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  Transgressing in chain stores. Unlocking the hypnotic power of Transnational capital. Breaking through the commodity wall.   Actions — a few words before we “Go Inside” Before you begin to stop your Shopping, before you become a Sacred Spy of the Shopocalypse — a few questions... Who’s your Devil?  From the Mouths of Babes to the Blog of the Church Go through scenarios. But the first witness, the People Role Players It helps to have a Physical Educator Arrange for your Fair Witness ... AND NOW ... 16 Retail Interventions For Your Action Pleasure Direct Action Workbook Bump and Grind the Buckheads Commercial Free Zone What’s That Voice In the Mickey T-Shirts? Shop Lift! Whirl Mart First Amendment Mob MEMORY RECLAMATION PROJECTS The California Guided Meditation The Marketing Consultant and It’s Opposite First Thought Your Thought Lost and Found Cellphone Opera Number One Cellphone Opera Number Two Trash Worship Virtually Hip - for Larry, Curly and Moe The Stockbroker and the Mermaid Fetus Sponsored Lover :: back to top :: Who’s your Devil? Whether big box or chain store, police who don’t know the U. S. Constitution or a nuke plant. This is your “charged stage.” Your audience approaches innocently, browsing or walking up the street, and then sees the logo of this Devil and immediately has certain thoughts. It is our job to know what the existing props (the logo, the celeb spokesperson, the corporate history, recent news items) are doing to the openness of that witness. In every one of these 16 Actions below, we are making our point by dancing with the resident message of our target Devil. Now a Wal Mart is usually not well liked, or at least complaints against it are well known, but that isn’t really the point. Despite the cozy “We’re Community” TV ads, Wal Mart is basically a military invasion. The only question is the impossible scale. They see, they bribe, they bulldoze. You can’t get there without a car. So of the Actions below, only a few will work inside a Wal Mart, where you must operate far “behind the lines.” There is the vast store, then a parking lot, then a highway – you can’t escape if they suspect you. So our approach is either invisibility (The Whirl or, say, Cell phone Opera #2) or complete exposure (gospel concerts in the parking lot with union officials and legal defense there with us). But Victoria’s Secret, or Starbucks– these are types of companies that engender a more complex, and not always unfavorable, response from the public. Their stores’ are not big boxes, they officially disengage from the phrase “chain store.” Victoria’s Secret is still not associated with clear-cutting virgin forests. Starbucks still insists it has nothing to do with employing 7 year olds. These companies have far more exposure from their famous ads than from the damning research that watchdog groups have on their websites. So then with these Devils, education becomes more important. Whatever shocking bit of theatre we can stage to catch our audience’s interest, we still must prove our case in a more traditional way with clear and clean information sheets. At any rate, you need to case the joint thoroughly. Walk through the store and slow yourself down and - slow the products down, too. See through them. Watch how the branding works. A Nike store is covered with the flying sweating limbs of the famous. A McDonalds is so bright the air has an ice-like quality. A Starbucks is dedicated to uniformity but with items that suggest originality, such as miss-matching beatnik-like furniture. These Evil non-places each ask for a perfect violation, the presence of an internal opposition that explodes the picture. We hope that you find an Action in this next chapter that is useable, if only to free your own imagination in these imagination-killing settings. Send your Actions in to our church website so that you, in turn, inspire others with the Spirit. :: back to top :: From the Mouths of Babes to the Blog of the Church Go through scenarios. There are three witnesses: People, press and police. The latter two are media – they send the message out by way of their theater and so they are important. But you should know who will be there and what to do if a badge or microphones are suddenly thrust in your face. :: back to top :: But the first witness, the People – they are shopping and we are interrupting them in an entertaining way. So we help them create a folk story from their experience. It is always a pleasure to hear them describe weeks after an Action “the terrible marriage spat, the wife was describing a sweatshop factory and the husband was on his knees… it was incredible! They were pulling on this box!” People can explain their surprising shopping experience using unexpected associations from dream life, or unsanctioned (ODD) memories, to embellish their talk. This is the heart of the matter; this is NEW; out of category; unmarketed language-making. The interrupted shoppers carry that radical recombinance that will come back and profoundly change the commercial press and the police, who are usually the last to change. We believe that the key to change is found in the talk of interrupted shoppers. Try to hear what they say on the grapevine, on blogs, find out what they are doing with their impressions. Get those non-professional confessions and bring them back to your website. Send ‘em back the church. Revbilly.com! OH PRAISE! WHEN THE SHOPPING STOPS! :: back to top :: Role Players There should be an Action Manager (AM). Most of the 16 actions below have steps in them and the manager can signal to stand up and sing, to go to the climax of the piece, or to suddenly go mute if the police happen by. Oftentimes the AM stands near the front door or window, seeing the farthest into the store and out in the surrounding cityscape. :: back to top :: It helps to have a Physical Educator. Someone who can really lead a warm up in the church basement. Breaking through the strict choreography of products takes body-and-soul readiness. Retail environments enforce strict responses. But our Actions will defy the lock-step of - soft voice /slow movement/ /walk to the register/swipe the plastic/bag and walk to car – all within security surveillance of both police and of cameras. Breathing and stretching softens the impact of that breaking product pattern. When you Disturb The Customers you are freeing them, but you are doing hard work. There is a definite recoil, we are picking the ultimate lock, hacking into that vast dance. Usually we’re basking in the pleasurable release of it for hours afterward, but we’re sore the next morning. :: back to top :: Arrange for your Fair Witness. You want to get your critique from someone not involved in the Action itself. Someone who sits on the very edge of the whole play sees all the elements. This person is not holding a spy cam, or watching for police. This person’s only job is to see it all. Remember the other members of the church. Transnationals are a cancer, dedicated only to expansion and ultimately Earth death. We must meet them all over the Earth. There are people in Brazil and Estonia and Singapore who want to know how you are bodily breaking the ASPHYXIATING LABYRINTH OF PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Tape everything, notice it all, and write journals, keep sending it out and receiving it. This is our good works. And always be polite to the workers and customers. Most of these Actions are comedies with a social conscience. But comedy is very close to anger, and excites all kinds of stuff in on-lookers… know that border. Don’t be angry at anyone who is angry with you. They are dealing with the breaking apart of product life, and that was their fundamentalist faith. Stay soft, cunning, loving. :: back to top :: Direct Action Workbook 16 Retail Interventions For Your Action Pleasure IT’S A PARTY! Bump and Grind the Buckheads. Gather a large number of party-prone faithful in our church basement. Print (on two sides) many copies of the Coverco report (which you can get at Coverco.org). Print it out in both English and Spanish. There are lousy things in that report about people who bring non-Fair Trade Coffee to market. The study took place in Guatemala, and a lot Starbucks’ victims are kids. Instruct everyone to stuff the pages of this report into their trouser legs, stockings, panties, undershirts and bras. Now with this large throng of the party-prone, fill up a Starbucks until the ratio of people to floorspace is like SOB’s on Saturday Nite. Go with saxophonists, kazoos and squeeze in a trinadadian drum. And a blaster with Thelonius Monk on it. Press the ON button. Ask the musicians to play. Begin to dance. Everyone bumps and grinds while the shoppers try to sip their $4 non Fair Trade lattes. The bumping and grinding gives way to increasingly articulate stripping. The reports fly out of the underclothing like bilingual white ravens. The sipping stops. Bump and grind them beans! :: back to top :: Commercial Free Zone Gather 20 or more of your strange worshippers outside, in an advertising-heavy area. Special roles: a couple doppelbillys ready to preach, and a couple angels dressed in white, and one flutist. It helps this Action to have many supermodel’s hips swiveling up in hot signage in the air above you, with their violent eyes peering down. In New York that’d be Times Square. Now make a circle. Stand the faithful shoulder to shoulder, facing outward at the high pressure mediasphere. Give everyone in the circle a big white cardboard panel, and ask them to hold them up so that the bottom of the rectangle is just above their eyes. The panels are held edge to edge, so that, with the bodies of the faithful, a visual wall creates a great circular room. On each panel is a giant letter, so that pedestrians and motorists read the phrase “COMMERCIAL FREE ZONE.” In the center of the circle, behind everyone’s behind – place a number of beautiful plants. On a plush rug set love-seats and lay-z-boys. Next to the little forest with the leisure chairs arrange for a flutist to play ‘Afternoon of the Faun” by Debussy. Outside the circle, the preachers invite the passersby to “Come in out of the ads! Save your Odd and Holy Soul from this predational economy! No selling here in our special Wilderness Area, Children! Come and relax! We’ll protect you! No ads will reach you! Inside this circle is a special place to have a moment to yourself, admiring the backsides of the Commercially Free, and listening to the flute’s idea of an eternal afternoon.” You can come here and STOP YOUR SHOPPING!” When a stray soul wants to come in, the angels accompany her or him delicately through the circle to the paradise within. Have a little table with a paper and pen. Ask for a thought when they are ready to leave. Thank the flute-player. :: back to top :: What’s That Voice In the Mickey T-Shirts? At the end of a Strange Worship, take the time to pre-record messages from sweatshop testimonies onto a dozen cheap little tape-recorders (“…my salary comes to fourteen cents an hour…”). These remarkable statements are available from NLC.org –the website of the National Labor Committee. Now go into a sweatshop company’s outlet – Disney or Wal Mart will do fine. Place the tape-recorders down in the products, such as under sweatshirts, or behind boxes, press Play. (You should have left a little leader of blank tape so that you have time to walk away before the sound starts up.) A few steps from where you planted your Seed of Truth, you can watch the comedy heat up. Soon sweatshop workers’ words are booming all over the store from beneath the products they manufactured. Security officers confer and start digging for the truth. Sometimes we the Humble Servants - we pile on the mischief. We have actually seen a Stop Shopping parishioner become incensed, scolding a Disney guy, “How could you allow these sweatshop workers to enter my delicate Disney experience! This is the High Church of Retail! This is my Holy Moment!” The obvious flaw of this Action is that the workers here on the retail end are also underpaid, are denied union rights, and probably agree with the feelings we have about sweatshops. If it’s any comfort – the store managers are usually the ones who most resemble Keystone Kops as they toss sweatshirts over their heads, desperate to hit the OFF button of the suffering. :: back to top :: Shop Lift! One of the simplest most powerful Actions. It helps in this Action if the participants are world diverse. It’s a quicker one -- you can hit a number of stores in succession. And it resembles Bump and Grind – because it is Body Theater again -- you want a big tight crowd in the store for this one. File into the Devil’s chain store that you have chosen. Now on the signal from the Action Manager, lift everything up high over your heads. All the chairs, ashtrays, napkins, gum machines – everything in the store that isn’t nailed down is hovering up there, held aloft. Now your prayer-leader makes a statement about the origins of these objects. The prayer is a direct-address to the people who made these things. Close your eyes with the store’s assets and inventory suspended above you, give the prayer its powerful send-off. We call this a Push Prayer. “We know that you have made these products. We feel that you have touched, you have created these things that surround us…” If these are Wal Mart clothes, have a Chinese-American member of the church call out in Cantonese or Mandarin to the workers on the other end of the labor loop. What an honest feeling to get this message going in the language of the workers as well as the consumers. Make a request that “somehow the division between consumers and workers be ended, so that we can talk directly to each another. So that we can talk to you. “There is a silence in this thing I have up here in my hand, a vision is locked in this, a witnessing. We upset the product from its presentation, take it back a step toward you. The journey of these products keeps us a part, the false ‘Free Market’ keeps us apart, and we are both powerless and we are both poor because we are kept apart. We believe that you hear us in the sweatshops and that we hear you calling from your toxic fields and when the distance in this product is finally crushed that we will touch. :: back to top :: Whirl Mart A seminal Action in our resistance against consumerism. Enter the Wal Mart or big box store singly or in small groups, grab a shopping cart and you are ready. You don’t announce this Action, although sometimes whirlers wear official “Whirl Mart” shirts. Don’t put anything, nothing, into your cart. Push it into the aisles of the store, not gesturing or talking, just look straight ahead. Eventually join in a line of your fellow empty carts, but don’t say hi to anyone. Keep your zen-like non-shopping concentration. If someone cuts your line by coming from a side aisle (mothers with kids get right-of-way) then the line breaks and reforms like the proverbial worm. Lines can become independent for a time, but they usually join up again somewhere down the line. There is scripted goal. The arrival is the journey. Push your cart, following or leading, for an 60 minutes. Our take on the psychic and political rewards of this Action are described in the chapter about Lawrence, Kansas. The incite Whirl Mart give us into the marketing entrapment, the vaudeville in the labels and the looming forests of underwear – whirling helps us do all the other Actions. This subtly deep performance is wonderfully described at Breathingplanet.net. Whirl Mart has been staged throughout the world. :: back to top :: First Amendment Mob This one can be wonderful with ten people and wonderful with 300 people. When a public place has been the setting for an arrest, say, in which the police forgot about the Bill of Right… then we go to that corporate lobby, or park, or river shore line, and begin to recite together the single sentence that is the First Amendment. Now this also works well talking into cellphones. Some Odd Believers feel safer with that cover. You can pretend that you’re talking to a niece that is trying to memorize it for a school class and this gives you the pretext for repeating it over and over again. “Alright, Siena, let’s go through it one more time, ready? Congress shall make no law…” We’ve had folks who actually were talking to friends on cellphones, not pretending, and those people on the other end were helping with the recitation, acting as prompters, reciting it from a First Amendment website. But many Holy Mobbers just recite the beautiful words without a cell, with both hands free to gesture. Some feel that they want to walk and declaim; others stand there reading the amendment from a piece of paper. You can’t make a mistake. The sensation of repeating these five freedoms is dependably uplifting but hard to explain. It is meaningful in an emotional way to both the recitator and the listener. We have staged this Action in places that are deeply contested, where governments and corporations are struggling for supremacy over individuals and community. But police have never been able to arrest us, halting in mid-cuffing, then looking around bewildered by their sudden lack of power as the echoes of the amendment make this Returning World. We’ve had police join us in the reciting. These freedom words continue to be actively free. Here it is: “Congress shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble; and petition the government for redress of grievances.” :: back to top ::
MEMORY RECLAMATION PROJECTS The California Guided Meditation This Action is well-served with 12 to 15 participants, and one meditation leader. In the Disney Store, we do this Action holding hands in a circle around the most prominent stand-alone display, where many famous neurotic characters look out from the shelves. The leader, walking on the outside of this circle, talks in that high monotone of a yoga instructor or hypnosis wizard. “And now you will close your eyes and give your mind permission, let your mind know, that what you will be seeing over this next period of time, the visions that you will imagine – will come from my instructions and my instructions only. The leader pauses, in that cadence, “Now, holding hands in this sacred circle, look deeply into the eyes of the product before you, whether it be Goofy or Pluto or Donald Duck… that’s right, look deeply into those fierce eyes. That’s right. Return the product’s stare, bond with it.” The sequence of the guided visualizing goes like this: 1) Look into the eyes of the product. 2) Close your eyes now and let your earliest memory come into your mind. Take your time. Let it come. 3) Very good. You are in a backyard now in a sandbox with your brothers and sisters. Or you are looking up at your mother from a tricycle. Very good. Now. Introduce the product with which you have bonded – insert that Disney product – that famous bug or animal or princess - directly into that early scene. This might not be easy. If you need to open your eyes again so that you can take the Disney character back into your old memory… go ahead. Don’t rush it. 4) Alright? Very good, now you have introduced into your earliest memory a new character, some Mickey Mouse or other is right there in the sandbox with you. Very good. But now you have to try to play with it, and it’s like a stranger has walked into your world, a monstrous nightmare of a stranger with big crazy eyes and a neurotic screaming voice. You begin to become afraid of it. It’s too big. It wants to much. It wants all the attention. And it suddenly dawns on you that -- this is outrageous! Why is your long-ago memory becoming a Disney production anyway? Now I want you to let yourself feel betrayal and anger. Give yourself permission to be hurt… 5) Open your eyes and shout into the eyes of that Goofy or Pluto or Donald: “I reject you! I throw you out! My life is not a Disney Production! I am free of your entertainment, your insinuation into my intimate memories… 6) And finally, break from holding hands, and everyone run from the store, shouting “I am free of Disney! My life is not a Disney Production! I am free! I am free!” :: back to top :: The Marketing Consultant and It’s Opposite This calls for a stand-up actor, a good improviser, who leads a group of five or six into the transnational chain store. All of you are dressed yuppily – you are in the Ad Biz. You are rude – ignore everyone, following your expert business advisor around the store, looking at graphics and pricing -- you talk loudly. In a Starbucks recently, Sister Laura Newman, our star soprano, went on about “Graphics that give us just a splash of green, a little touchy feely, the environmental movement is somewhere in the air, referred to, but no hard politics, no real politics PUHLEASE! (all laughing).” After this walking tour, sit down together like a class, raising hands to talk, etc. But on a signal from the AM, the troubles begin. A young designer stands up, then stands on a chair, puts arms in the air, and freezes in that position. A second and a third begin to waltz throughout the shop, as they dance they suffer operatic mood-swings, crying jags followed by guffawing. A student dies, face-down on the table. The consultant keeps cheerily raving. On a clapping signal from the AM everyone stops. The AM, who had watched the whole thing from a table and was taking notes, comes forward saying “Thank you thank you, some interesting work there!” -- exactly like a director. You all break character, gather back at the table, with the businesslike aspect of actors done with a run-through. The AM addresses you. “Look, In this run-through you were not any more politically specific than the greenwashers. I’ll tell you why. The age of parody is over. It’s too late for satire. Everyone laughs at advertising, including ad people. In fact it’s too late for political art. Let’s be - more like - humans artfully. And let’s get serious. Instead of the marketing perspective, which asks ‘How can the design of an object consumerize the individual?’ Let’s reverse that. We will approach the object refusing to consume. No, we hold on to our identity, insist on it, and we de-consumerize the object. The AM and the group sit down again, the session continues with the final instruction: “Alright, then what do we do? We have a thought, a memory, a private series of associations – and we insist on the importance of our personal visionary program. So let’s go back in now, when you walk up to that happy peasant posing with the coffee trees, when you see the New York Times on the chair, when you see that imitation Rauschenberg art on the walls – have your own response. Final note: In this exercise we don’t encourage you to necessarily damage those objects of fake bohemianism, but yes - have your response, honor your real response, which may rise up within you and then become an action that surprises you as well as “disturbing the customers.” You are profoundly disturbing the customer that you might have become, and nothing is more important than that. :: back to top :: First Thought Your Thought Any number of actioneers can do this one. Set up a table near the front-door of a transnational chain store. Good hits: Victoria’s Secret, Duane Reade (this Action has special resonance with pharmaceutical sales), or the Martha Stewart department at K-mart – design-heavy outlets are ideal. Put a sign on the table, “National Imagination Task Force (NITF).” Passing shoppers are asked to add their names/emails to a petition for Imagination Protection legislation. Two people at the table explain to the curious, “New studies indicate that the barrage of seductive advertising products and utopias is leaving citizens with significant imagination impairment.” Now, one by one, you leave the table to enter the store and pick up product from the shelf, as if you intend to buy it. Take the chosen purchase over toward the cash register and get in line. At the last possible moment shout “Oh, I forgot my money!” Run out of the store and go to back the NITF table where a notebook and pen awaits. Now write down the first thought you have that doesn’t involve that chain store or that product. Write and write until you finish. Write as long as you have to. There are no mistakes here. This is all Sanctified Oddness. You are exercising your imagination muscle, your post-commercial ability to see and remember. When you finish, replace a fellow worshipper at the table, sending that person into the store, so your group continues this process of near-purchases followed by full imagination. Meanwhile on the tabling end of this journey – explain what you are doing openly and invite others to try it. Read your imaginative out loud, and our experience is that this writing is funny and highly original. Ask folks to write a response to what you’ve written. Imagination causes more imagination. The post-commercial writing and talking in an hour or two will build up a solid culture-scape, heightening the public space outside and making the mass-produced product language inside the store windows seem to become a parody of itself. And there’s the struggle right there. :: back to top :: Lost and Found Can be one person, can be several. Simply – you lose something of great importance to you in a crowded room, could be the waiting area in a train station, or an audience waiting for a film to begin. The item should be something laden with memory, with a story. Here in our example the lost valuable is a great-great-aunt’s diary, a little leather-bound book. As you get on hands and knees looking in the darkness under chairs, in the seams between sections of couch, behind other people’s luggage, you keep describing “The lost world that she wrote about. She was a lesbian, her name was Lorraine - you see she met her lover in Chicago at a librarian’s convention – oh I hope I don’t lose this – excuse me can I look behind your leg? – thanks - and the two of them homesteaded in South Dakota for twenty years with 7 foster children - have you seen it? a little black book, very old -- and then they moved back east when two of the sons went AWOL from the Spanish American War – what a story! I’ll just be crushed if I… excuse me can I look under here? - and then they started a Peace organization and took in refugees in a Toronto Hotel that they somehow fixed up…” This is like a monologue from a stage but in this case the storyteller goes through the fourth wall and relates the whole story UNDER the audience. And, this is an ideal format for re-introducing the bios of the Saints in our church - Mother Jones, Joe Hill, the manong in San Francisco or Bruce Utah Phillips, King of the Hobos. Moral of the Action: We have lost our histories, but they are within us, under us, in the darkness behind us. Left in the hands of commercial media, history is sentimental and sugary and depoliticized. Let’s find our past and say it out loud in public space. :: back to top :: Cellphone Opera Number One Good with between 15 and 25 church members. Enter the store as single shoppers. No-one knows anyone else. But everyone has essentially the SAME story. Each of you has been sent by a wife or husband on an errand -- to go to this store and buy something for the child’s birthday. But one by one you get on your cellphones to object to the choice of gift. The store gradually fills with voices calling home on cell phones. All of you are disagreeing with that wife or husband who sent you – you refuse to buy the assigned gift. Now, the ferocity of a marriage spat is a very powerful force. A phrase like, “Look DEAR! Excuse me HONEY!” – makes renta-cops evaporate. If someone does shush you, well, agree and apologize – continue with a harsh whisper through clenched teeth. Nothing is louder. OK. Make up some refusenik theater: “Do you think Cindy should idolize this Snow White doll? This little wasp waist, c’mon! Oh! Oh! I see -- so women’s rights never happened is that it? Excuse me Ralph – why am i here? Why am i buying this LITTLE PLASTIC SLUT? ARE YOU TRYING TO ASK ME TO LOSE WEIGHT?” It is interesting to let the volume of the army of kvetchers stay at a realistic level, then rise very gradually, on maestro-like signals from the AM – so that the social conscience of our innocent browser can be excited several times as he or she walks into the voice-range of one phone call after another. A variation: A wife and a husband suddenly collide with each other shrieking, in front of the Pocahantas pajama sets – they were talking on cell phones but both thought the other one was at home. “What are you doing here? No YOU told ME to buy this… this sweatshop- piece of garbage!” At which point the marriage spat about the gift for Kimmy is free to continue LIVE AND NASTY! STARBUCKS SWALLOWED BY STRANGE WORLDS :: back to top :: Cellphone Opera Number Two This one is meant for Starbucks, in a neighborhood where the Devil’s cafes are clustering. How many of the Stop Shopping pious for this Action? – 4 or 5 up to a dozen or more. This is the emergency: Placelessness. The latte sipper looks up to see a person on a cell phone who is frantically lost, frowning, looking out windows. “But you said Starbucks at Astor Place, and here I am. No I’m not angry. I look forward to meeting you. You looked real wonderful on the Internet, uh… and I spent an hour on the subway too… so, where are you? Starbucks at Astor Place. Well so am I! Well, there’s more than one? Oh. Well, go to the window and look out and wave. Do you see me? I don’t see you. Maybe.. maybe… Look, I’ll go outside and jump up and down until someone comes by and stops me and maybe that’ll be you.” Then a second and a third person on cell phones and just few feet away, are shouting, “I’m at the Starbucks now! Where are you! What? I’m at the Starbucks. Are you here?” Obviously, it is wonderful to have lots and lots of people absolutely sincerely lost, asking about other Starbucks, getting directions to other Starbucks, going up to people at their lattes and asking “ARE YOU MY DATE? or ARE YOU MY DATE AND ARE YOU CHANGING YOUR MIND?” or or HAVE YOU SEEN A REDHEAD WITH BANGS AND A TATTOO THAT SAYS HILDEGARDE?” Nice touch: Later, the redhead that has that tattoo shows up asking for the person who just left. It’s a “Who’s On First” routine. Note: Placelessness mixes in with identity problems in this Action, because if you don’t know where you are, eventually you don’t know who you are. :: back to top :: Trash Worship Twenty actioneers dress up like upwardly mobile careerists. Each of you has a briefcase, a gym bag, or a big purse. You enter the Starbucks until the place is full. At least one person is seated at every table, and others are standing by the various counters – every flat surface has a nearby interventionist. On the AM’s signal you begin to lift out of your briefcases the empty Starbucks cups which you previously culled from the trash. Do this without expression, studying each item with interest, placing the cup carefully on the table. Soon the tables are crowded with Starbucks cups; there is no more room for anything else. You are sitting in this forest of upright trash, every item sporting the Starbucks logo. Then something very dramatic and Odd happens. Gypsy dancers stage a grand entrance accompanied by wild Bulgarian violinists. (Your choice: could be a fiery flamenco diva or a elegant Degas-like ballerina or a step-dancer in clogs.) The dancers have their skirts in their fists, flashing red petticoats. They throw back their heads keening as they whip their skirts around. Instead of clapping, you methodical yuppies at the tables pick up one cup in each hand and wave them in the air in circles. You come from a mysterious culture in which applause takes the form of this ritual Starbucks cup gesture. The performers dance freneticly, encouraging more airy cup circles. Soon the entire Starbucks is full of two-fisted cup circlings and you keep waving the cups until the finally the dancers leave bowing and yipping. When your play-within-a-play is over, put the cups away, into the briefcases and purses. We must leave the Starbucks with no evidence that we were there. To the observer, the whole thing was a strange dream. Of course, leave behind information sheets about Starbucks abuses. :: back to top :: Virtually Hip - for Larry, Curly and Moe This is a comedy for the Larry, Curly and Moe of anti-consumerism. Or is it the Cheech and Chong of neo-situationism? The Action is adaptable to any of the BOBO (bohemian bourgeois) chain stores that pretend to be arty, a destination for the hapless scene-maker or taste-follower. Anthologie, Crate and Barrel, Urban Outfitters, Starbucks. Take these three Stooges-like over-the-top characters and improvise from there. Hipster #1 feels like he dodged a bullet -- he doesn’t have to figure out what might be hip anymore. He’s SO RELIEVED that the hip decisions have been made by the mysterious gods of retail. He says “Wow, I’m virtually hip! I wanted to be hip all my life and now I’m IN. Hipster #2? He just keeps saying, “Wow I am SO HIGH – this shit is SO GOOD. I’m SAILING. oooh… I’m sailing over the edge. This stuff goes to my source, right to my source. I got to (drink) (see) (touch) (smell) more of this, cause WOW. I’M VIRTUALLY HIP! And Hipster #3: “I’m completely taken care of. I don’t have to make have any political values at all. I’m free of “having a position” or “feeling involved” all that HORSESHIT. Yeah, baby, I will never, oh man, all that GUILT! Gone. I am so post-social, baby. I mean I’m SO social. I mean, I don’t what I mean -- I’m passing out. I’m VIRTUALLY HIP.” So: The first hipster has virtual taste, the second virtual physical sensation, and the third virtual social connection. And they are funny in the tradition of the Three Stooges if their three kinds of know-nothingism are performed like fast hand-to-hand contact: biffing each other, farting, belching, apologizing, walking into walls, failing to shop like a civilized human being. This has tremendous dramatic possibilities! The bohemian bourgeois raised to the level of inspired pratfalling. Videotape this. :: back to top :: The Stockbroker and the Mermaid Fetus This is clash of two archetypes in the lead roles, but there are hidden mermaids – you’ll see what we mean -- and the AM is looking on, ready to join in. The two principles in the Action sit at the same table under the famous Starbucks mermaid. You two are both claiming ownership of that Starbucks mermaid-logo. First, the broker. (One of you Billionaires for Bush could take on this character.) You are confessing your love of Starbucks because of its constant expansion. “I love investing in Starbucks. I love to go to Karachi and find that my investment welcomes me– there she is - the green fish-woman in that beautiful logo, another damn Starbucks!” The woman across the table (can be any gender, of course, can be a Radical Faerie) lives in the vague zone of Starbucks like a happy fetus fish floating in the primordial placenta. She turns to the broker and says “Excuse me, but why did you Starbucks people air-brush off the nipples of the Fish-goddess? Her navel is gone too.” He replies paternalisticly, sensing a dues-paying member of Code Pink has his dick in her cross-hairs. “Well, ma’am, back in 96 we went into more conservative demographics like Ohio and Dubai – the old logo was actually quite sexy. Can’t have that!” The crazy lady replies “Oh, why do that predictable phallic thing? Expand schmexpand. Just breathe and float in the mermaid’s ocean, feel the soft protection of her lovely womb.” He edges away from the nut. But she is getting angry. “Look at her in the logo. She is the oceanic fertility goddess of the sea. She is Pina and Fan and Sheel-a-nagig!” The stockbroker gets a call on the cell. It’s the New York Stock Exchange calling. Starbucks has announced a thousand more coffeeshops in Africa and the the stockbroker has made $100,000 in the last ten minutes. He leaps us from the chair! ANOTHER TRIPLE LATTE FOR ME! THE MERMAIDS TAKING THE SUBSAHARA LIKE A PACK OF F-16’S!” This trips something in our mermaid fetus. She starts to move, to kick, to be born. To the astonishment of our Wall Streeter, she swims to the surface, she shouts and sings and undulates like a great fish: “WHAT AM I? I AM BECOMING! I AM THE MERMAID FROZEN IN THE LOGO. AND I WANT MY NIPPLES BACK!” Then she stands on the chair, and then the table. She addresses the whole Starbucks, “YES I AM THE STARBUCKS MERMAID AND I AM GETTING MY NIPPLES BACK!” More women rise from surrounding tables. They swim through the Starbucks, out onto the sidewalk and into the next Starbucks. More mermaids emerge, more mermaids, bare-breasted and undulating their fins, it’s the Mermaid Parade let loose in the city. “We are the mermaids who swam out of the Starbucks logo, and we have our power!” :: back to top :: Sponsored Lover Two leads (Jamie and Lucy) and two supporting parishioners and if possible each shill has a couple supporting shills coming in from across the Starbucks to get join the debate. This Action is designed to spread. If it’s working a whole Town Hall meeting develops inside our host chain store, discussing the issue of corporation appropriation of human emotions. Jamie and Lucy are the two lovers. You two enter the store and sit, staring into each others’ eyes. Hold hands in the center of the table. You are transfixed, and just a bit loud. You shills sit nearby with the AM in sight. The AM sizes up the progress of the play and signals all the shills to turn toward the lovers and openly watch, encouraging the voyeuristic interest from throughout the coffeeshop. Jamie: “I love you.” Lucy: “Oh, I love you.” Jamie: “I love you.” Lucy: “Yes darling, I love you so much.” Jamie: “I want to elope, marry, everything.” Lucy: “I want to plunge into a new life.” Jamie: “I love you.” Lucy: “I love you, too.” Jamie gets on one knee beside the table. Jamie: “Will you marry me?, brought to you by Subway – Good To The Last Bite.” Lucy: “Oh sweetheart… but… What did you say?” Jamie: “What I’ve been saying all along. I love you brought to you by Fig Newtons, The Taste Treat from Nabisco.” Lucky: “I love you. Just say ‘I love you.’”. Jamie: “I just love you, brought to you by Waste Management Systems, WM, Relax – We’ll Clean Up!” Lucy: “Honey, what IS this? Jamie: “This is my undying devotion to you, that’s all sweetheart, don’t be concerned, sponsored by Zocor. It’s Your Future. Be There. Lucy: “Have you, have you… SOLD OUR LOVE!” Jamie: “ Honey, brought to you by your local Coca Cola bottler, I love you as much as ever! believe me! by Polo Deckwear. Lucy: “Oh my god… this is a nightmare… It unravels from there. This little comedy has several possible plots, one is offered at the church website. We would like to hear what you come up with -- or see your videotape. But it’s so very important for the shills to come over to the lovers and spread the discussion throughout the Starbucks. Be loud enough. Don’t be afraid of entering the zone of Exalted Embarrassment. “Excuse me I couldn’t help but over-hear - that you found a corporate sponsored for your marriage proposal. That’s a fascinating profit center. Very creative, almost artistic. Who do you talk to for that kind of arrangement… do you have an agent? A second shill approaches in a state of shocked (and loud) disbelief. “Saying ‘I love you’ with corporate sponsorship? Are you, are you SERIOUS? I just want to say that this is incredible. Has it come to this. What is this culture coming to? ARE YOU INSANE?” Another shill marches up. “Look, dude, this is the 21st Century so get on board or get out of the way. You’re either with us or against us. How do you think people make a living today? I’ve sold adspace on my mother’s gravestone!” The notion that you can sell intimate emotions to corporations can be egged on by the shills, while the weary lovers sit in the center of it all. Maybe you’ll be lucky and a Joni Mitchell love song will come over the Starbucks sound system… Once we had a little old man speak up. He was the kind of nondescript fellow who might haunt the back pages of a Carson McCullers southern diner. A person who is always quietly and carefully – always there in back – with his newspaper and careful napkin and fork. I noticed him, and I thought we must be annoying him. Suddenly he put his paper down and called out -- “Did you read the one about the desperate couple who offered to name their child Wal Mart Lowest Prices Always Johnson? They were demanding a million dollars. Did you read about that? Imagine that - growing up with that name. ‘Hello who are you?’ “Oh my name is Wal Mart Lowest Prices Always Johnson!’ I mean What would you call such a child at home? ‘Wally?’ Yes that’s probably what they had in mind. Drop the advertisement in the middle and just stick with Wally but meanwhile get out of town with that Wal Mart money. Yes, I’m sure of it, that’s what they were thinking, that young couple. Oh well, his name is probably Harold now, something like that. Probably Harold Higby Johnson, after some deceased Uncle Harold Higby or some such. Oh well.” He stopped the show. :: back to top ::  
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   Brother Michael's Church Bulletin Diatribes, Data and Discussion. Blog-a-luia! 
My kids and I, along with two friends, were in the movie theater watching "What Would Jesus Buy." We had joined the mission in December 2005, when you came to Sabathani in Minneapolis, and we joined the choir at the holy of holies, Mall of America.
Anyway, midway through the movie, my 8-year old son leaned over to me and whispered, "Mom, you don't have to buy ME anything for Christmas. I don't need more stuff." My 9-year old daughter and her friend were actually in the film (there's a few-second shot of them holding up my debit and library cards, pretending they are credit cards). After the credits rolled, they told the audience around us that they were in the movie, and we all had a great discussion about your message. In some ways, your message is as simple as the lesson learned by the Grinch in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," when he learns that "Maybe Christmas doesn't come in a box from a store. Maybe Christmas, he thought, means a little bit more." I'm paraphrasing here, but let no one say your message is too hard or "not right" for children to hear. They hear you, and they move forward with that message in their minds. As the kids and I ate our supper, we talked about how seeing the movie brought back that day two years earlier, when we had seen the Church. We talked about your mission and about the details of the day. We talked about why it was important to think and talk about what Wordsworth calls the "getting and spending [in which] we lay waste our hours" (another bad paraphrase). I wanted to share my story with you, mostly because of your exhaustion in the movie's scene in Bentonville AR. Do not wonder if you are being heard--you are! So, thanks. And change-a-llujah. -Johanna  Stay in touch, hear from us, confess! 
Tue, May 20 : : WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY? DVD Hits The Streets
: : New York, NY
: : more 
Sun, June 1 @ 2:00 PM : : Highline Revival and What Would Jesus Buy? DVD Celebration
: : Highline Ballroom, New York, NY
: : more
Go to complete events listing
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