Minimalism seems to mean erasing half the words and asking the viewer to fill in the blanks

I think there are trends in a lot of things. I saw a discussion about the relative fit of men's clothing now compared to when I was a kid. Men wore tight pants "from the beginning of time *snerk*"; modern styles look really slovenly and unkempt in comparison.

One of the knitting blogs I read, which hardly ever seem to talk about knitting, often talks about staged productions as being superior because of minimalism in sets and costumes and props. I think that's rather cheap. I won't say that acting is a small component, anyone who's ever watched something on the WB or a SciFi Original Movie knows that bad acting ruins a show. But I don't see how one can have a professional production without any of the production. Of course this woman reviewing positively these "no effort made" productions gets her tickets free, and I too have lower expectations for free events. If you went without being her, you'd have paid $38 plus tax and handling and service charges and likely have driven hundreds of miles to be there. For that kind of effort on my part, I'm expecting a pageant-level spectacle.

I saw a minimalist production of Richard III a few years ago in Ashland OR (OSF) and slept through most of it--- there was this handicapped retard dude flailing and shouting at the audience from an empty stage. Random people in jeans and casual skirts would walk out and look repulsed and then leave without saying anything. I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying, even having read a summary of the play before going and knowing the hallmark speeches' significance... it was all just noise to me because there wasn't anything to pay attention to. Those tickets were $55. I later understood that the main actor was neither handicapped nor retarded and was not generally made of flail--- so he must have been a fantastic actor. It was totally believable that he was someone on a day-pass from the group home; that is probably a phenomenal skill level, but it was completely wasted because the rest of the set and props and costumes and actors were absent.

I thought it was a total waste of money. If I just want to hear random shouting I'll walk past the park and listen to the homeless people shouting at birds. If I'd gotten free tickets to that production of Richard III, I would have been a lot more tolerant of the zero-effort staging. I have been to a number of free Shakespeare shows and all of them have good actors. But even though those shows travel from venue to venue, they have sets and backdrops and props and costumes and makeup and crew. It looks like they coordinated in advance because people come onto the stage when they're supposed to be there doing something. The actors don't randomly walk on and off the stage for no purpose and without speaking like it's someone's living room and they've forgotten to bring the new bowl of popcorn.

I actually associate minimalism in stage productions with "cheap" and "unprepared" and "amateurish". Hiring great actors is no substitute for doing the rest of the work of putting on a play.

But we see a lot of minimalism lately. It attracts people who want to feel avant guard, the way black and white photographers tell people it's a more artistic medium and get all sorts of people convinced. The only place we're not seeing minimalism is in men's trousers! Unfortunately for me, it used to be the other way around, fancy productions, women's clothing that covered one's modesty, and men's butts were distinctly outlined through tight trousers. Now we have men wearing low-riding jeans so loose they have to be belted around the knees too--- or maybe that's the only belt and they're really walking around like they've just taken a dump and don't know how to pull up their own pants.

It used to be that fancy food places didn't want you to leave hungry and a meal would have a half-dozen courses. Now fancy food places serve whole meals that are the size of amuse bouches and look aghast that you might want dessert after.

I want stage productions akin to Cirque du Soleil, I want meals to have gravy, and I want to be able to ogle attractive men because they've put their bums on display. You can keep your minimalism if you give me back mine!

My oversized COD.

Supposedly the CARS program (also known as "Cash For Clunkers") is ending Monday.

Liberal news people have been touting the huge success of this program, reminding us that because of this program (cause not entirely proven, but I could stipulate to it for the duration of this portion of the discussion) almost $2B in cars were sold and that is about half a million cars. Because of this dramatic uptick in car sales, GM is re-hiring some of its laid off workers.

Of course, that presumes that people are still going to be buying cars without a 20% off coupon from the government, which I think is either unlikely or if true, then the CARS program was not the actual cause of the increased sales.

But! My big problem with this program is that it heartily rewards over-consumption. Yes, we want cars with shitty mileage off the roads, but I don't see why we should bribe people to do so. (Not to mention that it causes a dearth of parts available for other used cars. And that it adds a huge volume to already over-burdened landfills.) My car, which is a dozen years old, gets about 30-35MPG at highway speeds. I don't know what it gets "in town" because there seems to be a lot of overhead fuel consumption for small trips. But the sticker said 22MPG or so. That makes my 12 year old car superior MPG to the cars many people are buying via the CARS program.

Remember also that the original Prius got craptastic highway mileage, it was under 25MPG highway--- therefore rewarding people with that kind of car by giving them access to HOV lanes was counter-productive... those are the cars you want waiting in stop-and-go. And now that they have "hybrid" SUVs.... it's not even a useful designation. So, actually my old car has comparable average mileage to a hybrid.

But really, the government is giving people ~$4K for buying cars that get less than 18MPG originally. WTF! It should have been illegal to sell a car that gets that bad of gas mileage. And anyone who had one from before the law was passed should have been required to retrofit! Like you should not have been able to get license plates registering a car that gets 12MPG. The Army or whoever that needs armored vehicles doesn't do state-based registration anyway, but state-based National Guard units could get waivers. There should have been a program to help people with retrofit costs. But they should have done this in 1975. Certainly during the gas shortages before Reagan, the government should have enacted legislation. There should have been mandated increases in CAFE standards (where the fleet of cars sold by a manufacturer must average a certain mileage... so they could sell 3 guzzling SUVs if they sold 10 econocars) throughout the past 3 decades. If we had mandated it, cars could easily be averaging 50MPG since they sold cars like that in 1980. (New manual shift Honda CVCC in 1980 got 55MPG on the highway.)

So. I bought one of the most fuel efficient cars available anywhere when I bought mine. There were no government kickbacks rewarding me for doing the right thing. But now there is government handouts for people who said, "FUCK the environment, I want a car to be my oversized codpiece so everyone thinks I have a huge penis!"

Basically, since my car would qualify now for the CARS rebate standard, I'd like my free money. "Because you've been a good person who chose wisely for a dozen years before it even occurred to us that the environment mattered...." They could get that money by fining the people with the guzzling cars. Or they could have just added a gas tax that completely sodomized people who got 3MPG. Like $3/gallon in taxes. I buy about 60 gallons of gasoline per year, I can afford the extra $180. And if we'd used that tax money to subsidize public transit, then poor people wouldn't need to drive places. And it wouldn't cost more to repair roads than we take in in car-based taxes.

I don't mind, not really, not getting a handout for making the right choice. But I think it's wrong to reward anyone who deliberately chose wrongly.