The NY Times has a followup article on the story I posted yesterday. The latest attack was 30 miles from the capital. Don’t tell me we’ve “secured” the country.

Bloomberg is turning into the new Giuliani. Not only is he talking about a West Side stadium, the Police are starting to treat homeless people as a “quality of life issue”:

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday that the homeless have been targeted since February in Operation Clean Sweep, a crackdown that focuses on quality-of-life crimes using the same computer-assisted strategy that the NYPD uses to drive down major crimes.

Kelly said that while “being homeless is not a violation of the law,” trespassing and sleeping in city parks are against the law.

“Basically, what our outreach program does is contact homeless people and offer them assistance, shelter and hospitalization,” he said.

That was certainly not the policy on E. Fourth St. yesterday, where several witnesses watched officers from the Ninth Precinct verbally abuse a pair of homeless men and throw their Styrofoam shelter into a city garbage truck.

“Don’t talk to me like I have a heart, because I don’t!” one beefy cop told the pair, according to Joseph Esposito, 37, who witnessed the exchange on his way to work.

At no time were any services offered to the men, said Esposito, an assertion later backed up by the pair in an interview with the Daily News.

“Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, listen, you have to leave,’ it was, ‘I don’t ever want to see you in my precinct again,’” said one of the men, who refused to give his name out of fear of reprisal. “They gave us nothing.”

Good for the Daily News! These two articles were on the same page today.

While looking for Wieland Wagner pictures for my “Woyzeck” post, I came across this excellent Page Not Found error page at Frankfurt Opera.

Two nights ago we saw “Woyzeck” by Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan, and Robert Wilson at BAM.

The music is amazing. Tom Waits’s music at this point is that of a new Kurt Weill, and I mean Weill at his best. We were sitting on the front row, so it was fun to be able to watch the small orchestra as it played. The lyrics (created by him and his wife Kathleen Brennan) are brilliant. They never choose the clichéd or obvious word in a phrase. In “Coney Island Baby”:

Every night she comes
To take me out to dreamland
When I’m with her, I’m the richest
Man in the town

I almost expected the phrase to be “the richest man in the world”, but “town” works so much better.

Some other favorites from various songs:

The plural of spouse is spice.

God’s Away, God’s away
God’s away on Business. Business.

She’s a rose, she’s the pearl
She’s the spin on my world
All the stars make their wishes on her eyes

I’m not crazy about Robert Wilson. I think he has some good ideas and things are often attractive, but he’s in a rut. His style hasn’t changed much over the last ten years, and there are certain gestures — such as a spotlight only on a character’s hand — that have become rote. There were however, a few fabulous moments. When Marie and the Drum Major have their first big scene together, at one point she is singing “Everything Goes to Hell”:

I don’t like dirty dishes in the sink. Please don’t tell me what you feel or what you think.

and she sits on his back as he crawls across the floor on all fours. It’s hard to describe well, but the audience burst into spontaneous applause before it was completely over.

Anyone who has seen images of Wieland Wagner’s [framed site – hit cancel if asked] productions at Bayreuth can realize that Wilson is not as much as an innovator, in terms of visuals, as many people think.

At the reception afterward we talked with our friends Charles and Ray, fellow BAM-ites not to be confused with the artist Charles Ray, and looked at the celebrities: Isabella Rossellini, and Russian gay activist/poet/porn star Slava. James has some good links for him.

Many of the songs from “Woyzeck” are available on Tom Waits’s “Blood Money” CD. I talk about that CD plus his “Alice” — both highly recommended — here.

Later today I will add a couple of MP3s from “Blood Money” and “Alice”.

The Guardian has an article on two small town policemen, a gay couple, in South Africa.

My friends Emma and Lorelei (of Nerve fame) have just made their debut in the Guardian.

I’m tired of listening to people talking about how we bombed Afghanistan because of our more enlightened view of women. Most of the government isn’t in favor of women’s rights — being only slightly to the left of the Taliban on that issue.

We’re not interested in putting enough resources into the country to stabilize it, only enough to get started working on an oil pipeline.

Vandals, With Fire and Rockets, Attack 4 Afghan Girls’ Schools

… by Christopher Dazey on media coverage of anti-war rallies. Here is a sample, but you should read the whole thing, plus the rest of the letters. As a group, they are one of the best discussions of the art of protest — including all of the fringe groups and seeming off-topic speakers that often drive us all crazy when we attend one.

Michelle Goldberg’s disappointment with the protesters in Washington over their apparent lack of a coherent message is akin to a campaign manager saying that her candidate should “stay on message.” However, the protesters were not running for office, and the language of corrupt, corporate politics should not be applied to grassroots movements.

Good for the Wellstone family! They have disinvited Dick Cheney from the memorial service, because they’re unhappy at the vociferous Republican attacks on Mondale even before he is a candidate. [Link via TBOGG]

Newt Gingrich went on “Meet the Press’ to say that Mondale supported privatization of Social Security. Isn’t the GOP in favor of that? You would think he would be more careful about lying about something that ”http://talkingpointsmemo.com/oct0204.html#102802332pm">could easily be investigated</a>.

We went to Williamsburg this afternoon to see our friend Meighan Gale’s show at Black & White Gallery, on its last day. If you like what you see on the web site, you can call the gallery to see the work. I saw some paintings from the next show, by Lael Marshall, that looked promising.

Other highlights:

A great drawing show at Parker’s Box, with works by Simon Faithfull (often drawn on a palm pilot and blown up) and Bruno Peinado.

Bjørn Melhus at Roebling Hall: fabulous video show, with my favorite work (titled “Oral Fixation”) being a weird talk show, with all of the dialogue sampled from actual shows.

I also saw this solar-powered peace sign, a project of Think Global Peace.