Worthwhile Blog

My friend, Professor Mondo, has some excellent observations connected with the SotU address and a response by an Atlantic commentator.  Check it out:
http://profmondo.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/best-thing-ive-read-since-the-last-best-thing-i-read/
Something to think about.

The Road to Curmudgeonry?

Watched a live-stream evening of one-minute plays today.  I was struck by the paucity of human connection in the eighty or so one-minute moments that were dramatized.  The breadth of human experience was so limited that hysteria replaced genuine emotion and smug observations replaced genuine thought.  One might say that was the point, but if so, why not shorten the evening?  Fifteen minutes would have sufficed.  After watching ninety minutes of random observations I felt cheated.  I could have surfed television channels and have had a similar experience.  Hmm...maybe not.  I'd have turned off the set much sooner. 

It's been suggested that one-minute plays are theater haiku.  It's an intriguing idea.  To be fair, a couple of the plays did portray abbreviated human gestures that resonated.  But what I mostly saw was skit and satire.  Haiku are brush strokes: small moments of contrasting images and actions that reveal the world in new and often wondrous ways.  I savor a haiku--I don't rush through 80 of them at one sitting.  So here's hoping that these evenings are only a fleeting fad.