Beep. Bop. Boop.

This past month I got to see Hamilton in Chicago, which was just about as incredible as you’d expect, and because I am the sort of person who has a Lot Of Thoughts about things and also the sort of person who has a Lot Of Feelings about Aaron Burr, I wanted to word vomit about how acting choices change Burr’s character. 

  (Of course, when babbling about Burr’s character, I mean musical Burr, not historical Burr. I enjoy historical Burr too, but largely for the “what the fuck are you doing” factor; obviously, musical Burr isn’t and, for the sake of the narrative, shouldn’t be an exact replica of his historical counterpart.) 

  (Also, when I saw Hamilton in Chicago, I saw Daniel Breaker as Burr and Miguel Cervantes as Hamilton, both of whom are excellent actors and beautiful singers. My only real points of comparison are Leslie Odom Jr.’s Burr and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as they exist in the cast album, clips online, etc.) 

From the beginning of the Chicago production, I was listening to Burr and thinking, “This is so different. How is this so different? What is so different about this??” I didn’t really know until “Wait For It”; right at the end, Burr closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and held his hands palms-down at his sides, visibly calming himself and visibly reminding himself to, essentially, wait. He believed that he needed to wait in order to get ahead and so he made a conscious, strategic choice to do so. LOJ’s Burr wouldn’t have done that, because he did not need to remind himself to wait; waiting was what he did. It was who he was.

  The other really telling moment for me was during “Ten Duel Commandments,” when Burr says “Okay so we’re doing this.” DB’s Burr said this with a lot more humor and bemusement and a lot less resignation than LOJ’s Burr. It also came across like a joke or an aside to the audience, whereas LOJ’s Burr delivered his asides (“okay so we’re doing this,” “this should be fun,” “sweet Jesus”) as though he were making comments to himself. They weren’t Burr’s asides to the audience so much as they were Burr’s asides to Burr. LOJ’s Burr of course interacted with and addressed the audience (or the listener, in the case of the cast album), since Burr is the narrator, but there was almost always the sense that he was holding something back, maybe even from himself and certainly from us. 

I think these two moments say a lot about how differently DB and LOJ play Burr. DB’s Burr is not cautious because he is a fundamentally reserved, cautious person; he’s cautious because it’s a choice. He’s slicker. He’s funnier. He’s more charming and more open with both his anger and his sorrow. You can see him make calculating political decisions (going immediately to Madison and Jefferson after Hamilton’s rejection in “Schuyler Defeated”). He plays his cards close to his chest, but he plays them that way because it’s a strategy; it’s how he gets ahead. It becomes something he does, rather than something he is. His caution is external rather than internal; he’s cautious because that’s how the thinks he can succeed, not because that’s how he thinks he can survive. The tragedy of his taking the fatal shot in the duel is that after so much careful calculation, so much strategizing, he makes this reckless, wild choice; he waited too long, his career fell apart around him, and he finds himself in the wreckage with seemingly no other options. 

  On the other hand, LOJ’s Burr is solemn. He is serious and sad; from the clips I’ve seen and from what friends who’ve seen him in the role have told me, he’s also unbelievably still on stage, until “Room Where It Happens.” Everything about him is directed inwards, and because of this quiet sophistication, there is always the sense that a million things are happening somewhere deep inside his head. Campaigning exhausts this Burr (“honestly, it’s kinda draining”) because his is not a political temperament, but he wants power, he wants influence, he wants to be able to do what Hamilton can do. In the moments when we get a sense of what he’s feeling (“Wait For It,” “Room Where It Happens,” “World Was Wide Enough”), this mixture of sorrow and fury comes bursting through the cracks in his caution and his fear, and it’s powerful. Those moments are for himself; we’re watching him sing “Wait For It,” but he’s singing for himself. His anger is so different, too; when he gets mad (“Your Obedient Servant,” “World Was Wide Enough”), his rage is icy and cruel and seething, and it goes deep. In the end, when LOJ’s Burr pulls the trigger, the tragedy is that in the single moment when it mattered the most, he resisted his fundamental impulse to wait. He acted contrary to who he was as a person, to everything he believed, and paid the price. The most painful moment in the cast album for me is when Burr yells “WAIT!” after realizing Hamilton threw away his shot; Burr didn’t wait, and he can’t go back in time and make himself wait. The one time he truly, truly should have waited is the one time he didn’t. 

It’s also true that how Hamilton is played affects how Burr comes across. LMM’s Hamilton is constantly manic with energy, with desperation, with need. Even during his final monologue, when he’s become tired and gray with the weight of his life, he’s still a little bit manic. MC’s Hamilton is a little quieter. He’s cocky, he’s arrogant, he’s passionate and overzealous, but the reserve absent in Burr is present in him. I believed the other characters when they said he wrote like he needed it to survive; he is tightly coiled and a little bit on fire, always, like a low thrum rather than a constant buzz. I adore LMM’s Hamilton and I think LMM is pretty incredible in general, but his Hamilton always felt like a very different person than the character I imagined when I read Hamilton’s letters. MC’s Hamilton, though, felt very much like the Hamilton I imagined. He was still hot-headed, he still had no idea how to talk less, but his pain and trauma dampened him and weighed on him from the beginning. I kept thinking abut how historical Hamilton spent months in bed after the war; as a trauma survivor and someone with PTSD, I connected immediately to the growing ache that built up in MC’s Hamilton as Laurens died, as Phillip died, as his life crumbled around him. 

  I think what results from all of this is that the relationship between Hamilton and Burr changes. LMM’s Hamilton and LOJ’s Burr are foils of one another; they are both brilliant, prodigious men who are motivated, primarily, by fear. They’ve both been orphaned and abandoned at a young age and they are both working, as best they can, to avoid feeling that pain ever again. Hamilton does this by working, without rest or pause, to create a legacy; if he can’t be forgotten, then he can’t be abandoned, and no one will ever discount or ignore him again. (I think this is really supported by realizing that “Non-Stop” comes right after the Laurens Interlude; loss and abandonment result in mania, result in a desperate need to create something that cannot die.) Burr, on the other hand, manages his fear by waiting; if he is careful and cautious, if he waits for what he wants, then he can understand the world, he can avoid mistakes, he can create the life he wants. If he refuses to be reckless, then he can’t be blindsided by pain or by loss. His caution is not a political strategy, “Room Where It Happens” is not a strategic decision; his caution is the armor he wears to survive. Ultimately, with LOJ’s Burr and LMM’s Hamilton, the ways Burr and Hamilton are different serve largely to illuminate the ways in which they are the same. 

Student choir to perform “Hamilton” songs with Broadway guest (Philadelphia Public School Notebook):

Sydney Harcourt, an understudy for Aaron Burr (played by Leslie Odom Jr.) [sic] in the Broadway hit play Hamilton, will perform with students from Philadelphia Creative and Performing Arts’ concert choir at the American Revolution Museum’s Opening Gala on April 19.

Harcourt joined them Wednesday for a 90-minute rehearsal of their performance which includes renditions of songs from the play.

With vocal music teacher Dorina Morrow on the piano, and sophomore Zev Rosenberg on percussion, Harcourt coached the choir of sophomores and seniors through “The Room Where It Happens,” “History Has Its Eyes On You,” and “Wait For It.”

During a short break, Harcourt took a minute to express how impressed he was with the choir.

“These kids are killing it,” he said. “Like better than professionals. Really, I am so impressed. I really can’t speak any higher of the program at CAPA.”

Ok this is a mess and probably not a good likeness of either, BUT hear me out: Book accurate Sherlock with Dev Patel as Holmes and Riz Ahmed as Watson? Please?? I’ve convinced myself that I need this. Patel’s Sherlock would 10/10 shake a baby’s hand (among other actual canon Holmes shenanigans). Besides, Riz already has that long-suffering “what have you done now, Holmes” look.

Partially inspired by this photo post of the boyz at the Oscars. 

11:45:

They had just enough time to make it onto the platform, get their trunks loaded, and say their goodbyes. Molly ushered them all along, wishing that she could just Apparate them all onto the train and be done with it. There was too much to do, too much to say, too m—

All at once, she screeched to a halt. Percy crashed into her, causing the twins to snicker.

A tiny boy was being crossly turned away by a security guard. A boy whose ribs poked through his baggy shirt, whose glasses were broken, whose jaw was trembling as he tried to find his way. Well, surely she could be the person to guide him there? And did he…? Yes! He had an owl! He was one of them!

The poor child; he looked so lost.

Where were his parents?

Never mind, never mind. She would see to it that he would get on the train. But she had to be careful. She couldn’t startle him. He’d run off and that would be the end of it. No, no, they had to be crafty.

11:47 AM:

“Packed with Muggles of course,” Molly said loudly, ushering her very confused children past the boy. “What’s the platform number again?”

“Nine and three quarters,” Percy said. “Mother, how could you have forg—?”

It was George who nudged him as he understood what she was doing. She had done it before, after all, and she would do it again.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

The boy didn’t seem to notice them.

11:48 AM:

“Packed with Muggles of course,” said Molly again, marching her children past once more. “What’s the platform number?”

“Nine and three quarters,” Fred and George screamed in unison.

And still the boy remained lost.

11:49 AM:

“Mum,” Ron panted, tripping over himself as he ran to keep up with her. “Slow down!”

Molly ignored him as she practically flew past the poor boy. “Packed with Muggles of course! Now, what’s the platform number?”

“Nine and three quarters,” Ron bellowed.

11:50 AM:

Molly honestly didn’t care if her entire family missed the train and she had to set off across the UK herself like a mother leading a flock of ducklings: she was going to help this boy onto the bloody train.

She marched past him with a fiery determination and said, “Packed with Muggles of course!”

The boy looked up.

Yes! Okay, this was it, this was it, this was it. Play it cool. He was following them. Listening. Pretending not to.

They stopped.

“Now,” Molly said. “What’s the platform number?”

“Nine and three quarters,” piped Ginny.

Victory!

The next nine minutes were a whirlwind of chaos but they managed to get the boy through the barrier. At Molly’s insistence, Fred and George popped up and helped him get his trunk into the compartment. She handed Ron an extra sandwich and muttered, “Tell him that everywhere else was full.”

He dutifully nodded.

As the train took off, she waved to her children, including her newest one.

9.8.16

New Mexico sucks!

Now, I might be willing to admit that the reason New Mexico sucks is hugely influenced by the fact that I had a string of bad luck there. But still, obviously my opinion is the most important opinion ever, so for all intents and purposes New Mexico sucks. Here, I’ll make a list of why New Mexico sucks:

If you don’t recall the state of the country following 9/11, let’s give a little context, because it wasn’t pretty in the run up to the war against Iraq (and Afghanistan). Because here’s the thing:  President Bush was always going to invade Iraq. Let’s just get that on the table. The rationale for the Iraq war was about a dictator with weapons of mass destruction and his refusal to let U.N. weapons inspectors in to confirm he’d destroyed the WMD.  

The people who can more fairly be called war mongers with respect to the Iraq war are President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

After 9/11 – an al Qaeda attack funded/planned by Osama bin Laden and other extremists – the administration took massive advantage of the scared, vengeance-seeking political climate to justify the invasion of… Iraq. Despite the fact that none of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi. Most were Saudi. Bin Laden was Saudi, and he’d been given safe haven in Afghanistan, which was a mostly failed state at that point, ruled by the repressive awful Taliban. The Taliban brutally repressed women, killed their opposition, and were totally okay with al Qaeda hanging out there. 

But we invaded Iraq because reasons!

Now, look, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserved to be swept out of power. But Iraq had fuck-all to do with 9/11. Regardless, the Bush administration repeatedly and purposefully conflated the “global war on terror” and retribution for 9/11 with the threat Saddam supposedly posed to the States. Further, once the Bush administration started linking Iraq, WMDs, terrorist, and 9/11, being against the war was widely considered disloyal and deeply unpatriotic. 

An example you may remember – the Dixie Chicks (SIDENOTE:  Watch Shut Up and Sing, it’s fascinating):

CNN, March, 2003:   Country stations across the United States have pulled the Chicks from playlists following reports that lead singer Natalie Maines said in a concert in London earlier this week that she was “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

Station managers said their decisions were prompted by calls from irate listeners who thought criticism of the president was unpatriotic.

The drumbeat for war with Iraq (and Afghanistan, though that was almost an afterthought for all the airtime Saddam/Iraq got) lasted well over a year. Bush named Iraq part of the so-called “Axis of Evil” in his January, 2002 State of the Union speech; Bush stated he’d go to war with Iraq with or without a UN declaration in his January, 2003 State of the Union; Secretary of State Colin Powell presented what we’ll generously call intelligence mixed up with scare tactics to the UN in February, 2003; and on March 20, 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Eighteen months of this – of ridiculing France for refusing to join in (see “freedom fries”); of telling people “you are either with us or you’re against us”; of an absolute refusal to tolerate criticism of the president or the pro-war movement. So in late 2002 – nearly a year into the calculated case for war and the silencing of people expressing doubts or criticism – Congress took up the AUMF. 

77 of 100 Senators voted in favor (77%), including 29 Democrats

296 of 435 Congresspersons voted in favor (69%)

In that political climate, most of Congress voted the way Clinton did, including roughly half of the Democrats. But I think a lot of us agree it was the wrong choice. Guess what? So does Hillary Clinton!  

Clinton agrees voting in favor of the AUMF was a mistake. So why’d she vote to authorize military action if she didn’t support going to war? Here’s how Slate recapped Clinton’s explanation for why she cast it:

President Bush, she told the audience, had made a “very explicit appeal” that “getting this vote would be a strong piece of leverage in order to finish the inspections.” In other words, a resolution to use force would prod Saddam Hussein into readmitting U.N. inspectors, so they could continue their mission of verifying whether or not he had destroyed his chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons sites. In other words, Clinton was now claiming she voted the way she did in the interests of diplomacy; the problem was that Bush went back on his word—he invaded before giving the inspectors enough time.

Now, that could be seen as after-the-fact justification, right? Maybe she knows it was a mistake and is just trying to throw something plausible in there to cover her ass. Well, Clinton’s statements from the floor of the Senate confirm her account:

“Even though the resolution before the Senate is not as strong as I would like in requiring the diplomatic route first … I take the president at his word that he will try hard to pass a United Nations resolution and seek to avoid war, if possible. Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely and war less likely—and because a good faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause—I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation. If we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go away with delay will oppose any United Nations resolution calling for unrestricted inspections.”

So, yeah. Clinton made a mistake when she voted for the AUMF in 2002. But as with almost everything in national and international politics, the situation was greyer than some of her opponents make it out to be. And maybe her vote is a little more understandable in context. If you disagree with her decision in this area – whether it’s because she trusted Bush, or because she’s too hawkish for your tastes – it’s still pretty clear that she thought deeply about this and did what she thought was right at the time. 

And you know what?  It’s commendable for her to publicly acknowledge this mistake. It’s reassuring that she’s had this type of experience before – both as a Senator and then as Secretary of State. I’m not glad she voted for the AUMF – invading Iraq was the biggest geopolitical error the U.S. has made since the Vietnam War – but I’m sure as hell glad she’s thought about it and learned from it, which will make her a stronger, wiser president going forward.

Also, if you think that Hillary Clinton is a war monger, please explain how Donald Trump is a viable alternative:

MATTHEWS: Where would we drop — where would we drop a nuclear weapon in the Middle East?

TRUMP: Let me explain. Let me explain.

Somebody hits us within ISIS — you wouldn`t fight back with a nuke?

…

MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

MSNBC, March 30, 2016

Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of Silicon Valley, there was an age undreamed of…

Movies were sold on big reels of tape, wound up inside little plastic boxes.

And played on machines called VCRs.

And if you wanted to create a copy of a movie, you could hook two of these machines together and do it with no problem. In fact, it was ruled in a court of law that it was a fair use of someone elses copyrighted movie to make yourself an archival copy, so that if your tape broke, or the machine ‘ate it’ you wouldn’t have to buy another one.

Hollywood didn’t care for this.

So, when the digital age dawned, someone came up with the bright idea of selling movies on DVDs. And one of the big selling points, so far as Hollywood was concerned, was that you could encrypt the data of the movie on the disc, and put hardware to decrypt it in the DVD player, in such a way that it wouldn’t play if two DVD players were hooked together, and so that someone who put a DVD into a computer couldn’t copy it.

Techies and hackers didn’t care for this.

So, they started trying to figure out how to cryptanalyze the DVDs, which were encrypted with a tech called CSS, for Content Scrambling System. And they didn’t have much luck, because crypto is hard, and breaking it is harder. And then one day they caught a lucky break.

Some manufacturers of DVD players, from Taiwan iirc, put out a new product, one of which was bought by a hacker somewhere, who tinkered with it and realized that the makers had made a mistake. They hadn’t properly protected the chips that contained the CSS decryption key, which allowed this guy to get access to it and copy it. He then created a program called DeCSS, which would allow you to put a DVD in a computer and then ‘rip’ the data to your hard drive, then write it to another DVD. He posted it online, and within hours the news, and copies of the key and code, had spread all over the world.

Hollywood flipped their shit over this.

They brought the legal hammer down on this guy, and it ended up in court. He said he had a right, as per the previous Fair Use ruling, regarding VHS tapes, to copy DVDs as well. When people had previously complained that encryption was stripping them of their rights, Hollywood had argued that there was nothing in the law that said they had to make copying easy, and basically challenged them to figure out how to break it. In the court case, Hollywood argued that under a new law that had passed, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it was illegal to circumvent an DRM, or Digital Rights Management system. The plaintiffs counter-argued that they hadn’t really reversed engineered anything, that the dumb machines had been built wrong, that they had a right to tinker with it and see how it worked.

So, sitting between these parties was a judge who… to put it kindly, was probably in over his head. Probably some old guy, the kind of guy who still owned a VCR with the clocking blinking 12:00 PM because he didn’t know how to adjust the time. An old grandpa sorta guy. Maybe not a bad guy, just clueless about how tech works. So, when Hollywood argued that there should be some sort of injunction against the spread of the DeCSS software online, that it should be illegal for people to host it, or for others to download it, or to tell people how it worked, or even to link to it, gramps said, “Sure, why not? Here you go, here’s an order that says it’s illegal to possess this software.”

Well, the tech people freaked out about this, because it contradicted a number of already established precedents. Like Phil Zimmermann publishing the source code of PGP and shipping the books containing it to Europe, despite the fact that the encryption tech it contained had been ruled a munition that couldn’t be sold overseas. The precedent, that code was speech, and therefore subject to first amendment protections, seemed to be being thwarted in the DeCSS case. And the tech/hacker community wanted to make it clear that they weren’t going to stand for that.

So, some bright person somewhere, went out and got himself a shirt made, that had the source code of DeCSS printed on it, along with some quote from the order basically saying that it was illegal to buy or own this shirt, then started selling them on his website. This clever idea opened a floodgate of people coming up with unique ways to spread the source code of DeCSS, in a way that was tempting the court to try to stop them, on the grounds that the ruling would then go to a higher court and be turned over on first amendment grounds.

“Take t5’s low byte (AND t5 with two hundred fifty five) to put it

in the ith byte of the vector called k.  Now shift t5 right eight bits;

store the result in t5 again.  Now that’s the last step in the loop.

No sooner have we finished that loop than we’ll start another; no rest

for the wicked nor those innocents whom lawyers serve with paperwork.”

Quote from a long haiku that gives step by step instructions for implementing DeCSS

One of these people, Phil Carmody, raised an interesting argument. He said that software is just numbers. In fact, every piece of software is a single number, that is also a infinite number of numbers (or practically so) as there are nearly an infinite number of mathematical conversions or encodings you can perform on a number. So he wrote a little script version of DeCSS, then converted it to a number, then started to look to see if this number was the same as another somewhere. Was it hidden somewhere in pi? Or the Golden Ratio? What if you doubled it? or added 1 to it?

And after some searching, he found a list of the largest known prime numbers, wherein the 19th largest prime that had been found by that time, was the same as his code for DeCSS. So he posted this info online, and said, “If you go to this website, take this prime number, and save it in a file, then compile it, the output is this piece of software that is illegal to possess, transmit, or share information about.” Here it is, by the way:

485650789657397829309841894694286137707442087351357924019652073668698513401047237446968797439926117510973777701027447528049058831384037549709987909653955227011712157025974666993240226834596619606034851742497735846851885567457025712547499964821941846557100841190862597169479707991520048667099759235960613207259737979936188606316914473588300245336972781813914797955513399949394882899846917836100182597890103160196183503434489568705384520853804584241565482488933380474758711283395989685223254460840897111977127694120795862440547161321005006459820176961771809478113622002723448272249323259547234688002927776497906148129840428345720146348968547169082354737835661972186224969431622716663939055430241564732924855248991225739466548627140482117138124388217717602984125524464744505583462814488335631902725319590439283873764073916891257924055015620889787163375999107887084908159097548019285768451988596305323823490558092032999603234471140776019847163531161713078576084862236370283570104961259568184678596533310077017991614674472549272833486916000647585917462781212690073518309241530106302893295665843662000800476778967984382090797619859493646309380586336721469695975027968771205724996666980561453382074120315933770309949152746918356593762102220068126798273445760938020304479122774980917955938387121000588766689258448700470772552497060444652127130404321182610103591186476662963858495087448497373476861420880529443

Carmody argued, if the ruling that it’s illegal to do these things with the DeCSS software holds up, then it’s also illegal to possess, transmit, or share information about this prime number.  It will become an illegal number. It would have to be redacted from websites, and whatever books it might appear in. People searching for new primes, or any other number, will have to worry about sharing them online, that they are on some list of illegal numbers somewhere. The lists will grow exponentially, as the precedent that this software is forbidden to possess or share, will lead others to demand that software, and numbers, they don’t care for be made illegal as well.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: In photos

With Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream now open in the Globe Theatre, take a look at some photos from the production on stage. 

Seeing the show? Share your thoughts using #MidsummerNightsDream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream will play in the Globe Theatre until 11 September. Discover more about the production and buy tickets.

One cone to another | Michael Lampron-York

Pudge the fish got a peanut butter sandwich every Thursday. Nani does not argue the logic of feeding him, only suggests an alternative sandwich when they are out of peanut butter. Lilo was allowed to take as many photos of whatever mundane or odd subjects as she wanted and Nani would get them developed. Nani recognized what were important habits for Lilo.

When Lilo asks for a pet lobster, Nani does not tell her that lobsters are not pets. She tells her, “We don’t have a lobster door, we have a dog door.” She makes sure the woman at the pound does not tell Lilo that “Stitch is not a real name”.

NANI SPENDS THE ENTIRE MOVIE MAKING SURE THAT LILO NEVER FEELS LIKE HER IDEAS ARE WRONG.

And half of her terror of losing Lilo isnt even just losing her family; its knowing that wherever Lilo goes, they won’t know how to do these things. They won’t understand her. 

It’s not just a habit. It’s a very real part of Lilo’s healing process and Nani understands that.

Also if you pay attention to Nani’s room you’ll notice she had surfing posters and trophies. She was very much on her way to being a pro surfer but had to give it up to become the adult Lilo needed her to be.

And not ONCE does Nani show her sister any resentment. It’s worth it to keep her family together. This is a young woman who is willing to sacrifice all of her dreams and make incredibly grown up decisions.