Lisa Moscatiello

Eyes On The Prize: U.S. Civil Rights Movement

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:50:00 +0000

If you are an American and have never heard of Fanny Lou Hamer, Michael Schwerner, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Emmett Till,or Viola Liuzzo you need to watch this series or read the excellent companion book by Juan Williams.

Birmingham Church Bombing

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:57:00 +0000

Pro-Segregation Riots Draw Federal Troops

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:55:00 +0000

Obama Speech: 'A More Perfect Union'

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:50:00 +0000

Please listen.

Inwood Coffeehouse Part iii: Interview with Steven and Lesley Choy

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:55:00 +0000

This is the final installment of a series on the Inwood Coffeehouse in Wheaton (or Greater Silver Spring if you like), MD which is where I'll be tonight with the Ocean Quartette performing a seasonal concert. Show time is 7:30 p.m. Admission is $5. Location is 10921 Inwood Avenue, Wheaton, MD. See Part I and Part II

This past Spring, I performed at Inwood for the first time, in a duo with cellist Fred Lieder.
The week after the show, I decided to interview organizers Steven and Lesley Choy for my blog. Lesley's mom Annette (pictured) was there for dinner. As my cassette recorder rolled and Lesley began her story, the Choys' two birds, who had been squawking in their cages throughout dinner, suddenly fell silent.

Lesley was born and raised in New York City. She thrived on the city's vibrant culture and energy, and was devastated when her father's job forced the family to move to Maryland.

Lesley: I missed everything. Suburban Maryland was a wasteland. New York was just extremely textured. That was the only way I could describe it to people. They thought I was crazy. I said 'There's no texture here. In New York, there was a texture to everything. Every face had a texture'

Shortly after the move to Maryland, Lesley (pictured) fell into a profound depression. While it had been building for quite awhile, she recalled that there had been a catalyzing trauma:

Lesley: When I was 16 it really got bad. I remember what precipitated it. I was walking through the halls and I saw a poster of this beautiful German shepherd dog. It was an anti-animal cruelty poster, and it said, "This beautiful dog died of a scientist-induced heart attack." I went into the journalism class and sat under the desk. I sat there every day, under the desk, for weeks on end, as classes went in and out. I didn't attend any of my own classes. I was blindsided by depression.

This was during the 1970s, and like many school systems, Montgomery County had begun to explore alternative approaches to education. Lesley's school, John F. Kennedy High School in Wheaton, was an alternative school that encouraged experimentation and individual choice as well as more informal interactions between students and teachers. The close bonds between teachers and students at the school may have saved Lesley's life. Her English teacher had started to worry about Lesley, and one day he showed up at her front door.

Lesley: He came over to the house and told me I was going to fail English. He mandated that I write out all 20,000 compositions that I hadn't written. So that got me out of it, because I didn't want to let him down. I wrote all 20,000 compositions, and he graded all of them, and jokingly pointed out how unfair it was that I could spend fifteen minutes per composition and earn a B when the rest of the class took a whole semester.

Lesley and Annette recalled that when he first came to the door, he hadn't told them the real reason why he was there.

Lesley: He came under the pretense that he was cold and he needed to borrow some socks.

Annette: And we gave him the socks!

Once Lesley had weathered this crisis, she threw herself into acting in productions by the school's extensive theater department, which put on what she described as "gorgeous, full-blown student productions." Among the roles she played were Ophelia in Hamlet and the Duchess of York in Richard III.

Lesley: I love high school drama. We had three teachers doing drama; one who specialized in musical productions, one who did Southern drama, and one who did Shakespeare, Mr. Teunis. The kids had ample opportunity to direct, to perform, write and direct and produce our own productions. My friends and I would do existentialist theater and theater of the absurd. I directed Endgame.

Around this time, Lesley met Steven Choy (pictured-on guitar in group photo), a local musician performing in a pickup band of revolving musicians sometimes appearing under the name The Internationals. Steven, who also grew up in the DC area, had been practicing the guitar at his parents' dry cleaning plant. One of the Choys' customers was a guitar player who happened to be in the Navy. Steven's mom offered to clean his uniforms in exchange for guitar lessons, and Steven eventually became proficient enough to do paying gigs. At the time they met, Lesley had been dating another band member, but as she spent more time with the musicians she developed a friendship with Steven that ultimately led to their marriage, two children, and an ongoing creative partnership.

After she graduated she became one of the first members of the brand new Folger Shakespeare Group and the Shakespeare Theatre.

Lesley: But we weren't doing Shakespeare. The first show was a rock musical called Dionysus Wants You: A New Rock Musical. It was lousy. I've never seen anything so horrendous in my life. It was a horrible show. I was playing Semele, who gives birth to her son onstage. I was playing opposite Ernest Thompson, as Zeus, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for On Golden Pond.

Although she was landing professional acting gigs as a member of this new company, Lesley discovered that she had a problem:

Lesley: I realized that I don't really like actors. Ultimately, what got me out of it was witnessing a homicide. I was on the way to a rehearsal at St. Mark's Church on Capitol Hill, and somebody stole my purse. I thought he was holding mace, but it was actually a gun. A bystander saw what happened and interceded, and got himself killed. This also happened to be my very first day of college studying drama at Catholic University.

The police advised me that it was probably gang-related, and that there were probably witnesses, and that I should probably absent myself. And there was no sympathy from the producer or the director, or my colleagues or anything. The director said that if I didn't show up to rehearsal and attend every performance, he'd have me blacklisted from every theater in Washington. So, I decided at that point that I really don't like these people at all. So I quit. For good.

I stayed at Catholic for three years, and then I realized that they were really catering to the Equity actors and the graduate students. From sheer pushing I began to direct some graduate student productions while I was still an undergraduate. Nobody who was an undergraduate was going anywhere. It was strictly about show biz, so if you were an undergraduate you got to do the grunt work that equity actors weren't allowed to do. But because of my Folger experience, I was considered the cat's meow. It was, 'Oh my God, she's an undergraduate who had been an extra in Julius Caesar.'

After three years, Lesley transferred to the University of Maryland, and landed a major role on the main stage her first day of school. While studying drama, she took teacher certification courses, which would ultimately lead to her work with disabled people in the Montgomery County School System. But inwardly she had already felt a pull in this direction. One of her drama classes had been a course called Creative Dramatics. It was through this class that Lesley came to the understanding that, for some people, the drive to create is actually an urgent need, and that even if a person is severely disabled, that need still needs to be met. Lesley was gradually discovering that she had a gift - and a calling - to help disabled people meet their artistic needs.

Lesley: In Creative Dramatics class, we were given the assignment to create an activity for a population. I devised a method for allowing paralyzed children to create and perform in a theater production. In this hypothetical production, the performers were children who still had enough range of motion to move their eyes. By moving their eyes from one object to another, they could create stories using the progression from one object to another create character, setting and plot. It occurred to me that while people who were completely paralyzed couldn't speak and couldn't walk, they still had ideas and could still create. When you are in an institution, only your basic bodily needs are seen to. Having only those needs acknowledged and addressed adds insult to injury, and if you are an artist and have no way to engage your artistic side, that can be a great loss.

Lesley went on to teach disabled children in the Montgomery County Public Schools for several years, taking a break after becoming a mother. She continued to work with disabled individuals even after leaving the public school system. In 1995 she was commissioned by Washington Very Special Arts to write an opera. Her piece, called Perfection: A Space Opera in One Act, included performers with physical and mental disabilities as well as nondisabled professional musicians.

For Lesley, one of her chief aims is to provide opportunities for disabled artists to share their work with the public and also to collaborate with other artists who are not disabled.

Lesley: One of my themes is to be totally inclusive. So, pretty much, if someone auditions for one of my productions in an amateur capacity, not for a leading role necessarily, but in an amateur capacity, I will have a part for them. Period.

One such inclusive musical production the Choys helped to launch took place in November 2001 at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre in Rockville, MD.

Steven: At the time that we produced the show the whole country was in mourning, and this was their way of expressing themselves to get relief. It was a big show. We spent months rehearsing the show. We did "America the Beautiful," and helped them pick out other songs. The featured act was a zydeco band. Our friend Peter who's a professional singer came in and sang a duet from a Broadway musical with one of the disabled women.

It was this experience that ultimately led to their involvement with Inwood Coffeehouse. Meg Marshall, who was one of the show's organizers, was also an administrator at Inwood House, an apartment complex in Silver Spring for people with disabilities.

Lesley: At the end of that show people were saying that they wanted to do more performances like that in the future. Ultimately Meg (pictured, left, with volunteer) invited me to come work with her at Inwood, and she got together the funds to make the coffeehouse happen on a regular basis. By coming up with the funding, Meg Marshall turned what could have remained a pipe dream into a reality. This was the first time Steven and I had ever had a backer. Before, we were expected to bring in money and finance the show through the proceeds alone. Meg found financing for the coffeehouse; I'm not sure how!

Steven : At first we didn't have any idea how to proceed. The first one was very freeform. It was around Christmastime, so we knew we were doing Christmas music, which made choosing material easy. And we also did some of (locally based singer songwriter) Eileen Joyner's music. Eileen stayed with us, actually, for the whole first season, and then she moved out of the area.

Lesley: Initially there was minimal resident participation; we did a couple of group songs.

Steve: The drummer at the first show was an Inwood resident who has continued to play at the Coffeehouse on a regular basis. Since he started playing at the coffeehouse, he's become a different person. He's been so happy.

Eventually Lesley had the idea to bring in performers from the outside.

Lesley: I don't like isolation. I don't like barriers. There are so many barriers. Even within communities, they set up barriers. There are so many misconceptions about people with any disability. One misconception is that they are monolithic, that everybody's exactly the same, and that all disabilities are the same disability. There's no understanding. The only way to change this is to have dialogue and contact. So, that's why...this was my dream. I've had lots of time to think about it. We bring people together.

We are going for good art, and it is good art. You can achieve it with anyone. People have different levels of accomplishment. You know, they aren't at a professional level, but still, there are different levels of accomplishment that are beautiful and artistically accessible.

LM: This is what really struck me. In the folk world, it's about inclusiveness, but it's a cheap kind of inclusiveness where you can have no talent and have put no effort into this, or have no sense of what an audience might want to hear, but still be allowed to perform on stage. I was contrasting what I experienced at Inwood with all these times I've seen people on stage who aren't disabled, but who seem to have no musical sensibility. At Inwood you can feel the creative struggle going on with your group. You may have someone who can't see or can't walk, but you still make them do the work.

Lesley: Steven and I are really clear that we don't accept second rate, and by first rate, I mean we are glad to work with you provided you work, and that you're committed to art, and you defer to our judgment as artistic directors.

Steven: We've had members drop out because they didn't want to go along with this. They didn't want to put any effort in. They just wanted to show up and do whatever they felt like doing.

Lesley: We're interested in bringing people who otherwise wouldn't have an opportunity to fulfill their artistic needs...to give them that opportunity. But we're not pushovers, and we're musicians. We really abhor shoddy performances.

Steven: They aren't at the same technical level as you.

Lesley: But we expect them to put in as much heart as you would put in, and as much effort as you would put in, and to also, again, be flexible enough to defer to our direction.

LM what kinds of things do you come up against?

Lesley: We fight, especially with people who are writing their own original things. Some of it is just bad. And you have to come up with a way to be gentle and stand back, and offer criticism. Sometimes people storm off and say "I'm never coming back." I pretty much say, "Oh that's unfortunate." They always come back and apologize.

LM: I guess you have to know how much you can demand.

Lesley: Exactly--without going overboard. It's been an ongoing effort for me to explain to one of the performers that he doesn't really know how to play the guitar. We focus on showing him how to hold the guitar and how to move like someone who is playing the electric guitar, but I don't want to foster a delusion or fool him or flatter him since he's actually playing air guitar with the band backing him. That would be really horrible.

We have all our performers pick their own music. With one singer, we talk about what key she wants to sing in, and if necessary Steve transposes it to her key. And then, when it's all set, he comes up with an arrangement. Steve makes her go through it about fifteen times, and he'll focus on problem measures. She has problems with rhythm. But hey, she can sing high G, so I'm not complaining.

Bring Them Home, don't be fooled again

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:04:00 +0000

Tell Congress to stop the war. They are going to be told that they are "not supporting the troops" if they vote against continuing the war. They need your encouragement to do the right thing. Call them now.
http://www.congress.gov

That's what I'm talking about!

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 01:46:00 +0000

Lovely singer, great song, awesome band. It's Sandra Joyce on vocals, Niall Keegan on flute, and Micheal O'Suillebhain on piano - according to the credits. The song - For Ireland I'd Not Tell Her Name is the air and the last line that's in Irish.

Peggy Noonan

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:54:00 +0000

Who's the goddess of the Right,
Who coined "a thousand points of light?"
Who'll make a man from a buffoon,
And cause a Democrat to swoon?

Peggy Noonan, fair of face!
How can this bleeding heart not race?
I'm not her type, or so it seems
But Bush may drive her to switch teams.

Inwood Coffeehouse

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Sat, 19 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago my music partner (cellist Fred Lieder) and I performed at a Wheaton, MD venue called the Inwood Coffeehouse. Fred had performed there before, and he explained to me that it was a residential facility for people with mental and physical disabilities. The format was supposed to be a first half with a professional "feature act," followed by a second half that would be performances by both residents and other members of the community.

I assumed that this second half was either going to be something like an Open Mic or a jam session, and I was hoping to find a way to make a polite exit after my half was done.

Fortunately, that's not what ended up happening. Shortly before the show was to start, Fred had not yet arrived. It's not like Fred to be that late so I phoned him to find out where he was. It turned out that I had given him the wrong date, and he thought we were on the following night. He hurriedly hung up and jumped into his car and sped over to the venue. As 8:00 pm arrived, he was not yet in sight, and I thought, well, this is awkward, but no problem, maybe this open mic or jam thing can go first, and Fred and I can perform second. When I asked Steve Choy, the organizer, if this would be okay, he adamantly refused. We had to go first, and if necessary, I would have to go on alone. I thought, okay, another uptight folkie bureaucrat, but what can you do. When in Rome.....

(Steve Choy, pictured)

To my great relief, Fred arrived just at the stroke of eight, cello in hand, looking charmingly tousled and very handsome in a black suit that he had probably snatched up out of his laundry hamper as he jumped up out of his man chair in front of the tv following my call. Sometimes unforeseen events or emergencies can have a positive effect on a performance, since they throw the musicians off guard and out of their safety zones of tried and true material and interpretations. This proved true for us. The terror I had felt while waiting for Fred was channeled into energy and spontaneity on stage, and maybe because I felt so guilty about the time mixup, I had a sudden injection of humility and a desire to make people happy rather than worrying about mistakes or how many CDs I was selling.

Before the concert, I had asked Steven and Lesley if they had any advice on how to perform for an audience like this, which included people with physical and mental disabilities as well as people from outside who were were not disabled. Lesley was very clear that I was to change nothing about my act, and in particular she did not want me to treat the audience like children. Her purpose in bringing music groups into Inwood was to expose the residents to good art, and that bringing the arts to them was a lot easier than taking them on a trip to the Kennedy Center.

Maybe sensing that I was feeling unsure of myself, Steve helped me immensely by confessing that when he first started performing here, he had felt 'very uncomfortable.' That instantly reassured me, because it made me feel like it was okay to feel uncomfortable myself, that it didn't make me a bad person and so I could stop trying to pretend that I was A-okay.

Following our part of the show, I decided that it would be a good idea not to leave but to stick around as a gesture of respect, since I had screwed up so badly with the time mixup. But while I thought I was showing support for the residents by staying around in the audience, the residents and the Choys gave me much more than that by completely turning inside out my notions of art, beauty, performing, and the reasons why we create. The next show is Friday, June 8, and the feature act is jazz flutist Arch "AT" Thompson.

Next: The Show

Inwood Coffeehouse part ii

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Fri, 18 May 2007 18:03:00 +0000

The Show

The second half of the show was nothing like what I had expected. Rather than an open mic or some kind of free-for all, there was instead a house band composed mostly of outside musicians, who performed sophisticated, fully scored arrangements of songs chosen by the evening's performers at least a month earlier. The instrumentation included Lesley Choy on accordion, Steve on guitar, along with electric guitar, double bass and what Lesley described as "remedial jazz basson."

The arrangements and the instrumentation gave the band an otherworldly, cabaret society-meets-Tom Waits 3:00 o'clock in the morning feel. In addition to songs there were also poetry readings, which were accompanied by music as well.

One performer named Russell (pictured below) read an original poem about a bird while the band played an instrumental version of the English ballad "The Three Ravens," with Lesley on accordion playing the lead.

Elizabeth (pictured, right)who has Down's syndrome sang the Barbra Streisand hit, "Evergreen." When I heard the band break into the opening phrases I was astonished, since the melody is full of hairpin turns, strange intervals and really high notes. But Elizabeth nailed all the intervals with seeming ease, and while she didn't quite make some of the high notes, it didn't really matter because her performance was passionate and quite moving. I felt my world shifting.

Elizabeth's dad (pictured below) also sang. In his rich baritone he delivered a rendition of "The Greatest Love of All" that was rhythmically loose but which had a sort of recitative quality that made me listen to the words for the first time.

I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed at least I'll live as I believe. No matter what they take from me They can't take away my dignity. Because the greatest love of all Is happening to me I found the greatest love of all Inside of me.

A born diva, Phyllis several times expressed a desire to take on the popular American Idol contestant Antonella Barba. Phyllis had a commanding stage presence and held everyone spellbound with her rendition of "Sidewalks of New York"

Things have changed since those times,
Some are up in "G,"
Others, they are wand'rers,
But they all feel just like me;
They'd part with all they've got,
Could they but once more walk,
With their best girl and have a twirl
On the Sidewalks of New York.
East side, west side,
All around the town,
The tots sang "Ring-a-Rosie,"
"London Bridge is Falling Down."
Boys and girls together,
Me and Mamie O'Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic,
On the sidewalks of New York.

I found out after the show that Steven and Lesley volunteer hours each month, meeting four or five times a week with residents to help them with their performances. I was struck by the contrast between this coffeehouse, with its emphasis on rehearsing and artistic quality for people who, because of their disabilities are never going to be perfectly in tune or in rhythm, with some of the really bad art I've experienced at folk clubs and open mics where there is no quality control whatsoever because it's not considered egalitarian or accepting to expect musicians to work on their act before subjecting others to it.

I had a feeling that there was a story behind this, so I decided to interview Lesley and Steven about the coffeehouse, their lives, and their approach to music.

Next: The Interview

Aries Women

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:57:00 +0000

"Aries women are devotees of Nietzschean will power and inexhaustible nervous energy."--Camille Paglia

In a relationship, Aries is very romantic, will defend their loved one to the death, will insist on doing the chasing and can not bear to be chased by anyone, and can be extremely possesive of the lover, but can't understand if the lover is possesive. Aries will usually put their loved one on a pedestal. However, they do expect total faithfulness from their partner and for their lover to respond as if he or she is the first and best lover ever known. The partner of Aries must always keep a little mystery in reserve and must always believe in every new Aries dream. Aries can get bored very easily if there are no challenges left to face and can likely go out looking for another relationship as a challenge to him or herself. Any lover that hurts Aries very deeply will probably be totally frozen out and ignored.

March 21 Rosie O'Donnell
March 25 Anita Bryant, Aretha Franklin
March 26 Nancy Pelosi, Vicky Lawrence
March 27 Sarah Vaughan, Charlotte Joko Beck
March 30 Celine Dion, Melanie Klein
April 1 Grace Lee Whitney, Ali MacGraw
April 2 Camille Paglia, Emmylou Harris, Aine Minogue
April 3 Jane Goodall. Doris Day
April 4 Kitty Kelley
April 5 Bette Davis
April 7 Billie Holiday
April 8 Betty Ford
April 12 Shannen Doherty
April 14 Loretta Lynn, Annie Sullivan
April 15 Bessie Smith, Emma Thompson
April 16 Dusty Springfield
April 20 Mother Angelica

"Regardless of how you appear on the surface, there is a 'warrior woman' deep inside you, and what you really want is a "warrior" who is strong enough or brave enough to be your mate.
You're the kind of woman who secretly wants to say, 'You Tarzan, me Jane.' "

Beneath the Watchful Eyes - New CD by Arthur Loves Plastic

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:00:00 +0000

Arthur Loves Plastic's New CD, Beneath the Watchful Eyes, is set for release on Saturday, March 31 at Montgomery College Planetarium in Takoma Park. DJ Bev will be there in person, spinning tracks under the "stars." I've heard it, because, well, I'm singing on it. This has some of her spookiest, most heartbreaking tracks ever. ALP tunes just stay with you....See you at MC.

"Jane, you ignorant slut."

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:04:00 +0000

Recently on Hannity and Colmes they had a guest on to discuss Barack Obama's church, which is, apparently, a "black" church, but not just a church that has a predominantly African American congregation and a "black" style of worship, but it's a church that espouses a sort of positive black power message, and teaches "black" values. Sean asked, "is this racist?" And I thought, wow, what an interesting question. I was also looking forward to finding out more about this church, what constitutes black values, and so on. I felt bitterly disappointed, when, instead of a stimulating debate, all I got was about ten seconds of the guest making his point, and then being interrupted, and then the guest interrupting back. Do they coach people before they go on the show by telling them to talk over each other? If I wanted to give myself agita I'd just walk over to the dog park down the street and toss a pork chop into the fray. This show is junk food.

Do people debate anymore? Do people present opposing views in a civil manner, using evidence and reasoned thought to 'win' an argument? I remembered that Point-Counterpoint bit that they used to have on 60 Minutes where Shana Alexander would take the liberal stance and James Kilpatrick would represent the conservative side. At the time I was a little kid just waiting for The Wonderful World of Disney to come on, so Point-Counterpoint was just one more obstacle the grownups had erected between me and Herbie the Love Bug, but I did pay attention enough to recall that they would debate rather forcefully at times. Saturday Night Life famously parodied it on Weekend Update, when Dan Ackroyd would lean over condescendingly, point his finger at Curtin as if lecturing a child, and preface his remarks with an exasperated, "Jane, you ignorant slut." The joke was, wow, they sound so intense on the real show it almost seems like this is the kind of thing they might be thinking. Wouldn't it be OUTRAGEOUS if people actually SAID that?!

Well, guess what? Now they do say those things, and nothing could be more tedious.

I recently found this clip of former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show. Holtzman was on the House Judiciary Committee that brought articles of impeachment against Nixon, and in her interview with the skeptical and at times combative host, makes a compelling argument for impeaching George W. Bush. Listen to her airtight reasoning and agile ripostes to Lopate's every objection, and then you'll see Hannity, Coulter, Matthews, Conason, Maher, O'Reilly et al. for what they are - school kids trading playground taunts.

She has also written a lucid, easy-to-read and fascinating book called The Impeachment of George W. Bush. Part history lesson, part constitutional seminar, part "how-to" manual. Check it out.

It's coming ....

Scenes we'd like to see: If the Environmental movement hired Frank Luntz as a consultant.

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:23:00 +0000

When Al Gore lectured to the Oscar viewing audience, "This is not a political issue. It's a moral issue," and Melissa pleaded, "None of us is Red or Blue. We're all GREEN," I heard the sound of a million remotes clicking across the fruited plain. What these guys need, I thought to myself, is a consultation with right wing media genius Frank Luntz. Frank's first memo might look something like this:

From the desk of Frank Luntz:

RECOMMENDATIONS:

I. Iconography:

OUT:

A picture paints a thousand words. The American public is not motivated by images that appeal to the "conscience." Nothing says, "hmmm, some of last night's chicken nuggets would be great right about now; think I'll go look in the fridge," like footage of a glacier melting.

Needed: A new icon. Suggestion: Avid sportsman, rugged individualist, Indian fighter and avowed conservationist Teddy Roosevelt.

IN :

II. Terminology

Discontinue the use of depressing terms like "morals" and "responsibility." "Challenge" is good. The word "Stewardship" should replace "Environmentalism," and where appropriate, "Creation" should be used as opposed to "the Earth," "Mother Earth", "Gaia," or anything that sounds like witchcraft.

"Green" is another turnoff. It's a weak, neutral color, and is too closely associated with a certain effeminate singing frog. It's widely known that "It isn't easy being green" is code for "It isn't easy being gay."

And by all means avoid the term "Global Warming." If absolutely necessary, use "Climate Change"TM

III. It's the Narrative, Stupid!

Rough Outline for PSA:

Music: fife and drums "Over two hundred years ago, our forefathers shook off the yoke of domination from overseas."

Today, we are fighting a new American Revolution. We are engaged in a battle for Independence from...... (music: fife and drums fade into horror film score)

Foreign Oil

America can no longer afford to be dependent on her enemies for her source of power.

During the Cold War, we struggled against the Soviet campaign for world domination, and we won. Now we are engaged in a quest for Energy Security, and we will win this battle as well.

(Now for the climax . Your proposal to use the Space Race to introduce the idea of the War for Energy Security TM. , is on the right track, but Kennedy didn't get us to the moon - the RUSSIANS did.)

Right now, Japanese automakers are researching ways to phase out petroleum based cars altogether. They are developing faster, more powerful clean-running vehicles and intend to invade U.S. markets with them in the near future. Our forward-thinking rivals know that renewable energy is not only good science but good business. Will we be ready?

(Cut to tractor shot. Music: Western. The Big Country theme would be great, but expensive. I know this guy out in L.A.--what's his name? Monticello? Moscatiello? who can score something that sounds just like the original without violating any copyright laws!)

Today, we have joined the battle, from the high tech laboratories of our nation's research centers to America's heartland, where farmers are harvesting grains to produce biofuels such as ethanol.

You can be a part of the quest, too. By supporting funding for Energy Security research, and by purchasing Eternal RenewalTM products for your home and business.

Reclaim your birthright to dominion over this great Creation. Reach for the Stars.

Help us get there.

Before they do.

Tribute to Loretta Lynn

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:36:00 +0000

On April 21 I will be performing (with my band the Space Dots) in a Tribute to Loretta Lynn at BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, MD . I'll be sharing the night with Ruthie and the Wranglers.

I have been trying to write my own Tribute to Loretta Lynn here, but all I came up with was a bunch of pretentious crap. I'll just say this - a couple of years ago I had the blues big time for several months. About 90 percent of my CD collection was off limits. I discovered a "Loretta Lynn Greatest Hits" CD that I had bought years earlier, when I didn't really know her music and had probably been expecting her to sound like her friend and mentor Patsy Cline. Since she didn't, I had just shelved it. But now I needed something new, since my playlist at that time was some combination of Puccini, Lucinda Williams and Janis Joplin and assorted Irish music, and all of that was just TOXIC!! So I grabbed Loretta and took off on my road trip. I don't know what I missed the first time around, but this time her forthright, heartfelt singing and her effortless sounding lyrics and music just wrapped around my heart and put a smile on my face every time I played them....and played them....and played them.

I found some wonderful YouTube clips of some of her performances from the 1960s and 1970s tv variety shows. Go listen to them. My favorites so far are "Coal Miner's Daughter," "Blue Kentucky Girl" and "How Great Thou Art," which moved me to tears when I first heard her do it.

I'd like to thank the Academy

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 21:36:00 +0000

I went through a phase during my early 20s in which I was tormented by fears about death and violence, and violent crime in particular. During that time, I happened to watch the very first Prime Suspect series, in which Helen Mirren played a flinty Scotland Yard detective trying to nab a serial killer. Her character, Jane Tennison, was unafraid to go into slums and examine decomposing corpses and set foot on crime scenes where acts of unspeakable horror and degradation had been committed against women. The climax of the investigation was a one-on-one confrontation with her suspect in a bare interview room, as she met his eyes and wore him down with her interrogation until he confessed to the crime. Something about this portrayal of a woman just doing her job and being able to look with the cold eyes of compassion at human suffering and evil against this backdrop of London's crushing grayness gave me great hope and strength. I felt like I had found the perfect hero for our time. Mirren's portrayal of that character helped me form my young adult stance toward life. I was on my own search for meaning, and I saw that in order to "make sense" of life, you actually have to make it, by just getting up in the morning and walking through the shit of your life without shrinking from any of it.

I was so impressed by this that I wrote Mirren a very detailed and heartfelt fan letter, and stuffed a copy of the New St. George's British folk-rock CD High Tea into the envelope along with it. A few weeks later, I got - not a restraining order - but a gracious note from Mirren thanking me for my note and for my band's CD, which she said she was "enjoying a great deal!" Helen Mirren listened to "The Steggie" and "All the Tea in India"!

So, naturally, I would not have missed this year's Oscars for the world. I was not at all surprised when Mirren won the Best Actress award for The Queen, which, in a totally different way, portrayed another kind of hero for our time. But what I was surprised by was how moved I was by the entire Oscar presentation this year. In watching this year's Oscars I felt a sense of realism and optimism, as if Hollywood suddenly knew its place and was ready to both serve and lead, like Mirren's character in The Queen.

Host Ellen Degeneres set the perfect tone for the show. In her jester persona, part Charlie Chaplin physical humor and part Harpo Marx mischief, she disarmed the nominees and the rest of the audience by voicing what everyone was thinking (to paraphrase): "this is a night that will make or break your careers. There must be a billion people watching. I hope you're not too nervous" with the inside joke being that she, too, as host, would be on the line as much as if not more than the nominees. With her wide-eyed schtick, she cut through the layers of icy defenses that anyone in show business finds themselves encased in after a few years, portraying a naive bumbler who makes every faux-pas in the book. Kneeling beside Martin Scorsese in his aisle seat, she makes fawning chitchat with him for a few minutes and then, as if the thought had just occurred to her, slips him a script she just happened to be carrying along with her. Later, she hands her digital camera to Spielberg and asks for a photo of her and Clint Eastwood for her MySpace Page, and then at one point gets "caught" on camera making snide remarks about Oscar absentee Judi Dench to a crew member ("She's home having 'knee surgery' Yeah, right. More like eye surgery.") As the night progressed and the camera panned the crowd, it was evident that they had succumbed to her charms and were laughing unguardedly at themselves and having a wonderful time. To the rest of us at home, she seemed to be saying, "It's just a show. It's just entertainment. After this is over the auditorium will be vacuumed and we're all going to get back to our job, which we're doing for you, the public."

As in many other years, the 2007 Oscars had its share of politics, but not in the form of an Oliver Stone conspiracy blockbuster or an actor's grandstanding acceptance speech. West Bank Story, a musical romantic comedy about Jews and Palestinians, ("I just met a girl named Fatima...") won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short film. On the film's web site, the film maker Ari Sandel states his modest-sounding goals for the movie:

I wanted to accomplish three things with the movie:
1. I wanted to make a film that would get attention and also make people laugh.
2. I wanted to make a movie that was pro-peace and offered a message of hope.
3. I wanted to address the situation in an even-handed and balanced way so that Jewish and Arab audiences would feel fairly represented enough to let their guard down and laugh WITH the characters from the "other side". I thought, if we can make a movie that Israelis will watch and like the Arab characters and that Arabs will watch and like the Israeli characters then that will be something valuable.

Entertaining people and bringing them together through laughter? It sounds so corny and simple, but how many people would have had the courage and generosity of heart to pull this off? In his acceptance speech he said that so many people urged him not to do the film that he "shelved it" for five months before resuming work on his short film.I wonder how many people in Hollywood warned David Guggenheim not to take on another lost cause by making a documentary on the un-radical, anti-chic Al Gore and his Power Point presentation on Global Warming?

It may have come as a surprise to some that the man who composed the groovy theme music for tough guy Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a little old Italian grandpa in coke bottle glasses. Probably the only winner whose acceptance speech the band dared not interrupt with its unsubtle sendoff music, Ennio Morricone started off in English and then switched to his native Italian, with Renaissance mensch Eastwood gamely translating by his side. In a trembling voice, he expressed gratitude for his honorary lifetime achievement award and acknowledged all the great artists who had never won an award. He also thanked Maria, his wife of 51 years. Ironically, Maria really stood out in a crowd of people trying to stand out in a crowd, with her naturally aged face in the midst of all those androids with their regulation long necks, pert noses, wide smiles and plunging cleavage.

In her rendition of "I Knew I Loved You," one of Morricone's film themes recently set to lyrics, Celine Dion delivered the best musical moment of the evening. Unlike Melissa Etheridge, who seemed overly anxious to sell her song (which won a much-deserved Oscar), or the dueling divas in the Dreamgirls screamathon, Dion was poised and relaxed as she gave a restrained and reverent performance. Dion can afford to be relaxed. She isn't really even a star anymore. She has actually moved on to the Supernova stage. After the show she and manager-husband Rene Angelil returned to the heavens where they each rule their own planet.

I have not yet seen The Departed or the Last King of Scotland, so the climax of the evening for me was Mirren's award for The Queen. I did see that film, and found it to be profoundly moving and stealthily political. In its portrayal of a struggle between Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II over the crown's public response to the death of Princess Diana, The Queen was a testament to statesmanship at its best. In the film's pivotal moment, the beleaguered Elizabeth, who has been insisting that the funeral is a private matter, and who will be damned if she's going to pay homage to a trollop who's splashed her family's business over the tabloids, gets stuck while driving alone in the hills at Balmoral during a hunting expedition. She encounters the very animal that is being hunted, a fourteen point stag, and the two lock eyes. As she murmurs, "You're magnificent," and is moved to tears by the sight, she suddenly gets it. The stag represents something rare and majestic - the monarchy, tradition, the sacred trust between the Queen and her people. It could be many things, but whatever it is, she realizes that it is bigger than she is. After that, she decides to visit the shrines and bouquets laid out in front of the palace. I cried watching Mirren as the Queen, slowly walking along the gate, handbag in arm, reading handmade placards accusing her and her family of being heartless murderers, while stunned members of the crowd helplessly and reflexively curtseyed before her.

To me it seemed obvious that Stephen Frears was trying to tell our leaders to wake up and realize: it's not about you. Unless you stop fighting personal vendettas from forty years ago and working out family dramas on the world's stage, there will be no more world. That call to duty was the theme I heard in this year's Academy Awards. Hollywood is not the center of the universe, but it plays a vital role in keeping the rest of us going, by inspiring, making us think and feel, making us laugh and believe and want to get up in the morning. And each of us has our own role to play as we walk through the shit of our lives, struggling in each moment to do the next right thing.

Now, let's all have a nice cup of tea and get back to work.

Camille Paglia

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 15:34:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a lecture and discussion by the colorful and controversial public intellectual Camille Paglia at St. John's College in Annapolis (where I'll be going next fall to pursue a Master's Degree in Liberal Arts.) I was completely blissed out - freshly dosed with my ADD meds and buzzing on a can of diet Red Bull, I was spellbound by her two-hour slide presentation on Egyptian and Greek architecture and sculpture and the ways in which the arts expressed the changing political climates in those societies. She made a chilling point when, flashing slides of post-Athens, Hellenistic and Roman statues depicting lurid scenes of violence and sexuality, she commented that this type of art often appears when democracy is in decline. She sees the exploding body parts in today's video games and the oddly-proportioned, Photoshopped images of "perfect" faces and bodies on the covers of fashion magazines as indications of disturbing undercurrents in our own society. Democratic societies tend to produce realistic images of ordinary mortals and celebrate the wonder of the human form and human achievements. They create buildings that invite people to approach them and make use of them. By contrast, the huge, forbidding images of fabulous gods, goddesses and dictators that autocracies pump out as an intimidating form of PR remind her of the artificially elongated, hard and unapproachable looking women seen everywhere in today's media. And, according to Paglia, when a society seems to crave sensational images of eroticized violence and sexual acts, that is also a sign of chaotic tendencies. She darkly suggested more than once that we take our form of government for granted and that after one or two more terror attacks our American Democracy could well go the way of the Roman Republic.

Afterwards, a smaller group accompanied her to the "conversation room," where she took questions from a combined audience of St. John's students and members of the community. I was supposed to wake up at 5:30 am the next morning to drive to Central PA by 11:am, and I suggested to my partner Anita that we just stay for "one question." But we Could Not Leave Our Seats. It was a dizzying back-and-forth about everything from Egyptian art to the Rolling Stones to Meredith Baxter Birney's brilliant portrayal of scorned wife-turned-murderess Betty Broderick in a 1992 television docudrama. Since Paglia mentioned talk radio and how boring most left wing hosts are, I jumped on the opportunity to throw in a word for Stephanie Miller, which immediately got her attention. "Oh yes, I know her! She's from Boston, isn't she?" In true CP form, she would not take my word for it that she was wrong and I was right and that Stephanie was in fact from L.A.! She also didn't seem to realize that it's a nationally syndicated show. But she thanked me for reminding her about it and said she was going to find out more.

The four-hour event flew by. Afterwards, Anita confessed "Okay, I'm a convert." Finally! I am really going to have to get my Paglia talking points together. So often, when I mention her name to people I can practically hear the horses whinnying like they do at the mention of the pointy-breasted Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein. I am going to have to do a bit more thinking on this, but until I get my own Power Point presentation up and running, I'm going to recommend checking out this clip of a lecture and Q&A that she gave at Colorado College that was broadcast recently on C-SPAN.org

Arthur Loves the Caveman

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:35:00 +0000

Bev and I made it onto the GEICO ad campaign featuring the cranky Caveman. You can invade the caveman's privacy by clicking on various parts of his apartment. Don't forget to look at what's playing on his iPod.

I'm turning Japanese I really think so

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Apologies for not writing in this blog for almost a month and leaving the Happy Hooker to babysit. There is an explanation, though. I've had a life-changing experience!!

A few months ago I wrote in here about taking meds for depression, and mentioned that they've made me gain weight. Well, I saw a shrink to see about changing to a different drug, and after she did a differential diagnosis she said that she didn't think I had depression, just dysthymia (the farm team for depression), but that I was off the charts for ADD. I already knew this, actually, as did anyone in any band I've ever been in, but I've never sought treatment. So, always up for a mind altering experience, I decided to give it a go.

The drug she put me on is called Adderall (get it, ADDerall). It's an amphetamine. I took it and could feel the effects within about twenty minutes. I was at work, about to get started on a project. I told my boss that I was just going to take fifteen minutes to straighten my desk first and.....about six hours later I was still working on it. I suddenly saw what was wrong with my desk and filing system and could envision the perfect way to rearrange it. Unfortunately, I also became obssessed with having everything on the desk be exactly parallel to the edge. I ended up staying at work until 10:00PM, finishing my desk and working on my original project. After I went home I did the same thing all weekend, rearranging the contents of cabinets, labeling containers, discovering the efficacy of tools I never thought to use before, like paper clips, funnels, flashlights and footstools. I actually went a little overboard - to OCD (which is what made me wonder about the inspiration for that 1980s song by the Vapors). But my obssessive ideas were actually good ones - ones that ended up saving me time in the long run, and that I wish I had implemented long ago (and my desk and kitchen and home office are still organized a month later.) I learned later that during the first few days there's a "honeymoon phase" where you are euphoric and seemingly superhuman and that, if pushed too far by taking too much, will tip over into paranoia and psychosis. Cool!

I'm normally a person who does everything all at once - like, taking off my pants, shoes and underwear all at the same time, sending change flying everywhere. Or, I'll wake up in the middle of the night with cold feet and start rummaging around in my sock drawer without thinking to turn on the light first. How a drug could bestow upon me what most people call "common sense,' I'm not quite sure. But I have learned a few things since I got the diagnosis that address this. First, ADD is sort of a misnomer. It's not so much an inability to sustain attention as it is an impairment of the part of the brain (located in the prefrontal cortex) that controls what neuroscientists call the "executive functions" - prioritizing, determining salience, delaying action until a more opportune time, etc. This is why people like me get paralyzed - our little brains are unable to tell us whether to focus on getting our bills paid or our dishes done or calling our best friend to make sure some offhand comment we made hasn't offended her. We can't tune out a barking dog or a ticking clock or some idiot snapping gum on the Metro while we're trying to read. The drugs don't so much turn a perforated line of attention into a continuous one - rather, they show you the big, three-dimensional picture, helping you to foreground the important things and keep them there. Otherwise, everything is an immediate brushfire that needs to be put out RIGHT NOW, which causes a great deal of anxiety, frustration and discouragement. The drugs also stimulate the "rewards" part of your brain by increasing the access it has to dopamine, which is one of the chemicals that gets activated when you're in love or doing something that you know is going to bring some great benefit later. So that's another way the drug helps to keep you focused, by chemically inducing a feeling of assurance that whatever you're doing is going to 'pay off.'

The drug only lasts about four to six hours, so after it wears off you can either take more, or just go back to 'normal' if you want. When mine starts to wear off it's as if I can feel my coach gradually turning back into a pumpkin. I hope there won't be any neurological hell to pay for this down the line, but for now I am enjoying it. I feel like I have my brain back. Now that I've started taking these meds I appreciate what a disability ADD is, and how much time I have wasted for the last twenty years since this 'trait' first became a real problem (like me, a lot of adults with undiagnosed ADD get into trouble in college). This is why I could never read more than four pages in an hour, and why I forget lyrics to songs and can't remember to bring extra strings and batteries to gigs. It explains why I have to write on a piece of paper every little thing I'm doing as I try to clean my house, since ADD also affects the part of your brain that handles "working memory" - the capacity to keep a thought 'on line' in your brain concerning the past in order to help you accomplish something in the present. Apparently, I and others like me have a hard time doing something while simultaneously being able to remember the thought we had just a few minutes ago that set the activity into motion in the first place (Example-I have actually had to write a note to myself as I'm carrying a plate to the sink to remind myself why I went into the kitchen. To read about this in more detail, I recommend Russell Barkley's book ADHD and the Nature of Self Control)

So, the reason I haven't been posting on the blog lately, is that I've been playing with a new toy - my brain. I've been enjoying the fact that this medication has allowed me to focus on boring tasks like finishing my income taxes and actually doing my assignments at work without having to take 'escape breaks' all over the internet every five minutes. And blogging is one of my favorite escapes. But, gradually, I'm starting to take the 'new me' in stride and don't feel compelled to spend every medicated minute I have doing things I normally can't do.

Actually, will you look at the time? I have now been shirking for quite awhile.
Before I get back to work I will leave you with this thought, which I can now affirm along with former Vice President Dan Quayle:

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

Website of the week-Xaviera Hollander

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:38:00 +0000

Ring a bell? Were you born in 1970 or earlier? Are you sort of a trashy reader?Still can't put your finger on it, so to speak? Click here for the answer. This is a really fun site. I especially like the music jokes under the Personal section.

Oscar 1994-2007

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:04:00 +0000

Oscar passed away peacefully at home at about 7:45 am on Saturday. He didn't have to be euthanized or anything. It was about as un-traumatic a death as we could have hoped for. He was just one month shy of his thirteenth birthday. I'm doing okay with it, although I felt really sad and tired all day Saturday. My partner Anita is having a much harder time of it than I am. Since she moved down from Boston she put in a lot of time with him and was particularly good at knowing what he was trying to tell us. He really mellowed a great deal under her care, and I feel very grateful that she was in his life for the past few years.

We took him to this pet cremation place in Rockville called Heavenly Days - it was like something out of a David Lynch movie, but in a quirky, cute way with a nice little old lady handling all the arrangements. He'll be cremated by this guy named Greg and sent home in a tasteful wooden box.

He had had a rough time in the past few months with what appeared to be a nasal tumor, but then had rallied right before Christmas. He had a good last few weeks. Over the holidays there were lots of people around and lots of excitement, and he met another dog friend at Anita's mom's on Christmas weekend. He was doing great until right before he died. He was only really in decline for about two days. We were all home at the time. Dr. Pat Kriemelmeyer ("Dr. K") at Takoma Park Animal Clinic offered us a lot of good guidance on how to handle his decline and passing.

He was a good dog - goofy, energetic, intuitive, great at catching frisbees - not so great at returning them. When my cousin David was briefly living with me he thought his name was Oxford, and since we all suspected he was no Rhodes Scholar, "Oxford" became his ironically affectionate nickname. He was happiest when all of his housemates - Fred, Lisa and Anita, were home, sitting in the living room with him contentedly curled up on the floor. He loved to swim and run and gave us many many years of love and laughter. He was known and loved by many in the neighborhood! We all will miss him.

Singer jokes

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 21:30:00 +0000

I love love love singer jokes!! Like, you know, Q: How can you tell when a singer is at the door? A: She can't find her key and she doesn't know when to come in.
Or this one:
Q: How many chick singers does it take to sing a Patsy Cline song?
A: All of them, apparently.

I got many of my favorites from my bass playing buddy Rico Petruccelli, but this has got to be my favorite - a "living" singer joke (also courtesy of Rico).

Enjoy, and send more! Post here. Luv it

New Year's Resolutions

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:18:00 +0000

Ok, here are mine:
Quit cussing, dammit
Practice Italian every day

Here are some additional ones I've come up with for myself and all my musician friends.

Some things never to utter on stage again, ever:

"...and now for something completely different."

"This is a family show"

"We tune because we care"

"Is everybody having fun tonight?"
and the corollary:
"I can't HEAR YOU!"

"I'm going to kill myself"

Please add your own!!!!!!!!

Hello, Cleveland!

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 15:09:00 +0000

So, is it just me, or is anyone else wondering why the Department of Homeland Security gave the Associated Press a copy of a draft report naming the six U.S. cities least prepared for a natural or "man-made" disaster??? For once I'm glad I live in DC!

Overheard on the Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Moscatiello) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:23:00 +0000

Ok, so I was walking around the Hill yesterday and I heard this guy several paces behind me having a cell phone conversation. It went something like:
"How was your Christmas?....Oh, mine was ok, but....it was kind of awkward. It was the first time I've seen my mother since I admitted to having sexual desire for her."

Alllllllrighty then. Do not turn around, do NOT turn around.