…before I become an American Citizen. I have to get up at sparrow’s fart and drive to Kendal where they’ll make me swear an oath.

One problem. I haven’t decided on my accent yet. I though about Kentucky (it’s the easiest) but then what about Texan?

Suggestions gratefully received!

First night…. The gasp as the lights go up. The indrawn breath as the first obscenity is heard. The guilty titter as they get the first joke. The silence as they listen.

Second night… The gasp as the lights go up. The indrawn breath as the first obscentity is heard. The shushing as some idiot answers his cell phone!

The realization that I miss my hair!

Spot the Atheists!

When I read the Wizard of Oz aged seven I wanted to be either the Wizard or one of the wicked witches, not a munchkin. Now, at the advanced age of 61 I find myself cast as Larry in Michael McKeever’s “Splat.”

It’s not the hat, or the wig, or the big silver boots that make me quake… I just don’t like saying the F word on stage… and it’s almost the first word I say.

“Splat” is a minute slice of Munchkin life just after Dorothy dances off along the Yellow Brick Road leaving the house and witch to be cleaned up by the road gang. Thereby hangs the tale, a socialist reconstruction of life in a dictatorship and how moral decisions sometimes have to be passed by in order for natural justice to prevail.

Or…

A slight comedy. You decide.

The play is crafted within an inch of it’s life making demands of the actors that combine long internal journeys to truth with horrendous moral decisions. All taken at a breakneck speed and with juxtapositions of language and incident that, while they make may an audience laugh, are utterly real to the characters.

Nothing is exaggerated. The statements made by Larry, a socialist, and the wrestle with morality for all the characters simply echo the problems faced every day by ordinary people in extraordinary positions.

You come across Mr. “Evil Personified” in a road accident. Do you dial 911?

It’s rather odd to be cast in a short play where you are crucified on stage. “Paul and Eddie” by Ken Brisbois is  about ten minutes long and is a small slice of life on Golgotha Hill just before JC arrives.

Both actors (myself and Quincy Perkins)  and the director (Mike Marrero) are either atheist or agnostic and despite the initial puzzlement the rehersal process had certainly led me in a better understanding of the power of the story of the crucifixion.

It’s horrendously uncomfortable on those crosses. Even after five minutes our breathng is laboured and concentratiing is difficult. Arms, legs chest and necks ache and we take every advantage of the humour to deliver us from the internal processess of this hightly unpleasant method of execution.

I can’t move anything except my fingers, head and hips. I wear nothing but a loin cloth. All that work at the gym on my pecs disappears as the position of my body exploits bone and cartilage – not muscle.

Quincy stars. He has the most lines, is face on to the audience right at the edge of the stage. I get three or four word lines until near the end when I have a soliloquy. Every repetition of the hope in this short speech brings me to tears – and at the audition I noticed the other directors had wet eyes.

It is such a wonderful story. I can’t blame anyone for desperately wanting it to be true. I want it to be be true…. but it still isn’t.

Acting is, I think, the strangest of arts. Ken Brisbois dictates the manifestation of my internal world for me and I have to dig back, like an archaeologist, to that world.

Mike Marrero pushes me into a shape and in a direction that I have little control over. Then I take over. I’m left alone, with Quincy, to move people in a way that they don’t expect and may not want to go.

We have a five week run. During that time the short scene will develop, alter, shift, change in infinitely subtle ways and eventually we, the actors, get enriched and changed by what we do.

I have no idea whether or not Ken Brisbois is a theist. I suspect not. There seems to be no way that a believing christian could have developed a scenario and a script that contains such subtleties.

We open next week.

Part of me hopes for raving crowds of Christians outside the theater demonstrating against the play.

We’ll see.

Last night my partner and I had separate fundraising events. At home B (He who must be Obeyed) held a cocktail party for the Great and the Good in order to raise funds for the local theatre. I was, as usual, judge at Aqua Nightclub for their version of American Idol – Karaoke!

One made tens of thousands of dollars, the other hundreds of dollars. I leave you to guess which was which.

After my event a stunningly pretty girl came up to me and asked me what my sign was. “You’re such an interesting person.” Now, although I’m gay, flattery from youth of either sex is always welcome… but my astrological sign? I looked at her, as if from over a pair of thick lensed glasses, and replied “It’s either “Stop” or ” Speed Limit 45…  Surely you don’t really believe in such nonsense?”

“You don’t believe!”

“No, I’m atheist.”

“You mean you’re agnostic. Atheism meams that you have a closed mind!”

“Well, it’s not so open that my brains fall out.”

“But you’re open to the possibility that god exists?.”

“It’s possible, but I think, not believe, that we die and.. well that’s it!”

“Oh, I do too, but we’re all god really aren’t we?”

“I think a god would be able to do impossible things. Now I try to do at least three impossible things before breakfast every day – but I never succeed. So, no I don’t think we are.”

“I am glad that you’re not closed off to possibilities. That’s nice.

Now ”What sign are you?” is a fairly common “chat up line”. It is  all over the universe. Here in Key West the usual response from an individual to the refutation is “No I don’t believe either but I wanted to talk to you.”

It was nice to meet a believer.

We have hundreds, I mean one on every corner,  of churches here. Every time I challenge the attending faithful they quickly  recant their beliefs. I’m sure that the “Post Christian” era arrived many years ago. It’s just taken us all a long time to realize that.

Do I need to say more?

Failblog

News Story at “The Inquisitr”

New Scientist agazine has withdrawn an article by  Amanda Gefter about religiously slanted articles. It was a quick and funny read. Why?

I sent the editor an email…

I’m most concerned that the article by Amanda Gefter on “How to Spot a Hidden Religious Agenda” has been pulled from the website, especially as the reasons for this editorial decision have not been given and the edit is uncommented on. Please enlighten all of us!

I got the following reply…

Thanks for your email.

New Scientist received a legal complaint about the contents of the story ”How to spot a hidden religious agenda”. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily been removed while we investigate. We apologise for any inconvenience.

The only individuals and institutions named were 

• James Le Fanu (Author of “Why Us”)
• creationist blogger Denyse O’Leary 
• Expelled: No intelligence allowed. (The Film)

Who’s threatening to sue?

The full text of the article can be found here.

Dr. Scott Lively (USA), founder of Abiding Truth Ministries; Mr. Don Schmierer (USA) from International Healing Ministries; and Mr. Lee Brundidge (USA) an unqualified therapist have gone to Uganda in order to help kill, maim and imprison gay people.

When they return to the states it is understood that they will

• Use enforced therapy on young gay men and lesbians in an attempt to provoke their suicide.
• Work with legislators to segregate the individuals who propound a modern approach to sexuality and ensure that they are incarcerated.
• Insist on those parents within their control drugging and incapacitating their children if they do not obey rules.

At the event where they headlined (run by the Family Life Network in Uganda) efforts are being made to ensure the deaths and torture of gay people.

http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/09/Mar/0901.htm

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-11294.html

In Cairo on February 22nd a bomb was thrown from a hotel balcony into the crowd of tourists in the Khan el-Khalili bazaar below. It killed one 18 year old girl and injured at least about twenty others.

That evening I was still in Siwa and had gone out in the  for a coffee in the town square. I was met by a rush of local men waving their cell phones and almost in tears. The news of that explosion had reached Siwa by friends ringing each other and texting. We heard about it before it was on the news.

It reminded me of the last time I was in Egypt and gunmen had killed tourists outside Hatchepsut’s temple. The same anger and sorrow expressed partly because of the damage it did to the tourist indusrty but mostly from the sense of guests being abused.

“Please,” I was told,”Do not think anyone feels badly towards you. You are our guest. This is against all we believe in. We are so sorry!”

All over the street you could see men sitting on the kerb with their heads in their hands.

The following day I returned to Cairo and insisted with my fellow traveler in visiting the Khan el-Khalili market. Our guide was reluctant to take us. Too dangerous! We both felt that it was probably the safest place in the world.

What was usually a heaving mass of tourists was deserted. We were probably two among thirty or so who had made the choice to visit. Shopkeepers, usually hassling, were subdued and delighted to see us. I must have had twenty or more invitations to sit and drink tea with the firm statement “We are not selling today! Just sit and drink”

The picture above is my shadow over the restored pavement and railings. You can see the shiner slabs that had rrepaced those smashed by the explosion.

When the bomb went off the local waiters and staff ran TO the explosion, not away from it.

I phoned home to make sure everyone knew I was OK. The American news services were not even covering it. The reason? Maybe because the dead girl was French and the injured were German. No Americans were hurt!