It’s going to be a busy March. Buckle up, kids.

TUESDAY, MARCH 6th 9:00pm
MICHAEL RAIVE featuring FRANK GENTILE
Hosted by KEVIN MARSHALL
Cost: FREE
@ Pinto & Hobbes (142 Washington Ave., Albany)

SUNDAY, MARCH 11th 5:00pm
CARLISLE CAREY w/s/g KEVIN MARSHALL
@ Bat Shea’s (95 Ferry St., Troy NY)

FRIDAY, MARCH 16th 8:30pm
THE ROAST of JENNIFER McMULLEN (from Fly 92)
w/ KEVIN MARSHALL, SANDY BEACH, LUKE DONOVAN, & MORE
Cost: ???
Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)

FRIDAY, MARCH 30th 8:30pm
KEVIN MARSHALL & FRIENDS
w/s/g TBA
benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Cost: $10
Drink specials all night long!
@ Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)

I’m trying not to pay too much attention to this or give it too much weight, but when I do think about it I get a little bit sick. It’s 1953 all over again, and we’re about to give the Best Picture Oscar to The Greatest Show on Earth.

…

The Artist is a 2011 version of That’s Entertainment! in a silent, black-and-white mode with a strong narrative assist from A Star Is Born and Singin’ in the Rain.

Echoes a lot of my feelings on the film. Charming? Sure. But it’s way too derivative, twee, and self-congratulatory (not to mention a bit backwards and weird in its romantic themes) to warrant “Best Picture” consideration.

It’s popcorn. Nice to have at a theater, but not something I’d dare accept as a substitute for sirloin.

Previously: on French nostalgia for Western film and zombies

YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT!

Thanks to the Knick Ledger for the honor.

For the full list, click here.

NOTE: because of tonight’s event cancellation, I urge all of you to check out Laughs AGainst L&L at The Egg to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Starts at 7:30pm, tickets are $20, and there’s like a bazillion comics.

We are obviously very disappointed at this turn of events. All of us were looking forward to this show. Speaking for myself (though I’m sure Mo, William, and Jeff would express similar sentiments), I can say that I’m disappointed that I not only don’t get to perform, but that I have to inform all of you with such short notice. I can only apologize for the inconvenience.

Please note that this is not a reflection on any of us performers, all of whom were willing, able, and excited to perform for you tomorrow night.

Thank you for keeping us on your calendar and supporting local comedy.

click image for full size

(click here to download)

=== Download latest revision (PDF) as of 2/16/2012 ===

The idea was to make the process simpler and to tie it to the actual business rather than the land. Currently, a cabaret license is obtained through a clumsy process that results in a one-time $125 fee and is granted to the physical land. Which means that not only does it transfer to new businesses, but also new landowners. This new law, which if approved would go into effect April 1st, would hold specific businesses and business owners accountable for obtaining and renewing their cabaret license annually.

The most alarming aspect was addressed in a revision made two weeks ago. Basically, the application process was going to occur behind closed doors at the City Clerk’s office. That lack of transparency caused many, including myself, to remark that it made the process seem dirty and as if they were trying to pre-emptively shut down what they deem undesirable businesses, which would lead invariably to discriminatory practices muddied with political and racial biases. Thankfully, someone listened, and the process now has been completely changed to include input from various agencies and open it up for public comment.

The other major downside was the cost. Originally the range was a minimum of $300 to $900. The price has been brought down drastically, and is tiered according to capacity:

Up to and including 150 persons $150
151 to 300 persons $200
301 to 500 persons $300
501 or more persons $500
for each year or fraction thereof.

Note: if a venue has multiple rooms where events can be performed, there is a surcharge of $60 for each additional performance space.

Still very expensive for small businesses. One of the points I made to the committee was that many folks (and unfortunately one mustached member of the council whose name I unfortunately didn’t get) have this idea that businesses can afford whatever the city throws at them, what I referred to as a “tophat and monocle” image of small business owners. The reality is far different, particularly for those that own small coffee houses in the city limits.

One of the compromises in a recent revision attempts to address this. From Section 111-72 B:

B. Licensed premises that do not serve or sell any form of alcohol and whose amplification is only necessary for balancing acoustic instruments by means of a public address system or amplifier shall pay a fee of $50.

Again, it’s an earnest attempt, but done by people who don’t have a real working knowledge of  what’s going on in the city and a general trend throughout the country. Many coffeehouses do in fact have liquor licenses in order to supplement their income. There’s also the rise of the Wine Bar – we’re having one opening right here in downtown Troy run by city booster Vic Christopher – that’s serves as more of a cafe than a bar/tavern. So while it’s a step in the right direction, there’s still some work to be done.

While most of the revisions were for the better, there was one that seemed to be shoe-horned in by a misguided council member reacting to some anecdotal circumstance:

C. For the purposes of this chapter, a premises owned or occupied by a religious organization which permits musical entertainment, singing, dancing or other forms of amusement in said premises that do not coincide with a religious service shall be deemed to be  conducting a cabaret hereunder.

So basically, if a church is having a mixer, technically that can be construed as not “coinciding with a religious service” and subject them to needing to obtain and pay for a cabaret license. What I stressed to the members of the Committee and all present is that sometimes with a law like this, less is more. The easy way to fix this wouldn’t be to add more qualifiers as to what would be deemed as coinciding with a church or religious service, but to instead provide an exemption to all religious organizations. As hard as these fees will be for small businesses, it will be even harder for churches to cover them; they provide an invaluable service to underserved communities and, as such, rarely see the kind of cash flow that would justify the city charging them annually for a cabaret license. It would amount to the city looking like cruel overseers trying to draw blood from a stone, and all because one committee member was privy to an isolated incident.

This change is akin to someone getting cut off in traffic and, in response, trying to get legislation to make it harder for drivers to make a lane change. In that sense it serves as an apt metaphor for this whole process, which in my public comments I compared to taking a hammer to a housefly. Through the public’s input, however, we have seen a lot of changes made to the legislation that would make it more affordable and the process a lot more transparent and reasonable.

There’s still work to be done, but they’re getting there, thankfully.

As for Occupy Albany’s dog and pony show outside…ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. “Don’t tax the music” and “they don’t care about us” was the song being sung when I entered City Hall at 4:45pm and when I left at 6:00pm. The vast majority stayed outside, with only a handful coming in towards the end to get a sign onto television. They didn’t hijack the problem so much as embarrassed themselves by showing a fundamental ignorance or intentional misrepresentation (which would be worse) of the issue. It’s not a “tax on music” or “personal expression” as they were stating, it’s a tax on local business. Unfortunately the news cameras went right for them, which I saw coming from a mile away and had confirmed by several annoyed Facebook posts from people present at the meeting who watched the evening news.

My response: whatever. The circus ringmasters in television news media are naturally going to try to draw everyone’s attention to whoever’s rolling up in a clown car, so as cynical as it may seem, we can’t be too surprised. The good news, though, is that this process is moving forward in a positive way and there’s still time to provide more feedback and pressure to get the necessary changes made to make this a fair, affordable, and wholly transparent process.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Comedy, karaoke and Albany’s cabaret law (All Over Albany)
• Crashing the Albany Common Council’s Planning Committee Hearing (Kevin Marshall’s America)

After a day to digest it and wash off the shitty mood I was in all weekend, I came around to liking it a lot more. The cinematography was gorgeous, and of course Dujardin is a masterful mime. But I couldn’t help but feel a pinge of cynicism when re-reading all the stratospheric praise the film received. Like many actors in Hollywood, it was incredibly charming and pretty, but like those same actors, that alone doesn’t make it brilliant and unique.

Part of the problem is that the film is both pretentious and self-aware, the latter of which provides a convenient and critically unfair excuse for trespasses of the former. A perfect unintentional metaphor for what I didn’t like about the film came with the cringe-inducing appearance of generic African tribesmen. In their first appearance, their context can be seen as satire or reflective of the times. In their second appearance, that context is gone and suddenly you’re left asking “was that necessary?” Not to mention the troubling racial aspect, but that’s a whole other can of worms and hardly surprising with a French director.

As a whole, though, my lack of matched enthusiasm for the film can be attributed to apprehension that extends beyond the mood it happened to catch me in. Rather, I have a longstanding predisposition against any work that serves as a love letter to its own form. You see this also in novels about writing and writers and plays about theater, and it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers. The play Title of Show is perhaps the worst example I can think of all these things, because it presents itself as a love letter to theater but instead quickly becomes a tribute the artists put on for themselves for doing theater. Rather than the form being wonderful, it is them being wonderful for being part of the form, and it descends quickly into irritating, self-conscious nonsense.

I felt this to an extent with “The Artist.” It is a very daring and unique movie if you have not seen many silent films. I don’t deign to be an enthusiast, but even I felt a bit of boredom with the concepts used, such as occasional use of sound (or lack thereof) as a metaphor for the film’s over-arching story. This seems to be a very clever device, except it was actually done with the very first big-time “talkie” film, the Al Jolson vehicle “The Jazz Singer.” In “The Artist” it is in the execution that one must find art, because in and of itself it’s nothing more than a ham-fisted send-up to prior works. Which, again, brings about a bit of disdain for it rooted in my cynicism towards our preoccupation with nostalgia and referential material as art. All art, of course, owes something to predecessors, but not all of it need be a very direct allusion to it that says “hey, remember our predecessors!”

What makes “The Artist” work, though, and why I ultimately think others are right when they tell me I’m just being too uptight is that it’s masterfully executed. It will likely, to the chagrin of many, be the belle of the ball at this year’s Academy Awards. Part of me, though, wonders what we will think in hindsight when we look back at this film five years from now and figure out that Hazanavicius, the film’s director, really isn’t capable of anything other than light comedy fair and whimsy (which is all his work thus far has constituted). It may seem preposterous to ask so much of something that is meant to be so silly and light and charming, but that’s par for the course when a film is put in the company “The Artist” is put into and especially when it calls itself “The Artist.”

But if you’re willing to postpone or overlook that context and conversation and simply marvel at a few magnificent shots and a fantastic display by Dujardin, you’re going to love it.

=====

On a less pretentious note, did anybody catch “The Walking Dead” half-season premiere or whatever the Hell we’re calling it? I liked the episode, but oh my God, Andrew Lincoln and Jon Bernthal are over-acting the shit out of Rick and Shane. When they’re in a scene together it’s like watching theater majors performing their midterm in a 200 level acting class. I like them both and maybe part of this can be assigned to the writers, but goddamn. Let’s knock it back from like a constant 11 to a starting point of, like, 6.

This incident gets a passing mention of the first installment of an extensive four-part series by the Times Union’s James Odato and Jennifer Gish, but it’s key to understanding groups like the (I have to say) alleged cult. Because what you have here is intellect gone wrong; a true genius who fell so much in love with the smell of his own bullshit that even a revered core belief system becomes nothing more super-heated iron ore to be smelted into a more convenient weapon against any that deign to think differently.

Groups like NXIVM are all about “you and me against the world,” even if the rest of the world doesn’t actually give a damn. Problem is, when you see enough people as enemies and treat them as hostile, eventually you’ll give them reason to be suspicious. This is what’s starting to happen with Attorney Generals, former members, and even the Fourth Estate, which would otherwise have likely written off NXIVM as just another lame collection of business jargon and New Age nonsense developed by the only guy associated with them smart enough to know better. Instead, they shouted at those pesky kids in the neighborhood to stay off their lawn and  not, under any circumstances, look to see what’s going on in the basement. Which, of course, only meant something was happening down there.

So here we are. The Times Union‘s first installment of a four-part series is up, and it’s a great read:

Raniere landed on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2003 as part of a story called “Cult of Personality.” Since then, former followers have said, he has dropped into the background of NXIVM in an effort to avoid attracting the attention of the government, according to sworn testimony. Although he is NXIVM’s philosophical guide and figurehead, he has served officially only as a member of the executive board and has been eligible to receive royalities for leasing his Rational Inquiry methods. He makes rare appearances at NXIVM events, creating a certain mystique among those who adore him. His teachings and speeches are all recorded on video in case he might utter something so innovative it would be worth patenting.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Secrets-of-NXIVM-2880885.php#ixzz1mEFWjKU4

Also, check out the Times Union‘s list of influential folk in the Capital Region associated with NXIVM. Kinda disturbing and, I’ll be frank, in some cases very disappointing.

Responding to a 15-year-old’s temper tantrum to her friends on Facebook by sputtering and rambling for eight minutes and shooting a laptop with the hope that the whole world will see it and she’ll become embarrassed and ashamed.

Who’s the child here?

What a big man. A+ for bullying here, Daddy-O. Wonder where she gets it from?