Mr. Manners at the Ballet

Julie of We Are Lumberjacks recently sent me something awesome that turned me on to the Best of Craig's List series. Here's one I found that offers some very important etiquette tips for attending the ballet. It should serve as a cheat sheet for those of you who don't attend regularly, or who don't feel like you know how to act during a performance. I especially like the way the offending gentleman, apparently a master of irony, manages to both identify himself as a "polite person" and then scream "ya assholes!" in the same sentence. I wish I could match your awesomeness, Mr. Ballet Enthusiast Man.

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http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/326175577.html

To: Guy Who Screamed Obscenities at the Ballet the Other Night:
Date: 2007-05-07, 11:59AM PDT

It was Don Quixote, a rather fun full-length ballet, nobody dies like in the dreary Giselle or Swan Lake.

Another fantastic performance by the SF Ballet. I know you enjoyed it. Our whole section knows you enjoyed it. Every time a dancer would perform a particularly impressive jump, or a series of 3+ pirouettes, you would say, "Whoa!" or "Jaysus!"

This, I didn't mind. As a former dancer and now a season-ticket holder of our City's fine company, I get a kick out of hearing others' excitement for an art form I hold dear. Much better than the guy next to me whose head started to fall like a kid in an 8th grade math class.

So, the curtain falls. The end. Applause.

Curtain comes up and the dancers begin to take their bows. You notice a few people standing up. Was it an ovation? NO! They were LEAVING! These people could not WAIT to get to their cars (they were obviously not MUNI riders, walkers or cab-hailers like most of us in the City)! They had no time for CLAPPING! They had to get out now!

It was then you yelled, in your beautiful gray-haired old crotchety man voice, "WILL YOU PEOPLE SIT DOWN AND LET THE *POLITE* PEOPLE SHOW THEIR APPRECIATION?!," slight pause, "YA ASSHOLES!"

Now, I have seen dozens of ballets in my relatively short lifetime of 25 years. Never, not once, have I encountered a fan of ballet quite like you. At the ballgame, sure, that kind of yelling is par for the course. At the ballgame we eat peanuts and leave the shells in piles at our feet.

Sir, this was THE BALLET.

And for your outburst directed at the people who think somewhere in their tiny brains that it is even remotely acceptable to get up and leave during the curtain call, remotely acceptable to not even clap for the world class artists who just performed a most difficult and worthwhile ballet for our enjoyment (artists whose salary is about that of a standard office receptionist), remotely acceptable to WALK OUT while the house lights are up and we can all (including the dancers) see...

Kind sir, for your outburst, screaming at these "assholes", I thank you from the bottom of my art-loving heart.

I've been wanting to say that for a long time.

And WOW! They sat their asses down, didn't they?! A few were even clapping.

You are the BEST.

Cordially,
Fellow Supporter of the Fine Arts in San Francisco

Translation required

My computer and iTunes don't typically get along. They tend to crash each other. Normally, this is not an issue because I hate iTunes and have been able to find everything I want through open formats.

However, I was reading B.J. Novak's MySpace blog the other day, and I came across something that I really want to listen to. So of course, it's only available for download through iTunes. When B.J. (a.k.a. Ryan the Temp on The Office) was in high school in Newton, MA, he, his brother, and a friend pulled a prank on the unassuming visitors of the Museum of Fine Arts. They recorded a fake audio tour of a Chinese art exhibit, then replaced the real tapes with the bogus ones. Please, if anyone has the ability to download this tour on iTunes and then send it to me in a non-iTunes format, I'd be so happy I'd do jumping jacks.

Vote for Danny?

I just get the feeling that he belongs on a better stage than this. Perhaps he's trying to get more exposure for his magazine, movmnt, as a result of his minor reality show celebrity. But if this is what he wants--to win a national television dance competition--then by golly, we should give it to him.

The Smithsonian insults our intelligence

This Art Is Your Art, This Art Is My Art

The New York Times finally says what I've been saying for years now: the Smithsonian kind of sucks. It took a scandal for anyone influential to realize this, but I'm glad it's finally being acknowledged. At best, its museums and exhibits are uncontroversial diversions. At worst, they are propaganda. They tend to glaze over the most interesting (read: unflattering) parts of American history and instead reduce it to theatrical performance and unnecessary patriotic cheerleading. Don't get me wrong, I think patriotism is good, just not when it's based on half-truths. Exhibits like the West As America in 1991 at the National Museum of American Art and the Enola Gay in 1994 at the Air & Space Museum were not well received, but at least visitors were passionate about what they saw, one way or another. One of the most cliched, yet true aspects of history is that it helps us to identify mistakes we've made so that we don't repeat them in the present. This is especially important in the current political climate. I don't really expect the Smithsonian to emerge as a leading social critic, but they need to do something soon to avoid becoming irrelevant. Our nation's history means more than a pair of ruby slippers or a First Lady ball gown behind a glass case. The American History museum is especially guilty of this.

I must except one museum from this diatribe: the National Portrait Gallery. I think the Times is right that it sort of gets lost in the American art collection (and vise versa), but I'm glad the portrait gallery is moving away from the stuffy oil paintings of yore and branching out into cool things like installation art (yes, it's true, you can do an installation portrait!). If you haven't seen the portrait gallery yet, you should go there immediately. It will rock your socks off.