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rich people

Being Rich is Not an Innovation

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  I spent my morning at Denver International Airport, a misnamed complex of airport terminals peppered with satanic prophecies with only a single entrance.  If you believe the conspiracy theories, it was built as a last bastion of the global elite in the inevitable case of an apocalyptic revolution engineered and perpetrated by the rich and powerful, in order to become even more rich and powerful, I guess. Before boarding a departing flight from DIA, the first place you must go is a vast open room that once served as the primary lobby for the […]

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art

Putting the Arts to Work for Homeless Youth in Los Angeles

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    Art is more than entertainment or decoration.   Back in March, this photo caused some tepid online outrage in Los Angeles, and spurred another (too brief) examination of the homelessness crisis in the city.   It served as a snapshot of how relatively wealthy millennials were changing some of Los Angeles’ most iconic neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves into playgrounds of twenty-something decadence, literally stepping over homeless residents to snap a selfie in front of a cheeky mural.  When I saw it, I was immediately upset by not only how indifferent […]

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people

We Did This

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When I was a young boy, whenever I went to a public library, I would always search for books on two subjects: Nazis, and nuclear weapons. I think this was because the biggest myths of my young life were told by Steven Spielberg. Reading about the realities of those two ideas: German fascism – its roots in Enlightenment philosophies, populist politics and art – and the successful construction of a machine so powerful it could incinerate an entire city, and destroy the planet, those seemed like the most important things to […]

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theater

AEA Votes on #99Seat

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We’re almost at a head. I also recommend the editorial from Bitter Lemons​ and it’s detail about the full pager in the Los Angeles Times​ and Actors’ Equity Association​’s response: http://losangeles.bitter-lemons.com/2015/03/25/vote-no/#sthash.HLkwZvyx.dpbs It’s very possible that union actors will be forced out of the indie scene by their own leadership, which will make producer-hyphenates like me seek non-union talent or hang it up all together. AEA insists on portraying people like me as exploitative of actors and dismissive of their contributions, when in fact, most of what I do is engineer […]

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people

R.I.P Harris Wittels

Fancy Pants 2002
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  He was a rockstar at Emerson and apparently super nice.  I was in the audience at the Cabaret when Fancy Pants debuted.  I still remember a sketch (from their second show?) about going to work inside a living bear as the funniest fucking thing…     This is 2003 and they are like 19 years old.  This is from before almost everything it reminds you of. They were a million times funnier and more original than the other comedy groups on campus.  They seemed cool. I have no doubt that the three or […]

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atheism

Secularism is Not a Western Ideal

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As my friends on the Left settle into what I consider a reductive understanding of Charlie Hebdo’s work as racist, Islamaphobic, problematic, whatever – here’s a collection of cartoons by Cabu (one of the assassinated cartoonists) which evidence a more nuanced progressive point of view at that magazine. The cartoonist Cabu (who drew all of the cartoons shown here) was consistently anti-colonial and anti-imperial in his work, just like the rest of Charlie Hebdo. This character, a French soldier on the cover of a fictional magazine called ‘the pacifist union’ says “France […]

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