“I am Michael Brown” – and the killer (showing no remorse) walks away! SHAME !!! SHAME!!!!

And Kim (Mr.Elegance) Bodnia – watching his own clothes dry!

And, after his clothes have dried, he’s ready for the award ceremony

It’s an amazing sequence of events!!!!!

Linda “Maria Bonomi” – a great artist!!! (and Reinaldo Azevedo)

By Reinaldo Azevedo
Petrobras admite agora o que todo mundo já sabia: empresa está sendo investigada nos EUA

Com certo atraso, para não variar, a Petrobras admite o que o mundo dos negócios de todo o planeta já sabia: ela está, sim, sendo investigada pela SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), órgão que regula o mercado de capitais nos EUA. A razão? Os escândalos de corrupção que vieram à tona com a Operação Lava Jato.

Aliás, essa não é a única investigação em curso. A empresa também está na mira de órgão do Departamento de Justiça americano. Quando a notícia veio a público há pouco mais de uma semana, o que fez a estatal brasileira? Tentou negar o óbvio. Agora, não dá mais. Aliás, o comando da empresa negava sistematicamente que houvesse corrupção em suas operações, como sabemos. Dilma só admitiu a existência da safadeza há modestos 38 dias.

E por que uma empresa brasileira pode ser investigada por um órgão americano? Porque ela negocia ações na Bolsa de Nova York, condição essencial de uma empresa de seu porte e que tem de se financiar no mercado internacional. Todas as empresas que querem ter essa prerrogativa têm de se submeter à SEC, que é levada terrivelmente a sério por lá.

Agora a direção da estatal admite que vai enviar àquele órgão regulador dados de uma auditoria independente encomendada a dois escritórios: o brasileiro Trench, Rossi e Watanabe e o americano Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Há alguns dias, o comando da Petrobras chegou a negar que a contratação dessas duas empresas tivesse alguma relação com a investigação da SEC.

Esses dois escritórios se dizem ainda especialistas em leis anticorrupção, em especial a FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practice Act), que pune severamente empresas estrangeiras que negociam ações nos EUA e praticam corrupção.

Tudo indica que há gente na Petrobras que ainda não percebeu que a empresa não pode ser tratada como o quintal da casa da mãe joana. Já não adianta tentar tapar o sol com peneira. A questão da corrupção ganhou dinâmica própria. De resto, não se deve confundir a SEC ou as regras da FCPA com uma CPI de cartas marcadas no Brasil. A coisa subiu de patamar.

Por Reinaldo Azevedo

Ney Latorraca + GT – Sunday power lunch at the Four Seasons (NY)

Pop and classic. Pop and classic. And people in hiding being multiplied by Plato in retrograde!

PLATO in RETROGRADE.

Gerald Thomas © NY – Nov 20, 2014

Mike Nichols is dead. I’m obviously sad, touched.

____________________________________________________________________________________

“It was pop and classic. Pop and classic. Classically pop!”

We used to savor one movie at a time: say….. “Un Chien Andalu”, say… “Silence” or “Wild Strawberries” or “Seven”, “E la Nave Va”, “Blow Up” or Godard…or, even, ‘Happiness” (by Solondz)…John Waters or “Clockwork Orange”…

And it all tasted…. well…it tasted amazing!

John Fante tasted amazing. So did Plato. So did Ovid. So did Asterix, so did Nietzsche, so did Michael Jackson. It was pop and classic. Pop and classic. Pure Kafka, pure Raymond Chandler.

“We collect secrets over the years, hide behind them, depend on them, like aces up our sleeve. We think we have to protect the people we love from the truth, but the truth isn’t the poison. It’s the cure. Best thing you can do is teach your kids not to be afraid. We try to live a good life, a clean life. But secrets get in the way. Sure we can play dirty, use people’s mistakes against them. But put all those secrets behind us and the honest man comes out on top.”

Yes, we used to savor one at a time. And then again, we’d watch it again.
And again. Each time tasting more and more amazing! Just as we used to read Finnegan’s Wake or any Gertrude Stein, we would savor each word, each completion of a thought.

And there were many!

We’d find things we had not seen the first time around and we’d read them over and over. One film, one book or a painting: one would lead to another. Always another. One Rimbaud in, another Baudelaire out, one Satre in, one Wilde out.

Just as in Bruno, Dante, Vico… Joyce, this one, by Beckett. One Goethe at a time, slowly! One Garcia Marquez, one Hegel at a time. And what incredible taste!!!

Or…One Picasso at a time: “Guernica”! Day in, day out… “Guernica”! Or Duchamp’s “Large Glass”. Or Joseph Albers or Max Ernst or…. one Hélio Oiticica, one at a time!

It was almost monogamous! Yes, our relationship with the Founding Fathers of our cultural pillars.

The Flemish, the Spanish Masters, the drop outs. One Francis Bacon at a time, even when there were three! One Andy Warhol, even when he multiplied two by sixty!

Or, to go and see Yehudi Menuhin play live at the Royal Albert Hall or Lenny Bernstein at the South Bank or Carnegie Hall, conducting Beethoven or Villa Lobos’s “Bachianas”. One at a time. Even John Cage! One after another yet, one at a time!
Or a Wagner overture! What an explosion that was! Or “Concierto de Arranjuez”. Or Procul Harum!
Or…. Johnny Rotten. Yes, we liked him!!!

We used to listen to a few bands. A few bands only. And then, say, we used to go watch them live….like, The Stones, Zeppelin and so on. Yet, while our decibel range was from high to higher, it all seemed pretty quiet to me!

AND we used to watch plays. Yes, we’d ‘live’ in the theater and watch the same play many times over, observe specific actors in action, absorb the playwright’s lines, one by one! One after another, one by one.

And now? Now it’s all a huge web of an uninspired spy game! One huge Crime Scene Investigation!!!

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood. And….genocide!

It was pop and classic. Pop and classic.

We had a memory back then. We didn’t need a Google to remind us, or to remember for us. We didn’t need Google to translate because what mattered was our own interpretation.

“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
Napoleon Bonaparte

Neither pop nor classic.
We are at war! Not in a Clockwork Orange World War “kind of war”, but at war. More like the kind of “Usual Suspect” kind war, or Freud’s and Hitler’s idea of war.

The age of pure and simple propaganda.
Last night I found Edward Snowden hiding between two books on my shelves. I didn’t say a word. He uttered the word “Graceland” and I pretended to understand.

I’m always pretending to understand.

But I don’t!

Not any more!!!

Gerald Thomas
New York – November 20, 2014

Last night….

The Australian way of escaping to the UK

Last night, at a rather informal gathering, I asked a group of actors (average age around 40, from all over the world) about Samuel Beckett. No reaction (yet, some discomfort). Then I asked about Artaud. Nothing. Dead pale shade of whiter even paling !!! Paid my $ 6 for the Evian I had and walked away. On the Corner of Canal St and Greene I looked up at Richard Foreman’s loft and smiled at the fire escape. Came home sad on a cold almost winter day.

Most of us have absolutely NO idea of anything. I mean, people (we, humans…) are somehow brought up to see ourselves as ‘warriors’, fighters, and, from very early on we spend our lives fighting! Fighting diseases, fighting bullying, fighting ‘finding’ our identities, fighting to maintain it, fighting our declared enemies, fighting our declared friends, fighting our spouses, fighting our parents or children and, or, fighting depression and fighting the ultimate monster: DEATH!!!!

Ontem, aqui em NY, eu perguntei pra um grupo de atores (media….40 anos e de todos os países) sobre Samuel Beckett. Olhar pasmo! Ninguem sabia . Perguntei sobre Artaud. Nada. Paguei minha parte da conta e fui embora. Na esquina da Canal St com Greene – parei. Parei na frente do loft do Richard Foreman, olhei pra cima. Dei um sorriso pras escadas de incendio e vim aqui pra casa, triste!’

Esta é a herança dos nossos tempos, de nossos territórios: deturpação, esvaziamento da ética, implosão da moral em discurso pervertido, em bestialogias diárias, em sórdidos sorrisos chamados mercados. Reduzem-nos a isso, mercadoria para troca ou para o descarte, o refugo, o lixo.

Gerald Thomas

ENTREDENTES has come to an end after 2 and a half years in the making!

The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago and so did ENTREDENTES, my play which has occupied pretty much 2 years of my life AND included the Berlin Wall in its set.

Thank you all.

LOVE
Gerald Thomas

Still on the issue of what VEJA-Rio did to me and to Rabbi Nilton Bonder, here’s my reply published by this horrendous magazine:

Robin Williams and Carol Burnett in the most perfect comedy sketch

THE VERY BEST OF ROBIN WILLIAMS (on Viagra)