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Approaching sellouts at Waco Hall - “Nutcracker” and David Phelps
Two upcoming holiday events at Waco Hall are closing in on sellouts. This Sunday’s “The Nutcracker” with the St. Petersburg Ballet and the Waco Symphony Orchestra is down to side seats on the main floor and second balcony seats upstairs. Judging from ticket sales at past “Nutcrackers,” symphony officials anticipate a sellout by curtain time at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Call 754-0851 for ticket availability if you need to.
Christian singer David Phelps, a former Gaither Family vocalist, returns to Waco (where he attended Baylor) to present his Christmas show at 7 p.m. Dec. 16. That show’s more than two weeks away and only about 60 main floor tickets are left. There are more open spaces in the balcony where slightly more than 500 seats are available (OK, it’s not quite a sellout yet, but headed that way … ). Tickets online are available at www.itickets.com and Mardel’s Christian and Educational Supply store has about 30 floor tickets left.
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Why Thanksgiving films are rare
Each year, like clockwork, Hollywood cranks out three to four features with a Christmas theme or angle. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, might see one or two films in a good year. Stack Christmas movies against Thanksgiving and you’d see a mountain compared to a molehill.
Both are national holidays celebrated by millions. So why the discrepancy? Part of it, I think, lies in thanksgiving’s transitive nature: Those of us who are religious have an object for our action. We give thanks to God. That gives the holiday a grounding in religious faith with which movie studios are reluctant to address.
Think of all the Christmas films you’ve seen and name the ones that deal with the theological meaning of the holiday. Any come to mind that address the Incarnation? The belief many Christians hold that Jesus would later die to reconcile humankind with God? Not in the Christmas movies I know. Those deal with what a materialistic, consumerist society knows of the holiday: Santa, gift-giving, love expressed through objects, families reunited or affirmed in a sentimental way.
Thanksgiving films largely address one aspect of the holiday, namely the convergence of scattered families, and usually mildly dysfunctional families at that for comic effect. You don’t see Thanksgiving movies centered on characters who express thanks for their health, safety, material comfort or spiritual blessings - even though those subjects are commonly addressed by truly thankful human beings at this time of year.
Hollywood lacks the language of thanksgiving. We shouldn’t be surprised. Feature films so often use sex as shorthand for love, which ends up cheapening both. Violence and action dominate human interaction in film, shortchanging those communications that take time, patience or complexity, however essential they might be to culture and civilization.
That’s the nature of the beast: We thrive on conflict in our stories and we want them solved in short packages of time. That’s what we’ll buy tickets for. A true Thanksgiving movie? Too wordy. Too squishy. Too conceptual.
Maybe the lack of Thanksgiving films is another thing for which to be thankful - thankful that the holiday’s essence can’t be easily commodified and commercialized, thankful that there’s something deep and mysterious and meaningful that happens when we contemplate, individually and collectively, the blessings of our lives.
Could a movie ever substitute for that?
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“Oliver!” tonight - or tonight!
PHOTOS
Student discounts are in effect for tonight’s performance of the national tour of the musical “Oliver!” at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre. That means $10 balcony seats for high school and college students with ID. Call the box office at 752-9797 for more information.
That’s not quite as generous as the offer made last night to those attending the first night’s performance - up to four free kids’ tickets for every paid adult ticket if they want to return for tonight’s show - but that’s the breaks for not buying season tickets or getting your single tickets early.
The Hippodrome ended up with a second “Oliver!” performance thanks to Hurricane Ike this fall. The hurricane flooded Galveston’s Grand 1894 Opera House, where the musical was to play on the Texas leg of its tour. Losing the anticipated income from its Galveston performances almost caused the musical’s production company to scratch its Texas tour. That cancellation, in turn, would have cost the Hippodrome money, so the theater and other affected venues agreed to add additional performances to help the company defray its expenses. Turns out the Galveston theater plans to reopen in January 2009 with two performances of “Oliver!” on that month’s schedule.
Anyway, all of this to say there are plenty of seats available for tonight’s show at 7:30. If you’re a student in town for the holidays, you might take advantage of a stage musical for slightly more than a movie ticket …
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“Twilight” screams, “Risen” rises and alas, no “Romeo” rvw
If Waco movie theaters are anything like the advance screening of Twilight that I attended in Dallas earlier this week, the walls are likely to vibrate with the screams and squeals of true-blue Twilight fans, and it’s not from fear or fright.
The excitement level of that Dallas audience, dominated by high school- and college-age women, topped that at the advance screening of this summer’s The Dark Knight, which, given months and months of pre-opening hype, was surprisingly restrained. Not so the Twilight crowd. When the lights went down for the film, a voice in the darkness squealed “I’m so excited!” The audience went on to cheer the logo of movie studio Summit Entertainment, buzz excitedly at the first sight of Jacob Black and murmur aloud at Edward Cullen’s appearance.
We may all be watching films premiere in our homes within ten, maybe five years, but that experience won’t have the same dynamic.
Speaking of vampire movies, the Waco-produced Risen arrives in commercial movie houses this weekend with screenings in Indiana and Ohio starting today. Director Damon Crump tells me that Texas is on the list of upcoming screenings, but no word yet on a Waco appearance.
As for McLennan Theatre’s “Romeo and Juliet,” whose three-performance run opened last night, alas, I wasn’t able to make it for a review. Anyone who attended feel free to share your take on the production here.
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Waco TV/filmmaker to rob bank Saturday - cinematically speaking
Waco’s Red C Television, maker of the video series “Cowboy & Lucky,” will shoot a bank robbery scene this Saturday at First National Bank of Central Texas, 1835 N. Valley Mills Drive. It’s part of Episode 3 (of 13 planned) in the “Cowboy and Lucky” series. The company’s Web site says Episode 1 is available for online viewing, but the link wasn’t working for me.
The shooting will take place between 1:30 and 4 p.m. If you’re interested in being an extra, show up about a half hour earlier and ask. Red C’s producers, Russell Clay and Chris Cox are working on expanding their pool of extras for the remaining episodes in “Cowboy & Lucky” as well as their other television/video projects.
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Illusionist David Copperfield to reappear in Waco
Illusionist David Copperfield will bring his “Grand Illusion” show to the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum next year, performing two shows there at 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. Feb. 24, 2009. Tickets cost $49, $41 and $36, available at the Coliseum box office (254-776-1660) or Ticketmaster.
It’s a return visit for the performer, who played the Coliseum back in 2005.
And, no, Copperfield’s new show isn’t called “The Vanishing Economy” …
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Stephen Colbert sings Christmas
Well, actually it’s more about Christmas commercialization in his new CD A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift Of All, set for a Nov. 25 release on iTunes, but Pitchforkmedia.com has the single “Another Christmas Song.” (My favorite part: the bridge about the miserable waifs and who they are).
Yes, I confess, I’m committing a pet peeve of mine: promoting Christmas before Thanksgiving. Then again, so is Focus on the Family, which is gearing up its annual holiday - excuse me, Christmas - tradition of the bogus “War on Christmas” with a three-tiered checklist for judging retailers according to how they welcome customers.
Don’t know about you, but all the recessionary doom-and-gloom about Christmas this year might get more people finding non-commercial, non-materialistic ways to celebrate the holiday, which I think gets closer to its true celebration than merchants parroting a particular phrase.
Which is worse - a retailer saying “Happy Holidays” or, as Colbert so neatly parodies, crass commercialization of Christmas?
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Zoo Tunes - nice new event
Kudos to organizers of Sunday’s Zoo Tunes, which featured the Baylor Symphony Orchestra and the Waco Symphony Youth Orchestra in a family-friendly outdoor concert at Cameron Park Zoo.
I was there with my middle daughter (who plays with the WSYO) and my youngest (up for the inflatable kids games) and the afternoon had a mellow, laidback vibe well suited for a fall Sunday. It was nice to see an arts event organized for its inherent value and not as a magnet for charitable fund-raising, however worthy those events are.
It certainly didn’t hurt that the weather was an impeccable September afternoon - which, in Waco, usually arrives in November.
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NEA chair contrasts arts, entertainment in Baylor talk
You have to appreciate a Washington bureaucrat who describes his job as being “minister of culture in a nation that’s not sure if it wants a ministry of culture,” then polishes off a talk about the role of the arts in culture by reciting his own polished verse.
The stereotype of a Washington bureaucrat as a bloodless, ineffective pencil-pusher - a convenient stereotype in our political discourse these days - obviously doesn’t fit National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia (JOY-a), who spoke Thursday afternoon at Baylor University’s Armstrong-Browning Library.
Gioia, who said he intends to leave the post he’s held for six years in January to get back to his art of poetry, spoke to a small audience of students and academics, many from Baylor’s Honors College, about the role of the arts in national culture. The California-born poet, businessman and arts advocate is largely credited for steering the NEA away from the political shoals of controversial art to deeper waters of providing quality art to underserved areas and populations.
His Shakespeare in American Communities, for instance, brought live performances of Shakespeare’s plays to more than one and a half million high school and middle school students. (Gioia’s work is documented in part in Baylor history lecturer David Smith’s new book Money For Art; Smith, in fact, introduced the NEA chair to the Baylor audience).
In the span of a fairly wide-ranging 40-minute talk, Gioia talked about how his blue-collar parents shaped his ideas on arts accessibility; how the end of arts education is to enrich lives in a complex society, not produce artists; and where the arts and entertainment diverge.
While the arts and entertainment largely overlap, Gioia noted that entertainment provides a commodified experience - one gets (usually) the predictable pleasure for which one pays. The arts, on the other hand, offer the possibility of transformation. The quality of the art, its form, its content - all can change, however minutely, the viewer.
Unfortunately, entertainment tends to drive out the arts in today’s popular culture. “My worry is that in a society where arts are replaced by entertainment, there’s a general effect of stupefication. Americans aren’t dumber, but American society is dumber than it was 25 or 50 years ago,” he said. (For an expanded address on the subject, see Gioia’s 2007 commencement address at his alma mater Stanford University.
Gioia borrowed a page from entertainment, however, staying true to the adage, “Always leave them wanting more.” As interesting as his remarks were, there were plenty of topics one wanted to hear him address. There wasn’t a discussion of a 2002 NEA study that show young adults (18 to 34 years old) less likely to attend the performing arts than young people 10 and 20 years ago and also less likely to engage in literary reading (novels, poetry, etc.), though that information was in an NEA folder made available to audience members.
I didn’t get to ask one that’s frequently on my mind: With both the Internet and entertainment driven by dynamics of individual choice and, as a result, making it possible to stay fully within one’s cultural comfort zone, how does a community or country develop a common arts language or a shared arts culture? (Closer to home: How does one build community-wide interest in and support of Waco’s arts organizations?)
He did leave us with poetry, his “The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet” (a YouTube clip of him reading it at another event is here).
Our senior editor Bill Whitaker talked to Gioia after his address, asking him about his years in the Bush administration, working with Congress and more. A Q&A from that conversation ran in Sunday’s Waco Tribune-Herald.
Thoughts on what’s needed to strengthen the arts in Waco?
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“Taxi to the Dark Side” sceened tonight
The Waco Friends of Peace will have a free screening of the 2007 Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side at 6 tonight, Nov. 13, at Poppa Rollo’s Pizza.
While it was a bit of a surprise winner that year, beating Michael Moore’s more popular Sicko, those who watch it see why it won. It’s a methodical account of America’s deliberate use of torture in the beginning years of the War on Terror (has anyone noticed how that’s now being replaced by “America’s two wars”? Just curious.) Director Alex Gibney starts with the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Daliban arrested in the early months of the fight against the Taliban, detained at America’s Bagram Air Force Base and who died days later from injuries sustained in beatings there. Taxi then goes on to make its case that the death was no accident given the Bush administration’s tacit approval of torture to get information against Islamic radicals.
What makes this more than a political screed are the range of interviews (which includes military prison guards at Bagram, Iraq’s Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as well as the military prosecutors) Gibney secures as well as footage of all three prisons, the latter something missing in most discussions of the subject. There’s also graphic, explicit photos of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners beaten, tortured and sexually humiliated in American custody.
Taxi’s largely dispassionate tone makes its revelations and argument even more powerful. I’d put it up there with any of PBS’s “Frontline” specials on 9-11, the Iraq War and contemporary politics, which I think set the bar for coverage of today’s issues.
With the economy dominating public discourse these days and a presidential election behind us, it’s easy to turn our attention away from Iraq and dismiss what happened there a few years ago as water under the bridge. Part of the world, however, won’t forget, to the detriment of our future success in foreign policy and military deployment.
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Hippodrome cancels Tuesday’s “Tapestry” tap dance show
Those who would like more professional dance performances in Waco will have to wait a little longer as the Hippodrome today cancelled Tuesday night’s performance of the American tap tribute “The Souls of Our Feet” by Austin company Tapestry.
Waco Performing Arts Company Executive Director Scott Baker said the cancellation - he preferred to call it a postponement, with a yet-undetermined rescheduled date - was due to the theater’s inability to meet the show’s technical requirements. Slow ticket sales (only 88 sold with only six days to go) played a factor, too.
The company required the theater to provide such things as movable lighting, a digital sound board, special floor mikes to pick up and amplify dancers’ tapping and more, Baker said. Normally, such issues are ironed out during contract negotiations, but the theater director said there apparently had been some miscommunication. “I thought I had communicated pretty clearly what we could and couldn’t do,” he said.
Faced with the prospect of expensive equipment rentals and purchases or scaling down the production, Baker opted to cancel Tuesday’s performance and reschedule at a later time.”Obviously, I’m disappointed,” he said.
A Tapestry performance could come possibly next season after the Waco theater completes a planned sound system overhaul and other improvements this summer that would address some of the technical issues, Baker noted.
Those with tickets to Tuesday’s performance should contact the theater box office at 752-9797 for refunds or exchanges for tickets to other Hippodrome Family Series productions such as “The Spencers’ Theatre of Illusion,” Friday’s New Horizon Educational Series show “The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Favourites” or the Feb. 3 special event “Cirque le Masque.”
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Pat Green to help preserve TX dance halls
Texas country singer Pat Green will donate a percentage of the proceeds from his book Pat Green’s Dance Halls & Dreamers, written by former Waco resident Luke Gilliam, to the non-profit Texas Dancehall Preservation, Inc.
Specifically, he’ll donate a percentage of the autographed book copies bought through Green’s Web site before Dec. 25.
The year-old organization seeks to keep dancehalls operating as music or community venues, save historic dancehalls and inform the general public about Texas dancehalls and their cultural value.
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Baylor’s “Eurydice” thoughtful if lumpy
Playwright Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” whose Baylor Theatre production opened its seven-performance run Tuesday night, treats love and loss in a play like a cigar box of mementos. Inside are metaphors, symbols, ironic asides and jokes, objects to examine in turn, then put back and remembered in place of an even-tempered narrative.
In “Eurydice,” she reframes the Greek myth of Orpheus traveling to the Underworld for his love Eurydice to a tale from Eurydice’s point of view: How would it feel to lose one’s lover not once, but twice, and what if regaining life meant losing something in death?
It’s a provocative, bittersweet piece and director Amber Jackson’s production, anchored by Kara Killmer’s sweetly sympathetic Eurydice, nicely marries an imaginative visual sense to rich symbols and characters all beguiling in their way. That’s not to say “Eurydice” is consistent or answers all the questions it raises. But life, too, is maddening, obtuse and lovely, Ruhl implies.
On the day she marries her musically obsessed Orpheus (a charming Justin Locklear), Eurydice is lured away from their party by a tall, dark Nasty Man (Sky Bennett), who carries a letter from her dead father (Sam Hough). Her father, it turns out, hasn’t drunk fully of the Underworld’s waters of forgetfulness and still longs for his daughter. Above, in the world of the living, she stumbles on the stairs and dies.
Eurydice arrives in the Underworld via an elevator in which it rains on the inside, but doesn’t recognize her father. Three Stones (Zach Krohn, Brittany Howard and Lindsay Erhhardt), by turns sardonic and scolding, remind her that the language of the Underworld, the language of stones, has no words like father, room, husband.
Her father’s words and later Orpheus’ music (including a song written by Locklear) spark her memory of the life she left, to the chagrin of the Stones and the Lord of the Underworld (a forceful, but petulant Bennett, garbed as an English schoolboy and riding a trike. Whatever.). The Lord grants Orpheus permission to lead Eurydice back to the living world, but she finds regaining her husband means losing her father. In the end, the waters of forgetfulness and the language of stones find their place.
Ruhl’s play, written after the death of her father, has Eurydice as the most realized character, but Orpheus and the father are thinner in comparison. That leaves the play’s symbolism and metaphor - particularly the Underworld as a place where words and music bring unwanted Memory - as the most meaningful objects in the box.
The Baylor production’s visual sense brings that out, thanks to Bill Sherry’s clean, spare design, JoJo Percy’s lighting work and Adam Redmer’s sound. Adrienne Harper’s costuming of the Stones (in weathered clothes from three centuries) combined with Victoria Eisele’s makeup (skin tones of greys, blues and purples, I think) is a brilliant collaboration, by the way. I’d love to see Halloween in their hands.
“Eurydice’s” run is sold out except for a 2 p.m. Saturday matinee that was recently added. For ticket information, call the Baylor Theatre box office at 710-1865.
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“God On Trial” compelling drama and now online
Television dramas like last night’s “God On Trial” on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theatre” help make the argument that the smaller screen is the more likely place to find smart, intelligent drama these days.
The 90-minute “God On Trial,” written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, imagines a Jewish rabbinical court drawn up by men awaiting death the next day in an Auschwitz prisoners’ block house.
The charge: Given the unfolding horrors of the Holocaust, has God forgotten his covenant to Israel? The ensuing vigorous debate branches into other deep, possibly unknowable topics. Is suffering inherent in the Jews’ covenant with God? What role does free will play where evil is concerned? Why would God allow the murder of children and other innocents? Is the Holocaust part of God’s divine plan for his people?
It’s rare to see such serious theological debate outside of a religious context such as church, synagogue and/or university, which made “God On Trial” even more notable.
Those who missed its broadcast last night can catch it online this week through Nov. 16 at this link. There are spoilers on that page, so those who don’t want to know the ending may not want to scroll farther down.
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More photos from Waco’s “Rocky Horror”
Shawn McHorse, who led the preshow activities at the recent Hippodrome screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show, has posted photos from that night on his Austin Queerios! Web site. They’re primarily of the Queerios! shadow cast members rather than the Waco audience (duh - it’s the Queerios! Web site) and some are, well, racier than what we posted (duh- it’s the Queerios! Web site).
McHorse tells me that more than 530 tickets were sold that night and the Austin gang is more than ready to return …
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Wade Bowen brings in the bucks
Maybe president-elect Obama should add Wade Bowen to any financial recovery team he might create: The Waco native and his friends raised more than $84,000 for Postpartum Support International at his 11th annual Classic last weekend.
Approximately 1,400 fans showed up for the Sunday night concert that featured Bowen, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Stoney LaRue and Randy Rogers. Taking part in the Classic’s golf tourney at Cottonwood Creek Golf Course the next day were 135 players.
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Waco mayor to speak at Dallas idea symposium
Waco Mayor Virginia DuPuy will take part in this weekend’s fall symposium of the Baker Idea Institute.
Baker’s daughter Robyn Flatt, director and founder of the Dallas Children’s Theater, heads the institute, which aims to use Baker’s philosophy of creativity and learning through the senses to stimulate imaginative thinking and idea generation for business leaders, educators and more. Former Baylor theater professor Deborah Mogford, a Baker student and friend, serves as institute administrator.
This weekend’s symposium, held at institute headquarters at the Rosewood Center for Family Arts, 5938 Skillman, Dallas, focuses on “What Is An Idea?” DuPuy will speak at 8:40 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, and lead discussion sessions Saturday afternoon.
Upcoming symposia in January and March will address creativity and where ideas come from.
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Baylor International Film Fest this weekend- 9 movies
Some solid foreign films are on the lineup of the three-day Baylor International Film Festival held on campus:
Friday, Nov. 7 - Paris Je T’aime, 7 p.m., Bennett Auditorium; Death of a Cyclist, 10 p.m., Castellaw 101; Pan’s Labyrinth, midnight, Castellaw 101.
Saturday, Nov. 8 - Spirited Away, 4 p.m., Bennett Auditorium; Son of Rambow, 7 p.m., Fountain Mall; Hero, 10 p.m., Fountain Mall.
Sunday, Nov. 9 - The Killing Fields, 1 p.m., Bennett Auditorium; Yojimbo, 4 p.m., Bennett Auditorium; Mongol, 7 p.m., Bennett Auditorium.
Screenings are open to the public, I’m told, and you can’t beat the price: They’re all free.
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Monday night’s “Sweeney” a glittering razor
Wow - The national tour of “Sweeney Todd” stopped off at the Hippodrome Monday night and it was one of the smartest pieces of theater I’ve seen at the Hippodrome. The production was John Doyle’s reimagined 2005 revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical, which cast its story of a London barber’s murderous revenge (or is it a murderous barber’s revenge?) as either the wholesale imaginings of a madman or the memories of a witness driven mad by the horrors he’s seen.
An audience perhaps expecting something closer to the 2007 film adaptation by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the barber Sweeney Todd gave a warm, but short ovation to the company at play’s end and some were leaving the theater even before the actors finished exiting the stage.
In an ingenious piece of staging, the 10-actor company doubled as its orchestra- keyboards, two cellos, string bass, violin, clarinets, muted trumpet, tuba, accordian, guitar and percussion - performing onstage as the story unfolded on a sparse, wooden stage representing an asylum’s operating room.
The integration of instrumental music with the onstage action brought out new shadings. Foreshadowings concerning the Beggar Woman (Patty Lohr) and the young Tobias (Chris Marchant) were hinted at through their staging as instrumentalists. And the emotional relationship between barber Sweeney Todd’s daughter Johanna (a compelling Wendy Muir) and her sailor lover Anthony (Duke Anderson) was captured, if not deepened, through their expressive cello playing as much as their singing.
It was an impressive show of multitalented people, led by Carrie Cimma as a saucy Mrs. Lovett, the pie shop operator who becomes barber Sweeney Todd’s partner in crime. Merritt David Janes’ Todd was forceful and direct, while David Alan Marshall’s Judge Turpin was sinister in his normalness. Ruthie Ann Miles (the Italian barber Pirelli) showed remarkable instrumental variety (flute, accordian and keyboards) while Bob Bohan (the Beadle) added the texture of Sondheim’s score through his keyboard playing.
The revamped musical moved faster, with little time wasted between songs (it’s almost an opera anyway) and dialogue added to explain characters more. Paul Miller’s lighting design was a marvel of precision and the musical was filled with clever touches such as buckets of blood standing in for Todd’s throat slashing. Sondheim’s juxtaposition of the humorous and gory in the sweeping, comic and murderous waltz “A Little Priest,” found a visual parallel later when Mrs. Lovett sweetly sang “By the Sea” while wiping clean saws, hammers and other carpenter’s tools.
Imaginative, marvelously performed and engaging, this “Sweeney Todd” shone like a razor.
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Last-minute student deal for “Sweeney Todd”
The national tour of “Sweeney Todd” - the stage musical, not the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film adaptation thereof - comes to the Waco Hippodrome tonight, Nov. 3.
To push the house toward a sellout, the theater will offer $10 tickets for students after 5:30 p.m. today. You have to show your ID and it’s limited to seats available (primarily in the balcony), but a Sondheim musical for slightly more than the cost of a movie ticket is hard to beat …
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Political ads - a fatigued, idle fantasy
If the day after Thanksgiving can get the informal moniker Black Friday, I’d like to nominate tonight as Black Monday Night. It’s the Monday night before a Presidential election and the last time political campaigns have to influence (presumedly) voters. Which means I’m staying away from television tonight …
News this morning of a study that showed a correlation (presumedly) between teens who watch TV with heavy sexual content and teens who became pregnant got me thinking in a different direction: If television is so powerful in molding viewers’ attitudes, who picks up the national pieces after a season of divisive pre-election commercials? With millions of Americans told that the greatest enemy to their future is other Americans backing the opposing political party, do we think such messages vanish without consequences in the aftermath of that election?
I’ve long felt that TV critics who target sexual and violent content on television as seeing only one way that medium can shape values. Television and the commercials that fuel it also encourages a materialism that implies we are the sum of the products we buy. Dramatic and action programming that solves story problems neatly within their half-hour- or hour-long time frames may lead us to bold decisions that promise quick finality, something fiendishly difficult if not impossible in a messy, complex world.
Blaming television for our problems, of course, is one of those simplistic approaches and I admit that readily. But I find myself fantasizing: What if political parties were required to earmark a percentage of their media buys for post-election ads that remind us we are one nation, that compromise is a necessity for our democracy to work and disagreement should not mean disrespect as well?
It’s a fantasy - such a requirement would violate the First Amendment, for one thing - but in a media world fixated on pre-election poll coverage, I’d like to suggest there’s more to our political well-being than what party operatives and political commentators incessantly gab about.
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Latest comments
David is AMAZING - a must see. He is not only an incredible musician, but a phenomenal person. We thought about driving down from Colorado for the concert!
... read the full comment by Kim W | Comment on Approaching sellouts at Waco Hall - "Nutcracker" and David Phelps Read Approaching sellouts at Waco Hall - "Nutcracker" and David Phelps
Down to about 10 floor seats for David Phelps and a little less than 500 balcony seats.
If you have never seen David Phelps, you have got to get a ticket and treat yourself. You will walk away in awe!!
... read the full comment by brian townley | Comment on Approaching sellouts at Waco Hall - "Nutcracker" and David Phelps Read Approaching sellouts at Waco Hall - "Nutcracker" and David Phelps
money
... read the full comment by phil | Comment on Illusionist David Copperfield to reappear in Waco Read Illusionist David Copperfield to reappear in Waco
wow thats a pretty hard act to follow, watch your moner disappear to see an illusion, thats magic!
... read the full comment by phil | Comment on Illusionist David Copperfield to reappear in Waco Read Illusionist David Copperfield to reappear in Waco