.

I’ve been doing this a lot; messing around with so-called “Web 2.0” stuff. It’s all very interesting, but like everything else about computers, feels embryonic. There is a critical issue of critical mass that seems to play in. With some sites, you go and sign up and literally nothing happens. With others you get deluged by so much cruff that you wonder why you’re bothering. The balance between seeming pointless because there isn’t enough going on and seeming pointless because there’s too much, seems to be the really tricky thing.

Something that I’m not the first to notice is the fact that the early days of interconnectivity with computers featured List-serves and bulletin boards and it was all about community. Now granted it was a community of people who knew how to use the machines, but it was a community. When the web and web commerce became practical, the internet became very much about individual action, but now with Web 2.0 its swinging back towards interconnectivity of people, and now there are a lot more of them. Many of them are not even nerds. So this is interesting.

I intend to continue “messing around” with these sites, if only out of intellectual curiosity. So lets take a look at some of what I’m doing:

Flickr: This was the first site that I really started using. It’s a photo based social networking site. my id on it is “leoningul”. Lame. I know. Anyway, I occasionally upload pictures that I’ve taken. I have a small group of “friends” on it. People I’ve never heard of come by and look at my pictures. It’s all good. What I try not to do, it use it as the proverbial digital shoebox. I don’t throw snapshots up there. I think about it more as a low stakes public gallery. A place where I can put up pictures that I’ve taken (or made) that I think even someone who doesn’t know me would be interested in. In other words, there is a degree to which I see it as a public artistic activity. This may be pretentious but that’s how I feel.

Facebook: This is the big, scary monster of social networking sites. What gets me about Facebook is that I had a dozen “friends” on it, almost before I was done signing up. I continue to add a couple people a week. It’s silly. In many ways it’s just plain stupid, but what it ties into is the totally irrational way in which people relate. It provides for a level of casual contact amongst a large group of people which has already lead to some really interesting things. In the short time that I’ve been on it, it has already put me in touch with long-lost contacts and is starting to actually get me work. It’s not that throwing a fish at someone is something I would miss if I couldn’t do it, but there are plenty of people in my life who I wouldn’t relate to much at all if I didn’t have a context in which to “throw a fish” at them. I’ve also started playing chess on Facebook which is really cool.

Second Life: I’ve just started on this. It seriously freaks me out. Second Life is a virtual environment in which you have an avatar that you move around and interact with people and stuff through. I haven’t spent a lot of time in it yet, but I’m still yet to meet anyone. I don’t even know how to look for a person. Frankly it feels like death. I don’t know how to explain this, but it feels more like some sort of weird after-life, than a parallel life. We’ll see how it goes. A while back, I had some time and I did a ten day free trial of World Of Warcraft, which is similar to Second Life except that there’s a lot more structure and you’re basically in a Tolkein-esque world fighting monsters. After ten days they wanted me to start paying money and I realized that it’s one thing to find something engaging and even engrossing, but paying someone to steal time out of my life was not something I was interested in. The weird thing was that I could spend hours in WOW doing something utterly mundane, while letting the mundanity of my actual life slip by, unnoticed. I think there’s something going on here that is deeply interesting. Why are we willing to do as “entertainment” the very things we are seeking entertainment as a relief from? Anyway, I decided to see how far I can go with these things for free, and Second Life says that there’s a lot available without paying any “real” money. We’ll see.

Netvibes: This is interesting. Netvibes is essentially a web aggregator. A place where you can pull all the various content that you access regularly on the web together. I’ve been using Netvibes as my home-page for awhile now. I get my news and check in with blogs and other stuff through it’s widgets. However, they’ve just upgraded it and part of the new design is moving Netvibes towards a kind of social networking site. In addition to my own private Netvibes page, I now have a “Leon’s Netvibe Universe” that allows anyone to access an aggregate of web content that I, essentially curate. This is kind of interesting. You can check it out at www.netvibes.com/leoningulsrud

SEE: Part of the reason that I’ve been exploring this stuff is that we have a project at SITI Company that is an implementation of some of this technology. If this stuff is designed to allow contacts and networking across large groups of people, then there are certain things that we can do with our supporters and students, using this stuff. We’re calling it SITI Extended Ensemble (SEE), and it’s the brainchild of Brad Carlin. In some ways SEE is more like the old school BBS sites, but already in it’s embryonic stages we’re finding out a lot of interesting things about how these things work. In just over of month of being public we already have 200+ members and some lively discussions. An interesting thing that keeps coming up is that we want to define SEE as “Not a SITI version of Facebook.” You can check out SEE at: http://siti.collectivex.com

There are also things like del.icio.us, Digg and Stumble that I’ve been doing in terms of finding and tagging websites. There are also a whole raft of things from Google that are completely changing the way the web is accessed. These are so integrated into how I use Firefox (my current browser of choice) that I don’t even think of them as websites. Perhaps this is the kind of ubiquitous invisibility that Web 2.0 will eventually evolve into, overall. I mean as cool as something like Second Life or Facebook might be, they will never be a part of how I go about my day in the way that something like Stumble or the various Google tools that I use are. In Second Life and Facebook, I guess I’m being asked to extend my imagination into them (which is fine I guess), but the more evolved tools are already acting as extensions and modifications to how my imagination and curiosity works. Eg: when I wonder where something is, my mind reaches for Google Maps. Luckily it’s on my iPhone so it’s only a pocket away.

Whether any of this is good or bad I think is yet to be discovered. We’re in the stone-age. What I do know is that, like Marshall Mcluhan said: The new technologies are not bridges between us and our environment. They ARE the environment.

Let me see if I remember this… There is a story about Laurie Anderson getting an assignment to interview John Cage. Anyone got a citation on this? I think it’s on the Puppet Motel cd rom which I can’t play anymore. (Remember cd roms?!!). As I remember it, she’s sitting there listening to him talk and she’s increasingly obsessed with and distracted by a question that she eventually blurts out:

“Are things getting better, or are they getting worse?”

Cage takes a moment and then says:

“I’m not sure, but they’re certainly getting faster.”

The question is a good one. An excellent one. One that I find myself asking all the time. And Cage’s answer, like many things he said, is most exquisitely useful.

I have often said this but it is one of the profound mixed-blessings of being bi-cultural, that it is almost impossible for me to see only one side of any argument. This would be a great thing, except that I find myself arguing sides of arguments that shock me, all the time. So I try to inch the mix on this blessing towards the good.

I also believe in debate. Argument. The vigorous battle of ideas. Its a way of improving our thinking. Making our ideas stronger. Because of this, if you say to me that you support any of the current presidential candidates, I will passionately take up the cause of the other, and try to convince you. The foundation that this situation sits on is that I have not made up my own mind yet. And I will argue that I am passionate about NOT making up my mind right now. The general election is still ten months away. Because I refuse to hold a party affiliation, I cannot vote in the NY primary. The system has told me that I either play the game or they don’t want to hear from me till November.

Yeah, I tend to agree with the democrats. That doesn’t mean that I want to JOIN their little club. The candidates that actually articulate the things that I think are necessary in our country are cranks that have already been dismissed at this point in the process. My views run towards pacifist anarchy with social accountability. I have no problem with Marx being right, but Smith seems to have been more practical in terms of how the world seems to work. Everybody with “vision” is either a Utopian Capitalist or a Utopian Marxist. Meanwhile what are those of us who live in the real world supposed to do? I want a strong government that distributes wealth equitably, but also stays away from my life, and my personal choices about how to live. Clearly, I’m politically insane. You wouldn’t want me running the government anymore than you’d want me doing open heart surgery. I do, however, feel these things.

Part of my distaste for Party politics comes from a distaste for team boosterism/fandom. The whole “My team/family/race/religion/sexuality/gender/party/nation/culture/species is better than yours, and we’re gonna kick your butt!” is SO infuriatingly tiresome to me. It is the kind of thinking that allows us to find moral justifications for interpersonal violence (what other kind is there). But we reduce even something like doing political good to this same horse-race argument. My good is better than your good, and I will pound you to dust to prove it. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in competition. Far from it. I think it is essential. But it is a much more profound thing than the hooliganism I see most often. I have to thank my friends over at the “Oh My Goodness!” blog (see the link in the sidebar) for the following Carl Wilson quote about democracy:

“This is what I mean by democracy–not a limp open-mindedness, but actively grappling with people and things not like me, which brings with it the perilous question of what I am like. Democracy, that dangerous, paradoxical, and mostly unattempted ideal, sees that the self is insufficient, dependent for definition on otherness, and chooses not only to accept that but to celebrate it, to stake everything on it. Through democracy, which demands we meet strangers as equals, we perhaps become less strangers to ourselves.”

I like this. I like it a lot. It confirms in me the political thrill that I feel when I talk to someone who disagrees with me. The ecstatic joy of living in a milieu where I am not “like” those around me. The profound happiness of “otherness”. This is democracy. You don’t need democracy in an environment where everyone agrees. Democracy is a stab at answering the deceptively profound and paradoxical question: How do we live together while preserving the values of plurality and multiplicity? How do we REALLY?

Ok. I will now do the violence of political articulation here. From my point of view right now, this minute: The Barak vs Hilary presidential candidate argument, misses the whole point. The point is that the United States is being run by corporate interests and we are polluting the planet past its ability to continue to sustain us, while killing and torturing people. Both Barak and Hilary are members of our CURRENT government. Why have they not risked their political lives fighting what is happening RIGHT NOW? Why have they not aggressively pursued the sorts of changes that they talk about. Anyone can say the things that they’re saying. Why haven’t they done it yet? Why should we trust them AT ALL otherwise? This may be asking a lot, but do we not have a right to ask a lot of those who seek from us our political power? Barak, Hilary and Edwards agree on so much, what if they were to form a coalition to actually get some of these things done? We are being asked to care about who’s in the white house. Why? The only reason to care is because they may be able to do something meaningful. So isn’t it just as good if they can do it outside the white house? Why are they wasting our time? People are dieing unnecessarily right now. We are screwing up the environment unnecessarily right now. The civil rights of people are already being dismantled.

It’s like we’re standing inside a burning building watching some sort of competition, where we’re asked to choose which fire-department will come rescue us in a year. And the people with hoses and axes are being told to stand back and not get in the way of the all-important competition. And we are told not to run. To keep our eyes on the shiny trucks.

So is this new? Is this any different than it’s ever been? I doubt it. It’s probably always been this way.

It’s just happening faster.

The bulk of the time since getting back to New York was spent working on the new SITI piece “Who Do You Think You Are”. It’s exciting work and I can’t wait to get back to it. We’re taking a few weeks away from it before we go back to Arizona for the second SITI residency there where we’ll finish the play and premier it on March 1st.

In the meantime, I was supposed to go to Paris to act in a film. That got nixed because the director decided that he wanted to do my scenes in a more improvised style and I don’t have the French to do THAT. So I’ve ended up with some time on my hands. Which means, as usual that I let a lot of it run through my fingers. I’m not complaining. Wasting time is not a waste of time as far as I’m concerned. It’s giving me a chance to check in with all kinds of “Back-burner” things, but it’s at the expense of some of the “front-burner” stuff. Se la vie!

One thing that has taken up some time, is the fact that the Oscar nominations have come out. I had seen several of the films that had important nominations, but there were some holes. So I’ve been filling them in.

This gives me an excuse to talk about the Oscar movies for a bit.

I haven’t seen Atonement or Juno as of this writing, but the other three nominees for Best Picture are all exceptional films.

• Despite the fact that my friend Jordan Lage makes an appearance in it, I had not seen “Michael Clayton” until it was nominated. It’s an amazing movie. It captures a finely modulated sense of frustration about life that is so subtly rendered that it was hard not to identify strongly with the characters. I’m not one who usually finds this an important criteria for enjoying a film, but this was rather uncanny. There are things about the title character and his situation that I identified so strongly with and have never seen dramatized before. The entire cast is fantastic. Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton are being singled out for very good reasons. It is a testament to her chops, but if this was the first thing that I had seen Tilda Swinton in, I would think of her in a totally different way. For someone who is the embodiment of a certain kind of internal metal, to perform the complete lack of it is stunning. Tony Gilroy’s direction and screenplay are both not only inspired but driven by a clear passion for these flawed people and what they say about the world we live in. Mr. Gilroy also directed last year’s excellent, and otherwise nominated “Bourne Ultimatum” and is quickly becoming someone I pay attention to. Next time, I don’t think I’ll wait for a stupid Oscar nod to go see his movie.

• “No Country for Old Men” is, in my opinion, the most mature movie the Cohens have produced. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re doing an adaptation for, what I think is, the first time, but the film has a steady intelligence that cuts through their normal wit to punch you straight in the gut. It’s not that the wit is gone, it’s just modulated, and as such, moments that would make you laugh in another of their movies become something quite different here. Somehow in what is a disturbingly violent movie, they get you to care about almost everybody who enters the frame. This is why the violence is so disturbing. It is not a cartoon. Even the seeming stock charactors like the hotel clerks or gas station attendants (not to mention Tommy Lee Jones’ jaded cop with a hard past) come off as people who are worth caring about, and this is part of what makes Javier Bardem’s psychopathic hit man so chilling. He’s hurting people. And he knows it. No movie of this genre has ever scared me before. This movie scared me.

• I don’t know how to start talking about “There Will Be Blood”. It is a remarkable film. It is cinema. Although Anderson has been inviting comparisons to Wells and dedicated the film to Altman, it made me think of Kubrick at his best, and that’s hard to do. Daniel Day-Lewis stands tall in the middle of this masterpiece, and if he wasn’t a giant of world cinema before, he is now. It is a performance of historic proportions. There is much that can (and is being) said about this movie, but the most cogent thing, if you haven’t seen it, is “Go see it.”

What all three of the afore mentioned films confirm that whether a film (or any work of art) is uplifting, is not dependent upon it’s content, but upon the level of the artistry with which they were crafted. What is hopeful, is that in such a dark time in our culture, we can still make substantial works of art.

Looking over some of the other nominations:

• Mr. Depp certainly deserves his nomination for “Sweeny Todd”. I’m not always a fan of Tim Burton’s stuff. When I like it, I really like it, but there are times when he leaves me cold. I liked “Sweeny Todd”. Liked it a lot. It’s wonderfully twisted. The parallels to “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory” are both disturbing, and surprisingly fun to think about. I also love the fact that all over America it’s got the goth kids talking to the musical theatre kids.

• Mr. Hoffman’s nomination for “Charlie Wilson’s War” is deserved. It’s a wonderful turn in a good movie. I’m not a big Tom Hanks fan, but I actually liked him in this film as well. I was surprised. The film itself is interesting. I kept wondering if the general American public is actually understanding the connections between the story of the film and our current nightmare. There are a couple of scenes in which the screenplay is about 1 degree of separation away from mentioning Osama Bin Laden. It’s weird because I’m usually a big fan of ambiguity and allowing the audience to do the work, but I found myself wanting a more explicit line drawn.

• Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly” is one of the best films of the year. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it in the Best Picture category. The Best Director and Adapted Screenplay nominations are well deserved. This is another must-see, run-don’t-walk picture. It’s absolutely brilliant. On paper, it looks like it’s going to be a total drag, but it just simply soars. Filmed in the hospital where the story actually happened with some of the actual people who took part, playing themselves, this is a remarkable achievement.

• It’s nice to see Pixar’s second Brad Bird picture, “Ratatouille”, get some attention here. Recruiting Mr. Bird is one in a long line of smart things John Lasseter has done. The movie is a delight. I find it particularly moving because of the allegory that Bird is making about being an artist in America (I’m not making this up. I’ve heard him talk about it in interviews). The idea that we’re trying to make something good for people in an environment where the folks in charge are trying to kill us, is very resonant.

• Despite this post, I don’t really put a lot of stock in the Oscars. They’re fun. I enjoy them, but I don’t think they have a lot of meaning. What meaning they have is their ability to direct attention into directions that it wouldn’t otherwise go. Almost every year I can find something in the nominations or awards that makes me angry or bewilders me. This year is no exception, and here it is: Why no “Simpsons Movie”? What the…? I’m not going to go out on a huge limb here defending The Simpsons as important American cinematic art. I would argue, and not alone, that the show represents the very best of what American Television has to offer. This is not the same thing as being great cinema all on its own. That being said, there is something very interesting going on in “The Simpsons Movie”. It’s not just that it had a certain pop culture penetration. A careful examination of the film reveils that these people worked very carefully to ride the aesthetic line that separates Film and Television. I didn’t fully realize how carefully this was done until I got the DVD and saw it on a TV. The movie is in a different world from the TV series. If only on this basis, I think the film has something very important to offer to the conversation about cinema in the United States. This is ignoring it’s value as a fun movie that hangs twenty, while surfing the huge wave of American pop culture like only The Simpsons can. Now even if you don’t buy this, are you going to argue that “Surfs Up” is better? Really? REALLY? “Surfs Up” should be considered for an Academy Award and “The Simpsons Movie” shouldn’t. That’s what you’re saying? I wouldn’t mind it at all if “The Simpsons Movie” lost to “Ratatouille” or “Persepolis” (which I haven’t seen but intend to). I really wouldn’t mind that. But for Matt G. et all to not even be nominated is just crazy. Disclaimer: There may be some technical reason why “The Simpsons Movie” was not nominated. If that is the case, I don’t know about it. If I find anything out, I’ll report back. If any of you know, then enlighten us.

• The other movie that I think could have gotten more attention is “Once”. This lovely little film is something that there was a lot of buzz about in certain circles, but a more prominent Academy notice could get a lot more people to see it.

Ok. That’s enough for now. I’ve still got some movies to go see, so I’ll be back with more, but for the time being let me just say that it’s a nice time to be a cinemaphile. There’s some great stuff being made out there. The writers strike may move a lot of production overseas but that’s not such a bad thing. The standards are good and we may be getting back to somewhere near where we were before the industry was hijacked by the blockbuster. But that’s a rant for another time…

Go to the movies!

Ok, so I’ve been lazy about the Blog. Here I am climbing back into the saddle.

So I waxed rather rhapsodic about Japan while I was there so here are some things that SUCK about Japan:

• Relative rarity of free WiFi networks (Australia, or at least Melbourne, also SUCKs on this count)

• Rarity of AC outlets in Airports, trains, train stations. There are coin operated cell-phone charging stations which are cool, and I understand that free plugs aren’t ubiquitous in the States either, but if you look, you can usually find power to snitch in the US. This leads to another thing: I understand that the power needs are different, but if every little calculator can have the little photo-voltaic cell on it, why can’t my iPhone have a flip top that provides a trickle charge. I don’t expect it to be able to run it, but it would slow the battery drain. Wouldn’t it? (I’m setting this up for my bother Joel to comment on it).

• Shu-den. The last train. For all the glory of Japanese mass transit, it doesn’t run all night. On the way back to the hotel one night in Tokyo, Akiko and I were on the last train on the Sobu line into Shinjuku. We were changing there to the Yamanote, but the Yamanote line was delayed. Because the Sobu train was the last one of the night, they waited for the Yamanote line to arrive. When we got off the train, it was already full. As we stood there across the platform from it, it filled up to the point that people were hanging out of the doors. When our train finally showed up, it was full and MOST of the people got off and tried to get onto the now completely full Sobu train. The scene on the platform as our train pulled away was something out of a high-concept disaster movie. The number of people trying to get on was at least two and a half times the packed capacity of the train.

I don’t know the numbers on this but if the MTA here in NYC can run trains all night, why can’t there be some service late night in Japan? Is there a downside? Sound? Wear and tear? Capsule hotels will go bankrupt?

Speaking of sound: • Sound trucks. Japanese politics features a very vocal radical right-wing, called the Uyoku. As opposed to the radical left Sayoku, Both of these are boarder-line terrorist organizations, and whereas when I was young the Sayoku were the ones demonstrating against Narita airport and the constitution, by the time I was living here in the 80s and 90s it was the Uyoku that was making all the noise. To over-simplify completely, the Uyoku are Neo-Nazis. They’re intensely nationalist. They don’t like foreigners. And they would like us to operate on the basis that the 2nd World War is still on, and that Japan should be much more aggressive towards the Russians in terms of certain islands which are in northern Japan or southern Sakhalin, depending on who’s telling the story.

The MO of these guys is to drive around in black panel vans with white and red slogans written all over them and late 1930’s Messerschmidt loud speakers on the roof. The guy in the passenger seat then proceeds to shout into a hand held CB style microphone and what you can hear through the distortion of the tortured amps is a stream of Mussolini style tirade. They often have a posse which consists of a small parade of men marching behind them in military fatigues, helmets and white gloves, holding various banners and flags.

I was eating my lunch in the court-yard of the theatre in Mito many years ago when one of these parades went by. One of the marchers came over and stood over me, watching me eat my rice-ball. After awhile he asked if I liked Japanese food. I told him that I did, and he walked away as if I had validated something about his life. I was a bit confused by the encounter, but I don’t think I was as confused as he was.

Akiko and I ran into such a parade in Shibuya on our way to see Kayoko’s play and the sound bouncing off the glass sides of the valley of high-fashion retail was mind melting. I didn’t make out ONE SINGLE WORD of what this knucklehead was saying. I don’t know what the issue was, or what he was trying to convince me of. I suspect this has ceased to be the point of these trucks. They’re a form of right wing punk rock. I don’t know their politics enough to know if I agree or disagree with them anymore. But I don’t like their punk rock.

• Misogyny. There’s a lot of it in Japan. It’s everywhere. You see it in the behavior of both men and women. Almost everything I say about liking the basic state of being in Japan is predicated on my being male. I often wonder if Akiko would like Japan if she hadn’t been somewhat inoculated to the misogyny by growing up here.

• Racism. There is a truism that I hold to about living in the United States that states that, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t benefit from being a white person. This is mostly because I’m treated in with a modicum of respect and normality. I assume in an emergency, that I’ll be able to communicate reasonably with members of the Police. for example. In Japan this gets complicated because there is a kind of positive racism in that I’m actually held in some weird form of respect just cause I’m white. This has dissipated over the years just because it’s not the rarity it used to be, but when I was a kid it was SO easy to take advantage of being European that a lot of us didn’t really notice the extent of the effect. I remember that the first few black people I had contact with in Japan, had radically different experiences as “Gaijin”. Some of it was novelty but there was an ugly edge to it. Hip-Hop culture’s hold on vogue has changed this considerably, but there’s a generational issue. The official bureaucracy is not hip to Hip-Hop. The historical situation concerning Koreans and Chinese is an absolute horror story. One has to be careful. To say that Japanese people are racist… is racist. I know many Japanese people who are very sophisticated about these issues. I’m talking about general social tenancies here, which I acknowledge is dangerous.

The upside to the Japanese attitude towards gender and racial equality is that there is a relative absence of political correctness. People are more likely to indicate their attitude, and you know where people stand, but the underlying ambient level of discrimination is undeniable, and unacceptable. It’s not that this isn’t also true of most other countries, including the States but I believe Japan is shamefully behind, in terms of equal pay and other tangible issues.

• Localized technology. I don’t know exactly how to talk about this yet. It’s something that I really noticed on this last trip and I’m not sure I can be clear here but it has to do with Japanese society’s tendency to create a great deal of innovation that is fundamentally self-involved. It’s like the Americans making cars that only appeal to Americans and then expecting everyone to buy them.

There is this canard about Japan not being able to innovate. I think this is bunk. This is a society that can come up with five, distinct, cost-effective ways to package a rice ball without the seaweed touching the rice, that can be unwrapped without touching the rice directly. The six years I was gone saw a transformation in the way hot cans of coffee get sold out of vending machines. The new trains have these very user-friendly data screens that let you know where you are and how long it’s going to take to get you where you’re going. The thing that gets me is that the layout is reversed depending on which side of the train you’re on. In other words, the whole layout is reversed to make sure that the map is oriented the way the train is actually moving. The next station on the map is in the same direction as the train is moving. This is a small thing, but it’s the kind of thing that makes a difference between technology that’s adjusting to humans or the other way around. The iPhone (which I love) has a flaw in this regard: When it’s in Landscape mode, the volume rocker is reversed relative to the volume indicator on screen, and Apple is the master of this game.

Think for a moment about the latest development in toilet technology that has an actual impact on your life (not in the area of cleaning the toilet). No really. Think about it. It’s probably the development of cheap, readily available toilet paper. I’m willing to bet thats what it is, and I don’t remember a time when this wasn’t the case. This means, that I’ve NEVER seen forward movement (excuse the pun) in the technology of routine bowel evacuation. This is not true in Japan. When I was a kid, the throne style “western” toilet was a relative rarity. Now a toilet that doesn’t have a built in bidet, and automated washing set-up with air-drying and seat warming is a relative rarity. I’ve seen these things introduced in little news items in the States as an example of “those nutty Japanese”. I have never seen such a clear example of “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

Mocking these things makes us look like the filthy ignorant Neanderthals we probably are, but the broader point here is that the innovation that has lead to things things is not permeating world culture. This is the thing I can’t put my finger on, but there’s something self involved about making something that only a Japanese person would find useful. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that of course, but somehow I get the feeling in Japan that it’s not coming from a passion towards the Japanese way of life, but a fear of going out and playing in the bigger playground. It is the old Japanese insularity, and it feeds the conflicted sense of superiority (look at our cool stuff)/inferiority (oh you wouldn’t be interested) that lies at the heart of so much in Japan.

Ok. Thats it for now.

Gotta go do some stuff.

It’s 2008!

Looks alot like 2007. If you look in the right direction, it looks just like 1843 or 1214 or 25,000 BC. I wonder if it looks like the year 5008.

Nothing points out the indifference of nature/the universe to me the way a day like this does. There is NOTHING to mark this “New” year. Where is the starting point or the ending point in the track around the sun? It is gray and hazy in New York right now. Bits of rain. Does this “mean” anything? Does it have any relation to the rest of the 360 some odd days that today is now part of. Then again, it’s all about how you look at it, and maybe marking a day like this is a way of making ourselves conscious of things like time, it’s passage, and how for us it can be fleeting. My problem is that what people say about this kind of thing is something that I aspire to infuse every day with. To never engage in the drudgery of yet another day following day. So I tend to get prickly about holidays simply because they point out both nature’s indifference and our inability to make every day special.

But for today, here’s how I’m going to take it: This is practice. I’m going to take everything associated with New Years, new beginnings, clean-slate, hopefulness for change and growth. I’m going to take all of this and touch in with it today, as a way of seeing it. Then I’ll try to check in with it every day. To see if I can make every one of the next 360 some odd days as hopeful and clean-slate as this one. Then I’m going to see if I can do the same thing with the other holidays that make me prickly (easy to say now that the “season” is pretty much over).

Maybe that’s just a garden variety new year’s resolution. Hopefully not.

I’m sorry I’ve not been blog-prolific of late. Since getting back from Japan we’ve been busy working on the new SITI production “Who Do You Think You Are”. At the same time I got a cold (actually two of them) and had kind of a tough time. Then we got a pretty big homework assignment to work on during our holiday break so, although I haven’t been working EVERY MINUTE, I’ve been pretty busy.

I have at least one more post about Japan, sort of summing up, and I need time to sit down and finish it, but I haven’t taken that time yet, so. I’ll put it aside for now and see if I can get back to more regular blogging.

Have a good one.

So I’ve been in Tokyo for the last while. My time here has been extremely busy. No time for silly things like blogging. However, I have been thinking a good deal about this country and culture.

The one thought that I keep circling around is the idea that Japan is spending a good deal of energy and resources on innovation and development that is relevant only for the Japanese, and is still somehow failing to find ways to make their contributions resonate fully in the world community. I’ll try to come back to this point, but for now some vignettes of the week.

We spent the first couple of nights in Tokyo at the home of Yoji Sakate. Mr. Sakate is the artistic director of the Rinkogun company, and current head of the Japan Playwrights Association. I have known Sakate for about a decade now. We first met when I performed the simultaneous translation for a tour of Rinkogun’s Capital Of The City of the Gods. This was a significant tour for me in that it marked my first visit to New Orleans. I have since translated a number of Sacate’s plays and directed a reading of a section of his Attic. The last time I was in Japan was when I was here 6 years ago to create an adaptation of Moby Dick with RInkogun. So the first night we were in Tokyo, a bunch of the people who had worked on that show came over and we had about 17 tons of food and drink. It lasted late into the night. I had a long conversation with Mr. Furumoto, Rinkogun’s managing director. He’s from Toyota, where I grew up, so we have always had an interesting bond. It was interesting to hear how the funding situation in Japan is getting more and more severe. GOS grants that had kept the company alive for most of it’s 25 years, have simply gone away. Despite the fact that Rinkogun and Sakate have won just about every award available to them, and are arguably one of the most firmly established companies in the country, they’re still having to re-invent the funding wheel every year to stay afloat. There was a woman at the party that I did not know, who brought some food that she introduced as “macrobiotic”, informing us that it’s currently a big hit in the United States. This is a common trope, something that is barely on the radar in the U.S. is marketed here as a huge craze that is sweeping the United States. What struck me though was that she used the word “macrobiotic”. Now, I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the concept of macrobiotic food is based on “Shoujin Ryouri”, which is the food eaten in certain Japanese Buddhist monasteries. So there’s a perfectly good Japanese term for this stuff, which everyone in Japan would understand. “Macrobiotic” is, at best, clumsy in Japanese.

The next day, Akiko and I went down to Yokohama to have lunch with Akiko’s older sister and the elder of her two daughters. The ocean-front area of Yokohama around the new “Landmark Tower” is a futuristic architectural splurge with amusement parks, hotels and shopping malls arranged like the diorama of a theoretical cubist city. Post-modernism is alive and well in Yokohama. After lunch, Akiko and I went up to the top of the Landscape Tower (the tallest structure in Japan) on the elevator (the fastest elevator in Japan, although the certificate on display from Guiness said “Fastest Elevator” so I’m not sure if there’s a faster one anywhere). The view was spectacular. Even in Yokohama, which is technically past the southern border of Tokyo, the expanse of buildings is unending. You literally can’s see the edges of the city. It’s civilization as far as the eye can see, off past the curvature of the earth.

That night, Akiko went to see the dance company she used to dance with and Sakate met me at the Tokyo Public theatre to see Hanagumishibai’s new take on Chushingura. Hanagumishibai is a 20 year old company that has as it’s theme, the re-interpretation of Kabuki in a modern, unauthorized context. These guys (and yes, they’re all men) trained in the traditional techniques of Kabuki but are not part of the official Kabuki organization. I hadn’t seen their work in over 10 years, so I was curious to see how they were doing. I was a bit disappointed. Back in the day, the company had featured a friend of mine, the extraordinary Sasae Eisuke, as the principal Onnagata (specialist in playing women). Sasae was so compelling he became a kind of phenomenon all on his own. The times that I saw the company, the interplay between Sasae and company founder and director/performer Mr. Kanno was mind-blowing. These two guys were at the edges of their ability, weaving a totally new kind of cloth out of this ancient thread. Sasae has since left the company, and although Kanno is still really (and I mean REALLY) amazing on stage, the production as a whole felt safe. They have a lot of money now, the costumes look fabulous, the staging is gorgeous, but many of the very things that they began criticizing about official Kabuki are now features of their performance. It could have been because they were doing, perhaps, the most well worn play in the Kabuki cannon, but especially the first half was deadly boring.

The next day, Akiko and I moved to my brother Joel’s place for a night. After a beautiful walk through Tama Cemetery (resting place of Yukio Mishima, Edogawa Rampo, General Tojo and Admiral Yamamoto), we had dinner with Akiyo (an old friend from Toyota) and her two kids, so along with Joel’s family it was quite a crowd.

The next morning, with the help of Joel, I got a bunch of little fixes implemented on the blog. So if you haven’t noticed, things are working smoother and every-thing’s a bit prettier here at Leon’s blog.

Akiko and I then moved to a hotel in Ikebukuro, which was part of our old stomping grounds. That night we went to see Shiraishi Kayoko play the mother in Parco Theater’s production of The Beauty Queen of Leenan. For those who don’t know, Shiraishi Kayoko is the best stage actor in the world right now. I would qualify this as my opinion, but I’m not the only one who feels this way. She was Suzuki’s lead actor for the period of time when his work was important, and she was the progenitor of much of the so-called Suzuki Method. I was lucky enough to have my time with the Suzuki company and hers, overlapp by about 3 years, during which time we became quite close. She has toured to the United States twice with her “Hyakumonogatari” solo performances, and I have made a fool of myself on those occasions, distracting the audience with simultaneous translations. Aside from being a remarkable performer of the first order, she is also a fanatically loyal friend and one of my favorite people. The production was directed by a new up-and-coming 32 year old whipper-snapper of a director. It was solid, but not brilliant as a production. As is appropriate to the material, the style of performance was naturalistic. But this raises one of the most interesting points about the production; Kayoko is anything BUT a naturalistic performer. She is a monster on stage. A huge theatrical presence of titanic proportions, and to the very depths of every bone in her body, theatrical. So for her, acting “normal” on stage is immensely difficult. What this meant is that everyone else on stage is coming from a place of comfort within the daily-life body of naturalistic performance, and reaching towards theatricality. Kayoko is starting from a place of intense theatricality and reaching towards daily-life. Which one do YOU think is more interesting to watch? For me it’s no contest. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The character is a horrible, cruel, resentful hag of a woman. Kayoko makes her absolutely and terrifyingly vivid in all her ugliness and then makes you care about her. It was, in a word, stunning. After the show Akiko and I and Kayoko and her Husband went to Roppongi for late night Chinese. At midnight it became Kayoko’s 66th birthday so we made a deal about that. She was born the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As she said, “…there’s always been something about me and America.”

The next day (Sunday), I met my childhood friend and ersatz guru Tom “Peach-fuzz” Eskildsen for breakfast. We then met up with Akiko, Ivar Eimon, Paul Hoshizaki and his wife Hiroko for lunch. These are all childhood friends of mine. We were eating at this really rather good “All the organic food you can eat in 90 mins for 1800 yen” place when another childhood friend who lives in Kobe, Loren Gilbertson called Ivar. It was about as close to a full-on reunion as I care for.

Ivar had to leave but the rest of us went over to the Ginza and walked around until Joel and Ruth showed up and we had Joel’s favorite thing to eat in the entire world An-pan fresh from Kimuraya. Kimuraya is a very old bakery on the Ginza and An-pan is a sweet bean-paste filled roll that originated there.

The party then shed those not related to the Ingulsruds and we went to big brother John E’s and after meeting up with Joel’s two girls, we had a pizza dinner surrounded by John and Kate’s 29th floor, panoramic view of Tokyo at night.

This morning we had to leave the hotel by 10 am leaving us the bulk of the day before our evening flight, so we went to Ueno (the Hard Rock Cafe spells it “Uyeno”), put our bags in a big locker, and went to Ryogoku; the Sumo district. The reason for this side trip was that we had not had any luck finding Tabi (Japanese formal socks with a bifurcated toe that we wear for Suzuki Training) in my size. For reasons that perhaps obvious to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the sport, the Sumo district is a good place to look for anything oversized you might want in Japan. Please insert here one or more jokes at my expense comparing me to a sumo wrestler.

And now I’m at the airport. The tabi and everything else is checked in and we’re checked into that international limbo of intercontinental air travel. This has always been an emotionally and philosophically loaded space for me. I used to write poetry on airplanes a lot. Then I stopped writing poetry all together and the world was a better place.

I can’t say that I’m ready to go back. There are certain things/people I’m looking forward to seeing. But on the whole, I wish I’d been here longer. This is leading to a sense that I want to get back as soon as possible, and for as long as possible. I don’t want to be an ex-pat. I find them sad. But I do love this place and feel a bond to it, even if it’s only one way.

Then again, I want to live a life with lots of places that I miss.