Something From Nothing

JournalNews column


I had a lot of people give me the “Amen” from last week’s column when I lamented having over a hundred television channels, but never being able to find anything good to watch.
“Seems we had it better when there were only three or four channels to choose from,” said one person not so much older than me.
I remember those days, but I’m not so sure the programming was any better. We just weren’t so spoiled and television was still enough of a novelty and luxury that we weren’t as particular about what we watched.
I can look at most of the shows I grew up watching and see how hopelessly dated they were — and are.
There are a few exceptions. I still think “The Andy Griffith Show” is one of our entertainment industry’s finest accomplishments, a weekly show that was story-driven and that its humor arising from rich, solid characters, not snappy one-liners and put-downs as so much of the so-called situation comedies are today.
But over the weekend, I watched an episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore” show with my kids, and even though it was a popular show during its day, it now seems pretty thin, the characters lacking depth and warmth. I saw a few minutes of “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” too, one of the favorite shows of my youth, and couldn’t tolerate more than a few minutes of the corny and infantile jokes.
I guess what bugs me most about the television industry today is that most programs seem to be based on some kind of formula or trend. Why have there been so many shows lately, for instance, with a family in which the father is a fat and/or dumb guy and the mother is smart and beautiful?
The technology has advanced so far to allow so much more potential than is being realized, but we can hope. What I hope for is that the cost of producing a documentary or narrative video and having it streamed into our homes on demand will go down enough to let anyone with a story to tell have a venue, just as anyone now with a computer can launch a web site on the Internet. The television producer of the future will only need a digital camera, a home computer and a group of willing and talented friends.
While it’s true that there will be a whole lot more garbage to wade through, it will also allow writers and directors to have their say without having to convince a TV executive that it will attract so many millions of viewers. It could bring a sense of artistry to the medium of television that it has never had.
But we really needn’t wait. I read a news story a few weeks ago about a guy in New York City who brings new meaning to the words “home theater.”
Every night, Ed Schmidt admits and audience into his Brooklyn apartment for a performance of “The Last Supper,” playing a variety of characters in a one-man show that presents a modern take on the New Testament, putting the Gospel story in the context of a murder mystery. He charges $25-$40 per person, including dinner of gourmet cheese appetizers, Belgian beer, home-cooked lamb stew and good wine.
That’s the kind of trend I’d like to see people pick up on, to have live theater right in your home. Or to take it a step further and create a home-invasion theater company, in which the cast comes to my house and puts on a show for me and my friends.
In a culture that values the enormity of things, we need to find ways to step back and personalize our experiences instead of relying on those who cater to the lowest common denominator.

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JournalNews Column

I find it astounding that in the current state of television technology, with so many channels to choose from and the opportunity to receive programs “on demand,” that I still find so many occasions to say, “There’s nothing on TV.”

I’m particularly quick to turn off the so-called “reality” programs, those shows that seem to want to make us forget about our own troubled, pathetic lives by showing us the troubled, pathetic lives of others.

After I mentioned “Joe Millionaire” in last week’s column, I had more than one person agree with me that it’s one of the worse concepts ever, representing everything that’s wrong with popular American culture. Then after conceding the point, they’d say, “I watched it just out of curiosity.”

Well, maybe. But like they say, “If you’re not a part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
No, I prefer my reality programming to really be real.

Even in the middle of my 14th season reviewing theater, even when I’m thinking that I’d rather be somewhere else because I don’t feel well or because I have so many other things to do, I can feel my pulse quicken when the house lights go down.

I get lost in the theater in a way that television can’t even approximate. Several years ago, for instance, I went to the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati intern production of a Sam Shepard play in a dance studio off of Short Vine in Cincinnati. It was the middle of June, at least 90 degrees outside and hotter inside, but the play took place in a bleak Wyoming winter. There was no set, just a door and a few wooden chairs, and when the characters spoke of a howling blizzard outside, it was over the sound of a fan struggling to create a breeze in the hot-box of studio.

Maybe it’s my own power of concentration, or maybe it was that the young actors were performing with the thought of their careers being on the line. Whatever. I believed, and I forgot about the heat, the sound of the traffic outside the studio, and was transported to rugged Wyoming, battling the severe elements, immersed in the lives of those characters, and six years later, the experience is vivid in my mind.

A year or two later I saw “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a classic American drama by Eugene O’Neill in a production by the Rising Phoenix Theatre Company in Middletown. Hamilton actor Dan Britt played the lead, James Tyrone, and because I couldn’t come to one of the scheduled performances, they allowed me into the final dress rehearsal, so I was the only spectator.

The play runs over four hours in three acts, living up to the title, and it’s draining for both the actors and the audience. But that worked to my advantage, because during the third act, with James Tyrone drinking and spilling his guts to his family, everything else went away and I was there with them, tired (but not drunk), watching this drama being played out not by characters in a play, but by people living the parts.

Even in the best of circumstances, television can’t touch those experiences. You can turn off the phone, turn off the lights, send the kids and the dog to the skating rink or neighbor’s house and still never achieve that state of transcendence, never become a part of the experience, will always be aware that you’re glaring at a two-dimensional glow.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one kind of reality programming, but you’ll never find it in your local cable listings.

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JournalNews column

When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office in 1861, he had no plans to interfere with the right of the Southern landholders to own slaves. But just two years later, without the consent of his cabinet and against the advice of his advisors, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Although the proclamation didn’t really end slavery, it had a lot of positive political effects — discouraging European nations from joining the Southern cause, allowing the Union Army to recruit black soldiers. It also changed the focus of the Civil War. After the proclamation, it was no longer a war to preserve the Union; it became a war to free the slaves.

Consequently, many believe that it was the political benefits that convinced Lincoln to issue the document.

But speaking last week at the Hamilton Civil War Roundtable, local historian Thomas Stander posited another theory: That it was Lincoln’s spiritual growth and the convictions that came with it which gave him the courage to change his mind.

“It was through the benefit of his pure, homespun style of critical thinking that Lincoln realized that Thomas Jefferson’s dream, that all men are created equal, could be realized,” Stander said.

Stander pointed to the differences in tone between Lincoln’s inauguration speeches to illustrate the change in Lincoln’s character.

Track down the texts at www.bartleby.com and see. In the first inauguration address, Lincoln delivered more than 3,600 words. None of them are “God.” In fact, the whole speech is bogged down by its logical argument-making, legalistic tone, citing the Constitution of the United States as the guiding authority and exploring its ambiguities as it applied to the pending war.

The second inauguration speech is barely 700 words, nearly half of it exploring the paradox that both the Union and the Confederacy believed that God was on their side. He uses “God” six times and cites the Bible, not the Constitution.

Stander said there’s no evidence that Lincoln had a “born-again” experience, but that his spirituality evolved. I suspect that seeing this nation in a bloody war against itself, he began to wonder why God allowed such carnage on our battlefields, forcing him to question whether God was really on the Union side, and deciding He wasn’t.

Rather, Lincoln comes to the conclusion that the war just might well have been God’s retribution on this nation for perpetuating the sin of slavery, and could continue “until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword.”

Our current leaders would do well to consider this before we cast another stone in another war that — no matter what rhetoric gets spit out over it — is about a commercial commodity. Not slaves this time, but oil.

Our leaders seem to need a clearer picture of the complicated issues surrounding our nation’s involvement in the Middle East, and they need explore what evidence they have that God is on our side because I don’t see any.

On the contrary, I suspect that if God watches television, if He sees even the promotional spots for shows like “The Millionaire” or “Real World,” or if he catches a few minutes of the so-called religious programming (credit cards gladly accepted), He just might have some more divine retribution to dole out.

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JournalNews column


I suppose that if I received an engraved invitation to join the game, I might be willing to participate in the next “Survivor” series.

But I can’t imagine waiting in line for five or six hours for a two-minute shot at impressing whatever intern or Assistant Production Assistant to the Assistant Producer is screening all the tapes now piled high in an undisclosed Los Angeles location.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to observe hundreds of hopefuls as they braved the queue for just such a shot, and for the most part, I wasn’t impressed.

No disrespect intended to the nice people that I interviewed there, but even those who came with props and costumes failed to show much creativity or enthusiasm for the possibility of getting on national television.

I fully understand the desire to be in the spotlight. I became a writer, I believe, because of the attention I got from the comic essays I wrote while still in elementary school. And ever since Pat Ganz pushed me out onto the Ross High School stage 30 years ago, I’ve not been able to shake off the urge to perform. Although being an arts reporter and critic severely restricts my opportunities, I still find an opportunity every now and then to make my way to the other side of the fourth wall or play a song on my guitar for anyone willing to listen.

My guess is that most of the several hundreds of people lined up at Newport on the Levee on Monday don’t have much show business experience. But since it’s such a challenge just to get through our day-to-day lives, most of those there believe that they could eat worms for a million dollars.

But daily life isn’t show business.

Several of the people I talked to ahead of their auditions said that they were just going to “wing it,” then got frustrated at themselves for forgetting something. Many of the interviews I witness lasted a mere 15 or 20 seconds: “Hello, my name is Joe Doe and you should put me on the show because I survived 30 years on an assembly line.” Or something equally lame.

Some folks did show up with a bit of entertaining schtick. Patricia Porter, a Cincinnati teacher, rode into her audition on a tricycle and brought a stuffed, singing gorilla. And to show how creative and resourceful she can be, an off-camera friend pelted her with balls and toys that Porter had made.

Stacey Stine of Hebron, Ky., brought in an empty toothpaste dispenser to show the producers how frugal she can be by cutting it open to get at the dregs of the tube.

“I also recycle Kleenex,” she said, and I’m glad she didn’t get into the details of that process.

“Survivor,” I suppose, is one of the more benign reality games, certainly with a lower sleaze factor than the dating-and-marrying competitions. I can imagine that it would be a lot of fun to participate a game like “Survivor,” although I can’t summon up the interest to watch others play.

But many of the reality game shows have a meanness about them that I find distasteful. I’ve talked to people who get a kick out of watching the judges insult and degrade the people who appear on the talent shows that are so the rage right now. While it’s true that they’ve lined up for their chance to be ridiculed, but there’s something rotten about preying upon a person’s dreams and then taking delight in shattering those dreams.

It’s all fun and games and entertainment for the masses — unless you’re the person whose dream is being shattered.

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