Weekend in Review

Some poignant observations from my weekend that was:

Da Bears. Come back from 20 points down in 15:07 without scoring an offensive touchdown while turning the ball over six times. Unbelievable. I don't know what the best part was, Urlacher ripping the ball out of Edgerrin "Indy ain't so bad" James, Devin Hester faking half of the Cardinals out of their shoes, or Dennis Green's press conference meltdown. People will criticize Rex Grossman for turning the ball over 6 times, but he reminds me of a young Brett Favre, a cocksure gunslinger who loves playing the game but is prone to forcing the ball into coverage and fumbling. He kind of reminds me of a young Ryan Leaf as well now that I think about it.

Dennis Green, losing it:


Michigan Wolverines. The defense knocked out two Penn State quaterbacks on Saturday. Troy Smith, you are officialy on notice.

The Maryland DMV Vending Machine- Least healthy vending maching ever. The healthiest item was a bag of fried pork rinds. It had three kinds of donuts, both honey and sticky buns, and a host of other treats, none of which was less than 600 calories. It was quite the sight. Quite a fattening sight indeed.

Commonsensical. What a fantastic word! It's meaning is embedded in its construction. Genius!

Brechtian. I finally looked up what it meant for it seems to be the *it* word of the moment.

Brecht wanted the answer to Lenin’s question ‘Wie und was soll man lernen?’ ('How and what should we learn?'). He created an influential theory of theatre, the epic theatre, wherein a play should not cause the spectator to emotionally identify with the action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the actions on the stage. He believed that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he wanted his audiences to use this critical perspective to identify social ills at work in the world and be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change.

Hans Eisler has noted that these plays resemble political seminars[citation needed]. Brecht described them as "a collective political meeting" in which the audience is to participate actively. One sees in this model a rejection of the concept of the bureaucratic elite party where the politicians are to issue directives and control the behaviour of the masses.

For this purpose, Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself, which he called the Verfremdungseffekt (translated as distancing effect, estrangement effect, or alienation effect). Such techniques included the direct address by actors to the audience, transposition of text to third person or past tense, speaking the stage direction out loud, exaggerated, unnatural stage lighting, the use of song, and explanatory placards. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was, in fact a construction and, as such, was changeable.

My aim is for this blog to achieve Brechtian ideals by estranging the audience from the blog itself. Judging by my web traffic, it seems to be working.