As if New York didn't already have enough bland bank branches on every corner, now they have to go and (fictionally) start taking over our churches? EVG notes that Capital One has gone and turned the East Village's beloved St. Mark's Church into a fake branch for its latest commercial with Jerry Stiller. What makes the commercial especially galling is that the corner in question already has a long history of seeing its landmarks replaced by bank branches. At least this one isn't real...for now.
St. Mark's Church Becomes A Bank (In An Ad)
Opinionist: mythic figurations: a power triptych
In Joseph Campbell's hugely influential work of comparative mythology, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, the world's hero myths are boiled down to three narrative stages: the action, the trials, and the hero at home. But what about that fourth stage, when the retired hero is puttering around the house with no greater trial than cleaning the leaves out of the gutter? In mythic figurations: a power triptych, the plight of the washed-up hero is milked for steady laughs by Ilan Bachrach, who plays "The Warrior," a shirtless slob with a hairline that's receding as steadily as his odds of ever slaying a dragon again.
Richard Foreman, Ontological-Hysteric Theater
For the past four decades, Richard Foreman has challenged and fascinated audiences with a deeply idiosyncratic aesthetic incorporating traces of vaudeville, Jungian philosophy, slapstick, surrealism and myriad other disparate sources to create what he calls the Ontological-Hysteric theater. His newest “theatrical machine”, called Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, is the third in a series of works that heavily emphasize video projection, this time shot on location in Japan.

