How to use this Page

This week I participated in an engrossing #LitChat discussion of Gothic Romance and an hour just wasn’t enough time to explore all the questions that came up so I thought we’d continue the chat here on #ScribeChat. Now, lads, before you throw up your arms and run away screaming thinking this is only for the girls, [...] Related posts:

1. TOPIC: Should There Even BE a YA Literature Category?
2. TOPIC: Fantasy Literature In The Classroom: Angel or Demon?

… from that Scary McCreeperson robot voice simulator. He also defends his previous “racist Chinese” accent as simply brain damage.

If this doesn’t make you laugh, something is wrong with you.

Apple logo satire, for a news item about Steve Jobs who struck at Adobe because of a dispute about Flash.

You're invited to Sevensheaven.nl for an extended impression.

Satire for the Dutch Nu.nl news website, about the rise of the Google Android operating system.

Sevensheaven images and prints are for sale at sevensheaven.nl

Satire about a Belgian mother of 9 children who became pregnant of triplets at the age of 52.

You're invited to sevensheaven.nl for an extended impression.

Satire for the Nu.nl news website, about an undersea oil spill of BP that took months to fix.

Sevensheaven images and prints are for sale at sevensheaven.nl

The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center downtown Los Angeles.

Michael Sedano


If a comedic genius ever writes a black comedy about Arizona’s breathing while brown racism, I advise this genius to model the piece after Martin McDonagh‘s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the zany ethnic comedy running at Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum now through August 8.

This well-directed and acted production (other than some unintelligible dialect work) is among the rare good decisions by Artistic Director Michael Ritchie. Although this is another re-run developed elsewhere, it’s highly worthy. Sadly, the production also marks Ritchie’s almost total dismemberment of the Taper’s connection to its artistic history. Except for Lighting Designer Brian Gale and Sound Designer Cricket S. Myers, no one in cast or crew has any association with the Taper. When I read that in the playbill I had to allow myself a moment of silence to mourn the passing of an era. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but so it goes. Ave atque vale.

McDonagh’s Northern Ireland has come to accept terrorism as the natural course of inhuman events. When Davey brings a dead cat to Donny’s isolated home, Davey’s worried that Wee Thomas’ owner, Padriac, the self-appointed Lieutenant of an IRA splinter terrorist group, will return to his father Donny’s house to torture Davey and kill them both over the dead cat. They decide their best course is a series of phone calls to Padriac, spinning-out a yarn that Wee Thomas is doing poorly, hoping that by killing Wee Thomas gradually, the terrorist won’t rush home for revenge.

When we meet Padriac in the next scene, he’s in the middle of torturing James, a marijuana dealer hanging upside down, blood dripping from his feet down to his chest. Padriac offers the opinion he’s being nice, taking two toenails from the same foot so as to allow James to limp to a hospital on only one excruciatingly painful foot. James admits that’s a considerate gesture.

Padriac’s cell phone delays James’ election of a least favorite nipple to be sliced off. It’s Donny’s news that Wee Thomas is doing poorly. Padraic turns to James for consolation. James offers the likelihood the cat suffers worms, and a few pills wrapped in cheese should cure the ailing pet. Padriac frees the ungrateful James, gives him busfare, then rushes off to head home.

Matters devolve completely bizarrely out of control from these opening scenes. Three clownish assassins camp out in the rocky countryside, hatching a plot to kill Padriac. The trio are a Northern Ireland version of the stooges, lacking only Moe’s faceslap and Curley’s “yock yock yock,” except these three carry Glocks. Then there’s Davey’s 16-year old sister, Mairead, who prides herself on her accuracy with a pellet rifle. That she honed her skill by putting out eyes on the area’s cows is neither here nor there, a family in-joke. And, since Mairead’s sharpshooting will save the day, a few half-blind cows is a small price to pay.

Arizona hasn’t grown this extreme in violence—yet. No blood-soaked wretches have been discovered dismembering dead bodies with garden tools (the Taper audience gasped with mostly delighted asco). But news reports place oddball Nazis on the ready, traipsing around the border hunting down brown targets. And the impetus reaffirming their hatred comes from elected legislators. Arizona’s appointed governor proclaims her intolerance of racial profiling by law enfarcement, while simultaneously spinning a few yarns about decapitations and murder sprees by bogeyman immigrants. Poor Arizona. So close to California, so far from Decency.

Playwright Martin McDonagh‘s characters have grown so inured to torture and terrorism that

Satire for the Nu.nl news website, about a leak in the social medium Facebook.

Sevensheaven images and prints are for sale at sevensheaven.nl

Satire for the Nu.nl news website, about the Dutch gymnast Yuri van Gelder who turned out to have used cocaine again, after a previous scandal.

You're invited to sevensheaven.nl for an extended impression.

Political satire about the Libyan revolt against the dictator Gaddafi.

You're invited to sevensheaven.nl for an extended impression.

Tweet

By Robert Cowan

“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.” So wrote Salman Rushdie and he should know. Certainly free speech is routinely held up, often unreflectively, as an unambiguous, uncontroversial good – one of Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms, the right for which Voltaire would famously die, even if he disapproved of what was being said. In the age of WikiLeaks, the freedom to disseminate information and its corollary, the freedom to know what those in power have said or done in secret, have found ever more vigorous proponents, but also those who ask whether it has its limits.

It has always been problematic whether freedom of speech should be extended to those whose speech is considered abhorrent and who might even argue against others’ freedom of speech. Voltaire may offer to lay down his life and Chomsky may assert that “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”, but the very power of speech which makes its freedom so desirable can also render it an instrument of discrimination, violence, and oppression. It is no coincidence that it is often groups such as the BNP or Qur’an-burning pastors who hold up free speech as a banner under which they can use that freedom to demand the curtailment of others’ freedoms. Even more directly, the dangers of verbal incitement to hatred – be it on racial, sexual, or other grounds – are increasingly recognized in both the statute books and the public consciousness.

WikiLeaks has highlighted the other potential danger of free speech, that, in the famous words of the World War II poster, “careless talk costs lives”. Many have used the rhetoric of being willing to die for the right to free speech, but the issue becomes more problematic when it is soldiers who are dying in Afghanistan because of outrage at revelations of undiplomatic diplomatic cables. Once again, there is no coincidence that it is in times of war and unrest that the issue of free speech becomes particularly fraught. It is then that its negative ramifications can be most keenly felt, but it is also then that it is most under threat from the pressures of power and expediency, then that it most needs defending.

So what does all this have to do with the Roman poet Horace? Horace too was writing in a time of war and political upheaval. As he composed his Satires in the 30s BC, Rome had suffered almost a century of civil unrest exploding into outright civil war at regular intervals, and the final bout between Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) and Mark Antony was just around the corner. Horace himself had fought on “the wrong side” at the battle of Philippi in 42 BC, in the army of Julius Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, against the ultimate victors, Octavian and Antony. Taken into the circle of Octavian’s ally and unofficial minister of culture, Maecenas, Horace had his status and his finances restored. It was at this point that Horace wrote book one of the Satires. These poems are full of profound human insights and uproarious, often filthy, humour, as can be experienced in John Davie’s lively new translation, but there is one large oddity about them. Horace chose to write satire, the genre of the 2^nd century BC poet Lucilius, famed above all for his fearless freedom of speech, and he chose to write it in the period of probably the greatest military and political upheaval Rome ever underwent, but he “doesn’t mention the war”.

Not only does he not mention it, he goes out of his way not to mention it. Again and again there are opportunities to engage with the important political events in Rome and around her Mediterranean empire, but Horace repeatedly refuses. Satire 1.7 is all about Brutus’ time as governor of the provi

At the risk of giving someone an audience they don't deserve, I feel compelled to comment about the latest wolf in sheep's clothing: A clever money-maker (if only because some will actually think it's funny enough to buy) which may end up creating a whole new genre of adult bedtime picture books.

Now before you get your panties in a wad, arguing that adult bedtime picture books have already been done, I'm not talking about the kind of books with pictures that adults may use at bedtime from time to time. Yes, you are right. Those "self-help" books have been out since shortly after Guttenburg figured out how to mass produce the printed page.

But no. This latest creation is what otherwise would appear to be a children's picture book both on its cover and inside. But that's where the resemblance ends. Instead the book purports to be written for new parents to somehow help them deal with the frustrations of being a parent trying to get their new baby or toddler to sleep. What new parent couldn't identify with that?

No doubt the book will get a few chuckles. Likewise, I have little doubt it will sell, although probably not nearly so well were it not formatted as a children's picture book---kind of a formatting double entendre, if you will. And apparently many of you out there indeed will.

After all, the colorful children's illustrations are simple yet engaging. And what new parent could resist a bedtime story to help lull their little kiddo to sleep? But forgive my lack of excitement. To the author---and to Nightline for running the feature---I say GMAB! (which is now far and away my new favorite texting abbreviation).

For those of you scratching your heads wondering "What the... is he talking about?" I can say that sadly you won't have any trouble searching for or finding the hot new release online. This book has done what most authors can only dream about. It has "gone viral" with so much free promotion (including, I suppose, this blog post) that the author may be able to retire in before Labor Day. After all, it's a #1 best seller on Amazon---maybe even in a couple different categories.

And who knows? It may spawn any number of other books covering such parental challenges as long road trips ("Shut The F--- Up, We're Not There Yet!"), potty training ("Sit The F--- Down And Poop!"), arguing in the car with sibblings ("Don't Make Me Pull The F--- Over!"), food consumption ("Eat Your F---ing Vegetables!") and dinner time accidents ("What The F---? Did You Just Spill Your Milk?").

OK. So, perhaps I'm being unfair. After all, I'm still quivering after last month's sale of four copies of my books online. I suddenly found myself propelled up to a sub-500,000 sales ranking in children's books on Amazon. I gotta admit, having only half a million books ahead of mine in the rankings is pretty heady stuff.

Just think what might have happened if I had added an "F-bomb" (or its abbreviation) to a few of my published titles. The Nightline producers would probably have me on speed dial!

“I have long had a theory that one reason people become so agitated by cartoons is that there is no way of answering back. A caricature is by definition an exaggeration, a distortion, unfair. If you don’t like an editorial you can write a letter to the editor, but there is no such thing as a cartoon to the editor.”

- “Why Are Political Cartoons Incendiary?” by VICTOR S. NAVASKY (NY Times)

I alway enjoy looking at favorite artist's work process. It's been a while since I posted one. Since I'm in the middle of experimenting with my Photoshop skills, I thought this would be a good time to do so again.
Below is a recent sketch of mine, that I'm currently in the middle of coloring...

Satire for the Nu.nl news website, referring to indifferent reactions after the presentation of the iPad tablet from Apple.

You're invited to Sevensheaven.nl for more imagery.