Lala's Play Opens Tonight - Go See It

Here's her writeup on the ACC Newsroom:

Drama highlights talent-packed fall arts season

Director/filmmaker Laura Somers will helm the Drama Department’s fall production as part of the Arts and Humanities Division’s upcoming season.

The division has organized a full schedule of events. Among them is “Far Away,” featuring Somers as guest director. The former Austin resident helped found the dirigo group theater company before moving to Los Angeles.

“While ‘Far Away’ is a somewhat mysterious play, I believe that when audiences leave, they will be thinking about it for many days to come,” said Drama Department Chair Shelby Brammer. The play runs two weekends in October.


The Press Release:

The Austin Community College Drama Department will open its 2007-2008 season with Caryl Churchill’s FAR AWAY. Directed by guest director, Laura Somers and featuring Equity member and ACC faculty Jodi Jinks, Far Away, opens Friday, Oct. 19th in the Gallery Theater, 3rd Floor, Rio Grande Campus at 12th and Rio Grande in downtown Austin. The show runs Oct. 19^th, 20^th, & 21^st, and Oct. 26^th, 27^th, & 28^th. Friday and Saturday performances are at 8 p.m., and Sundays are at 2 p.m. Admission is by donation, though limited open seating with be available as a part of the TCG/ACot Free Night of Theater project for the October 20^th performance.

"Far Away" is a gripping hour-long play that packs the substance of several full length dramas. Essentially an apocalyptic play about an Armageddon created by its own victims, it provides a searing contrast between the world we treasure and the horror we have made of it. Poetic yet beautifully simple, it observes a time both near and “far away” when the developed nations are no longer just fighting against themselves, but against the world itself.

Stephen Colbert's NYT Op-Ed Piece

With apologies to Alan Ginsberg, it is to howl. I'm making the people in the cubes around me uncomfortable with my spit-takes and snorts.

Enjoy.

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)

By STEPHEN COLBERT
Published in the New York Times: October 14, 2007

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

More>>

New BEIRUT Album is on its Way...

Here's a taste. This house reminds me of late 80s/early 90s parties in Hyde Park, when Austin was a sleepy college town.

Zach Condon's Band
New Album - Cover Art

My Shangri-La Beneath the Summer Moon, I Will Return Again

Happy Birthday, Bapu

Hindustan Times
New Delhi, October 02, 2007

As the country marks the 138th birth anniversary of the Father of the Nation, the Nobel Foundation has regretted not giving the peace prize to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

The apostle of peace was nominated five times for the Nobel but the Norwegian Nobel committee believed that he could not be given the honour as he was "neither a real politician nor a humanitarian relief worker".

However, the Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation in Sweden Michael Sohlam says the decision not to extend him the prize was a mistake.

"We missed a great laureate and that's Gandhi. It is a big regret," he told CNN-IBN.

"I usually don't comment on what the Nobel Committees or prize awarding institutions decide. But here, they themselves think he is the one missing," he said.

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and finally a few days before he was shot dead in January 1948.

In 1948, the Nobel Committee declined to award a prize on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate that year".

Nobel Museum curator Dr Anders Barany told the channel that "Mahatama Gandhi is the one we miss the most at the Nobel museum. I think that's a big empty space where we should have had Mahatma Gandhi. I think it was a mistake," he said.

My Favorite 2 Sentences of 2007

From the latest James Wolcott article in this month's Vanity Fair:

"Be a hugger, he urged those gathered at a Rose Garden event on July 26 honoring the Special Olympics ('If you've never been a hugger, I strongly advise you to be one. That means you stand at the end of the finish line of a race and you hug the people coming across the line'), and even those of us who believe a second Nuremberg jury should be convened to try the president, the vice president, and a host of neoconservative architects for Iraq war crimes would concede that this sentiment presented the president at his most sympathetic and human-seeming."

Next paragraph:

"The chrome peeled off of Bush's halo as national healer in the post-Katrina tragedy of errors, the commendation "Heckuva job, Brownie" tied like a tin can to his legacy no matter how they try to paper things over at the future Bush presidential library and car wash."

"Something Emergent"

Beyond Wow. Notice the audience's irresistible urge to applaud.

"Texpatriate, Why Are Your Comments Disabled?"

Separated at Birth?

Watched Anthony in Beirut last night. Not yer usual glib Travel Channel pablum, what with the attack helicopters dropping flares & airstrip bombing strikes & scoping out escape routes & mass population exodus & aircraft carrier evac and all.

Also stumbled on This American Life's MySpace page. Francesca listens to it on her laptop before bed each night at our house.

Listening to This Today

What? What are you saying? Stop it.

Please don't talk to me like a pirate. I swear to god.

For Pastafarians, today is DON'T talk like a pirate day. Did you know that?

FAR more cool and collective:
The Mp3 Experiment

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

According to the Abilene Reporter News, it's time to don your finest and stuff yourself with desserts!

During this 10-day celebratory time, you're not supposed to look at the moon. The moon laughed at Ganesh, when he fell off his rat (among other reasons), so don't give it the satisfaction of your gaze.

One of the gajillion versions of his story (the first one I heard) tells that Ganesh was born to Parvati, wife of Shiva, who was off fighting in a war. When he returned to find his wife cavorting with a young, handsome man, he drew his trident and beheaded him. When dad realized his mistake, he cried to Parvati that he would go into the forest and replace his son's head with the first animal he could find.

Buddha was a Hindu, and the Bhuddists call him Vinaayaka. Vignesha means "Lord of Obstacles" (vighna is sanskrit for obstacles). As in, the one who sets them up and brings them down.

Once in Kathmandu I watched some kids my age giving puja to a Ganesh statue. I asked my friend (who spoke more fluent Nepali) what they were doing - he said they were preparing to take their exams.

Chris Oglesby's Lubbock All-Star Reunion

This was intense. More on this later. I can still barely see straight.

Virgin Lubbock Visit

Off to Hub City tomorrow, and Oges' one-year anniversary of Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air. I found this vid by searching "Lubbock" on YouTube. Imagine my surprise at the end, where it gives photo credits to "C. Oglesby."
Chris wrangled a tour at the only brewery in town, which (HAIL, yes) is right across the street from the gallery. Ray Wylie Hubbard had to cancel his show Friday night because everyone was going to the book signing instead.

I am extraordinarily psyched about this trip.

I Miss the 1/2 Hour News Hour

From middling TV actor and Republican Presidential Candidate, Fred Thompson:

“Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. … NASA says the Martian South Pole’s ‘ice cap’ has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, nonsignatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.”


That's so funny, I forgot to vote for you.