The next time you say that Barney Frank ignored warnings from the GOP about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2004, you might want to know that he wasn’t the head of the Financial Services Committee until 2007.
So he really couldn’t do anything until 2007.
And this will be one of the first posts I have relating politics, which my interest is being rekindled in.
Things I Don’t Care About:
-AIG. This is just getting out of hand.
-Octomom. But I do care about Octomom jokes.
-How much you’re not looking forward to “High School Musical” at the Waterloo Community Playhouse. Can I find someone that is looking forward to it?
-Shawn Johnson. I have a friend that won’t be pleased with that, but I just don’t care.
-The Four Billy’s.
-What new thing is being turned into a musical that the world can do without. I don’t have the space in my brain to keep track of this.
-“Monsters Vs. Aliens.” I read A.O. Scott’s review. That’s all I need to know about it. Well, I also read the title of the Wall Street Journal review.
Things I Do Care About:
–The Hypocrites’ 2009-2010 Season.
-The fact that I know what three of the four plays at CFCT are, but not the fourth one.
-How the plays at CSPS were.
-How great “God of Carnage” and “Exit the King” are.
–How much “Impressionism” sucks.
-David Mamet’s new play, “Race”, being directed by him.
-Devo having a new album coming out.
-The trailer for “Where the Wild Things Are“
Did anyone see “My Father’s Imaginary Friend” and “Cedar Rapids Famous” at CSPS Friday and Saturday night?
I want feedback, please. They sounded interesting and I wanted to go see them due to the puppets and the fact that they were new plays, but I saw another play instead.
In short, will I be kicking myself?
I’m actually sad I didn’t post this yesterday after I read it on my cellphone (I was busy seeing Shaw, taking care of college stuff).
Anyway, Thursday during a Senate Budget Committee meeting, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said to Kent Conrad of North Dakota, “I’d like to suggest to the chairman that he might want to support this because, you remember, you asked me two years ago not to take a vote on it and you said if we did take a vote on it you might not get your budget resolution adopted. So I did not ask for a vote on it and you said it was a very statesmanlike thing for me to do at that particular time and so I would hope that you would return the favor.”
Conrad laughed and said, “You know, I used to like you. Let me just say: Oh, you are good.”
“Well, your wife said the same thing,” Grassley retorted.
In short, the honorable Republican senator from Iowa made a “That’s what she said” joke.
(From the Huffington Post, which also has the CSPAN clip of it.)
The Manhattan Theatre Club announced (most of) their 2009-2010 season the other day. According to Variety, the season is to include “The Royal Family” (which my mom did in high school), Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” and “Time Stands Still” (which ran in L.A. and was reviewed in the New York Times).
The article also states that they’re cutting out a show from their season due to the fact that most theaters aren’t doing well. (It also doesn’t help that “To Be or Not to Be” bombed.)
What makes me scratch my head is why they’re cutting a show off of their off-Broadway season and not their Broadway season. Wouldn’t that ultimately cut costs?
Equity has announced arbitration dates for Jeremy Piven’s departure from “Speed-the-Plow.” Let’s see how this goes.
And David Mamet will make his Broadway directing in his new play “Race”.
(Both articles are from New York Times’ ArtsBeat)
I’ll be honest, I haven’t had a good week so far. It’s the result of a lot of things, including people getting upset over an article I wrote that was published two weeks ago.
So last night, I went on to Time Out Chicago’s website last night and saw that the most recent post on the TOC blog was entitled “Willcommmen to the new Hypocrites season.”
They’re doing “Cabaret”?, I thought as I clicked on the link.
The Hypocrites’ 2009-2010 includes “Frankenstein”, adapted and directed by artistic director Sean Graney; Jean-Paul Sarte’s “No Exit” (also directed by Graney), and “Cabaret.”
Although it’s not going to be directed by Graney, but by Matt Hawkins of the House Theatre, I’m still fairly excited.
Really, that made my day. I have more to look forward to when I move to Chicago.
Well, I went and put all of the remaining plays at both the amateur and professional theater companies on the calendar. While looking at the calendar on my Blackberry is a bit scary now, I thought that I should share this list in order to inform you of the remaining plays in this season, which I will define as August 2008-July 2009. The dates listed below are opening dates.
-March 27: Arms and the Man at the Hope Martin Theatre (Waterloo Community Playhouse)
-March 27: An Enemy of the People at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Iowa City (Dreamwell Theatre)
-April 2: Raising Medusa at the Riverside Theatre
-April 3: Picasso at the Lapin Agile at the Iowa Realty Building in Coralvile (City Circle Acting Co.)
-April 10: Rabbit Hole at the Iowa Realty Building in Coralvile (City Circle Acting Co.)
-April 10: Tales of Two Cities at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (SPT)
-April 23: Always…Patsy Cline at the Old Creamery Theatre
-April 24: Rumplestilskin at the Hope Martin Theatre (Black Hawk Children’s Theatre)
-May 1: Hair at Theatre Cedar Rapids Lindale location (TCR)
-May 15: Inspector Drake and the Perfekt Crime at the Hope Martin Theatre (WCP)
-May 22: Nocturne at the Paul Engle Center (Stage Left Productions)
-May 28: The Odd Couple at the Old Creamery Theatre
-May 28: Squabbles by the Iowa Theatre Artists
-June 12: Kiss Me Kate at the Oster Regent Theatre (Cedar Falls Community Theatre)
-June 12: Hello, Dolly! at the Englert Theater (City Circle Acting Co.)
-June 12: Riverside Theatre’s Shakespeare Festival begins
-June 19: Harold and Maude at the Starlighter’s Theatre in Anamosa.
-July 2: Schoolhouse Rock Live at Theatre Cedar Rapids’ Lindale location (TCR)
-July 10: High School Musical at the Hope Martin Theatre (WCP)
-July 10: Germans! at the Paul Engle Center (Stage Left Productions) (It’s a staged reading)
-July 11: Failing Evolution at the Paul Engle Center (Stage Left Productions) (Another staged reading)
-July 17: Courting at the Paul Engle Center (Stage Left Productions)
-July 23: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Mount Vernon Community School District Auditorium (Mount Vernon Lisbon Community Theatre)
And I still have yet to have conformation on what Classics at Brucemore is doing this year.
-July 24: The Laramie Project at the Martha Ellen Tye Playhouse (Marshalltown Community Theatre)
“Fragments” will be on a short hiatus due to health issues.
Thank you.
Last night, I was walking through the living room when the ten o’clock news on KWWL, the NBC affiliate out of Waterloo. It wasn’t the top story, but there was a story about a string of vandalism in the city of Cedar Falls. My interest was peaked and I stopped and watched and listened.
What occurred (I can, strangely enough, not find the article on KWWL’s website this morning.) was that in a couple of blocks, homes were spray painted with yellow spray paint. What was spraypainted was blurred on the telecast. I do feel sorry for the people who had this done to their homes, but a part of me felt smug. Very, very smug.
A lot of people in Cedar Falls have this arrogant, ignorant additude that their city is the best in the world because it’s perfect. What I mean by this is that nothing bad can happen because bad things, like crime, only occur in cities like Cedar Rapids or Waterloo. (By the way, that’s their words, not mine. Most of the people that like me are in Cedar Rapids or Waterloo.)
Don’t get me wrong. Cedar Rapids and Waterloo aren’t crime free. But neither is Cedar Falls. If you just look at their school district that’s pretty horrendous. Trust me, I was bullied frequently my junior year and most people have the attitude of “Yeah, right” or “OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY?” This all seems to come now, a year after the bullying stopped.
I doubt that many of the citizens are going to notice this. When the flooding occurred, a lot of people were like “The city was saved by volunteers! Yay!”
“But, the North Cedar neighborhood was severely damaged.”
“It was?”
When I was writing my article on the effect of the flooding on students at Cedar Falls High Schools, there was quite of bit of anger over this by people that were affected by the flood that lived in that neighborhood. And it didn’t shock me at all.
By the “city” being saved, they meant the downtown area. Yes, Cedar Falls Utilities had to move out of their office building because of the damage, but apparently, they’re not part of the city. (To this day, I have no clue who the hell builds a power plant NEXT TO THE DAMN RIVER.) (Update: It now makes sense.)
Look at it. Since the flood there have been burglaries, vandalism (and not of the insanely stupid high school senior variety either), and a guy with a live grenade in a standoff with police. And it hasn’t been like one a month.
I lose count of how many times I hear police sirens near my house. And I don’t live in a “bad neighborhood”. On the upside, I’m sleeping better.
But the residents of Cedar Falls will turn a blind eye to this crap because it can’t be happening in their city. And then it will get out of hand before they can do anything.
To be honest, I’m very glad that I’m leaving in August.
And, by the way, I feel safer in Cedar Rapids than I do in Cedar Falls. And that’s not just with driving, because people in Cedar Falls (and most of Iowa) drive like lunatics.
Fragments 