Microphilanthropy, Nixon

Riding the bus home from a weekend sauna excursion this afternoon, I saw a poster advertisement for a Swedish aid organization similar to Doctors without Borders, asking for donations to their Darfur aid campaign. The twist: Across the bottom of the poster was an SMS (email text messaging) number to which you could sms your donation of 1 or 3 dollars (10 or 30 kronor). Now in Sweden, where there are more cell phones than inhabitants (figure that one out....actually it's because some people have both a work and private phone), this struck me as a very inventive use of emerging technology. (Actually, SMS has existed in Sweden since at least 1998 to my knowledge, which is to say much longer than in the states). Further evidence for the paradigm shift that cell phones are bringing about. In ten years they'll be able to provide personal information, and LCD billboards will be able to display custom advertisements depending on the average age of the people on the bus, where it's headed, what time it is, etc. It's like Tom Cruise in Minority Report, only without the creepy eye thing. An America-fication of this technology is going to give birth to a commuter-shopping network version of the HSN, where people can mail order products via SMS while watching the home shopping network via streaming 3G video.

God Bless America.

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Speaking of which, I saw the opening night performance of Lundaspexarna this evening, performing the newly written 'Nixon'. Lundaspexarna are arguably Sweden's most famous Spex company (in the theatre company sense of the word). Spex is a common Swedish university student blend of comic farse, musical, and general play. It's highly entertaining and hinges upon high audience interaction. All exceptional songs and stage events receive an excessive clapping, which doesn't relent until the performers rerun the piece. This can mean everything from new verses, different choreography, different songs, different anything, and it can also happen several times for the same scene, which often forces the actors beyond their planned back-ups into improv, which can be even more hilarious. A number of big swedish comedy acts have also gotten their start with Lundaspexarna.

Lundaspexarna, being one of the oldest spex companies, are very traditional. They only allow men on stage, for one thing. To give you an idea, they only started using colored lighting on stage ten years ago. The stories also follow a certain plot algorithm. They center around a famous character (Dalai Llama, Al Capone, Picasso, etc.), for some reason always include the line "Look, somebody's coming", always open with the same song, always very heavy on puns and a bunch of other things. Every fall they present newly written spex's, and in the spring they do reruns of the classics with minor updates.

Nixon was about the corrupt Nixon running against playboy Bobby Kennedy in the '68 election. Kissinger played Nixons comic sidekick, Kennedy had a french bimbo as his tail. The final number was a god bless america-esque piece that finished with an american flag being projected in the background with the words "Support the USA, PG 90 156-45". PG is short for bank account, and 90 is the prefix for non-profits. Cute things like that speckled the whole performance. George W. Bush made an appearance (blatant disregard for time period is also a defining trait), with his nymphomaniac mother. The guy who played Barbara senior was freakin' hilarious. Many punchlines hinged upon conservative preaching clashing with her lude remarks.

Barbara: "TV is such a blessing of an invention, [and with Cinemax], I can watch all sorts of movies over dinner. Then around midnight they start showing pornography! But I'm always in bed by 10:30. [pause] So I tape it and watch it over breakfast!"

Hard to translate to a blog, but it was generally hilarious.

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Lastly, an evolutionary biology based looked at terorrism. I'm very skeptical and think it all seems pretty bunk, but still intersting. (via A&L Daily.