Jefe's House

A look at how Christians behave on sacred ground:

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From Youtube’s lefthandedart.  “A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later  caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him. I told him that I hoped it did not ruin his day.”

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Now for sale, Jefe’s Rubber Crosses for Rubber KKKhristians. They Bend! Collect all 4. Celtic, Latin, St. Anthony’s and Patriarchal!  

1. ’You shall have no other gods before Me.’

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2. ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image — any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’  

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3. ’You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.’
 

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4. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’
Except for skipping church to honor our Lord at a protest, like on Sunday, August 22, 2010.

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5. ’Honor your father and your mother.’
Just don’t honor anyone else’s fathers and mothers, especially the dozens of Muslim civilians who worked in the Twin Towers and were killed on 9/11, plus at least 8 (continue reading…)

This private school entrance is also spatially not in service. I checked.  But when they get it fixed I’m outta here.

“Hi Gangters of Plein Sud Guess What!! We are not moving from this spot.”

I stumbled upon some real-life street theatre in Tribeca this summer and wrote about it for the New York Press.  It’s this week’s cover story, To Kebab and  Conquer, about a street fight between a scrappy halal cart vendor and a highbrow restaurateur.

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 Here’s the online version.  Enjoy.

New York Magazine weighs in.

How Serge Becker treats his neighbors and customers.

Gawker writer Brian Moylan trashes Vogue editor Anna Wintour for trying to run Serge Becker out of town on a rail and for saying of him, rightfully (and I speak from first-hand experience), “I know the kind of places he’s involved in and the kind of people that he brings.”  Like I said, she’s exactly right, and he’s been getting away with it and will continue to do so for years.  Follow the [bribe] money.  Becker has a long history of utter disregard and contempt for his neighbors and a pattern providing employment opportunities and hangouts for unrepentant drug addicts and hoodlums. His establishments are little more than glammed up crack houses.  Don’t take my word for it, do your own homework.  

I hate it when a jackass hipster posing as a journalist describes the residents of a neighborhood as “pesky” for not wanting their blocks turned into eternal street parties and crack dens for his over-privileged moron friends.    Damn you, pesky citizens, for not rolling over and playing dead so coke-addled, pretentious suburban kids can live out their NYC glam fantasies and turn your residential block into a shithole.  

Wintour’s dead right about Becker and the crowd he runs with — convicted drug dealers, thugs, crackheads, crooks  – and that’s just the front-of-house staff.  Becker hand picks scum like this to be the public face of La Esquina, then wonders why no one wants him in their neighborhood? Gee Serge, what gives?   Wintour and her Greenwich Village neighbors might be “tony” but that doesn’t mean everyone who wants Becker’s slime pits shut down is in her same income bracket, so stop making sweeping generalizations.  Maybe she just doesn’t want to see her neighbors beaten, dragged, manhandled and have lit cigarettes tossed in their faces. 

Where do you live, Moylan? Please tell us so we can come by and party Becker-style outside your place, ‘k? No complaints, now, junior, or we’ll brand you a NIMBY.

Take that, commerce.  I love a theatre company that practices what it preaches, and the wonderful folks at The Collective have done it again.  I first became aware of this creative, inventive, smart, political, funny, driven, earnest bundle of talent a few years ago when I met member Lisa Kicielinski at Naked Angels’ tuesdays@nine reading series; since that time they’ve done two in-house readings of my works-in-progress UFOs Over Brooklyn and The Great Age as a personal favor to help me out in my creative process, and allowed my award-winning short film Lady in a Box to ride their coattails into the Global Awareness Project’s Strand Film Festival shown on the IMAX screen in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Their stage productions  usually have brief runs at this point, like bright bottle rockets going off in New York’s ocean of indie theatre while they continue to get their sea legs. If you’re having trouble navigating that vast sea, the Collective are a terrific port in the storm.

They often write and produce their own works in film and theatre, and sometimes produce modern classics by others like this Frank MGuiness play up there on the left.  There will only be 12 performances of this play, scattered throughout the summer, but here’s the truly unorthodox part that brings a tear to my jaundiced eye:  half of the tickets for each show will be given away. 

 ”In a struggling economy, art is both undervalued and underfunded,” said Collective member Kevin Kane.  “We want to make quality professional theater available to all. We want to have no empty seats.  To the struggling student, to the theater lover who has been priced out and to the first timer who can’t afford to fall in love, we say that we would rather perform for you for free than to have one empty seat in the house.”

Playwright McGuiness has allowed the group a special arrangement to produce his play. You can take part in the campaign by

• BUYING an $18.00 ticket and seeing the show. Simple enough.  Go here to purchase:  Smartixx

and/or

• SENDING A DESERVING STRANGER to see the show by DONATING a tax deductible $18.00. Follow the instructions for how to donate here: NO EMPTY SEATS

or

• SEEING IT FOR FREE WITHOUT BUYING ANYTHING if you cannot afford a ticket.  The work in this play has merit, this play’s message is relevant, resonant and important.  Don’t miss it. Order a free ticket and pay nothing for it.  Smartixx

This is high level theater at low level prices.  The play opens one week from today, next Thursday, June 17th.

Help them kick it off the right way by buying one ticket for yourself and one ticket for a stranger.

I really need a smartphone but in the meantime here’s some bad cell phone footage of Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff, both of them astounding guitar virtuosi, at Michael “Knitting Factory” Dorf’s City Winery last night.  Scottsman Al Stewart (Time Passages, Year of the Cat, oh but there’s so much more to this brilliant songwriter) is holding his own at 64,  still an unbelievable guitar player with a boyish, elfin voice that sounds exactly like it did 40 years ago. He’s also a hilarious, energetic wisecracker who chews up the stage, and a high end wine dealer when he’s not on tour.  Who knew?

I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don’t know why you should feel
That there’s something to learn
It’s just a game that you play

If you’re spending summer in NYC consider this 8-week, non-evaluative summer course.  This lecture and workshop class in dramatic writing and theatre history covers the exact same content I teach to undergrads in a 3-credit, full semester course.  You’ll write a lot, you’ll learn a lot, you’ll have fun.  Click to learn more and enroll.  Operators are totally standing by.

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Originally posted 3/12/10 by jefevonstanley on MediaElites.com.

 Fellow New Yorker:

Originally posted 3/10/10 by jefevonstanley on MediaElites.com.

Rachel Corrie

Theatre changes nothing, but at least it changes that. The BBC reports that the Rachel Corrie murder trial is finally underway in Israel. Well, okay, it’s a civil suit but still. Never heard of her?

Seven years ago, idealistic human rights activist Rachel Corrie, a Seattle native, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer on the Gaza Strip. Four years ago this month, the US premiere of the play based on Corrie’s poignant if naive political and philosophical ruminations, My Name is Rachel Corrie, was canceled by New York Theatre Workshop. The play, pieced together by actor Alan “Severus Snape” Rickman and Guardian editor Katharine Viner, had had a successful run in London in 2005.

NYTW’s PR nightmare began when conflicting reasons were given for the cancellation. Had they merely postponed it due to scheduling difficulties, or was it canceled because they’d consulted with New York City religious leaders who’d insisted the play was anti-Semitic and incendiary so they chickened out of premiering it? Hard to believe; after all, this was the organization that brought us Shopping and Fucking. Then again that play featured Philip Seymour Hoffman, so if he was bugged by the cancellation (see below) then maybe something was up after all. 

Continued here – http://mediaelites.com/2010/03/10/rachel-corries-ghost-gets-her-day-in-court.

Originally posted 3/4/10 by jefevonstanley on MediaElites.com.

Mark Stansberry's hoping Puddin can bring home the bacon.

So I’m on the 3 train yesterday morning creeping towards Brooklyn when a guy comes on around Chambers Street with, “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen…” which I would have immediately tuned out except he was right in front of me. Turns out he’s not soliciting donations nor is he part of a haggard, hat-passing do-wop quartet. He’s an animator and filmmaker. No wonder he’s broke.

He explains that he’s created a “kid and family friendly” cartoon called Puddin, (“Pictured here,” he said, gesturing grandly to his professionally silk-screened Puddin t-shirt), about a little girl growing up in Brooklyn in the early ’70s. He’s got a duffle bag full of DVDs containing six brief episodes, “and these are not flash animations, these are not computer generated, they are hand drawn by my colleagues and me. Over 25,000 hand drawings…” This filmmaker-huckster’s name is Mark Stansberry.

Long story short I dug up a Washington and bought one of the Stansberry-autographed Ghett-O-Gram Films (yes) discs and checked it out.  Continued at http://mediaelites.com/2010/03/04/roll-over-fat-albert-tell-charlie-brown-the-news-70s-rb-meets-childrens-animation-in-puddin/