Kyle Thomas Smith is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. He also publishes under the psuedonyms Colin Mac Gowan and Ethel Moneymaker.
Selected Clips
January 2004
"Those attempting to find a plot in it will be shot," declares Mark Twain with his opening words to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now the National Theater of the United States of America (NTUSA) throws down its own gauntlet, serving up a mutant piece of this same American pie in DUMBO with its latest collective theater piece: What’s That On My Head?
January 2005
Outside the Inauguration: The Plan
On Inauguration Day, Dubya’s rabbit eyes are about to shift into their dopiest state of confusion yet when he sees Lila Rose Kaplan’s Ladies of Liberty stomping up to triangulate DuPont Circle in DC. Arm in Arm with comedic escorts Billionaires for Bush, this bilious band of 19th Century battleaxes plans to hammer its croquet mallets straight into the groin of the president’s administration as it makes its way up its batty belfry to sound the death knell for women’s reproductive rights. “They expect ‘liberal radicals’?” says Kaplan, “Let’s give them nineteenth-century ladies instead.”
Monday July 2, 2007
There’s nothing better than an easy read. You sit back. Your mind goes. You enter another dimension, one that’s easy to coast through. Plus, according to scientific research, whether you’re reading Shakespeare or Jackie Collins, you’re engaging in the highest activity of the mind, where a multitude of mental faculties are exercising all at once. So, hats off to Bill Engvall! With Alan Eisenstock’s editorial assistance, he’s written Just A Guy: Notes from a Blue Collar Life, a book that you can read in one, two sittings tops. Engvall has no designs on writing a masterpiece. There are no literary pretensions, convoluted sentences or big words. Just a collection of anecdotes that reveal Engvall’s life story and what it means to be a Guy.
Friday Aug 10, 2007
There’s a lot of hoopla in New York these days around the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love. In Williamsburg and East Village, street vendors’ stalls are clogged with tie-dye, incense, peace pipes and Beat Anthologies. Last month was Hippie Fest at Seaside Park in Brooklyn, featuring Turtles and Zombies reunions. The Whitney even cashed in on the theme with its Summer of Love exhibit.
Tuesday Sept 4, 2007
Even though I’ve been a Buddhist practitioner for years, I don’t stop to look at trees or smell flowers. I’m a city boy. I bolt from Point A to Point B. My boyfriend Julius isn’t Buddhist, but he does garden a lot.
August 2007
As the years go by, Academy Awards are starting to assume less and less merit by film buffs. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ name has become synonymous with bling and studio politics, if not outright payola. But, this year, the Academy did a lot to redeem its reputation as a standard-bearer for excellence by awarding Best Foreign Language Film to The Lives of Others. Renters of this German thriller-due out on DVD and Blu-Ray on August 21-will witness what, with any luck, could prove to be the spark to light a renaissance of great cinema.
November 2007
Back in college, Tennessee Williams was my patron saint. Early in his career, after clocking out a full day of drudgery at the shoe factory, he would come home and fix himself a pot of black coffee for a graveyard shift of writing. Often, his alarm clock would ring at dawn and he’d find himself waking up from an hour’s sleep at his bedroom desk, still in the clothes he’d worn to work the day before, manual typewriter keys embossed on the side of his face. When he was a little kinder to himself, he would take a break and steal out on to the fire escape for an after-midnight smoke. There, he would gaze at the St. Louis sky and wonder if the stars would ever align to ensure his future as an artist.
September 2004/December 2007
Milarepa (1052-1136) was a Buddhist saint, who composed a repertoire of songs that are said to contain perfect instruction in the Dharma, or, the teachings of the Buddha. Before this, he had been a black magician and mass murderer. By and by, Milarepa’s transgressions began to weigh more heavily on his conscience than the roof he’d once sent crashing down on his uncle’s wedding party. Convinced he would perish a thousand deaths in hell, Milarepa sought out Buddhist master Marpa for purification.
November 2007
Craigslist.org is the great convener. Without it, how many of us would even know about the ID Project? So, one day, I decided to throw a “Call for Sentient City Submissions” up on craigslist and see what would boomerang back to us. That’s when Niradhara came into our lives.
Sunday Jan 20, 2008
The title for Libba Bray’s newest book, The Sweet Far Thing, comes from a verse in William Butler Yeats’ 1893 poem, "The Rose of Battle." I mention this to underscore that, unlike a lot of the Young Adult schlock that’s on the market, Bray’s work has a solid foundation in the literary canon, which her inspired writing is sure to advance today.
Wednesday Apr 2, 2008
Rufus Wainwright may have launched a Leonard Cohen renaissance, but, in my opinion, Robyn Hitchcock deserves to be crowned Bard of the Melancholy Sex Ballad. For one thing, Hitchcock’s voice puts Cohen’s to shame. His lyrics cover a far broader spectrum of emotions and experiences. Even when unplugged, his music fuses the speed-freak jive of the Velvet Underground with the cavalier British glamor of The Beatles and the surly surrealism of Bob Dylan. Yet he’s still out there playing small clubs for cult audiences. Why? Cohen may be a maestro in his own right, but why aren’t Nick Cave, Bono, and Rufus lining up to do a concert in Hitchcock’s honor? Why isn’t Joni playing his covers? Why isn’t Philip Glass begging him to collaborate? When will this guy get his due?
Shine A Light
Tuesday Jul 29, 2008
In 1998, The Rolling Stones released "No Security," a live album that was 100 percent better than the 1997 studio album "Bridges To Babylon" on which the tour was based. The album cover featured a concert photo of a long-haired, tattooed road hog, smoking a cigarette and wearing a sleeveless Stones-Lips t-shirt. Next to him is his girlfriend, a tattooed, body-pierced, anorexic road warrior with jet-black hair. This was the Stones. This was the band that released "Exile On Main Street" (1972), that presided over murder and mayhem at Altamont. "No Security" was their best album in 17 years, and the band hadn’t sounded better in a full quarter of a century.
Tuesday Jul 29, 2008
Most of us know the story. In January 2006, The Smoking Gun website documented how James Frey had lied about many of the events he wrote about in A Million Little Pieces, a memoir of his time in rehab.
A few weeks later, when Oprah offered Frey the opportunity to recant before a national audience, she went from being his foremost supporter to a front-line scourge.
For a long time afterwards, memoirists everywhere hid beneath their beds, lest their editors—and the editors’ newly-fired fact-checkers—would charge their doors.
