Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Volvo Aims To Produce Injury-Proof Car by 2020

This sounds both too good to be true and a bit far fetched, but I'd love to see this come to be. Volvo is working to create an injury-proof car by the year 2020. Watch the video at the link below and I think you'll have to agree it would be both difficult to achieve, and amazing if they can accomplish anything close to it.

Via Reuters

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Obama And The Gas Tax

So much for smoke and mirrors. Glad to see he's finally fighting back.

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Fox Needs a History Lesson

Ha. Looks like the Fox and Friends folks need a history lesson. With all of the talk of Hillary Clinton challenging Barack Obama to a Lincoln Douglas style debate, someone got their Douglas's confused.

Check out the video here.

Watchdogging

Karoli, who has been more than fighting the good fight on the recent Obama/Reverend Wright circus, says for her it is over. Lots of folks are saying that after Obama's denunciation yesterday. I hope so, but I'll be amazed if we don't hear more from Wright before it is really over. Someone needs to find out who is behind that book deal if you ask me.

Karoli also points to this quote from Bob Cesca:

If the corporate media had been as diligent about watchdogging President Bush as they have been about watchdogging Reverend Wright, it's very likely we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

They were watchdogging. Only problem is they were watching their ratings climb and not the story.

Uh Oh. Now There Is A Dave Winer Puppet

Just when it looked like Loren Feldman was going to move from puppets to children, along comes a new puppet. This new creation is the Dave Winer puppet.

Technorati Tags: Loren Feldman,1938 Media,Dave Winer

Interesting Juxtaposition of Headlines

I saw these headlines juxtaposed on The Drudge Report this evening.

 

Take a look at those first two. Anybody see a way of solving the first problem with the second? Or just that make too much sense given that we're spending all of this dough for oil anyway? Just asking.

Obama Fights Back Against Wright

I guess when you get thrown under the bus, you feel like doing a little bus driving yourself. Especially if it means trying to save your candidacy for the Presidency.

Obama came out from under the bus and said he was "outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday."

He also said, "it is antithetical to our campaign and it is antithetical to what I'm about."

It remains to be seen if this is the end of this, or just another chapter. My gut tells me the latter. My heart wants it to be the former.

Obama and the Reverend Wright

So did Fox News hire the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Did the Clinton Campaign? I just don't get it. If you read the remarks and ignore the sound bite coverage I think most intelligent individuals won't have a problem with much of what Wright is saying. Unfortunately, most won't read these comments or be exposed beyond the now cartoon-like appearance of Wright in the cable news merry-go-round.

I hate to say it, but I think Wright is out to sink Obama. I cannot imagine he's that stupid to think he isn't going to hurt Obama's chances, so something else must be a play beyond ego and hubris. The timing is just a shade too unreal.

NewsGang Live force to be reckoned with Karoli, is fighting the good fight on this. She is posting up sermons and speeches in their entirety and challenging listeners/readers to take things in context. Again, intellectually I agree with her and I wish that would help the situation, but I fear it won't. Scratch that. I don't fear it. I know it won't. I'm afraid these last few days of the Wright circus have effectively ended the Obama campaign.

Sure there will be calls for Obama to destroy his relationship with Wright or come up with another speech, but he's got to do more than that and I don't think it will help. The small minds that are playing with the ratings game with this are only playing to smaller minds. We're about to find out just how many of those we've still got in this country.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some Sunday morning reading to share.

Is this a sign that this year really might turn into 1968 all over again? Maybe we need it to.

Lessing, Google, Obama and Jesus: a net neutrality mash-up. Via Ars Technica

Lincoln Chafee lets us in on the behind the scenes on the Bush Tax cuts.

Hugh MacLeod is thinking of expanding his canvas from the back of business cards to abstract paintings on canvas. I like the idea, Hugh.

My buddy, and fabulous actor, Larry Dahlke, weighs in out theatre's leaving Front Royal.

Dave Winer on what to do about the Reverend Wright.

Clinton wants a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. I'd love to see it. I'm sure it wouldn't raise the level of questions asked on her part though.

James Kendrick on Dell saying they'll still sell you Windows XP.

Frank Rich is counting Democratic chickens before they hatch (or get nominated.)

Saying the Electoral College map has shifted in favor of the Democrats is like saying all of the 1st round NFL draft choices will be stars.

Closing More Than A Great Show

Tonight will be more than a bittersweet closing night for our production of Driving Miss Daisy. This has been a very successful run, of a wonderful show, performed brilliantly by a wonderful cast. Audiences have been moved very much by the show and those performances in our wonderfully intimate performance venue in Front Royal at the Royal Phoenix. We will certainly miss this show.

But we'll also miss this performance venue. When we moved into the Royal Phoenix, it was as a temporary move while we did some major construction and renovation at our home in Middletown, Virginia. That work is just about complete and we are preparing to reopen on July 12. That will be exciting. But during this year, many of us hoped that we could somehow find a way to maintain both performance venues and thus hopefully take some very necessary steps to help insure a better future for Wayside Theatre.

Alas, that is not to be. We had sought additional funding to maintain both. It would have required an expansion of staff to do so. But that funding was not forthcoming. So, as we strike the stage after the final performance of Daisy tonight, we will also begin striking a theatre as well.

I have to say my heart is very full of a lot of emotions about this, as are the hearts and souls of the other artists at Wayside Theatre. This year has been traumatic, as we knew it would be, so there were no surprises there. What did surprise us though is how much some in our community tie the theatre to a building, its location, and its appurtenances.

When we began performances in Front Royal there were (and still are) so many who wouldn't come there to see a show because it wasn't the theatre in Middletown. Now that we are preparing to leave Front Royal, (that news has only been out for few weeks) I'm hearing that folks who liked the theatre there won't come to Middletown. What's that old line? You can't please everybody?

What's sad, troubling, and at times almost debilitating for me, is that while the physical is certainly important to the theatre going experience, and both spaces have their charms (they also each have more than their share of quirks and problems), what makes it theatre, what makes it breathe, what makes it live, are the artists. In a world where figures, real estate, and stuff mean more than the ephemeral ecstasy of a brilliant moment of truth living and breathing on stage, or of a child experiencing the magic of Shakespeare for the first time, or an audience being swept away in unison by a musical moment that transcends the real world, it is hard to imagine anything beyond just how disposable art really is to so many. I am experiencing this at the moment as a very personal and also a professional failure on my part, for not being able to make that case clearer and with a clear enough definition that would perhaps have made a difference.

So, tonight we when take the final bow, a play will end its run, a theatre will end its life, and the artists who made both live for a brief time in the minds of its audiences will move on to their next challenges.

Put out the light, and then put out the light.

Othello, Act 5 Scene 2