I had the thrill of a lifetime on Thursday when my friend Steve invited me to join him at a table read for “The Simpsons.” A “table read” is when the actors sit around a table and read the script for the first time together. It’s usually a time for the writers to figure out if everything is working well, and it’s a loose rehearsal for the actors. I was giddy with excitement and didn’t know exactly what to expect. Would all the actors be there? Would we be the only people watching? Could I ask Harry Shearer to use his Mr. Burns voice to say, “Excellent, Ms. Cohagan”? Mr. Shearer was actually not there. He literally “phoned it in,” as did Julie Kavner (Marge) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa). But Nancy Cartwright (Bart) and Dan Castellaneta (Homer) were there and that was enough to make me swoon with pleasure. And they both signed my script! Mostly it was incredible to observe that the writing was still hilarious and top tier after all these years.

This creative 9 year old made an arcade entirely from cardboard. Watch this great short film to see him get the surprise of his life:

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I am posting what is easily one of the greatest examples of writing of the 20th century. This is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, written from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where King was confined after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign, a non-violent protest against racial segregation by Birmingham’s city government and downtown retailers.

I am particularly inspired right now to post this by the students in my class last semester, none of which could tell me what “Jim Crow” laws were (three of the students were African American.) Perhaps Mr. King would be pleased to know that we live in a time when young people don’t even have to know the name of these savage laws, but I think he would be more likely to invoke Edward Burke’s famous phrase that “Those that don’t know history are bound to repeat it.”

Click on the link to open the pdf:

Letter from A Birmingham Jail

I know I’m a little late to the party on this, but I still want to spread the love on “Girl Walk//All Day” created by Jacob Krupnick and Anne Marsen. This is a music video that slowly became a full length film. The director met the main dancer, Anne Marsen, at an audition he was holding and was so inspired by her unique style that he created a separate project for her. There’s something about Marsen that seems to perfectly embody the current zietgeist. She is trained, yet loose; sublime, yet street. She is a hybrid born of 2012. Watch the entire clip to really get the full flavor of her immense talent.

Girl Walk // All Day: Chapter 1 from Girl Walk // All Day on Vimeo.

You can watch the rest of the film here:

http://girlwalkallday.com/watch-the-film

I just got home from “Art Show 2011″ in Hollywood, which was in a massive warehouse space on north La Brea. The idea was that Mr. Brainwash, the new “art star” from 2008, invited street artists from all over the world to submit art, with instructions on how to mount it, and he would show it here in LA without selling a thing or charging admission. The show was only supposed to be open for 6 days but today there was a sign today saying they were expanding for two more days (Jan 1 & 2) which is no surprise considering the line to get in looped around the corner.

People are still scratching their heads over Brainwash, wondering if he is for real, or if he is just a construct of the artist Banksy, made up for the sake of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” and now acting as the public face of a street artist who has made a career out of staying anonymous. I for one, believe the conspiracy theories, and think Banksy has had a hand in it all. Mr. Brainwash showed up today (in the picture to the right) and he was covered in paint splotches, and I just have to say for the record I don’t know many artists who don’t clean up for their own shows. It’s like the baker of a beautiful wedding cake being covered in flour days later so we believe he really baked it.

Anyway, his work was very hit or miss, and most of it was a big rip off of Claes Oldenburg, but a lot of the stuff contributed by other people was great. Please enjoy the pictures since the show was up so briefly (click on the thumbnails to make them bigger.)

Herman Cain’s downfall is the most recent evidence that sexual harassment doesn’t mean anything to people in this country. In October, FOUR women came forward and said that Herman Cain sexually harassed them in the late 1990s. Sharon Bialek claims that while seeking advice about a job, she had dinner with Mr. Cain, and that afterwards, while in a car together, he put his hand up her skirt and then tried to pull her head into his crotch.

“That’s it,” I thought, when I heard her story. “He’s done.” The specific image of a man pulling a woman’s head toward his lap is so lecherous and visceral for women, I figured that this accusation would be the death knell of Cain’s campaign.

But no. Attention quickly went to Ms. Bialek’s attorney, Gloria Allred, who was accused of being an attention hound (the press wanted to focus on the unlikability of the victim’s lawyer, instead of the unlikability of Herman Cain) and then within no time we were being shown a new video about Mr. Cain, Libya and foreign policy. By November 14, Business Insider had announced that lack of interest in a Gloria Allred press conference was proof that “The Herman Cain scandal is dead,” a mere two weeks after the harassment news had first broken.

I know that we have a national media that has the attention span of a squirrel on crack, but could we not focus, for ONE MOMENT, on the basic creepiness and lack of character that Mr. Cain had shown?

As always, when accusations of harassment are made, the character of the women doing the accusing was called into question. Skeptics suspect motives of finance and fame. Really? In what world do these people live in that they believe that it is desirable to walk around being known as someone who was groped by Herman Cain?

For that matter, who wants to be known as a person who has been groped by anyone? We are each individuals who struggle every day to define ourselves in the most positive terms. To undermine one’s own reputation, to come forward knowing that one’s personal narrative is forever changed in the eyes of coworkers, friends and family, is an act of true boldness and bravery.

Especially when one has to contend with fiends like Rush Limbaugh, who when he heard that victim Karen Kraushaar wanted to organize a joint press conference with the other three women remarked, “Do they want to synchronize their menstrual periods? Why appear together?”

Yes, Herman Cain’s campaign is over, but the scandal that took him down was a 13-year extramarital relationship, not the harassment allegations. A consensual affair is what stopped people from funding his campaign.

An affair is a complicit act between two adults; it is not the same as a grown man pawing a woman and trying to coerce her face into his lap. It has been 20 years since Anita Hill sat in front of a hostile Senate and was dismissed as a delusional woman. Have we not progressed at all?

Where were the women’s groups decrying Cain? Where were the feminists? Women may not be the 99% but in 2010 we were 50.8% of the population and it is time that we say “Enough. We will not put up with this behavior any longer.”

As long as we keep slapping these men on the wrists and acting like they just ha ha “got caught with their hands in the cookie jar” the behavior will continue.  We need to recognize that harassing women speaks to a moral problem in the individual doing it. We need the media to change its attitude toward the victims and we need to start calling the perpetrators what they are: creeps; low-lifes; skirt chasers; grabby-handed misogynists. Take your pick. Just stop putting up with them.

Carolyn Cohagan is the author of “The Lost Children” (Simon & Schuster, 2010) and the upcoming “Ida and the Unfinished City.”

Circa 1990

WITH YOUR FEET IN THE AIR AND YOUR HEAD ON THE GROUND

Last night I hauled my keister up to Bakersfield to see the Pixies and their amazing Doolittle tour. Well worth the trip. They played the entire album, start to finish, from the first track. Such a simple thing that bands rarely do live, and it was crazy satisfying, like eating a a five course meal and knowing there won’t be one dish you don’t like.

A piece of trivia I’ve just learned and love is that when singer Frank Black (Black Francis at the time, but born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV) and guitarist Joey Santiago were looking for a bassist back in college, they put out a classified ad for a “female who listened to both folk music and Hüsker Dü.” And of course, they ended up with Kim Deal. Perfect.

2011

I’m not going to lie. It was a little shocking to see their raw middle-aged selves. I’m sure for all of us there it was a splash of reality. None of us are exactly spring chickens anymore. I was also surprised by how outnumbered the female fans were by the males. There were TONS of hipster dudes in their forties, bobbing up and down, who knew every word to every song. Me and my female friends were really into the Pixies in college so I was surprised to see the lack of representation. Maybe they were all home with the kids?

Here is a video of good quality to make you nostalgic and then one of bad quality that I shot last night. Following that is an interesting interview with David Bowie where he talks about the long term influence the Pixies have had on rock.

Stewie hassling Brian about the novel he’s writing is one of the greatest moments of Family Guy. And since I’m a writer, it also makes my eye twitch.