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by Chuck Shepherd

April 17, 2008

SEEDY!

Irish director-playwright Paul Walker’s production of Ladies & Gents opened for a March run in New York City 29 blocks north of Broadway in a public restroom. According to an Associated Press report, the entire play takes place among the porcelain in a bathroom in Central Park, portraying “the seedy underside of 1950s Dublin,” with the audience of 25 standing beside rows of stalls, near “spiders, foul odors and puddles of questionable origin.” Walker proudly admits that he wanted to take the audience “out of their comfort zone” to create “a different energy.” Actor John O’Callaghan recalled that rehearsals were especially difficult: “One man actually came in and had a pee right in front of us.”

CULTURAL DIVERSITY

In October, the government of Singapore, anxious about the city’s declining birth rate, began teaching high school polytechnic students how to flirt. Said Isabel, 18: “My teacher said if a guy looks into my eyes for more than five seconds, it could mean that he is attracted to me, and I stand a chance,” according to a March Reuters dispatch. The course includes “love song analysis” and how to chat online.

MANLY LAW

Officials in the Shivpuri district of India’s Madhya Pradesh state, needing a promising program to slow the country’s still-booming birth rate, announced in March that men who volunteer for vasectomies will be rewarded with certificates that speed them through the ordinarily slow line to obtain gun permits. Said an administrator, the loss, through vasectomy, of a “perceived notion of manliness” would be offset “with a bigger symbol of manliness.”

LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGES

Ajinbayo Akinsiku’s heavily abridged version of the Bible, in the Japanese graphic “manga” style, was recently published in the United States with the goal of making Jesus more “accessible” to a younger, religion-indifferent generation. Quirky, illustration-rich manga presents biblical philosophy as action scenes using contemporary dialogue, according to a February New York Times review. In one example, Akinsiku (who hopes someday to become an Anglican priest) has Noah taking census on the Ark: “That’s 11,344 animals? Aargh! I’ve lost count again. I’m going to have to start from scratch!”

THE CONTINUING CRISIS

Registered sex offender Jason Lee, 28, was arrested in Cincinnati in February and charged with several counts of deception for his seemingly benevolent acts of posting bond for two female strangers who had been arrested. Later, according to police, he had demanded sex and drugs from the women as payback, and a prosecutor said Lee had trolled for names of arrested women on the Web site of the Clerk of the Court.

WASN’T THIS A PAUL SIMON SONG?

Anthony Raspolic reported a break-in in the wee hours of Jan. 1 in his apartment in Durant, Okla. He told police that he was in bed with his girlfriend, but got up and left the room, and by the time he returned, someone had taken his place. The man scurried out of the bed, stole Raspolic’s wallet and fled in his Ford Explorer.

NO JOKE

Mark Hotuyec, 46, was arrested in Joliet, Ill., in February and charged with indecent exposure after he allegedly drove alongside a school bus containing fourth-graders while openly fondling himself, visible to kids looking out the window. The name of the school? Wood View Elementary in Bolingbrook, Ill. MTW