How long has it been?

I was watching television last night, a common pleasure I rarely get to indulge in. In truth there wasn't a damn thing on, except I did remember that I hadn't seen the latest installment of entourage so I brought that up and watched it.

But it was later when I was watching Boston Legal on ION tv that I began to think about the demise of broadcast journalism, and the protections journalists should enjoy from the constitution, but don't anymore.

I have to wonder when the campaign started to eliminate those protections and who thought that letting capitalism dictate what goes on the air was a good idea.

I have to wonder who owns Ion tv, it appears at first glance that NBC/Universal does, but the local affiliate shows a LOT of Pat Robertson, (dangerous) and I notice quite a few commercials for mail order albums for Jesus freaks. (still love that term)

The news is now run through a sanitizer and our ignorance is celebrated in that someone else gets to decide what we can handle and what we can't. It's not the United States anymore. And sadly our populace is so ignorant they don't know it. They're of a generation that never knew real freedom of the press.

Yes, there are a lot of nut jobs here on the Internet but I stand here ready to defend their right to rant about whatever imagined or completely untrue injustice they think needs to be addressed that day. It seems the only way to keep this much maligned bastion of freedom.

But it too is being slowly and quietly manipulated by the "communications" giants.

I've noticed recently that searches take me to more and more commercial websites and not the private sites and/or blogs. They're selling us something and Time Warner, Comcast, et al are helping them.

Unfortunately, it seems that there is no champion extant to save us from our consuming selves.

Surely all our educators aren't willing to tolerate the status quo and are instilling in their students some sense of the wrongs that must be righted in the current culture.

I hope so.

Yesterday i started to lecture a class I'd never taught before and I could see on their faces that they'd probably rather die than listen to another word. The lecture was about playwriting.

I can only take so much when i finally hit the wall.

I stopped the lecture, "Ok, look I see that you are just hanging on my every word as though I were some sage theatre guy who can impart wisdom you simply can't live without, well, those of you who are still awake anyway. So I say let's let your regular instructor pick up with the lecture when he returns next week. This week we're doing something different. We're gonna write a play."

Horrified looks all around.

"I have this idea for a series of one-acts. The central theme is stairs. That's it, that's all I got, let's go."

After a minute or two they slowly started asking questions like, "What do you mean, all the plays have stairs in them? Are they the same stairs? Are they inside or outside?"

And we have lift-off.


We wrote very little, but what we managed to do was brainstorm several one-acts into existence. The stairs are outside, they're in front of an apartment building, as time progresses different tenants and passersby use these stairs both for walking and for sitting, and their lives, or at least snippets of them are seen by the audience.

It was soo much more fun and engaging than me droning on for 75 minutes. In fact we were still talking when the next class showed up and we had to leave. That's teaching in my estimation, not regurgitation.

Stimulating minds to actually think hopefully encourages them to make it a habit, and to stand up and fight some of that control the "communications" companies are exerting over their minds.

I have to wonder if they'll take some of that excitement with them and use it to undo some of the damage that's been done to the freedoms this country thought it enjoyed previously. I hope so.

And so it goes:

Love