Ah... I was just wondering... if it's not too annoying, could someone tell me after the duties are explained? It's just this area in which I live is such a waste of space, especially culturally.
Ah, I guess I should mention those recent events that prove this area is unworthy of Pig.
1) A local artist in the town where I graduated with my B.S. (yes, I have a B.S., fire at will) won that town's annual arts council competition. As part of his prize, he was given a month-long exhibition at that town's convention center/university instructional space (the center has a tangled history of being jointly built by town and local state university, which has led to lots of arguments over scheduling of events and who gets to run the center. Adelphia Communications was also involved, but since it went bankrupt the city-university mess has just intensified). Less than a week into the exhibition, the general manager of the place decided that one painting in the exhibition was so offensive that it be taken down WITHOUT notifying the painter, and without his consent. The painter found out simply because he happened to visit his exhibition a couple of days later; the manager had, by then, left on a vacation, and the guy had to retrieve his painting from a locked meeting room.
So what was this horrible, horrible painting? One of a man in a urinal, presumably urinating, facing the wall so that nothing can be seen of him but the back of his head, his back, his clothed lower portion; not even the guy's forearms show, as the little privacy wall thingies seperating urinal from rest of space are included. There's no nudity, no excretion of fluids, nothing vaguely offensive beyond the fact that it's set in a urinal. IMHO, the worst things about it are its hyper-ironic-cutsie title ("Man at Fountain" or something similar), and the fact that it's a very badly executed exercise in persepctive and clumsily constructed.
Anyhow, painter pulled his exhibition as soon as he saw "Man at Fountain" was missing; the teensy eensy university museum has given him space, free of charge, until what would have been the end of his exhibition.
2) The town in which I live (just about 30 minutes away from the aforementioned town) has, as it's community venue, a high school gymnasium. (Our main claim to fame in recent years was hosting a Kathie Lee Christmas special that was taped for national broadcast, as well as hosting the Arby's high school basketball tournament every December.) For the past few years, the ciry and the school system have been fighting over who controls the gymnasium, as well as who gets how much revenue from ticket/admission and concession stand sales; it even led to a recall election involving some members of the school board. The issue was settled last year, with main control going to the school system, and all concession sales going to the high school's band and sports programs. Around the same time the news story about "Man in Fountain' painter was reported, the school system here released a statement explaining why it's been unable to book more national acts the past couple of years. Its explanation was that the control/revenues controversy hurt its reputation with tour bookers, but because the mess has now been settled, it should be getting in more national acts.
I STRONGLY beg to differ about the causes. While it did contribute a bit to booking problems, this town's reputation has been in the bucket for years, mainly due to some religious nuts and a few associated churches staging a fairly sizeable protest when a heavy metal band (I think it was Iron Maiden, why they even played here in the first place I don't know) played here back in the 90s. This venue never really had drawing power to begin with -- it's IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, population a little less that 20,000, the gym able to hold only a few hundred people -- but the protests pretty much told bookers that the community was only willing to allow certain types of acts in to perform (I think the city even passed a resolution saying it would only allow "family friendly" acts, university town and another town about 30 minutes away from here adopted the same sort of resolution later). For this town, those "acts" are second-rate country singers, "Christian" artists no one but fundies have heard of, and the occasional Dora the Explorer or similar show, along with local crafts fairs. And now, since the school controls booking, priority goes to school functions. How in the HELL can people here think they're going to get U2 in, or even Faith Hill? In the first case, the community is hostile, in both cases, the venue is TOO FRICKING SMALL.
University town is only marginally more open; its definition of "family friendly" includes rodeos, those Broadway tours involving no-name actors in decade-old musicals, and the WWE. (Yes, the WWE... this is redneckland, after all) The only two major acts who have come through recently are some rap act I've forgotten the name of (university booked it for the students, got the city to offer its venue-space-that-is-a-high-school-gym, community protests resulted in the city pulling its venue and the university having to offer its indoor football field, and their being STRICT controls on ticket sales -- only university students over 21, I think it was, could buy tickets, and their IDs were checked at the door, and I think there were city police on standby during the concert), and Elton John during his small venues tour (this was the smallest one he played, and imho the reason why he came here is because, at the time he played, the town had one of the largest populations of homosexuals per capita in the U.S.)
3) Those in charge of booking tours are really only interested in certain types of acts, namely, country and Christian. This bias existed well before the Iron Maiden incident, and the aftermath of that incident just gave those bookers justification for their practices. I know lots of people who would love to see a pop act or something DIFFERENT, but in large part because of the local bookers, it doesn't happen.
4) WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!!! I cannot stress this enough, university town is the largest town in the immediate area, and it's only about 55,000 inhabitants large (and I think that figure includes the out-of-town university students). About two hours from here are three slightly larger venues, they're a bit more open to booking a variety of acts and do get in a larger number/variety of acts, but quite honestly, not even those three venues will have the pull and assured ticket sales of Atlanta. I guess the best way to say it is that they're a couple of rungs above us in the booking chain, but not much.
5) Plus, this area just has an unhealthy fasicantion with country music... even our NPR affiliate devotes about 90% of its airtime to country/blues/folk/roots, and our two PBS affiliates (they're both located outside the region, only way to get them here is by came) tend to avoid most of the standard PBS staples! WETS even dropped the Met broadcasts!!! For those not enamored of all things country or fundie, when it comes to acts like Pig, those who prefer rock/industrial/goth/metal go with the most mainstream of acts, basically, whatever the big radio conglomerates are pushing that month, and NIN. This area is just too insulated, and I'm not sure promoting Pig would get more than a "Oh... he's that guy from the 90s NIN tour? Eh... I like NIN and Slipknot better... "
I so need to move somewhere more civilized.
NP
P.S. If you don't believe me about the local NPR affiliate, check out its programming schedule:
www.wets.org (I think that's the website, if not, look for WETS 89.5 FM online and you'll find them)