Alert! Controversial claim incoming! Poetry is nice, I think. Here’s some. “Good Bones,” by Maggie Smith:
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
Anyway, I’m home from shooting that movie I mentioned, Dying Alone. Acting is fun. I’ll report more fully on the experience when I’ve had a second to breathe, but in the meantime…
A job? In this econom-ahgkk. A sudden lurch, and sounds of struggle. Then a shout, a crunch. A final thud. Silence. Panting. Uneven footsteps approach. In this economy?
A long time ago in Montreal (as these things are), I was on assignment to review a Tanya Tagaq concert. I had forgotten my notebook, and so resorted to scribbling my impressions on the nearest piece of paper. Thusly, my copy of Why I Write by George Orwell became filled with esoteric marginal notes like “chorus swells —> Sense of Foreboding!” or “It’s MAGIC.”
This anecdote is maybe a cypher for my personality, but more importantly, it demonstrates my can-do-attitude and resourcefulness under pressure, both of which can be put to use at Your Place of Employment! I’m looking for work. Money money money money money.
Ideally, I’m looking for:
Part-time, contract, remote (or hybrid in NYC),
USA or Canada,
Communications roles, in the broadest sense,
Tags: copywriting/editing, media production, interviewing/hosting, research, creative direction, project management,
NOT social media management,
Industry/sector agnostic (i love 2 learn), but I have strong experience in: performing arts (duh), legacy & digital media, environmental, academic, NGO, labor, politics.
Please send any leads my way! Appropriate resumes and portfolios available on request.
As always, I’m available for performance or event photography, and maybe even some portraiture. Also, for any folks who may not know, I teach acting and theatre. Working with adults is what I’m best at and enjoy most, at all experience levels (coaching, ensemble, Shakespeare, scene study). Any conservatory teachers out there looking for substitutes?
AADA and your Data
Speaking of conservatories, I’ve gotten notifications from a couple of monitoring tools that a database from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts was leaked. I was notified because my data, including sensitive information, was included in said leak. Yours probably was too, if you’ve had any sort of interaction with the school. Gmail users can check their account’s “dark web report” to see their status—it’s not yet on https://haveibeenpwned.com/ but if you haven’t looked there before, that’s worth doing regardless.
Why does this matter? This is information that’s relatively innocuous on its own (although don’t think too hard about why a school I’ve never attended has my address), but it can be combined with other sources of leaked or publicly available information to trick, for example, your bank, or to spoof your email and scam your grandma, or all sorts of other yummy things. So do go check. There’s not much to be done at this point, other than verifying your other accounts and making sure they’re as secure as can be—always use two-factor authentication, don’t share passwords across accounts, etc. And, you know, plz resist an internet in thrall to parasitic data vacuums, and advocate for meaningful freedom from surveillance of all kinds, yada yada yada we’re so cooked lmfao.
Notably, at no point was I notified about this by AADA themselves. It seems they still haven’t commented on this, actually, which if I may be so bold is some bullshit (and also illegal under certain jurisdictions). Organizations that choose to hold people’s information also take on practical and moral (and legal) responsibilities to that information, whether they like it, or know it, or not; it galls me that an institution ostensibly dedicated to the enrichment and advancement of artists would be so callow towards those same artists’ safety.
Hands Off? More like (all) Hands On (deck)!
Last weekend, a couple million people took to the streets in basically every part of the country to say no thank you to fascism in America. Maybe you saw these protests, or heard about them, or participated (!!!), but also maybe not, given the impossibly fractured information landscape we’re dealing with in this, the year of our lord 2025. This truly giant demonstration was, I think, an event worthy of celebrating. Pretty good! Pretty cool! Pretty exciting! Let’s have more, please, especially since the hands in question are most definitely not yet “off,” and one might even say more “on” than ever.
It was absolutely wild, though, to see 5th Avenue filled to the gills with the righteous and the ready, and then to see mayoral polls with Andrew Cuomo atop the list. Like, the last time there was a mass protest movement for freedom and democracy in New York, that’s the guy who tried to send in the National Guard! Wild!
Memories are short, so I offer this reminder: New Yorkers, Cuomo is a bad guy. He won’t be our bad guy. He doesn’t care about us. We know this for a fact because last time he held power he was more concerned with making a global crisis about himself and hiding how many people died from his COVID policies than, you know, preventing people from dying of COVID. Not to mention the whole resignation as governor over the exposure of a decade of sexual harassment. Boo! No more macho-man megalomaniacal nepo-baby creeps, please!
There’s this argument floating around that because Cuomo is, I don’t know, mean, he’ll be mean to Trump (which is, it must be said, not the same thing as governing well). Let me counter that, even accepting this, New York is just getting rid of a mayor so politically compromised that the Trump regime tried to use the criminal case against him as blackmail to break the city. Why replace that mayor with a loser with at least two potentially criminal scandals that Trump’s goon lawyers can leverage in the exact same way? It’s not good, it’s not smart, it’s not right.
We deserve a good mayor, for once. If you’re registered for the primary on June 24th, please consider rating anybody else1, but especially Zohran Mamdani. And for those whose sole criterion for voting is spite against The Bad Orange Man, which I do respect as an honest impulse, I don’t think there’s a better choice imaginable than the Democratic Socialist immigrant Muslim (with, alas, a relatively famous mother. Can’t win ‘em all).
A better world is possible, including one where the evil fascist fucks currently running amok in your governments and institutions get their just deserts. The failed leaders of the past won’t get us there, though; and least of all one who has demonstrated through his return to public life the oh-so-familiar attitude that consequences don’t exist if you’re powerful enough. The main chant from the weekend’s protests was “We’re not going back,” right?
Next time I’m gonna write about something fun, I promise. It’s Furiosa. Furiosa is what I’m going to write about, because it’s all I want to think about whenever I manage to stop thinking about The Situation. It’s currently on Netflix, by the way.
“As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?”
Carl
Some links to neat stuff:
Born in the wrong generation - by Sam Kriss
You have gone nowhere. There is nowhere for you to go.
A colossal squid is filmed in its natural habitat for the first time : NPR
Colossal squid are known to be elusive and likely avoid the bright and loud research equipment used underwater.
The Phony Comforts of AI Optimism
A few months ago, Casey Newton of Platformer ran a piece called "The phony comforts of AI skepticism," framing those who would criticize generative AI as "having fun," damning them as "hyper-fixated on the things [AI] can't do." I am not going to focus too hard on this blog, in
"What Can I Do to Help the Labor Movement?"
You can do these things.
“Rating” is the word because the mayoral primary uses a ranked choice ballot. You enter five names in order of preference. None of them should be Cuomo!
This is the Carl Bindman Newsletter, for members of my professional or personal networks whom I think should get the scoop and be kept in the loop.
This newsletter was written on Lenapehoking, the occupied land of the Lenni Lenape.