100 reasons why you should buy tickets to war crimes [60-51]

Tickets are on sale now for our June production of War Crimes. You should buy some. Here are some reasons why:

60. Because if you don’t you’ll break your mother’s heart
59. Because 759 people from over 30 nations have been held at Guantanamo Bay without charge
58. Because without you there, it's not a performance -- it's just rehearsal (albeit a really awesome one)
57. Because an exceedingly reasonable ticket price for outstanding alternative theater means you can afford this place afterwards
56. Because audience members of the first performance to sell out before May 31 will be eligible to win a free Other Than Emily crew shirt (really)
55. Because finding a new political cause to get outraged over every month is exhausting, but human rights are eternal
54. Because if you don't you'll break my mother's heart
53. Because Stone Cold Said So?
52. Because the Robert Moss Theater has central air conditioning
51. Because we can kill time together until new Caprica episodes start up again

Need more reasons? Come back next week. Otherwise, buy your tickets right now.

you really think it's not going to happen here...

...until it happens here.

• While most reality-based municipalities wring their hands over the legality of stop-and-frisk, Arizona makes arbitrary detention based on appearance state law.
• Meanwhile, in Alabama, a right-wing candidate for governor shrouds his linguistic chauvinism under an aw-shucks "common sense" rubric.
• In Iowa, a congressional candidate advocates electronically tagging immigrants and likens them to dogs.
• And in California, police kick down the door of a blogger/journalist who received and subsequently wrote about misplaced corporate property.

Are you sure fascism can only happen in other countries?

psst ... c'mere

Check it out. It's the cast of War Crimes.

countdown

.5 weeks until Captain Ferguson. [tickets]

Six weeks until War Crimes. [tickets]

Eight weeks (we think) until live COI podcasts as part of BoCoCa.

mistaking the symptom for the disease

It's sinfully enjoyable to point and scorn SEC inhabitants touching themselves rather than watching the markets implode:

Just when it was beginning to repair its reputation with its high-profile case against Goldman Sachs, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suffers another major blow: Senior staffers there were surfing Internet pornography – as much as eight hours per day, in one case – when they were supposed to be policing the financial industry.

Perhaps this helps explain why the SEC didn't see the financial collapse coming. Or did nothing to stop Lehman Bros.’ questionable accounting tactics. Or Bernie Madoff’s dubious “investing” strategy."

They were busy with other things.

But it's all too easy to look for a scapegoat. Of course, it's a perfectly plausible narrative that incompetence and errant sexual desire are responsible for the lack of financial oversight -- but if you believe that, you probably also believe that Lynndie England is the ringleader of a massive criminal conspiracy.

This is "a few bad apples" all over again. SEC workers sleeping (or worse) on the job is not the problem is a symptom of the problem. The larger issue is thirty years of market deregulation, the Washington Consensus coming home from overseas to bite us on the ass, and Democratic Secretaries of the Treasury recommending the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

If you're the SEC, for three decades you've been told you're not the solution, you're the problem. So you're not going to intervene with the almighty market -- you're going to watch porn.

eff off

I like to point to school allegiance, rabid sports fandom, and regional chauvinism as example of why race-based identity never holds much water with me: explaining my behavior because there are inherent qualities of my character due to my skin being brown is as arbitrary and silly as attributing it to my wholly irrational love for the Brooklyn Cyclones.

But I'm as hypocritical as they come, and one area in which I've always been fully tribal in my thinking is my bias toward all native New Yorkers. Dwellers of this city are a superior breed of humanity -- a master race, if you will -- which is what makes this news item so very galling:

A failed plot to bomb three New York City subway lines during the morning rush last September was spawned in 2008 by two senior Qaeda leaders in Pakistan who sent three New Yorkers back home to carry out a suicide strike, federal officials said Friday.

The failed plot to bomb three New York City subway lines during the morning rush last September was hatched in 2008 by two senior Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where they met personally with three would-be suicide attackers from Queens to urge them to carry out a strike.

It's outrageously stupid for me to be more horrified by the plot simply because it was three guys from Queens -- although, as a Brooklyn native, I'm not surprised they were from Queens -- but I am.

Jon Stewart's reaction to Revolution Muslim, the New York-based group that threatened the creators of South Park last week, also holds at its core the horror that they dispatched their threat from "the former shadow of the World Trade Center."

American Muslims -- New York Muslims -- are better than this.

(Because New Yorkers are better than everyone.)

100 reasons why you should buy tickets to war crimes [70-61]

Tickets are on sale now for our June production of War Crimes. You should buy some. Here are some reasons why:

70. Because if there’s one thing your off-off-Broadway theatergoing experience has right now, it’s too much English
69. Because no animals were harmed in the making of this production
68. Because ON-STAGE NUDITY [Note: there is no on-stage nudity in this show]
67. Because the ghost of David Garrick said you should
66. Because you're as sick of identity politics as we are
65. Because the ghost of Slobodan Milosevic said you shouldn't
64. Because even if you didn't care about the last puppy (#99), you'll care about this one
63. Because musicals are overrated
62. Because vampires are overrated
61. Because because stunt casting is way overrated

Need more reasons? Come back next week. Otherwise, buy your tickets right now.