Tag Archives: general disgust

This is innovation, is it?: The CTG 2024-2025 season

Given the largely justified hand-wringing about the state of the arts in LA, I looked into the beleaguered Center Theatre Group’s upcoming season.  For thirty years, the CTG has meant nothing to me but Michael Ritchie is gone, there’s a new guy in charge, Covid has left the arts reeling, and maybe it is time to give the 800-lb gorilla another look.

As we unify our communities across all three theatres, we are building a sustainable future for art and innovation.

Or, maybe not.  Four musicals, a puppet show, and Hamlet is innovation?  Or maybe it is the Free Parking that comes with the subscription.  That must be it.  The Kirk Douglas which had the occasional hit among many misses is relegated two kiddie musicals.

The Onion called it nearly 20 years ago:
Our Global Food-Service Enterprise Is Totally Down For Your Awesome Subculture

Over the years I’ve seen so many bold, insightful, daring companies fold due to lack of audience, lack of attention, lack of money, and the exhaustion they bring.  And yet, this large-assed Creosote lives off of what largesse is left.

 

 

The pulse of artistic LA is in NYC

From the Sad-but-True department.  Leave it to the NYT to highlight the problems LA theatres face in the aftermath of COVID and bearing the brunt of the ills of the gig economy.  Uber and Lyft skate while tiny arts orgs have to conform to new wage laws while trying to reopen.  Whatever Dr. Soon-Shiong may have done for the LA Times, his inaction on the sacks of filth at his arts and culture desks is unpardonable.

 

Walkback of shameless: The future QOP leader speaks

“Nevertheless, she persisted”
“And still, [she’ll] rise”

As did her party, in standing ovation.  Snopes weighs in on the latest media victim from the party of personal responsibility.  The QOP appropriates, corrupts, and weaponizes anything and everything it touches.  The slide continues abetted by the invertebrate from Bakersfield.

 

The America First Playlist: An Inaugural Swing and a Miss

On inauguration day, a large chunk of America unclenched and exhaled for the first time in four wretched, miserable years.  Five if we count the rancid campaign of naked bigotry and full throated lies that preceded and presaged the disaster of 45.

We now have some sanity in the ship of state and can hope that any honeymoon lasts long enough to get people vaccinated, businesses restarted, and the arts out from under hiding.  Even before COVID, anything on the finer side of life was ignored at best and ridiculed at worst under the moron of Mar-a-lago.   Many of us who eagerly awaited 20 January and some sign of support to the better things woke up to surprise and not a little disappointment at the overwhelmingly pop-culture besotted inauguration that actually occurred.  The shark sandwich playlist promised much and delivered nothing.

“Whether you are a country soul, a jazz enthusiast, a hip hop head, a classical sort, or just love that old-time rock and roll, music clarifies, inspires, unites, and heals.”
— Inaugural Committee CEO Tony Allen

Us “classical sorts” got jack shit, not even the ubiquitous OFFS not-him-again Yo-Yo Ma bowsynching to Copland as in 2009 although the equally overexposed Rénëê Fleming was said to have sung at one of the side events.   The rest, excluding Bob Marley, was as America-centered and nobrow as anything the MAGA movement could scrape together, excepting of course getting the performance rights.  The perpetually inept LA Times arts and culture department, or at least one of its representatives, thinks things are looking up.  This schlemiel, a tv critic no less, views the cultural future as the wasteland of the Discovery Channel, Bravo, History, and TLC which at one time actually had some decent programming but which long ago sold out to the perpetually dropping lowest common denominator.  It might get better for the arts but it is more likely that the arts will just get redefined just as science was for ‘The Science Channel.’

What galls about the 46-0 shutout is that the United States does not lack for options.  Copland and Gershwin are overplayed but we have Ives, Joplin, and Gottschalk.  Dvorák was inspired in Iowa, Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky lived out their lives here (as did Schoenberg but let’s stay within realistic limits).  Hell, John Williams or Peter Schickele could have done something if asked.  And, if all of that is still too off-the-radar, there’s good ol’American John Philip Sousa transcribed by good ol’ American Vladimir Horowitz.  One pianist, one piano – saves on cost and brings everyone to his or her feet.  Regardez from the Hollywood Bowl in 1945.

Youtube Channel: Michael Brown