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Theatre of the absurd is one of the most misunderstood forms — probably because of the unfortunate name Martin Esslin stuck it with. Thirty years ago Saturday Night Live ran wonderful parodies of bad theatre of the absurd and its accompanying high-minded criticism; Dan Ackroyd, as the sour confection Leonard Pinth-Garnell, would watch a pretentious bit of downtown performance art with us and then sniff, “Mmm. That was truly bad.” That’s very funny, because it takes the perceptions of that period about theatre of the absurd, which had sprung up on these shores in New York in the 1960’s, and magnifies them.

Funny, but not accurate. Because, as Edward Albee pointed out in 1962, if there was an “absurd” theatre, one devoid of life and humor, it wasn’t the one downtown. The theatre of the absurd I’ve always loved is packed with meaning, and tends toward the very funny. This includes the work of Pinter, the supposed playwright of menace, and the bleak existentialist Beckett, as well as Ionesco, and Shepard, and the other major writers Esslin put together. They were all saying important things, and they were all funny.

The most important class I took in college was Theatre of the Absurd, an elective taught by professor Jeanne-Andree Nelson. I took the class on a lark: I liked Jeanne-Andree and I figured I could sail through it and get on to the serious business of graduate school and becoming a novelist. But I emerged from the class someone I hadn’t intended to be: a playwright. Theatre of the Absurd was so much fun, so filled with wild energy, so easy to do at any place and on any budget, that fiction looked like work.

In Jeanne-Andree’s class I learned about the writers above, as well as Boris Vian (whose “Empire Builders” I still revere), and Amiri Baraka, and Jean Genet — and I learned about the wonderful comedian Emo Phillips. In 1984, Emo was doing a sort of standup comedy that no one had done before, an insanely inventive and funny comedy that functioned on two levels: piercingly intellectual on the top, and clownishly foolish on the bottom, as though a cocktail-party philosopher had been cross-bred with the town moron. In other words, like theatre of the absurd. Professor Nelson, to whom I remain indebted, was smart enough to recognize the affiliation and to somehow secure a tape of the newly emergent Emo and screen it in class.

Here’s a copy of that first recorded Emo Phillips video, which I just found on the web. (It’s on Emo’s MySpace page, but it hasn’t always been there.) I recognized it immediately because it left an indelible impression on me (especially the joke about the basement). (You can find part two of the video on Emo’s site.) My friend Mark Chaet and I went to see Emo last year at the Steve Allen Theatre and I’m happy to report that Emo is as clever and funny as ever. I’m sure he’ll be back there at some point; you might want to sign up for the email alert.

The Earliest Emo ('83) Ever! (Part 1 of 2)

Almost every day I think about Anita Page, and several times a week I check online to see if she’s still alive. No more. She died today at the age of 98.

Ms. Page was a movie star of the 20’s and 30’s, appearing in the silent era in one of MGM’s biggest hits, which ultimately led to her being partnered with — and this is why she matters to me — Buster Keaton, in his first talkie, “Free and Easy,”  in 1930. Keaton liked her so much he requested her again for “Sidewalks of New York” the next year, making her the only female costar he worked with twice in movies with sound. Neither movie is very good — Keaton was drinking heavily and furious with MGM for taking control over his movies and changing his character; the ending of “Free and Easy” is especially hard to watch, as Keaton, made up as a sad clown with a teary expression looks on hopelessly as the shallow male romantic lead makes off with the girl. But both movies have their bright spots, and in both of them Anita Page is very good as a moll with wonderful comic moxie.

The reason I’m reminded of Anita Page on an almost daily basis is that above my desk I have a statuette of her that she signed for me almost 15 years ago. (When I retrieve my camera I’ll post a photo.) Back then, I went to the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax every month to see all the Buster Keaton movies, and in the process got to meet Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Dom deLuise and other Keaton fans who would come by. On the night of what would have been Keaton’s 100th birthday, I took with me another Keaton fan, the Ohio playwright Kevin Barry, who was in town because I was producing his play, and I wound up sitting next to another one of the great comic’s co-stars, Eleanor Keaton. I can’t remember what we talked about (except our mutual affection for her late husband), but I wish I did.

Some time after that, Silent Movie held a tribute to Anita Page and my friend Joe Stafford and I went. Ms. Page was selling and signing these statuettes, and Joe bought one for me as a gift. I’m still grateful. It’s one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever received. (Another is the framed photo that Paul Crist took for me of the lake deep in the woods where I spent so much of my youth.) It’s a reminder of friendship, and it’s a reminder that I got to meet two people who worked with Buster Keaton, who has brought me immense joy.

Here’s the above image in context on flickr.com.

The young woman pictured above is named Elizabeth, and by all reports is not running for Vice President. (Yet. McCain may change his mind when he sees this picture.)

The exhibition on R. Crumb that got so much attention last year in San Francisco is now showing in Philadelphia through December. I should have taken a day to fly up to SF last year to see it — still not quite sure how I missed it — and I don’t foresee being in Philadelphia again in time. So if you’re nearby, please go see it for me. (And bring me back an exhibition catalog.)

Thanks to Paul Crist (who is close to Philadelphia, where that catalog would be… ) for making me aware of this.

Over on the Huffington Post, a former constituent in the small town where Sarah Palin was governor writes a long letter about Palin’s decidedly poor track record. Admittedly, no mayor anywhere is loved by everyone, but these excerpts below speak directly to why she scares me:

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6
years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over
33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the
City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation
(1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a
regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she
promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they
benefited residents.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office
redecorated more than once.

 In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she
recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while
she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s
surplus, borrow for needs.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected
City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from
the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents
rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s
attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew
her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the
Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

So what do we have here?

• Poor administration
• Bad fiscal management
• Intolerance for disagreement

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sounds precisely like the Bush administration. Whether or not McCain is “four more years of Bush,” if he’s elected and is incapacitated, his v.p. might very well fulfill that mandate.

Thinking back to when I was an 11-year-old taking my required hunter safety classes, I can’t recall anyone else out in the field looking anything like the vice-presidential candidate above. If there had been someone similarly outfitted, my seriously hormonal self would have taken note. But no, it was a cleared field filled with somewhat clueless boys in dungarees and hunter-orange vests getting tutored in the way of the gun by middle-aged men who were passing on what they had once learned at the same age.

One of the things we were taught is that a gun is not a toy, that it is not to be treated as such, and that because we should always assume it is loaded and ready to go off, we should never point it at anyone or treat it as anything less than an instrument of death. It’s because of that thinking, which has informed my life, that I look at this image with nothing but dismay. Sarah Palin is by all estimates a skilled hunter and fisher — but I don’t like her cavalier attitude with that gun.

In most political seasons at least half of one of the main tickets scares the pants off me. In 1992, it was the utterly unqualified and unmoored Dan Quayle (and, more precisely, his scarily intolerant and rigid wife, who would have wound up running the government had something happened to Bush the First); in 2000 it was Dick Cheney; and in 2004 it was a trifecta:  Bush the Lesser, Cheney, and John Edwards, a hypocritical ambulance-chaser of the first order (which made it hard to support John Kerry — except for the alternative, which we’re now enduring).

This year, it’s Sarah Palin who gives me the shivers. I don’t like what she says, and I don’t like what her choice says about John McCain.

I think Palin’s shortcomings have been widely documented already, so I’d rather discuss McCain, a man I used to esteem. McCain is running on a platform of “Country First,” which by extension indicates a criticism that someone else — perhaps his opponent? — is not putting country first. But in picking an utterly unqualified number two, has the aged and cancer-prone John McCain put country first, or has he thrown a sop to the fringe elements of his own party while nakedly attempting to attract even a sliver of the disenfranchised Hillary Clinton supporters? Every year around budget time, I have seen McCain on C-Span voting against and speaking out against budget earmarks — but he has just selected a running mate who sought (and got) dozens of them for her small town and for the state of Alaska. Is this truly the person he thinks best equipped to step when the president is incapacitated? While I’ve rarely agreed with his politics, I’ve generally admired John McCain. Now that he’s caught Potomac Fever and is willing to sacrifice good judgment for his own election, I just think he’s a hypocrite. Embracing Bush the Lesser was bad enough; positioning someone for the presidency whom you cannot believe is capable is just selfish and unpatriotic.

He speaks truth to power, with a smile.

Case in point:

We’re all hearing that Obama has the youth vote nailed down. Evidently, the McCain camp agrees; their student support is in the single digit. (If you are that student and want to order, click here.)

Thanks to Chris Wojcieszyn for making me aware of this.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I promised a free iTune song to the person who suggested the best song I should be have but don’t. (And if you don’t remember, click here.) Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. But first, a little about the process.

Someone named “Niv” wrote “I love ‘Bring Me To Life’ by Evanescence. It is a very powerful song. If you have not heard it you should.” Niv, I thank you for the recommendation, and I did check that out. I can see why this song speaks to some people, but for me I have to say the goth/Christian collision skews a little younger than my demographic. (We’ll see if the Christian part becomes more interesting to me some day on my death bed, but I doubt it.)

My good friend Barry Rowell recommended “Lazy” by David Byrne. I am indeed a David Byrne fan, but here’s the problem with “Lazy” on iTunes — the full “preview window” of the song is orchestral instrumentation. Meaning that I would have to actually BUY the song to see if I wanted it for the reasons Barry gave. I decided not to, but I do have to say this piqued my interest in an album I wasn’t aware of and may go back and buy some day. (Without being able to listen to it first.)

Another good friend, Paul Crist, took to quibbling over rules like a Republican precinct captain working to suppress the rural black vote. First, he asked, “How are are we to know if you already have the song we are suggesting?” To which I responded, “You are to post — and then find out.” Then he proposed this: “I am going to try a different angle, instead of suggesting a song to get I am going to suggest a song to stay away from.” And he proposed that we not listen to bad remixes of “Werewolves of London.” Job done, Paul, I won’t — but that doesn’t tell me what I should listen to with my download voucher. So you’re disqualified.
Chris Wojcieszyn recommended This Mortal Coil’s cover of the Talking Heads song “Drugs.” Hm. That was interesting; thanks for alerting me to it. The original benefits from Brian Eno’s production and the queasy paranoia lurking beneath the entire album. The remake (and, again, I get to hear only 30 seconds) has a great slap and tickle in the bass, but overall it sounds overproduced. Still, Wojcieszyn being a man of taste, he has captured my attention with this. I wonder if he would lend me the album?

My mentor Rich Roesberg blew the deadline, but wrote: “But in case you win ANOTHER couple of songs, how about the theme from BLADERUNNER by Vangelis? I love themes from movies I love. You might also check the one from Robert Altman’s version of THE LONG GOODBYE.” Note to Rich: If you win some songs, redeem them on the soundtrack to “Grizzly Man” by Richard Thompson and compadres (with a DVD bonus feature of “Grizzly Man” showing Werner Herzog inserting himself into the proceedings). But even better, if you ever want some music so bleak and depressing that Angelo Badalamenti would have to turn it off, check out the soundtrack of “The Farmer’s Wife” by premiere David Bowie guitarist (and former bandmate of Soupy Sales’ sons) Reeves Gabrels. The documentary is concerned with a farm family struggling to make ends meet; I heard this precisely once, and about 10 years ago, and the music is still etched into my brain, like the scratches left by a drowning man. Truly depressive. And the parents in the film got divorced.

Finally, we come to Werner Trieschmann’s suggestions. Plural. Werner emailed no fewer than six (6!) suggestions, and gave as his rationale, “they’re great.” I know what you’re thinking, because it’s what I was thinking at first: Hey, he cheated. But in fact, a quick check of the contest rules reveals that I never limited entrants to one submission. Nor did I say that the rationale had to be compelling, clever, or even well-written. So what Werner has done here, in the time-honored American tradition, is show initiative. I know, we kinda hate it but we kinda love it, like having so much hubris that you say you’re not going to slum around with just one gold medal, no, you’ve got to be the Man from Atlantis and seize eight of them, helping to ensure that, say, Canada, comes away with absolutely nothing. And then doing that.

In addition to taking advantage of the slack rules so that he can carve through the water this way, Werner has assembled a compelling list of oddities. Look at this list and ask yourself about at least half of them: “Who?”

• “I Need Some Fine Wine and You need to be Nicer” by the Cardigans
• “Enough Rope” by Chris Knight (depressive but great)
• “The Sound of German Hip Hop” by Clem Snide
• “Cath…” by Death Cab for Cutie
• “Not Ready to Make Nice” by Dixie Chicks
• “Don’t Know Why” by Fleet Foxes

If I want depressive, I’ll go get that Reeves Gabrels soundtrack (see above), so that leaves out Chris Knight. “Don’t Know Why” isn’t available on iTunes. Dixie Chicks is just not me. “Cath…” is pretty good, but the Cardigans song and the Clem Snide song both really grab me. (I’m thinking Werner and I should do one of those music compatibility tests on Facebook.) It was almost impossible to choose, but here’s the thing — I’d already heard the Cardigans (anyone near a radio since the 1990’s has heard “Lovesong”), but Clem Snide was a discovery! I love the twang in the guitar, I love the offbeat lyrics, and the overall sound. I even love the name of their other songs, like “Joan Jett of Arc.” I found myself listening to more of their songs, going to the website, checking out tour dates — and learning that I had just discovered a band that had just broken up! How poignant. How like a Paul Auster novel — falling in love with some offbeat art and then almost getting to know the artist except he’s just died. (This recurring theme of something almost attained is the subject of Book of Illusions in particular.)

So I have redeemed my download on “The Sound of German Hip Hop” by Clem Snide, and awarded Werner Trieschmann the free download, I thank thank him and everyone else who entered.

Now only one question remains: What should Werner download?