Time: Thu, 02-Aug-2001 06:06:43 GMT     IP: 208.50.104.90

in the earlier part of the spring season, there was a no shame 
in maibe theatre, which was videotaped. the cameras were kind of 
high tech and were being well monitored by a couple of people. 
halfway thru the show, they switched sides to get a different 
angle. does anyone remember this? more importantly, does anybody 
know what this was for?
i know this is kinda late to be inquiring about this, but i 
always figured it'd be brought up and explained by somebody 
else. it never was (to my knowledge). today, i remembered it 
all, so i thought i'd leave a post on the board to find out.
so yeah, anybody know?

Time: Thu, 02-Aug-2001 16:57:05 GMT     IP: 63.50.21.59

Nick,
Sorry, Sir, but you're dead wrong.  You need to read it again.  The 
exterior story (i.e. what happens, Cliff Notes style) of The Sound 
and the Fury is, I grant you, not much, but it couldn't be too much 
more involved without sacrificing the real story, the interiority; 
plot shouldn't be your reason for reading in the first place.  What 
great narrative authors have done from Melville to Conrad to 
Faulkner to McCarthy to Morrison to Gass is to model our world/life 
by isolating certain aspects of concern within a smaller 
(fictional) world so as to highlight them, (the Pequod in Moby Dick 
thus becomes, simultaneously, the mind, America, all of humanity, 
etc.).  This is basic to most fiction, from good to bad--Faulkner 
to Grisham--what separates the great from the herd is the breadth 
of experience a great author manages to contain within his/her 
model.  Why does Shakespeare have such repute? One reason might be 
that his plays model the world with greater detail and variety 
than, say, Fletcher, or Arthur Miller (not my favorite playwright).  
Faulkner details Yoknapatawpha County not only on a narrative axis 
but on psychological, sociological, sexual, racial, political, 
economoic axes etc. as well.  TSatF, Light in August, As I Lay 
Dying, Absalom, Absalom! as well as parts of The Hamlet -&- If I 
Forget Thee, Jerusalem, are about as concentrated as twentieth 
century consciousness gets; their models, in their richness, sing 
to the receptive reader of a unity in real life.

Nick, it's not that hard, he does play fair, and you do need to 
read it again, because I'm slavering to argue with you on this 
theme in person, and at great length too and with daemonic 
persistence, the minute I finish persuading Arlen that Shakespeare 
is a great writer too  (sigh).

Time: Thu, 02-Aug-2001 20:31:23 GMT     IP: 207.191.211.207

In Dan's opinion, everybody should read "The Sound and the Fury."

In my opinion, there should be a word in between 'making out' 
and 'fucking', so that the same term doesn't cover quick kisses 
and mutual frig sessions, and when a friend of mine says, " 
______ and I made out," then I can know "This is harmless" 
or "You're going to ruin your damn life." Nowadays, "making out" 
is an even more useless air-wasting goddamn phrase than the 
lamentably destroyed "What's up?".

In my opinion, there ought to be a painful rite of passage from 
adolescence to adulthood in American culture. Nothing is sadder 
than a fat bald American driving a red Ferrari while popping 
blood pressure meds.

In my opinion, that idiot in Italy who wants to make human 
clones should be forced to bear all the clones himself until he 
truly understands the pain of dozens of miscarriages, 
stillbirths, and infant deaths necessary to produce one sickly, 
malformed child who spends his entire short life under a media 
spotlight, dying before he truly understands why those nearby 
shun and fear him as a monster.

In my opinion, it's a sad copout to say these things here while 
I wear a tie and carry a briefcase and angle for power within 
the Democratic Party. I angle for power there by saying the 
things that everyone already agrees with at the exact time where 
I will look the most like someone exasperated by all the 
bullshit and argument. Hey, it took me a year to go from guy off 
the street to State Committeeperson and County Financial Chair. 

James is crabby today.

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 16:43:29 GMT     IP: 198.214.102.190

Always good to listen to your brain in words, J.C.

You should all check out the Austin No Shame. The show is coming 
along quite well.

Shannon McCormick

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 19:07:05 GMT     IP: 209.212.82.162


Aw, heck, man. I agree with your opinion, but I disagree fairly 
wholeheartedly with your argument. Maybe it's a little snippy to 
cut and paste, but I'm just going to do it this one time:

JC (it is you, right, JC?) says:
"What great narrative authors have done from Melville to Conrad 
to Faulkner to McCarthy to Morrison to Gass is to model our 
world/life by isolating certain aspects of concern within a 
smaller (fictional) world so as to highlight them, (the Pequod in 
Moby Dick thus becomes, simultaneously, the mind, America, all of 
humanity, etc.)"
And JC is smart as fuck, so I listened to him. But this time, I 
take issue. I would argue that the above statement is true only 
wit the revision "what _academic critics of_ great narrative 
authors..." I don't think Faulkner deliberately made his 
Yoknapatawpha County a model of anything but _maybe_ a larger, 
similarly troubled southern United States in the first draft. I'm 
willing to concede that he _might_ have finished the first draft, 
analyzed it himself and seen the allegory embedded therein, and 
then went on to accentuate that allegory (those allegories) in 
subsequent rewrites. But I think the bulk of what JC discusses -- 
with respect to Faulkner and Moby Dick and whatnot -- is a 
product of academic analysis, and not deliberate invention on the 
part of the authors. It's akin to the process of psychoanalysis; 
the doctor realizes that the patient is reenacting his stunted 
relationship with his parents in liason after unsuccessful 
romantic liason, but all the patient knows is that he keeps 
dumping his girlfriends after three months. In the same way, 
Faulkner's subconcious anxieties/convictions about the South come 
out in The Sound and the Fury, but when he wrote it I suspect 
that he was just thinking about screwing with narrative, 
reinventing traditional sentence structure, ripping off The 
Catcher in the Rye (a book that would be written twenty years 
later, clever devil) for Quentin's Harvard scenes, etc.

(This is getting long.) Why do I say this? Because I write a lot, 
and I used to do so in a university setting, where I got heavy 
theory and analysis both before and I after I wrote stuff. Have 
you ever tried to write a scene by sitting down beforehand, 
deciding who the two (say) characters are, what they want in the 
scene, and why they can't both get it? The resultant piece 
of "writing" sucks ass -- or at least it always does when I try 
to do it that way. Structural, character, formal and allegorical 
analysis comes after the first draft is written, at the very 
earliest. Otherwise, your theory trips you up somewhere along the 
line, and you stop having fun, and you pay attention to what 
you're saying and not what you're writing, and all of a sudden 
you're Bertolt Brecht. If you're lucky.

Now, is Faulkner's prose masturbatory? I don't think so, because 
I happen to like it and ergo I think it works. Joyce, on the 
other hand, is a wanker. This is a purely arbitrary aesthetic 
decision on my part, but I stand by it. (Also, I get the feeling 
that Faulkner loves his characters -- even the jerks. I feel the 
same way about Barthelme, whom Mose got me to read a few months 
ago. Joyce, on the other hand, seems to be stricken not with 
hatred for the world -- which I can get into, passion, you know --
 but rather just distaste. That turns me the hell off real fast. 
Plus, he's writing essentially about himself in Portrait of the 
Artist, which I always hate in a bildungsroman.)

Coming full-circle, then, I would argue that Shakespeare is 
better than Arthur Miller for reasons pretty much the opposite of 
why JC likes him better. I think when you read a Miller play -- 
particularly Death of a Salesman, which is arguably his Big One --
 you know exactly what he's writing About. He's writing About 
alienation and depression and the essential futility of modern 
life (let's say. Everybody thinks he's writing about something 
different, but they always think he's writing about a particular 
thing, which is my point.) You can picture old Archie at his 
typewriter, realizing how he's writing About these things and 
thinking about it the whole time, and thus making his play a 
little more simplistic and a little less rich and real as a 
result. But Shakespeare, with a few notable exceptions, is a lot 
harder to ascribe motivations to. Who knows what the fuck A 
Midsummer Night's Dream is About? This is how you know it's good 
I think. (On second thought, maybe this is exactly JC's argument -
- the complete model of a world theory. Still stands that Miller 
can bite me.) Shakespeare is good because he writes great scenes 
and interesting characters and far-out ideas that seem perfectly 
legitimate and uncontrived when he executes them. The other 
stuff -- the symbolism, the larger meaning -- is for the 
spectators in the writing game. We should worry about how he's 
doing things, not the larger What he's doing.

Morrison? Tell me you don't mean Tony Morrison in the same 
sentence as those other folks.

Dan

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 20:05:14 GMT     IP: 216.243.220.117

Dan:

I agree with your statement about Joyce only this far. You can't 
see how far I'm gesturing, and that's probably a good thing for 
our friendship. Joyce is not full of distaste for the world! 
Reread Ulysses, and you will discover what I discovered when I 
was 16 (footnote: as a result, I was not discovering girls at 
that time, which probably would have been much healthier for me)- 
namely, that the average person has no greater advocate and 
passionate student than James Joyce. Ulysses is a paean of 
triumph and a revelation of the heroism and beauty in the most 
meaningless and trivial of gestures or lives. The closest I have 
come to heaven on this, God's Earth, is with Joyce on my lap 
beneath a stately oak. (Get your mind out of the gutter.)

James

-ostpay iptscray: And I find Faulkner is vastly improved if you 
imagine you're overhearing him muttering drunkenly to himself in 
some dingy bar.

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 21:18:15 GMT     IP: 63.50.21.2

Dan-
I think you misunderstood me or, more likely, I was writing so fast 
I didn't express myself very well; anyway, you and I are in 
complete agreement about everything.  I did NOT and do NOT mean 
that any author worth anything is sifting for theme ahead of the 
writing; by "model" I just mean that all narrative worlds must, 
necessarily, exclude 99% of the world, or else exceed, length-wise, 
transencyclopedic tedium.  So that the world of any book must be a 
mini-me to the doctor evil that is life.  Anyway, by model I didn't 
mean allegory (yawn) though I can see how I seemed to imply that.  
The point is, that in writers like Bill Shakes or Bill Faulks, the 
whole world comes at the reader instead of some single lousy notion 
(all notions, all beliefs, all ideas, all opinions, this one 
included, being lousy and the lousier when alone).  Your 
distinction of Miller writing ABOUT things vs. Shakespeare's just 
gobbling up what fits inside his lips is a better way of stating 
what I meant.

Yes I meant Toni Morrison.  She's uneven as all get out (can't 
stand Jazz, for instance), but have you read Sula? Wow.  However, 
we're one-for-one, I suspect, as I can't stand J.D. Salinger.  Glad 
you are one of the three in the country besides myself who read and 
appreciate William Gass.  I'm not so hard on Joyce:  genius, yeah, 
but he does get on my nerves, does wear out his welcome fast, and I 
have no pressing desire to spend three months rereading Finnegan's 
Wake anytime soon.  I don't think you can dismiss him, though; 
Faulkner acknowledged him as a master.

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 22:23:03 GMT     IP: 152.163.201.48

Barthelme? I have to vote yuck on Barthelme. I read his version 
of Snow White in the terrible lit class I took last summer, and 
I hated it. I just wasn't drawn in at all by it. Perhaps that's 
the idea of "pomo" fiction, but I don't think it matters if the 
readers simply doesn't like the story, and I didn't. Of course, 
I hated that class in general and spent most of that summer 
drunk, so that might have something to do with it.

Anybody wanna move to LA with me?

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 22:26:23 GMT     IP: 209.184.1.45

So we can surmise that the three people in the U.S. who have read 
Gass besides J.C. are me, Dan Brooks, and William Gass.

Time: Fri, 03-Aug-2001 22:28:43 GMT     IP: 209.184.1.45

Skip Barthelme's novels. He's much better in 3 page doses. I 
recommend both 60 and 40 Stories. 60 is slightly better, although 
it doesn't contain "The Palace at 4 A.M." nor "At the Tolstoy 
Museum."

That is all.

Time: Sat, 04-Aug-2001 00:38:41 GMT     IP: 207.191.211.207

Oh, and once you've read Barthelme you can skip Mark Leyner, who 
is basically a shallower yuppie version of Barthelme. And once 
you've read my pieces in the archives, you can stop attending 
theater altogether, because that's just all there is anymore. 
Except for Dan. And once you've kissed a lady of Paris, you 
realize you've never been kissed at all.

Time: Sat, 04-Aug-2001 06:01:54 GMT     IP: 24.6.203.142

Time: Sat, 04-Aug-2001 21:50:11 GMT     IP: 205.244.160.123

ljtynmk thzknk trprt?  nr asflkda ghrfds fqqprbb?  nhjtkhvl 
ntoxxlkdfs bvyttdw nvtrwq william gass!!!

-rtyfsdls

Time: Sun, 05-Aug-2001 23:35:14 GMT     IP: 64.12.106.21

ljtynmk thzknk trprt?  nr asflkda ghrfds fqqprbb?  nhjtkhvl 
ntoxxlkdfs bvyttdw nvtrwq william gass!!!

-rtyfsdls

Man, who let the Klingons leave a message?

Time: Mon, 06-Aug-2001 16:40:32 GMT     IP: 205.244.161.234

:Man, who let the Klingons leave a message?

Your racial bigotry is not appreciated here, Michael.

Time: Tue, 07-Aug-2001 01:18:23 GMT     IP: 205.244.161.64

::Man, who let the Klingons leave a message?

:Your racial bigotry is not appreciated here, Michael.


Speak for yourselfers.  I am one  pleased for a change to see 
some No Shame board racial bigotry  .   

Time: Tue, 07-Aug-2001 17:26:57 GMT     IP: 216.243.220.117

Hey, I'll have you know that Chris Okiishi and I consistently 
disparaged the writing of the white people at No Shame. And the 
Klingons, for that matter.

"kHe TAch! mAs chu HOCH lib!"
"HCH! !chU oo! ARKH ARKH ARKH ARKH!"

The trope is a sine qua non of hackneyed predictability, the pace 
is forced, delivery stilted, and worst of all, the author coerces 
us into enjoying this along with him by writing in a pause for 
laughter and by firing a disruptor at random into the audience. 

Time: Wed, 08-Aug-2001 20:00:46 GMT     IP: 128.255.111.184

My teacher tells me that blue-eyed people are slower, stupider and 
smellier than brown-eyed people. Also, blue-eyed people caused the 
deaths of six million brown eyed people. 
Leave the klingons alone.
Fight the real enemy.
Sinead O'Connor.

Time: Sun, 12-Aug-2001 05:22:43 GMT     IP: 205.244.161.249

So here I am thinking, geez, I feel groggy and gross.  I 
remember seeing a fruit juice machine accross the street.  
That would hit the spot.  So I grab $1.25 in change and head 
over there, only to find that the machine is out of everything 
but orange strawberry banana, which sounds good, but 
costs $1.75.  So I head back to my place, grab a dollar bill 
and make my way back to the machine.  I buy the stuff and 
out comes a bottle of startlingly transluscent fluid.  Hmm, 
thinks I, even when very settled, the juices of oranges, 
bananas and strawberries ought to look pulpier than this.  I 
shake the bottle with a ridiculous amount of force, but the 
opacity doesn't change.  I try it and it tastes awful, then I read 
the ingredients and find it's mostly water and high fructose 
corn syrup.  I just paid $1.75 for corn syrup.  I had to whine to 
somebody.

Time: Sun, 12-Aug-2001 16:26:54 GMT     IP: 24.4.252.103

Arlen Lawson's idea for a band "The Dickens" which he has been 
trying to crank-start since I met him is already the name of a 
country-rock band with record contracts and discs-on-shelves.  
The real Dickens is worse than Arlen-playing-guitar-in-my-living-
room-Dickens, though. Kudros to Arlen Dickens.

I don't post because I don't have an Internet in my house. My 
mom does though.

      Rev. Chris Stangl @ mom's house dot com

Time: Thu, 16-Aug-2001 01:35:02 GMT     IP: 216.248.127.175

I'm a recent graduate of Player's Workshop of the Second City in 
Chicago and am looking for an improv troupe to hook up with in 
the Iowa City area. Any ideas or suggestions or offers? Have 
been trained in all forms of improv, individual, long-form, 
short-form, musical, serious... Contact me if you have any 
information or interest. Thanks- Josh Crawford

Time: Sat, 18-Aug-2001 00:57:04 GMT     IP: 209.212.82.162

Reverend Chris Stangl? I'll have you know that there's this chick 
on the Lower East Side who does specious performance "art" and 
calls herself Reverend Jen. She wears elf ears everywhere -- even 
when she's just walking around, and not doing masturbatory solo 
stuff on stage -- and she has this lisp that makes me want to 
build a time machine and leave her infant body in a dumpster even 
more. Also, she did this thing at PS 122 called Avant-Garde-
Arama, in which we showcase "new and emerging" (read: not very 
good) artists,  and she didn't show up for her tech rehearsal, 
and when she performed it turned out to be a half-improvised 
teletubbies pardoy anyway, and for God's sakes the teletubbies 
aren't even an overdone cliche anymore, they're just forgotten, 
and I don't even bother to capitalize them even, and yesterday 
was my birthday so today being Friday my boss filled me full of 
whiskey and there's this married girl here at work who's real 
cute and maybe she's going to leave her husband and she keeps 
flirting with me, not just talking but really _flirting_, in the 
weight-shiftingest, used-to-be-a-modern-dancerest sort of way, 
and what is Reverend Jen mildly famous for on the Lower East Side 
besides being mildly famous, because Christ, I think she just 
bought her whole ouevre at the Halloween store. I still 
capitalize Halloween, because it has some relevance to our modern 
lives. No apostrophe, though, on account of anachronistic.

Hi guys. My play is doing good out here. Well! Well! Please sign 
me to your literary agency.

Dan

Time: Sun, 19-Aug-2001 06:31:46 GMT     IP: 65.100.180.24

Hey guys, I finally regained access to a computer.  The Rockies 
won by a landslide today, which doesn't happen much because 
they're last in the division.  Other than that, the Denver scene 
is the same as it always is.  But if any of you are in town, some 
friends and I should be doing a little show at Stella's coffEE 
House Tuesday night.  We'll be performing under the name of 
Chasing Santa (like Chasing Amy but a little more mythological).

By the way, does anyone know when No Shame is starting up again?

Time: Mon, 20-Aug-2001 05:02:17 GMT     IP: 205.188.193.33

Last night I somehow became filled with cider and vodka, walked 
out into a driving rainstorm and waited for God to take me. He 
didn't.

Have you met with any agents yet? They are a sneaky bunch, aren't 
they. Much like the woman you speak of.

Time: Mon, 20-Aug-2001 21:03:08 GMT     IP: 205.244.162.211

Here it is, the official announcement: No Shame will make its 
return on Friday, September 7th, at 11:00pm in Theatre B. As 
usual, pieces will be taken in the lounge beginning at 10:30.

Also, No Shame is taking part in the Weeks of Welcome festival 
this year, and on Friday, August 31st, at 9:30pm, there will be 
a free outdoor mini-No Shame.  The show will take place in 
Blackhawk Square on the Ped Mall (next to The Den), and will 
last 30-45 minutes.  Unlike a true No Shame, however, the 
writers for this show have all been predetermined. So, unless 
you've been asked to do so, don't show up with a piece and try 
to get into the show! Sorry.

Any questions?  See you soon.

Balls

Time: Wed, 22-Aug-2001 05:46:39 GMT     IP: 205.188.199.23

Have you guys ever seen real live amateur improv theatre?  Well 
then you are all in for a big damn treat!  The University of 
Iowa's Weeks of Welcome staff proudly presents the No Shame 
Theatre Amateur Improv Ensemble Troupe Posse!!!  NSTAIETP  No 
Shame is even rawer and more unpredictablerer than regular No 
Shame!  So bring your witless suggestions to yell from the crowd 
and prepare to split your sides, because we're live, poorly lit, 
and using stand up microphones!!

Time: Thu, 23-Aug-2001 12:43:19 GMT     IP: 128.255.202.213

this is a joke, i assume?

Time: Thu, 23-Aug-2001 15:33:59 GMT     IP: 128.255.107.165

Never assume. When you do, you make an ass out of u and me. On the 
same token, never joke. When you do, you make a j out of o and ke. 

charky

Time: Thu, 23-Aug-2001 17:09:15 GMT     IP: 205.244.162.42

"Some Dumb Lady" (who has a suspiciously familiar email address) 
is parodying the posters all over downtown advertising the WOW! 
edition of No Shame, because on those posters No Shame is 
described as being "amateur improv performances."  Rest assured, 
that will not be the case.  But seeing as how nothing sounds 
funnier or more interesting than amateur improv, we're expecting 
a huge turnout.  Better watch your back, IC Improv!  

Thought the live, poorly lit, stand up microphones part is all 
pretty accurate.

Balls

Time: Thu, 23-Aug-2001 22:33:16 GMT     IP: 128.255.199.216

is this the famous half man/half shark "charky" from "cabin boy?"

Time: Fri, 24-Aug-2001 18:24:11 GMT     IP: 64.12.105.59

"But seeing as how nothing sounds funnier or more interesting 
than amateur improv..."

I must disagree, and add that amateur improv is basically the 
worst thing that's ever happened to theatre, besides magical 
realism.

I got a job today! 

Time: Fri, 24-Aug-2001 22:51:20 GMT     IP: 24.6.203.142

I think that you are not disagreeing with anybody, Roth.  I am 
pretty sure it was sarcasm.  I think magical realism can be 
wonderful.

Time: Mon, 27-Aug-2001 06:13:04 GMT     IP: 128.255.202.213

So, the No Shame show on the 31st is at 9:30, right?

Is it on the same stage as the KRUI bands? If so, I thought 
those bands get over at 8. So, what's in between the bands and 
No Shame. It'd be cool if No Shame could get all those left-over 
indie rock kids as audience members... since they'd be into what 
No Shame does (i.e. No Shame is Indie Rock Theatre).

Time: Mon, 27-Aug-2001 15:58:36 GMT     IP: 128.255.109.175

You're right, Foop. Magical realism can be wonderful. I think what 
Roth was trying to say was that amateur improv is the worst thing 
that's happened to theatre, besides Firebugs. 

Time: Mon, 27-Aug-2001 16:03:56 GMT     IP: 128.255.109.175

So two of my room/mates have a morning show on KRUI, that's 89 
with a 7 at the end of it on your favorite radio dial. The name 
of their radio show, which plays 7am on Monday mornings is "The 
Continuing Adventures of Captain Cereal and his Breakfast 
Brigade." Seeing as how this title is a lot to remember, they 
needed a catchy theme song to go along with the show. That's 
where Nozebone stepped in. We wrote a catchy theme song for "The 
Continuing Adventures of Captain Cereal and his Breakfast 
Brigade," which can be heard on 89.7 KRUI at 7am Monday mornings, 
if you are so inclined to listen, you incliner you. Oh, the name 
of our catchy theme song? "The Continuing Adventures of Captain 
Cereal and his Breakfast Brigade."

Markus Markus Ted -&- Alice

Time: Tue, 28-Aug-2001 06:50:29 GMT     IP: 205.188.193.168


You're right, Foop. Magical realism can be wonderful. I think 
what Roth was trying to say was that amateur improv is the worst 
thing that's happened to theatre, besides Firebugs.  

Uh oh. Flamed by someone who won't even leave their name. Pardon 
me while I vomit in fear.

Firebugs wasn't the worst thing that's happened to theatre. It 
was just a show that didn't turn out so good. Sort of like 
Mallrats.

Time: Tue, 28-Aug-2001 12:18:09 GMT     IP: 24.4.166.160

In the Daily Iowan's University Edition section, page 59, "high 
and dry" article, they state that No Shame takes place on Fridays 
at 10pm.  If someone were to call they could request that the DI 
print a correction which includes the correct time AND informs 
people that it doesn't start till next week.  Just a thought..  
That way you'd be spreading correct information while getting 
even more free press.

-Adam

Time: Fri, 31-Aug-2001 07:27:04 GMT     IP: 128.255.202.213

hello - to anyone who is interested, i've got a new web page. if 
you wanna' smell it, go to "who's who at no shame" on the main 
page and click on my name. it'll take you right there! that's 
technology for you. 

or you can just go to "www.angelfire.com/ia2/paulrust" and see 
it that way.

i plan on doing semi-regular updates (knock on wood-like 
material), so it maybe something you want to keep checking on in 
the future. 

p.s. i hope ms. clarke doesn't mind that i used her dad's photo 
on my page. if it's a problem, i'll find a way to kill myself.