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When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

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Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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The revolution will be supervised.

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You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / Even More Agony, Rather Less Ecstasy

Even More Agony, Rather Less Ecstasy

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From Jenna Marotta at New York Magazine’s Daily Intel blog, the story of one more rightbrain individual who truly, seriously regrets the bad news about Steve Jobs:

Mike Daisey, creator and star of The Agony And The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a solo show opening October 11 at the Public, was at Disneyland last week when he learned of the Apple CEO’s resignation. “I found out on my iPhone,” Daisey said yesterday, still stuck in California as a result of post-Hurricane Irene travel chaos. “I just had the feeling you get when you realize that something terrible has happened, when you feel your center of gravity drop down to your bowels. What I think was really telling was that the release date for his authorized was moved up from March to November, because I think he wants to see it happen.”
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Daisey is known for lengthy monologues like If You See Something Say Something, Monopoly!, Truth, and The Ugly American (most of them directed by his wife, Jean-Michele Gregory). Even though Daisey calls Jobs “a hero of mine,” the monologist had enough concerns about Apple and its co-founder to fuel a critical two-hour piece that explores the human cost of Apple’s global supply chain, and the ultimate price of the shiny gadgets carried by so many. “Being a total tyrant and taskmaster,” Daisey says, “[Jobs] created the first global corporation that is welded to a single human vision.”…
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Jobs’s resignation and failing health have certainly altered the atmosphere for the show. “When someone gets ill,” Daisey acknowledges, “it’s hard to talk about that onstage.” But Daisey won’t be rewriting the play to accommodate the new developments. If Jobs should actually pass away during the show’s run, Daisey says he’ll be respectful without “lionizing” him or “creating a religion” of Jobs. Ultimately, he said, “the monologue is about the end of an era” at Apple more than a biography of Jobs. “The people who founded Apple used to call themselves pirates; it went from being a company about freedom to a company that’s becoming more interested in control than creating a great user experience.”

I’m so old, I still have an aural memory of Vaughn Meader saying, “… and the rubbah swaaaaan is MINE!” on my parents’ hi-fi record player. And that’s what ran through my mind even before I read Marotte’s article… although, fortunately, Daisey’s career is not nearly as dependent on one particular monologue as Meader’s was on his impersonation of JFK.

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    OK, new thread, and I’m going to be off topic, instantly.

    Here’s the fuckup with the jobs address: the WH made a big deal of the date, and the GOP balked, and the WH caved.

    THAT is the problem…the chain of events. Had the WH quietly negotiated this without making a big deal about it today, they wouldn’t have given the GOP the ability to show massive disrespect, and then win, giving the vermin of the Village a story that fits right into their narrative.

    This is a major fuckup.

  2. 2.

    WyldPirate

    I have to take exception to one of the claims in your link AL:

    “Being a total tyrant and taskmaster,” Daisey says, “[Jobs] created the first global corporation that is welded to a single human vision.”…

    I think Henry Ford beat Jobs by a goodly number of years. I am sure there earlier examples that predate Ford

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Aiding the slide off topic, I couldn’t agree more that “this is a major fuck-up” by the Obama administration. It is going to get plenty of play tomorrow and probably through Friday (and perhaps the weekend as well).

  3. 3.

    RedDirtGirl

    I grew up listening to that Vaughn Meader White House album: “Let me say this about that…”. I felt like such a sophisticated 8 year-old listening to “political” humor. Thanks for the memory trip!

  7. 7.

    hamletta

    “This is the Blue Room….”

    My college roommate and I used to call our dorm room The Blue Room, because the air was blue with cigarette smoke.

    I thought Garrison Keillor got a little Vaughn Meader dent after Oslo, when the killer turned out to be a bachelor Norwegian farmer.

  8. 8.

    kdaug

    OK, y’all wanna play open thread?

    Got two dogs, a golden and a german shepherd.

    Noses shaped like this:
    golden – “9”
    shepherd – “7”
    (right profile, tongue extends from the bottom center to the right, ignore extraneous lines).

    We give them both rawhides on occasion. Let ’em chew for an hour or two, then put the hides away.

    Here’s the thing:

    Golden can lick his nose clean. 30 seconds after we take it away, he looks like nothing happened.

    But the shepherd’s tongue apparently can’t clear that sharp turn in the 7. After an hour, she looks like Tony Montana coming back from a decadent vacation. White slobbery powder caked onto her upper nose.

    Here’s the question:

    My wife’s inclined to lick a napkin or paper towel and wipe the dog’s nose.

    I’m inclined to introduce the dog by saying “Say hello to my leetle frien’!” (OK, sometimes I throw in a “boom, boom, boom”, but that’s just for effect.)

    Which of us has the dog’s best developmental interests at heart?

  10. 10.

    R-Jud

    “I just had the feeling you get when you realize that something terrible has happened, when you feel your center of gravity drop down to your bowels.”

    Isn’t that where the center of gravity generally is anyway?

    /irrelevant

  12. 12.

    Tom Johnson

    Any reference to “The First Family” is worthy of kudos. Clearly, one of the most brilliant pieces of audio comedy ever.

    My favorite line is Fidel Castro ordering a chicken sandwich, with a live chicken. Absolutely brilliant.

  18. 18.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    Mornin Joe thinks the Prez needs to BE A MAN and give the fucking speech when he wants.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): A few weeks ago, Robert Reich was on Hardball, talking about how the President wasn’t doing enough on jobs. After about a minute rant, Chris Matthews actually asked Reich what the President could do. Reich then rattled off about 5 or 6 things, all of which would require Congressional action…

    At the end, Reich apparently realized he sounded like an idiot, and said that the President should just “fight” even if Congress says no.

  20. 20.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Baud: Hard to disagree, even this shit-head right winger Scarborough knows that is what he should do.

  22. 22.

    jeffreyw

    Gah! Woke up to a firefight on the TV, tuned to PBS’s POV. Danes in a shootout with the Taliban. They were yakkin and yellin and orders were shouted and I’m all WTF because the language teetered on the edge of being understandable-I was sleepily struggling to make out the actual words. I guess a squad of excited grunt infantry sounds much the same in every language.

  25. 25.

    harlana

    @kdaug: Yer wife has the right idea. You don’t want to make a big deal out of it or it will make him nervous and eventually he will run from it.

  31. 31.

    Keith G

    For those of you who are not on the White House mailing list, my good pal David Plouffe (Senior Advisor to the President)
    has asked me to “spread the word about this new tool by forwarding this email to ten friends. And remember, if you want to learn more about We the People and be the first to know when it is live, head to..”

    http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/WeThePeople

    I have been told that this “online platform gives Americans a direct line to the White House on the issues and concerns that matter most to them.”

    There ya go friends.

  33. 33.

    Keith G

    @Villago Delenda Est: Indeed.

    Repeating myself from an earlier time: Month per month, managing the stagecraft of the Presidency is as important as winning a vote in Congress. It sucks to be that way, but that is the way that presidential policy wins support, power is nurtured, and reelections are won.

  34. 34.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cleek: At this point, I have to agree. If, however, Obama tosses in a one line zinger or two about it during the speech, I think he can easily redeem it. The theme from the White House for the next year should be that the Republicans simply will not do their part in governing. He has been setting this theme up and the GOP has been providing example after example. It is coming to be the time when they need to be hammered about it.

  36. 36.

    gnomedad

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It is coming to be the time when they need to be hammered about it.

    This is what I’m hoping. I’ll repeat the phrase I seem to have coined: Voter Attention Span Unit. Republican fail has to be alive in the minds of voters in November 2012. Timing is everything.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    Anne Laurie: My parents had that Vaughn Meader album too. I don’t know what happened to it. I loved listening to it. I too have an aural memory of the voices. “Because it’s my ball” also stands out. And Jackie’s breathy line: “A quiet night, at home, alone.”

  39. 39.

    Tom Johnson

    @Raven — Tom Lehrer was hilarious, but he worked in a different genre: funny music. His “National Brotherhood Week” is still one of the funniest songs ever written:

    The Catholics, hate the protestants
    And the Protestants hate the Catholics
    The Hindus hate the Moslems
    And everybody hates the Jews…

    To celebrate his legacy, I think we should all go out and shake the hand of someone we can’t stand.

    Thanks for reminding me. It made my morning a little happier.

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