Category: Arts and Letters

Bob Marley – Card Carrying UAW Member

NOTE – Guess it’s not just the United Auto Workers now:

WHO WE ARE
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) is one of the largest and most diverse unions in North America, with members in virtually every sector of the economy.

UAW-represented workplaces range from multinational corporations, small manufacturers and state and local governments to colleges and universities, hospitals and private non-profit organizations.

The UAW has more than 400,000 active members and more than 580,000 retired members in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

https://uaw.org/about/

Vacation in Video Game Land

reddit
Coworker: So where are you going for vacation?
Me: Taking a week off work to play video games and stay home.

InteractionLess8764 Just describe where the game takes place and confuse the fuck out of them

AxelWasTakenWasTaken Im going to russia as a scavenger. I will murder every other person on my way while collecting some random bullshit to sell it to the flee market, then i come back to my basement to rest after a successful raid…

Meretan94 So im crashlanding on this alien planets full of agressive hippies who HATE pollution. Ill create wmd just to burn down their homes.

RootsNextInKin All the while yelling “the factory must grow” while trying to optimize production lines far more complicated than anything I’d ever do on my job and while also trying really really hard not to fall asleep (again….) because this shouldn’t take too long anymore!

lizurd777 I’m gonna wake up naked on a beach and beat other naked people to death with rocks

CatSidekick Doesn’t work for me. I’m playing Crosscode which is a game about playing a game. It’s a still a great game though

poompt Going to an ill-defined limbo region that may or may not be an afterlife, where I will attempt to murder God so I can become God.

Nochnichtvergeben I’m going to travel the world, get to to know alot of people and integrate myself into their culture. I’ll help some of them sleep better and solve some problems. I intend to keep a low profile.

Shouting at the Screen – Comedian Wyatt Cenac and Musician Donwill

SHOUTING AT THE SCREEN
Hosted by Wyatt Cenac and Donwill. Come early for a DJ set by Donwill in Trees Lounge from 8-9pm.

Back in the days before live-tweeting, the only way to express your thoughts while watching a movie was to yell them out loud to the delight of your friends, and the disgust of some old people a few rows in front of you. Comedian Wyatt Cenac (HBO’s Problem Areas, Bob’s Burgers) and musician Donwill (Tanya Morgan, Adulting with Michelle Buteau & Jordan Carlos) invite you to join them as they recreate the kind of ridiculous, loud mouthed magic that is generally found in movie theaters owned by a guy named Magic.

Each show, Donwill, Wyatt and a guest will present a classic film from the wonderful world of 70’s era Blaxploitation and Black cult cinema. The hosts will be mic’ed up providing commentary, lovingly poking fun at some of these films’ more absurd and problematic moments while also celebrating an important bygone era of Black independent cinema, whether that’s sharing obscure trivia or creating drinking games to highlight a film’s surprisingly large number of wide brimmed hats.

Disney Ushers Don’t Point – Michael R. Jackson Fresh Air Interview

GROSS: Since you worked as an usher at “The Lion King” when you started the process of writing “A Strange Loop” and the main character in “A Strange Loop” is an usher at “The Lion King,” now that you have a hit show, do you talk to the ushers? And do you try to hire ushers for whom this will be a good theater experience, a good opportunity for them to kind of almost be an apprentice?

JACKSON: Well, I don’t have anything to do with hiring the ushers. They’re – they belong to a union, Local 306. They place them in the theaters they work at. But I do. When I go to the show, I do often talk to them. They’re very nice people, but they also have a different situation than I had when I ushered because when you’re a Disney usher, you have this long employee handbook, and you’re considered a cast member. And you’re – and the people who come to see the shows are guests. And they are – and it’s almost like you’re working at a theme park. Like, they want to create, like, an experience for the people coming to see the shows. And so they’re just very strict about everything from grooming to how you can gesture to the restroom and all that sort of stuff. It’s – like, it’s pretty intense.

GROSS: How are you supposed to gesture to the restroom? What’s the proper call?

JACKSON: Open-handed. You’re never supposed to point.

‘A Strange Loop’ writer and composer started out on Broadway as an usher
Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical is about a young Black gay musical theater writer named Usher, who works as an usher at a Broadway show — just like Jackson once did.

Michael Shannon – What’s In My Bag?

Michael Shannon goes shopping at Amoeba Music Hollywood.

Check out his picks:
Wilco – Star Wars (CD) http://bit.ly/2iBmGFx
Eleventh Dream Day – Works For Tomorrow (CD) http://bit.ly/2iRv9HS
Superchunk – Come Pick Me Up (CD) http://bit.ly/2ijTjKb
The Jesus Lizard – Down (LP) http://bit.ly/2ipuN8o
Jerry Garcia – Garcia (Compliments) (LP) http://bit.ly/2iRuiGX
Yo La Tengo – Stuff Like That There (LP) http://bit.ly/2hFil7f
Sonny Rollins – East Broadway Run Down (LP) http://bit.ly/2hFkgbS
Thelonious Monk – Alone in San Francisco (LP)

Get his films-
Man of Steel: http://bit.ly/1L0Kz2Z
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done: http://bit.ly/1JyQM0N
Boardwalk Empire: http://bit.ly/1Rc1pNk

Musicals I Want Song – Definition, Example of

The “I Want” song (also called an “I Wish” song) is a popular type of song featured in musical theatre, and has become a particularly popular term through its use to describe a series of songs featured in Disney Renaissance films that had the main character singing about how they are unsatisfied with their current life, and what they are searching for.
Wikipedia

Knowing that Menken was classically trained in structure by his genius partner, the late Howard Ashman, not to mention his years with Disney, I looked for the “I want” song in the score. It was there, but it was that stupid western-fantasy number about going to Santa Fe. All right, I said to myself, time to squeeze this lemon. I devised a prologue to set up Jack Kelly as our hero and leader of the Newsies. I made him an aspiring artist who lives in a rooftop hideout. As the curtain rises he and Crutchie, a physically challenged boy, are just waking up to start their day. The boy worries that he won’t be able to keep selling newspapers because his bad leg is getting worse. Jack cheers the boy’s spirits with the promise that one day they’ll escape the city altogether and make a new life for themselves in the clean open air of Santa Fe. Cue the song! “You want to open with what?” Menken was perplexed to say the least. “‘Santa Fe,’ sung as a lullaby to Crutchie. Yes! It’s his promise to make life better for them”:

Don’t you know that we’s a family?
Would I let you down?
No way! Just hold on, kid, till that train makes Santa Fe!

“And then, at the end of Act 1, when the entire world comes crashing in on Jack, the battle is lost, his friends are defeated, he barely escapes with his life, he climbs back to his rooftop hideout and, in desperation, unleashes an emotionally charged reprise of the song, crying out to the skies for salvation!”

Just be real is all I’m asking,
Not some painting in my head!
’Cause I’m dead if I can’t count on you today—
I got nothing if I ain’t got Santa Fe!

Alan listened and nodded. He was sold. Jack was already adjusting the lyrics for both versions, and we were on our way.

For the record—if you think I was happy allowing a physically challenged child to be named Crutchie you still don’t know me. But, as I said, whenever possible, I had to respect the intangible magic that made the original so beloved. Hateful as I found it, I knew there were those who would miss a boy dubbed Crutchie if I renamed him.

I Was Better Last Night
Harvey Fierstein

When a Scholar Acknowledges All His Sources, He Brings the Day of Redemption a Little Closer – Talmud Quote

His voice is so weightily authoritative that he hardly ever bothers to cite a source or quote a fellow critic. There is, so the sociologist Michael Walzer tells us, ‘a saying in the Talmud that when a scholar acknowledges all his sources, he brings the day of redemption a little closer’, in which case Williams has managed to postpone the Messiah’s arrival indefinitely. Not that he always had that many sources to quote. There were many significant thinkers whom he never read; and while this reflects something of his originality and independence of mind, the way he draws so deeply on his own resources, it also betrays a certain pride and aloofness, a refusal to be beholden to his fellow intellectuals, which is not easy to square with his politics.

Critical Revolutionaries: Five Critics Who Changed the Way We Read
Terry Eagleton
(from the section on Raymond Williams. )

Rainbow Family’s 50th Annual Gathering

In the Main Meadow of the gathering on Independence Day, a shirtless man with long silver hair sat in the grass with his partner, watching the celebration of dancing and drumbeats unfolding before them. He said his name was Kadag, giving an alternative moniker that many at the gathering refer to as their “Rainbow name.”

Kadag traveled to Northwest Colorado from Chico, California, where he is a father and business owner. After attending his first gathering in 1992, he tries to get to the event every year, “if life makes it possible.”

“It’s a declaration of interdependence,” Kadag said. “Living on the land, you know how to care for one another. You get into an environment like this and you see love, you see random acts of kindness all the time, everywhere, from folks you wouldn’t expect it from.”

“That renews my faith,” he continued. “Coming out here to pray for peace in the cathedral of Mother Nature.”

Rainbow Family’s 50th annual gathering draws thousands
Forest Service officials estimate that about 10,000 people were camping near Adams Park on July 4.
DYLAN ANDERSON

The C-Minus Lifestyle

Of course, everyone is still busy — worse than busy, exhausted, too wiped at the end of the day to do more than stress-eat, binge-watch and doomscroll — but no one’s calling it anything other than what it is anymore: an endless, frantic hamster wheel for survival.

You’ve seen all the headlines about the Great Resignation — “Gen Z and Millennials Would Rather Be Unemployed Than Unhappy in a Job,” Business Insider reported, nervously. Even the youth of China are embracing the virtues of sloth, with the lying-flat and sang movements. On YouTube, the faux guru Self-Help Singh exhorts, “Do nothing.” Millions are now pursuing what a punk guitarist I know called “the C-minus lifestyle.” And it’s no longer just a subcultural rumble: Companies in Britain are now experimenting with a four-day workweek.

It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam
Tim Kreider

Portrait of Felix Feneon – Paul Signac

Opus 217. Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones, and Tints, Portrait of M. Félix Fénéon in 1890 (French: Opus 217. Sur l’émail d’un fond rythmique de mesures et d’angles, de tons et de teintes, Portrait de M. Félix Fénéon en 1890) is an 1890 oil painting by French artist Paul Signac. The Neo-impressionist work depicts the French art critic Félix Fénéon standing in front of a swirling coloured background. It has been held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York since 1991.

Wikipedia

Theological Purpose of Hell – Reddit discussion


talhatahir94
I think satan just gives you a tour and shows you around like in mtv cribs

Glenn_Maffews
Shows lake of molten lava…”and this is where the magic happens😉”

HappyDiscussion5469
It could happen to you, cause it happened to me

changdarkelf
If you want an actual answer, satan isn’t punishing you for disobeying God. The Bible teaches that everything good comes from God, and Hell is simply a place of complete separation from him. So it’s pure torture.

Anon_Postings
This. Hell is a result of the fall of man and a man’s choice on earth to knowingly and totally reject God. Hell is a continuation of this separation from God, but now it is absolute separation. And the soul is very aware of this and so suffers in existing in a place devoid of God who is love. The soul realizes their rejection of God. But I do not believe what the soul in hell would feel is regret. It’s too late. There is no love there at all. I think those souls would curse at God. The devil does not really understand love, but one thing is certain–he does not want it to exist.

CatBoyTrip
So basically nothing changes when I die?

random29852367
No more rent

Schattentochter
Supposedly you’d be going through a constant agonizing state of emptiness and craving something completely out of your reach.

Why the middle ages decided to make that all about gore and torture only they know (well, we do too – fear of hell was lucrative af).

maenefa
even Inferno has Satan chained up and frozen at the centre of hell.

86edjustntime
His punishment is self inflicted though. He’s trapped in the ice because he won’t stop beating his wings in rage and generating the ice storm keeping him frozen in place. If he did stop for a while he could escape but he’s a slave to passion and can’t.

Yak_Overflow
So fucking metal

reddit

The felt presence of immediate experience is the only world you will ever know. – Terence McKenna quote

‘If we as a community believe in anything, we believe in feeling good in the moment. The felt presence of immediate experience. This is what has been stolen from you. By capitalism, by religion, by linear thinking, by strategising. We’re always about to be happy. Or we’re always about to be free. And while we’re about to be free and about to be happy, life passes us by. This is because western ideologies are always ideologies of delayed gratification. It comes after death, after retirement, after coitus. It’s always after something that it comes. Well, I’ve got news for you, this kind of thing is chasing your own tail. The felt presence of immediate experience is the only world you will ever know. Everything beyond that is conjecture and supposition.’
Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, bibliophile and butterfly collector.

‘Can I keep this one?’ I asked.
‘Which one?’
‘The quote by Terence McKenna – I’ve never heard of him before.’
‘He was a bit of a guru figure.’
‘Was?’
She must have detected the disappointment in my voice.
‘He died a few years ago.’

Above quote from:

No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy
Mark Hodkinson

London Pride March – 50th Anniversary

More than a million people have taken part in the 50th anniversary of the UK’s first Pride parade in London.

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ community groups attended the march from Hyde Park Corner to Whitehall Palace earlier.

Revellers wearing face paint, glitter, jewels and sequins joined the celebrations as Pride returned for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The event, hailed as the most inclusive in history, included performances from Ava Max and Emeli Sande.

The parade paid homage to the original 1972 march, organised by the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), and saw revellers pass significant sites from the UK’s LGBTQ+ movement.

BBC

Related historical note, here’s how things were in the early 70’s, in New York:
“Arthur Bell, culture writer for The Village Voice, was arrested for holding another man’s hand as they crossed the street. You read that correctly. It was 1973, and you could still be arrested for holding another man’s hand in public.”

I Was Better Last Night
Harvey Fierstein