It was a total accident that I happened to hear on the radio this morning about someone giving a lecture on campus this evening entitled “improving the atheist image”.  Wow, not only a talk about atheism, but about one aspect of atheism I really care about.  I was interested enough to look up the event and only then did I realize that it was the author of the Friendly Atheist blog, which I think is the only blog I read regularly that isn’t written by a friend of mine.  Woah!  I totally gotta go!

So, I went.  And I liked it. So much of what you hear from atheists is harsh, negative, religion-bashing, often mocking, scornful, and generally hateful.  I’ve been seeking a way to express pride in what I consider my religious beliefs in a way that doesn’t sound offensive to people, but rather just inspires their religious tolerance even if they suspect I’m a doomed heathen.

Mr. Mehta’s approach is not exactly what I’m seeking, but on reflection I have to wonder if it might be better than what I was hoping for.  Or, if not that, at least an added perspective that has its own merits.  And that is, basically, he just presents himself as an atheist, and otherwise just seeks to have fun and meaningful interactions with people.

His talk was largely about how he ascended to his current quasi-famous position, which was by conducting an eBay auction in which he promised to attend an hour of religious service for each $10 of the winning price, and the “buyer” got to decide which services he would attend.  In the end he wrote a book about the experience, which was published by a Christian publishing company (I hadn’t realized until tonight that the publisher had a religious bent). It’s a fun story.  It’s even kind of thought provoking.  But it’s nothing like a tretise on whether there’s a God or not, nor is it any kind of deep exploration of the spiritual, moral, or ethical issues that atheists tend to take so seriously.  It’s clear that he does take those things seriously, but he’s giving talks about his experiences, not about those things.

After sharing that story, he did start talking more generally about good things for atheists to do.  He clearly advocates for positive-spirited activities, such as the well-known “free hugs” stunt, or partnering with Christian organizations for charitable activities (a University of Illinois group apparently did some great post-Katrina clean-up in this way).  He spoke disparigingly of shock-jock-style approaches like insulting bibles, sometimes in disturbingly graphic ways.  And he spoke glowingly of this “Atheist Bus Campaign” which is paying to put the uncommonly playful denial of God’s existence pictured here on buses that feature advertising.  A lot of his blog is collecting things like this, and that’s a great service to readers like me who are way less hip to pop-culture than he is.

I was quite disappointed with the question and answer session.  That is, I found the questions, in general, to be disappointing; I thought his responses were very good, never straying from the Friendly Atheist position he’s put himself in.  And, I think that comes entirely naturally to him.  It’s not that he’s an atheist who’s decided to be friendly, I really think he really is by nature both friendly and an atheist.  Clearly an extrovert, he obviously enjoys meeting with people all over and engaging with them.

In some sense, his approach seems insufficient to me.  I have a feeling like “what, he’s just a friendly guy, talking about whatever, but not making any qualms about his lack-of-belief in supernatural”.  It seems like the focus should be more on the actual… like… substance… or something.  I still think there must be ways for me to talk about my beliefs that are honest but non-confrontational.  Hemant kind of seems like he just doesn’t really focus on the beliefs that much, and just focuses on engaging with people.  But, on the other hand, I feel like I have a very firm understanding of his beliefs, so he’s obviously talking about them somewhat, right?

And meanwhile, he’s definitely got the whole friendly thing down pat.  I’m usually uninspired to try to meet people after presentations/performances, in part out of shyness and in part because I legitimately don’t usually feel like I get much out of such brief interactions.  But, at the end of this talk, there was no question that I wanted to approach him, compliment him, and shake his hand.  Probably this is in part because he’s not a huge celebrity, probably in part because he seems like someone roughly “my age”, but largely I think it’s because it just seems so much like he likes people that it would feel like a meaningful interaction just to say a simple thank you.  And, indeed, it was.

I left the hall with a palpable desire to be nice to people.  I held a door open for someone, I stopped on my bike and waited for a crowd of pedestrians to figure out which path they’d walk, things like that.  I think I’m pretty nice in general, so it’s not like these actions were so unusual for me.  What was unusual was how satisfying they were; I felt totally relaxed and patient, it felt like an excellent use of 5-10 seconds to wait for some people to pass without anyone having to worry about which way I’d be pedalling.  You have to respect anyone who can make you feel that way, and if a substantial number of people start associating atheism and that kind of kindness, the world will definitely be a better place.  So, thank you, Hemant.  And keep up the good work.

Well, when I read that Ralph Stanley was scheduled to play at downtown Bloomington’s Buskirk Chumley Theater, I felt pretty strongly that I should make sure I went.  Not that this would make up for it, but if it’s that easy to see a living legend of an art form you feel a connection to… come on.

I was a bit concerned that the show might really just be a ruse… get some random musicians to play and just set Ralph in front of them and watch the money pour in, just cashing in on a legendary name.  There may have even been a small number of people at the show who felt like that was what happened.  But, if so, I’d say to them that they’re missing the difference between a legendary name and an actual legend.

The band’s classic RV/Tour Bus was ostentatiously parked right in front of the theater on Kirkwood Avenue.  Some 20-something bluegrass musicians were playing on the sidewalk, a self-styled opening act, I guess.  It worked for me, got me in the mood for started me musing about this purely American music.

I cannot agree with the program notes’ claim that Ralph “..performs with the vigor and elan of a rock star” (I also cannot agree with the use of the word ‘elan’ in such a context… I can’t imagine Ralph saying anything like “an’ I’ll tell you right now, tho I wish it weren’t the case, after that 1973 show I never did hear Jimmy play with quite the same elan”).  But according to the program, he’s performing about 150 shows a year, which is nothing to sneeze at.

The hall was about 80% full, I didn’t see as many of my friends as I had expected, and really didn’t even recognize all that many people (rare for me whenever I’m at the BCT).  When the band took the stage, Ralph wasn’t even with them.  As they played a nice tune, I did wonder for a moment how much of the legend we’d actually get to see and/or hear. If I was feeling worried at all, though, I forgot about it when he took the stage, and started the classic bluegrass tradition of introducing the band.

Why do bluegrass musicians always introduce the members of the band individually?  Why do they always make a point of thanking the person who drives their tour bus (who may or may not be a member of the band)?  Why are some songs classic and never a surprise to hear at a Bluegrass performance?  Well, as is so often the case with questions like this, the real reason is because “that’s what everybody does.”  I mean, we can speculate about why people started doing that or why it stuck, but once it’s part of the culture you do it because it’s part of the culture, whether or not the original reason makes sense.

And the thing is, if you’re one of the people who actually started doing those things, that’s what makes you a legend.  And, if after upwards on 10,000 times doing it, it’s still something you do with sincerity (and perhaps a bit of tension that you’ll forget a name) it’s not at all bothersome that it doesn’t seem entirely spontaneous.

And then, when you start singing, and out of your mouth comes a voice scratchy in completely different way from the scratchy recordings of your voice that most of your audience heard at unknown times in their youths and that they filed those sounds in their minds under “that’s what bluegrass singing sounds like”, then you can rest assured that the audience will not feel cheated that you don’t sing every song… they’ll just wait on the edge of their seats for the ones you do sing.

His voice is remarkable, really… kind of hollow sounding, and high-pitched in a way that doesn’t sound like someone trying to sing high in their range.  Like everyone around me, I ate it up.

The introductions continued, and it turns out that his band includes his son (Ralph II) and his grandson (who didn’t seem all that far apart in age, actually).  He also welcomed his roughly ten year old (great?) grandson onto the stage, and the kid had an impressive voice (including being quite in tune, not always a trait found in bluegrass vocalists or 10 year olds).  Two of the other band members have apparently been playing with Ralph for almost exactly 15 years (one of them, according to Ralph, is actually having his 15th anniversay with the band this weekend).  And the bass player was a fill-in for the regular man who is apparently in the hospital with pneumonia.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, not just because my descriptions can’t do justice to Ralph’s voice.  But, I had to marvel: how can a man in a red leisure suit and an oddly sculpted “cowboy” hat come off as authentic?  How can someone who’s spent 62 years recording for major record labels and performing at all manner of gigs still seem as much like a genuine “country boy” as a polished show man?

Because, I think, this is his life.  I think that to be a legend, you’ve got to have devoted your life so overwhelmingly to one thing that you are hardly ever associated with anything else.  But then the necessary next step is that people stop thinking of that thing without also thinking of you.  So, then, if you just get on stage and be yourself, it’s automatically what the audience wants.

So, when Ralph joked that he used to play banjo in the band, but got “shot out of the saddle” by the current banjo player, it doesn’t just sound like a tired old joke for the stage, but some better version of the kind of self-deprecating humor that is often expressed in the phrase “senior moment”.  And when he says “but I still do play in the old claw-hammer style” I think it is a subtle but clear admission that his octogenarian fingers just don’t have the coordination anymore to play the fast finger-picking banjo style that bears his name.  But of course, we all wanted to hear how well he could play the banjo just the same.  How’s Ralph doing?  Can he still play?

The answer?  He’s certainly doing more for bluegrass banjo by letting someone else in the band carry on the tradition, but it was great to hear him play.

And, one more entry in the “authenticity” category… he offered to sell the very banjo they were playing.  “Now, some people say, ‘I’m tempted to buy it, but I don’t know how to play.’ Well, let me tell you… one of these days, these banjos I had made for me are really gonna be worth something… and, I’m afraid I won’t be here to take advantage of it when they are.”  In other words, I am trying to cash in on my name, but you could do the same, and maybe better than I can.  Something’s always refreshing to me when people are willing to admit that, of course, they want to make money doing what they are doing.

But, that doesn’t mean it’s the only reason why they are doing it.  And who knows if it’s even the most important reason.  I’m sure it increases sales of their CDs that the band, including Dr. Stanley himself, rushes off the stage and sits behind tables in the lobby to hock the wares…  But I think it’s also an enjoyable part of the night for them.  Besides being heaped with praise, they really shake hands and chat with people, and I think they must enjoy that.  I personally applaud the Bluegrass tradition for keeping the separation between famous performers and average audience members very thin, I can’t think of another musical tradition that is like this.  And, it’s hard to imagine how someone could fail to be authentically moved by someone saying “I saw you play 40 years ago” or “I saw you play 60 years ago”, both of which he tells us that he hears pretty often, and loves to hear it.

He clearly loves it.  I’m sure he could retire comfortably and live out the rest of his days in the part of Virginia that he’s always called home.  But really, the tour bus has got to feel about as much like home as his house does, and it’s not clear to me that he could really enjoy a quiet life in one place.  So I won’t be surprised if he passes through town again.  If he does, I’ll make a point of encouraging my friends to see this Library of Congress certified Living Legend.

• Obama is smoothly referring to the deficit as something “we’ve inherited”.  I’ve long said that the Dems should take the GOP to task for spending so much for the 6 years they were in total power in Washington.  This isn’t exactly it.  And, since the Dems control congress, they can’t really blame it all on Bush. Indeed, I thought Bobby Jindal speech was actually more direct about calling the Republicans failures on fiscal discipline. (In general I found Jindal’s speech to be intelligent, but not very inspiring.)
• When he says he wants to cut the deficit in half, is he talking about the ~$400 Billion deficit of the budget or the +$trillion deficit of reality?  If it’s the latter, he could cut it in half and still have the second largest deficit in history after the current year.  That is, prior to this year, we never had a trillion dollar deficit, I believe the record was in the $400 billions… so if he cuts it down to $500 billion….?  I may have my numbers wrong, but it seems like there may be a rather unimpressive way to technically meet that goal.
• He sure is talking about a lot of spending, and even lowering a lot of people’s taxes.  But at the same time cutting the deficit.  How can it be?  Well, one thing is letting the “Bush tax cuts” expire, but that’s not going to make the difference.  What I’m hoping is that he really will go through the budget “line by line” and eliminate programs that aren’t working.  Take, for instance, the war on drugs.  Can anyone say that it’s working?  And it certainly costs a lot of money.
• I really like his focus on responsibility and accountability in government.  I hope he can carry through on that.  A lot of politicians talk about that kind of thing, but I do feel like he is really more serious about it than most.  I hope I’m right.
• I also like his focus on accountability and responsibility outside of government.  Republicans have got to love that too… except that they might think that he is stealing their lines… except that they might actually have some effect when he says them.
• I really don’t think it’s fair to say that the United States is the nation that invented the automobile.  He could have said that we were the nation to turn it from a rich person’s hobby to a near necessity for everyone.
• Energy, Health Care, and Education.  Democrats are definitely in charge.  I’m skeptical that they’ll be able to succeed at these goals.  But I hope they do.
• “dropping out of high school is no longer an option.  It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American.”  This is a great example of the kind of thing that I feel like Obama can say in a way that seems like it would actually resonate with an actual young person considering dropping out.  I hope I’m right.  If he could inspire our nation’s under-ambitious youth, he could transform our society in ways that no law ever could.
• A really dense section of quite specific and often remarkable claims about his upcoming budget:
  • “end education programs that don’t work.”  That could be a lot of programs
  • “end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them”. I had to cheer at hearing this.  I sure hope he accomplishes that, although I don’t know how he can given that the Farm Bill just passed with huge Democratic support.
  • “eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq”, more cheers!
  • “reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use”.  Talk about a place to save money!! Maybe he will be able to spend all that money and still cut the deficit in half.
  • “We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier.” I don’t know much about this, but I can definitely imagine that there could be a lot of fat to trim there.
  • “we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”  The Dems must love this, although I have to wonder if it’s more symbolic than anything.  Companies aren’t exporting jobs for tax breaks, and I doubt that the tax breaks add up to much.  It’ll still be cheaper to hire people in China or India than in the US, companies will keep doing it.  Having said all that, I do agree with the spirit of the statement that the companies shouldn’t get a tax break for doing it.  But… what exactly is this tax break?  anyone know?

Finally, you’ve got to be impressed by Ruth Bader Ginsberg showing up for work yesterday and staying up to attend tonight’s speech.  She looked kind of dazed to me, though.  I hope she’s doing well.

In May there were literally no contested elections on my ballot. On today’s ballot, there were two decisions to make: A normal race for mayor, and a “pick three out of four” for the three At Large City Council seats. I was the only voter there the whole time I was there, which admittedly wasn’t very long. I remain disappointed by the non-printing electronic voting machine.

*yawn* At least the first time was fresh and new. Even if this vote wasn’t quite as boring, it was less impressively boring, so in some sense, even more boring.

I had a show on my college radio station where I played mostly modern
classical music. That’s when I first started thinking about
“prolific” artists. I noticed that I tended to dislike the music of
composers who were described this way in liner notes. Furthermore, I
wondered why, in an era of information overload, when thousands if not
millions of people are trying to get public attention for their work,
would anyone view being “prolific” as a positive thing. I’d much
prefer someone who produces a small number of great things to a great
number of small things.

So, when I read in the program to Reel that IU MFA playwrite Paul
Shoulberg was described by his advisor as “the most prolific
playwright I’ve had in the program in twenty years”, I got just a
little worried. In fact, although I’m sure the professor didn’t mean
it this way, it struck my mind as a backhanded compliment, a sort of
“well, this is the nicest thing I can think to say about him.” Again,
I’m sure that wasn’t intended. But I was worried.

Sadly, my concern was not in vain.

Reel tells the story of an impossibly small film crew trying to
complete the filming of a key scene of a love story. Now, a few years
ago I worked with my friend Alex on a short film for a film class she
was in. Our crew of vounteers was larger than the crew for this
supposedly hollywood-financed film starring an Academy Award winning
actor and directed by a somewhat legendary director. Now, I can’t
begrudge them for trying to limit the size of the cast, but they could
have at least pretended that there were more people around. No one
ever spoke of off-set assistants, costumers, sound engineers, or
anyone else who wasn’t seen on stage. This was especially striking
because the program offered a two-page glossary of different on-set
job titles, which I had presumed would be so that we didn’t get lost
in the jargon. Alas, no. The story really seemed to present a film
that would have listed six people (including the two actors) in its
credits. I don’t fancy myself some expert on film production, but
I’ve seen enough credits roll to know that this never happens, and it
made it impossible for me to believe that this really a film being
produced. I’m also at quite a loss as to why that glossary was in the
program.

Now, it would be one thing if we were being asked to believe that
somehow this was an intense labor of love by people with so much
experience and talent that they could pull it off even with so few
people. Instead, each of the members of this impossibly small crew
was also impossibly incompetent. Actually, I guess the cold,
arrogant, Lesbian cinematographer was good at what she did (she was
certainly very confident that she was, and the audience didn’t see any
evidence to the contrary). But, the director was such a wimp that his
reputation for quality films seemed completely baffling; the
gaffer/screenwriter-wannabe, who was apparently responsible for the
set up of everything, never seemed to get anything set up; the
all-around assistant at least seemed to be trying to do good work, but
was so disenchanted with the hollywood scene that her work suffered
horribly; and the two actors were completely over-the-top shallow,
self-centered, and unprofessional, albeit in markedly different ways.
It’s hard to imagine that Shoulberg really pictured an actual film
being made. The script seems more like it was written by someone
whose familiarity with dramatic production was watching the credits at
the end of a movie or two.

Ok ok, so it wasn’t realistic. I don’t need drama to be realistic.
It’s certainly possible for drama to use an unrealistic setting and
yet to grapple with very real issues. Maybe that’s even what
Shoulberg was trying to do here. Besides some kind of commentary
about show-biz, the play seems to be trying to get its audience to
think about the meaning of love. I can appreciate the irony of a
heartless bunch of hollywood insiders trying to produce a work of art
about this emotion that most of them (admitedly) have never
experienced. But the play failed to make me feel this irony. The
characters were too two-dimensional, the inter-relationships too
simplistic, the situation too unrealistic for me to really ponder on
the meaning of love at all. So, I mostly just felt impatient.

Having given all of this negative commentary, I should pause and say
that the play is not without its moments. There are some funny
one-liners, some of the over-the-top personality stuff is enjoyable,
and a couple of plot twists certainly caught me off-guard. I should
also compliment the performers, because I thought they became their
characters well, however silly that task may have been. But, from the
play, I’d expect more. In the program Shoulberg describes his writing
style as “theater for the indie-film crowd” and “dark, poetic truth
with tragically flawed characters”. I’m not sure how this play could
be considered poetic. I didn’t find much relationship to truth. And
the characters’ tragic flaws are stereotypical and simplistic, making
them much more laughable than dark.

In 2003, IU produced another student work called The Alien From
Cincinnati (by Jonathan Yukich). My quick review of that work was
something like “at least as funny as most sit-coms”. Sadly, I was
reminded of this back-handed compliment watching Reel. This play is
more reminiscent of a sit-com than an indie-film. At the same time
that I’m so disappointed, I find myself sympathizing with Shoulberg.
His heart seems to be in the right place, and I think he’s got a good
deal of talent. I’d like to think that I’d like some of his other
works much better. And I’d really like to think that he’ll slow down
and instead of turning out three full-length plays a year, just give
us a really good one every year or two.

I was vaguely aware of the IU/sex research relationship when I moved
to Bloomington in 1992, but by the following year I was very well
aware of the basic details described above. However, here in 2006 I
had never been to the Institute, nor did I even know where it was
located, even though I am amicably acquainted with its Director and
her husband (it’s certainly an exaggeration to say that everyone in
Bloomington knows everyone else… but it’s not a ridiculous
exaggeration).

Well, leave it to the highly motivated and highly effective founder of
the new polyamory group in Bloomington to blaze me a path to the
Institute’s door after fourteen years. Much to the delight of me and
many of my fellow members, she just called them up and asked if we
could take a tour. Sure! And, so it was that some of the mystery of
The Kinsey Institute was unveiled.

According to [kinseyinstitute.org](http://kinseyinstitute.org),

Tours of The Kinsey Institute are open, by appointment only, to student groups, as well as individuals and groups whose research and/or professional interests are related to the Institute’s mission.

I didn’t get impression that we had to submit a lot of credentials to be approved for a tour. This gives a good impression of the Institute’s relationship with the public: it’s not that they are hiding, but they also aren’t hanging lighted signs outside their doors. They seem to me to have reached some equillibirum with the University where they do enough publicity to
raise money and expand their collection, but keep it quiet enough so
as not to invite protests from social conservatives.

So, yeah, I really didn’t know where the place was. My friends in the
group had to lead me there. At least one person went to the wrong
building. And, the only clue that I saw that we were really in the
correct building was a little black building guide with removable
white letters (picture the things that tell you which dentist’s office
is which). You had to take an elevator to get there. As we were
waiting for the doors to open, we discussed that there wasn’t
obviously a way to get there by staircase. Was this intentional?
Probably not, but it’s so easy to develop conspiracy theories
surrounding this place…

Hopefully I’m already giving a sense of how understated the place is,
but there’s plenty more to follow. Our group had about ten members,
only one of whom (I believe) had been to the Institute before. He
warned us that when the elevator doors opened upstairs, we would exit
to a room about the size of the elevator car itself. With some
concern that they wouldn’t be ready for us, this fellow rode up to
tell them that we were coming. He sent word back that we should go on
ahead, they were ready for us, but that we shouldn’t overload the
elevator, so maybe we should come in two groups. Upon entering the
elevator car, I saw that the posted capacity was 2500 lbs, and,
quickly estimating that the average weight of our 10 people was far
less than 250 lbs., I figured we had nothing to worry about. “No no,
they said it was an old elevator and it gets easily overloaded.” Hey,
whatever.

So we arrived in two groups on the third floor, and indeed, exited the
elevator to a tiny hallway/room that basically just had the elevator
and a bulletin board to greet those exiting it. We turned left to
enter the Institute, and were greeted by our guide, Catherine,
who immediately advised us that if we had turned right instead of left
then there was a coatrack there where we could hang our wet jackets.
“Actually, it’s kind of nice, sometimes in the summer people come
wearing just shorts and t-shirts, and, well, we keep the institute at
a constant temperature year round and, well, it *can* get a bit
chilly.”

[editors note: I don't have total recall, the quotes I attribute to
Catherine in this post are recreations intended to give a sense of
what we learned from her and the spirit in which it was said. I hope
and intend to accomplish this accurately, but I may not always succeed.]

Catherine Johnson-Roehr is the currator of the Institute’s art collection, and she was very friendly, very informative, a very good tour guide all-around.
To me it was clear that her general attitude would
have been the same if she had been giving a tour of, say, an archive
of 12th century religious texts. That is, as long as she had an
interest in that subject. This was a person who, I’m sure, has a
healthy interest in sex, but her job is to manage an archive, and she
is clearly excited about her duties, irrespective of the subject
matter. And, that excitement seemed endearing here in exactly the
same way here that it would have if she were bubbling with
explanations about those hypothetical ancient texts.

The place seems small. “This building was originally built as a
women’s dorm.” It looks like it. I mean, it’s been remodeled, a bit,
but it still looks like the institutional building that it is: mostly
narrow hallways and small rooms. It’s not at all hard to imagine how
the reception area used to be a dorm room or small lounge or
something. The ceilings were all low and the rooms were all small.
[IU's Lilly Library](http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/) of rare books is far more glamourous than this
place. This place seems like they are trying to do the best they can
on a shoestring budget.

Well, anyway, on with the tour. We actually spent over twenty minutes
in the front hallway, flanked by B&W photos of Kinsey and some of his
colleagues from back in the day. Our group was clearly in its
element, and Catherine loved it. Questions flowed without hint of
inhibition, and Catherine answered with an “Oh, it’s so great that you’re
interested in this! Oh it’s so great that you know something about
this!” joy that any nerd in any field can relate to.

Catherine was smart to talk about the recent movie right off the bat.
I was very glad to hear that she and the Institute both approved of
the film from a historical perspective. Ever since I saw *A Beautiful
Mind* and then learned how horribly far from the truth its story is,
I’ve been highly skeptical of non-fiction film. But, *Kinsey* seems
to be all right in this regard, according to people who should know.
“It is a dramatization, so not everything is exactly as it happened of
course, but most of the facts are correct.” Works for me. The two
main factual inaccuracies that she highlighted were: that Kinsey never
did interview his father (a fact which I learned from a Fresh Air
interview with Director Bill Condon); and, amazingly, that the IU
Board of Trustees never voted against continuing support for the
Institute. Wow, that one was very interesting to me. She started to
say “Herman Wells was able to…” I don’t remember how she finished
the phrase, but she stumbled a bit. It seemed like she wanted to say
“Herman Wells supported it, and he was able to convince the trustees
to support whatever he wanted them to support.” But that doesn’t
sound very nice, now, does it?

The first stop after there was the research area, where people
definitely seemed to be in offices, doing research. We looked at few
posters that were almost identical to the type that you’d find in the
hallway of any science wing, and with which I grew very familiar
through Xie. Like any such posters, the titles were typically about 20 words and 60 syllables long, and pretty much incomprehensible to people outside of the field.

We moved on from there to the Library. Like the Lilly Library, this
one is very careful with its collection. It’s non-circulating, and
only staff are permitted in the stacks. However, answering a question
before I could ask it, Catherine told us that it was [searchable
through the rest of the IU online catalog](http://kinseyinstitute.org/library/kicat.html). “Just send us an email a couple of days in advance with the call numbers of the materials that
you want, and we can have them waiting for you on the reserved reading
carrel.” Actually, you also have to be working on a research project.
This seems to be very loosely defined: a presentation at a group
meeting was confirmed to be sufficient to qualify as “research”.
Maybe even a blog post would count.

The reading room was, as you might expect, just like any other small
reading room at any other library. The main difference was the titles
of the materials. They had bound volumes of multiple years of
*The Journal of Homosexuality* and *The Journal of Bisexuality*,
neither of which I had ever heard of. Other journals and magazines
like that, and lots of books with hundreds of pages of talk about
whatever particular sexual topic. Not very many books that looked
like they’d have dirty pictures in them, though. This was definitely
a place for geeks. Personally, my favorite part was the glass encased
collections of (what appeared to be first-run printings of) Kinsey’s
*Sexual Behavior in the Human Male* and *Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female*, translated into more languages than I could identify.

The conversation between the tourers and the guide was pretty much
continuous, including as we filed down the dorm-style staircases to
the art collection. Most of the art on display is just hanging on
walls in the dorm-style hallways… very nicely framed, yes, but if
you’re picturing an art gallery, just stop. Picture a long narrow
hallway with pictures on the walls. Naturally, Catherine had a story
to tell about any piece that anyone seemed particularly interested in.
“Oh, it turns out that this poster” (there were a lot of old movie
posters) “is really only the top third of a really huge movie poster,
which explains why we were never able to find that title in IMDB,
because that’s not really the title, that was just the attention
grabber. Now that I know that it’s not the entire thing, I can barely stand to look at this as it is.” It appears that IMDB is a valuable resource for them.
“Even the obscure ones are usually in there, not with very much
information, but at least the date.” Netflix is also a service they
rely on, and the Institute is generally impressed with their
collection.

Eventually we arrived at the actual Gallery, but this too was not very fancy. It seems to have been created by removing the wall separating two
adjacent former dorm rooms. It is presently displaying entries to
the first ever *Kinsey Institute Juried Erotic Art Show*. “We didn’t really have any guidelines,
except that we couldn’t really accept video, because we don’t have the
equipment to show it (!), but other than that, we just let the artists
define it.” This explains the vast array of materials. Several
photographs, several paintings, several sculptures (“this is a pretty
large group (!), so I’ll ask you to please be careful about the
sculpture on the floor”), even some fabric art. All of it was very
well done, most of it was very interesting, but I didn’t really find any of it very arousing.

Now, I’m personally not much for porn. I don’t buy pornogrphic
magazines, I don’t watch pornographic films, I don’t visit
pornographic websites, etc. There are a variety of reasons, some of
which I may not fully understand myself, but one thing is for sure: I
am less interested in pornography than many of my peers are. So,
maybe I just wouldn’t find any collection of art such as what we saw
here to to be sexually exciting. But I think there’s more to it,
which I think lies at the heart of my interpretation of the
collection. If the underlying message of pornography is something
like “You find this exciting, don’t you?” or “you wish you could
experience what these people are experience, don’t you?”, the message
I got from just about every piece I saw in the Institute was more like
“people everywhere, across time and geography, are interested in sex,
and in very different ways” or “some person(s) somewhere found this
item to be exciting, disturbing, humorous, or otherwise interesting
enough to bother creating it and preserving it.” The Institute
clearly maintains and develops its collection for purposes of
education and research, regardless of how titlating anyone might find
it.

Thus, I wasn’t at all surprised that our tour guide didn’t introduce
the holdings of the Institute as “the largest collection of
pornography in the world.” So venerable a source as [snopes.com](http://snopes.com)
believes that this is true ([debunking the myth that the Vatican
owns that honor](http://www.snopes.com/risque/porn/vatican.htm)), although there are also arguments that in this information age, Kinsey’s collections is
completely dwarfed by others, such as that of the [Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality](http://www.iashs.edu/) in San Francisco. Indeed, if one allows digital media, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some personal hard drives that contain more pornography than the Kinsey collection, although they would certainly be nowhere near as broad in scope historically or geographically. Catherine’s lack of interest in this
debate is probably indicative of the Institute’s attitude. She did
say, in her charmingly introspective, excited intellectual way, “we
get calls from new students who ask if we really have the largest
collection of pornography in the world, and I always just have to
think, is it really pornography? I mean, it all has to do with sex,
but it isn’t really what I would call pornography… well, I mean,
*some* of it is, but…” I pictured one of those politicians who use
the line “I know it when I see it” looking at what I was seeing
(which, I must point out, was certainly only a tiny fraction of their
entire collection, most of which is not on display). I would guess
that such a person would end up labelling about 25% of the displayed
materials as porn. If I played the same game, the number would be
much lower. But I think the more interesting issue, even for this
nameless politican, would be the process of determination. Was the
photograph of the two (seemingly) 80-somethings having sex
pronography? It was unquestionably graphic, but at the same time, the
purpose didn’t seem to be to arouse as much as to encourage reflection
on sexuality, aging, and life-long-love. The Kinsey Institute would
be unable to deny that it promotes this kind of reflection, even if
they downplay the pornographic nature of their collection.

The last stop on our tour was the “lab” where they conduct studies on
sexual arousal in actual people. This former dorm room still looked a
fair amount like a dorm room. There was more art hanging on the
walls, but this stuff was not at all erotic. As Catherine
explained, this was so that the subjects didn’t get distracted. The focal
point of the room was a comfortable looking easy-chair, with an
extremely unnatural-looking setup of a video screen and (I believe)
computer keyboard in front of it. The countertops were covered with
scientific looking equipment and materials instead of text books.
Catherine introduced us to one of their measurement devices, saying
simply “This is called a RigiScan”. The device used to measure the
same thing in females was called a “photoplethysmograph”, and as the name suggests,
was substantially more complicated. It worked, we learned, by
actually using light to determine if there is an increase in blood
flow, whereas the RigiScan measured changes in size. Once you understood those two devices, pretty much everything about the whole operation
seemed transparent. Seeing the cables leading to the video monitor
taped to the floor using plain packing tape made me feel like I could
have set the whole thing up myself.

And, with that, we headed back up to the third floor to pick up our
coats. “This has been a great way to end the week, you were a very
fun group.” Thanks, Catherine. You did a great job introducing us to
this famous but quiet local institution. It’s curious how completely
unmysterious everything felt once we were there.

On an evening when Americans traditionally think about Ireland, I
ended up thinking intensely about America and Americans. Kynthia and
I departed early from a fun gathering of particularly open-minded
friends in order to see [The Ryder Film
Series](http://theryder.com/)’s screening of [*This Divided
State*](http://www.thisdividedstate.com/) at the Buskirk Chumley
Theater.

The film is a documentary *about* Michael Moore’s scheduled visit to
[Utah Valley State College](http://www.uvsc.edu/) (UVSC). The film was *not* made by
Michael Moore. Indeed, it’s not even very much about him. The only
bits of Michael Moore we see are clips of his public appearances
during the visit. The film *is* about UVSC and its hometown of Orem,
Utah. The first thing that struck me about the story was just how
different the campus seemed from anything I was familiar with. In a
word: very conservative. Neither of the post-secondary schools that
I’ve attended are known for being particularly liberal, and my visits
to other college/university campuses have corroborated the idea that
they are not. But, wow, the picture painted of UVSC in this film is *really*
conservative.

In a [previous
post](http://davidernst.net/blog/2006/02/09/ann-coulter-just-dont-go/)
I expressed support for conservative commetator Ann Coulter’s speaking
engagement at IU, and implored those who disagree with her to simply
stay away from the venue rather than be disruptive. This is what I
did. Sadly, though, as I feared, [many Coulter detractors did disrupt
the
event](http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?adid=search&id=34257),
and, apparently the [controversy continued long after the event
ended](http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?adid=search&id=34349).
It’s probably still going on.

*sigh*

On the vast majority of political issues, Ms. Coulter and I are
extremely opposed. However, I recognize her as a nationally known
author and commentator, and I support Universities being places where
the opinions of such people can be heard. Having taken that stance in
that case, it was very easy to feel indignation as the movie displayed
the tactics of many of the conservatives in Orem trying to keep
Michael Moore out of their town. The similarities and differences of
the two cases were fascinating. The detractors in both cases accused
the scheduled speakers of lying, fueling hate, spreading bigotry, and
of being evil. The similarity in much of the rhetoric should be
enough to give anyone pause. (“Do I ever sound like that? Is anyone
who sounds like that really approaching an issue with an open mind?”).
In both cases there were questions raised about the amounts of money
spent on the speakers. I’m sure there were other similarities that
I’m not remembering.

But the differences were also striking. The Moore detractors in Orem
were obviously far more motivated and more organized. They offered to
buy out the speaking engagement. They demanded the resignation of the
Student Body officials who booked Moore. They arranged that celebrity
conservative [Sean Hannity](http://www.hannity.com/) speak on campus
prior to Moore’s visit. And, in the end, they filed a legal suit
against the Student Body officials who booked Moore.

The basic position of these activists seemed to be “this speaker
disagrees with the values of this community, and therefore should not
be welcomed here.” Now, I do think there’s a case to be made that not
all speakers are invited to all campuses, and it’s worth discussing
whether any particular speaker is a good choice. But, the activists
in the film make it quite clear that the conflict is about ideology.
One of the activists goes so far as to claim that being exposed to
“evil” ideas will likely make his own children turn “evil”.

I feel visceral pain hearing this attitude espoused. I am such a
believer in free speech that I cannot believe that anyone who feels
proud to be a citizen of this nation is so afraid of ideas and
speech.

However, I sense the same general attitude from the other side of the
political spectrum. Watching the film, I found myself feeling
positively about anyone who was civil and open-minded and negatively
about anyone who was rude and restrictive. I don’t see this as a
matter of being in the political “center”. It’s more like a sense that
there’s a different way to divide the population into political
parties: those who want civil debate and dialog on the one hand, and
those who want ideas silenced on the other. I sure know which of
those groups I belong to.

By the way, it’s worth noting that the film showed no right-wing folks
interrupting Moore’s speech. Rather, the only people to heckle Moore
were supporters of Ralph Nader. The film made them look stupid, I
thought, and I don’t think filmmakers had much to do with that besides
including the footage of them. Those protesters can have the
satisfaction of knowing that some people are now aware that some
people on the far left felt that Moore betrayed Nader and “sold out”.
I already knew that. What else did that outburst accomplish? I can’t
think of anything. The left has got to rethink its tactics. At least
the anger-mongers on the right are a force to be reckoned with, and
you have to respect their organization even if it is for a very bad
cause. I didn’t see anything worth respecting in the tactics of these
Nader supporters.

In any event, anyone who cares about the political landscape in the US
right now should find this film to be very thought-provoking. The
action takes place in 2004, and it was hard to reopen some of the
emotions I felt about the election that year. But it also served as
good reflection. I certainly hope the Democrats can run better
campaigns this year than they did that year. We’ll see.

I must say that I found some of the film-making techniques to be
amateurish. I could imagine the same filmmakers making some very bad
films. But, my hat is off to them for recognizing early on that the
actions going on at UVSC in 2004 were worth documenting. They were
right, and they collecting some great footage. The film is a welcome
addition to our national debate.

Tuesday: If we just introduce and accept the concept of *evitability*,
then there’s no conflict between Determinism and Free Will.

Thursday: Religions are a lot like domesticated animals, except that
they propagate via memes instead of genes… and that purpose that
they serve is a lot less clear.

Any friend of mine will tell you that I’m not a big fan of fiction.
But there’s a type of fiction that I have called “self-aware” fiction,
where the author is clearly just making stuff up (often quite
incredible stuff) to make a point about something that has nothing to
do with fiction.

Some literature buffs try to tell me that all fiction is really this
way, but if you want to really see what I’m trying to get at, read a
short story called [*Where am
I?*](http://www.cs.umu.se/kurser/TDBC12/HT99/Dennett.html) by Daniel
Dennett. I think you’ll agree the author is trying to do a completely
different kind of thing than, say, John Stienbeck ever was.

This story was what first impressed me about Daniel Dennett. I read
it in [The Mind's
I](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553345842/002-1900284-9923224?v=glance&n=283155)
during the [Douglas
Hofstadter](http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/people/homepages/hofstadter.html)
phase that I (like all good nerds my age) went through in college
(Hofstadter and Dennett were the editors of that book). I think of
myself as someone who loves philosophy, but when I studied philosophy
in college, I found most of it terribly boring. Most classes I took
seemed more about the history of philosophy than they were about
philosophy itself, and the texts that we studied were usually horribly
difficult to read. Dennett, Hofstadter, and others, represent to me a
movement interested in presenting enjoyable presentations of
philosophically interesting topics. When a professor in graduate
school described Dennett as “a charmer”, that resonated with me, even
though I’d never met him.

Well, I arrived home from NYC on Tuesday to an email from Kynthia telling
me that Dr. Dennett was in Bloomington this week delivering [Patten
Lectures](http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/patten/) on Tuesday and
Thursday evenings. And so it was that I got to see the charmer in
action. And in case there needed to be any support for the “charmer”
hypothesis, room 124 in Jordan Hall was clearly well over its stated
capacity of 298 people when I arrived about five minutes before the
lecture was to begin. I can’t remember philosophy ever looking so…
popular…

For as much as I admire Hofstadter’s writing, the times I’ve seen him
speak have always been disappointing. Such an amazing writer, you’d
think that that would translate into being a great speaker. Not so
much… He was quite cute though delivering his lengthy introduction
of Dennett on Tuesday night, replete with old embarrassing photographs
and his trademark word play.

But I found Dennett to be a very engaging speaker just as he is a
writer. His lecture was certainly not as gripping as *Where am I?*,
but we wouldn’t expect it to be either. If he always approached his
topics in that story-telling manner, it would get old quickly. But,
even when talking more like most other philosophers, he is engaging
and anything but dry. Or at least, so it was for me.

And this disclaimer is important. I had a strong sense at this event
of feeling at ease. At home. This kind of thing feels *natural* to
me, which is probably bizarre, but it’s true. And, while it is true
that I’m more comfortable in and interested by a lecture format than
many people, what I really mean is that the *kinds* of things that he
talked about and the *way* that he talked about them work in a very
natural way for me. I felt like a devout Christian must feel on
returning to church after a period of separation… Not euphoric in
any sense, just happy to be among somewhat-like-minded people,
exploring the deep issues that matter to us the most.

I will not try to reproduce the content of the talks, but I will
summarize them. Tuesday’s talk was about the old Free
Will/Determinism debate. Dennett’s offered contribution struck me as
a way to bring peace to the issue by changing the terms of the debate
somewhat. The key element being *evitability*.

Evitability is the opposite of inevitability, synonymous with
“avoidability”. Dennett argues that as life evolved, it introduced
evitability. Inanimate things can’t avoid anything. Lob a brick at a
wall, and the brick hits the wall. Lob a brick at a mammal, though,
and the mammal gets out of its way. Or tries to, anyway. Maybe they
fail, but they have the ability to make a decision in an effort to
have an effect on the future. Dennett presents this ability as
particular to life, and therefore introduced by evolution. [Freedom
Evolves](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007NLUP4/sr=8-1/qid=1142312521/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1900284-9923224?%5Fencoding=UTF8),
he says. Free will is a product of evolution.

So, is the universe deterministic? If someone had all the information
about all of the particles in the universe and could somehow process
it all, could they predict the future perfectly? Although I think
Dennett pretty clearly thinks the answer to this is “yes”, in this
lecture his point is that it doesn’t matter. Evolution introduces
free will whether the universe is deterministic or not.

I think the audience for Thursday’s talk was even slightly larger, but
they reserved a larger hall too so it seemed less crowded. Still, if
there were open seats in the house, there weren’t many. The topic was
that of Dennett’s latest book, [Breaking the Spell : Religion as a
Natural
Phenomenon](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003472X/ref=pd_sim_b_3/002-1900284-9923224?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155).
And yes, the religious theme almost certainly helped to inspire my
church analogy, above. Even more on that below…

Dennett introduced the meat of his presentation by saying that it was
a “sketch of a sketch.” I understand that he’s trying to highlight
that there is a great deal of conjecture in what he describes, and
that he wants to encourage more rigorous scientific investigations
into his conjectures. But, I don’t actually think that his
description of how religion is a natural outgrowth of life and culture
is all that difficult to summarize. Here’s my attempt:

We humans, like many animals, have an instinct to ascribe agency to
unknown things (hear a bump in the night: Who was that? An intruder?
An animal? An imp?). This is a great trait, because in some very
important cases, those unknown things are real predators, and we’d
better pay attention. Unlike other animals, humans have language, which (along with other
cultural abilities) gives us the ability to share these thoughts with others
easily. These ideas – a.k.a. memes – then reproduce in the
environment of our minds (“I think there was an imp trying to break
into my house last night!” “Really? What’s an imp? … Wow! I think
that’s happened to me too!”). Most of these ideas die out quickly,
but some ideas are compelling enough to make homes for themselves in
many brains. Stories about these unseen agents develop in our minds
and cultures. Eventually, some people devote themselves (frequently
with mind-boggling dedication) to the advancement and development of
some of these memes. And, at that point, we have religion.

A moment of the homey feeling that I described above happened when he
showed a slide of a rather grotesquely large looking dairy cow. He
asked “who is the designer of this animal?” My example for the same
idea is stating that apples are basically inventions of human culture.
The process of domestication is grossly underestimated in most casual
understanding of these things. Think of an apple you might find at a
grocery store (no matter how organic)… Nothing even remotely like
that apple existed until humans domesticated the tree. The fruit of
the pre-domesticated plant is apparently almost inedible (the “wild
almond”, I gather from [Guns, Germs, and
Steel](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393317552/sr=8-1/qid=1142313775/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1900284-9923224?%5Fencoding=UTF8),
is actually poisonous!) (Much more on the domestication of apples can
be learned by reading the extremely approachable [The Botany of
Desire](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375760393/sr=8-1/qid=1142380480/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-1900284-9923224?%5Fencoding=UTF8)).
At the same time, humans have as yet (to the best of my knowledge)
never produced any food that could sustain us that wasn’t made out of
something once alive. For Dennett, then, (and for me) most of our
food depends both on both natural evolution and “artificial”
domestication.

So it is, he presents, with religion. Dogs, he claims, don’t develop
stories out of whatever goes through their heads when they are aroused by a
bump in the night. They can’t, they don’t have the language to do so.
We not only have the language, but we have the brains to fixate on the
stories, and we have the culture to allow some of us to devote our
lives to the stories while others make the food, clothing, and shelter
that we need.

It’s an interesting presentation. Do I buy it? Pretty well. In both
talks, really, the feeling that I got was that these were ideas that I
pretty much already believed in, but he’s just saying them well and
has thought them through much better. Having said that, I also revel
in being able to reserve judgment, and let these ideas just live in
my mind as I proceed through life without having to commit.
The enjoyment I felt, then, is not “Hallelujah! The truth is
spoken!”, but more like, “It feels good to hear someone who thinks
about these things similar to how I think about them giving an
enjoyable talk about his thoughts.”

Further adding to my respect for the talk was his points of political
advocacy. Is Dennett trying to rid the world of religion? No, he
says. Having no idea what a world without religion would look like,
he’s not about to start advocating for it.

He did, however, advocate one idea and encouraged the audience to
“spread the word” if they agreed: It should be a mandatory part of our
primary and secondary education system to learn basic uncontested
facts about all of the [major religions of the
world](http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html). He even
mentioned standardized tests being required to verify that anyone with
a high school diploma (including those private- and home-schooled) be
able to demonstrate basic knowledge of the fundamental beliefs,
origins, histories, practices, rituals, and taboos, of the world’s
major religions. (He added, by the way, that if a private institution
wanted to add anything additional (such that all adherents to
religions other than X are doomed to eternal torture), that’s fine.
He’s only advocating that the basic facts be well understood.)

Personally, I was very pleasantly surprised by this choice. I hate
proselytizing, and I’m particularly annoyed by atheists proselytizing
because I don’t want to be associated with them. This, however, is
much more consistent with my beliefs in education, in freedom of
religion, etc. And I certainly think that it would only reduce the
amount of strife between some of these religions. So, I’m signed onto
this cause, and like Dr. Dennett, I encourage any of you who agree
with us to spread the good word.

A few quibbles: Dennett claimed that the above was his only point of
advocacy, but he did clearly advocate for the respect of atheists.
Specifically, he showed a humorous church sign that proclaimed: “GOOD
without GOD is 0″. While acknowledging the cleverness of this, he
also said that he strongly feels that the notion is wrong and should
be respectfully resisted. I agree.

He made a claim during the Q&A that “religious organizations are doing
all of the heavy lifting” when it comes to charitable work. Having
effectively started my professional career at the local United Way
chapter and being a proud contributor to that organization to this
day, I must take issue with that claim. While I whole-heartedly
respect much of the faith-based charitable work that happens in our
society, there is also a great deal of secular work in this area.
Indeed, if [secular persons really make up only 13-15% of the US
population](http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html) then I’d say “we” are
doing more than our fair share right now, although I don’t have any
hard facts to back up that claim.

Finally, while I understand the benefit, I must take this opportunity
to express my qualms with PowerPoint driven presentations. Yes, it’s
great to empower speakers to have all of their slides and other visual
materials well-organized and at their fingertips. It’s even nice to
see their main points highlighted more frequently. However, I find
that PowerPoint encourages the speaker to follow what they have
written, often defaulting to simply reading aloud what is on the
screen. I get a book on tape if I want someone to read to me; I
attend a lecture to see and hear someone actually act like a person.
Dennett was not as bad as many about this, but he certainly was at his
best when he was talking freely rather than following his notes too
closely. In one particularly bad moment, he wanted to make a point
that he kept thinking was illustrated on the “next slide”. He kept
not finding it, I don’t think I ever learned what the point was going
to be.

But, obviously, these complaints do not amount to a negative
experience for me. I was very glad to be present for the clear and
enjoyable presentations on interesting but potentially dry topics. I
hope that this tradition flourishes. When the presenters also happen
to be people with similar beliefs to my own, it’s just that much
easier for me to enjoy.

Our Town Quick Review: This classic American play would work better as a *Twilight Zone* episode.

*Dinner with Friends* Quick Review: It’s rare that drama succeeds so well at creating deep and realistic characters who are neither heroic nor flawed, neither good nor evil, and neither right nor wrong.

It’s not every week one can see live productions of two Pulitzer Prize winning plays in Bloomington. On Friday the 13th, I saw Thorton Wilder’s 1938 classic *Our Town*, which was the debut production of the new Cardinal Theater Company. Then, on Thursday the 19th, Donald Margulies’s *Dinner with Friends* from around the year 2000, and was produced by some weird collaboration between the Bloomington Playrights Project (BPP), the Bloomington Area Arts Council (BAAC, a.k.a. “the Waldron”) and Miro Productions. The contrast between the shows was striking to me, in many ways:

**My personal attitude**: Ok, let me be upfront. The contrast between the two experiences started for me before I got to either of them. Right before *Our Town*, I was unable to print a document I needed and upon investigation received frightening warnings that one of my hard drives was about to crash. I had to leave the disk in limbo to get to the theater in time to meet Kynthia and a gang of other informatics students. They were late, so I ended up walking in and out of the cold rain at the theater looking for them. Eventually I gave up and sat by myself for the first act. (Turns out they got there shortly after it started, and I sat with them for acts two and three).

On Thursday, though, I came home from work feeling tired… took a nap, and wondered if I’d go out. Renee called and encouraged me to join her and Jeremy for *Dinner with Friends*, and sealed the deal by offering to pick me up. That felt good, so I definitely started that experience in a much better mood. However, I honestly believe that these non-treatrical differences do not entirely explain the difference in my experiences.

Hoopla: It’s kind of exciting when someone embarks on an obvious labor-of-love and creates a new professional theater company, even in a town that already offers a huge number of theater productions relative to the potential audience size. Perhaps this is why the producers felt ok about renting the 600-seat Buskirk-Chumley Theater, even though most of the plays I go to in town usually seat between 20-200. Anyway, they got away with it, I was amazed at the size of the crowd. The theater was not quite full, but I’d guess there were about 400 people there… huge, for a local play.

*Dinner with Friends* was produced at the Waldron’s main stage, with the bleachers set up with about 100 seats. I’d guess there were about 60-70 people there, which seemed like a good crowd. But, yeah, a fraction of those at *Our Town*, and clearly the weekend shows weren’t that much bigger.

**Direction**: OK, let me offer some advice to all of you theater directors out there, from a complete schmoe: people talk at the same time as each other. They interrupt each other. They overlap their sentences. They have little micro competitions to see who is going to speak next. Or sometimes no one volunteers to speak next.

Watching the first act of *Our Town*, I was struck by how unnatural all of the acting felt. Were these actors (some, if not all, of whom were being paid union wages, which is very much in contrast to most of the community theater productions in town) just bad? Maybe some were, but because this “not talking at the same time” thing is a pet peeve of mine, I started listening to the pacing of the dialogue.

Line…pause…Line…pause…Line…pause…Line…pause…Line…pause…Line…pause…Line

By and large, the pause between each pair of lines was about the same, I’d guess about .5 seconds. To me, this made the whole thing sound like a first reading, rather than a full production. I remember thinking “well, they are saying all the lines in the correct order.”

As if I needed any further confidence on this belief I hold, *Dinner with Friends* presented just about one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of doing it *right*. Granted, part of this is because the play is partially *about* how people talk with each other, especially close friends and lovers. So, the playright certainly deserves a lot of the credit. But the director (Bruce Burgun) obviously gets it. Sometimes a line starts before the last one ends. Sometimes there are not-that-meaningful long pauses. Sometimes there are meaningful pauses. Sometimes people just deliver multiple lines at the same time. Karen (Francesca Sobrer) and Gabe (Richard Perez) do an excellent job of the classic “married couple trying to tell a story together” bit. Gabe was unbelievably convincing yelling to (the prerecorded voices of) his children asking for help with the VCR. Even the prerecorded voices overlapped on another (and you’ll *never* make a group of kids sound realistic if they aren’t talking at the same time as each other). And, the most obvious and most extreme example was Beth and Tom (Danielle Bruce and Lee Parker) simultaneously screaming their cases at each other during a fight. The dialogue in this play was uncommonly convincing to me, and although this certainly was not the only reason, I really think it’s a big part. So, directors, there’s your free tip from a schmoe.

**Acting**: I don’t have any simple tips for actors, except to convince your directors to let you follow my advice above. Having said that, wow, good acting makes a big difference.

Some of the acting in *Our Town* was really good. The “Stage Manager” (Henry Woronicz) wins my “I kept forgetting he was an actor” award, which is bizarre considering that in real life there are no narrators walking around. Emily (Anjanette Armstrong) and George (Alex Shotts), who I consider in retrospect to be the main characters of the play, also gave great performances. And Emily’s father (sorry! I can’t find the actor’s name!) was particularly convincing and enjoyable to watch as well. But… largely, the rest of the cast didn’t do very much for me. Granted, a main point of this play is for them to be presenting a pretty boring life in a pretty boring town. But, it’s also to talk about the beauty in that boredom, right? I think so, and … I could have gone for a little more beauty and a little less boredom.

*Dinner with Friends* felt like an “All Star” game in contrast. Lee Parker as Tom was probably the weakest, but that’s much more a tribute to how good the rest of the cast was, because he still did a very good job. I remembered Danielle Bruce fondly from her fine portrayal of an atheist liberal arts professor in *Accidental Rapture*, but I think she was even better here as the slightly new-agey fine artist, Beth. I’m familiar with Richard Perez as BPP executive director, frequent director of BPP plays, and general man-about-town in the local theater scene. It was great to see him act for a change, and he did a extremely impressive job overcoming his face recognition to become Gabe. But it was Karen who I kept forgetting was an actor and not really the pretty-happily married but mildly closed-minded woman I was watching. In any event, the whole cast was so good that it almost seems pointless to draw comparisons.

**Script**: The message I took away from *Our Town* was something like “people don’t realize how great their lives are, even when those lives seem terribly boring”. I’m not sure that I’m getting its point entirely, but it’s quite clear that it has something to do with the enjoyment of life. The narrator tells us of a quote from a midwestern poet: “You’ve got to have life to love it, and you’ve got to love life to have it”. Ok, that’s nice. I like that, and it’s stayed with me since I saw the play. But, woah, call me part of the MTV generation, but this seemed like a very long way to send that message. At the end of the first act I was struck by how boring the play was. By the end of the play I realized that act one was supposed to be kind of boring, to make us reflect on whether we appreciate how great our lives are, even when they are boring. Ok, I guess. But, I guess I just didn’t feel like the message made up for it. It’s one thing to appreciate the mundane in my own life, but I don’t think I need to pay money to watch other people’s lives be boring.

I’ve since pictured the same general plot being offered as a *Twighlight Zone* episode, maybe five minutes each devoted to acts one and two, and then fifteen minutes for act three. It wouldn’t seem so long, and the message would still be just as thought-provoking… although probably not as much so as the average episode. Instead, later this year, Bloomington will host the world premiere of an operatic version composed by Ned Rorem, whose musical style, in my opinion, is, uh, well suited to the plot.

*Dinner with friends* is also a play about appreciating life. Instead of a straight-forward message “life is great, more great than you’ll realize in your whole life”, though, this play challenges us to consider what brings us joy. The presentation brought to my mind the contrast between Static and Dynamic Quality that Robert M. Pirsig brought to us in his book *Lila*. Gabe and Karen are clearly happy with their life, but they certainly have issues too. Tom and Beth were clearly unhappy in their marriage, although their issues weren’t entirely different from Gabe and Karen’s. Tom and Beth enter new relationships after their divorce, and they seem sincerely happier than they did before. But they clearly gave up much of the same kinds of good things that keep Gabe and Karen happily together. Did Beth and Tom make a mistake by not trying harder to work things out? Are Gabe and Karen really happily staying together, or might they be happier with the excitement of new relationships? The play doesn’t answer these questions. Rather, it presents us with compelling arguments that each of the characters is “right” about what they are doing, even though their attitudes are conflicting. I feel like it’s pretty common for authors to try to avoid letting us know which of their characters they sympathize with the most. However, I think that it’s rare that an author succeeds in this goal as well as Margulies does here. Each character has flaws and strengths. We’re not left with any sense of heroes or villians. And, in the end, the play leaves us reflecting that life just goes on.

There are reasons that so much Western drama is tales of heroic accomplishment or tragic failure. These stories are naturally compelling. But special appreciation is due to a playright who succeeds at telling us a compelling story that doesn’t follow this compelling template. I think the Pulitzer Prize is well-suited to *Dinner with Friends*. If you have a chance to see it, I definitely recommend it, and I can only hope your production is as good as the one that I saw.

Presumably, some folks at the [Bloomington Playwrights Project](http://www.newplays.org) thought that they could draw people out to their new location (on 9th between College and Walnut) by promoting a show with an obscene title. Well, apparently, it worked. I spoke with the stage manager briefly after the show, and he said that this very long run for a BPP play was playing to consistently packed houses, and this new theater seems to seat more people than the old one did. So, another tribute to mixing sex and humor.

I mean, the Greeks did it (and IU’s Production of Lysistrata *really* did it). Shakespeare did it all the time. They did it in Vaudeville shows, right? There’s the whole Burlesque thing. There’s Mel Brooks and his ilk. And of course, there’s all sorts of other movies and venues that are even less generally accepted than these. I think it’s pretty darn clear: a huge number of people have a hankering for sexual humor.

So, we get *Chicks with Dicks*. It tells the story of a good girl turned sort of bad and joining a sort of bad gang of biker chicks known as Satan’s Cherries. They fight with the arguably (but not obviously) worse rival gang. I guess it’s a spoof on a bunch of things I’m really not very familiar with: biker movies, kung-fu movies, B-movies in general. I don’t know. But, whatever was being spoofed, the result actually *was* funny. phew.

The production was really good, too. The odd space that is the new theater was used quite well, I thought. The go-go dancers definitely created an appropriate atmosphere. The signs identifying the settings were funny and functional. The costumes were very impressive, especially since I’m sure their budget was whatever each individual actor could afford.

And, the acting was good, too. The main characters were definitely engaging, and overacted their parts just as much as the script demanded. But the supporting roles were really what made it for me. There was actually a good deal of competition for the uncoveted “I kept forgetting I was watching an actor” award. Alex Young was certainly amazing as Cindi, the overly-innocent girl from Bedford, IN. Alexander Gulck deserves great credit for his performances as different random men (one of only two males in the cast). While he was always recognizable, he did a great job having different character for each character. But, the “I kept forgetting I was watching an actor” award has to go to Joanne Dubach. Special notice needs to be made of the fact that the winner of this award for this play was given to someone who was playing a character named “Kitten”, whose costume was a purple cat suit, and succeeded at being believable both while meowing and while simultaneously dancing and delivering a post-modernistic critique of the action of the play. This was either amazing acting or the casting director just happened to find someone who was really like that. I suspect the former. Very nice work.

But, as I indicated up front, the real schtick here is bawdy humor. I definitely felt at ease laughing at (and with) the cast of this farce as they showed a lot of skin and delivered a lot of double entendre. I can enjoy sex humor as much as the next bloke, as long as it doesn’t seem offensive or exploitative. This was neither, and really ends up being pretty clean fun, if you ask me, even with the excessive fighting. Whatever the reasons, I liked it, and so did just about everyone else there.