TMI

Anyone who has had a blog for any length of time will identify with Emily Gould’s essay Exposed, in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Gould is a blogger, former Gawker.com staffer and writer, who shares some of the pitfalls of a life lived publicly on the internet. While it is her story, it is far from unique.

We live in really interesting times. The internet has shortened the time it takes for news and information to circulate. I typically learn about things first via email or someone’s blog and sometimes hours later via mainstream media. We’ve got at our disposal email, listservs, websites, blogs, social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, viewer produced content sites like YouTube and even XTube, to communicate with others, form networks of friends and associates or create our online persona.

The downside, as Gould’s story illustrates, is that many of us put too much personal information online and everything we put online is permanent. People you don’t even know are now privy to your innermost thoughts or your home movies. Almost all of us can be Googled. A year ago, when I was actively job hunting, I checked my blog stat tracker and noticed a visitor from one of the places where I had applied. We just never know who’s out there reading

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My favorite television series, The Wire, may have concluded its five season run here in the U.S., but season five hasn’t aired yet across the pond in the U.K. (British visitors to this site are advised not to read my old posts on the subject or you’ll find out how it ends.)

English fans of the series are just now getting introduced to some of the actors. The Guardian newspaper has a print and audio interview with actors Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and Jamie Hector, the characters “Snoop Pearson” and “Marlo Stanfield.” It must be strange to still do interviews about characters they stopped playing months ago but also disheartening to know they may never see roles that juicey again.

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Last Wednesday I attended a staged reading for a new play still in development, by an exciting young playwright I first told you about months ago. Katori Hall, who wrote Hoodoo Love, is working on a project now titled, The Mountaintop. The story is set on April 3, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee and involves a conversation between Dr. Martin Luther King and a motel housekeeper with special insight into the future.

Hall has an excellent gift for the English language and an engaging and insightful way with her storytelling. This particular story is unusually daring, for her use of real people in fictionalized events and her connection of King’s dream to present-day reality. The staged reading was done through the Lark Theatre Playwright’s Workshop. No word on when or if a full production will be staged.