Consider yourself when you aim to be amused or otherwise moved by a performance. You sit back. The expression on your face says “entertain me.” You are passive; you let it wash over you, whether the _it_ is actors on the stage, or television characters, or whatever. If you grow bored you can turn it off, or look down and examine your cuticles, or yawn loudly.

Now consider yourself facing a very different kind of performance: someone trying to sell you something. Much is the same. They clamor for your attention. You may or may not be amused. But the stakes are raised, because the seller, unlike an actor, has a very concrete goal in mind (for you to buy something) instead of the nebulous goal of entertaining you, and you have a concrete choice (whether to spend) instead of a nebulous one (whether to Be Entertained).

You could say that “Pferdwackür’s Vampire Nutcracker”:http://www.pferdzwackur.com/ is about taking these two types of performance and smashing them headlong into each other. But the play is far more subtle and weird than a bland critique of American consumerism, or even a wry commentary on it, because the actors _actually want you to buy things_. If you show up at any of the remaining performances this weekend — and you should — it’ll be fun, but it’ll also force you to choose whether to spend real money for a jar of Frabjous Elixir or a fuzzy knockoff of the Book of Secrets. You will have to decide whether you are being entertained, or hucksterized, or both. In a way I’m diluting the experience by telling you about it in advance, but I knew what was coming when I sat down and it was still a peculiar, engaging experience.

As to what the play is actual _about_, well, that’s hard to describe. The gaudy but gorgeous costumes, the green plumes of Seussian trees, and the gimcrackery of the 200 Machine will all resonate with anyone familiar with Matt Sahr’s other work: the surreal dance of Voice in Head, perhaps, or the adventures of the Candyman and Mr. Pointy. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Clod’s attempts to rescue his sister from a vampire that may or may not exist and may or may not be her real problem. Four fine young actors flit deftly among ten or so different roles. You’ll have to pay close attention to catch every nuance of the avalanche of words that the characters utter, but even when you find yourself completely lost to Sense, as it were, you can rest assured that there will always be Spectacle. For sheer delight, it’s hard to match a play where both stage and audience get inundated in a sea of bouncy rubber balls.

I suppose it’s in keeping with the play that I pass along a Helpful Consumer Tip: if you’re only going to buy one thing, buy yourself a Rubber Voodoo Man. The accompanying documentation is well worth the price all by itself.

So, to review: if you live in the area, you’re heading over to the “Baltimore Theatre Project”:http://theatreproject.org/ this weekend, Thursday-Saturday at 8:00, or Sunday at 3:00. Have a fine time, and whatever you do, don’t open the box.

“We got the bastard”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3317429.stm. This is definitely a long-overdue cause for celebration.

The news is best for the people of Iraq, because whatever else happens there, the possibility that he would somehow bide his time and make a comeback (after a humiliating U.S. withdrawal) is now gone. Also — and it’s scary that I even have to say this — it’s encouraging that his capture _didn’t_ coincide with a convenient event on the American political calendar. The capture is also good news for U.S. forces, many of which may be able to leave a little earlier now and under less embarrassing circumstances.

The down side is that, judging from the conditions under which he was found, it doesn’t seem likely that he’s been coordinating any of the insurgent activity that’s been going on. Which means that _other_ people have, and they’re obviously still around — though it’s possible that Saddam’s capture will demoralize them into irrelevance. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Now then: Where the deuce is Bin Laden? And where has he been all this time? It’d be nice if this development got us back on the real program, but I’m not holding my breath.

No, I’m not talking about the Bendis comic, but the TV show. It’s been around for a few years, but I’m only seven episodes into Season One, renting them through Netflix. This is how all television should be watched—all it takes is a bit of patience. Ever start watching a show that has promise, only to wish you hadn’t spent all the time when it turns out to suck later on? But if you’re willing to put up with a couple seasons’ worth of lag, you can rent DVDs of the good shows at your leisure, sans commercials, sans weeks of reruns waiting for a new episode.

For those who don’t know, Alias is an espionage thriller: one part grit, three parts nifty gadgets and exotic locales. It features the now-famous Jennifer Garner as Sidney Bristow, who works (at least in the first season) for SD-6, a spy operation that tells its employees that it’s part of the CIA even though it’s not. Sidney found this out and now she’s a double agent working for the CIA, so most of her adventures include countermissions that she must carry out under the noses of her colleagues. It’s just as convoluted as it sounds, and some of her missions are even more so. It’s great fun.

It is also a spy show only on the surface. Alias is, at heart, a tale about a superhero, and even one told in a comics style despite the fact that it’s on television.

The first, most obvious, and least important piece of evidence is this: Sidney Bristow has super powers. She doesn’t fly or shoot light beams out of her fingers, but she’s fluent in at least half a dozen languages so far, she’s a martial artist and a master of all manner of spycraft, and she’s only twenty-four or twenty-five years old. As befits a superhero tale, her colleagues have similar abilities. In one episode I recently saw, Dixon, her partner at SD-6, performs surgery in order to remove a bomb from someone’s chest cavity while in the back of an ambulance careening wildly down the streets of Sao Paolo. That sort of over-the-top derring-do is routine in Alias, and it has the same rip-roaring fun of a good James Bond flick. One thing that’s clear about these spies is that beyond just being extensively well-trained, they are a People Apart.

Much more importantly, though, Sidney has a secret identity, and the show is as much about the precarious balance between her secret work and her public life as it is about her spy missions. Screen time goes not just to the climactic defusing of the bomb but also to the issue of whether Sidney’s roommate’s boyfriend is cheating on her or not. Sidney is faced with the classic dilemma of responsibility that all superheroes face: she would like nothing more than to live a normal life, but without her help the good guys won’t be able to bring SD-6 (the guys who killed her fiance—a little dash o’ the revenge motif in there for good measure) down. A big part of what makes the show great is that Sidney isn’t a stoic spy like her father—she’s emotional, deeply vulnerable, even. The danger is not that her powers will fail her but that the pressure of her dual life will overwhelm her. In sum, she fits a classic superhero archetype cut straight from the cloth of Peter Parker.

A brief sideline: it’s those personal details that also hold the keys to the show’s demise. Heck, the show may already be going downhill and I just don’t know it yet because I’m a few seasons behind. The concept is brilliant but intrinsically difficult to sustain. If it turns out that one of Sidney’s close friends has actually been a spy all along, the show will have jumped the shark. If it turns out that her mother is actually alive, the show may have jumped the shark, depending on how they handle it.

Sidney’s character isn’t the only thing that reinforces Alias as a superhero tale. Both visually and structurally, the show resembles comics. I started to lose count of how many times the camera cut into slow motion to make the viewers focus not on the continuous action but a specific image: a panel, if you will. You’ll see what I mean if you sit and watch an episode with an eye open for how many times the camera lingers on a carefully-composed tableau, whether it’s the cityscape of the latest international hotspot or the new costume that Sidney herself is sporting. Structurally, the show’s continuous (as opposed to episodic) plot and cliffhanger endings are also reminiscent of comics, though of course those techniques are by no means limited to comics.

Several times while watching, I’ve been on the verge of rolling my eyes—at some unlikely development or improbable circumstance—when I said to myself: “Remember? It’s a superhero story.” And from that perspective it all made perfect sense again. I’m not saying you have to see it through that lens to enjoy it—it’s a fine show by any measure—but I’ve found it useful. A grudging admission is in order to everyone who pestered me to watch the show back when it was first on. (Especially Jonathan.) You were right. It’s good. But I’m still glad I waited for the DVD.

I periodically check my old, spam-riddled email address, just in case anything interesting comes through on it. Usually it’s just spam, but I don’t know whether to call this one spam or not. All the signs are there: a gobbledeegook freemail address as the source, and a long string of earthlink addresses with similar spellings visible in the “CC” field. But there’s no subject line, and here’s the entire body of the message:

brusque story slavonic admire midwinter asset delve incongruous
drain pistol beckon mangel dolomitic metallurgy corrodible clot elsie
lithic addend parsonage clinging pilferage tenneco wipe yin

How can it be spam if it’s not sending a message? Unless the message is _subliminal_. That could be it.

Or maybe it’s an ad for the OED.

Mick Jagger “has been knighted”:http://www.msnbc.com/news/1004306.asp?0cv=LB10 by the Queen.

Keith Richards “is criticizing”:http://www.cjad.com/content/cjad_news/article.asp?id=e120323A him for it.

Here’s the thing, Keith. As unthinkable as it would have been for Mick to be knighted in 1965, it’s not a big deal now. This isn’t because rock and roll has changed. It’s because society has changed. Rock _won_, dude. Quit complaining.

On the issue of who in Congress wants Charles Taylor captured, see also the Africa Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations. In the transcript (PDF) of their October 2 hearing, “U.S. Policy Toward Liberia,” it’s pretty clear that Chairman Royce (R-Orange County) has it in for Taylor and is eager to use Congressional muscle (such as it is) to get something done. I’m betting this is one of the only issues on which Royce and Kofi Annan will ever find themselves in agreement.

Take a moment and note the shoddy web design of the Committee’s web site. If I’m not mistaken that’s one of the Microsoft Frontpage default style templates that it’s sporting. And check out the portraits of the members: all grainy pictures, some of which have clearly been Photoshopped sloppily out of a larger group pic. Come on, people. You’re the United States Congress. You’re embarrassing us.

The only new wrinkle to the exile issue is that Interpol has issued a global notice for Taylor’s arrest. Nigeria has repeated its earlier statements that nothing short of a request from the Liberian government would prompt it to feed its guest to the wolves. But given Interpol’s vast resources and increased stature stemming from its role in the war on terrorism, it’s only a matter of time before President Obasanjo will have to relent.

Ha! That last bit was a joke. I can’t think of the last time I heard about Interpol in the news, which when you think about it is kind of odd when our current “war” must of necessity involve pursuing dangerous individuals and small groups across numerous nations and jurisdictions. Seems like they could be useful, but I’m sure the Bushies have as much interest in working with Interpol as they do with the U.N. I’m not sure how much use I’d have for them either, though: we’re talking about an organization where “football hooliganism” makes the front of their website as a top issue, not far from a press release bragging “Interpol joins Microsoft in fight against cybercrime.” Ah well. The upside about its being a body without a lot of power is that, well, would you really want a police force with worldwide jurisdiction and nebulous accountability having that much more power?

When it comes to Taylor, what they’ve done is issue a Red Notice, which is basically an arrest warrant without any intrinsic legal backing. This particular notice alerts the world to the fact that the Special Court in Sierra Leone wants Taylor. The interesting twist is that in Nigeria the notice does have some legal oomph, because the ECOWAS Convention on Extradition officially recognizes a Red Notice as an “official channel for transmitting requests for provisional arrest.”

I doubt anything will actually come of the Red Notice. What’s far more interesting to speculate about is whether U.S. pressure (specifically, pressure from guys like Royce and Wolf) helped to get it issued in the first place. Based on my complete lack of any sort of inside information, and my reliance on the poor man’s Lexis-Nexis, I’d have to say ‘no’, unfortunately.

Back in Liberia, the massive U.N. project to disarm the warring factions is facing resistance, including both riots and recent bloodshed in Monrovia. That first article contains this sentence: “Under the UN scheme, which is due to last nine months, the fighters will also be given counselling and vocational training.”

Counseling. Vocational training. You’re a 13-year-old from upcountry who is probably addicted to speed and has known nothing but killing since you were 8. You’ve probably committed atrocities that beggar description but that you have come to consider routine. I’m trying to picture just what the social worker might say to break the ice. Or just what vocation you might be suited for. About the only hopeful thing to say about the whole project is that doing nothing would be far worse.

UPDATE: Northbridge is still gunning for a chance to go get Taylor. Thanks to Ed Hand for spotting the news, a couple hours old.

In recent days I’ve been facing two dilemmas. As a father: how do I appease the appetite of friends and especially family for 1) updates on Ella’s life and 2) pictures, pictures, pictures? As a blogger: what do I do when the most obvious subject for blogwriting is my daughter and how utterly adorable she is — a subject bound to be of limited interest to the public at large?

The solution is “Cerin Amroth”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/, a weblog devoted exclusively to infancy, parenting, and Ella. It will be unapologetically Ella-focused, and therefore prone to effusive and even sentimental commentary on her life and activities. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, stick with Polytropos, which will remain the hard-hitting, no-nonsense bag of tricks you’ve come to expect. Not that this blog will be Ella-free, of course: I’ll be sure to cross-post those entries that I deem to have sufficiently broad interest. While the new blog’s main audience will be family and friends, and it won’t actively seek out a broader readership, my hope is that its quality will at least be _worthy_ of such a readership. So: feel free to check it out.

Everybody’s talking cover songs. Or, they were a few days ago. I’m not just the guy who’s late to the party; I’m the guy who shows up after everyone’s left and the hosts are trying to clean up but feel obligated to sit down and have one more drink that they don’t really want with this bozo who has no sense of timing. One advantage to this is that I can limit to myself to covers nobody has mentioned yet.

Not surprisingly, Unqualified Offerings is (was) Covertalk Central, with entries “here”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_11_30.html#004766, “here”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_11_30.html#004769, “here”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_12_07.html#004774, and “here”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2003_12_07.html#004780. Here are my additions to the heap:

*New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”, by Frente* — Just one acoustic guitar and Angie Hart’s lovely, lilting voice. The band is long-since defunct, and it’s not like they had all that many good songs, but this one was groovy.

*Paul Simon’s “Boy in the Bubble”, by The Blue Aeroplanes* — This one _has_ been mentioned — Henry of “Crooked Timber”:http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000953.html beat me to it, even as I was _so_ sure it was going to be my ace in the hole that nobody but nobody would think of. Henry notes that that album, _Beatsongs_, is OOP and darn hard to find, so I’m kicking myself twice for selling it a few years back. Let me give a shout-out to anyone else who remembers the Dutch Mother Underground doing _their_ cover of the Aeroplanes’ cover of this song, at a couple of shows at The Intersection in Grand Rapids circa 1992.

*Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, by Cake* — Why has no one else mentioned this?? Is it honest ignorance, or some hoity-toity impulse that fails to recognize the genius of Cake? Phooey. This song rocks.

*Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”, by the Cardigans* — I wouldn’t call this a _good_ cover, exactly, but it’s definitely surreal.

*Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet”, by the Indigo Girls* — Let me hasten to say that this wins my award for _worst_ cover. It is very convenient, actually, because I can point to Amy Ray’s screeching on that track to explain exactly when, and why, I stopped caring about the Indigo Girls.

*Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat”, by Joan Osborne* — Just one of the many gems on the album that nobody listened to because it had that atrocious “What If God Was One Of Us” number. But the rest of it is great. I’m serious.

*Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”, by Rasputina* — I heard this song on a mix CD made by Sara Zuiderveen, who, if she had a blog, would be kicking all our butts at this cover song game. This is one of those songs that you just want to set on constant repeat while you light candles and just lay there in perfect bliss contemplating the sadness of the universe. I know because I did it.

And the song I wish someone funky would cover: “No New Tale to Tell,” by Love and Rockets.

You have this weekend or next to scoot up to Baltimore and catch “Pferdzwackür’s Vampire Nutcracker”:http://www.pferdzwackur.com/ at the “Baltimore Theatre Project”:http://theatreproject.org/. It opens Thursday. The play, the intricate website, and the elixir itself (oh! the elixir!) are all the brainchild of the brilliant and thoroughly indivisible Matthew Sahr. Not to be missed. “This press release”:http://www.pferdzwackur.com/showsite/press-release.pdf gives more info and a bit of a peek behind the curtain of his mind. Sort of. You don’t want to look in there for too long. Be sure to explore the nooks and crannies of the website as well.

UPDATE: I’ll be there for the Sunday matinee: look for the couple with the two-week-old baby sitting very near the exit in case she starts crying.

If you don’t have any kids and don’t know much about them, pay attention. Until recently I did not appreciate just what the job of a nursing mother entails, how difficult and important it is. Brain surgeons, Navy SEALS, and air traffic controllers have nothing on nursing mothers.

Let’s do a bit of math. In those early weeks, a breastfeeding mother must feed her child 8 to 10 times a day. That works out to once every two or three hours. The actual process of breastfeeding can take a good long time in itself, too: you may have five minutes or so getting the kid settled down and/or woken up enough to eat, and you’ve got to intersperse the feeding with frequent burpings. Add all that onto 30-40 minutes of actual nursing, and you’re looking at a good hour for the whole process. Which translates, when you look at it, into more than a third of your time. This is how it is both day and night, with no breaks—there is no such thing as even four hours of interrupted sleep for a nursing mother. And remember that while nursing your child is literally sucking energy out of you, so you’re likely to be a good deal more exhausted in the first place. And we haven’t even gotten into the details of the physical havoc that labor has probably wreaked on you, that you are struggling to recover from even as all these other demands are being placed on your time and energy. Nor have we touched on the fact that nursing is only one facet of the attention that a new baby commands.

So the next time you see that mother nursing at your favorite coffee shop, don’t avert your eyes, and certainly don’t mutter under your breath about how uncouth it is to nurse in public. Approach her respectfully and give her a snappy salute. And if she is a single mom, or has twins, then you must approach her on hands and knees and place your forehead to the floor at her feet. Remain there until she deigns to touch your shoulder and bids you rise. She deserves nothing less.