tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30865772024-03-05T03:28:18.166-05:00Mike DaiseyThe online home of monologist, author, and solo performer Mike Daisey.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14064125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-17135560812966155212023-11-17T07:02:00.003-05:002023-11-17T07:02:26.689-05:00test test test<p> Test test test</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-43492789105302750092016-09-06T11:59:00.001-04:002016-09-06T11:59:34.051-04:00Download The Trump Card Script<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizWNfKWtfqDAt76OLj86EI9u5_bAqM3CLT60Q-3SuQQlD6K5IPZFuX-JvlrVHzx90jCuY2E5tftIhxMw4uu3kQ9calUQ7haSS2yKGZy7Huiy1DRq8A50vx_ajE9fyjIy-01UD9/s1600/daisey_billboard_trump_title_web.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizWNfKWtfqDAt76OLj86EI9u5_bAqM3CLT60Q-3SuQQlD6K5IPZFuX-JvlrVHzx90jCuY2E5tftIhxMw4uu3kQ9calUQ7haSS2yKGZy7Huiy1DRq8A50vx_ajE9fyjIy-01UD9/s1600/daisey_billboard_trump_title_web.jpg" /></a> </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>THE TRUMP CARD, my monologue about Donald Trump and all he contains in this particular American moment, is available for download as an edited theatrical transcript under and open performance license so that anyone, anywhere can perform and give readings of it.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Here is a quick Q&A to go over the salient points:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Q: When can I download a script to THE TRUMP CARD?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />A: Right now.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Q: How do we get permission to do a reading of the show?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: You don’t. You already have permission.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: How do we get permission to do a production of the show?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: You don’t. You already have permission.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: How much do we have to pay in royalties to do this?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: Nothing, it’s free.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: What’s the catch?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: There is no catch. It’s open sourced.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: Can I cut the script? Can I make changes?</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: Yes.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: Are theaters really doing the show?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: Based just on talking about this in interviews, I’ve had inquiries from a dozen theaters so far. And AGONY/ECSTASY, which I released the same way, has had almost 200 productions (that I know of) all over the world.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: What materials will you give us to do the show?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: A script of the show so that others can perform it, advice, images, a soundtrack suitable for your production if desired, and if you tell me about your productions some degree of social media promotion.<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Q: What do you get out of doing this?<br /> </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A: Nothing. Except I believe this is a unique election in my lifetime, and a unique candidate, and I wanted to give other artists an opportunity to build their own productions with these blueprints.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br />Why should I have all the fun?</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>***</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://bit.ly/trumpcard_script" target="_blank">Download The Trump Card script here.</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87741708/Show%20Images/daisey_billboard_trump.jpg" target="_blank">Download an image of a homemade billboard of Donald Trump in Iowa here.</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87741708/Show%20Images/daisey_billboard_trump_title.jpg" target="_blank">Download that same image with a title treatment for the show here.</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/87741708/Music/The%20Trump%20Card%20Soundtrack.zip" target="_blank">Download a soundtrack for The Trump Card here.</a></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>***</b></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-42251017643871153112014-10-20T18:53:00.001-04:002014-10-20T18:53:41.181-04:00Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K. - NYTimes.com<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok.html?_r=0">Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K. - NYTimes.com</a>:<br /><em>So far Amazon has not tried to exploit consumers. In fact, it has systematically kept prices low, to reinforce its dominance. What it has done, instead, is use its market power to put a squeeze on publishers, in effect driving down the prices it pays for books — hence the fight with Hachette. In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices. Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down.<br /><br />And on that front its power is really immense — in fact, even greater than the market share numbers indicate. Book sales depend crucially on buzz and word of mouth (which is why authors are often sent on grueling book tours); you buy a book because you’ve heard about it, because other people are reading it, because it’s a topic of conversation, because it’s made the best-seller list. And what Amazon possesses is the power to kill the buzz. It’s definitely possible, with some extra effort, to buy a book you’ve heard about even if Amazon doesn’t carry it — but if Amazon doesn’t carry that book, you’re much less likely to hear about it in the first place.<br /><br />So can we trust Amazon not to abuse that power? The Hachette dispute has settled that question: no, we can’t.<br /></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-82291799715012792872014-09-03T05:00:00.001-04:002014-09-03T05:00:09.170-04:00It's pretty, but is theatre any longer necessary? - DC Theatre Scene<a href="http://dctheatrescene.com/2014/09/01/pretty-theatre-longer-necessary/">It's pretty, but is theatre any longer necessary? - DC Theatre Scene</a>:<br /><br /><em>We’ve done a parallel disservice to the theatre: we’ve allowed an ancient institution of high purpose to devolve to something merely decorative, an appurtenance of leisured life, not a preserver of life itself. Theatre no longer guides, it distracts. Theatre no longer orients, it diverts. Theatre no longer flashes out danger, it celebrates good feeling. We’ve lost any visceral sense of what theatre is for. Like the lighthouses of popular imagination it’s perceived as quaint. It’s become a tourist attraction.<br /><br />At the summit discussion Peter Marks organized this spring at Arena Stage, five Artistic Directors bemoaned the lack of diversity in playwrights and directors, the lack of young people in the audience, the high cost of production, and the high cost of tickets. Their confab produced a flurry of derisive tweets blaming the bemoaners themselves for all these shortcomings.<br /><br />I found myself unable to take sides on these questions because my mind couldn’t let go of a statistic somebody mentioned in passing: according to the NEA, the audience for theatre has declined by a third in ten years.While we debate how to make theatre cheaper and more inclusive, a good part of our audience is dying off or learning to live without us.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-75930233474081659222014-08-15T15:59:00.001-04:002014-08-15T15:59:00.941-04:00Jess Row: Native Sons - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics<a href="http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/jess-row-native-sons/">Jess Row: Native Sons - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics</a>:<br /><br /><em>When Another Country was published—at the very peak of Baldwin’s public stature as a civil rights activist—it was taken as a document of a very small slice of the present: the Greenwich Village and Paris of the late 1950s and early 1960s, where interracial couples and gay people were able to live openly, mostly but not entirely out of the omnipresent shadow of violence. But Another Country is also an intensely prophetic book, in which Baldwin glimpses a world much more like the one we inhabit today, where overt, legal racism and homophobia is inexorably falling away, and what we have to look at, instead, is the face of the person we’ve feared and misunderstood and avoided. It’s a plural world, a world of unstable pronouns, multiple identities, and overlapping narratives. Which is not to say that anyone in the book ends up happy: this is a novel, after all, that begins with one man’s leap off the George Washington Bridge and ends with a series of betrayals—profound and petty—among his survivors. It’s out of that traumatized state, Baldwin seems to say, that the most important realization occurs: our offenses, our intertwined histories and mutual obligations, are more like love affairs than legal cases—love affairs that are never really over. “It doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time,” one of his characters says, “one is oneself all those people. We are the time.”</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-34836251257045022632014-07-18T09:06:00.001-04:002014-07-18T09:06:48.667-04:00OUR MAN IN HAVANA and YES THIS MAN<a href="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_doubleheader_july.jpg" onclick="window.open('http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_doubleheader_july.jpg','popup','width=819,height=545,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_doubleheader_july.jpg" height="430" width="645" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Daisey Doubleheader July" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><br />A reminder that next week I'm performing two nights with two different shows at Joe's Pub.<br /><br />On Wednesday, July 23rd, it's </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><strong>OUR MAN IN HAVANA</strong></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;">, my travel monologue about our fractured relationship with Cuba, drive-through mojito stands, and a very special seder in Havana. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><a href="http://bit.ly/1jK9eIc">TICKETS</a></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><br /><br />Then the next night, July 24th, I follow with </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><strong>YES THIS MAN</strong></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;">, my controversial monologue about men, women, privilege, power, and the Yaffa Cafe's carrot dressing.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><a href="http://bit.ly/1iW4vZg">TICKETS</a></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><br /><br />Hope you'll join us for this doubleheader,<br /><br />md<br /><br /><br />“He’s a brilliant trickster, a close-magician with superb sleight of hand. His furies are bright and stark, incandescently theatrical. His phrasings and delivery are ensorcelling and incantatory. He’s an escape artist.”<br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><strong>New York Magazine</strong></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><br /><br />“The master storyteller—one of the finest solo performers of his generation.”<br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><strong>The New York Times</strong></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><br /><br />“He embraces the insightful hostillity of the best comedy.”<br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:24pt;"><strong>The New Yorker<br /></strong></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-12491040390258039362014-07-11T11:39:00.001-04:002014-07-11T11:39:55.664-04:00Today<strong>NYTimes today, page one, above the fold: Child Labor in the High Tech Factories in China.</strong></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-36710051564021619062014-06-18T18:28:00.001-04:002014-06-18T18:31:10.373-04:00YES THIS MAN<strong>Hello Internet,</strong></p><strong>Mike Daisey here. I’m a monologist, and I do new shows every month at the Public Theater’s Joe’s Pub. Two weeks ago we announced and put on sale a show titled YES ALL WOMEN, in which I planned to talk about how our world is built on the subjugation and ownership of women, and how men perpetuate that violence.</strong></p><strong>I was always aware that it’s a provocative title—I get that. I want it to be provocative, because I want to get under people’s skins. My work has often functioned that way, and I wanted to try and be a man taking responsibility for my own complicity in the way things are. I was leery of the title, but you learn in theater to be even more leery of silence and having the world ignore your work. So I pulled the trigger.</strong></p><strong>Three hours ago Twitter blew up about the show. People were outraged and furious, and as I read their responses I saw that some people were genuinely hurt. And that felt terrible—I had thought that since I never used the actual hashtag, I would be commenting on and exploring the space opened up by #yesallwomen, but I never wanted people to feel their voices were being co-opted and silenced.</strong></p><strong>It’s a straightforward irony: I’m a man, who monologues, speaking. It was a charged gamble. I should have realized that often people judge me for what they know of my work, and I am sorry for anyone who felt hurt or betrayed. I’m especially sorry for anyone who felt like this was belittling #yesallwomen, which I think is a fantastic and necessary hashtag and conversation.</strong></p><strong>So, effective immediately, I’m changing the name of the show from YES ALL WOMEN to YES THIS MAN.</strong></p><strong>I’ve chosen to call the show YES THIS MAN not just because it better reflects what I aim to discuss in the monologue, but also because it is simply a better title. I engaged with many people on Twitter throughout this, and someone who was upset with me was kind enough to suggest it. The truth is that it was always a better title, and I would have used it from the start had I been clever enough to think of it.</strong></p><strong>I’ve learned in my life that it’s a process of revision—the past few years have been all about that for me, and I’m grateful. I hope that people take this change in the spirit that it’s intended: of openness, transparency, and with the belief that everyone has stories to tell.</strong></p><strong>Best,</strong></p><strong>md</strong></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-8738929657386885652014-06-04T10:02:00.001-04:002014-06-04T10:07:07.911-04:00YES ALL WOMEN<a href="http://mikedaisey.com/images/yesallwomen_mailing.jpg" onclick="window.open('http://mikedaisey.com/images/yesallwomen_mailing.jpg','popup','width=1461,height=875,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="http://mikedaisey.com/images/yesallwomen_mailing.jpg" height="527" width="874" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Yesallwomen Mailing" /></a><br /><strong><br /><br /></strong><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>YES ALL WOMEN <br /><br />Created and Performed by Mike Daisey<br /><br />Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater<br />Wednesday, June 25th—Doors at 9<br /><br /></strong></span><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/S8kJSa" target="_blank">Tickets</a></strong></span><br /><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br />Mike Daisey tackles what we don’t like talking about: how our world is built on the subjugation and ownership of women, and how men perpetuate that violence every day. Rejecting simple catchphrases and rote thinking, Daisey doesn’t try to speak for women—instead he interrogates his own history and choices as a way of framing a human discussion about how it could be possible to live an authentic life where we actually see one another. Gender, sex, violence, and passion mix together with dark humor as he does his best to try and tell an untellable story.<br /><br />Mike Daisey, hailed as “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times, is the preeminent monologist in the American theater today. He has been compared to a modern-day Mark Twain and a latter-day Orson Welles for his provocative monologues that combine the political and the personal, weaving secret histories with hilarity and heart. This fall he performed a critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel, </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>All the Faces of the Moon</em></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, onstage at the Public in Joe’s Pub.<br /><br />He has performed in theaters across five continents, ranging from remote islands in the South Pacific to the Sydney Opera House to abandoned theaters in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>Real Time with Bill Maher</em></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, the </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>Late Show with David Letterman</em></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life, his shows are among the most listened to and downloaded episodes of that program’s nineteen year history.<br /><br />He is currently at work on his second book, </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><em>Here at the End of Empire</em></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, which will be published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, six Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>“The master storyteller—one of the finest solo performers of his generation.”<br />—The New York Times<br /><br />“Pure magic.”<br />—New York Magazine<br /><br />“He embraces the insightful hostility of the best comedy.”<br />—The New Yorker</strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/S8kJSa">Tickets</a></strong></span><span style="color:#1a1aff;font-size:18pt;text-decoration:underline;"><strong><br /></strong></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-48221253729470967722014-05-09T14:33:00.001-04:002014-05-09T14:35:45.992-04:00San Francisco, Toronto, NYC, Havana, and More<a href="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg" onclick="window.open('http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg','popup','width=819,height=545,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg" height="545" width="818" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Daisey Portrait Cuba Web" /></a><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />Hello All,<br /><br />Three huge shows in three great cities this month:<br /><br />First, we bring </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>AMERICAN UTOPIAS</strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, my monologue of Burning Man, Disney World, and the Occupy movement to San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for two nights only, May 16th and 17th. These are going to be huge shows, and my first return to the Bay Area in three years—hope you can join us!<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="http://goo.gl/DiR4u8">Details and tickets</a></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />Second, I go to Toronto where I'll premiere </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>DREAMING OF ROB FORD</strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, a brand new monologue about Toronto's notorious mayor, as an environmental piece in an abandoned porno theater. That's just three nights only, May 21st to 23rd, and tickets are selling out.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="http://goo.gl/1vNjlf">Details and tickets</a></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />Finally, I'll present the very first performance of </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>OUR MAN IN HAVANA</strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, my new monologue about my journey to Cuba this spring and the world America has closed itself off to for just one night only at the Public Theater in New York City on May 27th.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="http://goo.gl/IEFeSr">Details and tickets</a></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />All these shows are likely to sell out, so use the links to get yourself tickets if you're interested. Starting later this spring look out for new episodes of </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>ALL STORIES ARE FICTION</strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;">, my podcast, which you can sign up for </span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><a href="http://goo.gl/x8kgIM">here</a></span>.<span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />Hope you are staying busy this spring,<br /><br />md<br /><br /><br /></span><a href="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg" onclick="window.open('http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg','popup','width=819,height=545,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="http://mikedaisey.com/images/daisey_portrait_cuba_web.jpg" height="545" width="818" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Daisey Portrait Cuba Web" /></a><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong>Mike Daisey: Our Man in Havana<br />ONE NIGHT ONLY<br />May 27th at Joe's Pub in the Public Theater<br /></strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><strong><a href="http://goo.gl/IEFeSr">Tickets and details</a></strong></span><span style="font-size:14pt;"><br /><br />Mike Daisey travels to a mysterious world located just ninety miles from America—the island nation of Cuba, a world frozen in the American imagination and burned from our memories by embargoes and blockades, where communism still rules and a ballet dancer is paid the same as a surgeon or a farmer. Daisey brings his shrewd and scathing outsider’s eye to the gloriously decaying streets of Havana, using this changing landscape as a window to speak about the true legacies of American imperialism, and what it means for us to live today in a world that only recognizes capitalism and corporatism as a way of life. Both a ridiculous travelogue and a philosophical journey, Daisey’s monologue unearths the human connections between neighbors who can live so close and still refuse to speak.<br /><br />Mike Daisey, hailed as “the master storyteller” and “one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by The New York Times, is the preeminent monologist in the American theater today. He has been compared to a modern-day Mark Twain and a latter-day Orson Welles for his provocative monologues that combine the political and the personal, weaving secret histories with hilarity and heart. This fall he performed a critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel, All the Faces of the Moon, onstage at the Public in Joe’s Pub.<br /><br />He has performed in theaters across five continents, ranging remote islands in the South Pacific to the Sydney Opera House to an abandoned theater in post-Communist Tajikistan. He’s been a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, the Late Show with David Letterman, a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth, as well as a commentator and contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC. In a brief, meteoric career with This American Life, his shows are among the most listened to and downloaded episodes of that program’s nineteen year history.<br /><br />He is currently at work on his second book, Here at the End of Empire, which will be published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster. He has been nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award, two Drama League Awards, and is the recipient of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award, six Seattle Times Footlight Awards, the Sloan Foundation’s Galileo Prize, and a MacDowell Fellowship.<br /><br />“The master storyteller—one of the finest solo performers of his generation.”<br />—The New York Times<br /><br />“Pure magic.”<br />—New York Magazine<br /><br />“He embraces the insightful hostility of the best comedy.”<br />—The New Yorker<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-7174148139032014242014-03-04T17:47:00.001-05:002014-03-04T17:47:54.676-05:00The Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with Gawker's Nick Denton<a href="http://playboysfw.kinja.com/the-playboy-interview-a-candid-conversation-with-gawke-1527302145">The Playboy Interview: A Candid Conversation with Gawker's Nick Denton</a>:<br /><br /><em>PLAYBOY: You're more willing than most people to organize your life according to principle and see how the experiment turns out.<br /><br />DENTON: You could argue that privacy has never really existed. Usually people's friends or others in the village had a pretty good idea what was going on. You could look at this as the resurrection of or a return to the essential nature of human existence: We were surrounded by obvious scandal throughout most of human existence, when everybody knew everything. Then there was a brief period when people moved to the cities and social connections were frayed, and there was a brief period of sufficient anonymity to allow for transgressive behavior no one ever found out about. That brief era is now coming to an end.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-31142066144825191842014-03-01T01:17:00.000-05:002014-03-01T01:18:17.114-05:00Heart of Blandness: A Walking Tour of Silicon Valley<p><br /><a href="http://gawker.com/heart-of-blandness-a-walking-tour-of-silicon-valley-1531745028">Heart of Blandness: A Walking Tour of Silicon Valley</a>:<br /></p><p><br /><em>Silicon Valley is also marketed as The Future of Humanity.<br /></p><p><br />But as a human landscape, it's a crushingly boring sunny suburban slab of freeways, fast food, traffic, and long smoggy boulevards of faded retail sprawling out to endless housing developments of sand-colored stucco boxes. It's Phoenix with milder weather, Orlando minus the mosquitos.<br /></p><p><br />Tech-loving travelers come from around the world to see Silicon Valley, but there's nothing to see—no Times Square, no French Quarter, just low-rise office parks and security guards circling the parking lots. Could anything be gained by walking from corporate landmark to corporate landmark? Maybe not, but two days of walking always beats two days of looking at a computer, even if I'd be walking from technology company to technology company.</em><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-48777708146851059522014-02-18T17:32:00.001-05:002014-02-18T17:32:10.723-05:00<div style="color: #243eff; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://kairuy.blogspot.com/2013/10/it-wasnt-anything-you-did-how-could.html">Conclusive Evidence</a></span><span style="color: black;">:</span></div>
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<i>It’s hard to know how often people fail to commit suicide, except in movies where someone always comes in at just the right moment, playing it for laughs. How many of us have watched people we love walk back from the razor's edge? If they really meant to die, how is it possible that they could fail? It's only then you realize how our lives turn on the thinnest of coincidences, coming home too early or too late to save someone. It’s hard to know how to respond - pretend it never happened? Pretend they won’t try again? Wait for them to succeed next time? Both Stephen Fry and Mike Daisey have talked about their failures to slip away silently, but the ones who have succeeded, they give us no answers. The dead can’t talk, and anyway, everyone knows answers only lead to more questions.</i></div>
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<i>Last night I thought again about the husband of my mother’s old college friend, who hanged himself when I was in high school. I had just met him and his family earlier that year. I can still remember his face, his thick shock of badger-striped salt-and-pepper hair. What we didn't know then was that he'd been battling depression for some time. One night, his wife called our home, her voice troubled, and I wrote down her phone number on a napkin that then was accidentally thrown away. In those days my Chinese was much worse than it is now; I'd forgotten her name, and it wasn't until a few days later that she finally reached my mom. I’ll never forget the shame that went through me when I heard why she'd called. I couldn't sleep without thinking about their son, some years younger than I, who'd been the one to find his father's body in their garage. I hope he understood, it wasn’t anything he did.</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-13915205959566229052014-02-03T17:53:00.001-05:002014-02-03T17:53:03.211-05:00Invite-Only Oceanside Conference Vows to "Reset the Agenda for Women"<a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/invite-only-oceanside-conference-vows-to-reset-the-age-1515198650/@sarah-hedgecock">Invite-Only Oceanside Conference Vows to "Reset the Agenda for Women"</a>:<br /><br /><em>Next week, Makers is hosting a three-day conference where Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt, Tim Armstrong, and others plan to "reset the agenda for women in the workplace in the 21st century."<br /><br />Where does one gather to hit the restart on the stagnant wage gap and institutionalized sexism for the next 86 years? At "the picturesque Terranea Resort, located on a breathtaking stretch of Pacific coastline," of course. The revolution also has time for "Sunrise Yoga" classes in the morning. Work-life balance, ladies and billionaires.<br /><br />Like all great equal rights initiatives, this one is also invite-only:</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-10251866295273890162014-02-03T17:14:00.001-05:002014-02-03T17:14:24.540-05:00'In God We Trust—but We Have Put Our Faith in Our Guns' - Ta-Nehisi
Coates - The Atlantic<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/in-god-we-trust-but-we-have-put-our-faith-in-our-guns/283534/">'In God We Trust—but We Have Put Our Faith in Our Guns' - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic</a>:<br /><br /><em>Davis was sitting in a parked SUV outside the Jacksonville store with friends when Dunn, who is white, began complaining about their music. An argument ensued, and then ended, when Dunn fired his 9mm handgun into the vehicle. As the SUV raced off, Dunn stepped out of his car and fired again. Then he and his girlfriend drove to a hotel, checked in, and ordered a pizza. He never called the police and was only arrested because a witness jotted down his license plate. Dunn, who is mounting a Stand Your Ground defense, claimed a passenger in the vehicle had threatened him with shotgun—or a stick. The police found no gun.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-6513343302352271732014-01-31T18:53:00.001-05:002014-02-02T15:41:22.525-05:00Publisher's Lunch on HERE AT THE END OF EMPIRE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpBv4xMOupWF9-KEujKUNPu6WRunm8zCbCBrr_xsP_EtXgvg2bpxvc6KobPOXmVhM1gPel8TtVnWilNGgyNATCNKQhSP8U45_wsHaWjU7jB3MDQCOQAA1gscCJhMEIl62lm4xj/s1600/photo-723701.JPG" onclick="window.open('https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpBv4xMOupWF9-KEujKUNPu6WRunm8zCbCBrr_xsP_EtXgvg2bpxvc6KobPOXmVhM1gPel8TtVnWilNGgyNATCNKQhSP8U45_wsHaWjU7jB3MDQCOQAA1gscCJhMEIl62lm4xj/s1600/photo-723701.JPG','popup','width=925,height=114,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpBv4xMOupWF9-KEujKUNPu6WRunm8zCbCBrr_xsP_EtXgvg2bpxvc6KobPOXmVhM1gPel8TtVnWilNGgyNATCNKQhSP8U45_wsHaWjU7jB3MDQCOQAA1gscCJhMEIl62lm4xj/s1600/photo-723701.JPG" height="114" width="925" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Photo-723701" /></a><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-83163095436320589742014-01-28T21:27:00.001-05:002014-01-28T21:32:34.065-05:00A Big New Year's Resolution<strong>Hello All,<br /><br />It's a new year. To celebrate, we had a bacchanalian orgy in our Brooklyn home on the 31st, and burned a Christmas tree to cinders in a barely controlled, almost catastrophic incineration.<br /><br /></strong><a href="http://mikedaisey.com/images/thesacrifice.jpg" onclick="window.open('http://mikedaisey.com/images/thesacrifice.jpg','popup','width=640,height=640,scrollbars=no,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=yes,left=0,top=0');return false"><img src="http://mikedaisey.com/images/thesacrifice.jpg" height="640" width="640" border="1" hspace="4" vspace="4" alt="Thesacrifice" /></a><strong><br /><br />I also made a big new year's resolution: after years of performing, it is time to write.<br /><br />So I'm letting the world know that I have committed to writing a new book.<br /><br />Titled HERE AT THE END OF EMPIRE, it's drawn from many years of my monologues and will try to tell a story of our moment now at the sunset of America's golden age.<br /><br />I'm delighted to announce that Simon and Schuster has enthusiastically bought the book, and have slated it for publication in 2015.<br /><br />After the success of ALL THE FACES OF THE MOON I'm really looking forward to immersing myself in another gigantic project.<br /><br />I'm also happy to announce that I will continue performing. We have shows happening over the next few months all across America, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Richmond, Blacksburg, and beyond.<br /><br />We've also decided to keep our podcast, ALL STORIES ARE FICTION, central to our work this year. We're putting up new shows all the time, recorded live around the world, including THE STORY OF THE GUN, the brand-new monologue I just created in North Carolina about guns, their history, and our charged relationship with them.<br /><br />You can listen to all these stories for free by following this </strong><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/13i69dn">link</a></strong><strong>.<br /><br />I hope all your resolutions are fiery, <br /><br />md<br /><br /><br />UPCOMING SHOWS:<br /><br />RICHMOND<br /><br /></strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>All Stories Are Fiction</strong></span><strong><br />University of Richmond<br />Modlin Center for the Arts<br />January 31st at 8pm<br /></strong><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/L7ticp">Details</a></strong><strong><br /><br /><br />LOS ANGELES<br /><br /></strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>American Utopias</strong></span><strong><br />Center for the Art of Performance<br />at UCLA<br />February 6th<br /></strong><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/1e5GXO0">Details</a></strong><strong><br /><br /><br />VIRGINIA TECH<br /><br /></strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>Faster Better Social</strong></span><strong><br />The Center for the Arts<br />at Virginia Tech<br />February 22nd at 8pm<br /></strong><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/L7tLLw">Details</a></strong><strong><br /><br /><br />SAN FRANCISCO<br /><br /></strong><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong>American Utopias</strong></span><strong><br />Yerba Buena Arts Center<br />May 16th and 17th<br /></strong><strong><a href="http://bit.ly/1e5HnUx">Details</a></strong><strong><br /></strong>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-71765614320285189002014-01-28T16:54:00.001-05:002014-01-28T16:54:10.300-05:00My personal Fox News nightmare: Inside a month of self-induced torture
- Salon.com<a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/01/28/my_personal_fox_news_nightmare_inside_a_month_of_self_induced_torture/">My personal Fox News nightmare: Inside a month of self-induced torture - Salon.com</a>:<br /><br /><em>Given the statistics about Fox’s conservative influence and the way it misleads its viewers, I think it is fair to classify much of what it does as propaganda. My liberal cynicism seemed to render me immune to that — their O’Reilly-style hectoring eliciting a few laughs, but doing little to change my worldview. But Fox, as I came to discover, indulges in another form of opinion creation. Let’s call this the propaganda of ignorance. By choosing which stories to cover, and, perhaps more important, which stories to ignore, Fox is able to advance its political agenda in a much more subtle and insidious way.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-43090326385907887642013-12-22T16:22:00.001-05:002013-12-22T16:24:39.073-05:00DFW on Suicide<strong>“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom this invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”<br /><br />David Foster Wallace<br /></strong>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-56438463147318750822013-12-16T18:50:00.001-05:002013-12-16T18:50:36.669-05:00What Tech Hasn’t Learned From Urban Planning - NYTimes.com<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/opinion/what-tech-hasnt-learned-from-urban-planning.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&">What Tech Hasn’t Learned From Urban Planning - NYTimes.com</a>:<br /><br /><em>Today, that Starbucks is gone. So is the popular brewery that was next door to it. The sandwich shop across the plaza is closed, as is the salad bar. It’s not that any of these businesses were particularly distinctive or delicious, but they provided a valuable service — lunch — and also some social connection among the building’s tenants and people in the immediate neighborhood.<br /><br />Gone also is any sign of life the plaza ever had. Google leased as much of the complex as it could get its hands on — and the correspondingly skyrocketing rents accelerated the closing of all the ground-floor businesses, even a short-lived outpost of The Melt (a franchise that serves uniformly grilled sandwiches made with a high-tech — and tech-industry-financed — piece of machinery). In place of Starbucks there is now something called the Mozilla Community Space — that isn’t open to the community. You need to be a registered “Mozillian” (whatever that is) to gain access.<br /><br />Tech companies that remain in the suburbs are taking a similarly upside-down approach to urbanism. Facebook’s Menlo Park campus, set in a sea of parking, is a sort of movie-set version of a city, with cafe, dry cleaner, doctor, dentist and personal trainers all accessible only to employees. Informal public gathering places (like Starbucks, for example, or a barbershop) are essential to local democracy and community vitality. But by creating “third places” (home and work are the first and second) that aren’t actually open to the public, that benefit is severely compromised.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-86387747176374303592013-12-16T12:52:00.001-05:002013-12-16T12:52:21.494-05:00The Weekend Uber Tried To Rip Everyone Off<a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-weekend-uber-tried-to-rip-everyone-off-1484140137">The Weekend Uber Tried To Rip Everyone Off</a>:<br /><br /><em>That's down the the line a bit—for now, we're looking at the eradication of low-tech cabs. Uber doesn't hide its contempt for traditional taxi cab systems and dreams of their destruction. City cab companies are rife with problems of their own, yes, but subject to regulation—the kind of regulation we now know Uber badly needs to implement itself, or be forced into. Uber wants to expand to every city in the country, and supplant existing cab systems—the ones subject to laws and regulations. For instance: if a yellow cab driver says it's going to cost an extra $100 just because it's Friday, he'll lose his job. If Uber does it, it's the magical mitts of supply and demand pushing us around.<br /><br />If more drivers leave traditional taxi companies for Uber—and I've talked to many who have—we step closer to cities where price gouging is the norm, where only the rich can get around, and where outrageous profiteering is the base fare. And if you don't like it, you can hit the road.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-87202373783195056402013-12-12T15:33:00.001-05:002013-12-12T15:33:39.686-05:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtiIpVsBYbmhQrM_CNKAEL3Bl2qjf93KnbB7fQ778buOdpch64C3MP1xS9vXoiTTGGxo6CIVbnDtd6WxxnLTycnXYPk8M8LOyayCI10Q49HuWDAS8heA2Pe_Jl9lWzU5YfMgBH/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-12-10+at+5.32.26+PM-719687.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtiIpVsBYbmhQrM_CNKAEL3Bl2qjf93KnbB7fQ778buOdpch64C3MP1xS9vXoiTTGGxo6CIVbnDtd6WxxnLTycnXYPk8M8LOyayCI10Q49HuWDAS8heA2Pe_Jl9lWzU5YfMgBH/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-12-10+at+5.32.26+PM-719687.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5956606052199284066" /></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-35468727012799117312013-12-12T12:45:00.001-05:002013-12-12T12:45:30.855-05:00The Financial and Artistic Disaster of The Guthrie's Dry White (Male)
Season - Parabasis<a href="http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2013/12/checking-back-in-with-the-guthries-dry-white-male-seaso.html">The Financial and Artistic Disaster of The Guthrie's Dry White (Male) Season - Parabasis</a>:<br /><br /><em>In other words, the Guthrie's new, huge complex and three separate spaces necessitated more conservative, less adventuresome work. This stood in stark contrast to the promises that Dowling made to the theatrical and funding community while he was actually campaigning for the new space, in which he regularly stated that the new space would allow the Guthrie room to more adventurous and diverse work. In fact, as Anne Bogart's "Conversations with Anne" reveals, major industry figures like Ben Cameron and Oskar Eustis specifically held up the Guthrie as an example of a company that was doing new building right, as a way of doing better, more interesting, more diverse work.<br /><br />So given that box office was apparently such a major part of the Guthrie's considerations, it's worth looking at how the Dry White Male Season worked out for them. And it turns out it was basically a disaster. Over the course of 2012/2013 season, the Guthrie went from having a surplus to a close to half a million dollar deficit, and much of the blame can be laid directly at the unpopular, criticaly unloved trilogy of Christopher Hampton plays that Dowling went out on such a limb to produce, and which played at around 50% capacity for their runs. <br /><br />If we drew the same lessons from this that theaters always draw from "underperforming" plays by Black playwrights, The Guthrie would never do a play by a British white male writer ever again. Call me crazy, but I doubt that's what's going to happen here. </em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-40262360101908373752013-12-02T23:19:00.001-05:002013-12-02T23:19:33.569-05:00Why Are We So Obsessed With Sales?<a href="http://gawker.com/why-are-we-so-obsessed-with-sales-1475110460">Why Are We So Obsessed With Sales?</a>:<br /><br /><em>Last week the Wall Street Journal published a story on the "Dirty Secret of Black Friday 'Discounts'," pointing out that although the number of deals offered by 31 major retailers increased by 63% between 2009 and 2012, their profit margins all stayed roughly the same.<br /><br />The reason that holding so many sales hasn't bankrupted all these companies is because, as the Journal puts it, they're illusions. Retailers' margins have stayed the same because the average list price — the price the item is eventually discounted from — has skyrocketed.<br /><br />It's almost all mental. Retailers are required to sell their products at the list price, but according to the Journal, those prices are quickly discounted. And very few people ever actually pay that list price — former JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson said in 2012 that the department store sold less than one in 500 items at full price.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3086577.post-29438165659306855462013-11-21T14:48:00.001-05:002013-11-21T14:48:31.259-05:00Goodbye Historic Clocktower Gallery, Hello Tribeca Luxury Condos:
Gothamist<a href="http://gothamist.com/2013/11/21/kiss_tribecas_clocktower_gallery_go.php">Goodbye Historic Clocktower Gallery, Hello Tribeca Luxury Condos: Gothamist</a>:<br /><br /><em>The Clocktower Gallery was instrumental in shaping the burgeoning alternative arts scene in the city. Among its most memorable exhibitions: a Dennis Oppenheim installation where the artist placed a dead German shepherd on top of a legless electric organ. As rigor mortis set in, the tones would change. (The ASPCA provided the deceased dog).<br /><br />Michelangelo Pistoletto's piece was shut down by the Board of Health because he used bones that had not been properly cleaned.<br /></em><em><br /></em><em>One Easter, a chocolate-covered Charlotte Moorman played a chocolate-covered cello. And then there's Gordon Matta-Clark's "Clock Shower" performance, where the artist soaped up and showered while hanging off the face of the clock.</em><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com