by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally

Jonathan Levine’s new film The Wackness is great. It really is. It’s depressing. No doubt. But it’s a good movie.

Josh Peck, as recently graduated - prep school - drug dealer - hip hop enthusiast - virgin - depressive - bored Luke Shapiro and Sir Ben Kingsley as lost - frustrated - depressive - addicted  -bored - tired Dr. Squires are excellent together. Their relationship gives the movie an uncompromising reality that infiltrates every moment of the New York City Hip-Hopped bildungsroman. All the actors have a great understanding for their characters and the director really gets you into the protagonists head. So much so, that your emotions twist and squeeze along with Luke’s as he suffers through heartbreak, insecurity and a drugged out emptiness that pervades each frame.

As to the movie’s authenticity: A+. Heck, I know kids from my New York City high school of whom this movie could very well be a biography. The film stays true to its location, its music and the complexity of each of its characters and the real life teens whose lives this story replicates. So, what about the drugs?

How come, people ask, Luke was never arrested for dealing drugs, even though in the movie he was often doing so in public, out in the open, using a converted Italian Ice cart? Even though 1994 was right when Rudy Giuliani stepped up his anti-drug enforcement? Simple answer: HE’S WHITE.

Read the rest of this entry »

Politicians want to pick his brain, women want to play with his ponytail; as social movement movers and shakers go, Drinking Liberally co-founder Justin Krebs is a virtual whirling dervish of democratic dynamism (while I, alas, am a compulsive abuser of alliteration.)

He’s faster than a speeding blog post! More powerful than a local motormouth! Able to leap tall blowhards in a single soundbite!

In his spare time, when he’s not busy building community, defending democracy, and Living Liberally, the charismatic Krebs is a cultural impresario and all-around-stand-up guy (literally–in his spare time, he does comedic improv.) Justin also co-founded the non-profit performing arts space The Tank, a Tribeca mecca for grassroots good times and “an incubator of hip, indie, up-and-comers in the arts,” according to Harvard magazine .

It’s ludicrous how many lives this George Bailey-on-steroids has touched. He’s amassed a stockpile of social capital that politicians and entrepreneurs twice his age would love to have, and he’s not even thirty.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m writing from the Young People For summit in Washington D.C. Living Liberally is one of the co-organizers and Laughing Liberally will be performing tomorrow. Last year when I performed at the summit,  I was thrilled to meet the “YP4 Fellows,” the young leaders and activists, who receive training and and support from YP4. I was struck by these energetic, open-minded, progressive, diverse, dynamic, and inspiring college students.

But this year, I have to admit, when I arrived at the hotel where the YP4 fellows are staying I was a little disappointed by what I saw. The people sitting in the lobby were much older, straighter, whiter, boring-er, and stuffier than I had remembered them being last year.   In the sea of white, suit-wearing people,whose age ranged from 50-80, my earings were literally the most ethnic things there. Is this what has become of the young progressive movement, I wondered in fear. Then I learned that the hotel was hosting the Republican National Committee’s Winter Meeting. And it all made sense. Phew!

Like what you see at YP4 more than at the RNC meeting? Then sponsor a YP4 fellow.