Byzant Kabbalah - The Hebrew Alphabet

The fledgling Wingate Street Micro Theatre
practices the art of not being seen within

The Very Microbes of Haverhill

By Douglas McDaniel
Mythville MetaMedia

In a better world, instead of the convergent one imploding with too many icons and multi-media diversions, the medium cool of the Merrimack River would be the message in Haverhill.

This river that runs through New England, called the Mer O Wac by the original aboriginal people who first found it useful, has banks laden with gorgeous red brick “satanic mills.” These dirt-rent cheap antiques from the post-industrial world are now rendered into technological target zones for the post-new economy.

Such towns as Lawrence and Lowell are communities crying out for renewal. While Lowell, in celebrating its past, everything from its literary native, Jack Kerouac, to its national park legacy to the quilt masters of yesteryear, some fret that Lawrence is a lost cause, while others, true believers trying to make something happen, are looking that self-defeating demon right in the eye.

Haverhill is somewhere in the middle. The true believers of Haverhill are celebrating the self-defeating demon. The riverside town’s very gravitational force can be found in the glorious past (and perhaps, present) of its Masonic Lodge in the center of town, overlooking everything. Indeed, the mysteries of Freemasonry lend an insidious quality to the place. And most of the locals you talk to kind of dig it.

“There’s something weird about this town,” says, maybe winks, the co-owner of the Invester’s Internet Café, across the street from the Masonic Lodge, which is also the home of Haverhill Beef, a place recently targeted by tricksters who threw a bag of white powder at its front steps as, perhaps (perhaps not), a pre-Halloween prank, and, another hassle for HazMat.

Yes, there’s a lot of drama in Haverhill, and comedy, too. A self-effacing, Rodney Dangerfield sort of funny. As the birthplace to the original Archie’s comix and current home of all kinds of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot style socio-political shennigans (hardly unique to Haverhill, except for the mean-spirited style that might take place in such a world-weary town), it has been said that when it comes to show business, if you can fail in Haverhill, you can fail anywhere.

A good example of that can be found in the ad-hoc slogan for the Wingate Street Micro Theatre: “This is a good place not to be seen.” That’s because most North Shore residents who know better couldn’t be forced to go to Haverhill even if they were bound, gagged and nailed in a coffin to be dragged there. Go ahead. Try it. Tell someone you want to see political satire at the Wingate Street Micro Theatre, 45 Wingate St., in the Haverhill Arts District, and they will look at you like a deer with headlights in its eyes.

Which is why Brian Longwell, the theater’s owner, decided to first try to use the available materials, that is, draw from the locals, to get his micro theater project started in the old Kelly Block building. Fortunately, he didn’t have to look too far. One of the better Irish pubs in the vicinity, the Peddler’s Daughter, was located at the basement level of the Wingate Street facility.

“I wanted to do the theater, and I felt the first thing I need to do is get a good restaurant,” Longwell said from his software company’s office on the third floor of the building. “So I associated it with a better class of drunk,” he says, borrowing a line from the Peddler’s Daughter proprietor, Michael Conneely.

Next, he and his wife, Joan, collected all of the books they could find. In fact, their love of books is more than apparent. It’s wall-to-wall apparent. The entrance to the theater and its box office has a half-dozen or so tall shelves of used books, and theater itself, which has a seating capacity of 48, has its walls covered with books to give it a special sense of warmth, a sense that the masonry bricks of literature are the things that bond us, truly, as opposed to the red-brick kind.

“It doesn’t have to sell books,” he said of the bookstore. “Just cool books. With books on the shelf, it helps to keep the riff-raff out.”

The theater is a less-in-more venue, with four rows of seats before the stage, which in the long run results in an intimate experience for the audience. Set up for multi-faceted kinds of performances, a video projector, sound system and theatrical lighting ---- even a off-stage curtain for the so-called “man behind the curtain” or “exit, stage right” ---- allow it to be a nice hotbed for anything from political satires to musical events. With so much utility and efficiency going for it, it works best for comedy sketches, or, just stand-up jesters, Longwell says.

Call it 21st century schizoid vaudeville.

A good example is Walsh Station, an improvisational troupe that made Saturday Night Live look like the tired old warhorse that it is. Contact with the audience was everything, and the group, made up of seasoned, skilled, well-practiced wannabes who are regulars at comedy night clubs in Cambridge, delivers a riotously funny show: before just a dozen people, in Haverhill, that is. Other regulars who come to the theater not to be seen include Jimmy Tingle, the street-wise comedian Tony V and political satirist Barry Crimmins, who recently performed his one-person show, “The Dawn of a New Error.”

After an off night when nobody came to see a performance by Tony V, “Failure, a Success Story,” the observational comedian was rather matter of fact about the lack of turnout. “There will be days like these,” he mused, more concerned about how to get some dessert downstairs at the Peddler’s Daughter. Of his show, which was not shown, he says, “It’s about being comfortable with failure, and how you can set your own tone for succeeding.”

All of this talent has been gathered together for widespread disregard in Haverhill with the expertise of a true impresario, Robin Hordon, who has been serving as the artistic director and manager since the theater’s opening in October. The former artistic manager at the former Catch a Rising Star in Cambridge. In the entertainment biz, Hordon has only a few rules, but mostly he’s a no-holds barred sort of guy, which is music to the ears of a performer who would like to break out of their mold, especially their own.

“You just have to keep your clothes on,” he says, “and you have to be a good soul. You can’t be a tramp. This isn’t a place for the devious or the negative. I’m not looking for striptease. I’m looking for people that would be much more concerned about us, as opposed to concerned about themselves, who are concerned about love, healing and have a different perspective on things.”

Just like a true man behind the curtain, Hordon is the sort of man who can go on, and on, and on. His energy is as contagious as his point of view, and since he sincerely believes the best product that can be delivered is based on an artistic sense of freedom, he’s also a bring ’em in, let it happen sorta guy, too.

“Audiences enjoy to see the artist go someplace they haven’t been yet,” he says. “We market this as an artistic sandbox.”

For Hordon, the only real bottom line is humor, the very water of life, fun and renewal.

“I really believe that humor is a significant ally to understanding, healing and love,” Hordon says. “It’s been known to unfold the tightest of folded arms, gets them to be human a bit, something in spite of who they are, and what they actually think.”

That, in a nutshell, is Haverhill, too. A strange town, with a wacky sense of itself, a place with a river of humor running through its rough and knotty exterior shell.

Douglas McDaniel is a freelance writer, poet, playwright, philosopher currently living in Haverhill, MA. His new book of poetry, “The Road to Mythville,” at iuniverse.com. Other evidence of his passage can be found at http://mythville.blogspot.com/ or the much-recommended http://kachinason.blogspot.com/. He can e-mailed, for as long as we have electricity, at mythville@yahoo.com.

Digital art theme parks:
The code of architecture,
and the art of code

By Douglas McDaniel

Just when you thought there were already enough possibilities for baffling amusements on Web, Internet art sites are popping up everywhere to provoke, amuse and even anger you.

Which is exactly what art is for, right?

Indeed, cyber art is emerging as a medium to be taken seriously enough to be included at the online offerings of major museums.

For example, the Museum of Modern Art has a number of interactive artists to experience. The Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial 2000 exhibition includes nine Web sites by either artists or more collaborative efforts.

The sites range from the ongoing multimedia project at Fakeshop to more generally fun site such as Ouija 2000 where users can operate a Ouija board with their mouse. The later has familiar theme of sites that equate occult mysticism with the Web. For example, Mark Amerika’s “Grammatron” is “non-linear narrative” about an “info-shaman.”

One of the best places to run a search on all online offerings available at the museum level is The Museum Network , which includes information and links to 33,000 sites. There’s also the Museum of Web Art , an entry in the field that given the chance, is capable of considerable growth.

Another Internet art site worth visiting is The Global Collage, a collection of artists from around the world that if you click on the collage at will rotate a new image every 30 seconds.

Other adventures in such efforts in digital culture can be found in Art Byte magazine, a for-print publication that also has a Web site with plenty of links.

Just remember: When exploring this cutting-edge form of non-linear entertainment, it’s probably a good idea to close out and save any work you have done on your computer. Indeed, some of these sites will not only destabilize you, they will rattle your machine pretty good, too.

One such practical joke can be found at the Whitney’s “Every Icon” by John F. Simon Jr. The Java aplet program automatically downloads and according to the Whitney site “would take several hundred trillion years for the process to conclude.” When one clicks on Ghost City , hundreds of small boxes will start appearing on your screen, and short of completely turning your computer off, you will be hard-pressed to figure out how to put the ghost back into the machine.

File Not Found: I Clean the Body Electric

By Douglas McDaniel

Terabytes of e-mail with technical questions arrive daily at Access Internet Magazine . But one of the more memorable queries seems to be a true indicator of the moral complexities the Internet creates for some married couples.

As one woman wrote in:.

"I'm having a slight problem with learning how to get into ‘cookies.' I have caught my husband going into the cookie files and deleting anything and everything he has done on the computer. He absolutely refuses to show me how to do this. On the other hand, he goes into cookies when I'm in the shower or at the store to look at what I've been doing. Myself, I have nothing to hide. But there are some things I'd rather he not know that I'd really like to do searches on….

"How do I get into cookies and how do I delete anything that I don't
want him snooping at?".

----Name withheld for obvious reasons.

Dear Name Withheld: Paranoia about the Internet abounds. People worry that Satan himself can get access to your credit card number and then, with the information obtained, spam your 8-year-old's e-mail with links to the latest Pamela Lee Anderson, er, "exercise" photos. Even worse, your boss is reading your e-mail. Bill Gates is watching you, too. But don't worry, Big Brother is watching Bill Gates. So he doesn't have much time to watch you… right now..

While a lot of media attention reminds us how the Internet is invading our privacy, we seem to be forgetting that security begins at home..

Ma'am, clearly, cookies are only part of the problem. Where there is no trust, well … the worry once associated with keeping a diary private is even worse for a PC user. The Internet is about free-flowing information, a wonderful tool for receiving and distributing anything imaginable in heaven or hell. For a prying detective, though, that also means fingerprints all over the crime scene..

As you surf the Web, the pictures and text that you run across get stored on your hard disk. Such things as cookies or your Internet Explorer history are like confession booth transcripts..

A number of software programs will scan and sanitize your system. For example, one, called SurfSecret, periodically cleans your cache files, cookies and toolbar, as well as recollections of your Internet Explorer history. Your computer is rendered more forgetful than Ronald Reagan at a deposition. It vaporizes your e-trail, giving you a read out of the vanquished list, the rough equivalent of the bottom of your shoes after a trip to the circus..

You could spend half the day exploring your secret self, the other half cleaning your tracks..

But truly, ma'am, cookies are better shared than hidden. And certainly, there's nothing worse for a marriage than a home-based personal info pirate. In an environment of distrust, how can information flow freely between you, your man, or your favorite Web site? Your husband's cookies could be clues to understanding his needs and inclinations. Maybe it would spice things up. Maybe you could share your own cookie curiosity. There's only one thing worse than cookies being watched: cookies being totally ignored..

An extraordinary archive of live radio performances by Ani DiFranco, Nick Lowe and Tory Amos

The Acoustic Cafe, which airs on Sunday morning here in Boston, is best heard over the Web, I've found, at Michigan Live. This archive features a wonderful set of unreleased stuff by Tory Amos, and, a lilting version of "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding" by its writer, Nick Lowe (Not Elvis Costello).

You Are Earle's for the Easily Distracted

Why go to this amount of trouble?
Because any day without
sunshine is, you know, night!


Pagan Pantheons of Pop

Obsessive Fan Sites


Harrison Ford’s Finger


Otter Pop Cosmology

‘Suck’ Sites

Worst of the Web

Waste of Bandwidth

Useless Knowledge Genre

Disorder in the court
www.dumblaws.com

Facts and damn facts, online

Mythville

Why Things Suck

By Douglas McDaniel

A whole genre of Web sites have sprung up around that word, turned into an acceptable part of our vernacular, most certainly, by that bratty Bart Simpson. Someday soon, quite likely, every goofball geek with an attitude will be posting a site at a dot-sucks domain address.

The worst of these sites, which turn deconstructive criticism into an art form, are Worst of the Web and Waste of Bandwidth .There is, of course, the satire newsletter, Suck, which actually doesn’t.

Others really, really suck. They are going to have to promote themselves. One would suppose the operators of suck sites would make excellent administrators of national, state and local governmental agencies, if only because they have plenty of time on their hands.

They would probably jump at the idea. According to the home page for Waste of Bandwidth, “There is no government agency dedicated to the content review of Web sites.”

PC in Dis-Geist: Take That, Jack
Review of the PC Game: “You Don’t Know Jack: Louder! Faster! Funnier!” (Sierra, Windows/Macintosh, ESRB Rating: Teen)

Speed, as any interactive gaming designer knows, is addictive. Yet, while most PC games involve hacking at ghouls by hyper-fast clicking with your mouse pad, You Don’t Know Jack games force the interfacee to read fast, think faster and hit the buzzer as if the index finger extended from the temporal lobe.

Such thinking quick on your pants can be a humbling experience and is therefore excellent therapy for most highbrow wonks. Jack’s high-culture multi-media blitz can reduce the local Trivial Pursuit champion into a puddle of simpering goo (and thus, a civic service is performed).

However, earlier editions were refreshingly irreverent and graphically revelatory. The latest offering of this ersatz offline quiz show dubbed “Louder! Faster! Funnier!” is making an irrelevant claim.

What was once an astonishingly hip mind-melt in a world that can never get enough madcap humor is now certainly faster but no funnier, probably less so.

Such is the speed of change in the digital realm.

And it’s hard to understand how more bratty volume is an improvement. Visually, it’s a been there, done that, and the gag writing is downright sophomoric. Quick, what’s the cure for “Saturday Night Live” Sucks disease? Answer: Bring back the Samurai Guy.

And the winners of this week’s You Are Earl awards are…

Who knows what new wave of Web-based insanity might become as necessary to our lives as bottled water or breath-freshening mints for dogs? Somebody thought something called Yahoo was stupid once, right?

The proprietors of Dumb Laws seem to have the legal system pretty much figured out. It’s a rich storehouse of useless legalese. Another contribution to weird niche sites thoroughly details how to pottie-train your cat (www.rainfrog.com/mishacat/toilet.shtml). That may seem overly specific, unless your cat isn’t pottie-trained.

Once humans get pottie-trained, they can really make the Web work for themselves at Best Toilets----a database of public restrooms in New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington D.C. (http://www.besttoilets.com/). It may top the list as one of the buzz sites of the summer, Web utility, after all, being all the rage.

There’s something timeless about the whole thing.

At Gentle Hints (www.gentlehints.com) you can send a person anonymous suggestions to improve themselves. Another one, the Abuse-a-Tron (www.upstart.xe,com/abuse/abuse.shtml), offers insults to each visitor to keep them humble, depressed, and, of course, powerless to make changes (at least not without the help of Gentle Hints).

You might be laughing now at dancing digital hamsters, cheeseburger dissection instructions or dot coms for cows, but someday soon we just might be asking these electronic entities to deliver our meals, give stock tips or attend to our most intimate affairs. They may even be able to balance our checking accounts. As if that’s possible …


Douglas McDaniel is a senior editor at Access Internet Magazine (www.accessmagazine.com), and contributing writer to G21.net and Disinfo.com. E-mail: dmcdaniel@accessmagazine.com