P4M NON-REVIEW: SPINNING INTO BUTTER PLAYS TO AN AGED, UNICULTURAL AUDIENCE AT LINCOLN CENTER

By now, you've probably heard of this play, Spinning Into Butter, in which four, white administrators of a conservative Vermont college display, comically but touchingly, their varying brands of racism-speaking-with-the-voice-of-not- deeply-enough-examined liberalism. A Nuyorican guy gets promised a scholarship if he lists himself as "Hispanic" on the application form; a black guy gets some hate shit posted on his dorm door; and the drama takes off from there.

A hit in Chicago, where it premiered last year, Spinning Into Butter has been in previews at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater and opens officially there tonight. It's tightly acted by a great cast and deftly marries a righteous political agenda with the emotional requirements of good theater. In fact, Spinning Into Butter is just the sort of moving issue-play that the Pulitzer committee loves. But as we pulled our attention away from the action onstage for a moment during the second act and surveyed the distinctly aged and largely uni-cultural audience (all of whom were sitting in $50 seats), we couldn't help noticing the same problem we addressed last week in our "anti-review" of Bill T. Jones's recent Lincoln Center appearance: the structural smugness of big arts institutions.

Yup. They didn't give us review tickets for this one, either-- because all of Lincoln Center's marketing and publicity efforts evidently go toward selling out the house to people who can afford it, and very little go toward expanding the critical context for the artist's work and widening the audience for it. We doubt that too many other urban media outlets got comps, either. (We did see some friends at the performance who review theater for mainstream publications and we'll try to get a review for you from one of them, since, again, the play was terrific and you should definitely try to see it.) It's great that Lincoln Center's target audience gets to see a play depicting many of its favorite forms of racism, but are Lincoln Center Theater co-directors Andre Bishop and Bernard Gersten absolutely precluding the possibility of a race-driven drama that speaks to, and is marketed to, everyone?

HALLMARK CRAPS OUT WITH AD BUY IN SPIN

For a minute there, we were afraid that Hallmark had created a doomed line of cards. The July, 2000, Spin contains a two-page ad for Hallmark's new Fresh Ink cards, which, according to the ad copy, let you "say something real." The ad depicts a soggy card on the bottom of a freshly-drained bathtub, along with a well-used bar of deodorant soap and a few of those asterisk-shaped anti-slip stickies. The card depicts a yellow rubber ducky and reads, Hope life is soon ducky... 'cause right now it's sucky.

Wondering if there were any market research on the subset of consumers who use both the word "sucky" and the word "ducky," we called Hallmark and spoke to very nice spokesperson named Lana. She told us that Fresh Ink is Hallmark's newest line of "alternative cards," aimed at 18-to-39-year-old women (though "men may like them, too"). Lana said there were 480 different cards in the line (!) and that they all use "the same language women use with their best friends every day."

Mystery solved. The only thing Hallmark did wrong was spend a lot of money advertising in Spin, which probably has very few readers who use the word "ducky" and also use cards to express empathy with depressed or luckless friends. Hallmark is gonna make a mint on Fresh Ink, as long as its advertising can reach the millions of lunch-hour-shopping secretaries who think that buying a card reading I opened the box, and inside was this tiny, delicate porcelain figurine that looked like me as a child... [Inside] I hate getting crap like that. Have a crap-free birthday will make them real.

EXCLUSIVE: ON BOARD THE U.S.S. JOHN F. KENNEDY WITH THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

We've used this space to take several pokes at the U.S. military-industrial establishment. Last year we even took Spike Lee to task for creating TV spots for the U.S. Navy. That's why we feel compelled, in the spirit of full disclosure, to report that we spent the 4th of July in the belly of the beast (well, on the flight deck of the beast): aboard the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, in New York Harbor, attending a dinner hosted by Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and watching fireworks.

We were among 300 guests. The ship had hosted 3000 earlier in the day, when President Clinton was aboard for the International Naval Review, but all of those people had been ferried off by the time we arrived for dinner, except the President, who'd been helicoptered off. It was an honor to be invited-- and we felt it important to go, because we didn't think there would be too many other representatives of the urban media there (and there weren't, although we did see and chat with the likes of Deepak Chopra, John Glenn, Dr. Ruth, Gary Hart, F. Lee Bailey, and Charles Rangel). We did feel a bit morally conflicted, as some of the other guests might have felt, especially when we were treated to a slightly scary, after-dinner performance of the Navy's silent drill team-- ten dudes spinning bayonet-tipped rifles with balletic precision. But we wanted to be there, finally, because we thought it would be interesting to see what it was like spending a few hours in the absolutely safest place on earth.

And it was interesting. Safe felt... fun, while we were there, anchored midway between the Statue of Liberty and Governor's Island, on an aircraft carrier that's a fifth of a mile long, with a crew of 5200. Helicopters patrolling overhead. Guarding on all sides (and somewhat below us, since the Kennedy is as tall as a 20-story building), other U.S.
warships, Coast Guard and NYPD vessels, teams of mysterious, all-black amphibious-looking things, and about 50,000 other craft, some belonging to the media. On deck, parked, a helicopter, a jet-- and a buffet, a bar, and a dance band. Privileged conversations unshielded from eavesdropping. Secret Service on the periphery, along with other security types (door staff at clubs take note: security for the Secretary of Defense is tight but genial). We were a little disappointed, by the way, when our Pentagon security clearance came through without a hitch, the day before. Clearly, our anti-establishment op-ed pieces haven't been transgressive enough.

The fireworks were OK. No radio on deck made us feel a little distant. The amazing parts of the day were: travelling by launch from Pier 78 to the Kennedy, down the Hudson, facing the massive, up-river parade of boats; arriving at the Kennedy and stepping into the cavernous hangar deck (like Captain Kirk coming on board the refurbished Enterprise in Star Trek II, or was it Star Trek IV); the orzo salad with scallops; the intense dedication we saw in each man and woman in uniform, whether wielding a weapon, a walky-talky, or a serving spoon.

In the street afterwards, when we were walking to the subway, after being ferried back to Pier 78 (bar still open all the way, thank you), we came across a guy playing solo electric guitar. To the delight of exhausted sidewalk-partiers, this guy was doing the famous Hendrix fucked-up "Star Spangled Banner," a work of pure genius that, to our ears, seemed to be asking ask how long America would need to continue seeing itself as an exclusive dinner party floating in a sea of protective hardware. We tried to focus on this as we hopped onto the A train-- but damn if we couldn't get the insane fun of military privilege out of our mind....