Sunday, March 15, 2009

Banning Picasso at the Lapin Agile, part 12...the pond gets bigger

Friday after work Beth and I met some friends downtown for happy hour. While we were catching up in the bar, my cell phone rang. It was a woman from Entertainment Weekly asking for an interview. I told her that I was in a bar consuming alchohol, "Just like in my play," I said. "Don't report that," I quickly added laughing. We chatted for ten or fifteen minutes. At the end of the inteview, the woman (can't remember her name) said she'd she was putting something up on their online edition and that she'd call me back "if the story gets bigger." I remember wondering what that could possibly mean.

I went back to my table and reported out to my friends. It was good for a laugh. Nobody here takes celebrity too seriously. We wondered though about how this reporter got my cell number. I finally realized that it was probably Steve Martin's publicist with whom I've had some communications over the funding the play. I mean that's part of a publicist's job description I guess, to get his client's name out there.

Then later at home I came across an email from a parent of a cast member who informed me that she had posted a link to my blog on one of her favorite political blogs.

If you're one of my few regular visitors to Free Hand you may have noticed an uptick in the comments section. When I checked the traffic on my site I discovered that yesterday and today were roughly ten times the normal amount. The scale of this thing is very small by big time standards; nevertheless, for me it has been a fascinating process of serendipitous developments. I suppose that's the sort of thing that the current media environment is good at facilitating.

Almost everything that has come my way so far has been very positive, even uplifting. Still, it's a bit strange.
K

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well you've hit the national news circuit now - the AP has a story on the wire, and huffingtonpost.com has it featured prominently... so I'd say things are going to get interesting.

John A. Nelson

10:04 AM  
Blogger Ginny said...

Beeb's got it, and it's on Google Reader. I commented on this elsewhere. If HuffPost has got it, it's all over the blogosphere.

What the hell, I'm posting a link to Twitter.

10:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My Dad, the reluctant celebrity! Two weeks ago I googled "Picasso..." and got 2 hits. This morning, I got 68,000 hits for the play! It's on youtube, AP wire service, Wikipedia has a blurb about the LHS ban, and I just noticed that the BBC picked up the story a couple of hours ago! Yeah, I'd say this thing is getting big...
♥Erin

11:17 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Curioser and curioser! I'm glad that most of what has come your way has been positive and even uplifting, although the saying
"All politics is local" does mean this debate is still located right here in our own little valley and will be settled by us. Outside opinions, while interesting, provocative or supportive, do not trump those of our neighbors, fellow workers, friends and strangers living among us. Those are the fellow human beings we have to compromise and settle with. It is not going to be an easy task and one that will not please all the people all the time. There will be those threatening to withdraw their support from our schools if their values are not made the norm, as well as those telling us that outside businesses will not want to locate in our economicaly distressed "Brigadoon" if we give the apperance of having regressive schools, etc. This debate is just the tip of the larger political and philosophical debate going on right now, one that has gone on since our beginnings, since Roger Williams thought colonists should negotiate and buy land from the Indians and Cotton Mather believed the new colonists had a charter from God and the King. We have always had this duality, in the origin of our union, in the ongoing disputes that make up its history and in the present debates we face. In the 'best system ever devised by man', we have the right to pursue happiness, but no one and no one side is ever going to be completely happy with the result of any debate in these United States. If and when that ever happens, one group will have probably gained a temporary advantage through some means or other, righteousness if representing the side you support, skullduggery if not, and pushed the pendulum too far. Then the pendulum will do what pendulums do, and some celebrate victory, it'll come swinging by and hit the celebrants in their collective heads, and the process will begin again.

The ship of state is a wobbly old girl as she rights (and lefts) herself over and over.

Get ready to roll, Kevin, and watch for icebergs--new boards forming above and below the water line.

GrK

11:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Its now hit:
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=7085709

The Herald
http://www.theherald.co.uk/entertainment_news/index.var.76991.0.comedian_to_fund_banned_school_play.php

CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/15/ap/entertainment/main4866297.shtml

Its everywhere.........

3:46 PM  

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