Global
Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War is an engaging, extensive, well-researched, well-written account of a topic that still manages to offend me. World War II is sacred history in the United States, the ultimate clash of pure good and evil, the fundamental origin myth of the military industrial complex. It is the top subject of books, films, and shows. Finding a novel angle on World War II that has not yet been exhaustively covered is, at this point, a significant feat. Finding a whole continent is a major victory.
The Tango War tells the story of how Latin America was, at least tangentially, part of World War II. The book’s introduction describes admiration for unrecognized heroes. It notes that “people of Latin American heritage are by far the largest driver of demographic growth in the United States.” One gathers that for the prestige of Latin America, and for the self-respect of Latinos in the United States, South and Central America need to have been in on the most glorious of catastrophes. That’s what offends me, or perhaps depresses me.
To celebrate the 200th tournament of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS), three concurrent events will be held across the globe in the United States, Mexico and the Netherlands across two days where top Duelists around the world will compete for prizes and a chance to earn a spot at the 2019 World Championship Qualifier. Everyone from novices to veterans will be in attendance to show off their best Decks and greatest strategies.
The 200TH YU-GI-OH! Championship Series will be held at the Columbus Convention Center, Exhibit Hall D, September 22-23.
All Duelists who submit their registration form, entry fee and valid, legal Deck List will receive an exclusive Participation Game Mat and Field Center Card to commemorate the 200th celebration, while supplies last.
Shortly after JFK was assassinated by more than one shooter on 11/22/63 (making the assassination a true conspiracy – rather than a non-conspiratorial “lone-gunman” shooting) the CIA devised a cunning ploy by inventing the pejorative “conspiracy theorist” terminology in order to cast doubt upon and discredit those who had taken on as their patriotic duty the need to investigate what was indeed just another of the Big Lies that regularly come from political entities that want our trust and votes.
Big Lies also come in advertising campaigns from corporations that want our trust and money; from government and military entities that want our taxes, trust and allegiance; and from the for-profit media entities that want our trust and purchases. All those entities were somehow involved in the crime - and the cover-up - of the events of 9/11/01.
As JFK researcher and James Fetzer collaborator Charles Drago was quoted as saying:
Black! - written and performed by Michael Washington Brown - is not a solo show solely about the African American experience per se. Instead, it is a broader look at people of African origin in England, Jamaica, the U.S.A. and sub-Saharan Africa. In this one-man show Brown incarnates men from these various locations (in fact, in the post-colonial segment of this 90-minute one-acter, he portrays both an interviewer and his interviewee), exploring what the playwright/actor calls in the L.A. premiere’s program the “distinct differences, yet, a very definite similarity between Black people from all walks of life” in disparate parts of our globalized planet.
In doing so Brown confronts stereotypes and varies his accent and demeanor as still and moving images (including of iconic Blacks like boxer/draft resister Muhammad Ali) projected on a screen behind Brown (technical design by Caitlin Rucker) punctuate his extended monologues. The gifted Brown seems to be a likely candidate for this dramatic exercise that’s often lightened by levity. Of Jamaican and Barbadian ancestry, Brown grew up in London, but since 1992 he has lived in California and New York.
Last weekend I was on Iranian TV being asked about the meeting in Tehran at which the presidents of Iran and Russia had refused to agree with the President of Turkey to stop bombing people in Syria. I said Iran and Russia were wrong.
I also said that nobody involved, least of all the United States, was right.
Not only would the United States and the world be infinitely better off if in response to 9/11 the U.S. government had done nothing at all, as Jon Schwartz tweets each year, but Syria would be dramatically better off if just about any outside force had never gotten in or now got out.
Here’s my 5-step plan for Syria:
If you’re an aficionado of musicals who hasn’t made a voyage yet to the Odyssey Theatre to experience the siren songs of Side By Side By Sondheim - which has been extended - you still have a couple of weekends left to sail on over to Sepulveda Blvd. Sure to delight fans of plays featuring songs, this revue’s “gimmick” (as Gypsy’s strippers would put it) is that three singers and a narrator (Mark D. Kaufmann, who occasionally croons tunes, too) accompanied by pianists Cheryl Gaul and Richard Berent (also Side’s musical director, he tickles the ivories on a separate keyboard), perform numbers with music and/or lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim.
So first of all, let me get this out of the way: I really enjoyed the annual experience of watching an ancient Grecian play performed under the stars at the Getty Villa, seeing and hearing it in an amphitheater the way Greek audiences did when Euripides’ Bacchae opened in 405 BC. The drama pits Dionysus (a whimsical Ellen Lauren) - who, according to press notes, is “the god of divine ecstasy, fertility, wine and harvest… [and] theater” - against Pentheus (Eric Berryman), king of Thebes (the dramatist’s birthplace).
I’m certainly no expert on Greek drama but it seems to me that what Euripides, the playwright of antiquity, was getting at is what Sigmund Freud, the 19th century founder of psychoanalysis, would much later describe in works such as 1930’s Civilization and Its Discontents. That is, the struggle between the id - the unrestrained, instinctual, inner self - and the superego, from whence rules and regulations emanate. Out of this epic clash and collision Classical tragedy is born - and borne.
“This isn’t rocket science,” Jackie Ingram said, humorously downplaying her involvement in the Restorative Justice Community Court, a pilot project of the Cook County Circuit Court, which has brought a new, healing-focused system of justice to her community this past year.
My thought in that moment was: She’s right. Saving kids and reclaiming a troubled, broken community may be more complex than rocket science.
And more crucial.
“This is basic,” she went on. “Give them hope that they have a future.”
Jackie, who lives in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale, is one of the community members involved in the experimental court, which addresses some of the worst failings of the country’s criminal justice system.