Sarah Palin walks into a foreign embassy...

So Sarah Palin goes to New York City to learn about foreign policy. (Apparently someone realized she can't quite see *everything* from her backyard.)


First she meets Hamid Karzai, the US-backed puppet leader of Afghanistan. She sits in a blue armchair and they talk about children. ("We have pregnant seventeen-year-olds in my country, too!")


Then she meets Alvaro Uribe, the strongman president of Colombia, one of the US's only allies in an increasingly left-leaning part of the world, who has managed to hold on to power despite some nasty repeated ties to murderous right-wing paramilitary groups. She sits on a pink chair and they talk about the lovely ornamental fireplace behind them.


Last she meets Henry Kissinger. She sits on a blue couch next to pictures of Ronald Reagan and the Pope. "Give me your wisdom about foreign policy," she says.

"Well, you already met with Karzai and Uribe," Kissinger says. "What more do you need to know?"

Seriously, folks. You can't make this shit up:

Palin in the City

Note: When I told this joke...er, amazing nugget of reality to some of my classmates, someone leaned over and quietly asked who Henry Kissinger was. After politely coughing to cover my shock, I briefly explained that if the US government were a James Bond movie, he would be the dude with the shark tank and the Persian cat.

I found it interesting and slightly disturbing that Obama, in the recent presidential debate, chose to invoke Henry Kissinger in arguing his strategy for diplomacy with Iran. Of course, Kissinger promptly called Faux News after the debate and offered his correction.

a sad day for the left coast, and the left

It was with great sadness that I learned that California Green Party activist and 2004 independent vice presidential candidate Peter Camejo passed away today, after a protracted battle with lymphoma.

Anyone who was involved in the 2004 Nader/Camejo campaign remembers Peter as a brilliant (and often hilarious) orator and a tireless organizer, who seemed never to run out of energy even after nearly fifty years of radical activism.  I remember in particular his incisive critiques of the two-party system, his passionate contributions to the debate that swirled around the Green Party and Nader in 2004, and his stories of hiding from the cops in Berkeley during one or another Vietnam antiwar protests.

Although the world has lost a great activist, Peter's legacy is evident in the existence of not just one but two viable left-wing candidacies in the 2008 presidential election.  Antiwar ex-Democrat Cynthia McKinney and community organizer and journalist Rose Clemente secured the Green Party nomination in July--a titanic step forward from the disastrous 2004 campaign of David Cobb.  Meanwhile, Ralph Nader is running an an independent with Matt Gonzalez (the Green Party activist who came spectacularly close to being elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003) and has already accomplished the onerous task of securing ballot status in 45 states.

Peter Camejo devoted much of his political energy to strengthening ties between the (largely white) Green Party and people of color in California, particularly the Hispanic community.  In an election when the mainstream parties have been falling over each other to win the race-and-gender gold star, the left quietly nominated four candidates of color (an Arab-American, two Latinos and an African-American) and the first all-women-of-color ticket ever nominated by any party in US history.

Peter, your experience, energy, passion and wit will surely be missed.  But you have left a formidable legacy in your place.

things i miss about new york

My roommate, who has lived in LA for many years, can't understand what I miss about New York. She points out that it's noisy, crowded, outrageously expensive, smelly, unbearably hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and breeds pedestrian speeds and levels of aggressiveness that many would consider unnatural. In fact, the New York Times recently ran an article addressing how newcomers adjust to New York by becoming rude and walking faster.

Of course, all the complaints about New York are true. I'll be the first to admit that New York is an unforgiving place. So why then, does New York continue to have such a deep hold on my psyche that the stock footage on Project Runway makes me tear up a bit?

Of course, New York is the home of my girlfriend, my cats, and most of my friends, so naturally I miss being there. But it is also, undeniably, my home. Having to defend my city from its detractors (my other roommate is batting for Chicago) has forced me to think about what I really like, and miss, about New York, the city, itself.

I miss its compactness. In my opinion this is what makes a city a city and not a suburb. The roommate who has lived in LA for many years described how when she lived in Santa Monica everything she needed was in a five-mile radius. This seemed small to her. Five miles is a hundred New York City blocks. From NYU to Columbia. From the East Village to East Harlem. If you put a five-mile radius into Fandango in New York, you get theaters in Jersey.

I miss being able to buy groceries, shampoo, beer, five different kinds of takeout food, go to a movie and deposit a check without having to get on a bus.

I miss New York's diversity. Of course, LA is one of the most diverse cities in the world, but it's so spread out that you can still live in a bubble. The same roommate described how, for many years, certain of her friends wouldn't come to her house because it was in a predominantly black neighborhood. They lived on the west side, and they never left the west side. The city of LA was like a different world to them. In New York, even if you're racist, you can't help running into people different from you because everyone's smushed together all the time.

I miss its public transportation. Okay, you may have guessed this one already. But seriously, folks! It's not just that public transit in LA is shitty. It's that the traffic is equally shitty, so you can't win either way. You can take the bus, but it might take forty-five minutes to show up, or you might spend twenty minutes going three blocks, because traffic is abominable. Not to mention the added benefits of never needing a designated driver, not having to worry about getting a ride late at night, not having to worry about calling a cab (as in, dialing a phone number, not just standing on a street corner.)

I miss Kate's Joint, The Organic Grill, Cafe Bar, Tony Grocery, the New York Neo-Futurists, St. Mark's Books, Bluestockings, the awesome short haircut guy, Atlas, hearing friends play at the Living Room, shows at The PIT, Shakespeare in the Park, off-off-off-Broadway, the Perfect Pint, Vynl, even having a Starbucks or three on every corner.

I miss the diversity of things to do. Theater of every imaginable kind, music, dance, comedy, movies, yoga, a museum for everything, or just a nice place to eat, drink and hang out, a $2 subway ride away. I'm sure many of these things exist in LA, but it's different when you walk past them on your way to work every day.

I miss the artists. Here people don't say they're in the arts; they say they're in THE INDUSTRY. I think of all the many friends and friends of friends I know who are amazing musicians, great actors, writers and directors. Most of them don't make any money doing what they're doing--often the reverse. There seems to be a different psychology here. When there's billions of dollars involved, people expect to be paid for their art. Whaaat, you say? Well, it's both good and bad. Of course, people should be able to make a living doing what they're good at and what they love. That's what every artist wants. The problem, however, is that when money's involved, everyone ends up doing something just for the money sooner or later.

Yeah, yeah. This may seem like an obvious point. But it's been on my mind a lot, since the LA style of art-making gets hammered home pretty hard at USC. And not without good reason--this is the reality of THE INDUSTRY and they are preparing us for it. You get work by working. You're professionals and this is a business. Everyone does jobs for money sometimes. Network!!!!!! Make connections. Get people's business cards. Get your own business cards. Get your foot in the door. Be strategic. How will this help your career?

I'm not trying to romanticize one way of working and villify the other (although it may sound that way). It sucks to have a day job you don't care that much about that saps time and energy from your creative work. But when you're working for free, at least most people stop and think about whether they really love each and every project.

I have gotten a bit off track here. In struggling to describe New York to aforementioned roommate one night, I blurted out "New York is like a mean parent." I think I like that description. It has a lot to offer, but it makes you learn all the lessons the hard way. You might grumble and resent it when you're around it, but it's not until you leave that you realize, deep down, you really did love it after all.

make it work!

I realize it has been almost two weeks since I last posted an update. I'm sure you're all eagerly waiting to here what adventures I have been getting up to. Oh, and adventures there have been! Since my last post I've rollerskated (disaster), learned to play blackjack on a haunted cruise ship (surprisingly fun), been to the beach (where a small child on a bodyboard nearly took me down), and visited what must be the world's cleanest mall. But more on all that later. I want to talk about my actual classes first.

Having now successfully completed almost two weeks of school now, I can safely say that this is gonna be hella fun. I think the program can best be described as "writing boot camp." Their strategy is to break screenwriting down into its most basic elements and really teach you to strengthen each one of those elements before doing so much as writing a line of dialogue.

Everyone has two writing classes with different teachers, and I really like both of mine.  In both these classes we spend most of our time doing writing and storytelling excercises. While games like "Two Truths and a Lie" might seem a bit elementary for an MFA program, it's actually been incredibly helpful. I have taken a lot of writing classes, but it's been a really long time since any teacher forced me to break down screenwriting into its most basic elements. It's kind of like the Project Runway of screenwriting: each week there is a new challenge, usually with many restrictions placed upon it. The exercises might seem easy, but after class usually everyone has found things they can improve in what they wrote, even if it's just a two-page non-dialog scene.

I must pause to share a really funny story from Braun's class. In the first class, we each had to tell a story about where we grew up. This woman Alice, who has a very strong Southern accent, was talking about growing up in Columbus, GA, which sounded very familiar to me for some reason. Then she said "Oh, and there's also a huge military base there, Ft. Benning." And I was like "I TOTALLY GOT ARRESTED THERE!!!" And she started laughing because she knew it was for the School of the Americas protest and when she was little her family used to be a host family for foreign nationals (mostly Saudis) studying at the School of the Americas. I hadn't been aware there was a host program. I guess I'd assumed that these people stayed on the base. In any case, the idea of Saudi generals and princes sitting down to eat fried chicken and grits with Alice's family in between lessons on counterinsurgency was somehow the most weird and hilarious thing I could think of.

In addition to our two writing classes and one critical studies class, everyone in our year has one four-hour marathon uberclass together with the singular Nina Foch. Nina is 84, swears like a sailor, and will shame you to tears if you are so much as a minute late for her class--to the point that almost everyone now shows up 10 minutes early. Her class is called "Directing the Actor," and so far has involved equal parts directing, acting, and skin-thickening. Nina's criticisms (which are frequent) are always blunt and sometimes unclear. Luckily her random stories about working on some-or-another famous movie are also frequent and often hilarious. It seems the best strategy for this class is to keep your head down, not get defensive, and hope to come out of it with a tiny percentage of the vast knowledge about acting and directing she has amassed over the years.

More to come shortly!