Author: old_wp_importer

Sheila, revisiting a book by method-acting guru Lee Strasberg, talks about

consistency

as a primary virtue of the actor

Lee Strasberg was obsessed with consistency and could it be taught. Were there ways to HELP an actor to be able to repeat himself? Certainly there are. Techniques of relaxation and concentration are the bread-and-butter of any regular acting class, and – like an athlete working out every day – like a singer doing scales – like a ballerina at the barre … these things must become rote.

…

actors need to know how to relax WHILE under stressful situations. Some people do it naturally. They come to life ONLY in clutch situations. These are the great talents. They always “show up” when it is demanded of them. They live for it. But many actors need to learn techniques. Relaxation is the key. Learn how to relax while surrounded by a jostling movie crew and you can relax anywhere.

The internet is

poisoned

. In my lunch break I started reading a blog on (er, mostly) Chinese politics, and within 5 minutes was confronted with slash involving David Miliband

and a stegosaurus

.

[no link, because it wasn’t very good porn. I hope in the fullness of time somebody will do better, and occupy that particular niche in triumph]

I find it hard to tell how much Runet has migrated towards twitter. You’d certainly think so from the international media coverage — but that can partly be blamed on the journalistic bad habit of only reporting tools the hacks themselves use.

Global Voices does provide a list of tweeple:

@MiriamElder, @ioffeinmoscow, @shaunwalker7, @A_Osborn, @oflynnkevin, @agent_Alka, @courtneymoscow, @PeterGOliver_RT, @mschwirtz, @markmackinnon, @tonyhalpin, @Amiefr_Reuters, @RolandOliphant, @niktwick are tweeting live in English from the big protest rally that is taking place at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow right now; @agoodtreaty is monitoring Russian-language Twitter coverage of the protests in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia.

But Livejournal, even in senility, still seems a far more potent location of protest. It’s where Navalny hangs out. It’s where Vladislav Surkov, Kremlin insider and puppetmaster of “

Managed Democracy

“, popped up to propose an urban liberal party.

But I can’t tell if LJ really is still important, or if I’m just noticing things there because of familiarity.

What’s really hilarious about last Saturday’s protests is how tiny the numbers are. Perhaps 25000 people on the streets. Anywhere else, protests short of a hundred thousand will barely be noticed. But Russian democracy has been ‘managed’ so well, that even a few thousand demonstrators can constitute a shock to the system.

I’ve been enjoying the latest installment from Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. Defence minister and rising star, he was forced out of office this spring, when a cluster of online activists discovered that he had plagiarised his PhD thesis.

Now he’s attempting a low-level comeback, advising the EU’s internet commissioner on online freedom. In particular, he’ll be looking at how the EU can support bloggers and online activists in authoritarian regimes.

Netzpolitik has mostly been having fun with all this (“

More Guttenplag-wikis for dictatorships?

).

But they also home in on the more important point — the inanity of separating “internet freedom in authoritarian states” (Guttenberg’s beat to be) from internet freedom in the EU. Telling others to be free while cracking down at home — it does have the kind of arrogance which Guttenberg does so well, but that surely doesn’t mean he should do it.

On the other hand, I do have a grudging admiration for Gutenberg’s willingness to accept humiliation. He’s chosen to go straight back to the world which saw through him, rather than the one overawed by his smooth rich-boy background. Perhaps also, over fading away into a world of business or conference-speaking, the usual stamping-grounds of the disgraced politician.

Holly might sound as though she’s talking about sex education. Maybe she is. But this is wider:

I don’t think this apathy makes the lab okay. I think it makes it insidious. “Yeah yeah, sex is dirty, sluts have diseases, just copy the answers off the board and we’ll get out of here before ten” is a much nastier and more dangerous thing than if we’d had an overtly ideological discussion of the subject. It makes it a given thing, a thing not needing discussion, that sex is dirty and nothing can be done about it.

Henry Farrell:

It is tempting to see the procedures of

the EU as a long-term conspiracy to bore

the public into submission. The truth is

more mundane. Europe’s leaders fell into

technocracy by accident rather than design.

This article on Lester Bangs is sharp and appealing:

No, sorry. Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t the party. It’s what you do when you’re home and miserable alone because you weren’t invited to the party. It’s what you do to make up for not being at the party. That’s why it sounds like a party. A guy wouldn’t break out one of those rubber fake-vaginas in the middle of actual fucking, would he? Rock ‘n’ roll is social masturbation.

It’s sort of appropriate for it to be less about Bangs himself than about his position and meaning, about his impact on his readers. After all, that’s much of the appeal of Bangs, as far as I can tell. It’s hard to know; he’s by now so frozen into the hall of fame that I can’t really get excited about him.

Still, I’m not sure I quite buy the idea of Rock ‘n’ Roll as the antiparty. Because unlike music or poetry or painting, music makes far less sense alone

Despite

London Calling

being one of my favourite albums, I’d never before realised what the cover was about:

[via Sheila O’Malley, whose now-waning period of Elvis obsession has been a joy to encounter]

It’s not so surprising that lobbyists are offering to demonize Occupy Wall Street for money. That’s their job, after all: latch on to whatever is happening, and demand cash to support or hinder or manipulate it.

What’s sweet is how fixated they are on finding some rich central backer pulling the strings. Maybe it’s Soros? After all, these people wouldn’t do anything unless they were being paid for it:

“It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”