Entries from March 2004 ↓

Americans are paying more for gasoline than ever before. Californians driving into their local gas stations this weekend can expect to pay about $2.17 per gallon. In Nevada, they’ll pay $2.06. Arizona, $1.91.

The lowest gasoline prices on average are found in Oklahoma and South Carolina, where they’ll pay $1.578 and $1.577 respectively for a gallon of regular.

I haven’t owned an automobile since 1998, the year I moved to New York City. Upstate, it was a necessity for every day getting around and as I recall the price of a gallon of gasoline back then was about $1.40. I remember thinking how that was a lot of money and because of my personal finances, I didn’t often fill the tank.

Living now in a city that has a mass transportation system that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I don’t envy car owners. What I lost in personal travel convenience and privacy, I gained in savings. A $70 monthly MetroCard gives me unlimited rides on buses and subways, and because it is provided through payroll deduction by my employer, even serves to lower my annual taxes. No more gasoline, parking, insurance, or repair bills.

Which is why I am hoping this upward trend in gas prices serves as a wakeup call to the rest of America. Things are only going to get worse. Fossil fuel is a finite commodity and a transportation system based on individual vehicles powered by such is only going to become more and more expensive to operate.

Communities that were designed to accommodate the automobile, with shopping areas and business districts spread far away from residential areas and only accessible by traveling long miles over expansive highways, may in the long run undermine their own objectives. With gasoline prices predicted to rise to $3 by this summer, people will travel less frequently. A division of “haves” and “have nots” may result, with only those able to afford an automobile and related costs capable of performing even routine tasks.

Stated reasons for the rise in gasoline prices include an increase in crude oil brought on by production decreases from OPEC, and political unrest in Venezuela, a major exporter of oil to the United States. Additionally, US refineries are changing their production processes, some of which are environmentally mandated, and passing along the increased expenses.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the Bush administration was “extremely concerned” about rising gas prices, but offered no specifics on what could be done about them. Considering Bush’s Texas oil roots and campaign contributions from the industry, it would be surprising if anything of real substance occurred. There is simply no incentive for them.

No, the impetus for change will have to come from somewhere else.

At the local level, municipal planners across the country need to seize the opportunity to encourage and lobby for more spending on public transportation.

Budgets earmarked for roads and highways should be redirected towards alternatives including electric and hybrid powered buses and light rail transports. In urban areas, bicycling and walking should be encouraged and supported as viable means of getting around and street design should reflect that. These would not only address transportation needs but better serve the environment.

America’s a love affair with the automobile was born out of the same sense of individualism that has all too often prevented us from recognizing our stake in larger community needs. We are fast approaching a time when like it or not, car ownership will be a luxury, available only to a privileged few. However, everyone’s ability to get from point A to point B should not be lost in the process.

This week’s Village Voice has an essay every blogger ought to read. It’s quite amusing I think.

In short, don’t take this shit so seriously, ‘k!

When it was announced months ago that Sean “Puffy-Puff Daddy-P Diddy” Combs was cast in the lead role of Walter Lee Younger in the first ever Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play A Raisin in the Sun, tongues wagged all over the New York theatre community.

Reviewers and other media types raised an eyebrow. Beyond his role in the movie Monster’s Ball, for which he received polite notices, few knew he could act at all. He’s not the first rapper-turned actor, and won’t be the last, and most are hired for their name recognition moreso than their abilities. People just assumed the play’s producers were engaging in stunt casting.

Meanwhile the Black acting community was highly insulted. Roles for Black actors in stage, television and film are scarce under any conditions, but parts in straight dramatic plays on Broadway are as rare as hen’s teeth. The email traffic was ferocious, as were the comments contained in them. It’s one thing for Hollywood to hire a non-actor, but THE THEATRE! Too many people felt they had paid their dues and Puffy hadn’t and that his casting was a slap in the face.

Stage veterans were added to the cast–Audra McDonald will play Ruth, his wife and Phylicia Rashad will play Mama Lena Younger. Kenny Leon is directing, and speculation was that by bolstering the cast with experienced theatre people it might offset any deficiencies in Combs’ acting.

Now comes word certain to fuel more rumors and send fear in the hearts of the show’s producers. With the play set to begin previews at the Royale Theatre in late March, published reports say P Diddy has maintained his usual busy schedule of running his music and fashion empire and found little time to even read the script. Those same reports claim producers have taken special care in the casting of his understudy as a precaution. Producers publicly deny any cause for concern.

Just weeks ago actor Omar Epps openly criticized the show business trend of hiring celebrities instead of trained actors, and singled out this play in particular. He has been joined in that sentiment by other name Black performers like Samuel L. Jackson and Charles Dutton.

When you consider that unemployment figures for all actors in all media consistently run at about 85 percent, and that for Black actors it’s around 90-95 percent, you can understand the concern. Producers, interested only in making lots of money, will hire anybody who can get fans into the seats, whether they can act or not, while Black actors desperately fight for any opportunity to show their talents.

Theatre is not movie making and bad acting stands out glaringly. You can’t ask for retakes. If the scene calls for real emotion, you have to find it inside and bring it out, because the audience is close enough to smell a fake. And, it’s eight shows a week–Tuesday through Saturday evenings, matinees on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. It’s a grind that even veteran film actors have a tough time handling, let alone beginners.

Only time will tell if Puff Daddy can be the Mac Daddy of the Great White Way, but if it comes to pass, it will only come after lots of rehearsal.

When you think about it, he does, but perhaps not in the way I do.

George Bush, who is now coming up short in numerous polls against both leading Democratic challengers, despite having out distanced all of them combined in the amount of funds raised, is strongly in favor of making same sex marriage rights the number one campaign issue this year.

Bush would like nothing more than to use the issue to divide, and thus conquer, his opponents, as he galvanizes support from his conservative extremist base. He knows that continual discussion forces centrists to pick a side and he’s betting that they’ll fall down on the side of fear of the unknown and a disruption of all things “normal.” As self declared “moral leader” he wants to be depicted as savior of a pure and sacred nation constantly threatened by terrorists abroad and liberal extremists at home.

The President is counting on being able to mold and shape enough unformed or ambivalent minds into thinking that the best way to defend marriage is by stopping people of the same gender who just want the right to have one. As he has said, occurrences in San Francisco, and now New Mexico and New Paltz, NY are “troubling” to him, and he’s hoping they are troubling to you too.

But make no mistake, it is not the idea of gay marriage that really frightens him. It is the idea that we’ll stop talking about it between now and November. If America turns its eye away from this issue, then we will most surely return to discussing the unnecessary war waging in Iraq.

If we start talking about the war, then once again we’ll begin talking about the 500+ American soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis killed, despite the fact that there were never “weapons of mass destruction” there as he claimed; Saddam Hussein never had any role in 9/11 as he tried to allude; the official war ended months ago and stability in that region seems years away.

If Americans stop debating the fact that two heterosexual drunks on a one night stand can fall into a wedding chapel in Las Vegas and receive more rights than two lesbians in a 20 year relationship, then we might also remember that more than $200 billion dollars have been spent on the war effort, with most of it going to defense contractors like Halliburton, the company Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. While Bush campaign contributors profit off of other people’s misery, here at home domestic programs benefiting education, health care, youth, seniors, the environment and a host of others, have had their budgets slashed considerably.

Bush’s desire to enact a constitutional amendment to define and limit marriage specifically to a man and a woman is a hot button issue guaranteed to ratchet up the rhetoric on both sides of the political divide. As it does our minds are sure to drift away from the whopping federal deficit, the largest in the nation’s history, and the jobless recovery that only Wall Street investors seem to be benefiting from.

Gay marriage opponents all know that if we allow this sinful act to be sanctioned by the government, it will lead us down the road to damnation. We must stop that from happening. In fact, the powers of John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act should give the FBI and other law enforcement officials unprecedented freedom to snoop and pry into our everyday lives without permission, and in so doing stave off such abominable acts, or anything else they so deem against their view of what is patriotic, holy or both.

Yes, if you are George W. Bush, gay marriage is the single most important issue facing the nation today. As he must know, if we don’t all face it together, than surely we will all stand in opposition to him and his deceitful, corrupt and morally bankrupt administration.

It isn’t every day you can walk into a store and bump into a living legend. Nor is it common to see upwards of a hundred people jamming store aisles while a concert goes on.

But both occurrences took place in downtown Manhattan when a true jazz luminary, the great drummer Roy Haynes and his quartet performed an hour long set at J&R Music and Computer World , as guests of Saturday Afternoon Jazz on WBGO-FM .

The diminutive and dapper drummer, who Esquire magazine once called, “the best dressed man in show business” earned his position of stature after more than a half century of performing with some of the jazz world’s brightest stars. The list reads like a history of music itself: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Joshua Redmon, John Patitucci, and Danilo Perez, to name an impressive few.

Haynes will turn 79 on March 13 but you’d never know it from the energy he generates. Perhaps the thrill of performing in front of appreciative crowds like the one he had Saturday keeps him young. Or maybe it’s the talented young crowd he runs with. He was joined most capably this day by Marcus Strickland on tenor and soprano saxophone and bass clarinet, Dave Kikoski on piano and John Sullivan on acoustic bass.

They dazzled through selections off Haynes latest CD, aptly titled Fountain of Youth (Dreyfus Records), including Twinkle Trinkle, Inner Trust and the classic Greensleeves. The CD interestingly was also recorded before a live audience, at Birdland in NYC.

During breaks, Haynes told radio host Monifa Brown that performing in front of an audience is what he enjoys the most. From the look on the faces of fans at what is quickly becoming a great free jazz hang, that enjoyment is mutual.

Mammy Dearest

Connections to past icons with more subtle social significance got a dramatic treatment in the Off Broadway one-woman show, The Mammy Project, written and performed by Michelle Matlock.

With satire and wit, thought provoking insight and heartfelt empathy, Matlock uses a series of short vignettes in an hour long examination of American societal fascination with the “mammy” image; large Black women usually working in caretaker roles in White households and seemingly selfless in their willingness to put their employer’s needs ahead of their own.

Despite a history of mammy images dating back to slavery, the subject matter had particular significance for Matlock, who as a freelance actor with her size and complexion, was once sent to audition for an Aunt Jemima commercial. She didn’t get it, but set out to learn why the imagery persists even in this day and age.

What resulted was a solo performance piece that has gone through revisions over time, and in its latest incarnation now loosely tells the story of the original Aunt Jemima, a former slave named Nancy Green who was first hired to pitch the pancake mix at the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

But rather than being a straight forward historical recitation, Matlock takes some liberties and weaves in original rap songs and modern day references to illustrate how times may have changed, but mammy figures have remained throughout.

And she does it in quite clever ways. Showing us the insidious nature of the slave auctions that placed value on buxom Black women deemed good for breeding, she performs the role of the auctioneer pointing out a slaves best features, then turns around and shows us the slaves-eye view, reacting to the descriptions. She does that part in eery silence, a frightened smile plastered on, hands and feet together as if shackled. The period of silence is long and uncomfortable.

Mammy exists because it is a comforting image for White people. Sexually non-threatening to White women, while being cheerful, strong and supportive. Matlock riffs comically on the images created by Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With The Wind” and turns a scene from “Imitation to Life” into a lesbian seduction. She contends current depictions in roles played by Nell Carter, Whoopi Goldberg and the popularity of Oprah are all manifestations of this same phenomenon.

While this classically trained actress performs quite capably in the show she has created for herself, if there is any weakness it is in the writing. Most individual scenes are interesting, but those that aren’t cause the show to drag and when she lapses into chronological progressions, it has aspects of story theatre.

But on the whole this was a worthwhile production. Sunday’s performance was the end of the run at the soon to close Palace of Variety on 42nd Street. Let’s hope the show finds another home again in the future.