Mark in the NY Times

Howdy, everyone! Check out my latest story in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section of "The New York Times!" It's about musical theater performers branching out into mainstream music careers.

Yowza!

It Looks Like Chaos, but It's the Fringe

Hello, hello!

In this week's Sunday arts section of The New York Times, I have a splashy feature covering the New York International Fringe Festival. You can read it here.

Have a great weekend! (Or week, if you're not reading this until Monday.)

I Have Pity... Just Not for Television

Hello everyone! I'd like to point you toward an article I wrote for Television Without Pity, which is a smart, snarky, and generally awesome website that everyone should know.

I interview actor Maulik Pancholy ("30 Rock," "Weeds") about everything from being on two hit series at once to the realities of working as an East Indian actor. There's also a bit about Tina Fey's e-mailing habits.

Enjoy!

Being Trans All The Time

So I've just published my first story in Time Out New York. It's a feature about transgender performance artist Scott Turner Schofield and his refusal to stop calling himself trans, even though he now passes for a biological man.

A 700 word feature doesn't give me room to dig into the issue with all the depth I'd like, of course, but I think it offers a nice jumping-off point for a conversation about labeling and identity within the trans community.

Hope you enjoy!

"Die Hard's" Message for the Ages

I've seen three movies in the last week, which is an enormous number for me. Even more surprising is the fact that all three of them have been major Hollywood blockbusters. None of your "Onces" or "Waitresses" here! Well, okay... I saw those last month. But still, I've recently been inundated with "Ocean's Thirteen," "Transformers," and "Live Free of Die Hard."

Of the three, it's "Die Hard" that I can't stop thinking about. Critics have been analyzing this franchise since it started, especially because Bruce Willis' character John McClane is positioned as a bastion of Wild West American machismo. He swaggers in, makes some cocky remarks, and then uses his combination of street smarts and--most importantly--brute force to obliterate all the evil in his path.

In a July 3 story in the New York Times, Caryn James makes the excellent point that "Live Free or Die Hard" finds its terrorists in the people who would deny us access to technological information. The central villain--Thomas (Timothy Olyphant), a computer whiz who used to be highly ranked in the American government--wreaks havoc on the country by systematically undoing everything that is run by computers. He takes out the internet, the cell phone towers, and the TV satellites. Then he obliterates the computers that control water, electricity, and gas. "The loss of our information fix," James writes, "hits a very raw nerve."

James' story is an excellent starting place for examining of the film's central anxiety. In her closing paragraph, she cites its "blend of old-school action and new-school tecnhology," and her phrasing hints at the question running beneath every frame: Now that technology is undeniably in control, how is the classic image of the American man--the one who shoots first and asks questions later, the one who protects the weak with his muscles and guns--going to survive?

The film's assumption, of course, is that many Americans are worried about the emasculation of the archetypal cowboy, and as it addresses and ultimately coddles this fear, "Live Free or Die Hard" becomes a template for how the most conservative (and often reductive) American ideas about gender and power can remain firmly in place.

WARNING: I'm about to give away almost every plot point of the movie. Don't read further if you want to see it later and still be surprised.

To read on, go to PopPolitics!

From My Other Writing Life

Hey everyone,

I wanted to direct your attention to an article I just published in "American Theatre" magazine about a theater company called The Civilians. In February, I lived with them for a week in Colorado Springs, Colorado, observing their creation of a documentary-style musical about the influence of Evangelical Christianity on the local community.

Hope you enjoy!

(If you'd like to see the story in print, you can find the piece in the July/August 2007 issue)

Mark in the New York Times

Check it out, y'all. I've got a story in this week's Sunday Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times. Excellent!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/theater/27blan.html

My Politics Go Pop

Remember a few weeks ago, when I mentioned that the website PopPolitics had referenced my Alanis Morissette post?

Well, now they've got their hooks in me but good. Starting today, I am a contributing editor at the site, and I'll be weighing in on music, culture, and whatever else tickles my fancy.

But dont' worry. I'll still be keeping it real here at "I Totally Hear That." And when I write something for PP, I'll always let you know.

For instance, click here to read my first post for them, in which I argue that Kelly Clarkson's relationship to her own fame makes her one of the most unique pop stars of the moment.

Awesome!

I Totally Hear That in the LA Times!

You read that correctly, folks. My post about Alanis' "My Humps" video has now been quoted by no less than the L.A. Times.

For those who aren't registered at the paper's website, here's the section of the story that mentions me...

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THE BIG PICTURE: Satire busts a hump
Morissette speaks volumes about sex, power and YouTube with a sly spoof.
PATRICK GOLDSTEIN
April 24, 2007

PEOPLE endlessly complain that Hollywood is full of dopey, superficial films bereft of anything new to say. And they're right. Anyone looking for art that is edgy or relevant — and inspires comment — is turning to Internet video, which has become the true engine driving our pop culture.

Nothing demonstrates this better than the tsunami-like viral success of Alanis Morissette's "My Humps," which surfaced three weeks ago on YouTube and quickly became the most popular video on the channel, attracting 5.5 million views, easily outdistancing such rivals as "Otters Holding Hands" and "Farting in Public."

At first glance, it simply looks like another pass-along parody, a takeoff on the original "My Humps" hit by the Black Eyed Peas. But Morissette's video is armed with a provocative subtext that has people abuzz with debate. It's a fascinating piece of video art, an inspired combination of satire, social criticism and career reinvention that is a signature artifact of today's viral Web culture.

On one level, "My Humps" is a commentary on dim-bulb pop. The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps," though a huge smash, was widely mocked for its vapid, suggestive lyrics. (Sample: "The boys they wanna sex me, they always standing next to me, always dancing next to me, tryin' a feel my hump, hump.") The video, featuring Fergie, the group's lead singer, was, if possible, even tawdrier. Full of nonstop teasing and thrusting, it's the kind of hip-hop booty porn that would make great torture material for Muslim prisoners at our Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Dressing herself Fergie-style, with baubles and bling, surrounded by black-clad male dancers, Morissette retained the original's visual sluttiness but replaced the Peas' thumping rhythm track with a pensive solo piano. By removing the intoxicating bass line and clearly enunciating the crass lyrics, she gave the song's sexpot swagger a new tone of sadness and desperation while simultaneously parodying her own artistic tendencies toward self-absorbed angst.

It's a striking performance, functioning as both social criticism and self-criticism. It also has given an instant shot of street cred to Morissette, whose career had slid downhill after her incandescent debut in 1995 with "Jagged Little Pill." Stereotyped as an earnest navel gazer — one blogger recently dismissed her as an "emo-feminist" — she suddenly has fans seeing her through fresh eyes.

As Mark Blankenship put it in his ITotallyHearThat blog, "Remember when I was saying Pink didn't manage to criticize the objectification of female sexuality in 'Stupid Girls' without becoming the very thing she supposedly opposed? Well, Alanis found a way. If that kind of wit, intelligence and humility is in her next album, I'm buying it."

This is what gives YouTube its real power. It is a forum not just for amateur pranks but also for career reinvention.

--

So if anyone is here visiting because of that story... welcome! Have a seat and read a while. May I suggest something in a vintage post?

How about... asking me to determine your pop-chart astrology?

Or perhaps you'd like to debate a disasterpiece?

For that full-bodied, "I Totally Hear That" flavor, try our sampling menu (also known as my run-down of the best songs of 2006).

We hope you'll join us again.

And by we... I mean... me.

Skoal!

Something from my other (writing) life

Hey everyone!

I don't often do this, but I wanted to post a story I wrote for this week's weekly edition of Variety. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and I thought it was worth sharing.

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Posted: Fri., Apr. 20, 2007, 1:53pm PT

'Naked' festival exposes face of war

Mark Blankenship: Critic's Notebook

By MARK BLANKENSHIP

NEW YORK -- What if, just for a little while, people stopped being angry about the war? What else would they feel?

Anger has dominated much of our cultural discourse about the strife in Iraq, from talking heads bellowing on cable news to pop stars like Eminem recording tirades. Fury has steered the theater, too, whether it's in the barbed satire of musicals like "Bush Is Bad" or the intellectual protest of David Hare's "Stuff Happens."

But while those sentiments are necessary, there are other responses to war that deserve exploration. With largely exceptional results, "Armed and Naked," an Iraq-minded festival of 14 short plays and four short films that wrapped April 22 and was organized by cutting-edge Off Broadway company Naked Angels, evoked the feelings that can live next to anger in the nation's heart.

The most striking plays trafficked in sorrow. Instead of pushing a political agenda or demanding a partisan allegiance from the audience, they explored how war devastates all Americans, no matter if their states are red or blue.

Enough pieces took this humanistic stance to form a kind of coalition, inviting us to step back from our idiosyncratic beliefs and grieve together over what's happening to our soldiers and our families. Over two weeks, the effect was harrowingly cathartic.

That impact points to the quality of the festival's work. While some of the pieces founder, most exhibit deep critical thinking and careful attention to craft.

Writers like Theresa Rebeck, Itamar Moses and Deirdre O'Connor make particularly good use of the short play format. Each scribe takes an everyday image -- playing cards, interpreting foreign speech, packing for a trip -- and develops it into a piercing metaphor. Delivered in 15 minutes or less, their insights are as taut as they are surprising.

With "Amici, ascoltate," Warren Leight returns from a long sojourn in television (on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent") to create a miniature epic. Without a single wasted word, he introduces three generations of a military family as described by Tony (Tony Campisi), a man whose mother almost shot him in the hand to keep him from going to Vietnam.

In a stellar coup de theatre, Leight lets Tony inherit his mother's fear by picking up her gun and carrying it, in one gesture, into the present day, when his own son is about to leave for Iraq. As Tony makes a silent, crucial decision, the pistol becomes more than a prop, representing any family thatloves its country but wants to keep its children alive.

Shifting meanings also invigorate "Myrtle Beach," a poetic and unsettling mediation by fest co-producer Dan Klores. The play is a conversation between the head (Yul Vasquez) and body (David Deblinger) of a solider who has been blown up.

At first, there's a dreamy calm as the two body parts -- inventively costumed by Jessica Wegener -- discover each other in the rubble. Ultimately, though, the playlet erupts into keening for the innocent man who was destroyed. The force of its imagery almost terrifies.

"Myrtle Beach" is particularly gratifying theater because it couldn't work as a film. The same is true of Will Eno's "Bully Composition," which invites the audience to imagine itself as a platoon of soldiers posing for a wartime portrait. A major question -- posed by Thomas Jay Ryan and Elizabeth Marvel, playing a photographer and his assistant -- is whether we're posing before a day of battle or just after we've returned. Wouldn't our expressions be pinched and fearful either way?

Eno asks this question so elegantly, couching it in a story about an ambiguous photo from the Spanish-American War, that he makes a moral point without preaching. If we examine our current standing in the war, he suggests, we have no way of knowing if we're at the end of the nightmare or the beginning. Capturing the image of our current historical moment means framing worried, uncertain faces.

Eno's play creates a reverential sadness. The audience is asked to become a congregation, considering its own mortality and the fates of all anonymous soldiers. But there's something liberating in that communion, in sensing how much we can empathize with fighters we'll never know.

A similar empathy floods Louis Cancelmi's "President and Man." But before it was even seen, the media and several conservative groups prematurely announced the play was a fantasy about assassinating George W. Bush. That sounds juicily inflammatory, but it isn't Cancelmi's intention.

To be sure, a nameless president (Chris Sarandon) gets killed in his bedroom by an aide (Brandon Miller), but Republicans might be surprised to learn the commander in chief is portrayed in a sympathetic light. He spends most of the play telling the first lady (Lizbeth Mackay) how much he loves and wants to help his people.

He's just afraid to tell them how much he cares. "I'd probably clam up," he explains. "I get too self-conscious when I know people are making judgments about what I say."

And just as the president can't face his people, his people can't face him. While slitting his boss's throat, the assassin says, "It's what they wanted. The people. They just didn't know how to ask for it."

That doesn't read as an attack on any particular official but as a cry of anguish for leaders and citizens so alienated from each other they can't communicate. A lack of understanding trumps good intentions, which leads to anger. And while anger results in action, the action doesn't fix the problem.

More love for "I Totally Hear That!"

The website Pop Politics has given a very kind shout-out to my post on Alanis' "My Humps." Thanks guys!

And I recommend their site to everyone. It's very smart in its pop culture analysis, and you don't find that every day.

Plus, the incredible website Okayplayer mentioned the post, too. Just scroll down their homepage until you see an entry called "A Sense of Humor is a Terrible Thing to Waste." That particular post gives a great argument for why hip-hop artists should laugh at themselves sometimes. Does 50 Cent have a million-dollar grin? Does T.I. know what it means to dream? We may never know.

"I Totally Hear That" on Slate.com!

Well, damn! Slate.com just wrote about my post about the Alanis video. On the page I link to, just scroll down to find me quoted there.

Crazy!

And welcome Slate readers!

Where I've been hiding...

Hey all... I know the posts have been a little bit slower in the last two weeks, so I thought I'd show you an example of what I've been doing while ludicrously not blogging.

Here's a link to my story in this week's Village Voice. If you're in New York, pick up a paper copy. They're free, don't you know!

Second Times the Charm

Hey everyone! Well, as it happens, I have another story in The New York Times, this one in the theater section. You can give it a read here.

EW shows the love

Well, if it weren't enough that The Times ran my story on "The Office," the good folks over at Entertainment Weekly just responded to it. You can read the interesting commentary on my story here.

You know what else happened today? I downloaded "Wincing the Night Away," the new album by The Shins. All in all, everything's coming up roses for the Markster.

For those of you who know The Shins, you'll already be familiar with their jangly pop, which is what Fountains of Wayne would sound like if they had stayed edgy instead of scoring a big fat hit with "Stacy's Mom." (I liked that song, so no offense to FoW. Just saying.)

I know some would call me a heretic for saying this, but I like The Shins' first album, "Oh, Inverted World," much more than their follow-up, "Chutes Too Narrow." Beside having a title that sounds like gay porn, "Chutes" feels blissed out and aimless to me. There's a dearth of hooks that command my attention, and I am busy, people. My attention's flickering away! If it's pop you're meant to be making, even if it's cool indie pop, then go ahead and stick in my brain.

Those songs from "Oh, Inverted World?" Stick in my brain like Post-Its. Have you heard "Girl, Inform Me?" Listen once, hum it forever. Same with "New Slang," which is the song that supposedly made Natalie Portman's character in "Garden State" stop being the prepubescent waif who would never, ever grow up and therefore force Zach Braff's character to realize that he has to deal with women and their very adult feelings.

(Oh, wait. That's not what happened. Porto stays mentally challenged, which makes her the perfect lust object for those men who want to succor their feelings of superiority and masculine power by only choosing girl-dolls as conquests. Give me Natalie-as-schemer in "Closer" any day.)

Anyway... what?

Right. New Shins. Full of great hooks. Plus, the music sounds a little bit different, but not radically so, than the last two records. Growth and familiarity all in one! Huzzah! (Listen to samples here.)

Good Times for "The Office"

Remember that post I wrote last month about music on "The Office?" Remember how it mysteriously disappeared?

That's because I rewrote it as a story for The New York Times!

If you go here, you can read my story in all its glory.

Awesome!

And in the real world...

... I just overhauled my website, trying to make it easier to navigate my writing samples. Plus, there's a new, more professional photo.

Take a look!

Off-Topic: May I Borrow That Oscar, Mr. Abraham?

This Sunday, the time will change and I will make my off-Broadway debut.

Yes, I'm appearing in a play called "An Oak Tree"...

http://www.barrowstreettheatre.com/whatsOn.asp#anOakTree ...

You can see me on Sunday, October 29 at 8 PM.

"An Oak Tree" is a two-character show about a hypnotist who calls a subject on-stage, only to discover they share something painful in their pasts.

Every night, the actor playing the subject changes. In the performance after mine, the role will be assayed by Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham. And in November, it's Leslie Hendrix, who plays the sassy, red-headed medical examiner on "Law and Order."

Apparently, it's very important that I don't know what happens in the play before I appear. As I'm performing, I'll be learning... something. I've been told an earpiece will be inolved. That's all I know. (And if you happen to know what's up... please don't tell me!)

So if you're in New York and looking for a good time, come see my performance!

A bit off topic...

Writing-wise, September has been especially busy for me. And I don't just mean the time that I spend crafting these blog posts, though I'm sure every one of them reads on a par with James Agee. (What up, Knoxville!)

My writing usually appears in publications that require paid suscriptions for on-line access, so I don't talk about it much here. It seems hankty to mention stuff that most of you can't read, you know?

But today? We're mixing it up! Today marks my first appearance in the print edition of The Village Voice, and that publication is 100% free. If you're in New York, grab a copy of this week's issue and turn to page 50 for some scintillating information.

If you're not a New Yorker (or you're a New Yorker who prefers clicking a link to going out into the cruel, cruel elements), just go here to read my story.

I'm excited to share something that everyone can read... It's not about pop music, but sometimes you gotta flip the script.

One plug and one apology

Hello everyone!

You should all go check out the latest issue of the The Advocate (that's a picture of the cover of the issue) because it contains two music-related stories by yours truly. My first story--"A God-Des Among Us"--is about God-Des and She, an amazing hip-hop act. (This is their website.)

The other story--"Dykes With Rhymes"--rounds up some of the best queer women in hip-hop and rap. And you know your life is not on target until you've heard some of that mess.


And now for an apology to "Jenn," who very kindly tried to post a comment here. I don't know what happened, but some technological glitch her post from going through.

Here's what Jenn tried to say about the "The Ladies Are Treating Us Right" entry:

"ok, so consider me shocked. only because of my love for adam over at amateur gourmet did i click the link. if adam says, i will click. but i did not expect to enjoy! to see karma chameleon, "the bomb", and the word trepidatious all appear in a blog about pop music... sigh. it brings glee to my secretly shakira-adoring heart. nice work! consider yourself bookmarked."

I had to put that up here. I got props, y'all!

Also, I've reconfigured things to make it easier for anyone to post. So tell me what's got your iPod ablaze.

--Mark--