April 30, 2009

You Gonna Jump or Jerk Off?

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If you’re like me, you think the Patrick Swayze-Keanu Reeves vehicle Point Break is one of the better things to happen to 1991. And if you’re like me, you have a suspicion that the production could somehow be even better were it performed live by young, yelly guys who never, ever put shirts on and a totally unpracticed Johnny Utah lead who is chosen from the audience and reads his lines off cue cards. Well, you’re right on both accounts.

Point Break Live! debuted in Seattle in 2003, but two cities in California are lucky enough to be hosting its current runs. The LA show opened for what was supposed to be a couple of months in 2007 and is still going due to popular demand; San Francisco has brought the show back after a successful go last year. It’s been to New York and Minneapolis and Las Vegas, and according to coproducer Thomas Blake, Nightline is soon to run a segment about how PBL! could change the face of theater. Let’s hope that’s true. Take, for example, this conversation I had with one of the actors after the show: 
 

My friend: Do you guys ever have girls play Johnny?

Actor: Yeah, but it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

Me: Because you guys can’t rub your dicks on her?

Actor: Well, yeah.

Want to see how the climactic parachute scene is recreated on a live stage with about $11 worth of props? Ditto Johnny Utah’s seminal surfing safari? While yourself wearing a poncho, which will be handed to you upon entering, like at a Gallagher performance? The self-consciously low-budget and obnoxious and absurd Point Break Live! is Point Break plus extreme caricaturizing, homoeroticism, and hot bros in board shorts throwing fake blood all over your face. This is the Point Break of your dreams. If you live in California, go. If you don’t live in California, consider flying to California so you can go. In the immortal words of Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi, if you want the ultimate, you’ve got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It’s not tragic to die doing what you love.
 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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