We Are Addicted to Blood and Need to Wean Ourselves Off of It

The United States of America was born in blood, just like a human baby.  The baby experienced catastrophic growing pains during the Civil War, but came out better for it.  Before it was grown as a country, it fought and won two world wars, resulting in its supremacy as a military power, which it wielded, subsequently, I would argue, no better nor worse than the Roman Empire did in it’s heyday. 

As a nation, we are like alcoholics who have not yet recognized our addiction to blood,  as we have to oil and freedom. Add to the mix our religion—also born in blood  (of a gentle, homeless, apolitical Hebrew rabbi, prophet and martyr 1,980 years ago and 9100 miles away)--  as we must to sell a war to the American people, whereupon we’re capable of just about any atrocity. When there is no popular jihad to harness the dark energy of our addiction, nor a plan for transmuting it, we turn it on ourselves in homicidal and suicidal frenzies.

Perhaps, most likely, the flaw lies in the Homo Sapien species itself. So that any other nation that might supersede us would do no better at fomenting peace; although it would be interesting to see if the Swiss could do better. Assuming it unlikely we would turn things over to the Swiss or that they would accept it, our best prospect for a future that dodges Armageddon ---for western civilization, at least-- would be the wholesale evolution of our species toward what some scientists are calling Homo Evolutis, via emerging technologies such as genetic manipulation, robotics, and the ancient technique of wealth redistribution. You can bone up on Homo Evolutis here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science

Meanwhile, Randy Newman captured this capricious, subconscious bloodlust and death wish in our collective DNA perfectly, ironically, in 1973, updated here a bit in 2004 and well worth listening to today. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAElK16OkjQ

Blogger(s) Wanted!

Welcome cisgendered people, GLBT, emerging gender variants.

Why open a blog post suchwise? Because I'm hoping it replaces the hoary "Welcome ladies and gentlemen," which seems hackneyed to my dramaturgic ear and exclusionary to my progressive mind. 

Also, I'm going out on my prophetic limb to predict that gender identification will become in the not-too-distant future as fluid and essentially immaterial to most human interaction as race is today.

But I digress, welcome to Mount Analog, a blog associated with GoldAlchemy.org

I'm looking for bloggers, experienced, fledgling, or aspiring, to contribute to this site, specifically people knowledgeable about art and entertainment in DFW to review local cultural events. I'm not so much interested in people promoting their own or their friends' events but real criticism as one might get in old-school journals, a la The New Yorker, Art Forum, Time Out, Cahiers du Cinema,  The Paris Review, etc, or locally, The Dallas Observer, Fort Worth Weekly or TheaterJones.

I'd also very much like to solicit reviews from DFW theaters that produce local authors, such as Hip Pocket Theater and Ochre House Theater.

 My belief is that a cultural "scene" is only as good as its critics.

 

Contact me here or at t.huckabeee@icloud.com

Or just go on the site and start stirring the mud.

The link below will lead you to a youtube site with one of the most riveting hours of drama I've ever seen, beautifully conceived, perfectly structured, with vivid characters, delivering reams of brilliant dialogue trippingly off the performers' tongues. I long to produce media this entertaining, artful and meaningful on a subject so controversial and topical. It's like Dave Chapelle or Aaron Sorkin got in a time machine and went back to 1965 to a produce a drama about race relations superior to "To Kill a Mockingbird"

My main, minor criticism is that the actor playing William Buckley, Jr. often goes beyond over-the-top, evoking a bug-eyed monitor lizard, or Nicholas Cage on acid playing Vlad the Impaler. Spoiler alert, the villain's ultimate defeat is telegraphed too early for my taste. Before he even speaks, his slumping posture and sneering facial expressions signal the viewer that he is thoroughly corrupt and consciously evil, and, therefore, destined to be defeated by the hero. (See Peter Sarsgard in last year's "Magnificent 7" for a character so irredeemable.) The deck is stacked, so to speak, which is not generally good for drama, but it works here for some reason. He also reminds me of Snidely Whiplash from "Rock and Bullwinkle" in his rubbery malevolence, except, for all I know, Snidely Whiplash was based on William Buckley, Jr.

It's an even slighter criticism, but James Baldwin's character is a bit too obviously the Apollonian hero, given lines of such crystalline logic, righteousness, and artful syntax that he would upstage Jesus Christ himself, even Jesus Christ rewritten by Shakespeare (which no doubt Shakespeare would have given a shot at, if not for fear of a literal roasting).

Likewise, the thundering, prolonged ovation of the crowd after Baldwin's speech gives away the dramatist's intent too early in the first half of the show.

Why wasn't I shown this oration when I studied public speaking at Southwest High School in Fort Worth Texas in the 1970s?

God bless youtube, the best channel on TV.

"James Baldwin" buckley youtube - Yahoo Search Results Yahoo Video Search Results

The search engine that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. Find the most relevant information, video, images, and answers from all across the Web.

VIDEO.SEARCH.YAHOO.COM