Category Archives: The Great Unraveling

Thoughts on “Ballet 422” and the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center

I liked this documentary on Ballet 422, which refers to the 422nd original ballet produced from the New York City Ballet Company. This one comes from choreographer Justin Peck, a 25-year old dancer/choreographer – and it’s his first ballet for the company.

For someone like me, who knows little of the world of dance, it was educational to watch the process of choreography. It’s always been somewhat of an enigma, or it’s like magic. Anyway, I really enjoyed the interplay between the choreographer and the dancers, and the parts that almost seemed co-created, or at least collaborated on. How these fantastic dancers remember what they’re supposed to be doing is truly beyond me! But they do, I guess that’s why they’re stars of the NYC Ballet, eh? Plus of course, there’s lots of eye candy no matter what your orientation happens to be.

The documentary (from director Jody Lee Lipes) also shows the requisite behind-the-scenes, including some parts of Justin’s life beyond Lincoln Center. We see him waiting for the subway, we see him go to his apartment in a borough other than Manhattan. It looks big enough by NYC standards, but then it got me thinking, he, a member of the corps de ballet probably doesn’t make enough money to live in that toniest part of New York.

So I looked up dancer salaries to get an idea. They are in the range, it seemed, of around $50,000 to $80,000 depending on what city they were dancing in and if they were chorus or principals or had a longer season, etc.

I found this information on The DL Reporter (http://dlreporter.com/2014/04/14/ballet-wage-issues/): (Raquel Nieves, author)

Jeremy Telman in his article, “New York City Ballet Dancers Agree to New Contract,” cited that a quick internet search suggests that a member of the corp de ballet makes $1,500 per week. He describes how the average rent in the city of Manhattan for a cramped one-bedroom is $3,150 per month and that it can get hard to find a two bedroom for under $1 million. “If the dancer gets paid for 38 weeks per year, that comes out to $76,000 per year, and that is a good salary in New York City as long as you can share a studio apartment in an outer borough with two or more other members of the corp (or you can marry an investment banker).[3]” Principal dancers, essentially the “A” list celebrities at ballet companies, make roughly about $1,000-$2,000 more per week than the corp de ballet (think below the line talent). Principals make more with the additional guest performance or teaching gig, but only a small percentage of dancers who join the company ever become principals.

So there you have it, on stage, like so many performers including actors and musicians, dancers appear to be so incredibly glamorous yet the society fails to reward artists for this. I also noticed during my viewing of the film that the theater building at Lincoln Center where the New York City Ballet performs is the David H. Koch Theater.

Yes, as in that Koch! Right, the Koch brothers, those infamous John Birch society right wing billionaire polluters from Kansas!

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According to the theater’s website:

In July 2008, philanthropist David H. Koch pledged to provide $100 million over the next 10 years for the purpose of renovating the theater and providing for an operating and maintenance endowment. It was renamed the David H. Koch Theater at the New York City Ballet Winter gala, Tuesday, November 25, of that year.

So great, he’s willing to support the actual structure and maintenance of the physical building, but the dancers who fly on the stage? Well, not so much, apparently. They are members of a union [American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA)] and, well, you know, the Kochs, they just don’t like unions. Their group “Americans for Prosperity” helps states like Wisconsin gut union contracts, which is just another way to race to the bottom and destroy the middle class.

So I guess the dancers won’t really be able to look to David H. Koch for any help with their meager salaries that don’t really allow them to live in the city in which they perform. I guess it’s always been that way for robber barons, i.e., Andrew Carnegie probably didn’t help any turn of the century violinists with their rent either, though he built a theater in which they could perform.

Not that the $76,000 annual salary would make much sense to someone like David H. Koch, who, according to this piece, made $3 million PER HOUR from investments in 2012.

One of the last images in the film “Ballet 422” is of Justin Peck returning to the dressing room after all the curtain calls for this successful ballet premiere to don his costume to dance in the corps de ballet for the next offering in the program, later the same night. A worker among workers, a union man.

COPS: Everything that’s wrong about America in one short “reality” show

OK so you probably read about a cameraman getting shot and killed on the production of this show, recently. Which is a really very sad and unfortunate thing, both for this man, his family and for the show and its fans.

yeah you wish

Though it’s pretty surprising this is the first time it happened. Probably, if you found this story somehow through the Internet, then you’re like me, because, yes – I admit that I sometimes watch COPS. Sometimes, even, I binge watch COPS (episodes are only 22 minutes long; also, they’re often set in Palm Springs, where I used to live, which gives me a kick).

But it’s like that empty high, that kind you get from the pink and white iced cupcake you know you shouldn’t be eating but do anyway and you’re gagging about 20 minutes later. Because COPS brings out the worst in us.

It’s about making us laugh at the misfortunes of poor people, mostly. Yuck yuck yuck, here’s another poor white trash slob getting pulled out from under his trailer. Surprise – he’s not wearing a shirt, he’s drunk, and he has no teeth. Well – I may have it bad, but not that bad! Not yet anyway.

Also I think the show really points out the absurd futility of the war on drugs, and the asinine laws we have on the books which routinely revel in absolutely destroying young men’s lives. More often than not, they’re young men of color. Although I’m sure the producers of COPS go to great pains to at least give the illusion that they’re unbiased in reporting on crime and race.

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But it’s so often set in some small town in a backward state where these minor drug crimes are felonies and it’s the way to keep these people off the streets, right – we don’t have that slavery anymore so that sure as hell won’t work – so send them all to prison. That’s the plan, right?

I get mad. Not only am I watching these COPS, who are probably decent guys and gals just hoping to make a living so they can buy a house and have kids and get a decent pension if they don’t get shot first, participate in this ruin but I also see it’s my tax dollars going to waste.

And sometimes their moralizing makes absolutely no sense. I remember one episode set in Vegas (another one of their favorite locations) and they were busting a young lady for streetwalking on the Strip. In the interview with the female task force officer, the girl talked about the money she’d make turning tricks (hundreds of dollars per night, or more) and the Person in Charge went on to detail how bad a life this would be, etc etc. But this young lady knows, like you and I both do, that a pretty 19 year old girl with perhaps a H.S. diploma, if that, in today’s world, might be able to get a fast food minimum wage job in a hellhole place like that, paying $8.25 per hour and requiring her to wear a silly costume and be a latter day wage slave – with no real hope of ever getting anywhere economically.

Not that prostitution is a sure road to a fantastic middle class life (though it could be a start) at least it pays a decent wage and there’s some semblance of control (at least this particular girl seemed quite smart to me). So what’s the real crime here? A no-victim offense like prostitution, or the systematic elimination of any real route to middle class?

All this is to say I resent the moralizing this show wants to convey and their definition of “crime.”

I’m really not sure who the real criminals are anymore.

The right of citizens to videotape police

The right of citizens to videotape police – latimes.com. *

Hell yes, I mean this headline surprised me because I thought, WTF, of course citizens can videotape public police activity. As the article rightly points out, where would Rodney King be today without the tape? Exactly nowhere.

The cops work for us, not the other way around. They are employees of the city goverments, i.e., employees of the taxpayers. Powers that be seem to have no problem setting up cams all over the place to patrol innocuous citizen activity in the guise of crime prevention and it’s only right that we can do the same. I’m glad the courts are upholding these First Amendment Rights.

Police also need to understand they and their unions are part of the 99%. The corporations will use you as their tools to crack down on peaceful protestors, but rest assured when they’re done with you they will fuck you six ways to Sunday and you won’t ever see it coming. Don’t be fooled.

Do the right thing, we’re all counting on you.

this is the Anthony Graber video, where AG was pulled over by a off-duty cop and filmed it with a helmet cam. He was arrested for posting this video to YouTube and faced 16 years in prison for that (not for his speeding offense). The case was dismissed last year as the judge decided videotaping police is not a violation of privacy, i.e., there is no privacy expectation when police do their jobs in public.

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Occupy Wall Street Statement

Here it is, thank you, Nation of Change, for emailing it to me. Reprint and share with your friends, family, co-workers, contacts! Use the language herein when talking about injustice.

This is only the beginning! I’m excited and I’m hopeful for the future.

Please note that when the writers of this statement use “they” at the beginning of a sentence, they are referring to “corporations.” – JA

What follows is the first official, collective statement of the protesters in Zuccotti Park:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government ontracts.*

To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

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America is Diseased: Mocking the Dying, Profiting off the Work of Uninsured Artists

America is Diseased: Mocking the Dying, Profiting off the Work of Uninsured Artists |

How did we get this way?

Or is it only an illusion or myth that we were, collectively, any other way – other than selfish, self-centered bastards only out for Number One?

I used to be insulted at the concept of the “Greatest Generation” – basically those people who grew to adulthood during the Depression then fought World War II and either died for their country or came back and built the economic powerhouse that was the American Middle Class. I was insulted because that was not my generation, those born in the generation after, we Baby Boomers, those of us who reaped the success of the most robust economy the world has ever known.

But now I really do see the point of the adulation and see that it’s accurate. These were people, many of whom probably did not agree with the war effort, who nonetheless selflessly joined the effort to defeat the fascists because they realized that a group effort would work, this national project would work, that the alternative was hell.

Consequently, they returned home and kept that “we’re all in this together” spirit of the battlefield, realizing that the collective building of schools, of roads, sewers, hospitals and all of that was for the good of everybody, and that nobody got to where they did only because of their own sweat or their own grace. These people knew this. They felt it in their bones.

How did we forget? Because the infrastructure was built. Somewhere in the late 70s or early 80s we, as a country, decided the U.S. was built as far as it was going to be and now it was time to take the spoils, to be greedy, to get as much for ourselves as we could before it all came crashing down, and hopefully we’d either be set or we’d be dead by then.

It’s really not a pretty picture, and didn’t have to turn out this way. I have no idea how we can recapture that essence in this country. Still, I hope it’s not a lost cause. Any ideas?

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Off the rails – the case for taxing the rich

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Honestly, from where I sit, the huge greed crisis we find ourselves in now began with the Republican rise in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan and his cronies. That’s also when we saw the first large groups of homeless people on our streets. If you were born after 1980, or even the mid-70s, you would never remember that once this was a very different country.

I’d really urge you to watch this as he makes the case in a quite entertaining way, and also really illustrates the difference between the left and the current incarnation of Republican thinking. Spread and discuss.

Murder on the Red Line

You don’t want to be Todd Martens.

Red Line train at Union Station

Above, first-hand account by Los Angeles Times staffer Todd Martens on the murder that took place on the subway car he was riding in last week.

I’d read the stories in the Times earlier, but this blog account is much more detailed and written in a way that any of us might write it if we were witnesses, as opposed to being journalist-witnesses.

I hadn’t realized that the murder took place in the first car in front – directly behind the operator cage.

This is usually the car I choose to ride in if I can – I know it’s got an empty wall for bikes, and usually there’s fewer people – though certainly not at rush hours. Also, like Todd points out in his post, you can see through the front windows of the train in that car and actually see what the tunnels look like, what the stations look like from afar, etc.
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Which is why a father took his small son to that car that day for his first train ride. This, almost impossible to believe. Who wants to bet that was the first and last train ride this kid will ever have?

This stabbing murder last week was the first homicide on Metro since it started. Since then, there’s been another stabbing, this one in Pasadena, so far not fatal.

It’s not going to make me stop riding Metro – I saw that as one of the advantages in moving back to Los Angeles from Palm Springs, that I wouldn’t need to use a car for every single trip anywhere.

But it does give you pause. The other night I entered the Red Line in that first car with my bike on a fairly quick trip home to Valley Village, only 5 quick stations between Sunset/Vermont and North Hollywood, the end of the line. Like it’s said, you never know what you’re going to get, and what I got was a really loud drunk man (another “transient” – don’t know – dirty backpacks, skateboards – what is it with the weaponization of skateboards? – and scary looking pit bull, who was not a service animal… you get the idea) who was trying to encourage the train occupants to sing Happy Birthday to him, or to “party” with him in some way. He didn’t appear to physically threaten anybody and the dog was, I have to say, well behaved, probably embarrassed for its owner. But this guy was verbally frightening, especially considering the recent events. And we were trapped in a moving train, buried beneath the bloody earth of Hollywood. I thought most of the passengers did their best to ignore him, looking out the windows at the black walls shooting past, or at their shoes. As I’d hoped, he, the dog and another companion left the train at Hollywood and Highland, which seems to be an area with a lot of these types anyway. The train car was again silent, and sped away into the night.

Donut Hole?

Worker charged with prostitution at Dunkin Donuts

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I wonder if there’s more to the story than the short item in the Times would seem to indicate. Knowing that the police and donuts go together like cream and coffee, I’m wondering if the alleged donut whore rubbed someone – the wrong someone – the wrong way. (So to speak.)

Canada’s Leader of the ‘Tea Party North’

I always thought, if it ever gets bad enough here, and the Right takes over everything and totally destroys the country (and they appear to be well on the way!) – I could always go north to Canada.

Well, that fantasy has been shattered. Meet Rob Ford, honorary head of Tea Partay North! Here he is in this linked article, trying to privatize garbage collection in Toronto.

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It’s hard to like some fool who is anti-bike. Looks like chubby Rob could get some of those bike benefits himself, like a reduced weight, lower blood pressure, etc. But he doesn’t care, obviously.

Is this the new political adoration, a la this Chris Christie model? Looks like he’s had more of a french fry party than a tea party, hey? I know, cheap shot, but don’t you know, at the “end of the day, it’s his own fault.”

Inland Empire seniors have nation’s second-worst access to public transit… and don’t try and cross a street, either, sucka

Inland Empire seniors have nation’s second-worst access to public transit, study says –

Inland Empire, from Julia Takes Pictures

Not that I was surprised to hear this, yet it is sad.

Makes you wonder what they were thinking when they planned the interurban sprawl of freeways and suburbs back in the 50s and 60s. That cars, no matter how many, would always be the solution. That internal combustion engines, no matter how polluting, would never exceed the capacity for the environment to clean itself from their toxins.

I suppose it must have seemed like nirvana at the time, all this cheap land away from from noise and problems of the city. Of course, now that nirvana is a nightmare.

As long as I’ve had a place in Palm Springs, we have been promised daily train service between the desert and Los Angeles. It’s been 10 years now, and so far it hasn’t happened. I, for one, am not holding my breath. Even though I’m moving back to the city from the desert, I still hope we see that one day as an option – not just for seniors, but for everyone.

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