Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC), Santa Barbara’s oldest continuously operating Actors’ Equity Association theater, opens its new season this week with Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. ETC also has a new executive artistic director, Jonathan Fox, with whom I spoke last week. He’s an impressive guy-warm and intelligent, very business-like, and fun to talk to.
Viewing Werner Herzog’s weirdly hypnotic 1972 film reminds us of his irreverent genius and vision, and also the spotty track record of achieving his loftiest ideals. Matters of history flit about the film, like the spider monkeys scampering around the raft in the chilling final shot, while mad Aguirre (Klaus Kinski, in one of his most spookily cool performances) babbles irrationally about his planned conquest of the New Spain.
There was much hand-wringing and chest-thumping by the Santa Barbara County Supervisors early Tuesday morning, but at the end of the day, they concluded they lacked the legal authority to provide the relief sought by the 55 low-income, Spanish-speaking families now being evicted from the Cedarwood Apartments in Isla Vista.
WORLDLY/LOCAL WOES: Oh mama, can this really be the end-to be stuck inside Santa Barbara with those Beverly Hills blues again? On a bad day in this town, it seems the place is sinking into the seething eddies of affluence, arrogance, and ignorance. Santa Barbara long-timers and lifers (sentenced to a life spent here, convinced that anywhere else on the planet would pale by comparison) wonder how the place became so alien.
President Bush agreed last week to a so-called compromise bill on the rules governing the interrogation and prosecution of terrorists. The bill, hammered out between Bush and Senate Republicans including John McCain (R-Ariz.), drops the administration’s original call for the redefinition of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Convention. But despite some claims that the administration bowed to the rebellious senators by agreeing to require military interrogators to adhere to the Geneva conventions, the bill still allows CIA interrogators to employ techniques that do not coform to the legal limits set for the U.S. military.
About 15 minutes into the bus ride, our guide leaned forward conspiratorially. “She had something under her eye,” he began, “and I thought it was a bit of mascara. But no :” and here we all shifted to the edge of our seats, poking our heads out into the aisle to get a better view. He paused dramatically, scanning the semi-dark bus and said, “It was a black freckle.”
Fortunately for firefighters, Santa Ana winds that were expected over the weekend never arrived, but the Day Fire is yet
Relative Values exposes a class-conscious society in which appearances and formalities still reign, but are fast slipping away. Even the butler laments the loss, saying, “comedy of manners disappears quickly when the manners disappear.” Of course, Crestwell is no ordinary butler; he quotes Milton and alludes to Somerset Maugham. His dry wit, sarcastic humor, and erudite knowledge exceed his superiors. Nevertheless, Crestwell will always remain a butler. Social equality is a utopian idea as far as he is concerned.
Santa Barbara News-Press reporters Melinda Burns and Dawn Hobbs with columnist Starshine Roshell at a pro-union rally this Sunday afternoon in front of the NP building.
He’s a black man from Newark with dreadlocks and street-savvy style who tap dances to Vivaldi. Savion Glover isn’t the kind of contemporary artist who has to work to earn street cred; he’s already hip. This is a guy who turns up in Notorious BIG’s lyrics and Puff Daddy’s music videos one minute, and on Sesame Street and at the White House the next. It has to be a truly unusual talent that appeals to such diverse groups, and unusual is exactly how Savion (pronounced “Save*ee*on”) Glover sees his work.
